Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #206 Revival in Your Home (God's Order - Part 1)

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#206 Revival in Your Home (God's Order - Part 1) · The OneCry Podcast

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  God loves order because He knows what disorder brings, and He knows what it
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  brings to your life, and He knows what happens to your home when things are not in order,
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  when they're just in total chaos and total disarray.
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  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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  The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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  Welcome to the One Cry Podcast. We are always grateful that anybody listens
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  to these, and people do. That's so wonderful.
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  In fact, what's been exciting is I think we've finished over 200 of these over the last few years.
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  And people, believe it or not, are listening around the nation and many around
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  the world. It's amazing how podcasts can just go anywhere and it just stays.
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  So you can go back and listen to it. If you find one that you like,
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  you can call a friend and say, hey, listen to episode number,
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  you know, 122, whatever.
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  And I hope you do that. I hope you invite friends because it's just a ready,
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  easy source of spiritual truth.
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  And our goal at One Cry is for a movement of revival and spiritual awakening.
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  It's happening, Holly, around the country. And we're so grateful to just play a small part in that.
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  And your listening plays a part in that.
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  The last few weeks, we have gone down a really important direction,
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  and that is how to have revival in my home, in my marriage, in my family.
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  And because the truth is, if you say, well, man, I've had a great revival.
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  God's just really changed my life. but it doesn't reflect in your home something's wrong.
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  It may be because if you knew better, you'd do better.
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  And that's what we're about in these podcasts. We want to give you some practical
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  tools about how to cooperate with God and seeing revival come to your family and through your life.
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  Sometimes we know better and we just need a reminder.
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  And sometimes we know better and we dig our heels in and we say no.
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  Well, it doesn't happen overnight. No, no. There are a lot of choices about that.
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  Oh, my stars. And we find ourselves, we've been married 52 years next week,
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  I think, or next two weeks. Do you remember what day?
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  Yes, I do. I'm not going to say it because I kind of don't remember. But it's the 16th.
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  That's right. 16th. We were in 1973.
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  We were juniors in college the summer before our senior year.
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  So there, boy, that's a long time ago. Seems like yesterday.
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  So, and God has taught us a lot. And what's crazy is what Holly was saying right
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  there. He has to teach us those same things.
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  I mean, we come back to these same truths over and over again.
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  We've got to forgive. We've got to love with the love of God.
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  We're going to talk about that in a few weeks.
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  Hopefully, we get progressively better. A little better. A little quicker.
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  Listening to the Lord. Yeah, and responding to the Lord. Yeah.
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  I would tell you that just before we go off of that to where we're going to
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  go today is you can get in habitual patterns.
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  You can get in a rut, you know, in the way you communicate and what you do and the way you respond.
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  And this is why learning as many truths about marriage and family revival is
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  important early and how critical it is to respond quickly.
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  You know, every time God convicts you, respond. Every time you learn something,
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  respond and begin to build a new pathway, a new habit, because they can get
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  entrenched in your in your home.
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  And it's harder and harder because it's become more habitual.
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  So this truth that we're going to talk about is absolutely critical.
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  Now, I used to have a deal. Holly, you remember this?
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  We had eight kids. And for 10 years, we lived in one house when all eight kids were at home.
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  Then they started peeling off to go to college and stuff. And we moved.
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  But in those 10 years, all of our eight kids lived in bedrooms upstairs and we were downstairs.
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  And that's in our house on Windy Heights.
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  And they would kind of go, they would kind of live a little bit under the radar.
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  Except that baby was in the closet. Yeah, yeah.
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  When we have a new baby, we fix the closet up in our bedroom and that was our
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  baby room, which was just a whole nother story.
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  But anyway, so, but they would live up there and sometimes we get so busy with
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  life is their rooms would kind of go under the radar and they just get a mess.
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  I mean, you know, you can imagine eight kids, what they could do to rooms.
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  And I would go up there because it was time to clean.
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  And I walk, I couldn't see the floor, you know, and I'd say,
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  oh my goodness. Well, I, over the years, I developed a genius method.
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  And the method was I would take a stack of lawn and leaf size garbage bags upstairs.
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  And I would say to them, children, today is the day of reckoning.
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  And we're going to stay here till this gets done.
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  And this bag is for trash.
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  Every bit of trash we're going to put right in here. This bag is the garage sale. bag.
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  Everything that you don't want to keep or that I deem is not worthy is going to go into that bag.
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  And then anything else will put up in its proper place in your room.
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  And this will be fun. This, you know, I kind of...
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  Lied to them a little bit. It was going to be great. But really,
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  by the end, they were loving it because they had their room back.
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  And what they loved was what I was after, and that was order.
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  There's something about order that's really refreshing.
