00:01: If I sign up for the Olympic potluck and I say I'm going to bring a salad, what am I bringing?
00:10: Now, it could be a bowl of lettuce or other leaves of whatever sort, cabbage or radicchio, arugula, something, with some other vegetables tossed in.
00:20: That's a very reasonable idea.
00:24: But I might not be bringing a bowl of lettuce, right?
00:28: You know I'm not bringing mac and cheese, but I might be bringing a pasta salad.
00:33: I'm not bringing baked potatoes, but I might be bringing a potato salad.
00:39: I'm not bringing a lentil casserole, but it could be a three bean salad with a nice vinaigrette on top.
00:45: All those are good.
00:47: Or I might be bringing dessert, right?
00:51: It might be marshmallows and cool whip and gelatin in a bowl.
00:55: If I say I'm bringing a salad, there are so many different definitions of what that is.
01:00: You really don't have a very good idea of what I'm talking about until you get details, right?
01:07: Similarly, Christian.
01:12: What do we mean when we say a Christian?
01:15: There are so many different things that one could mean by that term.
01:20: And it's helpful to think, what does God say a Christian is?
01:25: What defines a Christian?
01:29: It's not baptism, though Christians do get baptized, or observing the Lord's Supper, though Christians do that.
01:36: It's not defined, a Christian is not defined by being somebody who reads the Bible or prays, though genuine Christians do those things.
01:46: So also with church attendance or church involvement.
01:50: It's not even somebody who at some point in time was convinced to pray a prayer asking Jesus into their life.
01:58: Though typically, not always, there is such a moment in the backstory of a Christian.
02:07: We might think, oh, a Christian is somebody who believes that Jesus is real and believes that Jesus can get people to heaven.
02:14: And while that is true of Christians, that by itself does not make one a Christian.
02:20: Demons believe that to be true.
02:22: Genuine Christians do all those things and believe those things, but none of those things makes that person a Christian.
02:34: A Christian is someone who has heard and believed with repentance the good news about who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.
02:49: Jesus is God.
02:51: Jesus is the eternal, uncreated God who became a human being.
02:56: He entered into the experience that we have day to day.
03:00: He entered into the world he made by taking unto himself the nature of a real human man.
03:10: And then he lived a perfect life.
03:12: He did for decades on earth exactly what we should do.
03:17: Perfect obedience to God.
03:18: And then he allowed himself to be put to death undeservedly as a substitute.
03:28: Taking credit before God for our sin.
03:33: And taking upon himself God's punishment for our sin.
03:38: And he did this for all who trust in him or believe in him with repentance.
03:44: That is a true set of things to say about a Christian.
03:49: And those things are absolutely true of every genuine Christian.
03:54: But if we stop there, I think we can do people a disservice by giving them a false sense of security that they are in fact Christians.
04:04: Because there are people in churches all over the world who would say yes to those things.
04:10: I think those things are true.
04:11: But who may one day stand before God and be told, away from me, depart from me, I never knew you.
04:22: How can that be?
04:23: Every genuine Christian, by which I mean somebody who God defines as a Christian.
04:32: Every genuine Christian is someone who has been born again, to use the language of John 3.
04:38: Someone who has been made alive with Christ, as Ephesians 2 puts it.
04:44: Someone who's been regenerated or made again, to use the language of Titus 3.
04:50: And every such person is a new creation, as 2 Corinthians 5 describes it.
05:00: You see, becoming a Christian isn't about signing up to attend a particular congregation or church group.
05:08: It's not about signing your name on a doctrinal statement and saying, yep, I affirm those things to be factually accurate.
05:14: Every genuine Christian has, at the very moment of becoming a Christian, been made new on the inside.
05:24: There has been a remaking of that person from the inside out that God has done on his own initiative, of his own accord, apart from anything that we do.
05:35: Every genuine Christian has had a makeover, a rebuilding, a completely changed nature created in them when they become a Christian.
05:51: Now, usually it doesn't feel like, it's not like, oh, I started believing in Jesus on such and such a date, and all of a sudden I felt tingly every day.
05:59: No, it doesn't manifest in that way.
