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Crystal Sparks' Podcast
Our one goal of this podcast is to grow your faith and help you accomplish your dreams and your goals.
Crystal Sparks' Podcast
189. [Philippians Study] Modern Heresies
What happens when we reduce Jesus to merely a powerful deity rather than our sovereign Lord? While exploring Philippians 2:5-11, we dive into why this passage became the most quoted text among early church fathers as they defended essential Christian doctrine against dangerous heresies.
This episode examines how the early church confronted four major heresies—Docetism, Arianism, Nestorianism, and Gnosticism—and why their modern versions continue threatening orthodox faith today. From moral relativism that subjectively redefines sin to syncretism that blends Christianity with other religious practices, these repackaged ancient errors undermine biblical truth in subtle but devastating ways.
How do we guard against these influences? By distinguishing between "closed-hand" non-negotiable doctrines and "open-hand" matters where Christians can respectfully disagree. We must reject modernity's pressure to innovate doctrine, submit to wise spiritual leaders, remain comfortable with divine mystery, and pursue Christ with both love and reverent fear.
My hope is that this podcast helps grow your faith and equips you to accomplish your dreams and goals!
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Welcome to another part of my Philippians study that I have been doing with our staff at Staff Chapel. If you haven't listened to the other parts, you might want to go back deeper into my podcast, check out those episodes and catch yourself up to join where we're at today. All right, let's jump into Philippians. We're going to continue our study. Today. We're going to be in Philippians, chapter 2. Philippians, chapter 2. We're going to read 5 through 11. 5 through 11. Philippians 2. 5 through 11.
Speaker 1:And just a quick for us to remember. To sum up, the whole Bible, the Old Testament, or really the whole Bible. We've got God's law, which is the first five books of the Bible. Then we've got God's people. Next is God's wisdom. Then we have God's prophets calling back his people, god's son, which is the four gospels. God's church, which is what we're studying right now. And revelation is God's coming back, and so, um, for us to know, that's the whole summary of the Bible. So when we look at the whole story of scripture, um, that kind of helps us look at where we're at in the story. So right now we've been studying God's church and we're in Philippians, chapter two, verses five through 11. And it says let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation. Taking the form of a bond servant and coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death of the cross. Therefore, god also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. Now, at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, and of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the earth, everybody's going to proclaim that he's Lord at the end of all this, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father. Okay, so, um with this, uh, just for you to know, like this passage of scripture is actually quoted more than any other passage.
Speaker 1:Um with the early church fathers, and so, whenever they put together the canon, sometimes people question like how accurate is the canon? Well, just so you know, like the New Testament and many pieces of scripture, what we did when they were putting together the Bible to check the authenticity of it is they looked at early church patristic fathers and their writings, because they would write out the text in their what would be called their targums, because they would write out the text in their what would be called their targums, and so they would write out the text that they were going to preach off of, and then they put all those together, which helps form our canon, to give us assurance that what we're reading today was actually what Paul wrote. And the patristic fathers use this set of scripture so much, and the reason why is because it's all about Jesus and they are in this time period, they are wanting to confront heresies and different things that we're going to look at. But I would just say to you, like, when you go to this portion of scripture, this would be like the crowning moment of Philippians, like this is a big deal, like everything Paul's saying. It kind of revolves around this of who Christ is. So I want you to notice the movement of the text.
Speaker 1:In 5 through 7, it explains the mystery of the incarnation and he is the highest. So the movement of the text is upward. The incarnation, it's upward movement of the text. But verse 8, we see it moving lower. And he began, he being found in appearance of a man. So incarnation, talking about all of who he is, his divinity is high, then now he's being formed, it goes lower, then 8 spot high, so high and there's not a spot so low that Christ is not divine and superior over all. So the movement of the text, basically Paul's letting us know we're going upward, we're coming down, we're going to every single place and every single one of those places he is divine, he is holy, he is the son of God and just exalting it in our minds Sometimes it's kind of like the taunt of the people in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1:They said God is the God of the mountains, but is he the God of the valleys? Meaning there's high places that our God can be God, but is he in the low places? And Paul's basically saying there's not a single place you can go, as David would write that you could escape his presence, that he is all powerful, he is all divine. So Jesus is Lord. He's letting us know Jesus is Lord, elohim. There's two words for this Lord, there's Elohim. There's two words for this Lord there's Elohim and there's Jehovah. Elohim would be the word for all powerful, all resource, all wisdom, but Lord is Jehovah and this is lordship, and lordship expresses the unity of all people saying that he is Lord. Lordship is me declaring I will obey the path and the way of Jesus.
