Latest / REZ CHURCH Podcast / What's Wearing You Down Is Building You Up - May 17, 2026

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What's Wearing You Down Is Building You Up - May 17, 2026 · REZ CHURCH Podcast

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Not only did we not know that it would be apropos to be going
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through James chapter one over the next seven weeks when we set
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up this series, we also didn't know we would be changing to do
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1 service and I get to be the first one to do this now.
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Thank you. If if you're used to preaching
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when you preach 2 services and now you go to 1 service.
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Let me describe for you a little bit what that's like.
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Those of us who maybe have some familiarity with the game golf
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are refer happen to be familiar with the term Mulligan.
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For those of you who don't know, a Mulligan is when a golfer
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comes up at a new hole, puts the ball down and gives it their
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very best swing. And they look off in the
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distance and they don't see the little white ball going away.
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And then they look down. It's still on the tee.
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And they look to their friends and say, can I have them all
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again? A do over.
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I don't get a do over. What happens just happens.
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All right, So we're going to be taking a look, as Pastor Daniel
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mentioned at James chapter 1, specifically verses 2:00 to 4:00
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this morning. So I invite you to go there in
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your Bibles, whether you're using your phone app or whether
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you have a printed copy of God's Word.
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We're going to call this message growing pains.
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All right, James chapter 1, verses 2 to 4.
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Let me tell you a story, true story in my own life, and it's
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one of those times that I didn't really like James Chapter 1
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verses 2 to 4. OK.
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I was 3/4 of my way through my first year of teaching junior
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highers at Heritage Christian School and it had been really
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rough, very difficult. I got called in to my boss's
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office, very dear friend of mine, his name is Ken, for a
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private meeting. Ken told me.
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Vance, we have had numerous complaints about you from
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parents and also from some of your students.
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Now, to be honest, that did not surprise me.
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But then he said we're going to need to do 2 things.
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First, for the last quarter of this school year, I am going to
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take over teaching some of your classes so you can concentrate
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on the others. Second, we're going to put you
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on a teacher improvement plan beginning next year.
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If you do not improve greatly by mid year, we're going to have to
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let you go. I was crushed.
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I honestly don't remember how I got out of that office and went
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back to my classroom. I could lose my job.
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I had just graduated from my seminary four years earlier with
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highest honors, and now four years later I was in danger of
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losing my third job trying to serve the Lord.
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Now imagine some well-intentioned Christian see
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me stumbling out of Ken's office, had quoted to me
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immediately these verses. Consider it a great joy, my
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brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials,
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because you know that the testing of your faith produces
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endurance, and let endurance have its full effect so that you
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may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
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Seriously, my world is caving in again.
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I'm staring down another failure.
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I may not be able to support my wife or my young son.
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We may lose our house because I seem to keep screwing up.
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And you're going to give me something from the Bible that
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doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
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Now reality check. Something doesn't have to make
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sense to us to be true. The Bible, God's revelation to
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us, provides solid truth. Now the reason why I wanted to
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share that story from my own life is this.
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Some of us in this room have gone through something.
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Maybe you're in the middle of something that's very much like
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what I experienced. You're in a situation exactly.
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Maybe the circumstances are probably different, but your
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situation overall is exactly what I described.
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You feel totally overwhelmed in a crisis, not knowing what to
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do, and you can't even make sense of why such a terrible
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thing is happening now. For all of us, this little
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paragraph of three verses is a lifeline.
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It's a solid path to get our feet on moving solid ground when
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we're struggling. Our main point is simply this.
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Our pains can be a huge game. Now I emphasize that word can
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all right whether they are or not, whether the trials and
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troubles that we are in the midst of, whether we really do
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experience it as a gain in our life, it's not up to God, it's
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up to us. It's a potential possibility.
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We can make a huge gain from our pains that God is taking us
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through if we make 2 choices. That's what James is telling us
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in these verses. The first choice.
