Curt Harlow [00:00:00]:
Hello, my friends, and welcome to another episode of the Bible Study, where we take the sermons we preach at Bayside Church, all of our campuses, and we take a deeper dive, especially with the emphasis of how do you become a really good Bible study person? How do you understand the context, the language? Read a passage and get the original meaning out of that very same passage. And we are in an excellent letter, the Epistle to the Ephesians. Epistle. Just fancy word of saying a letter. And we are in chapter two. And we are joined for the first time ever in both iterations of the Bible Study podcast by one of the most powerful men I know, Josh Powers. So, Josh, why don't you tell them what you do? You have a really incredible job here.
Josh Powers [00:00:46]:
I, most of the time, get to work alongside Curt Harlow up at the Bayside Auburn campus. Man, we. We've just been running and gunning past Curt getting that thing launched, and it's been so fun, man. It's been a. It's just been a wild ride, but it's been good.
Curt Harlow [00:01:00]:
God's been doing some good things. Check it out. All right, let's jump right into it. We are in one of the most classic passages, but I think one of the mistakes that gets made in this passage, I'm going to call it out right before I read the passage is where the chapter is put. Okay? So, as you guys know, and as hopefully all the podcasters listening are going to learn or already know, the chapters were put in by not the inspiration of scripture. They're put in by helpful people. That said, it'd be nice to have. Have chapters and verses, so people go find their way around this thing and talk about it.
Curt Harlow [00:01:33]:
So they put chapter two right here at this sentence. And I think you absolutely have to understand the end of chapter one. So this is what we call context. At the end of chapter one, Paul is going on this incredible rift about everything that Christ has given us. Lavish grace, glorious grace. And he does it at the end of the end. He crescendos to talk about how authoritative Jesus is. So basically at the end, he says, God's resurrection power is in you.
Curt Harlow [00:02:04]:
And that's something, because everything is under Jesus feet and he's over everything. And everything in the church is about him and is him. And he is the biggest and best and most powerful. For instance, verse 20 through 23 quickly just says, God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand, far above all rule and authority, power and a dominion, and placed all things under his feet. And I'm appointed him to be head over everything for the Church. Now hold that thought. Hold that Cassandra in your mind, and let's get the transition. Verse one of chapter two.
Curt Harlow [00:02:45]:
Christ is everything. Christ is everything. As for you, though, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, not your dead in your transgressions and your sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the Spirit, who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show us incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Curt Harlow [00:03:58]:
For, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourself. It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he prepared in advance for us to do.
Dena Davidson [00:04:19]:
Amen. That's a mini gospel.
Curt Harlow [00:04:21]:
Yeah. I mean, exactly what I said to Josh. Josh is preaching this at Auburn this weekend. And I said this. I would stick to just verse 10 because it is one of the most succinct and clear presentations of why Christ did what he did and who Christ is and why he had to do it. It's the gospel, and I love adding the end of chapter one to it. Jesus big as for you, dead Jesus, Jesus high as for you, transgressions and sins. And that juxtaposition is so important now.
Curt Harlow [00:04:54]:
Okay, I'm going to. Because it's his first time. Dean, I'm going to. I usually go straight to you, but.
Josh Powers [00:04:59]:
Josh, we can still do that.
Curt Harlow [00:05:01]:
Give us some thoughts. If you were just sitting down with your cup of coffee at your home in the morning, studying this and saying, I want to get the original meaning of this passage just perfect. How would you approach this passage? What are some of your observations?
Josh Powers [00:05:15]:
Yeah, the first thing that I would look at is exactly what you said. This sort of idea that it's this concentrated bit of goodness. 10 verses that tells the entire story of the gospel, but so condensed down. It's this almost like if then so framework. If you want to go to that from like a. Let's raise up and look back down at it. Well, if we were in this dark place of like dead in our sin and transgressions, then God decided in his mercy to send Jesus and rescue us from our sin so that we can live a life that reflects these things as a reality. It's the gospel in its totality just shrunk down into a concentrated 10 verse amazing section.
