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What is Life? · Rick Manis Ministries Podcast

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Tonight I want to delve into the endless, seemingly endless enigma of the ages, the mystery, the question that you hear people ask, what's it all about?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we here?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is life really?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh specifically, we're talking about abundant life tonight, not existence life.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about abundant life because Jesus came that we would have that life and life more abundantly, or abundant life.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's also called everlasting life or eternal life.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you may know it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was taught a definition is the God kind of life, uh, which is um definitely a truth.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I want us to really look at this.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: What is what is this life that he's that he's that he's talking about here?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, originally uh I I thought all it was was a life that was after this life.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And while it would certainly include include anything after your uh your life in your in your mortal body, um it includes so much more of that because it's eternity.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the apostle John said that uh eternal life is something that lives in us.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to really get into this.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm probably not going to uh mention any scripture or even a truth that you haven't heard before, but you know, there's there are degrees of hearing.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something about, you know, you you can you can hear it and you can agree with it or not agree, but you can hear it, you know, and you can have it in your head.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can even adopt it as a part of your theology, a part of your your doctrine, and say, yeah, if somebody asks you, you say, Yeah, that's what I believe.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've read that, uh I have uh you know seen that, I've checked it, and I checked that off, and I I I believe that.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's in my belief system.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's there's this other thing where it's actually a part of your inner man, your heart, where it's where it's something that is happening to you, it's something you're experiencing, uh, it's something you you're talking about from what is happening uh inside you, actually, from something that's become real inside you.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to uh talk about that to the degree uh that I can because when when you really know, when you believe that this life, this abundant life, that this eternal life is not certainly not primarily, it's inclusive of everything, but it's not primarily talking about external things, but it's something that that is in us, this heavenly life, the God kind of life, that this is something that that was and is a gift that was given to us through through through Christ.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really believe that I thought I had a lid on it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just go ahead and tell you because I I thought of something, but I was in a uh in a meeting where somebody had uh before I spoke, somebody had uh it was out in West Texas, and a guy that worked in the oil fields he brought a bottle just like this, and he had oil and water in it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And of course the water was at the bottom and the and the the oil was sitting at top, and it's about half and half.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he was doing some kind of a demonstration where he was showing no matter what happens, if if if everything turns upside down in your life, that that oil will still be in the same place.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: It'll always rise to the top.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about the anointing and so on.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I asked him if I could use that because I wanted to do that little demonstration in the next place I went, so we did.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I used it and had the thing, and of course, of course, me.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting there uh afterwards and we're fellowshipping, and I've got that bottle of I've got me a bottle of water, and I've got a bottle, that bottle of oil pretty close to it, and you can only imagine what happened next.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you can take one sip of that, one swig of that, and it doesn't matter how much water you wash your mouth out with that night, you don't get rid of that taste and that smell.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: How'd I get off on that?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I distracted myself.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when you believe that this life really is the heavenly life that God has given to us, uh, believing that and embracing that, I mean really believing that and paying attention to it, setting your heart upon it, uh, like Paul says, it it really affects and it gives the heavenly life.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Something I'm very, very, very thankful for.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to stop trouble from happening.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've not gotten that good yet.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've tried it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Grass, grow two inches, stop.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, not found out how to do that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jesus said there's trouble in this world.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm gonna be in this world, there's gonna be trouble that you see, that you run into.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: But he said, but be of good cheer, because in me there's peace.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Be of good cheer.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and be happy, go ahead and enjoy, go ahead and because I've overcome this world.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I talk about this a lot and and and just about everything I teach sinners around this this type of truth because I I I love people.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I I really love people that are that are in love with God, and I don't want anybody hurting inside.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um we'll pray for you if you're hurting outside for sure, and God does miracles and he's a healer, the healer.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's a miracle worker, he's he's a provider.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh, you know, we've if you've walked with God for any amount of time, you have seen God blessed in so many of those external ways.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: But in all of these things, you can guarantee a daily strength, a daily joy, a daily peace, a daily good, good, good experience in this life, God with us, God walking with us, if you know uh uh uh the truth of what we what we have here.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have the God kind of life.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: God who is love, we have that love in our heart.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: God who is joy, we have all of that, and so on.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I believe that that a lot of Christians struggle really because, and I say it all the time, I'm not mad at anybody about this.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're all doing the best we can, but a lot of Christianity has done what just about every other religion does, and that is teach about God, present God from a knowledge of good and evil rather than from life.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so of course it goes back to the beginning like it always does.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: That there was life and there was the knowledge of good and evil.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Two things to choose.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Choose life, God said.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you can you can be alive, choose life and you'll live.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're already existing, but if you choose life, you can live.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and I am your life.