Latest / Pursuing the Heart / Ephesians 2:11-22 with Ryan Kellam

Transcript

Ephesians 2:11-22 with Ryan Kellam · Pursuing the Heart

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh pursuing the heart.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh God pursued me.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now I pursue him.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're on again tonight.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a good friend of mine, recent friend.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, his name is Ryan.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to pronounce your last name?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Kell is it Kellum?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: You got it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Ryan Kellum is on tonight.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: You want to well, Ryan, just tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thanks for inviting me onto the podcast.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, no problem.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Scott and I met at church.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I am on staff at Pendleton Christian Church.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I am uh the associate pastor there.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I who am I?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a pastor, I'm a friend, lots of those things.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, right now uh a lot of my energy is raising my children.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um so my wife and I, we have four kids.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and uh they are the joy of my life, and they keep me on my toes.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so the good thing is I'm on the other side of that.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So all my kids are grown and left.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So all yeah, and so now I'm just enjoying grandkids.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: See, I've heard that's the best.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is the best.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we're we're not there yet, uh, someday.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but you know, raising our four kids together, and um our new our new journey run is we are fostering a baby boy right now who's six months, five months old.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, five kids at home uh keeps me busy.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: That keeps a man busy.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh my wife Suzanne and I um been together for a long time, high school sweethearts.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, and um just been doing ministry together for a long time.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Ryan pulled in today in a 1991, is it Chevy?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Chevy Silverado, yeah.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, that that that's a classic, right?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it's lowered, which is funny to me.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was my dad's truck, my grandpa's truck, and uh, love driving that thing.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's terrible gas mileage, though.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a fun fact in 1990, let's see if I get this right.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: In 92, I sold my first car.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna like me.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: In 92, I was two.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so anyway, yeah.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that that truck, yeah.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've seen plenty of those and been in plenty of those.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fun truck to drive, too.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Big, big beefy engine sound and everything.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's good.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Big beefy engine.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You listen to any good music lately?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I enjoy listening to random, like jazz funky stuff that I couldn't even tell you the name of.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I just go on rabbit holes and let Spotify be my DJ.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you just all right, so let me get this.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is random.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is random.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you're on Spotify and you just pick a genre, or do you or you just pick play blah blah I mean just hit whatever because I have Apple Music, so that's who I partner up with.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's who I use my music, and I got all the Apple catalog, right?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I can go in there and today I think I was uh listening to um what you call uh it was called Picker's Hits, okay.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's just like stuff you would listen, smooth, just like country, but it's not it's not all the rock country, you know what I'm trying to say?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yours older country.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So yours is it random, like pretty random.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you were in jazz then?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, funky kind of funk jazz, like brass I love brass.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Brass?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Anything brass hits and like sometimes I'll just go like give me a good modern big band playlist, just hit some brass.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's random, man.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is that like Lawrence Welk type of music?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that like grandpa grand grandma music back in the day?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes and yes, whatever.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, just random stuff though, just random.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like I have this weird thing where I've been a musician all my life, so I I started I've been in worship ministry, playing music my whole life.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't listen to that much music.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: I sit down and play music, yeah.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll just randomly so when I'm listening to music, so uh Devin Dummel, he was on your podcast last week.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um he is he I work with Devin, he's my boss, he's the lead pastor there.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh anytime I play music, he'll come in and say, Is that elevator music that you're listening to?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, How dare you?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: This music's amazing.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, No, it's definitely elevator music.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So oh, okay.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll do jazz, all right.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then Devin was on last week.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you is there anything you want to correct him on?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Did you hear something that you you heard that you need to be like, hey, I need to correct Devin here?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I wouldn't dare.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Not on not on not in public, no.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just teasing.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But no, no, it was a really good podcast last week.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed listening to it.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right, just had a great conversation.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You and Devin work really, really well together.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: We are a great team, yeah.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um so anyway, we uh we love you listening.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just uh just want to let everybody know we're on all streaming platforms.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: We are on YouTube.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um then if you listen to any of those streaming platforms or even YouTube, please like, share, subscribe so more people could um pick this up.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you like it, uh share it.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: You also can leave a rating, a comment, and uh we also have an email.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's called pursuing the heart at gmail.com.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can feel free to um send something if you want uh words of encouragement or suggestions or anything.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're open to hear anything, so feel free if you want to.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: But uh we're gonna open it up and uh Ryan, I asked uh Devin last week to open it up in prayer.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You want to open up in prayer?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: God, we are amazed by your grace and even being able to sit here and and to open up your word is a gift.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I thank you for this opportunity to to hear from you, and I just pray, Lord, that uh in this moment that uh all of us who are listening to this and um engaging with your Holy Spirit, that we would uh experience your word in a new and fresh way.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I thank you for your word.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um we often take it for granted, but not in this moment, Lord.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Help us not to do that in Jesus' name, amen.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is something random.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: My cat's usually walking around doing his thing during the podcast.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: He just sits down on this chair over here and he's just chilling.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we're in Ephesians, Ryan, and uh what we have found out is the book here.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, one, Paul wrote it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is writing to the church of Ephesus, that's why it's named Ephesians.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when Woody was on here for chapter one, he kind of threw the idea out that it and I read the background that it was written to the church of Ephesus, but then some people believe it's the many churches around Ephesus as well.