Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #166 Living Vertically (2 - Embracing God's Vertical Love in a Horizontal World)

Transcript

#166 Living Vertically (2 - Embracing God's Vertical Love in a Horizontal World) · The OneCry Podcast

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  One of the greatest gifts God has given us as a follower of Christ,
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  as one that has received His love, is that now we can come in a relationship
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  with God in everyday ways,
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  vertically engage our God,
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  and listen, and be loved.
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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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  Welcome once again to the One Crap Podcast. I'm Bill Eliff, and my dear friend
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  Kyle Reno is with me today.
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  And we are so thrilled that we're coming into your car, or your house,
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  or your run, or at the gym.
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  It sounds a little creepy when you say it that way. Yeah, it's creepy.
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  You know, Kyle, I had, there's something about being around great men that changes us.
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  And I know you and I have talked about this before and all of us have our heroes.
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  I had a couple of weeks, really, it was about a 10 day span a few weeks ago.
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  And uh and in
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  in in those days i was around i was
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  around several wonderful great men but
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  three in particular one was i
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  i just because of a a group of guys i was with uh we we sat in the office with
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  jim cimbala the great pastor of the brooklyn tabernacle church and he's 82 years
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  old and he He acts like he's about 50.
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  And I was just blown away.
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  We sat with him for several hours and he was sitting up on the edge of his chair,
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  just so excited about this new outreach they were going to have to try to reach
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  a Hispanic portion and the immigrants that were coming into New York.
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  And then in the same breath, he's talking about this homeless guy across the
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  street that he's befriended and led to Christ. And I just thought,
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  man, the vigor, the vision of this guy at 82.
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  And then a little later, we had lunch in that same meeting and spent several
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  hours with Crawford Loritz.
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  And Crawford is about my age, I think, his early 70s, maybe even younger,
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  which is a frightening thought.
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  And uh but he he uh
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  he's just i just he was just talking and a bunch of us were just asking questions
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  the wisdom that was coming out of him was just unbelievable and then and then
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  a week later i i went to the to the great bellevue baptist church in memphis and had the privilege
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  of speaking over there with Steve Gaines.
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  And Steve right now has cancer.
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  He's right in the middle of chemotherapy. He's got another disease that affects
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  his muscles and makes him so tired.
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  And we sat at dinner and Kyle, you know, Steve really well, he really discipled you.
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  And And he is leaning up against the wall to try to keep his head up.
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  And we are laughing so hard. Yes, Gary.
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  And he is so happy, so joyful.
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  Wow. So full of God.
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  The whole point of me telling you this, that was a good 10 days. Yeah.
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  But being in the presence of those three men affected me.
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  I'll never be the same. I mean, I've been around them before,
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  but there's something about all three of them together.
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  If we had time, I could just tell you the particular things I saw in them and
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  how it changed me and thought, man, I want to be like that.
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  I want to be like that. And the beautiful thing that we're going to see today,
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  Kyle, is we can be in the presence of God all the time and be around God and look at God.
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  And that's the point of this little series that we're doing on looking up and
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  getting our vision in that direction. And boy, we need it, don't we, Kyle?
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  Yeah, man. Well, that's the perfect way to set this up because the truth is
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  about all three of those men.
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  Is not a microwave, is that they've learned to live vertically over decades of life.
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  And God's life has just permeated their lives.
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  You just get around them and you think about Him. You think about the Lord and you see.
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  And so last week we kickstarted and said, hey, what would it look like for us
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  to be a people that have better posture?
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  People that learn how to position ourselves in the presence of God,
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  not living on the horizontal. And just to declare again, listen,
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  this world is demanding your attention.
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  And our nation right now is fighting for your mind, fighting for your heart.
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  And so it's going to take some spiritual courage to fight for your eyes,
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  to fight for your sight line.
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  And so I just last week we looked at real quick.
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  Our God is the creator. So look up. Look up, people of God.
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  Today, when you walk into those times with the Lord, when you get in the car
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  and you're riding down the road and remember that our God has created everything
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  we've seen and all the unseen.
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  And that same God is in control and that he is watching over.
