When God Becomes the Center Again

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All right. This is a not a familiar place for me. All right. Here I am in front of all of you. What a what a great service today.

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The the presence of God is what I long for. The the presence of God is the keeping power in my life. And as I grow in my faith, that is the place I have to run to, as I maybe have to face larger things in my life. That is the place I have to run to, and it will be the same for all of you as God is, I think, prodding a lot of people, a lot of people to rise in whatever circumstances they’re facing.

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But I’m I’m excited about the word today. It’s a it’s a good word. It’s about God’s plan in our life. It’s it’s something we hear about. It’s something we have to process. I think for many of us, we constantly have to reconcile what our purpose is in our lives. We constantly have to figure out my doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

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Am I making the steps of of direction that God’s leading me to? And it’s a it’s an important question that we’re feeling free to ask. You know, what is what is our purpose in the earth?

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I like the idea of fighting for what is good. I like the idea of our church being responsible in contributing part of bringing justice into our community, and and bringing an answer to problems that exist in our community. I love knowing that there are so many people in here that are doing that, that are showing up in ways that bring leadership.

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Yeah, I love you guys.

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But God’s got a plan in all of this that is perfect. And when we can see God’s plan clearly, we start to see that he wants to restore creation, that he wants to crush evil, that he wants to establish the good. It was back in the garden. His plan is true. Transformation of culture at the source of where it began, where sin showed up is where God showed up.

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His plan.

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Is within the depths of our hearts, and his plan has shifted the identity of mankind.

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So sin is at work. This is where Satan began showing up in our history. He was in a garden. A story you’re all familiar with. And today I just want us to step into that place in our minds. Imagine a garden. Maybe you can relate to some gardener friends. You know, Peggy Costa’s got a beautiful garden. I’ve seen Kim Garros garden.

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You know, I’ve seen several gardens that were so large. I was thinking, what are you doing with all this stuff?

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Giving it away. But maybe you can put yourself in the Garden of Eden before Satan showed up. Maybe you could close your eyes and just imagine that a little bit. What do you see? What are the things that surround you? What are the sounds you can hear? What are the emotions that you could imagine there? What is the.

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What is the depth of that garden? How big is this place?

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And then Satan shows up and he asks the question, Did God really say, you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden? Eve’s response was, well, yeah, we can eat of everything except. Except the two trees in the middle of the garden. If we do that, we’re going to die. And his response was, you won’t die.

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God knows that. Your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it. And you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.

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Eve saw the beauty of the fruit.

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She. She was fine until this thought was planted. But now she sees the fruit and she has a new desire. She desires the wisdom it would give. See, something shifted in the garden that day. It shifted from a place of receiving to a place of deciding before eating the fruit. Human understanding was anchored in God’s design. God defined reality.

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Life with him was good, and separation from him was bad. But this shift occurred and we lost our center.

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This shift in understanding that took place by eating the fruit was a transition from objective, God centered truth to subjective, self-centered determination.

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Everything we know about the world, we live it through this lens of subjective, self-centered determination.

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Said another way. In this frame of mind, people can never really know who they are or really what the right way forward is. Everything is subjective and without purpose, because everything is now based on our passions and fears. Saint Augustine teaches something called the illusion of autonomy. He argued that the shift in the garden was an illusion of freedom.

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Think about that. An illusion of your freedom. Humans thought they were becoming masters of their own destiny. But by rejecting God’s definition of good, they actually became slaves to their own changing passions and fears.

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From this place of understanding, the question for how we reconcile our purpose in the earth is obvious and a bit disappointing because it will come from our passions or fears. The shift in the garden says we can do whatever we want. It says we gained the right to define right and wrong according to our own desires. In fact, determining our purpose in the earth is now going to have a sinking sand kind of feel because it’s now sourced by us mortal, decaying flesh.

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Ultimately, we lost purpose in the Garden of Eden.

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So God’s plan is about restoring what used to be the center of humanity’s life. It’s about. It’s about understanding what shifted and why. The world we walk out today is constantly wrestling with your purpose, constantly wrestling with your identity. A constant battle of knowing who am I? What am I doing? What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to land?

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How do I fit in this place of life? And we do our best. We find the things we’re passionate about. We find the things that we come to hate. And we make sure not to replicate those things in our life. But God’s plan is for him to become the center of our lives again.