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: That life is me.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So God is life.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's another definition, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: God is life.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I want to read Romans chapter 3, verse 23, just one verse.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got any kind of Baptist um background or anything close to it at all, you know this verse very well, one of the first that I'd ever learned after I'd come to the Lord, because they they first they get me saved, then they then they then they were started teaching me how to get other people saved.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this was part of the Romans' road to salvation.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'd have those those those those four verses or whatever it was, and we would lead them, and this was one of the truths, and it is truth, it's in the Bible.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I want to do with this first of all, so I want you to understand when we're talking about sin, there are two ways to to uh two ways that sin can relate.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's one whereas it's very obvious that sin relates to the law.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of 1 John, John said that that sin is the transgression of the law.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now they taught me that in Bible college.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well, that's pretty pretty simple.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sin is a transgression of the law.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But then I was reading on my own later on, and that whole passage there, he says, but sin's not imputed where there is no law.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and and and and he goes on and he and and and and he talks about that, and he says, and and in Christ there is no sin.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, wait a minute.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what's he talking about there?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about how in Christ we're not under that law.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ it's not imputed to us, in Christ there is no sin because of the righteousness that we have, but he's telling people, he says, but by the law, living by that, he said, what that whole law did, what it was about, was that that it revealed, he said, it manifested sin because to sin was to break that law.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the way it related was it was an action.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was something you did, an action you did that broke one of those many rules in the law.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how that's how we relate to sin with the law or with the knowledge of good and evil, is simply what the law really is.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big picture of the of the knowledge of good and evil.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when we relate to the knowledge of good and evil, sin is an action that breaks a moral law, moral code.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of Christianity has been taught that, most religion is taught that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why in this day it's almost like there's starting to be a restoration of what Paul called the simplicity of Christ.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The gospel of Christ that he said is the power of God unto soteria, uh, salvation, wholeness, soundness, um, even holiness.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um so this verse here says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is not talking about relating to the knowledge of good and evil or relating to the law.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's not talking about everybody has made a mistake by doing something wrong that the law told them not to do.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what it's talking about here.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: The word sinned is a Greek word hamartano.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sin is hamartano.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: It literally means to miss the mark, to err, to be mistaken.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: For all have missed the mark and fallen short of the glory of God.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh actually, I didn't even I didn't put it put it in there because there's a few uh a few things that says all of them are right in line with this, but one of them literally says to not participate or to share.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we do not participate in the glory of God by missing the mark, or it says by being mistaken.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I heard somebody this morning in in in the in the in the meeting talk, uh they were they they started relating things like this to to the Hallmark movies.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever watch a Hallmark movie?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever seen a lot of them?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, see a lot of, yeah, and and see you either have seen them or you've seen enough because somebody you're sitting close to sees a lot of them, or somebody you know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um we don't that's not our thing.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Judy is an artist, she's an she's a pro has been a professional actress, so she knows how to look at things from that with that eye.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and so, you know, there's a lot of things.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be critical, you can talk about how the acting is really bad and and and and and this it's basically the same story, right?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens is you got this you've got this girl who leaves the big city and goes back, either goes back to her hometown or some small town in the south somewhere, and she meets this really sweet, nice guy who just treats her really, really good, and she starts starts liking him a lot, and then then you know she ends up having to dump her big city high-powered boyfriend uh and uh and and decides that she wants to be with this guy, but then she'll walk around a corner and she sees him maybe hugging his female cousin goodbye or something, and she gets it all wrong, she gets mistaken, she she she she errs, she makes a mistake, and so now she, next thing you know, without even asked talking to the guy, never talks to him in this Hallmark movie, never asks him about it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first thing she does, she goes and buys a ticket home, back to the city.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then he hears about it at the end, and he runs to the airport, and right when she's at the gate, that's a Hallmark movie, right?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and then they they finally, if there's any kissing to be done, they will kiss right at the very end, and that's what you watch it for anyway.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But but another point is it it always works out good, it's always this is you know, it's always wonderful.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it, you know, you don't you don't go out of there like a lot of movies do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so the the whole point of that that I wanted to bring about in that is that is that the girl makes the mistake because she thinks the guy actually is with another girl, and and she's mistaken.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: She un she she made a mistake about him, about what his what he's about, what he's up to, made a mistake about what he thinks about her, and and and so she she misses the mark.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we did that, we have done that with religion, and we understand something about religion too, so we understand.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Religion is not a spiritual thing at all.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Religion is a very, very worldly thing.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it you can see it so clearly when you look at these things because religion is based on the knowledge of good and evil.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's knowing this is really, really, really, really, really important here.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of times people, you know, people that that that hear me and others talk like this, they it it can kind of irk some people because they're just like, but there is, there is right and wrong.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, there is.