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be the the area of Ephesus.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we do know that Ephesus was a very wealthy town.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so and also too, uh, like most thoroughfare towns, they worship different things, not only God, but they had other people, other little Gs that they were worshiping.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: They were all different religions as well.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the book opens up really, really awesome, just like uh some of the other books that we've read so far, is laying a great foundation on who Christ is.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the first chapter, some people might get confused when you read that.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just make sure, just like anything else, the verb tense is very important when you read Paul.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the first chapter is a lot of he, uh, him, who, you.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: You just gotta figure out okay, who is he, who is him, and you can be plural or singular.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, the Bible is written for us, not to us.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this letter was originally written to the church, so of Ephesus.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the church was made up with many different people, some were Jews, some were Gentiles, and Paul will in that first chapter, and Devin even I talked about it in the first part of the second uh chapter.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: That um you had this group, so he's bouncing to the Jews, bouncing to the Gentiles, and then he uses uh well, Southwest Georgia would be y'all, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all, so it's you all, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: It could be everyone, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did I miss anything there, Ryan?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the best examples in scripture is for the y'all, is like um uh God won't give you more than you can bear.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm like, it's y'all there.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're not alone, like right, yeah.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you're right, it's it matters.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and verb tense.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So my sister is uh English teacher, and now she's um transitioned into a librarian.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: She would tell me if she was here, verb tenses are very important because if there's an E D, that means it's past, it's already done.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to worry about it.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's um some just little things when we're going through this, and if you read it on your own, you're like, man, this first chapter is very confusing.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just slow it down.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Try to understand he, him, and when did it happen?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Did it happen in the past?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is it happening now?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it going to happen like that in the future?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, and then just those spooky words.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're in that first chapter.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get too scared about it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Predestination um is in there, predestined, yeah, is in there and called, those little spooky things.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not spooky.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just figure out why he why it's in there.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: When did that happen?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when did he predestined us?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was way, way, way back in the beginning.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This was his plan through the whole time to have a relationship with us.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: He had to send his son to die on the cross, rise again, and is now seated at the in the heavens at the right hand of the Father for us to have a relationship with us because the whole Old Testament's about a certain group of people, and it was only for them.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles were left out of the game.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh anything to add there.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just that you know, you talk about some of the spooky words and maybe not understanding.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I always encourage people to approach reading scripture with curiosity.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and if something seems weird, that's the perfect thing to lean into.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And also, too, um, what I found out uh long time ago is I had this great interpretation, the version of the Bible.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is the version, this is the only one I'm gonna read.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: But you might want to be flexible on that and read other versions.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna do that today.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do a complete spin today.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Usually I read out of the New American Standard.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what I have found out, I kind of embrace some of the ESV, some of the New American Standard, some CSP.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I like some of that.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know that you and Devin love the NIV, which is fine.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna pivot today to the New Living translation because I was reading the New American Standard, and it was like, okay, I get what it's saying because I'm I'm like I'm reading it, yeah, but then you get it a little clearer when you read the new living.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it it it makes it it it's different, and um it's just it's it's pointing out a little bit clearer because those some of those versions are word for word, and then this is more new living translation, what do they call that, Ryan?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is that's more of a um it's not a paraphrase, it's uh thought for thought.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thought, thought for thought.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of gets you thinking.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: You read you read like a a word for word, and then you can read a thought for thought, and it kind of like, oh, now I see what that word for word was saying.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so those good pointers.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so we're gonna jump in.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, verse uh Devin and I completed uh in chapter two, one through ten.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: This week we're gonna open up in a course verse 11, but let's look at verse 10.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I like to do, besides just jumping into a chapter.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Read the verse before, especially if there's a therefore or a but.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Devin had his little joke last week.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: He likes big butts.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: He does.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so um, anyway, we're going to read the verse before, so maybe it kind of helps us when we get into verse 11.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So verse 10 says, For we are God's masterpiece, he has created us anew in Christ, Jesus, in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's that long ago, all right.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: As when we choose to believe and we accept Christ in our heart and we have this relationship, we are in that plan.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: We were in the plan that he planned long time ago.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the word masterpiece.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: What does your version say something else?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna tell you, like, mine's so different.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm with the new revised standard version today.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay, no problem.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: In RSV.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I'll just read it to you uh because it's quite different.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: For we are what he has made us.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting now.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh that's very similar to masterpiece because masterpiece, if you're like a a painting and a masterpiece, there's a couple in this house, and you look at it, man, that is a great masterpiece.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, go right ahead.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I like that to be our way of life.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was the plan.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were created to be in union with Christ and with God.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: That was the way.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, verse 11 says, Don't forget that you Gentiles, all right.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So now he's gonna talk directly to the Gentiles and in the audience.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So anyone, anyone that's not a Jew is a Gentile.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I've learned a long time ago.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it says, used to be outsiders.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: You were called uncircumcised heathens by the Jews who were proud of their circumcision, circumcision, even though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty pretty bold, pretty bold statement there by Paul.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back here.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the Gentiles were outsiders.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are some Gentiles in the Old Testament that did believe, like Rahab, and when the spies came into Canaan.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she's in there.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Ruth is a Gentile, uh, she's a Moabite.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there are some exceptions in the Old Testament, but mainly it was all the Old Testament was mainly just for the Jews.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: The law was strictly for the Jewish people.