Latest / INSIGHT FOR LIVING: Biblical Wisdom For Everyday Living / Pastor Chuck Swindoll | Insight for Living – Germs That Make Us Contagious, Part 1
Transcript
- 0:07Speaker 1: Every single day, whether we realize it or not, we're
- 0:10Speaker 1: leaving something behind in the lives of people around us.
- 0:13Speaker 1: A mood, an attitude, a spirit that either lifts others
- 0:17Speaker 1: up or quietly pulls them down. We're all contagious, not
- 0:22Speaker 1: in a medical sense, but definitely in a relational one.
- 0:25Speaker 1: So the question is simple, how are we infecting others?
- 0:29Speaker 2: Today?
- 0:30Speaker 1: On Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall says it takes something
- 0:33Speaker 1: most of us wouldn't expect, courage to spread the kind
- 0:36Speaker 1: of influence that actually changes lives. Chuck title today's message
- 0:41Speaker 1: germs that make us contagious?
- 0:51Speaker 3: Do you have the courage to be a contagious Christian?
- 0:56Speaker 3: Perhaps you never realized that being contagious requires courage, but
- 1:01Speaker 3: think about that for a moment. Releasing Christ's infectious presence
- 1:07Speaker 3: in your daily life takes the courage to do several things,
- 1:11Speaker 3: like the smile at life rather than dread it. Like
- 1:17Speaker 3: it takes courage to listen to God's you can do
- 1:20Speaker 3: it rather than paying attention to others. Now you better
- 1:24Speaker 3: watch out, better hold back there. And it also takes
- 1:29Speaker 3: courage to be enthusiastic rather than pessimistic about what the
- 1:33Speaker 3: day may hold for you. It doesn't necessarily take a
- 1:37Speaker 3: dynamic personality to be contagious. For instance, we wouldn't say
- 1:42Speaker 3: that the late Mother Teresa had a boisterous temperament, yet
- 1:46Speaker 3: her vision to give love to the unlovable, the sick,
- 1:50Speaker 3: and the dying influenced untold millions of others, even in
- 1:55Speaker 3: her own quiet way. Contagious Christians you under stand, inspire
- 2:02Speaker 3: and challenge, sometimes even rebuke by their example of courage. Listen,
- 2:09Speaker 3: for example, to some descriptions of courage, as found in JB.
- 2:12Speaker 3: Phillips's paraphrase of First Thessalonians five thirteen to twenty three,
- 2:19Speaker 3: where he writes, live together in peace, Encourage the timid,
- 2:25Speaker 3: reprimand the unruly. Help those who are weak. Be very
- 2:31Speaker 3: patient with everyone. Be sure that no one repays a
- 2:36Speaker 3: bad turn by a bad turn. Good should be your objective.
- 2:42Speaker 3: Always be happy in your faith at all times. Never
- 2:47Speaker 3: stop praying, be thankful whatever your circumstances may be. If
- 2:53Speaker 3: you follow this advice, you will be working out the
- 2:56Speaker 3: will of God expressed to you in Christ Jesus. Never
- 3:00Speaker 3: dampen the fire of the spirit, and never despise what
- 3:05Speaker 3: is spoken to you in the name of the Lord
- 3:07Speaker 3: by all means, use your judgment and hold on to
- 3:11Speaker 3: whatever is really good, and of course steer clear of
- 3:16Speaker 3: evil in any form. May the God of Peace make
- 3:21Speaker 3: you wholly.
- 3:23Speaker 2: Through and through.
- 3:33Speaker 1: You're listening to Insight for Living to dig deeper into
- 3:37Speaker 1: first Thessalonians on your own. Be sure to purchase our
- 3:40Speaker 1: Searching the Scripture's Bible Study workbook by going to insight
- 3:44Speaker 1: dot org. Slash offer Chuck title Today's message germs that
- 3:49Speaker 1: make us contagious.
- 3:51Speaker 3: Seems to me that most people who want to get
- 3:53Speaker 3: the most out of life desire to be contagious people.
