Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 14, 2021 | Expresso - Erin Dykes

Transcript

September 14, 2021 | Expresso - Erin Dykes · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um I'm Erin Dykes.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was born and raised in Columbia, Missouri.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually adopted from birth by a single mom who grew up in church.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so my entire life, what church was the utmost importance.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: My mom did multiple committees.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: So most nights in between, we were at church.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it never was really a question for me if we were gonna go to church.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: What we were doing, we just always kind of knew church was where we were at.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I accepted Christ in the second grade, and really I feel like my walk with him is just kind of evolved from there.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think I had a pretty easy childhood, junior high, high school.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really until I um started looking at where I was gonna go to college and what that transition from college or from high school into college looked like that I feel like I truly understood um Christ working in my life or turning situations around that he had a better plan for.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I applied to one college.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I applied to Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, because I knew that's what I was doing.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's where everyone in my family had gone from my grandma down.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like, oh, well, there's no question here.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is what I'm doing.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I knew my path, I had it all set out.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I went in the spring to kind of finalize my classes, um, figure out my dorm, all of that.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That went great.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We got home and I had this unsettled feeling of like this, something's not right here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I talked to my mom and I was like, I don't really know what this is, mom.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's happening here?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and she was like, Well, I think you need to pray about it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the Lord's saying this isn't what you're supposed to be doing.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what do you mean?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's what everyone else did, that's what I'm supposed to do.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, no, if the Lord has something different, then you need to figure that out.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of talked to different people in my life and started praying about it and really just said, like, okay, Lord, if you have something different than this path, like show me work it out.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in May of that year, which if you have ever applied to colleges, that's like way late to the ballgame.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone knows what they're doing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so in May, I decided to apply to the University of Missouri, which was right in my hometown.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got late acceptance and everything fell into place for me to do the exact same major I would be doing at Southwest Baptist, but in my hometown.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that was really the first time I'd ever seen the Lord really say, like, nope, this is not your path.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I want you going this direction.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then just a couple months after that, my family went on a three-week-long mission trip to Africa.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we went with several other families from our church.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, at 18 years old, you're like, oh, this is awesome.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Senior year of high school is done.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going into college.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I get to go to Africa for three weeks and, you know, teach people about Jesus and go on a safari and have a fun time myself.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, little did I know what it would be like going to a third world country and really experiencing those people.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all the work we did was in AIDS orphanages.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So all of the kids there were orphaned because their parents had died of AIDS and they had no one else to take care of them.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So every orphanage we went to was well outside the city because they weren't allowed to be anywhere close to the city.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we had two different groups.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: One was the mission team that did Bible school and they painted kids fingernails and they played soccer and they did fun stuff, and then the other side was the medical team.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And since I decided I wanted to do athletic training, I was like, oh, well, I can do the medical side.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like this will be fine.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, like it'll still be a fun time, it'll be a good learning experience.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when word got out in the community that we had doctors there, people lined the outside of the orphanage and waited in line all day to just be seen by doctors and by me who had no degree, nothing.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was very overwhelming.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I did had no idea just the severity of some of the things we would be seeing.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I was 18 years old.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I had any grasp of really what true illnesses were.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I remember being a day, a day and a half in, and feeling like I was just suffocating.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to do any of it.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I see all the other people running and playing with kids, and here I'm watching moms holding their babies that are shallow breathing and not going to survive, but our doctors aren't able to take care of them.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as a mom now, sorry.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think about as a mom now, how terrifying that must have been for them.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, but at 18 years old, I didn't have any clue.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I remember going to my mom and being like, I want to go home.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do this, I don't want to be here, I don't want any part of this.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we went home that night in the group of people that we were with.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there were 10 of us from our church.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Two of them are actually now my in-laws.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they all sat and prayed with me and really just said, look, this is Satan trying to take this situation.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Satan is trying to turn this trip and rob you of what the Lord is trying to teach you here.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so I remember just really sitting and praying and realizing for the first time that like I could tell Satan no.