Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you.
Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations with your host, Ben and Spencer.
Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through the powerful lens of love.
In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing fresh insights and gaining
deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith in practical ways.
So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love in the context of the
Bible intersect to transform our lives.
Love and context.
We're back for another episode.
And I am Ben and that is not Spencer.
Not Spencer.
My name is not Spencer.
Not Spencer.
Brian Qualls is joining us one more time because as Spencer put it, scheduling in summers
is stupid.
Yeah.
And so he is just not we're we're we're trying to get some content created and getting the
three of us together was very difficult.
But Brian, you're back here again.
And I mean, I had fun last time.
I'm glad to be here.
Yeah, we'll see if we have fun this time.
So we are in week two of our mini series in the Book of James.
We're going to be going through chapter the rest of chapter one through the end of chapter
two, I believe today.
And so last week, we talked about this idea of in the middle of trials, it's actually
meant to produce you producing you a more Christ like version of everything that you
are.
God's creating you into the be the kind of person that he wants you to be.
And that in the process of this, we seek wisdom.
God brings us wisdom that is going to help us to focus on the good things, the things
that actually bring life and not to focus on the temporary things that are going to
fade away.
Because those are those are going to be problematic in our life.
Right.
And so we talked about how finding unity and finding ways to work together and work through
our disagreements is a is a more helpful use of our time than just dividing over things.
Right.
Which is great because we're getting into the back half of chapter one, which there
is some really fun things about that.
Yeah.
James really kind of hones in on that, you know, right living what that looks like.
So then once before we get into we're going to start reading the the rest of chapter one.
So reminder, this is James, the brother of Jesus, and he is writing to the Jewish people
in the Dyspora.
And so he's writing to people who are familiar with Torah.
So we're always going to reference back to this idea of what's going on in Jewish tradition
because he's doing a lot of it.
Right.
All right.
So you've got the rest of chapter one.
Yep.
This is out of the NIV for all my NIV lovers.
It says my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this.
Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry because human
anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
Therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept
the word planted in you, which can save you.
Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says.
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks
at his face in a mirror.
And after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it,
not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it, they will be blessed in what they do.
Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues
deceive themselves and their religion is worthless.
Understand that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this to look after orphans
and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
So many of those pieces we're reading and I'm like, ah, you got me.
You know, he's talking to me.
Yeah, he's talking to me here.
I'm one of the 12 tribes.
So before we get into chapter two, because it's going to be built on everything that
came in chapter one, let's talk about this idea of the tongue and taming the tongue and
about removing like living in a way that lives up to the calling.
So the using speech wisely is a major emphasis in Jewish tradition and literature.
It's a major emphasis referencing the tongue and how you use speech is a huge proponent
of like Jewish tradition, right?
Ethical teaching.
It's exemplified in teachings like the proverbs, like making sure that you're controlling your
speech.
In fact, if we have listeners who are really familiar with the proverbs, you probably have
them rattling off in your head as James is like reading or going through that passage,
but he extorts them to be quick to hear and slow to speak, which is aligned with like
the Jewish mentality of humility, restraint and careful speech.
I tend to be quick to speak and slow to listen.
I don't know if you suffer from that affliction.
Sometimes I think my wife would probably say I'm definitely, I struggle with that affliction.
I'm getting better at it.
But learning to like, I was talking to a friend of mine and we were having this discussion
about when you're listening to people and you're having discussions about things you
disagree on.
And I said, I'm trying to get better about learning to listen to hear and not to respond.
Active listening, right?
Yeah, I'm listening to hear what you're saying, even if I disagree with it, not to respond
with what I think you should think.
Sure.
Right.
This is a very difficult thing.
And at least this has been my experience in Christian conversation.
When I'm having conversations on things that we disagree about in scripture, I have, there
is a tendency to listen to respond about why you're wrong, not listen to why somebody believes
something.
Right.
So when they have a perspective on, you know, we just did the spiritual gifts, so let's
just say tongues, right?
Somebody has a perspective on tongues rather than immediately going to what I believe about
it and why I believe in from scripture.
When somebody has their, their specific perspective, it's better for me to be able to sit here
and listen about why do you believe this and then be able to ask questions to clarify.
Like, so where in scripture do you find this?
And so how do you apply that into how you love God and love other people?
You know, you start having this conversation because I have found with conversations with
friends of mine, and even you and I have had these things where I'll say something and
you're like, is, did you mean this?
I was like, Nope, not what I meant at all.
Can be interpreted wrongly.
And, and so like being able to go a little bit deeper and have these conversations and
having that active listening makes a big difference.
Active listening, listening to understand people would probably cure 70% of the divisions
we have in the body of Christ.
Amen.
Yeah.
I think what it comes down to, we talked about it last time relationship, right?
It's not a relationship for me to go, no, you're wrong.
And this is why you're wrong.
And this is why you should believe what I believe.
Right?
Relationship is help me understand that more.
Right?
That's what Jesus did.
Jesus asked questions all the time, all the time.
You know, it's a very Jewish thing to do.
Yeah.
And we should, we should do a better job of that because that's, that's going to build
bridges, not walls, right?
It's going to show people that we're willing to come to the table, even if we disagree
because we love each other in Christ, you know, and we're going to build a relationship
and try to hopefully build some understanding even though we disagree.
Right.
This, this contrast also with this, uh, quick to hear, slow to, slow to speak.
This also contrasts with being what he says, doers of the word, right?
Not, not merely, not merely listeners.
Like you're not just listening to what the word has to say.
You actually do it.
Um, I've made a statement on the podcast a number of times and I'm going to make it again.
If your theology doesn't lead to do ology, it's not worth having.
Yeah.
Like your theology, cause I, there's a lot of my friends who are, um, there are, I'm
going to call them intellectual Christians because they, they engage God from an intellectual
perspective and there's nothing wrong with that.
Right.
God makes people differently.
My wife engages God from an emotional side.
Right.
And, um, I'm going to pause there because I feel like the implication is that the people
who are intellectual don't have emotions and that's not what I mean, but it's not their
primary way that they engage with God.
Um, other people engage God by being in nature, right?
Um, like there are just different ways that God speaks to people, but the intellectual
side of people, they say, well, I need to get this theological idea like succinct and
like I'm right.