Josh Powers [00:05:52]:
That's the first thing that pops out to me. And I mean the other part too. You bring up this idea of like, man, Jesus is amazing, end of chapter one. And then it gets really dark. And yet it does say like right in the middle of the passage though, that because of what Christ has done, we actually are then raised to be seated with him in that place. And so it's like this wild ride of like, man, that's amazing. And oh man, that's really hard to hear. Hey, what? It's almost this shocking verse to read that based on this position that Christ has been put in, after all that he had lived through, to then end up in this place where in some way because of God's redeeming work, we are even in the same conversation as that is wild to me.
Curt Harlow [00:06:32]:
Yeah, it is this roller coaster ride literally where we start high Christ, everything is under him. He's got authority over everything. The Father has placed him at the right hand. We are dead in our sins because of our nature. We deserve wrath, we deserve judgment. But Christ redeemed us by his grace, his mercy. It says here on grace, we got the other side of grace and then seated us with him. So Christ starts here, he goes down, he gets us, he brings us up and we sit next to Him.
Curt Harlow [00:07:08]:
It's not just the language of the gospel, it's the position that the Gospel creates in us. It's a beautiful piece of writing. Dina, how should we take a classic passage like this? What's your observations? How can we become better Bible study people when we read something? And one of the traps here is this so familiar, we can just go to write or saved by grace, that's what it means, and move on. What do we do with this passage?
Dena Davidson [00:07:33]:
Yeah, well, before I answer that, you said if, then so, and I was just thinking we probably all have to kind of sit in every single one of those the if, the then and the so, because some of us, maybe we have a hard time with the if like we don't like to think of the wrath part of God and the sin and the death that humans have, maybe we're okay with that. But the, the then part, the understanding the work of Jesus, maybe we haven't really fully captured that. I think there's a good chunk of people in the church that we haven't really digested. The so like that's great that we have our fire insurance, but there's this whole so part. You know, the if then so. So what are we supposed to do? So I. I love how you frame that.
Josh Powers [00:08:13]:
So like both sides of the crescendo are a little bit needing some love.
Dena Davidson [00:08:17]:
Exactly.
Curt Harlow [00:08:17]:
Just for clearly. Because you guys think a lot sharper than me. The if is what again? Exactly.
Josh Powers [00:08:21]:
If is if we're in this place of darkness and the you know, when your voice got saddened down that part of the story.
Curt Harlow [00:08:28]:
If I have a fallen nature, if I've transgressed in sin.
Josh Powers [00:08:32]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:08:32]:
And then sit in that. Own that.
Josh Powers [00:08:35]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:08:36]:
So Dina knows this. Every year at the beginning of thrive school, I will say, anyone who can recite the ten Commandments, one of these years I'm going to get caught by this because other students are going to tell the students, anyone could stand up. I did this first, second week, they could stand up, recite the Ten Commandments in order. I'll give you $100. I've had one student, a girl, cuz their mom taught her a song.
Josh Powers [00:08:56]:
Over how many years are we talking here?
Curt Harlow [00:08:57]:
14 years.
Josh Powers [00:08:57]:
Oh, geez. All right, Got some work to do.
Curt Harlow [00:08:59]:
The point of this and then I don't shame them for that. I apologize that those that grew up in the church and have Christian parents and Christian pastors and Christian youth pastors did not make them understand the law. And the reason is you cannot sit in that place of hopelessness and the consequence of your sin if you don't understand what sin you've broken. I do not know that I'm a bratty snot dishonoring my parent unless I know that God's standard is to honor your parents. I do not know that I'm a thief unless I am told by the God and the Spirit of God. Use it to say God. Coveting other people's possessions is a deep and profound sin. And a major contributor to the brokenness of our world is me being a covetous, envious person.
