The Gift of Encouragement: How to Exhort One Another

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Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

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In this podcast series, we're going to be looking into biblical words that have great significance to our faith.

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The name of this series is called the Word of the Week, where once a week we will dive deeper into these words that we are familiar with in scripture.

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So come along with me.

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Let's study the Word of the week.

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Pastor Josh here.

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The word of the week is again gift.

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We've been studying the spiritual gifts listed in Romans chapter 12 here for many weeks now.

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And we are going one by one and looking briefly at each one of these gifts and how they fit in within the church and how we as Christians can identify those spiritual gifts in our life.

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And so we pick up with Romans chapter 12.

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And we have talked now about the gift of prophecy.

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We've talked about the gift of ministry or service.

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We've talked about the gift of teaching.

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And this week we find ourselves looking at the gift of exhortation.

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We need to ask a few questions with the gift of exhortation number one, what is exhortation?

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It's the gift of God given to us through the Holy Spirit, focused on motivating others to, or encouraging others in their spiritual growth.

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Okay, so this is the gift of encouragement, the gift of motivation.

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You could say it this way, coming alongside of someone to pull them along or encourage them along, even, even challenging them to come along in their spiritual growth in accordance to Scripture.

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And so just like all the other gifts that we've seen so far, this is a gift given to us by God through his grace after salvation, led by the Spirit, so that we can help in areas within the church, encourage others to come to an understanding of who Jesus is and what he has done for us.

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And ultimately, as we've seen in First Peter, chapter four, to glorify God.

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And so the gift of exhortation is, is that Spirit given gift to motivate others, to serve God, to motivate others to grow in their knowledge of the Lord and the application of their knowledge to godly wisdom.

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And so it's calling to action somebody who understands the truth of God, but now needs to apply that to their life.

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And so this is done to strengthen both the individual and the body of believers for service to the Lord, obviously for the purpose of exalting the name of God.

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And so an individual who has this gift appreciates serving, but also has a, has a desire to look into others, have compassion for others and challenging others.

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So this is a very all of these gifts are, are not self focused.

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It's the opposite of that.

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There's humility there, it's others focused.

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So, so these individuals would be able to give clear and practical goals and steps to achieve spiritual growth.

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And so this is somebody who focuses on individuals and loves individuals, loves mentoring, loves counseling.

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They might even have the element of teaching along with this.

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They would be able to explain well, to communicate direction well, able to understand difficulties in the way and prepare folks for those difficulties.

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Helping people make decisions, helping people finish what they have started.

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Giving people the drive to see spiritual growth in others as well.

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So we talked about this last week, Second Timothy, chapter two, verse two.

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You, you teach some so that they can teach some, so that they can teach some.

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So you've been taught and then you teach others and then other people teach other people.

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Well, it's the same thing with exhortation.

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You know, there's that idea of people have exhorted us, encouraged us, challenged us.

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And then there's other people that we can challenge in our life so that they may encourage and challenge others.

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And so this is a wonderful gift in the ministry, a needed gift in the ministry because we have so many people that as we, as we already seen in First Peter, chapter four, there's, there's the manifold or the various gifts of God.

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So different people fall on different areas of the spectrum within serving the Lord.

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And so like all of the gifts, this is a needed gift in the process of moving people forward.

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But like in every gift, you have the challenge of either living within the spirit or living in the flesh.

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So a spirit filled teacher or a spirit filled encourager is going to be someone who has the desire to push people forward, has a desire to discern the spiritual growth or the spiritual gifts in other people and, and then allowing them to get to a place of, of maturity in their life.

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And so, but then you have the other side of things where there's the, maybe the fleshly or the carnal exhorter.

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And you know, again, in all of these gifts, the person walking in the flesh is looking for self recognition.

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They're seeking praise of, of them, of their own work.

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And so we have to be careful of that.

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Obviously, someone who's walking in the flesh might feel that they could take credit for what they're doing by exhorting and challenging others, maybe even would elevate a, their, their personal experience or their opinions above scripture.

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So, so again, like all of the other gifts, we need to make sure that we are exercising this in the Spirit now we go back to first Peter, chapter four in that regard because it of gives us that.

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That touch point, that, that beginning point in, in reminding us what these gifts are all about.

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So as every man hath received the gift, so some of us have received the gift of exhortation.

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Some of us have received the gift of prophecy.

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Some of us have received the gift of.

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We're going to talk about later on giving.

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And so the list goes on and on.

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So some of us have been given that gift.

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All of us, we should say have been given a gift.

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And then he goes on to say, even so, minister, that's serving the same one to another.

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So again, the focus is other.

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So an exhorter is looking to see who he or she can exhort, who he or she can encourage, who he or she can exemplify spiritual growth to in their life.

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So even so, minister, the same one to another as good stewards.

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I think that's important to note as well.

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It's that stewardship principle.

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This is not something that we have been accomplishing in our own strength.

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This is a gift of God.

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We don't own this.

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We are stewarding what God has given us.

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And so that gives us that humility, perspective, that gives us that selflessness and allows us to see where truly the source of all these things are coming from.

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So good stewards of the manifold.

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We already mentioned that.

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The manifold, the various gifts of grace, the manifold grace of God.

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So there's so much packed into that verse.

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And we know that it's from God, we know that it's for God, and we know that ultimately we are just the vessels in this process of exhortation.

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So you think about different ways that we could exhort people.

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You know, you look at Scripture and you think of some individuals that might have been good exhorters.

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I think of people like David.

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He would exhort others.

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And David's mighty men, he came alongside of them and encouraged them to stand fast in their faith and, and fight for the cause of the Lord.

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And then, you know, you can think about back at.

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In the New Testament with Paul.

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I mean, Paul would definitely be considered a teacher, definitely a prophet.