06:01: But it's always true that genuine Christians have a new nature, because God has caused them to have it.
06:10: He has created it in them, a spiritually alive, new creation nature.
06:19: The most common word in the Bible to describe Christians is not the word Christian.
06:25: Did you know that the word Christian only shows up three times in the Bible?
06:28: That's our standard vocabulary today, but it's rare in God's word.
06:33: The most common word to describe Christians is disciples.
06:36: It shows up over 260 times.
06:39: Definitely the most common word to describe a Christian.
06:42: And I know I've said this before, but we need to remember, a disciple is a student.
06:48: A disciple of Jesus is a student of Jesus, but not classroom student.
06:53: It is an apprentice student, somebody who is with Jesus, observes Jesus, is learning from Jesus, and then follows in his footsteps, doing what he does, heeding his instructions, putting into practice what they learned from Jesus.
07:09: I don't care if you go to church once in your entire life, and that happens to be today, or if you go every single Sunday.
07:17: I don't care if you teach Bible studies, Sunday school, and children's church.
07:21: I don't care if you give 80% of your income to the church and serve on every committee under the sun.
07:27: If you do not turn away from sin, and toward actually following and obeying Jesus, you are not a Christian.
07:41: Actual, genuine, God-defined Christians turn away from sin and follow Jesus.
07:50: Now, I'm not saying they do it perfectly.
07:52: I'm not saying they don't have hiccups.
07:54: I'm not saying that it's not a process.
07:56: But that reality begins to happen and increasingly happens in the life of every genuine Christian.
08:06: There are countless people in this country who say that they are Christians, but they don't actually follow Jesus.
08:13: They may believe in true things about Jesus, things that the Bible teaches.
08:18: They may go to church or participate in some religious activities.
08:22: But if they don't actually follow Jesus, they are not Christians.
08:29: Following Jesus doesn't make you a Christian.
08:34: Following Jesus reveals you as a Christian.
08:38: Now, long ago, before cell phones, people used compasses to figure out which direction things were.
08:48: I can pull out my phone.
08:49: I can put it level.
08:49: There's a setting.
08:50: It'll be a compass for me.
08:52: That's really cool.
08:53: But back in the day, there was literal compasses.
08:56: And the needle would swing and point north.
08:59: Now, the little red tip of that needle did not point in a direction and that direction became north.
09:08: Rather, the needle turned and pointed to what was already north.
09:15: Our obedience or lack of obedience doesn't make us a Christian or make us not a Christian.
09:21: It reveals what is already true.
09:27: Our obedience to Jesus can't make us Christians.
09:30: You can't become a Christian or get God's forgiveness by anything you do.
09:35: If you could somehow be absolutely perfect for the rest of your life, God would still have to say, but what about before that?
09:45: Perfection is the standard.
09:47: You can't do it.
09:49: And our disobedience to Jesus does not make us non-Christians.
09:52: You can't lose your standing with God.
09:55: He doesn't forgive us and adopt us as his sons and daughters and say, oh, you forgot to take out the trash or you gave me lip one time.
10:03: I disown you.
10:04: That's not how God works.
10:06: But you can find out what you are.
10:10: And I want to apply this to us personally.
10:12: You can find out what you are.
10:14: Don't worry about what the other guy is.
10:15: Disciple is the most commonly used term in the Bible to describe a believer in Jesus.
10:43: The second most common word is brother or sister, describing the family relationship that we have vertically with God.
10:52: God is our father and Jesus is our brother because we've been adopted, but also describing the relationship that we have with one another.
10:59: If we have the same father, then we are brothers and sisters with each other.
11:03: But then we move to the term saint.
11:08: A disciple is the most common, but another crucially important term is saint.
11:12: It's used over 60 times to describe Christians.
11:16: Not to describe special Christians, not to describe elite Christians, or especially mature Christians, or the most knowledgeable Christians, or the Christians with the most authority.
11:25: Just Christians.
11:26: Just normal, everyday, regular Christians.
11:31: From baby first day of being a Christian to they've been a Christian for 117 years, and they're getting offended that Jesus isn't bringing them home.
11:38: Like, it doesn't matter.
