Increasing Our Awareness of the Distraction

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Dear Lord, Father God, thank you for the opportunity to record this.

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Thank you for the opportunity to speak to those that are around us, our circle of influence.

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Thank you for your word that we can continually understand the world around us from a heavenly

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perspective and not an earthly perspective.

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Lord, let us not traverse through the world without yout Word.

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It is our shield, it is our armor. You are our salvation.

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You are the grace that saves us and loves us.

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In youn Son, Jesus' name, and through the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. Welcome.

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Thank you for joining me today.

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I hope you had a really good Thanksgiving break.

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I have a lot to discuss and unravel.

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Today, not necessarily from Thanksgiving break, but just what's on my heart, the purpose of

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this podcast in general, right?

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To continue exposing what's been put on my heart to share the notes I leave, hence the name of the podcast.

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So today we're going to talk about the secular nature of the world around us and how we are

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distracted by that and how it is a clever, clever mechanism of the evil one.

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A lot of times we don't even realize it's kind of like a snake wrapping around us that's squeezing little by little.

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At first it doesn't seem like a threat, but when it's too late, it almost becomes too late.

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And while God can save us in any position that we are in life.

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I pray that as Christians we recognize the deceit before it gets to a point that we need rescuing

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from the depths of despair.

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I think we're called to continually be assessing and continually be recognizing recognizing

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the world, the secular nature of it, the evil within it, and keeping our lives pure, especially

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as it pertains to the circle of influence of people around us.

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So today I want to discuss how the Lord has reminded me, how the devil plays tricks on us, and

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how he keeps us in distraction and his evilness is successful when he keeps us in distraction.

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He doesn't necessarily need to get us on his team or to get us to buy into to what he's doing

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or worship him in goal.

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That's what he wants is to be worshiped.

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But if he can just get us away from the Lord, that is a win for him, that is success for him.

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And first we're going to get into James chapter 4 and talk about this.

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And I think that this will make more sense when we have evidence in scripture that talks to

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this problem and how it existed at that time and still exists very much today.

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I certainly can't say that it exists more so today because I wasn't around then, but it certainly exists today.

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So please open your Bibles to James 4, chapter 4, that is.

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And we're going to go through the first 10 verses.

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So again, James 4, verses 1 through 10.

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And today I'm reading out of the New American Standard Bible, version 1995.

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What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?

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Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?

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You lust and do not have, so you commit murder.

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You are You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

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You do not have because you do not ask.

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You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

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You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

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Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose?

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He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us.

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But He gives a greater grace.

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Therefore it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit therefore to God.

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Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

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Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

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Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

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Be miserable and mourn and weep.

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Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.

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Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you.

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Maybe it would be more fitting to conclude the podcast just right here.

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Not going to be able to say it better than that.

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Please re-listen to that and open your copy of God's Word and read it.

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What a powerful message that is that is applicable in between the holidays of Thanksgiving and

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Christmas in the year 2025, as it has been applicable for all time.

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Again, I hope you had a good holiday.

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I hope that you have a good holiday to come.

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And my purpose in this is not to dwell on the negative, but we need to be real.

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And we need to understand what is going on and what has been going on since the beginning of time.

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The devil is after us.

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He doesn't want the Lord to have our hearts.

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The devil is after us.

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We are being distracted and we are being convinced in things that just aren't truth. There was a.

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A YouTube short video that came out.

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I I'm not sure how long ago it came out, but I first saw it a couple days ago on Thursday, and

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I ended up sharing it with many of the students that I have the pleasure of teaching, the honor

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of teaching, and I've shared it with many people I know.

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And in 2025, AI is a thing, and I'm not here to tell you that AI is the devil.

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I'm also completely content with being wrong and being proven that I'm wrong.

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AI could be an extension of the devil. I don't know that.

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But it's not my point here to prove to you that AI is the devil.

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That's not the stance that I hold.

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It's not a conspiracy theory. That I hold.

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I also hold no ill feelings towards anybody that holds that conspiracy theory.

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But nevertheless, there was a pastor who typed into chat, if you were the devil, what would you do?

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And I highly recommend you look that video up.

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It was gross how accurate it was to things that happened today.

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The response talked about separating the nuclear family, getting fathers disengaged, getting

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tension within mother and father, getting children confused.

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Your truth, my truth, his truth, her truth, all the genders, everything else talked all about that.

