Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign Church we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting yes.newlife Gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:27] Good morning.
[00:00:29] I hope you guys are well today.
[00:00:32] Want to say good morning to everybody joining us on Church 307. To our friends over at the prison and at the jail, we're going to be in Genesis chapter two. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. It's right at the beginning.
[00:00:44] While you're turning there though, we are going to be diving into the theological deep end a little bit today, talking about some ideas that might seem a little bit complicated. And I bring that up, I give you a heads up about that because something that I hear fairly often as a pastor is something along the lines of, you know, that theology stuff, I just goes right over my head.
[00:01:05] That stuff's complicated. Just me and Jesus is enough. I don't need all those complicated ideas. And here's what I want to tell you.
[00:01:12] You can understand the things of God. You are made in the image of God. Genesis chapter one tells us that. So you can understand the things of God. The word theology just means the state study of God. So if you are made in his image, then you can understand the things of God. You don't have to remember all of the like Greek and Latin words. The secret is pastors don't anyway, we google it too.
[00:01:37] But if you you can understand the concepts, you can follow along. There's nothing to be afraid of when we start talking about the more complicated theological ideas. So we're jumping into the deep end today. Will you jump in with me?
[00:01:50] Sweet. All right. Genesis chapter two. We're going to start in verse four. Here's what it says.
[00:01:56] This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up. For the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth, and there was no one to work the ground. But streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
[00:02:16] Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Let's pray.
[00:02:28] Jesus, this is your Word.
[00:02:30] And as we pray often, we're here for you.
[00:02:35] So anything that's just my ideas, let us notice it so we can reject it.
[00:02:40] If there's anything that we talk about over the next few minutes that's consistent with your word and your character and faithful to who you are, planted deeply in our hearts that we become like you, Jesus, today. May the words from our mouths and the meditations of our heart be pleasing in your sight. We love you. Amen.
[00:02:57] I want to ask you a question that I just want you to think about as we start the sermon today. Here it is. What's more important, your body or your soul?
[00:03:08] What's more important, body or soul? Yeah, everybody says soul until you step on a Lego barefoot at midnight.
[00:03:16] And it's not. It's not your soul that's screaming. It's. It's your body.
[00:03:20] Here's a similar idea. Let's see if you can finish this sentence. All right? You need to finish it out loud. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can.
[00:03:30] Yeah, Never hurt me. You guys got it? Any of you watch the Office?
[00:03:34] Some of you, you can admit it in church. I promise.
[00:03:37] I love the Office. I've probably spent, like, a solid month of my life watching the Office.
[00:03:42] If you watched it, you remember the character Dwight, the actor who played Dwight in the Office? His name's Rainn Wilson, and he started a podcast called Soul Boom, and it's a philosophy and kind of spirituality podcast. And it's really hard to take Dwight from the Office seriously when he's talking about philosophy. But in that podcast, he had a clip a couple years ago that went viral. You might have seen it. In this clip, he said something like this. He said, I've come to realize that I don't have a soul and have a body.
[00:04:13] I am a soul, but I have a body.
[00:04:18] Or I'm not a physical being having a spiritual experience. I'm a spiritual being having a physical experience.
[00:04:26] I don't know if Rainn Wilson knew it or not, but he was actually quoting kind of a fringe preacher from something like 100 years ago named George McDonald.
[00:04:34] All of these statements represent what is really the common way of understanding human identity in our world. The average American, and especially the average American Christian kind of thinks about human identity in a way that lines up with all of these statements. And here's the best way to understand it. It's kind of like this water right here.
[00:04:55] This is a bottle of water. But none of you were confused when I said, this is a water, because when we talk about a bottle of water, we talk about it defining what's valuable about it. If I said, hey, can you hand me my water? None of you would be Confused, because when we use the name, we talk about what's really valuable. The bottle the water is in really doesn't matter that much. Right. I can drop it and it's not that big of a deal as long as it doesn't come open. Right? It's not. If I find this, which just happens fairly often, if I find this knocking around in the floorboard of my Jeep, covered in dust with my dogs and sons stepping on it for six months like dirty wrappers torn off, you know, the only thing I check the seal. Yeah, yeah. As long as it's not been opened, as long as my dog didn't lick inside it, I don't really care. I'll just wipe off the mouth area and drink the water. Because the water is the thing that matters. Right. The bottle is just a container for the water. The water is what has lasting value beyond itself. It doesn't really matter that much what happens to the bottle because the water is the most important thing. That's kind of how we tend to think about ourselves.
