September 11, 2024 • 56 mins
Welcome to the opening session of Season 12 in the Dwelling Richly Bible study, "Galatians: Free and Filled."
Do you ever feel stuck in your Bible study, unsure how to connect with God's Word in a meaningful way? Or perhaps you find yourself struggling to truly experience the freedom that Christ offers in your daily life? This message addresses those very challenges by diving into the book of Galatians, offering practical solutions for approaching scripture with intention and enthusiasm. You'll learn how to understand grace more deeply, live in the freedom Christ provides, and grow spiritually by engaging with God's Word in a way that transforms your reality. If you’re longing for a deeper connection with God and His truth, this message will guide you toward that freedom and understanding.
"Rediscovering Dad"
Did you see the exciting news? I discovered a great treasure! A collection of cassettes from 1981 containing recordings of my dad's messages through the Psalm 119! Read about that here. Bookmark the series here and look for new episodes Mondays August-October, 2024. His insights are so helpful! You will blessed, and, like me, you'll wish we had all of his teachings!
"So Glad You Asked" - podcast series where we'll tackle your burning questions about the Bible and life. Submit your questions through the link below
September-November, 2024 Podcast schedule:
- Sundays - "So Glad You Asked" (every other week)
- Mondays - "Rediscovering Dad" (Aug-October, 2024)
- Wednesdays & Saturdays - "How to Study the Bible" (April-August, 2024)
- "Galatians: Free & Filled" Messages and lessons (Sept-Nov, 2024)
Dwelling in the Word and letting the Word dwell in us richly is different than reading the Bible or reading a devotional with Bible passages. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly and return the favor by dwelling in the Word - not "doing" Bible study, not simply reading - but moving into the Word with heart, soul, mind, and strength. It's being intentional in making a shift from treating the Word of God like a self-help book to letting it dwell in us as the living Word of God that it is.
Questions about the Bible?
The new series, "So Glad You Asked" has launched! I'm taking your questions about the Bible, living the Christian life, dealing with difficult situations/people/life issues...really anything on your mind and I'll share my thoughts and responses. I'd love to hear from you. No question is off-limits - Submit questions about this or any topic to DwellingRichly@gmail.com or https://www.jennifergrichmond.com/podcast/#question
Share with others and thanks for saying Hi! Leave a Comment ⤵
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Time here together in this session. Tonight is the kickoff of the Galatians
Greenfield Bible Study, as you know.
And you've had your time in your grace groups to connect with everybody and revisit and laugh.
And I heard some, oh no moments.
And so all the things that we share aren't about being in that fellowship.
(00:21):
And I'm looking forward to that.
Some of you know that this summer I started a new podcast series and there was
a bit of an interesting journey that took place through that series.
And I want to share a bit of that with you tonight. And so many of you also
know that I am a PK. Who knows what a PK is?
(00:42):
That's a pastor's kid. I'm a pastor's kid. That's right. I'm a PK.
And so this summer, I started a series at the beginning of the summer in April.
I thought I'd do just a series through the summer called how to study the Bible.
And the idea was to think through questions that people have asked me in the
past, like, how do you do this? And how do you do that?
(01:04):
And kind of take some things that you've all learned through being in study
and put them out there in that format on that topic, how to study the Bible.
And it began with some passages in
Psalms and went to Proverbs and did something, we covered all of 1 John.
And then I shifted gears and I started going through Psalm 119.
And it wasn't a Bible study. It was letting the scripture teach us how to study.
(01:28):
God's word tells us how to study.
And so we went through the scripture to do that. All right. So I'm in the middle
of teaching through this series.
And I finally get to a box in my garage that I've been wanting.
How many of you want to clean out your garage?
I'm not the only one. Okay. So I finally had some time. I set it aside and I came across this box.
I kept on seeing that I know I needed to go through. It has some of my dad's
(01:50):
things. My dad passed away in 2016.
And so I opened the box and a rat had gotten into the box and made a bad, nasty mess.
If you've ever had to deal with rats in your garage.
So I opened that up and I uncovered a box within a box.
And inside that box within a box was the treasure of all treasures.
(02:11):
And it wasn't gold, diamonds, jewels, wasn't money. It was cassette recordings
of my dad's sermons and messages. Wow.
And they were pretty trashed by this rat. And so I put on gloves and just set
the box aside. I couldn't even...
Fathom dealing with it at that moment. But I eventually did,
(02:32):
found them, recovered them, and started opening up the cassette,
little plastic case, remember cassettes with the plastic case around it?
Open those up. That was the part that was covered in rat goo.
And inside, the cassettes were fine. They were fine, completely fine.
And so I have quite a few of them. I brought Brought a couple of them to show you here tonight.
(02:54):
But what was exciting? I wasn't doing right.
Back in my day, right?
So here's what was pretty cool. Among any cassette, any message I could have
found of anything my dad had ever produced, I happened to find a cassette that
said he was teaching on how to enjoy the Bible.
(03:16):
And I thought, really? really. Here I am teaching how to study the Bible.
And I went through and opened the next one up.
And the next set, and there are quite a few in this series, was him teaching
through Psalm 119, right where I had been teaching.
I mean, if you don't think I sat down and had a good cry about that,
that was just such an amazing, goose-fumpily wonderful, wonderful, wonderful moment.
(03:41):
Well, then the next was, would the cassettes even play? Would I even be able
to, you know, don't listen to them at all.
Well, that was a bit of a process. And I ended up having to buy a special type
of cassette player that would transfer it to an MP3 file.
And then I was nervous. Is it going to eat? Because I read all the reviews.
Remember? So I stuck in an old cassette. Are you ready what I stuck?
(04:05):
Wham it was wham wake me wake me up wake me up it was my original i tried to
find one well if it gets damaged his stuff is still out there digitally so i
can i put it in and it played.
Anyway long story short i wrote a series started a new whole whole new series
called rediscovering dad put it on my blog and was able to successfully start
(04:29):
transferring the cassettes over to mp3 i'm three messages in on that.
I started with how to enjoy the Bible.
That's up. Two of his messages from Psalm 119 are up.
I had already worked through a few of the passages that he's taught.
And I thought, oh man, those are great nuggets. I wish I knew that.
And so please enjoy those. Go listen to those.
(04:52):
So not only are the messages up there for you, but I've transcribed the entire
message about an hour long.
I've transcribed all of them. Sometimes it's hard to hear what he's saying.
And so it's transcribed for you. In addition to that, I've written a study guide
for each one, as well as a devotional for each one.
So if you don't have enough, you know, if you can't, you know,
this isn't taking up all your time, go back and listen to my dad's and be blessed,
(05:15):
be blessed and encouraged.
And I'll tell you one of the things that was most incredible about hearing my
dad's voice, and I'll try not to get too choked up about this,
but incredible to hear his voice, but also to go, I've said that to my women before.
I didn't even remember he said that. And then something else he'd say.
I've said that too. Wow. So all that.
(05:37):
And I was about 13 or 14 years old when I would have been sitting in this.
It was an adult Sunday school class at our church at the time.
And I just thought, I have no original thoughts. I have no original thoughts.
Everything I apparently just learned and just regurgitated somewhere inside
of me. And when I get up here to teach, out comes my dad.
(05:58):
So you will recognize his voice in heaven now and you will recognize him.
So I thought we'd open today with a little game.
This is a little game. And the game is called Dad or Jen.
So I'm going to put a quote on the screen here for you.
So you have a page to take notes on. Open up your notes page and make a little
tally chart for you. D for Dad and J for Jen or whatever.
And I'll put the quote and then you're going to put a little tally and we'll
(06:20):
see at the end how you did. You ready? Tuesday night proved it pretty good.
Wednesday morning killed it. Mary McCarville was really proud of herself.
So you might want to compare score with Mary McCarville on Sunday when you see her.
Ask her how she did. Are you ready?
I did put it on my Instagram page earlier today. All right, here we go.
(06:41):
The Bible isn't just a book of rules or history. It's God's way of showing us
his heart, his plan, and his love for us.
Dad or Jen? Jen. All right, make your tally. Here we go. Make your vote. Dad.
It's dad. Dad, isn't that beautiful?
(07:02):
1981. 1981 is where he went. And these are exact quotes.
I went through and they pulled excerpts out of the How to Study the Bible,
How to Enjoy the Bible message. So this is a direct quote from that.
And when you see any from me, those are direct quotes also from stuff I've said.
All right, we have to begin and we have to remember it's not about discovering ourselves.
(07:23):
We have to make our priority god who are
you dad or jen you're so
well trained you know me so well yes it
is me but really it's my dad it's not that he said that exact word but i am
standing on his shoulders i mean like i said there's no way i apparently have
(07:46):
nothing original say you can go to heaven you'll be like i've heard jennifer
let me talk to my dad talk to him and my mom too for for that matter,
if I only have her recordings.
So I have that as my past. I have that as my heritage.
And my passion for us this year is that you will embrace what you have as a
(08:06):
calling to offer this heritage to the people that God brings into your life.
And they will stand on your shoulders. Give them a shoulder to stand on.
Give them God's heritage, God's true word. All right.
When you come to the Bible, come with questions. It's okay not to know all the
answers right away. It's in the wrestling that we grow. Dad or Jen?
(08:26):
Dad or Jen? Dad or Jen? Put the tally mark.
Me that's that's a direct quote but again i mean
there's literally no way my i'm sure my dad
would have said that i and he listened to his teaching i there
surely he would have said that because let the
word of christ dwell in you richly it's not
just about doing bible study it's about letting god's word live in
(08:48):
your heart dad or jen dad or jen dad
or jen who said that that's me
that's a a direct quote from one of my messages but again
dad it was a
scripture that he and i turned into a song together we wrote a
song together based on that scripture context is everything if you're going
(09:10):
to enjoy reading the bible you have to understand what's happening why it was
written and to whom dad or jen dad dad does sound very dad like does it it is
enjoy it was the tip all All right.
Are you keeping score? How are you doing? You good? You good? All right.
The Bible is God's food for you.
(09:31):
Come and eat, whether it is a snack or a feast. Just come. That's me.
I'm sure I heard my dad or my mom say that at some point. Right,
though? All right. That's a Jennifer quote.
Test everything against Scripture. Don't just take my word for it.
Know the word yourself. Dad, well, you said it on Sunday on the 7th.
I think I said it one time. That's my dad, for sure.
(09:55):
If you open up to the opening introduction, you'll see that I write that in.
That's what I strongly recall him saying to us. Don't just take my word for
it. Test everything against scripture.
I always said that. Martin Luther said that, by the way, as well.
So dad was standing on his shoulders. That's the whole reason why we have the
Protestant Reformation is that Martin Luther wanted us to be reading the Bible on our own.
Remember, God's word was written for you, but it wasn't written to you.
(10:18):
We have to study it in context.
Dad gen, dad gen, dad gen.
Oh, yeah. Again, I have to put my dad there behind me, whispering over me and
he's coming out. And I love that heritage that he gave me.
