Confidence

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Because once I realize that I belong to you and you belong to me and we belong to each other, then that becomes the operating set of coordinates.
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So as I seek God, you know, I fall down into this newer knowledge about myself.
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The best thing you can do for your own self-worth is seek the mind of God.
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And the best thing you can do with your struggles with people that are difficult to love is to seek the mind of God and to let that so thoroughly infect you that it begins to shift you.
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Good morning, Bishop.
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Good morning.
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This week's devotion, you named confidence based off of Philippians chapter 3, verses 4B through 14.
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Want to take it away?
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Yeah.
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Confidence.
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St.
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Paul's letters accomplish three things.
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They reveal the character of God.
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They invite the reader on a journey and they paint a picture of a transformed life.
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He's no great writer, Paul, as writers go, but he writes what he knows.
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He knows he's found something that surpasses the confidence he had in lineage and learning.
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The origin, nature, and quality of his confidence now has shifted.
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Before his confidence came by seeking to earn status with God.
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Now his confidence is in seeking the knowledge of the status of God.
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Previously, he was his own glory.
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Now we might find him humming the old hymn to God be the glory.
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Amen.
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All right, I love that.
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So confidence, you see, confidence, Paul's confidence shifted.
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Yeah.
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What was that shift?
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Why, how, all the things?
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Yeah, you know, what I love about Paul is Paul, you could say that Paul says, uh, you know, I have a story and I'm sticking to it all through the New Testament.
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And that that story is that um I thought I was right and found out I was wrong.
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I thought I had the full measure of it and and realized I don't have the full measure of it.
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I realize I thought that I could earn the thing through learning and lineage and realize now that it's all gift, 100% gift.
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Um, and so I I think those are the shifts uh that really um uh Paul stays tethered to, no matter which community that he's talking to, uh, that we we can't make it ourselves, uh, that we have an unbelievable and infinite resource in the risen Christ, and uh and it'll knock you down and then lift you up.
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That's Paul's story, this thing.
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I love that.
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You know, when I think about confidence, the shiftedness, the shift in confidence being externally validation, you know, like knowing all the things, um, you know, affirming kind of like all that old testament lineage stuff, but then he had a really a real experience of the divine within Christ that completely changed him.
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I guess I'm curious about how one leans in to that real lived experience because Paul had an experience of Jesus that I think reminded Paul of Paul's the divinity from within through which he had a true relationship, like was able to experience God in a way that all that external stuff just couldn't affirm.
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Any thoughts on that?
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Well, I mean yeah, I think you're just you're just sort of going deeper on the point.
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I think Paul came to the clarity of that he didn't have he didn't have to earn anything when it came to God.
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And that everything that we do is in response to the goodness already extended to us.
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I mean, in in a in another place, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
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I mean, that's that's quite a thing to get your head around because it's much easier to realize that uh or to to dream up a universe uh where it's uh quid pro quo or tit for tat.
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Um, well, you know, if I do this and I do that and I do the other thing, then I'll achieve holiness or or or zen or nirvana and all those sorts of things.
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And it's really an interesting dance, isn't it?
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Because there are practices that we need to take up.
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There are things we need to say no to, there are things we need to say yes to.
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Absolutely.
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And um, you know, what sort of predates all of that, anything that we can do, uh, is this gift extended to us, the gift of life, the gift extended to us of intellect and reason and memory and skill, um, you know, the gift of capacity that we've been given.
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Uh, all of that, when you run to the end of that, there's still this other piece that we didn't author, that we didn't create that that uh that is there and undergirds the whole enterprise.
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So Paul runs headlong into that.
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And then he wants to keep that out in front of the community because he knows our propensity through his own biography, which is to rely, over depend on lineage, right?
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Uh and uh and learning.
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Those things are great things, those things are great inheritances, that's all good.
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And yet, if the goal is seeking God, right?
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Seeking Christ, we have to start with oh, we have this God who's provided a means that we might know God.
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And we didn't do anything to generate that.
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We're not the author of that.
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God laid down the breadcrumbs, God constructed a universe in a particular way.
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God decided to be available to people like us with frail minds and you know oversized egos.
