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How Do You Know It’s God Speaking… and Not Just Your Thoughts? · Relish: a Christian podcast

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  I can actually go out in the pasture yet and identify the spot where God talked to me.
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  What is your favorite book of the Bible? James.
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  I saw that one coming. The last most meaningful piece was when God poured his
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  Holy Spirit into me another time.
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  And all of a sudden I was speaking in tongues.
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  Relish. Pleasing or zestful flavor. A quantity just sufficient to flavor.
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  To be pleased or gratified by. Enjoy.
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  We are hoping that what we bring to your table today might add some spice to your life.
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  Welcome back to another episode of Relish. I am Rowan Miller.
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  This is Pastor Don Patterson. Don, how are you doing today?
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  Oh, yeah, we're doing wonderful. Yeah, yeah. Doing good? Yeah.
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  It's springtime. Yeah. Got to be doing good in this kind of weather and enjoying
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  it and green things, you know. Flowers. Flowers, yeah.
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  Planting seeds. Your folks had some nice flowers out front. Yeah. Yeah.
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  It was nice to see spring flowers. Hopefully that hail didn't ruin them too bad. Right. Yep.
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  Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, does anyone else's faith inspire you?
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  Yeah, there's definitely list, list of people there.
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  Um, parents, grandparents, siblings, Don, I mean, yeah, Church role models.
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  And that's sort of how we get our faith from generation to generation,
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  sharing it through models that inspire us.
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  Especially when we watch them
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  go through the hard stuff and they still smile at the other end of it.
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  And yeah, I'd say I have a whole raft of people who have inspired my faith over the years.
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  And the memory of them, now they're gone, still...
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  Still inspires me to this day. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah.
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  So you have some questions left over from Hillcrest? Oh, boy,
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  did we ever, yeah. You Hillcrest guys did a great job.
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  These are good questions. They've been really good questions.
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  Nice to have Corbin come in and help us with some of them.
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  Yep. And those were good times as well. See, we got these back end of January
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  or something like that. Yes, right.
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  Something like that, and we're still going. We're still going,
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  yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We actually taped in February, first week,
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  first Monday in February.
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  We taped and got questions before that.
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  Wow. Good job.
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  Yeah. All right. So these students here are pretty interested in some personal
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  aspects of their faith and life.
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  So I think. My person? Yeah. This episode, I think, is all questions specific to you.
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  But. Okay. We'll see. I think I want to go.
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  Okay, personal. Don, personal. Okay. How has God appeared in your life? Oh, man.
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  God has appeared personal, especially those times when I needed his voice.
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  Uh i often go back to when michael died and
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  and that personal those three words my son
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  died i guess it's four words my son died too i i
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  pled to him i said lord how come with all i'm doing for the church all i'm doing
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  all i'm preparing to do you know poor me lord poor me and uh job did the same
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  thing so i identify with joe and i poor me and uh,
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  Why did you let my son die was the question I posed to the Lord and the Lord posed, my son died too.
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  And it just changed the whole conversation. It changed my thought pattern.
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  God showed up in that moment to give me a comfort that I couldn't have gotten from anybody else.
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  In times of family, Charlene, her health is tenuous at different times.
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  And so in addition to working full-time, there was a lot of things I did at home.
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  And sometimes at the kitchen sink, you'd have that poor me, and I'm doing dishes,
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  and I've got all these things.
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  And just pose it before the Lord, he says, is this what's supposed to be happening?
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  And God would show up in those times.
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  My times in the shop my my saturdays often are times when i can go out in the afternoon,
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  into the shop and do things with my hands and get my hands really busy and say
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  yes so lord this stuff going on is not fun well what's this all about and he'll
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  give me maybe not words all the time but will give me a a song or something that comes out of,
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  my quiet time with him that is, ah, he's present here. He hears me.
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  Went through a very difficult transition a few years ago and just pled out to
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  the Lord, my, why, why do I and the church have to go through this right now? And, and, uh,
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  His words, I've got this. I've got this.
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  And it was calm, and it got me through.
