00:03:02.000And when we pray to God for more understanding, for a deeper understanding and deeper insight, we must at times be grateful for the light that's just at our feet.
00:03:14.000Because do you want to know the day that the people you love most die on?
00:03:20.000Do you want to see their name printed on a death certificate?
00:03:37.000Oh, Lord God, we ask that we can bring comfort and we can feel comfort today as we do this podcast for the second time because last time, ah, it led to an argument.
00:04:07.000We are a couple and we're a family, aren't we?
00:04:10.000And actually, what we discovered yesterday is I probably can't cope with having a toddler around while we're trying to record and focus on something.
00:04:19.000So, yes, this is round two, but I do have a good feeling about today.
00:07:11.000Like in the middle of, I've had it actually in the, I remember one time, actually, this is a curious example in the UK, I was walking bare somewhere, like, that you shouldn't be walked, like a field or whatever.
00:08:38.000To your point about spiritual warfare, I feel like, you know, when's it spiritual warfare and when is it the consequences of your actions?
00:08:46.000There's something in the 12 steps, there's a beautiful line in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that says When we have a resentment, we usually find that at some point in the past, we've made the decision based on self.
00:09:00.000That's put us in a position to be hurt.
00:09:02.000And really, there's seldom do I have a problem where I don't, where I'm not able to go, oh, yeah, you know, I did live in a particular way.
00:09:42.000And you can choose whether or not you want to live in it or if you want to turn against it or turn it off.
00:09:49.000And when you are in self, when my elected guiding principle becomes what do I want or what do I want to avoid, it's a problem.
00:10:02.000But spiritual warfare is the, you know, as Christians, we believe that the.
00:10:07.000Ultimate reality is spiritual warfare.
00:10:09.000That is the reality from which all other realities are derived.
00:10:19.000I would say, like, from a very superficial and very, like, I'm a beginner in the understanding of this.
00:10:25.000Certainly, it's not a term or phrase I would have used even six months ago, perhaps.
00:10:29.000I see it as when you're, I see it as something that prevents you from speaking about God in the positive light.
00:10:39.000I like, in a, I see spiritual warfare.
00:10:43.000As something like when you're putting out something that you're trying to make a positive, uh, bringing together, I see it like that.
00:10:53.000I see that when it when something stops that happening, that to me seems like that spiritual warfare.
00:10:58.000But of course, it can be any, it can be what one goes through with an event, or like you're saying, when do you determine when it's that, um, appointed attack versus like a kind of an attack on, uh, I suppose, sort of like an attack on a god rather than.
00:11:18.000Because of a decision we've made, a sort of self centeredness.
00:11:22.000But on the first level of spiritual warfare, it seems to me like it's sort of an attack.
00:11:29.000It's what was almost what was said in the comments last week or two weeks ago, where it was like the more something expands out a message, a positive message, it can be easier to attack.
00:11:46.000For our struggle, this is Ephesians 6 12.
00:11:48.000This is, you know, sort of in a sense, the Go to line from the New Testament from Paul's letter to the Ephesians For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
00:12:12.000My radical conversion to Christianity took place because.
00:12:20.000When I had the non intellectual, visceral, emotional, what I would call a kind of theophonic, a kind of just a sudden encounter with God that changed me urgently and immediately, then I read and continued to read extensively scripture.
00:12:36.000I recognized that what is being said in here is not what I thought it would be.
00:12:40.000And I do wonder what versions of Christianity people are practicing.
00:12:44.000And I don't mean Episcopal or Catholic or Presbyterian.
00:12:50.000I mean, When I'm reading this, it's not so much like a moral code and an ethical code is a natural expression of being in righteous alignment with God, but it's not a performance.
00:13:03.000The performance of being a righteous person is not what this is about, i.e., it's not about being neat and tidy and sweet.
00:13:12.000It's actually rather access to a wildness that's very difficult to, and when I say wildness, I mean an uncontainable energy.
00:13:27.000Now, this is again another sort of bit of information to sort of back up this idea of spiritual warfare, even though I know that kind of in part what we want to talk about today is prayer.
00:13:40.000We know that we're children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.
00:13:46.000When I read the Bible and I like the Old Testament, it's difficult in a sense to know how to interpret the Garden of Eden story or the book of Job.