11:39: All the way to the full spectrum.
11:45: The word saint means one who has been set apart.
11:51: What does that mean, set apart?
11:54: You ever go into a restaurant and see a table with a sign that says reserved on it?
11:59: Unless you called ahead, you know that's not for you, right?
12:03: That table's been set apart for someone.
12:07: That is reserved.
12:08: It's designated for a particular group or purpose.
12:13: Or maybe you called ahead, and you know that's for you.
12:16: We have funerals here sometimes, and when we do, usually there's reserve signs on a certain section of the seating, so the family has an area just for them.
12:22: And so when people come in, they find their seats, they know, nope, that row is set apart for the family.
12:30: Every single Christian has a reserved sign on them.
12:36: We are reserved or set apart by God for God.
12:42: Now, the Bible talks about this in a couple different ways, and it's important to distinguish.
12:47: There's what theologians call positional sanctification.
12:49: Basically, that means it's a done deal.
12:51: 1 Corinthians 1, verse 2, Paul is writing, quote, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified, past tense, to those sanctified, done deal, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints.
13:07: They have been set apart, and they're called to live as set apart people.
13:12: If you're a Christian, you are already sanctified.
13:15: God has already put his stamp on you, laid ownership claim to you, and said, you are set apart and designated for me.
13:25: Now, what does that mean?
13:26: You've been set apart by God.
13:27: It means you are set apart from, from the world, from sin, from idolatry, from selfishness, from all the garbage that so easily fills our life.
13:39: We are set apart from the things that Christ had to die to save us from.
13:45: And we are saved for God, for the glory of God, for the opportunity and the responsibility to represent God to the world around us.
13:58: We are separate from, and we are separate for.
14:04: When a man and a woman get married, they become set apart.
14:08: Each of them is set apart from all the other folks out there and set apart for their spouse.
14:16: Both and.
14:19: And so, my brothers and sisters, to every Christian in this room, I say, we have no business being normal.
14:27: We have no business being just like all the unbelievers around us.
14:33: We have no business living the same way everyone lives and loving what everyone else loves.
14:42: Now, I'm not suggesting that you should be weird for the sake of being weird.
14:46: Don't be odd just for the sake of being odd.
14:48: Don't be different as an excuse to give license to an affirmation to whatever your idiosyncrasies might be.
14:56: I like to tell dad jokes.
14:58: That's a Dylan thing.
14:59: That's not a Christian thing.
15:01: That version of, that part of who I am that's weird in that way, that's not distinctively Christian.
15:06: The differentness, the oddness that is to be present in our lives is to be that which is the overflow of our following Jesus.
15:16: It's the, I follow Jesus, so I do these things, so I love these things.
15:21: I follow Jesus, so I don't do these other things.
15:24: I don't like those things anymore.
15:28: That's what we're talking about.
15:32: Which brings us into what theologians call progressive sanctification.
15:37: We're already sanctified, done deal, God did that at the moment that we became Christians, but then there's this ongoing process of set-aparting, of set-apartness that takes place in our lives.
15:49: The ongoing transformation that God, the Holy Spirit, produces in us as we cooperate with him.
15:58: Progressive sanctification is an ongoing thing.
16:02: Now, some of you may have heard of a progressive dinner.
16:05: It's this way to take dinner and make it long and hard.
16:10: And a group of people say, hey, let's do a progressive dinner, and then they get together at somebody's house, and they have an appetizer, and they enjoy visiting, and so on.
16:18: They say, instead of staying here and having the next thing, let's all get in our cars and drive to the next house.
16:24: And then there they have a salad, and they enjoy visiting each other, and they say, it's really comfortable.
16:30: We don't want to be comfortable.
16:31: Let's get in our cars and drive to another house where they have the entree, and then they do it again for dessert and so on, right?
16:35: And it progresses from here to here to here.
16:41: Progressive sanctification is where you've already been set apart, but little by little, you move more and more to the next stage of living truly for God and not for self and not for sin.
16:54: which brings us to where we are in Romans chapter 15.
16:59: At this point, in Romans 15, we find the Apostle Paul, his heart for this church coming through, and what he desires for them is sanctification.
