Overcome Fear: Find Courage With God's Promise
Here’s a summary of this week’s sermon:
The talk delves into the complex nature of fear and the challenges we face in our modern world, drawing parallels from biblical narratives and the speaker's personal experiences.
The central theme is the biblical concept of 'taking courage' in the face of fear, emphasizing that courage is a choice and an active stance we can take, bolstered by faith in God’s promises.
The speaker explores how troubles arise in our lives, not just from living in a fallen world, but also from personal actions and the actions of others, and how turning to God can provide solace and guidance.
The message is one of empowerment and resilience, urging us to find strength in God’s unchanging nature and His promises, and encouraging us to face life’s difficulties with faith and courage.
💬 CONVERSATION STREET --
Dan and Ruth talks about :
Concept of Courage in Christianity: Ruth highlights Sharon's talk on courage, noting that courage in faith is an action and not passive. They discuss how courage in Christianity is freeing because it comes from Jesus.
Faith Amidst Troubles: Dan remarks that it's better to face life's difficulties with God than without Him. They discuss the role of faith in navigating life's challenges and the reliability of God.
Personal Testimonies and Encouragement: Ruth shares how faith has been the answer in all aspects of her life. They encourage viewers to lean on God in their own struggles.
Discussion on Hypocrisy and Truth: They talk about the importance of speaking the truth and not compromising it, referencing Paul's approach to the religious leaders in the Bible.
Final Encouragement: The encouragement for viewers to seek and trust in God, emphasising His presence and promises. They remind viewers that God is with them in their troubles, as exemplified in the story of the three men in the fiery furnace from the Book of Daniel.
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Matt Edmundson: Welcome to this week's Crowd Church service. We are a digital church on a quest to discover how Jesus helps us live a more meaningful life. We are a community, a space to explore the Christian faith and a place where you can contribute and grow. Our service will last about an hour and in a few seconds we will start with a time of worship after which you will meet It's our hosts for our service who will introduce today's talk.
After the talk, we head into Conversation Street, where we look at your stories and questions that you've posted in the comments throughout the live stream. I want to invite you to connect with us here at Crowd Church. And there are a few ways. That you can do just that. Firstly, you can engage with crowd from any device [00:01:00] during our live stream.
And if you're up for it, why not invite a few friends over and experience the service together. Church is all about connecting with God and connecting with others. And one of the easiest ways for you to do that is to also join One of our midweek groups where we need online together to catch up and discover more about the amazingness of Christ.
You can also subscribe to our podcast called What's the Story where we deep dive into. Stories of Faith and Courage from Everyday People. More information about all of these things that I've mentioned can be found on our website www. crowd. church or you can reach us on social media at crowdchurch. If you're new to Crowd or new to the Christian faith and would like to know what your next steps to take are why not head over to our website crowd. church forward slash [00:02:00] Next, for more details.
And now, the moment you've been waiting for is here. Our online church service starts right now.
Dan Orange: hEllo, everyone. We had a little, always have a technical issue when we start. We had a headphone problem. So I'm here today with my sister Ruth. Sister family, like orange sister, not, she's a sister in Christ, but my sister, actual sister as well.
Yes, that is always fun. Is it with you? He's just bound his
Ruth Orange: leg
Dan Orange: on the table. Yes, I smacked my leg on the slide underneath. Um, we were talking before, our week's been a bit interesting, hasn't it?
Yeah, not the easiest week we've ever had. So I spoke last week that my [00:03:00] granddad became a Christian, basically, when my grandma died, she was 101. Grandad's 98. And he waited all that time, and then realized he needed to give his life to God, which he did. And he died on Monday morning.
Yeah. So it's been a It's been a hard few weeks, but,
Yeah, but it's great to know that he and grandma are now in heaven. It makes things still a loss, but it makes things very different. This is why we do this, because we want to tell people, we want to tell you about Jesus. He's the answer.
To all of our problems, doesn't mean that life isn't tricky and hard, it's just true.
