0:00:00 - 0:00:18 I've made many allusions to the topic of gathering. And most of the time when I, when I comment on it, I say something like we're not gonna talk about this right now. So now the time has come to talk about it. Um That being said, it's an immense, immense, immense topic. And uh this, this however long 0:00:18 - 0:00:35 it ends up being it's a brief presentation proportional to the quantity of information under this topic. But so don't take this as this is all there is to know about it. Um Not that you should expect that any one person knows it all there is to know about it. But even if that were the case, certainly 0:00:34 - 0:01:00 only the tiniest bit could fit into one single presentation. The purpose of this one is not to give you an overview of uh well, not an overview but a detailed look at everything there is to know, but just the briefest little overview of, of one slice of what it's all about with the focused purpose of 0:00:59 - 0:01:21 shedding more light on why it's so important to adopt the purpose of Christ as an individual. And then as a family, that's something that is not happening for the most part. So is you'll see in this presentation, why, why it is that these things are sequential or at least you get an idea because like 0:01:21 - 0:01:43 I said, I'm not not making the full case here. What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna show you one Well, a diagram of how this is going to work, but again, it's just one sort of facet of what this is all about. And um I'm not gonna make a case for why it is that way. I'm not gonna appeal to scripture and 0:01:43 - 0:02:03 that would all take a very long time. And, and at this point, it really doesn't matter if you believe that or not because the purpose of it again is to point back at where you are right now. And that's a good idea whether what I'm saying turns out to be true or not. This is actually a really important 0:02:03 - 0:02:31 facet of um the Lord's work. It's a property that you could, you could add this under an entry uh as an entry under the topic of how the Lord's work. Uh It's, it's, it's almost like an authentication, like a stamp of authenticity uh in the Lord's work. They are properties of how he operates. And um a 0:02:31 - 0:02:58 AAA good deal of them are protective. So he, he protects us from ourselves and others in, in impressive ways. So one of these certificates of authenticity for his work is that when he gives you good reasons for something, um It, it turns out how can I say this? Uh it turns out to be a good idea for a 0:02:58 - 0:03:21 whole lot of reasons. And so even if some particular way that you saw what, how things were gonna go, ends up being incorrect or incomplete, it still ends up being a really solid idea. This, this is kind of a side note, but this, this um this applies to many worldly situations as well. So if you're designing 0:03:20 - 0:03:40 something, so for example, if I'm writing code as a programmer and I'm trying to solve a really complicated problem, um I think, you know, you, you do the work to get a good understanding of the situation. But in a, in a particularly in a complex situation, they're gonna be surprises. That's one nature 0:03:40 - 0:04:04 of complexity. And so as time goes on, when the new information makes your solution more valuable, it's a real or at least at least uh just as valuable as it was before, it doesn't, it doesn't diminish the value. That's a great indication of what you had in the first place, the value of what you had 0:04:04 - 0:04:27 in the first place. And so God's ways almost always have this signature where it seems like a good idea under certain, under a certain level of understanding. And then as more reality is unfolded, the value of it increases. So one signature of things that come from God is they get better over time and 0:04:26 - 0:04:54 uh against greater exposure to reality, that's a very important property. Anyway, you will see that this is one of those, this, this bears that signature. Uh It, it has that quality because you'll find tremendous value in this. Whether the full picture that I'm giving you here ends up being true or not 0:04:54 - 0:05:24 . So anyway, the point of this though is so that it um filters back to how you live your life as an individual and with your family right now, no matter what the future holds. OK. So here's the diagram. It's very simple. So you begin to live in Zion in yourself. Once you've got that figured out, then 0:05:24 - 0:05:51 you, you begin to do this as a family in your family. Then once you've got that figured out, you begin to do this in a community and then once you've got that figured out, you do this as a country. So one thing that I feel like I need to say here is there's this, there's this principle, it's in the Old 0:05:51 - 0:06:23 Testament and I can't remember which book if it's Leviticus, Deuteronomy. But it's, it's uh it's the Lord's law regarding polygamy under the law of Moses. And the instruction is that the, the benefits to the first wife cannot diminish. And I think that's a really, really important idea in applications 0:06:22 - 0:06:53 much wider than polygamy. So let's think of that in, in this case because I think it, it's very relevant if you look across the, the span of religions in the world today, but particularly Christianity, what you'll find is that people try to jump ahead in steps. So, for example, there are a lot of preachers 0:06:52 - 0:07:22 who try to help other people repent, but they have not yet repented and no surprise that doesn't go off too well. There are parents who try to