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  And while the nations plot, they plot in vain because our God is sovereign control.
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  Control and that should bring great comfort to us in
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  every aspect of our life and then the last point last week
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  was then our god is holy and we should rightly tremble
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  in his presence like there's something about getting under the right weight
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  of god and feeling in his transcendence that he is altogether other and and
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  it's married to this i'm gonna give you just a couple truths to help you and
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  I learn how to live vertically.
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  And that same God in his word, when he gives a one-word definition of himself, our God is love, is love.
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  I just got captured by this thought.
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  When God wanted to give a one-word definition of himself, he said love.
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  You listen to what it says in 1 John 4, 8, anyone who does not love does not
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  know God because God is love.
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  Bill, I've heard you say this in innumerable times, A.W.
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  Tozer's quote, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most
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  important thing about us.
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  And so a lot of us lose a vertical mindset in our approach to God because we
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  don't think about a God that is love.
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  Maybe we've had a painful past and authority figure in our life that sort of skewed our view of God.
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  Maybe it was a bad dad or a father wound, or maybe it's some religious person
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  leadership in your life that sort of tainted the way that you see God.
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  Maybe you see him as a harsh person,
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  Football coach is screaming at you all the time or a dictator.
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  Well, that's not the God of the Bible.
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  Look up. The God of the Bible is love.
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  Zephaniah 317 says, the Lord your God is in your midst. I love that thought.
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  He's here. The Lord your God is in your midst. He's close.
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  A mighty one who will save. If you're in the family of God, that's because our God is a savior.
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  He will rejoice over you with gladness.
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  Man, when the Lord sees you coming, he rejoices over you with gladness.
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  Like when you come to get into a posture and a position before God,
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  he goes, that's my boy. That's my girl. Look at him coming. I rejoice.
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  I love this about him. I love this about her. And it says he will quiet you by his love.
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  He will exult over you with loud singing.
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  Singing bill raised a bunch of babies and i should say holly did for him katie
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  is still raising kiddos for us between us we got a tribes of of children i love
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  what it says he'll quiet you by his love it makes me think of somebody holding
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  a little baby that's crying and it's just going.
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  Like the lord loves to hold his kids when we live vertically and just say it's gonna be okay,
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  to just quiet you with his love, he will exult over you with singing.
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  Like you know that God, if you want to live vertically, that God just doesn't
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  see that God sings over you.
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  That he's singing a song over you. I remember years ago there was a song,
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  you've never heard of it, I'm
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  sure, because it wasn't necessarily for the world, it was for one person.
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  But it it got recorded and
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  it just moved me greatly it's
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  called the promise by mercy me and the song was written as they were setting
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  up on the stage and and the stage hands were getting everything's pre-concert
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  and he saw this guy that just looked broke down and,
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  wounded and angry and and he was just one of the guys that was working this
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  event and all of a sudden out of his heart came a song that he felt like God
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  was wanting to just sing over him.
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  So for his sound check, he just started singing over this guy, I love you.
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  This is Lord, I will never leave you nor forsake you because I love you.
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  And he watched the demeanor of that guy change till that guy was just looking
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  at him and then ended with a conversation about God's great love for this guy.
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  All that to say, God's singing over you today.
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  Look up. He's singing over you. You're not coming to a dad that's scolding or screaming.
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  You're coming to a dad that is singing, that is singing over you.
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  He doesn't just say it. He shows it. Romans 5, 8 says, but God shows his love
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  for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
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  God doesn't just say it or sing it. He displayed it. He showed it and that his
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  son came for us. I love Tim Keller's quote.
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  You are more sinful than you could ever dare imagine.
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  Our God is holy. When you get in His presence, we realize, oh,
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  wow, we are sinful, man. That's not the end of the quote, though.
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  We're more sinful than we dare imagine, and you are more loved and accepted
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  than you ever dare hope at the same time, that you're more sinful than you imagine,
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  and yet at the same time, you're more accepted and loved than you ever dare
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  hope. hope, simultaneous truth.
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  Our God is holy, and our God is love.
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  Lends itself to this as you look up to remember, and our God, he came for us.
