World Challenge

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Amen. Well, let me pray, and I want to get
into the word here for just a few minutes with you. Father,
I thank you for helping us as a team to
begin this year in your word. And Father, I acknowledge
that I am not I'm not the man who you've
called to to make sure that the Word of God
is touching people's lives. I'm just one messenger added to

(00:23):
the many that these listening to me today have in
their lives. They have pastors, they have leaders, they have
people that have been discipled discipling them, they have people
they are reading. But I'm grateful to be one voice
that continues to promote your glory and your honor and
call people to a greater depth than you call people

(00:45):
to a higher admiration of you. And I pray that
my words today would help us be free from the
things that hinder that we give thanks in Jesus name. Amen.
If you have your scripture on your device or a Bible,
turn to First Corinthians chapter ten, and I want to

(01:06):
talk about fleeing from temptation, overcoming temptation by honoring God,
overcoming temptation by honoring God, by looking at God's power,
by looking at God's omnipotence, one of the again, one
of the words of the attributes of God, First Printians,
chapter ten. Starting in verse thirteen, I'm going to read
a fairly large portion. I'm going to be reading all

(01:28):
the way through to verse twenty two. So bear with
me if you would read along and look at the words,
take them in. Sometimes when we read scripture, we say
have I read that before? And it sort of becomes
blurry to us rather than a sharp, focused intake of
the words. So I want encourage you to look at
this with me. Verse thirteen. No, No, that's a strong

(01:53):
start to this verseon. It doesn't mean a little bit.
It's not a partial. It's no temptation has overtaken you.
That is not common to man. So temptation is common
to everybody. If you're struggling with a particular temptation right now,
you're not alone. You're wrestling with your brothers and sisters

(02:17):
in Christ who are as at the same time being
tempted as common a man. God is. God is faithful.
That's a powerful statement right there. And He will not
let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the
temptation he will provide the way of escape that you
may be able to endure it. Therefore, my beloved, flee

(02:39):
from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people. Judge for
yourselves what I say. The couple of blessing that we bless,
Is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break? Is it not a participation
in the body of Christ? Because there's one bread? Are

(03:00):
many our one body? For we all partake of one bread?
Consider the people of Israel? Are they not those who
eat the sacrifices and participants in the altar? What do
I imply then, that food offered to idols is anything,
or that the idol is anything? No? I imply that
what is pagan's sacrifice? They offer to demons and not

(03:23):
to God. I do not want you to participate with demons.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the
cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of
the Lord and the table of demons. Verse twenty two
cocludes our reading. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy?
Are we stronger than he? Again? The idea of the omnipotence,

(03:47):
the all powerful, the almighty nature of God this section
passage of section of Scripture concludes with a question, are
we challenging the omnipotence of God? Are we seeing ourselves
as having a power comparable to God? Can we handle
our life? Can we handle in the context of this
is several things that I wanted to talk about and

(04:10):
then come back to close with verse twenty two. But
back to verse thirteen overcoming temptation. You see there that
as I said, it's common to man that we have temptation.
But the God's response to that is that God is faithful,
and so I want to encourage you whatever you're struggling with,

(04:31):
whatever temptations, whatever, maybe besetting sins as we've heard that
word before, besius sins that seem to come at you
in a certain way that you know Satan, once he
finds an open doors, he is persistent, consistent, and unrelenting.

(04:52):
And so once we give him place that that foothold,
you know, the foothold. I always picture it being like
a you know, if there's an intruder at your door
and you open it a little bit and you see
it's an intruder, and then alsoden you want to slam
the door shut, but he puts his foot in there.
That's like a foothold to me, and that's what Satan
wants to get first. As a foothold, it always leaves
that place open. In contrast, the scripture says Jesus about Jesus, jesuays,

(05:19):
Satan has come, so he came to him, just as
he did to us with temptation. Satan has come, and
he's found no place in me. Man. I love that.
That's an aspiration I have in my heart that Satan
would come and go like, okay, let me attack his pride. No,
that place is not open. Let me attack lust. No,
that foothold is gone. Let me attack fear and unbelief. No,

