Latest / REZ CHURCH Podcast / When Everything Feels Broken, Find The Fixer - September 14, 2025

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When Everything Feels Broken, Find The Fixer - September 14, 2025 · REZ CHURCH Podcast

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Let me tell you, I woke up in a panic.
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The light was up. The sun was up.
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It was light outside. I was like, oh, no, did I miss
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church? I was really panicking.
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And then I looked and it was, it was actually early.
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And I was like, OK, I don't know.
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For some reason, I woke up in a panic.
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But the next three weeks, we're gonna be spending our time in
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the series called Why Are Things So Bad?
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Why Are Things so Bad? I don't think it's an accident
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that you're here today and a world full of distractions.
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You could be doing anything other than sitting in a room.
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But you're here. We're talking about the one
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thing that can actually fix what's broken.
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Every morning I wake up and I deliberately try not to look at
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the news. I really don't want to know and
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yet somehow throughout the course of the day, I come to the
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full conclusion that everything is falling apart.
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You guys feel that there are wars?
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Every war point to a spot on the map.
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There's a war happening. Ukraine, Israel.
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Our streets are filled with homelessness and addiction.
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A political activist shop for sharing ideas.
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My children, my teenage daughters coming home from
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school being nonchalantly show the shooting video of Charlie
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Kirk. Have you guys experienced this
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kind of bad? And maybe you're asking the
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question if God is real? If God is good, why does
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everything feel so broken? Have you asked that before?
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Today I want to show you that the brokenness is not the end of
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the story. It's actually pointing us
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towards finding the fixer. Find the fixer.
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That's our big idea for today. Find the fixer.
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The states of everything being bad guarantees that I have, I
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will, you have, and you will experience suffering.
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But the Bible tells us this was not the way.
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There was a time where we had heaven here on earth, a place
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that was called the Garden of Eden.
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It was beautiful, it was glorious, it was blush and
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peaceful and serene. It was filled with God's glory.
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A place where we had a complete relationship with God, where we
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could hear him coming. And no, I'm about to have a walk
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and a talk with God the Father. A place that was stress free,
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anxiety free, clothes free, but shame free, disease free.
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A place where God loved you so much that he gave us a choice.
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A choice to obey him, to listen to him, listen to his
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instructions or not to and that disobedience is called sin.
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Listen to this choice that would determine the history of the
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world will be in Genesis chapter 2.
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Join me there as we read verse 16.
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It says you are free to eat from any tree in the garden.
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All the trees I can just imagine going through and picking and
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just enjoying, you know, I wonder if yams grow on trees.
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Asking for Pastor Vance, but it says you must not eat from the
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tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from
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it you will certainly die. They were free to enjoy the
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Lord, enjoy everything good that He had given them.
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Or they could live on their own understanding instead of God's
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instructions. We are experiencing their
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choices. Adam and Eve was convinced by
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Satan himself that outside of God's control, outside of God's
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will, doing what they want to do is good.
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You should experience that. You should do it on your own.
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It won't really affect your life.
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There are no consequences to sin.
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A lie that he tells me and he tells you every day.
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Adam and Eve disobeyed God and fell into sin.
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Not unlike the same thing that we do all the time as we fall
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into our sins. Second Corinthians tells us that
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righteousness and wickedness can have no relationship.
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Nothing the light can do with the dark can't.
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You can't put those two together, and that's why God has
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a holy hatred for sin. Because of sin, we can no longer
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be in God's presence. We can no longer experience God
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how we were supposed to. Now we have to have it filtered.
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Instantly. We became separated from our
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Creator. All right, I know this is big,
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so everybody take a big breath in.
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Let it out. Let me show you what God is
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doing. Our first point of the day.
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He brings beauty from brokenness.
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Amen. He brings beauty from
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brokenness. Genesis chapter 3, flip over to
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chapter 3. Let's read this together.
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The Lord said, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have
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done this cursed. Are you above all livestock and
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above all beasts of the field? On your belly you shall go.
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I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between you,
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your offspring and her offspring.
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He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel to the
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woman, he says. I will surely multiply your pain
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in childbearing, in pain you shall bring forth children you
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desire shall be for your husband, but he shall rule over
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you. Then he says cursed is the
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ground because of you in pain. You shall eat of it all the days
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of your life. Some people may see God cursing
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all of humanity, but really this is merely the state of things
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when God is absent. Adam and Eve wanted a choice.