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um because it was given to the Jews, it wasn't made really for the Gentiles.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there was a distinction between Gentile and Jews, and that's circumcision.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's an outwardly sign, and it's supposed to be an outwardly sign of hey, I'm in a covenant with God, Yahweh.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And to a Gentile, they didn't have to do that, they didn't have to be circumcised.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because one, they weren't part of the family, but that was their sign.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: But then I like this, uh, I know in some of the other versions it's a little different.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It says, affected only their bodies, not their hearts.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the first person who was circumcised was affected by their heart as well, and that was Abraham.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham loved God.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: But this is saying the vast majority of the Jewish people, it only was a symbol on the outside, not on the on not on the inside.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of like uh Devin made this uh thing last week or said this, and then uh when Jesus was walking around and he told the Pharisees, you're just like whitewashed tombs, you look nice on the outside, but you're just filthy rags on the inside.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have anything to add there, Ryan?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like uh good job, you check the box.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I mean Jesus came and he took what they would have understood.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: You take the the Ten Commandments, for example.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was never meant to just be a box checking narrative.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes and says, Okay, it's really all about what's in your heart.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and so there's always more to it than that.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of people can check a lot of boxes and not have a heart change.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and those are the boxes, right?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I read my Bible, I prayed, I memorized scripture.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I read the Bible in a year, Ryan.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: What did you get out of it?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Good for you.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Good for you.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then are you did it grow?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did you grow closer to God with that?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are you having a relationship with God?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because that's what's made, that's what it's about.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: We get we get the Holy Spirit given to us as a seal.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're sealed.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: We learned that in the first chapter.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're sealed with the Holy Spirit.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now He is our helper.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's sitting there saying, You're good, Ryan.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're good, you're good.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're good, you're holy, you're redeemed.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's reminding you who you are in Christ.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it has nothing to do with what you way you look on the outside.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I get out of this too, because sometimes you're like, I've heard this way in the past, long time ago, um, when I was a kid.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're gonna be a Christian, you gotta do, you gotta, you gotta cut your hair, you can't do this, you can't do that.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta wear socks to church every Sunday.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll tell you a funny story.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I didn't wear socks one time, Ryan, when I was a teenager.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: This old lady calls my my mom, my dad after church, phone rings at the house.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Hey, your son didn't wear socks at church.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So then, of course, he calls me in and is like, Hey, you can't do that.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Why?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, did it do anything?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was this Southwest Georgia, yeah, you know, you penny loafers, no socks.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, you heathen.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Heathen.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So he's talking about appearance on the outside is not really the the main thing.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: The main thing is what's going on inside the heart.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: What's interesting, I think.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we talk about who we're talking to, Gentiles.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's the Gentiles by birth.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what's going to be interesting here is he's I didn't pre-study this, but I think what we're heading toward is you were once, but now you are.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Gentiles by birth.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he's talking to them.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think these are the people who are, you know, you used to be.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: But now you're this.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So pay attention.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: So he's talking to the grace here.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking to the believers in the congregation.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it says in in verse uh twelve here, it says, In those days you were living apart from Christ.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises of God uh promises God made, had made to them.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: You lived in the world without God and without hope.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like again, there's a distinction Jews, Gentiles, and if you were a Jewish person or you a Gentile back in the Old Testament, or even when Jesus was walking, you were not part of the promise.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were not part of God's people.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: God's people were the Jewish people.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like he says, You did not know the covenant.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know the covenant, you didn't know about you.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Probably have heard stories.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: About a guy named Abraham, and you've probably heard the Mosaic covenant of a guy named Moses, but you didn't know that.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little different when you hear things and you know it's something.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, and also, if you're part of the people, the Jewish people, they were talking about it all the time in the synagogues or even in their houses.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about who they were, what God did for us, like part of the Red Sea, gave Moses the Ten Commandments on the Mount Sinai, God's mountain.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the Deuteronomy 6.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, write it on your door frames, put it on your foreheads, put it everywhere, talk about it when you get up, when you lay down, all that.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and that was part of their living.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: They did that.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he's Paul's reminding the Gentiles, you weren't part of that.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And also uh it says in those days you were living apart from Christ.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Christ wasn't even He didn't come yet.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're saying, he's saying, remember.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Remember This is who you were.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is who you were.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then it says without God and without hope.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm maybe it's because I'm tired, but it almost makes me weepy thinking about living without God and without hope.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like to have that hope that I wake up in the morning and I know there's new mercies every morning.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like it brings me so much peace and joy and comfort.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I think about maybe waking up and not having that.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I this is how I equate it too.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me sad knowing that my kids don't have that relationship.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: They don't they they're without God and without hope.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: It makes my wife and I sad about that.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: We pray for them to have the same relationship and know who God is and know who Christ is.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And even family members that don't have that relationship and friends that I might have that don't have that relationship and don't have the hope.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I prayed for my brother many years that he would know who God is the way the God that I knew.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing now.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're hosting Bible studies at their house.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I prayed for my sister, I pray for my mom and dad that they would know who God was the way I knew God was.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: The God that we're reading, the what the God that we do, that we talk about in the in all these podcasts that we do.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like all you have to do is believe, have faith, and then have a then you get to participate in this relationship with the Father and participate this relationship with Jesus.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you see, and not everything is sunshines and rainbows.