How to Live a Faithful Life

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Well, I'm going to do something that

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I don't remember the last time I've done it,

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if I've ever done it, and that is talk about

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the role of women in the Bible.

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I'm going to meld that with, like,

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a whole talk I've talked about before,

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but like an entire talk about that,

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melded with motherhood,

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melded with whether you're a mom, not a mom,

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woman, not a woman, how it relates to faithfulness.

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And believe it or not,

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all this is going to hopefully make sense.

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So let's pray before I go any further.

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God, I'm asking that You would do something fresh

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in our rooms today, whatever campus we're in,

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I'm asking that all of us, whether we're male, female,

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mother, father, single, not mother, not father,

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whatever we are, that You would --

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You would give us something that would

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help us understand You better,

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help us understand ourselves better,

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and hopefully be more faithful to You

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when we leave here today.

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Thank you for the honor to talk about

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your transcendent truth, God.

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I don't ever want to take that for granted.

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I pray these things in according to the character

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and identity of Jesus. Amen.

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Well, Mother's Day is amazing.

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We all know it's amazing.

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I mean, Mother's Day is like, man, moms,

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everyone shows up for church because mom tells them,

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"I want you to go to church with me."

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And mothers, they get, like, they get spa days

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and they get -- they get --

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they get they get nails redone.

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They get jewelry, maybe get diamonds. Yeah. Right.

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Then, and then Father's Day, we get cargo shorts.

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That's like I said, that's it.

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Yes. The men are plotting now. Yes. Right, Right.

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And I've thought about this.

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Why is it -- why does Mother's Day

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seem to be a bigger deal than Father's Day?

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I don't think it's sexism.

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I don't think that.

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And by the way,

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today I'm going to speak in generalities.

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You can find an exception about everything I say today.

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Okay? So please don't do that.

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Just try to be open to the general themes

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I'm going to try to give you today.

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And I would say that I think that the reason

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why Mother's Day tends to be a bigger day

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probably than Father's Day is, I think by and large,

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us kids think of our mom as being incredibly faithful,

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maybe even more faithful than our dad was,

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maybe more present, maybe more warm,

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maybe more, more caring.

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Maybe it's one of my theories that could take place.

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There's something powerful and special about a mom.

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There's something special about a godly mom.

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There's something special about a mother, a woman,

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a father, a person who isn't a mother or father,

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who has, as we talked about last week, the X Factor.

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The X factor is the presence of God in our life,

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specifically the presence of Holy Spirit's in our life

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that gives us abilities and capacities

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that go beyond what our normal learning might do.

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We all know when someone's attractive,

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they may not go on to a magazine cover,

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but there's something about them that draws us to them.

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What is it about some people,

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wherever you drop them in life,

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they tend to be successful in business or whatever it is.

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They have the X factor.

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The X factor is the Holy Spirit.

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And when the Holy Spirit comes into your life,

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you have powers and abilities

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that are beyond your normal abilities.

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You have insights, you have characteristics,

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you have qualities that, if you develop them,

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will be beyond what you were before.

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Now, in the early church where this happens,

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I talked about this last week in Acts Chapter one,

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there is miraculous things that take place

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and one I want to just remind us of from last week

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was tongues came upon them.

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This is the kind of tongues where people were speaking

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languages that they had never officially learned

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to tell people about who Jesus was.

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And the people who were doing this,

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telling people about who Jesus was,

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they were men and women.

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It wasn't that tongues, the ability to proclaim

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who God was only came, only came to men.

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It came to men and women.

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Now, today I'm going to do what I did last week

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at the very end of our time together,

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I'm going to put up a QR code if you want it.

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I'm going to give you,

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just so you can pay attention more

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and maybe see stuff that

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that I chose not to include or delete.

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I'm actually putting my actual notes

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that are on my iPad for you to see.

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You'll see things that are there exactly how I intended them.

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This is not a paper.

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This is not an article.

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Please don't go posting it around.

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It's not for that. It's just for my personal notes.

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On the bottom of these notes,

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you'll see things that didn't make the cut.

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And I'll also have at the very end,

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I just put this in because some of you might be curious,

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I know Crossroads is a very big tent.

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We're a big tent and you have a big tent because

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you have a lot of people and you learn to live

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with differences with one another.

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You learn to live Republicans and Democrats together.

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What do you know? It can actually happen.

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You learn to do that, learn to live that way.

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You learn to live with people who have

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different beliefs about this and that.

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And one of the things that there are probably

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some different beliefs about in all of our rooms,

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in all of our sites, is what's the role of women?

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There's some verses in the Bible

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that seem to indicate that women can't teach

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or they can't lead, at least on a macro scale.

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How does that relate to other things in the Bible,

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this and that, other?

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We have different people

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have believed different things here about those things.

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And all of us are welcome. All of us are important.

