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Transcript

The True Reality · Rick Manis Ministries Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I remember driving down I ninety five on the east coast and um uh the GPS in the car said that there was a traffic jam, you know, a few miles up.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it said, Do you want to take an alternate route?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, man, I'm on I-95.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Everything looks good, it looks clear, it doesn't look like there's any problem, and I'm getting close, and it was asking for a decision because if I'm gonna take this alternate way, it's a mile up, and I'm I'm not seeing any problem.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what if what if what if she's wrong, and then I take this some side road and I get stuck on that when I'm right now.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm jamming pretty good down I-95.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see any problems at all.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I gotta decide, and I gotta decide quick, because the turn's coming up.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do I want to trust this thing?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't look like it's right, to my senses.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just went ahead and I decided to, in this case, I decided to trust it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I got off on the exit, and there was an exit that said Old Dixie Highway, and I got on down onto it, and it was a two-lane narrow paved road and had trees growing over it, and you know everything, and you could and it was curvy, so you couldn't tell where it was going, which direction it was really going to take you, and how long it was gonna it was gonna take.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I took it, and it was a nice, pretty little drive, and I drove about seven miles on it and came out, and where I came out back on I-95, I could see all the stack up of cars all around me, and I had come out just on the front side of it and never uh had to deal with that at all.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I've never forgotten that that lesson.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: The GPS is your eye in the sky, that's your Holy Spirit.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the one who knows everything and knows all the things, even the deep things of God.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the Holy Spirit, God Himself in you, has been given to us, the Bible says, so we can know the things that are freely given to us by Him.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I want to I changed my text this morning because of what the kids were singing about abiding in the vine.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it goes along with the word that I brought this morning.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought looking at that in John 15 was much a much better way of coming at it, the way that the kids were singing it, that that was such a good song.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in John 15, 4, Jesus said, Abide in me and I in you, because the branch cannot bear fruit of itself.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do this, you can't talk yourself into it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, in so many cases, you can't make yourself be this and do this.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can't bear fruit of yourself.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and when I when I lately when I see the word fruit, I'm I'm thinking mostly along the lines of what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The love, the joy, the peace, the fruit of the Spirit.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, you have to abide in the Spirit, you have to abide in Him because you can't do this yourself.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: People want to enjoy love, they want to enjoy peace, they want to enjoy faith.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: They want to live in a faith that's easy and it's flowing and it's natural and it's normal, not a hard thing that you have to try to keep fighting your mind with.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: See, when you're in when you're when you're independent and you're trying to do this yourself, that's when the fight is there.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and you just can't do it yourself.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: But abide in me.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Abide in me.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: That word abide, look it up.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the Greek, it means be present.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Be present in me.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or in other words, live in the now, right now, with me.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, and neither can you unless you abide in me.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the vine, you're the branches.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: He who abides in me, and I abide in him, bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to talk this morning about reality.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about reality.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think hardly anybody understands what reality is, and only by the Spirit can you know what's really real.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: How many know that the world that we experience, it's temporary, it shifts, it changes, it goes from one thing to the next.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not stable, it's not permanent.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: The things of the world, they just they change from day to day.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your perception of them changes from day to day.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your experiences change, they change from day to day.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your adventures change, your problems might change, but there's something that's constant, there's something that's real, there's something that always has been and always will be.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God, God Himself, the reality of God, never, ever, ever, ever changes.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus did the thing that he did, not only did he shed his blood to forgive us, not only did he raise from the dead to defeat the law of sin and death, and death in us, but he ascended to the Father so that he could come and live in every single one of us individually, giving us life, giving us the spirit, because the Bible is clear, life is in the Spirit.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Life is in the Spirit.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Abide in me and you shall live.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a life, you know, he talks about this life, this real life, this abundant life.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is not this life he's talking about?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: What do most people think reality is?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, think about this, and I'm gonna give you a little bit of a science lesson here.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: To humans, reality, what you perceive as real, is really nothing more than your brain, your brain receiving stimuli, sensory information, and making and packaging it to make sense.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's receiving it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I put my hand on this, something is going on in my brain, and it tells me what I'm touching right now.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's making sense of it.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's using memory, it's using all kinds of things, but it's simply a stimulation right now.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm seeing right now, this brain, this piece of meat here, that if the body were to die, this piece of meat just goes to just decomposes and goes to dust.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this brain here is receiving all this information.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It'll receive what what it hears, it'll receive what you say, and it'll make a reality of it.