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't have to listen to whatever thoughts he was putting in my head, whatever distractions he was trying to put in front of me, that I could I was there for a purpose and I needed to complete that.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I look back on that, and I have taken so much from that in so many different ways in my life, so many different times where Satan has tried to come in in other forms, in other ways, and I'm able to say, no, like you don't get to take control of this situation, you don't get to have a say in how this plays out, and all of that goes back to that first experience of really feeling Satan attack what we were doing and knowing that what we were doing was for good, yet Satan was trying to take all of it away from the Lord.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so fast forward I got back from that trip.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I felt like I really kind of knew the calling God had for my life, what I was supposed to be doing.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, started school, did my thing with athletic training, um, got about two and a half years in and again just felt very unsettled.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is not what I'm supposed to be doing anymore.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: They um had kind of changed some stuff in our program, and I didn't really like how it was going.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought, well, you know, I'm an adult now, I can figure out what I'm supposed to do.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I started praying about it and decided that I would not enroll in the spring semester of college, I would get a full-time job.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then once I did that, that's when I went and told my mom that I was no longer going to school and that I had a full-time job.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just told her, like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, but I know that that's not what the Lord had for me.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you can imagine, she took that really well.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I mean, I can only imagine what I would do if one of my children came to me and said that.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I did, I had a piece of like, I don't know what the Lord has next, but I know that the path I was on is not what I was supposed to be doing.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so fast forward to spring of 2011, I went to dinner with a friend after work, and in walked my now husband with a friend after work as well.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually grew up with my husband.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've known him since I was in kindergarten.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our families went to church together, so we started talking, um, ate dinner together, and really just started that summer we spent getting to know one another.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the whole time I knew he had one foot out the door.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was headed to Austin, Texas, to live the college life that he didn't get to live at Southwest Baptist University.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was a small Christian college, and it was very dictated in your faith and when you went to chapel and what you did.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was out the door to party.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I followed him.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: He moved in August, and I followed him that December.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And really, the first couple of years we were there, we just lived the Austin life.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: We would stay up late Saturday night, and it was easier just to not go to church on Sunday morning.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was fun to meet new people, go downtown, do different things.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we tried some churches, but Austin's very weird.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and with that comes lots of weird churches.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so none of them really fit for us, and we were like, well, maybe we just don't need to be at church right now.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and eventually God got a hold of us and really put on our hearts that no, we needed to settle down and we needed to find a church community.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so we finally bought a house and stopped apartment hopping and doing the Austin life.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we found a church not far from us.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really when I learned what church is and how important it is to have a community around you of people that are like-minded doing life with you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and unless you've had that, unless you have a church community, unless you have a group of people who root for you and are there no matter what, um, you don't really understand that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or if you have that and then you walk away, um, I feel like sometimes that's when you understand the importance of it.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we dove into church, we're really involved, and then found out in the spring of 2015 that we were pregnant with our first kiddo.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And right after finding out, it was almost immediate of the feeling of unsettled, like something's not right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, okay, Lord, like what are you doing here?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like we just felt like we were following your plan, we just felt like we were settled, we have great jobs.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do you have here?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we really started praying and had our community praying with us, and we decided that we wanted to be back closer to family, and his family's in Columbia as well.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we started praying about it, we came home that fall and met with a recruiter from shelter insurance, which is where my husband works now.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when we met with him, the recruiter was like, Well, we actually have an opening in Topeka, Kansas, if you guys want to give it a look, and we were like, no, thank you.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's Kansas.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we were we were really thinking like Kansas City, St.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, Springfield, like those are the only places we want to be.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks, but no thanks.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Okay, well, if we have anything else or you see anything online, just let us know and we can look at it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, fast forward to Jan February of 2016, and our daughter was born.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just a few months later, Lance found an agency in Lee Wood, um, Kansas, that he was like, hey, I think we might like this.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, hey, that's Kansas City, like that's where we wanted to be.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I worked at Dell at the time, and so I put in a request to be completely remote.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he bought plane tickets and came up and interviewed.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And just a couple days before his interview, um, I found out that Dell was denying my request to work completely remote.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was like the Lord slammed door number one right there.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, well, you know, it's just one door, like maybe the rest of this will work out.