impart religion to their Children without first living that religion themselves. So that's pretty awkward. And the sharper the kid, the less they're going to 0:07:21 - 0:07:38 be swayed by that, you know, people, people go out and they try to quote, preach the gospel to other, other folks and the other folks look at them and they say, well, I don't want your life, your life's not that great. My life's pretty good. So, what reason do I have to believe anything that you're saying 0:07:37 - 0:08:04 ? If it's so great, why isn't your life better than it is? So, this is a great example of people doing things when they don't really have surplus. So, so what do I mean by, by surplus? So, um, if, if you haven't figured it out inside of yourself, maybe you don't have so much to give to your kids just 0:08:04 - 0:08:26 yet. If you can't figure it out as a family, it being the gospel living. Uh, what we'll see here is the purpose of Christ, adopting the purpose of Christ. If you haven't done that as an individual, you probably can't do that as a family can, you, at least your family could do that, but it won't be driven 0:08:26 - 0:08:52 by you because you haven't done that. It'll be in spite of you, not because of you and then a community. So this all cascades, it's all sequential. Right? It's sequential. So you have to have a surplus before you move on. If, if you're not already doing all you can as a family to adopt the purpose of 0:08:52 - 0:09:13 Christ, you have no business trying to do this as a community and what you see, if you look in any existing Christian congregation, you see a group of people who are not living the gospel as individuals trying to live it as a community when they're not even living it as a family DC. And no wonder it 0:09:13 - 0:09:37 doesn't work. And what I mean by working there is no growth. These are people who are ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. They aren't actually becoming anything more like Jesus, who cares what they claim they believe, who cares about the, the rights and practices and habits that 0:09:37 - 0:10:04 they do or don't practice. Who cares? The point is they would not say, let alone be confident in saying I am more like Jesus every single day. So what do they have exactly what, what are they doing? Because uh if it's just sort of some club, they're part of who really cares. Right. OK. So I mentioned 0:10:04 - 0:10:28 that it's sequential. You, you can't go past one of these, you have to go through it. Now, everything after the first one is subject to the choices of other people. And that is another reason why this, this, uh this reference to the Old Testament is relevant. The point is, are you doing all that anyone 0:10:27 - 0:10:55 could do yet? And if you're not, you're not ready to move on to the next thing. So the surplus that a husband might have to give to another woman would absolutely be, be conditioned on what the first woman is willing to receive. Right? So this is a principle that has to do with a lot more than just marriage 0:10:54 - 0:11:16 , just plural marriage, I guess. Ok, it's, it's a really, um it's a really important idea. OK? But before we get into the particulars of the, what let's talk about the why? So why do any of this? And I, I know that there are people out there that have this implicit uh idea of value when it comes to gathering 0:11:15 - 0:11:33 and they're just all about it and they're really excited about it. One of the things we're gonna do eventually is I'm gonna lay out reasons people do this but shouldn't um and reasons people should have for doing it. But don't, and I think there will be some surprises there, but I don't wanna get into 0:11:33 - 0:11:58 all that. So just choosing one maybe this is a good one to choose right now to talk about. And that is the principle that you can't get more from God until you use what you already have. That's the way it works. If you want more from the Lord, you have to be able to, to tell him that you've been true 0:11:57 - 0:12:21 and faithful to everything you've received. What does that mean? Well, you know, across the board in Christianity in the Gospel, you need to get used to something, which is the Sunday school religious kind of answers are only the smallest piece of a much bigger picture. And unfortunately, that much bigger 0:12:21 - 0:12:46 picture is all the glue that ties it to your daily life. That's the part that's missing, that's the part we need to fix. So this question is not, um this, this, this question is an example of that. It's not limited to the churchy kind of part that everyone would just recite without ever thinking about 0:12:45 - 0:13:10 or living. It's also chock full of stuff that actually applies to your life every day. But it's not surprising and it's not shocking and it's not weird. It's just once you hear it, you go. Oh well, duh. And yet no one said it before. So here we go. You can't receive more from God until you one live obedient 0:13:09 - 0:13:39 to what you already have. Fancy that right? Two value what you already have as much as you should three desire, what you do not yet have as much as you need to in order to sacrifice what is required to obtain it. Now, maybe when I read these sentences, they don't make any sense or maybe they do seem 0:13:39 - 0:14:08 to make sense. Maybe they even seem to be very valuable and they are. But each of these sentences takes a lot to get to and to be explored in any fraction of the way it should be, would require a lot of content. So I think this just needs to be a standard disclaimer man. I'll put it at the foot of every 0:14:07 - 0:14:35 