What Do YOU do when No One Sees?

There's a thing you do when nobody's watching. Or at least you think nobody's watching. I think you know the one. You know the thing. You never do it in front of the people who respect you and and and that you respect. Never at the front of a room. But alone, late at night, with the door shut and the phone close. You go back to it. And you've made a quiet peace with it. A little bargain. You've told yourself this is mine. This is my little thing I got going on. You've told yourself it's yours, only you. Maybe it's a tab you keep open. A number you keep calling. When you know should delete it. A tab that you know you should delete it altogether. Maybe it's a resentment you feed like a small fire out in an open field, because out there where you think nobody can see, that fire of resentment keeps you warm. Here's what I want you to feel this morning. God isn't most interested in the version of you that shows up where everybody's looking. Because what you do out there when nobody is checking on you. That's what you actually believe. Today we're in one of the most important 16 verses in the Old Testament. And I walk straight out to your field and it asks you put that fire out. This is true word, faith for life with Dr. Sean. I'm Sean. First of all, thank you for joining. Um we we were we were uh only on YouTube for uh a little over a week. And uh I didn't love it. I like streaming live live. We did the premieres where I was on the chat, the live chat, but for reasons we'll get into at some point. I had to just be on YouTube. I don't I don't ever ask for prayers for myself, uh, but I need your prayers. I had a real bad fall. Real bad. Um yeah, hit my head, my knees, my arm, my spine, it all hurts. Um bad timing. They always are, and you know, I always brag on my VA team. Dr. Walker always says three points of contact. And I didn't have that, and that's on me, and I fell hard. It was right next to the road, I hit my head on concrete, was a bad deal. And uh this was a few days ago, I think, and my head bounced off the concrete, broke my glasses. Um I say all that to say this. I think of you all as family. When you hurt, I hurt. When you are in joy, I'm I'm in joy. I'm happy. When you all are going through struggles, I'm right there with you. I can be as close as you want me to be, as involved as you want me to be. But and I I was considering not saying anything about it because, well, why? What is achieved in that? By the way, I I have no idea how the sound is. Music too loud. I curated a whole thing of music today. I found it soothing and comforting. Um, yeah, we don't know if I uh suffered another TBI. I don't know if I was unconscious or not. Um good morning, Sean, spelled correctly. Tammy. Good morning, Tammy, Robbie. Good morning, Nicole. Good early morning out there on the West Coast. Good morning, Susan. Good morning, Linda. We are praying for you all. I love you all. Thank you, Robbie. Robbie says, good sound. Anyway, I won't belabor it, but uh I I want to tell you that um this rattled me. It was a very hard fall. I'm six foot four. Um Dr. Walker has always said the fall will happen faster than you can imagine, and you won't be able to do anything about it. By the time you realize you're falling, you will have already done the damage. She was so right about that. The other thing is, I'm a pretty tough guy. I've lived a pretty kinetic life, and I never thought anything could make me feel vulnerable. All of this stuff, and those of you who listen regularly, you know my story. All of this stuff never really totally made me vulnerable. This fall did. It to be honest, it rattled me. And I'm sure, you know, if I have another TBI, great. Another concussion, great, I'd be 14. Um, and I don't know what damage it did. I've got anyway, can't see it now, but I got it covered. Uh yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy, crazy, crazy. And it did happen before I could do anything about it. I say all this to say. You mattered to me. And uh I want you to know that. One other thing. I'm gonna re-record, I'm gonna do a live for Sunday, this past Sunday. I gotta figure out what day to do it. I've got medical appointments all week long, so I don't know, I'm not exactly sure where I'm gonna fit it in, but um. You never know about family. You never know who really cares about you. You never know the authenticity of it until something happens that they don't have to involve themselves, but they do. I will tell you while I was on the ground, Miss Colleen, she was up in, we were in a hotel, and uh we were packing to leave where we were and come back home. And I called her, and she didn't like the phone. She knows it's true. But she answered that phone immediately, and God had her right next to it. That sound was off. And she turned, just she was just right near it, so she saw it light up with my call. There's no sound. She answered the call. I tried to be calm and direct. I tried to make sense. I don't know if I did or I didn't, but I told her, I said, uh, I fell and I'm hurt. And I was bloody and all that. She was down there. I don't know how she covered all that ground that fast. She was a superstar athlete in high school. So maybe that's how. But she she got to where I was so fast. And Micah, I was walking Micah, and he stayed right next to me