OK. I think we're live, we're live. Try to give a countdown of 10 man. I'm starting to look like Yukon Cornelius here. Um Trying to go the whole winter without shaving. I saw a comment, a portion of a comment about uh what happens if I was in this faith? And then I found out that a bunch of nonsense
was going on and uh you know, one psychological barrier is an awareness of all the sacrifices I made. What, what happens to all of that? Um So let's start with an example. What happened to Paul? What happened to Paul when he found out that his, his pharisee zeal was misdirected. He had, he was a younger
guy and he was going at it, uh persecuting Christians. He held the clothing of those who stoned Stephen and he was just going from town to town chasing down Christian. So what, what's the deal with that? Well, what, what happened to Paul when he converted to um Jesus? What happened to his training as
a pharisee at the feet of a rabbi, a well respected rabbi? What happened to his knowledge of Greek? What happened to his oratorical capabilities? What happened to his zeal. So in physics, when you have an object in motion, it tends to stay in motion. In faith, you can make right angles and not lose any
momentum. So we tend to think of momentum in life as this thing that can only be curved. And if you were to make a right angle, you'd lose something or you have to hit a wall and come to a complete stop before you can turn like a giant train. Faith is not like that and sacrifices done in sincerity to
God, they are never lost, they're never lost. And God can take that anything you've put into your life. He can take it and redeem it, he can take it and he can point it more directly towards what has greater value. Paul absolutely drew on all of his experience as a pharisee after he converted to a more
full version of truth. He used his knowledge of languages. He even used his ability to make tents right by profession as a tent maker. He used all of those things in a different context. So let's say that you're part of a church for your whole life and you're doing all these things that you really think
are what you need to do. And then you find out that not only is there something lacking, but you probably had a part in some shifty things that how you feel kind of guilty about. Well, the guilt will be resolved through your honest recognition of the problems and your earnest effort to help other people
to see the same. And that's sort of a different issue. But let's say that you're doing that. The question is what becomes of everything in my life until now? Is that all a waste? Absolutely. Positively 100%. No, no. In fact, this is gonna sound crazy. You're not even at a disadvantage. It may be the
case and it is, the case is to the degree that you did all of it sincerely, if you really followed your conscience the whole time and you truly did your best 100% of that will carry over to this new situation. It's an amazing thing. The only thing that I can think of in temporal life, that's like it
is if you serve in the military and you come out of that and get a job at the post office or police force or there are various organizations that will do this, they will give you credit for retirement in their system as if you had spent that time there. I think in some cases they might even give you
rank. I don't know about that. But that is the case. Like if you do boy scouts and you're an eagle scout and then you join the army. I think it's been a while. But I think they make you a specialist right off the bat. You get boosted up four ranks. You're in E four. So, um, that's really significant
. And they recognize that experience and they say, oh, we have a place for that in God's house. There's a place for everything. Everything that's good has a place there they say. But, yeah, well, wait a second. Like, what if, I don't know, just using archetypal evil, right. What everybody thinks of,
what if I was in the Nazi army? And I worked my way up. I did terrible things, terrible things there. And I found out about Jesus and I immediately changed the, the course of my life. But what, what could Jesus do with that? You know, a lot of times we asked the question, what would Jesus do? And that's
a good question. That's a question everybody should ask more often, but maybe it's a good question to ask sometimes. What would Jesus do with, what can Jesus do with me? And you, and you say, but I messed up, you know, I'm old, I'm broken, I'm addicted. Done terrible things. See the light of the Lord
. It's like a dark room where you're at your life until that point is like a dark room. You see your history, all the places you've been, all the people you knew everything you've ever done. The light turns on. You see all these things that were there that you didn't see and you see shadows all over
the place that you didn't see when you say man I wish I could do that again. I'd do it totally different. The question is, what can he do with you? It's a wonderful question to ask. Do you know why? Because he's not gonna come and say, you know, they're there magic wand. It all goes away. He will show
you his glory by taking that and throwing it into him and bringing something out. That's so much better than anything. You could imagine. He does it every single time. If you believe he will do it, if you believe he will do it. Ok? So never ever, ever fear punitive truth, punitive benefit, meaning it
, it might be something better, but I'm not even going down the road to think about it because I'm afraid of what it might mean about who I have been until now and what I have done until now. Now if you want an example of this, there are, there's a wonderful example of this that I can think of. What's
this gentleman's name? Hold on. I gotta pull it up. There's a, there's a gentleman out there. Um His name is Afshin Javed, a fshinjav ID. This guy came across my radar recently thanks to a viewer and friend. I don't know this man and I cannot attest to every corner of his life. So if he turns out to
be some insane clown serial killer, you know, don't come back to me and say therefore, but the few videos I've seen of him cause me to feel deep love for this man because um he talks again and again about zeal in obedience to God and about consummate service to everyone, even your enemies. And again
, I don't know this man personally, but he seems absolutely sincere and to be able to say those things sincerely, it means a lot. Where did this guy come from? Well, he met the Lord in a prison in Malaysia his whole life until then had be been as a zealous Muslim. He was actually in Hezbollah. He's from
Iran and he was, he was like the Muslim Paul Saul. I guess he was, he was that zealous and the Lord snatched him and just pointed him in another direction. He said, don't slow down, don't slow down. But just let me, we turn you a little bit and you go that way. Now that's what God can do with your prior
sacrifice. You retain all the momentum, but he'll turn you as much as he needs to, to get you closer to the truth. It could be a 180 you won't slow down. My wife tells this hilarious story about this little dog she used to have and he wasn't allowed up on her mother's bed. She was living at home uh at
the time and one time her mom was taking a nap and the dog didn't, but the dog would always run and jump and sleep on her bed when she wasn't home. The dog thought she wasn't home but, but my mother in law was sleeping on the bed and so the dog runs full speed. It's a little fluff ball and in midair
notices that my mother in law was in the bed and somehow, somehow violated the laws of physics and did a 180 completely returning the momentum went the other way without touching anything. And uh that's what God can do with you. And even more than one aiding you with, with full conservation of momentum
, anything God touches, it's better. Anything God touches becomes better and not by a little, not by a little. So do do not ever be afraid of what could be greater truth. Do you need to be diligent in applying all the things you learn about evaluating truth? Yeah, absolutely. It's a dangerous game folks
. But all risk, all risk carries danger, the equal and opposite is potential benefit opportunity. So be careful but never be afraid, never be afraid because if it ended up being true, it will be worth it. Everything that is true is also worthwhile. It's funny, those things go together. So anyway, these
are thoughts and it's probably longer than it needs to be, but don't ever be afraid of putative truth or improvement for the, for the reason that you fear that that whatever changes might come of it cause you to lose something. There is no loss, there is no loss in the Lord. Ever, ever, there's only
better if you ever feel like something is being taken away from you in the past of the Lord. It's just cause you don't see the outcome yet in the best outcomes, they kind of have to be the most hidden for reasons I can't get into right now. But that's the whole point, the trust that we have in him that