video I make just because I say something in brief, does it mean it's not ridiculously earth shatteringly. Life changing, important more often than not it is or it should be or would be if you got it. So that's, that's the disclaimer. Um I can't really go into more of these right now but or, or go into 0:14:35 - 0:15:02 these more than I have. However, um that is what's what's holding you back. And so this system of adopting the purpose of Christ as an individual, as a family, as a, as a community and as a country that is the process for doing this for coming to the point where you live obedient to what you already 0:15:01 - 0:15:23 have for valuing what you already have as much as you should and for desiring what you don't yet have as much as you need to in order to sacrifice what's required to obtain it. This is what it's all about, even though this is, you know, suspiciously absent of, from any religious text you're gonna get 0:15:23 - 0:15:48 from anybody else. This is what it's all about and, and it's because people don't understand this. That's, that's one of the reasons that no one is doing this. That's, that's one of many, but that's, that's one. Ok, let's move on. So the first box is, adopt the purpose of Christ as an individual in yourself 0:15:47 - 0:16:12 . Now, I've spoken at length about this. This has been my initial focus. So if you read uh repentance, the book I wrote, um it's all about this. That's, that's what it's about is reconciling your life to the, to the purpose of Christ as far as you understand it. I have a lot more to say about that and 0:16:12 - 0:16:34 that'll come out in subsequent books and we give you a lot more firepower to do these things, but to understand the purpose of Christ and to live it in your life. But I've been preaching a lot about this. So it's not just limited again to these churchy ideas of here's a list of commandments, I need to 0:16:34 - 0:16:56 change my life. So I live those. You absolutely have to be willing to do that. But um and able to do that, but that's just the beginning. It is not the end. It's just the beginning. Obeying what you already know isn't limited to some list of rules you actually have to come to know the character of Jesus 0:16:56 - 0:17:16 and you have to become like him. And there's a lot of learning involved in that. It's a very, very long process. And so you can start it now, but you're not gonna end it anytime soon. And that's good. That's the way it's meant to be. There's a lot there, but it's not just limited to churchy kind of things 0:17:15 - 0:17:39 . It, it encompasses every aspect of your life, every moment of your life. If you had to boil it down, it might be appropriate to say something like it's to do what's best in all things all the time. Now again, this diverges from what you're gonna hear in a church. It's, it's uh it's consummate and it's 0:17:39 - 0:18:03 clear, it's not some obfuscated weird. We do this and we don't know why and you know, God knows and we just do these weird things and we ignore the rest of life for who knows what reason it's everything. So to, to do this, to learn more about Jesus, you have to learn more about reality. You have to learn 0:18:02 - 0:18:27 more about value, what things are worth what they cost. You need to learn more about how you operate as a person. There's a rational part of you and there's an emotional part of you and you need to, to get a lens on that and learn to understand how you operate internally and to take control of that and 0:18:27 - 0:18:50 to understand how God wants you to be in those ways and to make sense of and leverage the, the tools that He's given us because they're powerful and they're very important. You need to understand what you do and see it clearly because most people don't. And you need to understand why you do it. And then 0:18:49 - 0:19:10 you need to adopt what God would have you do for the reasons He has for you to do it. So there's a lot of learning and change in this. But this is what it means to reconcile your life to Jesus. And it's, it's so much bigger than, here's a list of a couple of rules and all you need to do is get to the 0:19:10 - 0:19:30 point where you live them. No, no, that's important. It's really important, but it's important for reasons that aren't as closely related to the content of those rules as most would assume. There's a much bigger picture here. And while it's tempting to see all that as a, well, I'm already overwhelmed 0:19:30 - 0:19:56 . And now you're telling me there's so much more than this. No, there is much more than this. But what you're not getting is that the much more it uh it removes all these barriers, these obstructions that exist in people who, who really struggled to obey a list of rules. There are reasons for that and 0:19:56 - 0:20:20 what you get in the rest of the, the story is how to remove those barriers and it's actually really simple. It's really simple. And when they're all pulled apart and it's all laid out for you, it's just the clearest track and it's very evident that it gets better with every step. And so that's what we're 0:20:20 - 0:20:44 doing here is we're removing all these obstructions and we're building a highway up. But you have to adopt the purpose of Jesus in yourself because it's the key to everything else. It's, it's not negotiable and it's an ongoing process. It's, it's uh to be clear with that, this arrow doesn't start when 0:20:43 - 0:21:06 you are an absolute perfect replica of Jesus. That's not what that means. It means that you fully rec reconciled to your limited understanding of how he is, which is another