Episode Transcript
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If you're able to remain standing,
please do so, and let's give our
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attention to Romans A, chapter twelve, Romans chapter twelve. Let's continue to
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hear God's word from this wonderful book. Going to read verses three through eight
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Romans twelve, three through eight.
For by the grace given to me,
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I say to every one among you
not to think of himself more highly than
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he ought to think, but to
think with sober judgment, each according to
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the measure of faith that God has
assigned. For as in one body,
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we have many members and the members
do not all have the same function.
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So we, though many, are
one body in Christ and individually, members
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of one another, having gifts that
differ according to the grace given to us.
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Let us use them. If prophecy
in proportion to our faith, if
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service in our serving, the one
who teaches in his teaching, the one
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who's the one who exhorts in his
exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity,
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the one who leads with zeal,
the one who does acts of mercy
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with cheer fulness. And I'll adverse
nine, let love be genuine. You
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may be seated. So this morning
I want to think with you by way
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of God's word here in Romans twelve, three through eight, about the gifts
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that God gives to us, his
children. I'm spiritual gifts, there's sometimes
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called. A lot of people find
this as an exciting topic, and I
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think that's a great thing. It's
exciting to be to hear about gifts.
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Right when you're a little and it's
Christmas time. You are excited in large
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part because you know what's coming gifts. Gifts are a wonderful thing. There
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and expression of love. They're an
expression of care and of tenderness, whether
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it's a gift from a husband to
a wife, or one neighbor to another,
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or from God himself to you.
To receive gifts from God is a
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wonderful thing. It's something to be
excited about, to think about, to
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meditate on, and indeed God speaks
to us about this and talks to us
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about how each one of us are
given gifts in the body and what that
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means how we are to use them. Paul makes this wonderful and very simple
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point in verse six. Having gifts
that differ according to the grace given to
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us. Let us use them.
I think I can read that better.
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Let me try again having gifts that
differ according to the grace given to us.
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Let us use them. If it
was Christmas, you'd say play with
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your toys. You've unwrapped them,
you have them, they belong to you.
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If you are and maybe, maybe
for Christmas, you didn't get toys,
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but power tools. Right, are
they supposed to sit in the box,
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or are you supposed to take them
out to your shop and use them,
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put them to good use, make
something wonderful? That's what we're called
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to do with the gifts that were
given us. They're not toys, they're
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not things that we can just sort
of pass away or let go for a
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time. They have this very wonderful
purpose for us as individuals and for the
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body all together. Now, in
order to use these gifts, in order
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to glorify God in our use of
them and to receive them properly, there's
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certain things we need to think about
this morning. I want to think about
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our proper perception of them, are
right attitude of them and our right use
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of them. So first our proper
perception of them. Paul begins this way
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by talking about sober judgment. That
doesn't sound quite so fun, but it
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is a listen, listen to what
he has in mind. He says,
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for the by the grace that was
given to me. I say to everyone
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among you now, let's pause right
there, notice what he's emphasizing already.
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Before he starts talking about how we
use our graces, how we use the
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gifts God has given us, Paul
says, I speak to you in the
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same way I'm about to tell you
to work and live your lives. Paul's
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working according to his gifts, he's
speaking according to the graces he's been given.
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And so, as an apostle,
graced and gifted by God to serve
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us and reveal these things to us, he speaks to us as God's mouth
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peace. He speaks to US and
gives us the word of the Lord.
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And here it is. Do not
think highly or more highly of yourself than
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you ought to think, but to
think instead with sober judgment, each according
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to the measure of faith that God
has assigned him. Well, so,
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the point here is really pretty simple. When God grants US salvation, he
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gives to each of us different things, and the differences that point that they're
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different is made several times in this
passage. Each according to the measure of
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gifts or in verse six having gifts
that differ according to the grace that was
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given to us. You might think
of maybe this is a bit crass,
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but he uses the word measure and
I think of God simply measuring out faith.
