Downward Spiral: Ep 4: Breaking the Spiral: Finding Redemption Amidst Rebellion

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Welcome to Faith on the Go, a series on the Diary of a Black Woman podcast.

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I'm your host, Connie Morris, and today's episode is titled,

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The Spiral of Rebellion, Humanity's Fall.

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In this episode, we're diving into how rejecting God's guidance has led humanity into chaos.

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The spiral began in the Garden of Eden and echoes throughout history.

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So grab your cup of coffee, your favorite tea, and settle in as we walk through scripture,

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life lessons, and moments that challenge us to reflect on the world's trajectory

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and our personal spiral path.

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So let's start with a question. Have you ever felt like the world is spinning

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out of control, like society is caught in a downward spiral?

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It's easy to feel overwhelmed. But what if I told you that the spiral was foretold

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and that understanding it could lead us closer to redemption rather than despair?

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Today, we'll look at the spiral as a symbol of rebellion.

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Picture a whirlpool dragging everything downward.

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This is the vigil of humanity's fall.

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If you notice everywhere we turn, we see negative news, negative news, negative news.

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When the world turns away from God, it opens the door to evil.

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But let's see what happens.

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Go with me to Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 7.

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I'm going to take a moment and just set this scripture up, foundational scripture.

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It's about the man and the woman, the woman and sin.

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We know the story. I'm going to be reading from the NLT.

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It's going to set the tone for this particular episode.

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All right. It says in Genesis 3 verses 1 through 7, it reads,

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The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God made.

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One day he asked a woman.

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Did God really say you must not eat of the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?

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Of course, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden.

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The woman replied, it's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden

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that we are not allowed to eat.

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God said, you must not eat of it or even touch it. If you do, you will die.

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You won't die, the serpent replied to the woman. God knows that your eyes will

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be open as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.

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The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful,

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and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the vision it would give her.

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So she took some of the fruit and ate it, And then she gave some to her husband

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who was with her, and he ate it too.

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And at that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shamed at their nakedness.

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So they sewed fig leaves together and cover themselves.

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So we see here that Eve was talking to the serpent and she was beguiled into eating the fruit.

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But not only did she be, she was deceived, but she also encouraged her husband to eat the fruit.

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So let's go over this. So in Genesis 3, we see the tragic progression,

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temptation. The forbidden fruit looked good to Eve, pleasing to the eye and desirable for wisdom.

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Well, we know that whatever God creates is always good.

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But when God tells you not to touch it, he means not to touch it.

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You ever had experience when God tells you not to do something and you do it anyway?

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It's never a good result. It never ends well.

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No matter how good it looks, no matter how handsome he looks or how beautiful

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she looks, If God says, do not touch it, he means do not touch it.

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So the first one, we see the temptation.

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We see the disobedience. Second one, we see disobedience. Eve took and ate the

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fruit and Adam followed.

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So first the temptation, then the disobedience, and third, the spiritual fallout.

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Immediately, they were filled with shame and fear.

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So now we can see the origination of shame and fear. It falls right after temptation,

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disobedience, and spiritual fallout.

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So whenever you feel shame and fear, can you see the progression?

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Like, Lord, what did I do? Because you feel naked and ashamed.

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You ever, they did, there's a movie, isn't there a show? Used to be a show out

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there, Naked and Ashamed.

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That's pretty much what Satan wants you to always feel, naked and ashamed.

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But God doesn't want that. And that's where the world seems like we're going

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on this spiral spinning out of control into chaos.

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This is a spiral. It starts with doubt, leads to defiance, and ends in separation from God.

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And isn't that what we see in today's world?

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People question God's truth, follow their desires, and find themselves spiritually

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lost, or you can say spiritually out of control,

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both physically, emotionally, emotionally.

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Out of control. Some more biblical examples of rebellion.

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We can go to the Tower of Babel. It's in Genesis 11, verse 9. Let's go there.

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Genesis 11, verse 9, 1 through 9.

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And let's go here. I'll read from the NLT, the Tower of Babel.

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At one time, all the people in the world spoke the same language and use the same words.

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As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.

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They began saying to each other, let's make bricks and harden them with fire.

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In this region, bricks were used instead of stone and tower was used for mortar.

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Then they said, come, let's build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky.

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This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.

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But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building.

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Look, he said, the people are united and they all speak the same language.

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After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them.

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Come, let us go down and confuse the people with different languages.

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Then they won't be able to understand each other.

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We notice here that in the Tower of Babel, they were united in evil to what?

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Be famous. I just like that part. They were united in evil to be famous.

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Let's make ourselves famous.

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And as we know, and we hear in society, what the famous people were doing to stay famous.

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So we see here that humanity united not to worship God, but to elevate themselves.

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Their rebellion led to confusion and division. So God divided them.

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He said, let's confuse their language. Let's separate them.

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And we also have Israel golden calf in Exodus 32. I won't read that,

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But if you get a chance, go ahead and read Exodus 32.

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And we know that while Moses was receiving the law from God,

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the people grew impatient and built a false God.

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They built a golden calf. Aaron was the leader of that.

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And so we also understand that people are always going to grow patient with

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God because God is not on a people timer.

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God is on his timing. His perfect timing is always perfect.

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But they forget sometimes that Moses was up there on their behalf.

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You have to read Exodus 32.

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God told them not to go near the mountain. He told them to be fasting and praying

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and to get sanctified because I am coming.

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Moses goes up to the mountain to prepare the 10 commandments for great people

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to get ready to go into the promised land.

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But this took longer. It was 40 days, y'all.

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40 days. What can you do in 40 days?

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You could have been exercising. You could have been fasting.

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You could have been doing a lot of things.

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But no, these people were building, partying like a rock star,

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partying like a rock star, doing everything instead of just sitting there in

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silence and waiting for Moses.

