Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 13, 2020 | UNCOMFORTABLE - Discipleship

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September 13, 2020 | UNCOMFORTABLE - Discipleship · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, folks.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Don't we love these things?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: These are great, aren't they?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's good to see you this morning.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Mulvain Building, College Building Online in uh various ways.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: We live in uncomfortable times, and uh they're only going to get more uncomfortable as we approach November, right?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh I've come to you uh on the second Sunday of our five Sunday series, Uncomfortable, to remind you, as I did last week, that we uh that we have an uncomfortable religion as well, that Christianity is not a religion that's full of comfort.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: C.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis put it this way.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I didn't go to religion to make me happy.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I always knew a bottle of port would be that.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, comfortable, comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So last week we started with uh uh so we're gonna talk about five things that make us really uncomfortable in Christianity during this series.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Last week it was the gospel, it was the uncomfortable grace of the gospel, which opposes our natural, comfortable feeling that we are accepted by God based upon what we do.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Today it's discipleship, which is sort of an insider world for uh insider word for following Jesus Christ.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you about that from the most famous passage on that idea, Luke chapter 9.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a cell phone, if you have an actual literal Bible, or if you have a great memory, uh feel free to not turn there.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the important verses on the screen from the New International Version, which is the same, by the way, the same version, which, uh, unless you're at home, is right in front of you underneath the pew.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, here in the Mulvaine building.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus said this.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: He said, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed on the third day and be raised to life.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let me uh the statement by Jesus and the ones that follow are so uh important that they are repeated three times in the New Testament and the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, at the very hinge of each gospel.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: You may not have known that the gospels had hinges, but they do.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you the story, the backstory about this.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, before this statement, Jesus has been staying up north in Israel in the region uh called Galilee, or if you're overseas today, it's called Hagalilee, the Galilee.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in Israel, that's what they call it, the Galilee.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he has just completed his two most uh public miracles, the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And his popularity is now at its peak.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Many, many, many people have believed in him, and many, many, many people are following him around, whether just to get food or because he's a rock star.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the disciples would have been happy to keep following, uh uh traveling around with their rock star of a miracle worker for the rest of their lives.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus knows that his time up in Galilee now is pretty much finished.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: His work is pretty much finished.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's left for him to do is to go down south to what's called Judea, where the capital of Israel is, which is Jerusalem, and he now needs to die for the sins of the whole world, which is the main reason he's come to earth.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So our story here actually begins with Jesus saying that he has turned his face south toward Jerusalem.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Jewish religious leaders who resent him, who fear him, who hate him, who are jealous of his popularity, who want to silence him permanently.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, it says that Jesus now intends to take his disciples south and make this journey to Jerusalem, and he will in the next couple of chapters.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he knows that he's gonna die on a cross there, but because these are his friends and his closest followers, and this is not something he's ever made clear to them, he now decides he's not going to hide this fact from him, from them, but he's gonna tell them the bad news, which will shock them.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: The bad news that he's going to suffer and die.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But first, they need to know the significance of this, who he really is, that he's more than just a miracle worker, okay?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's clear from a really recent incident earlier in the chapter on the Sea of Galilee that the twelve really still don't have a clue as to who Jesus is, that he is more than a miracle worker, that he's actually the Son of God, that he's the King and Supreme Lord of all, the Lord even over Caesar and over all of those pagan Roman gods.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he Jesus decides instead of going south first, he will take them up north to the very northern border of Israel.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So he takes them on a 40-mile hike, a three-day hike, north from the Sea of Galilee, all the way to the northern border of Israel, to the base of the great mountain called Mount Hermon, to a pagan city named after Caesar called Caesarea Philippi, where a mysterious dark river gushes from the bowels of the earth out of a black cave, which seems like, you know, every one of the supernatural vampire movies put together today, okay?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's just they don't understand where it comes from.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: They think it comes from Hades there, and so right around where that river gushes out of the black cave, they have erected a dozen glorious temples to pagan gods and to Caesar.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And right at that spot, Jesus has his 12 disciples around him, and they're staring at this heart of darkness, shall we say?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he turns to his disciples, surrounded by people who are worshiping and sacrificing to Caesar, and he asks them, Who do people say that I am?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they told him, told him, People think you're a miracle worker, a prophet who's a miracle worker.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, Who do you think I am?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Crickets.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then Peter spoke up.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You're God's Messiah, God's anointed, the one God has anointed and sent as king, the son of David, to rule the world in peace from Jerusalem.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge statement.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, at the end of the Gospel of John, that believing that alone will get you eternal life.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Jesus says, but I need to tell you something then.