Going Deeper with God - Knowing Christ

What if your spiritual resume is the very thing keeping you from truly knowing Jesus? We dive into Philippians 3 and confront the difference between being busy for God and being close to God. Paul calls his best achievements “garbage” compared to gaining Christ, and that bold language becomes a mirror for our own platforms, reputations, routines, and theological pride. We explore why intimacy with Jesus is the center of Christian life, not a side project, and how a relationship shaped by love outgrows a checklist of religious wins.

Together we examine costly discipleship: denying ourselves, taking up the cross, and embracing the fellowship of suffering as partnership rather than punishment. We talk about maturity that moves beyond “Is it sin?” toward “Will it draw me near?” and why this shift changes how we make daily choices. Real-life moments of provision—down to unexpected help at the checkout counter or a near-zero-cost refrigerator—show how God meets us in small decisions as much as major crises. These aren’t prosperity promises; they are reminders that God cares, guides, and provides as we yield our desires to him.

You’ll hear a raw testimony of transformation from addiction and homelessness to a life rebuilt by grace, and an honest challenge to leave behind idols that feel safe but keep us shallow. The heart of the message is simple and demanding: Jesus is not a means to something better. He is the better. If you’re ready to trade spiritual performance for living intimacy, to welcome both resurrection power and Gethsemane prayers, and to let your week reflect your worship, this conversation will meet you where you are and call you deeper. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review with one thing you’re surrendering to know Christ more.

Chapters

• 0:00 Called To Know Christ
• 1:00 Scripture Foundation In Philippians 3
• 2:30 Hard Truths About Church And Comfort
• 6:40 Knowing Christ Versus Knowing About Him
• 10:00 Paul’s Resume And The Trap Of Religion
• 13:10 Counting Gains As Loss For Jesus
• 16:10 Idols: Platform, Reputation, Routine
• 20:00 Hypocrisy And Covenant Faithfulness
• 24:20 Testimony Of Transformation And Grace
• 27:10 Power And Pain: Fellowship Of Suffering
• 30:20 Maturity: From “Is It Sin?” To “Will It Draw Me Near?”
• 33:20 Small Obedience And God’s Provision
• 36:10 Brokenness, Holiness, And Daily Intimacy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What is up and welcome to another episode of Faith and Failures. Today we're going to be diving into something that's very important. If you aren't aware, or maybe you're kind of aware, every person is called to know Christ. In my church right now, if you don't know the lead pastor of a church, and we're actually crawling through the book of Romans, we've been nine or I think nine weeks. So I want you to either take notes or screenshot what's going to appear on your screen. And we're going to walk through some scriptures. And I want to start off, uh let's just dive into some scripture. Okay. So this is what I this is what I personally love to do because I think it is paramount for the believer. And that is to study and read scripture. So if you want to look with me in Philippians chapter 3, verse 8 through 10, it says, Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law, rather, and this is also kind of an echo or duplicate of what is said in Romans as well, obeying the law, rather I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death. So that doesn't seem very encouraging. But if you know anything about the writings of Paul, Paul would he did not pull punches, just as if you think about it, Jesus did not pull punches. And I think we would have healthier churches and bodies of believers if pastors were not so intimidated by losing. I'm not saying this is everybody's stance, but I feel that a lot of times um ministries will not say the offensive thing or not say the thing that will bring correction to the body for fear of lack of money or showing up. And I was thinking about this the other day. Um I had somebody recently or family leave my church and they messaged me and my wife, and they they weren't upset with anybody. And you know, we we prayed a blessing over them. I mean, it happens. Sometimes where you're going is not uh not fit for everybody else. And if that's what they feel is right for their family, who am I to say? Oh no, stay at my church. I would rather somebody follow God than me 100% every time. So I was thinking, and I'm like, you know what? A lot of people they they value um people in the seats, but they forget like the what what the true measure of a successful church is the discipleship sitting in the seats. Like, not tithe payers, which is great. That's how the church functions, if you don't know, not giving of extra funds, which is a gift. Um, so when God pours it out, you pour it out on others. That's a part of giving. That that is a muscle, tithing and offering is a muscle that has to be exercised over and over again to gain strength. The one time in the Bible God says, challenge me to see if he actually is who he says he is, it's talking about our money. Because if you realize in today's culture, our money rules us. And it's the same with fasting, like food can rule us. I mean, I th I'm not sure I could be pulling this, this could be way wrong, but America has a problem with obesity because food rules us, and they have manipulated the food system to where the less um well-off money-wise can only afford the cheaper stuff, which is crap, which makes you gain weight. So it's kind of a a self-defeating American issue. But that being said, we need to be willing to look at the life of Christ in the way that it actually was mapped out for