Transcription
[Applause] Grateful. So, we are moving right along in our series, which by the way is a whole lot more fun apparently to our friends online, as is evidenced by our YouTube views, which have gone back up. So, praise the Lord, we get out of Foundation and all of a sudden everybody wants to be Christian again. So, okay, we don't like foundations, but we do like the Anyway. All right, we got to have it. Let's, let's bless the word.
Father God, we come before you in the mighty name of Jesus. We thank you for this word. The word that is renewing us in our spirit, transforming us in our mind. Your word goes forth and performs that for which it descends, not return to you void. We thank you that your word finds space to land in our hearts. And I thank you that we are coming into alignment. We are children of the Most High God. We are walking out a redemptive experience in the earth to glorify the name that is above every name. And we thank you that you are healing us in the process in Jesus name. Amen. And amen.
So, we have a few scriptures that we've been uh 5:23. Okay. Uh 4:12 and Romans 2, something like that. Okay. So, um, 28. So, so we have, and I'm just going to draw it up here a little small this time. Our figure, and this is our uh a review. By the way, do you guys enjoy Todd? >> Did he? Thank God for him. Um, we are going to do a little bit of review on our whole concept of the design of man, right? We have a spirit, soul, and the body. We grabbed that from 1 Thessalonians 5:23. We have a heart that sits at the center of man. Hebrews 4:12. Romans 2:28 talks about how we are circumcised, not in the flesh, but in the heart. The Holy Spirit dwells in the heart, in the spirit. And it is through this design that we gain access to the kingdom of God. And that kingdom is not of this world. It's in another dimension. And so we have our transdimensional bridge right there that comes right through our design. In this, we serve God as a temple both individually and corporately. And uh when we talk about being the temple of God, did I miss something? The castle is not good enough. It looks like a turtle. >> It looks like an elf. >> Out. All right. So, we, we, we'll, we'll cast that egg drazil out later. Uh, no. All right. So, welcome to church. Golly, >> y'all, you, you want to know, you want to know a secret? I went back to Taylor Welch. It's coming out this Wednesday. >> And I did talk about elves. So, if you ever wondered what the elves have to do with Antarctica, Wednesday. Okay. Anyway, you know, I walked in there and so the first question they asked me was, "So, what do you want to say about Antarctica?" I was like, "What? A lot." Okay.
So, main point back to the, so, so this is our design and and and what we've been arguing for throughout this uh series is that the body, the body has its own mind, emotions, ouchies, and will, just like the soul and the spirit. A shout out to all of our cat lovers. Um, we've been working through this reality because this changes the game on how we understand human design. You know, for a long time I thought my soul was the only part of me that had consciousness. My soul was my emotions, my mind, my thoughts, my intent. I thought that was the only part of me that had it. Later on, I met my human spirit and realized that there's a whole other set of intelligence, uh, emotions, will, you know, it's, it's, it's incredible how different that that that can be. And when we uh begin to tap into this one, we gain access to what I call the Padammic experience and history, which is a mind, will, and emotions and intellect that doesn't just draw from earth experience since conception, but a lot of experiences into the ancient hidden ages of creation. And whatever the spirit derives from that is very different than sometimes the soul's experience. You know, uh, one of the things I had to settle on, you don't marry your spouse's spirit. You actually marry their soul and get to know their spirit. That's a different way to look at marriage. Hopefully, we can work out all the kinks. But sometimes it takes some healing and some change in perspective even for the spirit. It's wild. And so, the spirit and the soul sit on different trajectories as far as growth, maturity, and healing. The spirit is breakable just like the soul. And that's Psalm 51:17, right? Uh, this, the, the spirit, the heart can be broken just like the soul can be broken. And every part of us needs to be put back together. This whole life is a redemptive experience. But then God gives us a body, and the body becomes the third member of the family of your human humanity, right? And it, it also has a mind of its own. So, how many of you know when two parents come together and make a kid, the kid has a mind of their own? As we were walking around the boat on our cruise, I promise you Dylan expressed all of that. We had a soundtrack everywhere we went on that boat, singing, dancing. It's like, wow, we got a lot of attention. I was recognized by the third and fourth day everywhere I went. "Oh, you're the father of those two beautiful children." "Yes, I am. My children will be noticed." Um, so, so, so, so the body has its own mind, will, emotions, intellect, experiences. Um, and and and so this, this is actually experienced in a very extraordinary manner because what we talked about the last time I was here is that emotion will be stored, memory will be stored in the cells of the physical body. Especially when trauma is at play, there are things that we will survive and dissociate that our body will remember for us. And sometimes those memories and emotion can be trapped in specific areas of the body, the gastrointestinal system, the sexual system, and organs. You, you would be surprised how many people have shame and self-hatred sitting in