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Created to Hear God's Voice: Sermon · Beyond the Sermon

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You're listening to Beyond the Sermon, the podcast of First
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Methodist Church in Collingswood, NJ.
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On our podcast, the goal is not just to share the sermons we've.
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Preached. But to go beyond the sermon and
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talk about what we're learning and what God is doing in US and
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in our community. You can find more information
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about our church at fumccollingswood.org.
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Thanks for listening. Good morning.
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This morning's scripture reading comes from Genesis chapter 3
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verses one through 19. Now the serpent was more crafty
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than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
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He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from
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any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent,
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We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say,
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you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of
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the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.
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You will not certainly die, The serpent said to the woman, For
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God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened,
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and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
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When the woman saw the fruit of the tree was good for food and
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pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom,
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she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her
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husband who was with her, and he ate it.
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Then the eyes of of both of them were opened and they realized
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they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves
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together and made coverings for themselves.
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Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he
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was walking in the garden in the in the cool of the day.
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And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
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But the Lord God called to the man, Where are you?
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He answered. I heard you in the garden and I
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was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.
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And he said, Who told you that you were naked?
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Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat
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from? The man said the woman, You put
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me here, put here with me. She gave me some fruit from the
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tree and I ate it. Then the Lord God said to the
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woman, what is this you've done? So the woman said, the serpent
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deceived me and I ate. So the Lord God said to the
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serpent, because you have done this cursed are you above all
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livestock and all wild animals, You will crawl on your belly and
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you will eat dust all the days of your life, and I will put
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enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and
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hers. He will crush your heel and you
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will, I'm sorry, He will crush your head and you will strike
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his heel to the woman. He said, I will make your pains
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in childbearing very severe with painful labor.
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You will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your
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husband, and he will rule over you.
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To Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate
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from the fruit of the tree which I commanded you, you must not
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eat from it. Cursed is the ground because of
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you, through painful toil you. You will eat food from it all
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the days of your life. It will produce thorns and
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thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field by
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the sweat of your brow. You will eat your food until you
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return to the ground, since from it you were taken.
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For dust you are, and to dust you will return.
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This is the word of God for the people of God.
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Thanks be to God. Amen.
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I think one of the biggest questions that people ask and
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have been asking probably for as long as there have been people,
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is what does the future hold for me, right?
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We want to know what is going to happen in our lives and in the
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lives of our family and, and those we love and, and even in
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the world in which we live, right?
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Things seem uncertain to us. These are normal questions that
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we ask because it's normal to wonder about the unknown.
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I think those big questions that we ask about the future speak to
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some of our biggest fears, right?
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Some of our biggest fears, which are not being able to control
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what happens, and two that will make the wrong choices and ruin
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our futures. Or maybe that at the end of the
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day, our lives won't actually have mattered for much of
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anything. But what if I told you?
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What if I told you that you could live with a relationship
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of conversational intimacy with the One who knows the future,
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the one who's guiding all things toward his ultimate purposes?
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What if I told you that is the kind of relationship that you
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were created to have with the God of the universe?
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Now, I'm not talking about God being some kind of cosmic
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crystal ball or or treating the Bible like a magic 8 ball that
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you ask a question. You remember those magic 8
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balls. You ask a question and you shake
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it up and then flip it over and it would either say yes, no,
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maybe not likely those kind of things.
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And when you didn't like the answer, you'd shake it again and
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flip it over and hopefully get a different answer.
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That's not what I'm talking about this morning, right?
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What I'm talking about is a real relationship with a real person
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who we can know and be known by. Now notice I I didn't say a
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human being, but a person, right?
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Because God, the God who made us, is a personal being who's
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been described by Orthodox Christians forever as a Trinity,
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right? Three persons in one being,
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so part of being made in
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God's image is that we are made for relationship.
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We're made to know other persons and to be known by them.