Curt Harlow [00:09:53]:
You know, I don't know even to the point where Jesus says with adultery and murder, my fantasizing about violent anger, my fantasizing about objectification of people sexually. Those are incredibly dehumanizing sins. So if I don't sit in that, if I don't learn about that, then I don't appreciate anything I've been redeemed from later. And we just skip. We just go right to grace and we don't sit. So the if is our sinful nature and deserving of wrath.
Josh Powers [00:10:25]:
There it is.
Dena Davidson [00:10:26]:
If dead in your transgressions, then saving.
Josh Powers [00:10:30]:
The work of God. Understanding if leads to the next part of this passage, in which case. But God, who's rich in mercy, decided that if wasn't where the story was going to end, inserted Jesus into the story through the narrative of this entire passage.
Dena Davidson [00:10:45]:
So I'm a good logic girl, and I understand with conditionals, the if then statements, if there's no if, then, there's no then. And that seems obvious, but so many people want to claim the saving work of Jesus. They love what Jesus did on the cross, but they don't want to claim the if. There's no then. There's no Jesus on the cross unless our sin put them put him there. And so I just think it's powerful. I mean, like, as a parent, it's helpful for me to know that my kids, in all of their glory and the way they reflect the imago day, they've also got sin inside of them, right? And so I can't wake up and think to myself, as so many parenting blogs say I should. You know, if I was just a better parent, if I was better able to manage their routines in their day, we wouldn't have these sinful behaviors.
Dena Davidson [00:11:31]:
Like, they wouldn't be doing these things. No, that's a lie. That's silliness based on what the scripture is saying. Every single human being has this if this dead in our transgressions and sins. We all need the then. We need the Savior, which is Jesus.
Curt Harlow [00:11:45]:
Let'S do a Genesis. And he was talking about parenting and he was saying, what we know for sure is this. In the nurture nature debate, what we know is this. You have very little control at changing the behavioral direction of your child. As a parent, you could do everything right. And there are certain genetic inertias that you'll be able to nibble around the edges. And yet you beat yourself up with that. Your job is you be kind, you be nice, you be generous, you be responsible, you be invested, get them to school on time, help them with their homework.
Curt Harlow [00:12:23]:
What then they do with that is really not up to you. It's really, really not up to you. This is a real big myth that puts a lot of people under condemnation. So you'll hear this all the time. You know, children don't ever. They have to learn hate. No, that is not true. This is said by people that have never been around children or are not paying attention.
Curt Harlow [00:12:49]:
So a child comes out of the room screaming to be the center of the room and meet my needs now, immediately. And then that child, in its first five years of life, maybe it's four years old before it starts getting any empathy. Every time that child needs something, it immediately cries and it immediately demands that everyone stop and give it everything as soon as it can walk. Not only is it crying and yelling at people to serve it, it goes and pulls the hair of someone else and puts the fork into the plug. Like if you. 500 toys in a room.
Dena Davidson [00:13:27]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:13:27]:
And one fork and one plug.
Dena Davidson [00:13:29]:
It's the first thing.
Curt Harlow [00:13:31]:
Oh, there's a fork. I found a fork. What is it doing here? Richard Dawkins is the only thing me and the most famous atheists on the earth actually believe in common that I know of. And he said humans are born with a selfishness gene. From an evolutionary biological point of view, there's undisputable. He said, humans. And I'm like, you're preaching the Bible. He's preaching this.
Curt Harlow [00:13:56]:
Sometimes people have a hard time talking about the deserving of wrath thing, but I think that is because it is hard to look at the real state of. The real moral state of ourselves. I think it's easy to see other people that deserve wrath, but it's harder for us to really go, like, we deserve punishment. We deserve. We may not deserve ice cream, you know, but when. When it comes to we deserve wrath and we get grace, we find both those ends hard to believe.
Dena Davidson [00:14:35]:
Strangely enough, my agnostic ethics professor, Dr. Casper, he knew I was a Christian, and so he struck up a conversation with me. He said, there is one doctrine of Christianity that I know is absolutely is true. And I was like, oh, great. Can't hear. We got one, right? We got one. He said, total depravity. It's true.
