Latest / Rick Manis Ministries Podcast / Who Told You That?

Transcript

Who Told You That? · Rick Manis Ministries Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about this morning.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see how this goes.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, I'm going to say something good about God, and we are proclaiming the gospel this morning.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're uh here at Grace Church we're we're not just teaching a doctrine of grace.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's part of it, but the doctrine of grace is the gospel.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the good news.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And everything about Jesus and everything about what Jesus did on the cross and his resurrection, everything declares good news, which speaks of God's grace.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is about that which was contrary to us, was nailed to his cross.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The blood of Jesus, cleansing us from all sin.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: His death.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everything about it takes all of it off of us and says, look, it's all on me.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see this?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're free.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: You've got nothing between you and God.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sin will not be an issue.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's been such a big liberation in my life was freedom from that sin-centric mindset and a sin-centric type of religion where everything revolved around sin.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody said the word conviction, it was conviction of sin.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the Bible talks about conviction of righteousness.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit, what's he do?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: He convicts you of sin.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or he points out what's wrong and all that.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Kyle deals with that in his book.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: The advocate's not going to be bringing up stuff that's going to work against you.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, a repentance?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Repentance?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Repent of sin.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of change your mind about God, change your mind about you, change your mind about everything that Jesus spoke.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, uh it's more than just a doctrine.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually learning our Father.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually coming to know and enjoy, and we're experiencing the joy and the peace and all that comes from knowing the person of God our Father.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm very relational in this.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hold this close to my heart because what where my joy is, is not that I just changed my religion.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I just changed my way of believing only.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: My joy is that I now feel close to Daddy.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a joy and a peace and security in that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to get into this beginning in John chapter 1 this morning.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And talking about the relational thing, talking about the person of God.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, he's wonderful, he's alive, he speaks.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as we just sang, he is for you.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: He is for you.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh in John chapter 1, verse 1, it says, In the beginning was the word, the logos.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the logos was with God, and the logos was God.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, as we we we look at this, I use that word logos because it's important.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because the word logos, I've said it around here before.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: The word logos means the expression or the divine expression of God, is what we're talking about.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about this, because what John is writing here, this is deep.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is deep.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Where Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they gave, you know, Jesus was born here, and here's what he did in his life, and it's, you know, there's miracles and all kinds of things.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: John goes way, way back to the beginning.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: He goes beyond Abraham, beyond Noah, beyond Adam.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: He goes all the way before creation and says, in the beginning was the divine expression of God.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Think of that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the expression of God was with God, and he, in fact, it was God.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then it goes on, it says that, and there was nothing made without him.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It says he was in the beginning with God, and everything was made through this logos, through this word, through this expression of God.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: All things were made by God expressing himself.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then it says, in him was life, and that life was the light of man.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the expression.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before there was creation, God expressed himself.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And everything that we see in this beautiful creation is an expression of God.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever just marvel, you're driving down the road and look at trees and all the beauty of everything, and just think, this is life happening.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: How does this happen?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: How does life happen?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It just where does all that come from?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: How does all that start?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: God expressed himself, and life, life's expression brings forth life.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens in in your life and in my experience too, that as the life is expressing himself, for he is life, capital L.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: He is life.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as he expresses himself, what's it doing?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: It brings forth life into our existence.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he expressed himself and brought forth life.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the way Genesis says it is God said, Let there be, let there be, showing to us that there was an expression coming out of him or going forth from him, and it brought forth all things that we see.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a part of God Himself.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's His own expression.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And He made all things, and of course they were good because all He can express is good.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And He He made man and finished with that, made humanity, excuse me, and that was the pinnacle of the whole thing.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: God had expressed Himself in this creation that we call man or humanity.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So think about God expressing Himself.