Speaker 1:So whenever is I think in our culture, our society, we're okay with calling him Elohim. We have a hard time calling him Jehovah. And even in I've been in Ecclesiastes vanity, vanity, everything's vanity. I studied it yesterday for hours. I'm like deep in it.
Speaker 1:But the interesting thing about Kohelet in Ecclesiastes is he only calls God Elohim and he opens up Ecclesiastes that I, solomon, having all wisdom, having all resources, having all wisdom, having all resources, having all power, did these things. And then in Ecclesiastes, chapter two, he basically goes through the creation story as though he's God. So he's saying I am my own Elohim and he only refers to God as Elohim all powerful, all wisdom, all resource. But the key in our Christian walk is not just acknowledging him as Elohim, but it's taking a step further that he is Jehovah, that he's Lord. So meaning that Lordship is me declaring I will obey the path and the way of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Perhaps the reason why the writer Kohelet of Ecclesiastes deconstructed so hard is he was okay with him being Elohim but never stepped into Jehovah. And Jehovah means that I have a relationship with him which even in Ecclesiastes, never one time does he talk to God. He talks about God, which is a whole nother thing. Demons always talked about God. Look in scripture. They never talked to him. And there's a difference. When we sing songs about God but not to him, we're all. Do you feel what I'm saying here? But here he's letting us know that he is Jehovah, he is Lord, he is not just all powerful, he's not just Elohim, he is my Lord and I'm going to obey the way and the path of Jesus. So this was a common scripture.
Speaker 1:Again, it was quoted by many early church fathers. Chris Austin says this. He says this of this passage of scripture. He says how can the wretched say that Christ's existence began from Mary? This implies that before this he did not exist, but Paul says, being the form of God, he took on the form of a slave. A lot of people had a hard time in the early church believing that Christ existed before Mary, that this began the exaltation of Mary, that as though she was the creator of Christ. And he's like no, before there was Mary, there was Christ, like he existed before.
Speaker 1:And the next church father that we have is Tertullian and he says suppose the terms figure, image of fashion, likeness and form referred merely to a phantom, there would then have been no substance to Christ's humanity. But in this case, figure, likeness and form all point to the reality of his humanity. He is truly God as son of the father, in his figure and image. He is truly man as the son of man. We look at the person of Christ and that's what Paul's setting down. I know that sometimes we're like, yeah, I've heard that, I know it. But sometimes our lives, right, like what we're living, our orthopraxy doesn't line up with our orthodoxy. And the more my orthodoxy, my thoughts about Christ align with who he is, my orthopraxy, the living, the outliving of it, my practice, will begin to align. So he's saying hey, guys, like whatever you're questioning about who God is, look in the person of Jesus, like he is the exact representation. And then we have Epiphanius of Salamis and it says the word tasted death once on our behalf. I love this. The death of the cross. He went to his death so that by death he might be, he might put to death, to death the word becoming human flesh did not suffer in his divinity but suffered with humanity. I love that he was.
Speaker 1:This early church father was alive in 400 AD when he wrote this, and so why did so many church fathers, why were they so emphatic about preaching and teaching off of this text? You think about how many letters Paul wrote. Why was this the common place? Well, the reason why is because orthodoxy my orthodoxy needs to be rooted in right beliefs, and, without knowing it, the biggest threat that happened whenever you read through church history and still today, because we're a part of that history the biggest threat to the church wasn't what was happening outside the church, it was the orthodoxy that was slipping within the church, and if we aren't guarding ourselves from wrong doctrines, then before we know it, we're drifting from what Christ set to do. And so they weren't worried about persecution of the church. They weren't worried about government. They weren't worried about those things. They were worried about the heresies that were slipping in amongst the people, and so the early church fathers were concerned with orthodoxy.