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, but during those um seasons where it seems like you're going through testing, suffering, whatever, man.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I grow more closer to Christ God than anything because I know the hope.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I I can't imagine.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I've I've been through some hard things, you know.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um going through that I the crazy thing is I don't think I would change that.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really hard to say sometimes because some of that includes loss.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh but the person that I've become because of God being with me through that, is uh I wouldn't trade that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we're two different people.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm envious of you because you didn't have to go through the things that I've been through, being an ex-drug addict, um, three-time convicted felon, what whatever that looks like, right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: That darkness that I used to be a part of, and it was Christ who came at the right moment to save me in rehab and walking through that, but then I sit here and I I I wish I was like, man, just to be where you didn't ever have to, like a person that never just got it.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just got it.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I believed, I just got it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I struggle a little bit here or there, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I got it, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: But again, when you get it, you get it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you do get it, you do want others to know who Christ is because you know who Christ is and what he's done for you, and you what he's doing every day for you, and it could be something really minute or it could be something big, yeah.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he's all around us, he's very active, and it's just um I do I'm right there with you, man.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some days I sit here and I'll I'm like, I'll sit here, I'm like, man, like my friend and I were on the phone today, and we were like, Aren't you this was his comment?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, Aren't you happy that you're not like these those guys that we were with last night?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Yeah, because you know why they don't have Christ.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's kind of sad, and that's why we pray for those people.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting because you can actually identify a little bit with what the what these believers are experiencing when Paul's like, hey, you remember when hey, do you remember?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, you Gentiles by birth.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember when you used to fill in the blank?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where we're headed because he's setting them up.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: So here comes a butt.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Devin loves big butts, and uh yeah, probably some other people too.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it says a but now you have been united with Christ, Jesus.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Through the blood of Christ.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is it's awesome.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, so get this, okay?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: You were alienated, you were not part of the family, but guess what?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I sent my son, and he walked, and then he got put on the cross, and he bled for you, and it was the blood of Christ that has brought you into the family.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were far away, but now you're knighted because of Christ Jesus.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's just amazing! That's awesome.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I am I'm getting jacked over here.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna tell you, I'm like, my hair, my hairs are standing on my arms, man.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just like people want to take the blood out of it.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, the blood's very important.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: He had to shed his blood because you you know why?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the sacrificial system, when they went to the temple once a year for the atonement of their sins, and we're just covered.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: But now we have the blood.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: The blood is good, it sets us apart.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we are if you believe in Jesus Christ and you believe in him.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw Jesus die on the cross, did you, Ryan?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw him rise again, did you?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: I have faith that that's true, yeah, and I want to have a relationship with a person that would do that for me.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he, oh my gosh, man, this is awesome.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like, but you aren't like that now.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I don't remember where it's at, but like, who's gonna have more gratitude?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: The person who's been forgiven much or the person who's been forgiven little, you know, and I I think that's a a parable of Jesus, and this is what Paul's doing, you know.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh remember, but not anymore, because you were once far off.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's like reminding them, you were really far off, guys.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um like you were way out there.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: There was no chance, there was no chance for you to make no chance, and yet I made a way.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God made a way, Jesus made a way, and this was his perfect plan from the beginning.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we started.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: What he what we read in verse 10.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: It says he planned for us long ago.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: He planned this, he planned that this was the perfect plan that God had put in play uh put in play for us.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's humbling to me to think that God was thinking about me.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why me?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: How about this?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: He pursued, he pursued you to have a relationship with him.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he pursued me.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I denied him when I was young.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to have anything to do with him.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: But man, now I want to have everything to do with him.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's life-changing.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um anything else you want to add on that?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's powerful.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: It says, for Christ himself has brought peace to us.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: He night united Jews and Gentiles into the world, into the pe into our own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm so this is gonna get me jacked up.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to start?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm can I just read for you mine?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, go ahead.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be an interesting process of reading different uh I love it.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Translations because mine's so different, and there's one really big difference.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's very interesting to me.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what mine says For he is our peace.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: What was yours?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: For Christ himself has brought peace to us.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: He is the it's interesting.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: For he is our peace.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in his flesh, he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: That is the hostility between us.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to explain the wall that was set up in the temple?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: There was a gentile court, and then there was the Jewish court.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Gentiles were not allowed to go into where the Jewish people could go.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was a wall separating, hey, no women can go beyond this barrier here.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was another barrier.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you are part of the priesthood or the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, but you can't go in the Holy of Holies because you're not a high priest.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: But he broke all those walls down and brought us all into one family.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I wonder if God does like the face palm sometimes.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like the way that the scriptures, like reading through the scriptures, knowing what we know now.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's like they they would take things like uh something that was that was intended to be good for us, like the Sabbath, and they would make it a requirement.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so for for me, the the God face palm moments is realizing that people were doing everything they could to make it more and more difficult to get into the presence of God.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these codes and laws and walls that you had to be or provide or bring uh just the right, and and it was so exclusive that you you just almost couldn't.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Part of reading through the scriptures is is realizing that the reason for that is because of the the power of the presence of God.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's scriptures that talk about how being in the presence of God would literally uh kill you, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's no ability to stand in the presence of God there pre-Christ's blood shed for us.