The Fruits of the Holy Spirit (BIBLESPEAK)

0:00 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Faith and Mission podcast. Great to have you today. We are a podcast that's talking about all kinds of topics about the Christian faith, theology and culture. And we're here today to be able to help equip you in your walk in following Jesus Christ. Today, we're going to be covering episode number two of the Bible Speaks series all about the Holy Spirit. This is where we allow the Bible to speak for itself. You see, scripture has a voice and we need to allow it to tell us what the faith is about. It's all about searching for truth. Today with me, I've got some friends and leaders in our ministry to help unpack the scripture about the Holy Spirit. Now, if you saw part one of the Holy Spirit series, we spoke all about who the Holy Spirit is and what the ministry of the Holy Spirit is. And today, in part two, we're going to be covering more of that, but we're going to specifically be speaking about one of the most important topics concerning the Holy Spirit, and that is called the fruits of the Spirit. We have with me today, who is also in our part one series, we have Steve Paul, who is one of our house church leaders. We've got Pastor Pat, who also leads a house church in the ministry. And we've got our dear friend and brother, Jeff Palamaro. And we're excited because, guys, we're all on a journey, aren't we? We're all trying to understand scripture together.

1:26 And that's why I'm encouraging you to join the conversation and to grab your Bible, grab a notebook, grab a cup of coffee, and let's dig into the scripture together. so that we can really grow in our understanding of the Holy Spirit. Well, the primary text that we're going to be jumping into today, guys, is all about the fruits of the Spirit versus the works of the flesh. So turn with us to Galatians chapter 5, and we're going to begin reading in verse number 16. This is Paul's letter. He's an apostle. He's sent by God to preach the gospel. And he wrote 13 of all the New Testament letters. And Paul the apostle is writing this region called Galatia.

2:10 And these are new believers. He's just establishing them in the faith. And they're just learning what it's like to no longer live without Christ. They're learning who Christ is, and now they're learning about the Holy Spirit. And you know, Paul is really addressing this idea that you are no longer going to live the way you used to live. Now that you've encountered Jesus Christ, there is a new way of living. Maybe you've even heard the idea of being born again and being made new in Christ and these verses that say that old things have passed away, but behold, all things are new. Well, it's not just theory. It actually is supposed to show up in our everyday life, marriage, even our work. So if you're somebody that has been Desiring to experience change in your life. And you may be saying, I am going to church, but I'm not experiencing the change that I like. Well, you're really going to love this conversation. So again, open up to Galatians chapter five, verse 16. I'm going to begin reading that. It says, I say then walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh for the flesh lusts against the spirit. And the spirit. against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. Well, let's kick off our conversation here with the first question. What does Paul

3:41 mean by walk in the spirit? He says, walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. What is this phrase walk in the spirit referred to? I think he's talking about the way that we live, the way that we conduct ourselves day by day, the actions that we take, and that we're not living according to the way the world says that. we should live, not listening to the news and the things that the world is telling us, but we're in the Word of God and understanding by the Holy Spirit that we can live a different way. And if we follow the Word of God and listen to the Holy Spirit, we are walking in the Spirit. That's good. Other thoughts?

4:28 What does walking in the Spirit mean, guys? Well, for me, it's going against what the norm is, what I used to live my life like. So Galatians really does hit home because it literally is walking out new life, you know, behaving in a way that is not what I used to be like, you know, and it's beautiful. Yeah. You know, one of the things I think about walking in the Spirit is that there is behavior change, but it isn't just our strength. It's not like we're trying to force a change in our behavior with our willpower. This is, Pastor Pat, like you said, like we're walking or living in the Spirit. So there's a work of the Spirit that's involved here, not just our human effort. Yeah. Why do we think that's important that it's not just our effort?

5:25 Well, it reminds me of a scripture in the book of Acts where it says that in Him we live and move. and have our being. He was talking to people who were idolaters. I mean, they grew up surrounded by all kinds of idols, all kinds of gods, in whose spirit they might be walking in. Maybe I'll walk in the spirit, the spirit of thunder, the spirit of whatever. And then the truth comes. There's one spirit, this unknown God that you aren't sure about. He is the God of all gods, and in Him we live and we move and we have our being. So it's more than just some God that we worship from afar off. It's not just an idol that we bow down to, but our whole being is meant to be within the Spirit of God. We were created for that. We would create it. And in fact, He even says in that portion that God established everything so that we would seek after Him. There's something deep within us that from the time we're born, it's seeking after God. But we don't know until we hear the gospel. Once we hear the gospel, we know the good news that we can live and move and have our very being in Him. It's good you're making me think about this idea because in episode number one or part one of the series, We spoke about how the Holy Spirit is not just a cloud, not just a concept, but He's God. So do you think it'd be accurate, Steve, that it's saying like