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: God says, God says man became like one of us to know good and evil.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, God knows good and evil, God knows right and wrong, but he is love.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: See, he can know the difference, but still be God and it not affect him in a bad way.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make him hate people like like it will do humans if they don't know this love of God.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: If they're not operating in this life that God's freely given us, you'll operate, you'll you'll you'll look at something through the knowledge of good and evil, and it'll make you angry.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: It'll make you hate somebody, it'll make you stressed, it'll bother you.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't do that with God.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, God does the quite the opposite of that with all of this stuff, with all the what we would call what could be called evil going on everywhere.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: He looks on that, and instead of saying, look how how horrible these people are, he says, I love these people.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna give them life anyway.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I am gonna make this so easy so they can just have freely, whosoever, if they want it, they can have this life of mine.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, if it didn't matter if they broke any, broke all the moral laws, they broke all the Ten Commandments and all the other 600 and something others that are in there.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter to him.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't, he knows what people have done and haven't done, but he doesn't operate in that judgment of that way.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's high he operates in something higher than the knowledge of good and evil because he's God, he is life.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And life is a zillion times bigger, stronger, and better than the knowledge of good and evil.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not what we thought at the beginning, is it?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have two marks that we can hit here.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can go for, you know, the lady or the tiger, the old choice here.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: We got the tree of life, we got the knowledge of good and evil.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Choose one.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: The tree of knowledge of good and evil looks right, it looks good, it looked good to her.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like it'll make us smart, it'll make us wise, it'll make us like God.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was that the that was what the temptation was.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It'll make us like God.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does religion teach?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: What does even a lot of Christianity uh show us that if we want to be Christ-like, we have to do these things.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to quit doing these other things.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we think in our mind, because of that, that we are either we are with, in fact, everybody comes up with this, with this deduction when it's all said and done, that they're not Christ-like.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not yet.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not yet, not yet, but they're going to keep trying.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they do keep trying, and many of them quit trying, and the the primary reason I've seen it over and over again is because they're trying to fulfill something that the knowledge of good and evil is demanding, and they can never fulfill it, and so they give it up and they tell me how many, I my heart has has broken over, I don't know how many times, people that I've loved and cared about that have come to God and have tried to fulfill and try to live this Christ-like life, and they've said, Rick, that's just not for me.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I just can't do it like you can.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: They think I can, they think I'm doing it, they think I'm, you know.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I just can't do it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've tried.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: People have told me I don't have the willpower.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have promised God, I have begged God, I have done everything.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just keep failing.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just keep falling on my face.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they get tired of failing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: They get tired of trying something that they really want to do.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They really want that life, that Christ-like life.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they keep failing and failing, so a lot of them just bail out.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Either they just go run away from it completely, or they just become somebody that just kind of sits in church numb to it all.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And none of those things would happen if there were not the knowledge of good and evil messing with our heads.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are y'all hearing me so far?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's an exciting thing when you think about it, if you look at this, that we can that we can push that all to the back, still knowing things, but we push it to the back and put life to the front.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then we can operate.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: See, it's like, you know, one time I was being critical of a person, I think I've shared this before, of, of, of a person, and I said, God, I don't like feeling this way about people.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just don't let me ever know anything about people.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to see anybody's faults, I don't want to see any of this.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, son, you're gonna grow.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: This was many years ago.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: He said, son, you're gonna grow to where you can see everything, and it won't affect your soul in a negative way.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the line, I've noticed that that's pretty much happened.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I just like, I just kind of like something's happened to me.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just kind of like, I'm like, I like everybody.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like I mean, the people that everybody's telling me I'm supposed to be hating, I just I can't.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: It don't, you know, something happens inside, it changes us.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that it's that it's that new life, that new creation, and it's the character of God who who is love.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, talking about this knowledge of good and evil and talking about life, God who is love, um, we have a verse in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 1, that says, we all know this verse, see, it says, Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or love inflates, but love builds up.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got an inflated thing like a balloon, or you've got something built.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: An edifice is a building.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Edifies, or it's like a like a brick, brick upon brick.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: One one is is is for real, one is solid, one of them is just uh you know what a puffer fish is.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: We should we call it we should call them blowfish.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I hated those things when I was a kid.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: In salt water, they would they were little bait thieves.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were bony, they're nothing to them except skin and bones.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they had this little mouth with these little butt teeth, and they would just just just just sneak bait off your off your hook.