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It'll make me laugh, it might make me sad, it might make me indifferent, but it creates a reality simply from taking in temporary stimulations.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even colors.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you really know how it works, colors aren't even real as we know.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: We just we just see them, and we it's just it's a reality.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's blue, that's red, that's green.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, what colors are, it's just a sensory stimuli.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's that there are no colors.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is, you know, you've got rods and cones in your retina, and what happens is when light hits an object and everything is made up of different kinds of cells, those cells will reflect that light in some part of the prism of light.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the cones will take it in and tell your brain, give you give your brain a memory of a color, because when you were young, you learned what this shade is, what that shade is, and what that other one is.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And not everybody's is exactly the same.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in fact, they may be very close, but not everybody's is exactly the same.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the ones that are uncommon, they see it, their their cones register it differently than the majority.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: We call them colorblind.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Simply because they don't see it like the majority does.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody's got their got these receptors in their brains and in their bodies, and they're what they're doing is they're taking you turn the lights out, there's no color.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: There can't be color.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: What color, what when color is generated is when light hits something and you're seeing the reflection of light.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: What you're seeing is not just color, you're seeing light.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's reflected in a prism as a certain color or shade, as we know it.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it's simply what your brain is making up, it's simply what your brain is telling you.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Even memories.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: They used to think that memories were like a like like the words on a page of a book that's on a shelf collecting dust.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever your brain goes back to that memory, it goes back and it and and and and what it saw 50 years ago is exactly how it's going to be then.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not always so.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because what your brain does is it reconstructs it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't file the exact thing there.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: It takes them, it takes certain bits of information and reconstructs every time.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's one reason why many people remember things completely differently.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because their brains are reconstructing it differently and they'll fight over it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They'll swear that they remember exactly how it happened.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll be so different.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens is to your brain is just it's making a reality.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Scientists say your brain really makes up your past, it just takes the information, puts it together the best it can, and what you call your past is your brain right now reconstructing something from before.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's one reason why after a while it starts, memories of certain things start to become more and more vague because your brain starts, starts, every time you're remembering it, it starts kind of just deleting bits of information that it doesn't think are quite necessary.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: But your brain is making it up for you.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so what most people call I said all that to say this, what most people call reality is this piece of meat in here that will decompose if the body were to be laid down into the ground, is that is that it's a machine here that's taking in sensory stimulations and it's telling you what, what's what.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why people's realities are created by their own mind, and they can have they can be doing the same thing, experiencing the same situations, and having two completely different realities.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Two people can be in a storm on the Sea of Galilee, one can have perfect peace.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: They see the storm, they feel the wind, the rain, the whole thing, but they've got a different reality.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus had a different reality than the twelve in the boat.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: The spirit.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: The spirit.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: The spirit is the spirit of truth.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The spirit is real.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Life in the spirit is real.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the Bible says if we live in the spirit, let's walk in the spirit, let's be present in the spirit, let's live from the spirit.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: If we're going to serve God, let's do it in the spirit.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about the spirit.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, the spirit, the spirit, the spirit gives life.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Job, he says there's a spirit in man.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I thought this, but there's a spirit in man.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the inspiration of the Almighty that gives him understanding.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: You get the perception of what's really real.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And because you're seeing reality, you're not living by the five senses anymore.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's called sense knowledge.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's called being sensual.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible talks about the wisdom of this world.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's earthly, it's sensual.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: He says it's devilish, it's deceptive.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And people rely on it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We deal with people in counseling and trying to encourage people and help.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you hear it a lot.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: They'll say, but this is my reality.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: But what we want to do is we want to try to break through.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: We want to try to speak truth that'll make you free because if you can see what's really going on, you'll bear much fruit.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: That one that you can't forgive, if you can see what's really going on, you'll bear fruit.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: You'll just have love.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be you'll feel loved.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You won't be offended.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're just you're too loved to be offended.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're too, you're too blessed, you're too favored.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the spirit, you are.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have been given everything through Jesus.