Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
All right, so we are in Judges chapter 2.
It's a really cool passage I'm excited about.
The title of the sermon is, And the Cycle Begins.
So we're going to see a pretty consistent cycle over and over and over again.
In Judges, and honestly, even through Kings and all the other books of the Old Testament where
Israel is doing good while they have a good leader, and then the the judge passes away,
and then they go right back to their sin, then they're oppressed by the people because God's
blessing has been lifted since they're breaking the covenant, and then they're oppressed by the
other nations, and then they cry out to the Lord, and God comes in, saves them, gives them a judge
to free them and rule over them, and then they're walking with God until the judge dies,
and they do the same exact thing over and over and over again.
So this is a cycle that is not a good one.
And just before we even start, I've heard people say things like this before,
and you know, it kind of bothers me, but they'll say things like,
aren't we all the same, like that?
Aren't we just like them, like we've done?
And in ways, yes, like, you know, we're not perfect.
We do sometimes go back to sin.
We might sometimes fall into a habit of sin or, you know, ways of thinking,
but the Christian life should not be marked by constant returning to sinful ways over and
over again, needing somebody to save you because we already have the Savior, right?
We already have Jesus, who's better than a judge, who has saved us from sin,
has set us free from it, has filled us with his Holy Spirit.
So now we actually have the grace, the empowerment to overcome and have victory in him.
So yes, obviously there's weakness in us.
Like we have a sinful nature, but at the same time,
like we should not be reading this and patting ourselves on the back,
thinking like, oh, it's okay if I keep doing it because they did.
Like, this is a warning right here, this passage.
Don't do what they did.
So yeah, that's where we should not be marked by a similar pattern.
So let's just pray and then we can get into it.
Lord Jesus, just thank you so much for your word.
And I thank you, God, for this church.
And honestly, every time I come here on a Wednesday night and I see this place,
I'm just thankful for even this building, Lord, it's a beautiful place.
And the few hundred years, almost 200 years or so that people have been
gathering in here and praying, it's almost like you can feel it.
Just all the faithful saints who've gone before us and have worshiped in here.
And I just thank you for this place, God.
I thank you for this church.
I thank you for the people in this room.
And most of all, just thank you for you and what you've done for us, Lord,
and how you're so close to us, Lord, at all times, even when we're not aware of it.
I thank you, Lord, for your mercy and your grace.
And I thank you that you will speak to us through this passage.
In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, so let's start right at the beginning of chapter two.
Then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bakim and said,
I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers.
And I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.
You shall tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice.
Why have you done this?
Therefore, I said also, I will not dry them out before you,
but they shall be thorns in your side and their Gods shall be a snare to you.
So it was when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel
that the people lifted up their voices and wept.
Then they called the name of that place, Bakim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord.
And when Joshua had dismissed the people,
the children of Israel went each to his own inheritance to possess the land.
So the first thing I want to point out is that most people,
most scholars believe that this is a Christophany,
which I'll explain why in a moment.
But Christophany is basically the pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus.
So before Jesus came, born of Mary, he was still existed, right?
We see that in John, in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was God, the Word is with God.
Jesus didn't suddenly get born, and now he's here.
He's eternal.
He's part of the Godhead.
He is God.
So before he was born, he wasn't just sitting on the sidelines waiting.
He's God.
He's doing things.
He's active, and he's moving.
So it's believed to be, this is a Christophany,
because one, that the angel of the Lord here claims deity, claims being God.
You can see right here,
I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land in which I swore to your fathers.
And I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
We don't see normal angels speaking like this.
Other passages where you see the angel of the Lord,
lots of times people fall down and worship.
Any time you see a normal angel and people worship,
they say, stand up.
I'm just a messenger.
You don't worship me.
But the angel of the Lord allows them to worship him because he is God.
So this is a very deep, serious moment in the life of the Israelites.
Whenever you see a Christophany, you want to just slow down
and read it and really pay attention to things.
And that's what I want to do here tonight.
So the angel of the Lord, Jesus, it says in verse one,
and the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Baqim.
So it's kind of interesting when you think about it.
Like how do they know where he came from?
Why do they know where he came from?
I guess they must have seen him coming up like the road walking.
Like I would have thought the appearance of God would just be shining out of heaven massive bang.
But here they see him coming and they know where he came from.