- 4:00Speaker 3: That implies that you desire to be different. So much
- 4:05Speaker 3: of life is just plain, boring, just drab. Have you
- 4:10Speaker 3: noticed it just seems to get long. As my mother
- 4:14Speaker 3: used to say, life just seems to get long. William
- 4:19Speaker 3: macnamara once wrote, in a book entitled The Human Adventure
- 4:26Speaker 3: these honest words, my grievance with contemporary society is with
- 4:33Speaker 3: its decrepitude. There are few towering pleasures to allure me,
- 4:40Speaker 3: almost no beauty to bewitch me, nothing erotic to arouse me,
- 4:48Speaker 3: No intellectual circles or positions to challenge or provoke me.
- 4:55Speaker 3: No burgeoning philosophies or theology, and no new art to
- 5:01Speaker 3: catch my attention or engage my mind, no arousing, political, social,
- 5:08Speaker 3: or religious movements to stimulate or excite me. There are
- 5:13Speaker 3: no free men to lead me, no saints to inspire me,
- 5:20Speaker 3: no sinners sinful enough to either impress me or share
- 5:24Speaker 3: my plight, no one human enough to validate the going lifestyle.
- 5:30Speaker 3: It is hard to linger in that dull world without
- 5:34Speaker 3: being dulled. I stake the future on the few humble
- 5:39Speaker 3: and hearty lovers who seek God passionately in the marvelous,
- 5:46Speaker 3: messy world of redeemed and related realities that lie in
- 5:51Speaker 3: front of our noses.
- 5:53Speaker 2: I say amen to.
- 5:54Speaker 3: That seems to me that what we really need in
- 5:59Speaker 3: this world is a body of people whose lives demand
- 6:04Speaker 3: and explanation. That's not original with me. I heard that
- 6:08Speaker 3: from Lloyd Ogilvie. Our lives, if they are indeed contagious,
- 6:14Speaker 3: will be lives that demand and explanation. People will want
- 6:19Speaker 3: to know how come you're so much like that? Now,
- 6:25Speaker 3: when I talk about being contagious, I mean it in
- 6:28Speaker 3: the right sense. We're all contagious. Problem is we're infecting
- 6:33Speaker 3: people with the wrong germs. Not the unhealthy kind of contagion.
- 6:40Speaker 3: Webster says, to be contagious is to communicate by contact,
- 6:46Speaker 3: to be catching. When people are contagious, there's an influence
- 6:51Speaker 3: that spreads from their lives that simply cannot be turned off.
- 6:57Speaker 3: We find ourselves inspired by them, and challenged by them,
- 7:01Speaker 3: and more often than not rebuked by them without their
- 7:05Speaker 3: attempting to rebuke us verbally. They convince us of the
- 7:10Speaker 3: good way to live. They inspire us to reach a
- 7:15Speaker 3: greater destiny. It takes courage. Takes courage to live like that.
- 7:22Speaker 3: Jeremiah was challenged. If you have run with the footman,
- 7:27Speaker 3: meaning the infantry, and they have wearied you, then how
- 7:31Speaker 3: will you contend with horses? Which is another way of saying,
- 7:34Speaker 3: if the infantry wears you out, what are you going
- 7:37Speaker 3: to do when the cavalry comes? And if in the
- 7:39Speaker 3: land of peace, wherein you trusted, you got tired, what
- 7:43Speaker 3: will you do in the jungle of the Jordan when
- 7:47Speaker 3: things were going well you found yourself swamped by your
- 7:50Speaker 3: own self imposed neuroses. What are you going to do
- 7:54Speaker 3: when it's jungle fighting? Jeremiah, be contagious, be different. In
- 8:01Speaker 3: this dull world, many of our Christian heroes had such courage.
- 8:05Speaker 3: Saint Francis of Assisi. You should study his life sometime now.
- 8:09Speaker 3: When you see pictures of Francis, you think of an old,
- 8:12Speaker 3: stoop shouldered man that talked to birds and played around
- 8:16Speaker 3: in the garden and lived a life about as exciting
- 8:19Speaker 3: as watching paint dry. But that's not Saint Francis of Assisi.