Dena Davidson [00:14:54]:
Historically, it's true. Psychologically, it's every. Every science says this is true. And I was just stunned. I was like, wow, that's weird. Because us Christians, we actually quite wrestle with that idea that humans are in such a state of rebellion against God that we do not want to reach out to him and be saved without his work of grace in our hearts. So I just. I found that fasc that this agnostic really realized what Ephesians 2:1 is saying dead in our transgressions and sins, that as a the theologians would say the human heart is curved in on itself.
Dena Davidson [00:15:32]:
We want what we want. It's another way of saying the selfish gene. I want what is best for Dina. And I think the only thing that has gone wrong is our society sometimes fails to recognize that that selfish gene is actually a sin. It is not a good thing for me or for society. For me to want what is best for me. There has to be this looking outwards of the human heart.
Curt Harlow [00:15:56]:
I think it's interesting that Paul uses two words for sin here in the first verse of chapter two. And whenever you see that sort of repetition and you see that the translators have translated them different, you know, I always like to dig down there. It's a great Bible study thing. So the Greek word for transgressions. And don't worry Greek speakers or Greek nationals, I'm not going to speak any Greek in this podcast. But what it means is falling away. So he's saying, for you are dead in your leaving God. We are the subtle wandering away.
Curt Harlow [00:16:32]:
You know, we do not want to follow. We would like God to rescue, but we don't want to follow. And then just in case, and I think he's speaking that mainly to Christians that started a Christ on a discipleship path in Ephesus, but because of persecution and the riots and all that sort of stuff, were tempted to fall away. And then he says, for you, as for you, you are dead and you're falling away, you're wandering away. And your sins, and this is just the blanket term, any failure to meet God's standards. So what do we do? We walk away from God and we don't meet God's standards. And we do that from the core of our natural being. This is who are who we are in our natural being.
Curt Harlow [00:17:17]:
And if you don't start there, grace is not as rich.
Dena Davidson [00:17:22]:
That's right.
Josh Powers [00:17:23]:
Yes.
Curt Harlow [00:17:23]:
It's not as wonderful. Okay, so if then so, so, so, so then is Christ made us alive.
Dena Davidson [00:17:34]:
Yep, yep.
Curt Harlow [00:17:35]:
And then so is.
Josh Powers [00:17:37]:
So go and live as if those things were true. So that's the last bit of the passage when he goes into, okay, if you're saved by grace, there's these works that were created, the good things for you to walk in. And the understanding of the if and then pieces should compel you into a life lived that reflects. So go do it right.
Curt Harlow [00:17:58]:
I always say, how do you know that if you've Gotten the so if you get the so you're going to do that, then if you're not doing the then, it's just exactly what you said with if. And so if you get the so you do the then.
Dena Davidson [00:18:15]:
Right.
Curt Harlow [00:18:16]:
So when I receive grace, I give grace.
Dena Davidson [00:18:18]:
That's right.
Curt Harlow [00:18:19]:
So when I know that I was dead in my sins, but Christ made me alive. I love the city of Ephesus even though it persecuted me and rioted against me.
Josh Powers [00:18:32]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:18:33]:
So do you have the grace of God in your life? Well, are you doing works that are good?
Dena Davidson [00:18:40]:
Yeah.
Curt Harlow [00:18:40]:
Are you doing the hardest good works that have already been prepared? They're just ready for you to take them and doing them? If you're not doing the good works. Maybe you haven't understood how alive you've been made in Christ. Or maybe you haven't been made alive in Christ.
Josh Powers [00:18:57]:
Well, like you said, it goes back to the sort of sitting you both talked about sitting in this if thing. No one want to walk around with like ashes on their head, you know, old school, Old Testament, sackcloth and ashes to really understand if. Look how miserable I am. And yet I do think in some ways this short circuiting of I don't want to be uncomfortable with the idea that I can't save myself is sort of undergirding both of the if and then sections. The idea that we actually can't do it ourselves. And we try so hard, we're exhausted. Like letting the control go so that by the time you get to the SO concept, you're just tired. You're just tired.
