Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, guys, welcome back to the Amani Talks podcast. You're
here with your host Amani on the podcast where we
discuss our Christian based topics and deepening our relationship with
the Lord. You guys, this is the last podcast episode
of twenty twenty five. Where has the year gone? Okay,
I can tell you exactly where it's gone. It's almost
(00:23):
like twenty twenty five was so long and so short.
And I'm learning to count my years, not just with
how I feel and how the time going by has felt,
but to count my years and answered prayer January, God
did this February. I found this out March. I got
(00:44):
deeper into my word. You know, I'm starting to count
the years by what God has done, or at least
the time in a year. Okay, but yeah, this is
the last podcast episode of twenty twenty five and the
next time you guys will be seeing me. You'll see
me next year, Like, yeah, you'll see me next year.
So I just want to do just a quick message.
I just want to do a quick check in. First
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of all, see how everyone is doing. Definitely put it
in the comments. Tell me how your twenty twenty five
has been My twenty twenty five has been full of growth.
It's been full of learning. Not gonna lie, it has
not always been progressive, but it's kind of like the
first half of this year was like roof, you know,
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and then sometimes you get comfortable and you get settled
in and the Lord has blessed you when you get
a little you know. So it's really been like up
and down. And December twenty twenty five, this last month,
I'm closing out by learning that your fire for the
Lord and your intensity of your relationship with him cannot
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be dependent on how you feel. It cannot. It has
to be a choice that you get up and make
every single day. And I've learned that it's really easy
to have a really strong relationship with Him when you're
in It's really easy to be on your knees praying
when you need God to pull you out of something.
(02:07):
But when things are going good, it's almost like, well,
what do I have to talk about? I don't have
anything to pray about. That's that's how I was feeling
like these past few months, and my prayer life was
really struggling, and you know, just the whole thing, And
just in the past couple of weeks, I really learned.
First of all, you train yourself for godliness. Paul told
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us that in I think that was first Timothy, Yeah
one Timothy four seven. Paul is telling Timothy to train
yourself for godliness. And I just realized it cannot be
dependent on how I feel. Nothing else that's progress depends
on how you feel. You paycheck, that's progress, right when
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you get paid every two weeks. It don't matter if
you don't want to go to work or not. Them
bills is progressing too. When I think about the gym,
I want to lose ten pounds, that's progress. I can't
be like, oh I don't fly like going to the
gym today. I mean I can, but them ten pounds
still gonna be there. There are so many things that
we train ourselves and we get up and we do
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every single day, and it's like, why do we take
our relationship with God for granted? So twenty twenty six,
I am going to message this podcast episode. Okay, twenty
twenty six, we are going into the new year with
more faith, with more focus, and here's a doozy. Here's
a doozy. More forgiveness, faith, focus and forgiveness. Because I
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realized that these three things holds so much freedom in
the Christian life. So let's start off with faith. A
verse that always comes to mind when I think of
the word faith is in Hebrews. Let me pull it up.
Hebrews eleven six tells us, but without faith, it is
impossible to please him. For he who come to God
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must believe that He is, and that He is a
rewarder of those who diligently seek him. I love that verse.
I love that verse because that perfectly encompasses what faith
is and what it looks like. That passage of Scripture
should be one of those verses that we always have
in our minds and in our hearts when it comes
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to how do we relate to God? How does our
relationship actually look? When it comes to what we practically
do to have a relationship with God. So going to
church does not necessarily please God. Tithing ten percent every
time you get paid does not necessarily please God. You
getting married does not necessarily please God. But there is
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one thing that does you having faith. So there are
so many things in life that you could be doing
that are right, the right thing to do. We all
know the right thing to do right. But if you're
doing them without faith, if you're doing them in your
own strength, if you're doing them leaning on your own
understand you're still not pleasing him. So what does that
look like? What does it look like when we say
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without faith, it's impossible to please God, Well, that looks
like putting everything that you have in one basket. In
that one basket is Jesus. That's what that looks like.
And it looks like you not straddling the fence on
your faith. It looks like you not being lukewarm anymore.