[00:06:03] I have a body, but I am a soul.
[00:06:07] I. The body is really just the container. Yeah, I should probably try to take care of it a little bit. But what does that really matter? The body is just temporary. The body is just going to get destroyed anyway. The soul is the thing that matters. So as long as I'm like, right with God in my heart, then that's. That's what matters.
[00:06:24] This is a common way to think about human identity, but it's not a biblical way to think about human identity.
[00:06:34] Did you know that there is nowhere in Scripture that tells us your soul is more important than your body?
[00:06:42] Nowhere in scripture. Now you might be thinking of Second Corinthians 5, where Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But if you read the rest of that passage, what Paul actually promises is that even though our bodies are subject to sin and they decay, that we will be given renewed bodies. That Christian hope is actually being physically resurrected. That when we pass away, whatever is spiritual about us is with God. But our ultimate hope is that he resurrects everything. It's a world made new. Christian hope is not souls floating around playing imaginary harps in a gold sky. Christian hope is resurrection. That's why Scripture says Jesus was the firstborn of the resurrection, because he gives us what we will ultimately experience. He shows to us. He purchased for us the hope that we all have. The idea that the most important thing about you, if I had to guess when I asked that first question, almost everybody in the room said soul. It's probably what I would have said, too. In fact, if today is your first day in church, you've never been in church before. I bet you know enough about church to assume that we're kind of soul people around church.
[00:07:46] But that idea that your soul is the most important part, it's not biblical. It's actually what we would call neo platonic dualism. That's two $10 words just shoved right together, isn't it? Neoplatonic dualism. What that basically means is this idea didn't come from the Bible. It came from this guy, Plato. Plato was a Greek philosopher who influenced really all of philosophy and Greek culture, and Greek culture influenced Roman culture, and Roman culture influenced the entire modern world. And Plato came up with this idea that was really pretty new compared to certainly the story of scripture, but also the whole world outside of his own thinking. And it was this dualism. Neoplatonic means we still believe more or less a version of what Plato taught. Platonic dualism. He taught this idea that the world can be divided into two things. That there's spiritual parts to our world and there's physical parts to our world. And they overlap, but they're not the same.
[00:08:47] So he would have taught that there's two parts to you. There's a soul and there's a body. And he taught that the most important thing is your soul, not your body.
[00:08:58] Your body is temporary, your body isn't going to last. The soul is what really matters. So the only thing that really matters is that you know the right things and you believe the right things. And if you know the right things and believe the right things, then everything else, well, it'll be okay. Dualism, the world is divided into two parts. That's what Plato taught.
[00:09:20] But once again, that idea didn't come from the Bible.
[00:09:24] It came from Plato. Now, this passage of scripture we read that we're teaching from this morning is the. The picture of how humanity was created. And it gives us a foundation for human identity. But I think this is one of the passages of scripture that basically, we've watched enough Disney movies that we can't trust our imagination when we read this passage of Scripture. Because I think when we read about God making a human, this is what we imagine. We imagine that God got some dirt and dust, and he built like a human husk, like a carcass of a human. He moved together some dirt and he made it look like a human. It was human shaped. And then he stepped back and very much like Tinkerbell, he breathed some, like, gold dust and powder and stuff into the person, and he took a soul and he breathed it into the person. And then that person, that husk, became a human being. But that's not what the story says.
[00:10:18] What the story says is that God formed the man from the dust of the ground.
[00:10:25] That word, the Hebrew word that we translate, man, is the word Adam. It literally means human. God created a human, and then he breathed the breath of life into the human. The phrase breath of life is fairly common in scripture, and it's used to just mean alive.
[00:10:39] There are times in scripture where it talks about battles and it says no one with the breath of life was. Was left. Everybody died. They killed everyone with the breath of life in them. It means alive. God made a human, and then he brought the human to life, which means that whatever it is that makes a human being human is both spiritual and physical. And you can't separate those things. You are not a soul inhabiting a body. You are a human being, body and soul.