because there was a road just feet away, just a few feet away from where I was. Busy, busy morning road. And she got to me, and she was calm and direct, and she helped me upstairs, and we got the blood cleaned off, and I'm sure I looked like a car crash. And she she helped me very, very much, and she had to finish packing. We had a goal of leaving at 5 a.m. Come back here. Well, we missed that by a few hours. Weren't sure if I had to go to the hospital or or what. I probably should have, but I didn't want to be stuck in Georgia. I knew I knew I have my medical teams back here, and I know probably not the best decision, but there are a lot of people who you'll go through times in your life, some rough times, some struggles, some really rough times. And then sometimes over time, the Lord, and hard work on your part, but the Lord, if you trust him, will repair and revise that relationship or those relationships. And and he's done that. The outpouring, we we let my family know, and um they were all kind. They all offered to drop everything. It was early in the morning, come and help, take me to the hospital, whatever needed to be done. And they meant it. The point I want you to get today, especially today, now who could have known this is day 100. This is day 100 right here. And you know, I mentioned briefly that I'm gonna re-record Sunday's summation and deepening because I didn't like it when I listened back and I was doing the live chat, and I'm gonna totally redo it. Totally. Um I want you to have my very best. And the day that I recorded that, I was rough. So we're gonna redo that. But I want I want you to know family doesn't always have your last name. Family are the people that drop everything and say, I'm here. They're the people that, no matter what, no matter the inconvenience, no matter the bad timing, they're there. I mentioned uh Dean Larry a fair bit. They're amazing, successful people. I mean, totally and completely successful people. They live an amazing life. And people look at them. They're both, he's super handsome and brilliant and funny and talented, and they're both in their 70s. And and Dee is little petite, little beautiful blonde, still beautiful in her 70s, unbelievable, fit. They're both fit. And people think, you know, and I've I've mentioned this in past episodes. People think, well, they got it all together. They're they're lucky. Smooth sailing for them. Well, I said last week, I think it was last week, maybe the week before. Don't think that. Stop looking at people and thinking that their life is easy. Their life is easy. It's not. I remember people saying to me lots of times, you know, people that heard about the accident was national news, oddly enough. Uh, there were teenagers, seniors, high school seniors in the other vehicle, and one of them died. I happened to know the young man. He lived across the fairway from where we lived. Knew him really well. And he was dear. People would see me, you know, two, three months later, and they'd say, Well, you look, you look great. You look fine. And I was the farthest thing from fine. I was the farthest thing from recovered, as you might imagine. And some of you are walking around, and you are the farthest thing in the world from recovered. You're the farthest thing in the world from being fine. I want you to know God loves you. He does. And I want you to know that when you bind yourself, there's no obligation watching this show. That's the thing. You can you can hop in and hop out. Um, our our our regular listeners, among regular listeners, there's about 37% that aren't subscribed, which blows my mind. I think why not why not hit the little bell? There's only 4% of you that have hit the little bell for all notifications. And I say that because sometimes you we don't understand how social media works. This is social media, it's YouTube, but it's social media. And so we present these things to you for free. And but there's a so much cost and so much behind it, so much effort behind it, the clicking subscribe and the little bell with all notifications, even the thumbs up when you do that, you have no idea what a difference that makes. Yes. You know, that's important to the show. Growth is critical because if you don't grow on YouTube, if you don't have all those things in place, um they just don't show your videos to people. You say, well, how could they do that? No, no, no. It's their platform, they own it, they can do it if they want, and they do. Um, they throttle, they've throttled this show many times. Family. You need to understand that family isn't perfect. You are not perfect. And it's okay that you're not. And if you're if you're in a situation where things are not perfect for you, your family, things are jacked up there. Maybe your your personal life is jacked up, maybe you know, you got a hurt habit or hang up that you think maybe that's that thing's winning the battle, and maybe it's gonna win. I'm here to tell you it's not gonna win. Good morning, Miss Sharon. Praying for all of you daily, praying that your walking is easier, step by step. And Miss Cheryl, I know that we don't see your name here, but I want you to know we're praying for you. And Miss Linda, we're praying for you. All of you, all of you by name, every day. Family. Family looks different in different places. Nowadays, in the