So I think let's get straight into the talk. If you've got any questions, then please just send them in. [00:04:00] Oh, Ruth's mic, I think she's just not talking into it very good. We'll adjust that for Conversation Street. Yeah. If you've got any questions, then send them in. We'll do our best to answer them, but here we have the wonderful Sharon Edmundson talking.
So let's have a listen.
Sharon Edmundson: Do you listen to the news? How does it make you feel? Happy? I doubt it. In the UK, the news is full of fighting within our government and fighting between nations. It's full of bad news of all kinds. It can leave us feeling depressed, cynical and fearful. I wonder what things in the current news make you the most anxious or fearful.
Or maybe the things in the news don't impact you directly, but you have other difficult situations in your life. Does the Bible have anything to say about all this? I believe it does. It explains why we have trouble in the world and it gives us insights [00:05:00] that help us to navigate it. I'm going to pick up on this through today's Bible reading.
Sometimes we have trouble just from living in a world that's cursed and decaying. The book of Genesis tells us that when God created the world, it was good, but soon after it came under a curse. So some of the trouble we have in life is because we live in a cursed world that isn't working completely how it was designed to work.
For example, maybe you're suffering from illness through no fault of your own. Let's be honest, some of the trouble in our lives is because of our own stupidity, bad decisions or sin. Now sin is a Bible word for our rebellion against God and his ways. Some of the trouble in my life has been caused by getting into relationships that I knew weren't right or making silly financial decisions and getting into debt.
Some of our trouble is caused by the sin of other people, for example the child who's knocked over by the drunk driver. Or the war caused by pride and greed and [00:06:00] selfishness of others. Some of it's caused by a mixture of the above. For example, where poorer people are affected much more from adverse weather conditions because they're living in poor quality housing in areas that are more susceptible to disaster.
Some of our trouble is caused by walking away from God. He's good and all his ways are good. The Bible says that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. When we turn our backs on God, we turn our backs on the source of all goodness.
But there's another reason that we can have trouble in our lives, as we'll see when we read today's passage. Today we're going to look at yet another part of the life of a guy called Paul, formerly known as Saul, where he is in trouble yet again. If you're new to Crowd or the Christian faith, let me give you some background.
Saul was a very religious Jew who had [00:07:00] been so passionate about his faith that he had approved of Christians being killed. And he believed they were teaching what they were teaching was wrong and would draw people away from God. But he then had a dramatic experience of God where Jesus appeared to him in a vision and basically told him that what he what the Christians were teaching was true.
That although he'd been passionately religious, he'd been passionately wrong. So he too became a follower of Jesus and went on a few missionary journeys to spread the message getting into lots of trouble on the way. Today he's in trouble again. He's been teaching in the temple in Jerusalem for seven days.
When another group of Jews stirred up the crowd against him and falsely accused him, they dragged him out of the temple with the intention of killing him. However, the Romans, who were the occupying force at the time, got wind of what was going on and heard the city was in uproar. Soldiers and centurions were sent to intervene.
They took Paul [00:08:00] to their barracks to be interviewed and whipped. As he was about to be whipped, Paul dropped in the fact that he was a Roman citizen, which scared the commander and the other soldiers, as it was illegal to scourge a Roman citizen. And this is where we pick up the story today. I'll explain as we go on, and then focus on one verse at the end.
The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews, so the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them. Now this was not a trial, the purpose of this was to see if there was a case for a trial.
So Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, My brothers, I fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day. At this, the high priest and Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. Now, Ananias means Jehovah is Gracious, but actually, he had a reputation for being a bit of a tyran.[00:09:00]
Then Paul said to him, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck. So Paul compared the high priest to a badly maintained and unsafe wall that was made to look okay with a lick of paint.
Basically, Paul was calling Ananias a hypocrite. Ananias was there to judge Paul's case on the basis of Jewish law, and yet he was ordering actions that went contrary to the law. So Ananias violated both Jewish and Roman law. Those who were standing near Paul said, How dare you insult God's high priest?