00:13:56.000Where it's so mysterious and poetic and figurative that it's not easy to understand.
00:14:06.000But if you can detect the geometry behind the language, there is clearly an energy system that is somewhat complete, a principle practiced within chaos that brings goodness, a commission given to the first people to become custodians of the earth and to multiply and to settle it.
00:14:27.000And then there is a decision made towards self by the early people, Adam and Eve.
00:14:34.000You know, I say literally that those are the names that they use.
00:14:38.000And from then on in, really, the Bible is a story, or the Old Testament is a story of God's compassion and God's wisdom and God's anger and God's wrath as God continues to say, Come this way, this is the way.
00:14:52.000And as people continue to disobey, disobey.
00:14:56.000It's very interesting for me as a human being to look at the ideas like jealousy and glory.
00:15:01.000I am a jealous God, don't have other gods.
00:15:15.000In this period, in this time of UAP disclosure and the Epstein files, it's very interesting, if you ask me, that some of the occultist mysteries that are very present in, for example, the book of Samuel, the book of Kings, where it's describing the most powerful institutions on earth in those days, sort of chiefs and members of the royal family, were practicing weird devil worship that seemed to involve sex practices and human sacrifice.
00:15:38.000The spiritual rebellion that precedes the.
00:15:42.000Human life seems to involve sexual magic and the sacrifice of human beings and interspecies copulation.
00:15:52.000All these ideas are sort of to do with power somehow, that power is corrupt, that there is a dark power at play.
00:15:59.000And we're, I think, living in a time simply because of the explosion of information and the capacities of our tools of communication where we are going to start to see the interstitial material between what is in scripture, the idea that.
00:16:13.000Battle and warfare in the spiritual realm is connected to human power and human corruption.
00:16:20.000I think these questions are getting answered.
00:16:22.000And people that are of faith, a lot of people live with the understanding of that already.
00:16:26.000But to truly live with it means, I suppose, that you see yourself as a combatant in an intergalactic war, a participant in a holy war.
00:16:35.000And to do the truth, my life's always felt like that, even when I was dealing with trivial things like signing on for welfare in Elephant and Castle and trying to get my hands on small amounts of drugs to eke my way through the day.
00:16:47.000I've I felt like I was on the edge of something.
00:16:49.000And when I became famous and it was disappointing and boring and sort of exciting and stimulating and all of those things that it was, I recognized it was heading somewhere.
00:16:59.000And in these last few years, in a way, like yesterday, like the last, this has been, you know, the trial's coming up in a couple of weeks.
00:17:10.000There's like a lot of things that are culminative.
00:17:12.000And even yesterday's argument while we're trying to do this, something that's quite new for us to present ourselves, to allow it to be.
00:17:20.000A married couple in front of the world while we're going through something, and I'm not saying front of the world like as if it's like it's not the Super Bowl, I recognize it's got a limited viewership, but what I mean to say is we're not restricting access to ourselves, yeah, at a time when we're under significant scrutiny.
00:17:36.000And yeah, it's like our friend said, this isn't like a normal Friday with a normal kind of couple, this is a couple going through a lot with on a Friday that you're that's two or three weeks away from a trial, you know.
00:17:56.000And I think I described the other day, like the feeling of like sometimes the pressure is like a vice and it just gets like that, you feel.
00:18:07.000And I just the other day found myself sort of staring blankly into the garden and like just like thinking I didn't have any energy.
00:18:17.000No, no, before because just of the post surgery, trying to get Herbie to take medicine, trying to get him to wash his mouth because he'd had mouth surgery.
00:18:30.000And I just felt like all the sort of skill set of caring for children, I was sort of exhausting all the different tactics I could have to make it fun to take medicine or fun to wash mouth out or teaching him to brush teeth when he's got stuff going on in there.
00:18:52.000You know, I just sort of like, I sort of was like, whoa, okay, I just need to take a breather for a minute.
00:18:58.000And it didn't feel high energy pressure.
00:19:03.000Almost like everything, just sort of a still pressure, a still pressure where I just had to stop for a minute, like stare, gather myself, um, and then go back and start the day again.
00:19:18.000Like, truly, that's what it was actually, you know.