Faith looks like getting up and doing something when God
has not told you what the end result would be.
All you know is how to start. All he's told
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you is step one, and it don't make sense. It
don't make sense, and he has not told you what
the whole plan is. Faith looks like you doing step
one anyway. Proverb sixteen nine tells us a man's heart
plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. We
all have things that we want to do. We pray
about them, we submit them to the Lord, and he
directs our steps on these things. Having more faith in
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twenty twenty six might also look like you having a
good thing in your life, or a good thing being
introduced to you. It looks good on paper, it looks
good to you, it looks good to everybody around you.
It might even be something that you've been waiting on
and praying on, even with those things, submitting it to
God and making sure God is this really from you?
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Because we've already talked about the devil knows what you
want a life too, boo, and he can give you
those things too. And a lot of the times, by
the time that we learn that this thing that we
thought was good is from the enemy, we're already going
through the consequences of it, right. We're already saying, oh,
that's why, you know, like, oh, that's not We're already
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going through the pain and the suffering of accepting what
the enemy had for us instead of waiting on God.
The devil can give you something that you look at
as good, but it will always be attached to suffering, sorrow, consequences, death.
We know that the enemy only comes to sorry, kill, steal,
and destroy. And it reminds me of this verse and Proverbs.
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Proverbs ten twenty two. It says, the blessing of the
Lord makes one rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
And sometimes we just have to learn by the consequence.
And by the time that you have learned enough from
the consequences, you learn what a good thing is, and
not only what a good thing is, but what a
god thing is. And sometimes that takes faith. It takes
faith to say, you know what, let me sit this
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on the side real quick. Yes, this is something that
I've been wanting, but let me put it up on
a shelf. Let me bring it to the altar and
sacrifice it, just to make sure that it's actually from
the Lord. It takes faith to do that. We don't
talk enough about how it takes faith to give the
Lord back something that you have been praying for. It
reminds me of Abraham and Isaac. Y'all know that the
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Lord told him that he was gonna have a son,
the father of many generations. All of that. He finally
gets Isaac, and the Lord's like sacrifice him. And the
Word never tells us that Abraham said anything against that.
All we know is that after the Lord told Abraham
to sacrifice Isaac, they went up on that mountain child.
They went up on that mountain child, and he was
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about to do exactly what God told him to do.
And then the Angel of the Lord came down right
before Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac. He has them
bound and he's about to get sacrificed, and the Angel
of the Lord, which is Jesus, stops him. Let me
get the versile, because I don't even want to chop
and screw it. Okay, let me tell you exactly what
it says, y'all. Y'all know I'm always in the New
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King James version Genesis twenty two twelve. And he said,
do not lay a hand on the lad or do
anything to him. For now I know that you fear God,
since you have not withheld your son, your only son,
from me. And then he goes on to say, by myself,
I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have. And
that's how I know that the Angel of the Lord
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is the Lord, because he's calling himself the Lord. By myself,
I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done
this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. Blessing,
I will bless you, and multiplying, I will multiply your
descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the
sand which is on the sea shore, and your descendants
shall possess the gates of their enemies. In your seed.
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All the nations of the earth shall be blessed because
you have obeyed my voice. When we're praying for something
for years, probably it takes faith that when you finally
see it come to fruition to really put it to
the test and say, is that's really from God? If
God asks me to give it back to him, will
I give it back to him? Really, we should be
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praying that with everything that we desire in life, Lord,
whatever this thing is that you are going to give
to me, give me the grace, the strength, and the
faith to give it back to you. I talk about
Samuel's mom all the time, Hannah like Hannah's faith. I
talk about her all the time. But she prayed for
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years for a son. It was not until Hannah prayed
to the Lord and she told him, if you give
me a son, I would give him right back to
you that the Lord answered her prayer. And that should
just realign our minds, y'all. With our prayer life, it
should remind us, or it should at least allow it
was to reflect on the reasons why we are even
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praying for certain things. What do I want this for it?