Paul replied, Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest, for it is written, Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people. There are several reasons that Paul might not have realized that Ananias was the high priest, but I don't want to get into them here. So then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and others Pharisees, called out in the [00:10:00] Sanhedrin, My brothers, I'm a Pharisee descended from Pharisees.
So the Pharisees and the Sadducees were both religious sects within Judaism during the time of Christ, but they disagreed about certain things. Paul knew he was not about to get a fair hearing, so he decided to use the principle of divide and conquer by making a loud statement before the Sanhedrin. He used the present tense to describe himself as a Pharisee, because in his basic theology he still was a Pharisee, and he was also a Pharisee by heritage.
He said, I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead. The real issue was the hope and resurrection of Jesus. Paul knew that the Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed about the possibility of resurrection. When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the assembly was divided.
The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection [00:11:00] and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe in all of these things. Paul's plot accomplished its goal. When he was done speaking, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and Sadducees over the issue of the Resurrection. There was a great uproar and some of the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees, stood up and argued vigorously.
We find nothing wrong with this man, they said. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him? The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring them, bring him into the barracks.
The commander had to react because he was responsible for the safety of all Roman citizens, so he basically took matters into his own hands and commanded the soldiers to go down and use force to get Paul out. The troops were to bring him into the Antonio Fortress. The following night, the Lord stood [00:12:00] near Paul and said, Take courage, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.
And it's actually this last verse that I want to focus on, and I want to bring a couple of things out of it. The first is this. Sometimes trouble comes not because we've turned our backs on God and are out of his will, but because we're right in the will of God, doing the right thing at the right time.
Verse 11 says that God stood near Paul and spoke to him. I don't know if that's with an audible voice, a vision, or just with a strong sense in Paul's spirit. One thing the Lord doesn't do is he doesn't have a go at Paul for being in trouble again. Paul's in trouble because he's doing exactly what God wants him to do.
So sometimes we can have trouble because of our faith, not in spite of it. If you're following God because someone told you it would give you a trouble free life, you've been missold. This is not the good [00:13:00] news about Jesus. If you're considering whether or not to follow Jesus, know that following him doesn't mean a trouble free life.
But it is a life worth living. To be honest, you're going to have some kind of trouble whether or not you follow him. Better to have trouble with God on your side, rather than to have trouble with God against you. Secondly, God told Paul to be courageous, that is, to have courage. Some translations translate it as be of good cheer.
The words were spoken to him when he was in a very fear inducing situation. We may not all be in prison, but we all have situations in our lives at times that make us fearful or are very difficult. Paul is told to take courage. Taking courage doesn't necessarily mean that the feeling of fear no longer exists.
After all, we walk by faith, not by feeling. The dictionary describes courage as the ability to do something that [00:14:00] frightens one, or bravery. Or strength in the face of pain or grief. Or the ability to control your fear in dangerous or difficult situations. So the phrase Take Courage suggests something active, not passive.
It suggests a choice. We can choose to give in to fear, or we can choose to face the situations that make us afraid. We can choose to do what is right. Even if that is costly. I went on a bit of a rabbit hole, or rabbit trail, of looking up other passages in the Bible that use this phrase take courage, or where it says to be courageous.
And I noticed a pattern. The command is always followed by a reason to be courageous. And the reason is never that we're enough on our own. The reason is always to do with God's presence, or his promises, or both. For example, a verse in Deuteronomy says this, Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you, he will [00:15:00] never leave you nor forsake you.
In this verse, the reason given to be courageous is that God is with the person and won't leave him. I was talking with a friend recently and she gave me an example from her own life where her son had courage because he was aware of God being with him. She doesn't want to be named but is happy for me to share the story.
So the gist of it is that not long after her son was born he developed a cyst on his spine and he spent a lot of time in hospital and the doctors said that he could end up paralysed. He was operated on and the operation was a success and they were told that the cyst would not come back. It did come back and he was operated on again.
