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.
So this is actually very interesting. The theme of the Nazirite has been a theme in my life
personally over the last 10 years. I grew up in this area, went to college, Penn State.
I encountered the Lord really at Penn State. Many of you know Shaei. We were roommates. He
doesn't come here every Sunday, but he's taught here a lot in the past. And for both of us,
the theme of the Nazirite was something that gripped us. And it was something that was held
out to us when we were young. And we're going to dig into a little bit about what the Nazirite
calling is, the spirit of the Nazirite. And really, it's about voluntary consecration.
And this vow, this section in number six, is set within the discipleship of the Torah.
It's kind of nestled in here and the Torah is just the first five books of the Bible. But
I just want to emphasize that everything we do as believers and followers of the Lord is empowered
by faith through grace. And we don't earn anything. So I want to make that clear,
because I want to talk tonight about voluntarily giving yourself to the Lord. And we do this
by His grace. We don't do this on our own merit. We don't do this on something that we earn.
But this is a mystery. And we know that the Lord creates the desire within us to come after Him
and to accept Him. And I don't want to really dig deep into the philosophy behind everything,
but I just want you to know that be okay with this mystery that the Lord creates hunger in us
and it's our responsibility to respond to that hunger. And I want to ask you guys tonight,
just to think very briefly in the beginning, what is the story that God has written
in your life so far, up until tonight? And what is the story that God wants to write
in your life and that He wants to do through you and He wants to build with you? Because seeking the
Lord and consecrating yourself to the Lord, it's about allowing God to use you to accomplish His
purposes in life. And when we focus on what God wants and giving ourselves to Him and emptying
ourselves of what we think we need and want, we actually reap joy and love and peace. And when we
empty ourselves of all the things we want and fill ourselves with all the things that God has for us,
we become our best self, so to speak. But we don't do it by focusing on our best self. We do
it by focusing on the Lord and seeking Him and voluntarily consecrating ourselves to Him,
putting ourselves on the altar. And so this message of the Nazarete when Shaei and I were in college,
it set us on fire to fast and to pray and to accomplish God's purposes in the earth.
And we'll get into fasting a little bit, but I'll just share a little bit of my story up front.
The Lord, after I encountered Him and I started to hear this message and this call,
you know, gave my life to Him, I'm going to serve you.
He touched me and as a response to the Nazarete theme in my life, I said, Lord,
I'm going to give you my weekends. And so just as a young 22-year-old, I just began to say, Lord,
I just want to give you my weekends to pray. And as best as I could, I just blocked out Friday night
and Dottie will remember and Roger will remember that we used to go over to the House of Promise
on Allentown. You guys, Chris and Jill and some other people were there too,
but it was just this little one-room schoolhouse and we just used to have prayer meetings there.
And we and a bunch of us were there almost every Friday night for a couple of years.
And out of that season of seeking the Lord and just as a young person giving Him my weekends,
which I was working at a bank during that time and also serving in our local church,
the Lord birthed His desire for me to reach Muslim people. And I remember sitting at my desk at
work just really unable to work. I was really probably not the best witness in the workplace
because I think my work suffered because I was just prayed a lot at my desk and I could have done
better. So I got convicted of that later, working on that now as I'm back in the workforce.
Sometimes if you don't pass a test once, the Lord makes you take it again. So right now,
I really feel like I'm retaking that test of just serving my employer. But the Lord began to
speak to me about Muslim people, 1.7 billion people who don't know who Jesus is, who bow their
knee to a God who doesn't care about them, who's not even real. He may even be a demon.
And I just was gripped with this and I just began to pray. And I was so dense at the time,
I didn't even want to go and be a missionary. I was just like, you know, I'm going to just pray
and I'm going to maybe reach Muslims here. And I started coming down to the mosque locally and
there's one right over here or here, I forget there, I guess that way. Yeah. And
walking in there and Chris and I walked in there one time together, we walked in and there's like,
no one there. And we're like, well, I guess we could go get some coffee. But just begin
to pray and to obey the Lord. And I remember one time the Lord spoke to me and he said,
now it's the time to be the answer to your prayer. And I was like, whoa,
I'm not ready for that. Because all I had, all I had seen about Islam was,
it's pretty ignorant at the time. It's just like, you know, ISIS, the extreme jihadis,
but most Muslim people are really wonderful, wonderful people and very nice and hospitable.