00:19:22.000Um, the yeah, so I think what can happen is, uh, you can power through, power through, get you know, you haven't, we have responsibilities, we can't just go to bed, you know, you can't just go like this is too much, I'm gonna.
00:19:43.000We raise our children absolutely to the best, in the most honest and authentic and real way we can, in the healthiest possible way.
00:19:51.000We try to be conscious of all the things the food, the screen time, the, you know, we try to be conscious with our time together.
00:20:00.000And obviously, Sunday service has become a sacred space for us as a couple.
00:20:04.000So, yesterday that was a bit of a hit because, you know, for us to have an argument in that space.
00:20:12.000You know, it was difficult and challenging, but probably in some way necessary.
00:20:16.000Like it was probably necessary to clear the cachet of all the buildup of stress.
00:20:21.000Because as I said, the day before I felt stressed and I had no feeling, I was just staring into the abyss.
00:20:29.000But also, I do think it's, you know, again, I know there's a lot of what do you call it, tropes of recovery, but like whether it's start the day again or is it as how quickly do you recover?
00:21:32.000But also, how do you, how, well, what if you call it more like trying to stay on track with a sort of ethos then, rather than it, because otherwise everything would be control, you know, choosing dinner would be control.
00:21:46.000Like what I mean by that is you're saying that.
00:21:49.000If there's a list of things like we're trying to be conscious of amidst being stressed, amidst being tired, do you see it as like, what happens when you just think, oh, I'll just let go of that?
00:22:00.000Well, what happens is by nature, children are on screens all the time.
00:22:03.000By nature, you eat fast food, whatever's easy and accessible.
00:22:08.000Or is that not the same thing as what you're saying?
00:22:10.000And I'm only using the example of that.
00:22:38.000In balance, and whilst of course any technology can be used for good, what is its primary function and what is the trajectory?
00:22:46.000The trajectory of like, or the telos, say, of our world right now, it seems to me.
00:22:50.000It is to create as best as possible a single source of power and control so that there's legitimate reason for digital ID and facial recognition technology and digital banking and digital currencies that are centrally controlled.
00:23:07.000That's, I think, what's going to be augered through successive crises.
00:23:11.000I think that's what was kind of rehearsed in the pandemic period.
00:23:15.000And for most normal folks, and we're all somewhere along that spectrum, aren't we?
00:23:22.000In nature, by in nature, I mean in your own nature and in actual nature.
00:23:26.000How often are you not indomed in a sort of prophylactic force field of control where the food that you're eating is addictive and poisonous?
00:23:36.000The information you're receiving is poisonous, toxic, malfeasant, dishonest.
00:23:42.000Yeah, the everything in your life, your environment, you don't have control over your environment, you're essentially in prison.
00:23:48.000Like, so the room that you're in now, see that as a spiritual person, you believe.
00:23:54.000That there are other energy systems and entities, that there is other power, there are other beings all around you, extra sensory information continually around you.
00:24:02.000And because we're sort of coached and coaxed and inculcated in the way that we have been, those ideas start to seem ridiculous, even when we're aware of Wi Fi and electricity and measurable energy systems that were once not measurable, but are measurable and harnessable now.
00:24:19.000And the problem with human beings is we always think that our current, Threshold is an absolute threshold.
00:24:25.000We never think, well, perhaps the day will come when we learn to be able to see that there are demonic entities all around us.
00:24:35.000Check it a good and very simple analogy for this is the following there is no, gosh, forgive this example because it's somewhat contentious.
00:24:46.000Listen to this statement there are no clinical studies that demonstrate a link between childhood vaccination programs and autism.
00:24:59.000There are no clinical studies to demonstrate that.
00:25:01.000And are many people funding clinical studies that would cost billions and billions of pounds to the pharmaceutical industry?
00:25:09.000No, they're not because there's no interest in doing that.
00:25:11.000So, there is a what we consider to be crisis is for the most powerful institutions in the world the optimal condition a stupefied, nullified, hypnotized, exhausted population bickering over insignificant.
00:25:28.000Trivial cultural issues is pretty good if you need to control billions of people simultaneously.
00:25:35.000And I've, by God's grace and by a particular friendship, had brilliant insights into the way that the CIA operates and the way that they can sort of generate a 360 diorama around a person in order to solicit a particular piece of information or a particular outcome.