And more recently, the cyst came back again and my friend's son had to have an MRI scan where he had to lie still in the scanner for quite some time. It can be quite scary to be in such an enclosed space for so long, and my friend was worried about her son [00:16:00] being scared in the scanner. The thing is, over the years of his short life, because of his health problems, he had learnt to pray and to know God's presence.
He wasn't worried, he said, Mum, how can I be scared when God's with me? How great is the faith of children. The last verse of the passage we looked at before says this, The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, Take courage. As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.
So this time the reason God gives to have courage is a promise about the future. He was basically saying you'll survive this current incident and you'll go to Rome. This is an example of how remembering God's promises can give us courage. Years ago when my mind was one big mess, I felt like giving up on faith.
The following verses gave me courage to continue. Jesus said, if you hold to my teaching, you're really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you [00:17:00] free. Eventually, as I dug into God's word and started to understand who he was, and who he made me to be, and how life operated, the freedom he talked about became my experience.
More recently I needed to confront someone about something, and like most people, I don't particularly like confrontation, but I knew I had to do it. However, I didn't have peace about how to go about it, and I was worried about the outcome. I prayed a lot about it, and I talked to a few friends, and then one friend said one sentence that I just knew was the way ahead.
I felt like I'd heard from God, it gave me such clarity and I just had peace about how to handle the situation and peace that even if it all blew up in my face, that God was bigger. Jesus had the courage to face dying on a cross because of looking ahead to what was promised. Hebrews says this, Therefore we also, since we are surrounded [00:18:00] by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us.
And let us from with endurance the race that is set before us looking unto Jesus, the author and finish of a finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. We're in the lead up to Christmas.
Now when we think about God coming to earth in the form of Jesus, it's a time when we remember God's presence with us and his promises. The Bible prophesied Jesus coming centuries before he actually came with these words. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, the Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.
Immanuel means God with us. The Christmas story also gives us example of people of courage. Mary had [00:19:00] courage. An angel appeared to her and told her she would supernaturally have a baby. She wasn't married. She hadn't slept with anyone. She'd have a bit of explaining to do to her fiancé and risked being an outcast in society and yet her response was to say, I'm the Lord's servant, may your word to me be fulfilled.
She had courage, but Joseph, her fiancé, also had courage. Mary's pregnancy could have been a source of great shame to him in the community, but he stood by her. What situations are you facing now where you need to choose courage? If you're already a Christ follower. Know that God is with you even if you can't feel it, and he's promised never to leave you.
Have you asked him what his promises are for your situation? Keep going, don't give up. Or maybe you know someone who's struggling that needs your encouragement to keep going. The Bible tells us to encourage one another. It says, For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but [00:20:00] to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore, Encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you're doing. Let's remind each other of God's presence and his promises. If you're thinking about being a Christ follower, maybe you need courage to take that final step.
It can be a scary step, maybe like Mary and Joseph, you'd face ridicule or shame from your community. Have courage, look beyond yourself to the one who will make all things right in the end. As Christ followers, we have hope for this life, but we also have a hope for the life after death. An eternal life that we get to spend with our loving Heavenly Father.
I'll leave you with these words about this life from Revelation. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old [00:21:00] order of things has passed away.
Dan Orange: Wow, we've just got to get rid of our massive headphones, we've got a headphone problem. That was an amazing talk, wasn't it? I think well, what things firstly? Stood out to you, Ruth. I have to go backwards, because
Ruth Orange: the one before she ruined my memory. I liked how she Sharon was talking about courage.
And I think, I don't know when, like what she said about courage being an action, not passive. Yeah. Yeah, to have courage is not the absence of anything, but it's
Dan Orange: the choice. Yeah, I think, yeah, if you think about perhaps, I don't know I like watching war films of World War One and you say, oh, that person had courage and it wasn't the fact that the situation they were in, it's because of what they did in that situation, [00:22:00] wasn't it?