their sexual organs because of past abuse. Specifically, those emotions and trauma memories are housed in those pockets of cells and systems. It, and it's, it's so profound because when you begin to study out the body, what you also learn is that every organ has its own energy signature to the point that you can remove a person's organ, but the body remembers the organ in its absence. Sometimes even a painful organ once physically removed can have residue of pain there that because it sits in like almost like an energy field memory in the body or relative to the body. I mean, this stuff, the body is so profound. And so what we are sealing is seeing is that as we are engaging this realm of ministry, we're we're talking to the consciousness of the soul. We're talking to the consciousness of the spirit. We're dealing with the consciousness of the body. We are apologizing to the body. We're reconciling the body. We are allowing the physical body to release its trauma memories from the cells and into the hands of Jesus. And this is bringing real healing. Right? So, we're looking at the body with a whole new lens now as we are going deeper into this ministry. We're so we're opening all of this realm up. And today, we're going to open it up a little further. Can I tell you something? Every part of our design has needs. And we can say that those needs are legitimate. Every part of us has legitimate needs. Our soul has legitimate needs. Okay? Our spirit has legitimate needs, and the body has legitimate needs. Now, sometimes we think certain things are needs that are not needs. You don't need dessert after every meal. Now, on a cruise, you'd think you do because man, do they have a lot of dessert and you can get as many as you want. Like, "Would you like another?" "No, please have another." Oh my gosh. So, but you don't need it. Some of us have reclassified wants and desires as needs, and some of us have classified needs as options, especially when it comes to the body. And one of those needs that has been reclassified as an option is rest. I almost just want to let the Holy Spirit take it from here. Does everybody just sit, just sit for the next two minutes and think about what you just heard? We have reclassified the legitimate need of rest as an option, and the body has suffered injury as a result. So, some of us have been fed bogus lines. "I'll rest when I die." "No rest for the weary." I've actually said that to myself and my wife after young children. Can I tell you? We got back from this cruise and everybody was navigating a bad mood. And so, it was a great trip, but you know, like we're all tired and in need of rest. My, my beautiful daughter decided she wanted bonding time with her parents between the hours of 2 and 5 a.m. It's the best bonding time because there's no competition. So, um, here's another one. "If I work hard enough, I can have it all right now." If I work hard enough, I can have it all right now. I can have the career, the kids, the marriage, the house, the cars, the this, the gold, the plane, the private jet, the blah, blah, blah, right now. I don't want to journey 20 years while I pace an expansion. I want it all right now. So, let's just take rest off of the menu and drive like we're insane. "If I stay in the glory." This is one for the superchans. How many superch Christians do we have in here? If I stay in the glory, I don't need a day off. That's for the superch Christians, right? I just stay in the glory. I, I pray in the morning, I pray in the evening. The Lord is my rest. Golly, sounds like me. We all have an opportunity to repent.
So, the point I'm getting at here is that rest is often overlooked, and with the amount of options available to us, it's always, there is always a reason to avoid rest. Always a reason. Um, so, so I'll give you a few of them. You know, uh, genuine rest gets sacrificed on the altar of misplaced work ethic. Can I tell you something? It's good to work hard. The Bible says, "Look to the ant, you slugard." It's, it, it's, you know, it's not a good thing to sit on our hands. The Bible does not actually teach a five-day, 40-hour work week. The Bible says six days. So, but the seven-day work week is not in the Bible. You won't find that. You will find six because as we look at what God did, he created in Genesis 1 in six days, and on the seventh day, he rested. And Jesus explained to us what God. How many of you know God does actually have an infinite energy source? Do you? No. But God, with an infinite energy source, rested on the seventh day. Why? Because Jesus said the Sabbath was created for man. So, misplaced work ethic, false expectations, poor time management. You know how you end up on the seventh day working? Often because you procrastinated what you should have done on the first and second day of the work week. So now you're up against the clock and you have to pull off that seven days. Um, poor time management, poor life systems, um, an inability to say no. Fear. Fear can actually drive a lack of observance of rest. And here's a big one: performance programming powered by shame and fear. You know, when, when Paul described how he was driven, can, can I tell you something? Paul was driven as an apostle. He really went the extra mile. I mean, he was whipped, uh, drowned, uh, uh, uh, left for dead, lots of fasting in prayer all the time. I mean, he, he goes through his list of everything he went through, and it's a tough list. I mean, it, it's brutal. He was driven. He says, "The love of God compels me." But performance programming compels you with fear and shame. Shame because if you don't perform, you will be what you've been accused of being your whole life: not good enough. So you have to outpace that accusation with performance. You're afraid of proving your accusers right.
