Ephesians Study - Week 7

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Hey, everyone and welcome to week seven of our Ephesian study.

We are so glad you're here.

I hope everybody's had a great week, great weekend, and I hope you've been enjoying this

week.

Yeah, so this week we're just going to dive straight in because we just have to.

We do.

Over those days where we are trying to crank out some podcasts and it is afternoon.

So if we sound off, that is why because we're hitting that afternoon, we should take

an nap time.

Hayley, Hayley's going on four hours of sleep, so we're going to be every day.

So yeah, we make it delirious by the end of this, but we will be knowing what we showed

up.

We're here.

We showed up.

Isn't that what they tell you in school?

Something about like half the battle or half the whatever is just showing up.

So I think we won the schoolers out like working out.

Okay, that works too, but I do feel like in school, they're like, there is some little

phrase that used to tell us that was kind of like, you know, just showing up is whatever

because you would, you would absorb a lot of like the information.

But if you're not there and you don't have any chance of gaining that knowledge, I don't

know.

I think I'm tired.

I already have a bad memory now.

I'm trying to think back to school days and this sounds like nothing I've ever heard.

Okay.

Whatever.

Yeah.

Maybe in college, maybe somebody is going to say someone comment and tell us if you've

ever heard this, someone's going to know this phrase.

Okay.

So as we dive in today for real, we are going to be talking about just kind of the unity

in the body of Christ and really something I'm kind of passionate about is like leaning

a life worthy of your calling.

And that's something that I think that is hard for a lot of people because they feel

as if they don't have a calling.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's really funny that I think that we as humans struggle so deeply with

what our calling is supposed to be.

But I think that's a lot because we, we try to make our calling too specific.

I think our calling is way more broad than what a lot of people do.

What a lot of people try to make it.

The Bible is very clear that literally our purpose on earth is to tell other people about

Jesus.

Right.

And so the hearing chapter four, it talks about how God has chosen us to be Christ's representatives

here on earth.

Boom.

Very simple.

But we want to make that, okay, well, I'm going to do this, this, this, and this to be

able to live out my calling and live out my passions and all of these things when the

reality is is like most things in life, we just overcomplicated it.

Yeah.

I think our purpose is, is really simple.

But the fun thing about this chapter is that Paul does give us some different ways,

like specific gifts that maybe that purpose can be walked out through.

And I think as we are reading through this, you might find that you identify with a little

bit of that some more, you know, because I definitely do.

There are certain things where I'm like, ooh, that one's me and that is not me.

I feel, I feel way more uncomfortable in that type of seat than I do in this seat.

And so, you know, I think there is, there are things like that where your gifts and your

strengths and your talents come into play.

But it doesn't, it's not really your calling.

Yeah.

I agree.

So here in verse two, I love that Paul has given us a little bit of advice.

He is saying always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowance

for each other's faults because of your love.

Okay.

So that is so many of us have already talked about that, like giving grace to others and

just loving people.

I know that when I first started reading the Bible, it was a big opening to me that the

greatest commandment was just for us to love others.

And that is so not what our world tells us to do.

But to read this Bible that's supposed to be so scary and big and full of rules, it

was very freeing to me to know that that was all that was really expected of me.

Yeah.

Easy?

No.

Not necessarily.

But at the same time, like to know that's all that, I mean, pretty much so we're asked

to do.

Well, I think personally, that's probably harder than a lot of the other commandments.

Like, thou shall not kill.

Okay.

Like, I've really never had the urge to legitimately kill someone.

So that way, you know, check, thou shall not, you know, commit adultery.

Okay.

Like, I can set some high boundaries and keep myself from being in that position.

You know, thou shall not worship idols.

Okay.

Like, I don't have any weird little statues around my house.

Not granted, of course, like cell phones and even people and different things like that.

Like, you can have idols in your life.

So, you know, that does exist.

But loving people, when they are difficult, loving people, when they are rude, loving

people, when they don't understand you and they've drawn to you and different things

like that, they're at stinkin' horror.

It is.

We're just loving people for no reason at all.

But there's so many of us feel like that.