6:55 walk in the Spirit is literally to walk in God. Yeah. Yeah, that's a, you know, a different level than just us walking in our strength. Yeah. Jeff, when you were first, you refer to your old life before you knew. My BC days. Yeah, before Christ, your BC days. When you were doing that, did you try to change in your own stride? Absolutely. I mean, for 38 years. I mean, that's why I identify with that scripture so much about the man with infirmities. But for 38 years, I tried to do things by my own strength. I had false identity throughout my whole life, you know, changing how I dressed, who I hung out with, what I listened to. You know, I practiced witchcraft. I practiced Satanism. I mean, I did Buddhism, astrology, you name it. I tried it all and it never worked out. You know, I was always seeking something like, like, like, like Mr. Steven was saying, you know, you're seeking something, but you just don't know that you're supposed to be seeking God. Yeah. So powerful. When I found God, he found me. You know, it literally put to death that whole false identity. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

8:04 Yeah. I remember for the first 19, 20 years of my life, I kept trying to stop worrying. Like even as a child, I had a lot of worry and anxiety and things. And telling me to stop worrying was telling me to grow taller in front of you, no matter how hard I tried. But when I became a child of God, by God's grace through faith in Jesus, I had peace. I have peace in us. We're going to see it's one of the fruits of the Spirit. That's right. So, you know, it's really important that we understand that living in God, walking in God, walking in the Spirit is something that is not walking in our own limited strength. We are not trying to create these changes. It's the Spirit inside of us. Pastor Pack, could you read from verse 18 to 21 because You know, Paul is going to talk about this idea of the works of the flesh. Why don't you read for us? I'm reading from the New American Standard. But if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions. factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these,

9:34 of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Wow. We talked a little bit about walking in the Spirit. How would we define this idea of works of the flesh? Like I said before, when I was living in that former life, and all those things that we just listed, that's how I was living my life. You know, that's the flesh. Yeah, I know you you were actually going down this list when you were describing your before Christ life. Yeah, yeah. That's my former resume. Yeah. So works of the flesh. Like, how would we define flesh here? Like, is it talking about our natural bodies?

10:17 Or is it talking about something else? Talking about our craving, our desire? Yeah. Well, what we're going after. we're going after, and I see that he's broken it down into three categories here. He talks about moral impurity first, and then he talks about false worship, and a lot of people are looking for a God, you know, like you spoke of before. They're looking for that one, and they get sidetracked into idolatry and witchcraft. And then he talks about personal and social relationships, how we interact with other people and react out of our carnal nature, out of our flesh. And instead of responding to them appropriately, we react. You said something really key. You said carnal, carnal nature. Maybe for those who are listening, we need to just address that. So what would that mean, Steve?

11:19 Well, I thought of it this way. You almost could say that we're all born with the kind of heart disease from our father, Adam. And so when he sinned, he brought down our whole race, really, you could say. And from that moment, there was this incurable heart disease that I had. And in this heart disease, the Bible says that our hearts are deceitfully wicked, that because of the fall, because of sin, there is within me not only this desire to reach out to know God, because I know I need to be in the presence of God, but there is also these desires that we have, that we inherited from Adam. these desires that are played out in these works of the flesh.

12:09 So you have the desires of the spirit, but we have the desires of the flesh and they're worked out in all of these things. This is how you see the nature of the heart disease that we have that can only be cured in Christ. It is curable. Only in Christ. Only in Christ. So, you know, a lot of people think that when we're first born that we're kind of really born with a clean slate. that we're inherently good and inherently pure. But the Bible doesn't teach that. It describes that this heart disease is coming down as almost like, like you said from Adam, like it's a spiritual, like a spiritual gene that's going all the way through. So we're actually born with natures that are bent away from God. I heard Charles Stanley, the late Charles Stanley describe it like that, as I was a new believer. I never forgot how he described it. You know, a nature that's bent away from God. It's not following God. It's not from God. So, in a way, would it be accurate to say that these works of the flesh are the normal behaviors, desires, like you're saying, that belong to the corrupted, fallen nature that's the opposite of God. It's kind of scary, though, when you think about it. These works of the flesh are what people deal with every day. That's right.