The first thing God gave his people when he delivered them from slavery was
a was a Jennifer. He gave them a calendar.
(10:41):
We're on his hours, not ours.
Jennifer. I did say that. But again, there's no way that's an original thought.
I'm sure my dad must have said something along those lines.
Lightly dividing the word of truth is a key to understanding the Bible.
Approach it with confidence that God has said precisely what he wanted to say. Dad or Jen?
(11:01):
Jen, dad, Jen, Jen. That's my dad in his cool Argyle sweater.
All right. Who do you think said this one? Dad or Jen? Jennifer is my baby.
Okay.
Okay. That's fair.
(11:24):
We'll see. I put that, I made a little video out of this and posted it to my
Instagram earlier today and I just left it.
I have no idea what I'm going to come back to. It might be my sister's writing me like, Hey now.
All right. So what a beautiful gift.
And I, I couldn't, I couldn't emphasize that more. And as I went through that
(11:45):
this summer and the joy of what that brought me and just the realization that
God had given me such an incredible gift,
I want that for you. I want that for you.
I want your loved ones to experience that because of your faithfulness.
And I want to help you be faithful.
I want to pastor and shepherd all of us in that way. So we're going to go through what will be a review.
(12:07):
I like to open up our Bible studies in the same way every year and move through
coming back to who we are.
What is this all about? What are we going to look forward to? How are we going to be?
And you are a different woman today than you were a year ago.
And you've learned things and you've applied them and you're going to have new aha moments.
(12:29):
And I want to always to be fresh like that.
Maybe you've already studied Galatians. How many of you've been through Galatians before?
How many of this is brand new, never been through of Galatians before.
Wow. Okay, this is very interesting. So.
Either way, God's word is fresh and new and alive and powerful,
and it moves through us. And we're different if we're growing in our faith.
(12:52):
And so God's word is going to teach you in a new way this year.
So we are women who enthusiastically and intentionally dwell in the word,
and we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. How many of you know that by heart?
That's who we are. That's what dwelling richly is all about. We're enthusiastic.
We don't think about getting into the word of God as a drudgery.
(13:14):
We're enthusiastic about it.
We don't let it just happen. And maybe if it does, we are intentional about it.
Because if we're not intentional, other things will happen. There are other
things that happen in our life.
And so we are enthusiastic and we're intentional about being in the word.
And we dwell in the word. We don't just do Bible study.
I mean, we do. We say, I'm going to do my Bible study. Yay.
(13:36):
No one's going to correct you on that. But you know what you mean when you say
that you are going to dwell in the word.
And so we take this beautiful passage from Colossians chapter three,
it's from verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in us richly.
And we do that. And I encourage you to read the rest of that passages.
You're gonna move into that as you go through this first lesson.
(13:57):
So we point, support, share, and provide. We point one another toward God for wisdom and hope.
We are creating a community of women. We're intentional about how that looks.
Look, we're not just going to let it happen.
We're enthusiastic about this community and we're intentional about this community.
And so we're going to protect it very closely to make sure it stays on point with God's message.
(14:20):
And so when someone in the group shares a difficult time, a joyful anything,
and when anyone shares anything, it doesn't matter if it's difficult or joyful,
you're going to point them toward God.
For wisdom and hope in no matter what situation. And as women,
we love to comfort and empathize with people. Oh my goodness,
that's so hard. I'm so sorry.
(14:41):
But the bottom line is if someone's coming to you and they're playing the victim, you need the wisdom.
Oh man, all your eyes just looked up when I said that. That was an interesting point of view for me.
If someone comes to you and they play that victim card, oh, this is happening.
You can tell, you can feel it because we've all done it before.
We're not going to feed that with each other. We're going to point each other
(15:05):
toward God for wisdom and hope.
And we're not going to feed the worst part of our spiritual weakness, right?
We're going to feed and help to cause to grow. And we're going to be intentional
about that. We're going to support one another in life's challenges and blessings, right?
Because that is what life is. It's challenges and blessings.
And we're going to share our strengths Now, listen, this is important because
(15:28):
I think as Christians, especially in this type of setting, we don't want to,
we feel like we're bragging if we play to our strengths. Does that make sense?
We feel like maybe we're not being humble if we're using our strengths.
And we don't want to look like we're not, you know, humble.
So we might downplay that.
(15:49):
Why would you do that?
Hasn't God given you a gift? Use it. Use it and have God orient your heart and
your mind and the way you come across so that it is a blessing,
but you are using your strengths.
And then with our weaknesses, we sometimes can have a lot of shame associated
with our weaknesses and we can feel like, oh, I'm not good at this and I'm not
(16:11):
good at that and so on and so this. Okay.
We're not going to be like that. We are going to
share our strength with humility and we're
going to share them and we're going to share our weaknesses with
humility and we're going to share them and someone's
going to buddy up with you and say you got this it's okay
or thank you for sharing that great strength you had and how you lifted us all
(16:33):
up because of your gifting right and then we're going to provide encouragement
and fun and friendship that grow out of God's word and how rewarded we will
be as a result of constantly making that our intention so we have some expectations.
We expect that we will get Bible-based teachings and studies.
You're not going to come to this Bible study and hear me say,
(16:55):
here's three great tips on how to have a better fill in the blank.
We're not, that's not what this is about. We, we, we love the warm and fuzzy
and like, I would solve my life devotionals. We do.
That's not this. You know that by now.
We just like God's word. If your marriage is struggling, God's word is going
to help you. Your friends here are going to be God oriented.
(17:17):
They're going to support you. If you're having trouble with your mom,
dad, elderly parents, young children, middle age, all the things that can go
on in life and work and all those things that are legitimately challenged.
It's not that we're not going to want to work through that, but we want to be
Bible-based and let the Word of God teach us how to deal with those situations, right?
(17:38):
There's resources available to go beyond that. And one of them has just come
to me. I love pastoral care hours.
And I do several hours a week with people with pastoral care of some kind.
And we'll get into the Word and we'll work through some more specific things
if you'd like that. So let me know if you need that, or if you know someone who does.
We will have faith building Bible studies. We have a faith where we have right
(18:00):
now, the level that we have, and we want to build that.
We're not going to stay stagnant. We're going to have fun and we're going to learn a ton.
You're going to learn more than you ever thought was possible and you're going
to give yourself grace. And so we expect to get stuck.
Because if you're going to learn, you're going to have to do something new and
you're going to have to try something you never tried before.
You might have to think about something the way your brain isn't grooved to think.
(18:22):
And we live in such a society right now that's really set up to have everything
catered to exactly how you want it. This is not a Starbucks cup.
We're not going to chuck off every single box and you're going to get all the
syrup and the pumps and the fillers and all the things exactly the way you want it.
You're going to get stuck and you're not going to feel like it's fun,
but you're going to move through.
(18:43):
We expect getting stuck because we've seen that Jesus allowed his disciples to be stuck.
He did not go to the cross with every single problem in their life solved.
He left them in the, I don't know. He left them struggling with some things.
He would tell a parable and they would think, huh, am I supposed to understand that?
(19:06):
And then they'd be embarrassed maybe if they didn't, what have you.
And Jesus didn't wrap it all up with a bow for them. Sometimes they explain
and sometimes he just left them in the mystery and the, I don't know.
And so why would we be any different? And so why when you get stuck and you're
in that process of growth, do you think, well, I'm not good enough at this.
It took me a lot longer than I heard so-and-so take to do hers.
(19:27):
I went through so fast. I guess I'm not a very deep thinker.
We expect to grow and then we give each other grace or give ourselves grace
in the process. And we use our gifting.
You are all beautifully gifted the way God has given you. We're going to use
that gifting. You're going to discover that more and more as we engage.
(19:49):
So how do we do this study? Well, we read the word of God. That's to be self-evident.
But we read it and we might listen to it as well. Maybe you have it on a podcast.
I recommend the Daily Audio Bible.
And he's great. He reads the Bible aloud and in different translations,
different versions of the Bible. Or maybe you just read it.
And we use a printed Bible for Bible study.
(20:09):
I love my apps. I use apps on my phone. I use them on my computer.
But I'm not doing Bible study only with that. That's a supplement to help me
see multiple parallel translations.
There's a variety of ways I use that. I want you in the word.
I want you to feel it in your hand.
I want you to hold it in your hand. I told someone a month ago or so,
whenever I started the whole, I want everyone bringing their Bible thing.
(20:31):
I said, you know, oh, I think it was you. I think it was you and your husband.
I said, I said something along the lines of, you know, I go easy on big church
people because they're not used to me up close and personal and like lighten them up for stuff.
But I'll light up the ladies if you walk in here without your Bible.
I don't mind. Does it bring your Bible? This Bible study, like bring your actual Bible.
I mean, big church, I might, like I said, go a little easy. And you and your
(20:54):
husband kind of laughed about it.
Maybe you're talking about me later in the car, like, that lady's intense.
Anyway, use a Bible, use a printed Bible, bring your Bible.
This is Bible study, write in your Bible, take notes, use a translation,
don't use a paraphrase. If you're not sure about the difference,
let me know, let your grace group leader know, we'll help you with that.
We'll be using the ESV, but you can, any of these other Bibles are great to use.
(21:17):
NIV, CSV, but NET are also good as well.
There's a variety of reasons why I narrowed it down on ESV. you can talk about
that another time, but use a good translation and then get help if you're not 100% sure.
If you want to try out a different style, let me know. Take notes,
take notes in your Bible and use colored pencils.
I always recommend this Pentel 8 because it has all the eight colored pencils right inside there.
(21:39):
And so use those as you're going through the Bible. So in our dwelling,
which we study, of course, we expect growth, we expect setbacks.
We give ourselves grace to learn. We engage with the scriptures.
We don't just read the Bible and we We think, think, think as we're in the Word.
We ask good questions like who, to whom, where, when, and why.
(21:59):
And boy, did we hit that last year in the Exodus through Deuteronomy study.
You have to think, oh, this was not written to me.
Boy, is this ancient stuff. So what happens sometimes is we move from ancient
Israel and Hebrew and 4,000 years ago and a writing style that doesn't even
look at remotely close to anything we're familiar with.
(22:21):
And we move over to the New Testament and it's 2,000 years closer and we feel
like, oh, okay, I totally understand this. And then some things are very relatable.
You know, Paul lightened people up like he did in 1 and 2 Corinthians.
We're going to see that a bit in Galatians as well. But it was still not written to you.
You're still reading a letter. And this is actually a literal letter whereas
(22:43):
the Old Testament wasn't written as letters.
This is actually a letter that was distributed to a variety of churches approaches
to them for a specific reason and a specific time.
So we're going to be mindful of that and let that still teach us.
And we're going to enjoy the process. We're going to have fun.
And that's a huge part of what I like to teach along those lines.
(23:04):
All right. So moving through our grace group guidelines is going to be a helpful
way for us to also focus in on our priorities.
Because I wrote this as a bit of a Bill of Rights or a Constitution,
I guess, in a sense of how I wanted to see us engage with each other.