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It continued to go on and talk about the distractions that are so focal in our lives.

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One of the most jaw-dropping moments of the response, again, from AI was that if AI was the devil.

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He would put a phone between your hands to keep you from putting your hands together in prayer.

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I mean, come on. Come on. This is. This is freaky. This is freaky.

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And how often do we have a phone between our hands that prevents us from praying?

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How often are we busy?

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That was another thing the response talked about, just keeping you busy.

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It doesn't have to keep you from, it doesn't have to keep you focused on him.

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He just has to keep you from the Lord.

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And one of the ways of doing that is just by keeping you busy as a workaholic myself. Man, that resonates.

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Am I doing things for a purpose like this podcast, the job that I have, or am I doing things

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because I'm just spinning the wheels and I'm being kept busy?

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So that keeps me away from God's word.

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By the way, in the members only section, I'm going to talk about this Bible here that I've purchased.

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I'm going to talk about that as it pertains to a Bible study that I am doing and a Bible study

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that I will continue over the next roughly five to seven years and what that looks like as my goal is to.

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Become, I suppose, a proper word would be productive in the Greek language and then eventually the Hebrew language.

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So if that interests, you stick around to the members only section, and I talk about that a little bit later.

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But you can go to biblicalanatomyacademy.com, click on podcasts, click on support the podcast,

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and you can get all the information towards what you need to have access to that members only section.

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But here in James, we talk about these things.

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We talk about the difficulties, the pleasures that they struggled with at this point in time.

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And the pleasures that we struggle with now.

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If the devil can just get you focused on a pleasure, he may not have won your heart, but he's

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pulled your heart away from the Lord.

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And that is a win in his book.

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Now, I have no idea why the devil exists. I don't.

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I don't understand those big questions.

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I have the same questions you do.

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I'm gonna ask many of the same questions when we get to heaven.

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I think that probably we won't have to ask the questions.

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I think we'll sort of just instantly know the answers to these questions that we've had.

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I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I can answer these big, deep, more than theological questions. But they don't matter.

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What matters is that we love the Lord and we recognize that we are being distracted and that

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we recognize that a war is occurring over our hearts.

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And on one side, he asks for full commitment of our hearts and love for him and sacrifice of

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what his son did on the cross and accepting his son, Jesus Christ, as Lord and Savior.

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He doesn't ask for perfection.

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He asks for your focus.

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He asks for your heart.

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He asks for your love.

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He gives you a choice.

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And on the other side, he just wants anything other than that. Anything other than that.

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And so we have a connection with the gate is narrow. The path is narrow.

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We see on social media, I see this pop up all the time.

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Where there's two paths, and one says, I believe in God, and the other says, I obey God.

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And there's very few people walking down the path that says, I obey God.

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And the path is narrow.

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And all these other people think that they're fine, that they believe in God.

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That's not what God asks. Simply a belief.

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He asks for us to obey.

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He asks for us to love.

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He asks for us to follow.

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He gives us many Commandments.

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Yes, he does say that we need to believe in his son, Jesus Christ, as Lord and savior, and will

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we be given a new heart?

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And if you know what that new heart feels like, you know that you can't help but produce works

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because your faith produces the works, not because works produces the faith.

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You can't help but do those things.

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I've never met a Christian in my life who genuinely believes in the Lord and says, I'm good.

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I just need the belief and I'm good.

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And just go about living my sinful, wretched life.

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I've never met a genuine Christian.

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That has said that, or I've seen that actually happen.

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You will be given a new heart and you are given a new heart.

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And that new heart yearns for its father, yearns for its maker, and yearns to follow his instructions.

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And his instructions are laid out in scripture all over the place.

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I was just this morning reading job 5, and I feel like the Holy Spirit answered an in the moment

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question, not even a prayer that I asked for, but an in the moment confusion.

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I so often am confused with Job because his friends rebuttal him.

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And at the surface, it seems like his friends actually have some logical advice.

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Seems like it makes sense.

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But if you look at Job 4 and 5 specifically, chapter that is, you see that what they're quoting,

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that they claim that they know to be the truth, know to have studied, is that, you know, good

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things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.

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And it's as simple as that.

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And they state evidence of that from what they've witnessed.

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They state things like, your tent or your house will not be missing items.

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The number of the blades in the grass will be equal to the number of children that you have.

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You will grow into an old age.