Yeah, I
Sharon Edmundson: just, I don't know if this is relevant or not, I
Ruth Orange: literally just watched Braveheart when William Wallace is waiting to be, of that horrible death and torture and,
and he admits in his cell that he's afraid. There we go, try that. He admits in
himself that he's afraid, but he knows still what he's got to do.
And he's, he's got to do it and he can't deny what, who he is and what he's stood for. So it's, yeah, courage is action. I like what Sharon said with that. Yeah. Yeah, but I also think it's really freeing. Courage when you're with Jesus is freeing, isn't it? Because, courage on our own.
It's too much, I think, it's too hard, but with Jesus, we can have courage because he's told us we can, because he's with us, therefore, he's bigger than us, therefore,
Yeah,
Dan Orange: it's before we can do it. Yeah, I know, we've [00:23:00] got that, we've got him behind us and in front of us, haven't we? So we can stand up for something knowing.
tHat he's got our back and like in Paul's case, in Jesus case, even in the worst situation, they both died because of this, but that, but they went into glory. They did it because it, God is over all and it's worth it. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think if you come here Ruth, we'll just have to get a bit closer because it's just, it's going in and out. It's not really picking up. There we go. Sorry. It's like we're on one of those um, radio show and we'll just have [00:24:00] to get, I've got my notes here. Yeah and Sharon said. Obviously there's troubles in this world.
We were talking before about our granddad passed away this week and we've both been to an amazing lady's funeral on on Thursday and she died way too soon but she knew Jesus. Yeah. We have that huge loss. And the family have that huge loss, but they know that she loved God, she's with him and we will see her again.
And that's not, we're not here to tell you about a pie in the sky type thing. This hope that's a wish. I often talk when I'm talking to people about Jesus and we, in, in. In the Bible, in church, we often talk about this word [00:25:00] hope. And in our English translations, often hope can be translated as a bit like a wish.
Ah, I hope that happens. I hope I have pizza for tea. But we have a hope. And the Bible says it's a hope that's steadfast and certain it's something that we can rely on. And that's. Why I want to bring this message. Yeah,
Ruth Orange: that's the freeing thing, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's true.
Dan Orange: I think Sharon said it's better to have trouble with God than without God.
Yeah, I like that. And I always think that, I think, I'm so glad I'm going through stuff. Life is hard. I've got loads of things in our life and family going on at the moment. I'm glad that I do that. alongside Jesus. We're not doing it on our own because he's good. He has got answers for us, he's got guidance for us.[00:26:00]
Fear will hold you prisoner, hope will set you free. Yeah. Jesus said truth casts out all, perfect love casts out all fear, doesn't he? Because he is that.
Ruth Orange: Yeah. And it's not a wish. It's not a wishy thing. It's like people say, Oh, it's a religion or Christianity or whatever. It's a crutch. But it's not making excuses.
I think when trouble comes, when things are awful, like somebody you love dies. We're not just It's great that we can rely on God. Yeah, and we're not and we're not wishing it away and saying that it doesn't hurt. But there's, we know the one that we love and trust is bigger and somehow we know there's more and there's an eternity and somehow we will get through it because he promised that we will, he promised that we will get through it.
He promised that it will be our comforter and his promises are true, truer than anybody else's. [00:27:00] Yeah, so it's going through, sometimes it's going through things like that, that when you learn more about, about Jesus and about life and how much you can trust him or not, if you don't prove something, you don't know if it's going to hold you, do you, does it, do you?
Yeah.
Dan Orange: Yeah. I love that little boy's words. How could I be scared? God is with us. He's been there before. He's looked after me. How can I be scared? Yep. And then that's not to say we aren't. I'm scared, but everything we go through, we can learn more about how to rely on him, how to lean on him.
Yeah.
Ruth Orange: He's fully reliable. He's strong enough,
Dan Orange: yeah. Was there anything else you wrote down in your notes?
