Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #204 Revival in Your Home (God's Plan - Part 1)

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#204 Revival in Your Home (God's Plan - Part 1) · The OneCry Podcast

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And we're going to live as husbands and wives and children and fathers and mothers
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to seek in every way to reflect the glory of God.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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Well, welcome to the One Cry podcast. I'm Bill Eliff,
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and I am so excited that I have a way more beautiful co-host this time than
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I've had with ugly old Kyle Reno.
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And so you, some of you may know my wife, Holly, but Holly is going to join
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me and you'll see why in just a moment.
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But Holly, welcome to the Woodcraft Podcast.
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Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yeah.
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So Holly and I, just a little of our history is this year and actually a few
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days will be our 52nd anniversary.
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And we've known each other longer than that. Dated for a little while.
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Since seventh grade. Since seventh grade, yeah.
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And along the way, we've had a lot of kids and eight kids and they're all married
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now and we have 27 grandkids.
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So you can see the toll it's taken on my life.
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But Holly still looks like she's 17 to me.
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But anyway, but one little period in our life was remarkable.
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In 1987, 86, maybe, Dale Faisenfeld and a ministry called Life Action came to
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our church in Norman, Oklahoma.
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Where I was a pastor for a scheduled two-week meeting, and the Lord just came in power.
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And that meeting went on to a third week and a fourth week.
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And it was just an amazing time.
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And Dale and I got to be very close friends.
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Dale was the founder of Life Action, which was the parent ministry of One Cry. Wow.
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And my heart had always been turned towards revival, but now especially so.
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And a few years later, the Lord called us to travel with Life Action.
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A lot of what they did was they had teams on the road that would go and do,
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at that time, two-week meetings in churches. And we took our families with us, lived in trailers.
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It was like a band of gospel gypsies.
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And part of my role was to teach every night.
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We had two preachers, but I would teach when I wasn't just teaching the regular revival sessions.
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I would teach on revival in the home.
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And Holly would teach the women every day.
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With Nancy. Yeah, with Nancy Moss. That's right. Right.
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She traveled with us and in those early days and, uh.
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And what we saw was that if you don't have personal revival in your home,
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you don't really have revival.
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I mean, the reality is who you are when we can say we're doing great and we're
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walking with God, but who we are
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really when the shades are pulled and the door is closed is who we are.
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That's the reality of our Christianity.
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Christianity. And so I think during those days, Holly, we just learned so much
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about what it would take to have revival inside the walls of your home.
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And the thing was, when you're teaching something and you have to teach it night
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after night after night, you got to live that out.
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I mean, you can't play games. The Lord will not bless that, honor it, use it.
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And, uh, so it was, uh, and we were traveling on the road with,
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uh, four kids and then ultimately five kids before we, uh, Daniel.
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Five and six, five and six, whatever.
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And, uh, so, you know, life was an unbelievable adventure and,
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uh, and we were living this out.
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So we learned a lot, didn't we, during those days?
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We definitely learned a lot during those days. Yeah.
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And as we've been thinking about this next season of our One Cry podcast,
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we thought we would pause and just spend several weeks here.
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I'm not quite sure how many.
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But several weeks teaching on how to have revival right inside the walls of your own home.
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And whether you're a family of one or a family of 10, all of this applies to you.
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Every bit of this is going to be applicable to you.
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And we're very excited about teaching this and learning together about these things.
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And I'm really thrilled to have Holly around because, you know, I can't just say stuff.
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You know, if your wife is sitting beside you, you really got to be.
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I'm not sure what that means. You got to be honest.
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I mean, I can't just say, well, you know, I'm the most godly husband in the
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world and she knows different.
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So she's going to keep me real honest, and I think I would be anyway,
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but she'll add to this as we talk here along the way.
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As we begin today, we want to talk about several things in this series,
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a revival of God's plan, a revival of God's purpose in our home,
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a revival of God's heart.
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How do we get the love of God inside the walls of our home?
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A revival of his covenant, a revival of harmony, a revival of unity.
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I mean, we're going to cover a lot of ground here in these next podcasts.
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But first of all, we want to just start in Genesis 1.
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It's a great place to start and look at a revival of God's plan.