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that same presence lives inside me now.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, gee.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: What that's the same, the same presence that's Ephesians 1, right?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: The same presence that was in the Holy Holies, yeah, the same presence that gave the power for Christ to be risen from the dead.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now I believe in him.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's been given to me as a gift, and I've been sealed past tense with that same awesome thing.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if people are following along, that's Ephesians 1.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's all one, yeah.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I think for Ephesians 2, where we're at, we're talking about uh creating walls and distance and and friction to get to God.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is like, nope, nope, not anymore.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do the work, I'm gonna pay the price, I'm gonna pave the way.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this whole like uh even the whole year in, year out, uh, you can't come in, the whole Jew Gentile conversation is trying, he's trying to like my my Bible categorizes this little section here as one in Christ.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're in Christ, none of that matters anymore.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to point someone in the Bible where God kills racism, one in Christ.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking this is right here because we have been joined.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: What used to separate us, now we're joined.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there's I mean, I hate to tell you, when you get there, there's gonna be a bunch of different people up there.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they might all look different, but hey, guess what?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's one common thing.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: We love Jesus, man.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I tell people you get in an elevator, you could be in on an elevator, some random person.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: You look over there, smile on them, they smile at you.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing you know, you're having a conversation.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing they say is, You have a blessed day.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, You believe in God, don't you?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's that aroma.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so all the walls are down, and he's saying, Hey, we're together, Jews and Gentiles, now.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing that separates us.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: We've been united through the blood of Christ.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: He had to do it, but now we are joined, and we're in peace and peace with God, we're in peace with each other.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: Powerful.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Powerful.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: It says he did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating himself one new people from the two groups.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but we live in a world that really is pretty divisive.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: Divisive?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Divisive, so divisive.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Every corner, every uh I feel like everyone makes money on making us mad.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so what Jesus or what Paul is doing here is so countercultural.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine it was the same then.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Division sells.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: It always sold.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're a slave.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's neither slave nor free here, buddy.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you're a barbarian.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, no, not anymore.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I'm a Jewish person because I've got the I'm the chosen people.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very prideful because God chose us.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't chose, they didn't choose, he didn't choose the Gentiles.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he's destroying that attitude.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: That pride.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: He destroyed it in Romans.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you read Romans, that was the whole Romans um, I think it's uh two, three, and four, he goes right after the Jewish person.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he is making them very humble, and he's humbling them, that prideful Jew that says, I'm a Jew, and I'm special because I am a Jew.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he's doing right here.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what does it say?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: What does yours say?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm kind of curious in the back half of um 15 where it says made it says uh creating in himself one new people from the two groups.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty similar that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome, man, because now what was divided us now has brought us together.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there is no separation because you know why?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are one group.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're the body, we're the church.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I read the Bible uh and think of very silly little things.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if if Paul walks into this space, like there's a reason he's writing this.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's probably some conflict going on between both between Gentiles by birth, who are now believers in Jesus, and the Jews who are believers in Jesus, right?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think like you just want to walk in there and look at both of them and just say, stop it.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Stop it.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Stop it.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Stop it.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're one.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: You're one.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And get along.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, kids.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I wish a lot of people could read this because it is the very divisive out there in the world.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you read this, sometimes the text is a text, and you don't need to go into the Greek, you don't need to look in a different.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it it's pretty clear to me.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a highly educated person.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: I read this and I can understand what it's saying.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that seems pretty clear.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty clear.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, or and our hostility toward each other was put to death.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oof.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I mean, Paul just keeps on going because it's like there must be something going on.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, there is then same it is to now.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because I hate to tell you, if you go to Jerusalem, those Jewish people that have the curls and they wear the black hat, they do not like Christians.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: But this is Sam.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're part of the same family if you believe in Christ.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ is the key.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you might look different, Ryan.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: If there was a video camera here, Ryan's skinny.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of chubby and fat.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've got a gray beard, I got a gray uh chin hair.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: His is all not gray because he's a young man still.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we might look differently, but we are part of the family, bro.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm from Georgia.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's from right here in Indiana.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: In Indiana, see, there you go.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: You got anything else to add?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I just love how clear he is.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Mine says putting to death that hostility.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know where you go with that, right?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, that hostility you're working on over there, just kill it.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need it.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, if you like I know people that battle racism.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you read this, I don't feel racist.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: It attacks it attacks that.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: It attacks who you are, like thinking that.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've seen people and I have been around people that just like will say, I don't like that group of people.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, really?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: You don't?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: What if they love Jesus?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then they're your brothers and sisters in Christ.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, just anyway, it's right here.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, He brought this good news.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, the so the so they're thinking, man, this is terrible.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're part of the family.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles are in on the party now.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that guy.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hate that.