And I think it's very intentional.
Everything with the Word of God is intentional and everything points to Jesus
and everything has significance.
So what is significant about Gilgal?
I want to turn to Joshua 4, which is where Gilgal is first mentioned.
So we could turn there together.
All right.
Let's jump to verse 19.
So the Israelites are coming into the Promised Land for the first time.
Everybody remember this passage?
This was probably two months ago, three months ago.
So they're coming over into Israel for the very first time.
And verse 19.
Now the people came up from Jordan on the 10th day of the first month
and they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho.
And those 12 stones, which they took up out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal.
And he spoke to the children of Israel and said,
When your children ask their fathers in times to come, saying,
What are these stones?
Then you shall let your children know, saying,
Israel crossed over the Jordan on dry land.
It was a miracle.
He's saying, Remember this miracle.
For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you
until you had crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea,
which he dried up before us until we had crossed over.
And all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the Lord
that is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.
So he's coming up from this place,
where these 12 stones are set up as a monument, declaring the power of God
and also his provision and that he was there with his people
and all that he had done, reminding them of who they belong to.
And in addition to that, in the next chapter in 5,
they are circumcised and have a rededication of their covenant to God.
So there's a miracle, there's a monument to remember what he's done.
There's a rededication to the Lord and they celebrate the Passover for the first time.
And then let's look at verse 9 in chapter 5.
Then the Lord said to Joshua,
This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.
Therefore the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.
Now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal and kept the Passover in Gilgal.
So this is a super significant place for the people of Israel and for God
because of all that happened there,
the very first time they stepped into the Promised Land, Gilgal,
the miracle that happened in Gilgal,
the covenant with God was rededicated in Gilgal.
And on top of it, it's named Rolling Away
because God took away the sin and the shame and reproach of slavery
and all that they had been through.
In that place.
So they were essentially clean.
They were like, you know, fresh slate.
And this all happened there.
And one thing I'm just blown away by is that word rolled away
is the first time it's ever used speaks of rolling away a large stone.
And that's in Genesis.
And what else was rolled away to remove sin and slavery
and also the shame of our past?
It's the stone in front of the tomb.
That Jesus rolled away and that heavy weight that was on us was rolled off.
And here this place is named Gilgal
because that heavy weight was rolled off of them.
Isn't that amazing?
So here is Jesus.
He's in Gilgal and his people are sinning and walking away already.
And they haven't even been there that long.
And he's in Gilgal probably, I don't know.
I could assume he looked at those 12 stones and thought about it.
Oh, man, like how far they have already fallen.
Like maybe he walked over to where they had their first Passover
and thought about the amazing time that was seeing the Israelites
just worshiping him and actually being dedicated to him.
And then he walks from that place to where they are now to Bakim,
which means weeping because they're now weeping aware of how far they had fallen.
And here they see him coming from that place.
Not only like, you know, what he must have been thinking,
seeing this place of dedication and now where they're at,
but think about it.
It's like if somebody like, you know, God sees us in our entirety.
He knows our good and our bad.
And you know, when it's kind of a rude awakening,
where you're like, you just were maybe doing something,
thinking something, whatever it is.
And you're like, oh, he can read me like a book, like, Lord, forgive me.
But imagine like him coming from the place
where maybe you made so many promises that you didn't live up to.
This isn't a form of guilt that he's trying to do,
but it's trying to remind them.
Like, remember the zeal you had.
Remember where you've come from.
Remember the beginning of this journey.
And that's the first point I want to make,
is that it is important to remember the early days of your faith.
It really, really is.
Like the early days when everything's so fresh and everything's so new,
it's important to not forget that.
Because if you go through this life,
and you're just like, forget what you've come from.
Forget about the experiences with God.
Forget about all the things that he's called you to.
And you just get kind of dumbed down and doled up by this life.
It's like, you just start going on autopilot.
And you just forget, like, why am I even here?
But remember the early days.
And if you come to the Lord and you talk to him and pray to him,
and ask for that zeal again, I mean, he does it.
He brings you back to that first love.
And I think about that in Revelation 2.
Jesus says to the church of Ephesus,
this one thing I hold against you is that you have forsaken the love you had at first.
Consider how far you have fallen,
and repent and do the things you did at first.
Remember where you came from.
