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Surrender: Raising the Sail | Nate Ross · Real Life Theology Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back everyone to the Real Life Theology Podcast.
• 0:05
  Today's episode features Nate Ross,
• 0:07
  who's going to help us see why leaders must surrender
• 0:11
  to Jesus as their true success.
• 0:17
  Well, hey everybody, so good to be with you.
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  And actually the reason why it's really good
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  is I'm not supposed to be here.
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  Shane Wood was supposed to be here
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  and unfortunately he couldn't make it.
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  And so Bobby reached out and said,
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  can you come and can you share at the Renew Conference?
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  And the renew.org, it's been speaking in my life.
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  And I said, man, I would love to.
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  You know, this is room full of leaders.
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  This would be great.
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  And he said, can you come talk about surrender?
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  Don't you want me to come talk about setting the course?
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  Right, don't you want me to talk about how you plan
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  and you do all these sorts of leadership things?
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  He's like, that's right.
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  So come talk about surrender.
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  And I was like, oh man, a room full of leaders.
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  Let's just be real.
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  We do not like to surrender.
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  We don't like to surrender.
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  Maybe we don't like to give up.
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  David, your words are so good.
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  Man, God wants to do more through us.
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  Let's not surrender.
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  But what is a key thing I'm learning
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  about the life of Christ is there is no setting the course
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  without surrender.
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  There is no way forward without it.
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  Matter of fact, I began to think about surrender
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  in my own life and we're gonna look just kind of briefly
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  how surrender leads the church through the book of Acts.
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  But I even thought about my baptism, July 4th, 1992,
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  at Sherwood Oaks Christian Church.
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  We did a kind of private ceremony
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  where there's about 30 of our family and friends.
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  And my dad was one of the pastors
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  and we went to get into the baptistry.
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  And it was back in the old days
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  where the pastors would wear the waders.
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  Anybody remember that?
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  You know, you'd go, I don't know if you'd go like fishing
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  in the creek after or whatever.
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  And I remember my dad walks in, he's got the waders on.
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  And I walk in and I take one step into the baptistry
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  and I yell out this phrase, I can't do it.
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  Like, oh my gosh, he can't give his life
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  to the Lord Jesus Christ, you know?
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  And this is so embarrassing.
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  His dad's the pastor, I can't, I can't do it.
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  The heater had broke the night before in the baptistry.
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  It didn't go cold, it went over 110 degrees boiling hot.
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  Talk about feeling the fires of hell, right?
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  And you're surrendering your life to the Lord.
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  I literally, I stepped in, I couldn't do it.
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  I literally, I stepped in, I couldn't get it.
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  They start dumping cold water into the baptistry.
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  It doesn't cool down.
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  It's one of those, I mean, it's just scalding hot.
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  So literally they set me on the edge of the baptistry
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  and they baptize me like a chicken nugget
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  and sweet and sour sauce.
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  They just take me down and throw me out.
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  It's how my life of surrender started to Jesus.
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  Hey, can anybody relate?
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  Going, man, I gave my life to the Lord.
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  It's gonna be great.
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  I'm gonna go to Bible college.
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  I'm gonna find my wife.
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  It's gonna be this.
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  It's gonna be, we're gonna plant the church.
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  I'm gonna be on Outreach Magazine.
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  Turns out Outreach Magazine has no more lists.
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  You can't make the list because of the pandemic.
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  It's all over.
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  And that's how surrender starts.
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  And what I love about this is in the midst
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  of the messiness of surrender, God is at work.
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  Matter of fact, the great commission in Acts
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  starts by the disciples' failure to see their surrender.
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  Lord, at this time, will you restore the kingdom to Israel?
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  And what does Jesus give them?
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  He gives them the great commission.
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  In their failure to see Jesus as their success,
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  he gives them the commission.
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  No, no, but you're gonna receive power
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  when my Holy Spirit comes on you
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  and you are going to be my witnesses
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  in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria
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  and to the ends of the earth.
