Latest / Calvary Chapel Devine, Texas Podcast / Addressing Emotional Health Issues in Church "Equip Conference 2024 Session 1." (Part 2 of 3) with Pastor Michael Petit

Transcript

Addressing Emotional Health Issues in Church "Equip Conference 2024 Session 1." (Part 2 of 3) with Pastor Michael Petit · Calvary Chapel Devine, Texas Podcast

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  Music.
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  Welcome to today's broadcast of Sun, Salt, and Light.
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  Sun, Salt, and Light, S-O-N, knowing and growing in your daily relationship with Jesus Christ,
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  but also be in the salt and the light in your marriage, in your family,
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  at your place of work, at your church, and even in the community you're in.
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  I'm Pastor Michael Petit. This is a radio ministry of our church,
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  Calvary Chapel Divine, Divine here in Divine, Texas.
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  We are so glad that you joined us for today's broadcast.
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  We are a Calvary Chapel, so we simply teach the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter.
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  We believe that God uses His Word to transform, restore, and to change lives one verse at a time.
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  If you're visiting our area, you'd like to get information about our church
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  or church service times, maybe even track down some of the other teachings that
• 1:02
  we have available through podcasts, whether it's through Audible or Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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  You can do all of that at our church website at calvarydivine.org.
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  That's calvarydivine.org.
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  Hey, this is Pastor Michael Petit.
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  Question for you. How do you disciple somebody with emotional health coming into the church?
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  Imagine this. Imagine having a family of five kids, a husband and wife with a broken marriage.
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  Two of the kids have tried to commit suicide. One has been actually placed into
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  Lower Ridge, which is a place for mental health.
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  And here we come into the church.
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  This is my family. How do you disciple them?
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  And that's not including the stuff I was dealing with. I had no clue what it
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  was to be a father, no clue what it was to be a husband.
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  And I was struggling with my own emotional health, which was through post-traumatic
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  stress disorder, from being in combat.
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  And here we are, and we need discipleship.
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  What do you do as a church?
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  Well, that's what this study is. is we were able to, I had the blessing of being
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  able to go to the Equip Conference here in Divine Texas and teach.
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  I had two sessions, and this will actually be broken up probably into four teachings
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  because they gave us two full-hour sessions.
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  And so you'll hear some of my testimony in this.
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  You'll hear some of the things that our church did as I came and our family
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  came into the the church, some of the things that were suggested to us to do,
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  which was biblical counseling for our marriage.
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  And so I hope this helps you.
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  If you have your Bible, we'll be actually in Psalm 23, and then we'll also be in Joshua chapter one.
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  And so we'll go through this bit by bit, piece by piece through the scripture as well.
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  So this is a teaching, just FYI, we will go verse verse by verse,
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  through the book of Joshua, chapter 1, I think it's chapter 1,
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  verses 1 through 9, if I remember right.
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  But I hope that you enjoy this. So the beginning of it, again,
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  is me sharing a little bit about my testimony,
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  our family's testimony, and as we're coming into the church,
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  and just the reality of what people are dealing with,
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  not only in the church, but also so as they become new believers and come into
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  the church and how does a church disciple within that?
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  And so that's what these teachings are. I hope that you enjoy them.
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  This is the first half of this four-part study.
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  This is the second half of this four-part study.
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  Do you know that your pastors all get together for breakfast every Wednesday?
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  See, he knows. They know. Why
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  do we we do that we need it it's discipleship
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  we build each other up we pray for each other there
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  are things that are happening you know that we're
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  praying for we're praying for y'all's building i know that they're that they
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  had talked about that and it's like man we're praying for what god is doing
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  i'm praying for y'all to go to three services praise god i'm praying that the
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  parking lot problem gets fixed and y'all have four services i know dad will be tired but hey.
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  There's enough people around this community our job and and and dad agrees with
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  me our job is we're not in competition with each other our job is to grow the
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  kingdom of god that's what the job is of the churches and this church belongs
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  to jesus and our church belongs to jesus and we forget that,
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  when we when we look at the the generation that's coming up the generation that's
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  going to be coming into your church.
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  Generation Z. It's important for you to understand who you're going to be discipling.
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  They struggle with depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicide.
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  When they were asked how their mental health was, only 15% said it was excellent.
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  That is 85% that is struggling with some sort of mental health issue.