17:12: As I read through the passage, verses 14 through 21, look for and listen for his heart towards this church.
17:21: Listen to what he's desiring to see happen.
17:25: Paul says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.
17:35: But on some points, I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
18:00: In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God so that from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.
18:28: Unless I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation, but as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see and those who have never heard will understand.
18:43: Paul's describing his work, his ministry, and he's saying it's all about Jesus, it's all about this gospel ministry and he comes back to that repeatedly and then he says that it's about explaining and bringing to bear the good news of Jesus Christ, particularly on Gentile people.
19:02: Gentile people is Bible language for not Jewish people.
19:06: Now, it's not that God was ditching the Jews.
19:08: God had assigned other people the job of primarily focusing on bringing the good news of Jesus to the Jewish people, but Paul had been assigned to the Jewish people.
19:17: You make sure that you're bringing it to these other folks that need to hear it as well.
19:20: And so he worked by word, by deed, by powers of signs and wonders and the Holy Spirit that worked through him.
19:27: He worked to bring the good news message of Jesus to non-Jewish people.
19:33: Why?
19:34: It has the goal, verse 16, that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
19:45: He's saying, he pictures all these non-Jewish people that he's working with, that he's ministering with, he's picturing them as a gift to God and saying, he wants them to be received by God with God's approval.
19:57: He wants God to receive these non-Jewish people and say, yes, I am glad to have them for myself.
20:06: And Paul understands the way that's going to happen is if they are sanctified.
20:10: So his job is to work toward their sanctification.
20:16: Now, he doesn't mean, hey, people, shape up your lives, be good, behave yourselves, and then God will like you.
20:22: No.
20:24: Rather, it's about the good news message of Jesus as the Holy Spirit is at work through that, causing people to think of themselves as set apart and to live as people who are set apart.
20:39: That sanctification, to be sanctified, literally means to be set apart, to make holy.
20:44: And he says, they need to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
20:49: But then, notice when he gets to 18 and 19, he talks about it differently.
20:53: He talks about it being to bring the Gentiles to obedience.
21:01: And he talks about fulfilling the ministry of the gospel of Christ.
21:04: He wants them to be sanctified.
21:06: He wants them to be obedient.
21:09: Now, which is it, Paul?
21:10: And the answer is yes.
21:13: Sanctification in the Christian life looks like obedience.
21:17: If we are living set apart for God, we're going to obey God.
21:23: John, chapter 14, verse 15, Jesus told his disciples straight up, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
21:30: obedience.
21:33: We cannot deceive ourselves and say, oh yeah, I love Jesus, if we disobey him on the regular.
21:43: Sanctification, as you and I grow in it, as we cooperate with what God is doing in our lives, it's going to manifest more and more as obedience to Jesus, as us actually following Jesus.
21:55: everyone's favorite season is upon us, and I'm not talking about mud season just around the corner, I'm talking about tax season, right?
22:05: If we are obedient to Jesus, we're going to be truthful on our tax returns because God calls us to be truthful, and Romans 13 calls us to submit to governing authorities.
22:18: It looks like being patient with our children as parents rather than exasperating them as my son enthusiastically was excited to hear just now.
22:33: Ephesians chapter 6.
22:35: But, and this is not in my notes, William, it also looks like children obeying their parents, Ephesians chapter 6, which actually comes right before the instruction to me, buddy.
22:47: It looks like husbands living with their wives in an understanding way, being sensitive to our wives particular weaknesses and showing honor as 1 Peter chapter 3 tells us.
23:01: It looks like serving one another within the context of the church using our specific God-given abilities as 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 calls us to.
23:13: It looks like being absolutely unwilling to participate in gossip.
23:20: 2 Corinthians 12.
23:21: It means being done with crude joking, inappropriate kinds of humor, Ephesians 5.
23:30: It means making sure that everyone is warmly welcomed to the church, Romans 15.
23:37: It looks like evangelism and discipleship.
23:42: Evangelism and discipleship.
23:44: In the Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28 verses 18, 19, and 20, Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
23:54: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
24:05: And behold, I am with you always to the very end of the age.