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Specifically, I'm not quoting, I'm paraphrasing, verses 24, 25, and 26. Out of chapter five. But in that. Those are Earthly things.

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Those are things that people that believe in God and people that don't believe in God, people

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that follow God and don't follow God, would value or say, yeah, that sounds like a good thing.

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But none of those change your destiny in heaven.

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None of those change your salvation.

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You see, the Christian takes it a step further and says, those things are nice.

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But whatever the Lord Wills, if the Lord Wills for me to have a small house and have somebody

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come in and steal it all, I don't have to understand why that takes place.

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I don't have to understand why bad things do happen to good people. God's will be done.

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Look at job in a few chapters earlier when he has things stolen from him, family members and friends killed.

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When he has boils all over his body, despite what his wife tells him, he gives all praise to God.

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And he says, if we give praise to God in the bad, why are we or in the good, why are we not

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giving praise to him in the bad?

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That's not to say that thank you, God, for doing all these bad things.

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But thank you, God, I put my trust in you.

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I do not understand why these things happen, but I do understand you. I love you.

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And I trust in you.

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Even if I don't understand it, I trust in you.

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There's so many of these things that we wrestle with on Earth, and we let our minds get in the way, our intellectualism.

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And I think we're gonna look back one day in heaven and we're just gonna shake our heads, laugh, cry.

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I don't know at how we got so caught up in.

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The nuances of these tactics, of these distractions.

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And we're going to see things so clear then in a way that seems confusing and muddy now.

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Really, what we need to do more of now is have faith, have that faith in the Lord that his ways

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are his ways and ours are ours, and we're going to follow his ways, not ours.

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So the Lord has placed on my heart today just the need to shake those within my circle of influence.

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Brothers and sisters, I'm not here stating you are saved or you're not saved.

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That's not my goal or my place. My name is Daniel.

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Daniel means God is my judge.

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God is your judge as well.

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I am not your judge.

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No pastor is your judge.

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But I am here to share God's word with you.

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And I am here to share specifically today, James 4:1-10 and share with you the distraction that is present, present daily.

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And you don't need to take my word for it.

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You don't even need to take my instruction on how to fix it.

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Go back to verse 8, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

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The verse prior, verse 7. Submit therefore to God.

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Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

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If you're worried about the devil's influence on your life, draw near to the Lord. Submit to the Lord.

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Yes, believe, but submit to the Lord. Have faith.

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I hope today has been an encouragement to you in some way.

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I'd like to leave you with a quote. As we always do.

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And that's from CS Lewis.

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Now, to provide some context for this quote, this, this quote is from a book called the Screw Tape Letters.

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One of my favorite books, if not my favorite book, outside of the Bible, of course.

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And if you haven't read it, like, must have, order it now.

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Must have get it on audiobook, physical book, both, whatever. Order it now.

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It really, if this stuff is interesting to you on how we're being tricked how we're being distracted, how we're being disturbed.

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This book sheds light on that perspective so, so well. It's a must get.

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But in that book, C.S.

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Lewis writes, and again, this is from the opposite perspective, it is funny how mortals always

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picture us as putting things into their minds.

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In reality, our best work is done by keeping things out.

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One of the hardest things about that book in the first few chapters I had to start over, and

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they're really short chapters, which I liked, but I had to start over after getting through

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a few, is because you have to flip your mind a little bit, and it's from the perspective of

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evil, not from the perspective of good.

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So everything is sort of backwards in the book.

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And this quote is specifically from demons, essentially, and fictional characters that he's created in this book.

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Now, demons aren't fictional, but you get the point.

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Our best work is done by keeping things out. And it's so true.

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Again, God wants our heart.

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He asks for submission, belief, faith.

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The devil just asks for anything else.

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Anything other than that is a win for him by keeping things out.

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So with that in mind, our question today, what is being kept out of your life that maybe you even think isn't?

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Maybe you're not even aware of it.

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What is being kept out of your life?

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Brothers and sisters, I love you.

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Please go to biblicalanatomyacademy.com and communicate with us.

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You can always email me at daniel@wearebaa.com and if you'd like to have full access to the

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members only section, you can click on podcasts on our website and then support the podcast

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and it'll take you through the process on how to sign up for that.

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Thank you so much for your support. We love you.

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We're gracious for your time.

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God bless. Until next time, may the peace of Christ dwell richly in you.

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And may I also express Maranatha, which is an Aramaic word translating to come, Lord Jesus.