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July 4 - Faith Awakens · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Well, hello, welcome to the Daily Ripples podcast.
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  Each day we take a stone of truth from AA's Daily Reflections.
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  This ripples out to the practical and spiritual application at the intersection of faith and
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  recovery.
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  Today's ripple is July 4, Faith Awakens.
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  The Stone.
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  The Stone.
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  Faith is not always created from nothing.
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  Often, it is uncovered.
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  What has been buried or ignored can come alive again.
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  Ripple 1. Practical.
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  Today I will pay attention to where I see signs of hope, change, and purpose.
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  I will not dismiss what I cannot fully explain.
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  Small moments of clarity can point to something deeper at work.
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  Ripple 2. Spiritual.
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  The Father has placed within us a longing for Him.
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  As I follow Christ, the Holy Spirit awakens that awareness.
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  What once felt distant becomes real and present.
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  Over time, faith becomes as natural as breathing, steady and sustaining.
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  Well, we're back.
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  The dynamic duo.
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  Yes, back again.
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  She's still here.
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  After she learned by living with me yesterday.
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  Here we are again.
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  My faith has awakened.
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  your faith has awakened. Are we just going to play around with the titles? Are we actually going to
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  talk about the content? Are we just going to banter back and forth and let people listen to
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  that for 10 minutes? Well, probably not. So the first sentence, faith is not always created from
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  nothing. You know, I had to ask you about this and go, where did you get this from? What do you
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  mean. And hopefully you'll share with everyone where you got that from. But after you shared
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  that with me, what struck, you know, or what stuck out to me is faith sometimes comes out of
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  desperation. You know, sometimes going back to living out life and learning through experiences,
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  sometimes things happen and you have nowhere else to turn.
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  So you're like, I just got to believe.
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  I just got to have faith that this is going to work out,
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  that it's all going to come together.
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  Yeah, otherwise you would not be able to keep going.
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  Exactly, exactly.
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  And as being a woman who at one point in my life was trying to raise two boys, yeah.
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  You're still trying to raise them, let's be honest.
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  Well, you know, they're just not going to leave me alone.
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  They're Corey's age, to be fair.
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  I know, right?
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  That's why I had to say they're not going to leave me alone.
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  But I'm blessed in that way.
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  But there were times that I'm like, oh, what am I going to do?
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  And all I had was the faith, you know, and they talk about the faith of a mustard seed.
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  But sometimes my faith was the size of a watermelon because I needed something to move.
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  I needed something to happen.
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  And it did.
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  It did. And I am thankful for that. And so when it said I will not dismiss what I cannot fully
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  explain, there were times I could not explain it. I could not explain it. And no, I did not dismiss
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  it because it was real. It was real to me. And because of that, that faith is in my daily life
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  today. I have faith that things are going to always work in my favor. Not that they always do,
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  because God doesn't give me all the desires of my heart because it may not be in his will.
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  So some of the things that I pray for, he goes, not yet. You're not ready for that one.
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  And I will always tell people, be careful what you ask for as well, because some of the things
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  you may not be ready for. But yeah, that faith, it does sometimes just come out of desperation.
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  What about you?
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  And where did you get the faith is not always created from nothing?
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  Well, I think, you know, several people know this, and we don't explicitly say it every
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  time, you know, when we do one of these podcast episodes, because we're not trying to trigger
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  any kind of copyright infringement or anything like that.
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  But Alcoholics Anonymous publishes a daily reflection, and the daily reflection is the
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  source material that I get the stone from when I'm writing these daily devotionals.
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  And the daily reflection for today, which is the 4th of July, which, by the way, happy birthday, America, I guess, 250 years.
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  Yeah, exactly.
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  We can still celebrate, even though we're not going to politicize it.
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  But yeah, it's still a celebration of the birth of our country.
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  Correct.
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  But it says on July 4th in the daily reflection, and this comes from the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, page 55,
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  says that deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God.
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  So, in other words, it's proposing that, you know, we're born with an idea of God in us, that that's how we are created.
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  We are created for communion.
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  And I believe that Scripture would affirm that same message.
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  I also think about how, you know, Jesus often, He would tell His disciples, and there's one passage in particular where, you know, He encourages them to allow the children to come to Him.
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  and that if anybody wants to enter the kingdom of heaven, they need to approach the faith as a child.
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  And so I was thinking about that also when you asked me that question earlier,
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  because, you know, as a child, I was thinking about my own childhood.
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  You know, when I was growing up, I didn't second guess or question the things that my parents told me.
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  You know, I just took them on 100% faith, right?
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  Especially as a young child.
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  If your parents tell you something, then clearly it is true.
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  And other, you know, through the course of education and experience and, you know, living life, you get other ideas that start to creep in that kind of edge out sometimes the voices of your parents or the voices of God.
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  But that childlike faith is really something special because that is a faith that just accepts things, you know, for as they are.
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  It accepts, you know, the truth.
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  And for me, the concept of faith awakening is kind of like, you know, I was born with
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  a faith as I got into especially early adulthood, you know, tried to bury it, you know, cover
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  it with everything, tried to bury it with relationships or with alcohol or with all of the above.
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  But then, you know, even before I got sober from my alcoholism, that faith was beginning
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  to awaken again, you know, as I said, just by someone asking me the simple question, well,
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  Why do you think you know more about it than billions of other people that have ever existed?
