Podcasts about corporately

Bearing the Fruit of Christ (audio) David Eells – 4/23/25 Saints, The Lord told me a few days ago that the Man-child and Bride are not quite ready for all He has planned.  He indicated the time would be soon, but they need to “…Behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.” This is justification by faith and also is how the power to manifest Christ in us comes. 2Co.3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. Today I'm going to talk to you about bearing the fruit of perfection in Christ. We have learned that we were sanctified and perfected. (Heb.10:14) For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. We shall be manifested in these things. We receive sanctification and perfection by this position in Christ Jesus. Now we need to cooperate with God to manifest what we've received by faith. (Heb.11:1) Now faith is assurance of [things] hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. We want the evidence to be made manifest in our life so that Christ can live through us in this world. I usually study the Parable of the Sower out of Matthew 13, but I would like us to look at Luke this time. (Luk.8:4) And when a great multitude came together, and they of every city resorted unto him, he spake by a parable: (5) The sower went forth to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden under foot, and the birds of the heaven devoured it. (6) And other fell on the rock; and as soon as it grew, it withered away, because it had no moisture. (7) And other fell amidst the thorns; and the thorns grew with it, and choked it. (8) And other fell into the good ground, and grew, and brought forth fruit a hundredfold. As he said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. (9) And his disciples asked him what this parable might be. (10) And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to the rest in parables; that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.  (11) Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. (12) And those by the way side are they that have heard; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word from their heart, that they may not believe and be saved. (13) And those on the rock [are] they who, when they have heard, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. (14) And that which fell among the thorns, these are they that have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of [this] life, and bring no fruit to perfection. So obviously, we're talking about the manifestation of perfection, which is to bring fruit to perfection. Notice, even though they were receiving the seed, they didn't bring the fruit to perfection. (15) And that in the good ground, these are such as in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience. These bring forth fruit unto perfection. Glory to God! That's our hope, that the Lord Himself will manifest His fruit in us. It's the seed that brings forth the fruit unto perfection; it's not us. It's the seed, the Word of God in us, that has power. One of the points is that we have to hold it fast, hold fast the seed. We see that the seed is being sown in the heart (verse 11) and the seed is the Word of God. If the heart holds it fast, it will bring forth fruit unto perfection. (12) And those by the way side are they that have heard; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word from their heart, that they may not believe and be saved. Here the Word is not held fast so that it bears fruit; this is a miscarrying womb. The heart is the womb that brings forth the fruit, just like the womb of a woman has to hold fast the seed in order for that seed to come to birth. (1Jn.3:9) Whosoever is begotten (the word “begotten” here is the same word for “born”) of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him…. In other words, it stays, it's being held fast, it “abideth in him.” He cannot sin because he is born of God. So, when the seed abides, it can come to birth, it can bring the fruit to perfection. And we know, since the seed is the Word of God, and Jesus is the Word of God, that the fruit that is born in us is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col.1:27); that is, Christ manifested in His people. We know that we were perfected at the cross, that His life was given for ours, and that we don't live anymore – Christ lives in us by faith. But as we hold fast the promise in the midst of the many trials of riches, temptations, and so on, as we hold on to the Word, that Word will bear fruit. Many times in the trial, our mind wants to revert back to the things of the world. Our mind wants to walk by sight instead of by faith, but in the trial, we have opportunity to hold on to the Word and not turn it loose, so that it bears the same fruit of Jesus Christ in us, the same faith, the same miraculous power, the same sanctifying power, manifested through His saints. When we're in the midst of the trials, we have to hold fast to the Word and cast down everything else. (2Co.10:5) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. That's the whole point: we are to hold fast to the Word and cast down every other word that empowers the curse. We must cast down the seed of the devil, which is his word and thoughts. Cast it down, cast it out of our mind. We only want the one seed that can bring forth the fruit of Christ. That's the only seed we want to accept and we have to hold fast to it, because the devil is seeking to take away the seed that's been sown in our heart. He desperately has to do that, or we will bear fruit and it will be too late. We have to “hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not.” When you're in the fiery trial and you know what the promise is, remember that promise is the seed that you have to hold to in order to bear the fruit. We don't want to have a spiritually-miscarrying womb. Remember, Jesus said, The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life (Joh.6:63). Any other word besides the Word of God is also spirit and is also life, but not the spirit and life of Christ. We don't want another life. We don't want to have “strange children,” as the prophet spoke: (Hos.5:7) “They have borne strange children”. They have to look like the father. If you have a child who looks strangely different from the father, you wonder, “Now, whose seed is this?” It wasn't the seed of the father. Well, so it is today. We read the Scriptures in order to become familiar with the Father, Jesus said, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father (Joh.14:9). In other words, Jesus manifested His Father. He was a seed which was in line with His Father, and we have to also be such a seed. The fruit in us has to also be a seed, which is in line with our Father's Word. There is an example in Leviticus 19 that points this out pretty well: (Lev.19:19) Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed…. In other words, each seed brings forth after its own kind; you don't want a mixture here. I remember my father-in-law told me one time about how he planted a row of hot peppers too close to a row of bell peppers and his bell peppers became hot. I can imagine, in some cases, hot bell peppers might be pretty handy, but if you want bell peppers, you want bell peppers. What the Father is looking for is Jesus. He's not interested in anything else. He has planted that seed in His field and He wants Christ. (Joh.3:13) … No one hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven…. The Lord wants Jesus, so we don't want two kinds of seed sown in our field, because this is going to be a mixture; it's not going to be the fruit of Christ. Any mixture takes away from the fruit of Christ. (Lev.19:19) … Neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together. That's a good example of “putting on the works of Christ” along with putting on our own works. “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to [fulfil] the lusts [thereof]” (Rom.13:14). The problem is making sure that the seed is the true seed of the Father, which is the Word of God, making sure that we hold fast to the seed, and making sure that we don't have a spiritually-miscarrying womb. Leviticus 15 speaks about that in another verse: (Lev.15:19) And if a woman have an issue, [and] her issue in her flesh be blood (notice that it doesn't say “in her body”; it purposely says, “in her flesh”), she shall be in her impurity seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. This is a parable and, therefore, types and shadows. There's nothing unclean about the natural thing that this is speaking about. But the spiritual revelation here is that it's very unclean. (1Co.10:11) Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come. So what we see here is something concerning a miscarrying womb, because of the issue of blood, where what's in the blood represents our nature. (Lev.17:11) For the life of the flesh is in the blood…. The life, the nature, the soul (“soul” is sometimes translated in the New Testament as “nature”) has been passed on to a person through the blood of their parents. This nature of the “old man” is our enemy; it's the whole problem we're fighting against. It's struggling with us and there's a war going on, but the Blood of Jesus represents His life, His nature, His soul, and bearing fruit is to bear the fruit of the Spirit and soul of Christ in us. That is what the Word manifesting itself in us is all about. We see here that, if a woman has an issue of blood in her flesh, this is impurity. Why? Because the blood of the old life washes away the seed, and the seed doesn't bear fruit. The woman is not fertile. In fact, it says here that she will be impure for seven days. She's not going to be fertile until the eighth day. The eighth day is a new beginning. So in a spiritual way (the verse is not talking about natural women), the “women” spoken of refers to sects and divisions of God's people, as Scripture speaks about them. (Isa.4:1) And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name…. These “women” are the seven churches doing their own thing. Women can also be local churches. (2Ti.3:5) Holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away. (6) For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, (7) ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. So they're studying, studying, studying. They continue receiving seed, but they're never coming to the knowledge of the truth. It happens all the time. “Silly women,” as the Scripture calls them, these sects of God's people who don't grow up in Him are led captive by these men making disciples of themselves. (Lev.15:19) … She shall be in her impurity seven days…. (Mat.15:6) … Ye have made void (“of no effect”) the word of God because of your tradition. We see from this that the blood of the woman represents her carnal nature, by which she rejects the seed of Christ (the Word of God), the seed that is to bring forth the life and nature and fruit of the Husband. The Jews were doing just that. They were like a menstruating woman, who were not going to bring forth fruit, because their old nature had determined that they were going to walk after their traditions – those things that were pleasing to their natural life and to their flesh. Therefore, when the Word of God comes along, which sometimes is crucifying to the “old man,” they reject it. It gets washed away by their own nature. Jesus rebuked them and He told them, Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man (Mat.15:11). Their thinking was coming out of their mouth. That was what was defiling them because they were rejecting the true Word of God. They were making of no effect the Word of God by their tradition, making the seed ineffectual in bringing forth any fruit. (Lev.15:19) And if a woman have an issue, [and] her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be in her impurity seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. Note that the word used here for “unclean” is the same word for “defiled.” Remember Revelation 14:4: “the firstfruits unto God and unto the Lamb.” It says they “were not defiled with women.” This is talking about them not being defiled with those sects of God's people who are rejecting the true Seed of God. If we're not holding fast the Word, then we're washing it away with our own unclean, fallen nature. (Lev.17:11) For the life of the flesh is in the blood…. As we read on down, we see: (Lev.15:24) And if any man lie with her, and her impurity be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days…. Well, we know who it is who “lieth” with these women. It is those who are supposed to be sowing the Seed of the Lord. Paul said, For though ye have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet [have ye] not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begat you through the gospel (1Co.4:15). In other words, Paul sowed the Seed of the Lord God, and it brought forth the fruit of Jesus in those early disciples, and so on. But we see here that those who lie with the woman who was not willing to give up her old life, to give fertile ground to the seed, then that man is unclean, too. (2Ti.3:6) For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, (7) ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Jesus said the same thing, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to the rest in parables; that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand” (Luk.8:10). Jesus wasn't going to sow the seed in that infertile ground. He wasn't going to give the true Word of God to those people who had no respect for it, and who would just wash it away, like throwing pearls before swine. It's that same way today. The true Word of God will not be received by many apostate Christians, and a person wastes their time trying to give it to them. Those apostate Christians will disrespect God's Word and will cast it to the ground. So the woman with an issue is going to stay in her impurity and the man who sows seed in her is going to stay in his impurity seven days. These people have the unscriptural idea that they're going to escape by flying away and miss the seven days of the Tribulation. They're not going to do it. (Lev.15:28) But if she be cleansed of her issue, then she shall number to herself seven days, and after that she shall be clean. We're coming to the time when people need to be cleansed so that at the end of the seven days (the seven-year Tribulation), they'll be ready to meet the Lord. (Lev.15:29) And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtle-doves, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tent of meeting. (30) And the priest shall offer the one for a sin-offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for the issue of her uncleanness. (31) Thus shall ye separate the children of Israel from their uncleanness, that they die not in their uncleanness, when they defile my tabernacle that is in the midst of them. Now we see here that we're talking about a defiling of a tabernacle, a body of God's people, a temporary temple of God's people. This tabernacle is being defiled because they've cast the Word of God to the ground. They have been caught up in the traditions of men, so that their own opinions and their own ideas are more important to them than receiving the Seed of the Word. I'm reminded of this: (Isa.32:9) Rise up, ye women that are at ease, [and] hear my voice; ye careless daughters, give ear unto my speech. (10) For days beyond a year shall ye be troubled, ye careless women; for the vintage shall fail, the ingathering shall not come. The ingathering harvest (the Rapture) that they're all expecting to be at the beginning of the seven days won't come until the end of the seven days. Why? Because they're defiled. The vintage did not bear fruit. (11) Tremble, ye women that are at ease; be troubled, ye careless ones; strip you, and make you bare (in other words, take off those mixed garments), and gird [sackcloth] upon your loins. And when does He say they are going to bear fruit? (15) Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be esteemed as a forest. The wilderness is called the Tribulation in Revelation chapters 12 and 17. The “firstfruits” in Revelation 14 “were not defiled with women.”  So we see these women who are defiled, have to go through the Great Tribulation in order to be purified. God's plan is going to be fulfilled. For those of you who are walking undefiled now, that's great, and praise be to God when we come to respect God's Word above our own thinking and the traditions of men. It's going to take a pure Word. Jesus said to these people, “ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (Joh.8:23). We can't have the mixture of two seeds in our field. There can only be one seed that is not of this world and brings forth the fruit of Jesus Christ. Remember the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares? The word there for “seed” is the word sperma, letting us know this is not just talking about plants here. The Word, sperma, is what's going to bring forth this wheat. When a person sows good seed in their field, the Lord's sperma is there. Who sowed those tares among the wheat? Jesus said, “an enemy hath done this” (Mat.13:28). There's not supposed to be two seeds sown in the same field. The field, here is in the Kingdom of God on this earth. But in our life, it's up to us to make sure we cast down the bad seed, which is, “imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God” (2Co.10:5). Receive only and hold fast to the good seed because the good seed will bring forth the birth. In Luke 8, we're told, (Luk.8:15) … that in the good ground, these are such as in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit with patience. I pointed out that in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the Lord used the word sperma. The sperma only brings forth after the nature of the Father, so that's using a human analogy. Jesus does the same thing again in this chapter: (21) But he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these that hear the word of God, and do it. Jesus also said, (Mat.7:24) Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And He said that the wind and the storm and the rain that comes will not tear down that house because it's built on the Rock (verse 25). So we see that to be Jesus' brother, we must be from the same Father and through the same “mother.” And to be His mother, we must bear the same fruit. We must bear the fruit of Jesus Christ. His fruit must be born in us. We must hold fast to the Seed of the Word of God, so that His fruit will be born in us. When the disciples came to Him and they said, “Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee” (Luk.8:20), He responded, (Mar.3:33) “Who is my mother and my brethren?” He always wanted to bring things to a spiritual level. (34) And looking round on them that sat round about him, he saith, Behold, my mother and my brethren! (35) For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. We have another example in Luke 11 of a woman on a natural level who came to Jesus: (Luk.11:27) And it came to pass, as he said these things, a certain woman out of the multitude lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the breasts which thou didst suck. (28) But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it. This woman could have been a Mariolater, of Mariolatry in our day. It was important to her to know who the physical mother of Jesus was, but He said, “No, that's not important,” because God could have picked anybody to do that, in that she was the mother of His flesh, not the mother of His spiritual “man.” The important thing is that this parable is fulfilled in our day. Who should bring forth Christ now? Those who hear the Word of God and keep it. So when we think about the mother of Jesus, Jesus applies this to us. In Isaiah 7, we see this parable: (Isa.7:14) Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign (The word “sign” here is owth and it means “omen,” which is a sign of something to come. Now this is the sign of something to come.): behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son…. How is it that Mary was a sign of something to come? Most importantly, she was a virgin. There was no seed of man; it was the seed of God that brought forth the fruit of Jesus Christ in her. In Revelation 12, we see what appears to be a virtuous woman with the 12 stars around her head, standing on the moon (in other words, reflecting the light of the Son), and she's clothed with the sun (she has put on the Lord Jesus Christ), and she's bringing forth, or birthing, the “man-child.” So, that woman must be a virgin. Just to fulfill the type and the shadow, she has to be a group of people who are rejecting the word of man. They're rejecting the seed, or sperma, of man. She must be a virgin. So, therefore, in these end-times, at the time of the birthing of the man-child, there is a group of people who are rejecting the seed of men. There are two things about that little parable in Revelation 12: one, I think, that is individual and the other that is corporate. Each one of us, as the mother of Christ, must be rejecting the seed of man: what man has to say, what man has to think, what this man in whom we walk thinks and believes with his sight and with his feelings, and so on. We're to reject those things in order to believe, to stand on, and to hold fast to only the Word of God, so that it bears fruit. Corporately, there is a body of people who are at this time rejecting the words of man, the seeds of man, and they will bring forth a corporate man-child who is the firstfruits of those who walk in the steps of Jesus Christ in the coming days. We see here that this sign is that they have to be a virgin: (14) … A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (God with us). Jesus wasn't just with them; He's just as much with us. He is still Immanuel, God with us. In fact, every Christian carries Jesus, as God, with them, because they're all pregnant with Jesus. They have all been pregnant with Jesus because of the Word of God, to which they highly respect and hold fast. They're going to bring forth His fruit. In Luke 1, we see the story of Mary, which is that sign. The angel Gabriel came and appeared to Mary, saying to her, (Luk.1:28) … Hail, thou that art highly favored (or, indued with grace), the Lord [is] with thee. This is very similar to what we saw about “Immanuel” or “God with us.” “The Lord” here is the word kurios, which is “lord” or “master,” and is used all through the New Testament. The Will of the Lord (Who is “God with us”) is being fulfilled through the type and shadow of Mary in His church and in His people, because everyone who hears and does the Word of God is like Mary. They are like His mother. Then Gabriel says, (30) … Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor (or grace) with God. Mary wasn't the person that a lot of Mariolatry religions want to make her out to be. She had to have grace; she had to be saved; she had to be filled with the Spirit, and she had other children after Jesus, after she fulfilled this type. It goes on: (31) And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb (this is the Word of the Lord going through the angel Gabriel, God's leading messenger angel), and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS (which originally meant “YHWH is salvation”). He is “Immanuel” – “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14) but the promise to Mary, as the mother of Jesus, was that she would bear the fruit of Jesus. This was the promise, and that's the promise to us, too. The Bible says the same thing about us, that we will bear His fruit: (32) He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. Once again, a firstfruit is coming forth in this day who will sit in the throne of David. It is Jesus Christ in a body of David, just like it happened in Luke at that time. (33) And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. (34) And Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Well, there it is. We see she had not known a man; it was not a man's seed that would bring forth this Son of God, obviously. Each seed brings forth after its own kind. If it's the seed of man, the only thing she could have would be man. Jesus said, “Ye are from beneath; I am from above” (Joh.8:23). He is born from above. No seed of man can bring forth anything from above, and so, she knew not a man. She was a virgin. (Luk.1:35) And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power (dunamis) of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also [it says in the Numerics, “that which is born”] shall be called holy, the Son of God. That's a better translation than in the ASV text, which reads, (35) … wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God. (36) And behold, Elisabeth thy kinswoman, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that was called barren. The next verse is very enlightening, especially in the original wording, which says, (37) For no word from God shall be void of power. You see, Mary had a Word from God, a Word that by itself could bring forth in her the Son of God. Now I know some translations say, “Nothing shall be impossible with God,” but the word here is “no word (rhema) from God shall be void of power (paI dunateo).” “Impossible” does not represent the original wording there. Everything that God says has the power; it is the Seed that has the power to bring forth itself in a fertile womb. So the Word of God in our heart has the power to bring forth Jesus Christ in us. It is His sperma. It has the power. All we have to do is give it fertile ground. We are Mary if we give the Word of God, which comes down out of heaven, which is not from man, fertile ground. And what did Mary say? (38) And Mary said, Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word…. In other words, she was in agreement with the Word of God. “Let it be so, Lord.” “Just as You say.” “I agree with that.” “I accept that, Lord.” Many people today are just washing the seed away. They argue with the Word of God, thinking that they have a right to their own opinion. We don't have a right to have our own opinion – we're dead. Dead men don't have their own opinions. We died with Christ and He now lives in us. We have His opinion, so believe what He says. Mary was in agreement with the Word that came from the Lord. Every word from God is powerful. It has the power to bring forth what it says. (38) … And the angel departed from her. She said, “be it unto me according to thy” rhema, and he “departed from her.” (39) And Mary arose in these days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judah; (40) and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elisabeth. (41) And it came to pass, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit; (42) and she lifted up her voice with a loud cry, and said, Blessed [art] thou among women, and blessed [is] the fruit of thy womb. And the same is true today: blessed is the fruit of the womb of this natural life that brings forth the fruit of Christ. (43) And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come unto me? (44) For behold, when the voice of thy salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. (45) And blessed [is] she that believed; for there shall be a fulfilment of the things which have been spoken to her from the Lord. The things that were spoken to her from the Lord, the Word of God, shall not be void of power. And, because she believed, there was a fulfillment of the words of God – all the words of God. Many Christians believe that these words of God are just naturally going to be fulfilled. However, they won't be fulfilled if a person doesn't have faith. The Word of God has power, but Mary had to agree with what was promised to her by the Word of the Lord: (45) And blessed [is] she that believed; for there shall be a fulfilment of the things which have been spoken to her from the Lord. Yes, the Lord says, For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified (Heb.10:14), but there may never be a fulfillment of that for us, unless we believe, as Mary did. Belief gives fertile ground to the seed, which will bear fruit when a person agrees with it, accepts it and walks in it by faith. We fight a battle with the devil, who has an ally, the old carnal nature, working with him and against us. The devil can steal the seed because he has agreement in the carnal nature, which washes the seed away. The carnal nature won't let that seed be held fast, so that it can bear fruit. We're like Mary only if we hold to the Word of God, as 2 Thessalonians says: (1:10) When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed (because our testimony unto you was believed) in that day. Why? “[O]ur testimony unto you was believed.” Jesus is coming to be glorified in His people because that testimony of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” will be believed “in that day.” This is talking about the time immediately before the coming of the Lord; look at the text. So, right before the coming of the Lord, God's people are once again going to believe in the Gospel that has been spoken to the “woman” church. Remember what Jesus said: (Mat.9:29) … According to your faith be it done unto you. (Mat.8:13) … As thou hast believed, [so] be it done unto thee. Do you believe that the seed of the promise of the Word of God can bring forth Jesus Christ in you? If you do, it will happen. We hear all the time in the churches that we can't be perfect, but there's no such verse in Scripture. We're going to read over and over in the Bible what it has to say about perfection before we're through with this teaching. What we have to agree with is, “Okay, Lord. You said it and I believe it. If, at the cross, You perfected me forever, as Hebrews 10 says, then I accept that Word. Be it unto Thy handmaid, according to the Word of the Lord.” Believe it; receive it. If God says it, it's yours. When you believe it, (Luk.1:45) Blessed [is] she that believed; for there shall be a fulfilment of the things which have been spoken to her from the Lord. We believe it. We receive it. In Colossians, we read, (Col.1:25) Whereof I was made a minister, according to the dispensation (or, the word is actually “stewardship”) of God which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the word of God. In other words, even though God has made this promise, He sends forth ministers (a messenger) to share the truth of this revelation with us, just like the messenger who came to Mary. And it's the same message of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Now, when we believe that, blessed are we who believe, for there shall be a fulfillment of the things which have been spoken to us from the Lord. Some people say, “Well, I don't believe that. We believe we're sinners saved by grace.” Now that's not in the Bible! That's a tradition. The Bible says, “He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb.10:14). “Sanctified” means “separated from the world.” If we are separated from the world, then we believe what God says: (Col.1:25) … (A stewardship) of God, which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the word of God, (26) [even] the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations; but now hath it been manifested to his saints. So, in the time of Paul, the wonderful revelation that he was about to share was made known. And, though they lost it shortly after that, in our day, once again, it is being made known. And what is that wonderful revelation? (27) To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We have no hope of glory outside of Christ in us. The seed brings forth the fruit of Jesus Christ. The part of us that was original, this old man, this old life, is just the dirt in which the seed was sown, but the seed is what brings forth Christ. Each of us must hold fast the seed and not be a miscarrying womb. (27) … Christ in you, the hope of glory: (Col.1:28) whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ. In other words, this is talking about manifestation. We preach the wonderful mystery of “Christ in you,” the holding fast of the seed of the Word, as the mother of the Son of God – being manifested in us and soon to be seen of men. “Present every man perfect in Christ.” Some may say, “But I thought we were already perfect?” Yes, we are by faith, and now Scripture is talking about manifesting that faith. Faith is the substance of the thing hoped for while the evidence is not yet seen, so faith gives us this substance, as a position in Christ, until the manifestation comes. It's like believing for a healing – it's a whole lot better to get one. The faith is just a meantime substance. God wants us to manifest that healing, that deliverance, that provision to us, and that is Christ in us! That is what we hold fast, what we're not shaken away from. We're not going to let the devil steal it from us. It's our right in Jesus Christ. Amen! Paul goes on to say, (29) whereunto I labor also, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily. The Lord is working in us to bring this to pass, as the Lord was working through Paul, His minister, to share this wonderful mystery, this revelation with the disciples in those days. Now we're entering into a time when God is going to share this wonderful revelation in these days with His people. He's going to work mightily through His ministers and He's going to work mightily through His people to manifest Christ in them. It's a wonderful revelation and it's a wonderful fulfillment! Christ is once again going to walk in this earth because God's people are going to believe. (2Th.1:10) When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed (because our testimony unto you was believed) in that day. Paul was saying that he didn't think it was completely believed in his day: “Our testimony unto you was believed … in that day.” In other words, God is going to share special grace with His people to believe once again this mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Glory to God! We are the mother of Christ! We hear and do the Word of God. We're not hearers deluding ourselves, beholding our natural face in the mirror: (2Co.3:18) But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. We accept from the beginning that Christ now lives in us, that we no longer live. We accept it by faith, and because we accept it by faith, God says it is going to be manifested. So glory be to God! This is the perfection that we have in Christ and it will be manifested through us as we abide in Christ. This is “that perfection.” Also, we have this word: (Luk.8:14) And that which fell among the thorns, these are they that have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of [this] life, and bring no fruit to perfection. The word “perfection” here is a strange word not used anywhere else in the Bible. It's the word telesphoreo. There's a common word for “perfection” – teleios – but this word is telesphoreo and it means “to bring to perfection” or “end in view.” In other words, we have to see the end from the beginning. We have to call these things that be not as though they were. We're “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord” (to look in the mirror and see Jesus; that's having farsightedness) and “are transformed into” that “same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.” And Paul prefaces that with, “But we all, with unveiled face,” so this telesphoreo we see from the beginning. We're seeing it, accepting it and we're walking toward it, and we're going to receive it by faith. Isn't it awesome? This is God's promise to us! Oh, praise be to God! Listen, saints, get into the Word of God. It's the only thing that brings forth Jesus. Love the Lord. Don't be distracted. Cast down the words of man.