Anyway, and about a year and a half later, I joined, I quit my job and I joined a Bible school
in Colorado. And then about a year and a half later after that, I went full-time in Istanbul,
Turkey. And me and my wife, Sarah, just moved back after I served there about six years. We
served there about two years together. And over that time, we were able to lead maybe,
you know, 17 people to the Lord, give or take. And these are people that would never have
met Jesus if we want to have answered the call. And so this is part of my story with God. This
is part of my chapters that he's written in my life. And he's the author. He's the author of our
salvation and of our life. And it was in response, the reason I'm telling this story is because it
was in response to the themes in this section. And I want to encourage you as we go through this
to, to ask the Lord to get hungry with God and say, Lord, what story are you writing in my life
in the next chapters? And to also look back and celebrate the things that the Lord has done in
your life and to celebrate the chapters that he's written. And as I was just going through this and
preparing, I was just, I was getting hungry for the Lord to move like this again in my life.
And just asking the Lord, Lord, make me hungry. Make me hungry again. Open up. Open up my
spiritual senses that I would be hungry. And I just want to just want to invite us that as we go
through this, this scripture, just to pray that in your heart, it's like, Lord, make me hungry,
whether you are hungry for the Lord right now, whether you feel like you're at 10 out of 10 on
fire, just say, Lord, keep the grace for this. Keep the embers of my heart soft and hot and
tender and tend that fire. We talked about Leviticus over these past couple months. And the
thing about the priests is that the fire on the altar never goes out. And the fire on our hearts
needs to never go out as we are priests to God. And I just want to invite the Lord right now,
come Holy Spirit, blow on our flame, Lord, blow on our flame, fan our flame, Lord.
Lord, let us lay hold of this not in a legalistic way, but in a loving way. In Jesus' name, amen.
And that's one of the keys. I want to get that really straight and clear is that this is not
legalism. This is love. This is voluntary, just like the gift of salvation is free.
And that's why I said this section, it's nestled within the Torah. So when we're saved and we're
being discipled, the Torah is like discipleship. Torah means instruction. And in the same way,
we're new covenant believers, the same call to pursue God, the voluntary call to say,
okay, my children are saved, but which of you want to come deeper? Which of you want to go further?
Which of you want to get to know me a little bit more? And just do it out of love,
respond out of it from love, not of legalism. The worst thing would be just
people to go and feel a heavy burden tonight, but to leave with a heavy burden, but leave with joy
in your heart. Because somebody said once, there's two types of people in the kingdom.
There's workers and there's lovers. And the lovers always outwork the workers.
Right? And so it's the same kind of dynamic in relationships as well.
Okay. Verse one. And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them,
when either a man or a woman makes a special vow, then vow of the Nazarite to separate himself
to the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. So verse one and two,
right there, the Lord speaks to Moses and the Lord doesn't say, everybody needs to do this.
There are certain things in the law and in discipleship in our Christian life that
we are never to do. Like we are never to lie. That is a command, right? We are never to
betray. We are never to commit sin, even though sometimes we do. And there's grace and
forgiveness for that blood of Jesus is powerful to cover it. But we are to never do that.
And there are some things that are required. Like we are required to live in covenant with
God. That's a non-negotiable. That when you come into relationship with the Lord
and you have a covenant with him, you can't break that covenant. That's a non-negotiable.
But this is an invitation. This is not necessarily a command. It's just
whenever somebody wants to go further in life. So the first point is, this is voluntary.
You do not need to do this. This is not required of you. This is a free invitation to go deeper.
But anybody can do it. It's open to everybody. It's not, there's not a whole lot of hoops you
got to jump through. It just says, when? Either a man or a woman makes this special
vow of the vow of the Nazirite to separate himself to the Lord.
