Transcript
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But if Jesus is the light, we should be a light as well.
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Look at what Jesus goes on to say in Matthew, chapter 5, beginning in verse 14.
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You are the light of the world, like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.
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No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket.
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Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house In the same way.
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Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
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Welcome to the City Light Church podcast.
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Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's Word and discover the hope and truth that he has for us.
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If you want to connect with City Light Church, feel free to visit us at CityLightNYCcom.
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That's CityLightNYCcom.
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Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already working in our hearts and minds.
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As you listen to today's teaching, remember that you are deeply loved by God, that you are surrounded by His grace and that he has a real hope and a future for you.
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Do you know that there are some painters who are masters of light and there are some painters who are masters of darkness?
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Doesn't that sound ominous?
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But I'm not talking about, like Darth Vader, luke Skywalker kind of light and dark.
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Okay, there are some different implications, not just the moral symbolism, and I'm not even talking simply about the issue of technique either.
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In the 19th century French Impressionists, for example, that were masters of light.
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They were interested in the optical effects that they found with paint, finding methods to make paint on canvas resonate and resemble what light does in real life.
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But for them to capture light on canvas was just.
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It wasn't a means to an end by itself, it wasn't the process only, but in a more realistic depiction of the world, is what they set out for.
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When painters in early centuries showed a special interest in light, it was often just as much for the symbolism of light as it was for its physical properties.
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Oftentimes what we would see is light shining through darkness.
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Right, you ever see a painting like that and you see this shaft of light cutting through the darkness.
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That's what I love about this building and I think it's appropriate.
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We're meeting in here today.
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Normally the area we meet we don't have windows.
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We've got these beautiful stained glass windows and the light can come through and it turns different colors at different times of the day and different periods during the year.
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I was joking before the first service with a couple of people in the back and I said you know what's kind of interesting when we meet here on Friday nights, I feel like it's kind of the lights pop a little bit more and I don't know why the lights aren't really shining.
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And they looked at me and they said because it's daytime and the sun is shining through the windows.
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James said oh, muah muah.
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You see, sometimes when it's cold, oxygen doesn't go all the way to the top.
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You hear what I'm saying?
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But light has some powerful implications and we see that lightness shining through the dark.
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Darkness usually is symbolizing ignorance and we see light typically symbolizing truth, goodness.
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I find it interesting.
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Throughout history we find a representation of light being truth and life right.
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And then Jesus comes on the scene and he says this in John 8.12,.
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Jesus spoke to all the people once more and said I am the light of the world.
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If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darkness because you will have the light that leads to life.
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Jesus calls himself the light of the world, and the light that leads to life no less.
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Today we have the privilege of celebrating our first service of the new year.
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We made it to 2024.
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Some of you didn't think we were going to make it, but we did.
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Happy new year.
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Are you glad to have 2023 in the rearview mirror?
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I'm kind of glad to say goodbye to that thing.
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I don't want to live in the past.
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Like Paul said, I press on to what is ahead.
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So, happy new year.
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2024 is ahead of us.
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So what does it have?
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More opportunity.
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That's what I'm excited about.
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So I thought it would be appropriate, on this first Sunday of the new year, to really talk about what city light is all about.
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What does it mean to be a part of city light and what does 2024 look like around this place?
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If you've been around here for maybe five minutes or longer, you know that at city light, we are passionate about making fully devoted followers of Christ.
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Right, that's really our mission.
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We want to invest God's word into your heart and see a transformation, his Spirit living through you and you in turn being a fully devoted follower of Jesus.
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But what does that really mean To say a disciple, fully devoted follower, really means disciple.
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You sum it up, really, with that one word.
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So I like to go to the dictionary and say, well, what is that one word?
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We like to just throw words around like they mean nothing and we let culture change the meaning of words and we just go with it.
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But what does the word really mean?
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So Webster's dictionary defines a disciple as a personal follower of Jesus during his life, especially one of the 12 apostles, or a follower or a student of a teacher, leader or a philosopher.
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So Jesus asked us to make disciples right.
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Disciple is a follower of Jesus.
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But where do we get that idea that we should be focusing on making more disciples?
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I just gave you the answers.
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Anybody know Jesus.
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Jesus told us to make more disciples right.
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So I'm not making it up, no one else making it up.
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Jesus made it up.
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He told us himself before he went back to heaven.