And it's a hundred percent like dialed in.
And I was like, okay, but how does that translate to what you do?
Because if I say that it's really important that we theologically understand how to love
God and love other people.
And then I'm terrible to my neighbor.
Then what I believe doesn't actually matter because it's not showing up in what I do.
You can say you love your neighbor as much as you want, but if you, your actions dictate
that you hate your neighbor, it's not true.
Um, this is coming back to first John, where he says, if you claim to be in a light, but
you hate your brother, the truth is in in you.
Right.
And, uh, and I don't want to caution us and, and this is me, I'm talking to myself here,
like just so you know, I'm talking to myself.
This is a thing that I struggle with.
Um, my theology should actually probably be a different kind of person.
And if it doesn't, then that's, that's the whole, it's on my side.
It's not on God's side.
Holy spirit is in me and ready to do it.
I don't need to simply be a hearer of the word.
I need to be a doer of the word.
I need to bring justice, care for widows, care for orphans, care for these people who
are downtrodden man.
That's one of the reasons I love the salvation army.
You guys are, you're standing right in the middle of like chaos.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And, and when we ask for transformation in our lives, it's being conduits of the Holy
Spirit.
A conduit doesn't just, it's not a, not a battery, right?
It's a channel, right?
We are channeling God's spirit into us and through us.
And that's where transformation comes, right?
One of the interesting things, I actually preached on this yesterday, kind of in preparation
to you, this word here in the Hebrew is Shema.
Right?
So it's a callback to Deuteronomy, right?
The Shema, the Lord or God is one.
Israel, Adonai, Eloheinu.
Exactly.
And you know, the Jews would have heard this, right?
Don't just be hearers of the word, be doers, because in Jewish thought, hearing and doing
cannot be divorced.
Right.
Shema literally means to hear and obey.
Right.
Like to hear, you obey.
Right.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind,
right?
And so being, you can't divorce that from hearing the word.
You have to also do that part of it.
Well, and in parenthood, we understand this because when you talk to your child and you
say, you say, hey, do you hear me?
You're not actually asking if they hear you, right?
You're like, are you actually going to do something with what I'm saying?
Right?
Yeah.
Like, so yeah.
And so like it's this idea of Shema, right?
It comes back to the Hebrew.
Obviously, this is Greek in the New Testament, but it comes back to this Hebrew idea of Shema.
And they would have been very familiar with that.
Right.
And to them, they're one, they're two sides of the same coin.
Yeah.
I cannot say that I hear God if I don't obey God.
Yeah.
It doesn't work that way.
Right.
So and that's how we have to live.
That's what, you know, James is calling us to here in this passage is to live that way.
Yeah.
And this idea, because right before this, he's talked about you receiving these gifts
from God.
So if you have received from God, it should manifest itself in your life in such a way
that you actually live differently.
So one of the things that I've had conversations with Pentecostals, non-Pentecostal alike,
because we just came out of spiritual gifts, is I said, when you are filled with the Spirit
of God, your life should be different.
And I said, so one of the, one of the evidence is now not the evidence.
I want to really specify this because there's always nuance to a conversation.
One of the evidences that God has moved in your life and that the Spirit of God manifested
itself in your life is you are different moving forward.
So when somebody is filled with the Holy Spirit and they speak in tongues, or they're filled
with the Holy Spirit and they lay hands and heal, or they fill out the Holy Spirit and
they speak the words that God has prophetically over somebody's life, your life should be
different too.
It is a, it is a, because you can't interact with the Spirit of God in your life, stay
exactly the same.
There should be a difference.
Like the theology is now moving into duology.
Your orthodoxy is now orthopraxy.
Yeah.
And this idea of like, yes, they're all connected.
Like these aren't separate ideas.
So like we put things into chapters and verses.
But James didn't write these as chapters and verses.
They're complete ideas that are connecting to each other.
The book of James is a single message, single letter, single letter, written meant to be
read, read and understood in one segment.
Now we're breaking it into six because it'd be hard for us to just cover all of what he
has to say in one episode, but we want to make sure you understand these are all connected.
One of the things I really thought is interesting that James does is, you know, he says, and
my mom would say it this way.
You got two ears and one mouth, right?
Yeah.
So you can listen twice as much as you speak.
And he says, be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.
And because anger is one of those emotions that you could do really dumb things when
you're angry.
Yep.
You know, you could feel like you are justified in what you're doing because you're angry
about it.
And so it's so important.
There's nothing wrong with being angry, right?
It's an emotion, right?
It's what you do with it.
Well, because can I ask you this question?
Is anger sin?
No.
What you do with anger can easily become sin.
Correct.
So, and I always specify this for people because they make a statement in the Bible that says
in your anger, do not sin.
Right.
Okay.
So that means it's possible to be angry and not sin.
Correct.
Anger is an emotion.
It is something that is welling up inside of you, usually against what is perceived
or is actual injustice.
What you do with that matters.
We saw recently in America, sometimes people went and they broke buildings and let things
on fire and they looted and they were feeling a real emotion.
But what they did with their anger was they brought destruction.
But in the middle of that, there were people in the middle who were very angry about what
was going on.
And they stepped in and they created and they brought peace and they brought justice and
they brought mercy and they brought relief and they brought Shabbat, this restful shalom,
right?
Into people's life.
From a place of anger because they were so, they were so like in their spirit, they rose
up.
Now, there has been times in my life that I've had that I was to say, honestly, most
of the time it's the looting was more wet, wet happens in my anger.
I get frustrated and I'm like, I'm going to throw this phone across the room.
Well, that's my destructive.
And that's absolutely sin.
It's also such opportunity for us to reflect, right?
I remember Jesus makes a statement about, don't be a hypocrite.
If you got a plank in your eye, stop trying to take the speck out of your brother's eye.
Just take care of the speck, then you can actually see to help them.
And this, this, uh, this work that God does in us through trials to refine us and to change
us, um, it, it, it should allow you for some self-respect.
But if you are, uh, just a listener of the word and not a doer of the word, if it doesn't
actually change things to you, it's like you went and looked in the mirror and you're like,
Hey, I have mud all over my face.
Well, wish I had a mirror to see where I could fix that.
