Latest / The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast / 572 | Conversations - What’s it look like to live in peace?

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572 | Conversations - What’s it look like to live in peace? · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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  She's a happy girl. Hello, friends, and welcome back to another podcast of Woman.
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  At the Well Ministries, where we believe that all of us have to come to Jesus
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  like the woman at the well in John chapter 4.
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  Our highest priority is making God real in your life.
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  Whether you are listening in our app, in your favorite podcasting app,
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  or on our website at watwm.org,
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  we invite you to sit down with us as we look to the scriptures to learn more
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  about God and to strengthen your daily walk with Jesus Christ.
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  In this episode of the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast,
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  join Kimi Miller and Erica Close in a conversation as we walk with Jesus.
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  In today's conversation, we're talking about the peace of God and how the peace
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  of God manifests or doesn't in our daily lives.
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  Well, thank you all for joining us. This is Erica, and I'm here with Kimi Miller.
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  Hello, and thank you for this opportunity to just spend time talking about the last message.
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  Yeah. So if you listened on Monday to episode 571, Kim talked about what it
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  really meant to live in perfect peace.
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  And we just wanted to take a moment and sit in that for a little while and talk
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  about what living in perfect peace really looks like in our lives.
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  And in that message, you brought up a lot of amazing truths.
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  And we bring all those things up always so that we can then apply them to our lives.
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  You know, I have to say, it may be harder for people to, in their mind,
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  figure out what living in perfect peace looks like than certainly it is to know
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  what it looks like if you're not living in perfect peace.
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  We live in a world, Erica, where chaos is the norm.
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  Stress is not just high.
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  People are drowning in it. And unfortunately for many people,
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  the stress they're drowning in, they can't get out of because they're honestly
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  creating a large portion of it for themselves.
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  And so I'm excited to talk about what it means to live in perfect peace.
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  But I'd like to put the disclaimer right out in the front.
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  You know, 365 days a year, I'm not living in perfect peace.
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  But when I'm not, it is 100% the choice I have made to place my focus somewhere
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  other than God, because He has given us what we need to live in perfect peace.
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  I love that you said that, because the first thing I wanted to talk about was
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  that relationship between living in peace and where our focus is.
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  Well, Isaiah 26.3 says, Because that will keep him in perfect peace,
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  whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee.
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  So the short answer is, if you want peace, focus on the Lord.
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  Exactly. And in your message, you gave us some things about what we should be focusing on, right?
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  Like who Christ is, what Christ does.
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  You said all these really quickly. You said, you know, what he can do,
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  what he will do, what he is doing. I think, you know, sometimes when we read
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  that verse, you know, whose mind has stayed on thee.
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  Well, what does it really mean to put my mind on God?
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  There's so many things about him we can put our mind on.
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  But the one thing is, is if you're focusing on God, who is perfect,
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  loving, kind, gracious, the great I am.
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  Then you can't be thinking about anything negative. Right. Because there's absolutely
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  nothing about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that even has a negative connotation.
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  He is pure light and absolute love.
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  And I think when we talk about what it means to keep our mind on Him,
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  to me, like how that shows up in my life is that if my mind is on Him,
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  I'm usually, number one, talking to him. Yeah.
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  Right? Number two... You can't be in the presence of someone that great and
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  not say something. Right. Exactly.
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  Number two, I'm potentially just going over Scripture, like,
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  in my mind, because I do like to practice my Bible memory verses,
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  like, whenever I have the opportunity. And one verse leads to another.
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  One verse leads to another. But also just, you know, focusing on the promises.
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  Which I don't know how you can really focus on the promises and not be talking
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  to him about them, like thanking him for them.
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  But I think, you know, this verse says, keep our minds stayed on thee.
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  You know, what does that look like? Does that mean we have to sit down and look
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  like we're meditating and put our mind on him?
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  That's the pray without ceasing people think is too. Right.
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  It's an attitude. It's a positioning. Right.
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  When your mind is focused on the Lord, it is a positioning of being in his presence.
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  And he is the filter that absolutely everything going on in your life comes through.
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  And when you have trust in him, because he says, you know, whose mind is stayed
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  on thee because he trusts it.