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  He came for us. That the gospel message is this, is not that we made our way
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  up the mountain to God, not that we figured out some way to understand or save
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  ourselves, but that our God came for us.
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  And this is the love of God.
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  1 John 4, 9, 10. God was made manifest among us. Talk about presence.
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  It was displayed, made manifest amongst us that God sent his only son into the
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  world so that we might live through him.
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  In this is love, Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son
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  to be a propitiation for our sins.
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  One of the greatest gifts God
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  has given us as a follower of Christ is one that has received his love.
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  Is that now we can come in a relationship with God in everyday ways.
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  Vertically engage our God and listen and be loved. Loved.
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  Be loved by God. Here's the thing that no human has ever done, and you won't either.
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  I won't. You'll never love God first.
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  Never. He is displayed in that he came after us when we couldn't come for him,
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  so the best that we can do is respond, and living vertically is a right response to God's work for us.
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  I'm going to give you two more things real quick. Our God also cares about us.
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  He not only saves us, but he actually engages in a relationship where he cares for us.
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  If you want to live vertically, one of the greatest things you and I can learn
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  to do as we walk with God and learn to commune is to realize that God actually cares about our life.
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  I remember the first time I heard a guy say to me, a mentor in my life,
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  he goes, God not only loves you, he likes you.
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  And he not only cared enough to save you, he cared enough to stay with you.
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  Like that God wants to be intimately involved in our lives.
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  Listen to what 1 Peter 5, 7 says, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.
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  One of the awesome privileges of being a people that live vertically is that
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  you get to carry into God's presence the things that you need to cast.
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  And if you'll cast it on him, that's freedom for you. I love Luke 12, 32.
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  Fear not, little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
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  So look up today and know that, you know what? This God that is love,
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  this God that came for us is actually a God that cares for us. He cares for you today.
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  Somebody needs to hear this. Some person on this podcast needs to hear this today.
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  God cares about what you're carrying.
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  He cares. you got a decision to make
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  you can either keep carrying it or you can cast
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  it you can cast it hear me
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  because listen jesus has broad enough shoulders to carry it so don't don't carry
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  it alone look up the last thing i'll tell you just to encourage you about living
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  vertically and i love this you see this across the new testament specifically
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  in acts bill i know we've talked about this conversation before.
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  In light of a God that loves us, that came for us, that cares for us,
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  and our God is coming back for us.
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  He's coming back for us. One of my favorite, most mysterious passages in the
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  Bible is Matthew 24, verses 30 and 31.
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  It says, and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven.
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  You say, Kyle, what does that look like? No idea. Can't wait to see it.
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  No idea. I don't believe it's the bat sign in the sky, but I think it's something
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  that appears in the heavens that instantly everyone's going to know.
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  Everybody's going to know Jesus is the true king.
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  He is the true king. It says, And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn,
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  and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,
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  and he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet,
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  and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.
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  That there's a moment coming, and this is why we should live vertically,
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  that not only he came for us to live perfectly, die sacrificially,
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  defeat death in his resurrection direction to ascend to the right hand of the Father.
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  But one day, listen to me, sky's going to part.
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  King's going to come. King's going to come.
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  And you look at those first followers of Christ, Bill, right after the other
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  side of the empowering of the Holy Spirit out to fulfill the mission of God,
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  they were always eagerly awaiting the day of the Lord.
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  That witness to me. We, as God's people on this planet, should not be as concerned
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  about what the polls say, what's next in our nation.
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  We should rightly engage be a part of
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  those things as a people whose eyes are
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  set on the sun that will one day come
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  again for his kids if
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  you if we become those kind of people you'll live more free and empowered than
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  you ever dare ask or imagine so bill i know you probably fired up ready to preach
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  back oh my stars i i almost broke in with the bill gaither song the king is
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  coming coming Which nobody even knows,
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  unless you're over like 100 years old.
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  But this is so rich.
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  You know, I was just thinking, Kyle, this thing of living vertically.
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  And when you get there, you know, the psalmist said the nearness of God is my
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  good. This is good for me.
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  And when you get there, you just see things that you don't see anywhere else.
