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Howdy. Well, glad you are here for worship today. Thanks to everybody joining us online as well.

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We've been spending a few weeks talking about the book of Ephesians.

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In the last two sermons, we looked at what it is to be predestined by God,

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as well as who are those who are fellow citizens with us in God's kingdom.

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One of the things that we saw about being predestined by God is that whenever we ignore the overall story of God,

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and we just focus on individual verses, then sometimes we get it in our heads that God has some desire

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that some people would only exist just to find their way to eternal damnation.

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And we see over and over again that that is not who God is and where his spirit is.

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We even saw it in our gospel today that even the disciples had hardened hearts,

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and God was still moving them and changing them so that they could see that he was bringing them hope and salvation in Christ Jesus.

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And then we ended up going to look at what it was to be fellow citizens.

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There are often times where we look at some people and we look for those that are more like us,

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the ones that we really understand and we see them as the ones that we're really supposed to reach out to,

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and those are the ones that we're supposed to be in the kingdom of God with.

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But God is actually wanting us to be connected to people that do not see the world the way we do,

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who come from backgrounds that we will never understand,

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but rather is that together we're meant to be one church that builds each other up and learns and grows from each other.

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And today we're looking a bit more at what it is to reach out to every family in heaven and on earth

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and how maybe there's something a bit about that that may be mysterious,

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but is still something we're meant to hear, to see, and to follow.

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And whenever I think about what it is to see a mystery, something that seems unknown and strange,

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my mind and my heart always go back to Ireland.

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I was in high school whenever a Titanic came out.

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I didn't really care anything about the whole rest of the movie, but the music.

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Oh my word, I loved the music.

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Irish music, a lot of those Celtic, you know, the fiddle and everything that's in there and all,

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or at least we call it a fiddle, and with it is realizing that a lot of that music there,

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so much of it was this kind of idea of to go to a land that seemed like it was a part of, you know,

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all these myths and fairy tales and legends.

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And so finally, two decades later, I finally got myself over there.

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And I was traveling around from place to place, and you see these castles and all these beautiful statues

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and you see the old graveyards with the Celtic crosses and the water is so gorgeous and the cliffs are so sharp

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and the land is covered in greenery and why am I here? I need to go back.

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I don't even know. I should probably finish the sermon first, at least.

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Then I'll go.

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Okay.

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But you know, while I was there, though, this land of mystery and of the unknown beauty,

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it really was something where you sense that God is there

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and that God is doing more than what you could have imagined.

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But it was strange to me, though, also what was happening while I was there on my trip

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is that I found out that there was actually somebody who was romantically pursuing me.

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I know, difficult to believe, but it happens.

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And this was some years ago, but what was funny about it is that this person, she was someone I grew up with.

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And what was strange to me was that as a child, I had always wondered, you know, what would happen if we worked out?

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And then there I was on the other side of the world, getting a message telling me how much that she really wished that things could work out between us.

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And in my head, I'm thinking, I mean, that's great.

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I mean, you know, she's beautiful, she's sweet, she's intelligent, she has a quirky sense of humor,

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which means that she might actually get my jokes.

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This is wonderful.

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And yet this whole thing in my head, I'm asking, and I'm like, God, but why?

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Why would it take so long for this opportunity to arise?

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Why would it be that in your plan, like we knew each other over and over again whenever we were younger,

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why is it that it would take decades before this opportunity would even arise?

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And then I would end up discovering that God is working in the mystery, even when we are not quite ready to understand it.

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You see, that's one of the things that is difficult, is that sometimes the strength that we need to have is the strength to accept the mystery.

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See, sometimes our soul, our heart, it takes a lot of strength to believe that even when we're not understanding things, that God is actually still at work.

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You see, we struggle often with the mystery of what God is doing, and so whenever we don't get it, how do we respond?

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We push even harder until everything is the way that we want it to be.

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I'm sure nobody here has ever pushed everything to be exactly the way that they want it to be.

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Nobody could possibly be that controlling, right?

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But you see, that is a temptation that we end up seeing, is that whenever something isn't quite fitting what makes sense to us,

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is that we are going to push until we can get to where it does make sense.

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And that's actually something that's important to know about Paul having written the letter to the Ephesians, is that Paul had been that guy.

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Paul, his name originally wasn't Paul, it was Saul. I know, very creative to go from one to the other.

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But with it is that when he was still Saul, and he didn't know that Christ was the one sent by God,

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he was so focused on trying to preserve what he saw as God's ways, that he ended up pursuing the persecution and the death of many Christians.

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Think about what kind of a person that he was willing to become, because he thought it was needed to get to where God wanted them to be.

