Audio file
Spirit, Stones, and Sight.m4a
Transcript
00:01:45 Speaker 1
Blessed morning to you here at the Fellowship of Joy.
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I'm calling this message today.
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Hard Rock vision.
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I'm not really sure why coming to a title is tough.
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Sometimes some of the scriptures that are.
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Involved today have to do with Rock first.
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Peter 3 is describing Jesus as the rock and then we have.
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The Psalm 31 that talks about him being God, being our our strength, our our fortress, the one who protects us and then John 14 centers around that wonderful passage where Jesus said I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare.
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Place for you.
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I'll come again.
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And receive my you unto myself that where I am you may be also.
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But I've chosen the passage from acts Chapter 7 as our focal passage for this morning, and that's where I'm going to spend the time focusing.
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And the rock part is Steven getting stoned?
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And the vision part is where I'm going to speak for a moment.
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Join me in praying.
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Our father, which art in heaven.
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Hallowed be thy name.
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Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day Our Daily Bread.
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And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
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Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
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For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
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Stephen was a member of the early church in Jerusalem.
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He had shown himself to have certain qualities that were prescribed when it came time to choose seven.
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Men to take care of the widows, to administer a program which was really a ministry of the Church to feed those who were a part of the church who were not able to take care of their own needs to.
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Really be their family.
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It soon became apparent that Steven also had some amazing gifts for communication, and he became a popular street preacher.
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And people came to hear him.
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He attracted such notice that the Sanhedrin dragged him before their court to answer for himself.
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And in X7, Luke Records a sermon.
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Where he takes the scholars and the leaders and the teachers on a trip through the Hebrew scriptures to show them.
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The emergence of the gospel.
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And they were enraged by him.
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And they dragged him out of the city.
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And they then began to pick up stones to throw at him.
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The stoning was a form of execution.
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And certainly it worked.
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They executed him.
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We take up this morning's readings after.
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Stephen's powerful sermon.
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So you see the you see the, you know the rock the and the and the stones.
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And now I want to share with you a little bit of vision.
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Because if you have one quality that Steven had in that moment.
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It changes your vision.
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I get vision tests.
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I have 3 ophthalmologists.
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2 of them are kind of active ophthalmologists in my life and then the third kind of in the in the background waiting in the wings.
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And then I have a ophthalmologist friend that I help with his business.
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So I'm surrounded by ophthalmologist.
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I understand about vision.
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Tests I get a lot of vision tests, but here's a case where Steven really passed the vision test.
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He's got 2020 in this instant.
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It says when the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and nashed their teeth at him.
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Which kind of shows you got.
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But Steven and don't miss these words.
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Full of the Holy Spirit.
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I I thought I would do a little Greek study on that and try to find something about that that was deeper than I thought it was and it's pretty deep enough in itself.
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The fullness just really means you're at that level of completeness.
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They the cup is full silver flowing.
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Well, when Stephen full of the Holy Spirit, looked up into.
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He looked up to heaven and he saw.
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The glory of God.
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This is no small thing.
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He saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
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Look, he said.
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I see heaven open.
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And the son of man standing at the right hand of God.
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Well, he does use the term son of man there.
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That's a messianic term.
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Even when it was applied to mere mortals like.
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So it's a messianic term.
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And but he's seeing Jesus in that role and at the right hand of God, which shows his special relationship to the father and.
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Furthermore, Jesus is standing.
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He's not seated at this point.
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He's actively waiting for Steven to come.
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I know in the past when I preached this, I've made more of that his standing and there may be more to it, but that's not the focus today.
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At this they covered their ears.
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No, that's just to say we don't want to.
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Hear any more?
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Of this, you know we're not going to hear.
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We're not going to hear it either.
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They, even though they could hear it.
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And yelling at the top of their voices, they rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.
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Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man.
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Named Saul.
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While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed.
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Lord Jesus received my spirit, then he fell on his knees and cried out.
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Lord, do not hold this sin against them.
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When he had said that.
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He fell asleep.
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He died.
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That was it.
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Which was an act of grace in itself, wasn't it?
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Was complete in the spirit the spirit was possessing.
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In that moment.
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And I assume that that description goes back to the moment he began to speak, and he mustered the courage.
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To bear witness.
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To why he was preaching Jesus on the streets every day.
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And he spoke this to a hostile crowd.
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Who knew all of this?
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Who gave this report to Doctor Luke?
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Luke was the physician and disciple.
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Who became the traveling companion?
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Of the apostle Paul.
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Who went with him?
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His journey.
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To proclaim the gospel.
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Luke was with Paul in the.
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Closing days of the book of Acts and Luke.
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Is the man who did all the interviews to.
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Write the Gospel of Luke and to write.
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The book of acts.
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I don't know how many sources Luke had for this event.
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But he had won.
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Who was there?
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And that one was a young man.
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Who was?
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And assign the task of watching the codes.
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But I imagine he had been in the court room hearing.
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Stephen's message.
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So much so that he remembered it.
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And was able to report it.
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Initially, this may have been part of.
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For continuing the persecution of the church, remember this is in the early days.
