Latest / The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast / 554 | The Elements of Prayer - Part 4 - Are Your Prayers Being Heard?

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554 | The Elements of Prayer - Part 4 - Are Your Prayers Being Heard? · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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She's a happy girl. Hello, friends, and welcome back to another podcast of Woman.
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At the Well Ministries, where we believe that all of us have to come to Jesus
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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, we invite you to sit down with us as we look
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to the scriptures to learn more about God and to strengthen your daily walk with Jesus Christ.
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Join us in this broadcast of Women at the Well Ministries, as Kim continues in her series on prayer.
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In this lesson, Kim will address some of the reasons the Bible says our prayers are hindered.
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A portion of this lesson is also dedicated to the practice of thanksgiving and
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the important role that a thankful heart plays in praying prayers that produce.
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Hello, and thank you for joining us in this fourth part of our series on practicing the elements of prayer.
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And in our last lesson, we spoke about three of the five elements that we have
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chosen to highlight for this series on prayer.
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Those five elements that we've been talking about are we are to worship, surrender.
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Petition, confession, and thanksgiving are the five elements that we pulled
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out to highlight in our prayers.
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But make no mistake and be very clear on this.
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God hears your prayers if you are his child and do not regard iniquity in your
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heart and don't have sin in there, regardless of what it is.
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You don't have to be an orator to be able to speak to God. You don't have to know some set prayers.
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You don't have to know some recipe. He said in 1 Thessalonians 5,
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17 to pray without ceasing.
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He told us again in 1 Chronicles that we are to seek him continually.
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He hears the simplest of prayers as he heard Peter when he said, save me.
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And he hears the big long orations like you saw of the prayer of J.
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Biz or the prayer of the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus makes.
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He hears your prayers that come from a repentant heart, seeking God in faith, believing.
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And so when you begin to pray, just speak to God from your heart,
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knowing who he is, trusting in him and worshiping him for who he is.
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And that helps us to get ourselves into the right frame of mind.
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It helps us to really increase our faith as we begin to see who he is and worship
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him for his majesty and his power.
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Then we are to surrender, understanding our positioning with God.
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And I don't mean on your knees or face forward, however you choose to pray.
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That's between you and God. I mean that proximity position of our hierarchy,
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knowing that God is God and we are his children created in his image,
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that our works are nothing but filthy rags, that he imputes his righteousness
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to us and that he makes our black, dark sinfulness white as snow and that his
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crimson red blood flows through us.
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And when Jesus looks at us, he sees his blood.
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And when he talks to the father, he says, there's one of mine, that's my child.
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Because of his sinless work,
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on calvary because of the completed work on calvary
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where he shed his sinless blood for each of us
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and that he was buried and on the third day rose again and was victorious over
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hell death and the grave we have a savior who is risen who is alive who hears
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our prayers and john chapter 17 says he prays for us we're told in hebrews that
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he ever liveth to make a recession for us,
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Jesus Christ is real, and we need to realize who we are in him.
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Then we need to take him at his word, offer our petitions to him knowing that
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our help comes from him, that we can come boldly to the throne of grace and
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obtain mercy in time of need.
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What a beautiful, beautiful truth, that we can cast our cares upon him for he cares for us.
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In James chapter 5 and verse 16, he says,
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confess your faults one to another and pray
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one for another that you may be healed the effectual fervent prayer
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of a righteous man availeth much but he
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encourages us to confess our faults one to
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another we're going to speak about confession in this portion of our lesson
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and he says in psalms 32 5 that i acknowledge my sin unto thee and mine iniquity
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have i not hid i said i will confess my transgressions unto the Lord and thou
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forgave us the iniquity of my sin.
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In Psalms chapter 66 and verse 18, he says, if I regard iniquity in my heart,
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the Lord will not hear me.
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It's a common misconception out there that God hears every prayer that everybody prays.
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The Bible tells us in James that sometimes we pray amiss.
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I know that in my own prayer life that I have prayed prayers that didn't even
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reach it to the ceiling because they were just form and fashion.
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They were just words that I were repeating. They were just blocks I was checking off.
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Sometimes I was just too tired to say anything else and I was doing something
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else and sort of just uttering some words.
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Prayer is a condition of the heart and it's the condition that says,
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Lord, I need you. Lord, I trust you. Lord, help me.
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Lord, I come to you because your grace is sufficient. I come to you because you are God.
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I come to you because you are the great I am. i come to you because you are
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the beginning and the end i come to you because you invite me and i love you
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and i know you love me and i know who you are and your righteousness flows through me,
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you see it's an interesting thing that we think that we can go to god and ask
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him for anything regardless of whatever yet.