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep on chipping away at it until the whole thing was gone, and you're you just get this little thing, and they'd never get on the hook.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't, their mouth was too little.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if but or you couldn't, but once in a while you would hook them and you pull that thing up, and ugh.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there were so many of them back in those days.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and when you pull them up out of the water, they'd go and they'd they'd but they'd be this like this soccer ball or something, and then just but what they're doing is they're they're afraid, they're scared, and their life's being threatened, so they're trying to make themselves look better.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's trying to scare me, trying to intimidate me by puffing himself up.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we know that it's nothing but air, and so I'd take my knife and I just poof, and you can actually pop it like a balloon, just poof, you know, and then we can throw it back, kick it back in the water or something because they just ugh, they were just a nuisance.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um honestly I don't see that many of them out there anymore.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think everybody did that maybe too much, but but but but but that's what I think of when I think of that, how knowledge puffs up.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the whole passage there says it this way in verse 1 and 2.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It says, We know that we all have knowledge.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, he says, everybody knows stuff.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, knowledge puffs up because we think that if we know things, if we've got a lot of stuff, a lot of information, we think we we think that puts us ahead of the game.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: He says, but everybody's got knowledge.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows stuff.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some know more about this stuff than others.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says, we all have knowledge.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And verse 2, and if anybody thinks that he knows anything, he still knows nothing yet as he ought to know.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're talking about that knowledge of good and evil, so you know stuff about that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, but that is so nothing compared to what you ought to know.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a knowledge.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible does talk a lot about getting knowledge and gaining knowledge.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: The difference is it's not a knowledge of good and evil, it's it's growing in the knowledge of Christ.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Grace and peace, Peter said, be multiplied to you through the knowledge.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not of good and evil, but really of life, the knowledge of Christ.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, take my yoke and and know me.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Learn of me.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um Paul said, I count everything that I knew before, everything I did.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, He says, I excelled in that religion.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: I excelled farther than all those my age, my peers.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Man, I was running for this.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then, of course, there's a list that he says, You think you don't think I can brag about things that I've done and things that I know?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You know, I'm of the stock of Israel, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin, a circumcised on the eighth day.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Concerning the law, I was a Pharisee.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ain't nobody better than us at the law.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Concerning the righteousness which comes by the law, he said, I look blameless.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's he's he said, but all that stuff I count it as crap, really, as dumb.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: He says it's nothing compared to the far excellent, more excellent thing of knowing, knowing Jesus Christ my Lord.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's two knowledges here.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's two knowledge.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like it's like it's more natural for people, even in religious teaching, that we gravitate toward that.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we can throw all that out.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's where all the condemnation of sin and not being good enough and not being Christ-like gets all thrown out.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: A common question is is, Rick, how when you say that we're we're complete in Him, we're perfect and holy in Him, how can that be when I still have wrong thoughts?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying, I want them to get better.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: How can that be when I still sin?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: How can that be when I, you know, when I still fail?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: How can those things be?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those thoughts all come because we're we're measuring it by the knowledge of good and evil.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're weighing ourselves by what we do well and what we don't do well.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what does the Bible say about that?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: The end of that whole thing is just always death.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: You experience death.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we experience in every form, even right now, while our body is breathing and our heart is beating, we experience the we experience a living death when we're living in stress.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Worry, fear, anger, hatred.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things that come because we're living in a world of tribulation and there's a jungle of things that go on.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And these things get in our face, they get in our eyes, and these are our situations and the things that we deal with.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's there's there's stress and fear and all those things.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and and and these are not small things.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: These are not just, these aren't more than just little old, you know, well, yeah, that's just feelings, that's just emotions.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is, but it causes people to take their own life, causes people to not be able to sleep at night, causes family members to hate one another, causes church people of all people to actually dislike one another.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: None of you have ever seen anything like that in the church world, but I've seen it.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Way too much, so much that it that it that it can hurt.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But we've got this, we've got we've this forest of situations, and sometimes it just gets in our field of vision so big that we can't see anything else, and we despair even of our life, or certainly of our condition.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what the knowledge of life does, it'll do this every time, and it gets better as you get you get good at it.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: What the knowledge of life does is it allows you, while you're in that forest of your situation, and it looks hopeless, and it looks insurmountable surmountable, what the knowledge of God, knowledge of love, knowledge of life does, is it allows you to zoom out and look at reality.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you find that the forest is not so big, and here is my eternity.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll look at that.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know what the transitive property of equality is in mathematics?