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And now for the first time, he lays out the bad news.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: He tells them, okay, now we're going to head south to Jerusalem, but I'm not going there to rule the world in peace.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going there to suffer and to be killed and arise on the third day.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's plan, that's God's will, and I must do it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's essential for me to do it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says this, and then he turns to them and he says, in these famous four verses, uh, which we could call the cost of discipleship, that's our theme today.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says, then Jesus said to them all, whoever wants to be my disciple must, same word really, must do something themselves.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, literally it says, Whoever wants to follow me.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the NIV says disciple, which really means the same thing as follows.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about being not a believer, a Christian.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about being a Christ follower.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: How do you become a genuine Christ follower?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do you become a true disciple of Jesus?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he says it takes three things.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says, whoever wants to be a disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about suddenly getting really uncomfortable.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Up till now, at this moment, they've thought after defeating the 4,000, 5,000, and having him agree that he's God's anointed and he's gonna come rule the world in peace and all that stuff, and he's more important than all of these gods and pagan gods and Caesars.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're thinking they're on top of the world, and all of a sudden he flips it and says, No, I'm gonna die, and you need to follow me.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the cost of discipleship, and something that we all find terribly, embarrassingly uncomfortable.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let's tear a lot apart.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, it's three three phrases.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: The first and the third are sort of opposites.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: The first is they deny themselves.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So people, as they look at yourself, they deny themselves, and the third one is they follow me.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But he's just said they're gonna follow me basically to the cross.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we have uh they deny themselves, they follow me, and and the middle one is both of them point to the middle one, they take up their cross daily, because that's where he's going, and by denying themselves, they're saying, you know what?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do that, but I'll do it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So uh looking a little closer at that first one, people always say, what does it mean?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can find a lot of on the Google, a lot of questions.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean when Jesus says to deny yourself?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the most simple way of saying it is it's self-denyable, self-denial, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, hey, hey, it's brilliant.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got a master's degree for that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So but what it really means is is saying no to yourself and saying yes to God in specific times, in specific ways, right?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: As Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he says, I really don't want to go there.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to, I don't want to die on the cross, Father.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: But not my will, but yours.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: He denied what he wanted and didn't have enough room to write, so I squeezed it down to your body, your heart, your mind, your person says, Me want to live, me want to live for myself, me want to enjoy life.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but you deny yourself by saying, shut up and pick up the cross.
• 10:56
  unknown: Okay.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever that means specifically, and we're now gonna get into that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, and the second phrase, which is the center, is take up your cross.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: What exactly does it mean to take up your cross?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: What really is required by God when He requires full commitment, total discipleship, denying yourself, and taking up your cross.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: What did Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean in the cost of discipleship?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: In his famous statement, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect person to say it, right?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because he literally died.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Was killed by Hitler.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out, and it's very important, that salvation, let's distinguish this from how to get to heaven.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was last week.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're talking about Christian life.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Or as Billy Graham would often say in his early days, salvation is free, but discipleship costs everything we have.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's uncomfortable.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get even more specific.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Take up your cross can either refer, as it did to the early Christians and to many Christians overseas today, to literal suffering and death, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Physically, suffering as Jesus did.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, this can be literal.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: The moment Jesus said, in this gospel alone, take up your cross daily, disciples surely thought, how can I keep dying?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: You only die once.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: How can I go to my death every day?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it must be that Jesus is speaking of something that I can do every day.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so it must be a kind of self-denial, mental, emotional, psychological, repeated daily, day after day, self-denial, saying no to myself and yes to God.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you about those two things, okay?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And how we do those two things.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: From now on, we're gonna get uh kind of practical.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about the first one.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about literal suffering, physically suffering as Jesus did.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mistake.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that a very well-known Greek scholar in our country wrote a blog recently explaining this verse and never once mentioned physical suffering.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And a kid wrote in and he said, Now, you've just said it's all kinds of self-denial and so forth, but isn't it true that the first disciples physically died and that people all over the world physically died, and that millions of people down through the years have had to literally carry their cross and die?