And we don't, the New Testament playing out of this is I'm allegorizing. I hope you can understand
that vows, Jesus has a very tough stance on vows. Like he just says, hey, let your yes be yes.
Right. But the spirit of the Nazirite is to pursue God. Whenever you want to separate and
consecrate yourself to the Lord, either for a season or just in general,
you can do it. It's an open invitation. Okay. So number one, it's voluntary. This is not a command
necessarily. Number two, verse three says, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink.
He shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink and shall not drink any juice
of grapes or eat grapes fresh or dried. All the days of his separation, he shall eat nothing
that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins. Okay. So what does this mean?
It's very clear in the Bible that wine and grapes, these are, these are blessings.
And yes, we're, we're not to, if you are the persuasion to have a glass of wine or a drink,
it's not necessarily forbidden. Although we are to live our lives in accordance with
keeping our body at the temple of the Holy Spirit and to abstain from drunkenness.
But we are allowed to have grapes. There's nothing wrong with grapes. There's nothing
wrong with grape juice. There's nothing wrong with wine per se in and of itself. God created it.
But you are not to consume these things if you make the vow of the Nazirite. So what's
the deal with that? This speaks to denying yourself legitimate pleasure for the seek,
for the sake and seeking of the highest pleasure, seeking God and experiencing God.
So this speaks really to fasting that, you know, will continue to allegorize. But in the
New Testament, this speaks, speaks to fasting and to prayer. And the call deeper of seeking
the Lord deeper is almost always accompanied with some type of fasting. And in my opinion,
my humble but strong opinion, it always has to deal with food. You can media fast, you can do
things, but it doesn't make you hungry, not looking at social media, not watching TV. It
doesn't make you hungry. And it's very important, I believe, that fasting has something to do with
your physical body. Now, not everybody can go without food for days or weeks,
but, you know, there's Daniel fasting and there's all different kinds of juice fasting and,
you know, consult with your doctor before you do anything. You know what I mean? Like,
oh, the commercial with the disclaimer, right? But it's something has to do with food,
giving up food. And there's just a mystery around fasting. And
this is the call that the Lord gives to us to abstain from legitimate pleasure
in order to put a stake in the ground and say, God, I want to follow after you. The Lord says
that if you seek me, I will seek you. That if you draw near to me, I will draw near to you.
And Jesus said, when you fast, not if you fast, right? That's the famous cliche
we like to say. But so in the early church, they fasted twice a week. I'll just give you
to give, you know, to lay any burdens on anybody. But I want to encourage us that the voluntary
pursuit of the Lord, going deep with the Lord, it involves fasting and prayer together.
John the Baptist, many scholars say that he was a Nazarite, that he consecrated himself
to seek the Lord in the wilderness and to not drink wine and eat grapes. And that there was
no razor that touched his head. I don't know if that's exactly in Luke chapter one or not,
I forget. But we can see this when his disciples say, hey, how come Jesus, your disciples drink wine?
Right? They're like, what's the deal? Like we, they had a little bit of a religious spirit,
right? Like, where are the Nazarite people? You know, we don't drink wine, right? That's not
how we want to take this, but they were the, they were definitely seeking after, seeking after the
Lord. And, and look at what John did. Jesus said that John was the greatest man up until now.
There was none greater than John the Baptist. And it's because he lived a life that was
sold out to the Lord. And he sought the Lord with prayer and with fasting and with,
giving himself to the preaching of the word. And all of our lives, I want to emphasize this,
all of our lives are different. Our callings are different. Don't ever look at somebody
and say, I want to be just like that person because the Lord wants you to walk out your own
life. Now, if you see someone doing something and it, it causes a desire in you, maybe that's
a sign that you have a calling as well. You know, somebody said that if you have
birth pangs, that doesn't create the baby. The baby creates the birth pang. So if God is
birthing something in your life and there's pain there and there's, there's desire to want to do
that, that means you have a baby, right? It doesn't mean the pangs don't create the baby.
