Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #94 - The Deepest Desire of the Soul

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#94 - The Deepest Desire of the Soul · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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  So you wake up this morning, what do you get up to?
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  Are you pursuing career, money, security, or should we be pursuing someone else?
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  My name is Brandon Fogle, this is Evolution.
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  Let's get into it. All right, today we're gonna talk about what does it mean to pursue God?
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  What does it mean to pursue Christ? And we're gonna take a look at a few different passages,
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  but the more that I've thought about this, A lot of my religion,
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  a lot of my deepest desires, and when I talk to God, when I talk out and just
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  try to analyze within my own heart, what does it mean?
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  When I say I'm pursuing Jesus, a lot of times it stops there and it's just words.
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  It's just a mental thing. I'm just saying, oh, I got to pursue Christ.
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  I got to seek his kingdom first and everything else will be added to it.
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  But it's more just a mental thing. and I think there is something deeper than
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  that because I don't want to live in the just abstract venture of chasing after God.
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  My pursuit of God is just, God,
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  I'm going to pursue you and then it stops there and I go about my day.
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  And the more I've boiled it down, it comes to my walk with God.
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  The best analogy I've found is generally, and this made no sense to me.
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  So if you're coming into this and this makes no sense to you at all,
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  This made no sense to me at all before I became a Christian was when people
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  talked about walking with God and seeing God working.
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  That just like seemed like, okay, that's, that seems stupid to me.
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  It just, it made no sense.
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  It did not connect at all with my brain.
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  I just thought Christians and people that talk like that were living in fantasy world.
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  So if you're there, I totally get it. But if you're maybe where I'm at a little
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  closer of pursuing God and walking with God makes sense to you.
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  Because as I've gone along as a Christian, it is more just daily life.
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  My day, my conducting my day and understanding that God is right there with me.
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  And just always having to remind myself because it doesn't come natural.
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  None of this ever comes natural.
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  It almost has to be supernatural. And it almost has to be, God,
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  can you please open my eyes?
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  Can you make me aware of your presence?
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  And one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament, in the Bible,
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  if someone asked me my favorite passage in the whole Bible, I would say it would
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  be this one, Psalm 42.1, and we're going to take a look at it as well as a few
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  other different passages.
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  Psalm 42.1 says, as a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
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  The way I remember it most of all is as the deer pants for the water brooks,
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  so pants my soul for you, O God.
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  That is because a lot of times as a Christian, that's all you got.
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  That's all you have. because if you haven't noticed, the stock market is not
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  a reliable place to put your money.
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  Is it ever? And if you're thinking, I'm going to build my wealth and build my
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  security and have peace in that, like the Bible says,
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  like a good Christian that I am, like the Bible says, it says it will make wings and fly away.
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  Wealth and money will fly away in an instant. And Paul, the apostles said,
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  don't put your trust in riches, which just easily, they will evaporate before your eyes.
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  They will just disintegrate before your eyes. If you think my security,
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  my hope is how much money I got in the bank or how much wealth am I worth on paper?
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  I mean, it's just so just abstract and ethereal.
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  It's not even touchable in a lot of ways. And we just, We get our hope and our
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  peace and our value in life based on how much money we got.
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  I know a lot of people struggle with that. I struggled with that as well.
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  And how do we find an anchor for our soul so that we are not just tossed to and fro every moment?
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  I think it starts with, as the deer pants for flowing streams,
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  as this version says it, so pants my soul for you, oh God.
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  We got to start there and then everything will grow out of that because I want
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  to be a person that is like a hunter daily waking up and I'm going out for the kill.
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  But my kill, my desire, my pursuit is not to kill God, but is to chase after him.
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  You know, I'm, I haven't actually been deer hunting. I know a lot of people are.
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  Really into that. I've not, I have not got into it. It's not a matter of,
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  I don't want to, but I know people will get up, wake up super early and they're
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  ready. They are on the hunt.
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  And you think about years and years ago, hundreds of years ago,
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  thousands of years ago, that was the name of the game.
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  It wasn't walking into wall street or walking into your daily job,
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  you know, punching in, punching out.
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  It was, I got to go out and kill something. Otherwise I'm not going to eat.
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  Otherwise, my family is going to starve.
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  So we need to almost take our mindset that we are pursuing God.
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  We have to have him. Otherwise, we're not going to live.
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  We got to get up and chase after him. I think we get so just removed from reality
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  because of technology, devices,
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  everything's in front of us as opposed to feeling the earth,
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  feeling the concrete world that is around us and understanding that the stock
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  market is not going to give us peace.