If you've been with Dwelling Witchly for a while, you've seen these every year.
And so I always like to make sure we cover them because it puts them back in
(23:29):
your mind and it reaffirms that I'm on your side.
Like I want us to connect and this is how that's gonna look.
God's word is our standard. We show up at Bible study and you might have a great
idea from a pastor, a great idea from a podcast, a fabulous idea,
and they might be legitimately great.
TV shows, programs, all the things that might help you understand the Bible.
(23:51):
And I learned this great thing.
That's awesome. you should be gathering. That's not God's word.
Stay focused on God's word.
And that's our final standard. But I saw this in this pastorate.
Super awesome. But we're going to be on God's word only in our groups.
We remember in essentials, unity, non-essentials, liberty, and all things charity.
(24:11):
This is so important because we have to know that there are essentials.
An essential example of that would be something like the Trinity.
So we know that God is three persons, not three energy forces,
persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
We know Jesus was born of a virgin. We know that he lived as a man.
(24:32):
He was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected on the third day.
Those are essentials. Those are what we hold to.
Anything else that's essential, obviously I didn't name all of them,
but that's the main stuff.
Non-essentials, that would be an example like taking communion.
For example, our brothers and sisters from the Quaker tradition,
(24:53):
tradition right down the street, by the way, Granada Heights Friends Church,
a lot of Quakers, because Whittier was started by a Quaker settlement.
So a lot of Quaker churches around here, they don't do communion. Did you know that?
No, that's part of their founding beliefs. They do not do communion.
They don't do baptism. Now, some churches might have adopted it,
but they're going away from their original founding history.
(25:13):
The Quakers did not believe in communion or baptism.
That's not an essential. That's not an essential. And we would think,
Great, yes, it feels like a super-duper essential. It's just not, though.
So I grew up where we took communion second Sunday of the month.
Baptist, second Sunday of the month. Some churches do once a year.
Some churches, backgrounds won't do baptism on a little baby.
(25:36):
Others think, oh my goodness gracious, you have to know what you're doing to do a baptism.
So again, we're going to put those in the category of non-essentials because
our Christian brothers and sisters still love Jesus and they hold to those essentials.
And of course we have charity for all the disagreements. So we're going to do
our own thinking as we're working through that.
And we're going to be aware that if you have a Bible with commentaries or study
notes that somebody else did a bunch of of thinking on that.
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And that's going to slant your Bible notes probably to the tradition that those people were in.
Most Bible writing and translating study guide committees are written by an
eclectic group of people, but there's a driving force behind a lot of it.
For example, the ESV is written by an entirely different or translated by an
entirely different group of people than the NIV people are.
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Very different approach to how things are oriented.
The ESV, very Calvinist. And if you don't know what that is, it doesn't matter.
We can talk about it another time, but they're going to be way more tendency
to feel a little Calvinist about how things are written, whereas the NIV, not so much.
NIV is going to be a little more loose with women and names and gender and things
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like that because they kind of soften all that up.
It doesn't take away from the truth of scripture, but it might bother some people.
They do a little more translating for you on the NIV side where the ESV tends
to take things a little more literally.
You'll start to learn to see that bias in the way they're writing.
But I will say, because I already put the list up, those are both great Bibles.
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But if you start to learn to realize, oh, they kind of bent.
I see how they translated that. There's a nuance there.
All you have to do is be aware of it. And so when you start spouting off something
as if it's the truth, you're like, oh, I actually got that from a commentary.
That's just a way of thinking about things. So I can't be dogmatic on it.
So trust God, pray for wisdom. God will give it to you and be gracious.
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Be patient, be patient with yourself.
Be patient with other people. We're all learning. I'm learning too.
So we'll be gracious with everybody,
right? And patient. Then we will remember, this is a Bible study.
That's why the thumbs up and thumbs down are there because there's going to
be right or wrong answers.
Not everything you say deserves to be pinned and put on the refrigerator,
which my son learned when he
was five years old and he handed me something that wasn't his best work.
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And he said why didn't you put that on the refrigerator refer back
to what i just said not your best work he went back
to he's like what he went back to his room and he drew a really nice
picture i did stick it on the refrigerator and he learned mommy isn't just going
to sign off on every little thing we're going to if you want it there it needs
to be at this level the same thing happens here you're going to be right or
wrong answers we we're like the cult prevention club we're not going to let
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you start some weird doctrine or here's what's interesting is you'll say something you'll not realize.
That's why I do the whole thing about the Trinity, God, the Father,
Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons.
Because if you think of them as energetic forces, that's a heresy.
And if you start talking like that, we're going to help you and correct and
go, oh, don't talk. That's a known heresy.
We're going to help you reword things. And we've talked about this before.
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Tighten up our theology. Remember I've said that before? We're going to tighten
up our theology so we don't run that risk and we keep things in truth of God's word.
And so that can leave you feeling like, Ooh, what if I say it wrong?
What if I, you know, sound like I'm Jennifer's going to bust in and say,
are you trying to start a cult? You know, and I get on your case or something like that.
No, but go back. We're going to have grace. We're going to wrong direction. Don't look.
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I really went, my goodness gracious. How did I, oh my goodness. I really, how did I,
Oh, Lord have mercy. You're still an eagle. I know.
How funny. Did I exit myself? I did. I exited myself out of that slideshow somehow. That was really...
Well, enjoy that while it's up there. Back to my dad's quiz.
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What button did I push down here? That's funny.
And four Ps. Have I talked about those yet? Let's get back up to grace groups
and start from there. Ding.
Okay. So we're going to share or listen. We're going to be patient with each other and gracious.
You don't have to share, but if you did the reading and you did the response
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to that prompt, please share and listen and enjoy each other.
Don't overthink it. I'm not going to bust in and hold up a heresy sign.
Maybe I will. That'll be funny. And then also done or not done,
come. Done or not done, come. Didn't finish the study?
Great. Just come anyway. There's only one One person is going to whisper in
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your ear ever and say, you know, your relations are at home.
You had a hard week. You really didn't do your best work or any at all on that
Bible study. Maybe just stay home. Let's watch another episode of Blue Blitz.
So come. And then as we meet with each other, we're going to be considerate
in our groups of the time that we're taking as we share and our tone.
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If you've been with me, I added that this year. I want us to be careful with our tone.
And I'm probably preaching to the choir. So you can share that I added this
to anybody else who might be challenged in this area.
But we're going to be careful in how we engage with each other.
We're going to put our fingers away and not point, you should do this.
Unless you really know that person and you've got that avocado-worthy relationship
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with them, we're going to be careful with that and we're going to be prayerful.
Listen, when you pull into that parking lot, you arrive at Bible study.
You arrive with everything you brought with you emotionally,
spiritually, physically, probably in your car, in your big purses and all that.
Pause. Pause. Leave your hands on the steering wheel. Don't reach for the door
yet. Just say, Lord, thank you. I'm here.
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And pray. Pray. And then when you step out of your car and you move your way
into this building, pray, pray for your Bible study leaders.
Pray for me, pray for each other and pray for this evening.
Just anoint this whole space with prayer and be in that spirit of prayer throughout.
So the whole plan of the Bible study is designed to support everything I've just laid out.
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We let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. I've embedded a pattern and a
predictability into your Bible study.
There's a rhythm to it, a flow to it. And if you start seeing it that way,
you'll realize, oh, look at that. It's always the same. It just ebbs and flows like this.
The goal is to help you grow in spiritual disciplines and to become equipped
to know the word and to really deepen your faith.
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And so you will know two things. You have an advocate.
So wouldn't that be awful if we didn't? And it's the best advocate ever, of course, is Jesus.
And listen to what he said. ahead. He said in John 17, verse 20,
I do not ask for these only, talking to who he's, he says in his high priestly
prayer, by the way, he's praying when he says this, we're going to get to this
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chapter in church in a couple weeks, coming soon.
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe.
Everyone raise your hand. Who are you?
Those who will believe, right, in me through their word. You have him.
We have a great high priest, the author of Hebrew writes in chapter Chapter
four, verse 14, who has passed to the heavens, Jesus, the son of God.
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What is the role of a high priest? You know this from last year.
He's the intercessor. He goes before constantly. We learned that so well in Leviticus.
And that's literally what Jesus is doing.
He finished his earthly life and time here, commissioned his disciples.
And now he's our great high priest once and for all, forever done.
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If anyone does sin or when anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father,
Jesus Christ, the righteous.
He is the one, the righteous one in 1 John 2.1.
So we know two things though. We have an enemy and Satan, of course, is there.
And he's a terrible, evil, lying son of a nutcracker.
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No, he's a devil that plows around like a roaring lion seeking to summon to
devour. who wrote that? Peter did.
Who was the one who was told, get behind me, Satan?
Peter was. Who was the one who was denying Christ? Peter was.
Who was the one who Jesus said to say it three times? Love my sheep,
love my sheep, love my sheep. Peter.
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You think he doesn't know about the enemy? Peter knew about the enemy and he
wanted to warn everybody about that.
And then in Revelation, John writes, the accuser of our brothers,
Jesus, has been thrown down.
Yes. So everyone says amen, right? Who accuses them day and night before our
God. And while he's accusing us day and night, Jesus is advocating for us.
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You have those two things going for you.
And then there's four Ps I want you to remember. First is to pray.
We're going to pray like James did, who first denied Jesus, his own brother,
did not accept him as his savior or the Messiah, but then somehow something
changed and he got wisdom.
And look what he wrote about it. If you lack wisdom, ask God who gives generously to all.
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And he was a living testimony. That's exactly what happened in his own life.
Amen. And then he wrote later in chapter five, verse 16, the prayer of a righteous
person has great power as it is working.
I could sound like he's bragging, but he's saying, I'm a righteous person by
the blood of Jesus. And it has great power as it is working.
And so he's praying. And then in Ephesians, Paul writes, pray every now and
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then when you feel like it.
What does he say? You pray at all times. How do you pray? Not in the flesh.
You pray in the spirit, the Holy Spirit. with all prayer and supplication,
all right? So we have prayer.
We also partner. We're not alone in this. We connect with our group.
We encourage. We have accountability with each other.
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And Jesus said in John 17, again, with this prayer, I in them,
you in me, that they may become perfectly one.
So the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.
They are, there's unity when we're in fellowship together on all these points.
And then the writer of Hebrew says these two things, exhort one another every
day as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness
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of sin. You know who he's referring to?
Some of you, he's referring to the Israelites who refused to enter the land and rebelled.
Go back to Hebrews and remember that.
But the way we avoid that is we're willing to exhort one another.
And we don't like that. I don't want to sound judgmental.
No, that's wrong thinking. That's worldly thinking. We exhort each other.
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We call each other out. We say when someone's sharing and kvetching about their
life, we say, you know, actually, let's get into the word. Let's pause. Let's pray.
I'm going to exhort you. We need to do this. So because I'm saying this out loud, I'm expecting it.