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We see that, I think, from the very opening verses of the story
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that God is telling. And in particular we see it in
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the passage that will read for us this morning from Genesis
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chapter 3. And here in Genesis 3, we're
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told the story of how in the midst of the good world that God
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had created and in the midst of the good garden where God had
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placed the very good man and woman, the serpent came and
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deceived those first humans. They disobeyed the one command
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that God had given them and sin entered the world and and and
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separated humanity from the God who made them.
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This morning. We don't, we don't have time to
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go through all 19 verses of that passage, but I want to focus in
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on verses 89 and 10 because I, I think these 3 short verses teach
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us three key truths, at least three key truths.
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We're, we're going to focus on three this morning.
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So I want to walk through these 3 verses together and remember
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these 3 verses we're talking about verses 89 and 10 of
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chapter 3. This is after the man and the
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woman disobeyed God, right? It's after sin came into the
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world and into the human experience and into the equation
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between God and humanity. So Genesis 3, beginning with
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verse eight, let me read it for us again.
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It says then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord
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God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day
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and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
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First tells us that they heard the sound of God walking in the
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garden. This is seems to be something
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they were familiar with, right? Something they had done with God
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since the days that they themselves were created.
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Something that didn't seem out of place to the man and the
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woman there in the garden or like God was somehow coming in
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like a principal who's called in when a rule gets broken.
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They were used to it. They've done this before.
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God had shown up in the cool of the day to walk with the man and
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the woman. And part of what it means to be
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created by God is that they and we were created to walk with
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God. Just like that.
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Even though Adam and Eve had sinned, they had disobeyed.
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God still wanted to walk with them and talk with them.
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And God came looking for them because he can't tell me that
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God didn't know what had happened or that God came
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looking for them and didn't realize that anything had
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changed between them until he realized that they were hiding
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from him, right? God knew.
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God knew. He always knows.
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And even though God, new God came looking for them and
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friends, God comes looking for us even when we try to hide from
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him, because we're created to walk with him.
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That's his desire. He, he comes looking for us
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because that's why he created us or he created us to be in
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fellowship with him. That's his desire, that's his
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intention. And so he comes looking for us
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to walk with him. And in verse 9, it continues.
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That's what the Lord God called to the man.
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Where are you? This wasn't how it was other
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days. So God was not only looking for
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the man and the woman to walk with, He called out to them,
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right? God spoke in a way that they
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could hear, a way that they could recognize as the voice of
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God. And notice God doesn't come in
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with guns blazing to nail them to the wall because of what
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they'd done. He comes and he asks the
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question. He asks the question, and I
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don't think that's incidental. Have you ever noticed if you've
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read through the Gospels like we did in the fall together, have
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you ever noticed how many times the gospel record has Jesus
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asking a question? Anybody know?
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No, 307 times in the Gospels, 307 times, Jesus asks the
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question. Often it's in response to
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someone asking him a question, which if you've ever had
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children, you know is infuriating, right?
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They come in, you know, you ask them a question, they ask you a
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question back, and they never really answer the question.
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Well, apparently Jesus does that to you.
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But anyway, the the thing about asking a question is that
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questions open the door for more conversation, right?
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Think how differently this story about God and the man and the
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woman would sound if God came into the garden that day and
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said stop hiding, come on out. Or, or he just launched into
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those curses that are recorded in the second-half of chapter 3.
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But he doesn't do that. He comes asking a question and
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the story actually God asks 4 questions before he says
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anything. He was using the the questions
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to create conversation because humanity.
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We were created to hear God's voice, to be in conversation
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with Him to to not just speak to God, but to hear from him as
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well. And because God cares about our
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conversation and he invites us to play a role, to to own our
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stuff so that he can bring the work of transformation in our
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lives. But it starts with a question,
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starts with hearing God speak. And then in verse 10, we hear
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the man's response to God's first question, right.
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He answered the man, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid
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because I was naked. So we hid the man and the woman
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had heard God walking in the garden.