Recorded March 9, 2025 Morning

The New Testament reveals a profound truth: as followers of Jesus, we are not merely called to gather but to be sent into the world to fulfill God's mission. Churches often measure success by attendance and budgets, but the New Testament prioritizes sending workers into the harvest field. As individuals, we can embrace that God has sent us to where he has us now to Glorify Him, Love People, and Make Disciples. Corporately, we have the opportunity to embrace a “Sending” culture and rejoice in the work of furthering the invitation to join the Kingdom of God.

Send us a textToday we celebrate Let's Talk with Sanctuary's 100th EPISODE!!! As we launch into a brand-new year, we see that there are some challenges before the Church, and understandably so. Scripturally, we know it's slated to get a little tougher, the closer we get to the coming of our Lord and Savior. Spiritual leaders must prepare themselves, and rally others, to be ready for Christ's return. So, what does it take to sustain until the end? And how does the minister of the Gospel prepare the way, cultivate an environment where the Spirit of God can do what He desires, and remain steadfast in our convictions, belief systems, and daily living in a way that pleases God? Let's talk about it all! In this episode, host Bridgette Tomlin welcomes her husband, Chresten Tomlin, back to the podcast to talk about a variety of things—subject matter that makes up the couple's conversations on the back patio, hot tea and coffee in hand, solving all the world's problems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Connect with today's featured guest, Chresten Tomlin:Website: www.ctministries.comEmail: ctministries98@gmail.comFacebook: @chresten.tomlin Facebook: @tomlinministriesFeatured:Earn a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card by giving Let's Talk with Sanctuary a Rating + Review on Apple podcasts!Launch or attend a Let's Connect gathering in 2025!Join Sanctuary's private Facebook group for ministry wives.Follow Sanctuary on Instagram @sanctuarym2mwMany thanks to our host, Bridgette Tomlin, and engineer Justin Lynn of Justin Lynn Music. Learn how you can capitalize on all Justin can do for your small business, church, or ministry by clicking here!

John 1:19-34,19 And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said.”24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) 25 They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.' 31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” Today we're gonna talk a lot about John the Baptist, and I'll admit it feels a little bit strange because John the Baptist was so much not about himself. I think that if John the Baptist were here he'd tell us to Hurry up, move on, don't spend too much time on him — But we're still gonna talk about him because the Bible talks about him, and here in the Gospel of John he's not just in Chapter 1 but he also shows up in Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 and Chapter 10. John the Baptist is an important person in this Gospel, so we're gonna talk about him, but true to the wishes of John the Baptist, I'm gonna try to keep the part about him brief and I'll end with why he matters for us as a local church in St. Paul, in the year 2025. So for the sermon, I got two things about John the Baptist and one thing about us. Father, thank you for your Holy Spirit and for the Holy Scriptures. And thank you that as your people we can gather together for worship. As your children, this morning we have come eager and expectant. We want to hear from you. Speak our hearts, we pray, in Jesus's name, amen. First thing about John the Baptist …1. John the Baptist is a bridge. Remember the first time John the Baptist is mentioned is back in verse 6. Almost out of nowhere verse 6 says:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.The purpose of this mention in verse 6 is the same as the purpose of the mention in verse 15:John the Baptist is the one who brings the news of the eternal Word into history. Remember this Gospel starts in verses 1–5 with this tremendous explanation of the Word — the Word is God, is life, is light — and this is deep and wondrous and it stretches our minds, and then John the apostle, the narrator, he interrupts this depth with verse 6 to tell us that God sent a man named John … and John came to tell us about this Word. Verse 14 picks back up the wonder of this Word, telling us that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” — and we saw this last week: this is a profound statement — this is dense theology; it's full of Old Testament allusions — and then, Boom, again, there's John in verse 15! Same guy from verse 6! John bore witness about this Word made flesh.Mining the FitAnd I know that in some of our English translations verse 15 is put in a parenthesis, but it doesn't have to be. Verse 15 actually fits nicely with what comes after it and I want y'all all to see this. So look with me. Chapter 1, verse 15 … 1:15.Verse 15:John bore witness about him [Jesus], and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.' ” 16 For [or because] from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. “Grace upon grace” — now what's that mean? Well, let's keep reading …Verse 17:“For [or because] the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”Track with me here, okay? Verses 15–17 are a series of explanations: Verse 17 explains verse 16 explains verse 15. Verse 17 is a contrast between the law (which came through Moses) and grace and truth (which came through Jesus). These are two different moments in the history of redemption: The ‘law/Moses' is a stand-in for the old covenant; and ‘grace and truth in Jesus' is the new covenant. And that explains that phrase “grace upon grace.” Another way to translate that little preposition “upon” is to say “in the place of.”John is saying: From the fullness of Jesus we have all received grace in the place of grace, because the law (which was one grace) came through Moses; but grace and truth (a better grace) came through Jesus Christ.John is saying in verse 16 that in Jesus we have received new covenant grace in the place of old covenant grace.And remember verse 16 is supposed to explain verse 15 about John the Baptist. But how?Well, it's because in the movement from old to new, John is the bridge. A Foot on Both SidesWhen John stepped onto the scene of what became the First Century, there's no doubt that he was an Old Testament prophet. It had been a long time since Israel had seen a prophet, but John was sent by God as a prophet to Israel with a message. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John the Baptist is this “Elijah figure” who was prophesied in the Book of Malachi — the other Gospel writers tell us that John the Baptist literally dressed like Elijah. He was an old school prophet leading a Jewish renewal movement. Even within Islam, they recognize John the Baptist as a prophet. Historically, this is a fact. Josephus, the Jewish historian, described John the Baptist as a moral-political troublemaker — which is prophet material.So John the Baptist was this Old Testament prophet and he came at an extremely important historical juncture. It's like John the Baptist has got one foot in the Old Testament and one foot in the New. He's got one foot in Promise and the other in Fulfillment. Imagine it like this: Say you're going on a hike. We've got some hikers in here, right?You're going on this hike, and it's a long one — there's a lot of ground to cover. It starts with a nice garden, but then there's a big river (or two) to cross, there's a high mountain, there's a desert, at times it gets really dark and quiet, and kinda spooky. There are some signs along the way pointing you forward, but this terrain goes on and on (for 39 books).But then you come to the edge of this thing, and there's like a ditch between you and the other side. And you look over at the other side and it's full of color, and they're having a party over there — it's a 27-book long party! But you're not exactly sure how to get from where you are to there. And that's when “There's a man sent from God whose name was John” — he's standing where you are but then he's able to reach one foot over to the other side and he says, “Come on!” He becomes a bridge.John the Baptist is the biblical bridge from the old to the new. That's what he is: a bridge. That's John the Baptist as a category. The second thing to know is that …2. John the Baptist is a voice.Verse 19 brings this all down to the ground even more. This marks the beginning of the official testimony of John the Baptist, and it starts with questions. John the Baptist was making a splash; he was gaining a following within the Jewish world, and the Jewish leaders wanted to know what's going on, so they send a delegation of men to look into it (we learn in verse 24 that it's the Pharisees who sent this delegation), and that's important because the Pharisees were a sect of Jews who were looking for the Messiah. They were devoted to the Hebrew Bible and they knew it said a Messiah would come, so they have that anticipation, and it's reflected in the questions these men ask John. They ask five questions and he responds to each one. That's verses 19–23, but I want to situate these verses within the whole of Chapter 1. Altogether, in Chapter 1, the identity of John the Baptist is referred to eight times (either by himself or by John the apostle). Seven of the eight mentions of John the Baptist are either negative or a deflection. The overwhelming majority of the times John the Baptist is talked about it's either about who he's not or it's about how great Jesus is — He ranks before me! I'm not worthy to untie his shoe! The only time we actually see a positive statement about John's identity is verse 23. Y'all look at verse 23.Just a VoiceThe delegation that's asking him questions basically gives up. In verse 22 they say, Okay, look, you keep telling us who you're not, but we gotta tell our leaders who you are. What do you say about yourself? (What a question! We're gonna come back to that!)But look what John the Baptist says, verse 23:23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said.”John the Baptist tells us that he's getting this from Isaiah, and we can turn back to Isaiah 40, verse 3, and we can read where Isaiah says this. Isaiah 40, verse 3,3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”John the Baptist is saying: That's me. I am the voice. Y'all know that singing competition show called The Voice? …It really has nothing to do with this. Except that, as I understand it, when that show started, the difference between that singing competition and all the others was that the judges could not see the contestants, they could only hear them. The genius was that they were de-emphasizing physical appearance, and focusing completely on the sound of the voice. So it's called “The Voice” as in just the voice. And that's what John means here — except that he's de-emphasizing his person entirely! He's solely focused on what he has to say. The voice is defined by its witness to the word. The Word is what he wants you to hear!So hear him — The Word, Jesus Christ, he is before me! John says …He's higher than me! I'm not even worthy to touch his feet! He is that great. Behold, he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! He's gonna baptize with the Holy Spirit. John is saying that Jesus is bringing the kingdom of God — the promised end-time kingdom, where the Spirit is poured out, where God judges and saves — Jesus is bringing that here. So you better get ready! All of y'all better get ready!Preparing the WayThat's what Isaiah was talking about when he said a voice cries “prepare the way of the Lord.”He doesn't mean prepare the way for the Lord as in Jesus's way to us needs to be prepared. Isaiah is taking about our way to Jesus. Jesus doesn't need any help. We're the ones who need the help. In the context of Isaiah 40, Isaiah is prophesying about the end of Israel's exile. He's saying the road from exile to restoration should be made straight. Clear the way. Level the ground. Make the pathway from a dark exile to a restored Zion CLEAR — he's not talking about how the Messiah gets to us, but it's about how we get to the Messiah. That was the mission of John the Baptist. He was a voice — just a voice — sent for our sake. He's a bridge and he's a voice — two things about John the Baptist. Now one final thing about us. 3. We should be like John the Baptist.Within all of redemptive history, John the Baptist is the model witness to Jesus Christ. He's the paragon that every witness to Jesus thereafter is supposed to look to. That's why he matters to us as a local church in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2025.We want to have a voice like his, and there are two things especially that standout. These are two things from the example of John the Baptist that I pray would be true of us. 1. We should clear the way for people to get to Jesus. And I'm thinking first corporately: Cities Church — are we clearing the way for people to meet Jesus or are we getting in the way?That's a question worth asking. Jesus is the cause of our existence. We are here by him and for him, and he's everything to us. And we want more of him. We want more of him for ourselves and we want these cities to have more of him through us. Corporately, we want Jesus to take our utmost — all that we've got, all we can give — we want him to take our utmost for his highest. We're a church committed to his fame. We want him to be impossible to ignore in the cities. We want people to know Jesus. Amen?So are we doing that? Are we helping people know Jesus? What about people who currently don't know him? Does our being a church make any difference for the people in these Twin Cities who don't know Jesus?That's a question for our church corporately, but what about you as an individual Christian? Does your life — does the way you live, the way you work, the way you interact with neighbors and others — does your life forge a path for people to get to Jesus or does it put obstacles in the way?Hey, let's be like John the Baptist!Let's make straight — in this 21st century post-Christian land — let's make straight a highway to our God! Every valley lifted up, every mountain and hill made low, uneven ground made level, rough places made plain — let us resolve, altogether and as individuals, to do everything we can to clear the way to Jesus, not be in the way.2. We should remember it's Jesus people must get to, not us. I'll say it like this: we want to clear the way for people to get to Jesus while also remembering that we're not Jesus. This gets back to that amazing question in verse 22. They asked John the Baptist: “What do you say about yourself?”This is the question: how do you understand who you are? Everybody has some kind of self-understanding, so what is ours as a church? What do we think of ourselves as a church and what would we say about ourselves if asked?Well look, the first thing John the Baptist says when he's asked this question is “I am not the Christ.” Don't rush past that. This is really important. It is absolutely essential to know that in the work of being a witness it is not yourself you are pointing to. You need to know that right from the start. If you're planting a church, you need to know that. And I can't think of a better time to remember this than on our 10th birthday, which is today (we're gonna celebrate next Sunday, but it was this Sunday, ten years ago, when we first gathered to worship as a church). We've been doing this ten years. Ten years. And ten years is a milestone, because now we're way past imposter syndrome. We feel pretty legit, and maybe we stand a little straighter now. Maybe we can start to think, Hmm, look at us. Maybe we feel a little increase in our self-understanding. STOP IT. Don't go there. Remember who we are and why we're here. It's not for ourselves. The goal is not our comfort. It's not that people would know us. Hey, we are all about Jesus. Who the Twin Cities need is Jesus Christ, not Cities Church. Jesus must increase, we must decrease. We show him. We point to him. We clear the way for people to get to Jesus. Clearing the WayAnd I want to end like that: if you're a guest with us this morning, or if you're here and you don't know Jesus, I want to tell you about him. Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to this world as man to reveal and redeem. He came to show us what God is like, and he came to reconcile us back into a relationship with God. The short way of saying it is that Jesus came to save sinners, which is all of us. We were condemned because of our sin, but Jesus went to the cross in our place: took our sin upon himself, he suffered the punishment we deserved. He was crucified, dead, and buried, and then on the third day he rose from the grave in victory. Jesus defeated sin and death, and now in Jesus forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. If you turn away from trying to be your own savior, and if you put your faith in Jesus, he will set you free. He will make you alive. You will become a son or daughter of God — not because you've earned it, but because of what Jesus has done. So trust him. I'm trying to clear the way right now. If you've never put your faith in Jesus, put your faith in him now. Say to him: Jesus, I can't save myself and I'm done trying. You died and rose to save me, and I trust in you. Put your faith in Jesus. And if you have, if you are a Christian, we now come to this Table to remember what he did. The TableAt the Lord's Table, the bread represents the broken body of Jesus, and the cup represents his blood. Together, this is a symbol of his sacrificial death for us. So when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are saying This is our hope. We have been united to Jesus by faith, and we eat and drink to give him thanks. So if you are a Christian this morning, if you have put your faith in Jesus, we invite you with us to this table.

The birth of Christ occurred under the noses of and in the presence of many people, and yet so many of those people missed it. The innkeeper missed it. The incarnation and birth of the Son of God, one of the most significant events in salvation history, occurred near or even on his own property, and yet he missed it. Maybe he was too busy with travelers or too concerned with the stuff of earth, and he missed the birth of the eternal king. The religious leaders knew all the prophecies concerning Christ, and yet when he came, they missed it. They weren’t looking for a Savior because they didn’t think they needed a Savior. In the coming days, we will celebrate the coming of Christ who died for our sins and provided salvation, and yet so many people will miss it. Maybe like the innkeeper, they are too caught up in the earthly business of life. Maybe like the religious leaders, they miss the celebration of the Savior’s birth, because they don’t think they need a Savior. What about you? We are in a similar position today when it comes to waiting for Christ. Will we be like Simeon and Anna in Luke 2:21-38? Waiting in faith for the promises of God to be fulfilled? Do we even know what the promises are? Are we walking in the Spirit and clinging to Scripture? I pray you will join us this weekend for worship and next week for one of our Christmas Eve services. Corporately and prayerfully, we will turn our attention to God’s Word. We will ask the Spirit of God to open our eyes, hearts and ears to His truth that we might grow in our anticipation for Christ. That, like Simeon and Anna, we would wait upon the Lord, watch for the Lord, and walk in the Spirit as we anticipate the blessed appearing of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The joy of seeing Him will be inexpressible!

The birth of Christ occurred under the noses of and in the presence of many people, and yet so many of those people missed it. The innkeeper missed it. The incarnation and birth of the Son of God, one of the most significant events in salvation history, occurred near or even on his own property, and yet he missed it. Maybe he was too busy with travelers or too concerned with the stuff of earth, and he missed the birth of the eternal king. The religious leaders knew all the prophecies concerning Christ, and yet when he came, they missed it. They weren’t looking for a Savior because they didn’t think they needed a Savior. In the coming days, we will celebrate the coming of Christ who died for our sins and provided salvation, and yet so many people will miss it. Maybe like the innkeeper, they are too caught up in the earthly business of life. Maybe like the religious leaders, they miss the celebration of the Savior’s birth, because they don’t think they need a Savior. What about you? We are in a similar position today when it comes to waiting for Christ. Will we be like Simeon and Anna in Luke 2:21-38? Waiting in faith for the promises of God to be fulfilled? Do we even know what the promises are? Are we walking in the Spirit and clinging to Scripture? I pray you will join us this weekend for worship and next week for one of our Christmas Eve services. Corporately and prayerfully, we will turn our attention to God’s Word. We will ask the Spirit of God to open our eyes, hearts and ears to His truth that we might grow in our anticipation for Christ. That, like Simeon and Anna, we would wait upon the Lord, watch for the Lord, and walk in the Spirit as we anticipate the blessed appearing of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The joy of seeing Him will be inexpressible!

Interview with Sean Roosen, Founder & CEO of Osisko Development Corp.Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/osisko-development-building-tier-one-gold-and-copper-mines-5487Recording date: 17th September 2024Osisko Development Corporation (TSXV:ODV) is advancing its flagship Cariboo Gold Project in British Columbia, positioning itself as a compelling investment opportunity in the gold mining sector. The project, nearing final permitting stages, represents a significant near-term gold production prospect in a tier-one jurisdiction.The Cariboo Gold Project boasts impressive fundamentals:2 million ounces of gold in reservesOver 3 million additional ounces of gold in measured, indicated, and inferred resourcesHigh-grade deposit averaging 3.78 g/t goldInitial production target of 4,950 tons per day, yielding approximately 220,000 ounces annuallySean Roosen, founder of the Osisko group, emphasizes the project's exploration potential: "We're averaging 14,000 ounces per vertical meter that we've gone down. For every 100 meters that we've gone down, we've averaged 1.4 million ounces." This metric suggests substantial room for resource expansion, with the deposit tested to depths beyond 1,000 meters.Osisko Development is implementing innovative technologies to enhance operational efficiency. The company pioneers the use of an all-electric roadheader, potentially reducing development costs by around $1,000 per meter. Access to low-cost hydroelectric power (approximately $0.05/kWh) further positions Cariboo as a potential low-cost producer.The project's scalability is a key attraction. Management envisions expanding production to 10,000 or even 15,000 tons per day in the future, potentially doubling or tripling annual gold output. Roosen outlines the company's ambitious goals: "Corporately, the big target for me is to set the stage to be a $1 billion company. We have the asset base to do that."From a financial perspective, the project's economics appear robust. The initial feasibility study, using a conservative $1,700 per ounce gold price, yielded an internal rate of return around 20%. With current gold prices much higher, the project's potential returns could be significantly enhanced. An updated feasibility study using a $2,000 gold price is expected by year-end.Investors in Osisko Development gain exposure to a management team with a proven track record. Roosen previously led the development of Canadian Malartic, now one of the world's largest gold mines, and founded Osisko Gold Royalties, a $4.3 billion royalty company.Near-term catalysts that could drive share price appreciation include:Final permitting approvals (expected in late 2024 or early 2025)Results from the planned bulk sample (scheduled for October)Updated feasibility study incorporating higher gold pricesOngoing exploration results potentially expanding the resource baseWhile the investment case is compelling, investors should consider risks such as execution challenges in mine development, potential capital cost inflation, gold price volatility, and regulatory hurdles.In the current macroeconomic environment, with strong gold prices and increasing M&A activity in the sector, Osisko Development represents an attractive opportunity for investors seeking exposure to a large-scale, high-grade gold project on the verge of production in a top-tier jurisdiction. The company's significant insider ownership provides some insulation against hostile takeover attempts while potentially positioning it as an attractive M&A target for larger producers seeking to replenish reserves.View Osisko Development's company profile: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/osisko-developmentSign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com

Corey Davis is the founder of Core Blend Training, a semi-private tranining gym with 3 locations in Georgia. We were recently introduced by a mutual colleague and I was interested to see how (and why) he decided to corporately scale his locations within a regional market. https://www.coreblendtraining.com/ —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Want to increase your business IQ by 100x for only $50?  Get enrolled in Microgym University - the only online business school that teaches you the best practices and business frameworks from some of the most successful brands in our industry and then lets you decide which ones to install in your business. New courses are added every month.  ⁠www.microgymuniversity.com⁠  —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Need help leasing or buying a building? I created the Gym Real Estate Company so that gym owners had someone who could go beyond the duties of a typical real estate broker and actually advise them on business aspects as they relate to site selection, market location fit, operational capacity, facility layout, pre-sell marketing, and more. If you're looking for help with your next lease or if you want us to help you along the journey of buying a building - ⁠head over to www.gymrealestate.co and book a Discovery Call. —-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14-Day Trial of GymsSudio — the last member management software you'll ever need. GymStudio is a gym and studio management software for businesses that want to deliver a frictionless member experience.  Our intuitive platform was designed to re-think how traditional gym management platforms organize memberships, payments, schedules, bookings, and more. GymStudio is utilized by small and medium-sized fitness businesses ranging from strength and conditioning gyms to yoga and pilates studios around the world.  We offer a 14-day trial and a concierge "transition service" when switching from another gym management platform. This all-in-one platform provides this and much more for less than $150 per month. https://www.gymstudio.com/ —-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Macrostax is the #1 nutrition management software that helps gym owners, personal trainers, and other fitness professionals offer customized nutrition plans to their clients without lifting a finger.  This scalable, hands-off approach to nutrition saves time, generates additional revenue, and allows them to add an extremely valuable offering to their fitness businesses. With over 1,500 gym clients across the US, Macrostax Team solves a missing yet essential puzzle piece for many gym owners that want to help their members reach their goals. Try Macrostax Team, FREE for 30-days with this link.

Why do we sing? Is singing so essential that a church service would be incomplete if it were not done? Does God instruct us to sing? How does singing serve a Christian?Blog Link: https://kuzaapp.com/why-we-must-sing-corporately/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kuzaapp Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kuzaappTik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kuzaappBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/kuza--3674993/support.