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And to his to his great credit, in this uh very popular Christian blog, he immediately wrote back and said, You're right, I'm wrong.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because many, many people, maybe most Christians down through history, have had to wrestle with the fact they might, out of persecution, literally die.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Tertullian, one of the great church fathers, early church fathers, wrote, The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And many, many early Christians, as you know, gave their lives.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let's talk about some of the countries in the world today where this is happening.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: I like to update you on this every six months or so.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am proud that our own Sam Brown back has the job of trying to help persecuted Christians, persecuted Muslims, persecuted people of all religious faiths around the world.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about China.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: The fast-growing religion in China for the last 10, 20 years has been evangelical Christianity.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: One nearly a hundred million Christians today in China.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And realizing that there are now becoming less members of the Communist Party in China than evangelical Christians, China has begun this huge systemic shutdown in the last year of all churches.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Of all Christians, you have to register, no more underground churches.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an underground church right here.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in the August 10th National Review, there is an article about the incredible shutdown and persecution of Christians happening just this summer in China.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I can I say it's not just Christians.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's shameful.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is not going to affect at all how many people go, take their kids to watch the movie Mulan, okay?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Which are you familiar with the new movie?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But several years ago, Disney, it's just that it's just that our movie makers in America are in the hip pocket of China.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: A few years ago, number five years ago or so, Disney had a comment on one of their movies that was negative towards China, and so China said, we're not gonna show that movie here in China, which is the biggest, which is the biggest uh uh clients for movies in the entire world because they're the biggest country.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna show that movie.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna boycott that movie and not allow it to be shown unless you change that.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So Disney went in and it changed it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And ever since then, it is clear that our movie makers are in the hip pocket of China.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: But the worst thing about this movie, Mulan, and again, I'm not urging a boycott.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's not gonna stop anybody.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hear it's a really good, interesting movie for kids, is that China said, yes, you can make that movie.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: You want to show it in a country.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you film part of it here in China?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And why don't you film it in this certain province, which happens to be the very province that China's being criticized for today, a province in which they have concentration camps for one to three million uh Uyghurs, it's called they're called Uyghurs Muslims.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: These are Muslims.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're in concentration camps where they're getting starved and where they're dying, where they're full-time making masks, making masks and making clothes to sell around the world.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Disney said yes, and Disney put out the movie, ignoring the fact there are concentration camps everywhere.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, this last week they are being criticized for it.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in in all kinds of major magazines.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to change the fact that the movie's gonna be number one at the box office, but but this is what China does, and China feels like it can get away with persecuting Christians and all other faiths.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: That was extra.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: But let's take Nigeria.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is a country where there's a genocide going on which has just started in the last year.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where five Christians are being targeted and killed every single day this year in China.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And here's Genocide Watch, not a Christian organization.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is the world ignoring a Christian genocide in Nigeria?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Article from last month.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's one from August the 22nd, a few weeks ago.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Nigeria, major magazine in America.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nigeria has become the world's biggest killing ground of Christians.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another International Society for Civil Liberties this year.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nigeria is a killing field of defenseless Christians.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where they're being slaughtered.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, Nigeria is about 200 million people, half of the Muslim, 100 million Muslims, 100 million Christians.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Muslims are up north, the Christians are down south.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: The killings are all going on in this middle third, right?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: This this middle area.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where Christians are defenseless, they're not fighting back, and they're being slaughtered.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nigeria, by the way, is the most populous country in all of Africa.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this major.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's, by the way, the uh it's the uh fifth largest Christian country in the world for number of Christians, and sixth largest Muslim country in the world.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's uh Sudan, country that some of us have been to a couple of times, where my brother has a church.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But but Sudan is just typical of all of the Arab countries.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Out of the 28 countries in the world that most kill and persecute Christians, out of the 28 of them, 18 of them are Muslim nations.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's Palestinian Authority.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a genocide in the Middle East, persecution gospel in Sudan.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Here's this this is this is horrible.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: A well-known African gospel singer and her friend, here's her friend.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: She the gospel singer got released after half a dozen years, were both kept in a small metal, for years kept in a small metal shipping crate in Eritrea because they both confessed Jesus Christ.