[00:11:10] It's not like this water bottle. It's more like this bicycle. Right here on the screen, there's going to be a definition from Merriam Webster of bicycle. Do you think I'll fired if I ride this?
[00:11:20] While we're waiting for the definition to come up? Yeah, I was really worried I was going to ride right off the stage, if I can be honest.
[00:11:27] But so far, so good. All right, here's the definition of bicycle. A vehicle with two wheels, tandem handlebars for steering, a saddle seat and pedals by which it is propelled. So which part of this bicycle makes it a bicycle?
[00:11:46] All of it. If I take off the handles, is it a bike?
[00:11:50] No, because the definition says handlebars. If I put a steering wheel here, is it a bicycle anymore?
[00:11:57] No, it's weird. It's something else. It's not a bike. Right.
[00:12:00] If I replace the saddle seat for a bench seat, is it a bicycle?
[00:12:05] No, it's something else. The definition says that it has a saddle seat. If I take the front wheel and I put it next to the back wheel, what is it? It's a cart. It's not a bicycle.
[00:12:17] You can't look at this bicycle and find the part that makes it a bike. You can't locate the identity of bicycle in it because a bicycle is, by definition the summation of its parts. A bicycle is all of the parts put together in the right order. That's what a bicycle is, and that's what a human is.
[00:12:39] You can't look at yourself in the mirror and locate in the mirror what makes you human. You could not open up your chest and find the human part inside you that makes you human. You are a human being made in the image of God, body and soul. A human being is different than an animal because it's spiritual and physical. A human being is different than an angel because it's spiritual and physical. Physical. You are a human being made in the image of God, body and soul. And before I go any farther, I need to say this. In Genesis, chapter one, when God made the world, he made each section of the world. And after he was done with each one, he said, it is good. But then he made a human being, a physical human being. There are millions of Christians who go through their whole life thinking that their bodies are bad and evil.
[00:13:29] God made a physical human being, and then he said, it is very good.
[00:13:36] It was only after a human being, physical and spiritual, was made that he said, it is very good. You are a human being, body and soul. You are not a soul inhabiting a body.
[00:13:49] You are a human being, body and soul. Now, you might be thinking. You're probably thinking, cj, that's interesting. Fairly nerdy, but why does that matter?
[00:13:58] Like, why did what. What does that actually affect in my life besides just trivia?
[00:14:06] Have you ever had words that you'll say at work but not at church?
[00:14:14] Because church is spiritual, right? It's sacred.
[00:14:17] But work is just work. Work is just physical, right? So what does it really matter what happens at work?
[00:14:23] As long as I'm right with God, then what does it matter? You have a T shirt that you think is really funny, and you might wear it on vacation, but you'd never wear it to a church event because church is spiritual. And you got to do the spiritual stuff when it's spiritual, but it doesn't matter when it's not spiritual.
[00:14:40] You ever heard someone talk about, I don't know, a family member who's making just horrible life choices, but they say, oh, but his heart's in the right place.
[00:14:49] He's, like, cheating on his wife, hasn't been to work in two weeks cooking meth. He's got such a good heart. He's just making bad decisions right now. But here's the thing. Your body's never done anything your heart didn't do.
[00:15:02] Did you know that your body's never been anywhere that your heart wasn't?
[00:15:08] Your soul has never been anywhere your body wasn't.
[00:15:15] Your heart is in the place your body is.
[00:15:19] You can't you can't separate those things.
[00:15:24] Jesus said in Matthew, chapter 12, verse 34, that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. In other words, trying to separate action and belief is nearly impossible.
[00:15:37] Now, I want to be clear here, because I say that, and there are probably some people who immediately start feeling guilt and shame because you're struggling with a sin. You're struggling with something and you know it's wrong and you don't want to do it, but you keep making that same mistake. And what you're experiencing is what we would call conviction in the church. That's what happens when the Holy Spirit works in the spiritual part of you to tell you that something's wrong. But the goal of the Holy Spirit is not just to change the spiritual part of you, but it's to change you. So the Holy Spirit is identifying in you something that's wrong, a way of thinking or a way of acting, to try to align you spiritually and physically, body and soul, ideas and actions with the truth. Now, if you find yourself struggling and continuing to make the same mistake while you experience the conviction of the Holy Spirit, what I want to tell you is that's good news. The Lord is at work in your heart, and that struggle that you feel is confirmation by that. The Lord is changing your ideas and your actions. It just takes a while sometimes. But if you find yourself in a place where you know something's wrong, but you just don't really care, ah, my heart's in the right place.