00:25:51.000We're also aware of similar programs by the FBI where they'll get people, they'll coax people along a pathway into an act of terrorism and then arrest them at the end of it.
00:26:00.000Well, these are bespoke and specific examples of what I would call a more general phenomenon.
00:26:05.000All of us are in an information environment where we get our information either from the BBC or from the BBC.
00:26:09.000From Fox News or MSNBC or CNN, or maybe we get it from alternative online media that have a similar set of biases.
00:26:15.000How much of the time are you able to access the source directly to get to God, the God that's within you and accessible for you, that you're connected to via the Holy Spirit through the grace of God and the sacrifice of Christ?
00:26:44.000Please, oh, I just was thinking actually when you say that about the sort of world we're living in.
00:26:49.000I do think of the Truman Show, I do think of how brilliant that is because you know, at the end, when Ed Harris, the character, speaks and he's like, What is going on?
00:27:02.000Because, of course, like the reason that film is so brilliant, someone tried to say that recently, I mean, they were a little bit younger, I think they were kind of in their 20s or something.
00:27:48.000In the film The Truman Show, the main character Truman does not know that he is the star of a reality show that's being secretly filmed all of the time.
00:27:57.000That's where you're a real pro because all of the time.
00:28:01.000And he starts to wake up during, he starts to realize putting two and two together, thinking, having memories of like, oh my gosh, I don't think, show me the photo album from my wedding day.
00:28:48.000It's interesting because we don't know what political systems are best.
00:28:51.000Sometimes I think a benevolent, Dictatorship under a kindly despot would be wonderful, like a brilliantly kind, very powerful person who loves you.
00:29:00.000But what I suppose, like with the Trimmer Show, like the allusion for the film to have any value at all or a significant value is the idea that we are all to a degree in a managed and prescriptive reality that increasingly is being controlled by commercial interests that only care about advertising products to us and keeping us sort of thoroughly and totally ensnared.
00:29:22.000And as this technology increases in its reach and its Potency, there is a battle on because this same technology could create total independence and total decentralization and total democracy.
00:29:34.000And, like, hey, we could run our whole community, can we be food independent and energy independent and run this whole community ourselves using this brilliant technology?
00:29:41.000Yeah, you could, except even trying to change a very, very minor thing.
00:29:46.000You pull one thread in this system and it leads so quickly to actual power.
00:29:50.000And increasingly, the biblical view is correct because it's not just about real estate and resources.
00:29:58.000This is not just, we want to control the real estate and resources.
00:30:00.000It's not just, inverted commas, human nature.
00:30:02.000There is a dark and insidious, good word, satanic.
00:30:07.000And nowadays it looks bureaucratic and it looks friendly, and we're here to help you.
00:30:12.000And we just need you to sign up for this in order that we can protect you from that.
00:30:16.000And it's changed my perspective on everything from migration to gun ownership that I know now.
00:30:22.000Whatever people, and the beauty of the system as well is the people that are advocating for, you know, don't let people, you know, gun controls, sincerely believe that they should have, there should be less guns because of school shootings.
00:30:36.000And the people that believe that there should be mass migration.0.86
00:30:39.000Say it's because of compassion and because people from war zones ought to be granted safe harbor.
00:30:44.000But the challenge is this you can't give that authority and power to any form of state bureaucracy, whether it's a political or commercial, private or public entity, because they don't even know what they're doing.
00:30:57.000They don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it.
00:31:01.000Systems and institutions are, by their nature, to a degree unconscious because even if you have a small system, like in your household, always put the keys to the side, well, what happens if a burglar watches you do that and steals those keys?
00:31:10.000Ah, the unconscious aspect of the system leaves you exposed.
00:31:14.000So, where we live now in deep bureaucracy, deep AI bureaucracy.
00:31:20.000So, in a sense, life itself is being nullified and sheathed by sort of a digital power.
00:31:51.000And when the devil, and this is from Charles Spurgeon's book, a sort of a compilation called Prayer and Spiritual Warfare by Charles Spurgeon.
00:32:02.000I will say that when we're in the hospital with Herbie, it was a period of grace, of synchronicity, and ordained encounters, one after the other.