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: This woman is still there after 15 years in that shipping crate.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: The other is now in Europe.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is on the cover of this week's Voice of the Martyrs magazine.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Peter.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter is a Czechoslovakian Christian who went down to southern Sudan, to the border of Sudan.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, again, Sudan Muslim in the north, South Sudan Christian on the bottom.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: He went down to the border to help out the Christians who are starving there.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: He got arrested.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: He spent a couple of years in prison there in Sudan, and he was deliberately put in a cell with three ISIS men who regularly beat him.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when he was about to die, fortunately, the prison guard let him go.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So he's survived and just written a book called Imprisoned with ISIS.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just a horrible situation.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Eritrea, which is uh just to the left, is Ethiopia.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's Sudan and then Egypt to the north.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Eritrea is also a Muslim nation.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a girl who just in the last year, senior in high school.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Sasuna.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she uh she she she her parents got divorced, they were Orthodox, uh not evangelical.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: They got, and then she she was given a Bible at age 14, a New Testament.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: She came to Christ, she got, became a fervent Christian, started an underground Christian Bible study in her school this last year.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then all the seniors, including the girls, have to go to a year and a half of military training on the first day of military.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: The guy in his fatigues, this is also in the most recent voice of the martyrs, said, Is there anyone here who is an evangelical Christian?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she's looking around and she knows there are other evangelical Christians there in her Bible study.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: They've all come from the school.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Uh, evangelical Christianity is just brought in by America at a week in Eritrea.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she stands up, and the girls around her trying to pull her down, pull her down, pull her down.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she stands up, she says, I have a Bible and I'm an evangelical Christian.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they threw in her cell.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: 15 women, a tiny little cell.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or they starved them.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: They let them use the bathroom at 6 p.m.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: every day, one time a day.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: She stopped doing it because of the way the guards were handling that and so forth.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she got weaker and weaker, so weak that when she became unconscious, they carried her to the infirmary and she fell out of the bed and broke three bones in her back.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just astounding.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, you know what?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I could have gotten free at any time if I would have just denied Christ.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: They kept saying, just deny Christ and we'll let you go free.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: But she didn't.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because she nearly died.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: She was able to get out of the hospital and walk to Ethiopia where she's safe today.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of daily.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Annual suffering all over the world.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take too long on this, but I am, I care deeply about this.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Fox News just ran a story, however, Christian persecution not just happening overseas, many in the U.S.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: targeted for their faith too.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there are stories about, and I'm sure you're aware, if there's an evangelical Christian or a Catholic who's up for a district court judge or whatever, they're getting grilled now by our Senate, right?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that uh so that in this last year, a Catholic woman who was up for a high high court position, uh, the Speaker of the House, you know, said to her, you know, the dogma runs deep in you because the woman confessed that she follows the Bible and the Bible does not sanction gay marriage.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, she was spoken against.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or there's the guy who's a who's a Catholic Christian from Nebraska, and he was up this last year for district court.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Senator Harris, you know, said, Does this mean, since you're a Bible reader, since you're a Christian, that you don't believe in abortion?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: He said, No, I'm pro-life.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and so she opposed him.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this this is this is this is what we're finding today, right, in America.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that the First Amendment is under attack in America.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: So all I'm saying is that there is literal suffering or that there is physical suffering as Jesus did.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not in America, at least not yet.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the other kind of suffering that you and I will normally face, okay?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the suffering of daily self-denial, daily picking up your cross, more mental, more psychological, more emotional, saying no to self and yes to God.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I am so proud of our church, and I'm so proud of so many people that I know of who show signs of picking up their cross every day.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of a couple of books that I'm reading this last week.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Miracles Out of Nowhere, just put out by Carrie Livgren, right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And on page 50 of this book, I was reading this week, this line.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Carrie talks about how he got miraculous encouragement when he was sort of at the end of his rope.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, he said, he, you know, he says, uh, I was hard at work on my first solo album now that they'd put out Carry on Wayward Sun, Dust in the Wind, and so forth.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: He got in himself, they'd said, We'd like a personal contract with you, put out a solo album.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he's telling about that album, and he says it was taking a toll on me.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I felt such a weight on my shoulders, I was feeling such spiritual fatigue because he said I was a new Christian.