important point. People get overwhelmed saying when, when, when I say something like we need to, to always be as we sincerely believe 0:21:06 - 0:21:31 Jesus would in our place. They're like, oh, how can I be perfect? Your sincere understanding of Jesus is much less than how good he actually is. Trust me. And you'll know that as soon as you do it because he will reveal to you aspects of him that are even better than you knew. That's, that's the biggest 0:21:31 - 0:21:52 understatement I think a person could ever make, but we're limited by words. So there it is. So on the one hand you're saying, well, I'm overwhelmed by my current understanding of Jesus and trying to measure up to that Well, the only reason that's hard is because you're still holding to you, you're still 0:21:51 - 0:00:00 afraid to let go of you. But the second you make the leap to God and you hold on to him instead, this is the easiest part. This is the easiest part. And it's, it's not hard because the process is hard. It's hard because you're hard hearted and hardheaded. You're, you're holding on to what cannot be, 0:00:00 - 0:22:39 you're, you're clinging to what has no value and you've been abundantly shown. And so you just need to make, make the leap to say. Yep, I guess what God has to offer is better than what I thought. So maybe I should go with that instead. It's, it's, it's uh that part's not hard. It's not. So what, what 0:22:39 - 0:23:01 makes it difficult is not the process, it's your approach. It's the hard parts in you and you can let it go if you want, you can make it easy if you want to. That's, that's my point. This part, at least this part is meant to be easy. You're just, you're just fighting yourself. It's not God's problem 0:23:01 - 0:23:26 . It's yours. OK. Sorry, we're getting ahead. Um OK. What about in your family? Well, I've made a lot of videos about this and this is why. So I've had a strategy here is crazy at all as it all may have seemed so far. Um But the videos I made about parents, this is what it's all about now. Um I'm not 0:23:26 - 0:23:46 sure what the perception of value was in those videos, but they're incredibly important because if you're not adopting the purpose of Christ in your family, you're not ready to do it as a community. And there are things that can only happen in each of these phases. There are channels of value from God 0:23:45 - 0:24:10 that can only be received and perceived and appreciated in the the phases they pertain to. So I won't rehash all those videos here. You should go watch them, but just to touch on a few points, the responsibility of each person in a family is to lead everyone else to the greatest possible improvement 0:24:09 - 0:24:37 . Um And, and it's worth a reminder here that in the Lord's way leading does not mean bossing people around, it means suffering for their benefit. So it's, it's to have an idea of what is better and to pay the price to enable others to obtain it. That's important to say. But another important facet of 0:24:37 - 0:24:56 this that might not be obvious is that in a family, you do have traditional or predetermined roles. You have this idea of parents, you have this idea of Children. Um you know, Children could be different ages, parents, there's a, there's a mom, there's a dad. So there's all these, there are all these 0:24:56 - 0:25:24 differences. But the most important difference between any set of people is not their predetermined societal or otherwise roles, it's their merit. It is how much like God they are. It's completely possible to have a little kid who has a much better understanding of God than anyone else in the family 0:25:23 - 0:25:50 . Examples from the scriptures, Joseph of Egypt, Samuel Jesus, right? David. So the examples abound. It's, it's the Kingdom of God is a meritocracy. And if you're going to adopt the purpose of Christ in a group, starting with your family that you have to Presuppose that you have to arrange things according 0:25:49 - 0:26:14 to merit. Now, the call the the ideal we are called to is for the father to be the person in the family, most like Christ, how often does this ideal occur? Well, I guess it really depends, but it's not hard to find examples where this is not the case. However, this, this gives a valuable instruction 0:26:13 - 0:26:36 for how we choose spouses as far as the the young ladies go at least. And also it, it uh calls young men to their duty, which is to learn everything they can about Jesus and live everything that they learn. So that that relationship is true in their family because the family will get the most out of 0:26:36 - 0:27:08 it when this is true. So um in the ideal, the parents ought to have the wisdom and the experience and the dedication to architect, the lives of their Children. So um that means seeing the potential in each child and helping them achieve it. Now, this can apply at every um, let's see, what's a word to 0:27:07 - 0:27:31 describe this idea and every scope in a family, uh, every, every, every scope of a, of a child's life, every, every facet of their lives. So it's not just the big picture of, oh, my little boy, my angel son Kyle, he's, uh, he's, he's the best person in the world that he's gonna be a little Jesus and 0:27:31 - 0:27:59 we're just gonna help him, you know. That's great. But you gotta break that down to what's your angel son Cal's potential in um in keeping a house tidy or making food, right? So the little things all the way up to the big things, you assemble these things together and you really think about holistically 0:27:58 - 0:28:27 , who do I want my son or daughter to be as an