We have to have a reason to love someone or we have to know them or have some type of

certain level relationship with them when the reality is is we're supposed to show love

to even the person that cuts us off on the road.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and they were asking, um, it was really, someone

we both knew they were, she was kind of telling me that they were asking her about a mutual

friend that this friend and I have, that's a hard story to follow.

But anyway, and the girl that was asking about her said, yeah, I'll be honest.

I know it's a fall, but I just don't really like people until they've given me a reason

to like them.

And I thought, man, that's a hard way to walk through life, you know, that also tells

me that she probably has trauma from friendships or personal relationships that has kind of

forced her to build up those walls to create a space to where that has to be the way she

protects herself.

But I can't imagine walking that way and I don't think that is how God intends us to walk.

No, I absolutely agree.

And one of the questions that I had written down this week was, um, if you say you're a follower

of Jesus, does your tone match?

Hmm.

So when you say something like that, is, is that a good Christian, you know, way outlook

on things?

And that, the way that the friend said, that's really how we're taught to live.

It's like, don't trust until, you know, someone has proven the very trustworthy, don't put

your heart into something until they've proven this.

But that's not how a walk worthy of being a Christian really looks like.

This is a phrase I do know.

You know, we always say, like, they have to earn my respect, yeah, to earn it.

Yeah.

And I think that's hurt.

I think that is a dangerous place to be as well, because that me, that when you're,

when you're putting someone in a position where they have to earn your respect, earn your

trust, earn your love, you're kind of saying, I'm above them.

And I'm going to see if they can get to my level or above me.

Oh, yeah.

And that's not how God calls us to walk.

God calls us to be the last one in line.

He calls us to be the servant.

He calls us to be Paul always says, like, I'm the lowest man on the total.

Well, I am the most humble of all the people.

Like he's constantly putting himself in this state.

Uh, he refers himself as a prisoner of serving the Lord.

Like a prisoner is the bottom of the bottom.

And he continues to put himself in that seat.

And I think when we are looking for people to earn all of those things,

we're putting ourselves above them and kind of trying to see if they can,

if they can make it up.

And that's not really good place to be true.

Okay.

So we've talked a lot about giving grace to strangers.

Oh, yeah.

But I feel like that that when you really align yourself spiritually, that becomes easy

to do, but something you and I just talked about before the podcast, we were talking

about how I had had no sleep and you said, how are you going to, like,

once you get your kids, what are you going to do to rest of the day?

So what is, what does walking wordy look like for you and motherhood?

Because that's harder.

We're like in marriage, motherhood marriage.

Why is it easier to go give grace to the lady at public that is to, you know,

your husband who calls and asks to where his keys are?

Like my husband did this morning, three o'clock in the morning, I have no,

I haven't even looked for your keys.

I don't know.

Yeah, spoiler alert.

They were in the driveway.

So yeah, no, I, I can definitely say this is an area of growth for me every day,

you know, and some days I feel like I'm doing a lot better than others.

For me, I want to be, I just think of it from the perspective of when they become

adults, am I someone that they will look up to?

Like in who I am right now, someone that they will think back on and think,

well, my mom really handled that well.

Like I know I was being difficult.

I know I was in the wrong and my mom still did X, Y, and Z.

And I want to be like her, they won't always say that.

I mean, I definitely get it wrong.

For me, that looks like having time to myself where I can find it and just being

able to take breaths and kind of like really bring myself down.

It looks like getting sleep.

I've been a lot better.

I'm a lot more level headed and a lot more honestly just able bodied to regulate

emotions and things if I'm slipped.

And so for moms, like that could be really hard because that's not always the

season you're in.

And I found myself having shorter feases and not explaining the why and not being

able to kind of carry us back there biblically, you know, but I think for me,

that's just a question that I asked myself, like, would they look up to me?

I love that you're thinking future because in the moment, most of the things

that we do as a parent, our kids are not going to understand and they're not

going to like, right, 100% then later on when you look back, how many times have

you looked back to like different situations?

And like you thought your mom was like the dentist first, never because you're

like a teenager and you're like, oh my gosh, why would they not let me do this?

So on a day and now you're like, oh, because you were a good parent.

Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think that it's easy to give in to kids because they're whining.