modern world, families look very, very different. And within those families, there are people with very serious struggles. We don't sometimes see them. Acknowledging them, being consistent, and being committed, that's family. One to another. And listen, if you're new to this, what we're doing here, you're welcome here. If you're listening and the first time you're tapping in, we're a hundred mornings into the reading of the entire Bible in order, start to finish. Today sets us down in Leviticus 17. By the way, if this teaching does help you, and I hope that it does, the book I wrote, True Word, Faith for Life, it's a good-sized book. It's made to last a lifetime. I spent a bunch extra on it. You'll see when this pops up on the replay, there'll be products. You can click on that. You can order it from Walmart.com. Oddly enough, it's $46 from Walmart. But if you order it directly from our website, I think it's a little bit cheaper. And Walmart gives us a dollar. And uh if you order through our website, same amount of time to get it. Uh, we do much better with that. Not for nothing. You don't have to buy if you don't want to. I think it'll help you. It's written for the person that really is tired of religious pieces and religiosity, and they're they're ready for the word of God to make sense in real life. And I think I hit the ball out of the park on that one. And I say a lot of stuff there that I can't say here. So I think you'll benefit from it. It's written so that you can write in it too. We use high-quality paper, everything high quality in it. Is it perfect? No. No. I'm a guy with a severe brain injury and spinal cord injury. You know, I'm doing the best I can, but I think it came out pretty good. And so far, everybody that's read it that's contacted me and from the weirdest places, and they say, thank you. I use this every day for my devotion. Now, let's get into the chapter because it doesn't waste a single verse. Sometimes when we read scripture, we uh we skip over things. We don't realize we're skipping over the things, but sometimes we do. We skip over some things. Because we think, well, that's not important. Everything is important. Little things don't mean a lot, they mean everything. Are you listening and are you ready? If you're ready, I I want I want to ask you. Oh, thank you, Miss Sharon. Ms. Sharon says, excellent book. It's a keeper for sure. That's very sweet. And Robert says he it's wonderful to start his day with all of us. God bless you, Robert. We're glad to have you. I this is you, this is a you thing to answer. Is there a field? Do you have a place you put your kind of secret secret stuff, your secret life? Is there a field out there? A place you go where nobody sees. Something you've never once been willing to bring into the light. Yes or no? That's all you have to do. You already know which one it is. I want you to hold it while we read. Now, I will tell you this. I will tell you this. Welcome, Jogo. Good to have you. Jogo is listening on the YouTube channel. For those of you listening on Facebook, I had a little trouble connecting on Facebook this morning. Um, I hope that it's all working fine now. And uh and I'm happy to have you. Anyway, we got to get going. I've been muttering and whatnot. I I have been contacted by some some listeners. It was during this past week. And they said, Is this real? Are you really gonna help me? Are you really gonna pray for me? Thank you, Nicole. Oh, that's so nice. She bought it for her kids, too. She says, It's a great book. Bought it for my kids. She says True Word Faith for Life. It's available at Truewordfaithforlife.com. Click on the store, it's right there. Also, by the way, Bible rebinding by Mooseworks Bible. Um, you can't see it here. People who have seen the quality of it, they've touched it, they're blown away by it. I had some dear friends we we were with last week and some dear family. And um crazy, crazy the response to the Bible when they see it and they feel it. It's unbelievable. She's not a sponsor or anything like that. Good morning, Miss Colleen. Thank you. She's not a sponsor or anything, uh, but she's done such beautiful work for me. I I told her, I said, listen, I I want to, I want to show the world, or at least my little world, whatever I can reach. I want to show them the beautiful and amazing work you do. She she does Bibles. That's what she does. She does them by hand. It's crazy. She's a very nice lady, very humble. She works in a little tiny shop, I think in Connecticut. She's on Etsy. So her her uh in the show description, there's a click link. And she's also on my website in the store, true wordfaithforlife.com store. And then you'll see my book you can buy, and then Bible rebinding. That gives you the link where you can contact her. If there's a Bible that you want to last forever, I I have a Bible collection. Um, Miss Linda has given me two Bibles that I treasure. And uh I'm looking at the Bibles now, that's where I'm looking. And there are some, there are two more that I'm going to have rebound. They don't need to be rebound from the sense that the covers good, but they look brand new. But there's no cover like these, and these will last. If you treat these right, they'll last forever. Anyway, to feel what God says, to feel why. Sometimes we need to know why, right? We're curious