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They had heard God's voice calling to them and they knew
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something wasn't right. They were afraid for the first
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time because they knew that their relationship with God was
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broken. They knew that they had been
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created to know God, not just to to walk with him, not just to
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hear his voice, but to know Him. And that relationship was broken
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as as we'll talk about hearing God over these next few weeks, I
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think this is something we have to to keep in mind.
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It frames the way we think about hearing God's voice, right?
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The primary point of communication isn't just the
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information that's exchanged between people.
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The primary point of communication is the
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relationship that's developed between those two people.
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God speaks to us not primarily so we can know the future.
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He speaks to us so we can know Him.
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All right. God doesn't just speak to us so
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we can know the future. He speaks to us so that we can
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know Him because God already knows us intimately, right?
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Luke records Jesus saying that God knows the very number of
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hairs on our heads. Psalm 139 says that God knit us
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together in our mother's wombs. He he knows our thoughts before
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we even have them. First Samuel tells us that God
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knows our hearts right? That famous passage where Samuel
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is going to anoint the new king and and Samuel's looking at the
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outward appearance and God says, no, I don't look at the outward
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appearance, I know the heart. God knows us intimately, but He
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also wants to be known by us. Jeremiah 24/7 says that God will
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give us new hearts to know Him. He says I will give them a heart
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to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people and I
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will be their God, for they will return to me with all their
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heart. There's so many other stories
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throughout the Bible that talk about God speaking to people,
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revealing Himself so that they can know Him, right?
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God calls Abraham to follow him. God gives Joseph dreams.
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He speaks to Moses from a burning Bush.
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He sends a messenger to encourage Joshua to give him a
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battle plan for going against Jericho.
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God calls Samuel's name in the night.
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He reveals himself to Elijah in the gentle whisper.
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He appears to Saul on the road to Damascus.
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He tells Philip to go walk on the Gaza road to meet the
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Ethiopian. He sends an Angel to speak to
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Cornelius so that Peter can share the good news with with
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him friends. These are just a few examples
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that I could give. And I say examples on purpose,
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right? They're not just illustrations.
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I think we often tend to think of of the characters and
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scriptures. We read their stories and we
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say, oh, wow, that's the exception.
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Those are the really extra super holy people.
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And I could never be one of them.
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Somehow these people that got written about in the Bible that
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God showed up to, they're, they're somehow quite different
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from us. It's just not true, right?
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These are normal people who were living normal lives before God
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appeared to them. James 517 tells us that Elijah
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was a man, a human being just like us, even as we are.
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He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not
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rain on the land for 3 1/2 years because God told him to pray
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that prayer. They were normal people who
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encountered the living God and said yes eventually anyway, they
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responded to what God was saying just like we can.
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And I think we need to read the Bible that way because just like
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Adam and Eve, we too have been created to to walk with God, to
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hear his voice, to know God intimately.
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Like friend. Some parts of Scripture, it's
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even described as a relationship between a lover and the beloved
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intimate relationship in his book, How to Hear God, A Simple
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guide for normal people, The kind of book I need to read.
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Pete Gregg says learning to hear God's voice, his word and his
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whisper, it's the single most important thing you will ever
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learn to do. I'm not exaggerating.
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Hearing God is not peripheral. It is integral to human history.
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Neither is it an optional extra for wild eyed Mystics and those
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who happen to be spiritually inclined.
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Hearing God is essential to the very purpose for which you and I
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were made. Without it, everything falls
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apart. Learning to hear God's voice in
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whatever way it might come to us Because it does come in
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different ways at different times, Learning to hear God's
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voice is essential if we want to fulfill the purposes for which
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God created us. And if we believe Jesus's words
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in John 10, as he's speaking about himself as the Good
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Shepherd, he says the gatekeeper opens the gate for him.
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The Good Shepherd and the sheep listen to his voice.