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can find another job, we can find a babysitter, like it'll it'll be fine.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: He came up, interviewed, flew back home, and just a couple days later they called and said, Hey, um, we're really sorry, but we offered the job to someone else.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so door number two slammed in our face, and we were both kind of like, wait, really?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and at the time, my father-in-law was the vice president of Claims for Shelter.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, but do you do you know who his dad is?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you just like you told us no, like, are you serious?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so we had a couple hours of like, okay, what's happening?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then like three hours later, the phone rings, and it was a regional manager for the company, and she said, Hey, I know that they just told you that they offered this position to someone else, but she said, I don't think this is the place for you.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, We've had multiple people in and out of there.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hard book of business, it's a hard place to sell.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she said, That being said, we just had an agent walk away from an agency in Topeka, Kansas.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, Okay, Lord, like, fine, like obviously this is where you want us.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we said, okay, let us think about it, pray about it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we kind of prayed about it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: We decided to come up for a long weekend, checked it out.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: We were like, well, it's a college town, like we grew up in a college town, you know, it's definitely a much slower pace than Austin, um, much slower than kind of what we thought we were looking for at the time.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: But okay, Lord, like if this is what you have, this is where we'll go.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, it was if this is where you want us, like we need you to work it out for us.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we need you to make it all fall into place.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at the time we both had two jobs where we had a base salary every month, but we both had commission checks coming in.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this would be one paycheck a month for our entire household.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were like, how like how do we make this work, Lord?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and just after finding out details and figuring it all out, um, we decided that I would help him in the agency and that we would just keep our daughter with us.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the summer of 2016, we moved to Topeka, Kansas, knowing no one, like not a single person.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had met the district manager one time before we moved here.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we moved over the 4th of July weekend, and we went to their 4th of July party that weekend and met their neighbors and their friends, and actually, one of the people at that party was Sarah Coles.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just so neat to see how the Lord works things out.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we tried a couple different churches when we first got to Tupeka, and they just didn't fit.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't feel like home to us, we didn't feel comfortable.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: We came to TBC one Sunday, we were actually here in Mulvaine, and we were like, this is it, like this is where we're supposed to be.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I um got involved in iMom that fall.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: We got involved in the young adults ministry, and we really just tried to dive in and get involved in the community because we knew that's what we needed.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: If we were going to live here and love it here, we needed a community around us.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and even though we moved closer to family, they're still three hours away.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So there was still no one here.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was just awesome to see the relationships and the people that the Lord put in our lives when we said, like, okay, Lord, like what ministry do you want us in?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where do you want us working?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want us doing?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's been so neat to see those friendships and relationships develop and grow.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, fast forward to 2018.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: We found out we were pregnant with our second kiddo, and we're like, okay, two kids, like we can afford two kids in daycare, that's fine.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I got to 39 weeks and they said, Oh, sorry, your baby's breach.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, well, all right, Lord, like what the heck?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was not not my plan, not anything, you know, and I thought I had it all figured out.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it seemed like from the get-go, everything was against us with Guthrie.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it was just one thing after another.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was sick, he cried all the time, like just screamed all the time, was colicky, spit up everything we fed him.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then just five or six weeks old, one of my friends was like, Hey, did you notice that his neck's always crooked?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, What are you talking about?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's nothing wrong with him.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's fine.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, he cries all the time, but there's nothing wrong with him.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, leave him be.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went home frustrated and was like, started looking at pictures, and I'm like, no, there okay, there really is something.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we took him to the doctor, and they're like, Well, yeah, we're gonna refer you to TARC, which is um like a special needs disability service that the state does.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so at six weeks old, they sent a stranger into my house to literally look at my son from head to toe and start physically stretching him and manipulating his body.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember just being like, Lord, like what are you doing here?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like letting go, giving control of your child to someone else, like what are you doing?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was not an easy thing for me to give up, especially since I feel like I was, I didn't want, I guess, to admit that there were more problems than I could handle.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was very obvious that there were other needs that I couldn't take care of.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So from six weeks old, they came in once a week, strangers who are now not strangers, um, and helped with our son.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I made the decision.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess we made the decision um before it was time for me to go back to work that I would stay home.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: That was also not an easy decision because I was not stay-at-home mob material.