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God Is Always Present...Always!
12 Plays3 years ago
Vernon welcomes us to 2023 with a reminder that God is present with us in every circumstance, from the hard times to the fun times and everything in between. Let's start 2023 right by experiencing His presence NOW.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Walking Free'
00:00:02
Speaker
This is your host, Vernon Terrell, with Grace Ministries International, and it's time for Walking Free. Well, welcome to 2023. At least that's if you're listening to this podcast immediately after its release.
00:00:32
Speaker
Welcome. And I know some may not do this, but I say Happy New Year. Was it? I read an article where I think Phil Robinson said he doesn't say Happy New Year or something like that. But you know what? Happy New Year. And I am grateful for this new year and
00:00:58
Speaker
This
Grace Ministries' Plans for 2023
00:00:58
Speaker
short podcast, I just wanted to come on and just tell you how excited I am for 2023. I know at Grace Ministries, we have got a lot of things planned that we're launching, a few big things that we're launching in 2023 to fulfill our mission, which is helping people walk free. That's what we do. That's what this podcast is about.
00:01:27
Speaker
walking free and it stopped talking about it, start walking it. And why do we say that? Because you know, talk is cheap. Although there are times we need to stop everything and talk because we haven't been talking and we're a counseling ministry, so we're all about talking. But that's not the context that this podcast is addressing.
Living Freedom and Righteousness in Christ
00:01:51
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It's the idea that
00:01:54
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So many of us, and I know in my own life, I knew about identity and I knew the verses and it was a revelation to me, but I really wasn't walking it in some areas I was. But I think this journey of life is learning to walk out our freedom and to walk out the righteousness that we have in Christ. That's just part of the journey. And there are times when we talk a big talk
00:02:23
Speaker
but we're not walking the walk. And I want you to realize that your talk of holiness and your talk of righteousness, it's true, and you can walk it out. And we walk it out in the very presence of God, God in us. And I know there's a book that was written a while back called Practice the Presence of God, and I like that title.
00:02:54
Speaker
I like the idea that we start out 2023 with really practicing the very presence of God. I like what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians when he was writing this letter to those folks in Thessalonica and he said in verse two, we give thanks to God always for all of you.
00:03:23
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making
God's Presence in Daily Life
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mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and your labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the presence of our God and Father. Do you know that everything we do
00:03:44
Speaker
it's in his presence and we don't always see it. We don't experience it because we're distracted, we're focused, sometimes we're hyper focused on the performance of a task or on the thrill of an event and that's all good.
00:04:02
Speaker
I want you to realize that in all of that, in the pain and in the fun and in everything in between, God is ever present. He's present with you right now. And I want you to realize that for 2023, that you're always in his presence, always in his love.
00:04:27
Speaker
He's not judging you. The presence of God is not him checking his list and making sure if you're naughty or nice. That's something different. That's not God. That's not the presence of God. His presence is always encouraging and loving you and stirring you on, letting you know how reconciled you are, letting you know how loved you are. That's what his presence is doing. The Holy Spirit in you is
00:04:56
Speaker
Letting you know his words, the words of Jesus, which says, I'm with you always, I love you, I will never forsake you, I'm always with you, always loving you, always encouraging. Letting
Grace, Humility, and Relationships
00:05:11
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you know there's hope. I'm crying with you, the Lord would say. I'm crying and weeping with you and laughing with you and rejoicing with you, excited with you,
00:05:24
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That's his presence, his ever presence. And Paul was letting them know that, you know, in your work of faith and your labor of love and that steadfastness of hope in the Lord and in his presence. And you know, when we're in the presence of God, the Lord's earthly brother James told us,
00:05:51
Speaker
that we humble ourselves in James 4.10. We humble ourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt us. That's our response to His presence, is one of humility. That's how we're walking out this incredible life that we have in humility. We're in His presence so we can humble ourselves. We don't have to defend ourselves
00:06:21
Speaker
and inflate, artificially inflate ourselves to others. We can be with others in his presence and be humble. That's the best recipe in relationships, if I could use that term. You can never go wrong with grace. If I'm gonna overdo something, I wanna overdo grace. If I'm gonna err on the side of something, I wanna err on the side of grace. I wanna err on the side of humility.
00:06:51
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Do I practice that perfectly? Absolutely not. But as I can be conscious of his presence, then I can choose in his presence to humble myself and allow him to exalt as he desires. And as Jude says in Jude 24, now,
00:07:19
Speaker
to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless with great joy. Our response is to humble ourselves. And we, just as humans, when we're in His presence, want to kneel because we recognize our own human inadequacy and our own limitations in the presence of an omniscient, omnipotent Father.
