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683 | Promise, then Plan · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast.
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With Kimberly Miller, where we believe that every man, woman,
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boy, and girl must come to Jesus just like the woman at the well in John chapter 4.
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Our highest priority is helping you experience the reality of God in your everyday life.
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Whether you're listening in our app, on your favorite podcast platform,
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are on our website at watwm.org.
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We invite you to sit down with us as we open the scriptures to learn more about
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who God is and to strengthen your daily walk.
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In this conversation of the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast,
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join Kim Miller and Erica Close in a conversation as we walk with Jesus.
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In today's conversation, we are chatting about what life looks like when we
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choose to live lives fully obedient to God's plan.
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Well, hello all, and thank you so much for joining us in this podcast of Woman
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at the Well Ministries. I'm Erica, and I am here with Kim.
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Hello, and we appreciate you listening so much, and pray that God touches your
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heart and mind as you are listening to our conversations and our podcasts and
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that it just inspires you and motivates you to get in the word.
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There's so much, even in the lessons that we've heard all of our lives,
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there's so much God has to teach each of us. Absolutely. I love,
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Kim, that you mentioned the lessons that we've heard our whole lives.
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So if you are a regular listener to Women at the Well Ministries,
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you have heard that in the last month or so, a few weeks or so.
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That Kim's messages on our Monday podcast have been very much around,
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these Bible stories that we know, accounts that we've heard,
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you know, probably throughout our whole lives in Sunday school and vacation Bible school.
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And they are accounts that are sometimes just so familiar to us that we might,
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gloss over them because their familiarity might.
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Erroneously make us think we've got them and we know all the lessons in them.
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But one of the things that has been so amazing to me in this last chunk of podcasts
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that we've done is that there is so much more in what we would call these quote
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unquote common accounts,
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than what many of us are familiar with.
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So if you are a regular listener to our podcast, you would have heard Monday's
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podcast, which was number 682.
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It was called The Wall's Fall. And
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in that podcast, Kim took us on a study through Joshua 6, 1 through 27.
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And if by chance you haven't listened or by chance you haven't read that in
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a while, I would just recommend that you pause right here and grab your Bible
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and take a read through that.
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But that account is one that probably is familiar to us.
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As the Israelites are getting ready to enter the promised land,
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before they can do so, they basically have to conquer Jericho.
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And they walk around the city for six days.
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And on the seventh day, they shout and they blow the trumpets and the walls fall.
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And that sounds so simple, but oh my goodness, there is nothing simple about that.
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So Kim, I wanted to talk about some of the things that you brought up in Monday's
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podcast, because I think that they are things that really apply to our lives
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and they could use a second chat.
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So one of the first things I just wanted to talk about is this idea that God's promise is.
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Generally, usually, pretty much always, precedes the plan.
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All of his plans are predicated on his promises. We get the promise,
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and often then we get the plan. We don't know how something's going to work,
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and yet we know the promise.
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Because the promises are written of old, and they're relevant for today.
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I think probably an easier way for me to understand what I think you're trying
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to say is that we get the assignment,
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and we have to count on the promise we know from the Word of God that that assignment is right,
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doable, and will result in God's will for our life.
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But what I found, just to add a little bit more to what you're saying,
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the plan he gives me, I think probably maybe once in my whole life, maybe twice,
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in my whole life of all the plans that I've had him lay out before me,
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only two of them made any sense.
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There have been some I didn't, I mean, I had to like sit with him to understand
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what he was asking me to do because my mind was so anti what he was saying.
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Like, not because I didn't want to do what God said, but because I could not
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believe what he was saying. I had to be getting it wrong.
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It was so like not what I thought he was asking.
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So I think that understanding the promises of God and a good place to start
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is the Hebrews 13, 5, I'll never leave you nor forsake you.
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And then throwing in those Philippians 4s, he's going to give us the strength
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and the power and all the things that we need to get it done.
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Helps us with the plan. But if you don't understand the character of God,
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the unusual plans are going to be difficult for you to believe.
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And for some people, it's not just like, I don't want to do this,
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God, you're telling me to do something stupid. For most of us,
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it's, this cannot be what he's saying. I'm getting it wrong.
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Like, I don't understand what he's saying.
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I think for the most of us, especially those who do love the Lord, that's what it is.