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  Do you notice my expression here? No, I'm not even looking at you.
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  I'm not even going to look at you. This system worked real well until one day
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  with my last little daughter.
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  I don't know how old she was. Actually, it was Bethany.
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  I thought it was Jessica. Anyway, one of them. It was Bethany. Yeah.
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  And they had this habit of taking a sheet of paper and scribbling on it or doing
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  something on it and keeping them.
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  And she had it seem like thousands of just random pieces of paper.
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  Well, there were masterpieces to her, and she looked over and caught me,
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  instead of keeping those, throwing some into the trash basket.
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  And she's rather dramatic.
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  And so she said, Daddy, you're throwing away my memories.
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  I never will forget that. And so for a few minutes, I didn't, and then I did again.
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  But anyway, well, God loves order because he knows what disorder brings and
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  he knows what it brings to your life.
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  And he knows what happens to your home when things are not in order,
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  when they're just in total chaos and total disarray.
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  So you look at creation. God made it orderly. He made it diverse and beautiful
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  and different, but there is an order and a design to it.
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  Look at man and his family in the garden, and you see order.
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  They had a plan, and they worked that plan. And then the fall came,
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  and suddenly that order was lost because they're no longer listening to God and following his plan.
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  And so the truth is that God wants to bring heavenly order to our earthly chaos in our homes.
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  There's an incredible passage. It's one of my favorite passages in the Bible
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  in Colossians chapter three.
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  And it's a great passage on prayer, but it's a great passage.
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  It just teaches us how to live. And it says this in Colossians 3, 1.
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  If you have been raised up with Christ, which we have if we're true followers of Christ,
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  If we're a believer and we've been resurrected in Christ and we're new in him.
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  Keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
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  Set your mind on the things above.
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  And then to emphasize that more, he gives the negative, not on the things that are on the earth.
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  So listen to what he says. That word
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  set your mind doesn't mean to have an occasional thought about heaven.
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  It says, I want you to be looking into the heavenly realm.
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  I want you to watch what's going on in the presence of God in heaven.
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  And we can, because we have the word of God and the spirit of God,
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  and we can know the mind and the heart of God.
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  Now, he goes on to say why this is possible.
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  He says, because you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God.
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  In other words, when you came to Christ, your old life died,
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  who you were without Christ, and you have Christ and he has you and he lives
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  in you and you have a capacity you never,
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  had before. There's an old film movie that.
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  Holly and I didn't see when it came out, and I think I've seen one of the sequels,
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  just part of it, and it's called The Matrix.
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  And there was Matrix 1, 2, 3, 2000, you know.
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  And the premise of that movie is really fascinating.
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  The premise is that there's this earthly realm, and you have all these people
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  that all they have, their whole orientation is just physical.
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  What they can see, feel, taste, touch, and hear.
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  But there's another realm that they don't see, and it's a spiritual realm or
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  a metaphysical realm, you could say.
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  And in that realm, in this movie, there's good entities, beings,
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  and there's evil beings, and they're at war.
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  And these beings can be in both worlds.
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  They come down to the earth sometimes and have battles and affect men,
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  And then they go back up to their spiritual, their heavenly,
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  if you want to set like that, domain.
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  And it's such a picture of the reality of us before Christ and after Christ.
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  Before Christ, our only orientation, we're dead in our spirit.
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  And our only orientation is what we can see, feel, taste, touch,
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  and hear. But Christ comes to live in us.
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  He raises us up.
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  We have him in us, and the Bible says our life is hidden with Christ and God.
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  And where's Christ? He's seated at the right hand of God. So we literally have
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  the ability to set our mind on the things above.
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  Now, God gave us a perfect illustration of how this is to work.
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  He sent Christ. And Christ became a man.
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  He laid aside all of his rights and privileges as God. He had to do that to be the right sacrifice.
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  And then also you can read this in John 6, the New American Standard translation,
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  six times from John 5 to John 14, John 16, I think, Jesus uses this word.
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  He says, I do nothing on my own initiative.
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  You say, what? I do nothing on my own initiative. Then he says this.
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  Now, remember, he's operating as a man. What I see my father doing, that's what I do.
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  How did he see that? What I hear my father saying, that's what comes out of my mouth.
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  Well, he was a man who was living in perfect union with his father.
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  And he was setting his mind on the things above. He was listening to his dad.
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  And he says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And he says,
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  this is the way I want you to live.
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  So God wants to bring, and that's why Jesus said here, pray like this,
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  thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it's being done in heaven.
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  So we as Christians, we have the ability now to bring heaven down to earth through
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  our prayers, through the way we live, all of that. In this passage,
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  Jesus says, now don't get this.
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  Don't miss this. He says, I want you to set your mind on the things above.
