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Destiny. Can I do things for God or does he do things for me? Welcome to Living Influence. So Bill, we're talking about how grace affects our destiny. Yes. Wow. And I want to start with the scripture. So it's Galatians 3.11. I'm just going to read it to start us off. Please. The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way.

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A person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Wow.

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Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right. The person who believes God is set right by God, and that's the real life. Rule keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule keeping, a fact observed in Scripture. The one who does these things, rule keeping, continues to live by them. Okay.

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Wow. I mean, that statement that he makes, doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Wow. Great, great reading. Thank you. Thank you again. Yeah. We're using the word destiny. Right. Our destiny is ultimately experienced when we trust God's purposes for us.

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Yeah. Let's, for our conversation, let's call that destiny our influence. Yeah. Let's talk about our influence. And we're actually called living influence. Right. Which means, Scott, we've been thinking a lot about this word, thought a lot about this principle. And now we're going to put it quickly into this context of grace's where it belongs. But influence. Yeah. Yeah.

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Just measuring the effect that I have on you. Influence. Yeah. You know, the way I see me has a profound emphasis on my effect on you. Yeah. What if I see me, as we've already shared many times, in this condition of shame? It'll have a profound effect on you.

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What if I see me as God sees me? That'll have a profound effect on you. And Peter, in chapter 5, starting at verse 5, he does an amazing thing. He says in there a promise that God gives grace to the humble. 1 Peter 5.5. Right. God gives grace to the humble. And for years and years, we've been discovering who the humble are.

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Yeah. But he says also in there that God exalts the humble. Right. What? What? You mean God does something to—wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're screwing with me here because I'm just a sinner. I'm just a sinner, and Jesus is my Savior, and I don't know anything about all this. Yeah, we do the humble performance. Exactly. We do the minimizing. Yeah, exactly.

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We think humility is minimizing. It's not minimizing. Humility is trusting what God is doing in me. Not what I'm doing for God. What God is doing in me. Let's just review that real quick. What's God doing in me? He's transforming me into a saint.

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Yeah. What? He's exalting me. That word scares a lot of Christians. Oh, no. No, I'm, oh, God, I don't deserve to be exalted. That's because you don't understand God. I have a saying about being humble. Is you can't be humble until you've been humiliated. That's when you can be humble.

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recognizing my need for a savior. Amen. Recognizing I don't have what it takes. Amen. And that I needed Jesus. I needed his cross. Amen. I needed what he did. Praise God. That's humbling. That's right. And that causes me, that belief, to be humble. Right. Now, that humility will always cause you to trust. Right.

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You will discover that you are not enough. And when you discover that you are not enough, you're going to have to trust somebody. It'd be great if his name was God. It'd be great if there were other Christians. But this God who has touched you when you needed him most and redeemed you...

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He has a plan for you and me. That's the part we so often miss. Yeah, and he wants to exalt you. He does want to exalt us in his plan. Which is crazy. Yeah, imagine it's like, he has a plan for me. What would his plan be? His plan would be for me to live.

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As the saint he has made me. Just think of what I just said. For me to live as the saint he has made me. For me to understand that I have become with Jesus Christ a joint heir.

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In the eternal purposes of God. Now God's blowing my mind. I can't, wait, wait, wait. I got the sinner part. I'm really confused about the saint part. And now you're talking about the exalted part that I share as a co-heir with Jesus in the purposes. And that's the key word. We're going to put back to destiny. Moving into the very purposes of God.

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It was the journey we were talking about this morning. I started this business in 1996. I don't know. It took me four or five years to figure out, oh, my gosh, I am the limiting factor in this whole story. And the limiting factor in this whole affair, if I don't figure out how to grow, we're really in trouble.

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And the crazy thing is that came from me believing I'm just a sinner. I go on this journey and begin to discover grace and begin to discover, wait a second, Galatians says that Christ is in me. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. What if I believed that? Absolutely. And now that simple change in belief is,

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changed how I affected my company. And I went from being the funnel and the problem to all of a sudden... And I think what it did, we talked about this, was when you leave that mode of seeing yourself as a sinner that you've got to fix, and you begin to trust that, wait a second, what if Christ is really in me? Let me trust who God says I am, that I'm a saint. What happens is your eyes...

