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Sept. 12, 2023
Communion: A Protective Shield and Pathway to God's Heart
Prepare to journey with us on an enlightening exploration into the true nature of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. We promise you a newfound understanding of scripture that goes beyond mere words, guiding you to the heart of God Himself. Our conversation pivots around the common misinterpretations of the Bible, dissecting them to reveal how a skewed perception can obstruct our relationship with the divine. Using 1 Corinthians 11 as our compass, we illuminate how understanding God's anointing can elevate us, collectively advancing us on our spiritual path. We remind everyone of God's innate generosity and His fervent desire for our collective spiritual growth.
As we dig deeper, we'll challenge common church teachings on communion and its implications for sin and unkindness. The conversation questions the conventional guidelines about communion shared in churches, bringing to focus how these may rob us of the joy that the Lord intends for us. We explore how communion can provide a protective shield, guarding against sickness and premature death, thereby allowing us to live a full and fruitful life. Wrapping up with our City Light Church Podcast segment, we highlight the enduring nature of God's love, the transformative power of grace, and the need to understand scripture through varied lenses. We end by acknowledging the power of the Holy Spirit within us, a force that helps us discern God's love and guidance.
Transcript
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It's important, as we're going to the next level, that we understand who the Lord is.
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A major reason people don't receive from the Lord is because they really have a wrong view of who he is.
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I say he's great and his mercy endures forever, and to them that's a foreign concept.
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I say he's not stingy and he's very generous and loving and kind, and now there's a disconnect.
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You got to know him and you cannot know him by your feelings.
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You can only know him through what the word says about him.
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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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If you're a guest, I want to welcome you to City Light Church I think I forgot to do that and if you're joining us online, I want to especially welcome you.
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Look around and you'll see that we're way over 80% capacity.
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We're right now at around 90% capacity and it's Labor Day weekend.
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Okay, I remember for 20 years Labor Day weekend was a ghost town.
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It was no man's land and August is typically the least attended month in the calendar year.
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Yet at August we were this full.
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And now Labor Day weekend, then we're this full.
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We're way past 80% capacity.
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80%, by the way, is the capacity of a church.
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Preachers love to see shoulder to shoulder people.
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They love to see 100% capacity.
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They don't see that.
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They'll see that a special conference or special guest speaker night.
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The reason they don't see that is because everybody loves to be shoulder to shoulder except the people who have to be shoulder to shoulder.
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People like to fluff and spread, and so 80% is the capacity.
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That means that we have officially outgrown this service.
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It's been over six weeks like this.
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Why am I saying all this?
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Because I began August and I was sharing.
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The Lord is up to something.
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I sense his goodness and he wants to do it.
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First, in you there is, there is an anointing he wants to get to you which will transform you and take you up to the next level that you've been itching and craving for.
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That's his way to take you from glory to glory, to take you from strength to strength.
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He is very, very good, he is very, very merciful and, best of all, he is very, very generous.
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I'm so glad that when I see his character, his nature, in the scriptures.
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He's not cheap, he's not a tightwad, he's not stingy, he's a font of generosity, and so all I'm saying is get your expector out there.
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I've talked to several other pastors and they're sensing the same thing, and to me there seems to be this pattern that any church in New York City who survived the lockdowns but not just survived the lockdowns, but then woke up and stood for truth and didn't exchange the truth of God for a lie, but stood for truth the Lord is now blessing and he's increasing, and maybe some pastors needed to go through the test.
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Will I fear man?
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Will I fear what people think, or can I demonstrate that really I'll get my orders from headquarters, and when they do that, then the blessing comes.
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But right now we're on the edge, and that includes you.
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I'm saying this partly as an exhortation and partly as an appeal.
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It includes you.
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So strap in, plug into your church, don't just come to church.
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Be the church and lean into what the Lord is doing, because he's not just throwing a party for a select few.
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He wants all of us to go together, all of us, as he thrust us onward.