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Some for you, some for you, some for you, some for
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you. But in God's wisdom that
is not always an equal measurement. That
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doesn't make him unfair because in God's
perfect wisdom he always gives to us the
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proportions that we need. For example, as a father, you know a
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lot of times my wife will prepare
the meal and I'll come in and help
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her at the end and dish up
the food on the plates. I suppose
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it would be fair in one sense
if I gave everyone the same amount,
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but it wouldn't be very nice for
Little Ruby if she had this enormous plate
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of food or if I was left
with a little two year old size plate.
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Well, that I suppose that would
be fair, but fair's not always
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best. I suppose are equal anyway. God is not concerned with equality.
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That's not the measure of all things. God gives to us exactly what we
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need. He gives us a measure
according to His grace. According to his
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goodness, he measures out for every
single one of us the faith and the
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grace that we need. And as
we examine that in our lives, were
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called to be honest about it,
to of a sober judgment about it.
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That means that God doesn't allow us
to, as he says, think more
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highly of ourselves than we ought.
We're not to presume that we have things
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that we don't, we have skills
that we don't, we have skifts that
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we don't, to pretend as though
we were something other than what we are.
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And you could think of that in
spiritual terms, whether it in for
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example, and the measure of our
faith and how strongly we believe, or
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you can think of it in natural
things, whether it's our our gender or
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our wealth or our position in life. Every single one of us has a
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particular condition. God has post put
us in. He's given us these gifts
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and each of us are unique and
individual. That diversity is a beautiful and
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wonderful thing. In making us one
body, God doesn't make us all the
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same. It's a sort of strange
and beautiful irony that, in making us
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all different, he unifies us together. Now that can be hard to understand,
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and that's why the metaphor of the
body is so helpful and that that
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helps control how we think about these
gifts. We think about our life and
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our gifts like life in a body. A hand is not the same as
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an eye, and that's really okay, because I don't want to just look
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at my food, I want to
eat it too, and I don't just
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want to pick it up with my
hands. I also enjoy seeing what's on
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my plate. The each part of
our body is designed differently and in different
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ways, and even the ones that
look pretty similar, one, at least
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on me, is stronger than the
other. My right hand is stronger than
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my left, and that has certain
advantages both for my left and my right
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hand. Our bodies are designed,
with all of these differences and all of
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this unique ways, to work together
as a unity, and Paul says,
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the church is like that. So
that means when we think about our gifts,
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when we take sober judgment, a
sober account as to what we have,
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we don't need to look, you
know, sort of across the body
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with jealousy at what somebody else has. We don't need to think of ourselves
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more highly because we wish we were
something else, because God has made us
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who we are, and that's a
good thing. It also means we're not
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allowed to think of ourselves any less
than what we are. If God has
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given us gifts and we say no, you haven't, that's a bad thing.
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You know, if you're if your
boss goes to you and says,
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here's a program I want you to
use, here's the tool that I want
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you to use to use your job, and you don't do your job and
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he says why aren't you doing your
job and you say the I didn't want
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to, and I give you a
gift and I give you the tool to
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do this job, well, you're
going to end up fired. God gives
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us gives. He gives us these
graces not so that we might ignore them,
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neglect them or to think less of
ourselves than we ought. We're to
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take sober judgment on ourselves, we're
to be realists, we're to so,
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we're to look at ourselves and say, what has God given me, and
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how can I serve in genuine love? That's what proper perception is right.
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It's seeing these things rightly. Of
course, that's not always easy. Jealousy
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discontentment, lack of experience. These
things can make recognizing our gifts or knowing
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how to use them a difficult but
nevertheless, this is what we should be
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aiming for. We should think about
ourselves and our gifts as those that are
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given to us from God. Grace
is given to us through Christ and belonging
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to as as belonging to his body. Together, we use them according to
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life in the body. so that's
proper perception. Next we want to think
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about right attitude. We've touched on
this already. If you're given a gift,
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what kind of attitude should you have? Should you be angry about it?