I want to see it. I want you to do this.
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I want us to live like that with each other. If I see a lack of that,
I'm your shepherd. God's given me that role.
I will move in and encourage and exhort you, hey, I would love to hear that
you worked through this with so-and-so.
Whatever it is, giving them that type of advice that's biblical, right?
And then he continues to say, but don't consider how to stir one another up to love and good works.
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And it might take an exhortation at first to do that, to stir someone up to love and good works.
But that is our goal. And that's what partnering is about. The third is a plan.
We plan now for the time that we're going to spend in Bible study.
Like I said earlier, it's not just going to happen And so we say Proverbs 16, 3.
And read all of Proverbs 16, by the way. It's plan, plan, plan,
commit, commit, commit. It's such a great psalm. You're going to read it in
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this lesson, but that's for another day.
So commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.
Not just willy-nilly, it's Bible study might happen if I get around to it.
You will commit to it and they will be to the Lord and it will be established.
But make it part of your plan.
And this is going to happen because as you leave tonight, I'm going to ask you
to exit out, go to your cars and don't leave the parking lot until you have prayed this prayer.
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Lord, I commit my work to you. I want my plans to be established.
I take you at your word. I'm leaving this parking lot ready.
I have five lessons of Galatians. It's going to take me from now until November.
I want to finish strong. I want to do them all.
I want to learn. I want to grow. I want to flourish. So we're going to not leave
that parking lot until we've prayed that prayer. Amen. All right.
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Prioritize. Your spiritual health is valuable. How many of you brushed your
teeth sometime this week?
I used this example when I was a fifth grade school teacher,
assuming everyone brushed their teeth. And I had kids go, I don't know, did I? I'm like, Okay.
That's why I provided mints when I would bend down and help kids with their math.
Your teeth are valuable. That's why you brush them. You schedule your little
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appointments to make sure you're getting them clean and what have you.
Your spiritual health is really valuable. You should make it a priority in the
same way you would brush your teeth, brush up on your passion to be in the word.
Timothy says, do your best to present, or Paul says to Timothy,
Do your best to present to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to
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be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
If you are ashamed, it's because you are not handling the word of truth rightly.
And you should be ashamed. You should know better.
Make it a priority. Like, learn. Work through that.
Think about it. You were who you were, but you are not that person.
Move in that direction. but make it a priority to leave that behind and move
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on in how you're growing in your faith and not be satisfied with your understanding
that you had yesterday or the day before or a year ago.
For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in those good works he already planned for us.
That's expectation. That's anticipation. That's enthusiasm.
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Like there is a plan. You're not just out there hoping it will all work out
in the end. God didn't just flip a switch and knock the world into existence
and let it keep on rolling.
He put his spirit of life into you.
And with that came his plan beforehand that we should walk in him.
Own that, love that, be excited about that.
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Wake up with that. Oh, Lord, you've given me this.
How dare we leave it unfinished when we let our head hit the pillow at night?
And so all of these things remind us in Matthew 6, 33, it's about the kingdom of God.
Seek first, seek first, seek first, seek first. Everything should be oriented
that and all those other things, everything we trouble ourselves with will be added to you.
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So I've organized the lesson in that rhythm and flow so we can make all of these
things happen. and week by week and day by day. Day one is today.
And that's just this time together. That's day one. If you want to look,
it's all outlined for you in the beginning of lesson one.
And when you find it, you can shout out the page so other people can hear it as well.
I found it. It's day, it's page 17.
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And so you've got a way right there to organize your week. If you're like me,
you already know what your next two weeks are going to look like to some degree.
For example, tomorrow I'm going to drive all the way out to Fallbrook with my
husband and my nephew's getting married. Yay.
So I've got a three and a half hour drive to Fallbrook. So we're going to head
out there, have this beautiful wedding at five o'clock at night,
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and then turn around and come back and then leave by four o'clock in the morning
because my husband has a job all the way up in San Luis Obispo.
And so my sister just recently moved there and I made arrangements with her
husband to surprise her.
She doesn't know we're coming and we're going to surprise her and see her in San Luis Obispo.
And I said, you know what? Let's not turn around and come back on Friday. Let's spend Saturday.
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And so Glenn was all about that. And I'm like, and let's stay at the Madonna Inn.
Yeah so we're
staying in the madonna and don't tell glenn because he doesn't know
he's you can book it don't you don't have to tell me which room because you don't
know about the madonna and they're all these cool rooms i booked the caveman
room that's the room we're gonna get it's fine we didn't do anything big for
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our our wedding anniversary this year so we're gonna go there anyway that's
all to say plan i i know i'm gonna be slammed i'm not gonna normally i turn around after today,
edit this video and get it out for you. I know I'm going to do that.
I'm going to be pretty tired.
And so I won't have time to do that. But I know that I think about intentional
day two in a regular lesson is always going to be the big overview.
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This entire lesson is like a day two. Basically, it's because it's we're going
to read all of Galatians in this lesson.
Days three through nine normally will be where you dig in a little deeper into the word.
And then day 10 is always the create and share, which is so beautiful to see
your creativity come out and the share that I encourage you to embrace it.
Is that something that you love doing?
Yay. Keep on doing that. If it's something you're hesitant about, work on that.
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Let's be the year that you really enjoy doing that.
Each day then is also have a flow to it.
And if you want to take a look at that on the top of page 19,
you can see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. We're going to pray.
And I will sometimes give you a prompt like I do on this day.
Pray for your grace group today. Number two, what's number two say?
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Memorize and meditate. What are we memorizing in this lesson? That's right.
And then we're going to simply read Galatians, and there's your passage.
If you look below, it's going to break that passage down for you.
And maybe when you open this, you realize, I don't have time for it all.
Just read. Just read 14 verses.
And you got that part done at least. Number four is write the word.
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That will begin actually in lesson two. at the end of Galatians,
we will have written all of the book of Galatians. It's so cool.
And so that starts in lesson two.
I'll give you a prompt to help you engage in our community, and you'll see that
coming through on the app. So look for those.
And then I already mentioned the worship playlist for you.
And then in this lesson, I'm going to ask you to think of a song that came to
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your mind as you were going through the word.
So Galatians in particular,
It's an incredible letter because it answers some core questions that all of
us need to be able to have the answers to.
And so here's just a few of the questions I feel like Galatians answers for
us. Why do we drift from the gospel of grace?
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Paul's going to open right up at the very beginning and talk about that.
There's a problem here, and we're going to have that question answered for us as we do our study.
Am I trying to earn my way to God through good works?
Maybe that's not something you struggle with, but that's not the point in total of this Bible study.
It's to equip you to grow so that you can also equip others.
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Maybe you know someone who still deals with this.
Am I living freely in Christ or am I still bound by guilt and legalism?
I think at any given season of our life, we might find ourselves bound by guilt
still over choices we've made, regrets that we have.
What does that look like to live free of that in Christ?
How can I overcome the struggle between flesh and spirit? And that's mostly
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for you guys. I don't deal with that.
This is a constant struggle in my life. And I want to submit to the Lord.
How can I overcome that struggle between the flesh and the spirit?
What does that look like? Galatians is going to talk about that.
How do I persevere in faith when I feel weary?
You know, maybe you're weary tonight about things that are happening in your life.
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And it's really hard to hang in there. We're going to talk about that in this study.
Am I living in the freedom of Christ, relying on his grace and walking by the spirit each day?
Wow. What would that look like? Living in freedom of Christ,
relying on his grace and walking by the spirit each day.
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We're going to move in and talk about that throughout the study as well.
So I want to give you some reminders of how you can make sure you're connected and access things.
First of all, your lessons are always printed and available to you right here at Bible Study.
You can also download them. There's a variety of places they go out so that you can find them.
If you aren't able to make it to Bible Study to print, you can open them up and view them as a PDF.
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And those are available on my website or the Church Center group.
I drop those into the resources tab. If you find a typo, you can call my secretary.
Doesn't really always catch everything and you can let her know no we i don't
have a secretary in case you did not know that but we have a little typo thread
that we start in our group,
and so i encourage you to hey you know check the group first maybe somebody
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already noticed it if you're looking up a scripture and you feel like does that
match what i'm saying there's not a magic it might be a little typo so check
the group and we will start a typo thread we're We're going to alert people of that.
Obviously, you're attending here in person. The Zoom is available and you can
join with that. And then my information here on how to contact me.
I use my Dwelling Richly Gmail address.
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That's an old address. I started that back in 1993, I think.
When I was a musician, I was writing a lot of songs.
And so that's been with me for a long time. It's my oldest email.
I still have it active. So it all goes filtered into one.
If you need to reach me, you can all those ways. the church number or that email address there as well.
Of course, your group leaders are there for you to connect with.
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And didn't they do a great job leading your groups tonight? Yay.
Thank you, group leaders.
So in Galatians, I want you to look for these words, and we're going to listen
for them in just a minute because we're going to close with a worship song together.
But I want you to look for these words, and whatever your understanding of this
idea is right now, Now, my prayer is that by the time we finish the last day
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of the final lesson of this study in Galatians,
you will have deepened your understanding of grace, true grace.
Like I had you ask in your discussion groups tonight, true freedom in Christ, being spirit filled.
And here's, I put the word reality up because the world is darkened in their thinking.
They're not living in true reality. They think they are, but they're dark.
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We have reality if we have Christ. Christ and that's
hope giving and so we're going to learn about that
true reality in this study we're going to know what
this means in our life that it is for freedom that Christ that is free and then
we're going to have this truth and I went back and forth on these two verses
as our theme verse and you can see which one ended up winning on the front cover
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but this was such an incredible verse I have been crucified with Christ it's
no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.
So we're going to close with this song, which will be a bit of a theme song
for us in our time together.
Make sure the volume is loud enough for us to be able to hear.
And if you know the song, great. Sing along. If you don't, you can just listen
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and you'll catch it and listen to it as we go.
I pray in Jesus' name, that there is no more or ever enough to give.
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He is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love,
my deep and boundless fear.
To this I owe, my hope is only Jesus For my life is wholly bound to his,
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Oh, how strange and divine I can see All is mine, yet not I, but through Christ in me.
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The night is dark, but I am not forsaken For by my side,
the Savior, He will stay I labor on in weakness and rejoicing For in my need
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his power is displayed To this I hold,
my shepherd will defend me Through the deepest valley he will lead,
Oh, the night has been won And I shall overcome Yet not I, but through Christ in me,
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Oh, my God.
No fate I dread I know I am forgiven,
The future's sure The price it has been paid For Jesus fled,
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And suffered for my pardon And he was raised To overthrow the grave,
Through this I hold My sin has been defeated,
Jesus now and ever is my King,
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All the chains are released I can sing, I am free Yet not I, but through Christ in me.
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I long to follow Jesus, for he has said that he will bring me home.
And day by day,
I know he will renew me Until I stand with joy before his throne Let's stand
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and sing the final chorus.
I hope, my hope is only Jesus All the glory evermore to him.