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So we're in the middle of this series called the anointed one and his anointing, which, if you've been joining us online for the last six weeks or coming in person, you've really and quickly realized that it's just a title with various subjects that I'm addressing.
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What a great title, because we're always going to touch on the anointed one and his anointing, so it's a title that fits Amen.
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I wonder, pastor James, do you cringe when I say that?
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Or you just know, I'm just wondering.
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Okay, because Pastor James has great, you got to hear his titles.
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I'll ask him, give me, and he just, it's the most eloquent guy I know and he just he's a total wordsmith and I'm like title, okay, here's one.
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Put it in six parts, but it gives me the freedom to talk about whatever the Lord wants to talk about and it's important, as we're going to the next level, that we understand who the Lord is.
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A major reason people don't receive from the Lord is because they really have a wrong view of who he is.
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I say he's great and His mercy endures forever into them.
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That's a foreign concept.
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I say he's not stingy and he's very generous and loving and kind.
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And now there's a disconnect.
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You got to know Him and you cannot know Him by your feelings.
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You can only know Him through what the word says about Him.
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And when you know Him, then you know who you're dealing with.
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You know what you can expect, you can receive from Him if you know His nature and His character.
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And I want to address because it's Communion Sunday, I want to address the common misconception of passage in the Scriptures that really confuses people and shows an unscriptural view of the nature and character of God, amen.
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So let's go into communion, into the teaching on communion, where the Apostle Paul begins in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 23.
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He begins his teaching on communion by saying this for I receive from the Lord that which I also delivered to you.
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He's talking about the teaching on communion.
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I receive from the Lord that which I also delivered to you Note that His first opening sentence.
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This is significant.
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It means that the Lord himself gave the Apostle Paul this revelation, even though he had shared it with the disciples physically, even though it's all throughout the Gospels the power of communion.
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This is so close to our Savior's heart.
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This topic, the subject of communion, is so close to Jesus' heart that Jesus, in his resurrected state, gave it to the Apostle Paul by revelation, a divine download on communion Right there.
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That should give us pause.
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In other words, communion is really important to Jesus.
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So it's not some empty religious ritual we get into.
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It's not something that we just slap on on the end of service because you know they always did it this way and we got it.
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But there is power in communion.
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Communion is God's supernatural delivery system and it was meant to be an exchange and an impartation during communion.
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But of course, if there's ever power attached to something, the devil will go after it.
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In fact, I've heard it said this way and I believe it with all my heart.
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The more controversial a subject matter is in the Scriptures, the more power is associated with it.
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That's why the enemy brings in so much confusion and controversy, and I cannot think of a subject with more controversy surrounding it than the subject of communion.
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Speaking in tongues, sure, laying out of hands, sure, but communion.
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For centuries they were killing each other, literally, not metaphorically.
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Different groups throughout Europe in different centuries, killing each other over doctrinal disputes about communion, which is you know?
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I mean, I've had doctrinal disputes with people but, oh, wow, you know, never thought, well, okay, that was that one time I did.
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It did cross my mind, but for the most part never thought murder.
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But that's how important communion is, for I receive from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, the Lord Jesus, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said take heed, this is my body which is broken.
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For you, do this in remembrance of me.
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Communion is a time to remember.
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Now this is really important to get.
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The Hebrew way of remembering something is different than our modern way of remembering something.
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If my wife and I, we want to reminisce and remember our wedding day, what we might do is open up our phone, go into our favorite album and look at some photos of our wedding.
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Right, we might even go old school and bust out the physical photo album that we had done and go remember this.
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Oh, remember that guy who ate all the cake.
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Where's he now?
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Whatever happened to him?
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And we're remembering our wedding day.
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Do you know that Hebrews would remember their wedding day?
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They would go and dress up and reenact their wedding.
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That's how you actually remember something.
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In fact, the proof of that is in how they remember the Passover.
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The entire meal and the whole flow of the dinner is a reenactment of the Exodus out of Egypt.