- 8:23Speaker 3: That's not him. You know what they called him in
- 8:26Speaker 3: his day, Joculator Domini, the hilarious saint.
- 8:33Speaker 2: How about Mother Teresa.
- 8:34Speaker 3: I cannot imagine Mother Teresa waking up to an alarm
- 8:38Speaker 3: in Calcutta four thirty five o'clock in the morning, thinking, oh,
- 8:42Speaker 3: rat's another hard day in the ghetto. I don't believe
- 8:46Speaker 3: she starts her day like that. I don't believe she
- 8:49Speaker 3: spends her life complaining about the lumpy mattress or the
- 8:53Speaker 3: hot days or the long nights. Now, there's something contain
- 9:00Speaker 3: just about people like this. To be around folks like
- 9:03Speaker 3: that is to be infected with germs of encouragement. And
- 9:07Speaker 3: you want to do better, You want to accomplish more,
- 9:10Speaker 3: you want to reach new heights. There is within us
- 9:16Speaker 3: a choice we can make to spread poison.
- 9:20Speaker 2: Or to spread.
- 9:21Speaker 3: Encouragement, and I think the New Testament is full of
- 9:23Speaker 3: sufficient challenge to send us in the right direction. Turn
- 9:28Speaker 3: if you will, to first Thessalonians five. There's a whole
- 9:32Speaker 3: list of things. Let me tell you a funny thing
- 9:35Speaker 3: that happened, and it's not in my notes, so don't
- 9:38Speaker 3: tell anybody I told you.
- 9:39Speaker 2: Okay.
- 9:42Speaker 3: Sometimes you get gifts in the strangest ways. My friend
- 9:45Speaker 3: Ray Stedman was ministering at a place back east, as
- 9:50Speaker 3: I recall, and he was sitting at breakfast alone one morning,
- 9:53Speaker 3: and there was a pewter salt and pepper set and
- 9:56Speaker 3: a little creamer in front of him, just beautiful. And
- 9:59Speaker 3: he thought, in a weak moment, that would fit neatly
- 10:05Speaker 3: in my suitcase. I could take that home and this
- 10:10Speaker 3: place would never miss it. And then the more he
- 10:14Speaker 3: thought about it and more scandily realized he would create as.
- 10:19Speaker 2: A minister stealing these things.
- 10:21Speaker 3: He thought, I can't do that. And so the next Sunday,
- 10:26Speaker 3: while he was preaching, he was on the subject of stealing,
- 10:28Speaker 3: and he admitted this to everyone. He says, I want
- 10:32Speaker 3: you to know that even I can be tempted to
- 10:33Speaker 3: do that. The following Sunday, morning at his study there
- 10:41Speaker 3: was a little package and he unwrapped it and it
- 10:45Speaker 3: was this pewter salt and pepper shaker and creamer. Someone
- 10:49Speaker 3: in the congregation heard his story and called back there
- 10:52Speaker 3: and thought, if he once it that much, I'll send
- 10:54Speaker 3: it to him, you know.
- 10:54Speaker 2: And so when he.
- 10:56Speaker 3: Shared it the next Sunday, he said, I also noticed
- 10:59Speaker 3: this lovely color television, said it, and he said, you
- 11:07Speaker 3: know what, I did not get a color television. Back
- 11:12Speaker 3: to the stuff at hand here, I want you to
- 11:16Speaker 3: notice that this list we're looking at kind of evolves
- 11:20Speaker 3: out of a statement that Paul makes in verse eleven.
- 11:23Speaker 3: Encourage one another, build up one another. I think if
- 11:31Speaker 3: I were to paraphrase it, I would say, be contagious.
- 11:36Speaker 2: With encouragement.
- 11:39Speaker 3: Be an edifier, just as a regular habit of your life,
- 11:45Speaker 3: so that when anyone leaves your presence, even though they
- 11:49Speaker 3: were there for a reproof, they felt built up. That's
- 11:55Speaker 3: quite a challenge. Be contagious in putting courage into someone else.
- 12:01Speaker 3: That's why I ask, are you courageous enough to be contagious?