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And his conversion will come somewhat later.
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But he's.
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Never gonna forget this moment.
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And he's never going to forget.
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Stephens witness.
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And I wonder if when it came to the time when Saul himself.
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Was executed for the proclamation of the Gospel.
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I wonder if he had a flashback to this moment when he watched the coats.
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And he watched Stephen full of the spirit.
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With the kind of vision that can only come.
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From a spiritual awakening.
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What happened to Stephen being full of the spirit?
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What happened to his vision?
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What can happen in our vision?
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When we are filled with the spirit of God.
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Well, I think the first thing that you see evident is that.
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Stephen was able.
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To catch a view.
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Of history as a whole.
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Steven saw history as a whole.
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Salvation history.
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There's a technical word for that in German.
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But who cares?
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That has to do with salvation history, the the theme of God saving power and grace throughout history, and Stephen recounts it in terms of the history.
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Of the people that he was speaking to the Jewish people, the context he was living in his own personal context, his own religious faith.
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His own deep commitments to the Torah.
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To the law and the prophets.
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And so he goes step by step through some major themes.
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Of the Hebrew scriptures.
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And he recounts how.
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Humanity and God.
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Were in something of a tug of war.
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But how God always comes out on top and how in Christ?
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Christ Jesus.
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This all comes to a fulfillment.
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And spiritual vision is something that enables us to look at history, our history, God's history, a nation's history, a A group's history, a religious history, any kind of history, specifically the history of all of mankind as a.
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As a piece as a whole.
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As a continuity continuity.
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Of this theme.
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Of God calling humanity to.
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The rightful place.
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In relation to him.
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And so.
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I wonder if maybe each of us could use a little bit of that in our lives as we look back on our own history, our personal history.
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Our own journey.
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Would it not be, you know, Mama Judd in the Grapes of Wrath?
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Said that, you know, women see, she said.
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Women see life is kind of a flow.
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Men live with jerks, he said.
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There's a jerk here.
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There's a jerk there, he said.
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You know, you do that, you grow up, there's a jerk, you, you get married, there's a jerk.
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I think she was onto something there.
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Of course, through the eyes of the author.
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Is not just a series of jerks.
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A jerk in this direction?
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A jerk in that direction?
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There's a flow.
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And so it is with our lives.
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God's doing something in our lives that is one big tapestry.
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And the Holy Spirit.
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In communion with our spirits so that we are in those moments where we're full of the spirit, we we have a an awakening.
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We have an eye opening experience.
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We look and see.
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Ohh, this is what God's been doing.
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May you have such grace today.
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To experience that.
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In your lives.
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That's the vision of the past.
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Which is a part of a whole.
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The second area where Stephen had 2020 vision in this matter is he was able to see beyond the moment.
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He was able to see beyond the moment.
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And he had the ultimate seeing beyond the moment because he was his vision was transported all the way to heaven.
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He saw the father on his throne.
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He saw Jesus standing to greet him.
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It all made sense and it gave him courage.
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And strength and witness.
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To what was happening.
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People ever ask you what's going on in your life?
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How you doing?
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Oh, we get these little cliches, don't we?
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Oh, too blessed to be stressed.
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Well, I've been blessed and stressed at.
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The same time.
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Thankfully, the blessing is stronger than the stressing.
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Well, God is good, you know all the time we say.
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And that's a little glimpse of what Steven got.
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But he got it.
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In a big way.
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Did the rocks hurt?
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That they hurt.
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Everyone was a fresh insult.
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Everyone was a fresh blow.
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Everyone was designed to knock him off balance until the final blow.
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That would take him out.
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Stephen in that moment.
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Of constant, unrelenting distractions.
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Was able to see beyond the moment.
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He was able to focus.
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On that vision of heaven.
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And that became more real to him.
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Then what was going on?
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In his physical proximity.
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What's most real?
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To us today.
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How we're going to live, how we're going to respond.
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How we're going to survive, maybe how we're going to keep going, how we're going to keep bearing witness.
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For the days that we have.
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But it's determined by.
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Level of which we are responding.
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To God's spirit within our lives.
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Full of the spirit.
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Affected his vision.
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And that he was able to see beyond the moment.
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Sometimes that's what it takes to get through the stuff that's going on in our lives.
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The the stuff that's happening to us, the rocks that are hitting us.
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With unrelenting passion.
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And to move on to the next level.
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Whatever that may be.
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Steve encourage gives us courage.
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Because it gives us perspective.
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The third.
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Vision test.
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Is that?
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He was able to see beyond his pain.
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I know that is a.
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Continuation of the last thought.
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But I want to dwell on it a little bit more here.
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He was able to see beyond his pain in this way.
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These are the sources of anger.
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Anger is a secondary kind of emotion in our life.
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It's it's seldom primary.
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It comes as a result of these other qualities, pain and suffering and.
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Fear in the sense that it's not just and it it shouldn't be happening to us and it throws us into him to give you their logical and psychological term.
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A tizzy.
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And in that tizzy.
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We're off balance and we grab for something that helps us respond.
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And so we decide.