I'm going to walk away.
Right?
And in a sense you're at the mirror, fix your face.
Right?
And, uh, what, what, what this work does is says, Hey, I have issues or places that I
need to change so that I can be a different kind of person.
I, I was quick to listen.
I was slow to speak.
I looked in this mirror and I said, Oh God, there's something here that you need to change.
It's time for me to stop and actually allow you to do this in my life.
Otherwise, this is going to be a problem.
It's really hard when you see the problem and then you're like, I'm good.
I'm good.
Yeah.
Like that's where things start to take root.
And uh, I mean, you know, as well as I do, I mean, you've met people where the, where
sin has taken root in their life.
Yeah.
Even people that know the Bible really well, people who love Jesus and they let something
take root in their life.
Um, offense tends to be the big one.
You got offended by something and you let it simmer and you know that you're not supposed
to just sit there in offense, but you let it simmer and it just, it's been eating you
inside.
I actually, um, I went to a church and uh, lovely people love the Lord, but they had
an offense from like 30 years ago.
Right.
And it still painted everything that they did.
Right.
And my wife actually physically had a problem with her leg.
Now here's the crazy thing.
Cause I'm referencing back to something where pastor Sarah and I talked about healing when
she uncovered this reality of this deep rooted sin, this deep rooted offense.
And she, she didn't like, um, I don't want to point out like it didn't overnight change,
but she recognized it was there and she started working with, like asking Jesus to work this
out of her life.
Right.
To be a doer of the word saying, I don't want this in my life and it's going to be a process,
but I'm ready to print this and, and cut this out.
Right.
Do you know her legs started getting better?
Nobody praying for it.
No, no, no healing prayers.
But like when the, when the emotional brokenness started coming out of her life, her physical
body started to respond.
Yeah.
I wonder, sorry.
No, I have a personal story along those lines.
Where, you know, kind of sinfulness can manifest physically.
In my youth, you know, I had a really bad porn addiction and, um, as do most men.
Um, I also struggled with the same thing.
Yeah.
And one of the things that, uh, one day we're playing football with some friends cause I
like sports and I hurt my foot really badly.
My hurt, my foot hurt probably for six months after that.
Um, either plantar fasciitis or something like that.
Literally getting up every morning was hurting.
And at that same time, God was working on my heart to get rid of this issue in my life.
And so I met with, I had ghosted a couple of ministries that I was a part of, like in
the middle of all that, cause of things that were going on and got put on my heart to go
apologize to them.
And so I, um, did that with one of them and then, um, I had to walk from that location
to the other guy's house, which was probably like two miles from where I was at.
And, you know, of course my foot hurt the whole way.
I sit down with him.
I confess, I share with him, you know, this is, this is why I ghosted.
And you know, I had this sin in my life.
I felt like a hypocrite, all these things.
When I got up from that couch, my foot didn't hurt anymore.
Yeah.
And it was this, this, you know, I was moving towards the calling that God has on my life
now.
Right.
And, um, it was an opportunity for me to not walk into that calling stumbling, right?
But to be able to stand up right and be able to walk confidently knowing that I've been
forgiven and that, you know, that, that my sin is not the end.
Right.
Um, but I, I, you know, for sure, sinfulness, I think manifests physically and forgiveness
manifests physically.
Yeah.
And, uh, I want to caveat here because some people are here might hear us say that, uh,
you're sick because you're holding on to sin and that's not what we're saying.
Not at all.
Um, that can be the case, but that does not mean that's the case.
We also live in a fallen world, right?
Where, um, suffering is inevitable.
Yeah.
Right.
Uh, if Jesus Christ, the son of God suffered and we're called to follow in his stead, we're
going to suffer too.
Like, that's just part of it.
Right.
And we're on behalf of bringing the kingdom into the world.
Right.
Um, but some suffering we bring on ourselves.
For sure.
I have, I have definitely like, and it's been many, many times and sometimes we'll talk
about it, but, um, we'll talk about more about it, but there's been times that I've prayed
for people and physically they are healed because they let go of something spiritually.
I often wonder how much baggage people are dragging around with them.
Um, so there is a, there is a, I'm not sure if this is a spiritual gift, so I'm just going
to go ahead and just tell people right up front.
Uh, I'm not theologically claiming this, but I'm just telling about the way that God works
in my life.
When I meet people and I shake their hand, often I can, I, I can sense like this, like
I'm going to call it a cloud above them.
And there are some people who are very nice people that have really dark clouds and like,
and I, and God uses that for me to start praying into their life, right.
And praying into their life and investing in them and, and helping them find then.
And I didn't think anything of it until what has been happening repeatedly is like these
people come and like these people have really dark clouds and they're like, yeah, I have
X in my life.
I have this in my life and it gives me the opportunity to actually, um, bring healing
from the spirit to them.
Right.
It would be really easy for me to use that to be manipulative.
I was like, it's not meant for me.
It's meant for me to be a conduit of grace into their life, which is always what the
spiritual gift is for.
It's not for me.
It's for the church to build them up according to what they need.
And uh, but it is, I, I've met so many people and like, and sometimes I'm like, I'm like,
oh, you know, maybe I'm being a little like, you know, hard or whatever.
And then something comes out and I'm like, oh, this is what God was warning me about.
Now I need to go and invest in this person's life.
Right.
And I I'm praying into them and I'm investing.
And sometimes I've done it well.
And sometimes I've done it not very well, you know, but like this, I'm, I'm listening,
hearing God's voice, coming back to our spiritual gifts idea.
Right.
And then I am evaluating this wisdom that God's giving me.
Is this the right situation to use it?
And then I speak the words of God into people's life.
And then I don't just partner with the word in my ears, but it actually manifests itself
into what I do.
Yeah.
And I love in John 15, where Jesus has this conversation.
He says, I am the vine and you are the branches.
If a man remains in me and I in him, he's going to bear fruit.
This idea of connecting to the spirit of God, if you are connected to the word, the word
being Christ, it's going to show up in what you do.
The better.
And if it doesn't, I got news for you.
You're connected to something.
It's probably just not Jesus.
Yeah.
And it's going to manifest itself in things like the spirit, like love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithless, general self-control.
And in his part, his conversation, James is having with the Jews is going to show up in
chapter two, these, these things.