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So to remember Jesus is to reenact and really ponder and connect with what happened at the cross.
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And how does it benefit me?
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Today You're remembering Jesus and you're partaking, you are joining, you are uniting, you are becoming one with his death, burial and resurrection.
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Do this in remembrance of me in the same manner verse 25.
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He also took the cup after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
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This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes.
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Then it gets dark, and this is where a lot of people get tripped up.
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It becomes more cautionary, and something that was intended to bring life in the church, the enemy used to bring death, and something that was intended to be God's supernatural delivery system of his power ended up being an event with a fence around it for only the select few.
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The enemy came in and put a fence around communion because there's such power connected to it.
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Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
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What?
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In an unworthy manner.
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9.9 out of 10 times.
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This will be interpreted and taught and preached as though the apostle Paul said whoever is unworthy?
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It doesn't say unworthy, it says in an unworthy manner, people have been made to feel guilty because the number one voice against us is the voice of Hasatan, the accuser of the brethren.
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And what's the number one message of the accuser of the brethren?
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Condemnation.
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So, after a little bit of introspection unless you're eyebrow deep in a sea of pride and blind to your own faults just a few seconds of introspection, you might, in and of yourself, start to feel unworthy.
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But it's not talking about you, it's the manner in which you partake of communion.
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What were they doing?
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What was the behavior the Apostle Paul was endeavoring to correct here.
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Well, they were haphazard about communion.
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They were actually getting drunk because they didn't use Welch's grape juice, they used the real stuff and they had forgotten the benefits of communion and just became this thing that they did.
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And he said if you're not expecting to receive something from communion, you're taking it in an unworthy manner.
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If you ever just eat it and you don't expect to receive something, that's in an unworthy manner.
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Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
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Let's keep reading, but let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
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So examine yourself that you understand what's happening.
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Can you just keep that verse up, please?
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Now, often how this has been taught is examine yourself for sin, and if you have sin in yourShaka we heard this a hundred times Can you just come up here, just hear me, just come up here real quick.
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I just want to introduce you.
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I only see you once every few years.
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This is my man, shaka Warren, my roommate from college, and if you haveHe's as beautiful on the inside as he is on the outside, I'm telling you you want to mess with me?
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No, I'm good, but if you want to hear college embarrassing stories, this is your go-to guy.
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This isI won't get into it.
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But do you remember that night when the anointing fell on us both and we were up all night confessing to each other?
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We used toThank you you see, your daughter and your beautiful wife and we would spend hours in the anointing together and one night.
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But you know, you never really quite let your guard down.
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All of us go with our best face forward, and this anointing dropped on us all through.
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We both started weeping.
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Now we're like 21 years old and we're dudes.
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This is not what dudes normally do.
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We start confessing to each other all of our deepest insecurities and I know it sounds foofy, but it was like liberating, like the Lord.
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It was like a spirit of honesty dropped.
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Really it was the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, and we just like, let the guard down and we were just talking to each other, like how I believe you talk in heaven.
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In heaven, you're not hiding anything, you're not trying to present yourself in any way, you're just you.
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And it was like for a few hours it lasted, and then it lifted and then, of course, the next day we're like you good, I'm good.
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Let's not talk about this until like 30 years later.
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Where was I in my sermon?
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Oh, the reason what made me think of you is we went to a church.
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How many times did we hear if you have sin in your life, don't eat communion.
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How many times have you heard that?
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I have a few questions.
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How much is too much?
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Never clarify that.
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The preacher will say if you have sin, examine yourself.
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If you have sin in your life, look, don't take communion because, well, you might die, god might smite you, he will strike you.
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So now communion is robbed of being this joyful event where you receive from the Lord, and it becomes this very, very uncomfortable Russian roulette kind of game.
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You know Russian roulette, you got a one in six chance, and now you're taking communion and the preacher says hey, if you have sin in your life, don't partake of communion.
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Well, what kind of sin and how much sin Like?
