Empty holes: gaps in our maturity

Many of us assume that we enter into adulthood full and complete in our journey towards maturity. We present our best self. But many of us enter into adulthood with missing gaps and empty holes. Join Joshua Hoffert as he talks about gaps in our maturity, experiencing the love of God, and knowing the Father's heart.

For more about Joshua Hoffert and Wind Ministries, visit: https://www.windministries.ca/

Transcript

00;00;11;14 - 00;00;29;01
Joshua Hoffert
And I drove the you all van onto the ferry to go to Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada and went to the the the president of our board went to his office to drop all the stuff off because we were closing on. And I remember emptying the U-Haul.

00;00;29;01 - 00;00;30;17
Joshua Hoffert
Van of.

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Joshua Hoffert
Computers and boxes.

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Joshua Hoffert
And.

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Joshua Hoffert
Files and all this stuff and then leaving the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Office.

00;00;36;29 - 00;00;40;29
Joshua Hoffert
And there's a a very different sound.

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Joshua Hoffert
A full U-Haul.

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Joshua Hoffert
Van makes and an empty U-Haul.

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Joshua Hoffert
Maybe. And it struck me.

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Joshua Hoffert
That everything that I had been building was now totally gone. And I'm listening to the empty U-Haul van, and I just burst. I've got.

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Joshua Hoffert
Props today, so.

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Joshua Hoffert
I'm like, filling up the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Space.

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Joshua Hoffert
Up here.

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Joshua Hoffert
Oh, wow. It's been a good morning. It's been a good morning. Good God. Nothing.

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Joshua Hoffert
You're not big enough to limit his bigness.

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Joshua Hoffert
What a great song. I love that you're not big enough. Nothing. Nothing.

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Joshua Hoffert
You could never make yourself big enough to limit his bigness.

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Joshua Hoffert
And we invent English words to make it make sense.

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Joshua Hoffert
The first thing.

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Joshua Hoffert
Okay.

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Joshua Hoffert
First thing I want to do. Some of you can probably make out that I have a connect four game up here, and so I'm not going to challenge.

00;02;19;04 - 00;02;20;08
Joshua Hoffert
You each.

00;02;20;08 - 00;02;40;26
Joshua Hoffert
Individually to see who can win. But I'm going to set that up in a second. I have some. Some of you most of you have followed, I think on some level, you guys are familiar with the fact that I love the Desert Fathers. Like, I don't think that's a surprising shock to anybody here.

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Joshua Hoffert
It's a shocker. Right.

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Joshua Hoffert
And that and many of you are familiar with the fact that I published articles on the lives of the desert Fathers, the teachings of the desert fathers trying to rediscover and read, dig these ancient teachings about the life of prayer and the rhythms of silence and solitude that we enter into these types of things and all to help benefit the body of Christ.

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Joshua Hoffert
That.

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Joshua Hoffert
We begin to understand in a new and fresh way. That's actually ancient and old, but new and fresh to our modern age, where we're so inundated with noise and technology and God.

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Joshua Hoffert
And when was the last time.

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Joshua Hoffert
Someone For some of you, this will hit home. When was the last time you drove in the car and you didn't turn the radio on or stream a song or.

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Joshua Hoffert
Something like that?

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Joshua Hoffert
You know, some some. For some of us, it is unsettling to be in the car without without noise. For some of us, it's unsettling to just have no noise around us. And so what does it look like to re-embrace the rhythms of life that introduce our.

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Joshua Hoffert
Heart.

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Joshua Hoffert
And create space within our heart to encounter the one who loves us? And so, you know, and we've talked about all that kind of stuff and how integral that I believe that is to our relationship with Christ and knowing the heart of the Father. And what is exciting for me today is because a number of you have to have picked up or seen the books that we've done on the Desert Fathers write the teachings on the Desert.

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Joshua Hoffert
Fathers.

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Joshua Hoffert
The seven day devotionals we put out, I've heard I've heard a lot of great feedback from many of you that have been impacted by those books. Well, just on Friday, we finalized Aaron and I drove to Halifax with the kids and picked up the print run of the new devotionals. And those are based on the lives of the desert mothers.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because.