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It's in verse 2. Choose a radical new attitude.
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Let's look at it again. James 2 chapter one, verse 2.
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Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever
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you experience various trials. Keyword there is consider.
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It has to do with attitude. I like what a preacher by the
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name of Chuck Swindoll said about attitude.
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So I'd I'd like to read this statement.
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For us, attitude is more important than our past, than
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education, than money, than circumstances, than failures,
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than successes, than what people say or do.
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We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play
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on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
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I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, a 90% how I
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react to it. And so it is with you.
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We are in charge of our attitudes.
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So James tells us consider it a great joy in the English
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standard translation that says count it all joy, Same idea.
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Basically, what he's telling us to do is we make a decision, we
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make a decision, we make a choice, and we stick to that
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choice. Consider it a great choice
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whenever you experience various trials.
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What does he mean by that? It means that we're walking
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along through life, just doing whatever we're doing and
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suddenly out of left field, boom, we're hit with a trial,
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we're hit with a problem, we're in trouble.
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It's the same word translated here whenever that when Jesus
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told his parable about the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke,
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and he starts off the parable with this man who is travelling
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and minding his own business, walking down this road to the
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city of Jericho, and he gets mugged.
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He gets mugged, he gets beaten up.
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He wasn't looking for trouble. Trouble found him.
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That's how it works, doesn't it? We cannot avoid hard things.
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Or we can take some precautions to avoid some of it, but there's
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other things. They just happen.
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They seem to come out of nowhere.
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That's why, we're told in the book of Job, man is born to
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trouble as the surely as the sparks fly upward.
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Consider it a great joy, my friends, whenever you experience
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various trials. Trials come in all kinds of
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shapes and sizes. For some of us, it's our health.
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Maybe we're struggling with an ongoing problem.
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We can't get seem to get the handle of it.
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For some of it, it may be family issues.
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You know, you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your
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family. Amen.
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For some of it, it may be a failures like what I described
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earlier. Maybe it's job troubles, maybe
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it's money struggles. Maybe it's an addiction that we
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can't lick and we're struggling. When James says various trials,
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those trials can either be as we know what's going on up here are
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in their thoughts. We're really, really good at
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beating ourselves up up here. So the trial can be what's going
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on in terms of our thinking or the trial can be going on in
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what's happening in the world around us, what we're
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experiencing, what may be a friend of ours, our family
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member is experiencing. All of that is trials.
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And by the way, what's a trial for one person is not
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necessarily a trial for another, right?
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You know, since my 20s, I have struggled with my weight,
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sometimes doing better, sometimes not doing so good.
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But I have some people that I know that they're slim and they
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say I can eat whatever I want. I don't like them.
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And you know when those of you who have come over, when we have
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greet the team over here in that little area, you know about the
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brownies, right? That's not helping me.
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The bottom line is this, when trouble comes, and it will, we
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can choose how we respond. We can choose our attitude.
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Now let me give you 2 examples of this.
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OK, first example, it's right out of the Bible.
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In the book of Acts chapter 16, Paul and his companions arrive
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at a little city called Philippi and they're preaching the gospel
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and God is blessing their preaching.
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And then to help a slave girl, Paul cast a demon out of her and
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the slave girls owners got mad. They dragged Paul and his friend
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Silas up before the local authorities tell a false story.
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Paul gets beaten up. His friend Silas gets beaten up.
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They get thrown in jail. Not only just any old jail,
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they're in the inner part of the jail, locked up in stocks.
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You know, we've seen pictures of people like this.
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OK, That's how they are. And then that night, they're
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singing. They're singing praise songs.
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They're singing hymns. Yeah, their back is aching and
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their wrists and their ankles are chafed.
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They chose a different attitude. And then as they're giving this
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concert and everybody else is listening in, boy, I hope they
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could sing good. But it doesn't really matter.
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God brings an earthquake. All the prison doors fly open.