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Whenever we hear about the story of Stephen being martyred, because he shared what he knew about Christ Jesus and the Gospel,

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who were they laying their garments in front of?

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Saul, the person who would later become the apostle Paul.

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How often do we pursue goals at the expense of God's laws and God's ways?

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How often are we so sure that where we're trying to go is where God wants us to be, but we're willing to do whatever it takes to get there?

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See, that was one of the things that kept striking me, is that as much as I wasn't understanding what was happening in my own life years ago,

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is that I was looking and saying, but wow, what a great opportunity to be with somebody that I was thinking, oh, this is the perfect person for me.

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This is the person that I need to be with.

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And so in my mind was, now she is within reach.

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Let's go. Let's figure it out. Let's make it work. Everything will be great.

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But what I started seeing though, what was happening in my own life, is who I was becoming in order to try to get where I thought I wanted to go.

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Is that I was becoming a person who was willing to let others tell me what I should or shouldn't do.

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Whenever I felt something wasn't right, I was willing to ignore it.

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Whenever it felt that I was letting go of what God was calling me to do in my life, because I have to pursue this goal no matter what,

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I started seeing in myself that I was not being the person that I should have been.

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I was so focused on where I thought I should go and who I thought I should be with.

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I wasn't pausing to say yes, but who am I supposed to be?

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And why have I stopped being that person right now?

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How often is it that we end up betraying who God has called us to be right here right now, because of where we think we're trying to get to?

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See, that's one of the things that we ended up seeing as God was reaching out to the Gentiles,

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is that we know from Scripture that God wants all nations to know who he is,

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but the people in Paul's time, they could not wrap their minds around what it was to reach out to the Gentiles.

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It made no sense to them whatsoever.

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We talked last week about how it is that Christians oftentimes expect others to be exactly like us before we could possibly imagine that they're forgiven by God.

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You know who I'm thinking of.

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Come on, think about it in your mind.

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Who is that people group that you just cannot imagine that they can possibly be a part of God's plan,

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because they're just too far off of the path?

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They're just too far gone.

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They're just too different where we need to be.

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You see, we have goals in mind, and we're oftentimes deciding how we're going to achieve them.

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But what we end up doing is we end up ignoring the sins that we are struggling with now,

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because we think that this is acceptable, because I know ultimately that God has plans in my life,

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but then we see what others are struggling with, and we're like, you know, they are clearly disqualified.

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They're clearly not a part of what God had in mind.

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And that's the thing is that as we keep going with where we want, not just our life to be, our family's life to be,

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the community that we're in, maybe even the world as a whole, and it doesn't matter what type of person we become,

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as long as we say that's where we're trying to go.

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We can be rude, we can be cruel, we can mock people, we can undermine them in their lives,

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we can end up showing them as little mercy as possible,

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as long as we make it clear where we want to go,

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because we want to get to a place where we think that's where God wants His kingdom to be.

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But as we get there, who are we willing to try to appease as we make our journey along this path?

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Because oftentimes, as we're trying to get to where we want to be in our life,

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it's amazing the friends and the community that oftentimes we find ourselves with.

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But also, those are the very people that we're sometimes the least likely to speak truth to.

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The people that are the closest to us on this journey in our life are oftentimes the ones that we're the most afraid to speak truth to.

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See, that was one of the things that I discovered is that even though I knew that there were things that were wrong,

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and I was seeing things in this person's life, and I'm like, this isn't right.

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Something isn't true, this isn't real.

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I'm seeing things that are hurtful, I'm seeing things that are wrong,

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and yet there was this little inner circle, this little bubble of people that were saying,

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no, no, no, you need to be completely supportive. You cannot say anything against this person.

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You cannot say anything to question what it is that they think and say and do, because they need you.

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They need your support. They need you to be behind them, no matter what.

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And then realizing that when we feel like we can't even question what the people around us say and do,

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is then we stop asking what it is that maybe God wants to speak at that moment.

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See, that's the thing is that sometimes we have the hardest time letting go of that bubble that we live in,

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that little inner circle. Sometimes we have a difficult time letting go of that,

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because we don't want to be the one that sticks out.

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We liked knowing that we had that core group, you know that little group, that little circle,

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that they're always there and they're always saying, yeah, to whatever it is that we say and do,

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they're saying, good job, yeah, that's exactly it. Doesn't matter what we say, it doesn't matter what we do,

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they're going to cheer us on, and they expect us to do the same.

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That no matter what it is that they want, we're supposed to say yes to it, because we want the same from them.

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How often are we willing to accept lies and to deny truth, just to fit in with the groups that we like the most?