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  See, a lot of times in our failure,
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  we don't understand why surrender is so important,
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  but this is what I'm beginning to understand.
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  Is this more important to me as a leader
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  setting the course as my surrender to Jesus?
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  Because seeing Jesus as my success in every situation
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  is why surrender is so important.
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  Jesus, you are my success right now.
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  In the middle of this, this weekend as a church,
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  we reopened finally.
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  And I'll tell you what, man,
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  I have felt like a failure through this whole time.
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  And this is why surrender is so important.
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  Because what happens in the life of the disciples is this.
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  They're fumbling around,
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  they're trying to figure this stuff out,
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  they're asking the wrong questions.
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  Can you imagine that question being asked to Jesus
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  after his three and a half years of investing,
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  after going to the cross, being resurrected,
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  and all they want is their nation to be great?
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  At that moment, I'm fine with Jesus.
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  I'm like, boys, I gave it a whirl, it's over, right?
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  I'm off.
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  And Jesus says, no, I wanna give you more
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  in the midst of your failure.
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  I wanna give you more,
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  but you gotta surrender to me.
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  I feel like what's become a little bit
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  of a life verse for me, I'm an Enneagram three.
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  So for me, failure is the like fatality.
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  So there's a deep fear of failure in my life.
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  And what the Lord gave me out of John 5, 19,
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  this is just a little bit of the, to me,
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  what I kind of call like the special sauce of Jesus
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  leading out of surrender.
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  He doesn't just call us to surrender,
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  he lived a life of surrender.
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  In John 5, 19, verse 20, what I found was this,
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  he healed on the Sabbath, and then it said,
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  the Pharisees tried all the harder to kill him.
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  And listen to how he responds,
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  because he paves the way for us,
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  because as leaders, we don't know how to surrender.
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  Well, I think it surrenders this, this,
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  and Jesus just lays out surrender for us.
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  Listen to what he says in John 5, 19.
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  He really just gives us the path forward.
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  It said, Jesus gave him this answer.
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  He said, I tell you the truth,
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  the son can do nothing by himself.
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  He can do only what he sees the father doing,
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  because whatever the father does, the son also does.
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  And then here's the anchor, for the father loves the son
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  and shows him all he does.
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  And three things that I think that Jesus is pointing here,
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  what a surrendered life looks like is one,
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  we do nothing by ourselves.
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  We just do nothing by ourselves.
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  And then here's what I love about how Jesus says here,
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  because a lot of times,
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  this is why I think we don't like surrender as leaders,
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  because we mistake the idea of surrender means to do nothing.
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  I'm just gonna wait for God to move.
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  I'm gonna wait for God to speak.
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  You know, the Bible's right there, pick it up.
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  And we confuse this idea of surrender.
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  And you know what he says surrender is?
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  Surrender is actually doing what God shows you to do.
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  You do what the father shows me to do.
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  And you know why he says that?
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  Because the father loves me, he loves me.
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  Before we start loving God and loving people,
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  I think the biggest challenge for us coming up is this,
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  learning how to be loved by our heavenly father.
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  It's learning how to be loved by our father.
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  Because when we are loved by our father,
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  we will love the father and we will love our neighbor
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  and we will make disciples and we will be healthy disciples.
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  That's what Jesus says, I don't do anything by myself.
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  I know you wanna kill me, I'm not alone.
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  I'm not alone, not alone.
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  And I think if we wanna grow more as being disciples
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  in a disciple making movement, it's this,
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  we've got to find Jesus in our failures.
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  Not our successes, in our failures.
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  That's where he meets these disciples in Acts chapter one.
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  Will you restore the kingdom?
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  Mm, nope, not the time for you to know.
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  But go make disciples, go make disciples.
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  I'll be honest, this season has been what feels like
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  the biggest season of failure for me.
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  We started three years ago,
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  we started planning a capital campaign for our church.
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  I've only been the lead pastor for three years
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  and we're out of room, we need to do these things.
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  And so we spent three years
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  trying to come up with these plans.