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  So, I mean, the world is making you see stuff all the time.
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  You're walking through this world. You're going to see that junk.
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  But unless you live vertically, unless you look up and there's a way to do that, you don't see this.
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  And I think particularly about these.
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  Things that you are talking about, about the love of God, the care of God for us.
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  And he showed that care by coming and then coming again.
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  I think perhaps the greatest tool the enemy has in his arsenal is to tell us
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  that God doesn't love us. Yeah.
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  And he's got a lot of ammo because it looks we know that God is sovereign and he's over the world.
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  And yet the world is a mess in so many ways.
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  Right. And so he just all he does is he just whispers that God didn't love you.
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  He didn't care about you. He's a million miles away.
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  And and, you know, I think there's some things in life, you know,
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  Kyle, you know, in sports that sometimes if an area is deficient.
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  You got to almost overcorrect.
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  Exactly. You got to work 10 times harder to get your legs.
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  If your legs are weak, you got to work way harder to get those legs in shape.
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  Right. And you got to overcorrect. I think we need an overcorrection.
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  Wow. Of the love of God. Right. And when we get there, that settles everything.
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  Sure. You know, what do you think, Kyle? I was just thinking as you were talking about.
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  The things that happen to us when we don't realize that God loves us,
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  you know, like insecurity.
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  We get terribly insecure. We're fearful.
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  Right. You know, so many areas.
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  Yeah, I think you're 100 percent agree.
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  If the enemy can deceive us about God's heart for us, then we won't trust what
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  he says. We won't we won't trust what's to come.
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  You know, but I think, I mean, you think about love, love is not just merely an emotion.
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  You know, like love is a reality. You know, like it's a fact.
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  It's, you know, Holly loves you.
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  Not merely because she says it, because she's displayed it in faithfulness over time.
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  And how, and I think one of the things about living vertically is,
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  is that, is there moments that you will feel loved by God?
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  100%. You know, there's moments where you're like, man, I sense the nearness
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  of God, the presence of God.
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  But I think as you learn to live vertically, you come to a place that you know you are loved. Right.
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  Because God said it. It's done. Yeah, it's done because it's and that's a confidence
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  that you walk into the world in a world that is that is trying to pump you full
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  of things that say, well, this is what love is.
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  You know, this is what this is, what this is, your value displays.
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  You're like, no, I am. I am fully loved, though. I am completely flawed.
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  I'm still fully loved. And now that the confidence that comes with that.
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  There's no substitute for you know i i years ago i taught through um first corinthians
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  13 on the love of god and and i have forever since then seen god's love as like this that god quality.
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  That always responds in self-sacrifice the opposite
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  of love is not hatred the opposite of love you see
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  it in first corinthians 13 is unselfishness
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  oh wow you know love right in
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  the middle you know he says he takes love like a prism and he turns it in the
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  light he says now love he's talking about that god called agape love it is always
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  patient it's always kind some guy says well i love my wife i'm just not kind
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  no you don't you don't love her because love is kind
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  to the extent that you're not kind, you're not loving her and patient.
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  And then it says right out of the heart of that love seeks not its own.
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  You say it's on what? It's on the way. It's on time. It's on rights.
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  It's, it's completely selfless. Wow. And that's what God is.
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  And when you, like you say, not only when we feel that singing a wonderful worship
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  song and we get all emotional about it. That's one thing.
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  But then when you walk with God year after year after year, you will see that he always chooses you.
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  He always gives first to you and you just relax in his love.
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  I have to tell you this. I was with my oldest daughter and her family this weekend.
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  And Jennifer is just a mama. I mean, she is all she's ever wanted to do. Right.
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  And the Lord has taken her through some really tough things.
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  She lost our 10-year-old son to cancer.
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  And it's created this heart in her that was always there, but just the love of God.
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  Well, they foster kids now and just one after another. And I watched her this
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  weekend. We were together all weekend.
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  And she's got this little foster child who's really been through some abuse and just a tough time.
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  And I want to take that child, you know, and he will scream his head off.
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  And then somebody else take him, you know, scream his head off.