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  When you trust in him, that's when you have perfect peace.
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  And that trusting in him is that as it comes through the filter,
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  you realize the filter loves you. It's Jesus.
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  The filter knows what is best. That's Jesus.
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  The filter understands what I need in my life to be who he wants me to be,
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  to fulfill what he's given me to do.
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  Therefore, woo-hoo, it's great.
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  And that's what this positioning is. You position yourself in the presence of
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  God because you live in obedience.
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  And therefore when you're
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  obedient you trust if we
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  trust when we're obedient and if we are obedient we're making a choice for god
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  our trust and the faith we have in him and the peace that ensues because of
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  that is very dependent on,
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  on what we really believe and is evidenced in our lives by what we really believe.
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  You really talked about this.
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  You really talked about how if when things happened in our lives,
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  we weren't going to God first, it was going to reveal the truth about what we
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  thought and who we trusted.
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  That was a little bit of a, that's a toe stomper, right? That's an ouchie. It's an ouchie, right?
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  Our lives really do evidence what we believe.
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  We may think we're faking it, and we may be able to fake it on a Sunday morning
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  or a Wednesday night or at youth group or something like that,
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  but that's a smaller part of each week.
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  And you're never faking it him. You're not faking it to him.
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  But one of the things that come to my mind as we were talking about this is
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  obedience is a demonstration of trust.
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  You don't do what somebody tells you to do if you don't trust they're telling you the right thing.
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  There is no one listening or me or you, either one, that if somebody said,
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  stick your hand on that hot stove and hold on to it, that we would.
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  Because we know that is an incorrect ask. so
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  the real truth of the matter is obedience is
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  an absolute revelation of complete
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  trust yeah which also means that disobedience is an absolute demonstration that
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  we're not sure what he's asking is best in fact it says you've asked me to do
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  this but i'm going to do that,
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  because what you ask me to do, I don't believe is correct.
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  And I think if we stopped in our tracks for a moment and realized that when
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  we disobey him, we are literally saying to him, you're wrong.
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  I think it would change how we behave sometimes because out of the heart, the man speaks.
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  And it's our heart that harbors what we believe in conjunction with our mind.
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  And our heart fixed on Jesus when he says, keep, you know, whose mind is saying,
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  that's our heart that is completely sold out, turned over in full confidence that he is right.
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  You're not in that little mantra, you know, kind of business,
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  just praying without ceasing.
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  No, your heart is turned over to Jesus, and everything you say and do filters through him.
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  And you've died to self. That's what it means to keep your mind stayed on Jesus.
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  You've died to self. And when you die to self, what you're dying to self is
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  positioning yourself below him, right?
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  Submit yourself under the mighty hand of God and he will exalt you and do Tom. Right.
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  So it's saying he is sovereign. And in Monday's message, one of the things that
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  you talked about was you talked about Jesus and how when he went to the cross.
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  He was doing something that he knew was going to happen before he ever left heaven.
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  Right? He knew that was happening. He was committed to that.
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  Right. And when he was on the cross and stayed on the cross,
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  he was committed to that.
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  Have you ever thought about this for a moment? That what we long for,
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  which is heaven, what we are waiting for, which is heaven, what our souls desire
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  to have manifested in front of us as heaven, he left.
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  Not because it wasn't amazing, because it was the only way we could get there.
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  He left the splendor of heaven to live in a dying, sinful world,
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  to pay the debt for people who would reject him, to get us to the place we longed to be.
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  It's an amazing demonstration of love. And obedience.
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  And I think about that at times, because sometimes when God asks us to do something,
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  It has nothing to do with us, except the obedience part.
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  He wants us to do something that shines the light in someone else's dark path,
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  that gives them the leg up over the obstacle.
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  That covers an erroneous thought.
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  And sometimes it's not at all what we want to do. And sometimes it's not something
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  that we would even think is good for us, it might hurt a little bit. It might hurt a lot.
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  Right. And if we stop for a moment to realize that none of that is on the degree,
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  of what he left and what he did.
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  And he said daily, take up your cross and follow me.
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  And we all remember that part. We always forget the deny yourself and take up
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  your cross and follow me.