Speaker 1:I think we have a famine of this within the church today. There's so little understanding of scripture and articulation around scripture, and I think for all of us, I think it's so important for us to come back to this and defend the faith that we've been entrusted to carry. We're not carrying a new faith, we're carrying a message that's 2,000 years old, like, and our job is to guard it. But how can we guard it if we don't even know if what we're believing is true? We're believing whatever's trending on Instagram or on X or on Facebook, or we're just been passed down to us, and so heresy confronting the early church was these four things Docetism this is Jesus' body was a mirage.
Speaker 1:He was only a spiritual being For docetists it was so taboo. When you see pictures of, when you see paintings of the Christ child, take note of the date, because for hundreds of years it was taboo to paint Jesus as a baby. And even whenever you go to an art museum, you'll notice that the baby even the early paintings of the Christ child he has a man head. It looks like he's like a miniature man. He's a tiny person. I don't know what you're allowed to call him anymore, but you know he's that he's a tiny person. I don't know what you're allowed to call him anymore, but you know he's, that he's vertically challenged, so he looks like a man, but he's obviously a baby because he's tinier and he's sitting on the lap of Mary, oftentimes because for them it was so offensive to think that Christ was a baby and Docetus basically believed that he was a spiritual being like he never took on earthly form.
Speaker 1:That was so wild to them. And so, which is sad, because in 1 Timothy 2, 5, it says that he makes mediation between us and God. And so if he didn't take on the form of man, and it even confronts that he, he knew all of our sufferings like he knew it, he took it on, he bore it in his flesh. If he was just spiritual, then there's no atonement for sin because there was no sacrifice. So the docetists, even though they were well-meaning and just know that, all of these heresies that were creeping into the early church, where they had pure intentions because they were trying to take something complex and make it simple for somebody to understand, and today still that's what's happening. It's like we're trying to take the complexity of Christ and simplify it down.
Speaker 1:And then there is Arianism. And this was Jesus was the son of God, but not co-eternal with God, because he was a created being. The offspring of this would be similar, would be Mormonism. Mormons believe this similar idea because they have a hard time recognizing that he is divine, that he is equal with God, that in their brain they can't even imagine that they think, because he was created, he's lesser, that he's like a watered down version, but we believe that he's co-equal with God, that he is, but at the same time he is submitted to the father. It's like this paradox of the two going hand in hand, this balance that we have to keep. Then there's Nestorianism, and this is Jesus was a person, but he was chosen by the Holy Spirit to be the Son of God, which just makes me eye roll really hard.
Speaker 1:The Council of Ephesus confronted this heresy in 431 AD and this played out today in the overemphasis of Christ's humanity. So we see this same idea of when people overemphasize in their teachings about Christ being a man just like us, but we miss out the part of his divinity, that, yes, he was like us, but he knew not sin. Like it's like it's the two going together. It's like this is like we make Jesus our best friend kind of mentality Of like he's just like me. It's like that whole campaign that they did around the Super Bowl he gets us and yes, but also no, because even though he understands me, he's on a level that I can never reach, and so there's a measure of him that is unknown to me because I've never lived as a divine being. Does this make sense? And so this is the overemphasis of Christ's humanity. And then in this, they forget that Christ had difficult days. This like blew my mind the other day.
Speaker 1:I was in a counseling session and I was just talking about trauma with my counselor, my trauma, and we were just talking and she goes. Well, crystal, she said think about Christ whenever he's in the garden and he's about to go to the cross and he's losing it on his disciples, he's like can you not pray with me for one hour? And she goes. His response she goes. Could we just consider that? That was like a trauma response. It was coming out of a place of pain. He felt abandoned and all of a sudden I go, oh my gosh, he felt abandoned. I said this is the trauma from when his mom left him, like as a young boy. And all of a sudden I was like, could it be that Christ in the cross, that that feeling of abandonment from a child at 13 carried over then at his place of deepest pain? And all of a sudden I told her I was like I'm so shook right now just at the thought that Jesus would have a trauma response but yet he was still sinless, but that he knows our trauma and that we have pain that makes us respond in a way that we wouldn't normally respond. Are you following me? And it's that Jesus had hard days just like us and yes, he did, and it's beautiful to paint that. But the fine line that we don't step into this heresy is that he experienced that trauma response and he still didn't sin. Does this make sense? I don't make him so like me that I'm like it's okay that I sin when I have the trauma response. Does this make sense? But he is divine and he did not sin.
