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425 | Stay on Task · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, friends, and welcome back to another podcast of Woman at the Well Ministries,
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where we believe that all of us have to come to Jesus like the woman at the well in John chapter 4.
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Our highest priority is making God real in your life.
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Whether you are listening in our app, in your favorite podcasting app,
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or on our website at watwm.org,
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we invite you to sit down with us as we look to the scriptures to learn more
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about God and to strengthen your daily walk with Jesus Christ.
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Living a life for Christ. She's a happy girl.
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Music.
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She's a happy girl.
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Often in our lives, we find ourselves questioning the task that God has given us.
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We even try to insert our will, our ways, and our ideas into the plan.
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But God has a plan for us and has specifically chosen the tasks He has for you.
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Join us in this podcast of Woman at the Well Ministries as we examine the lessons
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Moses teaches us concerning how to execute the tasks God has for us.
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I want to come out of Exodus 33, verse 14, and it reads like this.
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And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
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Our text tonight is that verse, But I want to give you just a little bit of
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preliminary verses as we get there.
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And we're going to start in verse 12, and I'll read through verse 14 again.
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And Moses said unto the Lord, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people,
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and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me.
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Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Amen.
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Now therefore I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight,
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show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight,
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and consider that this nation is thy people.
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And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
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I want us to take a close look at this account in Exodus.
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You know, Moses is asking for guidance and direction.
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And when we look at Exodus 33, verses 12 through 14,
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it shows Moses' humility, because his desire is to lead in accordance with God's
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plan and will for his life.
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We also quickly see that God comes down to Moses, and he speaks to Moses directly.
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And Moses is trying to get affirmation of what he knows to be true,
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Because we see in Exodus 33, 12, that he says, Thou sayest unto me, bring up this people.
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So again, we hear that God has given Moses a command.
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And Moses is all about fulfilling that command.
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But Moses, like many of us, is wanting a little bit more information.
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Because he says to him, he says, and thou hast not let me know whom thou.
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Thou wilt send with me. So Moses is looking for help, and no doubt Moses felt
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that God was giving him help.
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Maybe earlier in the text he was told that, but Moses believes that the job is too big for him.
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God is going to give him help, but he's wanting to know just who is this.
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And you know, I often worked in a situation where I was on a need-to-know basis,
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and there was a lot of information that I would want, a lot of questions that I would want answered,
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but they didn't think I need to know, because when it come down to it,
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I knew what my task was, I knew how to do my task, and I had what I needed to do my task.
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So any other information or any other detail wasn't important for me to know.
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And so I didn't hear anything else. It didn't even matter if I asked a lot of questions.
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In fact, generally, I learned to stop asking after one or two because I could
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see not only was I not going to get an answer, the people above me were getting
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slightly annoyed because my job was to do my job.
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And so as we look at Moses in this passage of scripture where he is seeking
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the Lord's will for his life, he knows the job that is at hand,
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but he's asking the Lord a couple of things.
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One, he directly asks him, who are you going to send with me?
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Because he says, you know, you've told me to go do this job,
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but you haven't told me who you're going to send with me.
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And I think what he also is trying to get is an affirmation that he's still in God's favor.
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And so let's look at our own lives for just a minute, because I think so often
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if we are asked to do something that we find to be difficult,
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we are trying to get all the details because one, we are trusting in ourselves.
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We're not truly trusting that God is going to take care of us.
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We're not truly trusting that God has everything under control.
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We somehow seem to know or think that we need to know the details in order to believe.
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And scripture tells us that faith is the evidence of things unseen.
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See, we don't get to know. But what we do get to know is Jesus.
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And we fully can know God because we can fully know Jesus.
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And that, my friend, needs to be enough to get us to be on point and on task.
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Hebrews 11, 6 says that it is impossible to please him without faith.
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So he says, without faith, it is impossible to please him. and you must believe
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that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
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And so faith is believing when you don't have all the details.
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Faith is sticking to the job because that's your task and believing that everybody
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else is going to do their work.