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  And here they come into your church. And what are you going to tell them?
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  How are you going to preach to them? How are you going to minister to them?
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  How are you going to disciple them?
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  Do you realize this is the next generation of the church?
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  And the Generation Z, actually 30% of them now identify as LGBTQIA.
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  And the generation that's coming after that is going to be worse.
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  The struggles with the teens that we're having now is we're seeing that loneliness,
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  Loneliness, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts are very real.
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  More than four out of ten students are feeling persistently sad and hopeless.
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  Four out of ten. One out of five students seriously consider attempting suicide.
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  One in ten attempted suicide. And this is the thing that should break.
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  I know for dads, for me, I got girls.
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  Three out of five girls attending middle school and high school struggle.
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  Three out of five girls. girls are struggling with loneliness,
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  anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and depression.
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  Three out of five girls. If you have daughters, you should be concerned.
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  And one in 10 teenage girls will either deal with rape or sexual abuse.
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  Let that sink into your head for a second. One in 10 men will deal with rape or sexual abuse.
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  Now, one of the things that we've done, and I will continue to do as long as
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  the Lord allows us to do it, is we've been going to the schools.
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  So we've already been to Lytle High School three times, and we've been to Divine High School.
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  We actually were able to have an open assembly last year, and we had,
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  I think, over 80 kids come to the faith.
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  We had over 200 in Lytle this past fall, but it does me no good to have them
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  come to faith if the churches are not ready to disciple them, okay?
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  So what do we do?
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  Is it a Calvary Chapel thing? No, I don't care.
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  I'm growing the kingdom of God, okay? That's step one. I'm growing Growing the
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  kingdom of God is not a Calvary Chapel thing.
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  It's not a First Baptist divine thing. We're there growing the kingdom of God.
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  That's what we're there to do.
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  So when we go to Lionel, what do we have? We have the Lionel pastors and the youth pastors there.
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  We have people ready there to receive them, pray with them, talk with them,
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  because where do they live? In Bible.
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  When we were here in Divine, Dad was there. Carlos was there.
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  Pastor Dan Yurte was there.
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  We had the youth pastors there. Why? Because we need to make sure that the kids are being discipled.
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  You have a youthful life group here in Divine. Did y'all know that?
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  It started because Miss Bailey. Y'all know Miss Bailey. Miss Strickers.
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  Yeah. they wanted to start something and now
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  god is moving and using that and it's
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  continued this year and guess what they're trying
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  to plan something for the spring they're trying to do a fields of
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  faith in the spring and we're trying to help them i have no clue how
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  we're going to do it but we're going to try and guess what i know that we're
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  going the right direction because the first first meeting we were supposed to
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  have what happened that's when we got the little bit of ice and they thought
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  it was going to freeze and so the meeting got canceled second meeting was we're
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  supposed to happen this past week.
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  What happened? The water main burst.
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  So I know the devil doesn't want this to go down, but you know what's crazy?
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  It's Ms. Hillary, who is the president of the club now. Do you know why she
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  wants to do fields of faith?
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  Because she saw what happened in the high school, and she wants to see the parents come to faith.
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  She don't want just the kids to get it. She wants the families to get it. These are your youth.
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  They're hungry, and they're out trying to to share the gospel.
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  And this is what we've been called to do.
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  We forget, you know, as the early church, Paul emphasized discipleship.
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  He did three things, really.
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  There were three things that were important to Paul. One, hey,
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  you're going to go through afflictions.
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  He would preach that. The church don't preach that no more. You know,
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  that was our vision for 2024 for the church. church.
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  Get ready. You're going to go through afflictions. When it happens,
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  let's bring people into the presence of God.
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  The other thing that Paul spoke about was discipleship.
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  It was important to Paul. He sent Timothy in 1 Thessalonians 3, verse 2.
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  It says, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's fellow worker in the gospel
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  of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the benefit of your faith.
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  So when the young church was hurting, when the young church was going through
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  affliction, he sends Timothy.
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  And how can he send Timothy? Because Paul did life with Timothy. He sowed into Timothy.
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  I told our church, every one of you need to have a Timothy in your life.
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  You need to be sowing into somebody. So that way, when you can't go, send Timothy.
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  Right. That's what you're supposed to do. You got to go to the hospital, bring Timothy with you.
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  You got to go speak to somebody at a funeral, bring Timothy with you.