people. How many of you are curious? You're a curious person. It's okay if you're not. I know people that aren't curious, but I've had people this past week. They contacted me. They literally are regular listeners of the show, they never go into live chat and they said, Is this real? Is this real? Do you really care? And I said, Oh, I absolutely do. Okay, what I have to tell you is heavy. And and both of them, one was a male, one was a female. Ironically, maybe not so ironically, each of them had the same situation they were dealing with. And it was heavy. And I was able to pray and pray with them and care for them and give them some ideas and some tools and some points of contact where they lived. They both lived in very different places. One of them lives in Singapore, which is amazing to me. So cool that they listen. And if you're listening now, they gave me permission to say their names. I'm not going to say their names, but they gave me permission to mention this. I I want you to know we all are dealing with stuff. All of us are. And this whole image of perfect church, you know, perfect congregation, perfect pastor, perfect worship team, choir, perfect video, all this stuff. That's that's a mirage. We are all hanging on with our fingernails. Sometimes we're at that ledge. And this is kind of one of those things. To feel why God says what he says here, you have to stand in the world Israel just walked out of. And I and I want you to know, I teach in a way, I teach from an ancient Near Eastern, my doctorates are heavily involved with ancient Near Eastern language, culture, and context. It's very important for me for you to understand the actual thing, what the words really mean. And I do a lot of work to make sure I'm doing that. So I want you to feel why God says what he says here. But in order to feel that, you've got to be in that ancient Near Eastern world. Israel just walked out of. It's an ancient Near East sacrifice. Look, in the ancient Near East sacrifice wasn't a church activity. A lot of people think this, by the way. They think, oh, it was just church. It was just the Jews sacrificing. It wasn't. It was, it was, it was the ordinary way you manage the invisible powers that attach to a place. There were spirits of the field, of the threshing floor, of the crossroads, and you kept them fed where they lived, locally, quietly, out in the open country. That's what verse 7 is naming. God tells Israel to stop sacrificing to the Se'irim. Se'rim. The word literally means the hairy ones, the goat spirits of the field. Israel had spent four hundred years in Egypt. Did you know that? 400 years. And they understandably picked up the habits of keeping the field spirits fed on the side. So God does something drastic. He pulls every altar into one place. Every animal comes to one door, one priest, one God. Not because he needs the foot traffic, he doesn't need that. He's not a mall. Because a private altar in a field is precisely how a nation drifts, and it's how we drift. You keep the public worship going where everyone can see. And a second altar. Wow. A second altar burning where no one can see. But the second one tells the truth about you. That secret one that tells the truth about you. Leviticus 17 does two things. It tells Israel where they may kill an animal, and it also tells them where they may never, or what they may never do with the blood. Take the blood. Because that's the hinge of the whole chapter, verse 11. Here's where your translation quietly makes a decision for you. And they all do. Good morning, to be continued 25. And this Cheryl, we were just mentioning that we were praying for you. We continue to pray for you. Um she has made an awesome recovery in this surgery as I understand it. Super serious. Miss Sharon's surgery, super serious. Um, you know, they're doing great. They're doing great. And your prayers make a difference. And they they tell me so. And we need to pray for Joe. You know, the caregivers, that's why I say pray for Miss Colleen. I am not easy. I am not easy. And she will she will tell you that. I do not make things easy. I don't make things easier on her. Truth. But she stays in the batter's box. And I appreciate it. Here's where your translation quietly makes a decision for you. And understand that I'm not trashing any translation at all. I don't get involved in that. I do reviews, Bible reviews that are on True Word, Faith for Life with Dr. Sean YouTube channel, the one with about 4,000 followers. And um, yeah, yeah, I mean, we talk about the differences in translations, and it's important to understand there are differences. There are differences. And sometimes the translators they make a decision for you. Well, we're going to say this means this. So the Hebrew, the Hebrew word underneath this verse is one of my favorites. Nefish. Nefesh. Nunfe Shin. That's how it's spelled. It means life. It means soul, the living self. It can mean the being that prays, the breath in a body. My friends, that's the name for us. Nefesh. And it lands three times in one verse. And let me just tell you, anytime anything lands three times in one verse, oh my, better pay attention. The life, the nephesh, the flesh is in the blood. God gives that blood on the altar to make atonement for your nephesh, your life, your breath. And then the last phrase. Now the