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In our earthly relationships, as a child and a parent, we would never go to
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our earthly father and ask him for something big if we were not in good standing with him.
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If you'd just been grounded, you didn't ask him for something new or something that you wanted.
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If you were getting ready to ask him for something that you thought might be
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difficult for him to say yes to, where a very common practice was to sort of butter him up.
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You crawl up in his lap and you tell him how much you love him and you hang
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out with him and you you know get his shoes for him and you get him something
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to drink in the evening and you hang out with him a little bit and then you spring the news on him,
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but yet that worked for some of
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us probably others it may not have
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but that stuff never works with jesus christ because
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you see you can't fool him he knows whether
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he has a relationship with you or not and you know whether you have
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a relationship with him or not because the bible says he said
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i write these things into you little children that you may know and
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he says that we can know him and from genesis to revelations we have a beautiful
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picture of who he is the old testament prophesizes who he is the new testament
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is the fulfillment of those prophecies and the new testament gives us the life
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for jesus and since jesus and the god are one and the same and the holy spirit
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all three in one then we can fully know god because we can fully know jesus.
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And you're not going to fool him anyway. And if you don't have a relationship
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with him, it's a little late to try praying about such and thus.
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But the prayer that he did promise to hear from all of us was the prayer of repentance.
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He said in Romans 10, 13, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
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In Acts, the Philippian jellers says to Paul and Silas, what must I do to be saved?
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And they said, believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
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saved. And then they add it in the house.
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You can't get saved for someone else, but your life certainly can introduce someone else to Jesus.
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And when they see the change that is wrought in you by the new birth,
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because old things are passed away and all things are become new,
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there is a difference in your life that they'll want.
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There's a joy in your life that will attract them. There's a light that they
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will flock to like a moth to light at night.
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There's a peace that they've been seeking that you have, that they're going
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to want with all they have.
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And you'll be able to show them that. and you'll be able to introduce them because
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the Bible says in Matthew chapter 5 that ye are the light of the world and that
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you don't hide that light under a bushel but you put it out for all the house to see.
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That your works may glorify your Father which is in heaven.
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We need to confess our sins because the Lord's not going to hear our prayers,
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if we regard sin in our hearts.
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And if we're serving Satan, he certainly is not going to bless us by answering our prayers.
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We can see that in our earthly situations. it seems
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that we should be able to see that in a spiritual condition and
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i hope that you're looking at that he said that if you were lukewarm he would
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spew you from your mouth you can't serve mammon and god in other words you can't
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have two masters and he explains to us in no uncertain terms and i'm praying
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to god that he gives me the liberty to teach a lesson on romans chapter 6 that
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says sin has no more dominion over you.
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Yet, we walk around and you can't tell us from the world. And he said, be a peculiar person.
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You should be very different than the person around you who doesn't know Jesus.
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The Holy Spirit dwells inside of you and it teaches you all things that you
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need to know. It guides you. It leads you.
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It's your absolute connection at all times to the living God.
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How could you not be different than somebody who doesn't have that inside of them?
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You need to take a close look and make sure you got there where the spout,
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where the glory come out. because if there's no difference in you,
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my friend, I'm not a judge, but I can inspect fruit and an orange tree is never
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going to produce lemons.
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And a child of God is not going to have continual works of the devil.
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You see, he chastises whom he loves. The Bible says in 1 John 1,
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9, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
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and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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And as Christians, we make mistakes. As Christians, we fall,
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but we're not utterly cast down and we're never in despair because Jesus Christ
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is our hope, the hope of all glory.
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And he said that he would forgive us our sins and that Holy Spirit inside of us convicts us.
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And we just can't get far from the straight and narrow because he tugs at us
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and he pulls us. And let me tell you what, my rope that he has on me is extremely
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short. And I praise his holy name for that because I get myself hooked up and all messed up.
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But he doesn't let me slip and slide because I am on the solid rock on Jesus Christ as whom I stand.
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And you see, my grip might be loose, but his is sure.
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And I don't have to worry about my salvation because I have a relationship with
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him. And I love him and he loves me and I've received him as Savior.
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And I'm going to live with him for all eternity. but that
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same salvation that same grace that
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has saved my soul that same imputed righteousness is the same one that wants
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me to work for him that wants me that i want to go out and i want to just love
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all over him and i can do that but love it all over somebody else i want to
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stand for him because my friend if you won't stand for something you'll fall
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for anything and i want to stand he says when you've done all else just stand kim.
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See, that's the problem. We want to talk to Jesus when we're not.
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We want to talk to Jesus when it's convenient. And we want to be associated
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with Jesus when it's the popular thing.