The baby creates the pangs. And the Bible talks a lot about birthing things. And that
happened, that can happen spiritually where you, the Lord puts an idea in you or a vision in you
and it, it just ruminates in your so-called spiritual womb and it grows and it grows and
it grows. And then all of a sudden it comes out in a moment, in an instant and the pangs are there.
And so if you, if you see some, if there's, if you have pangs, take note,
take note of where, of what gives you the birth pangs.
I can tell you that I had major birth pangs around the, the issue of Islam and going to see,
seeing just Muslim people get saved. That was something that gripped me.
What, what grips you?
Does anything grip you? You sit here today and you go, I don't know.
But I want to encourage you to get with God and to just put aside some time to fast and to pray.
Maybe, maybe it's just a couple of hours where you decide, I'm going to skip breakfast and lunch
on a Saturday and I'm just going to, I'm just going to open my Bible up and I'm just going to say, God,
make me hungry. Do something in my life because I want to be set apart. I want to be consecrated
for your work. Because it's always a paradox. Whatever you think is going to make you happy
in the natural normally disappoints you, right? I remember I put my whole track career in high
school on getting an offer to run at a, at a college. And I remember I was a Friday night.
I ran the time. I was a senior in high school. I had correspondent with a couple of coaches and they
said, if you run this time, you can come on our team. It wasn't like a scholarship deal or
anything. And I ran the time, emailed the coach. He said, cool. Got all the paperwork done. I went
to school on the next Monday. I told my friends and they were like, cool, you know? And I was like,
no, you don't get it. You don't get it. Like I staked everything on this and I thought
that running at that school is going to make me, is going to satisfy me. But it didn't.
But you know, you know, what has satisfied me is, is pursuing the Lord in a roundabout way.
The Lord, when you go after him, he takes care of you. Anyway.
Verse five, all the days of his vow of separation, no razor shall touch his head
until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord.
He shall be holy. He shall let the locks of his hair, of his head grow long.
Interesting. There in our communities, there are people who would take that literally. They would
just, they would just want to cut their hair for a few years. We had some guys in our mission
group that they would call themselves, you know, new covenant Nazarites or whatever,
and they would just let their hair grow long. But like I said, if we're setting this in the
context of the new covenant and with grace, it's like, you don't need to do these ritualistic
things. But there was something to signify to the community that these people were under a
Nazarite vow, right? It's very apparent that if your hair is growing out long,
that something's going on. Maybe he's taking a Nazarite vow. So it was a public thing as well.
And then verse six, all the days he separates himself to the Lord, he shall not go near a dead
body, not even for his father or for his mother, for brother or sister. If they die,
shall he make himself unclean because his separation to God is on his head. All the days
of his separation, he is holy. Or you could also say he is consecrated to the Lord. And if any man dies
very suddenly beside him and he defiles his consecrated head, then he shall shave his head
on the day of his cleansing. On the seventh day, he shall shave it. On the eighth day,
he shall bring two turtle doves or two pigeons to the priest to the entrance of the tent of
meeting. And the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering
and make atonement for him because he's sinned by reason of the dead body. And he shall
consecrate his head that same day and separate himself to the Lord for the days of his
separation and bring a male lamb a year old for a guilt offering. But the previous period
shall be void because his separation was defiled. And this is the law of the Nazarite. When the
time of his separation has been completed, he shall be brought to the entrance of the tent
of meeting and he shall bring his gift to the Lord, one male lamb a year old without blemish
for a burnt offering and one ewe lamb a year old without blemish as a sin offering and one
ram with blemish as a peace offering. And then it goes on. A basket of unleavened bread, loaves
of fine flour mixed with oil and unleavened wafers smeared with oil and the grain offering
and their drink offering. And the priest shall bring them before the Lord and offer his sin
offering and his burnt offering and he shall offer the ram as a sacrifice of peace offering to the
Lord with a basket of unleavened bread. The priest shall offer also its grain offering and its drink
offering. And the Nazarite shall shave his consecrated head at the entrance of the tent
of meeting and shall take the hair from his consecrated head and put it on the fire
that is under the sacrifice of the peace offering. And the priest shall take the shoulder of the
ram when it's boiled, one unleavened loaf and one unleavened wafer and shall put on the hands
of the Nazarite after he shaved the hair of his consecration. And there's a wave offering
and then says this is the law of the Nazarite, but if he vows an offering to the Lord above
his Nazarite vow as he can afford in exact accordance with the vow that he takes,
then he shall do in addition to the law of the Nazarite. So, how's a mouthful. But
this speaks to the sobriety of the call, of answering the call of consecration to the Lord.