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's like, he says, he brought this good news of peace to you, Gentiles, who were, and you your words earlier, Ryan, far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so the Jews that were near God, near Christ, because they were a part of the family, they were already near, but then they're the closer if they bel if a Jew believes in Christ and that Christ was the Messiah, Jesus was the Messiah and died on the cross, and he accepts that and has faith into that, he's part of the family.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's at Romans 11.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever read that, it's really good.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: It talks about the vine, and when Christ came, he cut all the branches off, and then anybody who believes in Christ is grafted back into the vine.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jew and Gentile.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like the point here is it doesn't matter how far off you are.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's preaching the same thing, he's proclaiming peace.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he's proclaiming the same thing.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: It says, now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Boom.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: It says we can come to the Father through the Holy Spirit.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because of Christ.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_04: And I love the Holy Spirit.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it says through the same, not different.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan doesn't have a different spirit because we look different.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan's from Indiana, from Georgia.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't get uh you didn't get the Indiana Holy Spirit, did you?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get a Georgia Holy Spirit, but my Holy Spirit talks with a Twang sometimes.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like fixing.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna fix into you.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna, you know, uh, do you want some of that?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: You probably wouldn't say that in Indiana.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there might be some parts of Indiana.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's plenty who do, yeah.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's like you're not getting the same, you're getting the same one.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna what he says to Ryan, he says to me.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: To take that even further, my uh 10-year-old doesn't get a different Holy Spirit.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, same one, same one.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're 60 and you finally accept Christ, it's the same Holy Spirit as a 10-year-old gets.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: The same power that raised Jesus from the dead.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Same power.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it says, so now, so now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners, you are citizens along with all of God's holy people.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: You are members of God's family.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Praise Jesus who brought us into the family.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Praise him.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am no longer a stranger, I'm no longer a foreigner.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was through the blood of Christ that I've been brought into the family.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: I believe that.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have faith in that, and now I act from that.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I know that.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that and God's like, dude, you're good, man.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what God's telling me.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure He uses maybe a different word, but I'm like, He's like, dude, you're good.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're good, bro.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're good.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God loves, hey, I love you.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're redeemed, you're holy.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: He reminds you who you are, your identity.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Your identity is very important.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: And knowing who the Holy Spirit is, love, joy, peace, patience, long suffering.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan did a good sermon on one of those.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: You should go listen to it.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you have that spirit that gives you all of that.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's an inward-outward change.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not you have to clean a lot of religions, you have to do certain things on the outside to be part of that religion.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have to look a certain way.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus and Jesus is like saying, dude, you're good.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or hey, you as an individual, you're fine.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Believe in me, I'll change you.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's where Paul started with circumcision here.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what, yeah.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was all about circumcision, right?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: To them.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what that's what they were doing when they were coming into the church of Ephesus.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of these churches, Galatia, um, uh, the the Colossa, where they would go in behind Paul's teaching and say, Oh, it's Jesus plus circumcision.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus plus memorizing scripture.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul was saying, no, it's Jesus plus nothing.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to add anything.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're right with God if you believe in Christ.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Period.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh, you know, trying to sow confusion and bring more into it than needs to be in Jesus just makes it so clear.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Paul is trying to point people to Jesus.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul's making it very clear.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: If I can understand it, that means a lot of people can understand it.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a little slow.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: I have to read things like several times, and that's probably why I'm reading now the New Living Translation.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: My friend would say this is the hippie Bible.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine, I'm fine with it.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it helps me understand.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Together we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and the cornerstone is Christ Jesus Himself.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go back to chapter one, chapter one is the foundation, it's Christ.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Colossians.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you read the first chapter in Colossians, it talks about who Christ is.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Christ is your foundation.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: You build upon that foundation through the Holy Spirit, yeah, and understanding the word.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you you start building on that, and you are a house.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're a house built on the foundation of the apostles, the prophets, but the main thing was Christ.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think to myself, here, why did he choose me to be a part of this?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting if you pull some leadership stuff out of what Paul's doing here.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: I love how he's calling these people to something higher and better.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's not just beating them down.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, he's telling them who they are, identity again.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I love how he's calling them.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: You are the household of God.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: Stop bickering about this other stuff.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: These Judaizers are coming in and like confusing everybody.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe it's the be better comment here.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, be better.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: Just be better, man.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but he's calling them up and giving them this purpose that God prepared for them.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I I love, I love that leadership quality that some people have to call you up to something.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh yeah, oh yes.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not beating them down, it's calling them up.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Calling them up, picking them up, bringing them up.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pointing them to the thing that God prepared for them.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I love all that.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: It says we are carefully joined together in him.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, here it is.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: In him, Christ.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: We, the believers, are carefully joined together in him, Christ, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Through him, you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his spirit.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, this is good stuff.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is some meat here, okay.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then my wife would say, This is the good stuff.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the meat.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the meat.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: So anybody that's been waiting for the meat, here we go.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, me?