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When I say "we," "what we believe,"

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what I mean is those of us who have to make decisions

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in leadership of how the church is governed.

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For decades, we've had women

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at every level of organization.

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We have women on our board.

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We've had women who are teachers.

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We have had women who are senior leaders

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on our staff for decades.

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This doesn't come from any other thing

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than looking at the Bible holistically and saying,

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"We think women need to be elevated

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and we think women get to play in the big game, too,

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not just men."

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And so we've got a little thing that we've been working on

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and we've had for years and years.

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Some of you clapping, some are, like, [grumbling].

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Please, today is not about clapping or booing.

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Just try to be open to what God might teach you.

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But at the end of that document I have,

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I have the thing that we've hammered through

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as a board years ago, and you can see that

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if you're curious.

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Anyway, some of that might be controversial.

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This is not what's controversial:

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Acts 1:8 says this.

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Hmm, might be good if I went to Acts instead of Matthew.

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Here we go. Acts 1, there we go.

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Who is the you? The you is men and women.

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Jesus commissioned men and women.

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He didn't just commission men.

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He commissioned men and women.

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Look at Acts 2:17, here's something interesting.

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This is when the Holy Spirit is unleashed

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and filling people who receive Jesus. Here's what it says:

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Yeah. So, women can prophesy, but they can't teach.

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That seems a little odd to me,

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but this is what it says here.

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The Spirit comes and everyone gets it in on that gig,

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everybody, men and women, prophesy.

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The early church was a movement

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like no movement in the history of the world.

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In fact, it's still a movement

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like no movement in the history of the world.

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The early church grew 50% a decade,

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decade over decade over decade

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over decade for millennia, 50%.

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In fact, it's still growing today.

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Well, it may not appear to be growing

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in the Western cultures of Europe and of America,

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but south of the border is taking off like a weed.

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How would you feel if your your family grew

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50% exponentially, kept growing, kept growing.

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I probably might not like that, actually.

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How would you how would you feel if your business

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grew 50% decade over decade over decade?

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How would you feel if anything grew that way?

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It'd be amazing, overwhelming probably.

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How did that happen with Christianity?

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Didn't happen with Islam. Didn't happen with Hinduism.

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It didn't happen with Judaism.

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How did it happen? My theory, and some sociologists' theory,

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is that the reason was in those other ancient religions

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women weren't allowed to play.

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But in Christianity,

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Jesus unleashed 100% of the workforce.

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Everybody gets the Holy Spirit.

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Everybody gets the prophesy.

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Everybody gets to go on adventure.

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Everybody gets to tell her neighbor about Jesus.

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Everybody gets to baptize.

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Everybody, 100% of the workforce unleashed.

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Jesus was a rule breaker in society in terms of this.

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He broke the cultural norms

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of what was expected to be with women.

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He actually had women in His inner circle.

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He talked to women publicly.

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Sometimes He would plan on doing this, be at a well

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I know this woman's going to come here. I'm going to --

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You, as a man, you were not supposed to talk to

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any woman you weren't married to, especially in public.

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He would talk to women. He would teach women.

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Presumably he would touch women.

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He would hug women.

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He befriended women.

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He he stood against all of these cultural norms.

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And that's why we have Him having such a movement.

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We've got His mother, Mary,

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who is one of His followers, one of His disciples.

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When we talk about disciples, by the way,

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many of us think about the first 12 disciples

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or the male disciples that we have the record

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of Him actually inviting in.

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He invited 12 men in, also known as the 12 Apostles,

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but recognize that there are many, many other disciples.

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Disciple is just the word mathetes in Greek,

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which means learner.

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When people would refer to rabbi

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and they would say, "Rabbi, teach us.

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Rabbi, tell us this."

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They're calling him his teacher

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and they're calling themselves His disciple.

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I don't know if you've seen it at all,

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but it's, in my lifetime,

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it's the best depiction of Jesus.

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Not even a close second to anything else.

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The best one is the series

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by my friend Dallas Jenkins called Chosen.

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I don't know if you've seen it.

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Recommend it highly.

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And Dallas does a fantastic job on this

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in showing that Jesus's disciples were women.

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They're are in the inner circle.

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They're are privy to all the teaching.

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They're involved in the game.

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You had His mother, Mary, you've got Mary Magdalene,

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you've got Mary, whose sister is Martha.

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You've got -- you've just got women

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who are around all the time.

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And this set up Christianity to have women

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who are leading women in leadership.

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In Romans 16:7, there's not just other disciples,

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there's other apostles, other apostles,

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and one of them in Romans 16:17, her name is Junia.

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And I said, her, her, her.

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She is an apostle.

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The Bible calls her as an apostle.

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Junia is a woman's name.

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A is a suffix in Greek that's only given to women.

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It's a feminine name.

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You know, like Pat can go either way.

