The Super Bowl of Preaching | 2023

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Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to Crossroads.

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I'm Alli.

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What? What are you looking at?

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Okay, This is weird.

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I'm -- I'm in a coffin.

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It's creepy in here.

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Did you ever think you would lay alive in a coffin?

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This is actually the moment that most of us

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spend our entire lives being afraid of:

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laying in a coffin.

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Most of us think that this is the moment

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that happens at the end of our life.

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But what if I told you that

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this moment has already happened

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because you were born dead.

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That's the shocking truth we're going to talk about

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in Ephesians 2 today: you were born spiritually dead.

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This moment, this coffin has already been a reality

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for you and for me and everybody else you know,

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and that is really bad news.

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That is really bad news for us

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because dead people can't help themselves.

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Dead people don't just stand up out of coffins.

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Dead people don't come back to life on their own.

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But Ephesians 2 doesn't stop there.

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Ephesians 2 has these two little words

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right in the middle of the passage

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and they change everything.

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Ephesians 2, those two little words are "but God."

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You were born a beautiful, innocent looking,

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chubby little baby, but you were dead, but God.

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Woo, it's harder to get out of than you think.

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Well, listen, God has done something that has

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changed the course of human life and death forever.

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And today we're going to talk about exactly what that is

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so that we can be reminded we have a choice how to live.

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You can continue through your life as The Walking Dead

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or you can decide that today is the day

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that you get to live your life more deeply,

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more fully alive than maybe you ever have before.

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Let me pray for us.

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Lord, my prayer for today is really, really simple.

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I want You to bring dead people back to life.

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In Jesus's name, Amen.

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Well, the truth that we jump into in this passage

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we're going to deal with today is a little bit hard to swallow.

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So first of all, I really want you to consider

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the fact that we are living right here,

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humans on Earth in 2023, and that that has shaped

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our perspective on what we think of as life and death.

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And I just want you to consider the idea

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as we begin in this passage, that maybe

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that's not exactly the same view

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that God has on life and death.

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And if you suspend that just for a second,

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it'll be a little bit easier to hop into Ephesians 2

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where we're going to be today.

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But I did want to show you something

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that will make it even a little bit easier.

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Look at this cute, chubby, chubby little baby.

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That's right. This is Allison Lynn, everyone.

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Allison Lynn in Columbia, Missouri all those years ago.

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This was me.

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I've had 4 of these beautiful, perfect little babies myself.

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And I know that the most offensive thing you can say

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to a new mom is that somehow their baby

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isn't the picture of perfection.

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We look at little babies like that and we think

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it's all possibility, it's all purity,

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it's all beauty, it's all life.

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And in many ways, physically, that's true, right?

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But spiritually, the life inside of us,

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the intangible life of our body, our mind,

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our motives, our heart, our desires,

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our spirit, that kind of life

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starts in a very different place.

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It actually starts right here.

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So let's jump into Ephesians 2 and see a little bit

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more about God's perspective on life and death

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that Paul, the writer of Ephesians is talking about.

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Ephesians 2:1, it says:

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And you were dead in the trespasses and sins,

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in which you once walked

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following the course of this world,

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following the prince of the power of the air,

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the spirit that is now at work

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in the sons of disobedience,

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among whom we all once lived

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in the passions of our flesh,

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carrying out the desires of the body and mind,

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and we're by nature, children of wrath,

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like the rest of mankind.

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Whoa. That is quite a passage.

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And it begins with those words: You were dead.

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Let's look at those: You were dead.

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Now, this truth is not exactly what we think of

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when we think of the beginning of our life.

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And as a matter of fact, we've constructed

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some narratives in our culture that help us

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to kind of avoid the blunt kind of harsh reality

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of this in our world.

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We say things like, you need a spiritual awakening

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or you just need a fan that spark of divine life

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into a flame,

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or you need to connect with your inner goddess

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and find your voice or whatever.

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We have all these spiritual sayings

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that are kind of getting at this idea,

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but they stop one step short of actually saying

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what the Bible says about it, which is you were dead.

