Latest / The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast / 652 | Love Must Flow: Becoming Christ’s Conduit in Every Relationship

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652 | Love Must Flow: Becoming Christ’s Conduit in Every Relationship · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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  Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast.
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  With Kimberly Miller, where we believe that every man, woman,
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  boy, and girl must come to Jesus just like the woman at the well in John chapter 4.
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  Our highest priority is helping you experience the reality of God in your everyday life.
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  Whether you're listening in our app, on your favorite podcast platform,
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  are on our website at watwm.org.
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  We invite you to sit down with us as we open the scriptures to learn more about
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  who God is and to strengthen your daily walk.
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  In this episode of the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast,
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  join Kim Miller and Erica Close in a conversation as we walk with Jesus.
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  In today's conversation, we're chatting about what life looks like when we choose
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  to allow Christ's love to flow through our lives.
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  Well, thank you all so much for joining us today. I am Erica, and I am here with Kim.
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  Hello, and I'm excited to be able to talk about relationships.
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  I think that relationships are,
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  are probably the stickiest thing we have to deal with in our lives. Amen.
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  I was just so thrilled in the studying for this message when in John 13, 35, we read these words.
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  By this shall all men know that ye are my disciple, if ye have loved one to another.
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  I loved how it was about having love and giving love to another,
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  not for another, but to another.
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  So you can't just love somebody. You got to demonstrate that love to others.
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  I love that. So the message that we had previously, so Monday's message was
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  number 651. It was called Christ in Every Relationship.
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  And I would just recommend that if you have not listened to it, that you take a listen.
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  It's about all of our relationships, and it is out of Colossians 3,
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  18 through Colossians 4, 1, but it kind of covers all of them.
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  And it covers just about all these different relationships that we can find
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  ourselves in and highly recommend that you take a listen.
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  But as Kim just read, the whole point in that is that love must flow from us to other people.
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  We have to be a conduit of Christ's love in every relationship.
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  And that is sticky.
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  And that is hard. And that is not a simple thing.
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  But we know we can do that through the power of the Holy Spirit that's in us.
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  I think one of the reasons that makes it so sticky, Erica, is it requires us to be responsible.
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  We can't just say so-and-so didn't treat me well.
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  He doesn't give us that pass. We have to show love one to another,
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  That's how people will know we are His disciples.
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  And showing love to is demonstrating love to. It's giving love to.
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  And sometimes we have to give love to someone who either on purpose or not on
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  purpose didn't give love to us.
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  And that's a difficult task.
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  It is a difficult task. You made a really good point in Monday's podcast where
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  you basically said, I'm not quoting here, I was writing as you were talking, but,
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  you said that Scripture's not given for us to hang others or to measure how well they are doing,
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  but it's given to us to allow us to measure our own actions and words.
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  That's tough stuff right there. That's a little bit of a toe stomper.
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  That was specifically relating to what we are learning, what Paul was telling
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  us in Colossians chapter 3,
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  and especially in what we were looking at on monday which was 18 through 4 1,
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  but it is true for all scripture absolutely it is for our edification.
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  It's to build our relationship with the lord it's so we know the boundaries
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  we need to walk in in order to live the abundant life that he has promised us.
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  In John chapter 10 and verse 10, so many people who don't know the Lord as their
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  personal Savior will refer to the Bible
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  and God as just a list of do's and don'ts, just this big supreme authority just
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  saying, can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do that.
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  And that's the furthest from the truth. Absolutely. God is love,
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  and we love Him because He first loved us.
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  But He has these commandments, these boundaries,
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  these if they want to call them rules they can but they are the instructions
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  that god gives us so that we can live the life he's promised us,
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  which is one of abundance of joy and peace,
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  and happiness and love jesus loves me this i know because from genesis to revelations
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  he's revealing that and sometimes when you love someone and you watch them do
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  something that is detrimental to their life or hurtful to them,
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  you have to intervene and stop it.