13:32 You know, I like the way the NASB reads it. It says the deeds, the deeds of the flesh are evident. And even, you know, like this is our culture, isn't it? Immorality, impurity, sensualities everywhere in the media, social media, movies everywhere. Yes. This idea of anger, jealousy. disputes, contentions. Sort of normal behavior. Accepted behavior. It reminds me of that saying, a fish doesn't know the water it's swimming in.

14:14 And this is just the water I was swimming in until I encountered Christ. It was all just normal to me. This is because I was not living in him, I was living in the lust of the flesh and carrying out the deeds of the flesh. And you didn't know there was another way to live. I didn't know there was another. I thought this was normal for me. See, I think that that's a big point, right? We think we actually are normal by doing these things and normal to have to deal with these things. So marriages are, I mean, just think about what kind of marriage do you have if your spouse has anger and sensuality and adultery?

14:55 and what kind of marriage you're going to have, what kind of workplace you're going to have, if your employees are dishonest and immoral, and there's contentions and office gossip. But we have to ask the flip, what would it look like if we weren't doing these things? And the Bible doesn't describe this as like a choice in the old nature. Nature means that it's just being who it is. Like in Texas, they say you could put a bow tie on a pig. That's right. It's still a pig, right? So many times we try to gloss things, make ourselves look, but inside we're still having these urges, desires for things that are not good. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so thankful that God showed me that there's another way. That way that I was living before was like loving hell. Yeah. And that was... Like you said, it seemed normal. So this is how I live my life.

15:56 God showed me another way. Let's read about it. Let's go to chapter five and Steve, why don't you go ahead and read those remaining verses there. Starting at 22 Galatians 5 22 in the New King James, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. gentleness, self -control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. All right, let's go through this for a minute. Jeff, I'd love for you to kind of talk about your experience here because you went through a difficult time in your life.

16:51 Right. Maybe you could share a little bit about that, how bad it got. Where do I start? I mean, from from my childhood into adulthood, I dealt with, you know, physical and sexual abuse. My dad left when I was 13, so I had no father figure. My mother had to work all the time at the hospital, so I had no supervision, which led me to hang out with the wrong crowd, making bad decision after bad decision, falling into drugs, addiction. um and living that immoral carnal life um and it was it was pain and it was walking the earth feeling lost while trying to find a home trying to find purpose find find identity um which ultimately led me to try to commit suicide you know i i almost succeeded but by the grace of god thank god that um my brother michael was able to answer the call to the dream that he received from the Lord and reached out to me. And he brought me here. He brought me to this family. He brought me to his kingdom. He showed me a different way of living. I don't have to identify what that is. What happened to me throughout my whole life was not who I am. What happened to me was not who I am. Yeah, I think that's so powerful, Jeff.

18:17 And I think a lot of people, you need to hear that, especially you who have maybe been abused, mistreated, gone through things. That's not you. Those are things that happen to you. God has a better way. So, you know, he describes that there's fruits of the spirit. These are different from works. These are not even deeds, right? The first time we spoke about the deeds in the NASB, right? The deeds. The New King James says the works. What's the idea of a fruit? What is the Bible meaning when Paul is saying the fruit of the spirit? I feel like that's the change in your character. uh from shifting from who you used to be to who you are now who you're intended to be yeah you know but putting death the old characteristics and behaviors and mannerisms and your whole mindset your heart changes yeah everything changes it's good it's good what else does what do we mean by fruit of the spirit it's good well fruit is something that develops over time It's not like, okay, fruit. Hey, put the plants in the ground. Oh, there's fruit. No, it's over time. Now, when Jesus took me out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son, there was an immediate thing. And I knew right away that my whole life was different,

19:50 that everything had changed. But that was just the beginning. You know, it's like they say, you know, the The wedding is just the beginning. The marriage is what comes after. So it's not enough to just be free. But there is now a new way to walk. There is a walk. And but the good news is there's power to walk in that, you know, always was addressing people who had who heard this false teaching. Well, you have to do this. That's the law says you have to do that. That's the law says thou shall not do that. You shall do this, this, this. And they were they were into a works. They believe that they could be right with God if they did certain things. And it's actually very true today, but I don't want to digress. The point is, he said to him, we have liberty now, but that liberty is not just to do whatever the heck you please, because as we discussed, there's other things going on, unless it's of the flesh. So now we can walk.