adult? And now going through the details of that, how do I make a path from where they are to where I, I see them as being as an adult in the best case? And, and the question there, the primary question isn't, what do they need to do? The primary question 0:28:26 - 0:28:48 is what are you going to give? Remember, leadership is about paying the price to enable another to be better. So the question is, what are you going to give? And maybe you're not going to be watching football so much because you need to spend that time with your, your child or maybe you're gonna take 0:28:48 - 0:29:14 a different job because it's gonna afford uh potential opportunities for your kid or maybe, you know, we can go on and on. So the, the rubber hits the road as the answer to the question, what are you going to do to make this more likely to happen? What are you going to give up? And what are you gonna 0:29:14 - 0:29:39 replace it with? Ok. As we get to spouses, there's a lot that needs to be said about this. Maybe it's a nice time to Sprinkle something just lightly that I'll get back to it some other time. If I were to ask you who's the greatest enabler of sin? You know, you probably say like the devil. Sure. Uh, who's 0:29:38 - 0:30:09 the greatest human enabler? And you have to answer with a role. So, is it an enemy? A stranger, a friend, et cetera. Well, the answer is probably your spouse. That should be a shocker, but I do believe it's true. Why? Well, well, if you're married, why spouses know each other the best or they're supposed 0:30:09 - 0:00:00 to, right? If they don't, something's probably wrong, but a spouse should at least know their spouse very well. Right. Well, you have the greatest lens on what their faults might be and what their potential is. The question is. What are you doing about it? It seems to me that a whole lot of spouses, 0:00:00 - 0:30:52 it's a full time job ignoring the faults of their spouse and often enabling them unfortunately. So your spouse ought to be your best friend. And the greatest thing a friend can do is help you be better. Is that true of your spouse? Is it true of you for your spouse? So, that's just the sprinkling of 0:30:52 - 0:00:00 an idea. I'm going to go into a lot more later. But I think spouses don't really pull their weight in the world today as far as helping the other be the best they can be. And again, I know that that's not a traditionally religious idea, but it's actually the point, it's actually the point of it all. 0:00:00 - 0:31:40 So, um, both spouses ought to do what benefits the other spouse and the Children the most and whatever that is all the time. That's how you adopt the purpose of Christ in your family. That's going to look different for each family. But it's going to look way different than their actual current culture 0:31:39 - 0:32:06 does because families today, they just live to have fun and avoid pain, which is also how individuals live and disaster ensues. We're all living far below our privilege. Uh, generally speaking, it's hard to find exceptions, but they do exist all right. So specific though, uh, specifically to a husband 0:32:05 - 0:32:34 or a wife, there are slight differences for a husband. Your job is to become worthy of leading your family in order to define that, um, in an individual preparation and then to turn and help your wife and kids. Listen to this next part, adopt your purpose because if you're doing your job, you will be 0:32:34 - 0:32:57 more like Jesus than anyone else in your house. Now, if that's not the case, you know, maybe you have a, uh, uh Samuel or David on your hands, whatever will then adopt their purpose. So that's an interesting thing to think about. How would Jacob's family have been different if they adopted Joseph's purpose 0:32:57 - 0:33:22 ? Well, at least his brothers would have been a lot better off, wouldn't they? It took them decades to get to where they could have been right away. And of course, Joseph had to suffer an intensely terrible life anyway. What about lives? Well, you have a special power to encourage your husband to be 0:33:22 - 0:33:43 the best man. He can be a lot, could be said about that. But you can also enable him to do more than he could otherwise do so, more than he could do if you weren't around. So that's a nice thing to shoot for. It's, it's not a bad idea to think that that one of the goals of a good wife should be. So that 0:33:42 - 0:34:07 because of her, her husband can be more than he would be without her. This is sadly not the case far too often. Of course, it's, it's, it's the case that, uh, the goal for men ought to be that their wives are more than they would be without them. And I'm not gonna take a position on which of the two 0:34:07 - 0:34:34 is least likely to have that attitude or to be most resistant to it because obviously that's a very, uh, that's something that's gonna be specific to the individual anyway. Um, but a wife ought to enable her husband to be more than he would otherwise be. Um, and that's a great goal and certainly, um 0:34:34 - 0:34:58 , that's connected to this idea of being more than he would be without her, but he should also be more because of her. So she can actively increase his capability through what she does or doesn't do. And so some specifics on that is, is uh i it's going to definitely have something to do with what she 0:34:58 - 0:35:22 receives appreciates and makes use of that he provides. So again, I've spoken to these points elsewhere, but that's just a brief recap. All right. So suppose you're doing this as a family. What's the next step? The next step? This is new. I