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It’s to restore us to himself. Because when God is at the center, our identity becomes clear, our purpose becomes clear, and our lives can become part of his restoration of the world. If anyone says, well, first, a God centered life will bring a true identity. If anyone says they are without sin, they are deceived. It says in first John.

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If anyone says they’ve never sinned, they make God a liar and show that the world is not in them. You see, our identity is connected with this reality that apart from God, we’re nothing. God’s plan, his purpose has been to save the world, the world he created from the power of sin that Satan introduced.

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Satan was sinning at the beginning, before Adam and Eve even showed up. His life existed in this, in this broken state, before the creation of the world. This this issue was something that God was aware would have to be dealt with in the days to come.

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And that place of wholeness is when he is our center.

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For God to deal with this. He brought Jesus along to make atonement for our sin, and not just for our sin, but the sin of the whole world, as it says in first John two two, the atonement for sin is the first step for resenting our lives around God. We call this salvation when we acknowledge we need saving, and we accept Jesus as a sacrifice for our sin.

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We secure the salvation of God in our hearts. Pastor David has been doing a series called The Apocalyptic Gospel. This series has been breaking open the book of Galatians, and it’s been focusing in on the freedom that is in Christ. It’s been diving into the depth of the power of the gospel, this good news, and it is such an important message, especially as we are walking through a a time of the world where so many things may try to define us, where so many things may try to arrest our purpose and our vision, where so many things may try to steer our lives.

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There is a freedom in Christ that comes through this beautiful message.

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And it has to be to the revealing of God. God has to bring revelation to this. And I want this to be our prayer. I want this to be the place that we seek God for greater revelation of who he is, greater revelation of what is true. This week I went to the chapel, connected with some of the guys, and Jim Lucic showed up.

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Jerry by Tim. But anyway, the the moment was kind of cool. You know, Jim wearing this nice green shirt and we’re like, hey, nice green shirt Jim. And he’s like, it’s not green. It’s it’s blue. Was like, no, it’s definitely green. I’m like, yeah, Jim that is a green shirt. And we’re just standing in the chapel. We got, you know, these amber skylights going on.

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And and so I decided, you know, let me just turn on the lights and I hit the light switches and bam, it’s blue instantly. I turn off the lights. Green. Turn on the lights blue. Turn off the lights. Wow, this is cool. It was like a science experiment. We laughed a bit, but it also brought clarity to how Holy Spirit brings light to what is true.

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And when his light shines on truth, it changes its appearance. It changes what is real. And we live in a world where everything may look green.

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Until Holy Spirit shows up and you’re seeing clarity, you’re seeing truth, you’re seeing what’s real. And this is why this, this path that we’re on to understand the world we operate, to understand the things we face. We gotta be partnered up with Holy Spirit. There are so many situations that people are walking through without that relationship, without that connection.

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Shelly’s been talking about this flow of God’s power in our lives. She’s challenged us through this unhindered series to restore that flow by not allowing situations to define us. The only way to be defined, apart from the situations that we’re living, is in Christ. First Peter two nine says, we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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When you look up this word chosen generation, that word generation actually means a race. God’s calling us unto a status as a race so identifiable that it’s its own race.

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We’re guilty of looking at a man and judging them by appearance. Right. That’s a that’s a part of this world to judge on that first impression. But you can see differences. You can recognize variations in people. And those are important observations, simple observations that distinguish people, distinguish culture, distinguish maybe where they’re from, distinguish their their life in certain ways.

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We have been called as Christians to be a chosen generation, a chosen race, so distinguishable that people would be able to recognize what you’re about. That kind of distinguishing quality is going to come from how you live, and how you live is only going to be different if you know who you are.

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Today, we’re going to be having a baptism. Yeah, we’re excited for that. And this is a step of faith for these candidates. And they’re going to be bringing declaration to their identity. It’s an embrace of a new life where God is our new center. You see, part of God’s plan is to secure your identity. He wants to secure your identity, to restore covenant, and to give you the family name.

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You’re literally a part of his family. You’re literally one he calls by name, one he recognizes as his own. This is this is an important distinction of identity.

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Water baptism is an important step for us to take as we are embracing who we are in Christ. We’re being buried into these waters of baptism and partaking in that that death Jesus took on for us. We’re we’re cutting covenant with God, and operation of our heart is taking place there. It’s referred to as as circumcision of the heart, to give connection to covenant that was made with Israel in the Old Testament through circumcision.