If you're in a place like they were, where you're stuck in sin,
and you know you're not living up to what you feel called to,
you're not living up to what God has called you to,
just remember the early days and the work will begin.
And for me, my early days are direct soul.
You know, I was a Christian since I was very young.
But when I went to college, things really shifted for me.
I went to Christian high school and middle school and all,
and it was great.
And I had a real faith in God.
But it's different when you get out into the world for real, you know?
And I went to direct soul and like immediately was confronted with things
that I hadn't seen before or been asked to do before and all this stuff.
And I remember like I struggled with the immediate like thing of like,
how am I going to say no to this or no to that?
Or like, I'm actually going to be doing this because I'm a Christian, you know?
I just didn't want to be rejected and like feel stupid.
And then I just decided like, you know what, who cares?
I'm just going to be truthful and like honest and I'm going to be a light.
And that really changed everything for me.
Like I didn't care anymore about what people thought.
And those were the early days of just freedom and honestly, like so much courage in the Lord.
And that's at direct souls where my love and my desire for God really grew.
And, you know, we were doing amazing things like we're doing worship in the middle of campus
in this big grassy area at night.
People are walking by and like coming up and like, what is going on?
There's like, I don't know, maybe a hundred people there just worshiping God
only like a nine o'clock night on Thursday.
And then even some of my friends who were atheists didn't even believe in God.
They got saved, born again.
Now it's 15 years later and they're still walking with the Lord.
And so it's important for me to remember those early days and like whatever your
gilgal is like that place where you first came to the Lord.
Don't forget it.
It's an amazing, sweet moment that is has honestly formed you into who you are.
And you need to remember those days because they're important.
And it will bring back the zeal for the Lord if you ever lose it
because those were really precious times that the Lord used in your life.
Let's read verse 13.
Oh, I'm back in Joshua still.
So verse 7, I mean.
So the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived
Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, which he had done for Israel.
Now Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was 110 years old,
probably on Arnold's diet right there.
And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Hares,
in the mountains of Ephraim on the north side of Mount Gash.
And when all the generation had been gathered to their fathers,
another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work
which he had done for Israel.
So after that moment that we just read before this,
they wept, they turned to the Lord and they're like,
I'm going to go and do what I'm called to do.
But there's obviously something that was missed, a crucial step.
And if you remember in Joshua, it says,
when your children see these stones, tell them.
Tell them what God has done.
And there must have not been many trips to Gilgal after that day, right?
There must have not been many trips to remind their children
and the next generation of all that God had done for them.
And that's why we always see through the whole testament,
always the saying, hey, like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the God who brought you out of Egypt.
Remember, remember what he's done.
Remember what he's done for you.
Because if you forget, if you don't remember,
you'll forget and you'll start to believe some other things that aren't true.
So they missed a crucial step of reminding their children.
The next generation rose up and forgot.
They didn't know who the Lord was or what he had done.
So we need to remind the next generation,
whether it's your kids, your grandkids,
those who are newer to the faith, people right around you,
just tell them what God has done for you.
I found the best thing to do is to just talk about it like it's normal.
You don't have to go into great detail
and say things that people won't understand that aren't Christians,
but just talk about as if they know God, how good God is.
Oh man, the Lord really has been so good to me.
I'm so blessed with my family.
I'm so blessed with this job.
Just talk about him more frequently and remind people.
And you remind yourself, but remind those around you.
So the next generation doesn't forget.
So the next generation doesn't walk into the same sins of before,
but they can actually walk in this new life that they can have in Jesus.
Let's look at verse 11.
Then the children of Israel did evil on the side of the Lord
and serve the bales.
And they forsook the Lord, God of their fathers,
who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.
And they followed other Gods from among the Gods
of the people who were all around them,
and they bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger.
They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Asheroths.
And Baal is the God of wealth.
It was an agricultural God, so money.
And then the Asheroths was the God of sex and love.
So those things still exist today, just without those names.
Money, sex, and love is what most people are going after in this world,
and they give up a lot for it.
And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel,
so he delivered them into the hands of the plunderers who despoiled them,
and he sold them into the hands of their enemies all around,
so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.
And wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity,
as the Lord had said and as the Lord had sworn to them,
and they were greatly distressed.
Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges who delivered them
out of the hand of those who plundered them.
Yet they would not listen to their judges,
but they played the harlot with other Gods and bowed down to them,
and they turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked
in obeying the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.