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He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
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When He has brought out all of His own, he goes on ahead of
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them, and his sheep follow him because they know what He looks
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like. No, because they know the path
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he's going to take. No, the sheep follow him because
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they know His voice. Friends, learning to hear God's
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voice speaking to us is integral to our ability to follow Him.
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If we don't hear His voice, if we don't recognize His voice
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among all the other voices that are trying to speak to us, if we
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don't know His voice, we can't follow Him.
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That's what Jesus said. We don't know His voice.
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We can't follow Him, or at least if we do know His voice, we will
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follow Him. So what's it mean to hear God's
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voice? Well, we're going to spend the
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whole next 5 weeks going over that, getting into that.
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We're going to look at how we hear God's voice, where we hear
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His voice, and how we recognize it to be His.
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We're going to talk about why God speaks to us and how to not
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hear God's voice. I think we're all, we can all be
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pretty good at that sometimes. And we're going to talk about
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how we respond to God's voice. I could never sum up all of that
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in this one sermon, so we're going to spread it out.
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But for today, let me just say that just as God spoke to people
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in the Bible in a variety of ways, God still speaks to us,
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and he still speaks in a variety of ways.
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It doesn't mean we always hear an audible voice speak from a
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cloud, right? Like what happened to Jesus on
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the day of his baptism. He gives dreams, He gives
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visions. He sometimes gives us a sense of
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leading about what we should do or who we should reach out to.
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Sometimes he whispers in our hearts, right?
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That's where God's Spirit lives after all, isn't it?
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In our hearts. So we wouldn't, shouldn't be
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surprised if He speaks to us there.
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His word can come to us through the word of a friend, through a
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passage of scripture, through a sermon, a song, a book, and on
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and on it goes. The key isn't trying to find out
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the one way that God speaks to us.
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The key is learning to recognize that it's God who is speaking to
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us. And not just last night's tacos.
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Now, this might be a new idea for you this morning.
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This might be outside of your experience, outside of the realm
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of what's comfortable for you. You may have thought or been
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taught at some point that the only way we hear God speaking
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today is through reading the Bible.
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And that is certainly one of the primary ways we hear God
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speaking to us. You might be hearing all this
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and, and your heresy alarm is going off full blast right now.
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Maybe you're thinking, isn't it a bit presumptuous to believe
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that God would take time to speak to me?
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To which Dallas philosopher Dallas Willard says, and I would
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agree. Isn't it more presumptuous and
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dangerous, in fact, to undertake human existence without hearing
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from God? To think that we can know
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better, that we should be able to figure it out apart from God?
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You might feel uncomfortable with the idea of God speaking to
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individuals. Or maybe you're sitting here
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wondering, have I ever heard God's voice?
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Maybe you just don't think that God speaks to people, let alone
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Someone Like You. I want to challenge you.
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I want to invite you to approach these next few weeks of sermons
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with an openness to hear the stories of Scripture as examples
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for us to follow, rather than the exceptional, extraordinary
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methods that God uses when He has no other options.
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And I want to invite you to ask God to speak to you this week.
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I want to encourage you to create some space in your life
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over these next 5 weeks to hear God speaking.
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That might mean you need to turn off the TV or the radio or the
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podcast or the audio book to experience some silence in the
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midst of our noisy world in which God could then speak to
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you. Might mean you need to pull out
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your Bible, blow off the dust, crack it open, right and and
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read and, and get familiar with what God's voice sounds like,
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right? Because in Scripture, that's
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where we learn to hear what God sounds like.
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You don't know where to start reading.
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Pick one of the gospels. See this Jesus, who is the
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clearest representation of God, the clearest self revelation of
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God that humanity has ever had, and it's recorded here in
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Scripture. Get to know God's voice again.
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Open up. Well, it might mean you need to
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pause and take some time before making that next decision to
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give him some space again to speak.
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Just the other day, I was faced with a choice between going to
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my physical therapy appointment and attending an important
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meeting that I could sit in and observe but I couldn't actually
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have any impact on. But there was a part of me that
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really wanted to know what was going to be said in that
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meeting, to hear it first hand, to know what was going on so I
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could be able to, to, to have all the information right.