So, let's take a look at Genesis chapter 1, verses 1-3. That's what it says: "Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done. And he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made." Then in Leviticus 16 and:e 31, it says this: "It is a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute forever." So, God didn't say, "I'm going to establish the Sabbath until Jesus comes and establishes the law of love." He just said, "Forever." Like there is an eternal plan behind a seventh day rest. Uh, he established a Sabbath not just for man, but he also went another step further and established it for the land. Check it out. Also in the book of Leviticus, speak to the children of Israel and say to them, "When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years shall you sow your field, and six years shall you prune your vineyard, and gather its fruit. But in the seventh year, there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land." Wow. Leviticus, this is 25. A Sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. Now, this is interesting. Why would you rest the land? Can I tell you something? Because in the year of rest, all of the nutrient depletion that the land experiences while it is being farmed is restored. So you have healthier food. Can you imagine? The fruit is more profitable. It doesn't induce disease or caloric deficits because you're resting the land. Rest is an essential part of spiritual warfare. When we rest in season and in appropriate cycles, our warfare is more powerful, more effective, and more effortless. I meet a lot of Christians, and and many of them are survivors that are in chaos realms of spiritual warfare, confusion. They feel completely overwhelmed. They're looking for relief. They are uh uh uh uh uh often times a little bit paranoid, right? What's coming and from where? They exalt the power of witchcraft over the power of God. "A witch is sending a demon at me." "A witch is sending a demon." It's like the worst experience. You know how many witches have sent demons at me, you know? And it's like, "How did that work out for you?" You know, it's like, but, but we have to understand our authority isn't dictated to us by what witch is sending a demon. Our authority is dictated to us by the God we serve, Jesus Christ, who has ascended far above all heavens. And so, you know, this whole fear realm is often uh the result of approaching spiritual warfare from a place of confusion and chaos and unbelief and fear rather than rest. Right. The most effective warfare is done, I believe, from a state of meditative contemplation where you're actually able to enter in through the presence of God, engage with what is going on in the spirit world. And if you have to enforce the power of God on a thing, you do it from a throne of ascension in Christ. It, you, you do it from a posture of identity, not from a place of fear and confusion and uh uh uh uh uh you know, scrambled eggs in the brain. It's, it, it's just not as powerful at all. And so, so rest is actually the ideal posture. Now, the devil wants to keep you out of that place. He wants to keep people off balance. He ran so many operations against me and Bride Ministries to keep this organization out of a state of rest for a long time. I mean, and and that was one of the one, one of the biggest shocks to me when I first started this ministry years ago was how vulnerable any person was that had a position with proximity to me. I didn't know. I thought it should be business as usual. If you had success there and you were good at that thing there, then you should be able to stand here and do that thing here. But not. So, it was like, nope, we're going to knock them out. And Christian and I saw like the first few hires that we made back in 2016, well, 2017, 2018. The first few hires that we made, no one lasted more than a couple months. It was just implosion, implosion, implosion, implosion. And everything kept falling back on me and her. Like it just would fall back. And it was like the moment we get a moment to breathe, it falls back. The moment we get a moment to breathe, it falls back. And and that agenda was actually a cycle that stifled growth for a couple of years because, you know, as as two people, we could only do so much, and we can actually do a lot because we're, you know, intense. But, um, that agenda to keep us out of a state of rest was pronounced. Some of you have also experienced that in different ways. The devil is running agendas against your life to keep you out of a state of rest, to keep you off balance, to keep you spinning your wheels and trying to juggle what's becoming destabilized. Destabilization agendas are a big play by the kingdom of darkness because they know that once destabilization is achieved, rest often gets sacrificed. Rest will get sacrificed. I am guilty. There are so many things that I have backstopped over the years at the consequence of I lose rest.