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Joshua Hoffert
There were. Here's here's one of the things that as I as I came to grips with in studying the lives of the early church fathers is that there were actually also early church mothers. And when you look at, say, in the in the same timeframe, Greek and Roman philosophical writings, not that I'm expecting many of you to know that, and I don't know many of them either.

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Joshua Hoffert
I know that there were a couple of women in the Greek and Roman society that were known as philosophers today. You can't find any of their writings because nothing exists today of what a woman wrote. No woman that at all that wrote in the Greek and Roman society. Can you find a single writing from that? You can find like when you could probably name just.

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Joshua Hoffert
Offhand.

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Joshua Hoffert
Some of the great minds that have shaped our world, like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, these names that have just become commonplace to us that were all three of them were Greek or Greek philosophers, right? You could.

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Joshua Hoffert
Name.

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Joshua Hoffert
I mean, you don't have to study philosophy to know that you can name a few of the men that have shaped Western thinking when it comes to the Greeks and the Romans of the time. Right. Comparable to the same age of the church. So you but you can't find any writings.

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Joshua Hoffert
From.

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Joshua Hoffert
Any woman that has existed at all from the ancient world. That's interesting.

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Joshua Hoffert
Right?

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Joshua Hoffert
Except for in the search, the only place you can find it is in the church, is in the early church writings. Now, now, with that said, there's not much, but it's there. Because when when Jesus said something or when when Paul, echoing the refrain, says there's now neither male nor female. They actually begin. That was a bomb that was dropped in civilization.

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Joshua Hoffert
That idea.

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Joshua Hoffert
So what we've done is we've taken what we can come to. I wrote I wrote 12 articles.

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Joshua Hoffert
On.

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Joshua Hoffert
Recreating the teachings of the desert mothers. When we when I blogged through the whole thing, we've just put out five new devotionals on the lot on the teachings of the Desert Mothers. So they are. And they're beautiful. My wife really likes the colors, and they were called almost like just like the fathers were called ABBA.

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Joshua Hoffert
Right?

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Joshua Hoffert
Abba Anthony, Abba Basil because it was a term of endearment. Father Anthony. Father Basil. They called the mothers almost because it was a term of endearment, and yet almost. Sarah The five that we've done almost. Sarah I'm a Theodora, I'm a macarena, almost syncretic. There's a reason why Aaron won't let me name all the kids after the.

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Joshua Hoffert
About Syncretic.

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Joshua Hoffert
I'm a mary, so I just want to read you one. Almost. Sarah. She said.

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Joshua Hoffert
This.

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Joshua Hoffert
If I were to pray to God that all men might approve of me, I would find myself at each one's door repenting. I would pray, rather that my heart might remain pure towards all having neither ill thoughts nor judgment regarding anyone. And here's what I wrote about.

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Joshua Hoffert
That.

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Joshua Hoffert
I had while the way that evening hours studying and reading about an early church movement and where it had gone astray, I laid down to sleep around midnight proud and content over late night over my late night studying. I half jokingly thought that God must be proud of my efforts.

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Joshua Hoffert
Never thought that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Oh, he must really.

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Joshua Hoffert
Be proud of me now.

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Joshua Hoffert
I really tried hard.

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Joshua Hoffert
On that one.

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Joshua Hoffert
The voice of God resounded clearly through my thoughts. I am proud of you for who you are.

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Joshua Hoffert
Not what you have done.

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Joshua Hoffert
The acceptance of God is merely a heart.

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Joshua Hoffert
Turn away.

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Joshua Hoffert
Christ is welcomed us into His loving arms for all of eternity. How could we not reciprocate? For those who turn to Christ, belonging comes naturally. It is not that we belong to each other or to the ideology Jews of the world that give us empty meaning or the marketing ploys of multimillion dollar companies trying to buy your allegiance.

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Joshua Hoffert
We find belonging in Christ. There would be no shortage of people to turn you away for the wrong glance or the wrong word. But Christ, our ever present hope does not turn us away. He does not require perfection to begin the journey, nor to sustain the journey. He invites us and we find him. And in finding him, we eventually find ourselves.