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's that if A equals B and if B equals C, then A also equals C, right?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: If two things are equal to one thing, then those two things are equal to each other.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if A equals B and B equals C, then A also equals C.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I said that to say this.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: We look at God, and and so uh a couple of, I just want to pull out a couple of things.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so John chapter 1 says God is life.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And first John tells us that God is love.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we could use all kinds of words, but I like to, I I'm really strong on this because I have looked at this and looked at this and looked at this.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, anywhere where it says God is light, God is life, and God is love, you can interchange them every time because it A equals B and B equals C and A equals C.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: God is love and God is life, therefore, life is love or love is life.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did you follow that?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a the God, God's love.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, people have a problem with that because love doesn't seem big enough to include all of life.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: We want love in our life.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: We definitely should have love in our life, but how can you say love is life?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this thing, or Judy says it a lot.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: When we see something beautiful, flowers, trees, mountains, whatever.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sunsets, this happens a lot.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I hear Judy say this a lot.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: We see a we we love sunsets.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Judy says, love did that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: You look at things like that.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: She'll look at one time I saw her, there's there's this big open field, and she's crouched down with her phone, cell phone, and she's like taking a picture of uh I don't know, what is that, but what she's seeing down there.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and you get up close, and there's this tiny little flower, and there's no other ones out in that field, and she's taking a close-up of this flower because, and and and and I'm like, what are you doing?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: She says, That flower, I'm taking a picture.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Love did this.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Put this flower in the middle, you know, and so I said all that to say this.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Think of everything.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Only love could do this.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Think of this as far as our known universe, and we're known quite a bit.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: We send probes and we've got tele great telescopes and all this, and everything we found so far, with all these planets that we've been able to look at and stars and all that, all these planets are these balls of rock, basically, spinning around in space.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this planet that we're on is one of those rocks, those big rocks spinning around in around in space.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: But what's different about this place?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's life all over it.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't see it anywhere.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: We keep looking.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it'd be fun if we found something, but uh, but we keep looking for life, and it's just more dust and rocks and stuff.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at this planet, and there's just life all over the place.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Life, living things, beautiful things.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about animals, I'm talking about beautiful people like you.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and I'm serious.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, look at look at how wonderful you are in that sense as a creation.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: What could do that?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: What could make you?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Only love could do that.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Only, only love, only a beautiful, loving, giving mind could do that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: What could make this creation, what could make this rock spinning in space, be teeming with beauty and life the way it is?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Only someone who we could call love is that.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're talking about what is life, this is another, I believe, important aspect of it, is that we look at love beyond what we understand as a human emotion and look at love as a person.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Look at God not as a big gray-bearded something in the sky, but look at him as a person, a living, the living being, really, who is everything about a love that is bigger than anything we've known, more powerful than so powerful it can make this planet come alive.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's not wimp.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's not that's not sweet and cute, that's power.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is one thing that can actually, you know how powerful fear can be?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Fear has taken people's lives.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Fear has caused people to take their own lives.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fear has caused mankind to to to to to to to annihilate each other almost in so many times and places.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Fear has great power to do these things, and there's one thing that has power to drive out fear.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's love, not an emotional feeling, it's God.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why can love do that?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because love is God Himself.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And not a big thing on a cloud somewhere.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's not.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: He is love that's bigger than all the universe because love created this.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Some reason I'm saying this is because some people say, well, life is it's it's it's it's power to live.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's life is you what what what this eternal life does, what it does is it's it heals every sickness and and it and it and it renews our youth.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's life, you know, and it's and it's just and it's it's it's abundant life, and it just it removes every every difficult thing out of your life.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's power of existence.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's great.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think life can include a whole lot of that stuff, but it's something better than that, bigger than that, more powerful than all of that.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not about something that's just fixing these things where we look like we're not manifesting life.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Love is is the life itself, and it's big, and it's this love that you're going to know.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Might as well get to know him now.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: This love you're going to know forever and ever.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you lay this mortal body down, you will continue to live.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he meant when he says, He that believes in me, though if he lives, he shall never die.