King James Version says, the blood makes atonement for the soul. But the Hebrew reads, b'nefesh, the nefesh, which can just as fairly be translated, the blood makes atonement by the life, by means of a life given. Oh, that's not a small gap. Come on. One reading says the blood covers your soul. The other says it atones by a life laid down in your place. Well, the complete Jewish Bible, I use the complete Jewish Study Bible very heavily, and the English Standard Version, or ESV, they lean toward that second sense, life for life. And I think, I think the Hebrew is pushing us there. Atonement isn't a fee God collects, it's a life given in place of a life. Miss Nicole says something, uh, something I think I should read to you all. We live in a culture that has taught us to hide emotions, appear strong and conform to the world. We all fall in short of the glory of God and we continually battle with ourselves to stay faithful. Amen. True story. True story. Thank you for that. Thank you all. You all are wonderful. I absolutely love you. So I want you to hear the world that this landed in. I want you to understand this. Because people in the ancient Near East, they didn't just avoid blood, they drank it on purpose. I know. Because blood was believed to carry the life force of a creature. And taking it in was how you pulled that force into yourself. I know it's weird. What this is a different world. We can't take what we know now, apply it to that anachronistically, and say, oh, well, you know, that's super weird. Well, it is super weird. They lived a super weird life. It was a tool for seizing life from the unseen world. And that's kind of what they thought because they were figuring it all out. But here's the thing: Israel's told the exact opposite. You don't seize life. It isn't a substance you can absorb. It belongs to God. And the only place blood may go is on the altar, where he assigned it for you as a gift. Now, here, who's doing the giving? I have given it to you upon the altar. Then the last command. When you hunt and catch an animal, you pour its blood out and cover it with dust, not just drain it, cover it, bury it. You handle a life with reverence, even when you're hungry, even when you're completely alone. I want you to understand something in the ancient Near Eastern culture. The Israelites were very different in the way they treated animals. They treated them beautifully, lovingly, caringly. And when it came time to take a life of an animal for food or for sacrifice, the Jews did it in a way, and they still do, in a way that is as compassionate as possible, as least pain or suffering as possible. Islam does it the exact opposite. So you need to understand that, you know, this was this was a daily part of life, right? Blood was a was a regular occurrence. So this line is older than Israel. Genesis 9. Noah steps off the ark. God permits meat for the first time. Because remember, before that didn't need meat. They didn't need it. But God permits meat for the first time and attaches one condition. The flesh with its life, its blood, you shall not eat. That's before Abraham. Before there's a Hebrew anything, God drew one line around the life of a creature and said, that part isn't yours to take. Uh-uh. Now, go back out to your field that I mentioned when we opened this. Because Israel wasn't rebelling at the tabernacle. That's not where it was happening. They showed up at the door with everybody else. They showed up looking ready for tabernacle. They looked ready for worship. They looked ready for the preaching and the singing and the all of that. They looked ready. Just like we look ready when we go into our church. I watched uh two baptisms in two different churches this week. One I've been to, the other I haven't. One I was just at. Me and this Colleen, we were at just uh this past weekend. Um, beautiful. Wow. Wow. Not this past weekend, the weekend before. Oh, wow. Amazing. Amazing. But then this weekend, we watched two churches, First Baptist Atlanta, Dr. Charles Stanley's old church. I encourage you to watch that. Amazing worship, amazing preaching. Dr. George is phenomenal. The worship team is poof, world class. It's amazing. Very relevant preaching. It's a little, a little more high church, you know. Um, and then and then the other church. So both churches, um, both churches had baptisms. One thing I noticed, the one church, everybody getting baptized was wearing a t-shirt. And it said the same thing. I swore I'd remember what it was, but I I forgotten. Bumped my head again. The point I'm making is this. Um, the other church uh was they were not dressed up, but you know, but everybody with both of them were all dressed up. The churches, each of the churches are not a dressy church. Now, First Baptist Atlanta more of a dressy church than than Grace Fellowship in Johnson City, Tennessee. But uh Johnson City is is the Grace Fellowship Church is more of a cash type deal. Um, people in jeans and you know, t-shirts or whatever. But the people that were going up to watch right next to the baptism pool or little tub, they were all dressed up. It made me think, you know, we get all dressed up for church. A lot of us do, or at least we used to, especially Easter, Christmas, and whatnot. We get dressed up. We dust ourselves off. Let me clean myself up first. That's what we