Ruth Orange: I like how Paul is talk talks how talk, how he talks to them, the religious leaders. Like he really, he doesn't soften anything, does he? He is a real, yeah. He really says it as he is, as it is and cause him hypocrites and [00:28:00] yeah, I just he, yeah.
He doesn't pussy foot around anybody. Because he knows the truth and he doesn't wanna compromise the truth. Yeah. Yeah. So with the whitewashed wall thing, I think when Sharon just, Sharon explained it like something that was going to be something that was in disrepair, but was painted to make like it wasn't, I've never seen it like that before.
That's really good. Yeah. I guess that's what a hypocrite is. Somebody that's or something or somebody that's in disrepair, but is made to look all right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can't tell people things by the surface, can you? Yeah, I guess that's why the Bible tells us not to judge. People, because you can't tell things
Dan Orange: by the surface.
God's the only judge because he can tell. He can look at our hearts rather than our actions and what's on the outside.
The, right at the beginning Sharon talked [00:29:00] about the dispute that was going on and we can have disputes and things in our life. I'm doing the talk in a few weeks time. And Paul then uses the same tactic. He, I say tactic, he just listens to God and God gives him some insight into the situation.
Sometimes we're not just to sit back. We are to say and speak the truth. And that might be just the situation he was in. Paul just said I'm a Pharisee. And half of them were like Oh, okay. That makes things a little bit different here. Don't be afraid to say what you are, what God's done in you and ask him for wisdom.
I love doing these talks because I'm talking now to you, but I'm talking to me as well. Because in my life, I just got to go, yeah, that's what I need to do. It's so easy, isn't it to miss out on what God's got [00:30:00] because we're trying to do things without him, even though we know him.
Ruth Orange: Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah. Cause he you said something then that made me think of something. Yeah, you could, he could have got himself, he maybe could have got himself out of trouble, couldn't he? By by being a bit nicer, yes. Yeah, but he couldn't because that would be untruthful to himself and to the spirit that was in him.
And
Dan Orange: God said to him I need you because I need you to take this message to Rome. So he knew that he had something to do there, some further thing to go, that God is with us. If you've got any questions, if you've got any prayer requests, so what we mean by that is, if you've got. Anything in your life that you're struggling with, if you need healing, if you're worried about a situation, um, if you don't know this Jesus, please just email in the website is crowd. [00:31:00] church, and on there you can email you can send us a WhatsApp, that comes through to the team, so we'll get straight on it um, and praying. It's, that's what being church is. is about. And that's why it's great that we can have Crowd Church, because um, you guys might not get to hear what's, what's going on.
So we can. Yeah. Bring this message.
Ruth Orange: Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah I actually do love it because, um, he's the answer to everything and life gets so complicated, isn't complicated and there's so much, so many things to navigate out there, but he's, he is, he's the answer to everything and not like a sweeping statement kind of thing where we think, Oh, everything's going to be all right, but somehow he's answer to everything.
Yeah, I do believe that because that's what it's been in our lives. I think that's what I was going to say about when you were talking about Paul, like he didn't, he [00:32:00] talks about his own experience and he talked about who he was and what he knew. And you can't argue with that. If it's your own experience in your life, it's pretty hard to argue, isn't it?
And yeah, in all my life he's always been the answer every single time to work stuff to personal stuff. To, to being lost, I get lost a lot
Sharon Edmundson: and it, and
Ruth Orange: it all, even with Sadaf, yes. And it always, it just, yeah, always gets me found again.
Yeah he's the answer to everything.
Dan Orange: I love that when God spoke to Paul, he said he stood near Paul, just that knowledge that God It's with us, not in a what's that?
Is it a Cliff Richard song where he talks about God looking down? Yes yeah.
Ruth Orange: I can't remember the
Dan Orange: words, but [00:33:00] God is lit, he's miles and miles away. God is watching us. God is watching us, and he is watching us, but he, if you ask him, he will stand next to you. And that it's awesome, isn't it?