Speaker 1:Gnosticism I believe this is still prevalent in the church today, and this is you need special knowledge that isn't in the Bible for understanding of God. Gnostics also believe that everything spiritual is good, everything material is bad, and so Gnostics they basically they're like God told me something, just believe me, because they have special inside knowledge that nobody else has, and so you hear people say that all the time They'll be like they have this special unicorn version of interpretation of the Bible that is, in. It's incongruent with any of the early church fathers or church tradition. But they're like just believe me, just believe me, I'm a Gnostic, but heresies of today and the ancient heretics. The difference between a heresy today and early heresy is ancient heretics didn't know they were being a heretic and they were just. They were just doing the best they could. Even Paul confronted Peter to his face. Galatians, chapter two would say. Peter didn't know he was being a heretic. He was being confronted because what he was doing is trying to make the gospel message applicable, make the Jews feel comfortable with the Gentiles, but in doing so he was watering down what the word was telling them to do. Are we okay? Am I talking over you or to you? To you, okay, all right, I'm trying to keep it. We're good, okay, so modern heresy combines multiple heresies. That's the difference.
Speaker 1:The first one that's confronting us today that we have to guard ourselves against is moral relativism. Moral relativism I think this is the most prevalent and this is a sexual truth comes from within and must be accepted and celebrated. And I would say it's not just quarantine to sexual sin. I think it's most sin. It's not just quarantine to sexual sin, I think it's most sin. It's like, well, I don't feel convicted about that, like it's fine. It's literally the lady that I met with. She's like, yes, I'm fornicating, yes, I'm like doing things outside of marriage that I should be doing, but God wants me happy. That's moral relativism.
Speaker 1:And in culture today it's just they say morality is subjective to cultures and individual opinions that what's sin to me isn't sin to you, which is true that in the New Testament says that he writes his law now on our hearts. So a measure of that is true, but it doesn't depart us from the things that the Bible clearly calls sin. Does that make sense? So, whether or not you watch a rated R movie, that's between you and the Lord. I have personal convictions around it. I'm not going to do it. Brian doesn't carry the same convictions I do when it comes to that, but he carries conviction around music that I don't carry around music. So does that make sense? But then the things that the word clearly states is sin. We don't get to be moral relativists and go, okay, well, just que sera sera, whatever will be, will be. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. And so in this, the Christian moral code they believe is obsolete and sin begins to be redefined.
Speaker 1:Anatomianism was the biggest problem after the Reformation, and I think we're still seeing that. And basically with the Reformation, with Martin Luther, we saw that the church stopped having accountability and so the church started redefining what sin was. And so I think that's one of the biggest losses we had in our departure from the Catholic church is there was no more like set what's in and what's out anymore. Every church was allowed to be a governance unto themselves and they began to say what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. And we still see the follow-up of that even today, as church organizations choose to take portions out of God's word that he says is sin and now say that it's acceptable to them. So that's moral relativism. Are we following this? The next is moral relativism. Are we following this? The next is syncretism, and this is permits them to embrace the traditions and beliefs of other worldviews and religious systems as equal to their own, which makes them universalist and, even worse, to combine them.
Speaker 1:Um, whenever I'm going to go a little bit over, is that okay? Um, whenever I taught at my kids' Christian school um, they both were, and I was tasked with teaching the Bible, but I wasn't allowed to preach. I could preach the teachings of Jesus, but I could not talk about the death, burial, resurrection. They're a Christian school Because they're like we don't want to offend anybody. And I was like you weren't allowed to do any Pauline epistles because that's going to confront that for sure. And I was like, okay, just to be clear, you say you're a Christian school, you should just say you're a universalist school, because they want all religions to feel comfortable there. So the the principal got onto me because on, uh, on Good Friday I taught, like, leading up to Good Friday, I taught on the resurrection, the burial of the cross and about how Jesus atoned for our sins. And she's like, yeah, but the Mormon can't feel comfortable if they're here. Again, I'm just going to push back on this.