They're asking 97 times in a row and like my side and I, we, we get in

little spats about this because if he doesn't like my answer, he just turns

to begging and that, that's frustrating to me because I've already given my

answer. And so having to really hold my ground after the 30th, please, mommy, please,

you know, that is hard because at some point you're just tired and you're like,

whatever, just eat the skittles.

I don't even care at this point.

Yeah, he've worn me down, you know, but also like building healthy habits in

their lives in the form of what they eat, how they pray, how they treat others,

how they respect their parents, how they treat their siblings, like all of

those things turn into something else down the road.

And so I think honestly, you have to, you have to have forward thinking in

parenthood, especially.

Absolutely.

And then I also think, um, you have to, you have to find the groove with

your spouse or, you know, whether you're a single parent, you have someone that

helps you raise your children in any capacity.

If you're doing it on your own, all together, maybe you have coaches that come

into your children's lives in some capacity because you have to find like,

what comes from the other person better, you know, like there's certain things

where I'm like, Andrew is going to handle that one.

Not because I need him to be the disciplinarian, but because he can get

through to a certain child about a certain topic in a way that I can, right?

And then also finding like, this is kind of trained to a parenting comment,

but I think it's important because I also think like Paul does this in the

letter of allegiance.

He never like condemns them.

He isn't just like telling them all the things they've done wrong or anything

like that.

He's building them up.

I think it's really important that parents don't team up against their kids.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, you can't just both jump on the kid and just both be,

you know, because that defeats the child and they need to have the discipline.

That's important, but they also need to build a gap and Paul does that really

beautifully.

Yeah.

And then also he shows too that we have to say United.

So although that we're, you know, coming in the parenting standpoint,

you're coming at different angles in behind the scenes, you're united.

And that rolls over to any relationship, of course.

I mean, that's not just parenting.

That's a, that's a very like easy thing to connect with because of the season

of life that we're in.

But that plays out in, in any life, I think about friendships and things that,

you know, I've needed to confront a friend or, or say like, you know,

okay, a close friend of mine recently, we were venting to each other a lot.

And after a little bit, I got really convicted about this.

This is a safe place for me.

This is a one of my bestest friends, okay?

But it got to the place where it felt like, okay, we've beat the dead horse.

Yeah, we're being very negative at all.

And we're living in a negative space and that's because they did over it.

And so I messaged her and I said, Hey, like first off, thank you.

Like thank you for letting me externally, you know, uh, process.

But I do, I am convicted.

I feel like I've gotten in a place where I've passed the external process and I'm

just living there blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And what was really beautiful is that she, when she responded back because she's

a Christian, she was like, well, I want you to know number one.

Of course, I'll always be your safe space.

But I want to honor your convictions and absolutely like, well,

help hold you accountable.

And this is a great reminder for me too.

And that's what unity in the body looks like.

Yes.

And we, we've got to be more vocal about things like that.

So like what I have in here too, walking wordy, um, we talked about

letterhead.

We talked about marriage.

You're talking about friendship, but then this can also be in business.

It can be in any kind of type of leadership, anything.

So if you think, oh, well, I don't have kids.

I'm not married.

I'm not any friends.

Maybe you have a job, but I've had to cut off like business relationships.

I know that me and one particular person, we used to talk all the time.

And every time though, it was always negative.

It was like, oh, this is going wrong with this person did this.

This person's crazy because you can imagine in real estate.

There's a lot of things that go like, there's a lot of negative.

And we would talk almost every day.

And it would be like 45 minutes of just negative.

And I had to like, cut that off.

I'm like, okay, I can't talk about this anymore.

That person no longer calls me anymore because they still want to talk about

the negative.

But we have to make sure that we're aligning ourselves that we're walking

wherever you through everything.

So I couldn't set here until you like, hey, I don't want to get into a negative

space with us as friends, but then leave here and go and do that in my business

place, right?

And also like who's listening to these conversations?

You know, sometimes it is private, but sometimes you're in a public setting

having a conversation with someone, maybe you're at a dinner.

Well, not every restaurant, the tables are far apart.

I mean, I can hear people around me sometimes, you know, yeah.

And are you having a discussion that when someone else hears,

you like, are they going to know your Christian?