us. And what do I mean by that? As Christians or as new believers, we oftentimes will try to package, um, we'll try to package God in a scenario to where we act as if we trust in God, we believe in God, then we will be blessed. And this is true, but financial promises are not in the word that every believer will be blessed. This is not a a blanket statement. What we and what God wants us to really understand, and I believe he does financially bless people, obviously. Uh he wants us to realize that our sustenance, our provisions are not from the money, they're not from the job, but they are from him. And so when we lean on him, then whether we have a lot or whether we have a little, even Paul wrote, I've had a lot, I've had a little. But what Paul really understood was how to be content. And so if Christ was to, like if we look at the story of Job, if Christ was to wipe out your family and leave you alive, if he was to strike you with a sickness, would you be okay with that? Or would you go into the spiral of God doesn't love me, God doesn't see me? All of a sudden you make it about if God doesn't do what I want, he doesn't love me. And if you've been a parent, you know that that is a very severely false and immature way to look at life. Because as parents, our children think we are making decisions, we are making rules just to be mean sometimes. We've had this conversation with um, he's 17 now, but um our son growing up, he thinks that we're just making rules to make rules, and it's not the case. We're doing it for protection, we're doing it to cultivate character in him so that when he gets out on his own, he will be a person of contribution and not of consumption. And that way he will be a contribution to society. So we're gonna walk through this today, and this is kind of the the title and the concept. We want to go in in deeper with Christ, in deeper with God. Like we want to go deeper in God. That's actually gonna be the title of this video knowing Christ. So, what does it mean to know Christ? We're gonna um in this video today, we're gonna break down what it means to actually follow Christ, what it means to go deeper. The answer isn't complicated, it looks like knowing Christ. So, Christ, Jesus, the Messiah, said to those who were trying to follow him while he was still alive, he said, if you do not pick up your cross, you do not deny yourself, you will not enter the kingdom. He was very clear about that. That he God loves us, he cares for us, but it's like if I was to to um with my wife, only tried to communicate with her when I wanted sex. Would that be a healthy relationship? No, it would be a one-sided manipulation of what I would call a relationship on my part, and then my wife would just be around to whatever, or if she did the same to me, if she only um say she used sex as a bargaining tool to get me to do things, she's still manipulating something that she knows I desire. Or if I do it to her, I'm saying, hey, if you do this, we'll have sex. I'm manipulating a basic instinct. So imagine if we applied that to God in our relationship with him, and we said, Lord, only if you do the things I want and desire will I reward you with my attention. Now that seems pretty blunt, but that's exactly how we live our life. Sometimes we get very complacent, we get very comfortable, and familiarity ends up breeding uh complacent Christianity. And what that means is we say we know God, we say we know Christ, but yet we we have no clue what is required to follow him. And so today we're gonna look at that. Um, I'm not talking about knowing about Christ, I'm not talking about quotes of Bible verses about him, but knowing him in such a way that your life revolves around him, your identity is rooted in him, and your soul is satisfied in him. So let's be honest. It's easy when we call ourselves the church to get busy doing spiritual things and still not know Jesus intimately. This is what Christ desires for us is to actually know him intimately, not just know about him, not just do things in his name. One of the scariest verses, I believe it's in Matthew. I can't remember exactly where it's found, but it talks about like people coming to them and saying to God and saying, I prophesied in your name, I cast demons out, we healed the sick, whatever. We did all these good spiritual things. We did all the things that the church is supposed to do. We ministered to people, true ministry, deliverance, true deliverance. And we did it all in your name. And then he said, Depart from me, I never knew you, you workers of iniquity. Meaning that we can do the greatest and the best of things, but our hearts can still be far from God and have no intimacy with him. And this is what God desires. So let's look at this. Religion is not the goal. Okay, Philippians 3, 4, chapter 3, verse 4 and 6, it says, I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. This is Paul writing this. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more. I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a real Hebrew, if there ever was one. I was a member of the Pharisees who demanded the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church, and as far as righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault. Now, Paul lists his spiritual resume here, not to boast, but to make a point. You can be fully immersed in religion and go to the right church and the right pastor with the right worship and all these other things that we think check the boxes off of doing being the church, but we can still be far from Christ. We can have a flawless family background, we can have the best of educations, we can go to seminary, we can do, we can have unquestionable discipline to tell ourselves no and to fast and to pray and do all these things. We can have a zealous commitment, and yet Paul realizes that none of that can replace knowing Christ. In Pentecostal circles, we value the fire, the gifts, the experience, and rightly so. All these things are biblical things. They are things that Christ promised, and they are things that the disciples, uh, not only the 12, but when the church exploded in the book of Acts, that was happening throughout the world. But if we're not careful, we'll start worshiping our form of godliness instead of God Himself. And this is very a very, very easy but slippery slope to go down in any church setting, any denomination. Let's go on to Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 and 8. I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done in me. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. The word Paul uses for garbage here is very strong because in the original language it means filth, it means a refusal, and it means dung. So poo-poo. That's how he now sees his former achievements in light of Christ. What a radical statement. Now let's ask the hard question. What do we still count as valuable that Christ is asking us to count as loss? I'll ask it again. What do we still count as valuable that Christ is asking us to count it as lost, to leave it behind for his sake, because it might have become the Lord of your life? Let's walk through a couple of options. Now, I can't I can't answer it for you. I can't tell you what that looks like on your end. This is right now a one-way conversation, but if you have any questions or or you would like to, you know, leave a comment below with as you're following along, timestamp it and say your answer. What is God calling you to leave behind? Is it your platform? Maybe that's become your idol. Is it your reputation? Maybe you appearing to be a certain way in a certain person in people's eyes has become a false sense of who you are and who you were created to be. Maybe your theological knowledge, you know, I tell my church people all the time, you will never argue. You will never argue a person into heaven, but you can love them into there. So maybe you're too hard on some things that may be from the word of God, but you're placing it over the heart of God. Does that make sense? Like, for instance, you can quote scripture until you're blew in the face and until the day that you die, but that doesn't make you know God. That doesn't make you understand his heart. Because if you read when Jesus was tempted, when he was uh at the end of his fast, the devil used scripture. So it's obvious that the devil knows scripture. That's how he can manipulate and fracture the body to make them believe things that are no longer actually true. Once there's a little bit of false mixed in with the truth, it poisons the whole well and all is false. So maybe it's your theological presuppositions. You presume certain things and you can't see past that. This is one of the hardest, in my personal opinion, this one and the next one is one of the hardest things to allow the Holy Spirit to buff out of us because usually these things were not just something we thought up, they were something that we were taught, that we were shown. And so it's ingrained in us, and it's very difficult to say, Lord, if this is false, I will walk away from it. It's very difficult. So maybe the next one, and this is the second part of this that that is very hard, is your routine or comfort. Maybe you're spiritually dead at the church that you're at, and you haven't recognized it because it's the church you grew up in, or it's your mom and dad's church, or grandma and grandpa's church, and you don't realize that the church that is good for somebody else may not be the church that is good for you. And let me put a little shameless plug in here right now. If you feel that way, I do not want any other church to come to my, I don't want nobody else's people. But if you're lost and undone, or you found this video and you don't know Christ, or maybe you just found Christ and you don't know where to go, I'm right now gonna put the address on the screen and I'll pin it in the comments below uh of where you can go and check out our church. You could check uh search our YouTube channel if you want, Connect Church Longview. It's the only church called that out there. And look what we're about. Like we only believe the word of God. That's it from cover to cover. We're a full gospel church, meaning that the entire gospel of Jesus Christ and the whole gospel of the word of God that is pointing to Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is what we believe. Nothing more, nothing less. And so maybe your routine or comfort is robbing you of what God actually is trying to lead you to because you don't, this is very this is human nature. You don't want to leave what is familiar and what you know. It's very hard, it's very difficult. But the truth is this you cannot cling to both Christ and your self-righteousness. I'll say it one more time. You cannot cling to your self-righteousness and then also try to cling to Christ. You must let go of one to be able to fully hold on. We cannot have both. And Paul doesn't just want to talk about Jesus, he wants to gain Christ, to possess him. Uh, Jesus kind of mapped this out a little bit in some of his verb verbiage, and it's almost confusing, but he's praying and he's like, Lord, let them be in you as I am in as you are in me and I'm in you, and it's like kind of a back and forth. But what it's saying is like, let them be so unified that there is no beginning and end to where you end and I begin. We are completely and I uh completely one, completely unified in mind, body, and soul. And I believe God gives us this example in um in not only scripture, but in the reality of