And when the Lord had raised up judges for them,
the Lord was with the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies,
all the days of the judge, for the Lord was moved to pity
by their groaning because of those who oppressed them and harassed them.
And it came to pass when the judge was dead
that they reverted and behaved more corruptly than their fathers,
by following other Gods to serve them and bow down to them.
They did not cease from their own doing, nor from their stubborn way.
Then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel,
and he said, Because this nation has transgressed my covenant,
which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded my voice,
I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations
which Joshua left when he died, so that through them,
the nations, I may test Israel whether they will keep the ways
of the Lord to walk in them as their fathers kept them or not.
Therefore, the Lord left the nations without driving them out immediately,
nor did he deliver them into the hand of Joshua.
So we see they got what they wanted.
They wanted the nations of the world and what they had.
And the Lord said, If you want them here, you can have them.
And this is what they're going to do to you.
They're going to honestly just oppress you,
and steal from you, and put you into slavery.
And isn't that such a picture of what happens with sin in general?
God is not going to force himself onto you.
God is not going to force himself onto the world.
He laid his life down for the world,
and he's proclaiming who he is to the world in many ways,
and including through his church.
But he's not going to force you to follow him.
And if you don't want to follow him, then he says,
Okay, here, you can have what you want.
And what we want in the end, the sinful side of things, is not good.
It just leads to this, the oppression of the enemy.
But I love the little couple of verses in here
that still point to the character of God.
Number one, that if this is your story,
or if it's a story of someone you know,
they just keep going back to their old ways,
and then say, Oh, I don't want to.
I want to follow the Lord.
Never mind, I'm good.
There's still mercy.
Like, mercy is needed by everyone.
God is still merciful.
We saw that in verse 18.
For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning.
The groaning of people that didn't want anything to do with him,
who immediately after the judge died would just be like,
we want to go back to our own ways.
And he still has pity on them.
Like, how much more does he have mercy and pity and grace
for someone who is his, who is a Christian?
Like, if you sin, he's not, like, gonna do what he does here
because it's a new covenant.
Yeah.
Yeah, so much patience.
Yeah, that's so true.
And like, that is something that should blow us away.
People that actually hated him,
when they were in distress, he was like,
Oh, I got to help them.
I have to help them.
And he sends someone to deliver them.
What a picture of Jesus, though.
He came to the world, and the world did not know him.
He came to his own, and they despite, they hated him, it says.
And yet he still died for them.
That is the love of God.
There's mercy.
There is mercy for you.
I love, if you look up the word mercy in the Bible,
like on Google or Blue Letter Bible, whatever you use,
I don't even know how many times it appears.
It's probably like over a thousand,
especially in the Psalms and Proverbs.
Because it's so obvious how desperately humankind needs mercy.
Like, if we didn't need it, it wouldn't have been said
so many times in the Word.
We constantly need mercy.
Here's one.
For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting,
and his truth endures to all generations.
We constantly need his mercy.
I love Psalm 103.
A friend of mine shared it a few years ago to me
when I was like beating myself up.
And he was said, Psalm 103,
for he knows our frame, he is mindful that we are dust.
And I was like, man, like he knows that we're all weak.
He knows that he made us out of the dust,
that we're not strong.
We actually aren't strong.
In him we are, but on our own, we're just dust.
He's mindful.
He's aware of our weakness, and he gives us his strength.
So his mercy is unmerited.
His mercy is everlasting, and his mercy is like so close.
I don't know if you guys know that Switchfoot song,
but maybe, yeah, beautiful letdown I think it is,
but maybe forgiveness is right where you fell.
Like the forgiveness of God is right there the moment you fall.
All you have to do is grab onto his hand and get picked up.
So his mercy is always there.
Then in verse 16 says,
Nevertheless, the Lord has raised up judges who delivered them.
God always gives you a way out.
If you are in a pattern that is not healthy,
a pattern of sin or turning back to your old ways,
God always gives you a way out every single time.
It says in 1 Corinthians 10,
No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to man.
So number one, that should make you feel better.
There's no new sin, no new temptation in the world.
Someone else has come against the same desires and thoughts before you.
Nothing is new, but God is faithful.
He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear,
but when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out
so that you can endure it.
