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That's why we've got to know God's Word and.

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Why theology really, truly does matter. Why I loved to preach God's Word and why I try to do it so passionately. Because it's not just facts or things that that don't really matter to the day to day of our lives. They literally matter in everything we do, every environment we live, every relationship.

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Brenton
That we are in. Welcome back to further. I am Brenton Grim. Today we have two guys in here. We got Nate Todd and we have Paul Fischbach. How's it going guys?

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Brenton
It's going well. How are you doing, Britton?

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Paul
I'm doing well.

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Paul
Great to be here.

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Yeah. Yeah. I want to start out quickly by just kind of talking about your weeks, prepping for this. How did how did it go?

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Paul
I thought went really well. Yeah, I, I tend to, because I don't have to preach every week. I tend to work ahead. So, I did my study a couple of weeks ahead, and, and then I was doing some writing. And last week is really kind of comes down to more tweaking and continuing to marinate on it and then just.

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Paul
Yeah, tweaking it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

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Brenton
Yeah. Well, I would be the opposite because I, I actually struggled quite a bit with this passage, to be honest with you. And, but in the midst of all that, I was reminded about how blessed I am to be able to work with, some really awesome pastors who help, help in lots of different ways.

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Brenton
But one example was them helping this week to, you know, help direct me and guide me. Paul being one of those guys to do that. So I appreciate that, Paul. And, man, we're just we're just blessed to be at a church that has, so many awesome, solid men to, to rely on and that we can help each other out.

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Brenton
So, yeah, very thankful for that. So, yeah.

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Paul
You know what, a just jump in on that too and just say I did the same thing. Like I, I go to the other guys. And even if I think I've got a pretty decent idea of what I want to cover and do, I want to make sure I'm in the in the right lane. So it's good for us to be able to have each other to bounce things off of and make sure that we're going the right way.

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Yeah. Yeah. Well, we do have a big and talented, pastoral pastoral staff here. So you're right. And, Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Nate. You guys had a large portion of John seven here, so I don't blame you. There's a lot to a lot to cover. And, you know, I was reading a commentary actually before we came in here, by R.C. Sproul.

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And he, he was saying that when he was, you know, teaching all of his, kind of preaching classes, he would he would say, whenever you're looking at a passage, look for the drama. And he said that in this passage he had a hard time finding it. And so, like, he eventually landed, I think on on verse five, where he's where where he's saying the brothers didn't believe him.

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And so it just it was interesting to even see R.C. Sproul kind of struggle through this passage as he was, as he was commentating. But all right. Well, thanks for sharing that. Okay, Nate, I want to I want to start with you. You mentioned on Sunday that you didn't have time to get into, the feast of the booths.

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Feast of Booths, as it were. And you said you discuss it today, so you have the floor. What is the Feast of Booths?

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Paul
Yeah.

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Brenton
Well, like Paul and I both alluded to in our messages, the feast of the. This is this, Jewish celebration to celebrate, the harvest for the year, but then also to celebrate God's provision for the Israelites, after they left Egypt and how he was with them through the wilderness. And one thing that I really found fascinating was, you know, in those wilderness years, God was able to, provide his provision for them through, the manna through the water from the rock and through the fire by night to to guide them.

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Brenton
And, before, during and after the feast of his teaching. Here Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life, the light of the world. And then actually during the teaching, how he says, the rivers of living water will flow from the hearts of those who believe him. And so this feast, the the Jews are there to celebrate.

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Brenton
They're celebrating God's provision. That all actually points to Jesus himself, who is there teaching at the feast. And so I just found that really to be fascinating, how, if they would have just opened their eyes, they would have seen it right there in front of them. But yet they were still missing. And so I just found that to be really fascinating.

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Brenton
And again, I think Paul and I both discussed the if if you dive in deeper, you probably could have done a whole entire message just on the Feast of Booths and the symbolism behind that. And so, that's, that's really the main thing that I found to be really cool.