(05:40):
that foothold is gone. That's my desire. And that's why
this passage of scripture, the tenth chapter of Corinthian's one,
is so important to us because we're going to he's
going to be knocking at that door. He's going to
be trying to stick the foot in the foothold to
get us to overtake us. That's the verse thirteen. No
temptation has overtaken you. It doesn't mean that you're not

(06:03):
going to be hit by it or affected by it.
Or slip or stumble into it. You may find no.
I'll say it more clearly in twenty twenty one. You
will sin. You will do something that is contrary to
the will and purposes and plans and desires of God.
But the goal is not to well, the goal would

(06:25):
be to be free of that, but more importantly is
to not be overcome or overtaken by those things. And
then it says, the response to that is not so
try harder, work at it, get an accountability group. The
response there is the faithfulness of God. That God is
at work on your behalf. He is more diligent, passionate, interested,

(06:52):
and effective in you overcoming your sin than you are
of yourself. Sometimes we think about, oh, I so want
to be free, Oh God, please, Well, God is more
stirred in heart of your holiness than even you are,
and so he's faithful to He's going to bring you
to that place. All you have to do is stay
in his presence, stay diligent, stay faithful, stay in love
with him, stay intimate with him, stay focused, stay stay

(07:15):
in the Word. Where with all shall a young man
cleanse his ways by taking heed to the Word of God.
And so stay in the word stay in prayer, because
this is the faithfulness of God giving us supply and
support in order to help fulfill his promise to be
faithful for us not to be overtaken in anything. So

(07:36):
then that's that same verse goes on to say, but
with that temptation, Okay, with that temptation, So that temptation
is going to keep coming. It doesn't say you'll live
now without that temptation. You see what it's saying. With that,
when that comes next today, next week, next month, throughout
the year, when it comes, it's because it's coming. He's

(07:58):
going to continually knock at the satans knocking the door
and try to get that foothold. But when it comes,
all right, when it comes, he will with that temptation,
he will also provide. So the provision is from the Lord.
The provision is not from your bootstrapping. It from your
promises to God, from your will power, from your tenacity,

(08:20):
from your super spirituality, or your holiness of your own energies.
Is something that is provided for you. That's good news, friends,
isn't it that God provides this for you? The thing
that you want? And as I said in a moment ago,
the thing he wants even more. It's provided for you.
He's making a way. It says here the way of escape,

(08:43):
not a way of escape. It's not like, well, one
way is counseling, and one way is will power, and
one way is a small group, and one way is therapy,
and one way is this and that. There are many ways,
and they all can be helpful. Everything I just mentioned
is helpful. But there's only one, the way of escape.

(09:03):
And that is not a thing or an event, a conference,
a book you'll read. It is hit God's faithfulness, it
is God's ability, it is God's power. He is the way.
That's so there's a play on words here. I think
the way he will make the way, and I think
that's Paul leaning back on the words of Jesus, that

(09:26):
I am the way, the truth in the life. And
no man comes to God, no man gets this provision,
no man gets the door closed. That foothold is trying
to get in it without the way, Jesus being the way.
And then it says two words here that both start
with E at least in the ESV. One word is
the way of escape. Okay, so you can escape. But

(09:48):
I like that word better than the next word anybody
see if you're reading ESV, what the next word is
that you're able to able to endure it? Well, I
just wish the period was after a escape it. That
would make my life in your life a lot easier.
But but it has two provisions for it. One is

(10:08):
to escape it. But the escape is not necessarily that
it's not present anymore, that it's not still knocking at
the door, that the food is not trying to get hold.
It's that it's that's not the escape here, apparently, it's
that when those things come, you'll be able to endure it.
The endure it doesn't mean endure the participation in sin.

(10:32):
That's in context here we're about to see. It's you
can't drink of the cup of the table of the Lord,
and of of of sin and Satan and the devil
and the foothold. You have to be on one side
you drink and eat of one or the other. And
so the enduring here is definitely not speaking of enduring,
just the fact that you have to continue. You know,

(10:52):
it's just life. You're going to continue to be full
of fear and doubt and lust and anger and strife.
That is just the way life is we're sinners and
we're just gonna know we're going to be able to
endure the temptation, and that in the South is an escape.
It is an escape in itself. Okay, Now now here

(11:14):
comes a surprise. This is the twist in the plot.
This is where the where the movie plot shifts radically.
It is verse fourteen. Therefore, my beloved flee from idolatry.
What is Paul saying here that every temptation that you

(11:34):
face is not just the temptation to commit that particular sin,
but it's a deeper temptation, is to live in an
idolatrous life? What is what is idolatry? Clautions Chapter three,
verse five lists various numbers of sin, drunkenness, lasciviousness, greed, pride, anger, strife.