marriage where scripture says a man is to leave his mom and dad, some of y'all need to hear this, and the wife leave their mom and dad, and you become one, you join together. There's an intimacy, there's a level of intimacy that it it makes the relationship special. And this is what God desires with us. He desires for us to fully and 100% belong to him. It's like, and here's how we do a church. Let me just break this down for a minute. We are so comfortable with coming into church and we we walk in and we do the church thing, and then we leave, and we're who we are. Things we would never say inside of a church, which doesn't really matter, it's just a building, but things that we would not say, attitudes and and and the way we interact with people, um, maybe the things you post on social media, how you dress, whatever. Like you wouldn't wear it and do it at church, but yet you do it out in in the middle when you're living your regular life. This is called a hypocritical lifestyle. And what this means is let me give you a real world example, and I'll give this to you. Chew on this, think about it, because it's very easy to do because we try to separate church and our life. And that's actually we are to be the church, not a building. A building is where we gather and worship and lift up the Lord, a very biblical thing, a very good thing. But it is not where that should you know stop. Once we leave and go home, you're still the temple of the Holy Ghost. You are the temple. So the church is being carried around with you. You are the church, you are an extension of the church. And I'll give you, excuse me, a real world example of what I love putting things in normal terms, biblical things and fleshly understanding. That way we can wrap our head around it a little more. So think if you live your Christian life like this, okay? You live your church going life like this. I'm married to my wife. We're about to be up on 11 years. Praise the Lord. We're still in our honeymoon. Somebody could tell the Jesus. Mm-mm. Uh, but imagine if I was only acting and playing the part of a husband when I was in my own home. When I left, when I went outside, take my ring off, go to different cities, travel out for work, go to, you know, meet with whoever. Whatever, whatever, doesn't really matter because when I'm at home, I'm married. But when I'm out doing my thing, I am not. Now, apply this same disgusting logic to the way we live our lives in the week. And then we come on Sundays and say that we belong to God. We'll lift our hands in worship. We'll say a prayer. We'll pray for people. We'll we'll sit there and listen. We'll even take good notes. And then we go out in the middle of the week and we just act a fool and do what we normally do. Now, now that I've put that measurement of being a husband or a spouse up in front of you, the Bible calls us very clearly the bride of Christ. So we are called to be in covenant, in commitment with God, no matter where we are. We don't just come into church to check off and get our fire insurance so we don't go to hell. God's relationship that he desires with us is not to keep us out of hell and it's not to bring us into heaven. It is relationship. Like my relationship with my wife is not to have sex with her. That is a benefit. It's because I want to be around her. I want to know her. I want to do life with her. And the same kind of covenantal relationship with God, it should be just as important to us to be close to God because we're not just doing it to go to heaven. We're not just doing it to get out of hell. We are doing it because we love him. We want to know who he is. We want to be in a relationship with him. And if you're saying, well, how can I begin a relationship with somebody I can't see or somebody I don't feel, let me tell you firsthand experience. I have seen, I have heard, and I have experienced God on a very personal level. More personal and deeper than any other relationship that I've ever had. But you have to be open to it. If you immediately say, Well, I can't do that because of this, this, this, and this, imagine if you were to do the same with your spouse. Well, I can't do this unless you do this, this, this, and this. It doesn't logically apply to anywhere else in our lives. But when it comes to God, we think we could just make up new rules and it's okay. Why would you do that? Why would you rob yourself? Why would you rob yourself? Find a Bible, find a church that believes everything the word says, and watch the scripture and watch the spirit bring the scripture alive like never before. It's a pretty awesome and amazing thing. And you will not be able, when you actually try and not just make up excuses of why you can't try, there's nothing like it. I used to be a meth dealer, I used to uh be an alcoholic, I used to be a womanizer. Like I have transformed, God has transformed my life. I owe everything to him. I was homeless. I lived in my car, and now I have a brick home, four-bedroom, two and a half bath, two cars, actually, a car and a truck. I live in a neighborhood with an HOA. Like, the HOA part's not really a bragging point. But what I'm saying, and I'm not trying to brag for me. What I'm saying is, God has completely in the last 12 years transformed my life from living in the backseat of my car or nasty hotels dealing drugs. And he has completely, I still had to deal with the echoes of what I did, the repercussions of my debauchery, but he has given me peace of forgiveness that I could not. That was one of the hardest things when I came back to the Lord and started trying to live for him was forgiving myself of all the things that I'd done and all the disgusting I was. But he forgives me. No questions asked. He says, if you have a heart of repentance, you belong