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Patricia, though, is always female, right?

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That's Junia, is an apostle, a female apostle,

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very clearly given in the Bible of Junia.

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Powerbrokers in the ancient world

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who were in the church who are women.

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Now, this is all just a background.

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I'm not even getting a motherhood yet. Okay?

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Wait till I get the motherhood,

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it's going to get really fun. Okay.

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In Acts 16:13 and following, we see another woman.

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We're not sure that she's a mother.

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She, in all likelihood, was a mother at one point,

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if she's not a mother right now.

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She's a very interesting figure.

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Let's read about her. Her name is Lydia.

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Here's what says in Acts chapter 16.

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Let's just take a --

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let's take a moment and just pause right here.

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This is talking here, it's talking about Paul.

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Paul had a ministry that needed to be funded.

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And Paul wasn't dumb. Paul wasn't dumb.

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He found somebody who had a lot of money

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and he befriended them so she could fund his ministry,

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or at least be a patron of it.

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And this is very common, right?

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We know the Medicis, they were a patron of the arts,

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and especially Christian artists

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who were writing arts during the --

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or drawing things during the during the Renaissance.

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They were a patron.

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They were funding these things.

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Very common in the history of Christianity

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to have somebody who has a calling

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who has somebody who's funding it.

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Paul has Lydia who's funding his ministry in part.

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This is a high, high impact woman.

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She's a dealer in purple cloth.

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That doesn't sound like anything today

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because we've probably got some purple in here.

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We've got all kinds of colors in a Crossroads site

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on any given day.

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That's because we have colors that's cheap.

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Back in the old days, back in the Bible days,

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you had the color of burlap.

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That's what you've got. You got burlap.

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You got to wear burlap.

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Honey, what do I got in the closet?

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You got burlap. Good, burlap.

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Because you didn't have money for colors,

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and especially not the pigment of purple,

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which came from a plant that was rare

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and the process was difficult.

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And so when you dealt purple cloth,

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that'd be like selling Rolls-Royces in the '50s,

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that would be like writing an app

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and having a startup in 2005

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when the App Store is newish and all that stuff.

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It was in a capital intensive endeavor.

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Where did she find this capital?

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How did she figure out supply line, supply chain?

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How did she do it? That's who she was.

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If they had a Fortune 100 list

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of most influential, richest women in the world

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at the time, or at least in the region,

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she would have been on it.

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To be a dealer in purple cloth is really rare.

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She is open to faith. She's a worshiper.

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So she's got some relationship with

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the Old Testament God or with spirituality in general.

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The Apostle Paul builds into her,

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tells her about Jesus. She comes to faith.

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And let's keep going here on verse 15,

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and after she was baptized,

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that tells us she came to faith, she got baptized.

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Judge me to be faithful.

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Friends, where I'm going today, at some point

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I'm going to circle out of motherhood,

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fatherhood, familyhood,

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and we're going to talk about being faithful.

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This is what we see in Lydia here.

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She's about faithfulness, but she is a woman of impact.

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She has a household, not a house, a household.

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It's a oikos.

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To have a household means you've got

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a big enough dwelling place

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and people look to you for leadership.

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It could be your kids,

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it could be servants, it could be employees.

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It could be people who respect you

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and want to come under your authority.

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She has a household.

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Is she widowed? Is she divorced?

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Did her husband leave her?

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Is she married and the Bible never mentions it

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because it's not that big of a deal?

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Like we're, like, [mumbles]

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"Well, certainly if she's married,

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we'd find out about the guy's name."

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No, Peter was married.

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We don't know his wife's name.

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And it's not anywhere in the Bible.

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"Well, certainly if there's a man, we would know."

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Why is it so shocking?

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There's a woman who's great.

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We just know her on her own name

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and on her own recognizance,

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and we don't know anything about her husband.

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Sorry, the world doesn't revolve around men.

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I don't know if you've ever figured this out or not.

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Whatever she is, she is a powerful woman

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and she has a household.

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And by the way, when she's hosting these meetings,

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come into her house, she's in charge.

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She's not like making the cookies and going,

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"Okay, Apostle Paul, do your thing over there.

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I'm just going to do cookies here,

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because that's all I do.

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Cookies, I serve them up. I get out of the way."

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One commentator puts it this way:

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She's leading the group that came under her roof.

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She is, is, or at least was a mother, I believe,

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if she's got a household and all these things

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and she is faithful.

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Billy Graham,

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I love what Billy Graham says about faithfulness.

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He puts it this way:

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Are you called to be a mother?

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Called to not be a mother?

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And I got to tell you,

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and just deflate the tension in the room.

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This is a very polarizing topic because

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the expectations on mothers on to be a mother,

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to not be a mother, what kind of mother you are,

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it is very sensitive.

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There's people in here who have painful memories

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of when they were a mother because they lost a child.