He's saying it's all common, don't beat yourself up about it,
but I've given you a way out.
Never say that you can't because God has given you a way out through him.
He is the judge.
He is the one who came and has given us victory.
And then finally, he's merciful.
He gives you a way out, but he also uses our bad choices
and what we want that isn't good.
He uses it to discipline us, correct us,
and ultimately do something far better.
So Hebrews 12, I'm going to read this.
I love it.
It talks about the discipline of God.
My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you
because the Lord disciplines the one he loves.
He chastens everyone he accepts as his son.
Endure hardship as discipline.
God is treating you as his children.
For what children are not disciplined by their father?
If you are not disciplined and everyone does undergo discipline,
then you are not legitimate,
not true sons and daughters at all.
Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us
and we respected them for it.
How much more should we submit to the father of spirits and live?
They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best,
but God disciplines us for our good.
In order that way, we may share in his holiness.
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.
Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness
and peace for those who have been trained by it.
So we see these nations in the land that he was said,
if you want them here, I'm going to leave them here.
I won't drive them out,
but I'm going to use them to drive you back to me.
If you want to go into idolatry, do it.
They're going to oppress you,
and then you're going to cry out and I'll be right there.
But you see his hand in it all.
His hand was there for good.
If he made their lives so easy
and there was no opposition,
right, if there's always only blessing in an earthly sense,
they got everything they wanted.
There was never a drought.
They never had someone trying to make war,
and they were in deep sin.
They would just die,
and they would have no hope in the afterlife.
But God said,
these people that you didn't drive out,
I'm going to use them so that you would repent,
so that you would turn back to me
so that you can have hope beyond this life,
beyond the good things that you want for this life,
and actually have hope for eternal life in the age to come.
So God uses everything for good,
and I have a few more lighthearted scenarios
of God's correction in my life.
When I was in Nashville, I had a business.
It was a party rental business,
and I prayed before I started it,
and I really felt peace from God that I should do it.
So did it.
The business went great.
We actually sold it for a good profit
before we moved back up to Pennsylvania.
But after one good success,
it's easy to think,
oh, yeah, I had something to do with it.
So I was like,
oh, anything that I'm going to try will probably work.
I mean, I didn't have that much of an ego,
but I'm thinking,
if I have a good idea, I think it'll work.
So I tried to start another business.
Had to do with box truck,
freight for Amazon and stuff.
And so I bought a box truck,
and it was very expensive,
and then I was going to use it for two businesses.
But that got kind of weird legally with insurance,
and then it ended up happening.
So my wife was like,
I don't know if this business is a good idea.
Maybe you should wait a while and pray about it.
I'm like, no, it's going to be great.
I'm just going to go for it.
So I didn't pray much about it.
Didn't have my wife's blessing.
Did the business anyway.
We didn't even get one shipment out the door.
All the things that I had lined up fell through.
And then that box truck got in an accident
with my party rental business.
And so I didn't know what to do with the insurance.
So I had to pay out a pocket to fix the box truck,
which was thousands of dollars.
And in the end, I'm like,
I had a moment with the Lord.
I'm like, I don't think I really listened to you about this.
And I think I had some pride in it
that I could just do it on my own.
And here I am learning a lesson.
But it's a lesson for my good.
It's not like he made all that happen.
He didn't make my coworker drive a box truck
under a nine foot bridge.
That's what happened.
He did that without thinking.
But God uses it to teach me something much more important
that might save me from some really bad decisions
worse than a box truck in the coming years.
So God does use bad things to teach us lessons.
Another one, I don't know if this is really correction,
but you know the soccer league that we have,
everyone's getting hurt.
I was one of them.
And so it was so funny
because before I played the first night,
played a game, it went well.
And I was saying to Mike after the game, the first game,
I was like, how's everybody getting hurt?
Like, come on.
And then he's like, yeah, I don't know.
And then the second game was going to start.
And I was there with Maria and the kids.
And I felt like I should go home
because it's bedtime routine.
I should probably be there for her.
And she kind of wanted me to go home too.
But then I'm like, oh,
but I really want to play in this second game.
So I was a bit selfish.
I'm like, oh, can I just stay
and then I'll get a ride home?
And she's like, okay, fine.
It's okay.
I stay.
And in the first half,
I just landed really weird on my leg.
And I thought I tore my quad.
And it just slammed up.