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The jailer is ready to kill himself.
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Paul yells at him, don't do it, we're all here.
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The jailer comes in and asks Paul and Silas this, sirs, what
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must I do to be saved? Paul and Silas had a different
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attitude. Let me give you an example.
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More recent, lot of us know about Thomas Edison.
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We can be thankful for him. He invented the light bulb.
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If it wasn't for him, we'd all be in the dark right now.
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He also invented batteries. He also invented film cameras.
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But when Mr. Edison was about 60-7 years old, he had this big
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factory laboratory area with lots and lots of buildings, and
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the thing caught fire. Over half of everything he had
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there was burned up. And in the middle of the fire,
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in the middle of the night, Edison's walking around, he sees
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his son. He comes up to him and says, get
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your mother and all her friends. They'll never see a fire like
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this again. After they finally put the fire
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out, Edison sat down in his chair at his desk and said,
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well, we just got rid of a bunch of rubbish, let's start again.
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Our pain, our pains can be a huge gain if we choose a radical
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new attitude. The second choice we have to
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make is that we focus on the future.
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Look at verses 3 and 4. Because you know that the
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testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have
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its full effect so that you may be complete mature and complete,
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lacking nothing. OK, just like verse 2, we kind
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of focused on that word consider or count.
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This time focus on the word no. You see, the consider thing was
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a one time firm decision. This is not that.
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No is something we have to keep reminding ourselves of over and
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over and over again. OK, it's a present tense.
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We keep this knowledge and insight constantly before us.
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Our Lord definitely has a goal in mind why we're going through
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whatever we're doing. It's an absolute certain future
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that He's working to bring about.
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Keep our eyes on His prize. Now this is kind of where some
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people think about this particular verse in the Bible
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and it's helpful. It's Romans 828.
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It says there we know. Notice again, no, it's a choice
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to know and keep knowing. We know that all things work
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together for the good of those who love God and are called
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according to His purpose. Now please understand what that
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verse is saying and what it's not saying, OK?
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It's saying it's not saying that all things are necessarily good.
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When you go to the doctor and the doctor says you have cancer,
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that's not good. OK?
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But that never stops the Lord from turning everything that
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we're going through into something that is ultimately
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good for us. You understand the distinction.
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So let me return to that opening story I shared with you.
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I might lose my job unless I change.
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Become a better teacher. That summer I worked my tail
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off. I had a dear friend, Mike
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Bowles, gifted teacher. I went to him for advice.
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I read books on teaching. I studied.
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When that second year started, I gave those kids both barrels.
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Mid year I saw a card. In my little teacher box at
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Heritage, it was from Shelly, our principal, and I kept that
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card for years. She had written You have
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improved more than any other teacher on staff.
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The bad stuff Jesus used for my ultimate good.
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OK, so we know there's going to be tests.
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That's part of the process. Tests can often refer to the
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idea of refining. You know, imagine in a mine
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someplace, they bring out this big hunk of rock, and maybe this
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happens to be a gold mine. All right?
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And maybe we see little flakes, little traces, little lines of
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gold in there. But we have a whole lot of rock.
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What do we do? We take the rock.
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We heat it up, we heat it up and heat it up until it melts, and
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then all of the impurities, because gold happens to be a
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very heavy metal. The gold sinks down, the
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impurities rise to the surface, and then the metalsmith people
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there scraping off the impurities until finally nothing
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is left but the gold. And in the ancient world, they
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knew they had gotten rid of the impurities when the metal Smith
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could look down at the molten goal and he or she could see
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their reflection. That's what the Lord is doing to
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us. He's putting us through the heat
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of testing so that we become people He can bless and use for
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His glory. Now the apostle Paul knew this
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in one of the most painful letters, if not the most painful
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he ever wrote. At one point he says this.
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Therefore, we do not give up. Even though our outer person is
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being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by
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day for our momentary light. Affliction is producing in US an
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absolute, incomparable, eternal weight of glory.