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We have people in our rooms who want to be a mother,

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but it just hasn't happened yet

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because of infertility or not the right guy,

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not the right father.

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We have mothers in here who have levels of frustration.

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We have mothers in here who are having an amazing time

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and are doing it great, great

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and are loving, loving life.

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It's just a sensitive of topic if you're a woman,

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I've just found this again and again,

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that women feel like people are judging them

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for being a mom, for not being a mom,

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for not being the kind of mom

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that someone else thinks that they should be.

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It's a very sensitive and difficult topic.

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In fact, I shouldn't even describe it anymore

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because I think Psychology Today

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said it even better than I could.

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I'll just quote them. Here's what they said:

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Or feeling guilty that you didn't work time,

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didn't volunteer full time,

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feeling guilty you were in the workforce,

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feeling guilty that you weren't in the workforce.

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I've seen it go all ways.

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And I think what it is, actually,

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it's a tactic of the enemy to just mess with women.

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I think it's attack of the enemy to make you feel

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like it seems like the whole world is against me,

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whatever your choices are or whatever you're doing.

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And that's just not true.

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God's not against you. He's for you.

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He's for you and He wants to encourage you today

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because you're a symbol,

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you're a sign of His faithfulness.

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Three big ideas today.

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Number one, when you're a mom,

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you are faithful to creation.

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You're faithful to creation.

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You're actually creating.

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Genesis 1:27, it says that:

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Creation is what happens when a mom has happened

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and you need a mom and a dad,

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or you need a male and a female

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to participate in creation.

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But we all know the women

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bear the brunt of the creation responsibility. Right?

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We all know that, right?

00:19:38

Us guys, you know, we're like, we're in, we're out.

00:19:41

Like we're gone.

00:19:43

Maybe in and out a couple more times,

00:19:45

but pretty much 30 seconds,

00:19:47

pretty much 30 seconds and we're done.

00:19:49

Like, done. I did my creation part.

00:19:51

My creation part done.

00:19:52

And then she's left with it, right?

00:19:54

And here's the half of the woman,

00:19:55

after that fun time that we have as men,

00:19:58

then the woman's got nine months, nine months.

00:20:02

First three months,

00:20:04

the body has morning sickness frequently.

00:20:06

First three months, she's vomiting the first trimester.

00:20:09

She's got hot flashes, fever, many women.

00:20:11

Why is that?

00:20:12

It's because the body is saying

00:20:14

there's a foreign life form in here.

00:20:15

Foreign life. I got to reject it.

00:20:18

It's, like, do I have a flu bug here? What?

00:20:21

And the body is trying to, "Get this thing out.

00:20:23

I don't know what this life form is. Get it out."

00:20:25

And she's dealing with it.

00:20:26

And then after about three months,

00:20:27

the body goes, "Oh, oh, oh, oh.

00:20:29

This is actually one of us. Okay?

00:20:32

It's one of us. Let's calm down. Let's calm down."

00:20:34

And then the next six months

00:20:36

are just getting progressively heavier

00:20:38

and progressively wobblier and you're waddling

00:20:41

and you're sweating more and you're more uncomfortable,

00:20:44

and you've got feet sticking up against your ribs

00:20:46

and you've got all this stuff happening,

00:20:48

you're dealing with it for six months,

00:20:49

all that's happening.

00:20:50

And then you go into the birthing area, right?

00:20:53

I'm talking like I know this.

00:20:54

I don't know this stuff much.

00:20:56

I've just seen it firsthand three times.

00:20:58

I was good in my 30 seconds and after that I just watched.

00:21:00

Right? So -- [laughter]

00:21:09

Amen, she says. How do you know? [laughter]

00:21:16

So and then she goes to give birth.

00:21:17

She goes to give birth.

00:21:19

Utterly painful process. Uh, utterly painful.

00:21:24

It's like, just watching it, it's like --

00:21:26

It's like taking your lip, scraping up over your teeth,

00:21:30

taking over your head up your back

00:21:31

and stuffing up your butthole.

00:21:32

That's what it's like.

00:21:36

And then -- And then -- And then when that happens

00:21:39

and life form comes out, then God goes,

00:21:41

"Man, this is so painful, I got to --

00:21:43

I hope this -- this woman's got to be faithful.

00:21:45

I want her to do this again."

00:21:46

So what God does is He sends a chemical wash

00:21:50

and He sends a chemical wash over the brain

00:21:52

and washes over all the memory

00:21:55

so she actually forgets the pain.

00:21:57

And then she goes, "Huh? Yeah, I'd like to have another kid,"

00:22:00

because she's forgotten it.

00:22:03

Because she's faithful in creation.

00:22:08

Psalm 119 says that God,

00:22:11

God in His faithfulness endures to all generations;

00:22:13

He has established the earth, because He is faithful.