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Joshua Hoffert
The great longing of humanity is to place our find our place of home and rest in Christ. We find that we have never been abandoned, but welcomed and in being welcomed, we are cherished. Almost zero. This principle. If she tried to find acceptance in the eyes of everyone, she would spend all of her time placating people. How many have ever wasted that time?

00;09;36;12 - 00;09;53;24
Joshua Hoffert
But if she sought the acceptance of God, she recognized she would find a purity of heart. So those are officially released as of today. You guys are the first place they're actually available. So those are after the service. You can find those out there. My lovely wife.

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Joshua Hoffert
Will.

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Joshua Hoffert
Will have them out there. You can get their $12 each and then you can get the whole bundle for 50, so you get one of them free. So we've got a couple other things in the book table, too. So that's that's that's a that's an exciting announcement for me that I've been I've been working on this project.

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Joshua Hoffert
While.

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Joshua Hoffert
I started the writing.

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Joshua Hoffert
And why. Thank you.

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Joshua Hoffert
It was five years ago that I started studying and writing about them.

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Joshua Hoffert
So it's.

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Joshua Hoffert
A culmination of years worth of years of work. Okay, so connect for you guys. Know how to play this game?

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Joshua Hoffert
Yeah, well.

00;10;39;01 - 00;10;51;24
Joshua Hoffert
Since we know how to play it, we don't need the instructions. So I bought this Kinect for specifically for today. We didn't actually have.

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Joshua Hoffert
It.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I asked a couple of people and nobody had it. So I didn't ask. Colby That's very true. Next time, call me. I won't leave you out. But I'm not searching for acceptance from you. Sure.

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Joshua Hoffert
Some of you guys, I know some of you I'm going to really frustrate right here because you're going to see four in a row. But we're not actually playing the game. That doesn't mean you won.

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Joshua Hoffert
Okay.

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Joshua Hoffert
Keeping this away from the hands of my children was not easy. So deep and profound right. Some of you creative types this is going to really like. It should just be a mess all over the place. Right there. We got all of them.

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Joshua Hoffert
Okay.

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Joshua Hoffert
I'm very happy with this. Not as happy as the books, but this does satisfy me. Many of us assume, okay, when we enter into adulthood and we've gone through all the formative stages of our journey, all that kind of stuff, that this is how we enter adulthood, right? It's no longer connect for. All right, that this is how you into adulthood complete.

00;12;54;26 - 00;13;03;10
Joshua Hoffert
All the gaps are filled in. This is what we present to each other, our accomplishments. This is almost Sarah writes.

00;13;03;13 - 00;13;04;00
Joshua Hoffert
That.

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Joshua Hoffert
Most of people in and will recognize all of humanity this way is that we're seeking for acceptance. And so what we put forward is accept me. So most of us, when we see each other, we see others. We even project ourselves. This is what we're projecting, This is what we think we look like.

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Joshua Hoffert
But in fact.

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Joshua Hoffert
What you actually look like is this.

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Joshua Hoffert
That's very.

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Joshua Hoffert
We're full of.

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Joshua Hoffert
Holes, we have gaps.

00;13;45;06 - 00;14;10;10
Joshua Hoffert
We have a lot of things we don't want other people to see, You know, the normal. We'll go back through this again. Okay. The normal stage, right. You know, you're born, you've got life. Things are happening, right? You're you've got a family, you're growing. You've got a mother who's nurturing. You know, she's I remember when I was I think I told you the story before, I can't remember.

00;14;10;12 - 00;14;30;00
Joshua Hoffert
Maybe a number of years ago, Erin and I were helping my dad move some stuff out of his out of his storage shed back down in California. And I came across a a journal that my mother had kept about the record of my birth, that I tell you this story.

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Joshua Hoffert
No.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I was reading through it and it was it was like a personal journal. It was like commemorating things about my birth. And so I felt like I had it was okay for me to look through. And and one of the things that I remember reading was my mom recounting the some of the first moments she.