So he's going to talk about partiality and favoritism.
Right.
So let's actually get in there.
I'm going to pull that up and read that my brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious
Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.
Because a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes and a poor man
and filthy old clothes also comes in.
If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, here's a good seat for
you, but say to the poor man, you stand there or you sit on the floor by my feet.
Have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes
of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him,
but you have dishonored the poor.
It is not the rich who is it not the rich who are exploiting you?
Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?
Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him who to whom you belong?
If you really keep the royal law found in scripture, love your neighbor as yourself.
You are doing right.
But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers for whoever
keeps the whole law and yet stumbles on just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
For he who said you shall not commit adultery also said you shall not murder.
If you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom because
judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
Mercy triumphs over judgment.
Amen.
Okay.
So there's a lot of verses in there that I've heard people take out of context, right?
But the big thing is don't show partiality in the love of God.
Right?
When you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is not one person who is more
valuable than another.
Period.
Yeah, I was like, I was going to I was going to qualify and I'm like, no, just period.
This is prime for you to talk about because of working with the Salvation Army.
You have a lot of people who are either homeless, unemployed or coming from really bad backgrounds.
Yeah.
So one of the people might recognize the uniforms that we wear.
One of the reasons why those came about is because we had kind of disparity in our churches
in the early or late 1800s when the Salvation Army started.
You had people from very low economic status.
You had people from middle and high economic status.
And so to kind of eliminate some of that propensity towards favoritism, that's part of the reason
why the uniforms were adopted was to create that uniformity between people so that it
didn't matter what station of life you were in, you belong to the family of God.
Right.
You know, and of course that could be accomplished and that is accomplished in other churches
without the uniform all the time.
But it's so true that it's so easy, I think, for us to look at people with and think we
need to treat them better or differently.
And part of that's our culture, right?
We have hero worship, we have star worship, and it bleeds into our churches.
Oh, all the time.
Yeah.
Well, and so James's warning is not a new thing.
And once again, I want to point out, like we talked about last week, he's not actually
talking about wealth in general.
He's talking about what wealth does to people.
Right?
Because he's talking about these people who drag people into court.
There's a lot of healthy people who never drag anybody into court.
Right?
There's a lot of people who are incredibly generous.
And in fact, the ministry of Jesus himself was accomplished by wealthy women, like it
was funded by wealthy women, not accomplished by, it was funded by wealthy women who gave
money for Jesus to go and spread the word.
Right?
So money is not bad in and of itself.
That what money can do where you show partiality is a problem.
And it's not a new thing because in the Old Testament, in the prophets, like they were
always rebuking the leaders and people in general for perverting justice and by showing
favoritism to the wealthy or powerful.
There's passages like Isaiah 10, one through two, Amos five, 11 through 12, Micah three,
nine through 11.
And they say things like, you're turning aside the needy in the gate, right?
This place where people come for food and for protection, you're turning aside the needy
or you make the ephah small and the shekel great.
Right?
His exhortation is like, you can't show impartiality.
You got to bring righteousness to all of the world.
The Jewish tradition places a high value of care and concern for the poor, the widow,
the orphan and the outsider.
Right?
Because once they were this when they were in Egypt, right?
And it gives numerous positions to protect the vulnerable and ensure that their basic
needs are met.
Talking about like the laws of gleaning, right?
There's the Sabbath year, there's Jubilee, right?
All these like provisions so that the poor don't stay poor, the downtrodden don't stay
downtrodden.
Uh, and by condemning the partiality towards the rich, rich James is actually upholding
the Jewish tradition that's been around for thousands of years, but it's always being
misused.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
Uh, even in Deuteronomy, um, Jesus makes, or God makes a statement and Jesus picks it
up later.
It says you will always have poor among you, which is something that Jesus quotes to them.
Mm hmm.
Therefore don't have a tight fist is essentially what he talks about in Deuteronomy.
Always have your hands open to lend to those who need it to give food for those who need
it.
Jesus makes a statement.
He says, you're always going to have the poor among you, but you won't always have
me among you.
So don't begrudge them this gift.
Right?
Now I've had people say to me when they interpret that they say, Oh, well, Jesus is saying that
service of above for him is more important than having the serving the poor.
It's like, no, he's saying that he's not physically going to be there.
The guy who can make food and heal people, he's not physically going to be there all
the time.
So it's okay to glorify Jesus.
You still need to have an open hand.
Right?
And by doing so, you, you glorified Jesus.
Yeah.
You, you make much of him when you are that way.
I think it's an axe, I was reading about it or preaching on it a couple of weeks ago.
You know, they, it talks about the early church taking care of their own, you know, and how
Barnabas sold everything so that he could give back to those that were needy in the
church.
Right?
And, and I, it's such a huge, it's something here in our community that we're, you know,
kind of forced to really look at right now.
There's people that are very needy and they have a lot less resources right now.
And what are we going to do as a church to help those?
You know, we can't always rely on government.
It's not always the best option to take care of people.
Nor should we rely on government.
Nor should we.
Yeah.
You know, the churches should be stepping up to do more of that, you know, and especially
in a place, in a state like we are today, where in a lot of other communities too, the
government fails people in need because that's not their first concern.
That should be the church's first concern.
And there is, there is a, the other side of that is like, you can't help people who don't
want to be better.
For sure.
There's nothing you can do about it.
You can still feed them.
You can still try to give them a dry place to sleep.
You can't help people who want, don't want to be any better.
I agree.
I, most of the time when I'm running into people having that conversation, that's not
where they're falling on the spectrum where they're already trying to love people.
And they're like, listen, they don't want to be any better.
And so when it, when they want to, I'm available, right?
It's usually that's an excuse to never get involved or love people well to begin with.
Sure.
And so don't find yourself there.
Yeah.
Like that's definitely a partiality.
In fact, James actually, he says he mentions the royal law, which is by the way, referencing
back to Jesus, having this conversation of Lord your God with all your hearts, soul,
mind and strength.
The second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself.
Right?
The law and the prophets hang on these two commands.
Once again, referring back to Torah.
Now love your neighbor as yourself shows up where?
Leviticus 19, 18.
Right?