20:47 in the Spirit, and as we walk, what gets developed are these roots. There's a result of this ongoing walking and this nurturing and this continuing on. So when we first receive Jesus Christ, we come to Him, we realize that He's the Son of God, we receive His sacrifice for us on the cross, that happens in a moment that we become saved. But it sounds like you're saying, that's the moment, that's the instant. But now you're working that out. And now the spirit is cultivating. He's developing within us. And then these things come forth from our lives. It's really the work of the spirit. It's the work of the spirit. There is no fruit produced in a positive way without the Spirit of God. He's the one doing it. It's nothing that we can... I can't make it happen.

21:44 I can't make it happen. I have to let him do it in me. That's, I think, one of the most powerful points of this text. It's the fruits of the spirit, not fruits of my effort, not fruits of me trying. So in order to bear fruit, you have to abide. You have to be in the tree. You have to be in the vine. Other thoughts about fruit of the spirit? I agree with that, you know, with any growth that I've had with the Lord these past almost three years has always been when I surrendered. Not when I tried. That's so good. Always when I was like, you know, God, I don't know what I'm doing. Help me. Yeah. You know, it's always been from surrender. Yeah. Jeff, how long have you been walking with the Lord? This October will be three years. Three years. Yeah. So, you know, in some ways, you're three years old in the Lord. There are people in the Lord for 30 years, 40, 50 years. that need to relearn that.

22:40 Yes, right. Yeah, guys, I want to tell you, you know, often when we are brand new in the faith and we've surrendered our life to Jesus Christ, it's the fastest time of growth in many people. But then we begin to what we pull it back. We start to get involved. We forget that we're walking in the spirit. We forget that it's fruits of the spirit. So this Holy Spirit who is God has a ministry to produce. Yes. inside of us, right? Let's go back to the text in verse 22, and let's just look at these things. The first fruit is love. Let's just take the first three the way you broke them up, Pastor Pat. Love, joy, and peace. And this is what everybody's trying to go after in their life. Yes. That's the exact order of how I experienced God when I first came.

23:38 When I first came here, I walked up to you and I said, I never felt so much love in one place in my entire life. I remember. And then I had joy and I had peace. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like this is massive. The world is really, they've got more anxiety now in the world than there's ever been before. Oh my goodness, yes. Even though we have more technology, right? Even though we have more access to more information than we've ever had. The world has less love, less joy, and less peace. Anybody want to kind of share how the fruits of the Spirit impacted or changed your life, your marriage, or anything? I know I've forgiven my family, and I've grown closer with my mother. I've forgiven the people who have harmed me in my past, and I was even able to spend last Christmas Eve with my family. first time in a couple of years that I did that. So, forgiveness and peace. You know, God just restores things that I didn't think were ever going to be able to be restored. Yeah, and the Holy Spirit producing them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How about you guys? Oh, loving, loving, loving the unlovely.

24:45 I had a professor once who used to call them sandpaper people. You know, people that rub you the wrong way. And yeah, just to be able to love them and know that that love was not something I could produce. It didn't come from me, that I had to receive that from the spirit in order to be able to relate to that person, to be able to hear what they're speaking to me. and not get agitated, not get angry, not get annoyed with them or impatient. I knew that there was a spirit doing that inside of me. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I heard it this way one time, to live above with saints in love, wouldn't that be glory?

25:27 But to live below with saints we know, well, that's another story. That's right. I heard that. So for me, the walking out what love means. has definitely been important and critical so that I don't become critical. Like Jeff said, you can sense love. But now we have the opportunity to walk that out. And there's that sandpaper where sometimes, you know, iron sharpens iron. We like to quote that as men. But yeah, there's that working out of what does it really mean? What does it look like to walk out love? And that's very, it's central, of course, it's the first thing. And when you walk in love, then the joy and peace come because you're at peace with everybody. God teaches you how to become love. Yes, right. indicators of Christian maturity is how much love have we received from the Lord?

26:23 How much love are we given? And how do we see our enemies? What does Jesus say? Love for your enemies, right? And joy, right? I mean, one of the biggest earmarks of a strong church is how much joy are in the people, right? This is life in the Spirit. And I testified before about peace. I used to be peaceful when everything was okay for a moment. You don't have a test to take, you don't have a this, you don't have a that. But now peace comes from within, not from outside. And I have to remember this all the time because even as a leader, sometimes people think that, well, if you lead the podcast and you're a pastor maybe... Maybe you're always walking on clouds.