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I say all the time, you're not trying to get something, you're not trying to become something, you're not trying to go somewhere.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: He gave us life, and he gave us life by coming to us.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says in Romans chapter 12, verse 2, do not be conformed to this world.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: This world created by sensory stimulations.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do not be conformed to this world, but be ye transformed, changed.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The word is metamorphosed.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's only used four times and really on three occasions in the Bible.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Once in two different Gospels where Jesus was metamorphosed, he was transfigured on a mountain and they saw him in all his glory.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Another time in Romans chapter 12, 2, where he says, be transformed, be metamorphosized by the renewing of your mind.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the other time in 2 Corinthians 3, where he says that when we behold the glory, when we're seeing the Spirit, we're transformed, we're metamorphosized.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: It changes us.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just seeing the truth makes all the change.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, just abide in me and you'll bear the fruit.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're if you're not if you're not doing it by being present in him, you're going to try to bear the fruit and you're going to have a struggle with your Christian life.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to have a struggle with your faith, struggle with your joy in certain times, struggle with your peace, and certainly a struggle with your love.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm here to announce there's a truth, there's a real reality, there's a life.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wonderful, and it's here, and I've tasted it, and I'm tasting it, and it's and my quest, my journey is over.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've found it.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm about now is just tasting it more and eating it more and seeing it more and partaking of it more and more and more.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the love grows and the joy grows and the peace grows, and it's not going away.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It just gets bigger and bigger and better and better.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me look stronger, it makes me look happier, it makes me look smarter than I ever was.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Simply because I'm seeing truth.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: You start seeing truth, it starts changing you.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are changed, metamorphosized by the renewing of the mind, the mind that thought reality was all those things we just talked about.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: These temporal things.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody says to you, it can ruin your day, it can ruin your week, it can ruin your year, it can ruin your life in some cases.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just because of something somebody did, which is simply something that you saw, you heard, you experienced, in some way, your brain took it in and it did something to you, and that became your reality.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that some people can have the same things happen to them?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they stay joyful, they stay peaceful, they stay loving, they still have faith.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: How is it some people still have faith when they've been, when there's been horrible things that they've experienced in life?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: How is it?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because their life is in the spirit.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're seeing something true, they're seeing something bigger.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're not playing mind games, they're not trying to talk themselves into something, they're not in denial.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: They can look their problems square in the eye, but they can look at it with truth.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was saying last night in a church we were in last night, said, you know, it's it's not denial.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: You look your problems square in the eye, but you know what happens to the in the brain.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is where people freak out, where people can ruin their day, can ruin relationships, is that they'll look at an issue, and because of what they create with this issue, it becomes the whole world.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: We deal with a lot with people trying to help people that are struggling and they're having, and they're there, there's so many wonderful things, there's so much heaven all around them, but they've got this one thing that's creating hell in their life.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying deny what's go what the problem is, but look at the truth.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: What's the truth?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not this, the truth is this.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's a problem there, but look at this.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, yes, there's tribulation in the world, but look at this, be of good cheer.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've overcome all of that.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all seeing that?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit, there's truth.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit, and I say this with with such passion.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've stumbled into what we would call eternal life in the now.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Where every day is now.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, most people, their realities are not really a reality because if you watch, most people spend most of their mental time either in the past, recounting something somebody has done to them, or recounting bad things, or they've had some horrendous experience that they can't get over it because they keep going back.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And all it is is just their brain going there.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Just a brain going there, creating memories, and then creating its own reality from that memory.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because of that, I can't be this.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because of that, I'm sad.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because of that, I'm this way.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or not only or if they're not spending it all in the past, they're spending it all in the future, trying to get somewhere, thinking that, thinking that my life is nothing now, and someday I hope.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, hope is good.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Better than not hope, but living in the future, and that, and you know, there's an old song that says tomorrow never comes because you'll never see tomorrow.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: I say I've said that, I've said that a lot.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: You'll all every moment that you live will always be now.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: You will always live in the now.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: You will always live in the present.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And since you always live in the present, wouldn't it be smart to make up your mind or choose something?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Choose something good because one thing God does give us in this thing.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, but we can choose where we're going to abide.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, commit your way to Him, He brings it to pass.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we can't bring it to pass.