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And God expresses Himself in many ways.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: He expresses Himself in nature.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can see God if you look at it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: He expresses Himself to us in our day with the Holy Spirit living inside of us.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's expressing himself.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are the children of God, for the children of God are those who are moved by the impulses of the Holy Spirit, Romans 8 says.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where your growth is coming from, because God is expressing Himself to you.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciated Matt's series the last three weeks on this because he talked about some of the conflicts that come to us as this is happening to us, and he expressed sometimes there's confusion about things that you've heard before or what you've thought before.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's there that you can even get angry at some things and some things, and it's like it's like, no, that that gets in the way, that mess up.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't, I don't, sometimes it's like, I don't even want to go there, God.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: But this expression of God, as he's expressing himself, it starts bumping into some things sometimes, and and and what we're hearing is the expression of God, and we're growing because as it does its work in us, as it does its creative, life-giving work, it starts affecting some other things.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's always good, it's always beautiful, it's always better than what you had, but the expression is happening to us, and that's sort of that's sort of that that uh path or that journey that Matt was talking about that we're on, is that life is being expressed to us, and we're seeing things in a more beautiful and bright way, and it makes more perfect sense with the heart of this God that we've come into contact with.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you a scenario.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's imagine that a young child, let's say a young boy, was was dropped off on a desert island, and he's very young, and he's dropped off, and and he's he's he's very young, but he's also, let's say he's old enough to where he can he can survive.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so we see him on this this island, and he's all alone, and he's got no contact with people, and let's say he's a child that has um he's never heard of God.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: His family, they never talked about God, didn't know anything about God, maybe they didn't believe in God, but he's never heard anything.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Never heard anything good about God, never heard anything bad about God.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he's alone on this island.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's got no contact with people, got no idea about this, a God at all.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: But he's all alone.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he's doing his survival thing, and he, as he's all alone over time, he's got some time on his hands.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe at times he, you know, he's gonna sit and he's gonna contemplate the sky, contemplate the earth.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he uh over time, because all that he's seeing is part of the expression of him, of God.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he realizes that, you know what, I'm not alone here.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's something going on here, there's a communion, there's a communication that's that's going on, and he realizes that he's not alone, and he realizes that somebody else is there, that there's a presence with him.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now he doesn't know about God, doesn't maybe doesn't call it God, but he realizes that a presence is with him, and as he spends more time contemplating and actually communicating with this one because he's realizes he's not alone anymore, he also realizes because the logos, of God himself, is expressing himself to his creation, this young boy, the expression is revealing to him or giving him a realization that this presence is good.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: This presence is for me, this presence is with me, this presence cares.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe at times he having nobody else to communicate with, he, in communicating with this presence, the presence counsels him.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a storm on the island, and the presence comforts him, but the boy is not alone.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the beginning, as the Logos has been expressing himself and always has been and always is to this day, because that's what the Logos is.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's the living expression of God, and it's expressing himself to this young boy, and what he will express is simply simply the reality or truth of the one that's doing the expressing.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of like what's happening to a lot of us here as we as we're growing in God or growing in grace, what's happening is revelation, and really, if it's if it's real, you're getting an expression from God.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're not just not just memorizing teaching that you've heard from up here or somewhere else, that God Himself is expressing Himself to you and it's affecting you.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I and you know, if I just speak for myself, I can see how it affected me, was it made me fall in love with this one that I struggled to love, even though the Bible said you're supposed to love God with all your heart and with all your might, and I wanted to be that, but I struggled with that and begged God to help me with that at one time.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then as I began to receive his expression and began to yield to what he had been trying to tell me for a long time, and opened my heart to a grace that was more amazing than my mind would allow me to try to embrace at one time.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I will open my heart to a love that was bigger and more unlimited and absolutely unlimited when I thought maybe his love was limited.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I opened up to a bigger love, I opened up to a grace that was more amazing.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: What I was in effect doing was opening up my heart to God himself, the expression of God was speaking to me.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw it, I realized it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh my.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: We sing a song around here sometimes, you are better than I thought you were.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can anybody relate to that in your life?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're growing, what's happening is that expression keeps doing that to you.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is why, you know, I'm not one of those people that said, Yeah, I got the revelation of grace 20 years ago, whatever.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It stays fresh because every day there's like, oh, he's still better than I thought he was.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because what?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: The logos, the expression of God, is still speaking to us.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: When I say logos, you could say the Holy Spirit in you, Christ in you, it's it's him expressing himself.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep getting amazed after all this time, and he still and he looks more beautiful.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody relate to what I'm talking about?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: As time goes on, it doesn't get old, it gets even better.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what why has that happened?