When the race is complete Still my lips shall repeat Yet not I, but through Christ in me,
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To this I hold My hope is only Jesus,
All the glory evermore to Him When the race is complete Still my lips shall repeat,
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Yet not I, but through Christ in me,
When the race is complete Still my lips shall repeat Yet not I,
but through Christ in me through Christ,
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in me and not through Christ in me.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you again, acknowledging that it
is not anything we've done or deserved, and you died for us.
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We have been crucified with Christ. It is not I, it's not us that live.
Christ lives in us. We can walk in your spirit, and I pray, Lord,
on behalf of every woman here and hearing my voice, Lord, that you would help
us with your spirit to learn this truth, to live this truth out,
and to be protected from any lies or untruths that keep us in darkness.
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Lord, shine your light upon us and help us to live in that world,
in this world, in the way that you would have us to live.
We ask, God, your hand of blessing now as we leave committed in your ways to
trust in you and to give all of our plans to you for your glory.
And we ask this now in Jesus' name. And everyone said, Hallelujah. Amen.
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Have a lovely, lovely evening. What are you going to do when you get in your car?
Thank you
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very much.
Time here together in this session. Tonight is the kickoff of the Galatians
Greenfield Bible Study, as you know.
And you've had your time in your grace groups to connect with everybody and revisit and laugh.
And I heard some, oh no moments.
And so all the things that we share aren't about being in that fellowship.
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And I'm looking forward to that.
Some of you know that this summer I started a new podcast series and there was
a bit of an interesting journey that took place through that series.
And I want to share a bit of that with you tonight. And so many of you also
know that I am a PK. Who knows what a PK is?
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That's a pastor's kid. I'm a pastor's kid. That's right. I'm a PK.
And so this summer, I started a series at the beginning of the summer in April.
I thought I'd do just a series through the summer called how to study the Bible.
And the idea was to think through questions that people have asked me in the
past, like, how do you do this? And how do you do that?
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And kind of take some things that you've all learned through being in study
and put them out there in that format on that topic, how to study the Bible.
And it began with some passages in
Psalms and went to Proverbs and did something, we covered all of 1 John.
And then I shifted gears and I started going through Psalm 119.
And it wasn't a Bible study. It was letting the scripture teach us how to study.
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God's word tells us how to study.
And so we went through the scripture to do that. All right. So I'm in the middle
of teaching through this series.
And I finally get to a box in my garage that I've been wanting.
How many of you want to clean out your garage?
I'm not the only one. Okay. So I finally had some time. I set it aside and I came across this box.
I kept on seeing that I know I needed to go through. It has some of my dad's
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things. My dad passed away in 2016.
And so I opened the box and a rat had gotten into the box and made a bad, nasty mess.
If you've ever had to deal with rats in your garage.
So I opened that up and I uncovered a box within a box.
And inside that box within a box was the treasure of all treasures.
(02:11):
And it wasn't gold, diamonds, jewels, wasn't money. It was cassette recordings
of my dad's sermons and messages. Wow.
And they were pretty trashed by this rat. And so I put on gloves and just set
the box aside. I couldn't even...
Fathom dealing with it at that moment. But I eventually did,
(02:32):
found them, recovered them, and started opening up the cassette,
little plastic case, remember cassettes with the plastic case around it?
Open those up. That was the part that was covered in rat goo.
And inside, the cassettes were fine. They were fine, completely fine.
And so I have quite a few of them. I brought Brought a couple of them to show you here tonight.
(02:54):
But what was exciting? I wasn't doing right.
Back in my day, right?
So here's what was pretty cool. Among any cassette, any message I could have
found of anything my dad had ever produced, I happened to find a cassette that
said he was teaching on how to enjoy the Bible.
(03:16):
And I thought, really? really. Here I am teaching how to study the Bible.
And I went through and opened the next one up.
And the next set, and there are quite a few in this series, was him teaching
through Psalm 119, right where I had been teaching.
I mean, if you don't think I sat down and had a good cry about that,
that was just such an amazing, goose-fumpily wonderful, wonderful, wonderful moment.
(03:41):
Well, then the next was, would the cassettes even play? Would I even be able
to, you know, don't listen to them at all.
Well, that was a bit of a process. And I ended up having to buy a special type
of cassette player that would transfer it to an MP3 file.
And then I was nervous. Is it going to eat? Because I read all the reviews.
Remember? So I stuck in an old cassette. Are you ready what I stuck?
(04:05):
Wham it was wham wake me wake me up wake me up it was my original i tried to
find one well if it gets damaged his stuff is still out there digitally so i
can i put it in and it played.
Anyway long story short i wrote a series started a new whole whole new series
called rediscovering dad put it on my blog and was able to successfully start
(04:29):
transferring the cassettes over to mp3 i'm three messages in on that.
I started with how to enjoy the Bible.
That's up. Two of his messages from Psalm 119 are up.
I had already worked through a few of the passages that he's taught.
And I thought, oh man, those are great nuggets. I wish I knew that.
And so please enjoy those. Go listen to those.
(04:52):
So not only are the messages up there for you, but I've transcribed the entire
message about an hour long.
I've transcribed all of them. Sometimes it's hard to hear what he's saying.
And so it's transcribed for you. In addition to that, I've written a study guide
for each one, as well as a devotional for each one.
So if you don't have enough, you know, if you can't, you know,
this isn't taking up all your time, go back and listen to my dad's and be blessed,
(05:15):
be blessed and encouraged.
And I'll tell you one of the things that was most incredible about hearing my
dad's voice, and I'll try not to get too choked up about this,
but incredible to hear his voice, but also to go, I've said that to my women before.
I didn't even remember he said that. And then something else he'd say.
I've said that too. Wow. So all that.
(05:37):
And I was about 13 or 14 years old when I would have been sitting in this.
It was an adult Sunday school class at our church at the time.
And I just thought, I have no original thoughts. I have no original thoughts.
Everything I apparently just learned and just regurgitated somewhere inside
of me. And when I get up here to teach, out comes my dad.
(05:58):
So you will recognize his voice in heaven now and you will recognize him.
So I thought we'd open today with a little game.
This is a little game. And the game is called Dad or Jen.
So I'm going to put a quote on the screen here for you.
So you have a page to take notes on. Open up your notes page and make a little
tally chart for you. D for Dad and J for Jen or whatever.
And I'll put the quote and then you're going to put a little tally and we'll
(06:20):
see at the end how you did. You ready? Tuesday night proved it pretty good.
Wednesday morning killed it. Mary McCarville was really proud of herself.
So you might want to compare score with Mary McCarville on Sunday when you see her.
Ask her how she did. Are you ready?
I did put it on my Instagram page earlier today. All right, here we go.
(06:41):
The Bible isn't just a book of rules or history. It's God's way of showing us
his heart, his plan, and his love for us.
Dad or Jen? Jen. All right, make your tally. Here we go. Make your vote. Dad.
It's dad. Dad, isn't that beautiful?
(07:02):
1981. 1981 is where he went. And these are exact quotes.
I went through and they pulled excerpts out of the How to Study the Bible,
How to Enjoy the Bible message. So this is a direct quote from that.
And when you see any from me, those are direct quotes also from stuff I've said.
All right, we have to begin and we have to remember it's not about discovering ourselves.
(07:23):
We have to make our priority god who are
you dad or jen you're so
well trained you know me so well yes it
is me but really it's my dad it's not that he said that exact word but i am
standing on his shoulders i mean like i said there's no way i apparently have
(07:46):
nothing original say you can go to heaven you'll be like i've heard jennifer
let me talk to my dad talk to him and my mom too for for that matter,
if I only have her recordings.
So I have that as my past. I have that as my heritage.
And my passion for us this year is that you will embrace what you have as a
(08:06):
calling to offer this heritage to the people that God brings into your life.
And they will stand on your shoulders. Give them a shoulder to stand on.
Give them God's heritage, God's true word. All right.
When you come to the Bible, come with questions. It's okay not to know all the
answers right away. It's in the wrestling that we grow. Dad or Jen?
(08:26):
Dad or Jen? Dad or Jen? Put the tally mark.
Me that's that's a direct quote but again i mean
there's literally no way my i'm sure my dad
would have said that i and he listened to his teaching i there
surely he would have said that because let the
word of christ dwell in you richly it's not
just about doing bible study it's about letting god's word live in
(08:48):
your heart dad or jen dad or jen dad
or jen who said that that's me
that's a a direct quote from one of my messages but again
dad it was a
scripture that he and i turned into a song together we wrote a
song together based on that scripture context is everything if you're going
(09:10):
to enjoy reading the bible you have to understand what's happening why it was
written and to whom dad or jen dad dad does sound very dad like does it it is
enjoy it was the tip all All right.
Are you keeping score? How are you doing? You good? You good? All right.
The Bible is God's food for you.
(09:31):
Come and eat, whether it is a snack or a feast. Just come. That's me.
I'm sure I heard my dad or my mom say that at some point. Right,
though? All right. That's a Jennifer quote.
Test everything against Scripture. Don't just take my word for it.
Know the word yourself. Dad, well, you said it on Sunday on the 7th.
I think I said it one time. That's my dad, for sure.
(09:55):
If you open up to the opening introduction, you'll see that I write that in.
That's what I strongly recall him saying to us. Don't just take my word for
it. Test everything against scripture.
I always said that. Martin Luther said that, by the way, as well.
So dad was standing on his shoulders. That's the whole reason why we have the
Protestant Reformation is that Martin Luther wanted us to be reading the Bible on our own.
Remember, God's word was written for you, but it wasn't written to you.
(10:18):
We have to study it in context.
Dad gen, dad gen, dad gen.
Oh, yeah. Again, I have to put my dad there behind me, whispering over me and
he's coming out. And I love that heritage that he gave me.
The first thing God gave his people when he delivered them from slavery was
a was a Jennifer. He gave them a calendar.
(10:41):
We're on his hours, not ours.
Jennifer. I did say that. But again, there's no way that's an original thought.
I'm sure my dad must have said something along those lines.
Lightly dividing the word of truth is a key to understanding the Bible.
Approach it with confidence that God has said precisely what he wanted to say. Dad or Jen?
(11:01):
Jen, dad, Jen, Jen. That's my dad in his cool Argyle sweater.
All right. Who do you think said this one? Dad or Jen? Jennifer is my baby.
Okay.
Okay. That's fair.
(11:24):
We'll see. I put that, I made a little video out of this and posted it to my
Instagram earlier today and I just left it.
I have no idea what I'm going to come back to. It might be my sister's writing me like, Hey now.
All right. So what a beautiful gift.
And I, I couldn't, I couldn't emphasize that more. And as I went through that
(11:45):
this summer and the joy of what that brought me and just the realization that
God had given me such an incredible gift,
I want that for you. I want that for you.
I want your loved ones to experience that because of your faithfulness.
And I want to help you be faithful.
I want to pastor and shepherd all of us in that way. So we're going to go through what will be a review.