don't think I've talked about this before. The next step is 0:35:22 - 0:35:51 to adopt the purpose of Christ in your community. Now, I don't mean your little suburbian enclave. I don't mean wherever you live. I mean, you create a community by finding at least one other family that's doing this. This is not just where you live. Um The things that you can do in the setting that 0:35:51 - 0:36:17 I'm discussing here are way better and completely different than the things you can do just wherever you live, the ingredients matter. And uh I was gonna make a reference to Papa John's there. But the ingredients matter. And um there are certain things that you just can't do with any old community and 0:36:17 - 0:36:37 those are the things that we're concerned with here. Um Obviously, whatever you can do with any old community you can already do and you're probably already doing it. What I'm talking about is something more, something better. The way you will uh group together, there are two categories. One is ideologically 0:36:36 - 0:37:10 and the second is geographically and I just want to speak in the briefest terms about these to help you not do something terrible. Um All gathering is ideological period. Full stop box it up, ship it. This is something that is missing from the understanding of people and it ought to be understood, it 0:37:10 - 0:37:42 needs to be understood. You can't do this as God intended without understanding that and doing it. You, you are sharing ideas first and foremost ideas about what read the head of the slide, their ideas about Jesus in the broadest sense, which includes everything about reality, right? So that is the the 0:37:42 - 0:38:14 primary element of gathering is your ideas. It's what you think. It's what you believe, which of course translates into what you do and how you feel and why you do it. All of that comes out of ideas. So if you don't have new ideas, what's the point of gathering? Or if you're not gathering to and through 0:38:13 - 0:38:53 new ideas, what's the point of gathering. And if it's not totally obvious, I'll spell it out. That has to be a function of change. Gathering is about changing and it's not just any old change, it's about improvement. Gathering is improvement by finding and living better ideas. OK. So I hope atomic bombs 0:38:52 - 0:39:18 are going off in your head right now. Cause if, if they're not, you're not understanding the, the, the new, the newness of what I'm telling you, the clarity of what I'm giving you. It all starts with personal repentance because if you're not finding and living better ideas as an individual, you can't 0:39:18 - 0:39:45 do that as a family. Because what do you have to offer as a father or a mother? If you're just doing what you always did before, where is the improvement? There isn't any? And then when you scale up to at least two families, there still has to be better ideas somewhere. Now, in, in practice, in all likelihood 0:39:44 - 0:39:59 , you're gonna have some good ideas, they're gonna have some good ideas. You're gonna mix them together just like as you, you do as a family, you know, your four year old girl might have some really good ideas about something and you're gonna grab those and you're gonna integrate them right in, you're 0:39:59 - 0:40:26 gonna find benefit where benefit is and you're gonna gobble it up. So there's no need to do this and it's impossible for it to benefit you if you're not already doing it. You see, so I, I alluded earlier to this idea that people are interested in it for all the wrong reasons and, and primarily the reason 0:40:25 - 0:40:49 is they want to get stuff. I wanna feel good about how I already am. That's their motive. That motive in the scriptures is described in the phrase to get gain. And here's a, here's a clue. It's not a good thing. It's the opposite of a phrase that uh let's see, the phrase is for the benefit of Zion, which 0:40:49 - 0:41:16 is, which is the purpose of Jesus. It's the benefit of all the benefit of the world. Those are all the same idea. So how are they different? One's about what you receive and one's about what you give. So it's better to give than to receive. So, one of these bullets though is geographically, we do gather 0:41:16 - 0:00:00 geographically. Um It's fun sometimes being so deep into things that, that no one else knows and which you don't talk about with anyone else because, or haven't yet because conversations come up and you forget where you left off with someone because people, it's not like their books with a bookmark. 0:00:00 - 0:42:01 Um And you get back to talking to someone and you just blurt something out like um yes, it's actually important for people to live in close proximity and they say, well, what do you mean? Why would you need to do that? Um There are things that you can only learn in the presence of someone. I have a lot 0:42:01 - 0:42:22 more to say about that, but that's all that I'll get to for now. Uh, there, there's nothing, you know, it's, it's well done kind of stuff. Once you hear it, you'll say well done. But you, you don't know it now, you, you couldn't explain it. Um So anyway, that, that it's important, but I put these in 0:42:22 - 0:42:42 the order they're in for reasons that are probably already obvious. People get the cart before the horse and they're all about geographic uh gathering and they don't understand why you would do that in the first place. Um But, but the reason is so you can learn more about Jesus through finding people 0:42:41 - 0:43:06 more like him than you are and through suffering uh suffering because of people who are less like