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  And it just is something that has struck me a lot lately is what He left and
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  what He got, so what I could gain.
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  And we need to, as Christ followers, be willing to leave some stuff and get
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  some stuff that's not that amazing,
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  because what's waiting for us is beyond our comprehension.
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  I hath not seen, and ear hath not heard, what lies in store for them that love the Lord.
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  And I think that in the busyness of the day and the busyness of our lives,
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  we don't think about what all we have honestly received.
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  Because we forget the what he does part. Right.
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  And because we focus so much just on what I have today, like what's happening
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  in this moment. Oh, no, this thing is happening.
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  Right. And we get so off track so quickly. But additionally,
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  Erica, we get so caught up when we see Jesus, we see the cross.
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  But we don't understand that he bears the cross daily for us.
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  Which means we don't lose our salvation and we don't get saved again.
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  But he's bearing the cross daily, paying the penalty for the sins of this world.
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  Because sin, the wages of sin is death.
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  And so this horrible, bad things he is bearing, and we don't even know what he spares us from.
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  I mean, Scripture tells us, I believe it's in Psalms 91, that we have angels
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  around about us so that we don't even dash our foot upon a stone.
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  We don't know what he saved us from. You know, those days that we forgot our
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  keys and had to run back in the house and we're mad because we're running late
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  or we hit every single red light.
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  I was going somewhere the other day, and in my past, I think there are four
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  red lights, and I kid you not, every single one of them I hit,
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  and I was already late when I started.
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  You know, but then I realized as I was walking from the car to this lunch,
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  which the person wasn't even upset, I wasn't even all that late,
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  but when I was walking in there, I thought, well, what do I know that he might have spared me from?
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  I could have ended up never showing up, because maybe I'd have been in a wreck and got killed.
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  You know, there's just things we don't understand. But when you have your mind
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  stayed on him, when you trust him fully and completely, then those things don't even really register.
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  You're following what God is asking you to do and what an amazing peace and freedom that is.
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  But it is so difficult to live in a world full of sin and people and agendas
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  and other people's thoughts and ideas that they just feel so amazingly compelled to throw upon you.
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  It's hard to live in a place where you just say, it's me and God.
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  I'm living for him. This is what he said. It wasn't your assignment.
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  You don't have to understand it.
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  It isn't your life. You don't have to live it. But hey, I believe.
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  And what happens is, is when we take our mind off of him, when we stop focusing
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  on him, we hear the chatter.
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  Yes. We hear the noise.
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  Our faith begins to dwindle and anything done without faith is sin.
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  And then sin enters our life. And then this amazing peace that God has for us
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  has dissipated because we've walked away from it, because we are no longer listening to him.
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  The only applause we need is that of nail-scarred hands.
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  And if I could remind myself of that every day and live in that mindset,
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  state on him, then the things people say, the bullying, the critical, the judgment.
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  The I told you so's, whatever.
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  You know, sometimes you may look like you're failing, but you're still walking
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  in the center of God's will.
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  And if you're not careful doing what he said that stops you or pauses you or
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  halts you or even makes you take a step back, you'll believe that person on
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  the outside more than you'll believe what God has said.
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  And the next thing you know, in the center of what you're supposed to be doing,
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  you're not feeling the abundant blessing, but now you're rebelling because it
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  didn't make you feel good.
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  Because the heart got messed up. We changed our focus from him to him.
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  To the loud voices around. But I want to remind you that Jesus shut the mouths of lions.
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  Absolutely. I love that you just talked about a pause. And to me,
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  that's almost like a holy pause.
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  I am sometimes somewhat forgetful.
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  And just the other day, I walked out the door.
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  There was a bag of stuff I needed to take with me for after work.
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  I got three minutes down the road and had to turn around. I remembered it and had to turn around.
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  And it's interesting because I've been very conscious lately that when something
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  comes to my mind that I have forgotten,
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  instead of sort of saying, oh, I can't believe I forgot that,
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  I'm working so hard to remember to say, hey,
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  Lord, thank you for reminding me.
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  And I just turned around and went back and got it. And to your point,
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  I am certain, 100% certain that that was his protection, right?
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  Keeping me from something. But it also gave me such an opportunity to say, thank you.