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the divine, that's the divine, that's the logos, that's the word, the expression of God showing himself, showing the glory of God, showing the beauty of God.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus called it, he said, when the Holy Spirit comes to you, he'll take my glory and he'll show it to you.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening to us.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, the young boy might realize even more.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: As God's expressing himself to him, the boy realizes I'm connected with this presence.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm one with this presence.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he goes on to realize, in fact, this is where I've come from.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is such a part of me.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: This presence is my very origin.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: What does he call them?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: He hasn't heard of God, hasn't heard the gospel of Jesus Christ in the way that it's commonly explained.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what does he call this expression that's been expressing itself through all creation, through all of time?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: But perhaps because of the goodness that he's experiencing from this presence, perhaps because of the goodness of the expression, maybe he calls him love.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he calls him this is the source of life.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he calls him father.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Daddy.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: But he's not alone.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he has a source.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you might know the story of Helen Keller.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, she was not long after she was born, she became blind and deaf.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So as a young child could not communicate because she's lived in darkness and silence.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's much frustration between those around her trying to break through and make communication with her, and she's frustrated because she's living in this world all herself, and these, and and and there's no there's no communication, no understanding going on.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: But she was very bright, she was extremely intelligent, and and and and she she learned eventually to communicate, like through sign language and braille and things, and she she she learned to communicate.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as the story goes, that eventually somebody explained to her the gospel.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when they presented the gospel to her, Helen said, I know him.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't know that's what you called him.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because in her world of darkness and silence, seeming to be like all alone in this condition and isolated and cut off, even though there's people around her and all these things going on, as time went on, Helen realized I'm not alone.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Helen realized, though these people don't understand, there's somebody that does.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it was very real to her.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And even in that darkness and even in that isolation of silence, the logos, God Himself, was not hindered from expressing himself.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: To this girl living in a dark and silent world, the logos could still speak, the logos still revealed himself.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the logos would comfort her, and the logos would counsel her.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: The expression of God.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we know God because of the supernatural work that God is expressing to us.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what it does, what you're finding out, is that it starts, though it might clash with some things we thought before, it actually even makes our Bible make sense and more clearer and we have greater understanding of the of the scripture.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: See, I, you know, don't get us wrong here.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want I wish everybody knew and understood the Bible more.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because so much of the missing, so much of the the error that maybe we've had before, the things that confuse us, is simply because of misapplying, misappropriating, or misinterpreting a lot of things that we've read.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: But with God expressing himself, the Bible makes sense to us.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: There were things that that that as God God was showing his grace and his love, they started to clash with certain things that were in my mind that I had thought of before, that I believed before.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wait a minute, this this is affecting this over here.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and and I don't know if I can let go of this idea, but then as God would express himself, then I look into I look in the scriptures and I see, oh, it really didn't say what I thought it did.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I start learning, I bec I started getting into and really looking at the at the scriptures, and I would and I would I would look at the context and I would understand the history of it, and I would see what they were really saying there, and it all began to make make wonderful sense to me because the the the the expression of God is beautiful and it's perfect.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in John chapter 1, as we go down to verse um 16, it tells us what was going on when Jesus came into the world.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 16 says, And of his fullness we all have received, and we have received grace for grace.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Of his fullness.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes and he brings fullness.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 17, because the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know that what he did, he came in with an expression.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus himself, and even the physical life of Jesus, that's another logos, that's another expression of God, right?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that Jesus was expressing God in everything he did, the way he lived and acted, the way he treated people, the things he said and the things he taught, and even what he demonstrated on the cross, that was an expression of the reality and the heart and the love of God.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus came and everything that he did was that logos, was that expression of grace and truth.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 18 says, No one had seen God at any time.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: That word seen is perceived.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not talking about physical eyesight.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: No one had perceived God at any time, but the only begotten Son who's in the bosom or heart of the Father, he has declared him.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: He has expressed the Father to us.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about when he came into the situation.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was a certain group of people or certain groups that were, that he was in conflict with, it seems like all the time, right?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: First one we think of is the Pharisees.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And these were people that, oh, you had the Pharisees, the Sadducees, you had the scribes, and some others, but the main ones were those.