all do. And you know, in the ancient Near East, where I'm talking about this passage, they showed up the same way, just like everybody else. We don't know what people are going through. We have a little saying we picked up from uh one of Miss Colleen's friends and former co-workers. You don't know my life. And it's funny, it's it's a funny thing. We do it funny, but it's true. We don't know each other's lives. And listen, these people in the ancient Near East, what this passage is centered right in, they went home and they kept a small fire going for the thing they'd never actually let go of. You start a fire to keep it going. Look, you can be present for everything public and still be feeding something in the field. You can sing every word beautifully and still keep a second altar burning at home. And here's the mercy hiding in the chapter. God doesn't march out to the field to catch you. He says, bring it to the door. Bring it to the one place where the blood is, because the blood is where life is. And the life was always God's to give. The field is killing you slowly. Listen, I just want you to understand something. I fell so hard, so fast, you know, I'm tall. And, you know, I'm 200, I don't remember, Miss Colleen, I don't remember 240, 200, maybe 250 pounds. That's a lot. I don't know if I was unconscious or what. Yeah, I just don't know. You don't know if you're unconscious. It's kind of a little bit of a silly question. Doctor, did you ever lose consciousness? Well, how do I know? I don't know. So I don't know if I did. The what I'm getting at is stuff happens in our life. And this Colleen could very easily have been following an ambulance to a Atlanta, Georgia hospital. Trying to figure out what to do with the dog and everything, and our extended family that was there, they were they would have jumped in. They're they're that way. They're amazing. And it's a it was a most complicated situation for many, many years. And it still is, and it it looks different, but we're tight. We're tight. We love each other. We would sacrifice for one another, and they did. They were ready. But it could very easily have been my end. It's weird, you know. Think about it. What we have going on. I want you to think about, and you know, you can just in the back of your mind, think about if you're facing your end, right? The doctors have told you, hey, you tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, you don't have long. And if they told you that. You think about, well, I don't want my family when I pass to find this thing or that thing, this hidden thing. You know, Israel was hiding these altars thinking that God doesn't see the smoke rising. That thing, whatever you don't want your family to find, whatever you don't want them to figure out, whatever's in your phone or your hard drive, or in that drawer under those things that you think nobody's gonna see, whatever that hurt habit or hang up is, call that a field. The field is killing you slowly on a schedule only you can see. God isn't asking you to feel ashamed of it forever, by the way. A lot of times we we we think, oh, well, you know, I gotta feel shame for this forever. No, when you place it before God, you genuinely ask for forgiveness, he forgives you and move on. He remembers it no more. And by the way, Robbie, I'm so sorry that you fell. Three points of contact, brother. I'm preaching to the choir here. I he says, I hit the kitchen floor really hard by accident. It stunned me. I can really identify with that, Robbie, because even though I knew, like they always put fall risk. I'm at the hospital all the time. They put fall risk band on me all the time. I'm a fall risk. This is 16 or 17. I don't know, Miss Colleen knows. So I can identify with you, Robbie. I hope you're okay. Three points of contact all the time. I hope I don't end up going back to my walker. The walker's amazing, it's really cool, but it's very limiting. We'll see. God isn't ashamed of you. Don't don't live in shame. If you've if you've dealt with it, if you've put it before God, set it aside, put it before God, and move forward. God's Asking you to stop pretending the public altar is the whole story. And carry the private one into the light where it can finally be dealt with. Listen, light is a great disinfectant. Deal with it once and for all. So here's this step, and it's doable before dark today, whatever time. Some of you, it's dark right now. You're listening very early in the morning. Some of you are laying in your bed after a hard day's work. And where you live, the time is it's nighttime and you're ready to go to sleep. Whichever it is for you, I want you to, I want this is your thing. This is your concrete thing. You say you want something concrete to do. This is easy. Name your field. Name your hurt habit or hang up. That thing that you keep going back to, where nobody sees, you think nobody sees. Say it plainly to yourself. No soft words for it. Say it plainly. Okay, that's a great thing. But here's the thing: do one concrete thing today that drags that thing, that hurt habit or hang up toward the door. And maybe it's deleting a phone number that you know you should let go of. Maybe it's deleting an account. Maybe it's blocking someone that you know you should block. Maybe it's a social media thing that you know you need to close the