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not for a second will you be dead.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about this.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: When we're looking at our new covenant, when we're looking at, now Super Bowl's on, I totally intended to go real quick, but a couple of things here.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Go buccaneers, amen.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, okay.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Too close to Kansas City.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know what a buccaneer is.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a pirate, you know what a buccaneer is, right?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a high price for corn.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: When we're talking about love, when we're talking about don't anybody call that corny.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when we're talking about love, we're talking about something that is not revealed to us in the Old Testament.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's mentioned.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: The word it's mentioned about about, you know, God loving us with an everlasting love.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's mentioned a couple of times, but it's not a it's it's not a predominant thing at all in the Old Testament.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And how people related to God in the knowledge of good and evil, Jesus came to supersede that and give us life.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus being that tree of life.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: We missed the mark.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: We missed that tree.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: We missed it and we hit the other one.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: We missed the mark.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: We were mistaken by not choosing that.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: We made a huge mistake.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: The girl in the hallmark movie makes a huge mistake when she decides to go back to that other guy.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: She misses the mark.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Airs is mistaken.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: We made a big mistake.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: We chose the wrong one.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus comes and he says, I'm still here.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: And even though you chose the wrong one, I'm still here for you.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what he does is helps us to change to choose the right one because he reveals to us, starts revealing to us in his actions, in his life, and in his teaching this God who is love.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And demonstrates that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then we see all these writings, it's in all the books.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not talked about nearly as much as it is as it as it is predominant in the New Testament.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Faith is talked about.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, we think of faith and we think of grace.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: He talked about love every bit as much, because they're all in, they're they all go together.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he says in Romans, and I'm referring to chapter uh 5, verse 5, that it's the it that love is that new nature that's been poured out by the Holy Spirit.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: That Holy Spirit is this is love poured into our heart, the person of love living in our hearts.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect love.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want there again, we're talking about something big.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even describe it because it's just too big.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I will tell you, it's bigger than just an emotional good feeling.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's bigger than just being sweet and nice.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly includes that.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: But those are just a couple of drops in the ocean of love.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Love casts out fear.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians tells us, Paul wrote it, and he told us that love is perfection.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: In Galatians, Paul said that faith works by love.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Faith is what, or excuse me, love, it's love that makes the faith effective.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: People say, well, we need love, but faith is important too.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: There is no faith that's working without love.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's always, first of all, it's God, it's it's it's it's it's it's God's love.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a human love that's manufactured, it's God's love that's given to us.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what makes it so cool and so easy is that this is a love that's freely given without any qualifications, without any demands.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just that truth right there would give you heaven every day, just knowing that, just knowing you can wake up and you are loved.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be in a forest of a trial right now, but one thing that that gives me such a joy in the middle of that is right in the middle of this forest of a trial.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am being loved right now.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: God has always been faithful.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's been faithful to you.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even when you didn't know he was there, he was.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: You you found that out later when you look back.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you didn't think he was working on your behalf and doing caring for you, you find out that he really was the whole time.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we're asking him, you know, remove these things when the whole time he's saying, Let me love you, let me care for you, let me give you something even bigger and better than that right now that you need today.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Paul said, Three times, take this thing away.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently it didn't happen, so he said it again, take this thing away.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently it didn't happen after some time.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: He asked God again three times, take it away the third time.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit spoke to him, said, My grace is sufficient for you.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Who I am is enough for you.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians, he said, it makes your faith effective.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who does that?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: The person of God.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: In Ephesians, it says that it's a it's it's it's God who richly loved us.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: His love has made us alive with him.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we know uh Colossians says, in Colossians 2, it says that it's love, it's holding all things together, all creation together.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's love doing it.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Look at all this mess that people are making out of out of out of everything right now.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: How is it even existing right now?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Love is bigger than all that, it's holding all things together.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Love is our empowerment.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Love is our claim to fame.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Love is what our life is.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's love.