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This is Pastor Daniel Stevenson. I'm director of the Southside Life Station and pastor of New Heights

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Fellowship Baptist Church of East Toledo and you're receiving this message because you opted in to be

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encouraged. I'm thinking today of Matthew 7-8. This is what it says. It says,

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for everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds and him who knocks it will be open.

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And basically Jesus is speaking here and he's making a statement about how this is essentially the way it

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works in all creation. It shouldn't really be as any surprise to us that we think that God is just

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going to visit blessings upon us in a certain area of our life if we don't ask. Even though God knows,

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yes he knows, but the fundamental bottom line of the way things work is people ask and then they

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receive. They seek and they find, they knock and it's opened. So in other words, we have a part to play.

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It's a part to play in any good thing that's going to happen in our lives. Hopelessness, depression,

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struggling will restrain us from playing that part. But remembering what this verse says will remind us

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that we can ask, we can seek and we can knock. And I would suggest asking, seeking and knocking

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first with the Lord that God would give us what it is that he truly wants for us. In fact it says

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elsewhere, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things should be added unto you. And so

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seek first the kingdom of God and you'll find it. So seek, ask, knock. That's the way the world works.

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Join us Sunday, this Sunday after service at New Heights Fellowship for our sixth anniversary. Now

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we've been going for almost 20 years but six years ago we constituted as a church at New Heights

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Fellowship Baptist Church and this Sunday afternoon after service we'll be cooking burgers on the grill,

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having cotton candy, snow cones, popcorn, some drawings and things. Join us then, probably starting

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around 2, but you're welcome to join us at service at 1130. Join us at service at 1130 if you possibly

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can and then stay. The cookout will be starting at 2. God bless you.