Now, under the new covenant, we don't do these things, especially as Gentiles.
But there is a seriousness and there is this divine romance that happens where God says,
God says, come with me and I will show you riches and treasures.
And you got to give some things up along the way.
Because these things weigh us down.
Right, Hebrews says, let us lay aside every weight that so easily entangles and ensnares and let us
run after God. And this is a process. This takes time, it takes sanctification. And within this
divine romance of God offering us to come and we responding, we can't get halfway there and say,
Lord, I want to go back. Right? Look at the Nazarite. There were so many things
he had to do that would prevent him from just voluntarily breaking off this bow. I mean,
for most people in Israel, this would have been a tremendously expensive
error, so to speak. Right? You would probably keep clear of the dead bodies. Right? Because this
would be expensive. I don't know how much it would be, but it's serious to take a lamb,
to take a dove, to take all these things and sacrifice them and put them on the altar. And
then there's the shame of shaving your head. Like that was kind of like a shameful thing back
in the day to have a bald head and everyone would know that you didn't complete your Nazarite vow.
Now the Lord, the Lord doesn't lay anything out like this when, you know, in the new covenant.
But I think it's just when we're looking at this and asking, hey, how does this apply to
our life? It's just that there is a seriousness. Take it seriously when the Lord is doing something
in your life, when there's hunger bubbling up in your life and when you feel like you're making
contact with God in that way where he's breathing life into you and you're getting excited. Be
careful. Be careful what you say. Be careful what you vow. Let your yes be yes and your no be no,
as Jesus would say. And if you answer that invitation to go and run after him in that way,
then you better be serious about it. Take it with some sobriety. Doesn't mean if you fall,
you just get back up. You keep running. You confess, repent, press delete, and keep running
after the Lord. And I'm not even talking like I shared a bit of an extreme example in the
beginning about, you know, going to the Middle East and sharing the gospel with Muslims.
That's just my story. But to bring it home,
what is it in our life, in your life that you need God to do?
Maybe you're just looking for a clear direction with your job. You want to know that you're in
the right place where you can serve people and you can provide for a family.
Maybe you have a wayward child that you're just praying for, and you just want the Lord to touch
them so that they come back. And crying out to the Lord, consecrating yourself to the Lord,
and asking him in prayer and fasting to make ourselves hungry to see him move in our life.
It's really what I believe the spirit of the Nazareth is all about. We consecrate ourselves
to God in order to see him move in our life, that we're closer with him, and we begin to not just
know his works, but we begin to know his ways. Like it says, Moses knew the ways of God,
but the Israelites knew the works. If you read the Bible, you know the works.
But do you walk with him when he does these things? And do we have a hunger to see him move in our life?
And do we have a hunger to see him write a story to answer our prayers? Or have we just
coasted in this way of, yeah, Lord did some cool things in my life, and I enjoy him?
And I'm speaking to myself too, because I want God to do things in my life. I want him to birth
things in my life, in my family's life, just discipling my children and leading my family.
That is a huge accomplishment. And that is in the scope of what I'm talking about,
of just, do you want righteous children? Do you want righteous grandchildren? Do you want to contend
for the family member who has said, I'll never accept the Lord? Or are you going to say, no,
Lord, I know you're good, and I can't control anything, but I just want to get close to you
and pursue you and just watch as you do things in my life.