Psalm 100

Recently, a popular boutique group fitness brand out of NYC, Fhitting Room, announced it was closing most of its locations. This video is my response to this news and a few industry insights. —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The only two group fitness franchises I would invest in… Industrious  If you want a well-organized, high operational capacity, barbell-based group fitness experience (aka CrossFit without the stupid shit), then you need to look into Industrious.  Click here and I'll personally connect you with the Industrious franchise team to learn more. MADabolic If you're looking for one of the fastest growing brands in the boutique fitness space that leverages gritty branding, strength-focused programming (but without the barbell and other space suckers) and has over 30 opened locations nationwide, then you'll definitely want to get in touch with the MADabolic franchise team by clicking here.  —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I solve problems in your business and make you more money.  Guaranteed.  For over a decade I've been working with gym owners (via one-on-one consulting) to help create tailored solutions to solve their business problems, engineer the game plan and empower them to execute the strategy. Stop wishing your business problems are going to magically go away.   Invest in your business and let me solve your problems and optimize your business fast and efficiently.  We'll work together daily/weekly, with a monthly call until the problem is solved and then I want you to fire me.  Because this is YOUR business, I'm just here to solve a specific problem and then get out of your way. Learn more about what it's like for us to work together. —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Want to increase your business IQ by 100x for only $50?  Get enrolled in Microgym University - the only online business school that teaches you the best practices and business frameworks from some of the most successful brands in our industry and then lets you decide which ones to install in your business. New courses are added every month.  ⁠www.microgymuniversity.com⁠  —------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Need help leasing or buying a building? I created the Gym Real Estate Company so that gym owners had someone who could go beyond the duties of a typical real estate broker and actually advise them on business aspects as they relate to site selection, market location fit, operational capacity, facility layout, pre-sell marketing, and more. If you're looking for help with your next lease or if you want us to help you along the journey of buying a building - ⁠head over to www.gymrealestate.co and book a Discovery Call. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wtfgymtalk/message

Corporately, relationally, and internally- those among whom God dwells must be holy

From Romans 15:14 we're headed downhill toward the last “Amen” in the letter. Verse 13 (which we looked at last November) is a great benediction, a good word that bookends the last major division of the application/implications (that started in 12:1) which addressed brothers welcoming one another as Christ has welcomed us (14:1-15:13). What remains is more personal, with some reminders from Paul about his commitment to the church in Rome as part of his commission to take the gospel to the nations. The paragraph covers verses 14-21. We're going to take it in two parts. Verses 18-21 are probably one sentence, and it's a sentence that begins by explaining verse 17; we'll pick up at that point next time. For now verses 14-16 are a feast, more than an explanation for the epistle and his *tone*, they are an expression of Paul's *life aim*. This is enough to get someone fired up; it certainly fired up the apostle.You know a lot about the apostle Paul. For that matter, we've been with him for fourteen and a half chapters (386 verses, 84 previous sermons) of this letter. If you had five minutes to write one sentence of Paul's life mission, what would you say? You could hardly improve on Colossians 1:28, or even Philippians 1:25. Before he describes his work product (verses 17-21), he describes and defends what pushes his work. It wasn't that he was discouraged about the Romans, it's that his objective was so *ambitious*.Two parts: his confidence in God's work among them and his compelling desire for God to accept them. Paul was well pleased with them, he wanted God to be fully pleased with them. # Confident Approval (verse 14)Paul wrote an awful long letter to some people he was convinced had everything they needed. > I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another. (Romans 15:14 ESV)This is *personal*, **I myself** and **you yourselves**, along with the **my brothers**. It's personal and emphatic and affectionate. It's also *confident*. He starts by saying he's **satisfied**, alright, also “convinced” (NASB) or “fully convinced” (NET), “persuaded” (KJV) as in, having been brought to a particular point of view. He had his info, and had no doubts. About what?His confidence was in their *maturity*. They were **full**, **filled with all**, **able**. It's astounding, considering that the church in Rome had to have been less than a decade old, and Paul had never been there (see verse 22). But Paul thanked God for them, “because your faith is proclaimed in all the world” (1:8). Here their faith manifested in character: **full of goodness**. Their faith was not ignorant or sentimental, but they were: **having been filled with all knowledge**. (And that was true *before* having heard the contents of this letter.) And their knowledge was of the kind that was for the community, not just the individual: **able to instruct one another**, though “admonish” (KJV, NASB) would be better; assuming a standard and helping one another toward it in “congregational obligation” (Morris). (This was apparently true in spite of the stronger/weaker brother tangles.) They had goodness, knowledge, and capacity for speaking the truth in love and building up one another in the body. That's some reputation, and Paul accepts it, affirms it, and yet is both pleased and not satisfied. This reference in _Mere Christianity_ isn't exactly the same, yet there's some overlap.> “As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, **‘God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.'”**# Compelling Ambition (verses 15-16)With that kind of endorsement, what else to they need? I don't think that Paul is merely being polite; he's plainly thankful for them, while also having such a massive goal that he can't consider his work done.> But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:15–16 ESV)I referred to these verses a couple weeks ago applied to sermons and especially the word of reminders. Who's to say that every Christian in Rome knew every bit of Paul's teaching on sinfulness and guilt, on righteousness by faith and in our walk, on the love of God for groaning sufferers, on God's blessing some to make Jews jealous that they would return to Christ, let alone all the particulars on presenting ourselves as living sacrifices. And so what if one of them said, “I know all that.” Paul still knew what God's grace to him was for.He wasn't just reminding, some of his reminders were **written to you very boldly**. In the original text **boldly** or audaciously is the first word in the sentence, grabbing attention. He wasn't holding back, wasn't reluctant to remind them. It was part of his calling. That's what the **grace given to me by God** refers to, not his salvation, but his apostleship, as evidenced by the fantastic progression of his purpose in verse 16. He was a **minister of Christ Jesus**. It's not the usual word for minister/servant, it's *leitourgon* (λειτουργὸν), a man who leads in public service, typically in worship settings, but sometimes of the work of government officials. There's a pattern to follow, a proper ordering of things. Of course our word liturgy descends from it. For sake of our mediation, he was a *liturgizer* of Jesus. This was aimed mostly at *τὰ ἔθνη* (same as the object of the Great Commission), the “nations” or the “peoples,” so not *the* nation, Israel, but the rest, so the ESV translates it, **the Gentiles**, all ethnicities other than his own (his Israelite brothers, Romans 9:2-3, 10:1, 11:1). Unlike his usual analogies (shepherd, builder, father, etc.), here Paul likens his work as **priestly service of the gospel of God**. He's been talking about “the gospel of God” since the start: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God” (Romans 1:1 ESV). The gospel is the good news *about* the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and of peace through faith, but the whole news is from and through and to God. This priesting work was preparing an offering, **that the offering of the Peoples may be acceptable**. He considered the whole “fullness of the Gentiles” (τῶν ἐθνῶν - see Romans 11:25) — as many as were appointed to eternal life (see Acts 13:48) — as a “gift” brought as an expression of service. The gospel is making, transforming, *adorning*, a gift-people. You are part of that gift.> “[D]oubtless this is the priesthood of the Christian pastor, that is, to sacrifice men, as it were, to God, by bringing them to obey the gospel.” —John CalvinSuch an acceptable offering is only possible as **sanctified by the Holy Spirit**. All three persons of the Trinity are working, and all three are honored as the offering is surrendered for His pleasure. The gospel can be summarized, and, its aims are sweeping, both for each believer and among the nations. As confident as Paul was in their faith, he was compelled by his bold ambition (also verse 20). In this case, if it's not broke, press the gas pedal. # ConclusionIs your character full of goodness? Are you filled with the knowledge of God and His will? Are you ready to come along side your brothers so that they might walk even better in newness of life, for altar-living? If yes, praise the Lord! You're still not done for the Lord, and in particular, *we all* are being consecrated for presentation to the Lord.This is group jealousability for serious. The gospel of God is the power of God for salvation, from faith to faith, making an obedient offering to God. The gospel does more than get into your head, it messes with *all* our stuff. ----------## ChargeIndividually, we are meant for altar-living. Corporately, we are meant for completed, consecrated communing, to be an offering acceptable to God. He has purposed our whole group holiness and health. He has bold ambitions for us, to make us pleasing to Him. Live your amen, so let it be.## Benediction:> Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.> > The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24, 28 ESV)

Corporate Responsibility. You hear that phrase often. But how many businesses truly follow through on being good corporate citizens? On today's episode of Fostering Change you will meet one organization that does just that: Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's Indiana Medicaid Health Plan. In fact, this organization was Comfort Cases' very first corporate sponsor - we are celebrating working with them for six years!You will hear Rob Scheer speak with April Lam, Chief of Staff for the health plan. April has a strong connection to Comfort Cases' mission, as she not only works closely with non-profit organizations, but has also been a foster parent and adopted a child out of foster care.Since the partnership with Comfort Cases began 6 years ago, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has packed more than 7,000 Comfort Cases® to support youth living in foster care.The partnership between Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Comfort Cases has grown since 2018. Since the expansion, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield's affiliated health plans have hosted 24 packing parties across 16 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico, providing over 12,000 Comfort Cases and XL duffel bags to youth in foster care nationwide.To learn more about Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana, please visit: https://mss.anthem.com/in/indiana-hom...To listen to previous episodes of Fostering Change, please visit: www.comfortcases.org/podcast or your favorite podcast outlets.If you have any comments, questions, or guest suggestions, we'd love to hear from you! Please write us at info@comfortcases.org.Thank you for listening and we'll see you next Tuesday! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can we grow from engaging tensions in our world? Vanessa Maleare shares her story of being shaped by tension in living out her calling, while reflecting on the story of Peter living in the tension of past failure and present affirmation.  [John 21:18-22]   Reflection Where in your life are you fleeing from tension? Which of these unresolvable tensions calls to you the most?? Which of the unresolvable tensions feels most pressing to engage in personally? Corporately? Resources Book: Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown

A new MP3 sermon from Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Corporately Giving by Grace What We Have by Grace to the Glory of Grace Subtitle: Biblical Theology of Diaconate Speaker: James Hakim Broadcaster: Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian Event: Sunday School Date: 7/16/2023 Bible: 2 Corinthians 9 Length: 35 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Corporately Giving by Grace What We Have by Grace to the Glory of Grace Subtitle: Biblical Theology of Diaconate Speaker: James Hakim Broadcaster: Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian Event: Sunday School Date: 7/16/2023 Bible: 2 Corinthians 9 Length: 35 min.

In the context of calling them to corporate giving, Paul taught the Corinthians that it's not just our possessions that we have by grace but the cheerfulness and diligence to give also comes by God's grace.

A new MP3 sermon from Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Corporately Giving by Grace What We Have by Grace to the Glory of Grace Subtitle: Biblical Theology of Diaconate Speaker: James Hakim Broadcaster: Hopewell Associate Reformed Presbyterian Event: Sunday School Date: 7/16/2023 Bible: 2 Corinthians 9 Length: 35 min.

Derek Strokon is a Human Resilience researcher. Derek is the #1 International Best-Selling Author of “Stop Stalling Start Selling”, and recently launched his second book “Human Being Human”.  He is a leader and business consultant whose practice focuses on resilience development and process implementation.  His award-winning approach to sales excellence is driven by a team-centered approach of ‘Strength Through Vulnerability'.  His relentless passion for evangelizing the ‘Human Journey', is both inspiring and contagious.   Derek received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Simon Fraser University and is a Certified Professional Coach from World Coach Institute.  Corporately recognized in 2018 as the National Sales Force Grow Leader, among many other accolades for sales excellence, he also attained his LLQP Full, MFDA, Labour Sponsored Fund, and Branch Managers Course certifications.    In this episode, Derek emphasized the power of just being yourself, and how we can start enjoying a life of contentment. He also shared about breaking away from manifesting hero culture. He provides honest feedback on why using the statement "You are where you are" is more powerful than "You are where you need to be". You'll get to learn more about experiencing the human journey in the present.   Connect with Derek Strokon LinkedIn YouTube Sacred Line Consulting TEDx Talks Amazon - Stop Stalling Start Selling Amazon - Human Being Human   Connect with Mike Szczesniak Instagram LinkedIn YouTube

May 31, 2023 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stjohnrandomlake/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/stjohnrandomlake/support

"You do you." "Just follow your heart." "You gotta be true to yourself." These are common phrases we hear in today's world, but are they accurate guidance for us as followers of Jesus. In this episode of UNSCRIPTED we discuss how we have all been created with an individuality, but, as followers of Jesus, we want to express our individuality in unity with other Christians.   

"You do you." "Just follow your heart." "You gotta be true to yourself." These are common phrases we hear in today's world, but are they accurate guidance for us as followers of Jesus. In this episode of UNSCRIPTED we discuss how we have all been created with an individuality, but, as followers of Jesus, we want to express our individuality in unity with other Christians.   

Catching Fish with Jesus' PresenceSeries: Gospel of John Preacher: Jim MastersSunday Church ServiceDate: 7th May 2023Passage: John 21:1-14-------------------Join God's mission. Remember Jesus' presence. Corporately, the Christian life is about the need for missions in and to the world, reminding ourselves that it is not possible without Jesus.

What is the secret to leading transformation? Sope Agbelusi is an executive coach, international speaker, husband, father of two, and the founder of MindsetShift, a leadership development company focused on developing authentic leaders. Corporately, he is sought after for his ability to help shift perspectives and install new mindsets that create lasting transformations. He has worked with respected global brands such as Google, Spotify, Morgan Stanley, Philips, KPMG, Yale University, HSBC, and more. As an innovative leader himself, Sope contributed to generating $800M+ with several teams in the automotive and engineering industry. His valuable insights have been featured on BBC World News, BBC Radio 5 Live, talkSPORT, BusinessCloud, and SOCIAlight among others. He is also the host of the Everyday Leadership Podcast, where he explores the leadership experiences of real people and how they lead from the inside out, not just the outside in. Today we discuss the biggest mindset shift needed right now, transforming the stories we tell ourselves, knowing your value and boundaries, why work-life balance doesn't exist, and how to truly lead from the inside out and create lasting transformation in your organization. What We Discuss in This Episode with Sope Agbelusi  The biggest mindset shift needed right now How COVID impacted our mindset Self-awareness and leading from the inside out Moving from Nigeria to the UK as a teenager Stepping into the fullness of who you are Having the courage to make the necessary changes in your life What does it mean to be an authentic leader Knowing your values and boundaries The key to building your self-confidence Demonstrating leadership at home Dealing with conflicting values in the workplace Embracing new career possibilities Why work-life balance doesn't exist How to create psychologically safe environments using harmony Episode Show Notes: https://leadersoftransformation.com/podcast/leadership/446-leading-from-the-inside-out-sope-agbelusi 

We are multipliers! We are a Great Commission Church and we are an equipping center for disciples. We are multipliers! Individually, we are all responsible to disciple those younger in their faith and invite those far from Jesus into a life-giving community. We are multipliers! Corporately, we are called to plant churches, pastor cities, and father and mother leaders to multiply the Kingdom impact. We are multipliers!   Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 NLT   But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts of the Apostles 1:8 NLT WE BELIEVE AS A CHURCH IN THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST, OR IN OTHER WORDS THE FACT THAT JESUS IS COMING AGAIN! After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!” Acts 1:9-11 OVER 300 REFERENCES IN N.T. OF JESUS' RETURN 216/260 CHAPTERS IN THE N.T. REFERENCE JESUS' RETURN 23 OF THE 27 N.T. BOOKS REFERENCE JESUS' RETURN But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I'm not about to let his grace go to waste. Haven't I worked hard trying to do more than any of the others? 1 Corinthians 15:10 MSG   Here's what I know great vision takes three things: It takes a Praying Church, a Selfless Church, and a strategic Church.   But the leader in charge of the synagogue was indignant that Jesus had healed her on the Sabbath day. “There are six days of the week for working,” he said to the crowd. “Come on those days to be healed, not on the Sabbath.” But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Each of you works on the Sabbath day! Don't you untie your ox or your donkey from its stall on the Sabbath and lead it out for water? This dear woman, a daughter of Abraham, has been held in bondage by Satan for eighteen years. Isn't it right that she be released, even on the Sabbath?” Luke 13:14-16 NLT   GOD IS LESS INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND MORE INTERESTED IN WHY YOU ARE DOING WHAT YOU ARE DOING.   Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. James 1:27 NLT   The Lord is more pleased when we do what is right and just than when we offer him sacrifices. Proverbs 21:3 NLT   But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. “Heaven forbid, Lord,” he said. “This will never happen to you!” Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's.”   Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:22-26 NLT   “Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world,” they shouted, “and now they are here disturbing our city, too. Acts of the Apostles 17:6 NLT   Go after a life of love as if your life depended on it—because it does. 1 Corinthians 14:1-2 MSG   Give yourselves to the gifts God gives you. 1 Corinthians 14:1-2 MSG   Most of all, try to proclaim his truth. 1 Corinthians 14:1-2 MSG     But because God was so gracious, so very generous, here I am. And I'm not about to let his grace go to waste. Haven't I worked hard trying to do more than any of the others? 1 Corinthians 15:10 MSG