00:22:19

A woman is not just faithful in creation,

00:22:22

a mother is not just faithful in creation,

00:22:24

she's also faithful in connection.

00:22:27

I think, again, the reason why Mother's Day

00:22:30

tends to be a bigger deal is because

00:22:31

those of us who are kids, we may be bonded

00:22:34

with our mom better because she did a better job

00:22:38

at connecting with us maybe.

00:22:39

I know this the case in my house.

00:22:40

One of my major problems, major issues was that

00:22:45

I thought my job was to toughen up my kids.

00:22:47

I thought that was what my job was.

00:22:49

And I think there's a role for that.

00:22:50

I don't mind like making my kids hearty, but like,

00:22:53

that was the only thing I thought.

00:22:55

They didn't think of me when they thought of tenderness.

00:22:57

I was tender from time to time.

00:22:58

But I didn't -- I didn't own that character quality.

00:23:02

Right? Lib did. She owned that character quality.

00:23:04

It would actually make me angry.

00:23:06

I finally realized, like, I'm getting angry

00:23:08

because I'm actually bitter that I didn't have

00:23:11

that very much in my home.

00:23:12

I was actually jealous.

00:23:14

She was giving a connection to my kids

00:23:16

that I didn't feel as much.

00:23:18

And let me just say this before I talk about my mom,

00:23:20

who is -- I'm very thankful and was great.

00:23:23

No matter who your mom was, she did the best she could.

00:23:27

No matter who your mom was, no matter who she is,

00:23:30

she's doing the best she could.

00:23:32

And she probably has improved

00:23:34

from her previous generation.

00:23:38

My mom tells a story regularly,

00:23:39

I think she would tell me this story

00:23:41

to help me understand her.

00:23:43

She would say --

00:23:44

she actually never talked about her father.

00:23:47

Never talked about him.

00:23:48

Good guy from what I understand.

00:23:49

I remember my grandfather. He was a Methodist pastor.

00:23:52

And he was an old school pastor.

00:23:56

So what that meant is the church owned the house

00:23:58

and they didn't pay him.

00:23:59

And someone, the farmers and stuff of the church

00:24:01

would stop by their house

00:24:03

and they would give them chickens

00:24:04

and give him tomatoes and stuff like that.

00:24:06

And then if he wanted spending cash,

00:24:07

he had to have other jobs.

00:24:09

So he coached football, coached track,

00:24:10

all these kind of things.

00:24:11

So basically he just wasn't around.

00:24:13

My mom doesn't have a lot of memories of him,

00:24:15

so that left my grandmother

00:24:16

to be the one in the house that that ran everything,

00:24:19

was always around who they could connect with.

00:24:22

And she tells the story of,

00:24:24

I don't know what year it was, was it 1950, '45?

00:24:26

I don't know what it was.

00:24:28

All the kids going down to the train station.

00:24:30

She said, the only -- my mom said,

00:24:32

"The only time my mother ever kissed me,

00:24:34

she took us all down the train station.

00:24:36

She was leaving and she lined us all up.

00:24:38

And she went one by one

00:24:39

and kissed each one of us on the forehead.

00:24:42

And that was it."

00:24:43

And I think it was my mom's way of saying,

00:24:45

"I wish she had a bit more affection,"

00:24:46

but also a way of saying,

00:24:49

"I am way upping the bar on affection,

00:24:51

way upping the bar on connection."

00:24:55

We need to be connected.

00:24:57

And all this stuff I'm talking about women in leadership,

00:24:59

all this stuff I'm talking about motherhood.

00:25:01

Let me just remind you,

00:25:02

I'm supposed to be the man guy, okay?

00:25:05

I'm the guy who people think talks about men a lot.

00:25:08

I'm the guy who goes all over the country

00:25:09

talking about manhood.

00:25:10

I'm the guy who would say,

00:25:12

"I think the biggest challenge in our families

00:25:15

is we don't have enough men

00:25:16

and we don't have enough men

00:25:18

who actually want to make mothers."

00:25:19

I'm trying to help you ladies.

00:25:21

I'm really trying. I'm doing my best.

00:25:23

But today is at least to encourage you

00:25:26

in your role as a mom, to keep connecting,

00:25:29

keep pushing, keep going,

00:25:31

keep recognizing your faithfulness

00:25:35

is mirroring the faithfulness of God.

00:25:37

Look at some of the verse in the Bible that show us

00:25:39

that God takes on motherly qualities.

00:25:42

In the book of Hosea 13:8:

00:25:56

This is, you know, don't want to get between

00:25:59

a mother and her cubs, not a father and her cubs.

00:26:02

In fact, those of you who don't like bear hunting,

00:26:05

the reason you bear hunt is you want to bear hunt

00:26:07

and kill the males because the males will eat their young.

00:26:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:13

People go, "Oh, maybe I'm for bear hunting."