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That's, that's a big thing for me, having the information,
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knowing things, how I try to control what happens.
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So when I found out that this meeting had gotten changed in
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its time and it conflicted with my PT appointment, immediately,
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I called the the physical therapy office and said, hey, do
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you have any other appointments? They said we have one other
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appointment, 7:30 in the morning, you can have it.
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I said, OK, I'll take it. My friends, I hate getting up in
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the morning, let alone getting out of the house on Friday,
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which is the one day I don't come over to the church.
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I don't come into the office. I try to take it as Sabbath,
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7:30 in the morning. I said, OK, set my alarm.
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I go to sleep. My alarm never goes off.
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I wake up at 7:45 to a voicemail that says, hey, we just wanted
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to check in on you because you're never late.
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Is everything OK? I said, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm
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fine. I just, my alarm didn't go off.
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I, I didn't wake up. I guess you can go ahead and,
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and charge me my no show fee. And they said, well, would you
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want to come in later? Do you have time?
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Could you come in? We have a 10:30 appointment.
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I said, I, I know that was my appointment as of yesterday.
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Well, they said, what would you want to come in then?
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The meeting, the appointment, I didn't want to go to PTI, didn't
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want to miss that meeting. But in that split second of
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making the decision, in that little bit of a time it took me
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to take a breath, God said, will you surrender this meeting?
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I said, OK, I'll take the PT appointment.
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And I went to that. I didn't get on the meeting.
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I didn't hear what was going on, what was said or anything like
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that. And the rest of the morning I
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struggled through I, I, I had to work through that decision I had
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made to say yes to God's invitation, even though I still
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wanted to be in that meeting. I had to, to surrender.
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I had to submit that to God. But it showed me again that that
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God cares about our transformation, right?
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He, he, he said to me over that morning, Scott, how much do you
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think it matters if you're there in that meeting?
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I said, well, I guess not a whole lot.
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He said, who, Who does it matter to be there?
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I said, God, you need to be there and if you're there, then
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I can trust you with the rest of it.
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Friends, we've been created to walk with God.
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We've been created to hear His voice because we've been created
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to know God intimately, not just know about Him, but to really
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know Him. And as we do, He wants to deal
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with those fears and those anxieties, those hopes and
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dreams, those attempts to control the world around us.
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Because He cares about our transformation.
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He cares about shaping us into the kind of people who can walk
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with him, people he can entrust with his presence and his
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authority. People he can send out into the
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world to carry his presence to people who need to know him.
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He wants to. He is speaking to us, and He
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wants us to learn to hear Him. And by revealing Himself not
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just as our Creator who made us and left us to run life on our
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own, but as our Good Shepherd who wants to lead us and guide
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us and shape us and mold us, who knows us and wants to be known
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by us. He's speaking.
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I think the bigger question is, are we willing to listen?
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Would you pray with me? God, we are grateful that you
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made us and that you love us. You care about us enough that
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you want us to walk with you and hear your voice and know you to
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relate to you, not just as as some God to be appeased, but as
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a friend to be known, a shepherd who wants to lead us and guide
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us and show us the way we should walk.
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So, God, this morning and over these next weeks, would you help
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us create some space? Would you help us know some of
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the things we meet, maybe need to say no to so that we can
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create some time, some silence, some solitude so we can hear
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your voice? And would you help us to
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recognize? Would you help us to recognize
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your voice as you're speaking to us, as you're showing us more of
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who you want us to be and who you are and, and your thoughts
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and plans for the world? God, would you help us to
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listen? Would you help us to respond?
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And in faith and in trust and surrender, God, we give you
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ourselves. We believe you're speaking, and
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we want to be people who listen. So would you speak, Lord, for
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your servants or listening? Jesus, we pray this in your
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name, Amen.