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You know, the truth is right now that you look across the scope of American culture and life,
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and it is amazing how far we have gotten from the plan of God for a home.
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Absolutely. I mean, the whole gender reversal thing and, you know,
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boys and girls not even knowing who they are and what they are and how the home fits into all that.
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Just the value, the reason why
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we have children and whether or not that matters. Yeah, having children.
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Yeah, we'll talk about that in just a moment. And so if we want to see real
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revival, if you want to see real revival, it starts at 20,000 feet.
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It starts at the biblical value level.
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Understanding what God's plan is and a willingness to embrace it and not live
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a life that's forsaking the plan of God,
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because anything less than the plan of God won't work.
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It just doesn't work. God has designed us.
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C.S. Lewis said he made us just like someone would make a car,
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and a car runs on gas and nothing else. And we were designed to run on God and
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his plan and his purposes.
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And it simply won't work any other way.
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So we want to look for just a minute at the plan, the big picture plan of God
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for your home and challenge you to really think, am I living this plan out?
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Am I going for this? Am I living for this?
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Now, the first place where this is mentioned is in the first book of the Bible.
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God's made the different parts of creation, and he said, this is good, this is good.
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And then the Bible says in verse 26, then God said, let us, obvious that God,
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the Father, Son, and Spirit, we're all there.
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Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
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Now, let me just pause right there.
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There is nobody in the world, there's nothing in the world that is more like God than us, right?
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I mean, there's the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the elephants
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and the zebras and the insects and all of that. They all reflect the image of God.
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But we're the only ones that God says, let us make man in our image.
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And that means so much. He made us with personality like his personality.
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It's not just a random thing that we can think and feel and we have emotions
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and a mind and a will and we can communicate with God.
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All of that was designed by God because he made us, the Bible says in Psalm
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8, a little lower than the angel.
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Some translations say a little lower than himself.
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And then when we fell, he has been restoring us to the image of his son so that we could walk with him.
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And he made us like he is so we can join him in what he does.
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And what he says here is in verse 26, let us make man in our image according
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to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea,
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over the birds of the sky, over the cattle and over all the earth and over every
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creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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And so verse 28, God blessed them and he said to them, be fruitful and multiply,
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that's another command in his plan, and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the earth.
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And then God said, behold, this is good.
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So you see in these verses the clear plan of God. Let me just give it to us in three words.
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First of all, we are to reflect, right?
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We reflect the image of God. And when we think about our homes,
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our home is to be a reflection of the nature and character of God, just like our lives are.
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When you look up in heaven and you look in the scripture and you see God and his nature,
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everything about God, except the fact that he is God, which is distinct above
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everything, we're to be like that.
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If God is love, we're to be love. If God is wise, he created us to be wise.
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He designed us. If God is loving and compassionate and desires unity and on
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and on, he wants us to be all those things.
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And he created us with all the capacity in him, if we're connected to him, to have those things.
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So the first thing that we have to embrace if we really want a revival in our
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homes is to say, you know what?
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We're going to live our home, and we're going to live as husbands and wives
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and children and fathers and mothers to seek in every way to reflect the glory of God.
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We want the world to see, when they look at our home, them to see God,
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what God is like, how God thinks, how God operates, It's how God,
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what God feels about things.
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So I think, first of all, Holly, we've got to be willing to commit.
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If we want real revival to come to our home, we've got to make a commitment
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that we're going to fulfill God's plan, and that's to reflect his image.
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I think, yes, we want to fulfill his plan, and we're going to pray that our
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children cooperate in that process. Yeah, and us cooperate.
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And we're not going to do it perfectly, and God knows that.
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And he has a plan to correct those imperfections and to grow us more and more
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into the measure, the stature, the fullness of Christ along the course of our life.
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And one day, completely correct that in our eternal home, in our eternal family.
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So first of all, if we want revival, we need a revival that's willing to reflect the image of God.
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Secondly, he says, let us make man in our image and let them rule.
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Now, that's a big deal. God is a ruler.
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God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. They are the rulers of everything.
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And they're over everything. And so then God made the earth and said,
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well, who is going to rule this?
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And so we're going to make man and we're going to make him just like us.
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And as long as he walks with us and listens to us, man and woman,
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and cooperates with us, then they'll be able to rule really well.