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It was an identified covenant that people were stepping into an identity identified relational agreement taking place.

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In water baptism. Were baptized in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we’re taking on his name. We’re taking on that identity as being one with him. And when we rise out of those waters, walking into new life, we’re walking into a life where he is the center.

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So this this plan of God is going to affect your identity. It’s going to affect your your purpose. And God wants to bring clarity to your purpose. In Romans six four it says, therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, even so, we should walk in newness of life.

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And then in Philippians 312 to 14 it says, brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. That upward call, that high calling of God for your life is walking in this newness of life, united with him in passion, connection, and purpose.

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This passion for God speaks to the aspect of knowing him. So when we are are pressing into that high calling of God, we’re pressing into a place where everything is counted as loss for the excellency of Christ, where our passion for him is so real, nothing else compares. That’s a place of knowing him that’s available to us, and that’s the place of knowing him.

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Where we begin to understand at such an important level what we’re capable of, where we get to understand at the most important level, who we really are and why we exist.

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This is this is the moment in a Christian’s life where they find clarity in what they’re going to do.

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That clarity of purpose starts to open up a bit, that that frustration of self-worth, that frustration of feeling like you’re wasting your time, feeling like you’re missing out. Feeling like the the things you’ve done in life have been a waste of time. All of that goes away. The moment we recognize that, we get to partner with him and step into his purpose, and his purpose is not to rescue America.

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His purpose is to rescue humanity. His purpose is to bring all of mankind into a oneness with him that is so tangible that we we step into joy. We step into peace.

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And second Peter 14637 it says that through these these are promises that have just been mentioned. Through these promises you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, but also for this very reason, giving all diligence. Add to your faith, virtue to virtue, knowledge to knowledge, self-control to self-control, perseverance to perseverance, godliness to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness.

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Love. Alright, that’s a lot of stuff to add to your life, but that word is not actually something you’re lacking and you need to get it. That word is actually learning to use the things that you’ve been given, because you’ve been given all things that pertain to life and godliness. So you are complete in him. Your identity in Christ is is a sure thing.

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It’s a certain thing. It is something that you’re not responsible for. It is because of your knowledge in Jesus Christ that you have been established in a path that is free, a path that is liberated from the bondage of of sins, from the chains and the shackles of of this world that try to hold us down. But when we don’t understand who we are, we step into a a returning of those things, of putting our trust again on those things.

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And when we do that, we get to enjoy the fruit of those things. It’s it’s how life works. But when we learn how to follow Christ, when we learn how to put these things to use our life bears fruit, fruit that remains. If we could go back to the garden. This is an important, an important place for us to arrive.

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Because what God wants in your life is for your life to be a garden. You know, Jesus had to face the call of God in the Garden of Gethsemane. He went back to the garden to confront what was lost in the garden. It was there that he surrendered his will to the father. It was there that he embraced his own tree, and through that embrace set creation free.

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This, this garden of our lives is for you to learn how to steward. It’s for you to learn how to create that place where your life brings peace, where your life brings abundance, where your life brings joy. And you know what? Maybe your life will be just like all these gardeners that you visit. When you go to their homes and you’re walking away with a bag of vegetables because they produce more than they can consume.

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That’s the kingdom of God at work. That’s the fullness of the life we’re called to. And that’s the the urgency of understanding that we have to pray into, because you can do your best with wisdom, which is a good thing, where you make choices because you know it’s a good, good idea. You’ve heard, hey, you should walk this way.

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I’ve learned the hard way, you know. Don’t do it my way, right? Those are bits of wisdom. But what you need is revelation. Revelation of Jesus Christ. It’s revelation that transforms how you walk. That word apocalyptic that David uses for the gospel is literally that word revelation. It is a revealing of truth, a revealing of God. When people talk about the apocalypse coming, they’re talking about a final reckoning, a final revelation that, okay, we’re up against God.

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I can’t walk in ignorance anymore and just try and do the best in my own way. But remember, remember the garden? What shifted? What shifted was we wanted to demand our own way. We wanted the right to determine what was good and evil. And in that path, we took on a responsibility that we weren’t designed for. Nor did we have the right ability for because we weren’t the source of life.

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We were not sovereign. We just wanted to be. We just thought it would be a good idea if we took control. Here, I got this. God, let me let me handle this. I think I know what I really want. That is definitely not what I’m looking for. You know, that is a boring life. And I’m. I’m made for a little bit more excitement than that.