- 12:06Speaker 3: See the word encourage, It means that putting courage into
- 12:11Speaker 3: someone else. Enthusiasm is from nthaos. Theos means God putting
- 12:17Speaker 3: God into another life. En courage, putting courage into another life.
- 12:26Speaker 2: And lest he leave us with just the.
- 12:28Speaker 3: Mocking sound of a command, he adds a list of
- 12:32Speaker 3: things we can do as we wrap ourselves up like
- 12:34Speaker 3: a gift and give ourselves to people. Some of the
- 12:38Speaker 3: things are kindly requested. Verse twelve, I request of view
- 12:43Speaker 3: that you appreciate those who are your spiritual leaders. Show
- 12:47Speaker 3: respect for your spiritual leaders. And verse thirteen concludes with
- 12:51Speaker 3: another kindly requested give up to others the gift of peace.
- 12:56Speaker 3: See the way it reads, live in peace with one another.
- 13:01Speaker 3: And then he changes to urgency in verse fourteen. Now
- 13:04Speaker 3: we urge you. Now he gets a little closer to home.
- 13:09Speaker 3: There are some things that are urgently needed. If you're
- 13:13Speaker 3: going to be contagious, if you're going to have an
- 13:16Speaker 3: impact in a dull world. There are some things that
- 13:19Speaker 3: must mark your life, and they're urgent things. Notice them,
- 13:24Speaker 3: admonish the unruly, Put courage into the discouraged. Stay with
- 13:30Speaker 3: the week. The word help suggest the idea of staying
- 13:34Speaker 3: with them in the long haul. We look at that closely.
- 13:38Speaker 3: Last time, be increasingly more patient, and verse fifteen, refuse
- 13:46Speaker 3: to retaliate, don't get even, don't even try to get even.
- 13:53Speaker 3: Let them win if they want to call that winning.
- 13:57Speaker 3: You will never be contagious if you spend your life
- 14:00Speaker 3: life getting even. Now he goes further. We had to
- 14:05Speaker 3: stop because we run out of time and we want
- 14:08Speaker 3: to continue. When you get to verse sixteen down through twenty,
- 14:14Speaker 3: you come upon things that are continually appropriate. See the
- 14:17Speaker 3: way it reads, Always rejoice unceasingly, pray in everything, give thanks,
- 14:27Speaker 3: stop extinguishing the spirit, and stop turning off messages from
- 14:34Speaker 3: God spoken through the throat of a prophet. And then
- 14:40Speaker 3: there are finally, well, there's one thing that's occasionally uncertain,
- 14:46Speaker 3: and so as we're going to see, we need to
- 14:48Speaker 3: examine it carefully. If it's good, stay with it. If
- 14:52Speaker 3: it's bad, get rid of it. We'll look at that.
- 14:54Speaker 2: In a minute.
- 14:55Speaker 3: Now, some things that are continually appropriate. If you want
- 14:58Speaker 3: to be contagious, work on these things. Always rejoice. I
- 15:07Speaker 3: cannot name one thing that is more contagious than genuine joy.
- 15:13Speaker 3: Can't name a thing. I know some people who say, look,
- 15:16Speaker 3: I just don't show it. I'm joyful, I just don't
- 15:19Speaker 3: show it. I never met anybody of whom that was true.
- 15:23Speaker 3: If you are truly joyful, you cannot keep from showing it.
- 15:27Speaker 3: I'm not saying you have to be a cheerleader. I'm
- 15:29Speaker 3: not saying you have to have a lot of charisma
- 15:32Speaker 3: or dynamic. You don't have to be like that in personality.
- 15:36Speaker 3: I know some very quiet kind of people who are
- 15:40Speaker 3: terribly contagious to be around.
- 15:42Speaker 2: Full of joy.
- 15:44Speaker 3: They're not applauding a lot. They don't do backflips down
- 15:46Speaker 3: the road, they don't sing to the top of their voice.