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston ordonate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. We are continuing oursermon series today called Committed. We've been talking about the essentialhabits of an abundant life and what we've been saying over and over throughoutthis series is that we are taking a look at some of the essential,nonnegotiable and just super practical commitments that every Christian needsto make in order to grow in their faith and persevere through life and toexperience and to enjoy the abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give. And if you were here last week, our teens director, Tyler, did an awesome job talking about our commitment to Scripture and I hope that that sermon just left you with a greater appreciation, a greater trust, a greater hunger and appetite for God's word. It's amazing that we worship a god who speaks, a god who has chosen to reveal Himself to us as His creation and we should never take that for granted, right? If God has something to say, we want to hear it. We want to listen. And it is awesome to think that we have access to the word of God recorded for us in Scripture. We worship a god who speaks. We also worship a god who listens. And this is what we are going to be talking about today as we look at the topics, the commitments of fasting and prayer. Like so many of the things that we've talked about in this series, this is not something we do, it is something we commit to, that fasting and prayer, they're not going to happen by accident, they're not going to happen on their own, that these are things that like the early church we need to devote ourselves to doing. And for some of us, maybe that feels like hard work. I don't know about you, but sometimes prayer could begin to feel like a grind. It could feel like something that you have to do or something that you're supposed to do when really we should view prayer as something that we get to do. And as we learn to do these things properly, even if at times they might feel like a grind, they might feel like a drudgery, they should become our delight, that as we practice them persistently, we find in them a great reward. And I use that word because that's the word that we're going to see Jesus used over and over in our text today when He talks about fasting in prayer. He keeps using this word reward. And so is that a word that you use? Is that a word that you think about when you think about fasting, when you think about prayer? Before we begin this morning, I want you to do something for me right now. I just want you to mentally do a quick evaluation of your prayer life. Rate yourself, scale of one to 10, 10 is everything's great, you've got an abundant, flourishing, vibrant, rewarding prayer life. One is it's dry, it's a grind, barely existence. Your prayer life is on a life support. Does prayer feel like a requirement, like a drudgery, like something that you have to do or does it feel like a reward? Does it feel like a delight, something that you get to do? Wherever you just rated yourself, none of us are a 10, we've all have room to grow and so my hope today is that we can all go up in our rating together. And so if you just said, "Well, I feel like I'm a two or a three," well, what would it take to get from a three to like a seven or to get from a five to a nine? What would it take for us to all grow to have a prayer life that's more like that of Christ Jesus? And lucky for us, this is something that Jesus' disciples wondered as well and they at times would ask Jesus, "Hey, Jesus, can you teach us how to pray?" And He did. On multiple occasions, Jesus taught His disciples how to pray and one of those is the text that we're going to be looking at this morning. It's Matthew chapter six, verse five through 21. This is a part of the sermon on the Mount. And Jesus spends a considerable amount of time teaching His disciples about this topic of fasting and prayer. So we're going to walk through this text together. It's a bit of a long text and we're going to just go through it section by section. And as we do, I want us to look at five commitments that are going to help us to avoid some of the pitfalls of prayer and fasting that we could potentially fall into, but also to just have an increasingly vibrant, abundant, powerful and rewarding prayer life that God wants us to have. So if you have your Bibles, we are in Matthew chapter six, beginning in verse five. The words are also going to be up here on the screen. This is what Jesus said, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray and stand in the synagogues and on the street corners that they may be seen by others. And truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who's in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this, 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They just figure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where mouth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning. Would you please join me in prayer for our sermon today? God, we pray that we would learn to treasure You as we ought. And God, we pray that You would forgive us for not praying as we ought. Lord, You warned Your disciples in the garden to watch and to pray that they might not enter into temptation for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is so weak. And God, we confess our weakness to You and we praise You that Your strength, Your power is made perfect in our weakness, that Your grace is greater than our failures. And so Lord, we ask today that You would to teach us to pray as we ought, teach us to live continually in Your presence, experiencing the blessing of knowing that You are always with us and You always hear us, that we can come and we can talk to You at any time. Teach us what it means to be anxious about nothing but to pray about everything because we know that You are with us, You see us, You hear us, You love us and You are able to provide for our every need. Lord, You are the God who hears and I pray that we would marvel at that reality today and we give You thanks and glory for it now, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, before teaching His disciples how to pray, Jesus first we see, He teaches them how not to pray and He gives them two examples. He says, "On the one hand, don't go and don't pray like the hypocrites. Don't pray like the Pharisees, the religious people." And on the other hand, He says, "Don't pray like the Gentiles, like the lawless pagans either." And so let's start with the religious people that with the Pharisees in verse five, Jesus says, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray and stand in the synagogues and not at the street corners that they may be seen by others. And truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Now, first of all, we need to understand Jesus isn't condemning public prayer. He's not saying that there's never an appropriate time for Christians to pray in public with one another. Corporately, we see it in the New Testament that that is something that the early church was devoted to doing, that it is a good thing for God's people to come and to pray together publicly. But what Jesus is telling us and what we all need to be cautious of is this, that if we find in ourselves that we can go to church and pray with other Christians or we can go to community group and we've got a lot of things to say to God and we can pray with lofty words and eloquence and everything sounds very polished, but then we go home. And when we're alone with God in secret, we've got nothing to talk about, well, He says that's a problem. That's a symptom of a pretty serious illness in the diagnosis that he gives is hypocrisy. I think of it like this. I don't know if you've ever been over at a friend's house like hanging out and then somebody you don't know, one of their friends comes in and joins you. Maybe it's a coworker or neighbor or something like that. And at first, everything's great. You're having a good time, hanging out. The conversation is going well and everybody seems friendly and then your friend gets up and leaves the room and now you're trapped in this awkward deafening silence. And a moment ago, we thought, "I thought we were all friends, but now that they're gone, I realize that was an illusion. You are not my friend. I don't even know you. You're a stranger and we've got nothing to say to each other." Well, don't be like that with God. If you are like that with God, that is a cause for concern. If you find it easy to talk to God when other people, other Christians are around, but you can't talk to Him in private, oh, maybe you've fallen into the same pit as the Pharisees and maybe you've figured out how to look really religious and sound really spiritual when other people are around, but there's no real relationship there with God. He says, "Don't fall into that pit. If the pathway to prayer is this narrow road, you've got this dangerous ditch on the one side that the Pharisees fell into," but he says, "But there's also this other ditch on the other side that the Gentiles fall into. So he says, "Don't be like the pagans either," and this is what He talks about in verse seven. He says, when you pray, "Don't just heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." He says, "Don't be like them as your Father knows what you need even before you ask." See, unlike the Jews who were monotheistic, they believed in one God rightly, the Gentiles believed in a pantheon of gods and their relationship to these gods was not particularly healthy. The gods were seemingly mostly motivated by their own selfish self-interest. And so the people envisioned their gods as these kind of powerful but moody beings and they needed to be appeased. They needed to be persuaded, even maybe bribed in order to care about the plights of mortal people. And their hope was that if they used the right words, if they prayed to the right god with the right words, in the right place, at the right temple with the right idols and the right sacrifices, well, maybe they could get somebody's attention out there. And so they would babble and they would heap up all of these words, as Jesus said, because they were just trying to cover all of their bases like, "If I just do this enough, maybe something will happen. Just throw a plethora of prayers out into the cosmos and hope that maybe somebody out there is listening." And Jesus says, "Don't be like that. Don't be like the Gentiles. The Gentiles weren't just a little-stitious, they're more than a little-stitious. They were superstitious. He says, "Don't be superstitious about prayer. It's not some magic incantation that you need to figure out. Prayer is not a way to tap into some higher power or manipulate some spiritual system. Prayer is just simply a conversation with God. And God is not a system. He is not a power. He is a person." And so I said we'd look at five commitments of a rewarding prayer life. And the first one is that, before anything else, we need to commit to this. We need to pray to God with God as a person. And I use the word with. We often talk about praying to God. Not necessarily anything wrong with that, but I'm using the word with here intentionally for two different reasons. First of all is because the Gentiles prayed to their gods, but they can never really be sure if the gods were listening to them. They could never be sure if anybody out there was hearing that they send their prayers off like an email and who knows? Maybe it just wound up in someone's spam folder. Maybe it just got deleted right away. They could never be sure. But we don't pray like that, that when we pray to God, we pray to a god that we know we have confidence, we have assurance that He is with us, that God is all knowing, all seeing. He is omniscient, omnipresent and all powerful. He always hears all the prayers of His people. And eight times in this passage, Jesus refers to God in a very specific way that shows the intimate relationship that we are to have with Him. He refers to Him as our Father. I mentioned earlier that this passage, it comes from the Sermon of the Mount, and later on in the same sermon, Jesus comes back to this topic of prayer in Matthew chapter seven and He's talking about the relationship of us praying to God as a father. And in verse seven, he says this. He says, "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives and he who seeks finds and to Him who knocks the door will be opened." And he says, "Or which one of you, if his son asks for bread, we give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, would give him a serpent? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, well, then how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?" I don't know about your dad's situation. Some of you had very good dads, maybe some of you didn't. The point that Jesus is making here though is that even the very best of earthly fathers seems evil when compared to the goodness, the kindness, the grace of our God, our Heavenly Father." And God wants us to know Him as a good Father, as a father who is so good, so loving, so attentive that He not only sees us, He knows what we need even before we ask Him," Jesus says. And Jesus calls God our Father. We need to relate to God as our Father. He also calls Him our Heavenly Father, that we can approach God with the affection and the intimacy of a father, but we must also approach Him with the reverence and the honor and the respect due to a Heavenly Father that our God as a father is perfect in His goodness. He's also perfect in His holiness. He teaches us to pray, "Our Father who arts in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." And so what does it mean to say that God is holy? It means that He is morally perfect in every way. He is completely pure without compromise, without contradiction. He is utterly distinct and set apart with no rival, with no equal for His glory, for His righteousness. And actually when you look at Scripture, what you see is that God is so holy, he is so righteous that anything unrighteous is unable to even stand before His presence, that even the angels of heaven, and when Isaiah has his vision, that they cover their faces before the holiness of God, that God is so righteous that anything containing even an ounce of sin, even the smallest imperfection, it would be destroyed before His holy presence as quickly as a shadow under the direct exposure of the sun. Hebrews 12:28 says, "Therefore, let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence in awe, for our God is a consuming fire." Well, this is true. How can we, as sinful people, hope to stand before a Holy God in prayer? Well, I mentioned earlier, there's two reasons that we need to not just pray to God but with God. And the first is simply that God is with us as a father, but the second is that we cannot pray to God without God helping us to pray to God, that we cannot come before the Father without the power of the Holy Spirit, without the righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is what I mean, when we pray to the Father, we do so in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ and we're able to, therefore, come boldly before the throne of God and stand before His righteousness, not because we're righteous. If we did that, we would die, but we are able to stand before His presence because, and only because, we have been covered by the righteous blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, that by grace through faith, the righteousness of Christ has been accredited to us. It covers us and we are able to stand before the Holy Father now and not just live, but to actually be loved, actually be welcomed into ... He looks at us and He sees us in the perfection of Jesus and welcomes us into His presence. And this is what it means to pray to God. It's really profound when you think about it. It is a Trinitarian experience, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit allowing us to come and experience just the awesome transcendent reality that our prayers can be heard by a Holy God. And that as they are and as we do, we realize that this Holy God is also our loving Father. And so commit to that, commit to having that mindset as you approach God, that you are speaking with God for the person that He is, both loving and holy, perfect in His holiness. Secondly, commit to pray with a plan. Jesus says in verse nine, He says, "Pray them like this." He's like, "I'm going to teach you. This is how you should pray. 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil.'" I think one of the reasons that Christians maybe don't pray as often as they should is because they lack that vision of God and who He is and the person of God that they are communicating with. I think if we had that mindset and we realize what an awesome privilege that is, we would pray more. But I think another reason that a lot of Christians maybe struggle with prayer is that they don't have a practical plan. And so really quick, I just want to look at four super practical things that if you're not doing them already, I would say start doing them and you'll find I think that these are going to help you with your prayer life because Jesus doesn't just say, "If you pray." There is a sense in which we are continually living in the presence of God, praying without ceasing. As we go about our day, we should have this mindset that God is with us. We are talking to Him throughout our day, that we have access to Him at any time, but then we should also plan specific times where we are going to sit down and focus and spend time with God in prayer. And that's not going to happen on its own. You need to have a plan. So first of all, you need to determine a time and a place. If you're a busy person, I don't know if there's busy people that live here in Boston, but if there are, you might need to put this on your calendar. You might need to schedule it. You need to plan ahead and say, "At this time of day, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I am going to pray and I'm going to have a time, I'm also going to have a place." Where are you going to do it? When are you going? For me, personally, I literally go into my bedroom, I go into to our closet and I close the door. And especially if you got kids, sometimes that's the only way you're going to get any kind of privacy. And I close the door and I pray. And I pray out loud. I don't know why. I started doing this at some point and it helps me to stay focused. It helps my mind not to wander and I'm having a conversation with God, so why wouldn't I pray out loud? Hebrews 5:7 says, "In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplication with loud cries and tears and to Him who was able to save Him from death and He was heard because of His reverence." I don't think that there's anything wrong with praying silently to God, but if you haven't tried praying out loud, I would say it's helpful for me, maybe it will be helpful for you, but the main point is determine a time and a place. Be intentional about it and make it happen. Secondly, use a template. It's not cheating to go into your prayer time with a plan of the kind of things that you're going to pray about. And I know there's a lot of different templates out there and maybe you've used a variety of them throughout your life. One that's really popular that I've heard about is the ACTS model, like the Book of Acts, and they turned it into an acronym, adoration Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. And so that's great. That's a good model. You begin adoration. You just spend some time praising God for His attributes like offering Him worship for who He is. A confession, you lead into a time of repentance where you're asking God for forgiveness and confessing your sins to Him. And Thanksgiving, you thank God for His mercy, for His grace, for all of His provision in your life. And then supplication, you bring your requests to God. You lay your heart before Him and you bring Him all your worries, all your concerns, all of your anxieties. Philippians 4:5-7 says, "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand, so therefore, do not be anxious about anything but in everything. By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So that's one model that people like to use and that's great. Me personally, I like to use the Lord's Prayer that we just read. The Lord's Prayer is a beautiful prayer on its own. You should memorize it. As Tyler said last week, you should internalize it. And I don't think that Jesus gave us this prayer to just memorize and then just like mindlessly recite over and over. I think He gave us this prayer as a good template, as a good model of the kind of things that the Father loves and wants to hear from us about. And so that's what I do. I pray through the Lord's Prayer and then I go back through it line by line, theme by theme and get more specific in my prayer time with God. Just personally, I find that really helpful. And then along with that, number three, is keeping a list. And so you've got your template. You keep a list. For me, I just do this in the little notepad app on my phone. Got it with me wherever I go. I got a list of general things that I'm praying about all the time. I pray for my wife, for my marriage, for my kids. I pray for Mosaic. I pray for the pastors, the staff, the community groups, the members of the church. And then as specific things come up in my life and the church's life and the life of people in our community group or whatever, I just add those to that list. Got it with me wherever I go. You do these things, pretty soon you find out you've got plenty of things to pray about that you need to be praying about with God. And fourthly, and this is really important, as you do this, as you make it a priority, you've got your plan, your template, you've got your list of things you're praying about, I record and remember. Sometimes you got to write things down that you're praying about, so that your future self is going to be able to look back and see and remember God's faithfulness throughout that time in your life. And I could give countless examples of this from my life, from members of our community group, but I think this is a good thing to do. Psalm 77 says, "Then I said I will appeal to this. I'll appeal to the year of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will ponder all of Your work and meditate on Your mighty deeds. Your way, O, God is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders. You have made known Your might among the peoples." As Christians, we believe this, we know this to be true, that our God is a god who always hears and who always answers all of the prayers of all His people. Nothing gets by Him, nothing gets unnoticed, nothing slips past Him. He always answers our prayers. Now, that doesn't mean that He's always going to say yes to our prayers. He doesn't always answer yes, but He is always going to answer best. He's always going to give us what is most and needed most glorifying to Him. And so when He does, don't just forget it and move on. How many times have you maybe prayed for something and then it happens and you're like, "Oh, probably a coincidence. No." No, don't just move on. Write that down, record it, remember it so that the next time you're praying about something, you can rely on it, so that you can look back because there's going to be some points in your future whereas the psalmist said you're going to need to remember the deeds of the Lord so that you can face the fears in your future with the blessed reminders of God's faithfulness in your past, so that you can then stand firm there in the present. Not because you're strong, but because you know that God is faithful, that He is with you, that He has upheld you and that His hand is upon you. First Peter 5:68 says, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that the proper time, He may exalt you, casting all of your anxieties on Him because He cares for you." So commit to pray with a plan. Number three, we see in this passage is we need to commit to pray with purity. Jesus says in His prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we've also forgiven our debtors and not and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," and then he stops and he gives some commentary on this. And in verse 14, he says, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours." And now we got to be clear, Jesus is not teaching a model of works-based righteousness here. He's not talking about forgiveness in the context of our justification. We cannot save ourselves by forgiving others. We cannot lose our salvation by failing to forgive others. Jesus, that's not what He's talking about here, but what Jesus is talking about here is He's talking about forgiveness in the context of prayer and in the context of our relationship with God, and therefore, also our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. And the warning here is that things are not going to be right and good between you and God the Father if things are not right and good between you and your brothers and sisters in Christ. If you are holding a grudge, if you're holding onto anger, resentment, bitterness, you're refusing to forgive somebody. So don't be surprised then if your prayers are hindered. I guess as a father, I picture it like this. Remember Jesus, He shared that parable, "Hey, if your kid comes and asks for something to eat, you're not going to give them a stone." No, of course not. Why would a good parent withhold something good that their child needed? But let's back up and add some context to that. If your kid came to you and said, "Hey, dad, can I have some dinner?" but on the way to the dinner table, they pushed their sister and suplexed their little brother off of the couch and then they're standing there before you. It's like, "Well, hold on a minute. We got to talk. Yeah, we can talk about food. We can talk about dinner. We got bigger things to talk about like why you just smashed your little brother's face into the coffee table." You get the point. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mountain, just the chapter before this, in chapter five, verse 23, "If you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember your brother has something against you," he says, "leave your gift there and go. First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift." This is how important, even if you're in the middle of worship, you're preparing to offer your gift at the altar, you're in the middle of praise and you're in middle of praise is stopped, first go be reconciled, then come and offer your gift. In Psalm 66, the psalmist said, "I cried to Him with my mouth and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened and He has attended to the voice of my prayers." The Apostle Peter talks about this in his first letter, both in chapter three, verse seven and in chapter four, verse seven, Peter says this. First, he speaks to the husbands. He says, "Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that," what? "So that your prayers may not be hindered." He says, "Husbands, if you want your prayers to not be hindered, well, then you would better be treating God's daughter with the honor, with the tenderness, with the consideration that she deserves." And then in the next chapter, he speaks more generally to all Christians and he says in chapter four, verse seven, "To the end of all things is at hand, therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded again for the sake of your prayers." Now, earlier when I asked you to rate yourself, your prayer life, if you were finding, if you were saying, "Ah, that's not so good. I'm like a two. I'm maybe a three," you need to maybe stop and ask yourself, "Could this be the reason why? Have I been cherishing iniquity in my heart? Have I been harboring sin, resentment? Have I been holding a grudge? Is there someone that I have been refusing to forgive or is there someone that I need to go to and ask for forgiveness?" Because when you got stuff like this in your life, the last thing that you're going to want to do is go and talk to God in prayer because you know that God knows, and you know that God's not going to let it go. He's going to press you on it. He's going to tell you, "You need to go and you need to deal with this right away." And so you begin to avoid God or you begin to put up a front to mask things, but you know that he sees straight through all of that. So if you're struggling with prayer, be honest. Ask yourself. Are you just going through the motions? Are you avoiding God and could the reason be that there is sin in your life that you know need to deal with, that you've been avoiding? The only way that you're going to dig yourself out of that ditch is to just stop hiding, stop running from God, stop putting up a front, wearing a mask. You just got to go to the Father in faith. You got to go to the Father. You got to just trust. You got to trust that God is going to be more satisfying than whatever sin, whatever iniquity you may have been cherishing in your heart. You got to trust that His way is going to be better than your way, that when you go to Him and you turn and you humble yourself and repent, He's not going to push you away, that He is going to welcome you back with open arms. But we need to commit to pray with purity, without hypocrisy, so that our prayers may not be hindered. Number four, Jesus begins talking about fasting. So committed to pray with fasting. Verse 16 says, "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. And truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Prayer and fasting, oftentimes, we talk about hand in hand. Unlike prayer, fasting is not something we do continually, unceasingly for practical reasons. You will eventually die of starvation if you try to do that. Fasting is a more occasional practice, but just like prayer, Jesus doesn't say, "Hey, if you fast." He says, "When you fast," he expects, he assumes that His disciples are going to fast and the question is not then, "Should we fast." The question is "When we fast, how should we fast? What should be the posture? What should be the motivation of our fasting?" The Pharisees were experts at fasting and many of them fasted multiple times a week. And they made a big show about it as they did and Jesus called them hypocrites for it because they fasted for attention. They fasted for clout, that the fasting of the Pharisees, it was really just another way for them to spiritually manipulate the people around them. They wanted to appear so strong and so self-disciplined and so holy and righteous and committed and spiritual that nobody would begin to question them or their authority. And so on the outside, everybody looked up to them. They looked so godly, they looked so devout, but Jesus saw right through them. He saw that they were really twisted and sick. And that's not like something I think many people encounter in our culture today. There's not like these religious, spiritual elites going around bragging about their fasting, but it's interesting that fasting has made a resurgence in our culture recently. Not so much for spiritual reasons, but for health and wellness reasons because there are. There's a lot of health benefits to fasting if you do it properly. And I'm not going to say anything too much about that in general. As long as you are honest about your motivations and as long as you're not trying to impress, show off, as you can stay humble, there's nothing wrong with a person fasting for health or wellness reasons. Now, there are a lot of benefits to it. There is, however, something deeply wrong for doing that, for fasting for those reasons by trying to make everybody else think that you're doing it because you're so super spiritual. And this is what ... God's not dumb. He knows you. He knows the motivations of your heart. He knows if you're fasting for Him or if you're fastening to get abs, right? If you're fasting for God or if you're fasting for like a god-bod, you're not going to pull one over on Him. And what does it profit a man if he gets washboard abs and loses his soul? We're all going to have shredded abs in heaven and that's great. There's nothing wrong with trying to pursue that right now, but be honest with yourself. If you're fasting for those reasons and fasting becomes a part of that process, just be honest about those motivations. Don't be a hypocrite, right? Don't do one thing and say something else. Don't try to create this image of yourself before others. Don't fast for attention. Don't fast to flex your spiritual maturity on the one hand and don't fast to flex your physical self-discipline on the other, trying to make people think that you're great, that you're strong because fasting is not about strength. Fasting, it's not about influence, it's not about clout. That's what the Pharisees got wrong. True fasting is about weakness. It's about brokenness. It's about repentance. It's about reliance on God. It's about awakening yourself physically to the reality of just how weak and dependent on God you really are. So when you fast, and Jesus assumes that you will fast, when you fast, the purpose is to humble yourself spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. And as you do that, the goal is you're just pulling the curtain back on reality enough to see things as they really are, to see how really utterly weak and dependent on God you are. And when you're doing that properly, you're really not going to care if anyone else even notices because your true motivation is you're wanting that intimacy, that closeness, that reliance on God. Matthew 4:1-4, "Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter came to Him and said, 'If you're the Son of God, well, then command these stones to become loaves of bread.' But he answered Him, 'It is written. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" And if you haven't fasted before or if you haven't fasted recently, I would encourage you to make it a commitment to do so soon, but as you do this, this should be your prayer. You should be praying, "God used this time to humble me, to bring me to a place, to help me feel and experience the reality that I am more dependent on You, on Your Spirit, on Your word than I am on the food that my physical body is hungering for right now." Because in reality, that is what is true. And so commit to pray with fasting. Let that become part of your spiritual life. And Jesus says, "In doing so, your Heavenly Father will reward you." Number five, looking at today, is to commit to pray with perspective. Jesus concludes, he goes on, he says, "So therefore, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also." Now, I included this last passage here because I think a lot of times we don't think about this in the context of prayer and fasting, but that's the context in which Jesus delivered it. This is a transitional part of Jesus' sermon. And so on the one hand, He's talking about literal treasures. He's talking about possessions and material things, but it's clear that He's talking about more than that. He's talking about immaterial things as well. He's talking about the Pharisees, the religious people who were in their practices storing up for themselves treasures on earth and really missing the point of what they were pursuing. Now, the Pharisees were very devoted. They were devoted to memorizing Scripture. They were devoted to giving to the poor. They were devoted to fasting and prayer, but as we saw, their devotion was motivated by the wrong things. Their devotion was motivated by love for attention, love for authority. They were treasuring their image in their influence. They were storing up these treasures on earth, and in the process, they were selling their souls for things they couldn't keep. Now, the painful irony is that these treasures that they were holding onto, they were really becoming to them like millstones tied around their necks, sinking into the sea, pulling them further and further away from God the Father. And meanwhile, the greatest treasure of all, the treasure that they actually needed, the treasurer that the Father had given was standing right there in front of them, Jesus, the Son of God, the treasure of heaven, our mediator, the one, the only one who could bring them back into the presence of the Father, was standing right in front of them. They couldn't even see it. They were blinded by their self-righteousness. And Jesus told His disciples in John 14:6-7, He said to them, He says, "I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Me." And then He said, "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. And from now on, you do know Him and you have seen Him." This is what the Pharisees couldn't see, that when you know Jesus, you know the Father, that when you know the Father, you're going to treasure the Father because as you seek this Father, you find the Father that treasures you. You find the Father that gave His greatest treasure to seek you, to find you and to bring you back home. He gave up His own beloved Son, Jesus Christ, so that you could be saved. This is why Paul in Romans 8:31, he says, "Well, then what shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?" Do you have that perspective when you pray to the Father? You are praying to the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, holy and sovereign and He loves you like a father that would give His greatest treasure to have you be reconciled to Him. I decided not to write a conclusion to the sermon today. It felt almost silly to stand up here and talk to you anymore about prayer when we could just spend these last few moments together talking to God together in prayer. And so we are going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to be throwing you a curveball right now, so brace yourselves for it. For the next several minutes, we are going to just be spending time together in prayer. If this like weirds you out, if you've never done anything like this before, don't be nervous. I will give you a pass if you are really uncomfortable praying with other people. You can stay by yourself in your seat and pray silently, but I would encourage you to just step out of that comfort zone this morning. And I want us to just kind of circle up in groups of five, six, seven, eight people and spend a few minutes praying together. And if you've never done this before, don't freak out. You don't need to sound polished, you don't need to sound eloquent. God doesn't care about that. Just relax. It's having a conversation together with our Heavenly Father. And so nobody's going to judge you, don't freak out and we're just going to get together. And as we do, this is what I want you to do. First of all, if you have something in your life that you need prayer for, share that with the people that you're praying with, but then really just spend some time praying for one another, pray for our church and pray for the things that Jesus taught us to pray. The words of the Lord's Prayer are going to be up here on the screen and just meditate on them and pray for these things. And when you look at this, Jesus, He's telling us, He's like, "I want you to pray to Me about the most seemingly insignificant and mundane things, your daily bread. There's nothing too small. Just bring it to Me." And on the other hand, He's telling us, "I want you to also pray for the biggest, most transcendent things that you can even think about. Pray for that God's kingdom would come and that His will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Pray about these things together." And so I'm going to close us in prayer. We're going to just split up with some people around you, get into some groups. We're going to spend some time praying together. After a while, the band will come up back up here and lead us and worship. But if you're with us, let's pray and then we'll continue in prayer together. Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. But as I said earlier, I pray that You would teach us to treasure You as we ought and to understand the price that You paid so that we could have a relationship with You, that we could stand before You and know that our prayers are being heard. God, I know that there are people here in this room that have things going on in their lives right now and I know that there are things going on in our world right now that are so big and so complex that they seem hopeless apart from a mighty movement of You, of You working miracles, working wonders among us. And God, we praise You that You are the God who can do just that, that you are the sovereign God of all the universe and You hear us right now. And so, Lord, I pray that You would help us to become a people of prayer. Help us to be a church that knows You and loves You and deeply relies on You as we come together right now. Lord, we do so in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our advocate, our mediator, our good shepherd, our great high priest. We come to You in the name of the One who has overcome Satan, sin and death, is now seated at Your right hand, ruling and reigning from His throne in heaven. Jesus, we pray that You would pour Your Spirit out upon Your church, that You would bring us now into the presence of our Heavenly Father and do so knowing that You are able to do abundantly more than we could ask or even think according to the power that has worked within us. And so Lord, to You be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic BostonChurch. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston ordonate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. We are continuing oursermon series today called Committed. We've been talking about the essentialhabits of an abundant life and what we've been saying over and over throughoutthis series is that we are taking a look at some of the essential,nonnegotiable and just super practical commitments that every Christian needsto make in order to grow in their faith and persevere through life and toexperience and to enjoy the abundant life that Jesus Christ came to give. And if you were here last week, our teens director, Tyler, did an awesome job talking about our commitment to Scripture and I hope that that sermon just left you with a greater appreciation, a greater trust, a greater hunger and appetite for God's word. It's amazing that we worship a god who speaks, a god who has chosen to reveal Himself to us as His creation and we should never take that for granted, right? If God has something to say, we want to hear it. We want to listen. And it is awesome to think that we have access to the word of God recorded for us in Scripture. We worship a god who speaks. We also worship a god who listens. And this is what we are going to be talking about today as we look at the topics, the commitments of fasting and prayer. Like so many of the things that we've talked about in this series, this is not something we do, it is something we commit to, that fasting and prayer, they're not going to happen by accident, they're not going to happen on their own, that these are things that like the early church we need to devote ourselves to doing. And for some of us, maybe that feels like hard work. I don't know about you, but sometimes prayer could begin to feel like a grind. It could feel like something that you have to do or something that you're supposed to do when really we should view prayer as something that we get to do. And as we learn to do these things properly, even if at times they might feel like a grind, they might feel like a drudgery, they should become our delight, that as we practice them persistently, we find in them a great reward. And I use that word because that's the word that we're going to see Jesus used over and over in our text today when He talks about fasting in prayer. He keeps using this word reward. And so is that a word that you use? Is that a word that you think about when you think about fasting, when you think about prayer? Before we begin this morning, I want you to do something for me right now. I just want you to mentally do a quick evaluation of your prayer life. Rate yourself, scale of one to 10, 10 is everything's great, you've got an abundant, flourishing, vibrant, rewarding prayer life. One is it's dry, it's a grind, barely existence. Your prayer life is on a life support. Does prayer feel like a requirement, like a drudgery, like something that you have to do or does it feel like a reward? Does it feel like a delight, something that you get to do? Wherever you just rated yourself, none of us are a 10, we've all have room to grow and so my hope today is that we can all go up in our rating together. And so if you just said, "Well, I feel like I'm a two or a three," well, what would it take to get from a three to like a seven or to get from a five to a nine? What would it take for us to all grow to have a prayer life that's more like that of Christ Jesus? And lucky for us, this is something that Jesus' disciples wondered as well and they at times would ask Jesus, "Hey, Jesus, can you teach us how to pray?" And He did. On multiple occasions, Jesus taught His disciples how to pray and one of those is the text that we're going to be looking at this morning. It's Matthew chapter six, verse five through 21. This is a part of the sermon on the Mount. And Jesus spends a considerable amount of time teaching His disciples about this topic of fasting and prayer. So we're going to walk through this text together. It's a bit of a long text and we're going to just go through it section by section. And as we do, I want us to look at five commitments that are going to help us to avoid some of the pitfalls of prayer and fasting that we could potentially fall into, but also to just have an increasingly vibrant, abundant, powerful and rewarding prayer life that God wants us to have. So if you have your Bibles, we are in Matthew chapter six, beginning in verse five. The words are also going to be up here on the screen. This is what Jesus said, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray and stand in the synagogues and on the street corners that they may be seen by others. And truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who's in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this, 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They just figure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where mouth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." This is the reading of God's holy word for us this morning. Would you please join me in prayer for our sermon today? God, we pray that we would learn to treasure You as we ought. And God, we pray that You would forgive us for not praying as we ought. Lord, You warned Your disciples in the garden to watch and to pray that they might not enter into temptation for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is so weak. And God, we confess our weakness to You and we praise You that Your strength, Your power is made perfect in our weakness, that Your grace is greater than our failures. And so Lord, we ask today that You would to teach us to pray as we ought, teach us to live continually in Your presence, experiencing the blessing of knowing that You are always with us and You always hear us, that we can come and we can talk to You at any time. Teach us what it means to be anxious about nothing but to pray about everything because we know that You are with us, You see us, You hear us, You love us and You are able to provide for our every need. Lord, You are the God who hears and I pray that we would marvel at that reality today and we give You thanks and glory for it now, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, before teaching His disciples how to pray, Jesus first we see, He teaches them how not to pray and He gives them two examples. He says, "On the one hand, don't go and don't pray like the hypocrites. Don't pray like the Pharisees, the religious people." And on the other hand, He says, "Don't pray like the Gentiles, like the lawless pagans either." And so let's start with the religious people that with the Pharisees in verse five, Jesus says, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray and stand in the synagogues and not at the street corners that they may be seen by others. And truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Now, first of all, we need to understand Jesus isn't condemning public prayer. He's not saying that there's never an appropriate time for Christians to pray in public with one another. Corporately, we see it in the New Testament that that is something that the early church was devoted to doing, that it is a good thing for God's people to come and to pray together publicly. But what Jesus is telling us and what we all need to be cautious of is this, that if we find in ourselves that we can go to church and pray with other Christians or we can go to community group and we've got a lot of things to say to God and we can pray with lofty words and eloquence and everything sounds very polished, but then we go home. And when we're alone with God in secret, we've got nothing to talk about, well, He says that's a problem. That's a symptom of a pretty serious illness in the diagnosis that he gives is hypocrisy. I think of it like this. I don't know if you've ever been over at a friend's house like hanging out and then somebody you don't know, one of their friends comes in and joins you. Maybe it's a coworker or neighbor or something like that. And at first, everything's great. You're having a good time, hanging out. The conversation is going well and everybody seems friendly and then your friend gets up and leaves the room and now you're trapped in this awkward deafening silence. And a moment ago, we thought, "I thought we were all friends, but now that they're gone, I realize that was an illusion. You are not my friend. I don't even know you. You're a stranger and we've got nothing to say to each other." Well, don't be like that with God. If you are like that with God, that is a cause for concern. If you find it easy to talk to God when other people, other Christians are around, but you can't talk to Him in private, oh, maybe you've fallen into the same pit as the Pharisees and maybe you've figured out how to look really religious and sound really spiritual when other people are around, but there's no real relationship there with God. He says, "Don't fall into that pit. If the pathway to prayer is this narrow road, you've got this dangerous ditch on the one side that the Pharisees fell into," but he says, "But there's also this other ditch on the other side that the Gentiles fall into. So he says, "Don't be like the pagans either," and this is what He talks about in verse seven. He says, when you pray, "Don't just heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." He says, "Don't be like them as your Father knows what you need even before you ask." See, unlike the Jews who were monotheistic, they believed in one God rightly, the Gentiles believed in a pantheon of gods and their relationship to these gods was not particularly healthy. The gods were seemingly mostly motivated by their own selfish self-interest. And so the people envisioned their gods as these kind of powerful but moody beings and they needed to be appeased. They needed to be persuaded, even maybe bribed in order to care about the plights of mortal people. And their hope was that if they used the right words, if they prayed to the right god with the right words, in the right place, at the right temple with the right idols and the right sacrifices, well, maybe they could get somebody's attention out there. And so they would babble and they would heap up all of these words, as Jesus said, because they were just trying to cover all of their bases like, "If I just do this enough, maybe something will happen. Just throw a plethora of prayers out into the cosmos and hope that maybe somebody out there is listening." And Jesus says, "Don't be like that. Don't be like the Gentiles. The Gentiles weren't just a little-stitious, they're more than a little-stitious. They were superstitious. He says, "Don't be superstitious about prayer. It's not some magic incantation that you need to figure out. Prayer is not a way to tap into some higher power or manipulate some spiritual system. Prayer is just simply a conversation with God. And God is not a system. He is not a power. He is a person." And so I said we'd look at five commitments of a rewarding prayer life. And the first one is that, before anything else, we need to commit to this. We need to pray to God with God as a person. And I use the word with. We often talk about praying to God. Not necessarily anything wrong with that, but I'm using the word with here intentionally for two different reasons. First of all is because the Gentiles prayed to their gods, but they can never really be sure if the gods were listening to them. They could never be sure if anybody out there was hearing that they send their prayers off like an email and who knows? Maybe it just wound up in someone's spam folder. Maybe it just got deleted right away. They could never be sure. But we don't pray like that, that when we pray to God, we pray to a god that we know we have confidence, we have assurance that He is with us, that God is all knowing, all seeing. He is omniscient, omnipresent and all powerful. He always hears all the prayers of His people. And eight times in this passage, Jesus refers to God in a very specific way that shows the intimate relationship that we are to have with Him. He refers to Him as our Father. I mentioned earlier that this passage, it comes from the Sermon of the Mount, and later on in the same sermon, Jesus comes back to this topic of prayer in Matthew chapter seven and He's talking about the relationship of us praying to God as a father. And in verse seven, he says this. He says, "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives and he who seeks finds and to Him who knocks the door will be opened." And he says, "Or which one of you, if his son asks for bread, we give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, would give him a serpent? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, well, then how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?" I don't know about your dad's situation. Some of you had very good dads, maybe some of you didn't. The point that Jesus is making here though is that even the very best of earthly fathers seems evil when compared to the goodness, the kindness, the grace of our God, our Heavenly Father." And God wants us to know Him as a good Father, as a father who is so good, so loving, so attentive that He not only sees us, He knows what we need even before we ask Him," Jesus says. And Jesus calls God our Father. We need to relate to God as our Father. He also calls Him our Heavenly Father, that we can approach God with the affection and the intimacy of a father, but we must also approach Him with the reverence and the honor and the respect due to a Heavenly Father that our God as a father is perfect in His goodness. He's also perfect in His holiness. He teaches us to pray, "Our Father who arts in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." And so what does it mean to say that God is holy? It means that He is morally perfect in every way. He is completely pure without compromise, without contradiction. He is utterly distinct and set apart with no rival, with no equal for His glory, for His righteousness. And actually when you look at Scripture, what you see is that God is so holy, he is so righteous that anything unrighteous is unable to even stand before His presence, that even the angels of heaven, and when Isaiah has his vision, that they cover their faces before the holiness of God, that God is so righteous that anything containing even an ounce of sin, even the smallest imperfection, it would be destroyed before His holy presence as quickly as a shadow under the direct exposure of the sun. Hebrews 12:28 says, "Therefore, let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence in awe, for our God is a consuming fire." Well, this is true. How can we, as sinful people, hope to stand before a Holy God in prayer? Well, I mentioned earlier, there's two reasons that we need to not just pray to God but with God. And the first is simply that God is with us as a father, but the second is that we cannot pray to God without God helping us to pray to God, that we cannot come before the Father without the power of the Holy Spirit, without the righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is what I mean, when we pray to the Father, we do so in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ and we're able to, therefore, come boldly before the throne of God and stand before His righteousness, not because we're righteous. If we did that, we would die, but we are able to stand before His presence because, and only because, we have been covered by the righteous blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, that by grace through faith, the righteousness of Christ has been accredited to us. It covers us and we are able to stand before the Holy Father now and not just live, but to actually be loved, actually be welcomed into ... He looks at us and He sees us in the perfection of Jesus and welcomes us into His presence. And this is what it means to pray to God. It's really profound when you think about it. It is a Trinitarian experience, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit allowing us to come and experience just the awesome transcendent reality that our prayers can be heard by a Holy God. And that as they are and as we do, we realize that this Holy God is also our loving Father. And so commit to that, commit to having that mindset as you approach God, that you are speaking with God for the person that He is, both loving and holy, perfect in His holiness. Secondly, commit to pray with a plan. Jesus says in verse nine, He says, "Pray them like this." He's like, "I'm going to teach you. This is how you should pray. 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not unto temptation, but deliver us from evil.'" I think one of the reasons that Christians maybe don't pray as often as they should is because they lack that vision of God and who He is and the person of God that they are communicating with. I think if we had that mindset and we realize what an awesome privilege that is, we would pray more. But I think another reason that a lot of Christians maybe struggle with prayer is that they don't have a practical plan. And so really quick, I just want to look at four super practical things that if you're not doing them already, I would say start doing them and you'll find I think that these are going to help you with your prayer life because Jesus doesn't just say, "If you pray." There is a sense in which we are continually living in the presence of God, praying without ceasing. As we go about our day, we should have this mindset that God is with us. We are talking to Him throughout our day, that we have access to Him at any time, but then we should also plan specific times where we are going to sit down and focus and spend time with God in prayer. And that's not going to happen on its own. You need to have a plan. So first of all, you need to determine a time and a place. If you're a busy person, I don't know if there's busy people that live here in Boston, but if there are, you might need to put this on your calendar. You might need to schedule it. You need to plan ahead and say, "At this time of day, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and I am going to pray and I'm going to have a time, I'm also going to have a place." Where are you going to do it? When are you going? For me, personally, I literally go into my bedroom, I go into to our closet and I close the door. And especially if you got kids, sometimes that's the only way you're going to get any kind of privacy. And I close the door and I pray. And I pray out loud. I don't know why. I started doing this at some point and it helps me to stay focused. It helps my mind not to wander and I'm having a conversation with God, so why wouldn't I pray out loud? Hebrews 5:7 says, "In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplication with loud cries and tears and to Him who was able to save Him from death and He was heard because of His reverence." I don't think that there's anything wrong with praying silently to God, but if you haven't tried praying out loud, I would say it's helpful for me, maybe it will be helpful for you, but the main point is determine a time and a place. Be intentional about it and make it happen. Secondly, use a template. It's not cheating to go into your prayer time with a plan of the kind of things that you're going to pray about. And I know there's a lot of different templates out there and maybe you've used a variety of them throughout your life. One that's really popular that I've heard about is the ACTS model, like the Book of Acts, and they turned it into an acronym, adoration Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. And so that's great. That's a good model. You begin adoration. You just spend some time praising God for His attributes like offering Him worship for who He is. A confession, you lead into a time of repentance where you're asking God for forgiveness and confessing your sins to Him. And Thanksgiving, you thank God for His mercy, for His grace, for all of His provision in your life. And then supplication, you bring your requests to God. You lay your heart before Him and you bring Him all your worries, all your concerns, all of your anxieties. Philippians 4:5-7 says, "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand, so therefore, do not be anxious about anything but in everything. By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." So that's one model that people like to use and that's great. Me personally, I like to use the Lord's Prayer that we just read. The Lord's Prayer is a beautiful prayer on its own. You should memorize it. As Tyler said last week, you should internalize it. And I don't think that Jesus gave us this prayer to just memorize and then just like mindlessly recite over and over. I think He gave us this prayer as a good template, as a good model of the kind of things that the Father loves and wants to hear from us about. And so that's what I do. I pray through the Lord's Prayer and then I go back through it line by line, theme by theme and get more specific in my prayer time with God. Just personally, I find that really helpful. And then along with that, number three, is keeping a list. And so you've got your template. You keep a list. For me, I just do this in the little notepad app on my phone. Got it with me wherever I go. I got a list of general things that I'm praying about all the time. I pray for my wife, for my marriage, for my kids. I pray for Mosaic. I pray for the pastors, the staff, the community groups, the members of the church. And then as specific things come up in my life and the church's life and the life of people in our community group or whatever, I just add those to that list. Got it with me wherever I go. You do these things, pretty soon you find out you've got plenty of things to pray about that you need to be praying about with God. And fourthly, and this is really important, as you do this, as you make it a priority, you've got your plan, your template, you've got your list of things you're praying about, I record and remember. Sometimes you got to write things down that you're praying about, so that your future self is going to be able to look back and see and remember God's faithfulness throughout that time in your life. And I could give countless examples of this from my life, from members of our community group, but I think this is a good thing to do. Psalm 77 says, "Then I said I will appeal to this. I'll appeal to the year of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will ponder all of Your work and meditate on Your mighty deeds. Your way, O, God is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders. You have made known Your might among the peoples." As Christians, we believe this, we know this to be true, that our God is a god who always hears and who always answers all of the prayers of all His people. Nothing gets by Him, nothing gets unnoticed, nothing slips past Him. He always answers our prayers. Now, that doesn't mean that He's always going to say yes to our prayers. He doesn't always answer yes, but He is always going to answer best. He's always going to give us what is most and needed most glorifying to Him. And so when He does, don't just forget it and move on. How many times have you maybe prayed for something and then it happens and you're like, "Oh, probably a coincidence. No." No, don't just move on. Write that down, record it, remember it so that the next time you're praying about something, you can rely on it, so that you can look back because there's going to be some points in your future whereas the psalmist said you're going to need to remember the deeds of the Lord so that you can face the fears in your future with the blessed reminders of God's faithfulness in your past, so that you can then stand firm there in the present. Not because you're strong, but because you know that God is faithful, that He is with you, that He has upheld you and that His hand is upon you. First Peter 5:68 says, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that the proper time, He may exalt you, casting all of your anxieties on Him because He cares for you." So commit to pray with a plan. Number three, we see in this passage is we need to commit to pray with purity. Jesus says in His prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we've also forgiven our debtors and not and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," and then he stops and he gives some commentary on this. And in verse 14, he says, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours." And now we got to be clear, Jesus is not teaching a model of works-based righteousness here. He's not talking about forgiveness in the context of our justification. We cannot save ourselves by forgiving others. We cannot lose our salvation by failing to forgive others. Jesus, that's not what He's talking about here, but what Jesus is talking about here is He's talking about forgiveness in the context of prayer and in the context of our relationship with God, and therefore, also our relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. And the warning here is that things are not going to be right and good between you and God the Father if things are not right and good between you and your brothers and sisters in Christ. If you are holding a grudge, if you're holding onto anger, resentment, bitterness, you're refusing to forgive somebody. So don't be surprised then if your prayers are hindered. I guess as a father, I picture it like this. Remember Jesus, He shared that parable, "Hey, if your kid comes and asks for something to eat, you're not going to give them a stone." No, of course not. Why would a good parent withhold something good that their child needed? But let's back up and add some context to that. If your kid came to you and said, "Hey, dad, can I have some dinner?" but on the way to the dinner table, they pushed their sister and suplexed their little brother off of the couch and then they're standing there before you. It's like, "Well, hold on a minute. We got to talk. Yeah, we can talk about food. We can talk about dinner. We got bigger things to talk about like why you just smashed your little brother's face into the coffee table." You get the point. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mountain, just the chapter before this, in chapter five, verse 23, "If you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember your brother has something against you," he says, "leave your gift there and go. First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift." This is how important, even if you're in the middle of worship, you're preparing to offer your gift at the altar, you're in the middle of praise and you're in middle of praise is stopped, first go be reconciled, then come and offer your gift. In Psalm 66, the psalmist said, "I cried to Him with my mouth and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened and He has attended to the voice of my prayers." The Apostle Peter talks about this in his first letter, both in chapter three, verse seven and in chapter four, verse seven, Peter says this. First, he speaks to the husbands. He says, "Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that," what? "So that your prayers may not be hindered." He says, "Husbands, if you want your prayers to not be hindered, well, then you would better be treating God's daughter with the honor, with the tenderness, with the consideration that she deserves." And then in the next chapter, he speaks more generally to all Christians and he says in chapter four, verse seven, "To the end of all things is at hand, therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded again for the sake of your prayers." Now, earlier when I asked you to rate yourself, your prayer life, if you were finding, if you were saying, "Ah, that's not so good. I'm like a two. I'm maybe a three," you need to maybe stop and ask yourself, "Could this be the reason why? Have I been cherishing iniquity in my heart? Have I been harboring sin, resentment? Have I been holding a grudge? Is there someone that I have been refusing to forgive or is there someone that I need to go to and ask for forgiveness?" Because when you got stuff like this in your life, the last thing that you're going to want to do is go and talk to God in prayer because you know that God knows, and you know that God's not going to let it go. He's going to press you on it. He's going to tell you, "You need to go and you need to deal with this right away." And so you begin to avoid God or you begin to put up a front to mask things, but you know that he sees straight through all of that. So if you're struggling with prayer, be honest. Ask yourself. Are you just going through the motions? Are you avoiding God and could the reason be that there is sin in your life that you know need to deal with, that you've been avoiding? The only way that you're going to dig yourself out of that ditch is to just stop hiding, stop running from God, stop putting up a front, wearing a mask. You just got to go to the Father in faith. You got to go to the Father. You got to just trust. You got to trust that God is going to be more satisfying than whatever sin, whatever iniquity you may have been cherishing in your heart. You got to trust that His way is going to be better than your way, that when you go to Him and you turn and you humble yourself and repent, He's not going to push you away, that He is going to welcome you back with open arms. But we need to commit to pray with purity, without hypocrisy, so that our prayers may not be hindered. Number four, Jesus begins talking about fasting. So committed to pray with fasting. Verse 16 says, "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. And truly, I say to you, they've received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Prayer and fasting, oftentimes, we talk about hand in hand. Unlike prayer, fasting is not something we do continually, unceasingly for practical reasons. You will eventually die of starvation if you try to do that. Fasting is a more occasional practice, but just like prayer, Jesus doesn't say, "Hey, if you fast." He says, "When you fast," he expects, he assumes that His disciples are going to fast and the question is not then, "Should we fast." The question is "When we fast, how should we fast? What should be the posture? What should be the motivation of our fasting?" The Pharisees were experts at fasting and many of them fasted multiple times a week. And they made a big show about it as they did and Jesus called them hypocrites for it because they fasted for attention. They fasted for clout, that the fasting of the Pharisees, it was really just another way for them to spiritually manipulate the people around them. They wanted to appear so strong and so self-disciplined and so holy and righteous and committed and spiritual that nobody would begin to question them or their authority. And so on the outside, everybody looked up to them. They looked so godly, they looked so devout, but Jesus saw right through them. He saw that they were really twisted and sick. And that's not like something I think many people encounter in our culture today. There's not like these religious, spiritual elites going around bragging about their fasting, but it's interesting that fasting has made a resurgence in our culture recently. Not so much for spiritual reasons, but for health and wellness reasons because there are. There's a lot of health benefits to fasting if you do it properly. And I'm not going to say anything too much about that in general. As long as you are honest about your motivations and as long as you're not trying to impress, show off, as you can stay humble, there's nothing wrong with a person fasting for health or wellness reasons. Now, there are a lot of benefits to it. There is, however, something deeply wrong for doing that, for fasting for those reasons by trying to make everybody else think that you're doing it because you're so super spiritual. And this is what ... God's not dumb. He knows you. He knows the motivations of your heart. He knows if you're fasting for Him or if you're fastening to get abs, right? If you're fasting for God or if you're fasting for like a god-bod, you're not going to pull one over on Him. And what does it profit a man if he gets washboard abs and loses his soul? We're all going to have shredded abs in heaven and that's great. There's nothing wrong with trying to pursue that right now, but be honest with yourself. If you're fasting for those reasons and fasting becomes a part of that process, just be honest about those motivations. Don't be a hypocrite, right? Don't do one thing and say something else. Don't try to create this image of yourself before others. Don't fast for attention. Don't fast to flex your spiritual maturity on the one hand and don't fast to flex your physical self-discipline on the other, trying to make people think that you're great, that you're strong because fasting is not about strength. Fasting, it's not about influence, it's not about clout. That's what the Pharisees got wrong. True fasting is about weakness. It's about brokenness. It's about repentance. It's about reliance on God. It's about awakening yourself physically to the reality of just how weak and dependent on God you really are. So when you fast, and Jesus assumes that you will fast, when you fast, the purpose is to humble yourself spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically. And as you do that, the goal is you're just pulling the curtain back on reality enough to see things as they really are, to see how really utterly weak and dependent on God you are. And when you're doing that properly, you're really not going to care if anyone else even notices because your true motivation is you're wanting that intimacy, that closeness, that reliance on God. Matthew 4:1-4, "Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter came to Him and said, 'If you're the Son of God, well, then command these stones to become loaves of bread.' But he answered Him, 'It is written. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" And if you haven't fasted before or if you haven't fasted recently, I would encourage you to make it a commitment to do so soon, but as you do this, this should be your prayer. You should be praying, "God used this time to humble me, to bring me to a place, to help me feel and experience the reality that I am more dependent on You, on Your Spirit, on Your word than I am on the food that my physical body is hungering for right now." Because in reality, that is what is true. And so commit to pray with fasting. Let that become part of your spiritual life. And Jesus says, "In doing so, your Heavenly Father will reward you." Number five, looking at today, is to commit to pray with perspective. Jesus concludes, he goes on, he says, "So therefore, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also." Now, I included this last passage here because I think a lot of times we don't think about this in the context of prayer and fasting, but that's the context in which Jesus delivered it. This is a transitional part of Jesus' sermon. And so on the one hand, He's talking about literal treasures. He's talking about possessions and material things, but it's clear that He's talking about more than that. He's talking about immaterial things as well. He's talking about the Pharisees, the religious people who were in their practices storing up for themselves treasures on earth and really missing the point of what they were pursuing. Now, the Pharisees were very devoted. They were devoted to memorizing Scripture. They were devoted to giving to the poor. They were devoted to fasting and prayer, but as we saw, their devotion was motivated by the wrong things. Their devotion was motivated by love for attention, love for authority. They were treasuring their image in their influence. They were storing up these treasures on earth, and in the process, they were selling their souls for things they couldn't keep. Now, the painful irony is that these treasures that they were holding onto, they were really becoming to them like millstones tied around their necks, sinking into the sea, pulling them further and further away from God the Father. And meanwhile, the greatest treasure of all, the treasure that they actually needed, the treasurer that the Father had given was standing right there in front of them, Jesus, the Son of God, the treasure of heaven, our mediator, the one, the only one who could bring them back into the presence of the Father, was standing right in front of them. They couldn't even see it. They were blinded by their self-righteousness. And Jesus told His disciples in John 14:6-7, He said to them, He says, "I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Me." And then He said, "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. And from now on, you do know Him and you have seen Him." This is what the Pharisees couldn't see, that when you know Jesus, you know the Father, that when you know the Father, you're going to treasure the Father because as you seek this Father, you find the Father that treasures you. You find the Father that gave His greatest treasure to seek you, to find you and to bring you back home. He gave up His own beloved Son, Jesus Christ, so that you could be saved. This is why Paul in Romans 8:31, he says, "Well, then what shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?" Do you have that perspective when you pray to the Father? You are praying to the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, holy and sovereign and He loves you like a father that would give His greatest treasure to have you be reconciled to Him. I decided not to write a conclusion to the sermon today. It felt almost silly to stand up here and talk to you anymore about prayer when we could just spend these last few moments together talking to God together in prayer. And so we are going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to be throwing you a curveball right now, so brace yourselves for it. For the next several minutes, we are going to just be spending time together in prayer. If this like weirds you out, if you've never done anything like this before, don't be nervous. I will give you a pass if you are really uncomfortable praying with other people. You can stay by yourself in your seat and pray silently, but I would encourage you to just step out of that comfort zone this morning. And I want us to just kind of circle up in groups of five, six, seven, eight people and spend a few minutes praying together. And if you've never done this before, don't freak out. You don't need to sound polished, you don't need to sound eloquent. God doesn't care about that. Just relax. It's having a conversation together with our Heavenly Father. And so nobody's going to judge you, don't freak out and we're just going to get together. And as we do, this is what I want you to do. First of all, if you have something in your life that you need prayer for, share that with the people that you're praying with, but then really just spend some time praying for one another, pray for our church and pray for the things that Jesus taught us to pray. The words of the Lord's Prayer are going to be up here on the screen and just meditate on them and pray for these things. And when you look at this, Jesus, He's telling us, He's like, "I want you to pray to Me about the most seemingly insignificant and mundane things, your daily bread. There's nothing too small. Just bring it to Me." And on the other hand, He's telling us, "I want you to also pray for the biggest, most transcendent things that you can even think about. Pray for that God's kingdom would come and that His will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven. Pray about these things together." And so I'm going to close us in prayer. We're going to just split up with some people around you, get into some groups. We're going to spend some time praying together. After a while, the band will come up back up here and lead us and worship. But if you're with us, let's pray and then we'll continue in prayer together. Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. But as I said earlier, I pray that You would teach us to treasure You as we ought and to understand the price that You paid so that we could have a relationship with You, that we could stand before You and know that our prayers are being heard. God, I know that there are people here in this room that have things going on in their lives right now and I know that there are things going on in our world right now that are so big and so complex that they seem hopeless apart from a mighty movement of You, of You working miracles, working wonders among us. And God, we praise You that You are the God who can do just that, that you are the sovereign God of all the universe and You hear us right now. And so, Lord, I pray that You would help us to become a people of prayer. Help us to be a church that knows You and loves You and deeply relies on You as we come together right now. Lord, we do so in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our advocate, our mediator, our good shepherd, our great high priest. We come to You in the name of the One who has overcome Satan, sin and death, is now seated at Your right hand, ruling and reigning from His throne in heaven. Jesus, we pray that You would pour Your Spirit out upon Your church, that You would bring us now into the presence of our Heavenly Father and do so knowing that You are able to do abundantly more than we could ask or even think according to the power that has worked within us. And so Lord, to You be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

