Friendship Series: Holding You Accountable - The Friends Who Love You Enough to Tell You the Truth

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Hello, hello.
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You're listening to the Jesse Morgan Devotions for the Christian Heart Podcast episode 111.
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This week's devotional is titled The Friendship Series Part 3: Holding You Accountable.
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The Friends Who Love You Enough to Tell You the Truth.
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Let's go.
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Hi, I'm Jesse Morgan.
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I used to just share home decor and renovation tips on social media, but now I'm sharing something even closer to my heart.
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My journey in love for Jesus Christ, my Savior.
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Welcome to the Jesse Morgan Devotions for the Christian Hawk Podcast.
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This is a weekly devotional I started back in May 2024, but the inspiration for it came much earlier.
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It was rooted in a faith journey that began when my daughter was born four months early in 2023.
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Through that challenging time, God worked in ways that truly amazed me.
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On this podcast, I share personal stories of faith woven together with Scripture to show just how incredible God's word can be in our everyday lives.
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My hope is that through these stories, you'll be encouraged, uplifted, and reminded of God's love and presence, no matter what you're going through.
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So I invite you to spend less than 15 minutes with me each week as we reflect on these devotionals together.
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Let's all pray within.
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Holding you accountable, the friends who love you enough to tell you the truth.
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Hello, and welcome back to the podcast.
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I'm so excited to be back.
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Took a nice break for like a month or so, and I'm just so blessed that God has allowed me to keep sharing stories and encouraging others within the name of Jesus.
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So thank you for being here and supporting me, and welcome back to the podcast.
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So let's start.
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Like I said, this episode is about friends who love you enough to tell you the truth.
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One of the greatest gifts God can place in your life, I feel, isn't just a friend who encourages you.
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It's a friend who loves you enough to tell you the truth.
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Let's be honest.
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We all love people who cheer us on, celebrate our victories, and support our dreams.
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But one of the greatest acts of love is having the courage to say, I need to tell you something because I care about you.
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Real friendship isn't built on avoiding uncomfortable conversations.
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It's built on trust.
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And trust grows when honesty is spoken with love.
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One of the things I appreciate most about my close, um, the closest friendships in my life is the transparency.
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We give each other honest opinions, but we also care about how we communicate them.
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Because of that, we avoid serious conversations over text whenever possible.
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Messages can easily be misread that way.
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Instead, we pick up the phone, we send a voice note, or meet in person.
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I actually love voice notes because you can hear compassion, concern, even hurt in someone's faces.
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Tone matters.
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I really believe it's one of the reasons my friendships have grown stronger over the years.
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Um, I remember making a huge mistake one time with one of my closest friends who has built an incredible business through social media.
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I made a comment that I intended as a joke on her page, and she didn't receive it that way.
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Neither did her audience.
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At first, I honestly didn't understand why she was hurt.
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For a while, we barely spoke.
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Looking back, I'm actually grateful she didn't call me an anger or react out of emotion.
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She gave herself time to process what happened before we even had a conversation.
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When we finally talked, she explained it in a way that I could understand.
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She asked me to imagine someone publicly criticizing my home decor page or my podcast.
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The work I've poured my heart into building.
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That moment she shared that it clicked.
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I finally understood.
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What I had dismissed as a joke and actually minimizing years of hard work, sacrifice, consistency, and the business she had built, I just felt terrible.
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I apologize sincerely.
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We worked through it together.
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Looking back now, what I'm most thankful for isn't simply that she forgave me.
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It's that she loved me enough to tell me the truth, regardless if it hurt or not.
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She could have quietly ended the friendship.
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She could have allowed resentment to grow.
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Instead, she invited me, you know, into a conversation that changed me for the better.
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I'll never make that mistake again.
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Not with her, but or with anyone.
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Today, I have tremendous respect for what my best friend has built.
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Watching her platform continue to grow reminds me that what some people dismiss as just social media is often someone's business, their ministry, calling, or livelihood.
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Her honesty made me better as a friend.
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As I reflected on that experience too, um, I realized something.
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My friend reminded me of someone in scripture, Nathan.
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Interesting, right?
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You would have thought I would have picked somebody a little bit more famous from the Bible, but Nathan.
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Some people wouldn't describe Nathan and David as friends because Nathan was God's prophet, and King David, as we all know, was Israel's chosen king by God.
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But I see something deeper.
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They loved the same God, they respected one another, and Nathan cared too much about David to stay silent.
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To understand this story, we need a little context.
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David was an incredible king who normally went to battle alongside his soldiers, but one season he stayed home.
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This story is probably sounding a little more familiar.
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Instead, he so basically one season he stayed home from battle with his men, and instead of being where God had called him to be, he was missing an action.
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That's when temptation entered.
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David saw Bathsheba bathing, sent for her, and committed adultery with her, as we all know this story.
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When she became pregnant, David tried to cover up his sin by bringing her husband Uriah home from battle.
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So everyone would assume the baby was his, because he would have gone home to his wife.
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But Uriah refused because his fellow soldiers were still risking their lives.
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So he felt like, how can I go home and see my wife and lay with my wife in a time like this?
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So David did the unthinkable because he was desperate to cover this up.