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  And he is looking for Jennifer. Jennifer, and he sees her.
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  And in two seconds, the crying stops.
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  A big old smile comes on his, because he just knows he's loved.
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  And the reason is she's been the one in the last days that's cared for him,
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  that's held him, that's sung over him, like you talked about.
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  And he knows he's loved. He knows it's good right there. And that's what happens
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  when that little boy is living vertically with his foster mom.
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  Yeah, that's what he's looking for.
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  That's what he's looking for. And that's what all of us are looking for. Hardwired.
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  Hardwired. That's why we need to live vertically.
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  That's right. So, Kyle, I wonder if we could take a minute as we pray. Okay.
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  And I wonder if you just would pray for us,
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  because I just think that this is such a deficiency that we have believed the
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  horizontal lie of the enemy and the lie that's coming from the pit.
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  That's right. That the Lord doesn't love us.
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  Would you take us there and pray particularly
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  for those who are listening yeah they that god
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  would uh bring this home to them today you just pray for us and we invite everybody
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  to join us as we pray yeah just even where you are even if you're riding down
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  the road eyes wide open or whatever place you find yourself would you turn your heart toward him,
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  Just turn your heart toward the Lord, even now.
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  Lord, I ask as we get before you, and I pray specifically for our listeners today,
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  that in a tangible, supernatural way, would you let each one of your children
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  know how much you love them.
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  That in spite of us, you loved us first.
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  That, Lord, we never had to earn it, that you decided to give it,
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  that it was displayed perfectly through the sacrifice of your Son,
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  that you choose to love us.
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  So I pray that the love of God would destroy every deception in any listener's heart today.
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  I pray that your love of God would be like, I think about an IV line that sometimes has to be flushed.
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  Would your love come and flush the arteries of our heart, our mind,
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  of anything, any deception, any scheme, anything that we've just picked up over time,
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  but I pray for any vantage point or view of God that has been contorted or deformed
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  because of somebody in our lives.
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  That's right. I ask in the authority of Jesus, would you lift our eyes beyond
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  that which is flesh and blood to your perfect face?
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  And just even in my heart now, would you let us hear you singing over us?
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  Would you let the listener today that you always are when we hear it or not.
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  But I ask, Lord, would you let us hear from the hallways of heaven the voice
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  of the Father that is perfect in his love for us?
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  And I pray that set us free. So I pray for a season, Lord, that is displayed
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  love and that was known in you coming for us and that you're coming back.
• 28:12
  So we love you. We entrust all these things to you in Jesus name. Amen.
• 28:18
  Amen. So beautiful. Come on. Hey, I have a little bit of homework for our guys. I like it. Okay.
• 28:26
  So we got one more, at least one more podcast on this living vertically truth.
• 28:34
  And as we talk about the love of God, I want to encourage you to go online,
• 28:39
  okay, and look up a sermon by Charles Spurgeon.
• 28:46
  Spurgeon it's called heaven a world of
• 28:49
  love you can you can just get a pdf of it you can
• 28:52
  also get it in a little book uh you know a
• 28:55
  lot of places sell that but I read that
• 28:58
  that sermon at least once a year
• 29:01
  wow I I for me
• 29:04
  of course I love Spurgeon and you know
• 29:07
  the wording is a little archaic but uh
• 29:11
  oh my he'll take you right there
• 29:14
  because he walks us into heaven and
• 29:17
  describes what it's like to live
• 29:21
  in a place that is filled with the perfect love of god wow now you you just
• 29:29
  i'll just leave it right there i just want homework that's your homework and
• 29:35
  i promise you you will You will write me a letter and you'll say,
• 29:39
  oh, Bill, thank you for that.
• 29:42
  And heaven, a world of love by Charles Spurgeon.
• 29:46
  And then tune in next time, because next time we're going to talk about not
• 29:51
  just the attributes of God that we see, but we're going to talk about practically how do we look up?
• 29:59
  How do we live vertically 24-7?
• 30:03
  And I don't think you'll want to miss it. invite somebody to join you and we'll
• 30:08
  look forward to seeing you on our one cry podcast.
• 30:11
  Music.