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  I'm amazed at how many times I would, especially in this period that now I'm
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  open to when God wants me to speak in tongues.
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  And uh and that's
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  happened in the car more than once as i was going
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  into a meeting and and we had good work
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  together and i'd come home and i'd just be in
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  such praise and the lord would show up and
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  give me words in
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  a tongue that i don't understand but i those words
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  calmed my heart and i praised the lord so god showed up in so many wonderful
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  ways uh both when i've been very happy and both when i needed him just to speak
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  into my life uh it's it's it's so real yeah.
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  I can actually go out in the pasture yet and identify the spot where God talked to me.
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  So I feel like I should do like an Abraham or something and put stones up,
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  you know, in that spot and worship the Lord in that spot.
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  But it's very precious.
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  Take your shoes off next time you go there. Yes.
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  Probably get a cuckold bird in my toe. But the idea that God can meet us in the here and now,
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  and I wish that for everybody, that they get those times where they meet the Lord face-to-face.
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  No, face-to-face, yes.
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  Yeah, I feel like it was face-to-face.
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  It's good stuff. Yeah, it is. It keeps me going. I bet.
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  What is your favorite book in the Bible? James. I saw that one coming.
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  James and Romans and yeah, but James, James, uh, is so down to earth and practical.
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  It speaks to so many different things. I, James, and it's a quick read.
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  It's a quick read. You can do it in no time at all. You can read the book of James.
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  Yeah. I, that's pretty much simple, simple answer, straightforward.
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  I've actually written some stuff on James. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Nice.
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  Has God ever given you a message or a sign to do something and you didn't do it?
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  Man.
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  These kids want to know everything. They do. They do. And I'm trying to think
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  of that time. I'm sure there's a time that that happened. Yeah.
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  I can't remember it right now. Maybe the Lord is being helpful in my selective
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  memory, and I can't remember it.
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  But the Lord asked me to do something, and I did not do it.
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  We may have to save that one for later. I can't think of that right now.
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  But I will assure the individual asking the question that it's happened.
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  Because I'm sure it has. It might not be as big or direct or memorable as Jonah
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  not going and obeying the Lord, but there's probably been times that we've all done that.
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  Yeah, I'd rather go down the other way than go there.
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  There was a time when somebody was saying, I should consider a certain congregation.
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  And it was a regional district minister kind of thing, saying,
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  I should consider this congregation. And I said, no way. There is no way.
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  And he approached second time and i said here is
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  absolutely no way and the third
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  time he approached then i said okay i'll tell you what
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  just to appease you will allow
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  a congregate a conversation to happen and so
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  in the congregation between me and the leadership the
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  uh search committee yeah and i said okay
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  just because you're my buddy and you're
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  asking me i'll entertain a conversation
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  with the search committee okay ended up going there and it ended up being a
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  really good fruitful ministry for many years but yeah i didn't want to go yeah
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  that wasn't something i thought should happen uh but i yeah.
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  We can close count it, yeah. Okay, you can count that. That's at least one situation where, yeah.
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  Probably God was calling through that individual, and two times I said,
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  no, you've got to be kidding me.
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  Well, we see that number three in the Bible all the time. Oh,
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  yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. How did you first come to Christ?
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  Well, I sort of put it in two stages. Okay. Because I came to Christ in my understanding
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  at home. My mom and dad are good Christians.
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  And dad made some moves. I mean, he moved us from one congregation to another
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  because of things that he saw in the first congregation that he did not want his kids to get into.
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  And so he moved us, and I honor him for that.
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  In that congregation, I came to an understanding of the Lord.
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  And this congregation was very biblical. We did a lot of study in the Bible
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  that I hadn't done before.
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  And so my first exposure to more in-depth Bible study was in that congregation.
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  And so I came to faith. It was a three-year catechism.
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  So you had three years of membership class. And the pastor led those.
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  E.J. Miller, great man. I enjoyed him tremendously.
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  And the second year, then I felt like I was ready for baptism, and so I got baptized.