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God. These are realities of the decisions we face. But this is, for me, what I want to prod our church with today. That we would we would be empowered, that we would be motivated, that we would be inspired to step into a deeper place of relationship with the father by asking for revelation, asking for him to reveal himself so that you’re not tormented by desires that conflict, those conflicting desires are normal.

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Those conflicting desires are because we have been pulled out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into his marvelous light this kingdom of God. But we haven’t necessarily recognized all the ways our life conflicts with that kingdom way. And so we’re still operating on an old database, still operating with a previous upgrade. And that’s where the challenge for us to just honestly step into a prayer closet.

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Do you know, I ask more people that are going through difficult situations what their prayer life looks like, and it doesn’t exist.

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Or they don’t read the Bible. Those two steps in our life are probably the most fundamental. And yet the things we fail to engage. The word is where you’re going to encounter his truth. Their word is where you’re going to, you know, start to recognize his voice leading your life. And so if you’re struggling, man, what does God want me to do?

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What is his voice? The word is a good place to spend some time. It’s a great way for God to start revealing things to you, because until you really know his voice, you need to know his way. You need to be able to learn his path, to recognize what is true, what is not. In first John, we’re challenged with this instruction to be to be able to test the spirits.

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Right. What are the influences in your life? Can you really recognize what is true? What is not true? How do you know? He says, well, if they if they claim that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

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For me, that wasn’t helpful. What does that mean? What does that mean? That Jesus Christ came in the flesh?

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It’s in that understanding that clarity will start to come.

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It means you. You recognize that he is the sacrifice for sin, for all humanity.

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You’re not in the equation. You just have to embrace it. So when an enemy tries to torment you, tries to discredit you, tries to pin you into a corner because you’re not perfect, then you’re you’re letting a spirit that doesn’t believe Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Influence your your life because he’s the sacrifice for your sin, not your performance.

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Your performance will determine whether you fellowship with him. You’re not going to you’re not going to commune with God doing everything but trying close to him.

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But you can’t be redeemed because of your life, only your faith.

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So in that God’s purpose, he wants to bring clarity. One of the things I’m excited to announce today is this next weekend we’re going to introduce or reintroduce to our church something called presbytery.

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This is this is a place where Holy Spirit brings clarity into someone’s call, into where they fit in the body of Christ, and to what what they have been prepared for. And it’s it’s a ministry that is led by a team of prophets, of leaders, of elders, of the church, men and women who have been established in the way.

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And it’s provided for people who have been walking this out for a while, because there’s there’s a seriousness to declaring ministry over people. There’s a seriousness to God revealing or clarifying what you’re called to. And that’s what takes place in presbytery. It’s it’s a place where God brings clarity. But it is not a place where God creates the call.

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It’s not created through these presbytery leaders. God created the call already, and when they speak, it will be confirmation and a moment of anointing because they’ll be laying on of hands taking place. There’ll be there’ll be a preparation of heart in this time. And this is the beauty of this ministry, and it’s something I’m excited about. So we’ve we’ve picked five couples for, for this Saturday evening.

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We’re going to have a worship time, you know, and see how the Lord reveals his call in their lives. But then we’re going to continue to schedule these opportunities from here forward. We’re going to try and have a visiting ministry in the mix. A combination of leaders that have this prophetic mantle and are qualified for this ministry. And we hope to bring greater clarity and encouragement to this House and the ones following Christ, so they can step forward with greater confidence and faith.

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Amen. So as we get ready to transition here, when I ask the the candidates if you would head on to the back, we’re going to have a baptism. And today we’re going to be watching individuals take these steps where and we’re going to be reminded that God is continuing to restore creation to a God centered life. This restoration work of Jesus is clarifying identity and purpose.

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Who you belong to is Jesus. You are his family. You have a purpose in his family. The power of sin is broken and your freedom is in Christ. And it’s certain our passions are still shifting as we figure all this out. But as we learn to love the one who gave it all our lives will continue to take on the reflection of Jesus Christ.

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He’ll continue to take on the essence of who he is, and it will affect every part of your life for the good. So with that, thank you guys for being here today. Thank you for.

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For answering the call. And thank you for continuing to walk in faith. We got a lot of things that are happening and we’re going to give you some updates.