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

So you say in that reminds me of the conversations I was talking about that I was

having later went out like later on, another person in the industry told me

he was like, yeah, I always see this person at like dollar general.

And she is always on speaker phone.

Oh, no, I'm like, oh my goodness.

This girl has been running around.

Boredness wear on speaker phone and like he was like kind of, you know,

poke and find out her.

He was like, hey, she's always on speaker phone.

It doesn't matter where she is.

And I was like, holy moly, what have I said?

And someone heard it and like knew it was me.

Yep.

Not goodness.

No, yeah, that's a horrible feeling.

It's a horrible feeling.

I think that it's important that that we are that we're always ourselves,

that we are always representing Christ well and that we are unified with other

Christians and that unity includes holding each other accountable.

Absolutely.

So after we get through all of these things where Paul is really lifting us up

and encouraging us and telling us that we need to bind ourselves yet at what

peace.

And I love that very last at the verse four that we are called to be one

glorious hope for the future.

And so next he really goes into talking about special gifts that we have been

given for the generosity of Christ.

Yeah.

And this is where this is where he kind of talks about this kind of what I was

saying at the beginning, like you might recognize some of the, you might

recognize yourself in some of these and not in others.

So in verse, let's see, where's it at?

Do do do do.

Verse 11.

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets,

the evangelists, the pastors and teachers.

Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the

church, the body of Christ.

This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and

knowledge of God's son that we will be maturing the Lord, measuring up to

the full and a fleet standard of Christ.

So really, now some people preach that you could be any of those, but I,

I don't know if that's where I land.

I feel like these are special, like special called people because he

talks about how it is their job to build up the church.

And that to me are like the people that work it, like work for Jesus,

for the church and go out and do that.

What do you think?

How do you talk about that?

I've kind of taken it differently because I think that when we look at

these things as titles, then yes, absolutely.

But if you look at it from, okay, so what is an evangelist?

It's right.

So an evangelist is someone who just goes out and is telling others about

Jesus, we can be an evangelist without calling ourselves an evangelist.

We're sure.

So I think that we're all called and given special gifts.

So maybe like teacher, maybe you're a pretty good teacher.

Like you do a pretty good job of going back and really laying things out.

So just because you're not a Sunday school teacher or like capital T

teacher somewhere, doesn't mean that that's not where you're gifted.

I agree with you.

I think in, I hear what you're saying.

And I don't disagree with what you're saying.

I think that this is a special kind of teaching.

Like this is a gift to teach the Bible to people.

This is a gift to evangelize to people.

Like I don't feel like I have an evangelist in gift.

And I would literally work to ministry for nine years, which is funny because

we're doing a podcast about, you know, I don't know that I could agree with that.

And when I think of like a evangelist, like they are, they're, they're,

there's the sky that worked with us.

His name is Chris Hopper.

And he was our outreach coordinator.

And if he just saw you in Walmart, he's going to stop to you.

Like I'm not talking about somebody new.

If he saw somebody walking in Walmart and he even remotely looked at them,

had a thought that they're having a hard day, he was going to stop right there

in the middle of that aisle and be like, man, I'm sorry.

I just got to ask you, like, are you good?

Are you having a hard day?

Is everything okay?

Oh, it's not.

We'll tell me that.

Well, let me tell you what God can do for you.

And let me tell you, I'm just praying over people in Walmart.

I can't do that.

Like I, that is very uncomfortable for me.

I don't think it's a gift that I have in the same way.

Now, can I, can I tell someone about Jesus?

100%.

But it's like more and open.

If there's a door that's open, then I feel comfortable walking.

I feel like an evangelist is like, let's go.

I feel so just so y'all know, this is us literally having a conversation.

Neater one of us is like, this is from the Bible.

Like this is exactly what it says, but as it does, this is why interpreting.

Yeah, we're doing.

But I still disagree because I feel like that he may be the vein, like title.

I would give him that title.

You, if he comes up to me in Walmart, I may feel very weird.

And I'm not going to receive that.

But I may receive you reaching out to me very, like you've done before.

Like, I just want to let you know that you were on my heart and you're doing a great job at this.

Yeah.