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The spiritual reality that we're born into

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is actually that.

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It doesn't leave much room for anything else.

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And the reason that I want so much for us

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to begin in this place, even as uncomfortable

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and kind of harsh as it is, is because

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if we don't get the starting point right,

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then we're going to be looking for the wrong solution

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to the wrong problem.

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And Paul is going to address that.

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We need this reminder.

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If we were written a letter like this,

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if we are written a letter,

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so this one's called Ephesians because it was written

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to a community in the city of Ephesus.

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So if they wrote one to me where I was standing,

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like, in my community, it would be Cincinnatians

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or maybe to our entire church you could write

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something like Midwesterners, right?

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We need this reminder too.

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If we had a letter,

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it would definitely have this reminder in it.

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And the reason is because you are just so nice.

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You are so nice.

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Here in the Midwest, especially,

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like we talked to people at the grocery store.

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We're raised with this mindset of trying to be

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a good person and live a good life.

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If we encountered, though, this paragraph,

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certainly Paul would have also used some emojis.

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Maybe these four would have shown up

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somewhere in this paragraph,

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this reminder of where we all began.

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I like the cat. I'm a cat person; don't hate on it.

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I know you all love your dogs,

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but you're just so decent.

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You're just so decent.

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And my experience tells me that

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the better a person you are, the harder a worker,

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the more you try to live life decently,

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the more prone you are to forget

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that this is actually the beginning,

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that this is the reality of our spiritual existence,

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no matter what the outside of our life looks like.

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And so if we don't kind of get our heads straight on that,

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then we end up like this woman

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who was in one of my Bible studies years ago.

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We were talking about this truth.

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I can't remember if it was from this passage

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or a different one that points out the same

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somewhere else in the Bible.

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But she said -- she kind of raised her voice.

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You know, she got like, [sound FX],

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like, got kind of worked up about it.

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And she said, "Are you telling me

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that my whole life I've been trying to be

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a good person and God doesn't care?

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That I've been working as hard as I've worked

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and being as good as I've tried to be,

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and that that's not important to God.

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Is that what you're telling me?"

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And I said, "Hey, no deep breath.

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God very much cares how you live.

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And also, you can't solve one problem with that solution.

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You have a different problem

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that requires a different solution.

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And this requires something that goes

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way, way, way beyond whatever we've got inside of us.

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We don't have the spark of life inside of us

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to solve this problem.

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That's why Paul begins this passage

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with the words you were dead.

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Now, a handful of weeks ago, you all were probably like me

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and you were watching the game, the Bengals game

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where Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field.

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We now know in that moment, his heart stopped.

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It absolutely stopped. No life.

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Now can you imagine how bizarre it would have been

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if instead of the amazing EMTs that rushed on the field

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to save his life, to restart his heart.

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Can you imagine how bizarre it would have been

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if they ran out on the field and gathered around him

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and started going,

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"I wonder how many pushups this guy did yesterday.

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Probably not enough.

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Where did he go in the draft again?

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What was his spot in the draft?

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Maybe if it had been a little higher,

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he wouldn't have, you know, ended up like this.

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Or what about charity?

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Does this guy do charity work? Probably not."

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Can you imagine how crazy that would have sounded,

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how bizarre that would have seemed,

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how very wrong it would have been.

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They would have rushed out onto the field

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with an urgent problem of his heart stopping, no life,

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and would have tried to solve it by suggesting

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he should have been a bit better of a person.

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That's crazy talk.

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And we can see that in the physical realm, right?

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Like, it's no problem.

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You can, you immediately understand

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that in the physical realm

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that would have not only been bizarre,

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it would have been wrong, deeply off.

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But for some reason, we struggle to see that truth

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in the spiritual realm.

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We struggle with these three little words: you were dead.

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And so we go looking

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for the wrong answer to the wrong problem.

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If we don't get the problem,

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we might even be offended by the answer.

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How crazy would that be?

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And we would definitely miss the signs

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that we were living our life dead.

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So what are those signs?