- 15:49Speaker 3: They're quiet people, but they're contagiously happy. There is in
- 15:54Speaker 3: this a well developed sense of humor, an optimistic outlook
- 15:59Speaker 3: on life, a focusing on the healing rather than on
- 16:03Speaker 3: the difficulty of the problem. A person who is rejoicing
- 16:07Speaker 3: always is one who is light hearted in spirit, one
- 16:13Speaker 3: who on occasion really enjoys a good laugh. Because some
- 16:21Speaker 3: of you still don't look convinced, I've done little research
- 16:23Speaker 3: in this, and I want to share with you that
- 16:26Speaker 3: there is scientific proof it will do you good. I
- 16:30Speaker 3: don't know if you've read The Anatomy of an Illness
- 16:33Speaker 3: as Perceived by the Patient by Norman Cousins, was written
- 16:38Speaker 3: by this former Saturday Review editor. He was hospitalized in
- 16:43Speaker 3: nineteen sixty four with an extremely rare crippling disease. When
- 16:50Speaker 3: conventional medicine failed to improve his condition, he was diagnosed
- 16:55Speaker 3: as incurable. Cousins checked out of the hospital. Being aware
- 17:00Speaker 3: of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on
- 17:03Speaker 3: the human body, the man reason that the reverse must
- 17:06Speaker 3: also be true, so he decided to dwell on becoming
- 17:09Speaker 3: well again. He barred a movie projector. Now, if you're
- 17:13Speaker 3: a physician, just keep listening. Don't turn this off.
- 17:17Speaker 2: Just keep listening.
- 17:18Speaker 3: He barred a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment plan,
- 17:22Speaker 3: consisting of Marx Brothers motion pictures, an old candid camera
- 17:27Speaker 3: reruns on film. He studied all aspects of his disease,
- 17:32Speaker 3: and with the help of his physician, he learned what
- 17:35Speaker 3: would have to take place in his body to make
- 17:36Speaker 3: it right again. He focused on that. In his book,
- 17:41Speaker 3: he recounts that he made the joyous discovery that ten
- 17:44Speaker 3: minutes ten minutes of genuine belly laughter would give me
- 17:48Speaker 3: at least two hours of painfree sleep. What had seemed
- 17:52Speaker 3: to be a progressively debilitating fatal cellular disease was reversed
- 17:58Speaker 3: and in time, Cousins almost completely recovered. After his personal
- 18:04Speaker 3: account of the victory appeared in the New England Journal
- 18:07Speaker 3: of Medicine, he received more than three thousand letters from
- 18:11Speaker 3: appreciative physicians throughout the world. Thirty four medical schools have
- 18:16Speaker 3: included his article in their instructional materials, and in nineteen
- 18:20Speaker 3: seventy eight, Norman Cousins joined the faculty of the UCLA
- 18:23Speaker 3: Medical School.
- 18:26Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
- 18:28Speaker 3: Another man writing about it, says, it seems the brain
- 18:30Speaker 3: causes the cells to produce proteins called endo enzymes.
- 18:35Speaker 2: Which are natural morphine.
- 18:37Speaker 3: Like pain killers, Laughter triggers the production of these endo enzymes.
- 18:44Speaker 3: Doctors now agree that cousins self prescribed therapy of joy
- 18:48Speaker 3: has a scientific basis. Laughter reduces pain and actually helps
- 18:54Speaker 3: to cure the patient. With laughter as his painkiller, Cousins
- 18:58Speaker 3: no longer had to use sleeping pills and other drugs
- 19:01Speaker 3: that alter the endocrine system and interfere with the body's
- 19:05Speaker 3: own internal healing mechanism.
- 19:09Speaker 2: I think that's great.
- 19:13Speaker 3: I'm involved in a little radio program and on occasion
- 19:16Speaker 3: I'll have people write me and say you can stop preaching,
- 19:20Speaker 3: which kind of catches me up short and then they
- 19:22Speaker 3: will add, but don't stop laughing. Yours is the only
- 19:26Speaker 3: laughter that ever comes into our home. Is there laughter
- 19:30Speaker 3: in your home? When did it stop? Chances are very
- 19:36Speaker 3: good that since it stopped you felt worse. You say, well,
- 19:40Speaker 3: if you only knew my circumstance. Wait a minute, since
- 19:43Speaker 3: when did circumstances give us reason to laugh or not?