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can stop looking at yourself. Absolutely. And you can actually see stuff that you would never have seen before. Absolutely. Just in a practical, easy way. I just notice. Notice your gifting. Notice this other person. Wow, they would really do well if I put them in that seat. Practically, but also it's spiritual as well. Amen. As you're describing that, what you're describing for us is influence. Yeah. You once had an influence.

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that was limited.

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by your view of you. Right. And then God graced you with his view of you, and it profoundly has affected your influence. Not just then, but today, Scott. Right. But today, your influence is expanding. Yeah. And that's what destiny is about. Yeah. For many, many years, I would sit with Christian organizations, and they'd have all these strategic plans of what they're gonna do next, and figuring out what they're gonna do for God. I mean, it would just take hours and hours and hours and hours.

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Well, the early church didn't know that. Here's what the early church knew. They were convinced of a couple things, three things. They were convinced of who Jesus was. They were convinced of his work, and they were convinced of the change he made in them. Yes. And that reality of God in them caused them to change the world. Now, I may sound like a heretic right here. I don't want to, but I think we've missed it.

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I think we have become so strategic in what we can do for God that we've not humbly let our God in to do in us. Sometimes, years ago when I'd go to a pastor's conference, I'd say to pastors, how many of you— don't raise your hands, I don't want to embarrass you— but how many of you have excellence as one of the key principles of your ministry or church? Right.

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They kind of stretch their hands out. Even though they weren't supposed to. And then I would say to them, okay, I have another question. How many of you have humility as a key principle of your church? And you can raise your hand now. No, nobody wants to raise your hand. And I would do that with this recapping statement. For all of us to think about, what if God does not want my excellence?

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What if God wants my humility so he can give me his excellence? Yeah. What if that were my reality?

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And the humility comes from trusting Him. Exactly. Yeah. What if that were my reality? What if I could move into the space of all these weeks we've been talking about grace? What if I could move into the reality of experiencing grace and receive my Father's love? And quite frankly, learn to receive your love, Scott.

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and learn to love you well. What if I could do that? There's this truism in Scripture. God, obviously, knowing that his authority would trigger the rebellion in the heart of a sinner. He knew that. He knew that. Humanity...

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in rebellion of God's authority, never, ever learn God's person, ever. But then God does something miraculously.

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He becomes a man. And Philippians tells us that this man, Jesus, who is God, laid aside his authority for a very important purpose so that we would know his person. Jesus, in humility, came to reveal to us the person of God.

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Right. So that we would not rebel against this person, but be able to receive the love of his person. Because receiving from God because of his grace is the only thing that can change us. We can work all day long, whoever we are. We can work all day long at doing something less than we used to. Or we can work all day long at doing something more than we ever could. Yeah. And good luck. That's what you just read. You just read it in Galatians. Right. Good luck.

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But what if God's saying to us, your destiny is dependent on my influence, and that influence in you is the influence that will change the world? What if that's what God's saying? Right. He could call me a heretic too, but I've had this thing that I would do. I would read secular business books. I mean, I was kind of a voracious, you know, I'm a bookaholic. Yeah. Always wanted to learn something.

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Lately, it's been my golf game.

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Who won yesterday? Don't. Every time we have one of these, you keep bringing up the fact you're winning. Stop it. Well, you beat me. It's temporary. You're winning now. You beat me and gin rummy, though. I do. Yesterday. Well, but I'm so far behind. I don't want to talk about it. But keep going. I came across this executive reinvention program. And they talked about, just like you talked about it, strategic plans. And they talked about, you know, continuous improvement plans. Yeah. And they contrasted that.

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to declarations, to declare something's true. And they were talking about the executive, like, instead of doing this incremental improvement plan, declare something's true. And so there's been companies that have done that. Nature Suite is a tomato company, and they declared that their farmers could make enough money to own their land and send their kids to college. Wow. And they could be profitable still.

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And they pulled it off. Good for them. But this declaration is what God does for us. He declares us to be a saint. Thank you. And that's a difference than here's 17 ways to stop these little sins that you're doing. It's huge, Scott. It's not just a little deal. What you just said is huge. It's like going back to those verses you started with, right? Doing things for God is the opposite.

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of what God wants to do in us. So I'm asking myself this question. How do I live into my destiny? I have to trust the person of Jesus. I have to do that. I can't live into my destiny. How do I function in my destiny? I have to trust the purposes of God for me.