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  Somebody gets sick or they get a diagnosis, you bring Timothy with you.
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  Because one day you can't go and Timothy can't.
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  To strengthen them and build them up in their faith. That's what our role is as an early church.
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  We forgot this. if you look at
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  acts chapter 2 acts chapter 2
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  verses 42 through 47 y'all can let me know when
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  y'all get there it's easy for us because we have it on the tablet so it's just
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  like quick so anytime you think the pastor's really quick it's in the notes
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  on the tablets but it's already there they don't have to flip through the book
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  you know acts chapter 2 verses 42 one of the things that we do as a Calvary Chapel,
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  and it's just one of our distinctives that we have, and we don't have,
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  you know, we take a very balanced approach to stuff,
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  but one of the things that we do is these four things for every ministry.
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  Every ministry that we have, we do these four things.
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  If you're going to lead one of my ministries in our church, if you don't do
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  this, you're not leading it.
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  It's that simple, because this is what the early church did.
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  They were continually continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching
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  and to the fellowship, in verse 42, and to the breaking of the bread and to prayer.
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  The apostles' teaching for us is the Word of God. They devoted themselves to it.
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  They devoted themselves to it. And then they had the fellowship, which is koinia.
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  It is not a potluck, okay?
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  Koinia, do you know what koinia is? Koinia is actually where you're admonishing
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  each other with the Word of God.
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  You're building each other up you're you're
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  even correcting somebody if you have to but
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  you have the word of god stored up on your heart and you
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  cannot disciple somebody if
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  it's not stored on your heart because they don't need your words they need god's
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  words they need to hear something from god and chuck used to always say like
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  when you when you have koinonia there's two things that you have you have two
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  ears and one mouth you need to listen more than you talk,
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  and then when it's time to talk you bring them the word and then we have the breaking of the bread,
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  and prayer the church has to make that an emphasis again a prayer like every
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  time that our ministries come together these four things are supposed to happen.
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  Why? Breaking of bread. I want y'all to read down a little bit further.
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  This is the beautiful birth of the early church.
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  Everyone keeping a feeling, a sense of awe.
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  So there's a reverence to God and many wonders
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  and signs were taking place through the apostles and all
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  the believers together had all things in common
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  and they would sell their property and possessions
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  and share with with them all to the extent that anyone
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  who had need day by day continually with
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  one mind in the temple so that is not
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  socialism all right because i've heard this
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  on progressives which drives
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  me crazy what that was is there were people being thrown out of their houses
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  there were people losing their financial stability they were they were being
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  thrown out of their jobs you had had mothers that lost their husbands because
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  they were killed for the way or they were put in jail.
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  And so they were coming together to try to help each other. So it's not socialism.
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  I've heard that preached and it drives me crazy.
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  But it says day by day, continually with one mind in the temple, they went to church.
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  They spent time together in breaking bread from house to house.
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  They were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,
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  praising God and having favor with some of the people. No, all.
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  So when you go and you, hey, we're going to have this thing.
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  You bring somebody with you.
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  Bring somebody with you. Hey, man, they're cooking tonight.
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  Somebody's in there. They cook for you. They fed you. Come and eat, man.
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  Bring somebody with you. and you don't get to choose who you bring.
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  Your church should look like the HEB. Hello?
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  When you go to HEB, you got everybody in there, right? That's how your church should look.
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  That's all, right? That's all.
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  And some of you go, I'd rather have the HEB people than the Walmart people,
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  but that's all, all of them, right?
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  You get them all. .
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  But they were taking meals together with gladness and sincerity,
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  heart praising God and having favor with all people and catch the end of this.
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  And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.
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  Do you think the church is over complicated things?
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  We have. Keep it simple. Just keep it simple.
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  Discipleship should be that. Discipleship is you actually living life with that person.
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  And that will get messy because you're going to be dealing with all these other
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  things that come into the church.
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  And it was somebody for us that took the time to disciple me when I came in
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  with all my mess and poor Joe listened to all my, I'm sure there was times he's
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  ready to throw me out the door.
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  But can I tell you one of the beautiful things that happened is when we came
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  into the the church, we had to deal with a 22-year mess of marriage.
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  We had 22 years of broken marriage and a broken family.
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  So the first thing that has to get fixed is the marriage.
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  So we did biblical counseling.
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  We did biblical counseling. We went outside the church and we had biblical marriage counseling.