Now, can I tell you something? The Hebrew word for kidney is *killa*. *Kilia*. Because if you don't take care of your stress, your kidneys will kill you. Oh gosh. Anyway, this word is mistranslated throughout the Bible. I didn't even know kidney was in the Bible. And when I found out it was in the Bible, I was like, "Why did they do that?" In the King James version, kidney is translated "reins." Like, r-e-i-n, rains. So when the Bible says "test my reins," I thought they were talking about like reins on a horse. I was, I never understood those passages like reins, whatever, like no, kidneys. And when you get to the New King James, when they finally got the chance to fix it, they translated it "mind." Mind. Can I tell you something? The heart is a major conversation point in the Bible. You guys know that. I mean, the heart is spiritual. The heart is physical. It's the seat of human intuition while also simultaneously being the organ that pumps blood through the body, the strongest muscle we have. I don't care how big your biceps are, your heart's stronger. And the reality is, the revelation around kidney is completely obfuscated from us English speakers by our Bible translations. But I'm going to show you some places where you find the kidneys being discussed. And we're going to unpack this a little bit more. Uh, Psalm 7 and verse 9: "Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just, for the righteous God tests the hearts and minds." Did anybody get kidneys out of that passage? No, not unless you looked at my brackets. Yeah. Mind is translated from the word kidney. *Kilia*. Yeah. So God actually tests the heart and the kidneys. Why? Why would the righteous God test your kidneys? Let's take a look at another passage. Jeremiah 11:20: "But you, O Lord of hosts, who judge righteously, testing the mind and the heart, not so. Testing the kidneys and the heart. Let me see your vengeance on them. For to you I have revealed my cause." God will test the kidneys. Can I tell you something? There is a clear spiritual mystery associated with the kidneys, not just the heart. We're talking about ministry to the body. We cannot have this conversation if we are not willing to unpack the conversation around kidneys. Jeremiah 12:1-2: "Righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with you. You let me talk with you about your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? You have planted them. Yes, they have taken root. They grow. Yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth, but far from their kidneys." What? Come on. Come on. How, who here has felt the Lord real close to your kidney? I mean, just like right up on there on your, oh, I can feel the Lord right there. You know, it's, it's kind of. But if you haven't, maybe you haven't been resting appropriately. Oh. Oh, man. Okay. So, so we're going to, we're, we're going to unpack this. Why would God be far from someone's kidneys? I mean, this is crazy. This is, this is the word of God. This is the word of God. I'm not done. Let's take a look at Psalm 73:21: "You see, because you have to see how obscene this is. I mean, it's all over the place. And we can't see it until we get our Hebrew lexicon out and start doing a word study. Thus, my heart was grieved. There it is. The heart was grieved, and I was vexed in my kidneys." Vexed in your kidney. Why would one be vexed in their kidneys? Psalm 26:2: "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Here it is. Try my kidneys and my heart." Try my kidneys and my heart. So, over and over again, we see the heart and the kidneys being dealt with as spiritually relevant organs to the plans and purposes of God in our lives, over and over. Now, the Bible does have a much more robust conversation on the heart. So, you, you see the word "heart" in from Hebrew and Greek is used like hundreds and hundreds of times. Kidney shows up about 19 times in the whole Bible. But even 19 is a lot more than you thought, because you probably thought it was zero, like I used to. I didn't know. No one told me. The verse I heard anyone preaching about kidneys was Arthur Burke. And I was like, "Why is he talking about kidneys?" And it's like, "No, it's a, it's, it's, it's not translated right in the Bible." Like, really? And I started looking it up like, "Oh my goodness, look at what we have found." It turns out the kidneys are very important and connected intricately to the subject of rest. And one of the things that you, you kind of need to know is like, if this is the kidney, this right here is the adrenal. Okay? Adrenal glands. So that's all right there. It's like, right there. It's like one big blob. And they sit behind the upper abdomen, partially covered by the rib cage. And this is the truth: stress and uncontrolled reactions to stress damage the kidneys. Other behaviors that can cause kidney damage include overuse of pain meds, missing out on sleep, eating too much sugar, drinking excessive alcohol. In other words, the condition of a person's kidneys is a direct read on their protocols for managing stress and taking care of themselves. Wow.