Speaker 1:Our goal is not for somebody with a different belief than us to feel comfortable in our service. Our beliefs are our beliefs. Does this make sense? And a syncretist says how can we blend all these different views? Examples to this would be there's now more and more Christian witches, christians that utilize crystals, christian Buddhists. There's even Christian Satanists, christian buddhists. There's even christian satanists, and and this, this is again and all of them operate without knowing. It's here's the thing is, when you know church history, there is no new thing. This is gnosticism, and all of them are christian gnostics and they say I have a secret view of god that you don't have. Just believe me, because God showed me this. I'm experiencing a measure of God, so just believe me. No Gnostic, we're not going to do that, okay.
Speaker 1:The next one is false Christ, false Christ. We see this in Mormons, a Jehovah's Witness, christian scientists, baha'i Freemasonry, unitarian, synchronous, and so all of these. They acknowledge Christ, but they don't acknowledge him as the son of God. They don't acknowledge him as the death, burial, resurrection, that he's seated at the right hand of the father and that he'll come again. Matthew 24, 11 says and then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. Second Peter 2, 1,.
Speaker 1:It says there was also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. So Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers, god and father, who is man, who obtained Godhood, and we all will reign in our afterlife. We get a planet where we get to like reign over our own planet If we do really good. Jehovah's witness. You have to work your way to heaven because Christ's work wasn't enough. There's 144,000 that will get into heaven. Everybody else you're out. Well, I'll just say, if we're all in the leading for 144,000, I'm definitely I'm not making it, I'll just. I might as well not do another good thing on this earth, because I'm definitely condemned to hell. Baha'i believes that Jesus is one of the nine great teachers that came to earth, and so they also extrapolate teachings from the other eight. Jesus is just one of the nine that they learned from. And then syncretist says Jesus is a way to the father, but not the way to the father.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we have I want you to think about this that there's open hand and close hand topics, and so close hand is close handed. Basically is anything that you see within the apostlesles Creed and Nicene Creed, and so these are close handed. We're not going to negotiate these. They're not up for debate, we're not. I'm not here to debate with you, to talk to you about it. It's just it's a close handed topic. But if you don't know the Apostles Creed, how can you defend it? You love me. So close handed, the identity of Christ, the authority of scripture. We believe we have a closed canon. We're not still writing it today. Pastor Jimmy doesn't get to have a vision tomorrow as a Gnostic and say I have a special view of God. Here's this new letter right Anything within the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed and the Trinity. Those are all close-handed, open-handed women pastors.
Speaker 1:I'm not here to debate you and you're not a heretic. Like, honestly, it's fine, it's an open-handed topic. A literal six-day creation. And which day is the Sabbath? I'm not here to debate you. Those are open-handed. There was not a single council to talk about those things.
Speaker 1:Speaking in tongues. Gift of the spirit I'm not. They're open-handed, I'm fine. We can still be a believer and not believe in the gifts of the spirit. I don't think that you'll live as good of a life Like you're not going to have full access to everything that God has. But I'm not here to debate you. Like, it's fine, you believe different. I believe different, but we can all still exist in the body of Christ. The governmental church structure I'm not here to debate that. Like, it's an open-handed topic.
Speaker 1:A style of worship Well, I don't believe in instruments, that's fine. Like, I'm not here. But the things that I hold close. I'm very like tight on those things, the identity of Christ and all of those things. Are we good? I think I'm so close to being done. Can you give me just a little bit longer? We okay?
Speaker 1:Okay, so a heretic is any person. When you call somebody a heretic, you're literally saying that they're going to go to hell, that they're apostate. Now here's the thing is that you can preach heresy but not be a heretic. And some of my old teachings I just didn't know any better it was heresy, like legit. Straight up I was like that's heresy, that was heretical, but it doesn't mean that I was a heretic. And a heretic is when you become loyal to these close-handed things, that now they're the negotiable. Does this make sense? And so now I'm negotiating the identity of Christ, I'm negotiating things about the Trinity, and so if you believe wrong things about God, it will rob your life, steal from your faith and deplete your soul of the beauty and goodness that God has available to us. And so how do we overcome the heresy of our day? Number one reject modernity and embrace tradition. Reject modernity and embrace tradition.