00:26:15

Yeah, it's the male bears that go and eat the cubs.

00:26:20

And so Mama Bear has to protect them

00:26:23

and stand between them.

00:26:25

And that's why when you're hiking,

00:26:26

if you come anywhere between them, she will devour you.

00:26:29

It's Mama. God is saying I'm like a mama bear

00:26:32

and eventually I will crush people who come against my ways.

00:26:35

Isaiah 42:14:

00:26:49

So God feels sometimes, we only know that because

00:26:52

He likens it to how a woman is in the creation process.

00:26:56

Isaiah 66:13

00:27:05

Ruth 2:12:

00:27:14

Whose wings do we come under?

00:27:16

The mother bird.

00:27:17

It's the mother bird who's in the nest.

00:27:19

And the chicklets and the henhouse,

00:27:22

whatever, come under her wings.

00:27:24

God saying you come under my wings.

00:27:26

I'm like a mother bird who will take care of you

00:27:29

and honor you and bless you.

00:27:34

All of us, none of us are a blank slate.

00:27:37

All of us have been affected by our parents,

00:27:41

and all of us are doing the best we can to press forward.

00:27:43

And I think what God would say to you is,

00:27:45

wherever you are right now,

00:27:47

God wants to encourage you and He wants to say,

00:27:49

He wants you to be faithful as He's faithful.

00:27:53

2 Timothy 2:13, says:

00:28:00

What does that mean, He can't deny himself?

00:28:01

It means that He can't deny His character qualities,

00:28:06

and His character quality is faithful.

00:28:08

God is faithful.

00:28:09

One of the things I really wish,

00:28:11

and I tried really hard to find it.

00:28:13

I've done this a number of times.

00:28:14

I go in the Bible and say,

00:28:15

I'm going to talk about this this week,

00:28:17

so let me find the best passage for that.

00:28:19

So I went and, like, okay, motherhood.

00:28:21

Okay, let's look at this fresh.

00:28:22

I know there's a killer motherhood story here.

00:28:24

I know there's one.

00:28:25

Like there's probably one, like, five verses long.

00:28:28

I can pull some stuff out of it.

00:28:29

And I go in there and there's not. There's not.

00:28:32

There's not a great mother story.

00:28:34

There's not a great father one either.

00:28:36

I felt the same thing on Father's Day.

00:28:38

There's not, like, a great like chunk, like,

00:28:40

here's what dad, here's what --

00:28:41

There's Proverbs 31 in the Old Testament,

00:28:43

that's a woman, that's a woman chapter,

00:28:46

not specifically a mother chapter.

00:28:48

It's a woman chapter.

00:28:50

Like, what's going on back there?

00:28:52

Like, all the things that we feel guilt about as mothers

00:28:54

or as you feel guilt about his mothers,

00:28:56

like, I'm not working outside the home

00:28:58

or I am working outside the home

00:29:00

or I'm not tucking my kids in at night

00:29:02

or I'm not doing crafts with my kids

00:29:04

or I'm not doing enough crafts with them

00:29:06

or I'm not reading them, how should I be reading to them?

00:29:08

There's not a biblical thing of, like,

00:29:11

Mary, Jesus's mother take him to bed

00:29:14

and reading a scroll at night, you know?

00:29:18

Waking up and having arts and crafts with Jesus,

00:29:23

like every good mom does

00:29:24

has arts and crafts days with Jesus.

00:29:28

Nothing of Mary disciplining Jesus.

00:29:30

Nothing's in there.

00:29:31

Why? Why don't we have these, like, really beautiful

00:29:35

here's what a mom is?

00:29:36

And by the way, maybe this should feel less guilty

00:29:39

when you're not fulfilling whatever picture

00:29:41

of what you think a mom is.

00:29:43

Because guess what? The Bible doesn't give you a picture.

00:29:45

So any picture you have, culture is giving you,

00:29:48

your history of origin is giving you,

00:29:50

because the picture isn't in the Bible.

00:29:51

And by the way, if it was that important

00:29:53

for you to be a specific kind of mom,

00:29:55

the Bible would have told you to be a specific kind of mom.

00:29:58

And it doesn't.

00:29:59

So work in the home, work outside the home.

00:30:01

God doesn't care.

00:30:02

You discipline this way, discipline this way.

00:30:04

I don't think God cares that much.

00:30:06

Just figure out how to be faithful because

00:30:09

what God really wants is not for you to be a mom,

00:30:11

not for you to be a dad.

00:30:12

He wants you to be faithful.

00:30:13

He wants you to be faithful to Christ.

00:30:15

That's what He wants, faithful to Christ as a mom,

00:30:19

or not as a mom.

00:30:20

It's about faithfulness.

00:30:26

You know, God, why would --

00:30:28

why would God choose Mary as the mother? Why Mary?