Josh Powers [00:19:34]:
There's no like, revitalizing, compelling, energizing, grace fueled awesomeness that happens from that. Just because I think that the, the. Like you said, Kurt, if we don't actually look back and appreciate all of what God has done for us, then the motivation to do things that are risky, that are scary, and that will definitely cost us the price doesn't. It doesn't balance out.
Dena Davidson [00:19:58]:
That's right. So good to answer your question from 10 minutes ago. Sorry about that.
Josh Powers [00:20:02]:
We're back.
Curt Harlow [00:20:03]:
I thought you did a pretty good job. Your diversion was a good answer too, but. Yeah. What's your other answer?
Dena Davidson [00:20:08]:
Okay, so you asked, what do you do when a verse is so familiar that you run the risk of just. Yeah, I read that a bajillion times, which honestly has been happening to me in my own scriptural reading. So I have fresh answer for it. You got to slow it down. You. You can. This is not the time to speed up your reading and consume Large amounts of scripture. This is your time to take on a more meditative, meditative approach to scripture.
Dena Davidson [00:20:32]:
So what I've been doing personally, I'm reading through Ephesians, actually. Not because it's what Bayside is preaching through. It's just where it fell in the Bible next. But it works out for my job. That's helpful. So I've been slowing down. So this is how I would read. I would read verse 10 for we.
Dena Davidson [00:20:48]:
Okay, who are the we that this verse is referring to? How do I find myself in that we? We are God's workmanship. What does that mean? That I am God's workmanship. What does it mean? That the God of the universe sees something in me and he wants to do something with me. Created in Christ Jesus. Oh, that's really nice. I don't really understand what that part means. Holy cow. Actually, there's a trinity reference right there that means created in Christ Jesus.
Dena Davidson [00:21:12]:
That creator word is a trinity word. And who has the power to create God himself. Oh, that's another verse that calls back to the Trinity. That's pretty cool. I worship you, Jesus, for creating me to do good works. God, what are the good works that you created for me to do? This is how I think the Bible takes on more meaning for us when we are in those familiar passages. As we slow it down, we chew on every single word, and most importantly, we ask God to speak to us in it. God, is there a work today that you've prepared for me to do in advance? I think that's really helpful.
Curt Harlow [00:21:46]:
People say this. I read a paragraph and I got the end of it said, I don't even know what that means.
Dena Davidson [00:21:50]:
Yeah, that's.
Curt Harlow [00:21:51]:
You read it again. Like, I still don't know what I mean. This was all of biology for me. The reason why that happens, by the way, you couldn't hear it, but Bree did laugh at that joke off camera. The reason this happens is because you are unknowingly reading a word or phrase you don't fully understand. So, you know, I had a professor, old professor, professor said this back in the day before the interwebs. He said, you know, read whenever you're reading, especially if it's difficult reading, read with a dictionary open and force yourself to go, do I understand what that word means? Created in Christ. That's a phrase.
Curt Harlow [00:22:32]:
I go, I'm not sure I understand what Created in Christ. Does that mean that without Christ's life and death and resurrection, I couldn't be created into a new being? Does that mean somehow I'm preaching predestinedly created inside of Jesus as a spirit baby before he comes. I mean, there's all sorts of wacky coldness I could get into there if I don't really understand what that means. What our brain wants to say is, oh, yeah, it's just flowery, good language. And we move on and we don't get the power of it. So slowing down is such a good thing. And what I noticed you did, you said, I slow down. But you also ask questions.
Curt Harlow [00:23:12]:
The slowing down. Who is the we? Boy, anytime there's a pronoun, that is a good question to ask, who is the you, who is the we, who is the they that this passage is talking about? Josh, you said something off camera before we started about the you and the we in this passage.