24:10: Notice in there, he says he's in charge, he's got all authority, then he tells his followers what to do.
24:15: Make disciples, which involves evangelism.
24:21: They have to start somewhere by hearing about Jesus.
24:23: That's the front end of this, evangelism.
24:26: And then, he says baptize them.
24:28: Us baptizing new believers is an act of obedience to Jesus.
24:32: And being baptized as a new believer is for that person an act of obedience to Jesus.
24:38: And then he says teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.
24:43: If Christians, if churches, if the ministry of God's people is not teaching people to actually obey Jesus, we are disobeying the Great Commission.
24:53: It doesn't say teach them everything about me.
24:58: Teach them to obey me.
25:02: If Brian or Liz says to their children, go clean your room, and the kids say, gotcha, and they stand there and just keep sipping their smoothie or what have you, are they obeying?
25:15: No.
25:18: And if Brian says to his son, whichever son he wants to in this moment, hey, I told you to go clean your room.
25:25: He says, no, dad, I heard you.
25:27: I understand that your desire is that I would clean my room.
25:31: We're good, right?
25:32: The answer is no, right?
25:34: And that son may be wearing the smoothie before this conversation is over, right?
25:38: You actually have to do it.
25:40: We actually have to do it.
25:42: Now, I'm picking on the boys here, but isn't that all of us sometimes?
25:47: Don't all of us have this tendency to say, yeah, yeah, I understand.
25:51: But then we're like, but I'm not going to do it right now.
25:54: That'd be kind of inconvenient.
25:55: That'd be scary.
25:55: That'd make me nervous.
25:57: That's inconvenient.
25:58: That's going to cost me something.
26:00: Well, Jesus actually wants us to obey.
26:03: It's part of our marching orders.
26:06: How many of you like eating at a restaurant?
26:10: Yes, right?
26:11: It's nice.
26:12: You go in, you look at all these options, you choose something that sounds good, somebody cooks it for you, somebody brings it to you, you don't even have to get up to refresh your water or your soda or whatever you're having, right?
26:23: It's just a beautiful experience of receiving.
26:27: But, Jesus says, it's time for you to get in the kitchen and start cooking.
26:32: It's not enough to be those who receive, we must over time become those who serve others, who are passing it forward, paying it forward, investing in others, making disciples.
26:43: It's good for people to have shared the gospel with you and taught you to follow Jesus and obey Jesus and encourage you to be discipled.
26:52: Yes, and then you are to make disciples.
26:55: Everyone in here who is a follower of Jesus has been commissioned by God to be set apart for him, from sin, for him, and to be his witnesses, to be his representatives in the world around us.
27:10: Every single one of us is responsible to be reaching out to people who don't know Jesus and helping them to come to know Jesus.
27:21: We are called to pray for God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
27:25: That's part of the Lord's prayer.
27:26: Implicit within that is that we want to see people come to know Jesus.
27:32: That's an evangelism prayer, in part.
27:34: But we are not to pray for unbelievers to become Christians as a substitute for sharing the gospel with them.
27:43: Both, not either or.
27:46: It's understandable for us to be concerned about alienating people.
27:51: Maybe friends, maybe family, like what if I share the gospel and they don't like it and they get upset with me and so on.
27:56: That's a reasonable concern.
27:58: In fact, Jesus told us that sometimes members of our own families will hate us because we're following Jesus.
28:04: It is entirely possible that sharing Jesus with somebody is going to make them upset with you.
28:11: But that does not give us license to not share.
28:15: We dare not value family or friend relationships more than we value loyalty and obedience to Jesus.
28:24: I've got a block on my desk that has these grooves in it where I can stick cards and I've got quotes on there and I kind of rotate them through to encourage me.
28:33: And right now the one that's showing is a quote from C.H.
28:36: Spurgeon where he said, as for me, I have braved the sneer of men because I feared the frown of my Lord.
28:47: I want to care a hundred times more what Jesus thinks of me than what people think of me.
28:53: A thousand times.
28:55: Ten million times more.
28:58: And I would go so far as to say this.