And afterwards, I literally,
I'm not saying that this was like
God's correction or anything.
But I will say afterwards, I'm like,
I knew I should have gone home.
I just knew it, you know?
And Maria was like,
you should have come home.
This wouldn't have happened.
But I'm just saying in a layhard way,
I think we all can think of scenarios in the past
where maybe we did what we wanted to do
and we didn't really ask God about it
or we knew He didn't want us to do it.
And then it didn't pan out well.
But what does that do for us?
Like something way better
than if everything went great.
That business, if I just did what I wanted to do
and it worked out great,
I would keep making that same mistake
because I'm thinking it's blessed.
When in reality, it's not blessed.
It's just making money.
And then where would I be in a few years?
I could be weighing over my head
and then going bankrupt
because I made one really bad mistake.
So all in all, God uses even our bad choices
and the broken world around us,
He uses it for our good to do a work in us
and He uses it for our correction
just like He did with the Israelites.
So the final thing I want to share too
is around just something logistical.
If you or someone you know is stuck
in this kind of pattern
that we see with Israel's unfaithfulness
of kind of like they just can't break
this pattern and this cycle.
The first thing to do
is obviously number one, repent.
Like repent to God
which means change directions.
It doesn't mean beat yourself up
and feel really, really bad.
There is remorse that comes along with repentance.
But repentance is changing direction.
So instead of going this way,
the way you've been going,
it means you turn to Jesus
and you follow Him.
Tell somebody about it.
If it's a secret and nobody knows about it,
you got to tell someone
because things that are in the darkness
need to come to the light
and then you have accountability.
Another thing I would say too
is we saw at the beginning of this passage,
Jesus the angel of the Lord says,
I told you to tear down the altars
but you've not obeyed my voice.
They kept the altar set up to these idols.
That made it super easy
to just start worshiping these idols.
Had they torn it down,
it would have been hard
because they wouldn't know what to do
to worship these Gods.
There's nothing there.
There's rocks.
Like it's just a mountaintop.
They wouldn't even know how to do idolatry.
So one, tear down the altar in your heart.
Like you repent.
You don't want to have that desire anymore.
But the next thing is
physically tear down the altar.
What things in your life are in your life
that are making it very easy
to do the thing you don't want to do anymore?
Maybe it's just an example.
Maybe it's like excess drinking.
Well, it's okay to have some here and there
but then don't keep in your house
if that's a problem.
Just get it out.
You know?
So it's like doing logistical things
like physically tearing down the rocks
from this altar
so it doesn't make it super easy
to go back to it, right?
So that's just something
I just want to encourage us with
and something I've done
plenty of times in my own life.
So I'm going to pray here in a minute
but the topics for our small groups
I just want to set up
would be one, what's your gilgal?
So like what are the early days
of your faith?
You can talk about it
maybe some things that the Lord did in your life
and then next would be
I think that's actually probably
going to take up a lot of time.
We could talk about that
and then maybe just, you know,
what have people done?
You know, we're supposed to remind those around us.
Maybe is there someone around you
that you've felt the Lord draw you to
that you need to like tell them about the Lord?
I just had one.
It was my boss.
I have worked for a year
and I really wanted to share the gospel with her.
I thought I had all this time
and then she took another job
and I had one month
and I'm like, okay,
we got to get this gear rolling.
Like, you know, she knew I was a Christian
but like, how am I going to do this?
So then sure enough
I kind of began the process
and on our last conversation
a day before she left
I was able to share the gospel with her
and pray with her and it was awesome
and she didn't give her life to the Lord right then
but I could tell God really was moving in her heart
and so like are there some people around you
that maybe you've been putting it off too long
and you just know you need to tell them
about what God has done in your life.
So let's pray.
Heavenly Father, just thank you so much
for your word again
and I thank you for all these people here, God.
I pray that you'd bless them, Lord.
I pray that you'd bless our conversations.
I pray that they would just feel your peace
and your love, God, and your mercy.
We so desperately need you all the time, God.
We're not ever supposed to be self-sufficient, Lord.
We're supposed to be God-dependent, Lord.
So I just pray that we would learn to rely
and depend on you more and more every day
and be filled by your spirit.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Thanks for joining us at Lansdale Life Church
as we praise God and discuss His word.
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at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube.
Be blessed and have a great day!