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Yeah. For sure. Do you have any other thoughts on that?

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Paul
No, I didn't promise to talk about it today.

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So that's fair. I should have known that. All right. So let's move on. You know, this isn't the first time in, John that we've seen people mistake Jesus mission. Mission, right. So here again, we see as, his own brothers are trying to get him to go off on a kind of self-promotion campaign at the festival.

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They saw him as an answer to a political problem. I think it, again, emphasizes the point that it's critical for us to know, you know, not only who we who we see, Jesus says, but to know the real biblical Jesus. And so what do you think? You know, as we think about our culture today, what do you think the most common misconceptions are about about Jesus?

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Well, open that up to either one of you.

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Paul
Well, I'm not sure I, I could specifically identify what the most common perceptions of Jesus are. I was thinking about different people in my life that I interact with and different misconceptions I come across. And I really kind of think it comes back to a lot of people like to pick and choose the parts of Jesus that they like for their that suits their purposes in a given situation.

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Paul
So I think a lot of this happens where like we want to justify our beliefs, our actions, behaviors, whatever it is, and we say, well, Jesus is all about love and we ignore the part where you know any talk of judgment or conviction of sin or anything like that, or maybe on the opposite end, maybe we're really angry with people and, upset our enemies or something like that.

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Paul
And we were quick to judge them. But then we ignore the part where Jesus says, you should pray for your enemies and love your enemies, you know? And and so we kind of pick and choose, I think sometimes that I think we kind of co-opt Jesus for either political purposes or whatever our desires are, and we just kind of want Jesus to serve our purposes.

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Paul
And that's really what we were looking at in this passage in John seven, is people wanted Jesus to serve their purposes. And and we're really no different today. We're doing the same thing today.

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Yeah. That's true. Nate, you have any thoughts on that?

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Brenton
Yeah, I just I just want to add one thing that, just kind of go along with what Paul is saying there, though. We, we like the, the parts that make us feel good. And so we tend to think that Jesus is there, just to serve our needs and that he is he is, just there to, to make us feel better.

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Brenton
And when it's actually we are here to serve him and and Clawson says that, all things are made by him, through him and for him. And that includes us, too. We're here for him. We are here to serve him and to bring glory to his name. Amen. So, it's we we like to turn that around sometimes and think that, he is here to serve our needs.

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Brenton
And to, fulfill any desires that we might have. But in in all reality, we are here to bring glory to his name.

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So that's really good. That's that's, a good observation, I think. So. Okay, so given that, how can we work to combat some of these wrong ideas of who he is?

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Paul
Well, I'm going to come back to kind of what Nate and I kind of focused in on, on our message was what Jesus was talking about in verses 17 and 18 of John seven. Like he said, do God's will and see God's glory. That's how do we combat misconceptions about Jesus. You have to do God's will, and so he gets glory.

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Paul
He's the one, ultimately. And that kind of ended with this. In my sermon, I said, you know, God is truth. And if he if God, if we really believe that that God is truth, then if we do God's will, he's revealing to us who he is or what the truth is. And if we're seeking his glory, we're going to discover what that truth.

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Paul
And so I feel like it comes back to what Jesus is calling us to do in this passage.

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Brenton
Yeah. All of life is worship. And, we need to remember that in everything we do and, everything we say, we need to be, worshiping him and, turning the focus back to him.

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Yeah. Do you think it's, it's an education problem or more of a heart problem?

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Paul
I think it depends on the person, but I would I would say probably the majority in our context. I would say probably majority is a heart issue. Yeah. You know, are we really willing to submit to what we have been taught and told who Jesus is? Are we submitting to it?

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Yeah. Well, there's certainly no lack of teaching about Jesus, especially in America. But there's a lack of good teaching about Jesus. And so I think, you know, education certainly comes into it. But but you're right. If somebody is, more than happy to kind of sit in a Jesus that serves us, what we need, then it's going to come back to our problem eventually, even if the education is correct.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Paul
Yeah, I agree.

