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Dad climbs mountains while carrying weight of late daughter · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day and welcome to the Wednesday, May the 13th, 2026 edition of Dennis and Forums Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's Daily article is written by our co-founder and chief vision officer, Dr. Jim Dennisen.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elfkins, narrator.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: A grieving father recently ascended the tallest mountains in Scotland, England, and Wales, while wearing a vest, the weight of his late daughter.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nathan Morris completed the three-peak challenge in honor of Zoe, who died of cancer in 2017, three months shy of her second birthday.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He wore a 22-pound vest, the same weight Zoe was when she died, to model her resilience
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  [SPEAKER_00]: his decision illustrates the fact that leverage is central to life.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The question is the end we choose to serve.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In Nathan's case, it was using tall mountains to honor his beloved late daughter.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: In several other examples in the news, the purpose was less uplifting.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: U.S. and Iran are continuing their stalemate while blaming one another for the war.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Russia and Ukraine are continuing their conflict despite a U.S. mediated ceasefire each accusing the other of launching drone and artillery strikes.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Republicans and Democrats are using the rise in consumer inflation to blame the other party and advance their midterm prospects.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can see the pattern.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm leveraging my time this morning by writing this article in the hope that God will use it to help you know Christ and make him known more fully.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are leveraging your time by reading it with the same hope in mind.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I hope I can leverage hunger later today by eating food that will make me fit or food that will make me fat.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Doctors can leverage our illness by prescribing unnecessary responses that profit them personally or by prescribing appropriate responses that enhance or even save our lives.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The same principle applies to attorneys when we face legal issues, who electricians and plumbers when we face electrical and plumbing issues, and so on.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Satan is the master at leveraging our circumstances for the worst possible outcomes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He uses attractive people to tempt us to lust that leads to adultery.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Financial challenges to tempt us to theft that leads to criminal convictions and injuries inflicted on us to tempt us to anger that leads to retribution and even murder.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, by contrast, is the master of leveraging our circumstances for the best possible outcomes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He uses physical illness to lead us to faith that positions us to experience God's best.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He uses temptation to lead us to reliance on the Spirit that empowers us to spiritual victory.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He uses the sins of others to lead us to compassion that forgives and heals.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's my problem.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Apart from the sanctifying work of the Spirit, I am more likely to cooperate with my enemy than with my Lord.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I am tempted right now to leverage this article to impress you and to engender your support for our ministry, rather than to glorify my Lord and help you follow Him more fully.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You are perhaps being tempted right now to read this article to earn quote unquote religious favor with God, more than to glorify Him and learn how to serve
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We're told that a Satan can't make us bad, he'll make us busy.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The corollary is that if he can't make us busy doing bad things, he'll tempt us to do good things for less than good reasons.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But if we allow the spirit to guide our thoughts and lead our actions, he will use us to leverage all that comes our way in ways that honor our Lord and impact our culture for his kingdom.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's consider an example.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In Acts 17, we find Paul in Athens having been forced from Thessalonica and Beria by opponents of the Gospel.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here, from verse 17, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Provoked translates a Greek word, meaning to be irritated or angered.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The apostle could have leveraged his frustration by belittling and ridiculing these idolatars, but instead, from verse 17, he reasoned with them, the word means to dialogue respectfully.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: This earned him a hearing before the erropagus, the highest intellectual and cultural authority in their society noted in verse 19.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Here in verse 28, he
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: quoted their own poets and philosophers and led several Athenians to faith, including Dionysus the Europa Guide and a woman named de Maris listed in verse 34 of Acts 17.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Both were so well-known at the time that Luke could identify them merely by their names.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Paul and his fellow believers continue to engage the pagan culture by speaking the truth in love from Ephesians 415, so respectfully that even the idolatrous town clerk in Ephesus said they, quoting Acts 19 verse 37, were neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers of our goddess.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In so doing, they turned the world upside down, according to Acts 17 verse 6, and paved the way for the Western expansion of the Christian faith that has come down to you and me today.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The key to impacting our culture for Christ is choosing a lifestyle of submission to the spirit and then leveraging the temporal for the eternal.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You and I are God's divine change agents.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: salt and light by which his spirit is working in the world to lead multitude to Jesus.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He has worked miraculously in us as the fourth century's Didamus of Alexandria eloquently observed.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The spirit freezes from sin and death and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes into spiritual men, shares in the divine glory, sons and heirs of God the Father, who bears a likeness to the
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  [SPEAKER_00]: destined to reign with him and share his glory."
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In quotes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, he wants to do through us what he does in us.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The salvation and sanctification of eternal souls will matter Eons after the galaxies are forgotten, and time is no more stated in Revelation 10, verse 6, King James Version.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Accordingly, as Francis Chan cautioned us, quote, her greatest fear should not be failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, what is your greatest fear today?