29:01: If you are more afraid of how a friend or family member may respond to you sharing the gospel, so much so that you're not going to share the gospel with them, you are valuing that friendship more than you are loving them.
29:20: You're saying, I want for me this friendship as it is, more than I want for you all that Christ promises to be and offers to be for you if you would trust in him.
29:30: you're putting self above that person.
29:34: That's selfishness.
29:36: It's understandable, but it's not okay for us to stay in that place.
29:41: We say here at Faith Chapel that our mission is for every believer to become, to make, to mature, and to multiply fully surrendered disciples of Jesus Christ.
29:54: That is not my job description.
29:56: That is our job description.
29:58: Every single one of us.
29:59: You need to become increasingly a fully surrendered follower of Jesus.
30:03: And then you need to help others do that as well.
30:08: I want to encourage you to ask the Lord what your next step in obedience needs to be in this regard.
30:14: And then take that step of obedience in his strength.
30:18: I said earlier that sanctification is something that God does as we cooperate with him.
30:23: In our passage here in Romans 15, twice we see it that it depends on the work of the Holy Spirit.
30:28: verse 16, we read that Paul is doing his gospel ministry so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
30:37: So Paul is doing gospel ministry and the Spirit does the sanctification.
30:41: It's a both hand.
30:42: Man and women, we do what we are responsible to do and God accomplishes it.
30:50: We see it showing up in verse 18 as well.
30:52: The Holy Spirit does it.
30:54: But it comes through gospel ministry.
30:57: It comes through us hearing, and believing the truth about Jesus day in and day out.
31:02: It comes as we focus on who Jesus is for us and trust him to be for us and to do for us all that we need.
31:11: The gospel is for non-Christians and the gospel is for Christians.
31:17: You need the good news of Jesus every bit as much as the non-Christian needs the gospel of Jesus.
31:24: And so we need to be preaching the gospel to each other.
31:26: If you remember back to the beginning of Romans, he talked about wanting to go to Rome and preach the gospel to them.
31:32: He's writing to Christians and he says, you who I know already know about Jesus.
31:36: I want to tell you about Jesus.
31:38: That's what I want to do.
31:39: I want to tell you more about Jesus.
31:41: That's what we need from each other.
31:44: This is not a willpower thing.
31:46: This is not, you've trusted in Jesus, now be a good boy, be a good girl, kind of thing.
31:51: This is about us treasuring Jesus above everything that tempts us away from obedience to Jesus.
31:58: Jesus will not be our greatest treasure if he's on the sidelines of our lives, if we keep him at our length most of the day, most of the week.
32:09: We need to constantly be fixing our eyes on Jesus, preaching the gospel to ourselves and to one another.
32:16: This is who God has revealed himself to be in Jesus Christ.
32:21: It's about trusting Jesus better so that we can love and trust.
32:25: It's about knowing Jesus better so that we can love and trust him more.
32:29: It's about believing that God knows best and that walking in obedience is the best way to live.
32:35: I want to end by bringing us back to Romans chapter 6.
32:39: Romans is this magnificent letter that builds on itself and here in 15 he's talking about sanctification, living set apart.
32:47: But you go back to chapter 6 and he was dealing with the thing where, well, do you just keep on sinning?
32:52: Because if God gives grace to sinners, more sin equals more grace.
32:55: That's good, right?
32:56: He says, no, of course not.
32:58: And then he says verse 11 to Christians, he says, you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
33:10: Increasingly, sanctification looks like us spotting the sin opportunities and saying, no, I am dead to that.
33:19: That is not for me anymore.
33:23: Let's pray.
33:25: God, help us to be serious about treasuring you.
33:29: Cause us to see Jesus as more desirable than every alternative.
33:34: Grow us in our faith.
33:36: Grow us in our valuing of Jesus and our confidence that he will be sufficient.
33:41: He'll never leave us.
33:42: He'll never forsake us.
33:43: That his way is the best way.
33:46: And that every temptation to something else is a deception from the enemy that will be sabotaged for us.
33:58: Grow us in our set-apartness.
34:01: Grow us in our desire to live as set-apart people.
34:05: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
34:08: Amen.