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He ordered Uriah to be brought to the front line of battle where he was killed.
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Afterward, David took Bathsheba as his wife.
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No one confronted him.
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After all, he was the king.
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But God saw everything.
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So God sent Nathan.
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I often wondered how God instructed Nathan to confront David.
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Um, God did tell Nathan what to say, but I always think about the delivery.
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Like, how did Nathan do this?
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You know, did he kind of do this on his own the way he thought best?
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Because he thought a lot of David.
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So either way, David either way, you know, Nathan didn't walk into the palace just pointing fingers when he confronted David.
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He didn't shame David in front of everyone, he didn't embarrass him publicly.
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Instead, Nathan told David a story.
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A rich man stole the the only little lamb belonging to a poor man.
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He told the story to David.
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David was furious.
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He declared that the rich man deserved punishment.
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Then Nathan directly looked at him and spoke one of the most powerful sentences to me in all of scripture.
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You are that man.
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You are the man.
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Nathan knew David.
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He knew David's heart.
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He knew David responded to stories.
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Rather than attacking him, Nathan helped David see for himself what he had become.
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That moment changed everything.
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David immediately confessed his sin and repented before God.
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Nathan's goal wasn't humiliation, neither was God's.
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It was restoration.
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And that's what real accountability looks like in friendship, looks like in companionship, looks like in relationships.
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Even after David's failure, Nathan didn't abandon him.
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Years, years later, if you look into scripture and towards the end of David's reign, Nathan continued serving David faithfully and even helped ensure that Solomon became king according to God's promise, which was David's son.
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Nathan never stopped caring about David.
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He loved him enough to tell him the truth, to confront him the way he did, even though he was king.
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And I think that's the lesson God wants us to remember.
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Accountability isn't about proving something, someone wrong.
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It's about loving them enough to help them see the truth.
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My friend knew how to reach my heart, and Nathan and God knew how to reach David's.
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Neither conversation was rooted in anger, but both were rooted in love and accountability.
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Real friends don't ignore hard conversations.
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Real friends don't use truth as a weapon.
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Real friends speak truth with wisdom, humility, and compassion because their goal isn't to win the argument.
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I know I hit a nerve there.
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Their goal is restoration.
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So today I want to leave you with this thought.
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Don't just pray for friends who encourage you.
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Pray for Nathan friends.
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Friends who love you enough to tell you the truth, friends who refuse to let you settle for less than God's best, friends who will lovingly point you back to Christ whenever you lose your way.
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Because those friendships don't just make life richer, they make us more like Jesus Christ.
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So my other question for you today is when you sit back and you look at the friendships that you have, because God wants us to have friends, wants us to have companionship in this world.
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So when you sit back and you look at the friendships around you, do you feel like those friends are there to really tell you the truth?
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Do you feel like those friends are there to see you get through something hard and they're cheering for you on the other side?
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If you can't answer that question, that might be something that you need to pray about with the Lord and ask God for friends.
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I would say I was a person for the past couple of years, I have wonderful friends.
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And a lot of my friends, like I said, we are we're very transparent, we we really tell each other what we think.
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But the hardest thing for me is distance.
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Some of my closest friends don't live here.
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And um, and I have in the last year have gone through some things recently with just people that you know were friends and thought I thought I was like good friends with them and all that, and and I had to sit back and reflect and be like, Lord, I want local friends, I want people that I can rely on.
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I want to have those relationships, you know, in a closer proximity than just you know, out of state.
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And the best thing I ever did was was really getting into church, joining a Bible study.
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That's the best thing I ever did.
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And it it was a year ago I made that decision, and I'm so thankful for it because I have been through some things recently within my family and my life, and my Bible study group, those women have been such a rock for me.
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I can literally get in our text chat, write up something.
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Hey, I need help, I need this, I need just guidance or just pray for me.
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And they always respond, someone answers, someone helps you, and I hope that I can do I can be the same way for them.
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And I'm so thankful for that.
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And they hold you accountable, they love you, they want what's best for you, and that's the type of friendships that we need in life.
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So if you cannot really sit back and think, do I have a Nathan in my life?
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Maybe it's time to seek that out and have God lead you to your Nathan friend.
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Because there's nothing like that.
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There's nothing so special as a friend like that.
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Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for Nathan.
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Thank you for the Nathan friend, Father.
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Thank you for being so supportive of your children finding friendships in this, in this time, in this world.
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Father, we just thank you for being the ultimate father, the ultimate friend, the ultimate, you know, guidance in our life.
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And Father, I just pray that everybody who listens to this podcast today is encouraged and touched.
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And Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your love and compassion.
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And Father, I just love you and I praise you in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Love you all.
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I'm so glad to be back.
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Till next time.
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Well, that wraps up this week's episode.
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I hope these devotions help you draw closer to God each day.
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If this episode encouraged you, please share it with someone who might need the same message.
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And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a weekly episode.
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Also, if you feek if you feel compelled, leaving a nice review would be so appreciated as well.
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For more information or to reach out, check the show notes or visit jessymorganhome.com or find me on Instagram at JessieMorganLife.
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Remember, God's timing is always perfect.
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Keep trusting him.
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Until next time, this is Jesse Morgan praying off.