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Should you be frustrated about it?
Should you be discontent? Kids,
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when you get a present, what
do you do? You say thank you.
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There's a joyfulness there. There's also
a humility there, especially when it
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comes from God. The gifts that
we get from God are always undeserved.
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There's nothing that any of us have
ever done that we can go before God
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and say, what you owe me
for this one right. There's not a
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single thing that any of us can
point to in our lives that isn't tainted
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in some measure by sin. All
of it, all of it. Even
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our best works, the prophet says, are like filthy rags. So it
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doesn't mean we don't stop trying to
do well or we aren't thankful for the
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graces that God has given us or
the sanctification or all of that, but
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it does mean that we have to
be humble. When God says, here
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you're now a servant, or here
I'm giving you the ability to lead,
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or here I'm giving you the ability
to be merciful, we should be thankful
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for that. It's different. These
gifts are especially gifts that are used for
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the glory of the Lord and love
for brothers and sisters in Christ. These
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things are contrary to the sinful nature
all of us are born into. When
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we exercise these gifts, were exercising
a different kind of life, a higher
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life, a spiritual life, and
that's a spiritual with a capital s,
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named after Holy Spirit. We live
a holy, spiritual life because the Holy
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Spirit is working in us, gifting
us with these things. So the point
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is is this perception of reality should
create a right attitude, we should be
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humble and we should use these gifts
in service. Paul warrens leaders, for
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example, in other places, not
to use their power as a way to
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oppress people. The spirit doesn't give
you the gift of leadership, for example,
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so that you can boss people around
or make a lot of money.
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Know, your gift of leadership is
given to serve or God. It says,
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I'm here, I'll give you lots
of wealth so that you can be
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generous to other people, not so
that you can hoard it and store up
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treasures in this world. God calls
us to be merciful to others, not
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so that we can lord it over
them and say, look what I did
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for you, but so that we
can bless them in the name of Jesus,
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in the same way that he was
blessed and was merciful to us.
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So our right attitude in using our
consists of things like humility, love,
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service, honor contentment. Isn't it
a wonderful thing when somebody uses their gifts
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in that way to serve you?
Have you ever been in a position where
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you needed the help of someone else? You needed the service or the leadership
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or the the wealth or the prayers
or any number of things. You needed
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the blessing of another person, and
I know that each one of you experience,
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have experienced both of these things,
both coming from a right attitude and
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from a wrong attitude. When somebody
blesses you, in quotation marks, with
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a wrong attitude, it's awful.
You'd rather not have it, you'd say,
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I'd rather not have the help and
do it myself. But when someone
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blesses you with the right attitude,
without Lording it over you, desiring to
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serve you, doing it in the
name of Jesus, isn't it just sweet?
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And know when they're doing it,
they're doing it for you, for
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those reasons, for the glory of
God and the name of Jesus, because
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they love you as a brother or
a sister. It's nice. It's really
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nice. And when all of that
has happened together in the context of church
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life, day in, day out, month to month, year to year,
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you have a healthy congregation, a
wonderful place to live and serve and
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be. Never perfect, of course, always forgiving, always struggling, always
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trying to overcome our own sins through
Jesus's strength. But when it happens,
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to whatever degree it happens, isn't
it so wonderful? It's what we should
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aim for. It's what God says. This is what I want you to
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be, and indeed, in heaven, this is what life will always be
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like, without any sin. So
proper perception, right attitude and, finally,
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right use. With the right perception
of these things and the right attitude,
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how do we go about using them? Well, the first thing to
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say is that we are to use
them. As I said, you can't
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use them if you're neglecting it.