What is Influence – Week 4   INFLUENCE   WE ARE MULTIPLIERS   LOVE   THE CHARACTER OF POSITIVE INFLUENCE   How not to be a negative influence   How not to be negatively influenced   How to become a person of Influence   A Person of Influence has integrity with people A Person of Influence Nurtures People and Relationships A Person of Influence Has Faith in People A Person of Influence Listens to People A Person of Influence Seeks to Understand People   How to Become a Person of Influence   All we need is interaction to influence   A person of influence connects with People   When you connect with people you come alongside them   “Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, “You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?” Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” “But sir, you don't have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water?…” Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” “Please, sir,” the woman said, “give me this water! Then I'll never be thirsty again, and I won't have to come here to get water.” “Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her. “I don't have a husband,” the woman replied. Jesus said, “You're right! You don't have a husband— for you have had five husbands, and you aren't even married to the man you're living with now…” When we see people as God sees them, have faith in them, nurture the interaction, listen with the intent to understand, and build an intentional connection we unlock the opportunity for God to shine through. …Then Jesus told her, “I Am the Messiah!” Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the nerve to ask, “What do you want with her?” or “Why are you talking to her?” The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” So the people came streaming from the village to see him….Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had said, “He told me everything I ever did!” When they came out to see him, they begged him to stay in their village. So he stayed for two days, long enough for many more to hear his message and believe. Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not just because of what you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves. Now we know that he is indeed the Savior of the world.”” John 4:7-42 NLT   1.     Don't take people for granted 2.     Possess a “Make a difference” mindset   Can we reach the masses better apart or better together?   3.     Look for common ground   4.     Recognize and have respect for difference in personality   “The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ…we have all been baptized into one body by One Spirit, and we all share the same spirit. Yes the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body and if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye, would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?” 1 Corinthians 12:12-17 NLT   5.     Communication comes from the heart   As people of influence we need to be wall climbers not wall builders   6.     Once Connected, move forward, be intentional, and lean in   A Person of Influence Empowers People   When we empower others, we are not influencing just them; we are influencing all the people they influence When we empower we multiply   1.     Evaluate the strengths of the person   No amount of knowledge or skill can drive someone to make an impact if they don't desire to do it themselves   2.     Give People Permission to succeed   3.     Be there for support and feedback   “You're never good your first time.” John Maxwell   4.     Release them to continue on their own   A person of influence multiplies other influencers   “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” Matthew 9:37-38 NLT   “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.” Matthew 9:37-38 NLT   MULTIPLIERS   We are multipliers! We are a Great Commission Church which means we are multipliers. Individually, we are all responsible to disciple those younger in their faith and invite those far from Jesus into a life-giving community. Corporately, we are called to plant churches, pastor cities, and father and mother leaders to multiply the Kingdom impact. We are multipliers!   Everyone has the potential to multiply influence by multiplying influencers   1.     Be a person of character and integrity 2.     Nurture your relationships and interactions 3.     Have faith in people 4.     Listen to people 5.     Seek to understand people 6.     Connect with people 7.     Empower People   THEN   8.     We can multiply  