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the scribes and the lawyers, they were experts at the law.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were in the scriptures, they were doing their best, and I and I I contend that their intentions were the best.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and they're they're they're they're they're pouring over the scriptures and they're they're debating the scriptures, and they've got groups where they just sit around and talk about it, and they bat things back and forth, and they're trying their best to understand these things, and trying to understand God, and Jesus even said, What you're trying to do is gain eternal life.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they're they're they're sincerely going after this.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: But in all that they're doing, they're not perceiving God.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because in all they're doing, they're not getting the expression that comes.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're always coming to him, and what are they doing when they come?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: It would say, so the Pharisees came to Jesus, and what were they?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: They would accuse him of something.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: We know they accused him of being a sinner, they accused him of having a devil, they accused him of the worst thing they could think of.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're even a Samaritan.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't, but they accused him of it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he wasn't anything they accused him of, because the accuser and the voice of the accuser and the spirit of the accuser is is a is a liar and has been a liar from the beginning, and the truth's not in the accuser.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus didn't come as an accuser.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did he?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they bring people even that are caught red-handed in sin.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what does Jesus say?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't condemn you.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: He never accused.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he would take the outcasts, and he would take the ones that seemed to be the lowest of the low, and sometimes they were just Samaritans, and sometimes they were demon-possessed, and sometimes they, in some cases, they were women, in some cases they were the poor, and in some cases they were people that were known sinners.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: In all the groups of those, what Jesus did was instead of accusing them, he brought them up because in what he was doing was uh expressing the Father.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love the song.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I started crying when we sang that last song about how he is for you.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: He is for you.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about that.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that about myself, but also being able now that it's starting to flow out of me where I can say it to anybody else.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because the expression of God has shown me his heart.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels good to know not only what God feels about me, and not only what God feels about you, but what he feels about so many others, especially those that I didn't think he felt that way before.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because his expression of his grace and his love contended with my thoughts on that.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as I continue to yield myself and say, show me your ways, and I just, I'm here to know you.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it really isn't that hard to do that anymore because I've tasted God and He's so sweet, and I'm just saying, just show me, and I don't care what it is, I don't care how it messes me up, I just like you.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So just show me more of you, just let me know more of you, because this just keeps getting better and better.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But they came accusing.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, Jesus made a point one time, he says, Come on, guys, he says, you know, you're of your father the devil, or the accuser.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, where you're getting all your ministry, all these things that you're teaching and saying, I know you might mean well, but you're getting it from the accuser.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no truth in the accuser.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: For he's a liar from the beginning.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the ministry that you guys are operating in, you're getting it from the wrong place.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the logos, it's not the expression of the father.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the expression of something else.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it brought accusations.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: So they and we know what the accuser will do.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: The accuser will accuse you.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: We know that a lot of a lot of us have had to deal with that where we felt like we weren't good enough or we didn't measure up and da da da da, all those kind of things.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it also accuses God, doesn't it?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because those two work together.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: It accuses God of making demands of you.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: It accuses God of having a standard that you're supposed to try to try to reach.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: It accuses God of being a punisher.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: It accuses God of making demands.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the logos, the expression of God, is constantly revealing to us something that just it hits our brain sometimes in a way.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because it's just too big.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul said it's a love that's too big to comprehend.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody wanted me one time to define it, and I'm like, I can't, how do I define it?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's I don't know what parameters to put on it.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen the ends of this thing yet.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen how deep this thing goes.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: I do know that if that if that's the truth, then it's not a love, it's not God loves us but, because the but is the end of it.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I found out that he's not a punisher in my personal life.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this for so long.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a point I want to make here because I can tell you vividly, I can see it in my mind's eye right now, details, I can see the pictures on the wall in the room where it happened.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was five years old, living in Lompoke, California.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And mama was around kind of around the corner there in the kitchen area, kitchen dining room area, and I was in the living room, and I'm jumping up and down on this, on the on this chair, and we had this big ottoman in front of the chair.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm hopping up and down, and then I leaped over that ottoman, and I successfully stuck the landing on the floor.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Five years old.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: But when I did, I bit my tongue.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for laughing about that.
• 26:35
  unknown: Ha ha ha!