It's just a simple point. We are
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called to use these gifts, and
pull makes that point or adds to that
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point when he says this in verse
seven. If service in our serving,
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if the one who teaches and is
teaching, the one who exhorts, in
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his exhortation, go use your gifts, go use your gifts. But we're
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not just to use them, we're
to use them well, as I've suggested
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already, we're to be avoiding the
sins that accompany them, and in the
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last three he emphasizes that point.
So, for example, he says the
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one who contributes do it in generosity, the one who leads do it with
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zeal, the one who at does
acts of mercy, do it with cheerfulness.
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With each one of these and the
other gifts as well, you can
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see how the opposite might work.
How an act of mercy can be done
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without cheerfulness. Why do I have
to give this ride this morning? Get
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up early, it's hard day.
Was a long week. I got to
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drive across town pick up this person. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Right,
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that's not being merciful with cheerfulness.
But how do we have that kind
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of cheer? How do we get
over our grumbling and discontentment and all the
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rest? Well, comes through the
faith that we talked about at the beginning.
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It comes from finding our place in
Christ, knowing how far he went
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out of the way to serve us, to help us, to be merciful
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to us. Did Jesus Grumble all
the time? Was He disappointed that he
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had to come to Earth to save
US Lousy Sinners? Know, he came
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with the utmost and highest love in
his heart. He came to Earth to
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serve us with all gentleness, with
the greatest love that mankind has ever known.
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He came to give mercy with cheerfulness. He led in zeal, he
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contributed his own life. Talk about
generosity again. As I've been saying,
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we serve in his name. That's
what it means to see ourselves in him,
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serving for him to others who belong
to him. That's what it means
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to use our our gifts swell.
So this is how we properly perceive them.
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This is the right attitude we have
in the way that we use them.
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But I think it's probably fair to
touch on one question before we end,
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which is how do I know what
gifts I have? I'm ready to
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use them, I want to use
them, but what do I do?
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How do I know? I'll tell
you that in Sunday school I'm going to
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be spending some more time on this
particular question. In regards to this particular
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church, what are the needs of
this church? Where are areas that you
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can that you can join? What
are some specific things where you that you
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can sign up for and help in? So I encourage you to be there
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for that. But we can speak
more generally and I think, still helpfully.
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How do you know when you have
a gift? will go back to
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my Christmas analogy. When your parent
hands you a gift, you know you
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have it because there it is.
It's really not any more complicated than that.
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You open it up in a fire
trucks inside. How do you know
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it's a firetruck. Well, because
you look at it and it's a fire
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truck. It's not a sort of
great theological exercise or a great philosophical exercise.
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You just simply look at it and
there it is. You see it,
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you see yourself doing it, you
recognize it in yourself. This is
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an important reminder because it reminds us
that these gifts that God gives to us
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are the ones that he gives to
us. We don't make them up in
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our mind. We don't declare by
sort of selfdetermination or Fiat. Well now
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I'm going to be one who has
the gift of service. Well now I'm
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going to be one who has the
gift of leadership. That where you do.
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Don't declare these things and give them
to ourselves. They're given to us.
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And would God give you a gift
that you were meant to use in
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service to his body and then never
tell you what it was? Never revealed
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to it, always keep it hidden
and secret from you. What kind of
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parent would give their child a gift
and then keep it from them? God
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doesn't do that either. Now,
sometimes we are blind to it or we're
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looking weirdly, or we won't open
the present or various things, and that's
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where it's helpful to have others.
Remember we're in a body, and sometimes
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others help us see it. Let
me give you an example. In First
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Timothy and and Titus, Paul gives
qualifications for elders and deacons. He gives
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these qualifications both to those men who
might want to serve, but to us
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as a church, so that we
might point to particular men and say you,
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my friend, are qualified to serve
as an elder. In other words,
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we see that gifting in someone else, and that's why the pastor myself,
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the elders and deacons of our church, didn't become so because one day
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they stood up and said, good
morning, I am the pastor of this
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church now. No, each and
every one of us were called by you
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to serve because you recognized something in
us. You said God has gifted this
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person with these gifts and they ought
to use them again. It's a wonderful
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and a helpful thing and it's something
you can be doing for other people,
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not just pastors and elders and deacons, but all of us in the body.