00:33:02.000Beloved friends, we have very much to learn from our Lord's temptation.
00:33:06.000He was tempted in all points as we are.
00:33:08.000And it says Hebrews 4 15 is a reference for that.
00:33:11.000If you will study the temptation of Christ, you will not be ignorant of Satan's devices.
00:33:16.000If you see how he defeated the enemy, You will learn what weapons to use up to use against your great adversary.
00:33:24.000If you see how our Lord conquers throughout the whole battle, you will learn that as you keep close to Him, you will be more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
00:34:08.000But if we must be tempted, deliver us from evil.
00:34:11.000Or as some render it very correctly, deliver us from the evil one.
00:34:16.000First we pray that we may not be tempted at all.
00:34:19.000And then, as a supplement to that prayer, yielding the whole matter to divine wisdom, we pray.
00:34:23.000For if it is necessary for our personal growth in grace, for the verification of our graces and for God's glory, that we should be tempted, Lord, deliver us from evil, and especially deliver us from the personification of evil, the evil one.
00:34:36.000With that as an introduction for a short time, let me call on you to notice in our text first the devil leaving the tempted one, then the devil leaveth him.
00:34:46.000Second, we will keep to the book of Matthew and notice the angels ministering to the tempted one after the fallen angel left him.
00:34:58.000Oh, sorry, ministering to the tempted one.
00:35:01.000After the fallen angel had left him, then third, we will mark the limitation of the rest that we may expect the limitation of the time in which Satan will be gone.
00:35:10.000Luke put it this way when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
00:35:14.000Some express it as until an opportune time, then he would turn again, and our great Lord and Master would be tried by his wicked wiles.
00:35:24.000Yeah, well, in there it's obviously talking about prayer, and that was something that we wanted to touch on today.
00:36:09.000And it was mentioned in church a few weeks ago that, you know, the priest had said, maybe you pray round the dinner table or maybe you pray with your family, you know, find your opportunity to pray.
00:36:25.000Maybe it's when you're brushing your teeth.
00:36:27.000And you looked at me and you were like, I'm constantly in prayer.
00:36:31.000And I found that in Thessalonians 1 Thessalonians 5 17, pray continually.
00:36:37.000Obviously, not meaning that you're speaking every second, but that you're keeping your heart open to God in every moment, you know, that that's the direction of your actions.
00:36:48.000And when I was thinking about prayer for emergency, not that there's anything wrong with that, that's with that.
00:36:55.000The desperation, the prayers of desperation, the prayers where you fall to your knees, the prayers where if you're in the middle of the night, and this came to me because the night before surgery with Herbie, I couldn't feed Herbie and it was, uh, He was awake and he was crying and he was distressed and he was saying, You know, I'm hungry and I want to be fed.
00:37:16.000And I just decided, well, the only way to get through this night is to sort of walk around with him and pace and hold him.
00:37:48.000Airbnb, uh, that didn't it was not appropriate really for a family to be staying in the night before our friend Carl had a demon clown dream, yes, and he also just sort of slept on the floor, which is funny.
00:38:00.000I think he, I think he was looking for ways to ground himself in the house, um, and and you know, like it was a creepy, creepy house.
00:38:09.000And uh, the truth is that uh, it's hard to navigate a house in an unknown space at night, it's hard to navigate, you don't know where things are, even if there's a crack of light through the window, you're like displaced.
00:38:21.000Wondering where I'm going to go in this house.
00:38:24.000I was sort of scared to even move around it because I didn't want to disturb the house.
00:38:30.000So I stayed in the bathroom and I shut the door and I just paced.
00:38:33.000And it did get to a point where I felt quite desperately.
00:39:59.000And I held him and I was like, oh no, lots of, Anyone that's been awake with a baby in the night or a toddler, a baby, or any child, and you know that the minute you move, they're going to wake up again.
00:40:11.000I just slipped and sort of slid onto the floor of the bathroom and pulled, I had trousers hanging over the hook of the towel rail and I just put them, pulled them down and yanked them down.
00:40:40.000Like I really was feeling desperate and pretty, you know, conflicted about what to do.
00:40:45.000And, but what we were discussing is really now it's a continual relationship with God.