00:30:33

She was it, like, her ovaries

00:30:35

are more blessed than other peoples?

00:30:37

Wasn't that. What was it?

00:30:40

I think it's because

00:30:42

Mary was the greatest woman in the world.

00:30:43

And God said, "I will find the greatest woman

00:30:45

to give my son to."

00:30:47

And why was she the greatest woman?

00:30:49

I think it's because she was faithful.

00:30:52

She was faithful to God,

00:30:53

and actually she was faithful to Christ.

00:30:55

She didn't give -- stop parenting once Jesus was 12,

00:30:58

once He was 18.

00:30:59

She's still there when He's dying on a cross.

00:31:03

No mother ever stops. Right?

00:31:05

And that's why, as old as we are,

00:31:08

we still celebrate our moms because

00:31:10

we realize she still hasn't stopped.

00:31:12

She's still going.

00:31:13

Especially in a culture where faithfulness

00:31:16

is an endangered character quality,

00:31:17

it's virtually almost extinct.

00:31:20

Because faithfulness by its nature means

00:31:23

you're doing it for a long time over and over

00:31:26

and over and over and over and over again.

00:31:28

Lib -- I got here this morning.

00:31:30

I got to get up early, I run through happens

00:31:32

at like 6 a.m. in the morning on Sunday.

00:31:34

And I get here and of course I get up before her

00:31:36

because she doesn't need to be up that early.

00:31:38

So I get here and I get a text from her saying,

00:31:40

"Hey." She texted me, "Hey, I forgot, or we forgot,"

00:31:43

I'm always the one who forgets. Always am.

00:31:47

Today's our anniversary. It's our anniversary today.

00:31:54

35 years. [cheers] 35 years.

00:32:02

She's a faithful woman. She remember before I did.

00:32:04

We've been forgetting the last several years.

00:32:06

You get up there, so many, like,

00:32:07

whatever it is, who cares? You know?

00:32:09

35. Here's the thing, the longer you do something,

00:32:12

the less people you'll be able to identify with,

00:32:15

because there are very few people

00:32:17

who do things long term.

00:32:18

And that's what faithfulness is.

00:32:20

Faith isn't I believe stupid things.

00:32:23

Faithful is I do obedient things.

00:32:27

Faith isn't I believe things

00:32:29

that are scientifically impossible.

00:32:32

Faith is I am doing things that God says are possible.

00:32:37

I'm doing them.

00:32:39

Faithfulness is in very, very short supply.

00:32:42

Faithfulness. And it's hard.

00:32:44

It's hard for me to find fewer and fewer people

00:32:47

who have been married for 35 years

00:32:49

and actually like each other still.

00:32:52

I'm employed by the same organization

00:32:55

with the same job for 28 years.

00:33:01

It's hard to find people who, shoot,

00:33:04

after it was after like after 15 years

00:33:06

I was like the longest running senior pastor

00:33:08

in all of Cincinnati after 15 years.

00:33:09

Like, already? Like weird. Weird.

00:33:13

Faithfulness. Faithfulness is very, very rare.

00:33:17

Faithfulness to Christ is very rare.

00:33:20

There is increasing numbers of people

00:33:22

who are what's known, as we've talked about this before,

00:33:24

deconstructing their faith.

00:33:26

And my heart hurts and my heart breaks

00:33:28

for those of you who are deconstructing

00:33:29

or those who may or those who are.

00:33:32

My heart hurts and breaks because generally

00:33:34

it means they've come probably a couple of things

00:33:36

have happened, a few things,

00:33:37

may have come from a very dysfunctional church,

00:33:39

married to a very dysfunctional religious family

00:33:42

of origin that's been very abusive, maybe,

00:33:44

and they got to get out from it.

00:33:46

The only way they know to get out from it

00:33:47

is get out from under Christianity.

00:33:49

Sometimes we deconstruct because

00:33:51

we've been taught things that are just stupid

00:33:52

and we shouldn't be taught these things.

00:33:54

Or if we're taught these things,

00:33:55

then we should be told

00:33:57

this is not a primary doctrine to believe in,

00:33:59

but someone tells us it is, and so we got to elevate it.

00:34:01

And then when that comes down, our whole faith comes down.

00:34:04

It bothers me.

00:34:05

I heard from people who have to go through

00:34:06

the pain of deconstructing.

00:34:08

And what also bothers me when someone has to do that

00:34:10

and they have to do it in public,

00:34:11

like people are, like, if you want to do it,

00:34:14

why do you have to like amass a following over this?

00:34:16

I don't why -- do you have to, like,

00:34:18

broadcast to people that you're doing it?

00:34:20

Why are you why do you need to be narcissistic about this?

00:34:24

I don't understand about that.

00:34:26

And then I get a little -- get a little pissy.

00:34:29

I'm like, I know that you think

00:34:30

that you're smarter than everybody else.