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After his resurrection, he gave us his marching orders and this is what he said in Matthew 28, beginning in verse 18,.
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Jesus came and told his disciples I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
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Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you and, be sure of this, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
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So his last command to his followers, jesus tells us to go and make disciples, make more disciples of Jesus.
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That part seems pretty clear.
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Right, everybody with me.
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What are we supposed to do?
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Make disciples.
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He tells us go and make disciples.
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So that part is clear.
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So if you're in agreement with me, you're in good company.
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But what doesn't he tell us how to go and make disciples.
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I think that's kind of interesting, right?
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He tells us to go do something.
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That's like the last command, it's like very important, because it's the last thing he said.
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It's like your parting words are big, right, you always say what do people say on their deathbed?
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Usually?
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That's kind of important.
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They told you where the combination was to the safe, so you can get all the money.
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What is the last thing he said?
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Go and make disciples.
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But he didn't tell us how.
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I think it's kind of interesting and I think one of the reasons is because Jesus knew that our communication was gonna change throughout the centuries, right the way the world relates as it evolves in our culture.
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He knew that we needed to stay relevant and current with the culture in which we're ministering to.
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Just like he did.
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He came on the scene and he upset everything.
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He talked in a relevant way.
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He talked in parables and stories.
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And the rabbis and the other priests?
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They weren't talking that way.
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They were going very old school, very levitical, and they were talking like, oh, he's talking in old days.
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But no, jesus came on the scene.
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He's telling stories, he's sarcastic, he's telling jokes and they're like what is this?
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I think Jesus wanted us to continue to grow in our communication style.
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That's why I'm preaching out of the NLT version today and not the King James version.
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Some of you said, james, I like the King James version.
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It's closer to God.
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No, it's not.
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It was closer to King James.
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Okay, in the year 1611, he decided he was gonna put a Bible together and where the us were, v's and now's were those, don't worry about it.
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But Pastor Bo uses the new King James.
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We look for relevant translations because our communication is important If we wanna reach a culture that has no idea what this stuff is all about.
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If we come on talking all this flowery 16th century stuff, they're gonna say what is wrong with you?
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So we just talk normal, we talk relevant.
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I think another thing that's important God knew that we needed to actually work together to find a solution.
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Now one of us has the full picture, right?
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We each have a piece of the puzzle and when we come together, we contribute our pieces and then the more we work together, the puzzle picture starts to get clear.
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Anybody ever put a puzzle together?
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I got a puzzle for Christmas.
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I hate puzzles.
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My wife loves puzzles, so we sit down and we do puzzles and I give up early and she sits there and she finishes the puzzle and I say look at what we did.
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We come together with our own experiences and we make it clearer together.
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So let's figure this out together, right?
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We have so many different kinds of churches in New York and throughout the world.
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It's because they've all come together and they're trying to figure out their why, right?
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So here's the question I wanna ask today and I wanna help us answer what has city light landed on in terms of our why, our how?
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How are we actually going to make disciples?
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So what we found is that we're better together.
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So we're better together.
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We're stronger together.
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Right, the picture becomes clearer when we contribute together.
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So the first thing that I wanna share with you that I think is gonna be helpful is that we actually have the privilege of doing life together with God.
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Okay, we can't separate him from the equation.
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If we do it in our own power, are we gonna succeed?
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No, that's it.
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You can talk back.
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No, you're not gonna succeed.
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So the first thing if you're taking notes and I hope you do, because the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory and you're gonna forget 90% of what I said by the time you get home and eat lunch, that's sad, because I worked hard on this, but that's okay, it's part of what we do.
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But if you write it down or put some notes in your phone, maybe this will stick with you later in the year.
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You think what is my purpose in life?
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Why are we making disciples?
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Why do I even go to city light church?
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You pull this out and you say oh, I remember Because we have the privilege of doing life together with God.
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It has to do with our relationship with God.
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Christ living through us allows us to love the people in our lives in ways that we don't have the power to love them.
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It helps us to be patient with people in our lives that is really hard to be patient with.
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We in the church world call them extra grace required people, egrs.
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Okay, if you don't know what that means, you're probably one.
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That's all I'm trying to say.
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We have people that are not like you and they get on your nerves, but we gotta love them anyway.
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Right Through Christ's spirit and his power, we have the ability to show patience and compassion, with Christ living through us.
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Paul tells us in Galatians 5, beginning in verse 22,.
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But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
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There's no laws against these things.
