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Howdy.

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Well, some years ago, I had told my sister that I knew what it was that I wanted for Christmas one year.

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Now, you've got to remember, I'm a child of the 80s.

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Born in 1980, I avoided the 70s by that much.

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And it was one of those things where in my childhood, I remember being in the theaters and seeing Transformers, the movie, the original.

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Not like all these weird, what Michael Bay things going on here.

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But rather, I remember this as a child and it was so hard to get a hold of a copy of that movie.

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And I found out that apparently it was out on something called DVD.

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And so I asked if she'd be able to get a hold of it.

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And I saw that there were copies you could get online for about 30, 40 bucks.

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And I'm thinking, okay, this would be a great present. I'm really grateful for this.

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But when Christmas came and she gave it to me and I realized it was still in the original wrapping.

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And I'm thinking, wait, but the used copies are 30, 40 bucks, but this is brand new.

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And then I checked and realized she had spent the full $100 to buy me the brand new version.

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And I was just, this was just too much for me. Oh my goodness.

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And I was like, you didn't have to do this.

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And she was like, I am not buying you something used for Christmas.

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And I was like, okay, I got it. I got it.

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So then when I found out that this last Christmas, she, I had asked her if she'd buy me a nice shirt

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because I'm a single guy and I have no idea how to dress myself.

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And so she went and bought me this really nice Lulu lemon polo shirt.

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And I'm like, what in the world?

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And I found out how much it was and I'm like, that's for one shirt?

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And wow. So, but I'm like, this is a really nice shirt.

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So I went and I found two more that were like 20 bucks each. They were used, but the same size, same style and everything.

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And I was just like, what happens if I tell my sister I bought used shirts?

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I don't even know.

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So, but fortunately we managed to get through the drama of that stigma.

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And that's one of the things to realize is that oftentimes we may have these ideas in our minds

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that we have a stigma attached to it.

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It's not that the thing may be good or bad, but rather is something about it,

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maybe just leaves a weird taste in our mouth.

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But even more than that, it's realized that the way that we view things also determines how we may treat it as well.

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And before we really get into the heart of this particular passage,

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I really want to make sure you know the setting and having to understand how many stigmas are being overcome in the midst of what's happening here.

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You may be wondering what was going on as far as the idea of being able to get through the purification and all of this

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and wondering what in the world did Mary do that required this big ceremony?

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Well, the thing with having a child in those days, you have to remember,

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people did not have the same type of sterilization techniques and the way of being able to wash things and take care of it almost instantaneously.

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Back then, you just had to make sure that if there was something connected to bodily functions,

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you just tried to keep it away from people and everything else for a while,

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or you had to douse it in a bunch of water for a long time.

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Well, with this is to realize that that was a part of the concern when someone had had a child.

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So just making sure that all the things were being maintained for cleanliness in the like.

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It's not like women were bad for having a child.

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But what was interesting though is that while you were supposed to maintain seven days after having the child,

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but then another 33 days before you could go into the temple, it was twice as long as she had had a daughter.

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And I'm pretty sure that we at this point in life have discovered that having a boy or having a girl

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does not magically make childbirth more or less difficult to deal with,

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as much as realizing that at that time when God had given the laws to these people,

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it was speaking to a society and a culture that thought that they needed to deal not just with the original sin of human beings,

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but also the idea that Eve was the first one who ate the fruit in the garden.

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The idea that not only were they purifying for the woman who had just given birth,

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but also purifying for the future woman who would be giving birth.

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The idea that all of this was really speaking to the way that the stigmas in their mind may have stood out

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of what was required in the presence of God.

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But even more than that is to realize what Mary and Joseph were coming into,

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being in this big city, and to be able to realize that they came from Nazareth.

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And the idea of saying, we realize later, people would say, can anything good come from Nazareth?

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It's almost like somebody in the big city wondering if anything good could come out of Lubbock,

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or Lubbock and Nacodotius, or something like that.

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Or for some people, as I've discovered, whether they may wonder if anything good could come out of Texas A&M.

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I'd like to say yes, yes there can.

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But not being very wealthy, because remember, this is kind of out of the way for people.

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And even more than that, to realize what we have from Simeon and Anna,

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is to realize that Simeon had been there for many, many years,

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and he goes around telling people that he knew he was going to see the Messiah before he dies.

