Transcript
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There's going to be times in your life when you believe God's prompting you in a direction or leading you to do something, and it's not going to make sense.
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You're not going to have all the answers.
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There are going to be times when you're going to have to step out or you're not going to understand what's going on.
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Well, why didn't I get the job?
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Or why did he go back to his old girlfriend?
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Or why did this happen?
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Or why did that happen?
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You're going to have to live by faith, not by facts.
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There are going to be times when you're not going to have all your questions answered.
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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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Yes, I'm so glad to see everyone.
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I love Christmas.
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How many of you went out Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving, the dreaded Black Friday?
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Only a few of you.
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You guys are getting smart.
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I appreciate that.
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I remember when everyone was getting up early because the deals were just so outrageous on Black Friday.
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You couldn't resist and it made me think to myself I'm getting ripped off 364 days a year if they can sell it that cheap on Black Friday, but every year Thanksgiving.
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I can remember still look at the ads online, the deals the stores are putting out.
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I can remember looking through the newspaper that's how old I am and you remember a newspaper.
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I have to explain after service what that is for some of you.
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You're like what is that?
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They would print the news and the newspaper would come on Thanksgiving Day and this thing was like 10 times bigger than a phone book, bigger than it was any other day of the year, because it was jam-packed full of ads.
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Everyone wanted to sell you something.
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On Black Friday the deals were amazing.
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I'd sit there pouring over there.
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I'd look at the electronics.
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I'd say I don't care about all that other stuff, let me look at the electronics.
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You remember that that's a good time.
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I'm in electronics.
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Well, I can remember several years back, nicole and the kids and I, we decided we were going to do something a little bit different on Thanksgiving than we normally do.
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Normally we spend it with a lot of family, we hang out, lots of different meals, fun, good time.
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But we were rarely thankful.
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So we decided we were going to do something different, just for us.
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We rented a cabin out in northern New Mexico that's where we lived at the time and we were actually going to go out, just us, and truly have a Thanksgiving we could be thankful for, for a change Not really, it's kind of for a change.
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And you're kind of wondering.
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You're like I don't understand, james.
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What are you saying?
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Yes, we were running and escaping from our family.
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I've told you, nicole and I, we were born and raised in Albuquerque, so all our family still resides there.
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And when I say all our family, my, both my parents are remarried, nicole's dad was remarried, we had siblings, we had grandparents, we had cousins, lots of family.
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And again, some of you are still saying, james, that sounds kind of nice.
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What's the problem with a lot of family?
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I wish I had Thanksgiving with a lot of family.
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Well, here's the important thing that I want you to understand it doesn't matter how much you actually love your family, by midday if you've been driving from house to house to house, having a full Thanksgiving meal at every house as if the others didn't exist, you got to have a heaping plate.
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My kids are car sick by halfway through.
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My stomach feels like it's going to explode.
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Every single relative is upset.
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You can't spend the entire day at their house.
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You got to go to someone else's house.
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You got the guilt trip oh, you have to go.
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Yes, we got to go.
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Oh well, you want me to fix your plate to go?
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No, I'm going to go eat 45 more turkeys.
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It was anything but a thankful time for us.
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So we decided you know what.
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We're going to get away and we're going to be thankful.
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So we rented a cabin far, far away and we told no one where we were going.
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It was a good time.
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It was right, peaceful.
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We got there up in the mountains.
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It was exactly the way it was advertised.
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This cabin had rustic construction, beautiful nature all around.
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You could smell the pine trees in the air.
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You city dwellers don't even know what that means.
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It's not the funky stench from the subway.
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This is real nature, pine trees Not the little air freshener you get from Glade and you plug in and you're like, oh no, this is real Even had a hot tub in the back.
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This place was legit.
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So we unpacked and we went out exploring.
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We went hiking, collecting flowers, just wandering around in nature.
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Nicole loves animals.
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She's like I hope I see a deer, a mountain lion and a bear.
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I said what is wrong with you?
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We will get eaten alive.
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But every time she wishes that we see it.
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So we saw a bear, a mountain lion and a deer.
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We lived to tell the tale.
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It's amazing how fast you can run when your life is on the line.
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But this place was amazing.
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The next day and a half were simply magical.
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Nothing wrong.
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We had a fire going in the wood, burning stove.
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We had a perfect Thanksgiving meal.
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Nothing could have been better.
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Incredible.
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All was right in our family, perfect peace and harmony, amazing.