- 19:47Speaker 3: If I went on the basis of circumstances, friends, you
- 19:51Speaker 3: think i'd do what I do for a living. You
- 19:54Speaker 3: and I realized that the challenge of life is living
- 19:57Speaker 3: above circumstances, seeing beyond the petty differences that lie between
- 20:03Speaker 3: us and other individuals.
- 20:06Speaker 2: Overlooking false, going further than the gloomy.
- 20:12Speaker 3: Grim response of others. I love this statement. I got
- 20:17Speaker 3: it from a French Jesuit priest theologian whose name I
- 20:21Speaker 3: can't even pronounce. Joy is the surest sign of the
- 20:25Speaker 3: presence of God.
- 20:27Speaker 2: Isn't that good? I think that's true? Now? How do
- 20:31Speaker 2: I do that? Unceasingly? Pray?
- 20:34Speaker 3: Hey, these are linked together like links in a chain.
- 20:38Speaker 3: If you try to do that without this next one,
- 20:41Speaker 3: you're gonna run dry. Your laughter is gonna turn into
- 20:43Speaker 3: just a silly little smile. You're gonna become just a jokester.
- 20:48Speaker 3: No one wants to be around just a jokester. That's
- 20:51Speaker 3: not funny. We pay entertainers to do that for us,
- 20:55Speaker 3: and most of them are grim people when they're not
- 20:57Speaker 3: in front of the camera. Only way to have a
- 21:00Speaker 3: heart that's full of joy is to have a heart
- 21:02Speaker 3: that's free of the burdens. And to have a heart
- 21:05Speaker 3: that's free of the burdens means you've got to release them,
- 21:08Speaker 3: and you release the burden how prayer? See the way
- 21:13Speaker 3: he puts it, unceasingly pray. Many years ago I stumbled
- 21:17Speaker 3: across this paraphrase, pray with the frequency of a hacking
- 21:21Speaker 3: cough ever had one of those little ticklish feelings in
- 21:26Speaker 3: your throat and just required that about every oh two
- 21:29Speaker 3: or three minutes. Sometime less than that, you had to cough.
- 21:34Speaker 2: You just had to. That's the idea.
- 21:35Speaker 3: It's not a non stop, twenty four hour a day
- 21:39Speaker 3: burden of prayer. It's not that it's just a regular
- 21:43Speaker 3: releasing of the load. You're with someone, they're honery, they're
- 21:48Speaker 3: hard to deal with. Release the load to God. You
- 21:51Speaker 3: get a letter that attacks you, release, let him read it.
- 22:00Speaker 3: You have a job that requires a few heavy decisions
- 22:03Speaker 3: and a lot of high powered responsibility kind of things.
- 22:07Speaker 3: Let him share in it. Why do you think you
- 22:09Speaker 3: have a savior? Since Wendy, could you handle it? You
- 22:13Speaker 3: will become extraordinary. If you do that, you will become
- 22:16Speaker 3: the gossip of the office. Your life will demand an explanation.
- 22:23Speaker 3: Contagious is the word pray without ceasing. What's the genius
- 22:29Speaker 3: of this discipline? Number one, it is tremendously therapeutic, and
- 22:33Speaker 3: number two, it is a direct pipeline to wisdom.
- 22:37Speaker 2: That's why prayer works.
- 22:39Speaker 3: It's a therapy that sends the burden from my shoulders
- 22:43Speaker 3: to God's. And second, it sends back to me perspective,
- 22:47Speaker 3: which is called in scripture wisdom works. I've never seen
- 22:51Speaker 3: it fail. Never When I say to my father, help me,
- 22:55Speaker 3: hear he does. And when he helps me, he also
- 22:59Speaker 3: sends along in the package insight. I need perspective, that
- 23:04Speaker 3: I need, wisdom that I need. I'm freed from the
- 23:07Speaker 3: anchor that drags me down. And as a result, guess
- 23:12Speaker 3: what verse eighteen happens in everything.
- 23:17Speaker 2: Give thanks?