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If I ask Christians, do you believe you're chosen of God? I don't know anyone who wouldn't raise their hand. They know that. But what they don't know is my next statement. Do you understand that every choice of God comes with purpose? Yeah, that's a good statement. Every choice of God comes with purpose. Could I get on my knees and have the courage to ask my God,

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God, what is your purpose for me? Yeah. What is your purpose for me? God, what is your purpose for us? Watch this. What is your purpose for us for them? Right. What is your purpose for me, for us, for them? Yeah. That takes trust with God. That takes trust here. And then this next statement. Yeah.

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And it takes our willingness to earn their trust. You and I have observed that the world is really tired of Christians telling the world how morally screwed up they are. You know, they're really tired of that. Yeah. They just aren't. I don't blame them. I don't know anybody who likes somebody to accuse them that they need to be fixed. But what if the world needs what Jesus said they need? They need to be loved.

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Now, in order, this is a truism, in order for the world to receive my love, I have to earn their trust. You know what God did? He became a man so he could earn my trust so I could experience his love. You talk about all these miracles of grace. Listen to this one.

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Do you know that in the purpose of God, I was recreated in the image of Christ? The guy you're talking to. Right. You were created in the image of Christ. Yeah. Could we just for a minute pause and say, is our destiny about our living in our reality of who God says we are? So like our God,

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We would dare to walk among humanity to earn their trust so we could love them. Yeah. That's our destiny. So how do I know if that's happening for me? Oh, that's a good question for any of us. Yeah. Part of it is this. We go back to the very thing we talked about last time, when we talked about meeting deeds. What if, by God's grace, tomorrow,

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I began to learn how to intentionally seek the needs of my neighbors so I could love them. What if I intentionally sought to seek in the lives of people that I'm with ways to meet their needs so I could love them?

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This is what Jesus did. He walked among us, fully aware of our needs, so he could love us. He went to Calvary, fully aware of my need, so he could love me. So that's really— Just that love. Yeah, that's really different than looking to our neighbor, to our spouse, to our child.

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For how to fix them or make them better. Oh, it's all the difference in the world. Yeah. It's all the difference in the world. What if my destiny, we'll come back to that. What if my destiny was really about my influence? And what if my influence was really the product of the miracle of God's grace in

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What if being a saint is not some Bible word? What if being a saint was my reality? What if God, you and I are really recreating the image of Christ and that his ability, these are his words.

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As if he were sitting here right now talking to us. This is what he'd say to us. He'd say, Bill and Scott, let me tell you something. I would like you to love just like I've loved you. That's what he would say to us. I'd like you to love just like I've loved you. Right. And by the way, if you would do that, it would demonstrate to the world that you are mine. Right. That love, because it is the fruit of grace, would be the evidence of our relationship with him. And that's the strategy of the apostles.

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To love one another. It was. Yeah. It was the strategy of the early church. Yeah. The church, unfortunately, in my opinion, and so many, many Christians have learned to become separate from the world because they're so afraid of the influence of the world. Because they've lost this miracle of hope. Do you know the influence of grace is always greater than the influence of evil?

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And we carry the message of grace. We do. Rather than being separate from the world, we literally are God's plan for the world. If we could just learn to live in to our destiny.

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it would change the world. It did then, and it will now. Yeah, because the world needs Jesus. Absolutely. Well, this has been like a great series. Oh, I've loved it. I think we've done eight podcasts. All that came from a question from one of our viewers, like, would you explain grace? Exactly. So we've been talking about it for several hours now. Yeah, and hopefully as we're doing this, that we, as we're learning this,

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will actually live into what we just said. Amen. Just live into it. Because I am still learning. Absolutely. And excited about it. God, teach me to trust you with me. Yeah. God, teach me to trust my future with you. Yeah. We hope that you have seen the breadth, the width,

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of grace. It's more than just for our salvation. It's for our lives. Absolutely. We want to thank you for listening. We want to ask you to hit the subscribe button or the like button, whatever vehicle you're listening or watching on. And we appreciate you joining us on Living Influence. Thanks. Thank you.

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Thank you for listening to the podcast. We're really glad that you're here. We'd love to know that you're here. And so if you could leave a comment, we would appreciate that. But more importantly, if you know someone that should listen to this or hear it, we would love for you to share it with them. Thanks again.