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Doing life together with God not only allows us to experience all the benefits that I just listed, but it shows them to the people in our lives.
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Apart from God, we can't hit the mark in any of those areas.
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No matter how good you think you are and some of us we do.
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We walk around like hmm, I got this.
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Anybody watch the Office.
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That's a funny show right there.
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Right, there's an episode in later seasons where Dwight and Jim are at a sales conference together and Jim is trying to get Dwight to like help him.
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And so he tells him there's bedbugs in their hotel, right, and he says, jim, what about these bedbugs?
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He said, oh, it was smug.
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How smug is that good?
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And so every time I think of smugness, thinking I got it all together, I picture Jim saying that bed bugs, and that's when we walk around like, but we gotta be real, don't look at this way.
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Look at this way.
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With God, we need a lot of help.
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So we need His power to help us to do things right.
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Apart from Him, we can't get it done.
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Doing life together with God means reading His Word.
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He gave us His Bible right.
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What's in His Bible?
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It's a love letter.
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It shows us His heart, shows us His character.
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That's an incredible book.
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Do you own one?
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Everybody have a Bible.
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We'll give you one.
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If you don't have one, we make sure in 2024 you got a Bible.
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You got the U version app.
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You can download it on your phone.
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The Bible don't discount God's Word.
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He communicates through His Word to us.
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It means spending time in prayer.
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That's simply talking to God, having conversation.
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The Bible says to pray without ceasing.
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Don't stop praying.
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Pray with Him.
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What does prayer actually do?
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Some of us have relegated that to like meal times or maybe bedtime.
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Or maybe when things get really bad in life, we're like God help.
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Or maybe if someone from church is looking, you're at a restaurant, you're about to eat and you see someone in the city like, oh heavenly Father, thank you for this room, amen, you weren't just gonna eat right there without saying thanks.
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Or if you're really spiritual, 21 days of prayer you're on Zoom every night at 7 pm.
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I appreciate some of you doing it, but it's even more than that.
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Prayer is connecting and communing with God.
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He wants a relationship with you and a relationship requires what Communication.
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You ever had a relationship with someone you didn't talk to?
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That would be stupid.
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That's not a relationship.
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And it's even more than just like, hey, how's it going?
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Oh, good, happy New Year, you have a good year two months.
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Yeah, it's cold outside.
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Yeah, it's real cold, getting wet out there.
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That's not a relationship.
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That's small talk, that's superficial.
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He wants to know that.
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You know he's there.
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Talk to God.
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The relationship with Him, doing life together with God, also means worshiping God with other Christ followers, just like what we're doing today in this place.
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Hebrews 10, verse 25, says and let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, ooh, do you know some people that didn't come today?
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Give them some grief and say Hebrew 10,.
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Cj said today you neglected Ooh, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of His return draws near.
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He tells us to worship Him together in His house, to encourage each other to do it.
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That's the next thing that we found as city light too is we have the joy of doing life together.
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So again, if you take a note that first one is the privilege of doing life together with God, the second is we have the joy of doing life together with each other, and that is a privilege.
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Some of you say what about those extra grace requires?
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It doesn't sound like a privilege, james, I know, but it is a privilege Nonetheless.
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That means getting in each other's business up in your grill, the good, the bad and the ugly.
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Because here's the thing the joys of life, they're just not as sweet if you don't have someone to share them with.
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Right, my wife is out of town right now because our daughter went back to the school down in Alabama.
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So they drove down.
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I drove up with them and this time they gave me a hard time on the road trip.
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I don't know why this, but I'm always trying to beat the clock and they're like dad, you do not stop enough.
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I'm like why we have gas and I know where I'm going.
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They're like well, I want to stop and take a picture here and let's stop at this gas station here.
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They're like why?
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And so they said I'm not very fun to go on a road trip with.
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So, fyi, if you want to go to a road trip, call Pastor Moe, do not call me.
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I just want to get there.
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I like the destination, not the journey.
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So they went down together.
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My wife's flying back tomorrow, and so I find myself so often I'm like hey, I got.
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Oh, oh, you had this, oh, it's lonely, because the joys of life are not as sweet when you don't have someone to share them with.
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So then I call her at face time hey, I had something I want to tell you, but I forgot.
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Just come home and the sad times, the burdens of life, they're almost unbearable if you don't have someone to share them with.
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Right, we need people in our lives.