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How often are we just dismissive when someone has gotten older,

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and we wonder whether or not what they have to say is as relevant for people today,

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instead of realizing that maybe they are the ones who are taking the time to listen.

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Because how much in our world today are we too busy trying to make sure we have kept up with the Joneses,

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or made sure that we have kept up with every group and club and sport in the world,

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and not taken the time just to listen to what God may be saying,

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or even for Anna, who wasn't willing or wasn't able to go forth and to be remarried,

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but spent her time serving God in his temple.

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To realize that the people that may have had the most stigma attached to them

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were the ones who were coming forth to reveal who this Christ child truly was.

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But the thing is that we don't always see what God sees.

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What God sees that we don't, maybe the very thing that makes all the difference.

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Because there they are coming in with a child in their arms, and let's be honest,

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you don't know what a child is going to become someday later on in life.

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And frankly, I don't even know how y'all can tell the difference between babies the first few days.

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Oh my goodness, they all look the same.

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I mean, I get mothers are supposed to know the difference and everything like that,

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but it's like I can tell, pudgy or not so pudgy, that's all that I got out of that.

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But, you know, after a little while is, is then you start to realize though that you don't know what the future will hold.

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You don't know if this is a future ballerina or someone who's going to be helping out at the local Starbucks.

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You don't know if this is someone who's going to be an artist or an engineer.

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You don't know if they want to work with their hands or they want to work with the words of their mouths.

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But rather is to realize that the future, it's so unknown.

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And yet at that point, with nothing obvious there,

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is that God is still proclaiming what he is going to do through this young child.

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That's the thing about this is that God's plans for us.

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They may very well take quite some time to be revealed.

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Because if we realize this is that Jesus doesn't end up starting his earthly ministry until he's in his 30s.

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And with that is to realize that it had already been revealed that he was meant to do so much.

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But it takes that long for it to come to realization.

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And while we may be thinking, well, you know, someone in their 30s, that's still pretty young.

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But the point being is how long to wait, even when you know that something is meant in your future.

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That is one of the things that can be hard about the life that we are living in Christ.

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Is that when we know that God is moving us and directing our paths,

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is that we may very well have to wait quite some time to understand how God is leading us the way we know that he is placed on our hearts.

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But that doesn't mean that we are not already that person that God is calling and leading blessing.

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Because as much as we may know that Jesus was anointed in the Jordan River many years later,

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that doesn't mean that he was not already the Messiah.

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We discover that just because we have not had an opportunity to see what is meant to be,

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that doesn't mean that we ourselves are not already being led and called and changed by God in the meantime.

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How often is it that we are still trying to make it?

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We're still trying to get somewhere.

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How often is it that many people feel that they have not arrived?

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How many people have not arrived where they feel that they are supposed to be?

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The difficulties that destiny does not always reveal itself in our timing.

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It turns out Colonel Harlan Sanders, who left school in seventh grade in his forties, was running a small gas station

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and started a restaurant in an apartment next door, didn't open his first KFC until he was 62.

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Julia Child didn't even know how to cook when she left college, I know the feeling,

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and didn't write her first cookbook until she was 50.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't begin the Little House series until her sixties.

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Ray Kroc was a traveling salesman for much of his career selling paper cups and milkshake machines

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before he teamed up with the McDonald brothers in his fifties and started the first McDonald's.

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We discovered that Leo Goodwin Sr. was well into his fifties before he thought,

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you know, I think I could start a low-cost insurance that became the government employee insurance company,

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otherwise known as GEICO.

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I think the GEICO came later.

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Duncan Hines did not actually start writing about culinary experiences until their fifties.

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We realized that Sam Walton didn't start his first Walmart until 44,

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and Stan Lee didn't create the Fantastic Four until his forties,

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let alone Spider-Man, Black Panther, the X-Men, and others,

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or even realizing that Gladys Burl didn't run her first marathon until she was 86.

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There's still room for many of you.

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Joseph A. Campbell didn't start his first canned goods until 52.

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Jarrah Tolkin didn't publish the Hobbit to Louis 45, let alone the Lord of the Rings in his fifties.