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  And they may or may not appreciate that from you.
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  But if you really love them, you have to demonstrate that love by just intervening.
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  And we see that so often with parents.
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  And we think that's just great.
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  But it's really a picture i think we are.
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  In this world living as god has instructed and orchestrated,
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  we are told as children how to follow,
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  rules that give us the best life possible and that is,
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  setting us up to understand that we need to follow god and follow god's rules
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  for the best life possible because
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  that earthly father is a picture or a symbol of our heavenly father
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  and that family structure, which we talked about in that message.
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  Is one in which you have the father and you have the mother and children.
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  And it is a unit that is working collectively together, but it's only going
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  to work like a well-oiled machine if the oil running through it is love.
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  And that's what God is showing us. And I am not married, and I don't have any
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  children, and I am part of the family of God, and I have a family that I'm part of.
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  So this isn't a message just for people who are married or people who have children.
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  It's a message that we are all part of the family of God and we are living our
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  lives, I want to say practicing, but learning how to live the structure God has given us.
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  Because one glorious day, we're all going to be together. Amen.
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  As a family. Even that person you may not like.
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  Well, yes. But what I think is... You better be sure to love with them.
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  Yes, we must. What's interesting is that, you know, I think,
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  you know, you talk about all that we learn in our earthly families and how in
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  so many ways that is preparation.
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  It's preparation for us to get into the family of God and to live as adults in the family of God.
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  It's preparation for us to know how to live once we get into it.
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  You're getting into the family of God. Correct. It's completely on Jesus and
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  your own personal thing, because there's plenty of people whose family did not
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  serve Jesus, and they have found him, praise the Lord.
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  I, on the other hand, was not that girl. I mean, my whole family did prepare
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  me to be able to know who Jesus was.
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  From my mother and father to my oldest brother down to the one next to me,
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  everybody is working to make sure Kimmy knew who God was.
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  And it was like that for every one of us.
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  You talked about how so many people do see the scripture as a list of do's and don'ts.
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  And I know that there are people who are raised with very much of a list kind of of do's and don'ts.
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  And when they sort of get out of their parents' home, they feel that they are
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  no longer under that list of do's and don'ts.
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  And I think it's important for us to realize that we all live in this set of godly constraints.
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  You talked about boundaries. You talked about grace, too, which I'm so thankful for.
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  But regardless of where we are, whether we are in a family home,
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  whether we're getting on our own as a young adult, whether we're an adult adult
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  or we're in our own families.
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  We still have boundaries set for us by God himself.
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  And I would like to speak for just a second. I think that parents can be encouraged,
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  to know that if they are bathing their.
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  Parenting style in Christ.
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  And if their home is a sanctuary for Jesus and He is high and lifted up.
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  And they are disciplining in a way that makes godly sense, the Holy Spirit and
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  God will help those children understand the hows, the wins, and the whys.
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  And they are the ones that are going to have the much better chance to leave
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  home and not just run away from everything they were taught.
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  Because they were not taught in punitive fashion, even though they may have been punished.
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  They were taught with the love of God so that they could be corrected and course-corrected
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  to live the life that God wanted them to live to receive the abundance of peace,
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  joy, and God's will for their lives.
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  You made such a good point on Monday when you talked about, and it was when
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  you were talking about parenting, but you talked about punishment as restoration.
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  And you were tying it to how the Lord course corrects us.
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  And his goal is always restoration. And reconciliation. Right.
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  Our goal in our relationships should always be reconciliation and restoration.
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  That was a good word the Lord gave us. It was very good. But it was in your
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  parenting section, but that is 100% how we need to live because the relationships
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  that we have with people.
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  There are road bumps, right? There are bumps in relationships.
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  There are things that happen in relationships, but if we are seeking the Lord
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  in that, we should be seeking to live as,
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  He lives and He's all about reconciliation and restoration because He always
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  wants to, as you say, course correct.
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  There's a get us to where we're supposed to be to every province. Mm, that's good.