As the Church of the West, we are far more familiar with the God of the mountaintop than the God of the wilderness. When suffering crashes into our lives we often wonder where God is, and Lent is an annual practice that teaches us to find His presence in our wilderness. The Wilderness is a place of harsh clarity, an uncluttered discomfort, where our hearts are laid bare before God– and we discover one that is always there. As the people of God, tell time differently. Whether we are aware or not, our calendars shape us. As the Church, our calendars are patterned after the life of Jesus. In each season, we are guided to reflect on a different moment in the life of Jesus. This is a guide that year over year shapes our identity, our practices, and our story. Advent & Epiphany – God with us.Lent – God prepares us.Easter – God for us. Pentecost – God in us. Ordinary Time – God through us.Lent is a season of preparation; dedication to repentance, abstinence, and fasting in order to prepare one's heart for the celebration of Easter. Lent is a season of preparation in the wilderness. The Wilderness in Genesis“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.”–Genesis 1:1-25 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. –Genesis 2:5–6.cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” –Genesis 3:17-19Genesis 3 closes with humanity leaving the Garden and returning to the wasteland of their own making. The Wilderness in Exodus16…‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” –Exodus 7:16. And in their idolatry and stubbornness, they live as nomads in the wilderness for forty years. The Wilderness in 1 Kings 19“Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” 8 And [Elijah] arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. 9 There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 He said, “I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” 11 And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper [or a thin silence]. 13 And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”–1 Kings 19:7–13.There Elijah confesses his distrust of God; he repents of his mischaracterization of the God of Israel. God meets him in the wilderness, but that's only after Elijah abandons his post and gives ups. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the biographers of Jesus, each tell the story of our Messiah's experience in the wilderness of Judea. “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan [river] and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days being tempted by the devil.” – Luke 4:1-2And that ancient serpent makes an appearance again; tempting Jesus to turn rocks into bread, to give in to ambition, and to take power for himself. Jesus patterned His life off the story of scripture and the love of his Heavenly Father. In response, may we pattern our lives after the one who overcomes the wilderness. And Lent is an annual practice that stips back distractions and teaches us to find His presence in our wilderness.The main theme of Lent is repentance. “return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning.” So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger,abounding in loving devotion. And He relents from sending disaster.–Joel 2:12-13 (ESV)Fasting is the practice of going without food and drink(excluding water) for a period of time. Abstinence is the practice of creating margin in our daily schedule for the purpose of reorienting our lives towards Christ.Corporately we will practice this on Ash Wednesday and every Sunday with 15 minutes of preservice prayer.

  So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” John 13:34-35 NLT   “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. Matthew 5:14-16 NLT   If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal 1 Corinthians 13:1 NLT   “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. Matthew 5:14-16 NLT   We are multipliers! We are a Great Commission Church which means we are multipliers. Individually, we are all responsible to disciple those younger in their faith and invite those far from Jesus into a life-giving community. Corporately, we are called to plant churches, pastor cities, and father and mother leaders to multiply the Kingdom impact. We are multipliers!   God's purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Ephesians 3:10 NLT   When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” Matthew 16:13-19 NLT   1. A PERSON OF POSITIVE INFLUENCE BREAKS THE DISEASE OF ME.   This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. John 15:12-13 NLT   But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:43-45 NLT   2. A PERSON OF POSITIVE INFLUENCE WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO SEE THEIR LOVED ONES HEALED   Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room, even outside the door. While he was preaching God's word to them, four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. They couldn't bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.” Mark 2:2-5 NLT   “Your life is like the morning fog—it's here a little while, then it's gone.” James 4:4 NLT   “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered — how fleeting my life is. Psalms 39:4 NLT   (God) who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. 1 Timothy 2:4 NLT   Then Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? How can I illustrate it? It is like a tiny mustard seed that a man planted in a garden; it grows and becomes a tree, and the birds make nests in its branches.” He also asked, “What else is the Kingdom of God like? It is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.”Luke 13:18-21 NLT   We are multipliers! We are a Great Commission Church which means we are multipliers. We are multipliers!      

In 2 Samuel 26, we learn that when we gather together to worship God there is so much more happening than what our eyes can see. 

Dec20-Lacey Evans post to get ppl outraged about autism- the narratives that are allowed online while pretending it is going against the grain-More J6 discourse- sports entertainment political storylines to prove we live in a parody -Meg Tory discourse-The Game's controversial picture of his daughter-some wrestling discourse about ratings-my idea for the next AEW Battle of the Belts-Dec21st-twitter files pt 8-Matt Riddles's latest controversy-guessing why things are trending- 1.7 trillion outrage- the analysis of how discourse is being planned out to seem humorous and some wrestling discourse before I watch Dynamite

To access a FREE collection of resources, go to www.RealGritVault.com   Learn how to break the barriers holding you back in this episode with Amy Ransdell as we talk about transformative ways to personal growth, self-improvement, and the impact of belief systems and emotions in our careers. Don't miss this talk to discover your potential and elevate your quality of life!   Key Takeaways From This Episode The role of religion and belief system in your upbringing Why you should trust your intuition  Importance of self-improvement in business Challenges that high achievers face in their lives How positive and negative emotions influence our brain What makes a person a high achiever?   References/Links Mentioned Powerhouse Deals in the Atlanta Real Estate Market with Amy Ransdell   About Amy Ransdell The tenacious REBEL heart behind Rules ReWritten™, Amy is obsessed with optimizing performance by helping clients defy limitations and redefining the rules to reach indomitable heights in business and life.  A Behavioral Transformation Coach, and leading expert in Peak Performance, Amy has worked with thousands of coaching clients over 20 years helping them craft daring and extraordinary lives. Clients include Inc100 executives, highly successful entrepreneurs, influencers, and leaders.  Corporately, Amy worked in Human Performance Training & Development and Executive Sales. She has served on boards and as the CMO of an 8-figure international service provider. Amy also has over 20 years of active entrepreneurial ownership in businesses within real estate investing, portfolio management, brokerage ownership, high-volume sales teams, strategic consulting, warehousing fulfillment, online content platforms, and top-tier coaching programs.  During all those years Amy has obsessively pursued the study of behavioral sciences, behavioral educational psychology, behavioral therapies, integrative psychology, neuroscience, neurochemistry, biochemistry, NLP, hypnotherapy, altered state sciences, meta-health, athletic performance, leadership development, and sales psychology. She is master certified in multiple modalities to help clients unlock, unleash, and elevate human performance, integrating that into the experiences of every client, student, trainee, and team member.    Connect with Amy Website: Rules Rewritten Instagram: @amyransdell_coach   Neil J. Timmins is on a mission to make a deep personal impact in the lives of his team members and business partners through his work as a real estate investor and mentor. He started as a traditional real estate agent where his team was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as a Top 100 team. Eventually, he made the transition from Realtor to full time investor.  Over the course of his career, Neil has been involved in over $300,000,000 in real estate transactions. Neil's portfolio depth includes assets ranging from houses to industrial properties. Recently, Neil and his team launched the Legacy Impact Partner Program where they partner with fix and flip investors from around the country. Neil's team brings capital to fund and fix rehabs, operational expertise, and years of experience catapulting their partner's business to new heights. Want to partner? You can learn more and book a call with Neil at www.LegacyImpactPartners.com.   Connect with Neil Website: Real Grit LinkedIn: Neil J. Timmins Facebook: Neil Timmins

In episode 8 of Volume 4 Greg talks life, love, the universe, and all things music with comedian, presenter, and podcaster LEE PEART!!!Lee Peart is a comedian, presenter, broadcaster and actor. Lee gigs at all the major comedy clubs across the UK, and has previously supported Jason Manford on tour.He is the resident warm-up artist for ITV's Loose Women, having worked there since 2017. He has also worked as warm-up for Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, Netflix's Dance Monsters,Love Island: Aftersun on ITV2, Ruth & Eamonn's Do The Right Thing for Channel 5, and was the main stage warm-up for This Morning Live& Loose Women Late​.He has been a regular contributor on BBC Radio London, BBC Radio Manchester, Gaydio and talkRADIO, discussing the morning papers and providing insight and comedic commentary on the latest news.He has his own podcast 'Let's Talk with Lee Peart' - on it he has interviewed the likes of Lorraine Kelly, Tom Allen, Nadia Sawalha, Gloria Hunniford OBE and more. He also has a weekly podcast called 'Fab Life with Lauren & Lee' which was featured in OK! Magazine and The Sunday Express as podcast pick of the week.Corporately, he has worked as a presenter for companies such as Movember, Gillette, Google, Investec Bank, and has hosted Manchester Pride's Big Weekend main stage for 5 years, introducing acts such as Sir Ian McKellan, Texas, The Sugababes and Alison Moyet. He has also hosted the Pride Parade, and was the host of Disneyland Paris Pride. In 2016, Lee played the part of Mark in the national tour of Three Days and Three Minutes with Larry, a new play written by Chris Mellor about the late, great Larry Grayson - one of his comedy heroes.Lee's WebsiteTwitterInstagramFacebookYouTubeLee's PodcastsSUPPORT THIS SHOW

This week we shift gears into the world of finances. Financial stress takes a toll on our health and well-being, the average person is living paycheque to paycheque or only $400 away from needing to borrow money for an emergency expenditure. Nate shares how he created a wealthy, and healthy, life and why he devotes his time now to helping others thrive and experience freedom. Want to watch a video portion of this episode? Click HERE. Nate Scott is the author of “Life Is Rich: How To Create Lasting Wealth” and CEO of Life Is Rich Global, LLC. Life Is Rich Global is a B2B company that delivers value through leadership & sales coaching and customer acquisition. Nate is a combat enlisted soldier, West Point graduate, and former Infantry Officer/Ranger. Corporately, he was a licensed financial advisor at a global wealth management firm and the Chief Financial Officer for an INC500 Fastest growing company. As an entrepreneur, his single largest real estate acquisition has been a 40-unit apartment complex, and he owned a tax franchise business. Nate is a man of faith, a husband, and a father. Follow Nate on IG and Facebook: @AskNateScott. Podcast: Life Is Rich with Nate Scott. To learn more, visit www.CoachingwithNateScott.com www.LifeIsRichGlobal.com www.LifeIsRichToday.com Hypnobabies now has Hypnosis for a Better Life available! Whether you want to reduce anxiety, increase focus and concentration, develop good habits or have a peaceful sleep this option is for you! Please click the link to learn more: https://www.hypnobabies-store.com/product-category/hypnosis-for-a-better-life/?ref-hyp=Chrissycord Come find me at www.girlwithaflare.com Instagram: @girlwithaflarecoaching FB and Twitter: @girlwithaflare Please subscribe to my YouTube Channel where I share video portions of the podcast episodes. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lifeisrich/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lifeisrich/support

In this conversation, KP talks with Pastor Len Burdick who has been leading worship since the 80s, in contexts of every kind! Len has a doctorate in Pastoral Leadership and Master in Worship Studies and has taught at Word of Life Academy. He's currently the Worship Pastor at Victory Church in Winchester, VA Helpful links: Connect with Len - @lenburdick "Clear the Stage" by Scott Wilson - https://amzn.to/3DsKEOD Get my book - www.worshipologybook.com The Worshiplogy Community (coaching for worship leaders) - https://bit.ly/3cUYGhj  