So this section of scripture, although it's kind of benign, you would pass right over it.
I think a lot of times in scripture, I'm so thankful that I really feel that the
prophetic moment tonight of me falling on this night to share, just because
it really is beginning to birthed something even in myself of remembering.
And remember when you first tasted the Lord, what was that like?
Remember when you were just starting out with the Lord, and you just did some
things that you probably wouldn't do anymore because you were wise. I remember just giving
a lot of my money away. Now I'm like, a couple kids are like, I'm going to use that.
But the Lord rewards those things. And one of the keys to unlocking this is Jesus says to the
church, forget exactly if you know which church in Revelation it is, you can call it out.
But he says, do the works you did at first. Ephesus, do the things you did at first. What
did you do at first? You read your Bible, you spend time with him, maybe you served,
got your eyes off of yourselves. So anyway,
I think it's just such an important thing because it's so easy in life just to get in the routine
of the regular and to not have that push to seek the Lord. And there's different seasons in life
and there's a lot of faithfulness of seeking the Lord and he pulls the curtain on your personal life
and all of a sudden you're doing something. I see that in my own life as well. I sought the
Lord basically in secret almost for years and then I was sent as a missionary. And so we have
to also respect seasons. There are seasons where the Lord is calling us to press in
and do these things and the Lord always wants our relationship. But I want to speak to the
people here who resonate with this now, if the Lord is calling them. And I just want to encourage
us to, let's just take a minute and let's just ask the Lord. We could just, you know, take a
minute and be silent and just see what the Lord would. If the Lord brings anything to mind,
if this little message and study brought anything to mind, I just want us to note it
and just to take a minute or two and pray into it. And if nothing comes to mind,
just pray, Lord, make me hungry. You can never go wrong with that. Make me hungry and thirsty,
just like Jesse taught on Sunday. Thirst, hunger and thirst. These are the things that God uses
to relate the spiritual life of you hunger and thirst for God and He satisfies. You hunger
and thirst to satisfy. So let's just take a second.
Just come Holy Spirit, come, speak to us. Make us hungry for you, Lord.
Lord, right now, I just pray, I just rebuke any thoughts of condemnation or failure. Lord,
I thank you that you are the restorer. Lord, you restore. He can make it new. I don't know,
I just felt that maybe there are some people who just feel like a sense of their little let down
or, man, I missed, you know, you dropped the ball a couple of times with the Lord.
I would just say that that is not His heart. His heart is to bring you into just the next chapter.
And so, Lord, we pray, God, that you would just, yeah, strike that lie down. And if that's you,
do not meditate on that, but cast it out. Take that thought captive and let the Holy Spirit
plant the seeds of hunger and hope in your life. And tend those seeds. Meditate on those thoughts.
If, I guess if somebody wants to share, you can. It wasn't really a thought that I had, but
would you like to share? Yeah, sure. Do you want the mic?
So, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but the Lord's been working just since this past,
or the week before last, and He called me to counseling several years ago, but I haven't
really been doing it. And then when I offhandedly announced that the Lord had called me to that
in an announcement, somebody picked up on that instead of the announcement.
Anyway, so I'm doing that. But last night I had this really bizarre dream,
and it was like a cult dream about people and gathering crystals and how these crystals had
power and you want to have these crystals. And I woke up from this dream and I'm like,
what was that about? And I was like, Lord, I know that it just gave me this longing inside of me
to have these crystals, because it was a dream and it was so real. But then when I woke up,
I'm like, no, I know this is not of You, Lord. So I just immediately woke up praying
and rebuking whatever that was. But the Lord spoke to me later about it. He said, Gail,
your heart should desire me the way you woke up wanting those crystals. You should be desiring
me like that. And you should be putting me first like the people in your dream did for those
crystals. And I was like, wow, what does that really look like? He said, well, for instance,
instead of playing games on your iPad, you could be talking to me. And I'm like,
yeah. And he said, instead of acting like you're retired from life,
just put yourself back into life and do it, you know? And then when you talk tonight,
it was just like, that was, yeah, the icing on the cake, like, okay, this is what I'm supposed
to be doing. I'm supposed to be really putting myself, whatever life I have left,
who knows what that is? I'm supposed to be using it for the Lord, whatever that is. Yeah.