Is it just for me? Am I going to use
this to glorify God? Is this going to help my ministry?
Please search my heart, Lord, and reveal to me why
I'm even praying for this thing. Because if you pray
out to selfish ambition, the Lord's not given that to you.
If you pray for it just because you want it
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for you, what is the Lord gaining from that? How
is he getting glory from that? And in all things
we should be glorifying him with everything that we have.
If it's not going to glorify him, he ain't doing it. Boom.
That's one thing I've learned. If it's not going to
glorify him, he ain't doing it. Our prayers we gotta
really ask. Lord, search my heart, and once I get something,
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give me the faith and courage to give it right
back to you. So I want more faith in our
twenty twenty six prayer lives. That's for me too. I
want more focus in our twenty twenty six lives. Y'all.
I'm gonna be honest and I and it's gonna sound silly,
but this has really been a struggle of mine in
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twenty twenty five, TikTok has taken over my life. I'm
not gonna lie. TikTok has taken over my life because
I wake up and I feel like I'm always on
goal with content creating, and I always have to edit
this and film this and submit this and email this
and da da da da da. Sometimes scrolling on my
phone is how my brain takes a break. It used
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to be watching TV. It used to be me watching
reruns of like Frasier or something, just being like, uh,
I just need a mental break. Now it's become scrolling
on TikTok. I'll scroll on TikTok until my eye's hurt.
And now I'll gotta take a nap because I'm getting
an eye headache. I recently got some blue light glasses
because I'm like, I'm looking at my phone too much.
My eyes are getting tired. And what I said in
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the beginning, when I was like, y'ah might think this
is silly, but let me tell you, that's how the
devil gets you by making things seem silly and oh
it's just TikTok, and he makes it seem harmless. Scrolling
on TikTok that's harmless. I'm looking at ai videos of
cats dancing. Oh, that's harmless. Whatever replaces time with God
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in your life is never harmless. Let me say that again.
Whatever replaces the time that you should be spending with God,
and you know that you're supposed to be spending this
time with him, it's never harmless. I'm telling you, y'all
think the devil is like this overt appearent, kind of
in your face entity. No, he is very slick, sly
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and subtle. He knows that if he comes to us
punching us in our face, we're automatically gonna reject it.
He comes to you whispering in your ear and touching
your face like this and turning your attention here. And
I realized, dog like, there are times that I'm not
praying or not in my Bible because I think I
need a mental reset. And my mental reset looks like
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me scrolling mindlessly on TikTok for a few And now
it's two am, and I'm tired. Now I can't read
my Bible. No, yeah, that's what I tell myself. Oh
now I'm too tired to read God. It's it's two am,
you know, I gotta get up at eight am and
I just go to bed. Ain't no way, Ain't no way, boy,
Ain't no way, Ain't no way that I think it's
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okay to get in bed. And I haven't prayed, and
I haven't read my Bible. But I strolled on TikTok
for four hours today. Ain't no way. I realized, like
this has to stop. Twenty twenty five, my focus for
God is going to be so much better than it
was this past six months and twenty twenty five. Wait,
I'm gonna say in twenty twenty six, it'll be better.
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My focus for God in twenty twenty six is going
to be sharpened, y'all. And that's my prayer for going
into this new year, and that's my prayer for you
all too, that if your focus has not been on
the Lord, and I mean your number one focus. We
live on earth. There are a lot of things that
we have to focus on. You got kids, you got
a husband, you got a career, you got school, You
got to focus on other things. But if God is
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not your number one focus, you can go ahead and
wrap it up. Sis, you can go ahead and hang
it up. I want all of us to reshift and
realign our focus so that God is number one. Whatever
that looks like for you. If you need to get
something physical, y'all know, I put on an episode months
ago how I got prayer Journal, After prayer Journal, after
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prayer Journal. I have an actual prayer journal I got
off Amazon. I'm gonna link it in the description and
if you guys want to get it, it's really good.