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  Understanding that we need actually daily food, concrete, real food.
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  But this can be spiritualized because Jesus said, man does not live by bread
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  alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
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  When you think about it, you think about your physical body and you need to eat to survive.
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  Jesus went 40 days and 40 nights without eating a thing and without drinking
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  anything, just complete fast.
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  And he survived. And people today, you can go that long.
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  We just think that we got to physically eat, but really what is sustaining us
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  every moment is God's breath, God's word.
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  He is the one who is holding us intact.
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  You know, we might feel hungry and I don't fast a lot, to be honest.
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  I really, I don't even know the last time I have fasted.
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  But that is a biblical thing where people do fast. And I think it just makes
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  you aware how dependent you are on God and to change your mindset as opposed to food to God.
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  And really, he is all we need every moment. He is all we need.
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  We need nothing else. So I always go back to King David and I think about David
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  and he wrote a lot of these psalms.
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  There's 150 psalms that we have and he penned most of them. And we think of
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  King David, and he led a crazy mad life, ended up being king,
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  but that's not how he started.
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  He started in the sheepfold being a shepherd,
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  being the lowest rung of society,
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  you know, just the guy that just did everything with his hands,
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  was out experiencing the earth, experiencing, you know, he was blue collar to
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  the extreme, but he is the one who was the most poetic man we really have in
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  existence because he penned most of the Psalms.
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  And I understand, so if you are not into this whole God stuff or you're not
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  into this whole Bible stuff, before I became a Christian, I tried to read through
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  the Bible. I really, really tried.
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  I gave it all I could. And I had a daily Bible that gave me 365 days that I
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  would read something out of the Old Testament, something out of the New Testament.
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  But it also gave you a little bit to the Psalms. And I was like, I would skip past that.
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  I wouldn't even read that part because I remember telling my friend,
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  I don't want to read that stuff because it's all about praise God,
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  praise God, praise God. Okay. That doesn't really help me.
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  And that was before I had my, the light turned on and aware of God's presence.
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  But it's like, well, now, now that I'm a Christian, it's like,
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  it is my daily food that I need to praise God. I need his word. I absolutely need it.
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  That's not to say I read the Bible every day. Cause I don't,
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  cause I'd be lying if I said I did, But I think as a Christian,
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  most Christians throughout history, they didn't have a Bible on their phone.
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  You think in the first century, the Christians didn't have the Bible app on
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  their phone where they could just read God's word.
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  But it's even if you don't have God's word, just being aware that he's there.
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  I think you need to, as much as you can, soak it in and absorb it as much as
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  possible. Because when you're out on your own, all you're going to have is those
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  words going through your mind, just turning over in your mind.
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  And the Bible is what just gets us in a right mindset to understand who God is.
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  Because we did not just come to a natural understanding of God by chance.
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  God had to reveal himself. And we have it.
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  Available on anybody's phone that they can go to and download a Bible app.
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  We are saturated with God's word, so I think we just take it for granted,
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  and it's so easy to take it for granted.
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  But I think you want to, as much as you can, get it into your bloodstream so
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  that when you are in the battle, when you're in the thick of it,
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  when you're going through your daily life, He is what is the foundation of your
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  mindset and the choices that you make.
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  You're aware of what you should do because you understand he is with you and
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  he's given you basic principles to govern your life.
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  But really, I mean, this is, I wanted this to be about pursuing God and chasing
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  God because it's so ethereal.
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  It's so just abstract. It's so just thought games.
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  Okay. I'm pursuing God. I'm thinking about it, but then I go about my day.
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  How do I actually do this? How do I continually understand he's right there with me?
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  Every decision I'm making, everything I'm doing, he's right there with me. And he loves me.
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  We can't just skip past that. He loves us like crazy loves us.
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  And that's been extremely tough for me, extremely tough for me because I see
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  what a piece of crap that I am.
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  And I always think he could only be judging me and condemning me by my actions.
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  But the Bible is emphatic how much he loves us.
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  You think about just a regular person out there, how much they could love you,
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  your family loves you, your wife, your husband loves you, your kids love you.
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  Take that to infinite because there's no other word or number to describe it, how much God loves you.
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  He, like seriously, reckless love loves you. He's coming after you. He is pursuing you.
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  But so where does the whole flip come? Like he's pursuing me,
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  but I got to pursue him. There is a sense God makes the first act in everything.
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  We didn't choose to be born. We didn't choose to come into this world.
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  He's the one who initiates it. He's the one who brought it about.