Yeah. Amen. Thanks, scale.
Anyone else want to share anything? You don't have to.
If you do, I'm just, I have one or two things. I want to just share it to close. If you do,
just pop your hand up and I'll, I'll bring it to them, bring it over to you.
Um, just as we close, let me say this, consider adding a rhythm of fasting into your life. If
you don't have it already, once a week is good. Skipping a meal here and there. If you've never
fasted it, but, but get something concrete to where it's a rhythm, whether it's once a month
or once a week, uh, or it's like a Daniel fast twice a year or something, a couple of days or
a couple of weeks. Uh, yeah, consider that as a takeaway. And to just say that
one of the snares going down this path is to fall into legalism. This is one of the reasons why I
right in the beginning, I shared that everything we do is on the foundation of Christ and his work,
what he's done for us. So that's grace. And we access that through faith and through our
allegiance to him. Uh, and that's the whole covenantal aspect of it, but we do everything
on him and out of love, not out of legalism or out of the law. And so there's a tendency to
fall into pride and to fall into legalism and to have the air of the disciples of John the Baptist
as well as if, as you go down this path and it gets more insidious, the deeper you go. And
yeah, just, it's always important. Just remember, we need the full package of the fruit of the
spirit and humility and following the Lord. And that's all on his grace. And so I'll just leave
us with that, that we rest on the finished work and we pursue him out of response to his love for us.
And one thing that really unlocks passion for God is knowing how passionate he is about us.
And if you think about how much God loves you and how much unconditionally he's passionate
about spending time with you, if you meditate on that, I guarantee that you will grow in your
joy. And if you let the seeds of those truths work deep in your heart, you'll become a beautiful
person. Not because you aim for that, but because you aim for Christ. So anyway, that's all I got.
I don't have any discussion questions, but yeah. Male and female are both open to it.
Yeah. Did you have a follow up with that question? What was it? Did you have a thought?
Yeah, definitely amazing to do this in communities of people for sure.
Because it was an individual thing. It was like a community took the nest right now. It was an
individual pursuit of God. And at the end of your vow, because I was reading literally, Christi gave
me a book actually a few months ago, and I was just reading about this. And so that vow could have
been anywhere from a week to a month to a year, five years to a lifetime. It was up to the
paper on the vow, how long they would have that vow, take that vow. And at the end of the vow,
they would shave their head. Men and women had sacrificed their hair on the altar.
And, you know, so, and even in the New Testament, it doesn't say it was a nest right now,
but I believe it's an axe where it talks about Paul shaving his head and doing it,
they believe that he took a vow for a period of time in the New Testament there. So anyway,
it's such an interesting thing. And like I really appreciate what you have said, because what it
really comes down to is remembering to consecrate ourselves to the Lord. And, you know, anytime,
anything of note happened in the Old Testament, God holds his people to consecrate themselves.
And especially going into like the Promised Land, anything like that,
Yeah, thanks. And that plays out in our life too,
whenever we're getting ready for something, the Lord calls us into that.
Yeah, this morning, I was thinking about how I consecrated myself,
and I've had myself here for so many years, and will speak of her. And it's not just a
self-righteous thing, it's keeping in mind that we were bought for a very happy price.
Yeah, amen.
Yeah, amen. That's great. Definitely.
Yeah, there are definitely applications. I think we all realize the Old Testament was not written
for us, or to us, sorry, to us, but was written for us. You know, that we take it and we look
at it through the lens of Christ and the New Covenant, and we can draw principles and
power and revelation from it.
All right, any other thoughts, or questions, or anything? Last chance.
Thank you guys for coming out tonight, and appreciate the opportunity to share in front
of you guys. So, Lord, thank you for this time. We bless you. We love you, Jesus.
Let's help us to go in the power of 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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Be blessed and have a great day!