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Yeah, you know, it it's almost ironic because isn't it interesting where we see, like, oh, so-and-so's on fire for God.
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Yeah.
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Which is all about kind of like not the show, because I know it's completely authentic, right?
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But if we didn't do it, if we don't have to do anything to earn anything other than build a relationship that God I think longs for, it it's it's just interesting when when all of that external validation is almost confirmed or affirmed with the way people show up in the world.
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I don't know what to do about that.
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What what would it be like if we started off by saying, Wow, God is on fire for us?
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Ha! I mean, that that's that's and then everything uh everything else is downstream of that.
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All all the other fire that that we showcase that we feel and showcase in the world is in response to to coming uh to some part of the knowledge that uh that God is for us, dramatically so, and that uh God has constructed not only the universe but God's own self so as to be available and knowable.
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Uh, so this is why that that first point that I made is that the the letters reveal first the character of God, then they invite us on a journey.
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There you go.
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Yeah.
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What kind of journey?
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Well, you know, the journey I think is to get to know more about the God.
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So the flip for for Paul, it seems, is uh seeking righteousness, right?
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That we can somehow construct to seeking God.
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And that in seeking God, as I draw nearer to God, uh things start to turn out right for me.
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Uh, and and I don't mean uh that like we get to win the Powerball or there's no more suffering or hardship.
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No, but but I I become in right relationship with God, and that undergirds all of the ups and downs that I live in my life.
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So as I seek God, you know, I come to a truer knowledge of God.
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And not only that, I come to a truer knowledge of myself so I can let some of the silliness burn away or the immaturity or the unfinished parts burn away.
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And also how I view my neighbor, even my enemy, now gets shaped.
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Um, you know, I was talking to a woman the other day, a deacon in the in our church, and she works at a college, and um, you know, the the language of the work that she does at this college had to change with uh with an executive order from Washington.
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And her office, formerly called the office of belonging, uh, has now shifted to some other words.
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And and we notice together that maybe that's because belonging is ultimately dangerous.
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Uh, because once I realize that I belong to you and you belong to me, and we belong to each other, um, then that becomes the operating sort of uh set of coordinates.
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And then if we belong to each other and deeply hold that, then that could change our economics, that could change our politics, that could change the way we do healthcare, that could change the way we educate one another's children, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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So, so as I seek God, you know, I fall down into this newer knowledge about myself.
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And so the best thing you can do for your own self-worth is seek the mind of God.
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Uh and the best thing you can do with your struggles with people that are uh difficult to love, uh, is to seek the mind of God and to let that so thoroughly infect you uh that uh that it begins to shift you.
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I love that.
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I love that because we remember then, right?
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That's literally the act of the Eucharist at the communion table, at you know, is remembering, remembering.
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So even the people that we can't, it's hard to love, right?
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We're remembering ourselves.
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And the reason why I name this uh confidence is because Paul says, Now I have the surpassing knowledge.
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So I had knowledge and it was all good.
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This is this is not disparaging knowledge and hard work and school and learning and you know scholarship.
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No, but now I have uh some other version of knowledge uh to lay beside that.
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And when I lay beside it, I find out the knowledge of God is surpassing knowledge, so he surpasses and transcends the bullshit.
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Well, I do, you know, I wanted to say thank you for your choice of words.
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You say he painted a picture of a transformed life.
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I don't know if that was intentional, but I really dig it because I think a lot of people want to paint the picture of the transformed life.
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Yeah, no, I I think what's so wonderful about the way that God decided to be God is that there's actually no cookie cutter.
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There, there is, we are this amalgam of all kinds of things, ups and downs, and family origin stuff and uh aptitudes and appetites.
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We are in we are unique, and and when we give that uniqueness uh to our loving God, it's amazing what God can create.
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You know, it's it's more like an English wild wildflower garden.
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You know, all these things are thrown together to make this beautiful garden, and the things are not alike.
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How boring would it be if everything was alike?
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But you know, it's a testimony actually to the glory of God that God can meet us uh in all the ways that we show up and still invite us forward into something that blesses us, uh, blesses our neighbor, and blesses the world.
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Thank God for that.
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Amen.
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Bishop, thank you so much for your devotion.
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