And that's in the middle of this section about how to love people that are, uh, you're going
to be in, in the middle of a bunch of people that don't believe what you believe.
Right?
You gotta love your neighbor as yourself.
And you actually got to live a different way to put a different kind of kingdom on display,
which is what Leviticus is talking about.
If you, um, if you go back to our episode, the heart of Leviticus, we talk about this
and that we're called to live in a different way in the midst of a people who don't live
this way.
Right.
It's holiness, right?
It's holy.
Being set apart, set apart.
Yeah.
And it's a word that people are going to, Oh, you know, like that's a lot of time when
people think holiness, they think solemn.
And I was like, but holiness is jubilant and it's filled with joy.
I was like, but God is holy.
Why?
Because there's nothing else like God.
Right?
Like God is unique in and of himself.
So if we're going to be holy, like he's holy, then we gotta be unlike anything else that
the world naturally perpetuates itself towards.
So when people slap us in the face, we administer justice.
When we see people who are hungry, we take out of our pantries and we feed them.
When we see people who are broken, we find some glue and we glue them back together.
Right?
Metaphorically, don't be putting super glue on people.
Yeah.
I mean, it was designed for that.
That's why they made super glue to begin with.
But like this, this whole thing of partiality is like, you're, it's not the sick or it's
not the healthy who need a doctor.
Right.
It's the sick.
And so when you're showing partiality to somebody because you think that their life is put together,
that is not the gospel.
The gospel is that we're going to take it to the poorest and the brokenest and like
the people who are seeking the kingdom.
And yes, the people who are rich are welcome into, well, sometimes the broken, the most
broken people are the rich people.
Yeah.
But we're not showing partiality because of their wealth or because of their knowledge
or because of their music ability.
Yeah.
Oh, I hit somebody.
I hit somebody in the church on that one, right?
Where you're like, uh, Spencer actually talks about this a lot because he's a drummer.
Right.
And uh, when he goes to churches, he, he comes there and he's like, yes, I can.
And no, I won't.
Right.
Because, you know, you got to, the second they come in, they're like, oh, you play drums?
Oh, your wife plays piano.
Oh, you can teach the Bible.
Oh, you like youth.
Oh, you have kids.
So you're cool with like teaching kids, right?
No.
Oh, oh, you're a janitor.
Oh, you know, we, we really need some help cleaning.
Oh, you're a contractor.
We have some broken things around here that we'd love for you to fix.
And all of those things are totally fine for people to be involved in.
Like, please don't miss here.
Like I'm not saying if you are good with kids or your contract, you can absolutely use those
in the, in the church to serve God.
Right.
But we should have barriers to the boundaries too.
Right.
But the partiality is, is like, I need to see you as a person and not for what you can
give to me transactional.
Yeah.
I'm not going to bring the kingdom of God into your life, not seeing what you can do
for me.
Yeah.
Like that's, that's the thing about partiality is that it starts to actually feed my selfishness
rather than actually feeding into the kingdom of God.
So learning how to not have bias, not have partiality, not have an ism.
I'm just going to, there's a lot of isms is actually learning how to treat people the
way that God sees them.
I remember I had this conversation and our non-Pentecostal friends are going to have
a little bit more issue with this, but that's okay.
You guys, you haven't shut me off yet, so you'll be probably okay.
And I was, I was having, I was praying for somebody and I was talking to them and God
was working in their life.
And as they were talking and they were talking about how they're seeking God, I had this
vision, this kind of open vision of like their eyes turning into like fire, but I knew like
the fire eyes were of Jesus.
I said, I feel like what God is saying and, and, you know, take this, you know, with a
grain of salt is that if you could see yourself the way he sees you, you would not treat yourself
so poorly.
You would recognize that you're valuable and that you're not supposed to stay this way
because it's going to break you, but he loves you and he wants you to be something else.
And, and, um, the person I was talking to, they're like, they're like, they started balling,
right?
Because I said, like, God has been talking to them about this and this and this, but
they say, I refused to look like I always see myself as my, my brokenness and my failures
as I, God doesn't care about your brokenness and failures.
He can fix those.
He wants you, he can redeem those.
He can redeem those.
He wants you to let it go and follow after him.
Right.
Um, so often in here is of the word we're like, man, I recognize that my life is not
right.
You're talking about with your porn addiction, right?
You went and you apologized and you said, I'm not, I don't want to be this way.
I'm going to start walking a different way.
And it actually started to manifest itself.
Your life started to put itself together in a different way.
And the thing that, that, that pastor, that youth pastor had said to me that really kind
of hit me and allowed for that redeeming this to come.
He said, Brian, I choose to see the best of you.
You know, I choose to see past those things.
And he, you know, he listed things that he had seen me do with the youth and stuff like
that.
Right.
And that was like the turning point for transformation.
When somebody saw past my mistakes and saw who I could be, even though at that time I
couldn't see it.
Yeah.
That's what we need to do for others.
I, uh, one of the hardest things that we do as Christians is looking past the faults
of others to find the gold.
Yeah.
Find where Jesus is working and like brush away the dirt, pull that forward and allow
it to transform like their life.
Right now I want to specify, this is not just us.
We're working with the Holy spirit.
This is him actually working through us into other people's lives.
Right.
But we have to be receptive and willing participants conduits, right?
We got to connect to the right spigot, right?
And allow his spirit to flow through us.
But looking for the golden people that we feel like are irredeemable.
Right.
Like that is going to change drastically how you interact with people.
And, and James is, is he has some very harsh words because they feel harsh because he's
speaking to a Jewish audience who knows what he's talking about.
He's like, guys, this is Torah.
You know this, you're not supposed to show people partiality because it got a bunch of
money just because you're in Greco Roman culture.
It doesn't mean you suddenly get to treat them different, right?
Just because they have high status because of their money, just because they have fancy
jewelry, just because they have, you know, XYZ titles or whatever.
Yeah.
Like that's not how God has ever worked.
True blessing comes from obedience and following after Adonai or as a, as a gentiles would
call him Yahweh, right?
Represented in the person of Yeshua, Jesus, like this is, this is where blessing flows
from and it might be physical blessing.
It might be financial blessing it, but it's definitely going to be spiritual and life
giving blessing.
Right.
Yeah.
And which is arguably the best blessing we can have.