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_00: You?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know he's talking to them, but like, wow.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if he's talking to the believers, then he's talking to the believers now.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I agree.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if I believe in Christ and I am in fellowship with him, I'm becoming a holy temple for the Lord.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: I pursue him, and out of that pursuit, because God pursued me.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, this is this is the whole like podcast, pursuing the heart, right?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: God pursued me, now I'm pursuing him.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as I pursue him, God is just cleaning stuff up.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cleaning that stuff out of my life.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know here's the thing.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: As I grow in him, I don't do certain things I did and struggled with 20 years ago.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm what we call that, well, so there's a church word called sanctification, but then there's Scott's word, it's called um maturing in Christ.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: Being you're growing in him.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: So as you grow in him, you are becoming this beautiful, holy.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're already beautiful in Christ's eyes because you have the Holy Spirit, you're redeemed, you're in Christ's family.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: But that outward behavior is starting to reflect what's inside.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's that inward, outward.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: Again, most religions teach uh outward to inward.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most religions do that.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Islam, Hinduism, a lot of them.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's outward, inward.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is saying as I grow in him, I am reflecting him on the outside.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's changing my behavior.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, I just went on a little tangent.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that holy, you know, that word holy set apart for a purpose.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: Purpose.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we go back to purpose again.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I I do love how uh a lot of times we re people realize that science catches up sometimes with uh scriptures.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like, oh my goodness.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: And now now it's like a it's a thing where like the thing that we crave and need as people is one to belong.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he's talking about that in here, and to have some sort of purpose.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if we're part of the family, there's other family members.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you belong in one family, yeah, and that's the thing we we crave, and right, and then the next level there is that purpose, and and it sums up in the last verse.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Now all you, all of us, okay, all the family can come to the father through the same Holy Spirit, because he already said that earlier.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: There is not a different spirit, okay.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: We did speak about that because of what?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because of Christ has done for us, yeah.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he's united us, he's just he hammered it, right?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it says, so now Gentiles are no longer strangers.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did I did I go back?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it says, Through him, you gentiles are also being made part of the dwelling where God lives by his spirit.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: God is in dwell is dwelling inside you because of the Holy Spirit.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: That same place we talked about earlier that people could not get to, have access to, the Holy of Holies, that place is now dwelling inside of us.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: I love how this when we read my last verse here, verse 22.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it reads this way In whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: Together, a dwelling place for God.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Together, yeah.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: So not even just individually, but like when we come together, there's a you know, we're two or three gathered.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a union, yeah.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a connection.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a dwelling place for God.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: God was this far off God and now he's dwelling with us inside us.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so the crazy thing back in the day, the Jewish peoples, some of them didn't even have that uh access to God, but they believed in God because of what God has done for their group their for the Jewish nation.
• 55:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now we get to experience the awesomeness of Him look dwelling in us.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Ryan, when when did you realize that?
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: What did that look like?
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh so my my story, my testimony, I guess, um, is I I always I always used to be like almost embarrassed at how simple it was.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh I you talked about maybe being envious of me before.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just got it, you didn't have to go through all that stuff.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: As one of those people who grew up in the faith, um I will answer your question, but like I often am envious of other people's testimonies.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that interesting?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh man, if I could have just gone through more hard things.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then now that I'm older, I'm like, that's dumb.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you did that.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do that.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so my testimony is one of extreme grace.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I grew up in a ministry-oriented family.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my family traveled much of the country singing southern gospel music.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up till I was five riding a diesel eagle bus.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we went to different churches and um shared the gospel through music.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's what I grew up in.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say uh I don't remember how old I was, uh, but my parents led me to Christ.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was a hot tub on vacation somewhere.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have I have them to give credit to for leading me.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was very young, you know.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was I should have to ask my parents about that.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: See how young I was.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm old I was old enough to remember it, but you know, was I eight?