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  And I didn't have a good answer for that, and I had to start thinking about it.
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  And I think that that was God speaking to me through that other person, trying to get my
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  rational, logical mind's attention, you know, at the time, because I certainly was not in
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  a place or in a mindset to listen to people who were churchy, you know.
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  But I don't know, God uses, you know, what he can, I think, at times to get our attention and what have you.
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  It says in the practical ripple that, you know, today I need to pay attention to where I see signs of hope, change, and purpose, and not to dismiss what I cannot fully explain.
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  And I think that was my problem for so many years, while I was drinking, while I was heavy in my alcoholism,
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  is if I couldn't explain it, if it didn't make sense rationally to me, then it just wasn't real.
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  You know, it was false. And what I have learned through experience, through being knocked down low,
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  is that that was coming from a place of just a huge amount of ego, as though my experiences were
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  the only ones that matter, you know, in the world. Well, no, the experiences of others matter as much,
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  if not more. And I can learn from others if I can get off of my high horse enough to listen to where
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  you know other people are leading me but anyway when it says that the father placed within us a
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  longing for him how have you experienced that i know that you don't come through recovery you know
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  mindset but have you experienced a longing for the father kind of in your life for me as a preacher's
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  kid um i've always been in church and um i've never strayed away uh physically if you will but
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  And I've traveled from state to state.
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  I haven't lived in the same place all my life.
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  But no matter where I lived, I've always found a church home.
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  And as you can see, now I'm married to a pastor.
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  So apparently God said, I can't let this one get too far away because she's a wild child.
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  So I got to keep her close.
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  Or maybe God had to have you in the mix so that I could actually go all the way through and become a pastor.
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  Well, that might have been part of it.
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  Maybe.
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  I just think he said, look, this one is a wild one.
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  I'm going to have to keep her close.
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  So I need to make her a preacher's kid and then she's going to have to marry a pastor.
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  Like, what?
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  Well, I mean, I was a hush, so I had to get married.
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  So, however.
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  That was BS for salvation.
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  Yes.
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  Yeah.
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  However, my actions didn't always mimic or follow Christ-like things.
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  So even though my body may have physically been in the church, my actions didn't model that.
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  But when I would stray, oh, there were consequences.
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  And he would whip me back into shape, remind me who he was, and let me know, yeah, you still belong to me.
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  And because of that, I never strayed too far.
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  He always got my attention.
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  And here's the thing, you know, I have siblings and my siblings haven't always, you know, stayed in church and followed that path.
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  And so, but they have flourished, you know, naturally, as we would say.
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  And there were times in my life that I would look at them and go, but God, look at me.
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  I'm trying to follow you.
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  You know, I'm longing for you.
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  I'm trying to do the things you say.
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  But here I am over here struggling and you're over there blessing them.
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  Woe is me.
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  What's going on?
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  And so he had to remind me that, ma'am, that's not what it's about.
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  You know, it's not about the riches in gold that you can receive here on earth.
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  And don't put your faith and trust in those things.
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  Get your eyes and your mind set on the right thing.
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  And once you do that, I'll take care of the rest.
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  And as sure as I tell you, my name is Cristi.
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  When I chose to do that, everything else was taken care of.
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  Yeah, most definitely. Yeah, it talks, you know, I wrote in the spiritual ripple, I guess, that, you know, what once felt distant becomes real and present, and then over time, faith becomes as natural as breathing.
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  And it does.
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  And that's just, I mean, that's just been my experience.
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  You know, it's not something that I've had to force.
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  It's just been, and primarily my experience and the growth of that has been through entering
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  into recovery, you know, getting sober from alcohol and working the 12 steps while at the
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  same time, you know, digging in deeper, you know, in church and going to seminary and learning
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  and studying all those things.
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  And the culmination of all that for me anyway has just been that, yeah, I mean, I know no matter what happens that I'll be fine, you know, that I have learned that.
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  And those lessons are hard learned at times, for sure.
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  There are some times when, you know, a new lesson will come up and I'll just kind of throw my hands at me like, okay, I got to learn this again.
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  But I know that ultimately it's for my betterment and for my good.
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  As you were sharing, I couldn't help but think about what I was just preaching about last Sunday.
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  You're talking about the consequences of doing wrong.
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  And that comes from Romans 6, verse 23, that says,
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  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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  And that's an amen right there.
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  We can close it out with our prayer for the day, if you would.
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  And before I say the prayer, for anyone that's listening, and you may be weak in your faith, and you're listening to these podcasts, and you're listening to us, you know, say where we've been and where we've grown, and you might be saying to yourself, I'm just not there yet.
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  It's okay.
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  Be patient with yourself.
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  Have grace with yourself.
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  And most importantly, pray about it.
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  ask God to help you in those areas. Have that conversation with yourself and be honest about it.
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  Have those honest conversations within yourself because you will get there in time. So I just want
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  to encourage you that you don't need to compare yourself to any of us or to anyone else. This is
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  your personal wall, your personal goal.
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  You aren't where you were yesterday.
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  So tomorrow, there is more growth for all of us.
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  So with that, let's pray.
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  Father, awaken faith within me.
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  Through your spirit, help me recognize your presence
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  and grow in trust as I follow your son.
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  Amen.
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  Amen.
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  Jim.