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Let's go back to our passage for a minute.

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I want you to see how Paul describes,

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this is some of the the language that he uses in the passage.

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He describes exactly what a life feels like,

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looks like, would be like

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if you were living it continually dead.

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He says this:

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you would be following the course of the world.

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You would be carrying out the passions of the flesh,

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the desires of the body and the mind.

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If I were to encapsulate what Ephesians 2 says

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a life dead, like, the Walking Dead,

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what kind of life would that be?

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It would be a life lived in the world of the world

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where you just meet the next craving,

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you just address the next need.

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Living dead is a life consumed by craving.

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Now I know I had one experience that taught me,

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like, physically, what would this life kind of look like?

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And it was many years ago

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and I was pregnant with my first son,

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but I didn't know it yet.

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And I went to this meeting.

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I was still in my corporate career

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and I went to this offsite meeting

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and there was, like, a kind of a big board room

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full of people and they served us lunch at this meeting.

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And it was sort of old school.

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And everybody got a dish

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of everyone's favorite cottage cheese.

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I brought some cottage cheese with me today.

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I got a spoon in here somewhere. Let me find this.

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Here it is.

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Now I am fairly revolted by cottage cheese.

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Anybody with me?

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I mean, this is, like, large curd.

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This is large curd cottage cheese.

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And it's like I would never -- I just would never.

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I mean.

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Oh.

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Right.

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So, I'm in the meeting.

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Oh. Eww.

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I should have brought some water up here.

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So I'm in the meeting

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and I have this little dish of cottage cheese

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and I'm like, "I don't know, looks kind of good.

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I think I'm going to eat it."

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Put some salt and pepper on it.

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Take a couple of bites.

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And I was like, "Hmm, yeah, I'm liking that."

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So I nudged the friend next to me.

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Her name was Chris, and I said,

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"Hey, can I have your cottage cheese?"

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And she was like, "Please."

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So she slides me her cottage cheese

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and I eat her cottage cheese.

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And here's what I start doing.

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"You, give it to me.

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Over there, I need that cottage cheese.

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You gonna to eat that? Bring it over."

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By the time the meeting was over,

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I had eaten like seven people's cottage cheese.

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And Chris even joked with me.

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She was like, "Are you pregnant?"

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And I was like, "Ha-ha."

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Actually, I was. I was having a craving.

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I would have been --

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I would have been the last person

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I would have thought prior to that moment

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in that board room that it was just an excuse

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that pregnant women made up to eat a lot more,

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until I ate seven dishes of cottage cheese.

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And here was me, I was like, you, I need it.

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I'll take that. Slide it over.

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I need yours. Please.

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I'm just meeting the next thing that I want.

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This is the life that Paul describes.

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He describes a life where we just look at

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what we think we need, our body tells us,

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our mind tells us, the world tells us, and we go,

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"I need that. I need that. Pass it over.

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Again. Please. More."

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This is the kind of life that Paul describes.

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And I've got to tell you,

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it doesn't always look like cottage cheese.

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It's not always bad looking. It's not.

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As a matter of fact, it's almost never evil.

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This life that Paul describes of death playing out

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in your life through the passions of your mind,

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your body, the world, it actually looks pretty good.

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I brought a few things that seem like my life of death.

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This is what death really looked like for me.

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At a young age I would never have had the words for this,

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of course, but I just craved approval.

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I want you to approve of me.

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And I learned how to get that through accomplishments.

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So I remember as a kid, I had a whole dresser full of trophies.

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It might have been cheerleading,

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it might have been gymnastics,

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it might have been swimming,

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it might have been academics,

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it might have been academics at some point.

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And I had -- I even remember dusting my dresser

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when I was a kid,

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and I had to lift up the rows of trophies.

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And this is how I learned how to meet that need.

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I wanted to know I'm okay. I've done good.

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I'm worth something.

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You can love me now because I did this, right?

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Who wouldn't love somebody

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with a whole dresser full of trophies?

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And this was my life of death going, "Again.

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I need that again. I need that again."