[00:16:51] That's a dangerous place to be.
[00:16:55] I see. If we have this idea that says, my soul's what matters, my body's just temporary, my body doesn't really matter, then you might find yourself, I don't know, sleeping around. And you say, oh, I know I shouldn't be, but God knows my heart.
[00:17:11] You know, as long as I'm right with God, that's what matters. You know, he. I believe the right stuff. I know I'm good. I know I shouldn't be doing it, but.
[00:17:20] Or you might find yourself thinking, I know I shouldn't be drinking that much. But, you know, God knows my heart, and someday I'll get around to changing that. But right now, you know, my heart's in the right place. I know I'm good with the man upstairs. So what does it really like, does it really matter what I'm doing on the weekends?
[00:17:37] You know, it shows how much we've been influenced by that. Those two big words, Neoplatonic dualism. If I asked you how your spiritual life is doing. You probably wouldn't tell me whether you've been working out or not.
[00:17:49] If you grew up in church, you'd probably say, oh, yeah, I've been reading my Bible. Or no, I haven't been reading my Bible. Because we imagine that you can take care of your spiritual life and your physical life, and they're separate.
[00:18:00] But if you would have asked Jesus or Moses or any character from the Bible, hey, how's your spiritual life? They would have looked at you confused because they would have seen no difference between spiritual life and physical life. In their mind, life is life, and it's all spiritual and it's all physical. And you can't separate the two not and have anything that's whole. That's why to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But in the resurrection, we receive a renewed body, temporary before resurrection, where everything is made right.
[00:18:36] What you do spiritually will affect you physically, and what you do physically will affect you spiritually. Sleeping around is a spiritual activity. It's not a spiritual. It's not a physical activity. Sex outside of marriage is a spiritual action, not a physical action.
[00:18:51] It's both.
[00:18:53] Drinking too much is a spiritual action, not just a physical action.
[00:18:58] Anger is a physical expression, not just a spiritual expression. I referenced a couple weeks ago the Surgeon General's report entitled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. And if you read far enough into that report, what you find is that the Surgeon General of the United States predicts that if we don't deal with our loneliness, our inside, emotional, spiritual problem, it will lead to diabetes, increased cancer rates, it will lead to heart failure and heart disease. Why? Because you can't really separate the spiritual and physical.
[00:19:30] If you're not okay on the inside, it will lead to the outside.
[00:19:37] But if I think I'm just a soul, then eventually I might think that it doesn't really matter whether I take care of my body or not. It doesn't really matter what I eat as long as I'm reading my Bible. It doesn't really matter if I exercise or if I'm active as long as my soul is okay.
[00:19:50] It doesn't really matter whether I take care of my physical body.
[00:19:54] It only matters if I take care of my spiritual life. But God says, how are you going to separate the two if you are a whole human being?
[00:20:04] Now, I want to make this as clear as I can so that we see that theology matters, and theology matters for all of life.
[00:20:11] We live in a world today that has a lot of questions. And confusion around things like gender identity.
[00:20:19] And if I believe that I am a soul, my body is temporary, that my identity is a soul and my body is just secondary, then why wouldn't I change my body to match how I feel in my soul?
[00:20:35] If I believe that who I really am is just spiritual, then why would it matter if I alter my body to align with what I believe spiritually or emotionally?
[00:20:46] But what Scripture teaches us is that you are a spiritual and physical being, that physically and spiritually combined, that is who you are, all shaken up together.
[00:20:59] And that our bodies and souls are good, made in the image of God. Now broken by sin, subject to sin, subject to temptations. We have brokenness spiritually and physically in our lives. We have brokenness in our bodies and we have brokenness in our souls. But you can't extricate those two things.
[00:21:19] Now, I need to take an aside here because I want to be as clear as possible. And anytime we start talking about physical health, shame comes quickly knocking at the door.
[00:21:29] It quickly invades the conversation.