to me. It doesn't make us perfect, but he is willing, and his grace and mercy outweigh anything that I could ever do. And it's a very beautiful thing. So the deeper you go, the more you get to know Christ, the more you get to know God, you realize this. Jesus isn't a means to something better. He is the better. Does that make sense? So let's look at the the third little thing I got here. Knowing him in power and pain. Philippians 3 10, it says, I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death. Now, this verse is the heartbeat of deep faith. Paul wants both the resurrection power and the fellowship of suffering. I know a lot of us when we hear this, it's like I don't want to suffer. I don't want to um I don't want to suffer and and have a terrible life. But this is where many of us stop because we love the power, we love the miracles, we love the breakthroughs, we love the fire. But do we welcome the suffering? The waiting season, the spiritual, spiritually dry spells, the moments where disobedience costs us everything. I'm sorry, I said disobedience. The moments where obedience costs us everything. Deep intimacy with Christ Jesus will lead you to the mountaintop and into the Garden of Gethsemane. It will lead you into the city while people sing your praises, and it will lead you into the wilderness to be tried and tempted by the same spirit. Romans 8 17. Let's look at this. As since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God's glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Now, here's something very important for you to understand. Suffering for Christ is not a punishment. It's a partnership. Now, I want you to ask yourself this very real question. Are you better than Christ? Are you better than Jesus? Then why do you feel that you don't need to suffer? Or how do you feel that you are better and you shouldn't have to suffer? It actually pulls us closer and a deeper understanding of who Christ actually is. And this is what we call, I tell my church this all the time, my mission and vision for the church is spiritual maturity. And this is maturity. It's not, I was talking to somebody yesterday at an event, and you know, we we oftentimes as believers and even seasoned believers, new believers, kind of all the above, we we kind of go, we we go to the question of, well, is it sin? And that is an immature question. I'm not faulting you for it, but I want you to understand that this is where you go from immature to mature in Christ. It's not, is it a sin? Is it the question should be, will it get me closer to God? If that's if that is my heart's desire, then everything I do should be something that gets me closer to God. Now, obviously, you have some nuance with this. Not everything is make or break. You're like, should I buy this washer? I don't know, is it gonna get me closer to God? But you desiring to be closer to God will lead you to the right washer and dryer, the one you should purchase, the deal that you're actually desiring and wanting. And some people are like, well, I'm not gonna, why would I pray over that? That's my point. Let me tell you a real story that happened to me. When I first came back to God, I was making$10 an hour, barely working 20 hours a week. My cousin took me in. Uh, I wasn't, I was a bum. I lived in their house. Uh, I bought little packets of food things so I can eat my room and not not disturb them. Like, it wasn't a fun time in my life, but it was a time where I had my cousin next to me, just letting me get out all my feelings, all my all the things in my brain to purify me and to and to just get it out. And I was in Walmart and I was just new back to the Lord, just out of jail, um, because I was homeless in my car that I mentioned, I got out of jail, and when I got out of jail, my cousin gave me a way out, him and his family. They they were moving an hour over an hour away, and they said, We want you to come with us if you want. And so I knew I needed to get out of that town. So I'm in this new life, I'm working a crappy job. I just found this girl that was at the church my cousin baited me to come to, which is my wife today. And I didn't have a whole lot of money at all. And I'm trying to spend it all impressing her, taking her out to like showguns, you know, places like that. And it didn't really impress her. But I but I won. I prayed harder, I think. Um, and this in this Walmart experience, I'm I'm walking around and I feel the Holy Spirit tell me, you know, these little items in my car, cart, maybe there was like 10 items. He said, take these three or four and put them back. And so I did. I'm like, okay, you know, I'm back I'm new, I'm fresh back to God. I don't care what the Lord tells me to do, I'm gonna obey. Like, I'm his, I'm all in. And I get up to the register, and this is before like the self-checkouts were like dominating the market. So there's an actual person. And I kid you not, I check out and she rings it up, she tells me the total, and it's like almost to the dime of what I had in my pocket. Now, to some of you, it's like, well, that's a coincidence, or some of you is like, oh, well, that's cool. But here's my point the small little things, because I was so new and raw back to God, like I was very, I wanted him to be a part of everything in my life, and I was very serious about getting to know God again. Because this was everything was so new and fresh to me all over again. That God on the little things, I he could have just let me be embarrassed at the at the counter, and I wouldn't have thought anything different. It was like, well, crap, I gotta go put this stuff back or or give it to them, like I don't have enough money. That's embarrassing. But he showed me in that, and I've I tell it's 12 years later, and I still tell