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I bit my tongue.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, I don't know if I cried or it probably did, but I went and I went, whom, you know, mom, I bit my tongue.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What were you doing?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I told her.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: And Mama, bless her heart, you know.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us are so ignorant of so many things, and and seeing ourselves coming to know God better is such a beautiful thing.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: But at that time she said, Well, you shouldn't have been doing that.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened was God was punishing you because you were doing something you shouldn't have been doing.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, wow, I mean, I knew if mama would have seen me do that, I'd get a punishment.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But now she don't see it.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I was doing it because she was around the corner.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: But now I got this eye in the sky making sure, too, making sure I don't get away with anything.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and so now, and I'm gonna tell you that this worked in my brain for decades after that, that I had this eye in the sky watching me and looking for opportunities like that to make me bite bite my tongue and blood coming out of my mouth, you know.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, I just I never shook it.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, a lot of things that I was hearing growing up as a non-Christian, and then even to become a Christian, a lot of things that I that I was hearing were enforcing that in some way.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm trying to love God with all of my heart, but he's a punisher.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to love God with all of my heart, but he's a judge peering over the desk at me.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to love God with all of my heart, but he's watching.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: God's watching you.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: God's watching.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: I get into church, beware lest your sin find you out.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: For there is nothing, for all things are naked and open unto him with whom we have to deal with.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, ah, I got no chance here.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying my best.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: But God was a punisher.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as grace opened up the heart of God to me, and God's revealing himself to me in such beautiful ways, and I'm falling in love.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the changes that are happening are just good and beautiful, and they're producing fruit.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is still the best way to tell.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is it producing peace in you?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is it producing joy in you?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And my answer was yes.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm getting, what I'm hearing, what I'm seeing, is producing joy and peace that I've been wanting for so long.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the part of the peace, the part of the reason I had such peace, because it dealt with that idea of the punisher.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to think, where did that come from?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I heard a lot of it in the name of God.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: But God's telling me something else.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: So where did that come from?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, who told you that?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the question in Genesis, Adam, who told you that?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was afraid and I was ashamed because I was naked.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who told you that you were naked?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like I say, you've been naked the whole time.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I never said anything.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Since I didn't say anything about it, since I didn't tell you to be ashamed, since I didn't tell you to be afraid, who told you that?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if the logos, if the if God expressing himself in his beauty and his goodness, if the if the expression of God wasn't telling me that, who told me that?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, somebody else, obviously.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just mama, it was many people after that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it gets burned out deep in your head.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to deal with this, and even as a Christian, and trying to, you know, and trying to do my best here, this thing is hindering me, this untruth that's accusing me of just of always doing things wrong, and I'm just like, oh, I mean, there were times I thought I am in line for a whip, and I can't avoid it.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I even prayed sometime, I remember at least one time I prayed, God, just get the punishment over with.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: The suspense is killing me.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I had a belief that came from an accusation.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: It accused God of being something that he expressed to me that he wasn't.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go to the scriptures.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the scriptures?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was beautiful when I found this.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: The scripture said, Psalms 103, he will not punish us according to our sins nor reward us according to our iniquities.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: How come they never preach that one to me?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because it conflicted with the idea that he's a punisher.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And punish, the idea of a punishment, see that that that ministers to the flesh.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's the flesh's way of controlling you and me.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was mama's way of controlling this rambunctious five-year-old boy.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you start to learn.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: See, and and and you and you start feeling like, I mean, so many things would come out of that.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So many things that I look back on that just make me wretch almost.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where it's like the things that we would say about God, God's bringing charges against us.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: God's, I mean, all these things we find somewhere in the prophets or some some scripture and try to apply it.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a saying that says, when a parent, it goes something like this, when a parent berates and belittles and shames their child, the child doesn't usually stop loving the parent.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: The child starts stops loving itself, himself.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I I can say that happened to me because I and because I I know that I was raised with a lot of that.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I still wanted, I still ran to mom and dad.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I still have wanted that connection.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I still wanted that.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't just start hating them and say, well, I don't like them for saying that about me.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: I continued to want them, I continued to love them, but I didn't feel very good about me.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't like me.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's burned in my head for many years.