[00:21:32] Because we live in a world that has what I believe to be toxic and ungodly definitions of things like physical health, physical beauty, things like that. And I can guarantee you that in a room like this, if we start saying stuff like taking care of your body and taking care of your soul both matter, then what starts coming into our minds, men and women, is something on Instagram you saw that told you if you're not this size or this shape or this masculine or this, this feminine or this or that, then. Then you're not good enough.
[00:22:07] And we imagine that there is a BMI that's healthy or a shape that's healthy, or a pant size that's healthy, or a certain amount of six packs, you know, abs that's healthy or something like that. And that comes from our world, not from God.
[00:22:22] God doesn't give us a certain size or pants or shirt you should fit into if you're going to be healthy. That's not what God says. God says, take care of your body and take care of your soul. And we have to reject the ungodly comparison of the world around us. That would say, if I'm going to be healthy, I have to live up to the standard of someone I've never met on Instagram because that is not what God gives us. God tells us that our bodies are different, our souls are different, but they are good and made in his image. And there is not, there is not a righteousness size or a righteous weight, or thank the Lord A righteous number of miles you can run or pounds you can bench press or anything like that. There is no comparison like that in godly health.
[00:23:10] I want to say something very clearly. The world around us gives us shame because it tells us what we're not.
[00:23:18] The world around us says, you're not skinny enough.
[00:23:21] You're not strong enough. You're not tall enough. Oh, you're too tall. Oh, you're not your. Your skin's the wrong color or you have the wrong complexion. You're not what you should be. The world gives us shame by telling us what we're not, but God gives us confidence by telling us what we are.
[00:23:39] Can I say that again?
[00:23:41] The world gives us shame by telling us what we're not, but God gives us confidence by telling us what we are. You are made in his image. You are carrying God's image around you spiritually and physically, wherever you go. You have been. The first word spoken over every human being is. It is very good. We are broken by sin. But what God says about us trumps any of the comparison and shame that the world says about us. So if we are going to talk about being healthy to the core, body and soul, we. We have to have this conversation, refusing to let the comparison of the world invade that conversation, but letting what God says about us drive the conversation. So with that in mind, I want to give you a statement that I think this entire idea hangs on. I think this is the way that we should frame pursuing health, being healthy to the core in body and soul. Our goal should be to be as healthy as reasonably possible within my current circumstances.
[00:24:44] One more time. To be as healthy as reasonably possible within my current circumstances. Every word in that sentence is important. As healthy as reasonably possible. What that means is, if you want to run ultramarathons, go for it. But God didn't ask you to do it.
[00:25:01] And to me, that sounds like torture. Honestly, if, like, the North Koreans wanted to get information out of me, they'd be like, run an ultramarathon or tell us everything. And I would tell them anything they wanted to know.
[00:25:15] Healthy is reasonably possible within your current circumstances. If you fast forward the story in Genesis chapter two to Genesis chapter three, what you find is that sin breaks the world. Sin breaks the world, body and soul.
[00:25:25] So we live in a world where we live within circumstances that are beyond our control.
[00:25:30] We live in a world that has been broken spiritually and physically. And we live in a world where we can be unhealthy spiritually and physically by our own decision. We can do things that cause us to be unhealthy physically and spiritually.
[00:25:46] Other people can do things to us that cause us to be unhealthy. It's possible that someone else could abuse you or harm you, and that could create PTSD or depression or things like that that are not your fault, but they are an unhealth that you live with. It's possible if someone else could drive recklessly on the interstate, then you could get into a car accident that wasn't your fault, and it could affect the rest of your life physically.
[00:26:10] It's possible. And we also live in a world where there are things that are unhealthy that we have a hard time locating whose fault it was. It's possible to be born with propensities, with physical or mental illnesses or varying abilities that cause us to be unhealthy.
[00:26:30] So we are not called to be healthy compared to the world's standard of health. We are called to be as healthy as reasonably possible within our circumstances, because we are a body and a soul, a good gift given to us by God that we should care for. And if I care for my soul, I should care for my body. And if I care for my body, I should care for my soul. Because you can't extricate the two things, they are always going to overlap. So I want to give you three things that I believe we should be doing to care for ourselves, body and soul. To pursue healing. The first one is this. We pursue healing for what is in our control. There are things for each of us that affect our health, that are within our control. I can control what I choose to eat, whether I choose to exercise. I can control whether I go to therapy. I can control whether I confess my sins or whether I do what Sawyer preached about last week and engage in spiritual disciplines and join community. I can control those things. And I believe it's my responsibility as a follower of Jesus to pursue healing for the things that are in my control, the things that I can do. I can choose to see a psychiatrist and take medication. I can choose to go to the doctor. I can choose to be as healthy as possible, physically and spiritually, body and soul. But there are things that are beyond my control.