27:13 No, not necessarily. We're getting attacked. The mind's getting attacked. And when I surrender, like you said, Jeff, to the work of the Spirit in my life, many times before He's even giving me answers, He's restoring my soul. He's helping me to think properly and come back to these. When that chaos comes about, I always think about Peter walking on the water. You know, it just makes me, like, when things get a little crazy around me, I'm like, all right, don't focus on that. Focus on God. Focus on God. Focus on Him. He will give you peace. So, let me just read through the other ones real briefly. Long -suffering, which means patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. self -control. Against such there is no law. So, you know, when we're taking all these things together, the thing that really impresses upon me is that these are not just inanimate characteristics. I think we need to put them all together. And I think that when we put them together, we're actually seeing God.

28:36 We're seeing what he's like. His image, yeah, that's the makeup of his character, these very traits here, so that when we see those in one another, we're actually seeing Jesus, we're actually seeing him revealed. And that's our goal, right, to show Jesus to the world who he is, because if they don't see him in us, where will they see him? I mean, I could attest to that. I mean, with just the testimony of what God has done in my life, people from my past that don't even live in this state have been reaching out to me, asking me about Jesus. Yeah, there you go.

29:19 That's it. So they're not seeing the Jeff that they used to know. They're seeing Jesus. It's not me that they're seeing. I was just ministering in another country last week. the driver, one of the guys that was driving us around to all the different places, he said, he's a successful businessman and doing very, very well financially and things. He said, if I only knew how good, because he's a newer believer, how good it is to be with Jesus. He said, I would have become a Christian so many years ago because he's tasting these things. Right. Right. Yeah. You know, when you read this, it's a description of Jesus, like you were saying, Pastor Pat. And when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense, right? Because we inherited certain things from Adam, but that wasn't God's original plan. When God created stuff, He created everything to multiply. He said, be fruitful and multiply everything that He made. So when He made the trees, He made them so that they would multiply. So we get to have the character of Christ so that can multiply on the earth. This is the goal. We're not actually supposed to be witnesses to know a lot of things.

30:43 we're supposed to multiply God's image. And this is a massive teaching that I do about what church should look like, even in our house churches that we have. And for those who don't know, we're doing our best to live out the, not only the teaching of scripture, but actually the practices of scripture. And so our ministry and our churches, we're a church of house churches that meet throughout the week and we gather on Sunday. But in those house churches, when we're actually sharing a meal together, praying for one another, getting involved in each other's lives, not just preaching from a pulpit and people listening. We're able not only to receive these things, but we're able to minister them. Has this impact, I mean, you guys are leading house churches, Jeff, you've been part of them for a while. Do you see the house churches someplace that... we really get to live this out in a special way? Absolutely, yeah. Because, you know, when you're in a house church, it's a family setting, and it's not intimidating.

31:47 You know, you have a few people in a living room together or around a table, and they're opening up to one another, and you can speak into their lives in an easy way and have them share what's going on in their life so that you know... where they're hurting, you know what their needs are in their life, and you can address that. It's just a comfortable, wonderful place to be in the body of Christ. And it changes lives. Yes, it does. Yes. Yeah, I mean, you know, COVID had everybody so isolated. And to be able to come together in a house church, it's just such a... There's there's hard. It's hard to come up with words to how that how how important that is, because then, like you saying, Pastor Pat, we get to interact with with one another, because I'll tell you, I'm not I'm not going to be good mentally all by myself, isolated. I'll tell you, that's for sure. I need other brothers and sisters, not just way out there somewhere, not on Zoom.

32:46 That can be good, too. But but to to be able to share a meal, to be face to face, look eyeball to eyeball, just That's so good for me. I need that. And sometimes a physical hand. Yes, that's right. Looking in your eyes, I say, I love you. Yeah, that's right. Right. Yeah. It's meaningful. We need that. We were made to be relational. And we don't always get a chance to do that on Sunday. Yes. Yeah. I know when I opened up my home, my first year when I got a home. because I came back and fought it with nothing. And God gave me that home. But when I opened it up to the house church and everybody came and we're sharing food and we're laughing together, crying together. And, you know, they got me a little sign that says together we make a family. I still get emotional thinking about it. God gave me a family. Yeah, and you know, family is a place of security, isn't it? Because sometimes somebody burns the roast. Sometimes a brother or sister does something. Listen, we get in the flesh.

33:42 We sometimes get in the flesh, and we need a family to hold us accountable. And here's a core truth that I think we always need to remind ourselves of. Verse 25. I'm sorry, verse 24. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh. with its passions and desires. I think we need to hold each other accountable in a good positive way to go, hey, you know, you're acting BC. You're acting like you did before Christ. In Christ, we're not supposed to be under the works of the flesh. We're supposed to conquer it. And what does the Bible say? We've crucified. the flesh.