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But you see, some of us, when we're out with our buddies who don't claim to
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be Christians, well, we just act like they are.
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And everybody who sees us wouldn't know one from the other.
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That ought not be, my friend. And he says, if you regard iniquity in my heart,
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the Lord will not hear me.
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That's Psalm 66, 18. and you might want to mark that on your heart.
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In Isaiah 59 too, he says, but your iniquities have separated between you and
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your God and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear.
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There is nothing that will separate you from the love of God.
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He tells us that very plainly in Romans chapter eight.
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But my friend, there's something that will separate you from right fellowship.
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He may love you but he can't hang out with you i don't
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know if you ever had the experience growing up
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where you had friends that maybe you liked but your parents didn't think
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were the kind you should hang around and it didn't matter too much how much
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you you liked them you didn't associate with them you could bring them to church
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didn't matter who they were i was never turned down but my parents are bringing
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somebody to church they could come to where i was but absolutely under in no
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circumstance was they were going to let me go to where they were.
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And you see, Jesus came to me when I couldn't go to where he was,
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that I could be where he is. You get that?
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Jesus came to me when I couldn't go to where he was, that I might go to where he is.
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Isn't that a fabulous, fabulous truth?
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But he never let me go where someone who doesn't know who Jesus is,
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living the kind of life that is sinful and wicked.
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I used to have friends that you would go to bars and stuff, and they'd say,
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oh, I'm witnessing. Yeah, you're witnessing, all right.
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But not for Jesus. You see, a Christian needs to be holy and separated.
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And it may not be a popular thing for me to say, but you know,
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the devil has duped many Christians into believing that strong drink is okay
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as long as you don't do it in excess.
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And that strong drink is just fine because the Bible talks about it and this
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and that. But let me tell you what the Bible says.
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The Bible says that you're to submit yourselves to God and nothing else.
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And when you begin to drink even in just a little bit, you lose control of who
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you are and you lose control of your faculties.
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And my friend, I don't care whether you think you can hold it or whether you
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think you can't hold your liquor.
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The truth of the matter is, is you're giving, you're submitting to something
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other than the mighty hand of God.
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The other thing I'd like for you to see is that you're setting a standard and
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a witness that makes it very difficult for the world to see a difference in you.
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And if you have objections to those statements or something,
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feel free to write me or email me and we can discuss it further and at length.
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But this message is about confessing our sins.
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And my friends, we need to get sin out of our life and we need to call sin what
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it is. It's not an alternate lifestyle.
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It's sin. It's not a choice. It's a child.
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It's not doing something because everybody else can do it.
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Sin is sin and God does not distinguish between sins. That's something man does.
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We call them white lies. A lie is a lie to Jesus Christ.
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And anything that we do without faith it's a sin you realize how difficult that
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is when you think about it anything we do that is not done in faith is a sin
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and the lord says that we need to get the sins out of our life,
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and then he will hear our prayers you see again he said but your iniquities
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have separated between you and your god and your sins have hid his face from
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you that he will not hear you what is it in your life.
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Is worth going to hell over for those of you who have not received jesus christ
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as savior but you're going to hell and something about your life you think is
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better than the life would be if you turned your life over to jesus christ and
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received his free gift of salvation,
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what is it that you think is more important and is worth going to hell what
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lie has the devil told you that is keeping you from receiving jesus christ as
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savior and my friends those of you who know Jesus as Savior,
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what sin are you harboring in your life that is worth?
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Now listen to me, that is worth jeopardizing your fellowship with Jesus Christ. That is worth,
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standing in the way of being all you can be in Jesus Christ.
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What sin are you harboring that God has said, get rid of?
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Because he said that if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive
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us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteous, you can come to him.
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And he said, there's not a temptation that has taken man, but that he has given
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us the grace to overcome.
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You don't have to submit to that sin. You can give it to Jesus Christ and he
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can get you through it, Whether it's alcoholism, a drug addiction,
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pornography, women lying,
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cheating, not having enough faith, being anxious, worrying, whatever gluttony,
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whatever it might be that your sin is, that nobody might even know but you.
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Jesus Christ has the power to forgive you of that and to move you through it.
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And you can be an overcomer through Jesus Christ.
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The Bible says that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
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The final element that we want to highlight in this series on prayer is thanksgiving.
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And my friends, 2 Corinthians 2.14 says, Now thanks be unto God,
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which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of
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his knowledge by us in every place.
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Now thanks be unto God, who always causes us to triumph.