(11:56):
It lists those things and then it says this at
the of it. After this list of sins, it says,
which is idolatry. Drunkenness is idolatry, Lust is idolatry, Pride
is idolatry. Self ambition is idolatry. And well, why what
is idolatry? I can do a whole message on that.

(12:19):
I'm not going to do it here this morning. But
it's basically idolatry is in its most simplest form, is
anything that I love more or even as much as
I love God, anything I depend on for life, abundant life.
Jesus says, I come to have life, but not just life,
more abundant life. And if we find life in alcohol,
if we find life and sex, we find life in drugs,

(12:40):
if we find life in business power, if we find
life in success and fame and fortune, those things are
becoming idolatrous to us. We're putting them on the level
of God. If I if if you know that, if
I would more, what would I mourn most of losing

(13:04):
one thing in my life? What would I mourn most
of losing what I would it be? My job? Would
it be notoriety? Would it be comfort? Well? Oftentimes, that
thing that we would say we would mourn losing the
most is a signpost to our idolatry. If we don't
answer that question, the thing I would mourn losing most

(13:24):
is my relationship with Jesus. Then whatever it is that
we would mourn more for is a sign of idolatry,
or whatever we want most. You can tell what you
want most by what you think about more often, what
you pray about more often, what you read about more often,
what you talk to your friends about more often. You
can track your heart by your desires and ambitions, and

(13:50):
it might be idolatrist, the idolatry the when when God
gave the commandments to Moses, one of the things he
spoke to him is you have no you shall have
no other God before me. Well that's strange, because of
course you know that there is no other God. So
you can't have another God before God because there is

(14:11):
no other God. What he's talking about there small g idolatry,
to have no other I have no other idol before me.
And there's two ways that that can be interpreted. The
first way is probably more classical, is don't have any
other types of God, bail you know, any other foreign

(14:34):
gods ahead of me, don't don't put anything. But the
other way of looking at it is, don't bring anything
before me into my presence. Don't have any idolatry in
your heart when you come before me, have no other
God before met. So you're coming in the presence of
God and you want God certainly all of a sudden,

(14:56):
this chat here today want God. But if there's something
we want more and that is our those are our lust,
those are are those are our temptations. The three temptations
that Satan gave to Jesus really not one of them were,
you know, things that in a sense, somebody wouldn't want.
You know, you can fall and not hurt yourself, you

(15:18):
get hungry, you can turn stone into bread, you can
rule over nations in themselves. Those aren't necessarily evil things,
but when they become things that you would desire before God,
because for Jesus to get any of those three things,
he would have to put them before God. I choose
to follow you now, Satan, and your plan for my
life more than God's. That's putting an idol in front

(15:41):
of front of God. So that's that's idolatry, idolatry. This
chapter goes on. Then it sounds like it's changing gears
once again, almost as a rapid pace, like the switch
switch switch. It's talking about temptation, then idolatry. Okay, but again,
idolatry is the living under the pleasure of sin and

(16:02):
accepting it. But then he goes on and I won't
take a lot of time in this next few versus,
but he talks about the couple of blessing, which is
the Blood of Christ. He talks about the body of Christ,
the one Bread, and then he goes on to contrast
this with idolatry being nothing of itself. It's not the food,
it's not the statue, it's not actually the money itself.