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I learned somewhat later how to meet that need.

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If you're -- you know what?

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If you're younger than me in here,

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you may have not ever gotten a paper report card.

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I like look my kids up on the computer now.

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Sometimes on that day when they come out,

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I actually forget.

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I don't have the awkward moment

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where they pull it out of their backpack anymore.

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That's, like, something we all need to do.

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Anyway. Grade cards, A minus.

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Be ashamed of that. Not good enough.

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Sometimes when people would see this stuff in my life,

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they would say, "Oh, you must be very competitive."

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And I would think that never really computed for me.

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I didn't feel competitive

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because that's not what I was doing.

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What I was doing is I need to know I'm worth something.

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I need you to approve of me.

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I need you to love me.

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And so I'll just perform for you

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in a way where I can meet that need.

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I can be sure.

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This was my life of death.

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And do you think that looked bad to people?

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Not at all.

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Not at all.

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Now, that might not be yours.

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I talked to a friend,

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and I recognized the same thing in her story

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when she described, this was crazy to me.

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But everyone else's always seem crazy.

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She put white rugs in her laundry room,

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like, where you would come in from the outside.

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I have four kids and a laundry room

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where you come in from the outside.

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I can't imagine putting white rugs in my laundry room.

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Her laundry room had white rugs

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and she worked her fingers to the bone

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trying to make sure that they stayed white.

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And at some point, she realized, "Oh, my gosh,

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this is like a grade card for me.

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Am I doing a good job?"

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She had left work. She had stayed home.

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She couldn't tell anymore.

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Was she doing -- was she doing a good job?

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So she made herself a report card

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and it just looked like a white rug.

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And at some point she realized,

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"Oh my gosh, what am I doing?"

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And so maybe yours are nothing like that.

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Maybe instead you've worked on every vacation

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you've ever been on.

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Maybe you can't remember the last time

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you were attached to a boyfriend

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or you were not attached to a boyfriend or girlfriend.

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Maybe you're obsessing over how many followers

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or comments or likes you have on social media.

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Whatever it is, whatever that thing is

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that you have to come get over and over and over again.

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That is your life of death playing out.

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That is the reality of who we really are

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spiritually speaking from the very beginning.

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And death will literally run your life.

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And it's very hard to stop.

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It's very sneaky.

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It comes back in all kinds of crazy different ways,

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even after you've seen it, even after you're free of it.

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It'll try to sneak back in some other way.

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This happened to me this last summer.

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Some of you might know that I have a book

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that recently came out, and you actually write that

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a really long time ago.

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Oh, thank you. That's so sweet.

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You write that a really long time ago,

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which I loved writing it.

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And then you go into this phase

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right before it comes out where you have to

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work with some people on how to market that book.

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I found myself, like, trying to find the formula again.

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How can I make A plus B plus C, equal an A?

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How can I do that? Where is it?

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How can I meet that need?

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You all, it's a book about Jesus. Right?

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Like, death does not give up it's all very easily.

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It's going to try to come back over and over and over again.

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And it took me a hot minute, but I saw it

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and I was like, "Oh, I know what this is.

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This is the old way, the old life."

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That's exactly what Paul is writing about to the Ephesians.

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He wants them to know you had a life before Jesus.

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Remember what it felt like?

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It was just meeting the next need,

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meeting the next desire, quieting the craving.

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It was a life where death ran the show.

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Totally ran the show.

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I hope by now you're yearning to know,

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you're yearning to hear what those two little words

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that I said from the coffin are and where they lead us.

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Because there's two little words

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right in the middle of this passage,

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and they come next and it is "but God."

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You were this, and this is how you lived, but God.

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And God did something that we're now going to read about.

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We go right into it in Ephesians 4,

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excuse 2, verse 4. But God.

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But God, being rich in mercy,

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because of the great love with which He loved us,

00:21:19

even when we were, what? Dead in our trespasses,

00:21:25

He made us alive together with Christ,

00:21:32

by grace you have been saved,

00:21:35

and raised up with Him and seated us with Him

00:21:38

in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

00:21:40

so that in the coming ages He might show

00:21:43

the immeasurable riches of His grace

00:21:45

in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

00:21:48

Friends, Oh, my gosh. What did God do?