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They built a false god.

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They began to worship a false god. How many of you know that right now in America,

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if you just Google it, you can't even Google it.

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You could just put false gods in America and you will find out there's so many false gods in America.

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People have chosen not to worship the one and true and living God,

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but all of these idol gods, idol gods that cannot speak.

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They cannot provide for you.

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They cannot protect you. Remember, you holding on to a rabbit's tail or whatever

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you do, hoping that that's going to bring you good luck.

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People leave their Bible open. Don't read it, but leave it open,

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hoping that that's going to bring you good luck. Come on now.

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God says, worship me in spirit and in truth.

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Do not build any false gods. But we see how the world is in a spiral.

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The world is rebelling against God.

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And look at what's happening in our public schools. Look at what's happening in our colleges.

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Look at what's happening in our kids, the drug, the opioid addiction,

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the hate that we have in America.

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And so as we see here, each of these stories from Adam and Eve,

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Tower of Babel, the golden calf, and if you read your Bible, there's many more.

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These stories show the rebellion leads to chaos. They leads to loss and broken

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relationship with the creator.

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Have you ever found yourself in a spiral? I mean, we all have.

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I can say I have. We make one compromise after another, and we don't realize

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that that one compromise opened the door to the evil one.

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And one compromise can mean something as simple as maybe sleeping with your

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boyfriend and now you're pregnant.

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It can mean maybe stealing from the till at work.

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It can mean punching and laying. It could mean cheating on your taxes.

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I don't know all the sins, but you know what your sin is. Your compromise is.

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But it happens so slowly when we begin to, we don't trust God anymore.

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We begin to trust in our own way. We begin to trust in a false God.

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Our false God could just be us in our own way, trusting in our own understanding.

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And we know that if we think about that, even when we were kids or even as adults,

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if you are an adult and you're still rebelling, we know that can be dangerous.

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As a police officer, I remember, you know, kids who would not follow their moms

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or fathers, their family curfew, I would say. And then they end up being out

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past the curfew and things of negativity will happen.

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Death, injury, just some, they'll get kidnapped.

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It's just different things will happen when we are not honoring our mother and

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father, when we're not following God's law.

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It opens the door to evil, right? And sometimes those evils masquerade as freedom,

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but they lead us to bondage.

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How about the one where, you know, back in the day, it was one of my scenes

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that I liked a happy hour.

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You love a happy hour, but do you know that maybe alcoholism ran in my family?

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So a little happy hour one day becomes an alcoholic the next day.

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And so we want to always consider that when God tells us that kings and priests

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do not drink alcohol, we need to honor that and not build up these false gods

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or these false images of what we should do.

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What we think we should do.

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I call them false gods because if we're not worshiping the one and true and

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living God, everything else is false.

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Everything else is fake. And all

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that masquerading, all that fake freedom actually leads you into bondage.

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Remember, as a teenager, you can get pregnant as a, I'm just going to go out for a few drinks.

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You can get out, you can become an alcoholic or get drunk and find yourself

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in a compromising position, right?

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Worshiping the false god of alcohol, right? You know, yeah, this is deep. This is going to be good.

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This is truth. I'm not saying I'm sitting here with a halo over my head.

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I'm just sharing some of my stories kind of in code, right?

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But God is a God that will deliver you from them all.

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But sometimes we have to hit rock bottom, just like Adam and Eve when they got

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kicked out of the garden, beautiful garden, garden with all the different beautiful

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stones and water not having to work.

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Just all their job was to just worship and obey the Lord.

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But they end up listening to a false God.

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Tower of Babel, the folks talking about they want to be famous.

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What have you done so bad that you wanted to be famous so bad that you did something

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that compromised your relationship with God?

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The golden calf incident, what have you done that caused you to grow patient

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with God and then switch to worshiping a false God?

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Today, the world is full of similar patterns of rebellion.

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We have cultural movements, media movements promote the idea that we don't need God.

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Entertainment and media, we see messages that glorify self over sacrifice and chaos over peace.

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This rebellion is packaged as enlightenment, but in reality,

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it is a spiral of destruction, redemption through grace.

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But here's the good news. The spiral of rebellion doesn't have to end in destruction.

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In Romans 5.20, it says, where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

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I mean, you cannot out send God love. You can't.

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So God's grace is like a lifeline extended to us as we're caught in the whirlpool.

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Jesus stepped into the mess of humanity, offering a way out.

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Just as Adam's disobedience led to the fall, Jesus' obedience led to redemption.

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Are you reaching for the lifeline or are you caught in the spiral?

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I mean, those are those two points. Are you reaching for the lifeline?

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Are you caught in the spiral?

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Today, make it your day that you reach for the lifeline.

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Yes, the spiral, it will keep spiraling. We know.

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And at the end of the spiral, it spits you out.

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Have you ever been spit out by the spiral? and you're like, oh my gosh, I have hit rock bottom.

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Where else can I go? You go to Jesus.

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But why wait till you hit rock bottom when you can just call on him now?

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So I just pray. We come to you, Father.

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Heavenly Father, we just come before you and we recognize the times that we

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follow rebellion instead of your truth.

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Forgive us for the moments we've questioned your goodness and chosen our own way.

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We ask for your grace to pull us out of the spiral of destruction,

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guide our hearts back to you, the source of life.

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And we decree that we will walk in your truth, resist the enemy's lies,

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and stand firm in faith. In Jesus' name, amen.

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I once again like to thank you for tuning in to our Faith on the Go series with

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the Diary for Black Women podcast.

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I'm your host, Connie Morris. And if this message resonated with you,

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share it with someone who might need to hear it.

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Remember, no matter how far you've fallen, God's grace is more profound.

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Join me next time as we continue our journey through this series.