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  I'm going to turn around because it's what you want me to do and get what I
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  need to do and go on with the day.
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  You know, you said something that struck a chord in my heart.
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  And oftentimes, especially in your case, when you forget something,
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  it's because you've got 17 other things that are happening all at the same time
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  and something falls off.
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  And that is a beautiful analogy. When we let a lot of other things in,
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  God knows exactly how much time we have.
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  He understands the capacity of our mind. He understands the goal of our walk.
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  And when we allow Him to fill our mind, we're not going to forget anything,
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  because the only things in our mind are what He has for us to put in there.
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  And he then allows us to breathe and live in a way that we can manage what is there.
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  And so when we think about how life is, I mean, life just has a million things
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  going on at one time. Absolutely.
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  And we don't have a center focus on your day-to-day work or whatever.
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  And we find that it's hard to keep it all going. But we try.
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  And then we take that same process into our spiritual life.
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  And we try to manage the balls. And we're like, oh, I'd like to be in that choir.
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  Oh, I'd like to teach that Sunday school class. Oh, I can do that.
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  Oh, and the next thing we know, we have piled into our spiritual vault more
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  than can fit in because something has to fall.
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  And then we forget it or we lose it.
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  Or we don't do it the way we would want to do it or the way the Lord would have
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  ever asked us. When all we needed to say was, fill my vault, Lord.
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  Or as a songwriter said, fill my cup, Lord. I'll lift it up to you.
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  So I really think you bring something.
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  When things aren't really working in your life, you might want to see who's
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  in charge of the workings of your life.
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  The inner workings, right? The workings.
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  Because if you keep your mind on him, and you let him plan your day and your stuff, it works.
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  And I'm not saying the fact that you forgot that thing was because you had too
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  many things and wasn't asking the Lord.
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  I'm saying in our day-to-day life, If we look at how it works and we lay it
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  against our spiritual life, we could easily see some analogies.
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  And one is you put too much on your plate, can't remember that one piece.
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  We put too much in our spiritual vault. And sometimes the stuff that don't belong there.
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  I think there's a lot of, you know, pressure right now in our world as to what
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  needs to be in that spiritual vault.
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  I was struck by this just the other day. I was scrolling on Instagram and.
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  Kimmy knows I love a good highlighter, right? I highlight things in my Bible.
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  And, you know, I take notes in my Bible.
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  Kimmy doesn't. That's just not how she works. And that's personal preference. That's what that is.
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  But it was funny to me because I was scrolling Instagram and saw like six or seven reels,
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  one right after the other from six or seven different Instagram accounts that
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  showed me all these different highlighters and all these different ways to take
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  notes in my Bible and all these different stickers I could put in my Bible and
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  different things I could insert and like all these things.
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  And it was all, you know, these Bibles were beautiful and colorful and filled
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  with notes and all these things.
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  And it was six or seven and it was so clear to me.
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  How that was just going to distract me from the Word itself,
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  right? That's mine is plain.
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  Right? But it was amazing. It was like six or seven, and I could feel,
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  I could hear it. I could hear it in my head.
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  Oh, I need to do that, or I need to do that. That would make my Bible study better.
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  That would do that. That would do that. And for some people,
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  I firmly believe that if that's how the Lord speaks to you while you spend time
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  in His Word, that's great. It's not how the Lord is going to speak to me.
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  He's going to speak to me with one highlighter and a pen.
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  And what is interesting to me is, and I was thinking about this because I watch
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  you and how you write all of your Word of God.
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  And I often open your Bible just and look, and I learn from things you write. That's for sure.
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  But what I was thinking when I was growing up, and I'm not that old people,
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  but when I was growing up,
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  there wasn't a right or wrong way to do things like study the Bible or highlight or color or take notes.
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  There were suggestions. I use a journal. Now I use a file.
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  But there wasn't everybody looking and judging and saying, you should do it
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  this way and you should do it that way. And if you don't do it this way, you're missing this.
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  The devil has taken a good thing and now made it so stressful that some people
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  just give up altogether in addition other people are so afraid you're not doing
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  right and now it's become a judgmental thing when i was growing up how you walked
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  and lived was just according to the word of god.