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A choice to live life without God, to do it their way.
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This was God simply giving them their wish.
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We do the same thing. We want it our way.
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But what I see right here after the curse is a merciful
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intervention filled with grace and compassion.
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Isaiah puts it this way. God gives us a crown of beauty
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instead of ashes, oil of joy instead of mourning.
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Even in the curse, he says he's planning beauty.
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Imagine your child touching the stove.
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Some of our children love to learn the hard way.
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Yeah, you could just let him do it.
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Go ahead, Let's see what happens.
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Again. I wonder if you're going to get
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burned. Or you could create consequences
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that protect them from greater harm.
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God allowed pain. He allowed struggle and death
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not as a cruel punishment, but as a built in alarm system where
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he's waving his arm screaming. This is not how life is supposed
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to be. Come on.
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Every struggle, every struggle you face, every injustice you
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see, every moment of pain, it's all pointing towards the same
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direction, the same truth. We are broken.
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You guys feel that we are broken and we need a fixer.
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We need a fixer. This brokenness is extending
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over hundreds and hundreds of years.
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Throughout history, God has sent prophets to show us something
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profound that life. Without God trying to navigate
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through the laws and the rules and the guidelines alone, this
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will never work. But here's the beautiful thing.
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Each time someone chooses not to follow God, that is not the end
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of the story, Amen? And if it was, this would be a
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horrible story. This is where God's beauty is
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revealed like no other place. He doesn't strand us in our bad
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decisions. Amen.
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As a parent, I can't tell you how many times I've told my
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children to listen. It's amazing how many times you
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can tell a three-year old and a five year old to do something
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and it never even gets close to being done.
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I can't tell you how frustrating it is to walk, to watch them
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make choices over and over and over again, knowing that those
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aren't good for them. Even when they stop listening,
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even when they don't want anything to do with my wife and
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I, we continue to love them, many times to the point of
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exhaustion. Parents, you exhausted.
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But here's God's beauty. He never gets exhausted.
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He continues even in our bad decisions.
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When a person turns from Him, he doesn't abandoned them.
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He doesn't walk away from their mistakes.
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He doesn't leave them in their sin.
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His love becomes a gentle pursuit, constant, not a
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forceful demand, but a patient and enduring presence.
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He continues to offer us chance after chance to accept Him, to
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accept His grace. This, this is the profound
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beauty of God. This is the profound beauty of
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his character. He meets us not at our best, but
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He meets us at our lowest, reminding us that we are not too
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far gone, that His love will still reach us.
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Even when it's horrible out there, God is still there.
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He's still bringing us up. Our second point for today is he
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creates comfort from chaos. He creates comfort from chaos.
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When first, when sin first entered the world, humanity, we
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fell so hard it looked like game over.
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We now have death. We now have disease, we now have
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hatred. Everything was disconnected.
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Our direct relationship with God had been severed.
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Death entered because SIM separated us from the source,
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the source of life, and that was God himself.
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With this connection severed, spiritual death was immediately
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immediate. It just happened, Done.
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And then physical death was inevitable hatred emerge.
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It cultivated, It came from our brokenness and a relationship
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with God. And every relationship after
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that was fractured. The love that should be
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naturally flowing from us, knowing that we are loved by
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God, was replaced by fear, jealousy, desperation, all
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breeding, suffering. But God.
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But God. God knew this was going to
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happen. You can't surprise God, He knows
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everything. He knew you before you were
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born. God's redemption plan for
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humanity pre existed, sin entering into the world.
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He knew this was going to happen, so his comfort that even
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in the middle of explaining that life without him is going to be
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bad, he's already explaining that down the road there's a
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plan to fix this. After all the lessons learned in
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life, that the world and life without God is bad, it's evil,
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it's impossible. He's still there, right here in
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Genesis 315. He announces there will be a
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fixer, A Savior, his son, Jesus. Genesis chapter 3 in the NFV
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says this. And I will put enmity between
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you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
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He will crush your head, Satan. Your head will be crushed, you
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will be destroyed and goes on, and you will strike his heel, he
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says. Satan, you will get your blows
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in. In fact, you will put my son in
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the grave, but he will not stay there forever.