Josh Powers [00:23:30]:
Yeah, I mean, Paul is writing this letter to the Ephesian church here who are wildly divided in a. In a city that wants nothing more than this little sect to be stamped out in the first place. Incredibly hostile. And they're going at it with each other. They're struggling over the Jews and the. The Gentiles, the whole thing. Most of them probably still don't even believe, I would think that Paul is even supposed to be preaching the gospel, whatever that even means to them at this point, to these Gentiles. And the first couple verses, if you look in here, it says you were under, you know, this curse that you were like this.
Josh Powers [00:24:02]:
He says it multiple times in verses one and two. And then all of a sudden, right there in verse three, it switches over to A. And the rest of the passage uses this we language. And so at the beginning, when things are dark in this sort of if territory, if we're going to keep using that, he specifically says this, you. So like those of you who weren't on the inside, the non Jewish folks I'm talking to, yes, like you were a problem. But then before the corner is turned, he says, we though, too were there together this unifying force that the Gospel can and, and must redeem both and all. And so that's a really like kind of nerdy little piece that I was going off of there. But it was pretty fun for me to see.
Josh Powers [00:24:42]:
Even Paul was going directly after the cultural separation that was being experienced that was keeping the gospel from moving forward.
Curt Harlow [00:24:49]:
Context. If you don't understand the trauma of the really violent riots that this early church went through, and then it spawned seven more churches in that area, and you don't understand that on that side of the Mediterranean, most churches were predominantly Jewish with Greek and God fearing Greeks in them. But Ephesus was the different one. It was the one on the way to Greece that actually was pretty 50 50. So it's the first real experiment. Can these two different subcultures get along? Can these new Christians that are Greek converts understand this weird Jewish messianic group? And then you get to the Greek peninsula and those churches like Corinth are mostly Greek with a few Jews. So yeah, you go from a lot of Jews to a few Greeks to Greek and Jew to. This is a big theme in all these epistles, but especially in Ephesus.
Curt Harlow [00:25:52]:
What does the work of Christ do to our are loving people that are very different from us but have the same God?
Josh Powers [00:26:00]:
Can you imagine this being read? Someone opens up the scroll and we got the letter from Paul. They start reading it. Is this like a Greek person who's like, wait, you, is he talking about. He's talking about us right now. He's like, it's not, it's not going well for us right now. They're like, all right, we switched over to we. Like, it's kind of comical to think in that lens, but we do that in the same way in our own cultural.
Curt Harlow [00:26:19]:
Jewish Christians are like, hey, we knew this. These prophecies about Jesus waiting for us. Are you a we? Huh? Okay, yeah, you're a we. That's exactly we got. You guys are too fun. All right, application. Let's be practical. Give me a thought.
Curt Harlow [00:26:35]:
What in the world should we do about this? If so, then pithy, beautiful little explanation.
Dena Davidson [00:26:42]:
Of the gospel, I think to true to what we've been talking about. Just really asking yourself the question, do you really believe the if? Do you believe it for you and do you believe it for all people in your life? So let's start with the you ask God, is there any part of me that I believe that I deserve anything from you except death and condemnation? If so, then root that out in me and help me understand that I am through and through a product of grace because I want to receive what you did on the cross. But unless I really believe that what I deserve from you, God, is death and condemnation, then I can't receive it. And this I think just goes hugely to our whole area of disappointment with God. We believe that God is not giving us what we deserve. What a weird thing for Christians to believe and it must be processed. But I, I think the more we can root ourselves in understanding what we truly deserve from God, the better our handling of disappointing life circumstances will be. And then Also, I just.
Dena Davidson [00:27:44]:
Maybe you believe it for you. But what about that family member that you love so much, but you've been tolerating. Tolerating their sin a little bit too much, excusing it, saying it's not a product of their sinful nature. Ask God to just give you the grace to see them as they truly are.