But that's some in love and bringing me like, but that's the holy spirit gift of encouragement.

That's an edification.

Okay.

So what about you teaching people on this podcast?

You don't think you can be, you know, I think I have a gift of teaching.

Okay.

I do think I have a gift of teaching, but I'm saying I think that these are

I just think I don't know.

Okay.

So the reason I have to say here and go, I don't know is because I literally have written down.

Ministry isn't just for the stage people.

No, that's not like in, like, when I agree with you, 100%, I'm, I, so okay.

We make sure I feel like I'm being understood.

I think that God gave these gifts to his church and these gifts look like apostles,

prophets, evangelist, pastors and teachers and their job, like those gifts,

are being executed through certain people who have like that calling to serve the church

in that way.

And their job is to build up the church and erase people up.

Now I think that everyone can eventually step into any of these.

Okay.

I just don't think that that's always like, I don't think you just magically have them

in the same way that like, okay, holy spirit gifts, like the gift of wisdom,

they gift up that you can just say, Lord, open the door.

God, holy spirit gifts, that to me is different than this.

Okay.

I agree because as we, down the road in same page here, yeah, because as we go on,

we talk where it like Paul is talking about how we can't stay spiritually immature.

Exactly.

Okay.

So I think you can like, you can grow in your discipleship to kind of walk into

these to where you're stepping into basically your role becomes less of a,

of a eater and more of a self-feeder.

And then also as you grow in that, as you're not the one receiving so much,

your spiritual maturity grows and then you're able to turn around and give that

to others.

But at that point, you are doing these things.

You're growing the church and you're serving the church instead of being

served by the church.

Yes.

And I think you can still have these, these gifts and as you get more spiritual

mature without having to title, but you may have the gift of pastoring,

but you may not ever be a pastor.

Well, right.

And when I was saying, you know, about like these are the gifts he gives the

church, you know, I'm always talking big C like I'm talking the church has

in the bride to Jesus, the one that the church has in anyone who is in

Jesus who loves Jesus.

So when you're able to turn around and step into that calling, like that to

me is different and very special that you have that you have grown in your

spiritual maturity to be able to be an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a

pastor or a teacher, but you're 100% like you wrote in your note, it is not

just for the stage, right?

It is for the workplace.

It is for your friendships.

It is for your home.

It is for any opportunity that you have to edify the church, the big church.

Anybody who's involved in loving Jesus.

That was a lot.

That was a lot.

Okay.

That was fun though.

And this is why you should have conversations about the Bible with other

people.

Yes.

Because then you can kind of go around and figure it all out together and be

able to see someone else as the way they interpret it.

And at the end of the day, usually no one's wrong.

It's always just like shaping things and seeing the big picture.

Yep.

I really liked the verse in verse 14 where it says, then we will no longer be

immature like children.

We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.

We will not be influenced with people try to trick us with lies.

So clever.

They sound like the truth that like gives me chills.

It does because I think that we often forget that Satan is literally

titled the father of lies.

Like that is what his name like me and then translates to and who he is.

That's his calling.

That's his purpose.

And he is the father of deception.

And so sometimes, especially in America, specifically, I do think that he uses

more obvious forms of distraction and things to pull.

People away from Jesus in other countries in America.

I think his favorite target is to just twist the truth.

It's that's what he did at the very beginning.

That was the very first lie he ever told.

He didn't just tell a like a full blown out lie.

He said, this fruit will make you like God that he really wasn't fully lying.

He twisted the truth to make it sound good.

Yeah.

And man's just people not just get blown about by the wind these days.

I mean, the slightest thing and we get knocked off our foundation and we're going,

well, I never thought about it that way.

Maybe Jesus isn't real.

And it's like you've spent 20 years saying you're a Christian.

How many years have you spent in the word?

Right.

Well, and now it's so, so quickly you have to really be on like, on guard because there's social media.

There's just TV.

There's all these things around you and things can slip into your mind and ideas can slip into your mind.

Even when you don't realize it as watching certain things, I see a lot of things come up on like

TikTok and things like that where people are throwing their own theology out there.

And if you're just on their listening to, you know, something or even, you know,

I like to listen to different pastors, but you have to be careful with that as well.