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, you can draw from that no matter what forest of situation that you might be in, no matter what is angering you, hurting you, stressing you, worrying you, and all that, you can draw from that new that new nature that has been given to us.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's there.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's good news too.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just knowing that love is always in there.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's him in there.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And everything you're getting from him is always ministered from that from that love.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: That love comforts you.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: That love, that love encourages you, that love shows you things, that love is perfect.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, 1 Corinthians Paul said, love is the one perfect thing.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when somebody says, How can I be perfect and whole and complete in Christ?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: People say, Is it possible that I'm becoming more holy?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm becoming more perfect.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, perfection is not the absence of human flaws.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Perfection is God's love in the midst of our flaws.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can live with that.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: If it's based upon me getting rid of my flaws, I'll never know what eternal life feels like.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's based on a free gift from somebody that loves me, I mean, absolutely loved me enough to just give it to me.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I couldn't even really receive a lot of it until I believed that he who he was.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it changes my whole perspective on what life is really about.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we're we're making it about all these things that are going on.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: If we can zoom out and look from a God's eye view, just like Colossians tells us in Colossians 3, he says, Since we're risen with Christ, since we're risen with Christ, then let's set our heart on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, and not on things below the things of the earth.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we're doing, what love allows us to do, what love has given us, is a vision where we see through a loving heart of God.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like that's where we zoom out and we move back from all these things, and the things that seem so life or death, every time we get God's perspective on it, every single time, life starts happening to us.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the situation that you really need something to happen, you look at it, you can look down upon it instead of trying to see your way out of it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can do this every time.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's life.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's like to experience abundant life, is that even when you're covered up and giants are surrounding you, you can always experience eternal life, and you will always, when you, as you do that, as you as you turn your heart to that, you will always feel bigger than the experience that's trying to overwhelm you every single time.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Paul said in in Romans 8, he said, to put your set your mind on the things of the Spirit, because he that sets his attention, his mind, on the things of the Spirit shall live or have life, shall experience life every time.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: But he who sets his mind, his attention on the things of the flesh, what's it say?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: Read it, it says, he shall reap death.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: You'll experience that old man, dead man walking type of life.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all hearing that?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hearing anything?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a gift.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this would be bad news if if if I dangle this in front of you and say, now this is what God offers, but you haven't done what it takes yet to get it.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: That would be bad news.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good news is you've already done what it takes.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: What did I do?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: You just breathed.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: You sat there with your heart beating.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: You did enough.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave to whosoever will.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians said it's his love that made us alive with him.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Colossians said it's holding creation together.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Peter himself, see, they all saw this.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were all, this was something.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: The new covenant, with this new covenant, the Spirit comes to live in them.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: What are they experiencing?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: And these guys were not flakes.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: These guys did not write these things because they sat down and said, Well, let's see, let's look at the scriptures and see what a good sermon will be that will dazzle the people's minds.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't do that.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: They were experiencing something.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Something had changed for them.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Peter, who was afraid of a little, of a young girl, you know, wouldn't even admit that he even knew Jesus, now is writing all of these things about him.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's experiencing.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, who was totally in the knowledge of good and evil, comes over to something else into life, and he's writing about life.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, it's love, it's faith, it's grace, it's it's peace.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter himself, who failed and failed and failed and failed and misunderstood almost everything Jesus said, said that love, in 1 Peter said, love is the most important thing of all, above all things.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Paul also said the greatest is love.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: John the Apostle said it very simply, God is love, or love.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Love is God.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can always look at God, look at life, or look at love, and it will always, always, just like a well welling up, and you always minister life to you.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Love is what made everything.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, let me repeat something I say a lot.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is life?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: You were made to be loved.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody named Love, God Himself.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: He has many other names, but I'm gonna call him Love because it's very clear.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: John said that's who he is.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: God is love.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody that we would call love.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Made you and I because love gives.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he didn't make you so he'd have people to give something to him.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's not love, that's demanding, that's tyrannical.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we could never even have gotten an image of a God like that unless we were looking at the knowledge of good and evil.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we've seen him as holy, and even thus in Christ as unholy.