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So when you start thinking about that, there was another entity in this process, and that was Satan.
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Satan wanted to rule the earth, right? And you can almost see him over the sidelines
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as God was speaking this, let us make man in our image and let them rule.
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And all of a sudden, his blood begins to boil.
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And he says, wait a minute, I thought I was going to rule the earth.
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I thought I was going to be in charge.
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And so he did everything possible to begin to destroy that.
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So God said, of course, knowing Satan's activity would be there,
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said, no, man is going to rule.
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Satan's not going to rule. I want man to rule, and I want you to do it in my image the way I do it.
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Now, just think about this. And Holly, I've thought about this a lot.
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We have so many things that rule over us.
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Like just for instance, first of all, we're supposed to rule our own bodies.
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God gives us this body. It's a gift. And we're to steward it, you know.
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And so instead of our bodies just getting all out of control and all of us struggle
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with that, some more than others, you know, we're to rule over our body.
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Now, you can't do that without the Lord and without his grace and without his
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help, of course, but we're to rule over our bodies.
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Think of this. We are given X amount of finances in our lifetime and things.
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And instead of those things ruling us, just think about how we get,
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we violate God's plan and we don't do it in his image.
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And we get in debt and how that debt just rules over us, how material things just rule over us.
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And they're driving our life. We can't do what God wants us to do.
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God says, well, I want you to go to the mission. Well, I can't.
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I've got too many obligations here. I want you to take my resources.
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They're mine. You're just a steward.
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And I want you to give to somebody. Well, I can't.
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Why? Because it's ruling over me. It's gotten all out of control.
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And you just think about everything in our life, that what's happening now with
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pornography and moral impurity across our nation?
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Do you know that in the normal, the statistics are that in the normal Christian church in America,
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50 to 60 percent of the men in that church any given Sunday have watched pornography
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sometime during that week? Well, it's just rules over them.
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And you say, well, no, it doesn't rule over. Okay, well, give it up then.
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And it's not just men anymore. Right. Men and women.
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And teenagers and young kids are exposed to that stuff. Yeah.
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So all of this is ruling over us.
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And God says, no, that's not the way I planned.
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This is not my plan. My plan is for you to walk with me and do this thing the
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way I've designed you to do it and reflect my image and then rule like I rule.
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I rule with wisdom.
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Well, to have wisdom, you've got to know God's mind.
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You've got to read the word. You've got to stay the word. Well,
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are we doing the things that are necessary?
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Surrender to him, the renewing of our mind, you know, growing into his likeness
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so that we're equipped to be able to rule like God wants to rule.
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And again, Satan, just think about this, what made the garden in the early days
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before the fall so spectacular was the presence of God.
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God had made these unbelievable creatures,
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They're just like him. They're in his image. But he knew that they could not
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function unless they walked with him and listened to him.
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Well, Satan, you look at the whole process of the temptation and you think, what was going on there?
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Satan was doing everything he
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could just to get them separated from the presence of God. And he did it.
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And then look what happened. And where did it happen first? It happened in the home.
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Here's Cain and Abel, and they're killing each other, right,
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in a very short period of time.
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So here's the plan. We're looking at it from the big picture view that if we
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want revival, we've got to find and embrace God's plan.
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And his plan is for me as a husband, for Holly as a wife, for our children to
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reflect the image of God.
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So we have to think about our home and say, okay, does this reflect the image of God?
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Is this God's plan? Is this what he wants to?
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And secondly, are we letting the world and the flesh and the devil just rule over us?
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I'll give you a very practical illustration.
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And I'm not a no TV guy. I, you know, at all, but, uh, unless it's a cowboy
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show, but anyway, but anyway, uh, just think of that TV just rules.
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I mean, most families, you walk in the door after work and you turn on the television
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and it's, it's on till midnight and, and it's just dominates us.
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You say, well, I don't, the TV doesn't rule us.
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Well, you can prove that very simply, Turn it off for a week.
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Just turn it off and see how much our lives have become oriented towards television,
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towards video games, towards the screen.
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Do you remember that moment when our kids were younger where we put the TV in the closet?
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Oh, yeah. Well, we got rid of the TV and then and then because we just realized it was ruling.
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And then I think some of the Iran-Contra affair happened or some big thing in history was happening.