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  And then in the next verses in Colossians 3, he gets real practical.
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  And he's saying, now, see what's going on in heaven? Bring that down to earth.
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  And he begins by talking about the home.
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  I remember the first time I was teaching through this passage as a pastor.
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  I thought, why does he talk about setting your mind on heaven?
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  And then he talks about the home.
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  And he says, wives, verse 18, be subject to your husband as is fitting in the Lord.
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  Husbands, love your wives and don't be embittered.
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  Children, be obedient to your parents.
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  Fathers, don't exasperate your kids so they'll not lose heart.
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  Well, the laboratory for bringing heaven down is your family.
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  And if you don't get it there, you'll probably never get it anywhere.
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  So what do we need to do to bring heaven into our home?
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  And another way to say that is to bring revival to our home.
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  Well, in the verses here, it says, Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
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  And let the peace of Christ, in which you were also called in one body,
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  rule your heart and be thankful.
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  Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you In all wisdom,
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  teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns and spiritual songs
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  and sing to God with gratitude in your hearts and whatever you do in word or in deed,
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  do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
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  giving thanks to God, the Father through him.
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  So he is clearly spelled out what his plan is.
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  And that's what heaven is. If you set your mind on the things above and you
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  just look at heaven through the word and by spirit and in prayer,
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  what you see is a heavenly father that loves his children perfectly.
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  What you see is the Lord Jesus, who is our groom, who has a bride,
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  and he loves his bride even to the willingness to lay down his life for her.
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  What you see is a bride in heaven that perfectly respects her husband and perfectly
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  submits to her husband in the most appropriate ways.
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  And what you see is a heavenly father who loves his children and who trains them and cares for them.
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  I mean, you see a family in heaven that is what God wants to bring to earth.
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  And when we cooperate with that process, we move from a home of chaos to a home
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  that has heavenly order.
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  Let's just look at this for a minute, honey, and these particular roles that give real structure.
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  And let me first say this. God wants to bring heavenly order into our earthly
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  chaos, but it always starts with you. It always starts with me, right?
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  One of the great problems in our home is we sit around and we point the finger
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  to the other end of the couch and we say, if he'd just get better,
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  if she would just pull her way, then we could have some order in this home.
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  And you don't get anywhere that way. That's a mind game you play that allows
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  you to just sit and do whatever you want to and blames the other person.
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  And I've had so many times in counseling that I started beginning my counseling
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  with couples like this. Okay, here are the ground rules.
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  And the ground rules are, are we going to be honest?
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  And secondly, you have to quit pointing to the other end of the couch.
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  You have to just look at you. This is about you. So don't use your finger.
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  I was pointing at you. I was illustrating. I was illustrating.
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  So the premise of this, if you want revival, if you don't want revival,
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  just keep blaming your mate.
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  Just keep blaming your kids. Just keep blaming your parents,
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  and you will never have revival.
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  You will continue to have chaos in your home.
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  But if you want revival and you want God's order, you look inside yourself,
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  and then you look to heaven.
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  And say, Lord, what does heaven teach me that I'm to be doing in my home?
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  Well, first of all, let's start with the husbands.
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  And first of all, it says in this passage of scripture.
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  Husbands, love your wives and don't be bitter against them.
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  Now, every time the Bible talks about what a husband's role is in the home,
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  God always says love. But it's not the word eros or the word phileo in the Greek.
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  It's the word agape, which is the God love.
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  It's that God quality that always responds in self-sacrifice.
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  And we're going to talk about that in a podcast here soon.
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  But it is a strong word. In fact, in Ephesians 5, he says, husbands,
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  I want you to love your wives just like I love the church. and gave my life for.
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  I had a group of 50 men one time on a men's retreat, and I got a whiteboard,
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  and I said, Okay, I want you to,
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  guys, let's just think together all the ways that Jesus loved his disciples.
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  And they kind of sat there looking at me, and then I prompted a little bit.
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  They got going, and we ended up writing, I think, 40 ways.
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  He spent time with his disciples. He stayed at night praying for his disciples.
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  He sacrificed for his disciples. He took the brunt for his disciples.
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  He led his disciples. He taught his disciples.
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  And ultimately, he was a cross for his disciples.
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  And then I looked at those men. We were just listing these things.
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  And I said, okay, I want you to look at those things.
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  In every way, it's listed there.
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  That's the way I'm to love my wife. Boy, it got dead silent. I would imagine. Yeah.
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  But it's true. And that's why he only had to use one word, you know,
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  because that's what that word means.
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  And then the little qualifier, like I love you, just like I love you,
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  you're to love your wife.
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  Then he says something else here, and don't be bitter towards them. And that's really...