00:21:52

This is the -- this is the truth

00:21:55

that when you start in the right place,

00:21:56

even though it feels so very weird and so very wrong,

00:22:00

this is the solution to that problem.

00:22:05

But God made us alive.

00:22:08

Now, Paul can be kind of a wordy writer, right?

00:22:10

If I was like an English teacher,

00:22:11

I could diagram the sentence for you,

00:22:13

and we would see the very simple structure

00:22:16

of this whole paragraph that says:

00:22:18

And you were dead, but God made you alive.

00:22:22

This is the core of the gospel.

00:22:25

This is the gospel itself.

00:22:27

If you've ever been one of those people

00:22:29

that sits in church and goes, like,

00:22:31

"I've heard people talk about this gospel.

00:22:34

What's the gospel again?"

00:22:36

The gospel is you were dead, but God made you alive in Christ.

00:22:41

God made you alive in Christ.

00:22:42

And this is the unbelievable reality, because

00:22:46

this is where our spiritual life begins.

00:22:51

And then God did something.

00:22:53

He sent His Son to this earth to live a perfect life,

00:22:56

not one driven by cravings and selfish motives

00:22:59

and desires that come back over and over.

00:23:02

Jesus came and lived a perfect life,

00:23:04

and then He went into a grave anyway.

00:23:08

And He did that for you, so that as He was raised back up

00:23:12

into an eternal life that overcomes any death,

00:23:16

He could share that with you.

00:23:19

That's what He wants to do, He wants to share it with you.

00:23:22

This is unbelievably good news.

00:23:24

If this is true, then that means it changes everything.

00:23:28

It changes absolutely everything about

00:23:31

how our life can be lived right here, right now, today.

00:23:35

God made us alive.

00:23:36

And how did He do it?

00:23:38

Together with Christ, by his grace.

00:23:42

Did it say if?

00:23:44

If you live a good life, if you work hard,

00:23:47

if you smile at people in the grocery store,

00:23:50

if you chew with your mouth closed,

00:23:51

if you earn a lot of A's.

00:23:53

No, it doesn't say any of that.

00:23:55

It says you were dead, and even in your death

00:23:59

and everything that means, God came to make you alive.

00:24:03

That is unreal. It's unreal.

00:24:07

And I just have to show you this one more time.

00:24:09

Look at this.

00:24:10

He didn't just make you alive.

00:24:12

He raised you up with Him

00:24:15

and He has seated you with Him

00:24:17

in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

00:24:20

Friends, you're not just alive.

00:24:23

Your life is alive in a whole new realm,

00:24:26

a whole new realm.

00:24:27

You may have begun your life here

00:24:30

and you will never go back

00:24:32

because you are already somewhere else.

00:24:34

You are already alive within an eternal reality

00:24:38

that is yours in Christ the moment

00:24:42

that you confess your faith in Christ

00:24:44

that you understand He did that for me.

00:24:47

He shares His life with me.

00:24:50

That is mind blowingly good.

00:24:55

And this is what God did.

00:24:57

I said today I wanted you to be reminded of what He did

00:25:00

and how that changes your reality,

00:25:02

because you really are alive in a whole new realm.

00:25:04

And if you are, then that means

00:25:07

your life works completely differently now.

00:25:10

It doesn't need to be a series of cravings that you meet,

00:25:13

instead, if I were to encapsulate a life in Christ

00:25:17

that starts here and now and never ends,

00:25:20

it would be I'm free to follow.

00:25:23

I'm free, and I'm free to follow wherever it is

00:25:27

that God is going to lead me.

00:25:29

Because God runs the show,

00:25:32

because God's plans dictate my life,

00:25:34

because God's priorities win the day,

00:25:37

because God is ruling over my life, not any other power.