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know how to do it.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: If we did, we already would.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: But we can choose.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: If we live in the Spirit, then let's walk there, let's remain there, let's be present there.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So wouldn't it be wise to choose that I'm going to live in the now?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: See, we've started a new year.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: People are making new year's resolutions, they're making new diet plans, they're making new things they want to become, they want to achieve, they want to do, they want to attain.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh nothing wrong with making plans, nothing wrong with great expectations.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in all of our expectations, let's remember fullness, which is the perfect combination of completeness, satisfaction right now, today, wholeness, and expectation.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're whole, because you're full and you have everything in Him, surely you can expect good in the coming year.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: But in doing so, don't put everything off until tomorrow.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't put everything off until the end of 2018.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let's live eternally.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: That means perpetually, always.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's don't live tomorrow.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not start living tomorrow.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's not start doing better next week.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's live today.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: How do we live today?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: We live today in the spirit.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: What happens if we live in the spirit?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Today, that means today we bear fruit.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we get to enjoy love.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we get to be loved.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's a truth.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: You are.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know this piece of meat up here will make a false reality and tell you that you're not loved?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: You ever thought it?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: You ever felt it?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where'd that come from?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not God.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: God would say, Who told you that?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Who told you that?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: The same one that told Adam he was naked, the knowledge of good and evil that we put together in our brain, ourselves.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: The whole problem with Adam is that he chose not to abide in the vine of God anymore.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: He chose to abide in himself.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has brought us back home.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or we can have life again.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: See, I talk to people and they want to make sure that I believe right about so many.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: I call them peripheral things, things that are mentioned in the Bible, but what does God say about the future?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: The end of the world?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Rapture, no rapture.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if there is pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, and I mean people break it up so much it's just impossible to agree on things.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of good things to discuss, but what good is it?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: If people aren't experiencing life today.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is that he did it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is that today we can abide in him and his words in us.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll never ever have to have a day without the fruit of living in him.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: What does living love do?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is knowing the truth?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: It took me a long time to know the truth.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It took me decades of Christianity to really believe how much God loved me.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I knew he did, to some degree, I said he did.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: But something happened where I knew that I was unconditionally, completely loved with no limitations.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was the beginning of stepping into something.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was the beginning of fullness.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Where I didn't feel lacking and start living for tomorrow.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I started enjoying today.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: The love brought the joy, it brought the peace.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the fruit of living in Him.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's the power, that's the strength, the gentleness, the goodness, the kindness.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I can't believe when I look at me now, Rick acts like this, like he does sometimes when I was so different 30 years ago, 20 years ago.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: The way I used to, the way I would treat people.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was living in my own reality and didn't see the truth clear.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was, the Bible said I was blinded.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have these attributes working in my life, these fruits of the Spirit, because I was blinded, I couldn't see, I didn't know who I was.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible said I forgot that I had been purged, delivered from my sins, that I was complete in Him.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing the truth allows us to give joy to the Father.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was His good pleasure to give us the kingdom.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And God loves us so much that what He, this whole thing of dying, the death that He did, the sacrifice of Himself, like He like the way that He did, and showing a love that has never been a greater love demonstrated, was so that we could have this life today.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: That we would never have a moment without being loved or favored or blessed.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: That we would never have to have a moment without having a joy that was bigger than all of our problems.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Without ever having a moment where that smile wasn't at least on the inside of our face, if it wasn't just beaming out on the outside, that that that that that peace was always going to be bigger than any bad news that would come.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: The gentleness, the goodness, the kindness, the perseverance, the patience, the faith.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Faith comes from living in that vine.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can't talk yourself into it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: It comes from the spirit of faith.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's him.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Are y'all hearing anything this morning?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's all been done, it's all been given, and it's all in him.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Abiding in the vine.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's all stand up.