(12:07):
I like to open up our Bible studies in the same way every year and move through
coming back to who we are.
What is this all about? What are we going to look forward to? How are we going to be?
And you are a different woman today than you were a year ago.
And you've learned things and you've applied them and you're going to have new aha moments.
(12:29):
And I want to always to be fresh like that.
Maybe you've already studied Galatians. How many of you've been through Galatians before?
How many of this is brand new, never been through of Galatians before.
Wow. Okay, this is very interesting. So.
Either way, God's word is fresh and new and alive and powerful,
and it moves through us. And we're different if we're growing in our faith.
(12:52):
And so God's word is going to teach you in a new way this year.
So we are women who enthusiastically and intentionally dwell in the word,
and we let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. How many of you know that by heart?
That's who we are. That's what dwelling richly is all about. We're enthusiastic.
We don't think about getting into the word of God as a drudgery.
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We're enthusiastic about it.
We don't let it just happen. And maybe if it does, we are intentional about it.
Because if we're not intentional, other things will happen. There are other
things that happen in our life.
And so we are enthusiastic and we're intentional about being in the word.
And we dwell in the word. We don't just do Bible study.
I mean, we do. We say, I'm going to do my Bible study. Yay.
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No one's going to correct you on that. But you know what you mean when you say
that you are going to dwell in the word.
And so we take this beautiful passage from Colossians chapter three,
it's from verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in us richly.
And we do that. And I encourage you to read the rest of that passages.
You're gonna move into that as you go through this first lesson.
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So we point, support, share, and provide. We point one another toward God for wisdom and hope.
We are creating a community of women. We're intentional about how that looks.
Look, we're not just going to let it happen.
We're enthusiastic about this community and we're intentional about this community.
And so we're going to protect it very closely to make sure it stays on point with God's message.
(14:20):
And so when someone in the group shares a difficult time, a joyful anything,
and when anyone shares anything, it doesn't matter if it's difficult or joyful,
you're going to point them toward God.
For wisdom and hope in no matter what situation. And as women,
we love to comfort and empathize with people. Oh my goodness,
that's so hard. I'm so sorry.
(14:41):
But the bottom line is if someone's coming to you and they're playing the victim, you need the wisdom.
Oh man, all your eyes just looked up when I said that. That was an interesting point of view for me.
If someone comes to you and they play that victim card, oh, this is happening.
You can tell, you can feel it because we've all done it before.
We're not going to feed that with each other. We're going to point each other
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toward God for wisdom and hope.
And we're not going to feed the worst part of our spiritual weakness, right?
We're going to feed and help to cause to grow. And we're going to be intentional
about that. We're going to support one another in life's challenges and blessings, right?
Because that is what life is. It's challenges and blessings.
And we're going to share our strengths Now, listen, this is important because
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I think as Christians, especially in this type of setting, we don't want to,
we feel like we're bragging if we play to our strengths. Does that make sense?
We feel like maybe we're not being humble if we're using our strengths.
And we don't want to look like we're not, you know, humble.
So we might downplay that.
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Why would you do that?
Hasn't God given you a gift? Use it. Use it and have God orient your heart and
your mind and the way you come across so that it is a blessing,
but you are using your strengths.
And then with our weaknesses, we sometimes can have a lot of shame associated
with our weaknesses and we can feel like, oh, I'm not good at this and I'm not
(16:11):
good at that and so on and so this. Okay.
We're not going to be like that. We are going to
share our strength with humility and we're
going to share them and we're going to share our weaknesses with
humility and we're going to share them and someone's
going to buddy up with you and say you got this it's okay
or thank you for sharing that great strength you had and how you lifted us all
(16:33):
up because of your gifting right and then we're going to provide encouragement
and fun and friendship that grow out of God's word and how rewarded we will
be as a result of constantly making that our intention so we have some expectations.
We expect that we will get Bible-based teachings and studies.
You're not going to come to this Bible study and hear me say,
(16:55):
here's three great tips on how to have a better fill in the blank.
We're not, that's not what this is about. We, we, we love the warm and fuzzy
and like, I would solve my life devotionals. We do.
That's not this. You know that by now.
We just like God's word. If your marriage is struggling, God's word is going
to help you. Your friends here are going to be God oriented.
(17:17):
They're going to support you. If you're having trouble with your mom,
dad, elderly parents, young children, middle age, all the things that can go
on in life and work and all those things that are legitimately challenged.
It's not that we're not going to want to work through that, but we want to be
Bible-based and let the Word of God teach us how to deal with those situations, right?
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There's resources available to go beyond that. And one of them has just come
to me. I love pastoral care hours.
And I do several hours a week with people with pastoral care of some kind.
And we'll get into the Word and we'll work through some more specific things
if you'd like that. So let me know if you need that, or if you know someone who does.
We will have faith building Bible studies. We have a faith where we have right
(18:00):
now, the level that we have, and we want to build that.
We're not going to stay stagnant. We're going to have fun and we're going to learn a ton.
You're going to learn more than you ever thought was possible and you're going
to give yourself grace. And so we expect to get stuck.
Because if you're going to learn, you're going to have to do something new and
you're going to have to try something you never tried before.
You might have to think about something the way your brain isn't grooved to think.
(18:22):
And we live in such a society right now that's really set up to have everything
catered to exactly how you want it. This is not a Starbucks cup.
We're not going to chuck off every single box and you're going to get all the
syrup and the pumps and the fillers and all the things exactly the way you want it.
You're going to get stuck and you're not going to feel like it's fun,
but you're going to move through.
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We expect getting stuck because we've seen that Jesus allowed his disciples to be stuck.
He did not go to the cross with every single problem in their life solved.
He left them in the, I don't know. He left them struggling with some things.
He would tell a parable and they would think, huh, am I supposed to understand that?
(19:06):
And then they'd be embarrassed maybe if they didn't, what have you.
And Jesus didn't wrap it all up with a bow for them. Sometimes they explain
and sometimes he just left them in the mystery and the, I don't know.
And so why would we be any different? And so why when you get stuck and you're
in that process of growth, do you think, well, I'm not good enough at this.
It took me a lot longer than I heard so-and-so take to do hers.
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I went through so fast. I guess I'm not a very deep thinker.
We expect to grow and then we give each other grace or give ourselves grace
in the process. And we use our gifting.
You are all beautifully gifted the way God has given you. We're going to use
that gifting. You're going to discover that more and more as we engage.
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So how do we do this study? Well, we read the word of God. That's to be self-evident.
But we read it and we might listen to it as well. Maybe you have it on a podcast.
I recommend the Daily Audio Bible.
And he's great. He reads the Bible aloud and in different translations,
different versions of the Bible. Or maybe you just read it.
And we use a printed Bible for Bible study.
(20:09):
I love my apps. I use apps on my phone. I use them on my computer.
But I'm not doing Bible study only with that. That's a supplement to help me
see multiple parallel translations.
There's a variety of ways I use that. I want you in the word.
I want you to feel it in your hand.
I want you to hold it in your hand. I told someone a month ago or so,
whenever I started the whole, I want everyone bringing their Bible thing.
(20:31):
I said, you know, oh, I think it was you. I think it was you and your husband.
I said, I said something along the lines of, you know, I go easy on big church
people because they're not used to me up close and personal and like lighten them up for stuff.
But I'll light up the ladies if you walk in here without your Bible.
I don't mind. Does it bring your Bible? This Bible study, like bring your actual Bible.
I mean, big church, I might, like I said, go a little easy. And you and your
(20:54):
husband kind of laughed about it.
Maybe you're talking about me later in the car, like, that lady's intense.
Anyway, use a Bible, use a printed Bible, bring your Bible.
This is Bible study, write in your Bible, take notes, use a translation,
don't use a paraphrase. If you're not sure about the difference,
let me know, let your grace group leader know, we'll help you with that.
We'll be using the ESV, but you can, any of these other Bibles are great to use.
(21:17):
NIV, CSV, but NET are also good as well.
There's a variety of reasons why I narrowed it down on ESV. you can talk about
that another time, but use a good translation and then get help if you're not 100% sure.
If you want to try out a different style, let me know. Take notes,
take notes in your Bible and use colored pencils.
I always recommend this Pentel 8 because it has all the eight colored pencils right inside there.
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And so use those as you're going through the Bible. So in our dwelling,
which we study, of course, we expect growth, we expect setbacks.
We give ourselves grace to learn. We engage with the scriptures.
We don't just read the Bible and we We think, think, think as we're in the Word.
We ask good questions like who, to whom, where, when, and why.
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And boy, did we hit that last year in the Exodus through Deuteronomy study.
You have to think, oh, this was not written to me.
Boy, is this ancient stuff. So what happens sometimes is we move from ancient
Israel and Hebrew and 4,000 years ago and a writing style that doesn't even
look at remotely close to anything we're familiar with.
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And we move over to the New Testament and it's 2,000 years closer and we feel
like, oh, okay, I totally understand this. And then some things are very relatable.
You know, Paul lightened people up like he did in 1 and 2 Corinthians.
We're going to see that a bit in Galatians as well. But it was still not written to you.
You're still reading a letter. And this is actually a literal letter whereas
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the Old Testament wasn't written as letters.
This is actually a letter that was distributed to a variety of churches approaches
to them for a specific reason and a specific time.
So we're going to be mindful of that and let that still teach us.
And we're going to enjoy the process. We're going to have fun.
And that's a huge part of what I like to teach along those lines.
(23:04):
All right. So moving through our grace group guidelines is going to be a helpful
way for us to also focus in on our priorities.
Because I wrote this as a bit of a Bill of Rights or a Constitution,
I guess, in a sense of how I wanted to see us engage with each other.
If you've been with Dwelling Witchly for a while, you've seen these every year.
And so I always like to make sure we cover them because it puts them back in
(23:29):
your mind and it reaffirms that I'm on your side.
Like I want us to connect and this is how that's gonna look.
God's word is our standard. We show up at Bible study and you might have a great
idea from a pastor, a great idea from a podcast, a fabulous idea,
and they might be legitimately great.
TV shows, programs, all the things that might help you understand the Bible.
(23:51):
And I learned this great thing.
That's awesome. you should be gathering. That's not God's word.
Stay focused on God's word.
And that's our final standard. But I saw this in this pastorate.
Super awesome. But we're going to be on God's word only in our groups.
We remember in essentials, unity, non-essentials, liberty, and all things charity.
(24:11):
This is so important because we have to know that there are essentials.
An essential example of that would be something like the Trinity.
So we know that God is three persons, not three energy forces,
persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
We know Jesus was born of a virgin. We know that he lived as a man.
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He was crucified, died, buried, and resurrected on the third day.
Those are essentials. Those are what we hold to.
Anything else that's essential, obviously I didn't name all of them,
but that's the main stuff.
Non-essentials, that would be an example like taking communion.
For example, our brothers and sisters from the Quaker tradition,
(24:53):
tradition right down the street, by the way, Granada Heights Friends Church,
a lot of Quakers, because Whittier was started by a Quaker settlement.