Speaker 1:Church history did not begin with Martin Luther. It was going on 1400 years before that. So look at church history. What is what does church history tell us about certain things when we're in this time where culture's trying to pull us from certain things Because we don't come up with new heresies, they're just rebranded old heresies.
Speaker 1:Cs Lewis says this a man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village. The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. That's freaking fire right there. Gk Chesterton says this that a disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or a high point of vantage from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living in. So we're not the first generation to be assailed by heresy. However, we are tasked with the responsibility to guard the creeds and the faith that has been passed down to us.
Speaker 1:I love verse five. He says let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ. There has to be an alignment of our minds of what is true about Christ, what is true about his divinity, what is true about his death, burial, resurrection and how our orthopraxy flows out from that? Hebrews 13, nine says do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines If it sounds weird and too hard to understand and it sounds like, wow, that's so fresh. Everybody's like I want a fresh perspective. How many times do I tell y'all at the college the goal is not to find a unicorn translation of the Bible that nobody's ever heard it before. That's not the goal. That's not the goal of your preaching, that's not the goal of your teaching. I want to stay on the path that's been forged for me for 2000 years.
Speaker 1:Ephesians 4.14 says that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning, craftiness and deceitful plotting. So we need to know that what we believe, and know the faith that has been passed down to us. If I know history, then I can know the origins of the heresies that are being repackaged. History keeps you from repeating past mistakes, so learning church history is so important. Number two submit to leaders. Wayne Grudem says this.
Speaker 1:False doctrines are adopted by theologians first, pastors second and finally the people in a congregation. So true, so true, like I hear things sometimes I'm like it preaches good. Just because it preaches good doesn't mean it's right, and just because it's going viral doesn't mean it's accurate. So listen to and learn from people who have a high honor for church history. If they read I tell the college all the time read dead people, read dead people. Read church fathers read Aquinas. Read some of the early fathers. Read Augustine, read some of these guys that I'm not looking for what's trending in the top 10 right now in Christian literature. I'm looking. Does what the early church say align with what's trending with the top 10 in Christian culture?
Speaker 1:Number three remain in the mystery. God is better than we understand and all the heresies began to happen. When we try to demystify Christ and we try to explain injustice, when we try to explain our humanity, when we try to explain our sin nature and we try to excuse it, and when we start to get into those things, we're going to step into heretical grounds every time, and so for us, I have to be okay that I live in this tension. I live in the tension that Christ told a woman to go into a town and preach the gospel and the whole city got saved. But that also Paul wrote that women should be silent in church. It's a tension and I'm not here to explain it because it's a mystery. Does this make sense? There's going to be like these tensions that we hold in our faith, and so I have to be okay with remaining in the mystery.
Speaker 1:The Trinity is a mystery. That's why the whole Nicene Creed was written. It's because their minds couldn't get around. There was all these heresies happening. So they wrote the Nicene Creed to confront all these people that were struggling with Christ's humanity and the divinity.
Speaker 1:And so, number four pursue Christ with fear, with love and fear. I don't know all the answers, but I love him with all my heart, and so Paul's letting them know out of all of this text, like it's loving him, fearing him, that he ascended up, he came down on the earth, he went to the lowest possible with the unbearable punishment of the cross. He went. He's going to be Lord in hell. They're going to bow down. There's going to be Lord of earth and Lord over the earth. He's Lord of it all. And so I'm going to pursue Christ with love and fear.
Speaker 1:So, lord, we just thank you so much for this time together, lord. We just thank you, lord, for this passage. God, I thank you that you've entrusted to us, lord, a faith that's been passed down through the generations. May we carry it well that, lord. We're just one runner in the long lineage of this, the church. And so, father, I thank you that, as the baton's been passed to us, the church. And so, father, I thank you that, as the baton's been passed to us, lord, let us run with fear and let us run with love. Lord, let us look ahead to the ones that have paid the price before us, and may we walk in their steps. Lord, any area where we're trying to pave a new trail, we just say we're sorry and, lord, we get on the path, lord, that's been paved for us by Paul and by John, lord, by Peter and Father, we run that path well. And so, lord, we thank you for all that you're doing in our hearts and our lives. May we love you more in Jesus name. And somebody who believed it said amen. Love you.
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