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You may inflict pain, you may inflict suffering, but you will
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not win this war. This is the first gospel.
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Amen. This is the good news in the
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world that just been eternally separated from God.
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Now, I know some of you might be thinking this is just wishful
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thinking, but how do we know this is real?
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That's a great question. Look at all the alternatives
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we've already tried. We've tried education.
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We are more educated than ever. Yeah, we are more divided than
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ever. Yes, we've tried technology.
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We can instantly connect to anybody with anyone in the
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world. And yet our loneliness, our
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depression at our all time high. We've tried politics, we've
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tried political solutions, but every cycle promises that we're
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going to fix what happened last time.
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We've tried therapy, self help, medication, meditation, and all
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these things are good. They can't help, but they can't
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heal the fundamental brokenness. Every human system, every
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political solution, every technological advance, they will
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eventually real reveal the same thing that we can't fix
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ourselves. We tried, it doesn't work.
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But there's something different about Jesus.
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People don't usually lie when they know that something is
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false. The disciples went from hiding
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in fear to dying for Jesus message.
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Something changed everything. Think about that for a moment.
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Humanity disobeyed God. He did they we did exactly what
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we were not supposed to do. God, the one who laid out
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everything, gave us everything. This beautiful place, We messed
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it up. And that here is God immediately
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speaking into our redemption. While Adam and Eve are still
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covered in their shame and their failures, God already had a plan
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for their restoration. That plan, that plan is for you.
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That plan is for me. It hasn't changed.
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It's still the same plan. And that rescue plan?
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His name is Jesus. All right, take a second flip
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all the way over to Romans chapter 8.
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I'll let you take a second. Get there.
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We're going to be with Paul, Paul who's gone through a lot of
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things. He's going to help us get
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through this. Our Third Point for today is he
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ransoms rebels to righteousness. Let me say that again.
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God, he ransoms, rebels to righteousness.
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The gospel tells us that the summit of man did not come to be
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served. Jesus, He did not come here to
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be served, but he came to serve and to give his life as a ransom
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for many. This word ransom he used to mean
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paying for someone else's debt. Jesus paid our debt with his
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blood. It was the price required to
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free rebellious humanity from the bondage of sin and the
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penalty of eternal death. He ransoms rebels from
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righteousness. Life can absolutely be a wreck
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at times. Whether it's losing a loved one,
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whether it's your dreams falling apart, you have chronic pain,
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you're battling depression, financial ruin, or just living
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in a broken world. Suffering is real and it hurts
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like hell. Jesus himself told us in this
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world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the
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world. That's not denial of your pain,
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that's not denial of your suffering.
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That's not denial that it is really bad out there.
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That is promise of victory. Romans 8, verse 18.
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Paul starts with the bold statement.
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He says For I consider that the suffering of this present time
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are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to
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us. He tells us that our current
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pain has an expiration date. This will not last forever.
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Amen. What's coming next is so
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incredible that it makes everything that you're looking
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at small in comparison. Now this isn't a guy that's in
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the ivory tower. This is Paul who's been beaten 3
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times, who's been shipwrecked 3 times.
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He's been imprisoned, he's been in stoned, and eventually he's
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beheaded, martyred for his faith.
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He knew suffering. He knew it intimately.
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He needed us to realize that knowing God, have a real
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relationship with God, pulling our full trust in God, allows us
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to endure pain and suffering, Paul discovered.
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When you put your current suffering on one side and then
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God's glory on the other side, there is no comparison.
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For those of you have been walking with Jesus for a long
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time, you know this isn't theology.
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This is life experience. You've seen that.
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You've seen God taking the worst moments, the biggest problems,
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the things you just don't know how we're going to get resolved.
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And you see God weaving his way and making them into something
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beautiful. Yes, this is not a coincidence.
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That's the fixer at work. Even when you can't see him,
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even when you don't know what's going on, he is there.
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He is involved. He is working in our lives.
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It's like comparing a paper cut to winning the lottery.
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A bad day versus a lifetime of paradise, a temporary haddock
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for eternal joy. The ratio is so overwhelming.