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  We launched it in January,
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  did our capital campaign to expand the building.
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  You know where this is going.
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  Two weeks after people making commitment weekend,
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  we had to close our campus for COVID.
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  Nothing like asking people to give generously
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  to a building they can't come to.
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  But would you still trust the Lord, right?
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  That wasn't the hard part, here was the hard part.
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  Our generosity coach said, here's what you do.
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  After the first quarter, you send out mailers
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  telling people how the campaign's going.
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  You remind them in the printed, their commitment,
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  what they've given so they can continue to take those steps.
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  We're like, okay, we did everything right.
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  We mailed it out, here was the only problem.
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  The printing company got behind and they printed,
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  they printed the handout and what was supposed to happen
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  was they printed the name on the outside.
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  They were supposed to turn it over,
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  print the giving commitment and what has been given
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  and then mail it out.
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  The printing company printed the names on the outside
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  and when they went to do this, the machine switched.
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  Our entire database of people who had made commitments
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  got the wrong commitment through the mail
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  in the past couple of months, every single person.
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  I said, hey, good news guys,
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  we all have new accountability partners.
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  And no, I did not say that, thought about it.
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  My phone's blowing up.
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  I thought this was a personal private commitment.
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  I thought nobody else knew this.
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  I do nothing by myself.
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  I literally just had to lay on the floor,
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  total embarrassment, total failure.
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  And you know why?
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  Here's what the Lord was revealing to me in this season.
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  Nate, your success to you is your effort.
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  I need your success to be Jesus.
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  Here's where my mind is jacked up.
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  If you work hard enough, everything will work out.
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  And if it's not working out, guess what you do?
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  You work harder, you work harder.
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  That's not the gospel.
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  The hard work has been done.
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  The hard work has been done.
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  I do nothing by myself.
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  The hard work has been done.
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  I do nothing by myself.
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  I only do what the Father shows me to do.
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  Because Nate, people might not love you right now,
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  but your Father does.
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  Your Father does.
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  This is why surrender matters so much to us as disciples
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  in making the disciple-making movement.
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  We did everything right and we still failed.
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  We did everything right.
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  We did everything right.
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  What I'm learning more about surrender is this.
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  I've confused sacrifice for surrender.
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  God, I'm sacrificing this stuff.
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  Things should work out.
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  That's not what he's asked.
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  I've asked you to surrender your life to me.
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  Matter of fact, Samuel had to confront Saul about this.
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  If you remember this in 1 Samuel 15, verse 22,
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  Samuel replied to Saul,
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  does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
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  as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
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  To obey is better than sacrifice.
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  To heed is better than the fat of rams.
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  And this was Saul's confession.
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  I have sinned.
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  I violated the Lord's command and your instructions.
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  And then he reveals what he had surrendered his life to.
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  I was afraid of the people, so I gave in to them.
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  Fill in your own blank today.
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  What have you surrendered to
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  more than the success of Jesus?
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  I resonate with Saul.
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  I was afraid of the people.
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  This weekend when we reopened, I guarantee this.
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  Hey, how are you?
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  I mean, there's gonna be like, uh-oh, like, uh-uh.
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  There's gonna be a,
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  there's gonna be an opportunity
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  for me to be afraid of the people
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  or surrender to the Lord and walk in what he has.
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  As we find out in the book of Acts, on and on again,
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  we see these people surrendering to the Lord.
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  Matter of fact, what I find amazing is this.
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  The book of Luke and Acts, 52 chapters devoted to one man.
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  And at the end of 52 chapters, we have no baptism video.
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  We have no testimony, great thing.
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  You don't know if Theophilus even gives his life
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  to the Lord, but you know this.
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  The reason why 52 chapters were written
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  is because a man was struggling,
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  trying to come to the terms
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  of surrendering his life to the Lord.
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  And what Jesus says is this.
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  Over 20% of the New Testament is written to one man,
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  and that is perfectly fine,
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  because it is about surrendering
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  to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
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  It's about surrendering our lives to him.