00:25:44

The power of the Holy Spirit,

00:25:46

who actually comes to live in you,

00:25:49

sustaining that life, comes to live in you

00:25:52

when you come to a genuine faith in Christ.

00:25:55

And then He begins to rule over your life,

00:25:58

attacking any aspect of your life

00:26:01

that is still being lived under the rule of death.

00:26:04

Isn't that amazing?

00:26:05

And you begin to live increasingly, increasingly free

00:26:09

to follow God wherever He is leading.

00:26:12

I want you to see a picture of this

00:26:14

in the life of Christ.

00:26:16

In John Chapter 10, Jesus describes His own life.

00:26:19

And I want you to listen to how He describes it.

00:26:21

It's incredible. John 10 says:

00:26:37

Friends, Jesus at will, at the will and plans

00:26:42

and promises of His Father, He could lay down

00:26:44

any part of his life, any day that he lived,

00:26:47

or He could pick it back up again.

00:26:50

He wasn't driven by selfish motives or cravings that he had

00:26:54

or whims of the day or anything like that.

00:26:56

He was always under the authority of God

00:27:01

to put it down and to pick it back up.

00:27:04

This is the picture of freedom that we get in the Scriptures.

00:27:09

Now, it might lead you to some unexpected places,

00:27:14

fair warning.

00:27:15

A life where you're free to follow God

00:27:17

means you're following Him. Right?

00:27:21

You're not continually meeting your own desires,

00:27:23

you're following Him.

00:27:24

He might lead you to a really good counselor

00:27:26

to deal with some things.

00:27:28

He might lead you to give some things up,

00:27:32

to lay some things down, and He might lead you

00:27:34

to take up new paths that you never once

00:27:37

would have ever thought you would have been on.

00:27:39

The thing is, you're free to follow Him there.

00:27:43

You can lay anything down and you can pick anything up

00:27:46

that needs to be laid down and picked up

00:27:48

in order to follow Him.

00:27:50

Do you want a simple test to see

00:27:52

whether you're living dead or alive?

00:27:55

It's super simple.

00:27:56

One question. Can you stop? Can you stop?

00:28:05

Can you stop the work?

00:28:09

Can you stop the alcohol?

00:28:10

Can you stop the relationship?

00:28:13

Can you stop whatever it is that's been running your life?

00:28:16

Can you stop the volunteering?

00:28:18

Oh, my gosh.

00:28:20

If I was driven by volunteering, I would never sleep.

00:28:22

I have four kids at three different schools.

00:28:24

Step away from the Signup Genius.

00:28:28

You don't need a sign up for that. Stop.

00:28:32

You can be driven by things that look incredibly good,

00:28:36

incredibly helpful.

00:28:37

And God wants you driven only by one thing: Him.

00:28:40

Can you stop?

00:28:45

And if you can't, you know that,

00:28:47

that at least that aspect of your life

00:28:50

is still being ruled by death.

00:28:52

It's still being run by death.

00:28:54

And there's more life for you.

00:28:55

We're going to finish this passage,

00:28:57

these last couple of verses.

00:28:58

They give us a peek, a little peek at the life

00:29:00

that Paul means when he writes this passage.

00:29:03

So remember, you were dead, but God made you alive.

00:29:07

And this is how he finishes in Ephesians 2:8:

00:29:11

For by grace, You've been saved through faith.

00:29:13

And this is not your own undoing; it is the gift of God,

00:29:16

not a result of works, so that no one can boast.

00:29:20

For we are His workmanship,

00:29:21

created in Christ Jesus for good works,

00:29:24

which God prepared beforehand,

00:29:26

that we should walk in them.

00:29:29

God wants you free enough to follow Him wherever He leads.

00:29:33

It's a gift.

00:29:36

That you can take right here, right now, today.

00:29:38

And also this life that's waiting for you,

00:29:41

it feels like you.

00:29:43

You know, when you're just meeting needs and desires

00:29:45

and cravings all over the place,

00:29:47

I know that you don't feel like yourself.

00:29:50

I certainly don't.

00:29:51

I feel a quality about that day or work

00:29:54

or aspect of my life that's, like, off a little bit.