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Second corinthians 9 15 says thanks be unto god
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for his unspeakable gift and that
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relationship that you have with jesus christ is an unspeakable gift as we begin
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to think about worship and we begin to talk about thanksgiving and and we begin
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to look at these things i ask you to look to to the book of psalms in chapter
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100 he says make a joyful noise into the lord all you land serve the.
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Come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord, he is God.
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It is he that hath made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
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Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.
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Be thankful unto him and bless his name. For the Lord is good.
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His mercy is everlasting and his truth endures to all generations. Hallelujah.
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We have much to be thankful for.
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When we come to Jesus Christ, We have the confidence in knowing that if we have
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come in faith, believing in our hearts and our lives are right with God,
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that he has heard our prayer. He will answer our prayer.
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He's working all things out for our good. He'll take our burden and he'll make it his.
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He'll give us his light burden. He'll walk with us and talk with us.
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He'll never leave us, never forsake us. How could you not be thankful?
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We should walk away as Hannah did in the first chapter of 1 Samuel when she
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prayed and she heard from the Lord and she knew her prayer was answered and
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though she hadn't eaten and though she had been grief-stricken and very sorrowful
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when she come up from her prayer,
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she was no longer sad and she began to eat.
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I've seen the time in my life when I've prayed to God and I got up just as upset
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and sad as I was when I sit down.
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Now, did I really pray? No. Did I give him my heart? No.
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Was I able to let God take my burden? No. I gave it to him and before I got
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up, I picked it right up and walked out the door with it.
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He said to cast your care off, man. You need to leave it there.
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It's a beautiful old hymn that my father used to sing. And he said, leave it there.
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Leave it there. Take your burdens to the Lord and leave it there.
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Friends, we need to be thankful that we have a God that hears and understands and he cares.
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And Hebrews chapter 4 verses 14 through 16 tells us that he was tempted like
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as we are yet without sin.
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And he invites us to come boldly to the throne of God that we may obtain mercy in time of need.
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Oh, my friends, it's a beautiful thing to trust in the Lord.
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It's a beautiful thing to know that he is God.
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It's a wonderful thing to believe in him and to know that when you peel your
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head at night, that all is well.
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In Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 20, he says, Giving thanks always for all things
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unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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In Philippians 4, 6, he says, Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer
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and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
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And then verse 7 says, and the peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
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All my friends, don't worry.
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Oh, we can't put a price tag on the value of not worrying. We can't put a price
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tag in the value of being able to pillow our head at night and knowing that everything's okay.
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And we can do that with Thanksgiving because we can walk away knowing that we've
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handed it to God and it's okay.
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You know, I don't know what problem you have right now, but it's safe in the Lord's hands.
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I don't know what's bothering you right now or what's troubling you,
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but it's safe in the Lord's hands.
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You see, our faith can get tested sometimes and we can walk through the valley
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and we can think we believe in God,
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but maybe you're just a little too afraid to place that sick loved one in the
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hands of God because perhaps you're afraid the outcome won't be what you want.
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But my friend, the outcome will be exactly the right thing and the outcome will
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be what's best for that sick loved one and that outcome will be the best for
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what's best for you too because he said that all things work together for the
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good to them that love the Lord and that are called according to his purpose in Romans 8, 28.
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And friends, he told us in Romans 8, 38 that nothing could separate us from
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the love of God. Nothing, not height, nor depth, not angels, nor principalities.
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Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And he said, all things come down
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from the Father of lights. And with him, there is no turning or no variableness.
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He loves you and he's always loved you. And regardless of what the problem is
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that you're facing right now, regardless of how upset you might be,
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regardless of how it may not look anything like the way you want it to be,
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he's still God and he's still in control.
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He's a God on the mountain and he's the God in the valley.
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You've got to trust him at all times and always, and in all ways acknowledge
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him and be thankful when you land the prayer in his hands because he is worthy
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and trustworthy and he can keep your prayer,
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and he can keep that loved one and he can keep that burden that you have and
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he'll do more with that burden than you could ever do.
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You're kidding yourself when you think that you're taking care of that burden.
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You don't have what it takes. If you really believe and you really have a burden.
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Hand that burden to the Lord because that's the only place that it's safe.
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As the only place that it can be trusted.
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We begin to close this lesson, I want to remind you that we've highlighted five
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elements in this series on prayer that we need to have in our prayer life. We need to worship.
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We need to surrender. We need to have a petition.
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We need to confess our sins because he won't hear us if we have iniquity in
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our hearts. And we need to leave that prayer with thanksgiving.
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And my friend, he said to pray without ceasing and to come boldly to his throne.
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Thank you for joining us in today's podcast. You can visit the show notes for
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quotes from today's podcast and scripture references.
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website. 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.