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Is it only like, if I'm like, bound and habitual, rebellious sin?
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But what about?
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I mean, the scripture doesn't mention that at all.
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So let's just say you took an Uber to church and you had an Uber driver and he was playing ethnic music Really really loud.
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Why are you laughing so hard at that?
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I'm in Queens, 161 nations.
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So I got to say because ethnic music is great unless it's in a language you just can't stand.
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Amen, look, there's so many cowbells I want to hear on my way to church.
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You understand, and you have an unkind thought.
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Lord, rescue me now, come quickly.
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Lord Jesus, in fact I just said that and you had an unkind thought towards me.
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Let's take it a step further.
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I mentioned cowbells and you took it very personally.
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Certain songs just don't need a little more cowbell.
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But you have an unkind thought.
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Now you come in, you're carrying that into service.
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That's an unkind thought, that's sin.
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And now you're in service and it's communion time and I say if you have sin in your life, don't partake of it for you.
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Now you're like oh, is this, does that count?
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Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but who's going to risk it?
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And so you're robbed.
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Are you hearing me?
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Now, instead of it being the blessed meal of the Lord, it became the death cookie, where you may get smitten, you may not.
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Let's roll the dice.
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What a bizarre and weird, strange teaching we are allowed into the church.
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That totally goes against how the Lord reveals Himself to be.
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Let's keep reading and see what in the world is the apostle Paul talking about, and then you'll realize it could only take a bunch of baptized and pickle-juiced phariseical minds to twist it and turn it and make it into what it was later presented to the church.
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For who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner, eats and drinks judgment to Himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
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Now listen, because see, there's that word judgment and the Pharisees get excited.
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You've got to be really careful when you're learning from a minister who gets excited about destruction and death and judgment.
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There are some.
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They're like ooh yeah, lightning, brimstone, mwah.
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The problem is that they weren't discerning the Lord's body.
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They weren't entering into communion realizing that it was God's supernatural delivery system.
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They didn't take time to remember, to ponder the Lord's body, to ponder His blood and what that affords them today.
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Next verse, no, the previous one, please.
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I'm seeing one here and then another there.
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Okay, thank you.
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Verse 30, as usual, you were right, I was wrong.
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For this reason, many are weak and sick among you and many sleep.
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See that verse that was made to become.
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If you have any sin in your life and you take communion, you're not properly discerning the Lord's body.
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That's why you're sick, you're weak and many of you are dying prematurely.
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How many of you have heard this Shaka?
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We were raised on this right.
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Yet I've known some horrible sinners that came with me to church.
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God never did the courtesy of taking them out.
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I always wondered about that.
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I always wondered.
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There were several people in the back.
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I was like Lord, if you're ever gonna do it, a first Corinthians 11, do it on that.
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And he never did.
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Here's what the apostle Paul is saying the natural way of the world.
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What happens out there, the natural cycle of life, is guess what?
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People get sick, people get weak and people die prematurely.
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That happens.
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Communion is supposed to interrupt that.
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Communion is supposed to negate that.
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Communion is supposed to protect from that.
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There is falling asleep, dying prematurely, getting weak, getting sick out there.
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But to the body of Christ in here, this should be shielded from that.
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But because they're not properly discerning the Lord's body, because they're not engaging the Lord with faith during communion, well then, that's why they're just going the way of the world.
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They're going through the natural cycle of life.
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There's nothing supernatural about their life.
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Just like a heathen.
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They're getting weak, they get sick often and some prematurely die.
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And the Lord is saying that's not my way.
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How many of you know the Lord wants you to live a full, fruitful life, all right, ah.
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My Bible says with long life he will satisfy me and show me his salvation.
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Length of days he will give to you.
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And length of days doesn't mean you exist in extra 20 years.
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No, you live thriving, vivacious, walking in divine health.
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Amen.
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Now let's keep reading.
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Isn't it amazing, same scripture and you are getting a front row seat to how we can be presented two entirely different ways.
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