00:34:32

I know you do, at least that's what

00:34:33

you're putting yourself up.

00:34:34

But listen to me, listen to me,

00:34:36

astronauts are Christians, PhDs are Christians,

00:34:40

leading world authorities are Christians,

00:34:43

Nobel Prize winners have been Christians.

00:34:46

It's not that Christianity has all of a sudden

00:34:48

become nonsensical, it's that you're unfaithful.

00:34:51

There's a big difference there.

00:34:53

The difference between being nonsensical

00:34:55

and being unfaithful, when you give your life to Christ,

00:34:58

and I'll just remind us of those of us

00:34:59

who've ever done this.

00:35:00

If you've ever done this and you got baptized,

00:35:02

what you said to Jesus was, "I'm going to be faithful.

00:35:05

I died to myself. I left it in that tub.

00:35:08

I drowned at the bottom.

00:35:09

And if life doesn't go my way,

00:35:11

if I feel like God isn't blessing me

00:35:13

the way I think he should, if I'm having pain

00:35:16

and difficulty coming, this is what I signed up for.

00:35:18

I signed up to be faithful.

00:35:20

I signed up to follow Him,

00:35:22

not be blessed by Him and have a nice, comfortable life.

00:35:25

I signed up to follow Him."

00:35:27

That's what's faithful. That's what it is.

00:35:30

And that's, I think, why we're so drawn to mothers,

00:35:34

because mothers have cleaned up our vomit,

00:35:36

they've wiped our rear ends, they've slid us $20 bills.

00:35:40

They've hugged us and held us.

00:35:41

They've shown up to bail us out.

00:35:43

They keep showing up, even when we don't love them,

00:35:46

when we don't value them, when we ignore them,

00:35:48

we make their lives more difficult.

00:35:50

We keep showing up, or they keep showing up.

00:35:55

And God says to us, "Will you do the same thing for me?

00:35:58

Will you show up, whether you're male or female,

00:36:01

mother or father, single, whatever, will you show up?

00:36:05

Will you be like Me and be faithful?

00:36:08

Whether it's easy, whether it's hard,

00:36:10

whether you're rich, whether you're poor,

00:36:12

in sickness, or in health, so long as you live,

00:36:14

will you be faithful?"

00:36:17

Moms don't even have to answer that question

00:36:20

because they just are.

00:36:22

They show up.

00:36:23

And God would say the same thing to all of us:

00:36:25

Will you be like Me?

00:36:29

Somebody who spreads out His wings and helps

00:36:32

and blesses and shows up and is faithful.

00:36:36

This is the X factor.

00:36:37

The x factor that you can have is the Spirit of God

00:36:41

who lives in you and makes you, if you will,

00:36:43

a possessor of divinity.

00:36:45

But how do you know that someone actually has the Holy Spirit?

00:36:47

It's not their charismatic personality.

00:36:50

It's not.

00:36:51

It's not how many Bible verses they've had memorized.

00:36:54

It's not that.

00:36:56

It's whether or not they're faithful.

00:36:58

Whether or not they show up every day.

00:37:00

If they have the X factor of hanging in there

00:37:02

a little longer, the X factor of showing up,

00:37:05

the X factor of fighting, the X factor of nursing,

00:37:08

the X factor of hugging and holding and over and over,

00:37:11

day after day, week after week, month after month,

00:37:13

year after year, decade after decade.

00:37:15

That is the X factor.

00:37:17

That's what the Holy Spirit can give you

00:37:20

if you want Him and if you want to be like Him.

00:37:24

If you want to be like a mom who's a great mom.

00:37:27

Now, I want to I want to end our time today.

00:37:29

That's the end of my pithy time. I want to do this.

00:37:31

I want to just -- I don't want to pray over us.

00:37:33

I want to put a blessing on us.

00:37:35

I want to take a twist over Old Testament passages

00:37:38

of giving a blessing or a benediction.

00:37:40

I want to put one on you.

00:37:42

I want to air it towards the moms,

00:37:44

but I want this to be for all people,

00:37:45

whatever gender or role you may have in the family,

00:37:48

or if you don't have a family.

00:37:49

So if you wouldn't mind, go ahead and stand right now.

00:37:52

Go ahead and stand

00:37:53

and let me do an old school blessing on you.

00:38:03

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

00:38:07

May His countenance shine upon you.

00:38:11

May He lift up His face and see you and smile upon you.

00:38:18

May you be faithful,

00:38:20

just like your Heavenly Father is faithful.

00:38:22

May you be powerful just like your Heavenly Father is.

00:38:24

May you endure just like He endures.

00:38:27

And may you nurture, comfort, create

00:38:30

in the way that He does, so long as your God enables you.

00:38:37

By the power vested in me,

00:38:38

I declare you and charge you to be faithful.

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