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Was I five?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Was I twelve?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was somewhere in that range, you know.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: So very young, I accepted Jesus uh and and I said yes to him, and uh and then along the way I just kept saying yes to little things that came in front of me.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I I got into places that I probably never should have been in, you know, as far as like opportunities to lead and and grow.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was a very young man leading worship.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh didn't know what I was doing, but I said yes to somebody, you know, and uh shout out to the people who were willing to ask me.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, those leaders in my life.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so that's kind of my story.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Grew up with uh in in the faith.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I had uh I wouldn't call them faith crises, but along the way I I learned that there's other other ways that people view faith and religion and walks.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to college and got a degree, and uh Bible college, you know, makes you think, makes you see different things, and um, and so I I I I swung my pendulum of faith from maybe more emotionalism to very much in my head, and then I'm finding my way back to the middle again, you know, stuff like that.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I've I've been very blessed, very thankful for all of the godly influence in my life, from my parents to my grandparents.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just said the other day, my kids are so lucky, they have they have great influence for generations behind them.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's my testimony is a testimony of grace that's awesome from generation to generation.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Shout out to my grandparents who made that decision and uh set uh set me up for living this life.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's awesome.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: So early on you accepted Christ through the your teenage years um and college, you just you just were you just did it.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I did I just kept saying yes.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: So in high school, in college, were you playing in bands still or were you just like um just going to school?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was probably 12 or 13 when I said yes to leading a youth group in worship.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh shy, I was a shy kid back then, I was very shy.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and uh didn't know what I was doing, and I said yes to that, and I've been doing it ever since.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: So many, many years.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've known people same age, and they're still leading worship today.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I I don't know what that's about.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's something there.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I tried to think that I wasn't gonna be in full-time ministry, uh, and God had different plans.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, No, you definitely are, and so I said, Okay, and went back and got some more education.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh, God's been good to me.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then through that, along the way, your wife accepted Christ.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Probably she did she very similar story to mine, very similar, young age, and you just you guys just grew and grew and and eventually got married, and then now you have this union that's in Christ.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like to people looking on the outside?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: The the beginnings of that were interesting just because you know we we had such different expressions of faith at the beginning.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was very I I grew up in a very charismatic uh environment.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if you're listening and don't know what that means, it was just uh it could be a wild ride sometimes.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um in my growing up, there was um I I heard I heard the speaking in tongues and I heard the expressive praise and the shouting and the like it was very normal to me.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: My wife grew up in the Methodist church.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's quiet.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you go there, you don't say anything.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't like me because I'm the one in the audience that says amen.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, someone just Scott, someone just said the other day, Second Service, there's somebody in our staff meeting today.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, someone said, There's somebody second service that's that's saying amen.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And like that's Scott, you know, he's the one.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um in in uh at Lavaner, the other church uh I go to sometimes or go pop back in.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my friends a long time ago brought their wife and she's Catholic.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so later on he said, My wife said, Who is that guy behind us that just wants to say amen all the time?
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ever sit next to him again if I come.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but she likes me now.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: So the the church I grew up in that's very tame.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: The amen is nothing.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've been to some our brother's church.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was good.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, they humbled me because there are people there who'll stand up.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, and they'll just start, yes, amen.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're all in, yeah.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, praise Jesus, anything, hallelujah.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's all.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'll go to another country, yeah, and it's a whole new ball game.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to do that.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, I have it's very interesting.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: But so so my wife and I come come together, we're dating now, and she's her expression of face very different than mine.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I didn't know that there was such a variance.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you know, and so coming together, we we really uh so you your your question was what does it look like to have a holy union?
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we uh found our way to our expression of faith, and uh it it's been a very it's been it's been a great place for us to to be able to be in that space where it's like I've learned so much from her and her family, and she's learned so much from me and my family, and we were able to kind of step outside of our holy huddles and kind of pave a path for us of how we express our faith in that way.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: But it is um it's something I take for granted probably more than I should.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we are one and there there's just no getting around that.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like we are one, we are dedicated, like it's our kids know that.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome, and there's there's no doubt in their mind, and there's you know, that's just not always the case.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you for coming on.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, I'm had a blast.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that went pretty went by pretty fast.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: It did.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: I did I can't believe it's over already.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I really appreciate you saying yes.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the person you are to me, and I appreciate your teaching, um, and I appreciate who you are.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh thank you, um Devin and you coming on.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope people listened to this and they liked our conversation.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they also heard your story, and maybe they're like, oh man, that is just awesome.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved how Ryan how he accepted Christ, and now he's doing this in the ministry, he is doing it, he is living the calling that God has on his life, and also now he's in union with his wife, and he's got this wonderful family, and um, so uh appreciate you, man.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I hope someone listened tonight.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you listen tonight and you don't have a relationship with him, and you want to have a relationship with him, with Jesus, the person we've been talking about tonight, it's real easy.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: There is no magical words, there isn't anything Brian has magical, I have magical.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, Lord Jesus, I just want to have a relationship with you.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: Starting tonight, I want to have a relationship with you, I want to know you, I want to live in that family, and I want to experience the life that you have for me, that you want for me, and you make him the number one priority in your life, and you chase after him, and you get around a good, good group of people, believers that are pushing you to more maturity, sanctification.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can see, Ryan, I am I'm just getting jacked over here.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that happens to you.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: You pray, you get baptized, you join the family, and you mature in your faith.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I just pray that you accept who Christ is.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I just what a great evening.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, Ryan, I don't know you know this, but we always end the podcast with an acronym.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_01: I bet I could guess what it is.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: You do know what it is.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: You text it to me often.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: And what was really funny, the man that was on here last week, he said I had to Google it.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when we first met?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, I'm Googling and I can't find out what that is.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me you want to say it?
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes on Jesus.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: K-Y-E-O-J, keep your eyes on Jesus because if your eyes are on him, oh my gosh.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're still going through stuff, but your eyes are on him, man.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes on Jesus.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: We love you.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, share, subscribe to the podcast, and we're all on all streaming platforms.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you come back next week and thank you for listening.