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  Two quick things I wanna encourage us with
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  if we're gonna surrender.
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  One is this, as I see through the book of Acts.
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  If we're gonna surrender our life to Jesus,
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  we better learn how to raise the sail
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  instead of rowing the boat.
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  We hear Jesus talk about the wind and the power of the wind.
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  And what happens in the book of Acts
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  is the disciples quit asking about restoring Israel,
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  and they start stepping into the Spirit,
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  and they start raising their sails.
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  It's said that in 1300 BC,
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  the Mesopotamians were the first ones to discover the sail.
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  And can you imagine what that moment was like on the boat
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  when the first sail went up,
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  and they experienced a power
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  they had never experienced before?
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  I mean, just put yourself there on that boat.
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  Your whole life had been rowing and rowing.
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  And for that time, you raised the sail,
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  and you experienced a power you have never experienced.
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  That's what the book of Acts is.
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  They, Peter, quit rowing the boat.
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  In 50 days, he goes from cutting a man's ear off,
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  denying Christ, to preaching the first sermon in 3000.
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  That's a heck of an internship right there.
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  50 days.
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  You know why?
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  He quit rowing the boat, and he raised the sail.
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  And we get 1 and 2 Peter 20 years later
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  of a man who had surrendered his life to the Lord.
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  And I can't get over 1 Peter 4, verse 19,
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  when Peter says this, instead of denying Christ,
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  you know what he says?
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  He says, if you are suffering according to God's will,
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  you should commit your life to your faithful creator
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  and continue to do good.
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  Raise the sails.
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  Raise the sails, because our success is in Jesus.
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  And he has a fresh wind to move his church forward.
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  Second thing is this, though.
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  Not only do we raise the sails,
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  the surrendered life in the book of Acts,
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  it speaks about Jesus.
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  We oftentimes make Acts a theological discussion
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  about tongues, when actually the proof of the Spirit
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  throughout all of the book of Acts is this,
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  that people spoke boldly of Jesus.
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  It ends saying, boldly and without hindrance.
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  They taught about Jesus.
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  They spoke about Jesus.
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  Their success had become Jesus,
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  because they surrendered to him.
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  I don't know what this year's been,
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  but what I do know is this.
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  Oftentimes we feel like, I can't.
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  And Jesus is saying this to us today.
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  I can, because I did.
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  And I just want to pray for us right now.
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  As this season of surrender is upon us,
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  David, I think you said it great.
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  I think we're in a new season of pruning.
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  I think God has something different for us to do.
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  And so I just want to invite you right now,
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  just to pray for me to say a prayer over you.
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  As we begin to uncover this calling on our life of surrender.
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  Jesus, we thank you.
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  That Jesus, you don't just ask us to go and make disciples
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  and to be your witnesses and start on us.
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  Jesus, this all started with you.
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  You are our success.
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  You are our power.
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  You're our only hope.
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  And so Jesus, right now, I know we are a room full of leaders.
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  Father, we struggle to surrender,
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  but by your grace and by your mercy right now,
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  would you free our hearts
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  from what we're holding back from you?
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  Holy Spirit,
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  would you bring fresh wind into this place,
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  into us as your leaders?
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  If we're lying on the floor,
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  or God, maybe some things are just going great in this room,
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  would you remind us it's only by your power?
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  And Jesus, we will never get over your surrender
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  and your journey to the cross.
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  And Jesus, we thank you for that.
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  Your surrender and your journey to the cross.
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  And so thank you.
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  Thank you for leading the way.
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  Thank you for being our hope.
• 17:43
  Thank you guys for listening to this episode
• 17:45
  of the Real Life Theology Podcast.
• 17:47
  Coming up in just a couple weeks,
• 17:49
  we've got the 2026 Renew.org National Gathering.
• 17:53
  We would love to see you guys there.
• 17:55
  You can check it out.
• 17:57
  There will be a link in the description.
• 17:59
  I hope to see you guys there.