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: See how these things do?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why the logos, the word of God, the Holy Spirit, the expression of God Himself is so important and so such a lifeline to us because it liberates us from all of the lies that come from an accusatory idea or accusatory spirit, if you will.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it and what's it doing?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: All of that, and these thoughts will come to all of us.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: It'll it'll accuse you of not being good enough for God, and that was Adam's original feeling.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It'll accuse God of not being that good to you.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then it'll accuse others of all kinds of stuff.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got all this stuff going on by the spirit of this world, by the father of lies that people are operating in, and a lot of it we're using religion to bring the accusations.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the beautiful thing that I see happening in me and in you, and we have the most beautiful conversations around here about God expressing himself and how he has and is liberating us from the lies of the accuser that has accused our father, that has accused us, and is accusing other people.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're getting instead of that is the heart of Daddy, which is love.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: It always does, and if you get tired of it, get used to it, because it's all going to come down to that throughout all of eternity.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll be it's the best thing that you've ever tasted and experienced, and the fruit of the Spirit is love, and the attributes of that are joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, patience, self-control.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: It all works from the expression of God Himself.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had another experience that I'll share with you just as an example.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: So at 21 years of old, my years of age, my life changed.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: I became a Christian and have been, you know, trying to live for God ever since.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But at 17, I also had a conversion experience.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I devoted my life to God.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and immediately I quit a lot of bad habits.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was heavy and you know, heavy into the drugs and heavy into alcohol, and had every kind of, I mean, every kind of vice that you could think of and addiction.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had a whole bunch of them.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and I quit them.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was it was really wonderful, and I quit them for about three months.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't wasn't in a place where there was much revelation about God.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was just basically that you you make a commitment and then you then you live straight.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, after about three months, I got got with some old friends, and one of them had some cocaine, so I said, just I said, give me that.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was I was ready for some more, been a while, and give me that, and man, the next few years I'm I'm off into the whole deep drug world and everything that that brings.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean deep.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it got me into trouble sometimes.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: So one time I was in the lockup because of something related to the the whole drug issues, and I'm laying on that dirty cot and I'm just feeling like I have hit rock bottom, and oh my goodness.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what I had been taught up until that time was that when you when you sin, that God, God leaves you, his presence leaves you, and I just I was sure all that time because of how I was living, that if I would have died any time, I'd go straight to hell because I had I had I had rejected God and God was not with me, and there was no there was no no hope for me unless basically I came back and quit the drugs, is what it came down to.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't want to do it or couldn't do it or something, but so anyway, I'm still I'm I'm on this track and I just know, I just conscious of all the all the time that God's not happy with me, God don't like me, God's not for me, God's not gonna bless me, God, there's nothing, there's nothing God in my life, He has departed.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I can get him back if I straighten up, but I ain't ready to straighten up yet.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was the belief that I had, and I'm laying on that dirty cot in that jail, and I'm just hit rock bottom, and I am just so in in sorrow about myself and life and everything, and I start talking to God.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even though my belief is that he's not there for me.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I did anyway, and the presence, presence of God surrounded me.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just just, I felt, I felt him.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I started praying in the spirit, which surprised me because I didn't think you can't do that.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's the spirit's gone.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't live in me anymore.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: He did for three months, but then I did something, and then he skedaddled.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in spite of everything that these other people that knew things told me, I discovered something that the logos, that the expression of God showed me, revealed to me.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I started crying because of this one truth.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I started crying, and I was saying, He's still with me.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't leave.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a big deal to me.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was sure he left, and there was nobody that told me that he would still be with you when you went back into that lifestyle.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it went against everything.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: It surprised me.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: It did not make any kind of sense.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: But he proved to me somehow by expressing himself to this lost boy in a jail cell doing all the wrong things that he could think of, he still proved to me that he was with me and he was for me.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I went out of there knowing something that God himself expressed to me that none of my teachers had told me.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it did, it took me a while to really come back to communion with God, but I always knew, because the truth had said something to me, I always knew at that time that he was, during that time, that he was with me.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course he was with me.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why did I think he was not with me?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because somebody told me he wasn't.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: See, and a lot of times what's happening with this is we're we're we're we're rightly dividing something here, that there are the things, like as Paul says, that the Spirit teaches, things that Christ teaches, and there are things that other things have taught us, or other people maybe.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so many times I can see that now as God is speaking to me and revealing things to me, I can realize, oh, well, I thought that.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that come from?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize, oh, somebody told me that.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: It starts messing with so many things that people had told me.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it messed with my eschatology.