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  And it wasn't according to this influencer that uses pink, green, and yellow.
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  You know, I remember when the Rainbow Bible come out, you know,
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  with things with Holy Spirit.
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  And I remember just gasping because when I opened it up, I was distracted by all of the colors.
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  And maybe I have a one-track mind, so my Bible's pretty pristine.
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  The pages get a little bit old looking on the sides, but that doesn't mean I
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  haven't studied. But if someone ever took my Bible, this one's never studied
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  in her life. And if you take Erica's, you think she didn't do anything but study.
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  But it's not a judgment thing. And I think that that's even studying the Bible
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  has become something that causes people to have stress. And have stress.
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  And I wanted that that's what you meant when you talked about what's in your spiritual vault.
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  Right. Because now what people are doing are concentrating on the how and the
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  process. And not the word.
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  Right. And not him. And that's what I'm trying to say.
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  The simple verse, and I don't mean that it's just not complex,
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  but it's rich and it's full, is, look, he'll keep you in peace if you just keep your mind on him.
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  On the word, on him and what it's saying. And stop worrying about so-and-so
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  studies this way and they're getting much more out of it. So-and-so speaks that way.
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  So change the way you do it. Or so-and-so has this style.
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  And God has given you a style. He's put in your heart how he wants you to do something.
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  Don't look left or right to see how it compares to someone else.
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  Do what he says and be anchored in him. That's really what he's asking and what
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  gives us perfect peace. Absolutely.
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  You know, there's so much more room these days for the devil to come in and steal our peace.
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  It's just so much easier for the devil to get to us because we open the door
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  to our phones, our TVs, our computers, all the people.
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  You know, we have so much constant communication that he can get into,
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  but it doesn't change the sovereignty of God.
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  The devil's going to take whatever avenue he can, but it never changes who God is.
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  He's the same yesterday, today, and forevermore.
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  And he is God. Sovereign.
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  He is God. Whether we let him take that position in our life or not, do not kid yourself.
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  He is still alive.
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  God. I may have gotten us a little bit off track with my whole Bible and highlighters and colors,
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  but it's important because all the things that we have talked about today,
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  the sovereignty of God, how our actions reveal what we really believe,
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  how placing our focus on God himself,
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  is what leads to peace,
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  is how we have that peace and how we keep our mind state on Him.
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  So I just wanted to bring it home and close with something that you said on Monday.
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  On Monday's podcast, you said, let come what may, I am fully safe in the arms of God. Amen.
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  And let come what may, He has me.
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  I'm going to hold on to that let come what may phrase,
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  because I think that let come what may, regardless of what happens,
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  regardless of what the devil tries to put in my head, regardless of what I see
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  on Instagram, on Facebook, regardless of what somebody says to me,
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  I am fully safe in the arms of God. I am loved.
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  You are victorious. I am victorious because of the work that God has done in my life. Hallelujah.
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  Right. I'm saved. I the things, all of those phrases are what needs to be in our mind.
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  Let come what may, I am what he has done for me.
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  Praise the Lord. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today as we talked
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  over what it meant to live in the peace of God.
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  We hope and we pray that you have that peace.
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  Remember, you are loved. Jesus loves you.
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  Thank you for joining us in today's podcast. You can visit the show notes for
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  quotes from today's podcast and scripture references.
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  We pray today has been a blessing and we encourage you to reach out to us through
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  our app, our website, or our Facebook page.
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  You can find our app by searching for Woman at the Well Ministries in your app
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  store or through our website at watwm.org.
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  We're on Facebook at facebook.com slash watwm. If you visit our website,
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  you'll be able to subscribe to Bible Bits, a daily devotion written by Kim and
• 28:09
  delivered Monday through Friday by text message.
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  Woman at the Well Ministries is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving
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  our Heavenly Father, and it is through your loving and generous support that
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  our ministry continues to bless others.
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  To learn how to partner with Woman at the Well Ministries, please visit our website.
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  Thank you to the Gospel Group Fudge Creek for letting us use their hit song, Happy Girl.
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  We greatly appreciate your prayers. We are praying daily for our listeners.
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  Remember that God loves you. You are loved.