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was a new Christian, and he says, I knew that being a Christian meant going against the grain of the world, and so I was writing songs that that that were no longer despairing, but but indicating that I had found something wonderful.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a tension with the band members.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he tells about that, and then how he got a strange phone call out of nowhere when he was working on this album, and uh of someone who was passing through an airport who somehow got this number and called him, and it was one of his miracles out of somewhere.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And just reading that even as a young Christian, Kerry knew, knew that he needed to pick up his cross and follow Christ.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Knew that instead of going along in order to get along, he needed to walk the other way, right?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: That he needed to say no to easy self and yes to God.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or another book I'm reading this week, Wesley Hill's Washed and Waiting.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Wesley Hill is uh, anyway, I won't tell you all about him.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Subtitles Reflections of Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says, he says, as a teenager, I knew two things for sure.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, I loved Jesus Christ as a Christian.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, I knew that I had never had any feelings for sexual feelings or romantic feelings toward anyone except of my own sex.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: But but listen to what he writes even early on on page 16.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: This book is written mainly for those gay Christians who are already convinced that their discipleship to Jesus necessarily commits them to the demanding, costly obedience of choosing not to nurture their homosexual desires, whether through private fantasies or physical relationships.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great book.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, uh, and and if you ever want to have a discussion about it, I'll be glad to.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But but you understand, these are the daily decisions that we make, the constant decisions that we make that involve self-denial, denying carnality in ourselves, denying selfishness in ourselves, and choosing Christ.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: For, Jesus continues, whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty tricky statement.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by that, Jesus?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in context of talking about denying yourself and taking up your cross, by save my life, what it means is no cross for me, baby.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to live.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna pick up some cross, I'm not gonna go die.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas lose my life means, oh, okay.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll pick up the cross, I'll do what I don't feel like doing right now, I'll go against my self-centered wishes.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Another way of putting it is to save my life is to grip my life in order to gratify myself, whereas to lose my life means to yield my life to follow Jesus Christ.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, here's a book I have in my library by a guy named Earl Ubel.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be a apparently a popular book 25 years ago, called How to Save Your Life by changing and breaking your habits and working harder and exercising and eating and da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's that is this is the reigning view.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: In America, we want to save our lives, we want to avoid risk as much as possible, we want to live as long as possible, and we want to live it up.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in me.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: We want to have self-fulfillment, we want to be our own boss.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is what America has taught us because this is success, and that's being healthy and wealthy and comfortable.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, losing my life in the pursuit of Christ means the opposite, right?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: It means I give up protecting my life from any threats, physical or spiritual or emotional, any threats to my health and my wealth and my comfort.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I am told every day on television, I must always avoid all risks.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, wear your mask in order to protect other people, right?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or do what it takes to protect others.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do what it takes to honor Christ, do what it takes to help your children or save other people.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem we've got today is that we are being sold this bill of goods, and we're constantly sold this.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the 1980s, it was you have to you have to do everything you can to protect yourself from AIDS, because you're at danger from AIDS.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or I don't know, Y2K.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, life's gonna fall apart.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's as though somehow we're constantly hit with these fears that cause us to do whatever the people who scare us tell us to do.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because the most important thing in life in America is to be like Oprah or like Trump and to be successful and to have health and have wealth and have comfort, and I must not risk those at all costs.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: What Christ is saying here is you need to give up protecting your life from any threats to your health and wealth and comfort.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a famous preacher today whose famous line is your best life, live your best life now.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's I just I just won't say anything more about that.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, secondly, give up being my own boss.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this ties in with it, doesn't it?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a country that tells us from a very early age that you need to be self-sufficient.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You you are your life is up to yourself, therefore you need to control your life.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so much of this, by the way, that is good.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hate the victim mentality, and you do need to take charge of your life, but you are not your own boss.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you think you're your own boss, I have to be careful.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm listening to an album my son gave me right now in my car.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's totally extra.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I should just shut up.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where one of the fame one of the lines in this really cool song is I did it my way.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I hear that, I sort of twitch and almost drive off the road.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, give up my consumer church anity or my consumer Christianity, which says that I'm going to evaluate everything in life, including everything at church, based upon what I like and what's good for me, rather than rather than what's good for others.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or Christ.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Give up my pride in being more deserving.