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And I had a little we had a little five inch TV and we pulled it out of the
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closet and we found ourselves sitting right around the TV every night following this.
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And then we thought, this is stupid. Let's buy a TV.
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But anyway, it rules. Yes.
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So the big picture, do you want revival in your home?
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Then make a determination by the grace of God.
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We want to measure everything by this. Does this reflect the nature and the character of God?
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Are we ruling over the world, the flesh and the devil?
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Are we making decisions in our home that let the world, the flesh and the devil rule over us?
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And then there's one other thing, Holly, and you're an expert at this,
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is God calls us to reproduce, right? Oh, well, thank you. Yeah.
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You're an expert. Hey, kids, you've got more knowledge than most people.
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But anyway, he says, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
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And this was not just about having kids, you know.
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It was his plan for developing a next generation that would reflect his image
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and rule and reign, right? To fill the earth.
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And to fill the earth. That is, that he creates. That he creates.
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And it says in verse 28, it says, I want you to multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it and rule.
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In other words, if we quit having kids, then there's nobody there to subdue the earth.
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And it just runs wild without a caretaker, without stewards.
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And if we don't do it by reflect God's image and ruling according to his plan,
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the world is in chaos, which we see that evidence of that right now.
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So Holly and I, we won't, this program is not about this, but let me just mention
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this, that Holly and I both came from families of four kids and we wanted to have four kids.
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That's we always, you know, and we lived in the day when back in the 70s, we got married in 73, 73.
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Yeah, that you just went on birth control pills was the thing back then.
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And nobody even talked about it. You didn't even discuss that.
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It was just that's what you did.
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And there was no rationale for it. You know, it was just the thing. Portions did not exist.
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Yeah, they didn't. They were just beginning to exist. And but I mean,
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I remember sitting in a room when Francis Schaeffer was speaking and he talked
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about abortion. And I turned to my brother and said, what's that?
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I was I was in high. I was in college. Mm hmm.
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And so we had four kids and then we got to the end of that and we said,
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now, why are we only having four kids? Well, I was pregnant with number four.
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Yeah. And we thought, oh, well, so this is the fourth one.
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And that was what we had planned.
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And all of a sudden we said, no, why? Yeah.
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And we had a great friend who was a Christian school superintendent and his
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wife, and they had 10 kids, and they were 10 really godly kids.
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And I went to him one day and I said, Ralph, Ralph Bullard was his name.
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And I said, Ralph, talk to me about this. And if I'm lying and dying,
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what he did was he took a Bible and he pushed it across the table.
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And I looked at him, started smiling. I said, don't do that to me.
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He said, yeah. He said, you're a student of the Bible. He said,
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why don't you just study it and then come back?
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Well, I began to just search the scripture like I would any topic.
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And what I found was it said, the Lord opened the womb.
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The Lord closed the womb. The Lord opened the womb. The Lord closed the womb.
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And I saw people in the Bible just trusting God for their children.
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And so Holly and I began to talk about this. And of course, for me,
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it was this great theological.
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Talk about coming out of your study that day saying what you thought about having lots more kids. Yeah.
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And I said, I said, man, this would be so great. I can see, you know,
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10 kids and they're all different, different personalities and they have to
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learn to live with each other and how great this would be and how many kids
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would go out. I would multiply.
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And Holly said, she looked at me. And you said, and then I can sit on the front
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porch and watch all of my grandchildren and children in the front yard.
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Yeah. It'll be glorious.
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Glorious. And Holly looked at me and said, you got all these great theories.
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All I can think about is 100 more years of stretch panels on my pants.
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Yeah. So we took time and Holly, as she always does, just prayed through it
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and studied through it. And she came to this conclusion.
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I think we ought to do this. And so we released that to the Lord.
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Now, I think in that moment, and this is why I want to make this point.
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In that moment, we were embracing the plan of God.
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I remember saying, you know, if we can trust God about a car,
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I think we can trust him about how many kids we should have.
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And we didn't know if we'd have another child or not.
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That was up to him. But we thought we ought to be able to trust him and to trust
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his plan. It was actually harder for me to trust him with, Lord,
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do whatever you want to do in the area of kids.
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And I sat down at the table one night and made a list. And at the top,
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it said, why I don't want to have eight million kids.