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was working, like, you know, I I worked for a tech company in Austin, like that's where I thrived.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I did not feel like staying at home was where I thrived or really where I felt like I wanted to be.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I knew that that's where the Lord was saying I needed to be.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we pulled our oldest kiddo out of daycare, and that was a hard transition for her because she was with her friends all day and then was home with me, and she was not a fan of that.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I just really dove into like, okay, Lord, like, how do we get Guthrie better?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do we get him to a spot where he's normal or not not normal, like where he's age appropriate or where he should be.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we got six months down the road, and then we found out that we were pregnant with baby number three.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what are what are you doing, Lord?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I can't handle what I have.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like it, you know, it took us over a year of trying with Guthrie.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it just never crossed our minds that we would have a third that quickly or at all.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, wait, Lord, like I'm drowning here, like I can't handle what I have.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're adding another one on top of this.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you trying to do?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I quickly realized that through all of that, that was Satan.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: That all of those thoughts, all of those feelings, all of those fears were Satan.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was another moment in my life where I had to say, like, no, Satan, you don't get, you don't get to have control over this.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like it, you don't get to take this situation of a third baby and turn it around and make it negative.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we should be celebrating this, and you don't get to take that from us.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I we prayed about it, we, you know, had a plan of action for what we how we were gonna still continue things for Guthrie and care for a newborn and all of that.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I just dove headfirst into it and said, okay, like whatever it takes.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we're 18 months past that now, and it's it's definitely not easy.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, kids are absolutely crazy, and having two boys 15 months apart is insane sometimes.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there are still days where I'm like, what, like, what are we doing?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this normal?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do other people have kids like this?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this can't be real.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we do it, and the best part in all of it is the community that's been around us and all of it.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that therapist that came into my home when my son was six weeks old is now one of the people that if I need prayer, if I have a question, if I need to run something by someone, she's one of those people that I go to.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Lord knew exactly who he was putting in our lives at that time.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at our lives at TBC and the people the Lord's placed in our lives at TBC, they were put there at specific times for specific reasons.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we would not do the things that we do.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: We would not be able to have the life that we have if it wasn't for friends, if it wasn't for people who've come alongside us and done life with us.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I look at the last year and a half, I look at COVID, and I'm like, what like what has happened in our world?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yet we've had friends who, through all of it, have been there with us, and our kids really don't feel like they've missed out on a lot because they've still had friends, they've still gotten to have experiences and they've still gotten to do things because we just decided, like, Satan, you're not taking this from us.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we're not we're not gonna keep our kids from getting to be around their friends and getting to do things.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I guess in closing, if there's two things that I hope you take from this, it's that Satan doesn't get to control your life.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have the ability to say no.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you tell people all the time no, if you don't want to go to dinner, if you don't want to do something, you know, even your action sometimes without saying it is a no to people.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: So why do we not tell Satan no?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we allow him to control our thoughts and to control our mind when he doesn't have to?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that that's a big thing that I've had to learn in my life.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is how important church and community is.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, like church in Sunday morning is great, but that's not what the church was designed for.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um when the Lord designed church, he designed it to be a community and a group of people that you do life with.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And for us, I look at my life and I look at the friends and the families that I've had in my life over the course of my entire Christian life.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there have been people that have done life with us all throughout the way.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's different seasons for all of that, and they've all been there at perfect times and perfect seasons.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, I look, I look at our friends and I look at the people that it's you know, it's six o'clock on a Monday, and you're like, well, I didn't make dinner.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's see what our friends are doing, let's go to dinner, you know.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those are the relationships that the church brings into your life that are you can't put a price tag or a value on those things.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I hope that if you guys don't have friends like that, that you find, like start small, you know, even if it's serving dinner on Wednesday night, you never know who you're gonna be serving next to.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: That person could become like family to you.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: That person could be the person that when you need someone to come over in the middle of the night because you need to take your kid out of the hospital, like that's the person you call.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, or go to a women's Bible study, um, go to intentional mom.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I look at all of the people the Lord has placed in our lives, and all of them are because we said yes to show up at a ministry or we said yes to go to a Sunday school class.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And those are people that we we could not do life without.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I hope that you guys have someone like that in your life.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't, then I hope you talk to someone um who can help you find those people.