So a lot of Quaker churches around here, they don't do communion. Did you know that?
No, that's part of their founding beliefs. They do not do communion.
They don't do baptism. Now, some churches might have adopted it,
but they're going away from their original founding history.
(25:13):
The Quakers did not believe in communion or baptism.
That's not an essential. That's not an essential. And we would think,
Great, yes, it feels like a super-duper essential. It's just not, though.
So I grew up where we took communion second Sunday of the month.
Baptist, second Sunday of the month. Some churches do once a year.
Some churches, backgrounds won't do baptism on a little baby.
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Others think, oh my goodness gracious, you have to know what you're doing to do a baptism.
So again, we're going to put those in the category of non-essentials because
our Christian brothers and sisters still love Jesus and they hold to those essentials.
And of course we have charity for all the disagreements. So we're going to do
our own thinking as we're working through that.
And we're going to be aware that if you have a Bible with commentaries or study
notes that somebody else did a bunch of of thinking on that.
(25:59):
And that's going to slant your Bible notes probably to the tradition that those people were in.
Most Bible writing and translating study guide committees are written by an
eclectic group of people, but there's a driving force behind a lot of it.
For example, the ESV is written by an entirely different or translated by an
entirely different group of people than the NIV people are.
(26:21):
Very different approach to how things are oriented.
The ESV, very Calvinist. And if you don't know what that is, it doesn't matter.
We can talk about it another time, but they're going to be way more tendency
to feel a little Calvinist about how things are written, whereas the NIV, not so much.
NIV is going to be a little more loose with women and names and gender and things
(26:42):
like that because they kind of soften all that up.
It doesn't take away from the truth of scripture, but it might bother some people.
They do a little more translating for you on the NIV side where the ESV tends
to take things a little more literally.
You'll start to learn to see that bias in the way they're writing.
But I will say, because I already put the list up, those are both great Bibles.
(27:05):
But if you start to learn to realize, oh, they kind of bent.
I see how they translated that. There's a nuance there.
All you have to do is be aware of it. And so when you start spouting off something
as if it's the truth, you're like, oh, I actually got that from a commentary.
That's just a way of thinking about things. So I can't be dogmatic on it.
So trust God, pray for wisdom. God will give it to you and be gracious.
(27:25):
Be patient, be patient with yourself.
Be patient with other people. We're all learning. I'm learning too.
So we'll be gracious with everybody,
right? And patient. Then we will remember, this is a Bible study.
That's why the thumbs up and thumbs down are there because there's going to
be right or wrong answers.
Not everything you say deserves to be pinned and put on the refrigerator,
which my son learned when he
was five years old and he handed me something that wasn't his best work.
(27:48):
And he said why didn't you put that on the refrigerator refer back
to what i just said not your best work he went back
to he's like what he went back to his room and he drew a really nice
picture i did stick it on the refrigerator and he learned mommy isn't just going
to sign off on every little thing we're going to if you want it there it needs
to be at this level the same thing happens here you're going to be right or
wrong answers we we're like the cult prevention club we're not going to let
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you start some weird doctrine or here's what's interesting is you'll say something you'll not realize.
That's why I do the whole thing about the Trinity, God, the Father,
Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons.
Because if you think of them as energetic forces, that's a heresy.
And if you start talking like that, we're going to help you and correct and
go, oh, don't talk. That's a known heresy.
We're going to help you reword things. And we've talked about this before.
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Tighten up our theology. Remember I've said that before? We're going to tighten
up our theology so we don't run that risk and we keep things in truth of God's word.
And so that can leave you feeling like, Ooh, what if I say it wrong?
What if I, you know, sound like I'm Jennifer's going to bust in and say,
are you trying to start a cult? You know, and I get on your case or something like that.
No, but go back. We're going to have grace. We're going to wrong direction. Don't look.
(29:00):
I really went, my goodness gracious. How did I, oh my goodness. I really, how did I,
Oh, Lord have mercy. You're still an eagle. I know.
How funny. Did I exit myself? I did. I exited myself out of that slideshow somehow. That was really...
Well, enjoy that while it's up there. Back to my dad's quiz.
(29:24):
What button did I push down here? That's funny.
And four Ps. Have I talked about those yet? Let's get back up to grace groups
and start from there. Ding.
Okay. So we're going to share or listen. We're going to be patient with each other and gracious.
You don't have to share, but if you did the reading and you did the response
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to that prompt, please share and listen and enjoy each other.
Don't overthink it. I'm not going to bust in and hold up a heresy sign.
Maybe I will. That'll be funny. And then also done or not done,
come. Done or not done, come. Didn't finish the study?
Great. Just come anyway. There's only one One person is going to whisper in
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your ear ever and say, you know, your relations are at home.
You had a hard week. You really didn't do your best work or any at all on that
Bible study. Maybe just stay home. Let's watch another episode of Blue Blitz.
So come. And then as we meet with each other, we're going to be considerate
in our groups of the time that we're taking as we share and our tone.
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If you've been with me, I added that this year. I want us to be careful with our tone.
And I'm probably preaching to the choir. So you can share that I added this
to anybody else who might be challenged in this area.
But we're going to be careful in how we engage with each other.
We're going to put our fingers away and not point, you should do this.
Unless you really know that person and you've got that avocado-worthy relationship
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with them, we're going to be careful with that and we're going to be prayerful.
Listen, when you pull into that parking lot, you arrive at Bible study.
You arrive with everything you brought with you emotionally,
spiritually, physically, probably in your car, in your big purses and all that.
Pause. Pause. Leave your hands on the steering wheel. Don't reach for the door
yet. Just say, Lord, thank you. I'm here.
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And pray. Pray. And then when you step out of your car and you move your way
into this building, pray, pray for your Bible study leaders.
Pray for me, pray for each other and pray for this evening.
Just anoint this whole space with prayer and be in that spirit of prayer throughout.
So the whole plan of the Bible study is designed to support everything I've just laid out.
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We let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. I've embedded a pattern and a
predictability into your Bible study.
There's a rhythm to it, a flow to it. And if you start seeing it that way,
you'll realize, oh, look at that. It's always the same. It just ebbs and flows like this.
The goal is to help you grow in spiritual disciplines and to become equipped
to know the word and to really deepen your faith.
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And so you will know two things. You have an advocate.
So wouldn't that be awful if we didn't? And it's the best advocate ever, of course, is Jesus.
And listen to what he said. ahead. He said in John 17, verse 20,
I do not ask for these only, talking to who he's, he says in his high priestly
prayer, by the way, he's praying when he says this, we're going to get to this
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chapter in church in a couple weeks, coming soon.
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe.
Everyone raise your hand. Who are you?
Those who will believe, right, in me through their word. You have him.
We have a great high priest, the author of Hebrew writes in chapter Chapter
four, verse 14, who has passed to the heavens, Jesus, the son of God.
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What is the role of a high priest? You know this from last year.
He's the intercessor. He goes before constantly. We learned that so well in Leviticus.
And that's literally what Jesus is doing.
He finished his earthly life and time here, commissioned his disciples.
And now he's our great high priest once and for all, forever done.
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If anyone does sin or when anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father,
Jesus Christ, the righteous.
He is the one, the righteous one in 1 John 2.1.
So we know two things though. We have an enemy and Satan, of course, is there.
And he's a terrible, evil, lying son of a nutcracker.
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No, he's a devil that plows around like a roaring lion seeking to summon to
devour. who wrote that? Peter did.
Who was the one who was told, get behind me, Satan?
Peter was. Who was the one who was denying Christ? Peter was.
Who was the one who Jesus said to say it three times? Love my sheep,
love my sheep, love my sheep. Peter.
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You think he doesn't know about the enemy? Peter knew about the enemy and he
wanted to warn everybody about that.
And then in Revelation, John writes, the accuser of our brothers,
Jesus, has been thrown down.
Yes. So everyone says amen, right? Who accuses them day and night before our
God. And while he's accusing us day and night, Jesus is advocating for us.
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You have those two things going for you.
And then there's four Ps I want you to remember. First is to pray.
We're going to pray like James did, who first denied Jesus, his own brother,
did not accept him as his savior or the Messiah, but then somehow something
changed and he got wisdom.
And look what he wrote about it. If you lack wisdom, ask God who gives generously to all.
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And he was a living testimony. That's exactly what happened in his own life.
Amen. And then he wrote later in chapter five, verse 16, the prayer of a righteous
person has great power as it is working.
I could sound like he's bragging, but he's saying, I'm a righteous person by
the blood of Jesus. And it has great power as it is working.
And so he's praying. And then in Ephesians, Paul writes, pray every now and
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then when you feel like it.
What does he say? You pray at all times. How do you pray? Not in the flesh.
You pray in the spirit, the Holy Spirit. with all prayer and supplication,
all right? So we have prayer.
We also partner. We're not alone in this. We connect with our group.
We encourage. We have accountability with each other.
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And Jesus said in John 17, again, with this prayer, I in them,
you in me, that they may become perfectly one.
So the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.
They are, there's unity when we're in fellowship together on all these points.
And then the writer of Hebrew says these two things, exhort one another every
day as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness
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of sin. You know who he's referring to?
Some of you, he's referring to the Israelites who refused to enter the land and rebelled.
Go back to Hebrews and remember that.
But the way we avoid that is we're willing to exhort one another.
And we don't like that. I don't want to sound judgmental.
No, that's wrong thinking. That's worldly thinking. We exhort each other.
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We call each other out. We say when someone's sharing and kvetching about their
life, we say, you know, actually, let's get into the word. Let's pause. Let's pray.
I'm going to exhort you. We need to do this. So because I'm saying this out loud, I'm expecting it.
I want to see it. I want you to do this.
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I want us to live like that with each other. If I see a lack of that,
I'm your shepherd. God's given me that role.
I will move in and encourage and exhort you, hey, I would love to hear that
you worked through this with so-and-so.
Whatever it is, giving them that type of advice that's biblical, right?
And then he continues to say, but don't consider how to stir one another up to love and good works.
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And it might take an exhortation at first to do that, to stir someone up to love and good works.
But that is our goal. And that's what partnering is about. The third is a plan.
We plan now for the time that we're going to spend in Bible study.
Like I said earlier, it's not just going to happen And so we say Proverbs 16, 3.
And read all of Proverbs 16, by the way. It's plan, plan, plan,
commit, commit, commit. It's such a great psalm. You're going to read it in
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this lesson, but that's for another day.
So commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.
Not just willy-nilly, it's Bible study might happen if I get around to it.
You will commit to it and they will be to the Lord and it will be established.
But make it part of your plan.
And this is going to happen because as you leave tonight, I'm going to ask you
to exit out, go to your cars and don't leave the parking lot until you have prayed this prayer.
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Lord, I commit my work to you. I want my plans to be established.
I take you at your word. I'm leaving this parking lot ready.
I have five lessons of Galatians. It's going to take me from now until November.