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here I'm just thinking of a story that I uh that I read about, you know, the shock that this poor woman had when she found out that the killer of her own son had come to Christ.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted to extend forgiveness to him, but then he'd come to Christ in prison, and she then found it herself unable to allow Christ to allow him to be saved.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this tendency we have to go around in life and be happy that we are more deserving and more righteous and more holy and more regular in church and more, you know, all of those things.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: But we we need to get rid of that pride.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, to give up my need to be cool.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is, of course, really common.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about cultural Christianity where all of us want to be respected and all of us want to be liked in public.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: I even do, as a as a pastor, I would rather that the newspaper write good things that nobody reads the paper anymore.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Forget that one.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was 20 years ago.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, but but that, you know, but that people think of me well.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And all of us want that, but you gotta be reminded.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is the series Hank that we did at uh family camp this year, and it was uh be weird or something like that, because Christianity is weird.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to be willing to be strange and countercultural because it's gonna get more and more that way.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you hold on to the Bible and hold on to what the Bible teaches, you're going to be weird.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to be uncool.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what losing your life in the pursuit of Christ means you need to do, and every one of these things is, frankly, uncomfortable.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, What good is it for someone to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now I notice this is the NIV, I notice you're used to hearing soul, and I know you're used to hearing thinking of hell, and I know all of a sudden, you know, having thought about total discipleship and the cost of discipleship and living the Christian life, all of a sudden you go, oh, oh, soul, this, oh, this is what I have to do to get to heaven.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, he's not talking about what you do to get to heaven, or else you're gonna go to hell.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about, he's talking about not, you know, the fact that you're gonna lose the life that you try to save, and yet you'll save the life that you lose.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the judgment seat of Christ factors in here, that you're going to be honored with a well done, thou good and faithful servant, if you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you want to include salvation, uh, you know, that's fine.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: But but then think of it the way C.S.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis thought of it at the at the close of his book, Mere Christianity.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: When he wrote this give up yourself and you will find your real self.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lose your life and you will save it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: But look for Christ and you will find him and with him everything else thrown in.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: This sort of lose your life and you'll save it, try to save your life and you'll lose it, has a remarkable parallel in a statement in a description made by a couple of uh concentration camp survivors, one of them most famous, Soulzanates in the Gulag Archipelago, when he says, prisoners in our camp were determined to either, they divide them, he said, into two groups.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some were determined to save their bodies.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, live as long as possible, even if they had to compromise their convictions to do it.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Others, he said, prioritized saving their souls, their faith, their integrity, their encourage, staying true to what they really believed.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they were determined to save either their bodies or their souls.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: We saw that those who chose to save their souls gained the strength to stay alive.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But those who chose to save their bodies and give up their faith and give up their moral convictions and maybe, maybe turn in their fellow, their fellow campers or whatever else.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those who chose to save their bodies at the expense of their souls ended up losing both soul and body.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord Jesus Christ is saying, I believe to Christians, he's saying, if you live your life in order to save your life and protect your life so that you can live a comfortable life that gratifies you and satisfies your desires, you will end up losing not only your body, but you will lose your life in the end.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your life will dribble away into the sand, you will die, you will be unhappy, you will come to the judgment seat, and you will not hear.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago, it's been over 60 years ago now, five athletic, good-looking, smart guys went together down to South America.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there, on a Godforsaken beach, they were killed by headhunters.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Roger, Pete, Jim Elliott, and A.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jim's widow, famous woman who recently died, found in his Bible words that he had written in it when he was a teenager.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as a teenager, Jim Elliott had written, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to save what he cannot lose.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is a almost a rabbinic comment on Jesus' words.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you try to save your life, you lose it.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you're willing to lose your life for my sake, you will find it.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll be no fool if you give what you cannot keep.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is your life.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: To gain what you cannot lose.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Magazines in America did not agree in 1956.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: The newspapers in America did not agree, they consider this to be a horrible waste of life.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: A tragic cutting short of the lives of these five men.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus would have said, no, they couldn't keep their lives anyway.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Their lives would have been a little bit longer.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what they lost, they have gained and more.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, by the losing of their lives within a generation, that whole tribe came to Jesus Christ.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: When I was uh young, even before I was 10 years old, this was typical of my dad, my dad handed me a book.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: He would hand me a book once in a while and say, read this.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the book he handed me was um was a famous book back then, not so famous now, called Fox's Book of Martyrs.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was the most famous book about early Christian martyrs, and frankly, as I uh lay there in the afternoons eating an apple in a hammock reading Fox's Book of Martyrs with its short little chapters about the beheading of early Christians and these women who were who were sawn asunder, I was captivated.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Graphic stories of uh Christians being devoured by wild animals or being impaled on poles.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what teenage boy wouldn't love to read about that?