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It's not about saying I'm going to abandon this group for that one or that one for this one,

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but instead saying maybe at this one moment in time, I have to stand for what is real and what is true,

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even if nobody else gets it.

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And then you may be wondering, but then how am I ever going to get where I'm going if I don't have my little inner circle?

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True, because maybe the question is, are you really sure that was where you wanted to go in the first place?

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You see, Paul ends up saying in chapter 3 that he is in prison for the Gospel, and you're wondering what kind of a world was this.

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But you see, that's the things that Paul had been a very important person in the Jewish community.

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There were any number of ways that he probably could have spun it.

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He probably could have found ways to, you know, you just kind of change things a little bit about Jesus, the Messiah, the Gospel.

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Just tweak it a little bit, because then the community he was a part of, they'd probably be okay with it.

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If you just rework it, re-market it, kind of re-brand it a little bit, okay, make it look a little bit different.

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Maybe they needed to be on Instagram instead of Snapchat or something else in there.

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I don't know, one of those, one of those. Don't even try Facebook, because those are pagans right there.

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But with it is that he didn't end up leaning on them to try to make him feel that he was in the right.

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Because not only was he not willing to change who Jesus was, but he was also not willing to change who Jesus was going to reach out to.

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See, not only was it that he wasn't going to say, well, you know, Jesus is a son of God, kind of like we all are, no.

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He's the son of God. He wasn't willing to say, he's a Messiah sent by God. There are many Messiahs, no. He's the Messiah.

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Well, you know, the Gentiles, they'll eventually figure it out, and God really wants them as kingdom, but at some point, no.

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Salvation is theirs now. And then when it came down to it, there was no one for him to fall back on when they were throwing him in jail.

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But he willingly went, because he knew that he could not deny what was true.

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Even though at the end of the day, he didn't know where it was going to lead, except he knew he would get a chance to proclaim the gospel.

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See, that's the thing about this, is that we don't always know where things are eventually going to go.

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And just to be completely honest, I can't hold things in very well. I'm not very good at it. I used to be. I'm not anymore.

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And after a while was finally saying time and time again, some things are right and some things are not.

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And sometimes you have to be open to hearing what other people need. And apparently that relationship was not the one that I was meant to be in.

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Because I would have had to have denied many things that God was doing in my own life, but also the hope of what God was doing in hers.

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Because as long as I was feeding into all of that enablement, she was less likely to hear what God needed to speak into her life.

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See, that's the thing. See, we don't get to decide the outcomes. We don't know where all of this is going to go to. We have no clue.

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We don't know the ultimate goals. We don't know the ultimate outcomes.

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But in reality is that we're not meant to try to focus on manipulating things to get to where we want to go.

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But rather is to ask how we're supposed to follow God at this moment.

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What is God saying at this moment? What is God calling me to at this moment?

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I don't know if it's going to get me in my little inner circle. I don't know if everybody's going to like it.

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I don't know if it's going to necessarily get me to some goal that I had in mind. I don't know. But at this moment, what does God desire of me?

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And what does God desire of you?

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Because that's the thing is that there are others that are outside of our norms.

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The people that don't fit in what we're expecting, but we're not called to try to manipulate them to try to get to where we want them to go,

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or where we want to go ourselves, we're called to follow what God is saying to us, in us, through us right now.

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Because that's the thing is that God is doing more than what's obvious.

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God's plans are deeper, better, more thorough. They end up pervading time and space.

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Things that we never expected, things we were never waiting for.

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But God is doing things. We don't see it. We don't know it. We don't get it.

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But at this moment in time, it's not just what can God be doing all around us. No, what is God doing through you right now?

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Because the greatest mystery is oftentimes what God is doing through us.

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Even with regard to doing things that we never considered, we never imagined, or even ever even wanted.

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Because that's the thing about it is that our goals, that's not where God's leading us.

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God's leading us to His paths.

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But then I don't know how to get there if I don't know where we're going. You're right. You don't.

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And that's why right now the only thing you're called to is at this moment, right here, right now, what is God calling you to?

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Because God is not asking you to make sense of His plan. He's not asking you to figure out how we're going to change the entire world.

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He's not saying for you to figure out how we're going to get everybody to see the world the same way we do,

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or somehow make everything fit the way we want it to. He's just saying right here, right now, what am I calling you to do right now?

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So as unsure as you may be about where we're going, or what it is that God has in mind,

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may we continue to follow the mystery, trusting that God has it figured out, and that all He's calling us to is the present,

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and what He wants of us here and now.

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Because if the world had worked out the way I thought it would be, I wouldn't be with here, you here, right here and right now.

190
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And I think God is doing something. And I'm really excited to see what it is, even if none of us have any idea.

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With that, thanks be to God.