(16:22):
It is the demonic force behind it, the influence is
behind it. And so so it's the root of all
evil is money. Not money, it's it's it's the root
of the desire of it. Sex in itself is not evil.
It's the misuse of sex in an ungodly and unproper
way that is evil. And those things are temptations that

(16:45):
are demonically inspired. And Paul goes on to say, you
cannot and I cannot allow these two cups in my life,
and I can't participate and drink of both of them.
A couple of the Holy Spirit and the Lord, and
then a couple of the demons and sin and and
giving into temptation and not escaping and not enduring and
not living. You can't drink of both of the Verse

(17:07):
twenty one. You cannot drink of the cup of the
Lord and cup of demons. You cannot partake of the
table Lord and the table of demons. Paul is in
his context here, it's not just being, you know, getting oppressed.
You know, there's an argument and a lot of Pentecostal
charismatic churches are Christians demon possessed or demon oppressed. And

(17:27):
that's not what Paul is after here. What he's after
here is saying, anything you do when you're not escaping
and when you're not enduring the temptation, the foothold of
Satan is coming from the table of demons. It's a
demonic influence trying to speak into your life. Since I
brought it up oday, I don't believe Christians can be

(17:47):
demon possessed. I believe that can be oppressed. But possession
is ownership. And if Christ lives in you and you
have been blood bought, the blood of Jesus is more
powerful than any influence of Satan. Even though you might
give into sin or Satan, you will not be You
will not be possessed by Satan. You can't be possessed
by something that God already possesses. And so that's my

(18:09):
take on that. That's a little sidebar there, But back
to this one. Even though you're not possessed, and maybe
you're not even oppressed, you certainly are hoodwinked into drinking
a cup that doesn't belong in our body and participating
in things that don't belong in our body. All right,
So in closing, I got three last points here and

(18:31):
it's all from verse twenty two. And everything I said
up to this point is this introducing verse twenty two,
because this is the now I'm talking about the key
to overcoming, the key to enduring, the key to powerful,
the key to drinking the cup of the Lord and
passing on the cup of demons. The key to it
is shall we It says, how we provoke the Lord
to jealousy? Are we stronger than He? And so this

(18:55):
is this is where I think what I'm sharing with
this morning really gets powerful. Is it's it's talking about
the omnipotence again, that attribute of God that we've been
speaking of over the past few months. And Paul just
closes this passage of scripture here the section with a
question that could revolutionize, could rock our world, by saying,

(19:18):
are we stronger than He? In other words, where is
our source of power? In the context of these two tables,
or in the context of the foothold, getting in the door,
or in the context of enduring, in the context of escaping.
It's the question, Paul asks, Okay, who's stronger to do this?
You want this done in your life? Are you stronger

(19:40):
than the Lord? So, just a couple of quick things
about this. When we believe we can, in our own strength,
our own willpower, our own resources, our own energy, be
set free from this which tries to overcome us, overtake us,
then we are saying we are stronger than the Lord.

(20:00):
That the Lord. It's not the Lord who's going to
set us free. It's our own energies, it's our own willpower,
it's our itself. And so that is provoking the Lord
to jealousy. That is God saying you have an idol
in your life. The idol is you. You think you
have strength enough to set yourself free. And how many

(20:20):
times have we promised the Lord we would never commit
that sin again. How many times have we said that
was the last time. How many times have we wapped
over our sin and went right back into it. Well,
it's because we're trying in our own strength, and I
want to encourage you this morning, to lean into the Lord,
to lean into his promises, to lean into his power,
to lean into his provision for you. He has provided

(20:43):
the way He's provided Jesus for you, and that is
stronger than you are. So that's the omnipotence of God.
Is trusting the power of God more than trusting your
own power. Number Two, When we abide lightly in our
own sin, it is provoking the Lord to jealousy. Uh.
You know when we glibally look at our sin and say,

(21:03):
it's not that serious, God's not that. You know, now
that I'm in covenant with God, you know, he he
my sin is taken more lightly. It was taken heavily
when I was in the world, but now it's taken lightly.
I would suggest to you the opposite is true. Because
you are his son and his daughter. He's more He's
more serious, more sober minded about our sin than he

(21:26):
would be if you were. If you're living for the devil,
he is expected. You know, remember what we said to
the Pharisees. You do what your father does because your
father is the devil. So you act like the devil.
It's almost an expectation. But now the expectation is you
live like your father God lives, you live like the son,
like your elder brother Christ lives. And so there's there's
there's almost the sense of of a of a higher

