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Midterm Mayhem - What should my response be? · Quiet Time Conversations | Practical Discipleship

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, for those who are angry and upset and fearful about the midterm results, this is who that's for.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: First, I want to say we are in this world, but we are not of this world.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know we live in it and we live among it.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that the laws they make will affect us as well.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I just want to remind you, we are in the world, we are not of the world.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: If we are Christians, we live in the kingdom on this earth.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We live in God's kingdom on this earth.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in the same way that you had the Israelites and the Gentiles, we have the Christians and those who are not, right?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Israel, when they were obeying God and they were doing all the things that he asked them to do, his hand was over them and they were in peace.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Gentile nations around them were not in peace.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: They were in war, they were in famine.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Everything was happening with those Gentile nations, but when Israel did what God asked them to do, his hand was on them and they had peace.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now that goes for every circle of my life, starting with just me.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: If I am doing what the Lord has asked me to do, and I'm just talking about what he says in the Bible, I'm not talking about the Lord came to me at night and said, This will be your ministry.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm referring to right now.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying in the Bible, in the New Testament, how did they tell me to act?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing that to the best of my ability.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: As long as I'm doing that and I'm not in bitterness and I'm not in unforgiveness and I'm not in anger and I'm not sinning, I'm not actively sinning, the Lord's hand is on me as a person.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am covered, me as a person.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's my, maybe my marriage is the next biggest circle, or the next bigger circle is my marriage.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: If we are having a marriage in the way that the New Testament tells us to have a marriage, God is on our marriage.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are protected from things, and then it goes even bigger to my family, and I pray over my kids, and so it's a bigger circle.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then a bigger circle might be my small group, and then a bigger circle might be my church, and a bigger circle is my city.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So in each of these circles, this is just my opinion, just so you know.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: In each of these circles, you can be blessed or not blessed based on what that circle is doing, all the way up to the country and up to the world.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every region, because you can look around and see some families are blessed, some are not.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are blessed, some are not.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Some countries are blessed, some are not.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can just see blessing and not blessing.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it all over the place.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it all goes back to what did God ask us to do?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who did he ask us to be?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: What has he asked us to do?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are we doing those things?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I say that to say this.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: My family and my house can be blessed even if lawmakers aren't making good decisions in my area.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still blessed.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord reminded me, He's my foundation, not my state, not the Senate or the House or the President.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's my foundation, he's my provision, he's my protection, he's my deliverer, he's my defender.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And what surprised me was I didn't know that I had put so much trust in my in my state.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that I had put so much trust in my state.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when that trust was gone, I left me flailing a little bit.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't even, I said, thank you for showing me that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I did not even know that I had put so much trust in people over him.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I had done.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So during COVID, panic.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There was panic everywhere in the United States, just panic.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: In my house, there was peace.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was no panic.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: There was peace.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is what we cannot do.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot use our mouth or our social media to hate on the other side who won, who didn't win.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can't do that.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: We are called not to do that.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the New Testament says, pray for those who are in authority so that you may live in peace.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: There is something spiritual that happens when you pray for those that are in authority.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: There are still people.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And scripture also says that the king's heart is a river in the hand of God, and he moves it where he wishes.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: The king's heart, and the king is also that's also president.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's also president.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to believe, we have to trust God more than we're trusting the president.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: His heart is a river in the hand of God.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: That means God is making some of these decisions.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And why?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a really good question.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's because his church went back to sleep.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: The church was so comfortable, they just kind of slipped right back into sleep and they went right back into the culture.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he wants us to be apart from the culture.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: We are supposed to live in his kingdom, not in that kingdom.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So who knows?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and there's also, you know, things are being set up for end times that are coming at some point.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's happening too.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God is going to do things that we sit here and go, what, what?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is he doing?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: The enemy is not in control.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: God is in control.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: He is.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: But whether or not I have peace depends on him whose um God gives what oh, what's the scripture?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: God keeps him in perfect peace whose mind is steadfast.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, how do we get peace regardless of political parties?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless, how do we have peace?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Our mind is steadfast on the Lord.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we get peace.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's right there, it's there for the taking.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it takes some repenting because we've been angry and we've been bitter, and maybe we've even been raging.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we do that because of fear.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: We do that because my way of life is being threatened.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes this side feels it, and the next time the other side is gonna feel it, and we act out of that fear.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, God has not given us a spirit of fear.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: That means that's that's outside of me.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: That spirit of fear is outside of me, and it is whispering horrible things to me.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it gets me so riled up that now I say things that that I shouldn't be saying.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I have authority, I have spiritual authority in my mouth and in my words.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm using that authority to beat up and abuse a political leader, nobody got helped.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can't use Satan's tools to get God's result.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I can't hate this political leader and God will suddenly step in and go, okay, I'll fix this.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how that works.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And where is the scripture?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where it is, but I've got it highlighted somewhere in my Bible that if you take your own wrath on someone, God now won't.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So don't leave vengeance to the Lord.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you take your own vengeance on somebody or something, now God won't.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: He will step back.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna do it because you took your own vengeance.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not our job to take vengeance, no matter how upset we are.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to pray for them and to love them like Jesus said.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Love your enemy.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's agape love.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is to lay your life down for your enemy.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a shocking?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's as shocking today as it was the day Jesus said it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's shocking, but that's what he asked us to do.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I say you're blessed because you're doing what the New Testament told you to do, that's one of those things.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Love your enemy.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: They will know us, I think Paul said, by our love.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Someone said that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: They will know us by our love.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to the testimony of a woman who was Muslim and she's now Christian, and she said the thing that caught her attention was how loving the Christians were.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: They were loving, they just loved her, even though she was full-on Muslim.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: They just loved her, and that's something she didn't experience in her own religion.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, God was loving.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Allah is not.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's not loving.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's not one of his characteristics.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: They will know us by our love.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are not going to make brownie points for the Lord by saying mean, rude, hateful memes on Facebook, calling out the other person is horrible.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Those political ads, they're awful.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're just awful.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't watch any of them anymore.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't listen to a word any of them say, whether it's my side or the other side, because they're all quite horrible.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can't tell me your good attributes on one of those ads.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't tell me the good things that you've done.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to tell me the absolute horrible things that the other person has done.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have to respond in kind.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just out.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm kind of out on the whole thing.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the kingdom.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I will continue to vote what I what God's morals are in in the New Testament.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'll vote that, but I'm not, I don't think I'm a political party anymore.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on God's side.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And God's telling me to pray for all of them.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's and I'm just, I want to pray for all of them and invite God's kingdom into this mess we got.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all I want to do at this point.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope, I hope something in there stood out.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I hope I didn't make everybody mad by saying that this is what I'm doing now.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do this now.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So God bless you.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.