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But in the very beginning of your walk with Christ, your knowledge of him is
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less, and his ask is also less, because to whom much is given, of much is required.
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I think that's a really important thing, and I think that we should just sit there for a moment.
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But as we get to know him better, he does ask different things of us.
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It's a relationship one has with the Lord. And I think that's something people forget.
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God gives us a relationship with him and he washes us white as snow and his
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blood engrafts us into the family of God.
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But your relationship with God is 100% dependent upon the development you have
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of getting to know him. He knows you perfectly. Right. He loves you perfectly.
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He's always there. He does not hear me well here.
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He does not have to develop anything because he has already developed it perfectly.
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You have to develop the relationship with him just like you do your friends.
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There are things I'll ask you to do now that I wouldn't ask you to do 21 years ago. Right.
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When I picked you up off that airplane, I wasn't asking you for nothing.
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And now, just yesterday, we had to divide and conquer to get something done for our ministry.
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And so God works very much the same way.
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He's a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Lazarus and Martha and Mary,
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he referred to them as his friends.
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So this God we serve, who was fully man and fully God, time.
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Also has a full relationship with us.
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And just like you develop it with a human you can see and hear,
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you develop that by spending time in his word and speaking to him.
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And the more you know him, the more you love him.
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Now with people, that might be different. Sometimes.
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But with Jesus, I promise you, the more you know him, the more you're going to love him.
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Absolutely. And the The more you know him, even when his plans don't make sense,
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the promises will hold you in. Right. Because you have faith in him.
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And as a human, we tend to look at our circumstances and they have a much bigger
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weight than they should. Because they really should have no weight.
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Because our circumstances do not change who God is in any way.
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Or as our governor would say, former governor would say, in any form or fashion. Former fashion.
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It doesn't change anything whatsoever.
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In the good days, he's got the same character as he does in our bad days,
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as he does every day in between.
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But we are different. Humans are fickle, and we are moody, and we are, you can just wake up.
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On the wrong side of the bed. Correct. And so, you know, nothing changed in
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the night. You just got up, and you decide you're going to be cranky.
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Or it just happens. But God is always the same. Yesterday, today,
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and forevermore. And about that, I love that.
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You're never going to call up a prayer to Jesus and him just say, I'm sick of you.
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I'm not talking to you today, which we shouldn't do that to people either,
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but we kind of do. We don't say it, but we just say, I cannot talk to that person one more time today.
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You know, but he doesn't do that.
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And so he's perfectly in tune with what we need.
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And we need to learn who he is, how he behaves in certain situations or instances,
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how he would handle a situation, because we are to be more like him and we can't
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be more like him unless we know who he is. Amen.
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You know, to come back to circumstances, because you talked to him on these
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podcasts about this idea of filtering,
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circumstances, and you made this really great contrast where you said we don't
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filter God's promises through our circumstances.
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We filter our circumstances through God's promises. That's huge.
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It is huge. And I think so often the first one is what we do.
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You know, God promises something and we just look at our circumstances and we
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say that can't be possible.
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And there's no faith in that. And we get mad at him because it didn't go the
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way we wanted it because we want all these things in our life to change,
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but we don't want to change.
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And we want all these blessings, but we don't want to work. And we want all
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these things to happen in a certain way, but we're not willing to obey.
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And so when a circumstance happens, instead of knowing, hey,
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this is God. This is what he has planned for my life. This is what he wants.
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He's with me. He's going to get me through.
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I'm not meant to stay here. It's not my pool of Bethesda. I'm going to get through it.
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But instead, we're like, well, how could you do this to me?
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I thought you were blah, blah, blah. and it's generally things that's not even true.
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God is God, and that's where we just need to stop. Yeah. God is God.
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And everything about Him is right, and everything about Him is true,
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and everything about Him is for our good and His glory. Romans 8, 28.
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He loves us, and everything that is happening to us is to bring Him glory,
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and it's for our good, and we need to just stop there.
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If true faith goes no further than that, They believe we're loved.
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We believe it's right. We believe he has our best interests at heart.
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We know that every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights.
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We understand there's no condition to our love.
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We understand that there's no end to our love.
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And yet we say, how'd you do that to me?
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Basically, what we're saying, which none of us have the guts to do,
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is who do you think you are?
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Do you know who I am? That's what you're saying when you question his instructions and his plan.