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It's so one sided that changes have you see every current
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situation and you and I, we're not the only ones waiting for
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things to get better. Verse 19 says this for the
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creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the
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sons of God. Verse 22, it says, for we know
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that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains
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of childbirth until now Paul says this creation is waiting
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and eager longing and the groaning together in the pains
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of childbirth. The whole universe is like is
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like a woman in labor experiencing intense pain but
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knowing something beautiful is about to come.
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Think about that image. Childbirth is so excruciating,
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but women labor. Don't think this pain is
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pointless. She knows that it's producing
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something credible, producing new life.
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All the suffering, everything that's happening, all the
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brokenness, the injustice, it's all labor pains.
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Something magnificent is coming. It's going to change the world.
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The mountains, the oceans, the animals, even the stars, they're
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all waiting for the same thing. Verse 23.
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And not only through creation, but we ourselves, we have the
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first fruits of the spirit grown.
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And really, as we wait eagerly for the adoption of the sons,
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the redemption of our bodies as believers, as people have put
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our full faith in Christ, we're not just waiting.
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We're already a part of the victory, Paul says.
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We have the first fruits. It's like getting a taste of the
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feast before the banquets. Every moment of peace you feel,
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every experience of God's love, every answered prayer, every
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glimpse of joy. It's just a tiny preview of
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what's coming. Amen.
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Just like in the very beginning when we experienced heaven on
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earth, while we had a perfect relationship with God, amazingly
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He brings beauty from brokenness.
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His beauty is there. When sin entered the world, God
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didn't abandoned us. The pain, the difficulty, the
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brokenness, what we are experiencing serves as that
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warning sign. It points us away from sin's lie
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and towards God towards we need to find the fixer.
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He creates comfort from cast. God wasn't surprised about this.
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He wasn't surprised about humanity's fall.
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His redemption plan existed before sin entered the world and
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he's announcing that there will be a fixer.
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He says My son Jesus, he ransomed rebels righteousness.
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Jesus came not to be served, but to serve, give his life on the
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cross as ransom for so many. The entire creation is groaning
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like a woman in labor, knowing that significant change is going
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to take over the world. So how, how do we live this out?
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What do we do with this? I'll tell you #1 is to hate sin.
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Hate sin. This week I identify one area in
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your life where you've been tolerating something God calls
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destructive. Maybe it's the content you're
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consuming, maybe it's the conversations you're having.
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Maybe it's the thoughts that you're entertaining or playing
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with. Ask God to give you His heart
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because our hearts are not the same.
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His heart hates it with the Holy Hatred.
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Before our society stops accepting sin, the church has to
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stop first. Amen.
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Before it gets any better in our neighborhoods, in our schools,
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in our homes, we have to stop accepting sin.
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I'm not telling you to hate people.
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Actually, I'm asking you to love people but hate the sin.
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Don't be OK with it. Don't go along with it.
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Call it out for what it is, but please, please be gentle and be
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gracious. And if I'm being 100% honest,
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this is so easy for me to say and it's not easy for me to live
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out. The first words that come to my
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mind are often not gentle. I don't think of people in the
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best way the first time. My sinfulness of being harsh and
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cynical. Often it just flows out of me.
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I'll tell you that I would enjoy it.
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I enjoy being sharp and I enjoy being to the point and fast with
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my words. I would make excuses.
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Oh it's OK, this is how friends talk to each other.
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Even if that was 100% true, what a horrible example it is to
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speak harshly, not to be gentle, not always thinking of the best
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of someone. This week alone, I have messed
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up this so many times. I'm repeatingly apologizing for
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my sarcasm, for my cynicism, for hurting people with my words.
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And that was just on Wednesday. But that's just me, right?
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No one else falls for that sin. We don't start to hate sin by
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focusing on hating sin. This is super important.
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We don't start to hate sin by focusing on hating sin.
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We start hating sin when we fall more in love with Jesus.
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When you truly fall in love with someone, you don't force
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yourself to stop doing things that would hurt them.
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You don't. You naturally, you want to
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protect them. You want to protect what you
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love. You find yourself thinking, how
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do I not damage this relationship?
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It's not about gritting your teeth and white knuckling
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through your temptations. It's about your heart.
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It's your heart being so captivated, so captured by God
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that the thing that is controlling your life, the thing
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that's taking over you, the thing that's really messing you
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up, you start to lose your grip on it.