(21:48):
call on believers to be set free. So take it
more seriously. When we don't his commands, we kind of think, well,
his commands aren't fully required, they're just partially required. Well,
well then we're we're provoking him to jealousy. And it's
like we no longer blush. That's a scription says we
no longer blush. A quick illustration of this would be

(22:10):
from probably twenty years ago, maybe even twenty five years ago.
My kids were little. Kelly and I were living in
Denver at the time, and my mother and father came
to visit us, and they wanted to do something sort
of family outing, So we went out to dinner and
then we decided to go see this movie. It was
a PG movie. He probably don't remember it before most
of your time, but it's called King. Ralph. John Goodman

(22:32):
I think, was the star of it, and he played
like a janitor that found out he was next in
line for the throne and he was going to become
the King of England. So weird plot. A funny movie,
pretty funny and PG. But about halfway through it, my
daddy was sitting next to me, got up and walked out,
and I thought, cool, he's gonna go get us some
popcorn or soda, some candy or something. But he never

(22:53):
came back. So about twenty five thirty minutes later, I
went out and check on him, and he was standing
in the lobby and I said, Dad, why you come
in and join us? Do you want watch the last
of the movie. It's really funny, and he goes no,
and he didn't want to say why he had left.
I finally got out of him. He said, well, the
main character there took the lord's name in vain, he
said g D And I said he did, and he goes, yeah,

(23:16):
it goes you know, and it offended me, and I
was just thinking of the contrast between him and me.
I didn't even know it was said. I had become
I had gotten the place where I no longer blush
over hearing certain things said, where I no longer get concerned.
It's just, you know, they just do that in Hollywood.
It's PG. So it's okay that I go to this. Well,

(23:38):
there was a big difference between my sensitivity to the
Holy Spirit and his. And I learned something that day
that it's so easy to abide lightly in sin, to
to not look seriously and soberly at it. And when
we do so, we're provoking the Lord to jealousy. And
we're saying we are stronger than the Lord, that we
can that we can expose ourselves to these compromising things

(24:03):
and at the same time stay strong in the Lord
and overcome temptation. You know that that I could look
at certain things and think that I would not fall
into sin, that I could, I could flirt with sin,
and I'm strong and I you know, I'm saying, I'm
Are we stronger than he? That's what we're saying. And
then lastly, one least one we we when when we

(24:30):
when we fear Satan's power, this is good. I thin
like this. When we when we fear Satan's power over
God's power in our life, we are provoking the Lord
to jealousy. And we in other words, when we're giving
more power telling telling ourselves man Satan's He's got a
such a strong foothold in my life. I don't know

(24:52):
if I'll ever be set free from this, I don't
know if this temptation is ever going to go when
or if I'm going to ever escape it, or if
I'm ever going to be able to do without keep
falling into this singing pattern of habitual sin over and
over and over again. When we live in that kind
of doubt and unbelief, we are actually saying Satan is
stronger than the Lord in my understanding of what the

(25:13):
enemy is after the tactics of the enemy. More than
getting you to the place of saying like I have
a problem with anger, I have a problem with fear.
More than that, what he's really trying to get you
to say is I have a problem with God because
I've been asking him to set me free and he doesn't.
In my work with teen Challenge, I've noticed that time
and time again where students would come in and say,

(25:36):
for years, I've been praying asking God to set me free,
and you see the anger in their face and you
hear it in their voice. I've asked God to set
me free. He's not come through for me. And in
more subtle ways, I think all of us do that
to some degree. We begin to wonder, like, where you know,
why God, Why aren't you working more powerfully? You know,

(25:57):
why do you allow Satan to be so strong in
my life? And so we're saying at this point, maybe
we're saying, are we maybe in the place, is he
Satan stronger than he the Lord? And so we when
we do that. I just wanted to read this. It
is belittling. This is from a man named Charnak, Stephen Charnock.