Ruth Orange: Yeah yeah, like the story of the three blokes in the fire, when they get chucked in the fire because they don't, they weren't going to bow down to anybody else, only God. And it says they came out and they didn't even smell of the fire. I don't know why that just came into my head then, but because, but then they said that there was three people chucked in, but they saw four people in there.
Yeah. And one of them was the Lord, wasn't it? Wasn't it? Because he was in there, in the fire with them, in the trouble with them, and they came out and they didn't even smell of the smoke. Yeah, he's not somebody that's just watching from afar. Yeah, so
Dan Orange: I've read that in the book of Daniel. Oh,
Ruth Orange: well done. Oh
Dan Orange: yeah, of course.
Not named after me, I was named after that Daniel. And again Sharon at the end talked about Emmanuel, which means God is with us. It's Christmas at the moment, and you'll probably see that,[00:34:00] plastered around on cards and things, and it is that, that God is with us. He didn't come, He came to earth as a child, as a baby, so He could live with us.
He didn't come in as God who hadn't experienced pain and Suffering and just life became God incarnate, God as man with us to go through this with us. That's the difference between other religions and stories is this God that was before everything came to be with us, Emmanuel.
Let's see if there's any Matt said, yeah, [00:35:00] we're brothers and sisters, we're not going to Yeah,
Ruth Orange: thanks for clarifying that, Matt.
Dan Orange: Sorry, very big
Ruth Orange: silence there. The one of the very first things Sharon said was that he's the source of all goodness. And that, yeah that's true. Everything good comes from God. Everything good. And I can't remember what I was watching the other day, and oh, it was these two people in this silly film but one of them was saying he doesn't believe in God, but he believes in his family, he believes in himself, he believes in love, and I just thought where do you think love comes from?
God is love, he invented love he is he's the epitome of love yeah, it didn't just, Come out of nowhere and yeah, I think we forget, sometimes we think we're bigger than him and we're better than him and because we don't challenge or, I don't know but yeah he is love [00:36:00] and love looks different sometimes, doesn't it?
But it's,
Sharon Edmundson: yeah,
Dan Orange: he is. I've been reading C. S. Lewis and Mere Christianity. It's an amazing book. He's, I like him because he's very logical, is how I think, and he said yeah, in the world, there are good things, there are good people that don't know Jesus, because God is good, God created this world, and he permeates through everything, yes, we have illness and sickness and sin has come in, but our God is there, and that's why he says.
Come and know me in the fullest, know me to the max, John 1010 says that doesn't he, I'll give you a life in all its fullness. So yeah, come and know this great creator.
Ruth Orange: Yeah, you can see bits of him everywhere in nature and in people. Yeah, but there's just glimpses, isn't it?
Yeah.
Dan Orange: Come and know him fully.
We're coming to the end of our time [00:37:00] here. Next week we've got Matt Edmundson and it's it's Christmas Eve next week so it's a non live stream. So the talk will be on but there won't be any host doing questions. Still if you've got questions then please just put them in the comments because there's always someone that will love to answer those and get back to you.
It's been As always, a fun tech week, I do.
Ruth Orange: It's me Dan, I've got this weird electrical impulse, sorry everybody, that as soon as I come near anything techy it goes wrong, so you can blame me for that
Dan Orange: bit. Thanks Ruth, thanks for joining us. Thanks everyone for coming on in the comments.
Oh, sorry, just looking at a comment that came up. Thanks for Yeah, thanks for everyone in the comments, and have an amazing Christmas if we don't, if there is no hosting [00:38:00] before then. And again, if you want to know anything, anything more about this amazing Jesus, about this amazing God, please contact us on the WhatsApp or by email, and we'll see you next time.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, have a good Christmas.
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It has been Awesome to connect with you and you are awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear and hopefully we'll see you next time. That's it from us. God bless you. Bye for now.