him than you are. That's it. That's it. Right. So where two or more are gathered in my name there, I'll be amongst you. He will flow to you greater light as you live, the light that you have. And part of 0:43:06 - 0:43:30 that's going to be through the warm and fuzzy. Oh That's awesome. I never knew that before. And part of it's going to be through having your heart ripped into pieces by people who have every reason to treat you very well. That's the purpose. So only the right people will be excited about what God offers 0:43:30 - 0:43:57 when they understand what it really is. That's a principle. That's true in every facet of the gospel, like I've said, heaven is an acquired taste. It's the same idea. Um OK, so, so another warning sign here, if, if anything that you envision to be part of this is extreme or strange, you've probably got 0:43:57 - 0:44:18 it wrong. Um, this kind of arrangement you should think of it. I know people, this isn't my case. Um, my siblings all live really far away but I, I know people who have a, a brother or a sister or even a close friend they get along with really well and maybe they've gone in together to buy a plot of 0:44:17 - 0:44:37 land and subdivided it so that they can both build a house, they can each build a house and like they're friends and they, you know, they share eggs and stuff, chicken eggs, not human. That'd be a very close friend, I guess. Anyway. Um You know what I mean? It's just like uh your ideal neighbor, you 0:44:37 - 0:44:59 , you go find your ideal neighbor and make them your neighbor, not, not by force. Um But you, you go in together so that you can be actual neighbors. Um That's the idea here. There's nothing crazy about this. It's very simple and mutual benefit communities to step up from just, you know, your brother 0:44:58 - 0:45:21 or your sister that you're close with mutual benefit communities. They're nothing new. Um You know, there's, there, there are communities like the Amish, the Hutterites, there's, there's all sorts of Mennonite versions of this. Um And of course, those have very strong religious um moorings, but that 0:45:20 - 0:45:41 isn't actually necessary for this. Um And, and probably should be avoided honestly, which might seem weird because the heading of this is adopt the purpose of Christ progress is not about compulsion. If there's benefit to be offered, then the relationship is something other than some compulsory religious 0:45:41 - 0:46:06 one, isn't it? So if, if uh if you and I just to use a temporal example, if we get into a business arrangement, there's no religious compulsion in that is there, we both feel like we have things to, to um add to the equation and we define the terms of that interchange and then we get it done. So one 0:46:06 - 0:46:24 of the unfortunate barriers to all of this is seeing it as a much bigger deal than it is. And it's, it's funny there's so many things like this, on the one hand, people see it as a bigger deal than it is and on the other, they see it as a smaller deal than it is and both are problematic. You have to 0:46:24 - 0:46:49 see things for how they are in order to really do what we are meant to do in this life. And that's true in everything. OK. So, so just to underscore this one more time, this is a situation of mutual consent. It's not a situation where there are, you know, surprises, gotcha. Something else is actually 0:46:48 - 0:47:13 going on, whatever, whatever, whatever everybody ought to be totally upfront and honest about what they're doing, which probably makes it a little bit more obvious why you have to do this as an individual first. Um, while I'm at it, 11 reason why doing it as a family is important, um, is actually it's 0:47:13 - 0:47:34 a great segue to the rest of the slide. So you might wonder like, where's the instruction book for how to do this and that might be provided one day. However, as far as the, the big picture goes because there are a lot of subtleties. But the big picture you learn pretty much everything you need to know 0:47:34 - 0:47:58 . If you really do this as an individual and as a family, you're going to learn so much through that there are gonna be so many surprises and so many revealed shortcomings that you have to fix that when you're ready to scale up to this, it's gonna be no surprise. And by the way, if you can do this with 0:47:58 - 0:48:25 two families, you might try it with three. And if you can do it with three, you might try it with four. And eventually like Abraham, you might have 300 families hanging out all working together. Now, um I guess, I guess for the purpose of not leading you astray on something, um I might mention here that 0:48:25 - 0:48:57 the idea of mutual consent that that does not mean that you have to go in with some idea that all people in this situation will be interchangeable. What do I mean by that? Well, in Abraham's society, um there was a hierarchy this, I'm trying to clarify what, what, you know, the mistake of the ultra religious 0:48:57 - 0:49:21 types. There's an opposite spectrum of that, which is this perverse egalitarianism idea um taken to that extreme. And like I said, the Kingdom of God is a meritocracy. So how do you, how do you merge all this together? Well, you identify what has value and you go with it and you might say, well, that 0:49:21 - 0:49:42 doesn't answer the question of who has value and what value they have. And now you get into these ideas about authority and all the, the stuff that gets people worked up, but also gives folks license to do really terrible things. It's actually super clear, what do you want now go get