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You can be encouraging your brothers and
sisters in their gifts, in the
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things that they have been given.
Thank you for serving me and bringing that
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meal over to my house with such
cheerfulness too. You have a real gift
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for that, especially if we see
something happen over and over and over again,
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when in there is a pattern there. But what if you're, let's
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say, a new Christian, or
let's say you're a little Christian, one
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of our young ones here, and
you're still learning about the world and you're
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learning about yourself and learning about your
place? How can you learn to recognize
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these things? What if no one's
saying anything? Do you? Well,
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the way to determine the gifts again, is not by feat but through the
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application of yourself to the needs of
the church. Right when your body encounters
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a problem, let's say sitting down
and your desire to sit down, what
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happens? Do you have to make
a conscious choice? All right, I
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go to work, examine the proportions
of that chair, find the distance between
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me and it. Legs, start
lowering yourself, arms move out balance.
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Now you just sit down. Let's
of course you're going through physical training and
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trying to relearn these things, but
in general, the body works as it
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works right. The eye does what
it needs to do, the hand does,
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it eats, it needs to do, but it works in the application
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of it. That's why physical training
is so important, because it's sort of
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reapplying the body to these tasks.
If you have to relearn to speak or
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relearn to walk, what do you
do? You start walking, you start
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talking, you go through these kinds
of things. The same is true for
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our gifting. So here's a way
to determine your spiritual gifts. You look
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out and you say, what are
the needs? And if you see in
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need, and you start moving toward
it and you help it and you find
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yourself doing those similar things over and
over again and you probably have those gifts.
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Probably one of the best points to
make here. is much more important
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than naming or identifying a particular list, is just serving and loving. God
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doesn't give one gift to each person. Sometimes he gives lots of gifts to
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one person. The Apostle Paul's a
really good example of that. Paul's goal
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in life was not to sit down
at his kitchen table and come up with
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a chart and identify all his spiritual
gifts. He simply look for needs and
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started working. But he did so
with this proper perception in this right attitude,
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and that's what God calls all of
us to do. You can't appreciate
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your presence unless you open them,
and so that means that God calls each
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of us, with an open heart
and eagerness to go and seek the benefit
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of others work, to be open
to encouragement, open to rebuke. We're
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to look for our weaknesses and our
strengths, be realistic about who we are
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and who we are not to not
US estimate ourselves more highly than we are
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or to underestimate ourselves either, but
just simply be honest before the Lord.
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And where we are weak, we
ask him to make us stronger and grow
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us in His grace, and where
we're strong, we ask him to help
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us apply those gifts that he has
given to us. And all of this
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we do relying on the Lord who
unites us together. Remember Paul's words from
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Philippians Thirteen. I can do all
things through Christ, who strengthens me,
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he strengthens Paul, he strengthens each
one of you, he strengthens his body.
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At the end of the day,
this is about Jesus, about his
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work and his his work among us
and in the church. The vital connection
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that we have with one another as
part of our body does not come by
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the identification of a gift. It
comes by the giving of the gift and
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the strengthening of those gifts and the
using of them, all through the Holy
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Spirit. The gift that comes to
US comes from the one who first loved
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US and first served us. The
church works the way it does and ought
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to work the way it does,
because of what Jesus has already done for
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us. And the wonderful thing is
is even in the weakest and most struggling
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places, wherever the spirit is,
you still see these things going on,
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God continuing to bless and grow and
sanctify. So that's my encouragement and exhortation
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to you this morning. From God's
word, consider who you are with sober
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judgment, remember who you are in
Jesus Christ, and then act accordingly with
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life and his body, out of
genuine love and service for him and for
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others. Let's pray and ask that
God would help us in these things.