So, now we're going to expand this a little more. I'm so glad I gave myself that extra 15 minutes. Um, terror, horror, and the nervous system. Kidneys tend to hold horror and terror. There's different kinds of emotion and broken emotion trauma that goes in different areas of the body. A lot of times when it's physical trauma, those areas of the skin, the elbows, the shoulders, and they may reflect those areas of physical trauma and store those memories in those areas on the surface. But when a person goes through emotional horror and terror, for some reason that actually seems to drive towards the kidney. You can actually find at times regions of captivity that sit relative to the person's physical body in the kidneys where the parts that the soul parts that hold the terror and horror memories live. So when people go through trauma backgrounds, right, we have a lot of ranges of trauma: physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual. Uh, not all of those result in horror and terror. Not all of those result in that. But some do, especially when those events include an element of satanic ritual abuse. And so a lot of this will drive towards the kidneys. Now, I want to explain to you the adrenal glands and how this connects to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system response. A chain reaction is triggered when we perceive a threat. First, remember Amy? Let's uh do this. So, I gave you this picture the last time we were preaching and um, it looks kind of like this, right? So, we have Amy and and Mr. Hippo and the uh temporal cortex, right? And so, we have arousal. Uh, we have the recording, um, and those books got stored here, and this is narrative memory. Okay. And I said when arousal goes haywire due to trauma, this uh, you know, passes out, this doesn't know what to do. And so we have uh cellular memory, right, where the trauma is getting stored in the cells of the body and the parts of the soul that dissociate. And so trauma memory sits outside of narrative memory. Now, we're going to talk about Amy and Hippo again in regards to the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, which has everything to do with adrenal response. And this is ministry to the body because you have to understand how your body has reacted on what you've been through. So, a chain reaction is triggered when we perceive a threat. First, the amygdala sounds an alarm. Okay? So there's an alarm bell that goes off and and and and so it calls upon Mr. Hippo, the hippocampus, which now sends signals to the endocrine system. So we're going to move this out of the way and we're going to say, okay, well, there's a major threat happening. So, we're going to send signals to the endocrine system, and that hits the adrenals. Now, when you have a horror event that causes the alarm bell, signals the endocrine system, and triggers the adrenals, you then drive the sympathetic nervous system into action. Why does that matter? Because this is the fight or flight response. This is the fight or flight response. So the adrenal glands release epinephrine, norepinephrine. It goes into the blood. The lungs expand. Respiration increases. The body takes in more oxygen but goes into a heightened threat state. The heart beats faster. Pupils dilate. Muscles tense up. The body deems some functions unnecessary, like digestion. Um, and if the threat sticks around or you stay in an elevated state for too long, the hypothalamus, the pituitary glands, the adrenal glands all engage. They release a hormone called CRH, corticotropin-releasing hormone, and it signals the pituitary gland to release ACTH, which uh releases cortisol. And so cortisol is the stress hormone. What it does is it keeps the body on the energy it needs to stay on high alert. You can't sleep. You don't rest. It uh impacts blood glucose levels, and you're now in fight, flight, or fawn, and you can spend extended periods of time in that state. Now, the, the problem is when you are spending extended times in that state, uh, the body doesn't achieve homeostasis. So the person begins to go through all kinds of outward uh demonstrations of their dysfunction and dysregulation on this nervous system engagement, including weight gain because they're not digesting stuff right, hypertension, anxiety, metabolic disorders, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disorders, and diabetes. All of that is tied to an over-engagement on the sympathetic nervous system. Now, the problem for a lot of trauma survivors is they spent a lot of their childhood with a heightened sympathetic nervous system engagement, producing permanent dysregulation in their body. They're hyperaroused. Often they are uh uh uh uh uh uh, you know, experiencing ongoing physiological symptoms that are sourced from the stress state their body was maintained in over years of abuse. So, as you stay in this state, the adrenals get taxed, and over time the adrenals go into dysfunction. It's called adrenal fatigue and adrenal failure. What does this produce? Low energy, exhaustion, anxiety. You have low energy and anxiety at the same time. Frequent illnesses, difficulty falling or staying asleep, frequent urination, brain fog, and cravings for sweet and salty foods, which will then drive the weight gain right through the roof. And the thing is, while the kidneys will be a place where the horror and terror can be stored, we