Because if they're not teaching biblical truth and you're not going back and verifying those things,

then you can be like not only believing their own things, but spreading that information.

Well, we've said this before, but like fat checked us when the whole point of this podcast is that

you are reading your Bible yourself and that we're discussing it together.

So we've said it from the beginning, we are not theologians.

We have not gone to Bible school.

This is, I mean, I've worked at ministry for nine years.

Hayley has incredible wisdom from the Lord.

I've, I've witnessed it on countless occasions of just things that the Lord has given her.

But the thing is, is that at the end of the day, you've got to read this for yourself.

You cannot listen to it from someone else and, and just walk with that because you don't know where they got that information.

Um, the Bible talks about like in Ezekiel, it tells us to be a watchman, you know, and I love that.

I love the idea of just like kind of having your sword ready and having your eyes ready and that you're really looking for.

Is that from the Lord and is that is that where I'm supposed to be and is that the next step?

I think it's important that like you said, we are on guard that we are aware of.

What's being said around us and how it is affecting us.

Yes.

So as we get to the kind of end of what we're reading today, how do you feel about the verse 15?

It says, we will speak the truth in love.

How do you do that?

Like, what is, I mean, what is your, because I feel like that's something also that we, growing up like as far as Christians,

we had a hard time speaking truth in love and it's, it's hard to find that happy medium of, are you being judgmental and just, you know,

condemning someone or are you speaking truth in love and standing up for what the Lord has called us to?

Okay.

Well, first off, I've always said, I'm very grateful.

I'm not the judge and I don't, I, I don't want to be the judge.

I have no desire to have any part of deciding who is right and who is wrong.

So when I take that off the table, when I take off the idea that I get to figure out whether someone's right or wrong,

that does make it easier to share truth in love because I'm not looking at it from a place of judgment.

I'm just kind of expressing what I've learned and in hopes that maybe they will accept that.

So I can think of a conversation I had years ago with a mutual friend who is, it's a gay man.

He's been gay for as long as I've ever known him and he's a, he's a friend of a friend and he came into town and asked me if I want to get dinner.

And I was like, sure, great.

Let's go.

You know, why wouldn't I?

You know, so we didn't got dinner with him and I don't even know how we ended up talking about the fact that he was gay.

And how his family, I was working for the church at this time and how his family, like how that affected his family or whatever.

And he starts telling me, you know, about how this aunt was like going on and on about him, whatever.

And I just remember looking at him and I said, yeah, I think I've just kind of decided that at the end of the day,

like it's not my place to decide if that's right or wrong.

Like, of course, biblically, I have my understandings and my opinion, but he grew up in Georgia and he knows what the Bible says.

Like, it's not like he doesn't know.

This is the choice he's made.

And the best thing I could do in that scenario was continue to love him in hopes that I wasn't another Christian that was pushing him away from the church.

And I literally said to him, I said, you know, I've learned that it's the Holy Spirit's job to convict.

It's not mine.

It's not your aunt so and so's.

So until the Holy Spirit convicts you of that, you know, I don't really know that there's not anything I can say that would change anything.

So all I know to do is just love you.

I think you know what the Bible says and and that is my personal like that is what I believe, but that doesn't change the fact that I love you.

And that's just what was said and he absorbed it fine.

It wasn't a big deal and we moved on with our lives.

I do think back on that conversation in terror, you know, like, please God don't let me have said anything that was offensive just because again, I don't want to be that stumbling block.

The Bible calls us not to be a stumbling block for other people.

So for me, God, Jesus said, Jesus said, the greatest commitment is to love your neighbor.

So and then the Bible tells me not to be a stumbling block.

Okay.

So then the best thing I can do is lead with love, lead my life, by example, and when there's an opportunity to speak truth, which in my opinion, you always have to have relationship first.

If you're speaking truth, quote unquote, in love to some stranger on Facebook, you're not, you're not doing it because you don't have relationship with that person.

You've, you've gained no like relational equity with them.

So you're pulling out with draws when you've never made a deposit and that's never going to work.

But I have had friends where I've had to say, it's a lot easier when they know Jesus, of course, because then you get to say, hey, I know you love Jesus.