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Jesus says in verse 17 that those who seek to do God's will, will know whether his teaching is from God. Paul, you brought up First Corinthians, which I thought was really good. Verse two or chapter two, verse 14 says, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for their folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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This verse, you know, to me seems to be speaking about our nature more than anything. So, how if if we are in our natural state, we're unable to know the truth, that there's a, there's an inability on our side. And so how does the, you know, a obedience to God increase our ability to discern truth?

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Like, is it is it a result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we're saved, or is it a result of consistent obedience to God, or is it both?

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Paul
Well, I think, I think your leading question there on both, I, I would probably be inclined to think maybe it's both. Yeah. Yes. We do not naturally have the ability to discern spirit of truth. So God has to reveal that to us. And so his indwelling spirit, you know, before we're believers, it's not an indwelling spirit, but God's Spirit does speak to us even before we're believers and then reveals God's truth to us.

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Paul
So that enables us to discern the truth. And then and then as we submit, you know, submit to Christ, become believers, followers, disciples of him, that consistent obedience continues to help us identify the truth. About who he is and what we're supposed to be and who we are. Yeah.

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In the in the first Corinthians one, would you agree that in the scope of that, he's probably talking about, you know, saved person versus a not saved person. So the, you know, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the one that divides that. Okay.

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Paul
Yes. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah.

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Yeah. I think as I was looking through some of the stuff, it was just interesting and even Nate and I had the conversation of, you know it does seem that Jesus is talking about an act of obedience. Right? When he talks about the, the, you know, following the will of God. But certainly in view of that has to be the Spirit's role in our salvation.

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So it's both sanctification and it's and it's the Spirit's work of, of opening our eyes. Yes. Nate, do you have any other thoughts on any of that?

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Brenton
No. I think you guys said it very well. So I talked about the feast of Vision at the beginning this year.

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You you're good to go. You you can you can leave. Well, good. Because I have another question for Paul here. So you quoted, da Carson. And he said divine revelation can only be accessed from the inside. And this, this made me start thinking about evangelism a little bit, you know, where where we're we're quite clearly asking a person on the outside to assess divine revelation.

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And so what, what implications do you think this truth has on, on our evangelism?

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Paul
It's a great question. Well, first, I'll just say we know from Scripture that, what Dr. Carson said is true, that divine revelation can only be accessed from the inside because Romans three says no one seeks God. There's no one righteous. Right? So we don't naturally want to seek God or follow and obey him. That's very clear in Scripture.

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Paul
So salvation is only by grace. Through faith. God has to draw us to himself. We saw this earlier in John, actually, I think it was just last week where, Chris was preaching and John 665 says, this is this is Jesus speaking, says, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless is granted to him by the father.

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Paul
So Jesus says, the father has to draw people to himself. So in in evangelism, God is drawing people to himself. We're faithful to share the gospel. We need to be faithful to do that. But as God who draws them to himself. But ultimately then, there comes a point when a person has to make a choice. So a quick story.

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Paul
Years ago, I was a pastor down in Arizona, and there was a woman who came, made an appointment with me. She came in and she had been attending our church for several weeks, had been hearing the truth about the gospel, and was just really trying to wrestle. What do I really want to make this commitment? And she had some questions.

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Paul
And so we kind of walk through those questions and she's like, yep, yep, okay, that all makes sense to me. And she she was really at the point like this makes sense. But I don't know if I can really trust it. And I finally just had to tell her like at some point you're going to have to make a choice here.

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Paul
Like you've gathered as much information as you can here. And now you have to make an informed decision. And this is kind of where I ended. My message was to those who didn't believe to say, you're not making a blind choice here, but you're making an informed decision to say, this makes sense. I need to finally take a step and will to do God's will.

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Paul
I'm going to choose to follow Jesus and trust him. And then you finally discover for yourself. You experience for yourself the truth of what you've been investigating and hearing about and all that.