account. Maybe it's you need to pick up the phone and tell one trusted person in your life the true thing that you've been doing alone out loud today, not next week. You say, Why would I do that? Because when you bring it to light, you realize this can be dealt with. This doesn't have to rule my entire life. Somebody in Israel had they had to bother to cover the blood. You have to bother to bring the field in. Do it before the sun goes down. Today. Now, hold verse 11 and walk into John 6. Yeshua is standing in front of a crowd that knows Leviticus 17 by heart. And he says, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Woo! We hear communion, but they hear the unthinkable. He took the one substance God had reserved to himself, the carrier of life. You were never allowed to take it in. And he said, You have to take it in. John says, many of his disciples walked away that day and stopped following him. Did you know he had just so many disciples following him, not just the 12? That group just grew and grew and grew, and they all traveled. Some of them, when they heard this, they said, no, no, I'm out. I'm out. You know, your pastor, your church, whatever, you see something, you hear something you don't like, and you're like, I'm out. People are doing it with President Trump. Some of their favorite political leaders. Oh, they do one thing you don't like. Oh, I'm out. I'm done. Some people do that with their marriages, their friendships. Some do it with their jobs. And some of Yeshua's disciples walked away that day and they stopped following him. But look at what he's claiming. He isn't canceling Leviticus 17, by the way. He's saying that verse was about me all the time. That whole time it was about me. Do you understand what I'm saying to you? Please understand this. If you don't ask questions, I'll help you. I don't want you to sit there going, oh, I want. You can always reach out to me. By the way, always, you can always reach out to me. Truewordfaithforlife.com. And then if you have my number, text me directly. Text is the best way. And once we establish contact through the website, you know, we'll uh avail you of a of a uh another way to contact me, which is quicker and easier and all of that. But you first have to go through the website, true wordfaithforlife.com slash contact. There's a contact button up at the top. And I and I reach back out to you. I don't just let it sit. But remember what Yeshua said. Now remember Leviticus 17, that whole crowd, they knew it. They knew it. Understand this. They knew it. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. And for that crowd, it was unthinkable. He took the one substance God had reserved to himself, the carrier of life itself. And you were never allowed to take it in. And he said, You have to take it in. You can understand. Listen, let's not judge those disciples that walked away. They don't know what we know. Well, but they were with Jesus. I had somebody this weekend say, I don't understand it. How in the world could somebody not follow Jesus? And that's a that's a common response. I myself used to say that all the time. But then once I studied, you know, decades ago, I started studying the ancient Near Eastern language, cultures, and context. And I realized, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. First of all, this is an ancient world. They didn't have all the stuff we have, they didn't have beautiful Bibles in print and every kind of translation. They didn't have, they didn't have, you know, texting and Bible verses or devotions that come right to your phone. They didn't have any of that. It was a new world, man. It was crazy. Don't be so hard on them. Listen, look at what he's claiming. He is not canceling Leviticus 17. He's saying that verse was about me the whole time. I say to you all the time, any of you who are listening still, I say, listen, the context matters. The Old Testament matters. You'll never understand the beauty of the New Testament. And we're going to get there. You're never going to understand that without this foundation. It won't make sense. The blood God gave on the altar, the life he said was his to give, it was pointing right there at Yeshua. I am the life that gets given. And at the table, he lifts a cup and he says, This is the blood of the new covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Are you listening? So this chapter refuses to let atonement be cheap. Life for life. Life for life. God set the price himself and then he paid it himself. Atonement has never, never not once been free. It has only ever been free to you. And he didn't ask for your blood. I have for you today a challenge and a choice. And I knew this was going long, and I'm sorry about that. No, I'm not. You needed to hear the first story because I wanted to share with you what happened to me. And um, not for pity or anything like that, but you if I'm not here one day, if you just try to click in and it's not here, I want you to understand it's not because I'm, oh, he slept in. You know, there's most likely something going on if I don't let you guys know. Anyway, it's that, but also the thing that, you know, the realization, hey, we we love each other, we care for each other. You're getting a product for me that I work extremely hard to make as good as I can possibly deliver it. And I do it, I