(26:22):
It is belittling of God's power. When there is in
us a great fear of men. Fear of man is
the credentialing of a mighty man with the disrepute of
the arm of God. It's whether it be the fear
of man or the fear of Satan. What he's saying
is that we when we fear that arm, that mighty
arm of somebody else, what man can do to us,

(26:44):
what Satan can do to us, then we are putting
the power of that person. We're almost putting an omnipotence
in a source that is not omnipotent, provoking God the jealousy.
And so what God is after here is saying, if
we want to overcome, to escape and to adore, we

(27:05):
have to realize there's an idolatry functioning in our heart.
And some of the descriptors of that idolatry is fear
of man, fear of Satan, fear of losing control and
having to trust God rather than ourselves. And so we
can become our own idol. We can even make an
idolatry out of Satan, that he's more powerful than God.

(27:26):
And so really what we're fighting against here is idolatry.
And how we're fighting, the weapons we're fighting with is
to realize that God is stronger than us, that he
is the one going back to going back to verse thirteen,
that is faithful, going back to verse thirteen, that he
is providing. That these are aspects of the omnipotence of God.

(27:52):
It's one thing to have power, but if you don't
use that empower that power, are you really powerful? And
so it's one thing to theologically say God is omnipotent,
But unless we understand that omnipotence is functioning in my
life today, that God is This is not a verb,
but I'm going to use it as one. God is
omnipoting to omnipoting being in me. He is using his

(28:14):
omnipotence in me today. He is functioning in his omnipotence
power in my life today, and he is using that
power to provide for me a way of escape, endure,
demolishing all idols, crushing, bringing down every stronghold, every foothold,
everything that comes against me. And then, and the name
of the Lord, we have we have been given freedom.

(28:36):
Therewith since we've set free, stand therefore in your freedom.
Stand in that freedom. Don't stand in your own strength,
don't stand in fear of Satan, don't stand in the
littlement of sin. The stand in the Lord and his
power to ultimately powerfully fully deliver us from sin and

(28:57):
Satan's devices in our life. Ay Man, let me pray
for us. Father, thank you that you always accompany your
word with an ability to accomplish that which the Word
has presented. In other words, I have known you to
be a God who doesn't just throw out theological doctrinal
information for our minds to be intrigued by. But you

(29:21):
bring forth the intrigue of the word and of doctrine
and theology to change our life, our mind, our heart,
to remove us from idolatry, to remove us from thinking
that we might be as strong as the Lord and
I know none of us would ever say that I'm
as strong as the Lord. But oftentimes our behavior betrays us.
And we trust in ourselves. We trust in our friends.

(29:43):
We trust in the phone call to our friend and
he's going to talk me through this, or she's going
to help me understand this problem. And that's good to
have friends like that. But Lord, what we're talking about
here is ultimately trusting in you, believing in you that
you're the God who provides the way. You are, the
matter of fact, not only providing a way, but you
are the way of escape. And we give thanks for

(30:05):
that in Jesus name, and I pray over all my
brothers and sisters in Christ right now, particularly anybody that
as they're listening to this, it sort of pushes a
button in their heart and their mind. They're thinking about
something that they've been wrestling with, and Lord, maybe that
wrestling has been going on for a long time, and
maybe they're about ready to give up hope, saying, I
just don't know if God is really as faithful as

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he says he is. And we know we heard it
today from your word that God Satan is after not
just getting us to commit sins, but to question the
faithfulness of God, because once we question the faithfulness of God,
the battles lost. So we repent. Lord, we say we
repent duly. One of the actual sin that we give

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into is But even more so, Lord, we repent of
the unbelief about your faithfulness and your power. And we
thank you that all of this comes out of the
other attribute, the goodness of God. You've been good to
us in revealing your power. You could have withhold held
it because we don't deserve it. You could have withheld
your faithfulness because we don't deserve it. But in your goodness,

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you have not only spoken it to us, but you
have put it on us, revealed it in us, made
it a reality in our life. We give thanks for it.
Pray blessing Lord. I ask you to bless my brothers
and sisters in Christ in twenty twenty one, whether they
go out or come in. Let the face the Lord
shine upon them. Let them find great nuggets of gospel truth.

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Let them revel in the glory of God. Let them
be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Let
them find themselves in new levels of the things of God,
that their thirsts are quenched by drinking in that which
is living water, eating of the bread of life. Lord,

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So fill us with those things that we would never
look to the cup of demons on the table of
that which is not that provokes you to anger and jealousy.
Thank you that we have that promise from you, that
you are faithful in Jesus name. Amen,