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Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a great example of, you know, the, the father drawing and somebody responding. Right. You know, that's that's the work of the spirit. Still, it's good.

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Brenton
Yeah. I'll just add I've said it before and my role on on being on pastoral staff here at Harmony, as the assistant pastor here at Burlington, I said one of the hardest things about my job is that I can't save people. But yet, at the same time, one of the most reassuring things about my job is that I can't save people.

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Brenton
And so I can only do so much. And sometimes it can just be heartbreaking that you just want it so bad for people more than what they wanted themselves. But yet at the same time, it's also reassuring that if it was up to me, I would fail every time. And so it's all, the Lord, the Lord working in their salvation.

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Brenton
But yet I am called to do something, and we're all called to do something, and that's to go preach, preach the gospel.

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So yeah. Good. All right. So, Nate, this one's for you. You you highlighted the the difference between seeking self glory and seeking God's glory. What are some ways that we fall into this kind of self-promotion today?

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Brenton
It's not too hard to to look around and to just see where this is happening all over the place. And really, it's, what idols do you have in your life that you're putting before God? And so when anytime you make a choice to, make something else, a god other than the one true God, then, you're ultimately seeking to glorify yourself because you're saying that you know better than God and that, this will be better than God in my life.

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Brenton
And whether that be money, career, relationships, whatever that may be, when you're seeking to put those ahead of God. You're really saying that, you know, I want to glorify myself in these things. And so, that's something we all struggle with again. Like I said in my message, obedience is not about perfection. We're all going to fail.

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Brenton
We're all 100% reliant on God's grace. But it really has to do with the heart. And what what is my heart's desire is my heart's desire to glorify God. And or is it my heart's desire to really glorify myself and as we struggle back and forth, we need to be constantly assessing, you know, where where am I falling short?

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Brenton
And how do I need to give that to the Lord, whatever that idol may be in my life?

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Paul
Yeah. I agree, and I'll kind of build off of something Nathan said earlier. Yeah, maybe singing a little bit different way. But I think we need to realize that we're God's not part of our story. We're part of his story, that this isn't about us, this is about him. And we get to play a part in this, and he's created us, like you said earlier, for his glory.

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Paul
This is for Christ. And so we've got to learn to die to ourselves and live for Christ. And, you know, Jesus said that very clearly that we need to, take up a cross daily and follow him. And so we have to surrender to him. I think this comes very practically saying, like, it's a daily surrender, that I wake up in the morning and I say, I'm alive today.

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Paul
Thank you for life today, and I'm alive for you. So how do I live for you today? How do I, I submit myself to whatever you have for me today, and I'm going to I'm going to be faithful in that. And whatever the result is, I trust you.

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Yeah, yeah. And that was going to be my next question. You know, I think you pretty much answered it there. Sorry about that. But no, it's fine. Let's let's stay on it a minute. So, I'm kind of just looking for some, like, concrete examples of living for God's glory. You know, that's a term that gets thrown around a lot.

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And I think it would be maybe helpful just to talk about what that practically looks like. And I think you're, you're right that, dying to ourself, living for God's glory is is what we, what we want to do. But if we think about that on kind of a daily basis of, you know, talking to the average Christian, how should we how should we think about that?

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And how do we, you know, keep that in the forefront of our mind as we make decisions, as we go to our work, as we play, whatever we're doing, how do we how do we keep that in the in the forefront of our mind?

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Brenton
Yeah. So when talking about God's glory in, the message from last week, I said, one way that we seek to give God the glory is by praising and pointing. And so we praise him, in all of our life, and really that it goes back to a matter of worship and it goes back to, are we always going to are we always going to feel like, shouting and saying, you know, Hallelujah, Amen.

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Brenton
No. And we're going to have really hard things that we go through in our lives. But are we still having a worshipful heart in those things? Are we still, praising him and still saying, you know what, God, I trust you. I trust in your plan, and I know that, you are in control in that area of my life and in all my life and and then pointing.