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And then to realize that John Pemberton, after having a saber wound,

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struggling with heroin addiction, was looking for a pain reliever that was not addictive

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and stumbled upon the formula for Coca-Cola when he was 55.

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The thing is, is that the timing in our lives, it's something that we may not discover for quite some time.

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Many people need time to discover their calling.

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We spend so much time making sure we know how many people are famous and wealthy before they were 30

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to realize that those are the flukes of circumstance,

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and that we are meant to discover life and destiny and purpose in a timing that may be all our own.

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But also even more than that is what about the times when we wonder, maybe we made a misstep.

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Did we make a choice or decision, something that somehow delayed what we were meant to do,

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or meant to be?

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Do we wonder if somehow we misdirected God's paths?

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Do we wonder if anything in our life may be wasted?

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The thing is, is that we know that we are sinful and we are broken and we don't make every right decision.

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Is anything truly wasted in life?

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And so asking that question, do we waste our potential, is to realize how many of Jesus' own disciples fled at the crucifixion.

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How many of them were running away when they realized that their Messiah, their rabbi was being arrested.

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How many of them were not even ready to admit of who they were meant to be, and even more than that, his own family,

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not even wanting him to go forth and to do the ministry that he was meant to do.

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What is it whenever the ones who are closest to us aren't even sure that they want to even support or encourage,

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or maybe when we aren't ready to support and encourage the ones that are closest to us.

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And so we realize later that maybe we weren't quite ready to see what God had in store.

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But even knowing that, the fact that this Jesus was appointed for the fall and rising of many in Jerusalem,

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and that even his own mother would be struck to the core at seeing what would happen to her son,

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is to realize that when his resurrection came to be, is to see that their plans for him, their plans for themselves,

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they were not truly wasted.

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Is that God was able to take what had happened, and even the fact that they fled or turned their back,

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and to use that to glorify Christ Jesus.

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Even for the times when we realize that we have made missteps,

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is that that does not mean that God is now done with us.

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And it does not mean that we have now thwarted his future plans.

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And it does not mean that we no longer have a place in what God is doing.

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And that may be hard because it's easy for our minds to get stuck in the past,

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and we're looking at a future that we wished we had,

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but to realize that even in the midst of all of this,

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that God is still welcoming us back, even each day, with every misstep.

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Because that's the thing about this is that while we may wonder about whether or not we have wasted something,

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God's plans are never wasted.

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And so when we realize that as God has destined us,

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is that that does not mean he has not taken into consideration our humanity,

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and the fact that we needed a Savior in the first place.

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And so when God sees us,

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he does not see us as whether we have or have not somehow managed to do everything he wanted of us correctly,

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but rather he sees us as his heirs.

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And that's the thing about being the heirs of the King.

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Because when grace sees us as God's heirs,

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it means that we also have a future inheritance that no one else can take away.

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Because as much as we may think of or know how often it is that those who are in power

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may stumble and make mistakes or even their future heirs may do the same.

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We know that that doesn't change their place,

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or the fact that there is much that is still expected.

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We may not even be willing to see it ourselves yet.

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Maybe you're still not even sure you want to have something that you're meant to live into.

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Leave me alone. Let me just live my life.

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But there is a God who's bigger even than the times when you're not ready.

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Because with that is that even when Simeon saw what others couldn't,

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God reveals what even we can't see in ourselves.

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So much of what we know, so much of what we believe.

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So much of what we think is just this much of what's happening.

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And to realize that what God is doing is going to go way beyond even what we may have imagined.

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So we may realize our sins, but we must also give that to God.

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Because in reality is that it is not the efforts that we make

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that determine what God is going to do.

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Rather, it's God's grace that takes even the worst and turns it into what is beautiful.

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So no more do we need to spend our time wondering,

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am I truly worthy of being a part of God's plan?

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None of us are, but that's not what makes us a part of God's plan.

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It is only truly by grace.

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And then realizing now that you are still a part of it, even now being forgiven, being loved,

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is that now you get to try again.

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And you get to discover even more of what may be in front of you.

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So whatever you may think is keeping you from discovering that in your own life,

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may God show you truly his forgiveness, his mercy to you,

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that you truly have a part, no matter what anybody else may think of your potential.

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Thanks be to God.