can do this to ourselves. We can overwork our adrenals. We can put ourselves in fight or flight by driving ourselves crazy because we refuse to engage a period of rest. So we put our own system in sympathetic uh conditions so that we can work, work, work, work, and we drive our own adrenal fatigue because we do not follow biblical wisdom, and it is to the detriment of our bodies. Many of us have offense sitting in our physical bodies towards our souls because we have made choices to keep ourselves in a sympathetic nervous system state and not allowed the body to switch gears and go the other way, which is the parasympathetic nervous system. Because rest engages that one. It pulls us right out of that spin cycle and it relaxes the body. Once the parasympathetic nervous system engages, digestion improves. We have a state of calm. We feel safe. The body balances. Now we are able to enter a state of meditative prayer, the presence of God. We sleep better at night. When we enter a state of rest, the body balances. And when God is searching for those that reflect his righteousness, that manifest righteousness, he's looking at whole life stewardship. Someone say whole life. >> Whole life. >> Stewardship. Okay. Now, I often talk about stewardship in response to financial management because that's part of your whole life. But can we talk about another part of your whole life, right? Taking care of your body and achieving rest because some of that, for some of us, rest is an achievement. Some of us may need to get off of our hands and do something productive. But the rest of us, so, uh, rest can be an achievement. I know that's true for me and Christian. And we have to choose. We have to make choices to achieve this. And it does get more difficult depending on certain seasons of life. Young children and rest do not mix. >> You have to carve. You got to carve it out. And, um, taking a family cruise is not part of that carving. Like, you, you do the carving after the family vacation. There are many people that have insomnia, restlessness, exhaustion, weight gain, hypertension, and anxiety that also have Jesus. Let me, let me give you Isaiah 57:20 and 21: "But the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace," says my God, "for the wicked." Some of us feel like those people in Christ. We feel like a troubled sea. We can't rest. Our waters cast up mire and dirt, and we don't have peace. And part of achieving peace is not just praying, "God, give me peace." It's actually making choices to achieve rest. Because when we achieve rest, it engages the parasympathetic nervous system, which puts us in a state of peace. And it brings our body out of the offense that it may be in because we have made choices that have kept our sympathetic nervous system engaged for too long or too often. Romans 5:17: "For if by the one man's offense, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ." We receive a gift of righteousness, but it is our choice whether or not we're going to reflect that righteousness. Part of choosing to reflect the righteousness of God in Christ outward is a choice to put the body in a state of rest in a regular iteration. That is the wisdom of the Sabbath. When a body is abused and pushed beyond its limits over a lifetime, the body, the body learns to live here. And sometimes we need to retrain our body. Sometimes the body won't naturally drift over here at all because of our past. And we need to make choices to push our body into that state. We have to unplug. We have to create space because the body won't naturally go there until you train it to go there. There is a process in the Bible we talk about called repentance, right? And there is a way to say, "Lord, I repent for what I've done." And we can clear spiritual things once we confess, repent, and renounce uh bondages off of our lives, etc. But repentance in its true definition means to turn 180 degrees. And sometimes repentance is as simple as different lifestyle choices. Different lifestyle choices. And so today, that's what I am going to leave us with. You have permission to achieve rest because it's part of how we reflect the righteousness of God. Are you okay with that?
Let me pray for you. Father God, we come before you in the mighty name of Jesus. And we thank you for the faithfulness of God. We thank you for the wisdom of the Sabbath. And we accept the words of Jesus. The Sabbath was created for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Father God, we thank you that you desire the longevity of our bodies, the peace that you died to give us residing in our lives. We thank you for rest that we can labor to enter into your rest. And we choose to labor. In fact, we confess lifestyle choices that have driven our sympathetic nervous system haywire, that have kept us in fight or flight, burned our adrenals, pushed us towards adrenal fatigue without disengagement, hyperextension, refusing to say no, poor time management. Father, we repent. And I thank you that following today, your Spirit is moving in our lives to come alongside, to coach, to counsel, to teach, and to show us where rest is achievable. To encourage us to engage in healthy lifestyle choices that produce longevity and reflect the righteousness of God. And so I bless every member of this church with rest and permission to rest in Jesus name. And if you receive that, say amen. And amen. [Applause]