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Now, I particularly have always struggled working on a team because I want to
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live and die by my own decisions.
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I want to live and die by my own work ethic. I want my success and my failure
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to depend upon me because I believe in me. I believe I will get the job done.
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But that's not how God works.
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First of all, I can't do anything without believing in him and allowing him
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to equip me to do what I need to do.
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So step one is being fully committed to him.
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Step two is realizing that God God works in community.
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God gives you people. It shows us the love of God.
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It shows us the family of God. It teaches us how to love as he said love.
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Because he said that the second commandment was as the first commandment,
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we should love others as we love ourselves.
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So he expects us to live a life of love.
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And we are told that we are to be people of obedience.
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And that by loving him, we will be obedient. and his commandments won't feel grievous.
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And so as we begin to look at that, I want you to think about your life.
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At work, I struggled because I couldn't always trust everybody on my team.
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And they messed up once, maybe 20 years ago, and I still would have in the back
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of my mind that person's not trustworthy.
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Or maybe for a short portion of time, we would have somebody on our team that
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really wasn't able to do the job.
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And so you had this angst, You had this fear, and so you wanted to know what each person was doing.
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You wanted to know how your work fit into that intricately.
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But ultimately, they didn't give you any answers. You may not even know who's
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picking up your end of the work because you're on a need-to-know basis.
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And so quickly, I learned that what my task was to fulfill my assignment to
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the best of my ability with fervor, with passion, and to get it done.
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And what I've come to know after some 55 years of walking with Jesus is that
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I don't need to know the outcome because I'm not responsible for the outcome.
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I don't need to know the how because I've not been asked to orchestrate the strategy.
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I've not been asked to determine how it's done or to equip myself to get it done.
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What i've been asked to
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do is the task god has
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given me and he's given us all the
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same task and that is to go and
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preach and teach and spread the gospel of jesus christ now each one of us has
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gifts and talents to do it in various ways and he calls upon those gifts and
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talents and he calls upon you very strategically in very strategic circumstances to do the job,
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but he's never asked you to question how, when, or what.
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He's not asking you to do that.
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He's asking you to trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not into
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thine own understanding.
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In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path.
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Be not wise in thine own eyes, depart from evil, and fear the Lord.
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In proverbs 3 5 through 7 now i
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believe just given my own personality.
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And the own experience of how i
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worked the more i knew about the
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assignment the more of my opinion i would stick into it and since i didn't know
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all the other facets a lot of times my opinion was mute And though it sounded great to me,
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and given the limited information that I had, maybe even seemed plausible,
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but because I wasn't sitting in the seat of the individual who had the game plan,
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I was rarely, probably, even close to the mark when I started inserting my way.
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And I wasn't hired to insert my way. I was hired to do my job.
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I had a task to do.
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And I didn't always need to know why I was collecting certain samples at certain places.
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I didn't always need to know why it was at certain times.
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But then there were other times I did need to know so that I could do diagonal
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curves or I could figure out what is best for that population or how we could
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mitigate because I knew other elements around.
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And so as it was needed, I was directed.
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Now, I clearly learned how to do that at a 31-year career with the government.
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I've had 55 years of walking with Jesus, and I can be just like Moses and say,
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Hey, who are you going to bring to help me out?
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Tell me some more of the plan. And I'm often like Moses.
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I want the affirmation that I still have his anointing, that I still have his favor.
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And I really don't think that any of that is wrong. as long as I am continuing
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to move forward in my work while I'm asking.
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And this is what we find with Moses.
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He says, you said that you know me by name.
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That's a whole different story, but he knows your name. If you think you're
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lost and forgotten, that you're unimportant, the King of Kings and the Lord
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of Lords knows you by name.
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And he says, and you said that I found grace in your sights.
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And here's what he says. Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace
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in thy sight, show me now the way.
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You see how it has shifted from 12 to 13?
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In 12, he wants to know the plan. Who's coming? Who's helping?
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How's it going to happen? What's going to take place? What are we going to do?
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In 13, he's like, show me the way. Tell me your plan.