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So we lay our head on the pillow that night.
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I have fullness in my heart.
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I hadn't put a single mile on the car that day I go wow, this is the way it was supposed to be.
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The pilgrims actually did it this way, I'm sure they went out in a cabin far, far away.
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Well, my daughter couldn't sleep that night, and far be it for her to suffer a sleepless night alone.
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So she had to make sure the rest of the family was awake too.
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Thank you, nichele.
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So, after a few futile attempts to get her back to sleep, staring at the ceiling for a while, I had the brilliant idea well, it's past midnight.
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Technically it's already Black Friday.
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We're already awake.
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Why don't we go wander around, see if we can find a store and see if there are any deals?
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Not the best plan I ever had, but it was a plan.
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So we got dressed, we got in the car 10, 15 miles into the closest town to where we were staying.
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We actually come across a Walmart, a Walmart in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains.
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It's 3.30 in the morning and lines are already forming outside this Walmart.
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I said, well, we're already here, let's just park the car and line up with the rest of the crazies.
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There must be something that they know, that we don't know.
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It's probably electronics.
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So we parked the car and we get in line.
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So we waited longer than we should have, in the dark, in the cold, in the parking lot of Walmart on Black Friday until they finally opened the doors.
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Now, at this point you would have thought that we were all starving people and in that Walmart was the last piece of bread on planet Earth.
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Because they started pushing and shoving to get in that Walmart like nothing I had ever seen.
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I was almost run over by an 85-year-old woman and I hadn't even made it inside yet.
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I said this is serious.
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I looked into the call.
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I said I got to get my head in the game.
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This is like no joke.
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Ok, so I got to get my game face on.
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I let my male primal instinct take over and lead me directly to the electronics department.
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That's where the action was.
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That was the good stuff.
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Right, I was so excited to get there.
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But then it was.
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I mean, man, woman, big, tall, young, old, everybody was there, all vying for the same few deals that the store decided to put out for Black Friday.
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The real fireworks began when some of the customers found out that some of the employees had put aside some laptop computers for their friends and told everyone else that they were sold out.
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Woo, you would have thought it was World War III.
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Neither side were backing down.
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It was getting serious.
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And then pushing and shoving started and I got to admit I was scared.
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All my dreams of getting next to nothing deals, they disappeared just as quickly as those laptop computers.
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We were in full blown survival mode.
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So I said all right, nicole, we got to go.
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I got the kids Get behind me.
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I threw one in the basket Nicole, get back, we are going to make a break for the doors.
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We got to get out of this place and I'm serious and so, easier said than done, they had pallets lining up in the aisles.
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This had to be a fire hazard.
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We should get the New York fire marshal in there.
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And it's going to say how do you have pallets in the middle of the aisle?
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How can people get out?
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This is a fire hazard.
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But there were pallets everywhere, merchandise people, wall to wall.
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Everywhere you looked I could not get out of there.
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This was do or die.
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I was terrified.
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So I pushed with everything in me and I do not know how many people I ran over that day in Walmart to get out, but somehow I survived and we got out of that Walmart.
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And I learned three things for sure that day.
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The first is if you are or know someone that day that I ran over in that Walmart.
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I'm sorry, but it was them or me and I wanted to live to see my family grow up.
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Ok, I apologize.
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The second thing is I got some of the cheapest TVs I've ever seen in my whole life.
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I mean ridiculously cheap.
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That was a good time.
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But the third and most important is I learned that I'm never going to go shopping on Black Friday for the rest of my life.
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Nothing worked out the way I had planned Absolutely nothing.
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Has anyone ever been there when you had a great idea, you thought this is going to be so good, we're having a great Thanksgiving, I'm going to go out and get some deals at Walmart.
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And on Black Friday and the mountains in the middle of nowhere, who's going to be there?
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Well, apparently the whole planet showed up in the mountains of New Mexico at the Walmart at 3.30 in the morning.
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I don't know where they all came from.
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They shipped them in on a bus or something.
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Well, nothing turned out the way Mary and Joseph thought it would that very first Christmas either.
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They had their plans, their hopes and their dreams and it didn't quite turn out the way they thought it would.
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You remember Mary and Joseph?
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They were engaged to get married.
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They lived in a little town called Nazareth Heard of Nazareth, not Pennsylvania, it was a place back in the Middle East.
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There were only about 300 people that lived in Nazareth a little tiny hole in the wall.