Yeah.
I like that kind of blessing.
Yeah.
So then let's, let's jump into chapter two.
And if you read chapter two, I think we actually started, we're going to do 14 through 26.
So this is going to be the crux of our conversation because this partiality, this is going to
talk about then this faith, this trusting in Jesus is actually going to do something
in our life.
Yeah.
Right.
And I love, he starts off again, brothers and sisters.
He does that a lot.
He's like, brothers and sisters, by the way.
So I'm saying to you, my brothers and sisters, what good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone claims to have faith, but has no deeds, can such faith save them?
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.
If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about
their physical needs, what good is it?
And the same way faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead, but someone
will say, you have faith and I have deeds.
Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds.
I feel like that's a mic drop moment.
You believe that there is one God.
Good.
Even the demons believe that and they shutter.
You foolish person.
Do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?
Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac
on the altar?
You see that his faith and his actions were working together and his faith was made complete
by what he did.
And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was credit to
him as righteousness.
And as he was called God's friend, you see that a person is considered righteous by what
they do and not by faith alone.
In the same way was not even rehab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when
she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction as the body without
the spirit is dead.
So faith without deeds is dead.
Yeah, that was definitely a mic drop or at least a papyrus drop moment.
I don't know what kind of paper they were using.
So like somebody somebody is going to be like, actually they used a composite.
That's fine.
That's totally fine.
I know if you correct me, I will apologize in the next episode.
You know, so I love that.
So one of the things that James does here, which I think is really helpful because he's
talking to the Jewish people, he takes Abraham, right?
Father of faith, like he is Father Abraham.
He had many sons, many sons had father.
Okay.
But so Abraham, the founding father of the faith, right?
He is the one who God says, you know, go to the land that I'm going to show you.
We have a lot of episodes in Abraham.
He says he believed God and it was credited him as righteousness.
God said that Isaac is going to be the child of promise.
But he also said, you need to go on the mountain and sacrifice Isaac.
And he's like, okay, well, I don't know how that's going to work, but somehow you maybe
will bring Isaac back to life, whatever.
And one of the hardest moments he goes and does this.
And we talked about in that episode how God is actually showing Abraham that he's not
like every other God he's encountered.
Every other God is going to require your children of you like your firstborn.
It was going to have all of these things, but God is the God who's actually going to
step in and walk the path twice.
If you go back to our episode where we talk about the blood path and connected to the
Baymah teaching, this thing is that when God actually gives a promise to Abraham, this
smoking fire pot and this fire and the smoking pot go through and God actually walks the
blood path twice as both the person guaranteeing the promise and the person on the other side
of the promise.
Abraham walks at zero times and God walks it twice.
He says, this is a like, this is foreshadowing for sure of what's going to go happen with
person of Jesus Christ.
He's going to walk both ends of the covenant in that case.
So he takes Abraham, father of the father of the faith and talks about how his faith
and deeds line up.
And then he takes a Gentile prostitute, right?
If you were writing this and it wasn't from God, you probably wouldn't use her as an example.
Gentile prostitute.
So he's like taking like, he's like these, like if you want to talk about like extremes.
Yeah.
And we just talked about favoritism, right?
So Abraham's going to have a ton of favoritism, a female prostitute down here, right?
Female Gentile prostitute.
So founding father, patriarchal culture, Gentile prostitute woman over here.
And he says both of them had faith, but their faith was manifested by what they did.
By, by, uh, by stepping out and actually doing something.
And so like for us, like if we say we have faith, if we say we have theology and it doesn't
shape who we are, what good is it?
Man, come on.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a big old resounding gong and clanging symbol.
Or if our theology that we hold to doesn't shape us to look like Jesus and act like Jesus
and love like Jesus, it's probably our theology that's wrong.
Yeah.
I've talked about there, there's a word going around that is, um, being used properly and
improperly.
It's called deconstruction.
Yeah.
Okay.
I never want somebody to deconstruct their faith in Jesus.
I want them to deconstruct their faith.
It doesn't look like Jesus.
Amen.
I'm going to say that again, because I want to make sure that I'm not misquoted.
Pastor Nick, I love that guy.
He's been a friend for like, I've had been friends with him for over 20 years.
You should never deconstruct your faith in Jesus.
You should deconstruct the pieces of your faith that don't look like Jesus.
Because those have no bearing in the life of a follower of Jesus.
He is my rabbi and I'm going to model my life after him.
Now it's not going to look exactly the same because Brian, you and I are different people.
When Jesus steps into my life and Jesus is, I'm trying to mirror Jesus in my life as a
father and husband and in my church and in my work, it's going to look different than
when Jesus steps into your life because we have different callings.
But the principles are the same.
Is that I'm going to, am I going to love God and love other people?
Am I going to proclaim the gospel?
Am I going to bring relief to people caught in sin, people caught in brokenness and say,
hey, there's a different kind of life that you're invited into?
Or am I going to use it to divide people further?
And living that way, he gets to it here.
It's a life of righteousness.
And Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness because he acted on
it, because it became a part of his life that he lived out.
I wanted to share this analogy I saw earlier today.
Sometimes holiness and righteousness are hard for me to delineate.
Sometimes they feel like synonyms and we kind of just group them together.
And I saw this thing that really kind of hit me hard.
I'm a big sports fan.
Go Raiders.
Go Lakers.
I'm an LA kid.
Hey, listen, they need all the help they can get the Raiders this year.
Yeah, prayer, lots of prayer, please.
Both of those teams.
But there's this idea that holiness is being set apart, right?
It's being set apart for a purpose.
And holiness is like an NFL player who's been drafted.
Now they're in the big leagues.
They have a new identity, right?
They're set apart for this new purpose.
And righteousness is right living, right?
Righteousness is living according to the way that God's called us to live, to be the people
that are set apart.
And so it's like an NFL player who eats the right food, trains the right way, is fully
committed to his graph.
These are acts of righteousness that manifests itself in their life.
Now, once again, this is an analogy.
So doing these things is not righteousness, right?
We're using an analogy comparatively.
Yeah.
But in our Christian life, how holiness should manifest is in right living.
Correct.
Right.
So being in the word, being doers of the word, not just hearers of the word.
I have had this conversation.