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So we do not focus on what is seen, but what is unseen.
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For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
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Notice what he's concentrating on.
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He's not focused on the tests, and they were hard.
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They were really hard. That's not his focus.
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He's focused on the end result, the test.
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He calls those light momentary troubles.
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Why? Because in comparison, he could
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see what God was bringing about in his life and eternal weight
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of glory. By the way, glory can also be
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translated honor. You know what every Christian
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should want to hear from the Lord when they finish this life
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and they're standing before Jesus.
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We should all want to hear Jesus say this.
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Well done, good and faithful servant.
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Think what that means, to be honoured by the Lord himself.
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That's called finishing well. And sadly, a lot of Christians
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never get there, partly because they're focused on the test.
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They're not seeing the process, they're not seeing the future.
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Daniel mentioned his struggles. It's the same for me.
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It's the same for all of our leaders.
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It's been a hard season, but I can tell you this in the midst,
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even though at times, yeah, I, as I've told people I wanted to
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run for the door, I was looking for it.
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The Lord has repeatedly strengthened and blessed me.
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You know, I have a dear friend from my day's teaching at Nueva
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High School. And Sergio, my friend, whenever
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we were going through a hard time, he'd say, you know, Vance,
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he never called me Vance. He always called me Mr. Furtado.
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But whatever. God never gives us more than we
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can handle. I would nod my head and then I
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thought, years later, Sergio, I know you meant well, but that's
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not really true. God often gives us more than we
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can handle. Why?
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To teach us to handle it with him.
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What's the purpose of God's test?
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Why does He take us through some of the things that He takes us
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through? Well, verse 4 in this little
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passage tells us there's 2 results that God is aiming for
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as a result of the test. The 1st result is where it says
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let endurance have its full effect.
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English standard version says steadfastness.
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Jesus doesn't want us to be wussified, Wimpy pushovers.
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Those are the kind of people that usually give up.
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Rather, he wants stubborn, determined disciples who will
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not quit. Now have a picture of 2 trees.
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Hope the guy Yeah good, the guys were able to get it up OK.
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The tree that's over on the left, at least that they call it
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a tree. That's a bonsai tree.
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Linda and I were over at Morro Bay celebrating our anniversary
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part of this last week and, you know, went to a place, saw some
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bonsai trees. They're, you know, like this,
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OK, It's a shrub, but they call it a tree, OK?
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But they're cute, you know, people trim them and stuff like
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that and do whatever. God doesn't want us to be bonsai
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trees. You sit on a bonsai tree, you
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have a dead bonsai tree. OK, that's it.
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It's all over. God doesn't want that.
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He takes us through trials and tests.
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He's not after bonsai trees. He's after the tree on the other
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side. That's a white oak.
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White oaks have some of the toughest, heaviest, strongest
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wood of any tree in North America.
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When they built those old sailing ships of the US Navy,
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they built them out of white oak.
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And like the ship USS Constitution that's still in
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Boston Harbor, the British said, hey, we're shooting cannonballs
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at this thing and they're just bouncing off because the size of
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the ship were two feet thick white oak.
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They live for over 500 years. They can grow hundreds of feet
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tall. That's what God the Lord wants
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to turn us into, endurance. 2nd result is that we will become
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mature and complete, lacking nothing.
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What exactly does that mean? Jesus used the same words in his
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Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 verse 48.
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Be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect.
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Let me tell you something that does not happen until we stand
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before Jesus. But in the meantime, what's
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happening as we grow in our walks with the Lord is this.
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Each and every person in this world was created, Scripture
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says, in the image of God. Now sadly, when sin entered our
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world, that image was defaced, but it was not erased.
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And when we become a Christian and we begin to grow and we
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learn and love the Lord, and we learn to love one another and
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we're growing in holiness, God is changing our character.
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Bit by bit that image of God begins to re emerge.