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't out to change my eschatology, I was just enjoying the grace and the love of God.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love this.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he keeps revealing himself, and it's like, oh, so maybe what I thought about that wasn't like, well, why did I think it was like that?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody told me.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, God, I thought that you were gonna do this, and all the, and you know, who told you that?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they all did.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've taken the courses, I've listened to the tapes, I've read the books, and they all have said that.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you're gonna do.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then you go to the scriptures, and it just became clear.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, that's not what it's saying at all.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: It dealt with a lot of things, dealt with hell.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like it wasn't, it wasn't like what I thought it was.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, uh, well, well, why did I think this?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody told me.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then you go to the scriptures, like, oh, and the logos.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: See, this Bible is hard, except for the Spirit revealing the truth to you.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is why people get so many different, why people argue about it all the time.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: It it's it happens all the time.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Every day, somebody's arguing over.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Two people that are serious about God will be arguing about some point of the scripture.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they're they have such conviction on it because they've seen it in a certain way.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you think, how can there be so much in this Bible that that we we in the body of Christ disagree with on so many of it?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so much.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to say we we agree on the basics, but I found that when you talk about grace, a lot of people don't even agree on the basics.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: About the good news.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, 1 Peter 5.8, I want to wrap this up.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Peter 5.8 says something interesting.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me show you something on this.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: I used to look at this, and the way it was presented to me, was that was watch out, because you got this this big, bad, powerful devil out there somewhere, and he might he might get close to you.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and the way we we've presented the devil was the devil is the one with all this, he does stuff.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's got this power.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's he might he's the one that gave me the flat tire so I couldn't make it to church last week.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one that that made this happen to my house.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's the one that that he's doing all of these things.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: And people will say, well, I know it's the devil doing that, the devil doing that, and all that, and I and I started wondering for a while, like, why is it that the devil just kind of gets to do any any whim that he gets in his in his mind?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if we want God to do something, man, we gotta pray, we gotta join together, we gotta fast, we gotta uh, you know, get a prayer chain going, we gotta, we gotta maybe get our lives right in some area, we gotta do all these things, and then maybe you might get what you prayed for.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the devil wants to do something, it just happens, he just does it.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Something to throw out there in reading the Bible.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see anywhere, really, where it says that he does those things.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I see a whole lot where it says that he accuses and where he allies.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the strength and the power of this roaring lion, roaring lion, something coming out of his mouth, seeking whom he may devour.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the devour is not just making calamity coming into your life.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: What devours, what eats you up, isolates you, confines you, imprisons you, and hinders you and hurts you, and all this.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's these lies that Jesus came.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: To deliver us from with the truth, because what he said, it's the truth that makes you free.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't say someday you'll get in a prayer line and that's gonna do it.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even though praying for people is good and it's powerful, and we are very gifted as children of God.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, it's the truth that makes us free.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm so so in love with this.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've been the I've been the healing evangelist, I've been the I've been the miracle guy, I've been all that.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's great, that's cool, it's real, those things happen.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I've got so enthralled with truth.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when I first came here, I was I was not looking for for a church that was trying to make something something happen with the worship or something trying to I wasn't looking for something that would that would have some kind of show going on after the preaching was done and all that, and and and I don't mean to to demean any of that stuff, but I I was so in love with truth, like I just want to hear somebody tell the truth because that's that's my power, that's what empowers me right there.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I loved that when I when I heard somebody just speaking truth, because that's what Rick needed.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in the prayer lines, I've been in the head squeezing and the stomach punching and the pushing and the pulling and all this stuff, and I've done it all myself, and and it's fun.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, it's spectacular, it's a lot of fun, and it feels powerful.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I it it's there, but man, when you've touched daddy's heart and tasted that goodness, a liberty comes that none of those things actually produced.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: The truth makes you free.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so be vigilant, watch out, because be aware is a better word.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's a lot of accusations going on about you, about God, and about other people.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 12.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna finish with this.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: It says it's beautiful, gives us beautiful news and a beautiful picture in this chapter.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's talking about the dragon, you know, and it talks about how the the dragon actually tried to devour this woman who was gave birth to a man-child who was to rule the world with a rod of iron.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was Jesus.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And he tried to devour and said, out of his mouth.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Proceeded a flood to swallow up.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so so these things proceed out of the mouth.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: These things are the lies and the accusations.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it says in uh in verse um where does it start at?