Guarding the House From Our Enemies (3) (Audio) David Eells - 8/7/22 The “Beautiful Serpent” Returns To Destruction   Claire Pienaar - 7/25/22 (David's notes in red) I dreamed I was at a large American-styled school in a cafeteria and I was happy. I seemed to only be observing in this dream. (A cafeteria is a place where food is served. There is healthy food and junk food to choose from. We must make the right healthy choices of what we feed our spiritual man so that we can be effective to fight the enemy and our old flesh nature. Rom 8:13  for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.)  My old school friends were huddled together, and they were acting very strange. Their behavior made me think they were drug addicts, but I pushed it far from my mind. (Riaan: Old friends represent past struggles or addictions; demons previously overcome in our lives who are huddling together to look for a way back in.) (These can be addictions of the old man to anything or idolatry with anything that has become more important in our daily lives than God. They take away our time from Him and Kingdom matters.) The cafeteria changed to a field and war zone. (Riaan: This is a spiritual war). Many Army men were taking down these drug addicts. (Representing warring angels who fight on our behalf when we invoke the Word of God.) (Riaan: The angels are ministering servants that have their orders from the Lord to obey the Word and take out these demons by the authority of Christ). (Heb. 1:13-14  But of which of the angels hath he said at any time, Sit thou on my right hand, Till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet? 14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?)  One of my drug addict friends was a lady named Linda. (Riaan: Linda means "beautiful serpent.") Linda's boyfriend whose name was Brett, hated to do it, but, he shot Linda because she was so evil. (Brett means “A man from Britain or Brittany. Briton was one of the places the Roman Empire beast that could not gain a foothold in. It caused much embarrassment to the Romans. So Brett represents my spirit man which is much bigger than the addictive sin nature. [When we walk and talk by faith.])  She was pregnant and cried out to get someone to save the baby. Her blood was running everywhere. (The baby represents the fruit of the old man and the blood; his nature.) I was watching all of this, in plain sight and nothing was happening to me. (Claire was supernaturally protected on the battlefield. Linda the beautiful serpent enemy disguised as a friend will contiue to try to bring forth the fruit of the old nature.). The entire field looked like a bloodbath. (It is the battlefield of the mind where we conquer our old nature and the fiery darts of the enemy or they conquer us. The blood of the old man is conquered by the new man, "Christ in you the hope of glory".) Then something very strange happened. Linda (the beautiful serpent) was raised from the dead; not in a good way but in a fearful way. (Rom 8:13  for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.) She was now even worse; she had more addictive and maniacal behavior and her hair was getting darker... (This is a good representation of our battle with the flesh nature when we fail to keep our foot on the neck of the old man. They can come back stronger and uglier the next time around.  This is a dangerous direction to go because, in the Parable of the Sower, 3 out of 4 fell away and bore no fruit.) (Riaan: Mat 12:43-45 But the unclean spirit, when he is gone out of the man, passeth through waterless places, seeking rest, and findeth it not. 44 Then he saith, I will return into my house whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man becometh worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this evil generation) (Jesus was speaking to the people of God here.) She was now completely open in her dealings with the other “druggies” and told me that she had never wanted me to know, otherwise I would not be friends with her. (The enemy and our flesh nature are very sneaky this way. They want us to be in agreement with them so that they can keep their house or not have to go to their cross.) I tried to get her to come to me, but she couldn't, she was hooked.  (Our flesh nature can never change or come into agreement with our spirit man. He must die. 1Co 9:25-27 And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 26 I therefore so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as not beating the air: 27 but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.) Then Brett came again and he was huge. Easily more than 2 meters tall, and very large. (As we continue to feed and mature the spirit man with the Word he will easily conquer the old man. 2Co 4:16  Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.)    He said he'd have to finish her off, and he kept on calling his superior to check that it would be ok. (Riaan: John 14:31 but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.). Linda knew she'd get killed again and she was trying to hide with another girl... They were doing drugs, now, right in front of me. (This represents out-of-control fleshly addictions.)  I was astonished that they'd be so brazen and flaunt their bad habits in front of everyone. They were careless, loud, and outright rebellious. (Riaan: Luke 12:2  But there is nothing covered up, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. 3 Wherefore whatsoever ye have said in the darkness shall be heard in the light; and what ye have spoken in the ear in the inner chambers shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.)  I then sat down with Brett for lunch, and these other really tall, big men arrived, and even though they looked different to Brett, they were on his team and they were committed to getting this drug problem eradicated. They were planning their strategy. It didn't seem too difficult, but they were going to keep on attacking no matter what. (We recently heard from the warrior angel, Shemuel, who stands next to the "Drain the Swamp" sign near our water purifier in my house. He said, “The enemy and their (human) minions have sustained large set backs and heavy casualties. They are now regrouping for another attack. Keep praying, doing warfare and praising; sending us out to do battle on your behalf.")  I asked the Lord who Linda represents in this dream and I opened my Bible by faith at random on Isaiah 43:25, on “thy sins”. I thought Linda might represent the flesh in this dream, so this is a good confirmation. (In context 24-26)  Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices; but thou hast burdened me with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities. 25 I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake; and I will not remember thy sins. 26 Put me in remembrance; let us plead together: set thou forth thy cause , that thou mayest be justified.  When we do not repent there is no sacrifice for our sins nor for willful disobedience. But in many cases it is the sin that dwells in us as Paul lamented about in Rom. 7. Claires finger was on “thy sins” in verse 25 which says, "I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake; and I will not remember thy sins.” God knows our hearts when we sincerely desire to repent and He will give us the grace to do so for His own sake. Rom 7:13 - 8:4 Did then that which is good become death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good; —that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15 For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do. 16 But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. 18 For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. 19 For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practise. 20 But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. 21 I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present. 22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23 but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? 25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. Rom 8:1-4 There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4 that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.)   Tempted by the Spirit of Anger and Factious Nazi Sympathizers   Claire Pienaar - 7/29/22 (David's notes in red) (This dream is a big warning not to get distracted. However, it seems the Lord has sent the distractions to some as "training" because it was "covered under the red pick up truck", as you will see. May Our Lord show favor to those who continue to seek Him diligently, and fervently.)  I dreamed I was travelling on a highway in what I thought was my silver van. I had my old boss who's last name was Khosa next to me. (She was my boss when I worked for the Dept. Of Foreign Affairs in South Africa. Her last name means “angry men” and “herder of cattle”. I think she represents the curse, and maybe specifically an angry spirit that herds beastly people. I cast out anger many years ago and saw it leave. When I feel it trying to come on me, I remember what it looked like when it left. It manifested as a small black dog, insignificant.).  In the dream, I realized I was driving a red pick-up truck, and in the back of the truck, I had all my toiletries and clothing (Toiletries represent being clean. Clothing represents being covered with the garments of righteousness, and the red truck represents being covered by the blood of Jesus). It seemed I had packed up my belongings from my home and was carrying them in the pick up truck.   I turned left, at Khosa's direction, and then realized she had no idea where she was going. I now had to turn back onto the highway (of holiness), and it was busy, with two opposing lanes. As I waited for an opportunity to cross over into the correct lane, I felt myself growing smaller. My feet could hardly touch the pedals and I could barely see out over the steering wheel. (When we listen to the flesh's directions, our spirit man gets smaller and we are in danger of losing control of our vehicle.)  I made it across and Khosa was not happy that I had made it back onto the highway. She said she never travels on highways and only used back roads. I said to her, “I've never even considered it”. She said, “You should”. I said, “Is it quicker?”. She replied, “No, It's always longer by at least 20 minutes”. I shook my head and she walked away. (Riaan: She seems to represent many different things like faction, division, anger, self works of the flesh. These will cause many to get off the highway of holiness and shrink back, or to lose maturity in Christ).  Suddenly, I was in a house with Riaan, my husband (His name means little king, so he might represent the Man-child and I, the Bride because my name means “brilliant” as the clothing of the Bride in Rev. 19.). It was not a house that we've lived in, in the natural. It was almost empty. I figured we were moving out together to another place. (We must continue to come out from among them and be separate and made holy, moving out of apostasy and familiarity with the fallen lascivious Church).  Riaan's mom and dad were there, as well as his sister, her husband, and their children. His brother's children were there too. I was very separate from them, and I kept on checking the bathroom cabinets to make sure these were empty so we could leave. (The Bride is ready to leave with her Groom and is still making sure she is clean and that she has everything required for purification.)  His family brought up the name “Dr Mengele” in every sentence. They were were praising him and said, “His sacrifice was worth it”. They kept on saying he did such good work. They were enamoured with him. I balked at this. I had a vision of this man descending into deep water as part of a military execution. In this vision, he was drowned at sea.   (Mengele was an ardent Nazi, and he joined the research staff of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in 1934. During World War II he served as a medical officer with the Waffen-SS, which was the “armed” component of the Nazi paramilitary corps) in France and Russia. In 1943 he was appointed by Heinrich Himmler to be chief doctor at Birkenau, the supplementary extermination camp at Auschwitz, where he and his staff selected incoming Jews for labour or extermination and where he supervised medical experiments on inmates to discover means of increasing fertility, to increase the German “race”. His chief interest, however, was research on twins. Mengele's experiments often resulted in the death of the subject. He was called the “Angel of death”). (We have seen that Nazi's are like the faction in that they hate and kill God's people.) My in-laws kept on asking me what I thought, whether I agreed with them, and whether I was coming with them. They seemed to want to tempt me towards anger or discord.  I could not respond with what they wanted to hear, so I asked Riaan when we were leaving. I told him the car was packed and ready. Then I woke up. (Dr. Mengele was the enemy of God's people. Like many today, who are being experimented on by the vaccines, who are dying and many more will die.) (Riaan: Trusting in the arm of the flesh and vaccinations or any other means of self deliverance is supporting the "angel of death”).  (Claire, as a type of the Bride, does not trust in the arm of the flesh which has killed so many Christians. Jer 17:5-8 Thus saith Jehovah: Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from Jehovah. 6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited. 7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in Jehovah, and whose trust Jehovah is. 8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, that spreadeth out its roots by the river, and shall not fear when heat cometh, but its leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.)    Buffet the Old Man and Wait on the Lord  Claire Pienaar - 7/31/22 (David's notes in red) I dreamed I was at a large home; it was white and it was a place where people gathered and were currently gathering. (Riaan: Our bodies are the house of God. A large house represents a corporate body.)  This really old man came to the door and tried to come in, and I knew he had an assignment on my life. He was a very smooth talker and seemed very friendly to everyone else, but I knew I could not go anywhere with him and I told him to leave. I was so rude to him, it surprised me in my dream. (Riaan: No more mister nice guy to this old man!! Get rid of him with force!) (The old man is an enemy of God which makes him our enemy. Rom 8:5-8 For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace: 7 because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: 8 and they that are in the flesh cannot please God.) Then he said, “I've got your number, little dove, you'll always be mine”. And I took him outside and I beat him up. I've never been in a physical fight, so I don't know what that looks or feels like. But in the dream, I went ballistic. I kicked the wind out of him, head butted him, got him to the ground and laid into him.  His face seemed to contort from disbelief to sheer feebleness as I did this. I could feel the frame of his skeleton give way and he was just a pile of mush when I was done. He was all squishy.  I gave him one more blow to the head and then got up and went back inside. (Riaan: Wow! Good job Claire! It's a spiritual fight against the old man, but it's still a brutal, all or nothing fight! Put down that old flesh!) (1Co 9:27  but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.) Then the scene changed, and I was at King's Cross in London, England. It is a large train station. I was not wanting to get onto any train but was waiting for a white train to pull in. (Riaan: King's Cross is a play on words, as the Bride waits at the cross of King Jesus, which represents death to self and is where the Holy Spirit train picks us up).  In the meantime, there were black men who were blowing up train tracks. (Men walking in darkness destroying the paths.) They were trying to get people killed and one of them seemed to follow me around. (Riaan: Factious and divisive apostates try to derail the body of believers who continue on the original path of the original gospel). (Isa 3:12  As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they that lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.) I started walking along the tracks and there were different levels of scaffolding and tracks. I was on a very high level and if I fell, I would die. This black man was intent on me dying. (Riaan: It's walking in the heavenlies, and we can't fall back or we risk becoming twice dead and plucked up by the roots and impossible to be renewed unto salvation. Keep walking by faith and overcome, endure). (Heb 6:4-8 For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. 7 For the land which hath drunk the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receiveth blessing from God: 8 but if it beareth thorns and thistles, it is rejected and nigh unto a curse; whose end is to be burned.) I pretended to jump off the high level, and then I went back to my spot, but he really jumped, and when he miraculously landed at the bottom. (The flesh cannot fall away and die. It is already dead and fallen away.) He seemed to be distracted and left me alone. I kept on having visions of these black men all over the tracks like spider men. (Riaan: The attacks from the enemy are in full scale now. Our fight is against the principalities, powers and rulers of darkness.).  At this point in the dream I knew a big inferno was coming. I could see and feel the heat and an orange glow coming closer. But I just sat and waited. These black men and other people were running left and right, but they'd never escape what was coming. (Riaan: Representing the fiery trial of God to burn up the flesh). Then I woke up.  I received this word by faith at random: 2 Samuel 3:29: let it fall upon the head of Joab, and upon all his father's house; and let there not fail from the house of Joab one that hath an issue, or that is a leper, or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth by the sword, or that lacketh bread. (Exo 20:5  ... I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me.) (Riaan: Joab represents those who fall back, they were once the king's best man but then did murderous works and fell away and all their previous mighty works are forgotten. Matthew 7:22-23 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.) I asked the Lord for another verse and my finger landed on witchcraft, from Nahum 3:4: because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts).     Burning the Old Man's House Marie Kelton - February 2022 (David's notes in red) The Lord gave me an open vision. I saw the sky was a light greenish color and my spiritual man, who was wearing all white, walked out of a black house. My spiritual man turned and looked back at the house. (We must not look back at our old nature and what is the past because it will destroy us as it did Lot's wife. We must keep our eyes focused on Jesus in the mirror, our hope of glory.   Php 3:13-14 Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before. 14 I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 2 Co. 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.) Then, I saw my flesh man who was black and wearing all black, in the house screaming at my spiritual man through a closed window of the house. (Yes. We must close all windows and doors which represent opportunities for the old man to speak or gain access to our spiritual man. I believe the windows represent our eye gates and what we see and the doors are like the mouth of the cave that Joshua put the 5 kings into and rolled a great stone over the entrance, representing preventing the old man to speak and the 5 senses to rule over or bring a curse upon us.) Then my spiritual man lit a match and threw it on the house and set it on fire. (The fiery trial destroys the old man as we obey the Word. Heb 4:12  For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.)   The Lord Claims His Bride Marie Kelton 3-23-22 (David's notes in red) While reading the Bible, the Lord gave me an open vision of Him sitting beside me. (This is the key to close relationship with Jesus, our heavenly Husband, who is the Word made flesh. We must put His Word down into our hearts. Amo 3:3  Shall two walk together, except they have agreed?) He put his hand on my heart and light came forth from His hand into my heart and it lit up my heart. Then I saw the light spread from my heart to the rest of my body. (Corporately, the Bride is the heart of Christ's Body because she is the closest in nature to His own heart. Through the hand or works of Jesus, the Bride will be used in a great way to bring the true light of Christ to the rest of the Body, just as the heart in the natural pumps the life giving blood to the rest of the Body. John 15:1-8  I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me.  5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing. 6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. (This is like the black man in the house above that was burned.) 7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disciples.)   7/25/22 During the Monday meeting, I had an open vision. The Lord came and sat down next to me. (Just as Jesus came in a body of the son of David as the Man-child, Jesus is coming in the David Man-child reformer body of ministers to take His rightful place next to His Bride body.) I notice He had a wedding ring on His left hand. Then I looked and saw that I had a ring on my left hand also. (The ring is a sign of eternity, and in this case, eternal intimacy with the Lord. It is also a ring of authority; being a joint heir with Christ.)  I thought of this verse in  Isa 54:5 For thy Maker is thy husband; Jehovah of hosts is his name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall he be called.   Seeking to Purchase Wisdom's House Eve Brast - 7/28/22 (David's note in red) (I believe Shalonda represents the Bride in this dream just as in the dream above titled, “The Lord Claims His Bride”.) I dreamed I was in the kitchen of a house, that all the local UBM brethren were touring. It was built and owned by a silver haired old woman. (I knew in the dream that she was Wisdom personified.) She wanted to sell the house and was encouraging us all to pitch in together to buy it. But, not only were we all individually too poor to buy it, but even if we had corporately put all our money together, it still would not have been enough. We were individually and corporately too poor to purchase the house of Wisdom. (In Pro 8:19, Wisdom is valued far above silver and gold. So it seems we are poor in wisdom to purchase Wisdom's house.)(Thank God that Jesus, who is Wisdom and the Word, paid the price through His blood shed for us to have the restored house. 1Co 1:24... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.) There was a large man standing in the middle of the living room. He had a deep voice like James Earl Jones and a long beard and was dressed in a judges robes. He was listening very carefully to what we were saying in our conversations and interactions. (This represents the Father who listens carefully to our words, considers the thoughts and intents of our hearts, monitors our actions with regard to one another and He acts on our confessions of faith to bring about His promises in our individual lives and for the corporate Body.) I walked into the living room and saw Shalonda standing with the Father to her right. Her face was turned downward towards Him as if she was ashamed for Him to see it and her eyes were cast down towards the carpet. I walked up to her and asked her how she was doing. She tried to talk with me while still looking downwards. But as she slowly lifted her face up towards me, I saw that the enemy had beaten up the whole right side of her face. Her whole eye and cheek area was all blackish blue and bruised. I asked, “What happened to you?!” She said, “It's okay. Father is helping me. I've been receiving a lot of “hand-ups.” As she lifted her right hand, palm up, in a gesture. I could tell the Father was pleased with the confession but He understood that it was half-hearted and this was why the enemy was beating her up.” At the same time I felt bad that this had happened to her and wondered if there was something I could have done to help prevent this or to help her fight. (Justification by faith is the main thing. Also Jesus made reconciliation for us and He made us ministers of reconciliation by uniting others to Him by encouraging their faith. With faith we are able to beat up the old man instead of being beaten up by him.) Then my attention was drawn to all of the moldings and cabinetry in the house and the kitchen. They were all sanded down and stripped, waiting to be restored and refinished. I had an open vision of how they used to look with intricate carvings and wood workings. I thought what a shame! I had no Idea that this house used to be so splendid and beautiful. It was still a very beautiful and desired house but nothing like it's original state.  Then Michael Hare came up to me and said, “Have you ever seen this house in its former glory?” And I said, “No. Seems a shame.” (Meaning it was a shame that we couldn't restore it because we were too poor.) Then I woke up. (Ezra 3:11-13  ...And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised Jehovah, because the foundation of the house of Jehovah was laid. 12 But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers houses , the old men that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: 14 so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people…) (Jesus is the true house of God. Our job is to behold Him in the mirror by faith until we are restored as His body 2 Co. 3:18.) This dream made me think of Proverbs 8 & 9: Pro 8:1-23 & 30-36  Doth not wisdom cry, And understanding put forth her voice? 2 On the top of high places by the way, Where the paths meet, she standeth; 3 Beside the gates, at the entry of the city, At the coming in at the doors, she crieth aloud: 4 Unto you, O men, I call; And my voice is to the sons of men. 5 O ye simple, understand prudence; And, ye fools, be of an understanding heart.  6 Hear, for I will speak excellent things; And the opening of my lips shall be right things. 7 For my mouth shall utter truth; And wickedness is an abomination to my lips. 8 All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; There is nothing crooked or perverse in them. 9 They are all plain to him that understandeth, And right to them that find knowledge. 10 Receive my instruction, and not silver; And knowledge rather than choice gold.  11 For wisdom is better than rubies; And all the things that may be desired are not to be compared unto it. 12 I wisdom have made prudence my dwelling, And find out knowledge and discretion. 13 The fear of Jehovah is to hate evil: Pride, and arrogancy, (including the pride of life) and the evil way, And the perverse mouth, do I hate. 14 Counsel is mine, and sound knowledge: I am understanding; I have might. 15 By me kings reign, And princes decree justice.  16 By me princes rule, And nobles, even all the judges of the earth. 17 I love them that love me; And those that seek me diligently shall find me. 18 Riches and honor are with me; Yea , durable wealth and righteousness. 19 My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; And my revenue than choice silver. 20 I walk in the way of righteousness, In the midst of the paths of justice;  21 That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance, And that I may fill their treasuries. 22 Jehovah possessed me (Jesus) in the beginning of his way, Before his works of old. 23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, Before the earth was... 30 Then I was by him, as a master workman; And I was daily his delight, Rejoicing always before him, 31 Rejoicing in his habitable earth; And my delight was with the sons of men.  32 Now therefore, my sons, hearken unto me; For blessed are they that keep my ways. 33 Hear instruction, and be wise, And refuse it not. 34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, Watching daily at my gates, Waiting at the posts of my doors. 35 For whoso findeth me findeth life, And shall obtain favor of Jehovah. 36 But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death. Pro 9:1,3-12  Wisdom hath builded her house; She hath hewn out her seven pillars: ... 3 She hath sent forth her maidens; She crieth upon the highest places of the city: 4 Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: As for him that is void of understanding, she saith to him, 5 Come, eat ye of my bread, And drink of the wine which I have mingled. (This is the Lord's supper that we must eat and drink.) 6 Leave off, ye simple ones, and live; And walk in the way of understanding. 7 He that correcteth a scoffer getteth to himself reviling; And he that reproveth a wicked man getteth himself a blot.  8 Reprove not a scoffer, lest he hate thee: Reprove a wise man, and he will love thee. 9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: Teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. 10 The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom; And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. 11 For by me thy days shall be multiplied, And the years of thy life shall be increased. 12 If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself; And if thou scoffest, thou alone shalt bear it.   Though I Walk Through the Valley Marie Kelton - 6/17/22 (David's notes in red) During the Friday meeting, I had an open vision of me walking down a dark road with little light. In the vision I was singing "God of Wonders" which was the song we were singing at that time. As I was seeing the vision the verse popped into my head "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil..." I saw as I was walking that I had on a pair of white headphones. (The white headphones represent listening to the promises in the Word of God as He leads us through the valley of the shadow of “death to self.”) After the vision I opened my song book randomly to page 56 which is the song, "God is Good all the Time.” My eyes fell on the first verse of the song which said, “If you're walking through the valley and there are shadows all around. Do not fear, he will guide you. He will keep you safe and sound.” Psa 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.   Partaking in Christ's Sufferings Marie Kelton - 8/1/22 (David's notes in red) During the Monday meeting the Lord gave me an open vision of Him holding a goblet. The Lord then walked into the Holy of Holies were I was sitting. I was wearing all white with a white head covering. The Lord sat down beside me. (Representing our spiritual man which is sanctified and purified by the blood of Christ and is the only one who can sit with the Lord in the Holy of Holies in our individual temples.) I knew He had drank from the cup. Then He handed me the cup and I drank from it. Then the Lord said, “Partake of My sufferings.”  Mat 20:22-23 But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink? They say unto him, We are able. He saith unto them, My cup indeed ye shall drink: (Referring to the cup of suffering of crucifixion and "death to self”. This is martyrdom for Christ's name's sake.) but to sit on my right hand, and on my left hand, is not mine to give; but it is for them for whom it hath been prepared of my Father. 1Pet 4:13 but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ 's sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy. Then a little while later, I had another open vision of me and the Lord in the Holy of Holies eating. (Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.) The Lord had a plate full of food and I did too. I saw the Lord eating with a fork and I asked Him what was on the plate? He said, "vegetables and fruit.” When I looked at my plate, I saw that I had the same meal. (Fruits and vegetables represent healthy food for the spirit man which is the body and blood of Jesus. Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life. The bread/flesh/meat represents the body of Christ which has life because of the wine/blood/nature of Christ. John 6:53-58 Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. 54 He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 56 He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me. 58 This is the bread which came down out of heaven: not as the fathers ate, and died; he that eateth this bread shall live for ever.)   Finish Your Own Race First!  Tabitha Pienaar - 6/30/22 (David's notes in red) (Claire said, “My young daughter, Tabitha, had this dream last week. She said, 'It's the first time I've ever come first in anything!' Thank you Lord, for keeping Tabitha's eye on the prize and from distractions.”) I dreamed that I was in a race with many other children and I was in a mixed group of boys and girls together, but mostly girls. (1 Co. 9:24-27 Know ye not that they that run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? (Jesus in us receives the prize.) Even so run; that ye may attain. 25 And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 26 I therefore so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as not beating the air: 27 but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.)  (Riaan: Tabitha means “gazelle” or “gracious” ). (Tabitha is representing the Bride who finishes her race of sanctification first, so that, as we will see, she can help her “little sister” as in Song. 8:8-9, learn to run the race too. Psa. 18:31-42 or who is God, save Jehovah? And who is a rock, besides our God, 32 The God that girdeth me with strength, And maketh my way perfect? 33 He maketh my feet like hinds feet : And setteth me upon my high places. 34 He teacheth my hands to war; So that mine arms do bend a bow of brass. 35 Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation; And thy right hand hath holden me up, And thy gentleness hath made me great. 36 Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, And my feet have not slipped.  37 I will pursue mine enemies, and overtake them; Neither will I turn again till they are consumed. 38 I will smite them through, so that they shall not be able to rise: They shall fall under my feet. 39 For thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle: Thou hast subdued under me those that rose up against me. 40 Thou hast also made mine enemies turn their backs unto me, That I might cut off them that hate me. 41 They cried, but there was none to save; Even unto Jehovah, but he answered them not. 42 Then did I beat them small as the dust before the wind; I did cast them out as the mire of the streets. 43 Thou hast delivered me from the strivings of the people; Thou hast made me the head of the nations: A people whom I have not known shall serve me.)  Back to Tabitha: It was a maze race, and the racetrack was very densely covered with ferns and other leaves. The maze was strange because it wasn't grass or hedges, but it was a track where you could easily get lost. In the middle of the race there was a crocodile pond and a child got stuck in there. I went past the child and saw that she was going to be eaten by a crocodile. I stopped by and helped her, and many children raced past me when I did that. (It's not the fastest runners who win this race but the faithful who obey God's command to Love one another.)   As soon as she was freed, we started running together. In the middle of the dream there was an overhanging area of vines, that was so thick you couldn't see which way to get through. I took a vine and swung and tried to catch a fern so I could get in front of the other children. (Being in heavenly places up above the earth with Jesus, who is the Vine, is how we win the race. John 15:5  I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing.) I failed the first few times, but as soon as I got ahold of the fern I scrambled along until I was in front of the other children. Then it was the end of the race, and I sprinted to the finish line. I knew I had won because no other children were there yet. Soon a boy came in 2nd place, and then another girl came in 3rd.   The girl who came in 3rd tried to figure out who had won between me and the 2nd placed boy. Soon another group of children came, and the rest were lost in the maze. f The man who was hosting the maze race decided it was time to give out the trophies. (Representing Jesus who was with God the Father when He created this earthly race of trials for us to overcome and win through Jesus' blood.) Then I said to him, “There are so many children who are lost in the race. Why give out the trophies now?”. He said, “We can't wait for them. I told my boss we'd give the trophies out at a certain time. Now is the time and I can't deny my Word”.  So I said, “Fine”. He took up a paper and gave a long speech about how the race was conducted and said, "Thank you to all the people who made the race a success." Then He called “Tabitha” and I stood up on the platform as he gave me my first-place trophy. For some reason, I shouted “Stevenson!”. (Riaan: Stevenson means “garland” or “crown”). (James 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he hath been approved, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to them that love him.)   I was so happy, and mommy and daddy were so happy too and we couldn't stop playing praise music. When we were done, I decided that I was going to look for the children that were lost in the maze. (We must get the beam out of our own eye and then we will see clearly to help our brethren. The Bride will overcome to be chosen as the Bride before the tribulation so that they can in the tribulation wilderness can guide others to maturity.)  The scene changed and I was scrambling through a maze that was more dense than the one I had been running in the initial race. I heard some shouting in the distance. I started running toward the noise and saw the rest of the children in the pond that the crocodiles lived in. (Having been through this in her own race, the Bride will be able to help the little sisters avoid or escape the perils along the way.).  One child was screaming because a crocodile was quickly swimming to her. (These crocodiles represent our beastly enemies and the factious that try to kill the children with their slanderous mouths. The people who become weary in running the race and don't endure in the trials are in danger of not finishing the race at all. Rom 16:17-18 Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them that are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them. 18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent.) I crossed the rock jetty to the area where the child was screaming. I picked her up in my arms and decided the rocks were going to be too slippery for both her and I to cross, so I swam to the other side and gently placed her on the ground. I called to the rest of the children to, one-by-one, go across the rocks that formed the jetty to come back to the bank on the other side. (The Bride body will help others who are the elect of God escape the enemy and his minions who are trying to devour them with their fiery darts from their mouths. The crocodiles are like the dragon in Rev. 12 who sought to devour the woman Church in the wilderness.)  Once the children had done that, we continued the trek back. This time we got very lost. I didn't know why we got lost but there had been signs on the trees before, that pointed the way, but the maze was denser now, so we couldn't see those signs anymore.  We went to an area where we had to sign some papers to see where we were. (This represents coming back to our covenant written in the Word and recommitting to it, to find our way back to the Father.) After the race, the boss (Representing the Father) would come and get the papers to see all the children who had participated in the race. (This represents God's Book of Life that people are written into or blotted out of depending whether they endured until the end to see their salvation.) Soon we found our way out of the maze, and everyone was safe again. Then I woke up.   Tabitha asked the Lord to give her a word that would help her understand the dream, and she received, Nehemiah 6:15  So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days. (Riaan: Elul is the 6th month and is usually Aug/Sept). (The wall represents sanctification which is what we are in the race for. What if the end of the race and the finishing of the wall which, represents sanctification, are synonymous and this ends in this time frame of August/September when the Man-child comes for the Bride and the tribulation begins, ending at the same timeframe?  That would be nice.)   Be My Steadfast Lighthouse Eve Brast - October 2017 (Link)  …As I was driving to work one morning, I knew that Father was really driving the message of steadfastness home to me and pulling it together from many different angles. So I asked Him to expand on this; to solidify it in my mind. At that moment, He opened up a vision to me and in a split second I saw it all and understood it more deeply. In the vision, I saw a lighthouse upon a large rock near the ocean shore. It was a pitch black, stormy night and the rain was beating against it almost sideways. Its light burned bright into the darkness out toward the storm tossed sea. It stood strong and faithful against the elements; always shining its guiding light out to sea. I was as tall as the lighthouse while I was walking toward it and then I was merged into it and I became the lighthouse. (David: I believe that Eve represents the work of the Bride to be a lighthouse to the people to bring them to safety. She is also a fit person to have this dream personally for she has worked very hard as long as I have known her to bring the light.) As its light beamed forth from my eyes out upon the wind tossed waves, I saw many wooden ships in distress, being tossed about on the waves. As I focused on these ships, the faces of desperate people appeared where the bows had been. They were intensely focused on my light to avoid being dashed upon the rocky shore. Father spoke to me and said, ”Consider a lighthouse and its steadfastness in the storm. It is reliable, immovable, and ever guiding distressed vessels away from danger… Will you be My lighthouse?” We may never know on this side of eternity how many distressed vessels were saved because of our faithfulness and steadfast reliability to bring the light to them. In the end, I've had to repent of getting caught up in my own little universe of problems. Today Father brought me back to a word He had given me during the 40 day fast... Here it is below: Father spoke to me and said, ”Don't faint in the day of adversity. Be strong. Take courage, for I have heard the cries and the prayers of my people and I will bring great deliverance. You will see the destruction of the enemy with your own eyes. With your own eyes will you see the mighty works of My hands. You feel I am far away, but I am very near to you. You wonder if I hear, but I tell you, I have heard and will answer you in ways that you could not conceive of. Don't faint ! Believe and keep believing, for blessed are they who have not seen me and yet believe! Give Me all the praise and glory for the battle is already won! And I have given you the victory for I reign victorious forever and ever. I will cause you to contend with horses.“ This word reminded me of two texts: Jer. 12:5, If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and though in a land of peace thou art secure, yet how wilt thou do in the pride of the Jordan? And Rev.2:3, and thou hast patience and didst bear for my name's sake, and hast not grown weary.   Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic Armenian Assamese Aymara Azerbaijani Bambara Basque Belarusian Bengali Bhojpuri Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dhivehi Dogri Dutch Esperanto Estonian Ewe Filipino Finnish French Frisian Galician Georgian German Greek Guarani Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Ilocano Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer Kinyarwanda Konkani Korean Krio Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kurdish (Sorani) Kyrgyz Lao Latin Latvian Lingala Lithuanian Luganda Luxembourgish Macedonian Maithili Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Maori Marathi Meiteilon (Manipuri) Mizo Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Norwegian Odia (Oriya) Oromo Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Quechua Romanian Russian Samoan Sanskrit Scots Gaelic Sepedi Serbian Sesotho Shona Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Sundanese Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Tatar Telugu Thai Tigrinya Tsonga Turkish Turkmen Twi Ukrainian Urdu Uyghur Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zulu Powered by Translate Printer-friendly version