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  And I can still remember the feeling of the water going over my head.
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  I can still, even though the building is now the fellowship hall,
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  I can just about identify where I was standing when I was baptized.
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  It was a very powerful spiritual experience. Even so, it pales in contrast to
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  when God called me to ministry.
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  Because I was feeling this nudge for quite a while.
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  And so I went to the pastor's, the pastor lived right across.
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  Can you imagine being a college student and your pastor lives right across from
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  your dorm and he knows your car and he knows.
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  No parties at Don. No parties at Armad.
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  And so I drove past and he was in blue jeans and he was pulling crabgrass.
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  I never saw my pastor in blue jeans until that point.
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  And so I said, how am I supposed to know if I'm to go into ministry?
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  And his counsel was pray pray that
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  god will open and close doors so that you will know exactly what he wants you
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  to do and so that evening i went home went back to my mod and i knelt by my
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  bed and i prayed that prayer and all it was a.
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  A sudden moment with the lord and i
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  felt like he heard my prayer and i
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  felt a transformation in my in my body in
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  that moment to the point that my uh best friend my best friend went to the same
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  college okay and he noticed because all of a sudden my language changed there
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  wasn't any of those expletives that needed deleted anymore.
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  And that transformation was amazing.
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  There's been further transformation since then that God has met me where I'm at.
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  It's as if I'm one of those poor souls that has to be pulled back like a turnip
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  and peeled, you know, peel the bad part off the outside so that we can finally
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  be who God's calling us to be.
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  And he's continuing to clean us up over time and continuing to transform us.
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  The last most meaningful piece was when God poured his Holy Spirit into me another time.
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  And all of a sudden I was speaking in tongues in that meeting.
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  I don't do that every week.
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  But it was a powerful, powerful moment. And that was in the last five years.
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  Wow. It's as if God's continuing to work on me. Yeah.
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  God is good, and he's still working on me.
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  That little song we used to learn in Bible school, God's still working on me
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  to make me what he wants me to be.
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  I think I've heard it, but he added the moon and stars.
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  Jupiter and Mars, God's still working on me.
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  God's still working on me to make me what he wants to be.
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  He's made the moon. Yeah, Louetta, you can pull that one out. Say it for somebody.
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  I think last question here. Do you relate your story to someone in the Bible?
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  I think you mentioned earlier you were kind of like Job. I feel like Job a lot
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  of times, because I do believe that the tests I've gone through have molded me into who I am today.
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  I can feel Paul sometimes, you know.
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  Peter. My personality, oh man.
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  I identify with poor Peter.
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  Because sometimes i open my mouth when i should keep it
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  shut and peter was really one of
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  those individuals did the same thing uh uh foot and mouth disease yeah uh but
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  yeah peter would be this another one that i would identify most often because
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  he uh yeah he and i have personal, similar personalities.
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  Sad to say, but it is true. Yeah. Yeah. I don't believe I've, uh.
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  Disobeyed. I, uh, denied Jesus, denied my Lord, but, uh, I'm not done yet either.
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  So I pray that that doesn't happen.
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  Yeah. Alrighty. Well, thank you, Don. Thank you for opening up to your whole entire lifestyle.
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  Yeah good questions guys and i
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  don't mind sharing those things that might help
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  you in your in your walk yeah i
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  mean it kind of goes back to the question that you gave me at the beginning
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  oh yeah i hadn't thought about that connection but you're right yeah about yeah
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  god is good yeah and he'll come into our lives as far as we'll let him yeah
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  and he'll transform us from our lives as far as we will let him do so.
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  We gotta wanna, gotta wanna. Thank you guys for joining us.
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  Hopefully we got your questions answered. If we didn't, let us know. Exactly.
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  But yeah, we'll see you next time. Lord willing.
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  Thank you for joining us for this podcast. Feel free to become part of this
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  ministry by sharing it with others.
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  Our goal is to help each other grow deeper in our understanding of who God is
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  and is calling to us in our daily lives.
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  Thank you again for joining us and may God bless your day.