Blessing Your Prodigal, episode 81

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey right here at When You Love a Prodigal,

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and also help and hope for your own life journey.

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Welcome back!

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How have you done at setting aside your idols and putting the Lord where he belongs on the throne of your life?

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Today, be sure as you listen to jot down what you want to do in response to what we're talking about.

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Let me tell you a story.

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As our son continued to live with us during his roller coaster early 20s,

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sometimes making good choices, more often not, we set some clear boundaries,

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summarizing he needed to respect us and our home and our values and be a contributing member of the family.

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After several months of not abiding by these boundaries, his father said,

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Josh, you need to find a job and a place to live.

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So he ended up moving in with a friend, and he slept on their couch, I don't know, for at least six months.

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He found occasional work, but his friend grew tired of feeding him.

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So occasionally when I was grocery shopping, I chose to bless him with some food that I knew he would like for the next week.

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He didn't deserve it or earn it, but I chose to bless him, and he was grateful.

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Our God loves to bless his children, just like his children, you and me, as well as our prodigals.

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You will find blessings throughout Scripture that talk about the way he loves to bless.

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And this one is called the priestly blessing, and it's one of the most known.

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So let me just remind us of this blessing.

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Scripture says, God said, he'd said this to Moses, may the Lord bless you and protect you.

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May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you.

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May the Lord show you his favor and give you peace.

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So it's no surprise that our God also wants us to be channels of his blessing to others.

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And for us to choose to bless the people in our lives, whether it's our family or friends or neighbors or even enemies,

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somebody who might be against us, and of course, our loved wanderers.

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We are God's image to the world that desperately needs him.

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We reflect what he is like, and God has sent us out to reveal himself.

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And in one of those ways is to be a blessing and to bless people.

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Scripture is filled with promises and admonitions of blessing.

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Here are just a few of the many, many evidences of God's blessing and desire to bless.

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This one is from Isaiah 44.

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I will pour out water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.

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I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants.

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That's pretty straightforward.

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In Ephesians 1, praise be to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

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who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

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If we know him, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing that's available already.

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In Romans, Paul tells us, bless those who persecute you.

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Who persecutes us the most? Probably not intentionally maybe, but our prodigals.

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He says, Paul goes on and says, bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse.

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And then in 2 Corinthians, he says, and God is able to bless you abundantly

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so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

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I think he covers it all in that verse.

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Blessing is ours.

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What is a blessing? I mean, seriously, what does that mean?

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In the South, we know it's almost a sarcasm.

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Bless your heart, honey.

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And if someone sneezes, well, we will say, God bless you.

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But to bless is to do good to or express good wishes or offer prayer to God for someone's welfare and benefit.

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What a wonderful thing to ask for good to happen in another's life.

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That's what a blessing is, is to wish on them through the Lord who can bless good in their lives.

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One of the best ways to see how to bless someone or many someones is to recall what has blessed you.

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If what someone did for you or didn't do to you or said to you blessed you,

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can you see how doing or saying the same kinds of things could bless others, especially your prodigal?

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We often bless others when we meet a need or do a favor or sit and listen.

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I remember one day when I was really angry at my prodigal.

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I thought, all right, I am going to bless him.

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And I chose to do that by going and getting all his laundry in his room and taking it to the machine.

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And as I dropped each piece of clothing into the machine, one by one, I said, I bless you, Josh.

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If you've listened a long time, you've probably heard me tell that story because it was a very significant one for him as well as for me.

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To be able to do a tangible blessing to him and he appreciated it.

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Those are beautiful blessings that we can do in action.

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And there are ways we can bless our loved ones, our prodigals, by the things we do for them that aren't called for, that they didn't even think to ask.

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We can act a blessing out.

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But we can also do it with our lips, with our words.

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We can speak a blessing.

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We can pray a blessing.

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Or if you don't want to say it aloud, you can write it out for them.

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But that is a really helpful way to be specific in a way to bless them.

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But it's still how do you do it?

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How do you come up with the words to bless them?

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Well, because Scripture is full of blessings and promises, God's given us all we need to really speak blessing to our loved ones.

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So let me help a little here.

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15 years in a prodigal wilderness taught me a lot about giving and speaking blessings to our wanderer.

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The Word of God gives me so many ways to do it.

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When I read Scripture, sometimes the words just jump out at me and say, that is just what our son needs.

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Or maybe someone else, maybe another family member or a friend going through a hard time.

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Or perhaps I think someone has a need like for patience or hope or wisdom or forgiveness.

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And I look in Scripture for what I can pray for that person.