it. That's, that's 0:49:42 - 0:50:02 all it is, right? So if you see value in something that someone has that they're offering again, coming back to the business example, um if, if you come together in a partnership and one person is an attorney and is really good at what he does. And let's say there's a lady who's super good at marketing 0:50:01 - 0:50:25 and um they decide to partner up in a business situation, they're probably gonna have an explicit understanding that when it comes to marketing, the marketing lady is gonna have um creative control and the the legal situation will be the, the lawyer's purview, but it's almost never the case where that 0:50:25 - 0:50:50 has to be brandished. It's like if a marketing situation comes up, the attorney is gonna gladly ask the lady to take care of it. Right. Because he knows she's better at it and she enjoys it. Do you get that? So, the mutual consent thing, it doesn't Presuppose, um, some kind of egalitarianism. It's, uh 0:50:50 - 0:51:13 , it's just that everybody's on board and happy with the way things work. So, um in Abraham society, I'm sure Abraham would have been tickled to have someone take over whatever it was he had to worry about. And we, we know that because of his joy when Isaac came around and Isaac, that was his defining 0:51:12 - 0:51:36 quality was that he was able to receive everything that Abraham was and had. But um the other 300 men in that household, so to speak, they, they were not interested or capable of that interested in or capable of that. I don't know. Hopefully that's not murky. I'm just trying to throw it out there as 0:51:35 - 0:52:03 a, a piece of this. Don't, don't suppose that joining together families in this sort of community idea is a necessarily, um we're all coming to this with equal footing situation. It might be, but it all has to be based on actual merit. So for example, I'll just get into a specific example here, if you 0:52:03 - 0:52:31 own 4000 acres somewhere and you say, hey, um, hey guy, you seem to be, uh leading your family in the purposes of Christ. I think that if you moved on to this land, which I own these benefits would, would be present for both of us. And you start talking about this. Well, that doesn't mean that that guy 0:52:31 - 0:52:51 comes and now he gets 2000 acres and you sign over the deed to that half of the land and whatever it could be, the case that he gets all 4000 and you actually ask him where you should go on it and what you should do there just, just to throw this whole thing for a loop. I, I just want to show you that 0:52:51 - 0:53:15 when, when you do this, like I said, at the family level, if you've got a kid who somehow has tremendous wisdom, why wouldn't you ask them questions on things that, that you wouldn't normally care what a kid has to say about it? You see? So, uh the Old Testament in the Old Testament, we read that whatever 0:53:14 - 0:53:39 was put into Joseph Joseph's hands, God made to prosper. So the first person he met that was really smart was the pharaoh because the pharaoh thought hm I have a bunch of stuff and I would really like even more stuff and I know that this guy is like some kind of a compounding machine. And so I'm going 0:53:38 - 0:54:03 to sign over everything. I have to him because I know it's gonna grow more than it otherwise would. Now he retained oversight. But you get the point or when um when Alma came into Mosiah kingdom, Mosiah was the leader of everything. He was a king. He had absolute power that included over their church 0:54:02 - 0:54:33 . But he immediately recognized that Alma could lead the church better than he could. And so he made him the high priest and that's how this goes, right? Because if your concern is the benefit of all, it's not the um if your concern is the benefit for all, it can't be the advancement of yourself. So 0:54:32 - 0:54:53 you would only be interested in that if the case was such that it would help everyone more than anything else. So, uh maybe this is an example of how to get into the weeds very quickly on what should be a simple idea. But I'd like to think of it in terms of being something where the details are actually 0:54:52 - 0:55:15 pretty simple. It's just that our current traditions are quite messed up. And so it takes quite a bit to chop those away. And then it's really obvious what, what's better anyway, the final box was adopt the purpose of Christ as a country and this is not something I'm going to get into right now. Um This 0:55:15 - 0:55:35 is in many ways the same because I think you're probably seeing parallels between each of these, but there are some really distinct differences here and, uh, eventually I'll get to them, but it's gonna take a little bit more explanation and it just doesn't matter right now because people, you know, are 0:55:35 - 0:55:54 crawling like little babies to talk about running is advanced enough. We don't need to talk about flying. So, um, anyway, we'll, we'll leave it at that and I don't know, uh, what you think of this, but if you have any questions, you can let me know and I reserve the right to sidestep them for future 0:55:54 - 0:56:19 date, but I'll let you know at least. Um, and maybe your question is addressable right now. So I hope this is helpful and I hope to see more people doing this. Um, just to, just to give you a take home, you already have everything you need to conduct the first three steps on this path. And as far as 0:56:19 - 0:56:34 I can tell if there are a few people in the first, I don't know anybody outside of my own who's on the second. So, um, let's get that rolling. It's past time.