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  So sometimes you will have to send people out and that's okay.
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  Okay, that's what Stitch is for.
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  And so we started working on our marriage.
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  And I knew I was in trouble because when we had our first session, I'm 39 years old.
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  And the first session, my wife goes, when he was 17, I was like,
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  oh, this is going to be, this is going to do a lot.
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  She went back to when we were 17 and we'd known each other since high school.
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  She sat behind me in Wichita Falls, Texas.
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  Her dad and my dad were both Air Force.
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  And I was like, Lord, I was a mess at 17. So this is going to be a while.
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  And can I tell you, one of the things that we started doing was just practically
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  applying the word of God in our life. Was it hard? Yes.
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  Were there tears? Yes. Yes. Were there moments like, well, why does God do this like this?
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  Yes. But there was somebody to walk us through that. For me,
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  it was Pastor Louie Delgado and many others.
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  And and they would I can remember they would let me talk and then they would
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  say, well, look, Mike, let's go to the word of God and see what God's word says.
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  No, I want to keep talking. I want to be in my feelings. No,
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  we got it. It's time to get to the word of God.
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  It's understanding, and you have to understand, I was going through...
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  When I came back from Iraq, I couldn't understand.
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  I can still remember walking to the mall in Louisville. We were stationed in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
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  I think it was a Saturday after I got back on Friday or something like that.
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  And everybody was just going on with their lives. And I couldn't understand it.
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  My wife tried to wake me up, almost choked her.
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  I was on the 50-cal mount. Now, you know, what's crazy, and this is just the
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  Lord, is Lavelle, the driver that I had, reached out to me this past week.
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  And I haven't talked to Lavelle in over 30 years. He has MS.
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  All of us are sick. And I told him, he asked me, how are you doing?
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  I said, I'm all right, man. They diagnosed me with porphyria,
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  which is what the Vietnam vets have.
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  That's what happens when you get exposed to chemical. I said,
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  well, I don't trust my government that much.
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  I'm very hesitant when they ask me to do the thing.
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  And so what happens with my body is my blood will actually, when it gets through
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  my liver, it pushes too much oxygen through.
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  It's painful, but that's just one of the things. The original thing that they
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  found out I had was autoimmune disease called Sjogren's.
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  And so I wake up in pain and I go to bed in pain. I deal with it all the time.
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  And I was struggling with that as I was coming back from the war.
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  And then we got stationed in Hawaii.
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  And I'm going to tell you this, and I'm not going to sit here and try to glorify
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  the sin that I was in, but I was a very sinful man in Hawaii.
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  Way suicidal and many times coming down the mountains driving over 90 miles an hour,
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  ready to go off the side at any moment because i
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  was done seeing the army at that time there was
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  no btsd we were told when
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  we out processed in egypt if you
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  want to go home tonight you can go home tonight if
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  you want to talk to the psychologist or the psychiatrist
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  you'll be here another three to four days
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  or however many days they want to hold you what do you want to do everybody
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  went home then when we got home what did they tell us to do put that stuck away
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  tuck it away and let me tell you something you can't tuck it away and and could
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  i tell you something else Location doesn't change it.
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  We moved from Hawaii, San Antonio, to Georgia, to San Antonio,
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  back to Georgia, and every time it followed me.
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  And every time I thought I had a handle on it, it'd come back up.
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  Until I got to a point in 2008 when my wife was like, that's it,
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  you need help. So I went to the VA.
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  And the first thing the VA wanted to do is medicate me
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  and so i my my
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  thought was is like i i told
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  him i said let me just talk to somebody first and then we can we
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  can look at whatever y'all think we need to do now in 2008 the same time i'm
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  talking to the va guy i started going to church and by 2009 things started changing
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  and the therapist at the va was like what's going on and i told him i'm going to church,
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  I gave my life to Christ and over the
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  next six months he's like well Mike you don't need this anymore you're
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  good and I can tell you it had nothing to do with that therapist it was God
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  that concludes today's broadcast of sun salt and light radio we hope that you
• 21:57
  enjoyed it if you'd like to submit a prayer request or get in contact with us
• 22:02
  or find out service times you can do all all about at our website,
• 22:05
  as well as get our podcast at Spotify, Audible, TuneIn Radio,
• 22:10
  pretty much wherever you can find a podcast.
• 22:12
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• 22:19
  Music.