do it. My whole life is driven toward this thing. What we're doing right here is to help you understand scripture, the word of God, and walking the story of God. That's that's my aim. I want you to be closer to God. I want you to have Jesus Yeshua in your heart and in your life. And here's your challenge and your choice. You've got a choice. When you're listening to this, you've got a choice. And it's the same, it's the same one Israel had. It's the same one Israel had. You can keep the public altar clean and the private fire burning. Presentable in the room, but quietly starving out in the field. And nobody would ever know. That hurt, that habit, that hang up. Or you can bring the whole thing to the door. The blood's already been poured out, the life's already been given. The only question left is whether you'll carry the field into the light of it all, or you'll keep tending that hurt habit or hang up alone. And that thing could be anger, that thing could be resentment. Listen, one of those roads leads to shalom. The other one just keeps you warm for one more night. Prayer isn't asking for an easy journey, it's asking for a strong back. I want you to pray with me. Heavenly Father, I can't thank you enough that you never once asked us to pay for our own atonement. We couldn't do it. And I thank you that you gave the blood for the altar, that it was a gift before it was ever a requirement. I thank you so much, Father. We confess we've made forgiveness cheap. It was us. In our own heads, we made forgiveness cheap. We talked about grace like some sort of formality. And we've forgotten that a real life, the life of Yeshua Hamashiach, was poured out so we could stand here at all. I thank you for the honor of conversing with you. I don't know how to thank you. But I do. And we confess our fields, our hurts, our habits, our hangups, the things we go out to quietly, that we keep quiet, where nobody sees, that we've kept small on purpose, so we could keep them. You know each one by name, and we're tired of tending them. I ask that you give us a strong back to carry them to the door today, not to hide them better, but to bring them in. Thank you that the life that is in the blood. Thank you that the life is in the blood and that your son poured out his own blood so that ours could be spared. I pray this in the name of your blessed son, our Redeemer, our Savior and Lord. Yeshua. Amen. Listen, maybe, maybe you've heard about the cross your whole life, and it's never once. It hasn't cost you anything to hear it. Maybe a little bit of time. It's just been information. A fact you nod along with. But Leviticus 7 says, life for life. A real life was really poured out, and it was his. It was Yeshua's. It was specifically for you. You can't pay it back. You were never asked to. Good thing. We couldn't. You're only asked to come to the door. I want you to pray this with me. If you've never come to Christ, if you've never placed your faith in Christ, if you've never turned your life over to him, pray this with me right now. Don't wait. Live or on playback, pray it with me now. Yeshua, I need you. I believe you died for me and rose from the grave, and I surrender my life to you today. I ask you to forgive me, fill me, lead me. I'm yours. In your name. Amen. Listen, if you prayed that prayer with me, first of all, totally stoked, but heaven is rejoicing. Sixty seconds ago, you were a different person than you are right now. And you don't have to walk it out alone. We'll help you. We'll help you. You can you can reach out to me. I'd love it. Truewordfaitholife.com. Click on the contact button. Reach out to me. I'll reach back out to you. We'll help you any way you need. Also, tell somebody, tell a believer if you know a believer. Tell somebody you trust. Listen, you may tell a family member that you think is a believer, and they may ridicule you. You? They may believe, look, you gotta you gotta do a bunch of stuff first. He says, come just as you are. He'll do the changing, he'll help you. Don't worry about how they respond. Just tell somebody publicly. That's a big deal. Listen, you've been carrying a fire that has only ever kept your own hands warm. And all the while, all the while. It burned everything. Your hands are warm, but it's it burned everything behind your hands. Everything. Put that fire out. That hurt, that habit, or hang on, put it out. We're gonna deal with it. We're gonna deal with it. Come to the door. Yeshua's life was already given, and it was given for you. That's where the blood is, that's where the life is. That's where Shalom has been waiting the whole time. And maybe this reached you in some way today. Send it to the one person you thought that their name, their face popped up, and you you saw them, you heard them, you felt them while you were listening. That wasn't an accident. Share it. Share the link. Then go bring your field in, your hurt, your habit, your hang-up. Bring it in and put it before God. I want you to receive this Hebrew blessing. Hebrew is Lashon Hakadesh, the language of God. I'm going to translate it for you. I'll say it first in Hebrew. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Until tomorrow morning, live right here at seven AM Eastern Standard Time. Until then, Veshalom Elechim Shalom Bishem Yeshua Shalom Shalom That was difficult. Wow.