I want to hear your opinion as I kind of go through this.
I had this conversation with a lot of people because I really struggle with this idea.
People say, well, I'm just a sinner saved by grace.
And I said, okay, but the Bible teaches me that I was a sinner saved by grace.
Now I've become the very righteousness of God.
We are called to be the righteousness of God.
And I'm not saying that we're perfect every time.
Like I think that's far, that's way overstretching this.
But my life now, like prior to this, I was a sinner and I was broken and I had no way
back.
I had no way into the kingdom of God.
Now through the finished work of Jesus Christ in my life and the Holy Spirit being put through
my life, I am actually called to be the righteousness of God, to be holy as he is holy.
And so my life actually should represent the holiness of God wherever I go in the way that
I treat other people.
I'm not a day prayer retri anymore.
I was now I'm called to be the very righteousness of God.
And it's something that I live into rather than something that I live in fear of.
Do you know what I mean?
And I think the reason I bring it, I added some caveats is I think people have misunderstood
when I've said that is that I'm saying that everything you do is perfect now moving forward.
No, no, you're still going to sin.
You're still gonna need to repent.
You're being refined into the image, which we talked about in episode one.
The trials are actually pulling up all this garbage so that there's gold, so that you
put on the righteousness of God wherever you go.
And there are definitely more golden parts of my life than others.
There's some parts where when God refines them, I'm like, is there any gold in there?
Well there's sometimes there's gold and sometimes there's golden calves.
It's just a reality of living in the world we live in.
But I think what your point is that holiness manifests itself in our righteousness.
So stop talking about yourself like you're just a broken piece of garbage.
You're not.
You've been refined and you're being refined into the very nature of Christ.
And scripture calls us saints.
Scripture says, my holy dearly loved children, calls us brothers and sisters.
It is an identity issue, I think.
Yes, we're all sinners.
We have sin in our lives, but that's not my identity.
My identity is somebody who is a saint, somebody who lives for Jesus, somebody who wants to
be holy as God is holy and striving towards that.
So I think we do have to redefine ourselves in that.
If I'm only ever a sinner, I think to your point, you were saying, I am saved and I've
preached this at our church a lot.
I don't always just preach what I'm saved from.
I'm saved to.
I'm saved to a life of holiness.
I'm saved to a life of service.
I'm saved to a life of loving others.
Because if I only ever focus on what I've been saved from, I'll never live in the present
and the future.
Right.
Well, and coming back to James, James makes a statement and it's prior to this passage
we just read.
He says, for the one who said, do not commit a murder, don't commit adultery, coming back
to Exodus and Deuteronomy, the 10 commandments, right?
That's what he's referencing to this invocation of this cornerstone of mosaic law.
He's like the same guy who said this, you're not supposed to show partiality.
These were supposed to, these don't do these things because you're supposed to be this.
By the way, if you don't know what I'm talking about exactly, go back to our 10 commandments
episode because we talked about how five are about how we relate to God and five are about
how we relate to other people.
And this mirroring idea of like one and six go together and two and seven go together
from Rabbi David Foreman.
But this, the, the 10 commandments, these, this, this deck a log of life giving advice,
right?
Is going to say like, this is how you like, this is going to change you into being the
kind of person that engages mercy, that loves justice, right?
Loves mercy, walks humbly quoting from, from Micah, like he's shown you a man.
What's good.
These are the things that you're supposed to do.
And now in the person of Jesus Christ, we, we don't show partiality because it's all
open from, from Abraham to Rahab.
And people, when they respond, when they have faith and they respond in action, it's a beautiful
thing, whether you're the founding member of the Jewish faith or you're a prostitute
in a city that's about to be overrun.
When your faith and actions work together, it's a beautiful thing that God accomplishes
great things.
Yeah.
And, and then in my line of work and serving the least of these and serving, you know,
those that are in dire need, dire straits, I might be the only person that's trying to
see that gold.
They're in the fire.
Oh, they're in the fire.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes they only feel like the impurities that we're trying to take, that
God's trying to take out.
And I might be the only person that's willing to say, I want to see the gold.
I know you have value.
I look at the cross every day.
It proves that you have value.
He paid every price to show that you have value.
If there was value here, there's definitely value there.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's so important for us in whatever capacity, whatever work we're in, whatever church we're
serving in, we need to be engaged with the needy.
Right.
So the statement that you're reading, and I almost chuckled when you read it, it says,
you believe that there is one God.
Good.
Yeah.
Demons believe that too.
Their orthodoxy is spot on.
Your orthodoxy is spot on and guess what?
Your orthopraxy is about that of demons.
Yeah.
Wow.
Like that was the implication I took from him.
You know, is like, you say you have faith.
I'm going to show you my faith by what I do.
Now I think the caveat here and where people have kind of gotten into like this, where
some cult have showed up, right, is where they say, well, you actually have to do these
things and that demonstrates that you have faith.
No, you have faith and then it's demonstrated in what you do.
You can have deeds and not have faith.
It's not your deeds that save you.
It's your faith, trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ that saves you.
And through that, but if that is true, you're going to manifest in deeds.
So I think when people, they're like, they're like, well, I trust in the faithfulness of
Jesus Christ.
So then why doesn't it show up in your life in some way?
Yeah.
Besides intellectually.
Right.
It's powerful.
It's hard.
Yeah.
It should show up in so many ways.
I agree.
And it's going to, and I'm not saying like each person is not going to go and work with
the poor and each person is not going to go and visit the prisoner and each person is
not going to go and visit those who are sick and each person is not going to be a person
who helps people who are out of work, but somewhere.
Yeah.
There's needy.
Yeah.
In a lot of different ways, emotionally needy, physically needy, spiritually needy.
You know, it's not just limited to people that are poor, people living on the streets.
There's a lot of rich people that are needy that need the love of Jesus, you know, for
sure.
And each one of those callings is going to have a pitfall.
Yeah.
Right.
That you got to watch out for.
And so like, uh, if you're called to minister to the rich, man, it's going to be, you're
going to have to be really careful not to get stuck into partiality.
Yeah.
If you're called to witness to the poor, you're going to have to be really careful not to
let people continue to live, uh, in a place of brokenness to actually work in a way to
bring them out of that.