     In our current section on case laws (Deut 19:1—26:19), we are considering how the nation of ancient Israel was to practice righteous living after they entered the land of Canaan (Deut 16:20), how righteousness was measured by conformity to God's laws (Deut 6:24-25), and obedience would result in the Lord's blessings (Deut 11:26-28). In this section, Moses addresses the matter of charging interest on financial loans (Deut 23:19-20), the importance of keeping vows to God (Deut 23:21-23), and respecting a neighbor's property (Deut 23:24-25).    Charging Interest on Financial Loans      Israel was a theocracy, one kingdom under God, who was their Judge, Lawgiver, and King (Isa 33:22). As a theocracy, Israelites were to have a sense of corporate responsibility for each other, as they were all in the covenant community, a special people, chosen by God to be His holy representatives to others (Lev 11:45; 20:26; Deut 7:6; 14:2). This had practical application in everyday matters such as loans to the poor. Moses said, “You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest” (Deut 23:19). Two groups are assumed in this verse, the wealthy and the poor. This shows that in a theocracy where God Himself rules, there would economic stratification. Socialistic and Communistic ideas of redistribution of wealth is a foreign concept to the Bible and tantamount to theft. Biblically, God directs wealthy Israelites to deal generously with their poor countrymen. It was fine to give them loans to help them when they were in a disadvantaged place, but they were not to charge interest (Ex 22:25-27; Lev 25:35-38). Eugene Merrill states, “Proper treatment of a brother in such matters would ensure the blessing of God in the land of promise (v. 20). God himself gives freely and graciously, so why should his people profit from the misfortune of one another (cf. Lev 25:35–38)?”[1] Not only was a loan to be made to a poor Israelite without interest, but if that Israelite could not repay the loan at the time of the sabbatical year, the loan was automatically forgiven (Deut 15:1-2).[2]      However, for foreigners who were outside the covenant community, Israelites could charge interest on loans. Moses said, “You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen you shall not charge interest” (Deut 23:20a). Foreigners (Heb. נָכְרִי nokri) were those who lived among Israelites but were not part of the covenant community. Nothing is said about the resident alien (Heb. גֵּר ger) who resided among the Israelites, who enjoyed greater benefits than the foreigner because he/she had committed themselves to the Lord.  Foreigners might see Israel as a growing nation with strong economic possibilities and want to interact with them in business ventures. If a foreigner wanted to take out a loan from an Israelite, the latter was granted permission to charge interest on the former. Peter Craigie comments, “The Israelite was permitted, however, to lend on interest to a foreigner. Since the foreigner was not a member of the covenant community, it was not considered necessary to treat him in the same way as a fellow Israelite.”[3]Here was just economic discrimination where membership had its privileges. If Israel would follow these commands, like all the others, the benefit would be, “so that the LORD your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess” (Deut 23:20b). God's blessing would follow obedience (cf., Deut 14:29; 15:10; 24:19; 30:15-16). Daniel Block writes, “This policy seeks to inspire generosity by reminding Israelites that Yahweh's generosity toward them is contingent on their generosity toward each other. The motive clause reflects Yahweh's desire to bless them in the land in every effort to which they put their hands.”[4]      There is no theocracy in the world today; however, just nations do well to learn from the economic principles of the Bible. God's laws to Israel concerning money assume a free-market economy where individuals could pursue economic self-interest, but not in such a way so as to exploit a disadvantaged member of the covenant community. Today, a free-market economy is preferred over other economic systems, as it does more to elevate the poor in a community by allowing them to make good financial choices and benefit from those investments. However, those operating by selfish values can manipulate such a system, as they can any system, even one designed by God. A free-market system, by itself, does not secure a moral outcome or fair treatment of the poor. However, when God's values for the poor undergird those with economic wisdom, it meets His approval and others are blessed by their open-handedness. Keeping Vows to God      Integrity matters to God, especially as it pertains to keeping a promise we make to Him or others. In ancient Israel, it was permissible to make a vow to God in which one promised to give something to Him, usually as an expression of gratitude for His goodness. However, when a vow was made, it obligated the promiser to fulfill his word. Moses said, “When you make a vow to the LORD your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for it would be sin in you, and the LORD your God will surely require it of you. 22 However, if you refrain from vowing, it would not be sin in you” (Deut 23:21-22). This directive assumes individual property rights, and the right of volition to give freely what one has to another. There is no compulsion. However, if one vowed to give something to another, it meant the thing actually belonged to the other person, although it was not yet in their possession, it was theirs to claim. In this case, the vow was made to God, who holds the promiser accountable for what was promised. Failure to keep a vow was regarded as a crime by the Lord. However, if His people refrained from making a vow altogether, it was not a sin. The property was theirs to keep as their own.      But if one made a vow to the Lord, to give Him something as a free expression of gratitude, then that one must not renege on his/her vow. God said, “You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to the LORD your God, what you have promised” (Deut 23:23). A word released cannot be taken back, and it's better to pause and consider one's words before speaking, especially is it relates to promises made to God. Victor Matthews states, “In the Decalogue is the commandment that no one should ‘misuse the name of the Lord' (Ex 20:7). When a vow using God's name is spoken, it brings God into contract with that person. Thus, any failure to carry out the stipulations of the vow breaks the contract and subjects that person to divine wrath.”[5] And Peter Craigie adds, “The principle underlying the injunction is rooted in the nature of the covenant. God spoke His promise in words to His people; His spoken word was reliable and would be fulfilled—it was not a spoken bribe to secure the allegiance of the people. To make a vow to God, then fail to fulfil it, would be contrary to the whole spirit of the covenant.”[6] Solomon speaks to the matter of vows, saying: "When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it; for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow! 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. 6 Do not let your speech cause you to sin and do not say in the presence of the messenger of God that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry on account of your voice and destroy the work of your hands? (Eccl 5:4-6)" Respecting Property Rights      Israelites were to have a sense of community and regard for each other's wellbeing. Concerning an Israelite traveler, the Lord said, “When you enter your neighbor's vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. 25 When you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain” (Deut 23:24-25). Here we observe both corporate and individual rights. Corporately, traveling Israelites could eat from their neighbor's crops, whether grapes or grain, and this until they were full. However, they were not permitted to harvest their neighbor's crops beyond what their bellies could hold. To take more than one's stomach could hold was theft. This was a divine mandate that provided for a traveler to benefit from a wealthy landowner, but also protected the landowner from exploitation. All Israelites, whether wealthy or poor, were to remember that God owned the land (Lev 25:23), and He had the right to instruct His tenants about how they should manage their property, especially as it related to those within the community. Eugene Merrill states, “The allowance for the passerby was, no doubt, to create an atmosphere of general grace and hospitality and to provide practical aid for the traveler who, in those ancient days, might not be able to carry sufficient food supplies for a long journey and who would have no way of preserving certain foodstuffs from spoilage.”[7]      Jesus and His disciples followed this law when traveling. Mark's Gospel records, “And it happened that He was passing through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain” (Mark 2:23). Earl Radmacher states, “When Jesus and His disciples picked grain in open fields, they were following the common practice allowed by this regulation. However, the Pharisees challenged Jesus because they did it on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23–28).”[8] When Jesus was charged by the Pharisees that He and His disciples were breaking the law, what they were breaking was manmade rabbinical law, not biblical law. The biblical record is that Jesus “knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21), was “without sin” (Heb 4:15), and “in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). Present Application      Words are the currency of the heart, for by them, we reveal our moral wealth or poverty. For some, a person's word is gold. We trust what they say is true and that they will keep their promises, even at great cost to themselves. Faithfulness to keep a promise is a measure of one's integrity. God wants us to have integrity, because He has integrity. To say God has integrity means He is honest in nature, that He always speaks truth, and that He is faithful to keep His Word. Because of who He is, God does not lie, and when He makes a promise, He always keeps it. The Bible reveals, “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent; has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” (Num 23:19; cf. 1 Sam 15:29). Elsewhere it is written that God “cannot lie” (Tit 1:2), and that it “is impossible for God to lie” (Heb 6:18a). Scripture reveals that even “if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim 2:13). This reveals the character and immutability of God as well as the integrity of His Word, which is comforting to His people, especially since there is much falsehood and many promise-breakers in the world.      As Christians, God calls us to be like Him, to “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15) and to keep our promises to others. Warren Wiersbe writes, “The foundations of society today are eroding because of unkept promises, whether they be official contracts, marriage vows, political pledges, or words spoken on the witness stand. We expect the Lord to keep His promises, and He expects us to keep ours. Truth is the cement that holds society together.”[9] But truthful lips and a faithful life are the fruit of a heart that is filled with God and His Word; a heart committed to walk in godly integrity.     In Psalm 15, David writes about the one “who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart” (Psa 15:2).[10] One of the characteristics of the person who walks with integrity is that, “he swears to his own hurt and does not change” (Psa 15:4b). Other translations read, “he keeps his word whatever the cost” (Psa 15:4 CSB), and “he makes firm commitments and does not renege on his promise” (Psa 15:4 NET), and “keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind” (Psa 15:4 NIV). This behavior describes a mature believer who has a well-developed walk with the Lord. Concerning Psalm 15:4, Dr. Allen Ross comments: "Here the psalmist is dealing with faithfulness, keeping one's word, even if it proves costly or inconvenient. The righteous must not change their mind to avoid an unexpected painful outcome; they must keep their word even if it means they suffer loss of some kind. In fact, to take an oath and not keep it would be to take the name of the LORD in vain. It would be better not to take the oath in the first place if possible."[11]      The Christian who has a deep concern for integrity, truth, and faithfulness will keep his/her word, for honor is of more value than the pain of loss, whatever it may be. Solomon tells us, “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than he who is perverse in speech and is a fool” (Prov 19:1), and, “Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than he who is crooked though he be rich” (Prov 28:6). This second proverb reveals a situation where a person chose godly integrity over crookedness, even though it resulted in financial poverty.      Three closing points. First, having Christian integrity does not mean we become sinless. As Christians, we still possess our fallen natures, live in a fallen world, and face temptations and attacks from various sources that seek to undermine our walk with God. Even the godliest of saints sin (i.e., Moses, David, Peter, John, etc.).[12] The reality is there will be times when we fail to live by godly integrity, when we fail to keep our word, both to the Lord and others. But relapse does not have to mean collapse, for if there is humility, we can come before God's “throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16). And if we confess our sins to Him, “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Second, our failings, though many, do not destroy the Lord's faithfulness to us, for though “we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself” (2 Tim 2:13). God has blessed us with many promises (2 Pet 1:4), and He has perfect integrity, always keeps His Word and never fails. Third, God wants us to develop godly integrity so our character and life measure up to His righteous standards as revealed in Scripture. But developing godly integrity is the pursuit of a lifetime, as we make moment by moment choices to submit ourselves to God, to learn and live His Word, to be honest in who we are, to speak truth in love, and to keep our promises to others, even if the cost is great. As Christians who want to serve the Lord, may we rise to pursue such an honorable life, for God's glory, and the benefit of others.   [1] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, vol. 4, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 315. [2] Of course, a wealthy Israelite might have a concern that a needy brother would ask for help near the seventh year, just prior the time when loans were automatically forgiven, and the loan would become a gift with the lender losing all hope of repayment. If the wealthy Israelite failed to obey the Lord and withheld the loan to the poor person, then the poor “may cry to the LORD” in such a situation, which meant he would take his case before the Judge of all the earth and, it would “be a sin” in the one who was stingy. Here, it is revealed that the poor had legal rights in God's theocratic kingdom, which is revealed in other parts of Scripture (Deut 27:19; Pro 29:7; Isa 10:1-2). The cure of a hostile attitude toward the poor was a generous heart and an open hand. This cure was to be self-administered. Failure to be kind and open-handed would bring about God's cursing, but obedience would secure His blessings (Deut 7:11-13; 11:13-15, 26-28). [3] Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 303. [4] Daniel I. Block, The NIV Application Commentary: Deuteronomy, ed. Terry Muck (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 548. [5] Victor Harold Matthews, Mark W. Chavalas, and John H. Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), Dt 23:21–23. [6] Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, 303. [7] Eugene H. Merrill, Deuteronomy, vol. 4, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 316. [8] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 258. [9] Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Counted, “Be” Commentary Series (Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor Pub., 1999), 133. [10] The believer's walk (הָלַךְ halak) is idiomatic of his/her behavior or lifestyle. It is the fruit of life that reveals the root of the heart. In this context, righteousness (צֶדֶק tsedeq) refers to a life in ethical conformity to God and His Word. And truth (אֱמֶת emeth) denotes what is dependable or reliable, and refers to God's absolute and unchanging Word, that should fill the heart of the believer. [11] Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms 1–89: Commentary, vol. 1, Kregel Exegetical Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2011–2013), 393. [12] Moses sinned when he disobeyed God by striking the rock twice rather than speaking to it (Num 20:6-11). David sinned when he had an affair with Bathsheba and murdered her husband Uriah (2 Sam 11:1-17), as well as when he took a census in Israel (1 Ch 21:1-8). Peter resisted Christ going to the cross (Matt 16:21-23), and later denied Him three times (Luke 22:54-61). John was rebuked twice for worshipping an angel (John 19:10; 22:8-9).

     In our current section on case laws (Deut 19:1—26:19), we are considering how the nation of ancient Israel was to practice righteous living after they entered the land of Canaan (Deut 16:20), and how righteousness was measured by conformity to God's laws (Deut 6:24-25). In the previous section, Moses provided instruction concerning war with cities outside Canaan (Deut 20:10-15), and cities inside Canaan (Deut 20:16-20). In this pericope, Moses set forth a law concerning an unsolved murder, and then addressed the responsibilities God placed on the leaders of a nearby city to pronounce their innocence before the Lord (Deut 21:1-9). By following this law, the leaders of the city—elders, judges, and priests—were taking responsibility for what happened in their communities. Even though the city leaders were not personally responsible for the sinful act, it was still their problem as it fell under their jurisdiction, and God expected them to handle it in a specific way that satisfied His holiness, and this because He dwelt among His people.      Our current section opens with a scenario in which a murdered person is found lying in a field and the murderer is not known. Moses wrote, “If a slain person is found lying in the open country in the land which the LORD your God gives you to possess, and it is not known who has struck him, 2 then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one” (Deut 21:1-2). As stated on previous occasions, Moses described the land as that “which the LORD your God gives you to possess” (Deut 21:1a; cf., Deut 5:16; 17:14; 18:9; 19:1, 10, 14; 21:23; 24:4; 25:15, 19; 26:1-2; 27:2-3; 28:8). God owned the land (Lev 25:23), and He was granting it to His people as He'd promised to Abraham (Gen 12:7; 15:18), Isaac (Gen 26:3), and Jacob (Gen 28:13), but with the condition that they obey Him for blessing (Deut 28:1-14).      When the murderer could not be found, God instructed the elders and judges to investigate the matter and to “go out and measure the distance to the cities which are around the slain one” (Deut 21:2b). These would not be the judges and elders in the nearby city (Deut 16:18; 19:12), but those who served at the central sanctuary and served as a higher court (Deut 17:8-9). Warren Wiersbe states: "The “elders and judges” mentioned in Deuteronomy 21:2 are probably the “sanctuary court” mentioned in 17:8–13, and this would include the priests (21:5). This was the highest tribunal in the land and murder was a heinous crime. Furthermore, nobody had yet measured to see which city was nearest, so the elders and judges couldn't have come from that city. Once the nearest city had been determined, the elders of that city participated in the assigned ritual. We assume that the elders and judges investigated the case thoroughly before they took the steps outlined in these verses."[1]      God owned the land the Israelites would possess (Lev 25:23), and it was the place where He dwelt among His people. The Lord had said, “You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the LORD am dwelling in the midst of the sons of Israel” (Num 35:34). The land itself was to be treated as holy, as God Himself resided in it, among His people. When innocent people were murdered, God declared that “blood pollutes the land” (Num 35:33a). This was true when Cain killed his brother Abel, and God said to Cain, “The voice of your brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground” (Gen 4:10). Concerning murder, the Lord also said, “no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it” (Num 35:33). That is, there was no atonement for the murderer that would acquit him of the punishment for his crime. The murderer was to bear the punishment for his crime, and this by the local government (Gen 9:5-6). However, in the current situation, the murderer could not be found to pay for his crime, yet God's holiness needed to be addressed. Some method of justice needed to be followed in order to remove the corporate guilt of the community.      Though the murdered person was not the fault of anyone living in the nearby city, it was still their problem, and God expected them to deal with it in a righteous manner. Corporate responsibility was common to ancient cultures. For example, in the ancient law Code of Hammurabi, if a person was murdered, and the murderer could not be found, then “the city and governor shall pay one mina [500 grams] of silver to his people.”[2] This payment was given to the family of the victim, and this by the governor of the city. Thomas Constable states, “Cities were responsible for murders committed within their jurisdictions. This indicates that there is corporate guilt in God's government. The ritual prescribed removed the pollution caused by bloodshed.”[3] Earl Kalland adds, “When the perpetrator of the crime cannot be detected, some method of removal of the guilt that then falls on the land and people must be secured…The procedure given in this section of Deuteronomy provides the means for satisfying the Lord's justice by the removal of corporate guilt.”[4]      The people of the city were to understand that all that happened in their community had an impact on God Himself. The city nearest the slain person would be required to take responsibility and follow the required actions to remove the guilt of their community. Specifically, it was the elders of the city who were to act, as they represented the community as a whole. Concerning the city elders, Moses said, “It shall be that the city which is nearest to the slain man, that is, the elders of that city, shall take a heifer of the herd, which has not been worked and which has not pulled in a yoke; 4 and the elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with running water, which has not been plowed or sown, and shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley” (Deut 21:3-4). The actions included taking a heifer that had never been worked, bring it to a valley with running water, which valley had never been plowed or sown, and there break the animal's neck. The unworked heifer, the clean running water, and the unplowed valley seem to provide a picture of purity. To be clear, this was not a sacrifice, for the animal was not offered by a priest on an altar. Rather, killing the heifer appears to be a symbolic act of what the officials—and the community—would do to the murderer if he were in their hands. In this way, they demonstrated to all that they were willing to take responsibility for their community and adhere to God's high standards of justice.      After the elders of the city performed this act, God then called for the priests, saying, “Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near, for the LORD your God has chosen them to serve Him and to bless in the name of the LORD; and every dispute and every assault shall be settled by them” (Deut 21:5). Though the city elders were mainly responsible for adjudicating the matter—for they represented their community—God also required the Levitical priests to be present, as they represented the people to God. Here we see both a horizontal and vertical aspect of righteousness within a community. The function of the priests seems to picture a final absolution of the matter. Furthermore, we see in this situation a shared responsibility between the religious and the judicial.      After the priests had performed their duty, Moses then states, “All the elders of that city which is nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall answer and say, ‘Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it'” (Deut 21:6-7). Here, the elders of the city who followed this act were then to wash their hands over the dead body of the heifer and pronounce their innocence concerning the murder, that they neither had any part in the heinous act, nor knew who the murderer was. Earl Radmacher states, “The elders of the city bore the responsibility for the murder, even though they were not personally guilty. It was up to them to seek atonement for the murder.”[5] Peter Craigie adds: "The elders of the city that accepted responsibility for the dead man washed their hands over the broken-necked heifer. The symbolism of the various actions now becomes clear: the crime deserved to be punished, as the broken neck of the heifer indicated, but the hand-washing of the elders showed that, although they accepted responsibility for what had happened, they were nevertheless free from the guilt attached to the crime."[6]      Then the elders of the city were to say, ‘“Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O LORD, and do not place the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of Your people Israel.' And the bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them” (Deut 21:8). Forgiveness followed the action of the elders who followed the Lord's instructions. The word forgive, which appears twice in this verse, translates the Hebrew verb כָּפַר kaphar, which commonly means “to appease someone…to make amends…to make atonement.”[7] The word is often connected with the atonement that comes when a priest sheds an animal's blood on the altar (Lev 17:11). Here, however, the word connotes an appeasement for justice. Though the elders of the city were innocent, they accepted responsibility for the horrendous crime committed nearest to their community, and sought to balance the scales of justice by means of killing a heifer (as though he were the murderer), washing their hands (a picture of innocence), and by prayer to God (who is the offended Person). Their request to God was, “Forgive Your people Israel whom You have redeemed, O LORD” (Deut 21:8a). The language recalled God's redemptive work for all Israel, when He redeemed His people from Egypt and called them out to be a special people who represented Him to others. Here was a corporate mindset in which the elders of the community took responsibility for those under their care. If they followed these procedures as prescribed, then “the bloodguiltiness shall be forgiven them” (Deut 21:8b).      The act of the elders did not forgive the murderer of his crime. The blood of the animal was not shed. Furthermore, the act was performed by the elders of the city as the priests watched. The place where the animal was killed was an unworked field, not at an altar. There was no removal of sin for the murderer, only the elimination of any suspected guilt on the part of the elders of the city and the community as a whole.      Moses closed this pericope, saying, “So you shall remove the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, when you do what is right in the eyes of the LORD” (Deut 21:9). Murder is bad business, as it stains the community where it occurs. The stain was washed away when the elders and priests of the city accepted responsibility for the matter and followed the Lord's instruction for cleansing. The elders and priests were not admitting guilt for the crime, for they were innocent. Rather, by following the Lord's instructions, they were publicly testifying concerning what they would do to the murderer if he were in their hands, and in this way, showed their sense of righteousness agreed with the righteousness of God. In this way, God's justice was emphasized and upheld.      In the grand scheme of life, no one gets away with murder. God sees all that happens. ‘“Can a man hide himself in hiding places So I do not see him?' declares the LORD. ‘Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?' declares the LORD'” (Jer 23:24). Though the murderer was not found and judged by human courts, God Himself sees what happens in His world, and He will eventually execute justice in His time and way. For God is “the Judge of all the earth” (Gen 18:25), and He “is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day” (Psa 7:11). No one escapes God's final judgment. Present Application      The Bible teaches both individual and corporate responsibility. God holds each person accountable for what they think, say, and do. However, individual actions can impact the lives of others, both in the moment as well as in the future. For example, when Adam sinned, we all sinned with him (Rom 5:12), and so we are spiritually dead (Eph 2:1-2). Here is corporate guilt. On the other hand, Christ died for sinners (Rom 5:8), and when we trust in Jesus as Savior (John 3:16), we share in His life and righteousness (John 10:28; Phil 3:9). We are all born in Adam at physical birth, and are born again spiritually at the moment of faith in Christ. All humanity is either in Adam or in Christ (1 Cor 15:21-21).      Individual actions have consequences that impact the lives of others. Abraham's disobedience in going to Egypt caused problems both for him and Sarah (Gen 12:10-20). David's disobedience to God in taking an unauthorized census led to the death of 70,000 Israelites (1 Chron 21:1-14). Of course, God disciplined David because of his affair with Bathsheba as well as the murder of her husband, Uriah, and God's judgment impacted David's family in the years that followed (2 Sam 12:5-15; cf. 2 Sam 13:1—18:33). Jonah's disobedience nearly killed his fellow travelers (Jonah 1:12). When Joshua and the army of Israel came against the city of Ai, Israel was soundly defeated and 36 soldiers died (Josh 7:1-5). When Joshua cried out to the Lord and asked why they were defeated (Josh 7:6-10), the Lord said, “Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them. And they have even taken some of the things under the ban and have both stolen and deceived. Moreover, they have also put them among their own things” (Josh 7:11). When investigated further (Josh 7:12-19), it was found that one man, Achan (likely with the knowledge of his wife and family), was responsible for the sin. Achan said, “I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel” (Josh 7:20).      Addressing individual responsibility, God said to Ezekiel, “Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine. The soul who sins will die” (Ezek 18:4). And, “The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself” (Ezek 18:20). There is suffering that can come from God, and there is suffering that can come from our connection to others. Children may bear the consequences of their parents' sins, but only as the consequences fall naturally into the lap of the child because of their relationship with their parents. But children do not suffer by the hand of God for the sins their parents commit. John Barry affirms, saying, “Corporate responsibility for sin does not mean succeeding generations are punished for the sins of earlier generations. But, the consequences of the sins of earlier generations may affect later generations.”[8]Walter Kaiser states: "Ezekiel 18 focuses on the responsibility of the individual for individual guilt. That is one side of the coin. But the Bible also recognizes the reality of the concept of corporate responsibility when it comes to accounting for the effect of some individual sins. The case of Achan in Joshua 7:1–26 is the best example of corporate solidarity, for when Achan sinned, it was said that all Israel had sinned as well. We can understand how one traitor can sell a whole army into major trouble, but we forget how the effects of some sins fall on whole communities, nations or assemblies of persons. In the case in Ezekiel 21, the sword would cut both the righteous and the wicked. That is because in war often both the good and the bad fall. But that was not to say that everyone was individually guilty; no, it was the effect that reached and impacted all."[9]      Corporately, Israelite communities were organic, with each part touching and impacting the other, such that no one operated in complete isolation, nor in a completely neutral manner. Like two sides of a coin, individual actions impact a community, for better or worse; and the communities' overall health affects its individual members, either in positive or negative ways. William Raccah states, “Ancient Israelite culture was therefore organic in that each of its parts was interdependent on the others, yet at the same time retained its independence in certain aspects”[10]      It should be noted that God sometimes allows His innocent people to be swept up in the judgment He brings upon a nation, and this because He plans to use them to serve as His representatives. God permitted Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, and Ezekiel to go into Babylonian captivity, though they had not personally been disobedient to the Lord. God then worked through these men to demonstrate to others how a godly life could be maintained in the midst of a hostile pagan culture. Their trials provided an opportunity for them to grow spiritually and to shine in a dark place.      Just as God was seen to be in the midst of His people, Israel (Num 35:34), so today, in the church age, Jesus walks in the midst of His churches and evaluates us. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, the seven churches in Asia Minor were referred to as lampstands, and Jesus is seen “in the middle of the lampstands” (Rev 1:13) as “the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (Rev 2:1). Each home-church was under constant review by the Lord Jesus Christ. Out of the seven churches, Jesus gave praise only for two (Smyrna and Philadelphia), both praise and rebuke to four (Ephesus, Pergamum, Thyatira, and Sardis), and rebuke only for one (Laodicea). And Jesus also gave instructions for each church, to continue what was right, or to correct what was wrong.      Though individual in nature, each church was part of the “body of Christ” (Eph 4:12; cf. Eph 1:23) which makes up the universal church. Paul wrote, for “you are Christ's body, and individually members of it” (1 Co 12:27), and, “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor 12:26). As Christians, we must think in terms of individual and corporate responsibility, realizing our actions not only impact us, but the lives of others with whom we are in regular contact. It is essential to our spiritual development that we accept responsibility for the things we do as well as the things that come into our lives, even though we may not be the cause. And we can pray for God to remove difficulties, but what He does not remove, He intends for us to deal with, and this for our spiritual development and witness to others.   [1] Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Equipped, “Be” Commentary Series (Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor Pub., 1999), 139–140. [2] James Bennett Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament , 3rd ed. with Supplement. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 167. [3] Tom Constable, Tom Constable's Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Dt 21:1. [4] Earl S. Kalland, “Deuteronomy,” in The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 130. [5] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 255–256. [6] Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 279–280. [7] Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 494. [8] John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Dt 24:16. [9] Walter C. Kaiser Jr. et al., Hard Sayings of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 315. [10] William Raccah, “Sociology and the Old Testament,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

Pastor Wayne Van Gelderen preached this sermon at the 2022 Extreme Love Conference at Falls Baptist Church in Menomonee Falls, WI. It was delivered on Thursday afternoon, March 3, 2023.Dr. Wayne Van Gelderen, Jr. is Senior Pastor at Falls Baptist Church in Menomonee Falls, WI and President of Baptist College of Ministry. For more information about the Extreme Love Conference and other Victory Conferences, please visit victoryconf.org

This first section of Joshua is about God's preparation of His people for His work – a hard work that requires great sacrifice and leads to great blessing. Joshua emerges as a powerful leader for a difficult time because he has spent so much time engaged with God's preparation plan for him. Corporately and individually, we can emulate such preparation so that we too are the right leaders for our homes, businesses, nation, and church.

Corporate worship is God's way of filling and refreshing us with His Spirit. When we come together as a church community, the presence of God is there with us.