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It will be fully restored when our sin nature is eradicated and
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we are standing before Jesus for all eternity.
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That's why we're told this in John first John chapter 3.
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We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will
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see Him as He is. That's the future we need to
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focus on. In the meantime, we go through
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the test, We go through the trials.
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God is making us stronger and stronger as we rely and walk
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with Him. But that's the goal, and the
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Lord won't be finished with maturing us until He returns.
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That's why we're told this in Philippians 16.
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I'm sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will
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carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
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And by the way, since we're all works in progress, none of us
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have arrived yet. What God wants to do in our
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lives, we need to cut each other a little slack.
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Don't you think so? By the way, if somebody sat in
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your spot, somebody took the treat you wanted, cut each
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other's slack. We're all growing second choice.
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Focus on the future. Now.
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In conclusion, again, our main point is simply this.
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Our pains can be a huge gain. Now, maybe you're here and
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you're not a Christian. Maybe a friend invited you.
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Maybe you just wanted to come on your own and check us out.
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And by the way, we're all glad you're here.
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But let me ask you something, OK?
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Have you ever noticed that Christians, they respond
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differently when they're going through trouble?
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Never wondered why? Why are they weird?
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I mean, they hurt like everybody else, they bleed like everybody
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else. But why are they different?
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There's two things that makes a Christian different #1 they have
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a relationship with someone, Jesus, who loved them so much he
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died to save them #2 the Christian knows who's in charge
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and where they're going. They don't know the details.
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They don't need to know the details.
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They're trusting the Savior and Lord who laid down his life for
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them. Now non Christian skeptic, you
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don't have any of that. You do not have a relationship
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with the Almighty God who created you, who loves you, who
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wants to have a relationship with you.
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You do not have that because you have not asked for it.
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And secondly, when you're going through hard times and
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difficulties like we all do, you don't have somebody to walk with
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you. But you can.
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Starting today, you can have what every Christian in this
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room has. If you want a relationship, a
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loving relationship with God right now through Jesus, the
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very Son of God. I'm going to invite you to pray
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with me. And by the way, I'd like just so
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that we don't have distractions, can we all please just close our
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eyes? OK, again, if you want to know
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God, to know Jesus, pray this with me, whether out loud or
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silently. Dear Jesus, I ask you to come
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into my life. I ask you to take away my sin.
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I ask you to give me a relationship with you.
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Lord Jesus, come into my life. If you prayed that prayer, would
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you just raise your hand so that I can see it?
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Thank you. We can all open our eyes if you
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prayed that prayer. Welcome to the family.
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If you just asked Jesus to be your Savior and Lord before you
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leave this room, would you please visit either our table
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over here or our table over here where we have a banner saying I
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raised my hand. We want to help you and be with
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you as you go on your new walk with the Lord.
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Now, Christians, we need to talk.
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James is teaching us in these verses that we all have a
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choice. We can learn whatever the Lord
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intends for us in our trials and troubles.
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Whatever's going on right now, we can gain from our pain, or we
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can choose to ignore what He's trying to teach us.
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We don't want to do that. I can tell you by bitter
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experience, you don't want to do that.
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Because what happens is, is God's going to bring back the
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same lesson that He wants us to learn?
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And if again we refuse, He's going to bring back the same
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lesson He wants us to learn. Remember about the people of
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Israel wandering around in the wilderness one more time around
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the same mountain. Don't go there.
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Ask the Lord this. What do you want me to learn
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from this trial? What do you want me to change?
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How do you want me to grow? Now, if we're that honest, that
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direct with the Lord, you know what He will respond.
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And when He responds, our part is to obey.
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Now, as we're wrapping up the service at this point, I'm going
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to invite the folks in our prayer team to come forward.
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If you want someone to pray with you, please come down.
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We'll be happy to pray with you. Whatever you need.
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We want to pray with you. You come as the Lord leads.