Right.
And kind of like you were getting to earlier, you know, a lot of people don't want to give
handouts.
Correct.
And so the philosophy, you know, we tried to live by in the army is let's, let's give
hand ups, hand ups, right?
How can we help people out of that situation?
Not just enable them to continue to live in that situation.
Sometimes that takes a long time before somebody's ready to be, I'm done with this life.
I'm ready for something more.
My porn addiction didn't go away overnight.
Of course not.
Yeah.
But there was a process by which God rooted it out of my life.
And there was a definitive moment where I said no, and it started to go right.
By the way, uh, I'm, this is probably not, uh, there are people who may be unhappy that
I'm going to share this, but there are so many men who are struggling with that.
And because it's such a, they're like, well, it's not my man.
It's not my father.
It's not my brother.
It's not my son.
You know?
Um, yes, it is.
Nobody would have ever thought.
I don't think anybody would ever thought that I'd struggled with that.
And most of the men that I talked to, like most people wouldn't know.
Um, it's, it's speculated somewhere in the neighborhood of like 95% of men in America.
And for you single dudes out there, marriage isn't the cure.
All for marriage is not the cure.
All for it.
No.
I mean, I had a conversation with my wife before we got married about my, uh, my, my
struggles, right?
Because if she was going to marry me, she needed to know the places that I struggle
too, because I was marrying my etzer connegdo.
I was marrying my force that opposes.
She was going to strengthen my life together to become one flesh.
She has to know my weakness.
Just like I had to know hers.
Yeah.
And no, you don't get to know.
She can share that with you.
It is for me to know because I'm called to strengthen her.
Amen.
Man.
I love the book of James.
It's so good.
Like, I think, I think sometimes in the, in the, the verbiage and the way that it's said,
we tend to take it and it's like this really harsh letter.
It's not, it's direct.
It's brothers talking to brothers.
Yeah.
And he's like, come on guys, we know what we ought to do.
You know what?
Taurus says, and you're, you're like, oh yeah, well, you know, I got the faith, but he's
like, no, if you got faith, it's going to show up in what you do.
Yeah.
And I kind of look at this as like, like an older brother having a conversation with the
younger brothers is like, listen, you know what dad wants us to do.
Go take out the garbage.
Right?
Like you, you can be as mad as you want, but that's part of living in the household.
Right?
Part of being a member of this household is you got to take out the garbage.
And if you have dishes, you need to do your dishes and you need to not slap your younger
brother.
Yeah.
Like those kinds of things.
Like this, it's not, it's not, uh, it's not meant to be condemning and, and, and, and
with family, you can have a more direct conversation.
Yeah.
And so, uh, as we continue to go through this letter, I think it's really going to be important
for us to understand.
Like James loves the people he's writing to and he wants to see the best come for them,
which is why he's being very direct.
He's like, listen, you gotta get rid of this stuff.
That's not cool.
You can't have partiality.
That's not who Jesus is.
Yeah.
He just took people from all over the place and now he's welcoming the Gentiles.
So you gotta get with it.
Yeah.
Right.
Those Gentiles are weird.
They're not Jewish any way, shape or form.
Just to go back to, you know, porn addiction and God's work on my life and redeeming that
when that pastor told me, you know, I choose to see the best in you.
It broke down the enemy's lies in my life and allowed me for the first time to realize
the mistake I was making was that I was telling myself if I just stopped doing this, I could
come to God.
If I just stopped doing this, then I could live the life that God wants me to live.
And that was the enemy's lie on my life, keeping me from the calling that God had on me.
And what he revealed to me...
That is a lie on so many things.
Yeah.
And what he revealed to me was it's totally opposite.
If I come to God, he will change me.
If I come to God, he will fix me, he will restore me, he will redeem me.
And that was the power that broke that lie in my life and allowed me to go, no, I can't
white-knuckle my way into a relationship, right?
I can't white-knuckle my way out of pornography addiction and into a relationship with God.
It doesn't work that way.
I need God's help first by coming to God and then allowing him to transform.
And like you said, it was a process.
It wasn't just, oh, okay, that's gone now.
Those desires are gone.
Because at the root of that sin was this really...
It's a desire that I had for intimacy, for relationship, for that was being pursued in
the wrong way.
Correct.
Yeah.
And so once I was able to come to God and have that beginning of that transformation,
I could see where the enemy was lying and I could see where the truth was.
And there are times that God breaks off a sin, single thing.
Sure.
Right?
It breaks up.
Most of the time, what's gonna happen is because you didn't acquire your sin overnight, you're
not going to unload it overnight because it literally integrated into your life.
Yeah.
Right?
Now it's time to integrate your relationship with God into the same parts and allow him
to purify them.
So one of my favorite verses from 1 John, if we walk in the light as he is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Christ purifies us from all his righteousness.
So the implication is that you don't come to the light purified, right?
You come to the light and we have fellowship and there in the fellowship, God's blood and
his light purifies us from all unrighteousness as we walk together.
Amen.
I'm going to, I'm going to do something a little strange.
We haven't done on the podcast before.
I'm actually going to address people who are listening and I think there's going to be
some of you who are listening that you think right now that what you have is insurmountable
and God can't, you got to clean it up or there's something you have to do.
It's not something you do.
It's somewhere you go.
And so we're going to pray for you right now.
And I was just a pray for you that today is going to be the moment that you take that
step into God's presence and he begins to purify you through from all your unrighteousness.
So Holy Spirit, we would just pray over our people listening that they would just receive
from you the invitation to come and step into your presence that the blood of Jesus would
just wash over them that the things that that have had long had root in their life that
have been dragging them down, they would suddenly be able to set down, break the chains, walk
after you and allow you to purify their life.
God, they are not perfect nor will they ever be perfect except by your blood and your spirit.
I just ask that you would just open your presence to them today.
God, that they could step in and be purified by your goodness.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
All right, guys.
Brian, thank you for being here and filling in for Spencer.
I really appreciate you being here.
We will we'll let you know in the next couple of weeks how scheduling goes.
We're hoping to have him back soon because we got a couple weeks.
So yeah, gotta get me on as much as possible.
Exactly.
And so we just really appreciate that.
And otherwise, God bless.
See you next time.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Love and Context.
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