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  Providentially, you could say your parents had a hand in it,
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  but he's the one who brought them together.
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  He's the one who's orchestrating everything. Don't be deceived.
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  There is no random coincidence. There is none.
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  Absolutely none, no matter how that, I mean, and that's not just a Christian
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  thing. That's anyone that really seriously takes to heart that there is one
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  God, one sovereign God that brought everything into motion.
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  Because I know I get it. No, not everybody agrees with that.
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  Not everybody believes there is a God.
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  Not everybody even thinks that there could be a higher power.
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  A lot of people just were here by chance.
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  We're evolved monkeys. Or there's a mothership out there. The aliens are the
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  one who threw us down here and are just watching us, seeing how we'll act and everything.
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  But even if there are aliens, where do you think they came from?
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  Just logically, and you go to whatever religion out there that wants to say
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  there's a pantheon of gods or there's a God, there's a God above us,
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  but then there's a million other gods above him.
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  Logically, you got to come to a conclusion that there is one being who sprung
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  all of this into existence.
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  It only makes sense. But how do I get in touch with this God?
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  How does his pursuit of me that is initiated by his first cause,
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  but I'm supposed to pursue him.
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  I think he chases us, turns on the lights, and then we come after him.
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  And it's our daily, it's all that we are is to come after God. It's in our core.
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  He infuses into us that fabric of his Holy Spirit that just permeates through everything in our body.
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  He has to do it first, but then our life as a Christian is just chasing after
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  him daily, every moment, moment by moment, pursuing God.
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  I wanted to go to a couple of different passages because I brought up David
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  a second ago, and I'll turn it on so you can see it on the screen as well.
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  Psalm 19.1. So picture this, you're King David, but this is before you become
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  a king, and this might be you in your life. You're not the king yet.
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  You're not that whatever you have in your mind that you are going after,
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  whatever you are chasing after in your life, whether it's career, whether it's,
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  getting that promotion, whether it's creating your own business,
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  whether it's building a family or whatever, whatever you have in your mind,
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  your deepest desire in this earth that you want to pursue, you're not there yet.
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  So you're King David, but you're just the shepherd boy.
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  And imagine you're just laying out in the fields in Israel, ancient Palestine,
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  ancient, ancient Palestine, not just 2000 years ago with Jesus.
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  This is a thousand years before Jesus. And you're laying out in the fields,
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  you're watching your sheep, protecting them, killing lions and killing bears
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  as they come after your sheep.
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  And you just look up to the starry hosts, look up to the skies,
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  and you just see infinite possibilities. You see an infinite distance away from
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  you, and you see these stars out there and you're like, my God.
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  Because even today, we can resonate and we can relate to David because we can
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  look up at the stars and say, like, my God.
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  And this is what he says in Psalm 19.1.
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  He says, the heavens declare the glory of God in the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
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  You look up this up at the stars in the sky. That's all the only conclusion you can come to that.
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  There is a being out there that put all this into existence.
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  It didn't just come by random chance. It didn't just come by aliens.
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  And if there are aliens, there's something above the aliens.
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  And he understands and he gets by divine revelation because he was a prophet. David was a prophet.
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  He was in tune with God.
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  He wrote a majority of the Bible.
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  But picture this. This is you and you're looking up at God and you're like,
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  my God, how much I want to pursue you, how much you are my life.
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  And everything I have before me today, what I'm going into, all I know is you're there with me.
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  I don't know how I'm going to make it out. I don't know what the diagnosis is going to be.
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  I don't know if I'm going to lose my job or if I've lost someone in my family
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  and I just got, and I'm just going through hell.
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  In every storm that we're in, we can have peace through it. And I wanted to
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  end it on one last passage. It's in the very last verse of the very, very last Psalm.
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  So you can see it. In Psalm 150, verse six, it says, let everything that has
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  breath, praise the Lord, praise the Lord.
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  And you can see the whole Psalm there before you. If you have breath in you,
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  if you have life in you, every moment, every breath that comes out of our lungs
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  that we exhale, Let it be praise to the one who is giving us every breath.
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  Let's not live our life in pursuit of.
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  Of what's here and now, but let's pursue God's kingdom and God,
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  because Jesus said, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,
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  and everything else will be added to us.
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  We don't need to be tossed to and fro and chasing everything and finding our
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  peace in whatever is out there, but we can have peace knowing that we have all that we need in God.
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  Bottom line, you need nothing else, and everything else is just gravy.
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  So if you've enjoyed this video, make sure you like and subscribe,
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  smash that like button and share it with your friends and keep evolving to the best version of you.