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  That's good. You know, I want to go back to this idea of the scripture as sort of a measurement tool.
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  And it's all about what we measure, right? How are we measuring ourselves?
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  And I think what's important is that we remember that we are measuring ourselves,
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  against what Christ asks us to do.
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  We're not to measure ourselves against what the person does that we work with
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  or the person that sits in the pew behind us. Right.
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  Our measurement is not looking side to side at others.
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  But when we're measuring ourselves and we're measuring our walk and we're measuring,
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  how we're living our lives, that measurement.
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  Needs to be against what Christ has asked us to do.
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  And that can be a little bit complicated because we have to have a good picture
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  of what Christ has asked us to do.
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  But when he makes that clear and we do it, that's the end, right?
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  That's what we need to do. That's the path we need to follow.
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  And it's at that point when we're implementing that many people are going to
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  come and try to measure you and say, you may not be doing this the way God wants,
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  you know, the way I think you should do it.
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  But if you are measuring yourself against what Christ has asked you to do, then we are...
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  We're in the right. You know, 2 Timothy 3.16, I want to start as 3.15.
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  And that from a child, thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to
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  make thee wise in the salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
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  All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine,
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  for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
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  that the man of God may be perfect through furnished unto all,
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  thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
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  The point of the scripture is absolutely for us to find our boundaries, for us to find our way.
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  In John 14, 60, he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life,
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  and no man cometh unto the Father but by me.
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  It's incredibly important that we as Christians understand the value of the
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  Word of God and the purpose of the Word of God.
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  It isn't for me to use it to beat someone else over the head with.
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  It is for me to become more like him.
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  And I love this passage in 15 because it's talking about Timothy and how he
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  was bathed in the scriptures and what a value it was for him as a child.
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  And it is the example we're given. Our children need to learn about God at home, in their house.
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  They need to have the scripture on their walls. They need to,
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  in fact, in the Old Testament, it talked about putting on their frontlets.
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  Frontlets aren't from their eyeballs. You have to put the word of God all around everybody.
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  And if you keep yourself soaked in the word of God, then the instruction and
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  your boundaries are going to be part of what you need. Absolutely.
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  As we close this podcast, I want to talk about one last point that came out
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  of Monday's podcast that I think is just so vitally important for our listeners to hear.
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  And that's that our goal is not better behavior, but a life that is submitted to Jesus.
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  It's not about how I act and what I do, because I can fake it for a while.
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  But a life that is submitted to Jesus will result in the actions that he calls us to.
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  And better behavior as your goal is literally putting it on you.
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  And you're thinking you have the ability to do whatever.
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  You do not have the ability to be righteous. I don't have the ability to be
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  righteous. None of us has the ability to be righteous, but all of us are righteous in Christ Jesus.
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  So the more we submit to him, the more righteous we can be.
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  We can't do that on our own. Amen.
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  We can do that, however, through the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Amen. Amen.
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  Well, I really hope that folks go back and listen to Monday's podcast on relationships.
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  It was, as I said, a little bit of a toe stomper, but I am always so thankful,
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  for messages that I hear that force me to think and that force me to evaluate
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  and that force me closer to Christ to find out what,
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  needs to be submitted to him so that my life reflects who he is.
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  Thank you all so much for listening. Remember, you are loved. Jesus loves you.
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  Thank you for joining us for today's podcast. You can find quotes and scripture
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  references from this episode in the show notes.
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  We pray today's message has been a blessing. If it has, please consider leaving
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  a rating or review on your podcast platform.
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  Your feedback helps others discover the truth of God's Word.
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  You can connect with Woman at the Well Ministries through our app at watwm.org
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  and on Facebook and Instagram.
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  While you're there, learn more about Bible Bits, Kim's daily devotional delivered
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  Monday through Friday by text message, and the Bible Bit Podcast.
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  Thank you for your prayers and support. Remember, Jesus loves you. You are a little.