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was horrible.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: But as I lay in that hammock reading, I remember thinking if only those people had lived where I live, here in the country of Oregon, underneath the shadow of the beautiful Mount Hood and close to the wonderful waterfalls off the Columbia River.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's too bad they couldn't have lived here because nobody's killing Christians here.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: A few years later, I went off to summer camp, Christian summer camp, where we were inspired by the songs and by the speaker.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And on the last emotional night, we would sit in the dark around the campfire, around the bonfire, and we would sing, I have decided to follow Jesus.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've decided to follow Jesus.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've decided to follow Jesus.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: No turning back.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: No turning back.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Though no one joined me, still I will follow.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Though no one joined me, still I will follow.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Though no one joined me, still I will follow.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: No turning back.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: No turning back.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: The world behind me, the cross before me, the world behind me, the cross before me, the world behind me, the cross before me, no turning back.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: No turning back.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And one after another, in the dark, sitting around the bonfire, every one of us almost we would muster up the courage, even the shyest of us, like me, to get up and take our stick and throw it on the fire symbolically, and to stammer I stammer out our vow, our promise, that we were going to commit our lives to Christ.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: We were going to jump in the fire, basically, and we were, we meant it literally.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: That we would live for Christ and we would, if necessary, die for Christ.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I pictured myself becoming a missionary and getting speared in the back.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or being burned at the stake.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I pictured myself being blindfolded and marched to a gray wall and being told, deny Christ, and you can live, confessed Christ, and you'll die.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I confessed Christ.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the guns roared.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I died.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: I pictured it.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I imagined back home everyone I knew, all of those people who had taken me so for granted, calling me their hero.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I pictured flags flying at half masks and beautiful girls weeping and saying, if only.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I pictured that, honestly, but I meant it.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I've never been more serious in my life than I was then.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember one camp, especially when I was 15 years old.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I made a vow of such awful sincerity that I was convinced that hell trembled.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was about to live for Christ and to die for Christ, literally, if necessary.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I floated all the way home from northern Washington back down to Oregon on the wings of that vow.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as I look back, I vividly see myself, just two days later, crying so hard that I had to hold myself up, clinging to the refrigerator in the kitchen.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had broken that vow, I had been vengeful, I had been mean, I had been selfish toward one of my younger brothers, and I knew that I had failed utterly.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had not followed Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had turned back, I had promised to live and die for Christ, and I had not done it.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody, I'm not blaming them, but nobody had warned me that I couldn't get it over and done with in a split second.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with the drop of the guillotine blade, that it would be so daily, that I couldn't write one big check, that for the rest of my life, for the next, it's now been 50 plus years, that I would have to be writing over 50 years of little checks.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: 76 cents in the morning, 35 cents at noon, dollar and a nickel at supper.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: Giving my life away, denying myself and carrying the cross one tiny little dribble at a time.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I imagine this is true for most of us.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're giving our lives away, dying to ourselves a dribble at a time, not in one big check, but in a thousand, in hundreds of thousands, years and years of little checks.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Teachers buying lunch for a kid with money from their own pocket.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Parents going out at night to rescue a teenager who yelled at them and called them names just hours before.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Being in a hurry, but looking up at heaven and letting the other guy go first, being exhausted but stepping in to help anyway, making a meal and sharing it with a person who always plays the victim and has an addiction.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: I am amazed at how often I see followers of Christ here at Topeka Bible Church doing these things freely and happily, denying themselves and giving up their lives a dribble at a time.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Denying themselves, dying to themselves, sacrificing themselves, holding the good things of this life ever so lightly and giving themselves away in costly service.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: With the cross on their shoulder, with their head held high, looking ahead of them at Jesus following him.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Whoever wants to follow me, he must deny himself or herself, take up their cross and follow me.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: How's that going for you?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for uh for the shocking challenge.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: We understand that this is the only religion on earth that orders things this way, with free grace at the start, but then costly discipleship the rest of the way.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for, I pray for ourselves, I pray for us, for in these days when we are being told to avoid all risk, it's tempting to forget that you're telling us the opposite, that for your sake, in the sake of our best lives, that we must take risks, that we are not in control, that we must give control to you.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Say yes to you, no to ourselves, to carry our cross and follow you.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming and listening to that.