It allows you to categorize, order and classify your prayers
under different things, and you get to know answered prayer
and you get to really reflect on your prayers and
what God has done for you. Like I said, I
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want our years to be measured in what God has
done for us. Right, So I have an actual, legitimate
prayer book. I also have like a journal I got
from TJ Max that I turned into like how I
order my podcast episodes notes in church. I have another
journal that's just more so about my life, but it
also has Bible notes in there. If you are a
physical person like me, I need something physical. I need
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to be doing something for me to remember. Get you
something to write, okay, get you a journal, Get a
few journals okay. If you are someone that you are
more visual, get on YouTube and make sure that your
YouTube explore page or your YouTube whatever they call it,
make sure that that it's full of sermons. Make sure
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it's not full of some relationship and dating stuff. Make
sure it's full of sermons. Make sure that every single
social media apt that you have everything that you can view.
Your FYP, your explore page is going to be full
of motivational quotes, full of the word, full of what
you should be singing, whatever it is that floats your vote,
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whatever it is that gets you going, make sure that
God is the focus of that thing. Right, So for
my social media, I need to make sure I'm doing
more on my social media for God, talk more about Him.
I do it a lot already, but if I'm not
focused number one on Him, then I need more of it.
Whatever it is that gets you going, make sure that
God is the number one focus of that. That's what
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are twenty twenty six. If we have no other goal,
reshift and realign your number one focus to be the
Lord and the last thing that I really want us
all to get deeper into for twenty twenty six that
is going to give you so much freedom, Like freedom
is the last f we talked about faith focused, and
now we're talking about forgiveness. Okay. One thing that I
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learned about the Christian life is that people talk about prayer,
they talk about going to church, they talk about serving,
they talk about your family. Forgiveness is not talked about
enough as a part of the Christian diet, as a
part of something that you are constantly consuming. They don't
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talk talk about how forgiveness is never a one step process.
It is something that we as Christians every sea. It's
like when you wake up and you pray every single
day forgive. The older you get and the more life
experience you rack up behind you, the more years and
memories and all that stuff, the more opportunity you have
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to move forward and forgive. Because I'm telling you, it's
like every single day somebody trying you. If it's not
your family, it's your friends. If it ain't your friends,
it's your coworker. If it ain't your coworkers, it's somebody
on social media in the comments. It's always something right.
And I realize because one thing that I did in
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twenty twenty five was really, like, like I said in
one of my prayer journals, because I'm very physical, I
need something physical. It wasn't enough for me to just
verbalize I forgive this person. I had to write it
down in my prayer journal. And I did that months
and months ago, and it felt good. It felt like, ooh,
you know, a weight has been lifted off of me
because I was really serious about forgiving all these people,
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forgiving not just them, but forgiving what they did too.
It's like, you can't just forgive the person, you gotta
forgive the situation too. Right. But recently it's been sneaking
back up on me and not been really confused about
it because I'm just kind of like God, like Heavens
are already forgiven this situation. Haven't I already forgiven this person?
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I have really learned in twenty twenty five that forgiveness
is an every day part. Okay. It is a major
food group of the Christian diet. If you ain't hear
from nobody else, you are hearing it now. And forgiveness
is so important, not only because you have to look
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at it as a process of Okay, it's not just
a one time thing. I truly have to forgive every
single time I think about it, every time that it's
brought up again, I gotta forgive again. It's not just that,
but it's also because of the severity of it on
your spiritual life. Unforgiveness it's not something to play around with, y'all.
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Unforgiveness hinders so much in your walk with the Lord.
First of all, I think one of the biggest things
that gets hindered in our relationship with God if we
harbor unforgiveness against other people is that you won't be forgiven.