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We'll put on the lenses of anger.
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And we'll anger will give us enough energy to to face our fears and to face our pain and to face our suffering.
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To face our doubt.
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And it comes out and it looks like we're just angry people.
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Angry people are not likely to do a lot of forgiving, are they?
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Angry people are not going to be predisposed to absorbing pain.
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And putting it into perspective.
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Where's the anger?
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In Stephen.
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The suffering is present.
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The pain is present.
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The spirit didn't give him the power we're told to not feel the pain.
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Where's the anger?
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Where is the God's going to get you for this?
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Just see you guys just wait.
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Where's that?
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Where is the desire to see his tormentors suffer?
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Where is it?
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We've all felt it.
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We've all expressed it.
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Where is it in Steven?
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Wouldn't that have been Stevens human reaction?
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Fight back.
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Even with words.
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Even with thoughts.
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They were attacking him.
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It wasn't stopping, they were angry.
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But Stephen had not stopped being filled with the spirit.
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You're still being empowered.
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And moved.
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By the spiritual reality that was a greater reality in his life.
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Remember, he'd seen Jesus.
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He'd seen the father, he'd seen heaven.
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He'd seen the glory of God.
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And it caused everything else to kind.
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Of be diminished.
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To fade into to.
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Become a part of the background.
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Of his life.
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A real background, but a.
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A reality, but not an ultimate reality.
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His response?
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Maybe he saw the nail scarred hands of Jesus.
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Maybe he remembered what Jesus said from the cross.
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Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, because his words were very similar.
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When he said Lord.
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Receive my spirit.
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But he also said.
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Do not hold this sin against them.
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Some of you, my friends, might be saying.
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You know what?
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That wasn't technically correct.
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He didn't really have the power to invoke that.
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I don't know.
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Jesus said if you forgive the sins.
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They're forgiven.
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Sometimes our.
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Our very practical theology that comes, you know, from Jesus.
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Is it seems to conflict with our systematic theology that comes from all our biblical scholarship.
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Who cares?
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We're not trying to figure that out.
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This is Stevens attitude.
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They don't know what they're doing.
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Lord, don't hold.
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He didn't even say that, did he?
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Jesus said that Steven just says don't hold it against them.
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Don't put it on their record.
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Leave this one off their record.
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Don't hold us against them.
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How could they?
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Hear that?
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And not forget?
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Well, one person heard it.
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Saul, who we know is Paul heard it.
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Because presumably he told Luke.
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And Luke included it in his account.
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Maybe Saul was able to put that out of his mind during the subsequent days of.
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Persecuting the church.
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Very likely.
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Was able to.
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Leave that aside, as he was still breathing threats we find in.
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The next chapter?
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He was still looking for Christians to persecute.
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But there are voices that come to reside in the recesses of our minds.
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That in the right moments pop up.
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This was Stevens vision.
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He was able to see beyond his pain.
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He was able to see the big picture.
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He was able to see what he didn't completely understand.
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He probably had no idea of that young man that was standing there watching the coats.
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Standing around.
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Watching your life.
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And getting a subliminal message and getting a hearing, words that are going to be stored up for a another time and receiving impressions that are going to be stored up.
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For another time.
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Maybe our focus is on our own pain, but.
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Maybe something else is going on in the?
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Background. Maybe someone is watching?
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How you deal?
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With your.
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Full of the spirit.
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A vision.
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And a perspective.
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Is going to change the history of the world.
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Would anybody argue?
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Against this assertion.
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That what happened to Saul of Tarsus?
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On the road to Damascus.
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When Jesus appeared to him.
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With a question.
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Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
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Who are you?
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I am Jesus.
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It's me that you're persecuting.
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And from blindness.
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He went to vision.
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And he.
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Saw everything in his own past in a new way.
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And like Stephen, full of the spirit, he was able to see history as a whole.
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He was able to see beyond the moment he was able to see beyond his own pain because we're told that Paul suffered something.
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His share of persecution and he.
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Was able to put all of that vision into.
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His preaching and his teaching.
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And his missionary endeavors and Saul of Tarsus.
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Who from birth was also named Paulus, his Greek name.
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And his name as a Roman citizen.
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And he was able to leverage that citizenship.
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And the fullness of the spirit.
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Change the world.
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And in part because of what Steven saw.
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And communicated that day.
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Your need for revenge.
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Your need to be justified.
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It's a natural human.
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Reaction but it it is a far less importance than the big picture.
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Of what God is doing in the moment.
00:29:25 Speaker 1
That's beyond us all.
00:29:28 Speaker 1
May we experience in those times of trial.
00:29:33 Speaker 1
The same fullness of the spirit as Steven did, and may we receive the gift.
00:29:40 Speaker 1
A vision.
00:29:42 Speaker 1
That Steven received.
00:29:46 Speaker 1
The Lord bless you and keep you.
00:29:50 Speaker 1
The Lord make his face to shine upon you.
00:29:53 Speaker 1
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and be gracious unto you and give you peace through Jesus Christ our Lord.
00:30:07 Speaker 2
Amen. Amen. Amen.