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And then it was a yellow legal pad. I filled it up with reasons.
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And then I got to the bottom of that paper and started reading it and ended
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up on the floor in tears and told the Lord he could do whatever he wanted. Yeah.
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That's a good wife right there. A little stubborn. Well, I mean, it's surrender.
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It's surrender to the plan of
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God. And, you know, we've learned after 52 years what Romans 12, 2 says,
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the will of God is good and acceptable and it's perfect.
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It's complete, lacking in nothing.
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We can trust God with anything.
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Doesn't mean there's not any problems and difficulties in this world,
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but it means that we can trust God.
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And, you know, for us, I know some people make that decision and trust the Lord
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in that same area and never have children.
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And their faith step is, will I believe God and trust him even if I don't have any children?
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And for us was trust God to have a whole lot of children and to care for those
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children and to pay for those children and all that.
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And he has. He just has. And, you know, five of our sons and son-in-laws are
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pastors, all of our kids, by the grace of God, are walking with the Lord and making an impact.
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And so we could talk about that for a long time. But just to bring this to a
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close, let me ask you a question.
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Do you want to see a fresh revival in your life?
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And do you want to see a fresh revival in your home?
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Well, it begins by embracing, accepting, believing in, and acting like it's so.
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God's plan for your home. And his plan is to reflect his image.
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What's not reflecting his image? How can we change that? How can we turn our
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home to reflect his image?
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And all of that of reflecting his image and ruling and reigning and reproducing,
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all of that comes from a surrender to him and walking with him.
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You know, I had a young couple that was in my office when I was in my second
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church, little church plant.
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And I had a little broken down couch that I was, he was sitting on it and it kind of sunk down.
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And this guy was not a Christian.
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And I was just, he said, you know, what do we do to get married?
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And I said, well, let's just talk about that.
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And so I began to describe to him what his responsibilities were and would be as a husband.
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And I laid it on, I'll be honest, I laid it on pretty thick,
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but I wasn't any thicker than it is and should be.
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Well, you need to be this as a husband. You need to be this as a father.
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And this is going to require this of you.
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And I watched that guy just sink down in that old couch farther and farther and farther.
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And then he looked at me. I'll never forget this moment. And he said,
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I can't do this without Christ, can I?
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I said, there's no way I have the glorious privilege of leading him to Christ
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that day and then ultimately marrying that couple.
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You can't do this without Christ.
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And Holly, we always come to this close of this time and we want to pray.
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And we're inviting our listeners not to just listen to us pray, but to pray with us.
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So would you do that right now? Now, Holly, I'm going to ask you to begin and I'll close our time.
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And let's just pray that God would give us understanding about these things
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and that would lead to a fresh revival in our homes. Let's pray.
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Lord, we're grateful that you are in charge, that you have a plan that will
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never end until we face you in heaven. and you come back to earth.
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And Lord, you are the creator of all things. You know everything about us. You know every thought.
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You know where our struggles are.
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And Lord, we can stop and listen to you.
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And those things are in your hands instead of ours. And that's where we want to live. That's right.
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And Father, we just think about.
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Our enemy who has come to steal and kill and destroy, and he wants to do that in the home.
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That's where we live. That's where it all happens. But Father, your plan is good.
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Your plan is joyful.
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Deliver us from the idea that if we pick up the Bible and believe it and follow
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you by the power of the Holy Spirit, that somehow that's going to be oppressive
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and terrible and we're going to miss something.
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Lord, you came to give life and life abundantly.
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And Lord, help us right now where people are just sitting in their car or in
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their home or wherever they are.
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I pray, Father, that something would happen in their soul.
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And they would say, you know what? I'm going to live for and embrace the plan
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of God that's very simply and clearly laid out in the first chapter of the Bible.
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So help us in that and bring revival to all of our homes. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
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Well, thanks for joining us, Holly. Thanks for being with me.
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And we're going to be together in the next few podcasts talking about this very
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thing. I hope you'll join us.
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I hope you'll call somebody and tell them, hey, turn into the One Cry podcast.
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They've got, you know, it's not just Bill.
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It's somebody who's really smart and pretty that's on there.
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And so anyway, we hope you join us next week and bring somebody with you.
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Music.