When we go into the Book of Mark. Let me
pull it up, Mark eleven, Mark eleven twenty five says,
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and this is the Lord speaking, this is Jesus. And
whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone,
forgive them that your Father and Heaven may also forgive
you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither
will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses. I don't
know about y'all. I don't know about y'all. But one
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thing that I cannot, I refuse to be okay with
is me sending it up. Because we sin all the time,
and when I go to pray and I ask the
Lord for forgiveness, he doesn't forgive me. I can't afford
that y'all, Like, I can't afford for me not to
be right with God. It's like if me not forgiving
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you is gonna mess up what I got going on
with the Lord. Baby, you forgiven because I can't. I
can't afford it. Like I need all the grace on
my life, I need all the mercy, I need all
the forgiveness. If that's gonna be hindered because I got
a problem with you, girl, go ahead, you're forgiven, like
I just knowing that your relationship with God will be
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hindered by your poor relationships with other people. That should
be the number one thing that motivates you to make
sure that you deal with everybody. The Word tells us
as much as we can control, live peaceably among all men.
You don't. Don't worry like you can't worry about what
anybody else got going on, because here's the thing. You'll
be sitting at home stealing, you know, mad because it's
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what somebody did to you. Baby. They're not thinking about you.
You the one that's mad. And that's what I think.
You know, take away the spiritual aspect of unforgiveness, just
the physical aspects of it. Like you're sitting at home
mad like you're really mad, and they out live in
their best lives. I saw a girl on TikTok saying,
you need to go ahead and forgive them because at
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the end of the day, they're gonna ask the Lord
for forgiveness and the Lord will forgive them. You see
what I'm saying. No, he has no he's no respector
of persons. He does not show partiality to people. He
doesn't say, oh, yeah, they did that to you. No,
I'm gonna get them. That's not the way that the
Lord really operates, you know, Like he is an avenger.
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He tells us do not repay evil for evil. Vengeance
is his. But when it comes to forgiveness, if they
ask him for forgiveness, he's gonna forgive them. So what's
going on with you over here? Like it just doesn't
make any sense. It hinders so much in our spiritual lives.
It doesn't make sense for us physically. You not forgiving them,
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it's not bothering them, it's bothering you. Also listen to
this Sewod Corinthians too ten through eleven. Now whom you
forgive anything, I also forgive for if indeed I have
forgiven anything I have forgiven that one for your sakes
in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage
of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.
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Now we see that not only does unforgiveness hinder our
prayers to the Lord, but what it also does is
give Satan a foothold to take advantage of us. The
enemy uses unforgiveness against us. Not only is the unforgiveness
that I'm dragging into twenty twenty six stopping me from
having a good relationship with God. He's not forgiving me
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because I'm not forgiving them. But on the other side
of this tug of war, the devil also has a
foothold in my life. He's using it against me. Double homicide,
Double homicide. I said, I need all the blessings, all
the grace, all the mercy, all the forgiveness in my life.
I don't got time for you to be standing in
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the way of what God has for me. It is
benefiting me to forgive. It's benefiting me. We think that
if we forgive someone that wronged us, and a lot
of times people wrong us for no reason, and that's
what really gets us. It's when something just seems like
I wasn't even doing nothing to you, like why would you?
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Or betray you too when you're good to somebody and
they betray you. Oh baby. So that's really where the
unforgiveness and resentment comes in a lot of the time, right,
And we think that if we forgive them, we think
that we are holding something over them. We think, Oh,
if I forgive them, then I'm losing this fight, this battle.
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Oh I've lost if I let it go. No, they
need to know how I didn't like that, and they
need to feel my wrath and all this stuff. We
think that it's up to us to show them, no,
you shouldn't have have done that, you know what I mean.
And that's the whole crux of our unforgiveness is I'm
not gonna let them get away with it. Let me
tell you something. The Lord sees everything. He'll let nobody
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get away with nothing. And if he does, it's his grace,
and you don't got nothing to do with that. If
the Lord chooses to punish, that punish is supposed to
lead people to repentance, and if he chooses to give grace,
that also leads to repentance. So we have no say
over how the Lord chooses to deal with people that
wronged us. Right, but you have to understand you're not
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forgiving for them necessarily, You're not forgiving and in the
back of your mind saying oh, I'm gonna lose this
fight if I forgive, you gotta understand you're winning the
battle when you forgive. Forgiveness is an act of positive
spiritual warfare. Sometimes we think about spiritual warfare being something
that's always against us. Oh, I'm going through spiritual warfare.