Curt Harlow [00:28:00]:
Yeah.
Dena Davidson [00:28:01]:
And just like God loves them as they truly are while they are dead in their sin, give you the capacity to love them while they're dead in their sin.
Curt Harlow [00:28:08]:
We really do enable our children, our best friends, our fallen away friends, because we don't want to. So someone in sermon prep, to your point, just made right there DNA about sitting in the. If they shared a Chuck Swindoll image about this. And he said the first couple verses of chapter two is like the jeweler who brings out that deep black velvet cloth and lays it on the counter so that when the diamond is placed on it, the diamond, you could see it. Purely our understanding of the deep black, wrathful nature is the only way for us to see the brightness and beauty of God's grace. Okay. And by the way, I am the one who stole that from sermon prep today. Everyone's gonna be.
Curt Harlow [00:28:57]:
I'm not the one who said it.
Josh Powers [00:28:58]:
It's really good, though.
Curt Harlow [00:28:59]:
It's really good. Josh, how should we apply this passage?
Josh Powers [00:29:02]:
Yeah, a simple takeaway. I mean, that turn right in the middle of the passage. Like, but God is such a fantastic and amazing knock opportunity here. No, it's such a fantastic turn. It's the entire gospel in two words. But God, even though that dark cloth exists there. So something super simple. Start every day with a But God prayer.
Curt Harlow [00:29:24]:
I love it.
Josh Powers [00:29:24]:
Like. Like the demon's talking about. Like, if we don't really remember, we don't want to dwell on where we came from. But if we first forget it, the richness becomes either boring or unnecessary. So, like, if we started every day, what. What kind of, like, perspective frame are we putting on the rest of our day if we like but God, and that's where we start to send the rest of it off. Well, that's amazing.
Curt Harlow [00:29:45]:
Mine's very practical. Go out and do some good works that we've been prepared in advance for you to do.
Dena Davidson [00:29:50]:
Amen.
Curt Harlow [00:29:51]:
So if you were dead in your sin so that Christ could make you alive, you will do good works that have been prepared for you specifically in advance from eternity for you to do. So question number one is, are you doing any good works? And question number two, are those good works really good works? Are you doing them out of gratitude for being made alive in Christ? Are you just building your resume or manipulating someone by being kind of kind to them for a moment? But are you a person that does good works? I hear this all the time. People say, Curt, I don't know what to do with my life. I do just right there. Instead of worrying about what job or what degree or how many kids or what you should go, where you should go on vacation, what if you made it your aim to do the good works that have been prepared for you to do? And from there, watch God work every one of those other decisions out?
Dena Davidson [00:30:49]:
So good, so helpful, so simple, man.
Curt Harlow [00:30:53]:
Just like that feces so good. By the way, next week on the Bible study pod, we are going to have the one and only Jason Kane is going to be here. He's probably the most honest person on our staff, I would say. Jason. Jason.
Josh Powers [00:31:09]:
He calls him like they are.
Curt Harlow [00:31:10]:
He doesn't ever let the elephant come into the room without saddling that elephant up. So he definitely don't want to miss Jason. We'll be in chapter three. Three. It's a great passage. We just all studied it together maybe an hour ago. And definitely here's what I want you to do. Find a church to go to this weekend.
Curt Harlow [00:31:29]:
Studying your Bible is one part of it. Going and having the Bible taught to you is another part of it. Being a Christian fellowship is a third part of it. So, man, put those all three together and you're gonna find a lot of things. Go good, subscribe like and make some comments you guys get on, especially the ones that get to my Instagram. I want to hear some conversations from you guys. Tell me when I'm brilliant.
Josh Powers [00:31:53]:
Full stop.
Curt Harlow [00:31:55]:
You thought I was going to say, tell me when I'm wrong? I'm not inviting any more of that into my life.
Josh Powers [00:31:59]:
I stopped guessing about 20 minutes ago.
Curt Harlow [00:32:01]:
We love you guys. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.