[00:27:48] There are things that I cannot directly affect by my own actions. So the second thing we do is we pray for healing for what is beyond our control.
[00:27:59] I believe in miracles.
[00:28:01] I believe in them.
[00:28:03] Say whatever you want. I believe in miracles. I believe that God can, in a second, heal cancer. I believe that God can change your diagnosis.
[00:28:12] I believe it 100%. I've seen it happen. I believe that God can take away PTSD in a moment. I believe that God can heal depression and balance out the chemicals in a brain that lead to mental illness. I believe that God can do that. I believe that God can overwhelm you with his presence in such a clear way that it destroys your season of doubt and you are no longer wandering in the wilderness. I believe that Scripture tells us in the book of James that if any of us is sick, and we should read that as sick, spiritually or physically, that if any of us is sick, that you should go to the elders of the church. They should anoint you with oil and lay hands on you and pray for you, because God is our physician. I believe that God can and does heal. And as Christians, honestly, I think we do not pray for healing enough because we're afraid of what happens if he says no. But if we have to take responsibility for what we can control, then we have to pray for what we can't control. And if you're struggling with depression and anxiety, please pray about it. Please ask your life group to pray. Pray about it, please. Please come to the prayer wall and have somebody pray about it with you. If you have a medical diagnosis that you can't imagine how it could ever get better, please pray about it. Let's intercede and beseech the Lord and ask for a miracle together, because I believe God does heal.
[00:29:19] But we also know that there are times in God's wisdom where he does not heal.
[00:29:27] We know that God can and does sometimes take away the cancer.
[00:29:32] Sometimes the cancer is taken away through chemotherapy, and sometimes it's not taken away at all.
[00:29:38] We know that sometimes with mental illness, that therapy and medication make a significant difference and change the experience of life. We know that some people experience miraculous healing and that some people learn to simply manage the symptoms and they never experience full healing. We know that.
[00:29:58] So when God in his wisdom, chooses not to heal, we trust God. When he does not heal, we learn to trust.
[00:30:12] It is possible to live a life of joy and hope while dealing with mental illness.
[00:30:20] It's possible.
[00:30:21] I have close friends that have struggled with severe anxiety and depression, and they do what's within their responsibility. They go to therapy and they do the things they're supposed to do. But they have also learned to experience a depth of joy and hope that transcends their experience. Scripture calls it peace that passes understanding.
[00:30:42] It is possible.
[00:30:44] It's possible to live with joy and hope while going through a season of doubt. That you cannot imagine ending. It's possible.
[00:30:51] There are people in this church that I know it's not. I can't tell their stories because it's their story. It's not my story. But there are people in our church who live with long term pain and illness. But they have learned to let God form them in the pain and to experience a joy and a hope that transcends the physical suffering of their condition. I do not know why God sometimes heals and he sometimes doesn't. But I do know beyond even the slightest shadow of a doubt that it is possible to have joy and hope and purpose in Christ in the things that are not healed.
[00:31:25] So we pursue healing for what we can control. We make the healthiest decision possible for our bodies and our souls. We pray for God's healing with what we can't. And when he does not, we ask him to teach us to trust him so that we can still experience his joy. Because, my friends, you are a body and a soul. You are a human being, body and soul. You've never done anything physical that didn't affect you spiritually. And you've never done anything spiritually that didn't affect you physically. You are a human being. And our hope as human beings, body and soul, is that even in the pain, spiritual and physical pain of this life, that we know there is a spiritual and physical hope of resurrection where God makes everything right for eternity. And I promise you, if you are in Christ, you will know what it means to live with none of the effects of sin, none of the pain, none of the doubt, none of the illness, none of it. That is our hope.
[00:32:20] So we take responsibility for what we can now while we trust Christ for the future.
