0 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:18,000 Well, these were questions that were compiled primarily from one brother down south that brought these into our lives. 1 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:23,000 I remember one time when one brother was asking a whole lot of questions... 2 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:36,000 I remember just breaking down into tears and saying, "Hey, if a scientist is trying to find a cure for polio, that's science. 3 00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:42,000 If a scientist is trying to create life in a test tube, that's not science, that's immoral." 4 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:46,000 And I want to emphasize that point about all of these questions. 5 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,000 The "how to's" and all of that - it's a very dangerous thing if you carry it too far 6 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:57,000 and bring it to the place of trying to create artificial life in a test tube, 7 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:05,000 by analyzing and scrutinizing and trying to apply principle upon principle to accomplish a task. 8 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:08,000 If you do that, you're actually going to lose God in the process. 9 00:01:08,000 --> 00:01:12,000 He's not calling us to know everything. He's calling us to be laid bare before Him. 10 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:17,000 The tree of the knowledge of good and evil - even knowledge of good - still brings death. 11 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:21,000 It's the Tree of Life that we're looking for. It's the Life that becomes the Light of men. 12 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:27,000 It's far more important that you talk to your spouse or your neighbor... 13 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:32,000 and you open up your heart about the sins that are plaguing and easily besetting you - 14 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:40,000 - the temptations that are overcoming you, the fears and the frustrations and disappointments in your life, your inability to pray. 15 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:49,000 It is far more important to open your heart with people around you, then it is to know 10,000 things about the "right way to have church." 16 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:55,000 The Right way to have church is to walk in the Spirit of God and to help everybody else to do that too... 17 00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:04,000 to obey Jesus and to walk under His guidance in relationship and fellowship with Him and to help everybody else do the same thing... 18 00:02:04,000 --> 00:02:09,000 to cry out to God for the gifts that allow it to work together in a meaningful productive way... 19 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:13,000 so that it plows up a field instead of just going around in circles... 20 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:19,000 so it's a river that lights a city instead of just a lake that sits there and looks pretty. 21 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:25,000 It needs to be the work of God, but the place that we need to start is to eat from the Tree of Life. 22 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:27,000 The Life becomes the Light of men. 23 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:34,000 To lay down our life for other people is the starting place and I hope all of this has been helpful in some way. 24 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:39,000 But also, I beg you, we all beg you, - and we talked about it before we were even doing this thing... 25 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:46,000 We beg you not to try to "do" stuff with certain truths and try to copy anything. 26 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,000 But rather, be Jesus to the people around you, 27 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:52,000 starting in your own home and working outward, 28 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:55,000 and then having the courage to hear the word of God for your life, 29 00:02:55,000 --> 00:02:57,000 speak the word of God into other people's lives, 30 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:01,000 and anticipate that others will do the same thing. 31 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:06,000 So our prayer for you is that you'll have the courage to walk in God's way for your life. 32 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:13,000 And the body of believers that you're a part of right now will prosper and grow into the image and likeness of Christ - 33 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:22,000 - Head in heaven, Body on earth, a demonstration of the life of God to the people around you in a very clean, proper, lovely, beautiful way. 34 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:29,000 No beauty or majesty... but that from the gut of the thing it would be filled with righteousness and truth and sensitivity and love... 35 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:35,000 Not afraid to take a stand, but also quick to show mercy to those that turn away from darkness 36 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:43,000 and to lovingly be patient with people that are really desiring to walk in truth and that are not running from the light. 37 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:50,000 So perhaps we can all pray together right now if you'd be willing to do that with us. 38 00:03:50,000 --> 00:03:56,000 Holy Father, it's our prayer that Your Kingdom would advance and be enlarged - 39 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:00,000 - first of all in the heart and the mind of whoever is listening to this right now. 40 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:06,000 That you would be able to expand your Kingdom, first of all in their heart as they give away more and more of their self life, 41 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:13,000 and allow You to have more and more of a place to fill them and to change their minds and their lives, 42 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:18,000 and the members of their body to be more and more devoted as instruments of righteousness. 43 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:24,000 Father, please, by Your Spirit, and by the confident expression of the New Covenant, 44 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:28,500 we ask that You would work within us to cause us to keep Your commands and decrees... 45 00:04:28,500 --> 00:04:31,000 That You would put Your very Life and Spirit in us. 46 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:36,000 And that we wouldn't be dependent on simply externals, but rather that the Word of God would enrich us. 47 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:38,000 That the seed would grow as You give it Life. 48 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:42,000 Our God, we pray that you would help whoever is listening to this right now... 49 00:04:42,000 --> 00:04:48,000 to grow in the grace and the knowledge of an intimate relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. 50 00:04:48,000 --> 00:04:51,000 To grow not only in the unsearchable riches of Jesus, 51 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:55,000 but also in the administration and the working out of those unsearchable riches - 52 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:59,000 - in their personal lives and in the assembly of believers in their city. 53 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:03,000 Our God, we pray for unity in this city and every city, 54 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:09,000 based on Your Word and Your Life and the Liberty that's in Your Spirit - the Righteousness that's in Your heart. 55 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:12,000 God, we pray that You'd raise up Phinehas's - 56 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:21,000 - the workers that need to do the things that can precede the fullness of an expression of Your life in any given city. 57 00:05:21,000 --> 00:05:30,000 God, please pour out Your blessing and Your protection, out of Your abundant mercy, in all of our lives and cities and nations. 58 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:35,000 We're desperate for You. We, like Moses said, "There's no reason to go on if You won't be with us. 59 00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:41,000 We'll be like all the other nations. It'll be meaningless, self-serving and worthless. 60 00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:44,000 If You're not with us, then there's really no point in it all. 61 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:48,000 So, our God, we pray to You and beseech You... 62 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:53,000 in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the pioneer of this Faith - this most holy faith and this way of life - 63 00:05:53,000 --> 00:06:00,000 that You'd open the eyes of our hearts and our minds to be enriched by Your blessings and by Your promises 64 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:07,000 and that we'd expect nothing less than the full expression of Your word in our lives and in our environments. 65 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:14,000 God, grant, by Your mercy, these things to take place in the city of whoever may be listening to this right now. 66 00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:23,000 We pray in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord, our King, our Messiah, our Friend, and again, our Pioneer. Amen. 67