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That's a scary question. But it's exactly what you're doing.
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Because you're placing you as you're placing yourself as the Lord of your own life.
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And you're placing your judgment above his. Like, I know what's best.
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We don't have a clue what's happening the next second.
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I sometimes don't know what's happening in the moment. Absolutely. You know.
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One of the things that I think that we can land on there is that,
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you know, for every circumstance, you know, some part of God's character is
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the perfect answer for it.
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You know, when we're talking, like when you talk about like the names of Christ,
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right? You know, Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father.
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Prince of Peace. Right? Like all the things, like when we think about all of
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those names and all of the.
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Characteristics of God, for any one of our circumstances, He is the answer.
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I find that when I am, you know, praying now, you know, if I'm praying for healing
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for someone, the request is preceded by, I know you are the great physician.
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Will you, you know, heal this person.
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Or if I'm praying for someone who is in, you know, emotional distress,
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you know, we know you are the counselor, you know, counsel this person.
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And I, you know, I think you're the provider, provide for this need,
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you know. Jehovah Jireh. Right.
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Like when we, it demonstrates our faith when we tell God that we know who he
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is before we ask him for something.
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Listen, man, God told Joshua that he already had the city.
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He had the king and he had the people.
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But even before that, he told Rahab, when we come and take the city,
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we'll take you with us if you have the spots.
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That's before they even got on the ground. Right. So they knew they were gonna
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have the city even before that because of the promise with Rahab.
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But I don't think anybody believed it when it got the edge of the wall.
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Well, you know, one of the things in Monday's message you talked about,
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you know, faith is when you keep going when nothing's happening, right?
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They had six days of nothing's happening. I really appreciated that you said
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in there, you know, on day five, you would have really expected,
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it was three, you really would have expected like chunks to start falling out of the wall.
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Cracks in the wall. I mean, I would have expected some sense of instability
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well that's the thing like when we think about our human selves like when we have to go.
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You know, if we have to move a pile of dirt, right, we've got to do it a shovel full at a time.
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That's how earth works, right?
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If we're going to go do something, God doesn't need incremental activity to get his work done.
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But I would have needed the incremental activity to have had the faith remain, I'm afraid.
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These people saw nothing. And they kept going.
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As if it was the same first day they had done it.
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And they shout before the walls come down.
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I mean, it's an incredible faith. Shouting was the obedience, right?
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Their victory came from their obedience. It wasn't that they got to see that
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and then shout, but the shout and the blowing of the trumpets,
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that was part of the plan.
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You know, I was thinking as I've been studying this passage for a while,
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how I would have been in the march.
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Like I'd have been uber excited in the march.
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And again, I'm thinking I would have thought, okay, by the third time around
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on that seventh day, the ground should tremble.
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Something should be happening. I should start to see something going on.
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I mean, something should shake, something should. By the seventh time,
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I hope I would have been so overjoyed that I couldn't have contained myself.
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But I'm afraid that coming around the end of six and starting seven,
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I'd have been, something better happen soon because it's not looking good for us. Yeah.
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And I wonder what the people inside the walls thought.
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Honestly, I would imagine, I mean, Jericho was such a fortified, strong city.
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No, I think they would have heard it, but you had to know that there were people
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on the wall, right? There were always watchmen on the walls.
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And I'm certain, you know, the first day, you know, the watchmen would have
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known, you know, the second day they would have told, you know,
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everybody they knew, you know, hey, there's this crazy group of Hebrews like
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marching around the city.
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I feel like it would have become almost a spectacle and people would have been
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watching. Which would have made it even harder to be patient and wait upon the Lord.
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Because they would have been being laughed at. How often have you—I don't even need to ask this.
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How often have you been laughed at for doing the will of the Lord?
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I'm just—you don't even need to answer because it's a lot.
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I feel like it's constant. But, you know, I think all of our listeners,
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too, so often, you know, we have done things in obedience and holy cow, we might get questions,
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but sometimes we just get laughed at.
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And sometimes that stops us.
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But it did not stop. Nothing stopped them short of doing God's complete will for their life.
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And I will forever be changed having Sidonap for as long as I did to work through this message.
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I'm telling you, there is power in complete obedience. There's power. Absolutely.
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There were a couple of things that you said that really kind of struck me.
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And you said that the silence that they heard, and that would mean the silence
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of God in that, as they were marching around for multiple days.