00:40:50.000It's a continual relationship in order to prep your soul and your soul for God so that when you go into those states of desperation, you sort of know what you're dealing with.
00:41:10.000And I, as you know, because this is probably one of the bits we discussed yesterday before our argument and the podcast capsized, but I see it different than that.
00:41:21.000I see it rather than preparatory, I see it as continual for another reason.
00:41:26.000You know, the famous phrase, no atheists on a sinking ship, that once you're confronted with, oh, wow, the ship's not going where we thought it was going, we're actually going to die.0.73
00:41:38.000Suddenly you start to reach for a different reality.
00:41:42.000Because it's no longer a comfort to you that there are fresh towels and a buffet.
00:41:50.000The comfort of the boat is no longer sufficient.
00:41:53.000So, some of us, alcoholics, drug addicts, crazed, shamanic, priestly, wilderness wanderers, have always had a sense that the world isn't working.
00:42:10.000And you try to, I've tried to, defibrillate and stimulate some sort of sanctifying and holy pleasure.
00:42:16.000Out of inert material, can drugs, can sex, can fame, can money, can any of these things somehow be sacralized, divinized, turned into something valuable?
00:42:25.000And the answer is, of course, no, they cannot.
00:42:28.000And as we've said before in this podcast, the things you experience in crisis are things that you are going to experience anyway.
00:42:34.000So, this for me, the idea of continual prayer is more like, is based on these two bits of scripture Exodus 3 14, when Moses first encounters God in a burning bush.
00:42:48.000And he is instructed to go and tell the Israelites, We're freeing you from bondage.
00:42:53.000A perfect analogy because surely, if we are not with God, we are in bondage.
00:42:58.000We have to choose who to be enslaved to this false counterfeit system or to the system of our Creator.
00:43:08.000Anyway, God said to Moses in response to, Who am I going to say sent me?
00:43:12.000Because I don't think I've got enough authority to go and tell everyone we're leaving slavery against the most powerful nation that there is, that for all we know is supported. themselves by, well, certainly by supernatural power, Moses' magicians were able to do many of the 10 plagues and miracles and signs that Moses performed.
00:43:31.000God said to Moses, Tell them, I am who I am.
00:43:35.000That is what you are to say to the Israelites.
00:44:12.000Here in John's gospel, our Lord is once again in conflict with the Pharisees and he says to them, He says to them, very true, like, well, you're not 50 years old, the Pharisees say, challenging him.
00:44:46.000Now, I suppose, so when I'm saying continual prayer, what I'm acknowledging is an idea that you do find in other traditions that God is in the present.
00:44:57.000It's not that God is only the present, but your access point to God is the present.
00:45:01.000So, continual prayer is not continually being on your knees or continual petition.
00:45:06.000It's a recognition that for me, the supreme reality is the reality with God, and that any attempts to synthesize the connection will ultimately fail.
00:45:19.000And that really, for me, if I repent, turn away from the world and turn towards the light, turn towards God, and then stay with God, there is nothing else to do.
00:45:28.000Now, like the things that come forth from that, I think there are as many ways to be Christian as there are Christians.
00:45:37.000And that there could be as many churches and iterations.
00:45:39.000And I say that with all due respect to the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, both of which I know of, I love.
00:45:47.000But man, there's a reason that he gives Peter the commission and says, John may not even die.
00:45:55.000John the mystic, John the beloved, John that ultimately ends up on Patmos, John with the shamanic and prophetic gift, every bit as ethereal as Peter is carnal, every bit as mysterious as Peter is institutional.
00:46:10.000Peter, that wants to build tents during the transfiguration, so that Elijah and Muhammad have got somewhere, excuse me, Moses, forgive me, Lord, Elijah and Moses have got a place to hang out while they're up there.
00:46:25.000You know, so, yeah, so my point is that there can be so much freedom in this.
00:46:31.000In fact, when we say freedom, I think we mean connection to God, ultimately.
00:46:37.000And actually, it reminded me that a friend had recommended this book a while ago.0.92
00:46:42.000Gosh, two years ago now, because I brought you this two years ago, and it's called Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Statton.
00:46:49.000And an invitation to the wonder and mystery of prayer.