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  Why did he say that? He could have said a thousand things. Well,
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  bitterness comes when we feel like in some ways we've been hurt or wronged and
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  we get unforgiveness in our heart toward our mate or towards anybody.
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  But bitterness comes when we hold on to that.
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  And it grows and grows and grows. And it becomes Hebrews talks about a root
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  of bitterness that always springs up.
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  In other words, you can't push it down and it's all going to manifest itself.
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  Always springs up, always causes trouble and always defiles many.
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  In other words, bitter people, hurting people, hurt people.
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  And so what he's saying is when you've been hurt legitimately by your mate,
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  or when you feel like you've been hurt by your mate, you've got to learn how
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  to instantly forgive and not hold that.
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  And you've got to be quick on forgiveness or you'll get bitter.
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  And as a husband, if you get bitter towards your mate, you can crush them.
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  You know, you can be an unbelievably destructive force in your home.
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  So the one side is the positive, love them aggressively.
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  The other side is the negative.
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  Don't let bitterness root in your heart.
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  And if you look up in heaven, you see a husband, Jesus, with his bride,
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  the church, and he loves them perfectly.
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  And he forgives them completely and fully.
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  And let me just pause right here and say to every man in this room,
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  whether you're married or not.
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  Are you willing to love your mate, whether it's your wife or it's maybe a future
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  mate that you might have?
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  Love them with the love of Christ. Now, you can't do that without Christ and without his help.
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  But you can do all things with him.
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  You can love them regardless. You can love them in spite of anything.
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  And are you willing to lead the way in quick forgiveness in your home, quick forgiveness,
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  and so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and harms everybody in that home?
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  That's how you begin to bring heaven to earth.
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  That's how you begin to see a revival in your home.
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  You know, I could go on, but I want to stop right there.
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  I just sense that's enough for this podcast.
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  And we're going to come back and pick this up next week.
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  And honey, we're going to talk about the rest of this for wives and for children and for fathers.
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  And but I just want to stop and I want to I want us to pray for our husbands.
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  They're listening and just for the men.
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  And I wonder if you would you would pray for that and then and then I'll pray.
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  And then we'll come back and pick this up next time, and we'll concentrate on
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  the last part of this, bringing revival in our home. Let's pray.
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  Father, I thank you that we can come to you with every single thing that we need.
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  I pray specifically for the men that may be hearing this podcast.
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  And, Lord, that you would teach them step by step to honor their wives,
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  to forgive quickly, because that is huge in the home.
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  And the children in the home will learn that by watching their dad.
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  That's right. So, Father, I pray that you would teach these men who are listening
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  how to follow you in your steps.
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  And it requires that you lay down your life a little bit and give forgiveness
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  to your wife, your children, and wherever that tension is coming from.
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  So I pray that that would happen in your life, in your home.
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  And Father, we can't love like this without looking to heaven and seeing it
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  pictured and modeled for us.
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  And then crying out to the Spirit of God who lives within us, who is love.
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  You don't just have love. You are love. And the Bible says, Lord,
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  that the love of God can be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
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  We can't work this up, particularly when somebody does an unlovable thing,
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  particularly when it's hard to love. And it is at times.
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  The Bible says, Lord, that love is the fruit of the Spirit. And so if we're
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  not filled with your spirit and walking and following your spirit,
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  we can't have the love of God.
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  So help us realize as men that if we're not loving our wife and if we're not
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  forgiving our wives, Lord, we are bringing chaos into the hole.
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  Lord, I pray that we would, as we're praying right now, we would take personal
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  responsibility. Responsibility.
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  Lord, we don't have to take responsibility for everything, but we have to take
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  responsibility for what we're responsible for.
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  And we're responsible to love and we're responsible to forgive.
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  So, Lord, if that's not happening, I pray that we would start there and we would start now.
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  And I pray that through the men on this podcast, that, Lord,
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  a revival would begin to come right to the doors of our home.
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  And I pray, Father, when we walk into our home, that our children,
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  our wife, would sense and hear and feel Jesus in us, flowing through us.
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  And Lord, they would hear the words of heaven, and they would feel the love
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  of heaven, because what we're doing is God initiated.
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  So we pray that and we ask it for your name. Amen.
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  Well, again, we're always grateful for you listening.
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  I just feel like this is a really important podcast today.
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  And I want to encourage you to, it's short, listen to it again,
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  particularly the men, and pray it through.
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  Study it in the scripture, study Ephesians 5, study Colossians 3,
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  and next week we're going to talk about the wives'
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  role in bringing heaven down and bringing heavenly order to earthly chaos and
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  the children's role and the father's role as they teach the children.
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  So I hope you join us and I hope you tell other people about the podcast and we'll see you next time.