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Well, they were told to be silent and not use their voice for anything. They were just silent.
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They didn't say anything, but also there were no tumbling rocks,
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right? Like nothing was happening. I think God was speaking to them.
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And that's in their hearts. I do. Yeah.
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But the silence demanded that they develop the discipline to trust.
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And I think that's important for us. And to wait to hear. So often we have to
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wait to hear for certain things. Like we have to wait.
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But I'm too busy talking about it to hear what he says sometimes.
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And we can't do that, right?
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Sometimes he asks us to do things, and then we may not get step two for a while,
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but that doesn't mean we don't continue step one.
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But you know what it also kept them from doing?
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If they were going to follow him completely and not use their voice to say anything,
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they couldn't complain.
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They couldn't complain. When they stumbled over a rock or somebody in front
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of them was going too slow, they couldn't complain. There was complete unity.
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That's really good. That's a really good point. We might not want to complain
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so much. God might shut our mouths.
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That's really good. I thought about that. It's just they could not complain.
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And they never questioned him.
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That's what it says. They never questioned him. But, you know, they,
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speaking anything that would have been outside of the unity of what God commanded
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them to do, would have been a detraction to the people on the wall watching
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or would have put discord among the group.
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And so the silence took care of that i want to just go back to that phrase you
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said outside of the unity and in that situation it was the unity of those who were marching,
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that whole group were in unif they were unified but how often,
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do we follow the lord in something,
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but we are not silent so it's i'm going to follow the lord in this thing,
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and then we kind of but it might be hard and we
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gripe and complain about it and we talk to other people about it and we're like
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oh the lord's telling me to do this thing and i'm doing it and this is hard
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and this has happened and this has happened and this has happened,
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and we kind of gripe and complain our way through it.
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That does not demonstrate unity between us and God. Amen.
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You know what else? That's an ouchie.
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The other thing about that is how many times have, I call them dream squashers.
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How many times has God given you something and somebody's negative voice has
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stopped you from doing it or certainly delayed you?
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That is a problem. None of that was going to happen because God silenced their voice.
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And they couldn't. But they agreed to that. They did it. He didn't take their voice away.
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Right. But they were in unity with each other. And with him. And with him. Yeah.
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And I think. That's why you got to band with people who are banded with him.
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Absolutely. But I don't know. I'm just going to go back to that.
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If we're in unity with something he has asked us to do, there really doesn't
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need to be a lot of discussion about it. God said it, it settles it.
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You don't need everybody else's. Remember, they did not modify or come short of the plan God gave.
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And so often when we ask other, talk to other people about, we're seeking validation, right?
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We want people to affirm that what we've heard is wrong. You don't have to do
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that. Or that it's, that it's, or you want them to just tell you you're right.
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Or how great you are because you're following God's command,
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which is your reasonable service, according to Romans 12, 1 and 2. Well, that's hard.
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All right. One more point. So often when we're talking about trusting God and
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faith, we allow our results to determine our faith.
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And that's not how it's supposed to go.
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We certainly stack up the results on what our faith will be after that event. Right.
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And faith is faith, right? Faith is not measured.
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Evidence of things unseen right if something's not seen then it can't really
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be measured right we don't measure up our results,
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and then say you know lord i believe you because i you know see xyz there's
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evidence that builds our faith but when something hasn't happened yet,
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it does not allow us to take that yet and use it as a measure of what God has
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done and therefore how much faith we're going to place in him.
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Because God defines faith as a substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
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Faith is believing for the sake of believing, in knowing who God is and believing he cannot fail.
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Amen. I love him. I do too. And I love the process of getting to know him better.
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I love spending time on his word. Amen. Amen.
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You know, you asked us on Monday what wall is standing before you today.
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I think we all just need to sit and ponder that. Because there's always going to be some sort of wall.
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But there's also going to be a faithful God.
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Amen. Hallelujah to the Lamb. There is, there's going to be a wall.
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There's always going to be a wall, but he's always going to be there.
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And the walls come tumbling down. Amen. At the touch of the master's hand. Amen.
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All right. Well, we hope that this conversation- For the mention of his name.
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We hope that this conversation has been a blessing to you. I know it's been
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a blessing to us to have the conversation.
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And we just invite you to keep listening. Please, if this podcast has been a
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