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This is the same truth with Jesus.
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The more we understand His heart, the more we see His
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kindness, the more we see His patience, his relentless pursuit
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of us even in our mess. That's how our hearts change.
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We stop asking, how can I avoid this sin?
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What barriers can I put up? So I stopped doing whatever it
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is. And we start asking, how can I
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honor the one who loves me so much, the one who gave me life,
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the one who gave me everything I have?
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Application #2 Live like the fixer is real.
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When you're in a time of joy, a time of peace, when you're just
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living a great life and you're excited about it, write down
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those experiences. Write them down how you felt,
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the way you felt, why you felt that way, who you felt it with.
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Put them in a journal, put them in some sort of notebook and a
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Google doc. Build a bank account of God's
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love, of the experiences that you have had with God because
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there will be a time where you're going to need to reach
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into that bank account and remember when everything gets so
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hard, when everything is bad, when you realize we still live
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in Bakersfield. Remember how you once felt loved
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by God, how He was there for you.
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Why? Why you felt loved, who you felt
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loved with. That person, that person that
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you felt loved with may be able to come alongside with you.
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If not our community groups, our ministries, they are all filled
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with people who are going through similar things, have
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experienced or are experiencing what you're experiencing.
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Don't do this alone. God gives us the body of
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believers. Look around, you guys are
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amazing. He gives us so we can come
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together. Do that Come Together
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application #3 help others find the fixer.
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I don't know about you, but I can't keep this to ourselves.
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I can't keep this to myself. We can't keep this to ourselves.
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If you look out there, people are drowning in the chaos,
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desperately trying to fix their situation, their circumstances,
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fixing with everything that they know how except the one solution
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that actually works. Your family, your friends, your
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classmates, your Co workers. They need to hear about the
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fixer. This doesn't mean being preachy
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and obnoxious. It means living so differently,
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with such hope and peace. In the middle of your suffering,
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in the middle of your your problems, in the middle of
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getting to know that you have cancer, whatever is going on in
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your life, living with joy that people can't help us.
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Why? What makes you different?
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Why are you still joyful in this situation?
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When that door is open, tell them about Jesus.
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Application #4 is find the fixer.
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Some of you have come here in this morning feeling broken,
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feeling that there's no other way, that there's no hope.
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Others have been carrying guilt and shame, thinking I have gone
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too far, I have done too many things, I've dipped too far into
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this world. I want to tell you that God,
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what God told humanity in the darkest moments, that there is a
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fixer. His name is Jesus.
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It's the same thing He's telling you right now.
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He's not looking at your failures.
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He's looking at what His Son did on the cross.
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He's not asking yourself to clean up first.
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He's asking you to trust Him with your mess, with your
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situations, with your pains, with your sufferings.
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This is the same power that the universe was spoken into
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existence with, and it's being offered to you.
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I want you to take the opportunity to start a
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relationship with Jesus. You can do that by praying what
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we're about to pray. This isn't about perfect words.
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It's not about getting the right formula.
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God just cares about our hearts and that we're actually
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surrendering to Him. You can pray this quietly.
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You can pray this silently. You can repeat after me, or you
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can declare in your own words that you fully trust in Jesus.
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But this is a moment between you and Him.
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Let's bow our heads in prayer. Right now is the time for
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someone in this room to surrender their life to God and
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tell him you're putting your full faith in Him.
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Let's pray Jesus today I choose to follow you.
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I know I'm a messed up person and lost on my own.
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I know I can't save myself. I've tried.
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I can't follow you perfectly. But I trust you to save me
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today. I give you my entire life.
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I surrender to you. I accept your love.
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I accept your peace. I accept your forgiveness of all
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my sins, all my problems. I look to you, God, Jesus, be my
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savior. Head still bowed.
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If you prayed that prayer for the very first time, would you
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be brave and raise your hand for me to see?
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I see your hand. I see your hand.
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You put your hands down in the name of Jesus, Amen.
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Listen, if you prayed that prayer for the very first time
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and meant it, something incredible just happened.
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You didn't just say some words. You stepped from death into
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life. You stepped from darkness into
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life. You went from lost to being
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found. Welcome to the family of God.
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This is just the beginning of the greatest adventure of your
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life.