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: It says, there was war in the heavens.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: Michael and his angels against the dragon is his angels, and and and and Michael symbolically also is is is speaking of Jesus because Michael means who is like God or one that resembles God.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was what?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: The expression, the expressed image of the Father to us.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I always say, if you're confused when you read the scriptures and you say, Well, if this one says that God will do that, but over here it says that.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look at the expression of God, look at Jesus.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if Jesus ain't saying that, then the Father ain't saying it.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, but in that war, the dragon and his bunch, they, verse 8, they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that great dragon was cast out, that serpent, serpent of old, called the devil, called Satan.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: The devil means one who slanders with libel, a traducer, diabolos.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Satan, we get from the the Hebrew, it's Hasatan, actually.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even think it's really a name.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's it's a it's a it's a it's a word, it's a description.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: It means the adversary, the accuser.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Deceives the whole world with what?
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: Accusation, lies.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was cast to the earth, and then his messengers were cast out with him.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 10.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now, somebody say now, now salvation has come, strength has come, the kingdom of our God has come, and the power of his Christ have come.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're standing in right now.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation has come to us.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation from the dragon, salvation from the voice of the accuser, salvation from the lies.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: They found nothing, they've got no place in us anymore.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: The power of Christ, Christ in you, God expressing himself in me and in you.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: See, Judy and I talk about this a lot.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Grace is not not just a doctrine that we debate with people.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: Grace is what we're living.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're experiencing, we're living, and grace is what we find ourselves giving.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I believe, I've come to believe by the expression of God in recent years, that maybe the whole point of people having so many differences, some people being born certain ways, all these things that we accuse and judge, maybe the point of it all is that they're all opportunities for us to learn grace, to live grace, and to give grace, just like our daddy is revealing to us.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because it all started in the beginning with an expression of God of amazing grace, and it was good.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, the restoration has come because the accuser, the dragon, the serpent of old, the accuser, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night has been cast down.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can say this has by and large happened in my life because the accuser that seemed to be right in here all the time never left me good enough, always left me needing more, needing more, never quite measuring up, hating my imperfection, despising it, apologizing for it.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: That sound that guided my life and tormented me and devoured me for so many years has been cast down.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: It does not exist.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: To the degree that people that know me real well say, you just can't condemn Rick.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if I do something wrong, if I hurt you or something, I'll I'll feel bad.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry for that.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do that.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I do things and I say, God help me, I don't want to do that again.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not condemned by it.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't change my value because the accuser's been cast down.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't change my connection with daddy because the accuser has been cast down.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: Who did that?
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus did that.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: The truth has made me free.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we proclaim.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to convince people of a doctrine, we're declaring a liberty that we've tasted and that has impacted our lives and the joy of it, we just want to spread it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: We want people to hear it, we want people to know it.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 11 says, and they overcame him.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you overcome the accuser?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, the blood of the Lamb.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because the blood of the Lamb says, clean, perfect, whole, entire, holy.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's not much room for accusation if you're holy.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: We overcome by the blood.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you still gotta do this.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Even a pastor I was talking to recently, just that essentially told me he didn't want me preaching his church anymore.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but they still gotta do this.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the blood.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but if they don't live up to this, then God's gonna do that, but the blood.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they can still go to hell as a Christian if they don't, but the blood.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: We overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word, the logos, by the expression of God of our testimony, our life's expression.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: Would y'all stand up?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to pray.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: How y'all doing?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are you enjoying the growth?
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you love being on this path where you're walking with your father and he's showing you beautiful things, isn't he?
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's pointing out things, and it he really is altogether lovely.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about this, Judy and I, and we're like, you know what?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: In all these years since we've been on this path of God's graciousness and learning Daddy's heart, not one thing he showed me has been scary, has been ugly, has made me feel bad.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it brings joy.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is heaven in our heart.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're drawing from, this is what we're living out of.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I thank you for for I thought I don't even know how to, I don't have words.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your goodness.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my father.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I wasn't looking for anything else, you still expressed yourself and you you wanted to be known.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I thank you, Father, for you have made yourself known to the people that are here this morning and even and those that are listening.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: We we give you thanks.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: We do run out of words for you're altogether lovely.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: We do run out of words because you're better than we thought you were.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: We do run out of words because you're just more beautiful than our words can describe.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even know how to praise you correctly.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we're sure thankful, and we're sure loving you, and we sure enjoy this, and we love the security and the peace that we have in you, and we love the love that we are able to receive, and I we love as we see it start to move more and flow out of us.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: We love it when we see ourselves giving grace where it was not deserved, which is the very definition of grace.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Father, for your amazing grace this morning.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: We celebrate you in Jesus' name.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: God bless you guys.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: Have a wonderful day today.