• 43:59
  unknown: And if
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: If we were to read our word correctly through a clear lens, without that veil of the knowledge of good and evil, we would see that the Bible says that God is holy, and it also says that we are holy.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody says, How can we ever be holy when we act the way we are?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're the temple of God.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the temple is never going to make itself holy.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing that makes the temple holy is the holy God that's in that temple.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's why this temple is holy.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: As long as God is a part of who you are, you cannot be anything but holy.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: You will forever be absolutely holy as He is holy.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why Jesus said that.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just be that.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Be holy.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm trying to get holy.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't say try to be holy.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't say try to get holy.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: He said just just be holy.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just be holy.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just be holy.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want everybody right now to be seated.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, try to get seated.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, try to sit down.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody, at least try this.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, we got to fight.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: He already made you to be seated with him in heavenly places.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: Love made all of this.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Through Christ, who is our life, he brings us into oneness with our Heavenly Father, the Creator, God we call Him.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: We become into oneness with that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: If I can get a little poetic here, we move, we start moving in the flow of that beautiful, beautiful thing called life.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is where love starts coming out of you to everything and everybody.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what they're doing, you're starting to see it like God does.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: I shared in a church last week about how when I was extremely, extremely, extremely hurt, upset, and having bitterness toward certain people, God broke through and blessed me.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest thing He blessed me with is something that catapulted me into something that I'm reaping from day after day after day.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was like the best gift.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: How could I even be mad at the people that hurt me?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because through that I got the best gift.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: But God allowed me in my hurt, in my pain, my anger, my bitterness, he broke through.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: And his spirit does what only his spirit can do.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: He'll cause me to see through his eyes.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw those people the way that God had never stopped seeing them.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I started getting a feeling for those people who I looked at.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were so mean, they were so selfish, they were so, but this nature of love started overtaking my little carnality.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt for those people who had done such painful things, I believed.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: I felt for them the way that God had never stopped feeling for them.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: He always.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I saw them.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: I saw them.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: I looked upon them.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't angry.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I could see it.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just um, it's like I zoomed away from it.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Before it was just all this stuff that they had done to me.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I zoomed out and I see these people and I think, these precious people.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I said that, these precious people.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: They just, they've got some blind spots.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're hurting, they're struggling too.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Father, they don't know what they're doing.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're so precious.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I could see why God could love them so much.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it brought an instantaneous, almost healing in me.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't a one-time thing because that ability to see, you talk about life where there's no heavenly vision, people perish.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because you'll just, if you don't have heavenly vision, you will have knowledge of good and evil vision.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: But this spiritual supernatural thing called God, creator of everything, living in you and I, allows us, shows us, enables us to see things and to know the knowledge of life, not just the knowledge of good and evil, where I could just judge those people.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where I could just discern and decide whether they were worthy or not, or what they should do and what they shouldn't do, and what they ought to have done, and they could have done this and that.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can go round and round with all that.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he allowed me to see something that has stuck with me.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that it is a gift.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where I can see people the way God sees them, without even trying.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would have to try hard to not do that.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I wish I had that.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: We all have it.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says that it becomes effective when we acknowledge what we have.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you see this stuff, you'll never again ask God to give you peace because it's there.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never again ask God to give you patience for anything because He already has.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: Been sitting there right here, and it's a part of your life the whole time.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just a matter of acknowledging that.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, it'll be like a well of salvation that you can just be drawing from, and it'll spring up.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: It'll start springing up unto what?
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everlasting life.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Another word for everlasting is perpetual.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not just something that starts when your body dies.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: It means everlasting.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually something that never, ever stops.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: If bad news comes to me tomorrow, the life doesn't stop.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: The joy doesn't stop.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's life.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is the eternal life that Jesus came to give you for you to experience upon this earth in the now.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Would you stand up?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: His love, God, who is love.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was love himself that created everything.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was love himself.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is love himself.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: As Paul found out.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Paul experienced this, is why he wrote it down.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: He discovered something he never knew was there.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, this love thing that I found in this new and living way, he says, it's love as perfection.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and love never fails.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, church prophecies will fail.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Tongues, knowledge will cease.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge will run out.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge will fail.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: But love never does.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Someone says, but Rick, can I really, really trust that love?
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: Him who is love.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Trust it.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: How could we not?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's the most giving, beautiful, powerful thing that any of us have ever come across.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Father, what can we say?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right now I'm asking for ministry, for the ministry of your spirit to help us all, to do what we can't do.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: If we temples, if we could just make ourselves know and see things, oh, we would just do that.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: But you're our lover, you're our God.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're that spirit that's in us that gives us inspiration and understanding.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our prayer tonight is that we can behold, we can see this thing, we can see this in ever-increasing measure, that we can just look at it so that when darkness tries to move in, we just look at Him who is light and love.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it fades.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: Father, I thank you for heavenly vision for everyone who notices the power to zoom out and look from the place on high and look over things and see what the real perspective of life is really all about.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: That no matter what they're dealing with, life is eternal and life is good.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And tonight we are blessed.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we thank you, Father, for putting our soul at rest because of this life that you've given us.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: And help us to acknowledge it every day when we wake up and every evening when we lay down.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Father, for being our helper, our counselor, our comforter, our friend, our lover of our soul.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you in Jesus' name.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.