So I don't think that you're intentionally doing it.

But I do feel led because I'm your sister in Christ to remind you that biblically, blank, blank, blank, you know, fill it in.

This is, this is how we're supposed to be.

I also like to follow my sword.

I have no problem being like, hey, I kind of suck at this too, but I think if we try to do it together, we'll get better at it.

I think that's amazing.

And I think that we, we worry so much about if we are like in the situation you're talking about, like we worry so much.

Are we doing the rat thing or we saying the rat thing?

When the reality is is if we just show love to them and focus on ourselves and all the things that we need to work on, because I think the number one thing that we look at when we look at speaking truth, we think about speaking truth again to strangers or to people that are living in an obvious sin, but we forget about speaking truth and like hard conversation to marriage, like when we're correcting our children, accountability and friendships, like there's so many other things that are more important than what comes up automatically.

That we think of, well, like you just said, like more important, I actually think it is more important when we're speaking truth to people that we should focus on other Christians.

Now, I'm not telling you to go and just start going on this like run where you're just going to every Christian and being like, you're a bad Christian blah, blah, blah.

But if Christian women with walk and talk and act like Christian women, we would have a lot less drama in the world.

We would have a lot less falling out in the world. We would have a lot more of women lifting up women. We would have a lot more of encouragement amongst women.

My gosh, where would we go if we were unified under Jesus and how many more people would we bring to Jesus and lead to Jesus if we were acting like him.

Jesus had a crowd around him everywhere he went because he was who he was. Yeah. And he was a magnet for people.

Where our goal is to be like Jesus, how many people would be magnetized to us if we were that wonderful.

Well, I think that we get on our high horse and we want to save someone. Yeah. And we forget that we're not to say you're, I know several years ago, we had a lady that came to our small group.

And she was a known atheist. And so at first, the first like super Christian thing, you're like, okay, what are we going to say to break through to her?

Right. Guess what we said. Nothing. Yeah. Hey, what's up? Glad you're here. Didn't make it weird. Like we just showed her love. She became a great friend to all of us and an amazing Christian.

And she like became to know the Lord on her own. Yep. There was nothing that I could have said that would have made her change her mind. And she said she actually came to our group because she had always made fun of Christians.

And so she just went to see what it was all about. But like the difference between that group and any other Christian that she had ever came in contact with was no one tried to argue with her or try to prove her wrong.

Right. Right off the bat. They just showed her love, brought her in. So hey, this is what, this is what we're reading. This is what we're understanding in this. What did you get from this?

And she went on to read the Bible from cover to cover. Yep. In no time at all. Can't you know the Lord for himself before herself. And I'm like, okay, wow. I was putting so much pressure on myself. Like I really had that kind of power.

I know. Isn't it funny that once you finally realized like, it's not on you. Everything is so much easier. It's not about you. It's not on you. Like you literally are there to be a vessel and love people.

And now, should I have been like a horrible influence? No. Like you really need to make sure that you're on your best good Christian Bay. You're not not like what you think you're supposed to be. You're supposed to dress. I'm supposed to add whatever. But like truly.

They're in a genuine way of being able to show someone love and caring for them and getting to know them and just being who you were called to beat. Yeah. I agree.

The last verse says he makes the whole body fit together perfectly as each part does its own special work. It helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

So when we are walking out, our calling, when we are feeding ourselves and trying to come to a place where we have these gifts of apostles and prophets and teachers and pastors and just all of that.

That's when the whole body is healthy. That's when it's full of love and it's growing and who doesn't want the church to grow. So.

We will end on that note. But I hope that you guys will read the scripture for yourself because just like Haley and I interpret it in scripture differently. You may interpret it differently as well and also it's just good and to read this for yourself and let it sink in your spirit and in your heart and just commit to memory so that you aren't easy to blow with the wind and that you are.

Planted your reeds are deep and you are planted and and have a firm foundation. So.

All right. Week seven complete. We will see you guys soon for week eight. We will be finishing a chapter four and we will be talking about putting off our old self. So it's going to be good. It's going to be good. We will see you guys next week.

Be sure to join us back next week as we continue to dive into God's word together. See you then.