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And then he says these so impactful, incredible words, that I may know thee.
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I've been walking with the Lord for 55 years.
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And daily, if I'd just listen to that knock on my heart's door that he speaks
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about in Revelation 3.20, he'll open it up and I will know things.
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And Jeremiah 33.3 said, Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great
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and mighty things which thou knowest not.
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You know, they make a commercial where Captain Obvious says everything everybody
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knows, and he's really very little help.
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I don't need God to tell me what I already know.
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I need him to open up things I don't know.
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And I don't need to know how they work or why they work. I am never going to
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understand displacement where a ship can float in the ocean. I'm convinced of it.
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The brightest of minds have tried to explain it to me.
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Simple minds have tried to explain it to me. I know the theory.
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I can write it out as well as any of you.
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But my brain doesn't get that the cruise ship I'm going to go on is going to stay afloat.
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And when I jump off that ship,
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deck, if I would, I'm gonna sink. It doesn't make sense to me.
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But it doesn't have to. I still get on the boat. I still fish in the water.
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I still swim in the water.
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I've come to just realize that theory works.
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Displacement works. Why can't we come to the conclusion that grace works?
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That he is who he says he is. That faith is the key that unlocks the power of
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all of heaven, according to Ephesians 3.20.
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God chooses to come down and visit us and to tell us his plan.
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And that's what Moses is saying.
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But you got to walk in God's path to receive God's grace.
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Did you hear that? He says that I may find grace in thy sight.
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He says that I may know thee, show me the way that I may find grace in thy sight
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and consider that thy nation is thy people.
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In that two phrases and those two phrases, he is saying, show me your way that I may know you.
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And in your path, I will have your grace and affirm to me that what you said.
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Let me hear again that I have your favor. Let me know. See, what Moses teaches
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us in Exodus 33, 12, 13, and 14 is this.
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We need to walk in the ways of the Lord and allow God to walk with us in all that we do.
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And that's only going to happen when we are walking in his will.
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We also learn that rest and peace is found in the presence of them.
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He says that in Exodus 33, 14, and he said, My presence shall go with thee,
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and I will give thee rest.
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We also see what Moses teaches us, that we must continuously seek God's direction.
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Seek God's will for our life,
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seek his strategy for the assignment that he's given us, and especially in times
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of despair and trouble and turmoil.
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In the midst of the storm, you
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got to trust him more than ever because you got to know the anchor hole.
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I'm fairly certain that no one listening would refuse to get on a boat.
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You've never seen the captain. You've never been to the bottom of the boat where
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all the mechanical stuff is going.
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Yet you're going to get on that boat.
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But you believe they've done what they said they were going to do.
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You believe it's trustworthy.
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You believe the inspectors have
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done. Or you just so much believe that you don't even think about that.
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Yet the King of kings and the Lord of lords, he's spoken to you. He knows you by name.
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He has a plan for you, to prosper you, and to give you a hope,
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according to Jeremiah 29, 11.
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And he has spoken that without faith it's impossible to please him.
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But we don't always embrace the task as smoothly, as quickly,
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and as wholeheartedly as we walk up the ramp to get in the boat.
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But I want to tell you something. You got to believe.
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If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believes.
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Friends, Moses shows us humility. And it gives us the key to living a successful life.
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And that is to complete your task in accordance with the will of God for it.
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Don't insert your ideas.
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Don't give it qualifications. I'll do this if you do that.
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And when you ask, listen, and he'll show you things that you've never heard or seen.
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But most of all, you got to show up and you've got to do your task.
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And you've got to trust that He knows best.
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Friends, if we live our lives according to Exodus 12 through 14,
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we're going to know the peace that passes understanding, the joy unspeakable
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and full of glory, and we're going to live in the blessings of God. Amen.
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Music.
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Joining us in today's podcast. You can visit the show notes for quotes from
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today's podcast and scripture references.
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Thank you to the Gospel Group Fudge Creek for letting us use their hit song, Happy Girl.
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Remember that God loves you. You are loved.
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Music.