34:30 We have to take up our cross every day. So I want to issue a challenge to us and to you who are listening right now. Are we trying to counsel the works of the flesh? Are we trying to educate ourselves out of the work of the flesh? Do we think somehow by studying why we're angry that that's going to be the ultimate answer? You know, I think counseling and shepherding and things are often essential, but I think they're meant to bring us to this verse, that eventually those passions and desires, selfish ambition, lust, anger, all these things that we read, they need to meet the cross. Yeah, they need to die. We need to kill them. We need to bring him to Christ, and Christ is going to say, bring him to the cross. Yeah. Yeah, the entry point to all the blessings of the fruit of the Spirit is through the cross. how to forgive and come back and talk things through and get past that and just respond with love. And you've experienced this in our church family. I mean, we all have where, you know, you can have some conflict with people

36:02 and then you're like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah. I got to say I'm sorry right now because this is not the character of Christ. This is my old man. Right. Right. And so. You know, it's kind of funny because when you're talking to somebody, you know, you often think as a pastor, like, am I talking to the new guy or the old guy? Which one am I talking about? And I think there's also we need to understand the grace of God in this process, right? Because like you said, we don't just immediately, you know, step into maturity in an instant. And God is patient and God is kind and God is good. And so he's he's helping us to mature in him as we're maturing and growing in Christ. we're seeing that we're behaving less and less like we used to. I want to challenge everybody who's listening, and my challenge is for blessing. Have you really met Jesus? Have you really encountered his goodness? Have you deeply sought after him to say, Lord, I'm tired of man -made religion? I'm tired of even being let down by human beings. And yet, Lord, I'm tired of being let down by Christians who say that they're strong. You see, meeting Jesus Christ is to meet the one person who's not a hypocrite.

37:29 You see, he's pure. This is him. Jesus never falls into the flesh. Jesus never has a moment in which he's sinning. He's without sin. He's the securest place of love in all creation and he says come to me He says come to me and I will give you rest And I I think we we don't even just need rest from other people. I think we need even rest from ourselves Yeah Because this teaching says that God is not just delivering us from enemies He's delivering us from ourselves He's delivering us from the effects of all the abuse that we have He's delivering us from the traumas and the hurts and the pains. He's making us new. And He does that ultimately by delivering us from sin. And that's why the way to receive, because you had said that there is a cure. There is a cure. And the cure isn't a thing. The cure is a someone. And His name is Jesus Christ. And He invites you to come to Him. and to place your heart's faith in him. You see, Jesus is the son of God. He's more than a prophet and a teacher.

38:47 He's the only begotten son of the Father. And he actually went to that cross. And when he went to the cross, he was destroying the power of sin. And the old nature is empowered by sin, but Jesus destroyed the power of sin. And he's inviting you. to come to the cross and say, Lord, I lay down my life. Like Jeff was saying, I surrender and I come to you. You could do that right now. If you're hard to, tell them that you believe who he is. Tell them that you want to turn away from sin. You want to turn to him. It's going to be the best decision you ever had. And we want to hear about it. I would love to hear about your decision to receive Jesus Christ. I'd like to invite you to email us at contact at gospelmissionnetwork .org. And you could also go to our website at gospelmissionnetwork .org. You can contact us through there. But let us know what you did.

39:47 Let us encourage you. Let us help you get started in your faith. We love you. God bless you. This has been episode number two of Bible Speak, where we allow the scripture to speak for itself. God bless you. Thank you for listening to the Faith and Mission podcast. If this episode blessed you, please like, subscribe, and share it with somebody who needs encouragement today. Stay connected with me on Facebook at facebook .com forward slash Steve Hannett for the latest updates, announcements, and ongoing encouragements throughout the week. For resources, training, and tools to help you fulfill the Great Commission, please visit us at gospelmissionnetwork .org where you'll also find the Be Healed podcast, our TV program, The Miraculous Life, and my most recent books including Unleashing Heaven's Breath. Until next time, may Jesus Christ lead you, guide you, and establish you in the fullness of His grace and power. God bless you. The Faith in Mission podcast is a production of Gospel Mission Network, an apostolic church network called to fulfill the Greek commission by reaching the lost, planting churches, and raising up leaders around the world.

41:00 If God has used this ministry to bless you, we invite you to partner with us. Your tax -deductible gift helps us continue this work. Simply visit gospelmissionnetwork .org and click the Give button. Every gift makes an eternal difference. Thank you for your prayers and generous support. Together we are advancing the Kingdom of God.