this story because I believe God cares that much about the little, he wants to be involved in the little things in our lives. He cares, he cares. That's intimacy with God, where we let him into the small little moments, where we let him into the small little decisions, and so that is maturity, not asking God to rescue you from every hardship, but recognizing that even in the hardship, he is revealing himself more deeply to you. That's that's powerful. That is a place that the enemy does not want you to get or go to, because then you'll know and understand the depth of the sacrifice of Christ. Look at Philippians chapter 3, verse 11. So that one way or another, I will experience the resurrection from the dead. Now, Paul ends this section with the personal resolve, and he says, This in essence, no matter what it costs, I want Jesus. I want to know him so fully that even death can't steal what I have gained in him. Now you have to ask yourself this. I try to end every every episode with the question. So, do you want to go deeper just to feel more spiritual? What is your reason for wanting to get to know Christ? Is it something that is for you, or is it just to get to know him? Or do you want to go deeper so you can know him in the secret place, in the power of his resurrection, and in the fellowship of his suffering? This, my friends, is the essence of getting to know Christ. Not just in his goodness, not just in his blessing, but also in his suffering. And this will produce out of you the good fruit that I know that you really do desire. But something to think about. The Bible talks about fruit, the fruit of the spirit. You cannot plant seed and be sick and be greatly successful at it until the soil is broken. And I'm using this analogy because I want you to understand that God loves and desires for people who are chasing after him to have a heart of brokenness, broken before the Lord. That we are un we are so undone. There's multiple times in the Bible where people are next to his holiness and in his presence, and they just they come undone because of how holy and righteous and pure God is. But that same God is a God that desires a personal relationship with you. He is not a distant God, he is a a relational God, he is a practical God. I in my story of at Walmart, when it was a very practical thing. And um I'll share another story of how I believe God provided you can say whatever you want, but this is just how I see the world. This is my view. We had a a refrigerator that we, when we moved from Lake Palestine over here to Longview, we took that refrigerator that was in this the the buy of the house for us. So technically, we didn't pay any more for it, so it wasn't like we purchased it, but that refrigerator was free to us with the purchase of the house. Excuse me. Then we moved to Longview, we brought that refrigerator. It was getting older, it was having some issues. Well, then my wife's uncle said, Hey, I have this uh refrigerator that is not that bad. It's a French store or whatever, which was much different than what we had. All you have to do is come pick it up. So we went and picked it up. I think this was last year, maybe the year before. It served us well. The ice machine didn't work, the water didn't work. We didn't have that in the other one, so we weren't really worried about it. Well, this at the end of 2025, there it started kind of leaking, and the uh the freezer on the bottom started having huge chunks of ice, and then on the back, there was this massive rust spot that seemed to be getting worse and worse. And so we have uh homeowners insurance and we or the home warranty, whatever it is. So we called them up, they came over, they started looking at it, they're like, Well, this is this, and then we start my wife's like watching over his shoulder, thank God she was, kept pointing out things, and eventually he got to where, like, oh, and the yeah, I think he was talking about the back party. He's like, That's that's not fixable, like they're gonna have to reimburse you for that. So a refrigerator that cost us nothing led to another refrigerator that cost us nothing. Then the voucher comes back from the home warranty, and it was over$2,000. I was not expecting that. So we go to Lowe's. We had you have to do it through Lowe's. We went to Lowe's and we got a very nice, expensive all said and done with taxes and everything for I think we paid$600 with with taxes and everything. They came, they they installed it, and I'm standing there, and I'm like, there's a dent right up here on the door. Um, what do we do about that? He said, Hold on, let me call, let me call them and I'll help you. He got us$300 return on the refrigerator, and we could get a new panel to replace, and I mean it was a little tiny dent, nothing big at all. And we can get a new panel from Samsung to replace. It could actually, the front of them, you can change them out and make them different colors and stuff. It was kind of cool. But uh, we got the stainless steel because it matched everything else, and he said you could just replace the panel. I I didn't look at the exact number, but literally almost paid zero dollars for a brand new fridge. When you have the favor of the Lord in your life and you care about what he cares about and your life belongs to him, why would he not bless your life? I'm not saying you're gonna be rich, but the Bible says that if he even dresses the lilies, if he feeds the birds, he cares that much more for you, his personal and intentional creation. He designed you to be in audience with him, to have a relationship with him. But to do that, you have to follow Christ in the blessing and also be willing to embrace the suffering. I love you. I'm praying for you, and I hope you all have an amazing month.