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But we do know that Paul would come alongside and exhort others.

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And I think that that's an important ministry gift that all of us can at least strive for, even if we're not necessarily gifted in this supernaturally.

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I think that we all should strive to be better at exhortation.

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Exhortation in the area of encouragement and the area of challenging others coming along And I think that's important to notice too.

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It literally means to come alongside of other people.

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It doesn't mean to push people.

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You know, I think sometimes that gets out of context when we think about, you know, challenging people.

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It's like, well, I don't push people.

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I don't condemn people.

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I don't, you know, judge people.

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No, exhortation is, is essentially coming alongside of someone and urging them to do something.

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So it there is that in the Greek, the idea of being close, the idea of walking alongside them.

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We're in the trenches together.

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And Paul Instructs Timothy in First Peter, or excuse me, First Timothy, chapter 4, verse 13.

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In the ministry, he says, till I come give attendance to reading to exhortation into doctrine.

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So we know that exhortation has to be a part of the church just as much as doctrine, just as much as biblical teaching sound.

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Biblical teaching needs to be within the church.

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So does exhortation.

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And so the word is used there in the concept of encouraging, admonishing and challenging others to spiritual growth.

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And so in that case, Timothy's job as a pastor was to encourage those within his body, within the flock, as an under shepherd.

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And so we know that obviously this would be a gift that many pastors should, should have or at least grow in.

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But we know that the church is more than just the pastor.

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The church is made up of many individuals.

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And so the exhortation gift can be exhibited in many different areas within the church.

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So the Holy Spirit gives believers these gifts for a purpose.

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And that purpose is to bring them closer to the Lord so that they can reach more people for Christ.

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And so I think what we can leave with, with this thought is ex exhortation is not pushing.

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Exhortation is not pressuring.

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Exhortation is not putting a guilt trip on somebody for spiritual growth.

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But it is a time where we can come alongside of somebody and so doing it together.

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Let's do this together.

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So exhortation is not just talking the talk, but it's walking the walk.

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And so people with the gift of exhortation don't just proclaim the truth.

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That's the gift of prophecy.

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There is some proclamation of truth with exhortation, but the exhorter develops relationships.

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The exhorter takes time to do extra things when people might be struggling with their Bible study or their prayer time or even just elements of their life.

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And so an exhorter is someone that takes it a step further from the proclamation of the truth.

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It takes.

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They take it a step further than teaching the Scriptures.

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So it could look like this.

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You know, a person could get up and say, thus saith the Lord.

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This is true from Scripture.

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But an exhorter would then come alongside of someone who might be struggling in an area and say, hey, can we go grab some coffee?

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I'd love to help you out with this.

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I'd love to pray with you on this.

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I'd love to walk you through some steps to get to this place in your life that God wants you to be.

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And so like we mentioned before, regardless of whatever gift that we are given in, in the primary sense, all Christians should desire to become better at this gift of exhortation or this aspect of exhortation within the ministry, because this shows, this shows the love that we have for other people and it ultimately will strengthen the body of Christ the more that we exhort each other to love and to good works.

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And so all of us are called to exhort each other, challenge each other to that.

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And I think that that is an element of the church that sometimes gets overlooked.

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Sometimes we don't have a problem with the proclamation of the truth, but sometimes we have a problem with the follow up, following up with the understanding that, hey, someone needs help, Someone needs help here.

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Hebrews chapter 3, verse 13 talks about we need to do this every day.

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The encouragement has to happen every day, the exhortation has to happen every day.

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And I think that that is showing the importance of, of the love that we have for each other, but ultimately the, the practical application of, of the truth of God, even, even in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews chapter 10, verse 24 and 25.

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Very familiar passage when it comes to the assembling of ourselves together as a church.

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But it, but it says, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking of the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting, there's our word there, but exhorting one another.

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And so much the more as you see the day approaching.

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So the call is, is that we are all up to meet, we are all to spend time together, and we're all called to exhort each other.

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And, and that's the idea of provoking each other to love and good work.

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It's not a negative provoking that we're provoking just means to stir up, to encourage, to, to revitalize, to get each other fired up for the cause of the gospel.

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And so we as a church are called to meet together, but meeting together is not enough because if you go on farther in that verse, it says, but exhorting one another.

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So the goal is to meet, yes, as a church, but then the next step would be meet and then exhort each other for love and good works.

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And, and I think that is what God has called us to do when it comes to the area of exhortation.

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Now we'll come back next week and we will look at the gift of giving and we're going to go through each one of these gifts here listed In Romans chapter 12, these ministering gifts.

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And when we get done with that, we'll have a good picture of these spiritual gifts listed to us In Romans chapter 12, as we serve the Lord together.

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Well, after that study, we will get into a new one.

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ong with us here this year in: 2025

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These will be posted every Wednesday and I hope that you can enjoy these, grow with us on these, and then share some of these with your friends and family.

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Because the more we promote the Gospel, the more we're able to see people come to the understanding of who Jesus is and what he has done for us.

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And we want to proclaim the truth to all of the world.

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So I encourage you share it with one person maybe that you know.

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And I hope it'll be a blessing for them as it has been for you.

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Well, God bless.

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You have a wonderful week.

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We look forward to coming back next week and studying more about these gifts of grace.

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God bless.

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Hey, I really appreciate that you listened to the Word of the Week podcast.

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If you have any questions about the podcast or about our church, Middletown Baptist Church, you can find more information about us on Facebook or YouTube or you can find the podcast on NBCPodcast.org you can contact me directly at Josh Massaro at middletownbaptistchurch.org stay tuned for future Word of the Week episodes where we dive deeper into words that impact our life according to scripture.

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Thank you so much.

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God bless.

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We'll talk to you soon.