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And I often turn that Scripture into a blessing.

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How does that work?

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Well, let me share with you some examples of how I have activated God's Word into simple blessings.

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And then you're going to get to do it.

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So say that your prodigal has resisted Christ's invitation over and over.

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You could bless them from Ephesians 1, 18, which says,

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I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called.

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And so you might take that thought and you might bless them with these words.

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May the eyes of your heart be enlightened to truly know him, to truly know Jesus, to the Father, however you would like.

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But take the promise of that Scripture and turn it into a blessing.

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The word may is the beginning of anything you want that you want to turn into a blessing.

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Or when it appears that all hope is gone for your loved one, you've really given up because they seem to have given up.

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This Scripture from Jeremiah 24 is one of my very favorites of all.

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It would bless you as well as your prodigal.

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Jeremiah says that God says, I will watch over and care for them and I will bring them back here again.

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He's talking about the children of Israel who have been in captivity for 70 years, but he's talking to us too.

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I will build them up and not tear them down.

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Sometimes I think we do more tearing them down than building them up, but that's not what God says.

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Then he says, I will plant them and not uproot them.

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I will give them hearts that recognize me as the Lord.

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They will be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me wholeheartedly.

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Now, as you listen to me read that verse, I hope your heart just was, wow, what an incredible word from God.

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It's so powerful. I'm going to read it again and then I'll just read the short blessing that I wrote from that.

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Remember, he says, I will watch over and care for them and I will bring them back again.

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I will build them up and not tear them down.

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I will plant them and not uproot them.

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I will give them hearts that recognize me as the Lord.

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They will be my people and I will be their God, for they will return to me wholeheartedly.

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So the little blessing I wrote, may you be built up, not torn down, planted, not uprooted.

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May you return to God with all your heart.

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Isn't that a beautiful blessing?

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So here's another.

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Perhaps a loved one or friend has had some hard days or your prodigal has.

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You read this in Jeremiah 32-40.

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And I love this too.

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I will make an everlasting covenant with them.

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I will never stop doing good for them.

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I love it.

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You could write or speak or pray a blessing over your loved one.

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May you know that it gives God joy to always do good to you.

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Here's one.

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So if someone that you care about has experienced something painful, even traumatic, a great loss in their life,

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you might claim Joel 225 for them.

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I will repay you for the years that the locusts have eaten.

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So your loved one, by their own choice even, has really suffered a lot of loss.

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And you're going to say, we're not going to lose those years.

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And here's a simple blessing.

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May all the days and years of your life stolen by the evil one be restored.

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What a powerful blessing.

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And for that person who feels like a failure with no real future, consider 1 Corinthians 2-9.

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What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him.

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And so you might bless them with these words.

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May God open your eyes and ears to see and hear what God has prepared for you.

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One of my favorites is in Hosea 11-4.

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He says, I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.

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To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.

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I love the picture of God's loving care.

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And a blessing might read like this.

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May you feel cords of loving kindness as the Father bends down to feed you.

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That might be really powerful for a hungry prodigal.

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Here's one more, and then I'm going to kind of turn it to you.

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If your prodigal is trying to make better choices, this could be an encouraging verse.

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In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

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So I might say this to them.

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May the light of your life shine brightly into the darkness around you.

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Let me give you a thought on that.

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Our son, since he has turned around and come back to us and to the Lord and making good choices in his life,

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he's always wanted his life to count, but he doesn't see how he could be very useful.

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And so he takes great joy in this podcast and in my book and the other ways that I seek to encourage people who have a prodigal.

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And so for him, he loves that his light is shining through the stories I tell about him.

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And that could be true for your prodigal as well.

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Now, you can always just look at scripture and pray that verse for your loved one.

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But I love turning those words into blessings.

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And so I encourage you to make blessing people one of your beautiful reflections of the image of God in you.

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So that when people look at you and hear what you say and the way you treat people, they're going to say,

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that reminds me of God because you bless through your words and through your life.

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Speaking, writing or praying blessings over your wanderer will bless you and them.

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So I hope you noted some of the ways that you can apply this.

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In today's show notes, I have added some links that will help you even more.

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So go there and click on and I have a whole booklet of ways to do that.

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So make sure you don't miss out on those resources.

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So what about you?

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Who can you bless today?

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And perhaps you want to take one of the scriptures I mentioned or something you've been reading in the scripture

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and see how God could use that to bless you, but then for you to bless others as well.

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And you can bless me and many others by telling your friends about this podcast,

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by subscribing to it or rating it or even writing a review.

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I would be very grateful and blessed.

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God bless you.