00:46:53.000And actually, in this book, of which he, you know, some of the title, some of the contents pages, you know, prayer posture, our father, adoration, search me and know me, confession on earth as it is in heaven, intercession, daily bread, petition.
00:47:08.000He breaks down prayer, gives examples.
00:47:40.000Talk about the details of your life you're sure he doesn't care about, but talk to him about the ways that he has let you down or disappointed you.
00:47:46.000And I was surprised when Jamie Winship told me that too.
00:47:48.000You know, talk about, talk to God about the things you feel let down by.
00:47:52.000And I felt like I didn't want to say that because it felt like I'm not going to tell God that I'm not happy about the way that thing turned out.
00:49:33.000Mixture of motives and excuses, blur of memories, quiver of hopes, knot of fear, tangle of confusion, and restless with love for love.
00:49:44.000I wander somewhere between gratitude and grievance, wonder and routine, high resolve and undone dreams, generous impulses and unpaid bills.
00:49:56.000Come, find me, Lord, be with me exactly as I am.
00:50:03.000Help me accept what I am so I can begin to be yours.
00:50:07.000Make of me something small enough to snuggle, young enough to question, simple enough to giggle, old enough to forget, foolish enough to act for peace, skeptical enough to doubt the sufficiency of anything but you, and attentive enough to listen as you call me out of the tomb of my timidity into the chancy glory of my possibilities and the power of your presence.
00:50:50.000So at C1728, this just made me laugh because actually we're not hairdoing together, but she said the couple that hairdo together stay together.
00:52:02.000I was so late today, I had an early church crawl today and wasn't able to watch live, but you better believe that I. Instead, start my Sunday with y'all.
00:52:44.000Of the Old Testament of the Acts, and then we open the Bible on a reading to be chosen by the Holy Spirit.
00:52:50.000And every time Jesus shows us his presence through the Bible, then we open our hearts to Jesus through the readings.
00:52:55.000And that helps my family and children to know each other, know each other's burdens and share feelings.
00:53:02.000Then we take 15 minutes meditation on Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.
00:53:07.000And we pray our Father after, as we offer all our intentions and requests and praying for our enemies, asking for double blessings on them.
00:53:15.000And we end it with a hymn to our Blessed Lady.
00:53:44.000Then, of course, if you want it as an audiobook, you can have it for nothing.
00:53:47.000I was thinking a bit about the new version of the C.S. Lewis Narnia Chronicle Magician's Nephew.
00:53:55.000In which Meryl Streep will voice the character of Aslan, because some people consider it to be quite controversial as he's a male Christ like character.
00:54:09.000The director of the film or series, I'm not sure what kind of medium it is, happens to be Greta Gerwig, who I know from when I did the film Arthur.
00:54:17.000Shouldn't have done that voice, should I?
00:54:31.000Anyway, Greg Gerwig, she was in that film and she was a really very lovely person.
00:54:36.000And she's subsequently gone on to have enormous success as both an actor and as a director, Little Women, Barbie film.
00:54:42.000And I was thinking, what is it supposed to be our perspective on this as Christians?
00:54:48.000And then I, because I've seen some Christian people saying, this is an attempt by the culture to destroy a beloved artifact, even though Meryl Streep is a peerless actor, maybe the best actor, I reckon.0.80
00:55:03.000In the world, she, you know, it's a deliberate attempt to desecrate a cultural object.0.67
00:55:09.000But people have similar feelings, don't they?
00:55:11.000Of course, when it's Star Wars or, you know, less, you know, people treasure and cherish cultural items because it has an intrinsic connection to them emotionally.
00:55:20.000I didn't want to, I started to watch The Twits by Roald Dahl on Netflix and I had to turn it off.
00:55:26.000Because this is so far from the book.0.73
00:55:28.000I know, because Dear Old, Dear Old, he was a dear old, he did like a bit of the old anti Semitism.0.73
00:55:55.000But actually, I have a slightly different perspective because I think, you know, in Genesis, when it says, in our image, Elohim, in our image, we created them, man and woman.
00:56:09.000Like the image of woman is every bit as divine as the image of the male.
00:56:14.000And I think perhaps more importantly than a sort of a theological position on sex, which does, you know, I do know no man and woman in heaven, no marriage in heaven.