I want to finish strong. I want to do them all.
I want to learn. I want to grow. I want to flourish. So we're going to not leave
that parking lot until we've prayed that prayer. Amen. All right.
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Prioritize. Your spiritual health is valuable. How many of you brushed your
teeth sometime this week?
I used this example when I was a fifth grade school teacher,
assuming everyone brushed their teeth. And I had kids go, I don't know, did I? I'm like, Okay.
That's why I provided mints when I would bend down and help kids with their math.
Your teeth are valuable. That's why you brush them. You schedule your little
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appointments to make sure you're getting them clean and what have you.
Your spiritual health is really valuable. You should make it a priority in the
same way you would brush your teeth, brush up on your passion to be in the word.
Timothy says, do your best to present, or Paul says to Timothy,
Do your best to present to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to
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be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
If you are ashamed, it's because you are not handling the word of truth rightly.
And you should be ashamed. You should know better.
Make it a priority. Like, learn. Work through that.
Think about it. You were who you were, but you are not that person.
Move in that direction. but make it a priority to leave that behind and move
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on in how you're growing in your faith and not be satisfied with your understanding
that you had yesterday or the day before or a year ago.
For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in those good works he already planned for us.
That's expectation. That's anticipation. That's enthusiasm.
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Like there is a plan. You're not just out there hoping it will all work out
in the end. God didn't just flip a switch and knock the world into existence
and let it keep on rolling.
He put his spirit of life into you.
And with that came his plan beforehand that we should walk in him.
Own that, love that, be excited about that.
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Wake up with that. Oh, Lord, you've given me this.
How dare we leave it unfinished when we let our head hit the pillow at night?
And so all of these things remind us in Matthew 6, 33, it's about the kingdom of God.
Seek first, seek first, seek first, seek first. Everything should be oriented
that and all those other things, everything we trouble ourselves with will be added to you.
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So I've organized the lesson in that rhythm and flow so we can make all of these
things happen. and week by week and day by day. Day one is today.
And that's just this time together. That's day one. If you want to look,
it's all outlined for you in the beginning of lesson one.
And when you find it, you can shout out the page so other people can hear it as well.
I found it. It's day, it's page 17.
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And so you've got a way right there to organize your week. If you're like me,
you already know what your next two weeks are going to look like to some degree.
For example, tomorrow I'm going to drive all the way out to Fallbrook with my
husband and my nephew's getting married. Yay.
So I've got a three and a half hour drive to Fallbrook. So we're going to head
out there, have this beautiful wedding at five o'clock at night,
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and then turn around and come back and then leave by four o'clock in the morning
because my husband has a job all the way up in San Luis Obispo.
And so my sister just recently moved there and I made arrangements with her
husband to surprise her.
She doesn't know we're coming and we're going to surprise her and see her in San Luis Obispo.
And I said, you know what? Let's not turn around and come back on Friday. Let's spend Saturday.
(41:09):
And so Glenn was all about that. And I'm like, and let's stay at the Madonna Inn.
Yeah so we're
staying in the madonna and don't tell glenn because he doesn't know
he's you can book it don't you don't have to tell me which room because you don't
know about the madonna and they're all these cool rooms i booked the caveman
room that's the room we're gonna get it's fine we didn't do anything big for
(41:32):
our our wedding anniversary this year so we're gonna go there anyway that's
all to say plan i i know i'm gonna be slammed i'm not gonna normally i turn around after today,
edit this video and get it out for you. I know I'm going to do that.
I'm going to be pretty tired.
And so I won't have time to do that. But I know that I think about intentional
day two in a regular lesson is always going to be the big overview.
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This entire lesson is like a day two. Basically, it's because it's we're going
to read all of Galatians in this lesson.
Days three through nine normally will be where you dig in a little deeper into the word.
And then day 10 is always the create and share, which is so beautiful to see
your creativity come out and the share that I encourage you to embrace it.
Is that something that you love doing?
Yay. Keep on doing that. If it's something you're hesitant about, work on that.
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Let's be the year that you really enjoy doing that.
Each day then is also have a flow to it.
And if you want to take a look at that on the top of page 19,
you can see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. We're going to pray.
And I will sometimes give you a prompt like I do on this day.
Pray for your grace group today. Number two, what's number two say?
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Memorize and meditate. What are we memorizing in this lesson? That's right.
And then we're going to simply read Galatians, and there's your passage.
If you look below, it's going to break that passage down for you.
And maybe when you open this, you realize, I don't have time for it all.
Just read. Just read 14 verses.
And you got that part done at least. Number four is write the word.
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That will begin actually in lesson two. at the end of Galatians,
we will have written all of the book of Galatians. It's so cool.
And so that starts in lesson two.
I'll give you a prompt to help you engage in our community, and you'll see that
coming through on the app. So look for those.
And then I already mentioned the worship playlist for you.
And then in this lesson, I'm going to ask you to think of a song that came to
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your mind as you were going through the word.
So Galatians in particular,
It's an incredible letter because it answers some core questions that all of
us need to be able to have the answers to.
And so here's just a few of the questions I feel like Galatians answers for
us. Why do we drift from the gospel of grace?
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Paul's going to open right up at the very beginning and talk about that.
There's a problem here, and we're going to have that question answered for us as we do our study.
Am I trying to earn my way to God through good works?
Maybe that's not something you struggle with, but that's not the point in total of this Bible study.
It's to equip you to grow so that you can also equip others.
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Maybe you know someone who still deals with this.
Am I living freely in Christ or am I still bound by guilt and legalism?
I think at any given season of our life, we might find ourselves bound by guilt
still over choices we've made, regrets that we have.
What does that look like to live free of that in Christ?
How can I overcome the struggle between flesh and spirit? And that's mostly
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for you guys. I don't deal with that.
This is a constant struggle in my life. And I want to submit to the Lord.
How can I overcome that struggle between the flesh and the spirit?
What does that look like? Galatians is going to talk about that.
How do I persevere in faith when I feel weary?
You know, maybe you're weary tonight about things that are happening in your life.
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And it's really hard to hang in there. We're going to talk about that in this study.
Am I living in the freedom of Christ, relying on his grace and walking by the spirit each day?
Wow. What would that look like? Living in freedom of Christ,
relying on his grace and walking by the spirit each day.
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We're going to move in and talk about that throughout the study as well.
So I want to give you some reminders of how you can make sure you're connected and access things.
First of all, your lessons are always printed and available to you right here at Bible Study.
You can also download them. There's a variety of places they go out so that you can find them.
If you aren't able to make it to Bible Study to print, you can open them up and view them as a PDF.
(45:37):
And those are available on my website or the Church Center group.
I drop those into the resources tab. If you find a typo, you can call my secretary.
Doesn't really always catch everything and you can let her know no we i don't
have a secretary in case you did not know that but we have a little typo thread
that we start in our group,
and so i encourage you to hey you know check the group first maybe somebody
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already noticed it if you're looking up a scripture and you feel like does that
match what i'm saying there's not a magic it might be a little typo so check
the group and we will start a typo thread we're We're going to alert people of that.
Obviously, you're attending here in person. The Zoom is available and you can
join with that. And then my information here on how to contact me.
I use my Dwelling Richly Gmail address.
(46:24):
That's an old address. I started that back in 1993, I think.
When I was a musician, I was writing a lot of songs.
And so that's been with me for a long time. It's my oldest email.
I still have it active. So it all goes filtered into one.
If you need to reach me, you can all those ways. the church number or that email address there as well.
Of course, your group leaders are there for you to connect with.
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And didn't they do a great job leading your groups tonight? Yay.
Thank you, group leaders.
So in Galatians, I want you to look for these words, and we're going to listen
for them in just a minute because we're going to close with a worship song together.
But I want you to look for these words, and whatever your understanding of this
idea is right now, Now, my prayer is that by the time we finish the last day
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of the final lesson of this study in Galatians,
you will have deepened your understanding of grace, true grace.
Like I had you ask in your discussion groups tonight, true freedom in Christ, being spirit filled.
And here's, I put the word reality up because the world is darkened in their thinking.
They're not living in true reality. They think they are, but they're dark.
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We have reality if we have Christ. Christ and that's
hope giving and so we're going to learn about that
true reality in this study we're going to know what
this means in our life that it is for freedom that Christ that is free and then
we're going to have this truth and I went back and forth on these two verses
as our theme verse and you can see which one ended up winning on the front cover
(47:52):
but this was such an incredible verse I have been crucified with Christ it's
no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.
So we're going to close with this song, which will be a bit of a theme song
for us in our time together.
Make sure the volume is loud enough for us to be able to hear.
And if you know the song, great. Sing along. If you don't, you can just listen
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and you'll catch it and listen to it as we go.
I pray in Jesus' name, that there is no more or ever enough to give.
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He is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love,
my deep and boundless fear.
To this I owe, my hope is only Jesus For my life is wholly bound to his,
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Oh, how strange and divine I can see All is mine, yet not I, but through Christ in me.
(49:23):
The night is dark, but I am not forsaken For by my side,
the Savior, He will stay I labor on in weakness and rejoicing For in my need
(49:46):
his power is displayed To this I hold,
my shepherd will defend me Through the deepest valley he will lead,
Oh, the night has been won And I shall overcome Yet not I, but through Christ in me,
(50:17):
Oh, my God.
No fate I dread I know I am forgiven,
The future's sure The price it has been paid For Jesus fled,
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And suffered for my pardon And he was raised To overthrow the grave,
Through this I hold My sin has been defeated,
Jesus now and ever is my King,
(51:07):
All the chains are released I can sing, I am free Yet not I, but through Christ in me.
(51:32):
I long to follow Jesus, for he has said that he will bring me home.
And day by day,
I know he will renew me Until I stand with joy before his throne Let's stand
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and sing the final chorus.
I hope, my hope is only Jesus All the glory evermore to him.
When the race is complete Still my lips shall repeat Yet not I, but through Christ in me,
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To this I hold My hope is only Jesus,
All the glory evermore to Him When the race is complete Still my lips shall repeat,
(52:44):
Yet not I, but through Christ in me,
When the race is complete Still my lips shall repeat Yet not I,
but through Christ in me through Christ,
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in me and not through Christ in me.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you again, acknowledging that it
is not anything we've done or deserved, and you died for us.
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We have been crucified with Christ. It is not I, it's not us that live.
Christ lives in us. We can walk in your spirit, and I pray, Lord,
on behalf of every woman here and hearing my voice, Lord, that you would help
us with your spirit to learn this truth, to live this truth out,
and to be protected from any lies or untruths that keep us in darkness.
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Lord, shine your light upon us and help us to live in that world,
in this world, in the way that you would have us to live.
We ask, God, your hand of blessing now as we leave committed in your ways to
trust in you and to give all of our plans to you for your glory.
And we ask this now in Jesus' name. And everyone said, Hallelujah. Amen.
(54:14):
Have a lovely, lovely evening. What are you going to do when you get in your car?
Thank you
(54:35):
very much.
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