00:07:51
Speaker
Jude tells us, now to him, that same father, who is able to keep you from stumbling. Stop
Standing Blameless in God's Glory
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on that one for a moment. Do you know that he is able to keep you from stumbling? But when you do, he's there to love you in the stumble. But the father and his omnipotent power through his spirit in us
00:08:19
Speaker
is able to keep us from stumbling because you have the victory because he is your victory. He's your life. He's my life. Let's hold on to that for 2023. That's how we can walk out this face. This faith is to realize that as I humble myself and realize that it's his life in me,
00:08:47
Speaker
His power in me, his victory in me that is able to keep me from stumbling and to make us stand, Jude 24 goes on, to make us stand in the presence of his glory blameless. Often we don't want to stand because we see so much of our inadequacy
00:09:16
Speaker
we see our past failures, and to read what Jude says that we can stand in the presence, and he's the one who's able to make us stand in the presence of his glory. You know, Moses said that he couldn't look on the face of God or he would die, and now because of
00:09:46
Speaker
what Christ did in his life in us, in union with our new creation, we can stand in the very presence of his glory blameless, with great joy, not fear or trepidation, but we can stand in the presence of his glory, his full glory,
00:10:15
Speaker
with joy because we've been made brand new and we are united with him. Isn't that incredible that he's the one that will keep us from stumbling? He's the one that can lift us up by the hand as we're humbling ourselves and make us stand in his presence.
00:10:44
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We
Joy and Victory in God's Presence
00:10:45
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don't feel blameless, do we? We don't feel like standing in his presence. Sometimes we don't feel like even acknowledging his presence.
00:11:02
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And he says, you know what, all of that has been, all that sin has been taken care of as far as the east is from the west. You are brand spanking new and your blame is staying with me. And experience my glory. It's always his glory.
00:11:27
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We just get to stand in that presence blameless with great joy. What a way to start 2023 knowing, knowing that his victory is enough, knowing he's made me blameless, knowing that my response is one of humility,
00:11:57
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humility in my relationships, humility with my Heavenly Father, but knowing that He's the one who makes us stand blameless with great joy. I want you to take a moment in your walk to stop, stop talking even, be quiet for a moment.
00:12:28
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And if you need to, close your eyes, but recognize the Father who is in you in the presence of His Spirit, loving you, embracing you, letting you know it's gonna be okay, letting you know that it's finished. There's nothing left for you to do.
00:12:54
Speaker
You can rest, you can experience his joy. You are in his presence right now. Your spirit is joined with him. One day, your full senses will experience his presence. And that's gonna be in that new glorified body of yours. That's gonna be raised up.
00:13:24
Speaker
Right now, you're in his presence. We're distracted often, but I want you to just rest for a moment and understand the truth.
00:13:37
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that you are in the presence of God, as Paul wrote to those in Thessalonica, that you know that as he was praying for them and remembering their work of faith and labor of love and the steadfastness of hope that they had and that they have in their Lord,
00:14:04
Speaker
and all of this in the presence of our God and Father, knowing, brethren beloved, His choice of you. He
Expressing Christ's Life and Love
00:14:16
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chose you. Yes, it's a mystery. You received Christ.
00:14:27
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And He chose you in Christ to be holy. He chose you personally in Christ to be righteous. He chose you to express the very life of Christ wherever you are, in whatever relationship you're in. Express the very love and life and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:14:59
Speaker
How do you do that? In humility, that's our response. We humble ourselves. I'm going to be taken advantage of. You know, humility is not being a doormat. Humility is standing strong and firm in the grace and faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Humility is not defending yourself when you have the right to defend.
00:15:29
Speaker
It's not lifting yourself up, it's letting Christ and others lift you up. It's walking confidently and securely, doing what you know is right in an attitude of humility, in an attitude of not my will, yours be done. That's what our response is.
00:15:59
Speaker
So I wanna encourage you on this short first podcast of the year that God is with you, always with you. He's never left, nor will He ever leave. Whether in your mess, whether in your excitement and energy and fun, in all points in between, He's with you.
00:16:28
Speaker
Always loving you. I want you to know that. I want you to experience it. Sometimes we need to stop and just say, thank you, Father, for your presence. Help me to see it. Help me to experience it. Help me to know it as I go throughout my day. And then you won't be talking about it. You'll be walking it.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:16:56
Speaker
You've been listening to Walking Free, a production of Grace Ministries International in Marietta, Georgia. For more information, go to our website at gmint.org. That's gminc.org.