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Brenton
And so, no matter what is going on in your life, you you're pointing others, based off of you know, you're, you're worshiping, worshiping him and all of life. You're pointing to others that way, but then you're verbally pointing others. You're verbally sharing the gospel with others and, and telling others about the good news of Jesus.

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Brenton
And so, again, praising and pointing. Those are ways that we can bring him glory, but really doing his will and trusting in obeying that was my other two points, that I glorifies him as well. When we when we trust him in our circumstances and then we obey him, obeying his will through what Scripture says. And and just doing what he wants to do.

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Brenton
And then he's receiving the glory.

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Yeah. Well, let me let me probe a little bit, a little bit deeper. So, you know, say someone, you know, I personally have times where I, I'm completely selfish, right? That my desires are, are only toward myself. And and so, you know, in times of despair or, sadness or even, you know, good times where we, begin to trust in ourselves too much.

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How can we kind of recenter our, our minds on, on the glory of God?

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Paul
I think if we've got that attitude that Jesus calls us to, that we're going to be seeking his glory, then. Then it needs to be a conscious decision each day to to be doing that. And so as the Lord convicts us of those things, whatever specific examples in your particular life of, I'm not seeking, necessarily seeking God's glory in this area, it's it's submitting to that, realizing that conviction, acknowledging it to the Lord, and then saying, Lord, help me to change it.

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Paul
You've given me your spirit within me to sanctify me, to change me, to make me more like you. Conform me to your image. So help me to make that change. And then it's consciously making those decisions that are different than what you were doing before. And I think there's, there's a million different ways that this can show up in our lives all throughout the day, whether that's decisions on our entertainment that we're engaging with or how we're choosing to engage with our family members or friends.

00;23;29;24 - 00;23;52;25
Paul
Whether or not we choose to spend time with the Lord or not. There's a million different decisions we make all throughout the day that we're making choices of, am I going to be about myself, or am I going to be about seeking God in his glory in my life? And the sensitivity to the spirit in that daily walk, I think, is cultivated over time as we continue to be submit ourselves to him.

00;23;53;00 - 00;24;07;21
Paul
Yeah. And you're not going to cover all of it at once. But, you know, over the next week, month, year, you can work on different aspects as the Lord convicts you in the next year, he's going to convince you about other things in your life, and you're going to continue to be sanctified all throughout your lifetime.

00;24;07;23 - 00;24;41;26

Yeah, I, I like how you kind of laid out the, the steps there of like realizing it and acknowledging it. Sometimes that can be the hardest thing of like, you know, acknowledging that we are not in step with where we should be. But then, you know, following that up with repentance. But I think back to just this, this passage that we went through, we see, you know, if our goal in our Christian life is to is is conformity to Christ, then we should read these stories of Christ and we should be challenged.

00;24;41;26 - 00;25;00;28

Right. So we see that everything that he did was to the glory of God. He didn't do anything outside of God the Father. Yeah. And so, you know, we should take that as an example and look at these stories. As you know, this is this is who we're trying to emulate. So let's, let's emulate the things he does.

00;25;01;00 - 00;25;01;07

Yeah.

00;25;01;13 - 00;25;25;15
Paul
So yeah, Jesus said everything he did was to follow the father. And then you look at the Apostle Paul, he says, follow me as I follow Christ. He even said, you can follow me. I'm trying to model this for you as I am modeled from Christ, and I would love to be able to someday, you know, say. And I can say to some extent now to some people like follow me as I follow Christ, and that is part of our sanctification.

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Paul


00;25;26;06 - 00;25;32;01

And good. All right. Well, that's all I got for today. I appreciate you guys coming in.

00;25;32;03 - 00;25;33;12
Paul
Thanks for the conversation, for having us.

00;25;33;12 - 00;25;48;01

Thanks for preaching. You guys at home or in the car or wherever you are. If you do have any questions, please feel free to reach out further. Ask it further. Podcast.com, and we will talk to you next week. Thanks.