00:29:56

This life God has for you, it feels like you.

00:29:59

You've been created for something.

00:30:02

And not to do work like a slave over and over and over again.

00:30:06

We sang that song earlier No Longer Slaves.

00:30:10

This is exactly what it talks about,

00:30:13

that the perfect love of God comes in and frees you

00:30:18

so that you don't have to live like that.

00:30:21

But there is things for you to do.

00:30:23

There are good works that God has created you

00:30:26

uniquely to go and fulfill in this world.

00:30:30

This is a life of freedom, freedom to follow,

00:30:34

permission to leave behind

00:30:36

whatever's been running your life.

00:30:41

And we just have to ask one final question

00:30:43

about this passage, because it's kind of

00:30:45

overriding the entire thing.

00:30:47

You've got to wonder if this life is so good,

00:30:51

why does Paul have to remind a bunch of believers

00:30:55

that they can live like this?

00:30:58

Because that's what's really going on here.

00:31:00

Paul is saying, "Hey, believers in the church

00:31:04

in the city of Ephesus, you were dead,

00:31:07

and God made you alive."

00:31:11

He's talking past tense.

00:31:12

He's talking something that already happened to them.

00:31:14

Why should he have to do that if this life is so good?

00:31:21

What he wants from them is to choose it again today.

00:31:25

He wants them to remember, to contrast.

00:31:28

Do I want to live like this or do I want to live like this?

00:31:30

Because you can continue to be The Walking Dead.

00:31:36

You can continue to put yourself

00:31:38

under the rule of a spirit that isn't God

00:31:41

of a life run by death even when you've been freed in Christ,

00:31:46

because you have a choice.

00:31:47

And Paul is saying, "I want you to choose it again

00:31:51

and again and again.

00:31:53

And I want you to remember what it feels like

00:31:55

and what it looks like to not live in that freedom.

00:31:58

And now I want you to choose it again."

00:31:59

And I think there's people in here today

00:32:02

that want to choose life again.

00:32:04

One group in here has never done it.

00:32:09

You just didn't know.

00:32:10

At some point someone has to say to you,

00:32:12

"Hey, did you know you were born dead

00:32:14

and there's a way to life?"

00:32:16

Somebody needs to say that, and that's one group.

00:32:20

Others of us in here, we know full well the power,

00:32:25

the ruler, the craving, the desire of our flesh

00:32:28

that's been running the show and we're submitting to it

00:32:32

and we're choosing that over and over and over and over again.

00:32:36

And I want you to consider

00:32:37

what if you made a different choice today?

00:32:40

What if you believed you might have the authority

00:32:43

to lay it down and the power to pick it back up

00:32:45

if God ever wanted you to, but you are free today?

00:32:50

And the last group is maybe like me

00:32:54

this past summer when you're, like, you're doing it,

00:32:57

you're trying to live free and all of a sudden, crap.

00:33:01

There I am acting like my old self again.

00:33:04

And it just takes you a minute to see it.

00:33:06

And right now it's coming into focus

00:33:07

and it's time to say yes to the freedom

00:33:11

and to the life that God offers to you.

00:33:14

Right now, you can turn away from death

00:33:17

and you can walk straight into life.

00:33:19

I'm going to pray for us.

00:33:22

Lord, for those of us who have never taken you up

00:33:25

on your offer of life, I asked that Your Spirit

00:33:28

would just be all over those people today,

00:33:31

pulling them, magnetically drawing them into a life in You.

00:33:36

I pray for ultimate final freedom in Christ.

00:33:41

And for those of us who have already said yes

00:33:44

to that freedom and who are living under the rule

00:33:48

of something that is not You

00:33:50

that is dragging us toward death, I pray that

00:33:53

Your life in us would overwhelm that death, Lord.

00:33:58

Bring your Holy Spirit into those places

00:34:01

and overwhelm that death with Your life.

00:34:04

Thank You for Your Grace.

00:34:06

Thank you for Jesus who shares His life with us. Amen.

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