00:56:23.000In the transcendent realm, that kind of identity is redundant.
00:56:27.000Angels don't, you know, or at least archangels don't have that kind of identity.
00:56:30.000And one might wonder about the watchers.
00:56:32.000Well, certainly those ones in the book of Enoch have some pretty interesting views on sex.
00:56:57.000Whether it's a sort of a cultural art object like C.S. Lewis's work or a real life drama, we ought to be alert referencing the Truman Show there.
00:57:08.000That in the same way that one person in the film Truman Show lives in a 360 manipulated dome in order to elicit certain emotional experiences to create drama.
00:57:19.000In the same way that deep state agencies are able to construct scenarios in order to gain information or to create certain outcomes, in the same way that the FBI couldn't generate a kind of inverted commas terrorist attack, at least a matter of public record, it's been demonstrated, when in fact, obviously, it's got motivations other than catching criminals.
00:57:40.000In the same way, all of us are being exposed to cultural stimulants, for example, the Lindsay Clancy trial or any of the racially oriented.
00:57:51.000Trials that are in the United States of America, or the many trials and scenarios in the United Kingdom.
00:57:57.000I think, in order to create dissonance and conflict at a cultural level continually, because the real problem would be if we were to recognize we are all of us one creation, one family, participants and co heirs with God.
00:58:16.000He was very reluctant, God, to give us kings.
00:58:19.000He was like, why don't you have a system where it's decentralized and you have Judges and judiciary and assemblies and juries, and you work out your problems for yourself.
00:58:26.000With the technology we have now, there's really no reason for people that have an Islamic perspective to be in constant quarrel with people that have a different Islamic perspective, or people that are Christian to be in constant quarrel with people that have a different Christian perspective, or people that are atheist to have a constant quarrel with people that have a different atheistic perspective, and all of the other potential iterations of conflict that can be drawn out from anything from sport to whether or not it's right for Trump to take Greenland.
00:58:56.000For whether or not it's right for Greta Gerwig to use the voice of Meryl Streep to voice Aslan.
00:59:02.000Whichever position you have on, say, let's choose for ease the most controversial figure of our time and maybe of all time, Donald Trump.
00:59:10.000Whether you think he is an earthbound deity and a conduit, an avatar for divine power, or you think he is a demonic beast straight out of the book of Revelations, either one of those perspectives is fine.
00:59:27.000And everything in between for the true power.
00:59:30.000The true power wants us divided and it wants us distracted.
00:59:36.000In truth, there is a beautiful fractal reality that we can access that this spiritual warfare that we spoke of at the beginning is being fought within us, within us, and for us, and of us.
00:59:50.000And it is happening at scale in innumerable iterations across this bandwidth of reality.
00:59:57.000And the best way to proceed is to find God yourself.
01:00:01.000Find God and then live in truth and reality with that God, knowing that your neighbor is non limited, your brother is non limited, and love is not limited.
01:00:14.000And when you are unable to practice that because it's frankly too difficult, know that you are forgiven and know that it was never meant to be practiced in solitude.
01:00:24.000It's meant to be practiced in concord with a loving community.
01:00:51.000Dear God, thank you for being with us here today and Jesus Christ for dying for us.0.71
01:01:02.000And gosh, sometimes I find it so nerve wracking and challenging, God, to do these Sunday services just because of really what it comes down to is a sort of insecurity of just, you know, You know, silly, silly,
01:01:20.000superficial insecurities of whether or not I'll be sitting in the right position or whether or not I'll, whether one of our children will need us and we'll need to come up with a new way of handling that or will I say something silly?
01:01:36.000And really, all it is, is just, it just shows me to trust you entirely, God, because when I do trust you, it just all falls into place and it feels like a great, Great burden lifted to feel that letting go, that letting go, and knowing that you're with us.
01:01:58.000So, thank you for being with us here in this Sunday service.
01:02:01.000Thank you to everybody who's listening.
01:02:05.000It makes us feel like we should keep going in regularity because we know that if it's somebody that's going to tune in because they like tuning in last week and they want to tune every week, it's a good feeling, it's a good reason to keep going.
01:02:35.000And Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.
01:02:41.000The where there is hatred, I may bring love, the where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, the where there is discord, I may bring harmony, the where there is error.