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You also can enact on spiritual warfare. You are gaining
battle ground and spiritual war fear. When you forgive, you
are gaining ground. You are winning battles in the war. Okay,
First of all, the Lord already won the war. He
already won it for us. But you are doing the
right thing. You are gaining traction, you are moving forward.
It's for your benefit that you forgive. Do not take
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the unforgiveness that you have been really struggling within twenty
twenty five into this new year. If you want to
be prosperous, if you want the Lord to overflow you,
that forgiveness has to stay. Actually, don't. I don't even
want to say I don't even want to say, oh,
leave it in twenty twenty five, Leave it here today,
right now, leave it here right now. It was just yesterday.
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I just had to pray him and be like, God,
help me to forgive, help me to forgive. And if
you believe that you already have forgiveness within you, it's
much easier to give. You don't got to wait on
God to give you forgiveness. It's already within you. Boo.
You just have to forgive. You just have to give
it out. It's already within you. Acts like it, acts
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like forgiveness is already within you, acts like focus is
already within you, acts like faith is already within you,
because it is. And I want all these things that
are already within us, every gift of the spirit, to
just wash over our twenty twenty six and allow the
Lord to really work. When these things are at the
center of our lives. Faith, focus, and forgiveness, the Lord
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can really work in your life. And don't you want
to see what the new year has for you when
you're not lukewarm, when you're not holding onto this we're
not resenting this person. Don't you want to see how
the Lord can really give one hundred percent. First of all,
he always give one hundred percent, and that was time
for you to give one hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, the
Lord is already He's always operating on maximum capacity. It's
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you that has your hand closed to it. Open up
your hand. Twenty twenty six can be exactly what the
Lord has for you with faith, focus and forgiveness are
I love you guys. Merry Christmas. I'll be in New
York for Christmas. I'm actually leaving out very soon. I'll
be there all throughout the new year with friends and family,
all that good stuff. Just a reminder you guys. I've
(27:12):
been putting out more on the Christian Girls Trip social media.
We are going to Cape Town, South Africa, November two
through November eighth of twenty twenty six. I would love
for any woman out there that enjoys traveling, making new friends,
having Christian women around you, deepening your relationship with the Lord,
because we definitely will be doing that during our trip.
If that sounds like those things are up your alley
and things that you enjoy doing, definitely look into joining
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our Christian Girls Trip through the month of December. I
think it ends December thirty first, right now, your deposit
is only eighty dollars to join the South Africa trip
with me and the other women that are going to
join me. Your deposit right now is only eighty dollars
through twenty twenty five, So do not wait. If you
guys want to come to South Africa with me. We're
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going to be on safari sunset sales. What else are
we doing? I got so much on that ituner very
I'm forgetting helicopter ride, sight seeing, you know, day trips,
all that kind of stuff. If that sounds like something
that you want to do, definitely join our second annual
Christian Girls trip to Cape Town. It's gonna be amazing.
(28:15):
I'll put the link for that in the description box.
If you guys joined before the year's up. Like I said,
deposits are only eighty dollars and they also have payment plans,
and you have ten months of praying, prepping and preparing.
Prepping and praying are the same thing, praying, prepping and planning. Okay,
because we're not going until November, so you have a
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full ten month of twenty twenty six to really get
get your coin together, get your plans together, and come
to South Africa with me. I'm so excited Cape Town,
Are you kidding me? I have something very special being
planned for all my ladies that are already in South Africa.
If you guys want to see me and be a
part of our festivities, even just a little bit, I
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have something that I'm still in the works getting planned
out for you guys, so you guys are not left
out on this trip. I definitely want to be there
and see my South African community because I know what
so many of you guys. You guys are always in
the comments and in my DMS letting me know like hey,
girls supporting from South Africa, and I'm like, well, I
like that's so crazy. So yeah, Christian girls trip. Have
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a happy Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I
love you guys. Keep God in your life. Twenty twenty six,
all right, I'll see you guys next year. Bye.