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No one ever went to Nazareth unless you knew somebody and they really twisted your arm to make you go there because you did not want to go to Nazareth.
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I was going to be really mean in the name of Barrow that no one wants to go to.
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But some of you are going to be like, hey, that's my Barrow, I'm just kidding.
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But no one wanted to go to Nazareth.
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But that's where these two people lived.
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The Bible tells us Mary and Joseph were engaged to be married and back in the first century you actually would have arranged marriages, right?
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They didn't have Christianminglecom or eHarmony, right.
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The mom and the dad would actually, when you were about two or three years old, they would make an arrangement as to who you were going to marry.
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That's pretty interesting, isn't it?
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You guys wish we did that today.
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I thought that was kind of sad, until I had a daughter of my own.
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I said, ooh, I kind of like this idea.
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Now that might be kind of a good deal.
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I'll tell you one thing you grow up kind of knowing who your kid's going to marry.
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You can watch them, you can flick them on the back of the head when they make stupid decisions and nobody can do anything about it.
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It's like, hey, we have a contract.
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You know what I mean.
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Dating is brutal Broken hearts, broken promises, broken dreams and forget man having to ask a girl out.
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That's a rough time right there.
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I'm glad we're not dating, I'm glad we're already married.
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You know what I'm saying.
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Thank you, I survived it.
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Once, I tell you, there was a teenage boy who was actually giving his mom an update as to how it was going with a girl he liked at school.
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He said mom, I really think she's starting to warm up to me.
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She said well, why do you think that, son?
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He said well, this last time, when I asked her out, she said this is the last time I'm going to tell you.
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No.
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There was a grandfather with his grandson sitting out on the porch.
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He said Tommy, do you have a girlfriend?
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Gross grandpa, I don't want a girlfriend.
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You ran off to play baseball.
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Well, there was a little girl in the porch next door just kind of smiling.
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She looked at the grandfather.
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She said they're always the last to know.
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Dating is rough.
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But there were three stages to the marriage process in the first century.
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The first is the engagement.
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The child was arranged at about two or three years old by the parents of the bride and the groom.
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The parents would make this arrangement.
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The parents of the boy would pay the parents of the daughter a sum of money to compensate for the loss of their daughter.
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Again, since now I have a daughter, I kind of like that idea.
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I also have a son, so I don't know if I like that idea.
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The second stage was called the betrothal stage and this was when the kids were about 13 years old.
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They would get prepared to spend the rest of their life together.
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The young man would bring a cup of wine to the young girl's house and, in full view of all of her family, he would present this cup to her.
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He was signifying with the giving of the cup that he would lay his life down for her.
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Now her, if she received the cup and drank from it.
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That was signifying that she would be willing to lay her life down for him as well.
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Once this took place, the young man would tell the young girl I'm going to go back to my dad's house, I'm going to prepare a place for us.
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He would build an addition on to dad's house for them to live.
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He said I'm going to work day and night, tirelessly.
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It's not going to take me long, and when I'm done I'm going to come back and I'm going to take you as my wife.
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The third stage was when the young man had finished this addition on to daddy's house.
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He would come back and he would take her as his wife and they'd have the wedding ceremony.
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Now look at what Jesus said in John chapter 14.
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I love this.
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He said my father's house has many rooms.
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If that were not so, why would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you?
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And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me so that you may also be where I am.
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I think that's pretty incredible that right now, jesus is preparing a place for us, you and me.
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If we're Christians, if we've trusted him, we'd profess him.
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He's preparing a place for us and we just kind of gloss over that and they're like oh, that's awesome, man, we're going to be in heaven with Jesus one day, woohoo.
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But Nicola and I we've built several houses over the course of our years together and there's not a lot of new construction up here in the Northeast.
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Everything's really old.
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So you might not relate to what I'm saying, but down in the South we build a lot of new stuff all the time.
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You just go find some dirt and you build something.
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So every time we would pour concrete we would put our initials and maybe a Bible verse and the concrete and it would just kind of be memorialized there forever.
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We'd be framing up the walls and before we put up the sheet rock we'd sign it, put the date, we'd put a Bible verse or something before we put it up.
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That's kind of built into the foundation of the home that Christ is the center and we kind of left our mark and that's kind of fun.
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And I think what if Jesus is writing my initials on the inside of the mansion he's building for me?
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He's preparing it.
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He's like oh, james, I'm going to leave you a special note you're going to find when you get here.
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You're going to blow your mind.