- 23:19Speaker 3: Did you notice this? It's an always matter of rejoicing.
- 23:23Speaker 3: It is an unceasing matter of prayer. It is an
- 23:26Speaker 3: in everything matter of giving things, not for everything.
- 23:32Speaker 2: This helped me a long time ago.
- 23:34Speaker 3: I used to think that I was responsible before God
- 23:37Speaker 3: to give thanks for everything. No, why would I ever
- 23:43Speaker 3: give thanks for something I really needed to confess to
- 23:45Speaker 3: him is wrong. I'm not thankful for sin in my life.
- 23:51Speaker 3: I'm not thankful for calamity that drops me on my face.
- 23:56Speaker 3: I'm not thankful for the cursing of someone else against me.
- 24:01Speaker 3: I'm not thankful for ugly things done against my children.
- 24:05Speaker 3: But in them I am thankful. You see, the little
- 24:10Speaker 3: word N gives me the perspective of the whole pattern
- 24:14Speaker 3: which God is weaving together in his sovereign way.
- 24:19Speaker 2: In his pattern there are beautiful threads.
- 24:22Speaker 3: Of gold and silver, and yellow and red and orange,
- 24:26Speaker 3: and bright greens and bright blues. But in his pattern
- 24:29Speaker 3: there are also somber grays and blacks and deep hues
- 24:35Speaker 3: of brown.
- 24:37Speaker 2: Those are needed in the pattern.
- 24:39Speaker 3: And so in this whole pattern that God is weaving together,
- 24:43Speaker 3: I'm giving him thanks. I'm giving him thanks for the
- 24:47Speaker 3: low tide. In the midst of it, I am gaining
- 24:50Speaker 3: a depth concerning his plan that I would not have
- 24:54Speaker 3: gotten but for the thing itself not really.
- 25:10Speaker 1: Chuckswndahl is midway through our study in First Thessalonians, chapter five.
- 25:15Speaker 1: He titled his message Germs that make Us Contagious. It's
- 25:19Speaker 1: the eleventh sermon and a collection of twelve that concludes
- 25:22Speaker 1: Monday here on insight for living. Since our verse by
- 25:25Speaker 1: verse study in Paul's letter concludes next week, I want
- 25:28Speaker 1: to remind you that time is running out to request
- 25:30Speaker 1: your copy of Chuck's book called Laugh Again Experience Outrageous Joy.
- 25:36Speaker 1: It's founded on Paul's letter, not to the Thessalonians, though, but
- 25:39Speaker 1: to the Philippians. Here's why that's significant. Did you realize
- 25:43Speaker 1: that Philippians is the most joy filled letter in the
- 25:46Speaker 1: New Testament and it was written by a man in chains,
- 25:50Speaker 1: no windows, no freedom. Paul was in prison, and he
- 25:53Speaker 1: had no idea how his story would end. Yet he
- 25:56Speaker 1: wrote to the Philippians about joy, not as a lofty goal,
- 26:00Speaker 1: but as a present day reality. Chuck has spent years
- 26:04Speaker 1: unpacking how that's even possible and what it means for
- 26:07Speaker 1: you today. His book Laugh Again will change the way
- 26:10Speaker 1: you think about joy and about the God who makes
- 26:13Speaker 1: it available in places you'd least expect it. It's our
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- 26:33Speaker 1: your generous gifts. When you contribute to Insight for Living,
- 26:37Speaker 1: you make it possible for us to share these daily
- 26:39Speaker 1: studies not only in your community, but all around the
- 26:42Speaker 1: world in multiple languages, for countless people. You're providing an
- 26:47Speaker 1: oasis of truth where men and women come to understand
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- 27:17Speaker 1: Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuckswindall continues to explore the
- 27:21Speaker 1: germs that make Us Contagious Thursday on Insight for Living.
- 27:28Speaker 1: The preceding message, Germs that make Us Contagious was copyrighted
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- 27:36Speaker 1: two thousand and three and twenty twenty four, and the
- 27:39Speaker 1: sound recording was copyrighted in twenty twenty four by Charles R.
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