00;14;52;06 - 00;14;53;06
Joshua Hoffert
Had.

00;14;53;08 - 00;15;06;01
Joshua Hoffert
Breastfeeding me. And that might sound a little bit hard to read as an adult man, but I recognized when I read that just how tender my mom's heart was to me.

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Joshua Hoffert
And it it struck me just I was so.

00;15;11;14 - 00;15;25;15
Joshua Hoffert
She was excited to nurture me. And so these these things happen, right? I read that kind of stuff. And I see as a child that's so necessary to be celebrated, to be cherished. You know, you've got a dad who comes home.

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Joshua Hoffert
And.

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Joshua Hoffert
He just sweeps you up into your arms and he celebrates you when you come home. You know, you've got friends that are in show up and knock at your door and they want to play with you. Well, that was in the eighties.

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Joshua Hoffert
Nowadays it's intense. Yeah.

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Joshua Hoffert
Now they text right before, right? And then they play the you play online games with your friends, I guess, you know, Fortnite and whatever that kind of stuff is. But you know, you go to school and you earn grades and you get accolades from your teachers and all this kind of stuff, right? All these things start filling you up and you start becoming complete.

00;15;55;28 - 00;16;02;04
Joshua Hoffert
But then some kind of trauma happens, some kind of.

00;16;02;04 - 00;16;06;22
Joshua Hoffert
Pain. Maybe it's the pain of verbal abuse, maybe it's.

00;16;06;24 - 00;16;07;08
Joshua Hoffert
The pain.

00;16;07;08 - 00;16;22;23
Joshua Hoffert
Of physical abuse. Maybe for some of you it's sexual abuse. Something happens that totally throws your life around. You're adding these things to you and all of a sudden trauma happens and the whole thing just falls apart. And then you go through your life.

00;16;22;26 - 00;16;24;13
Joshua Hoffert
Let's get these guns down.

00;16;24;15 - 00;16;40;21
Joshua Hoffert
You go through your life and all. You've got all these holes in this trauma and this unresolved pain and all these things. And you're going in and you're starting, okay, well, I got this accomplishment now, so I'm out of not wanting and I've got this relationship now and I'm hitting that one. And I earned this thing here and I got a raise at work and.

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Joshua Hoffert
You know, and and I.

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Joshua Hoffert
Got I got married and I had kids and, you know, and then we went on a vacation, and then I got to go to that place that I really wanted to go. And you keep adding it and adding it and adding it and adding it.

00;16;52;20 - 00;17;32;04
Joshua Hoffert
But nothing seems to stick. I became a father. I had children. I became a mother. That's what I always wanted. I got married. That's what I always wanted. I finished the degree. I got the dream job. I became a manager.

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Joshua Hoffert
But.

00;17;34;21 - 00;18;05;24
Joshua Hoffert
We got all this unresolved stuff. That's what we keep adding stuff, but we're never able to become who we are.

00;18;05;26 - 00;18;21;09
Joshua Hoffert
You know, here's the thing about the the Advent season when we're considering, you know, we would well, we will read things like what Jesus said, you know, Matthew five, great Sermon on the Mount.

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Joshua Hoffert
Awesome. You know, incredibly instructive.

00;18;24;17 - 00;18;25;16
Joshua Hoffert
And we read it through the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Lens.

00;18;26;13 - 00;18;38;28
Joshua Hoffert
Of an orphan who's keeping us trying to be perfect as your father is perfect. All right. I'm going to try and do that one and turn the other cheek. Okay. Well, someone hit me. I got angry, but I turned the other cheek and they hit me again, and I got even angrier.

00;18;39;00 - 00;18;39;15
Joshua Hoffert
And.

00;18;39;17 - 00;18;42;24
Joshua Hoffert
You know, so I keep on trying to fulfill the religious commands.

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Joshua Hoffert
But. And it's just not happening.

00;18;45;14 - 00;19;00;16
Joshua Hoffert
I will be angry and do not sin. Okay. Well, no, I didn't do that one. I got angry and then I said, okay, I didn't do that one. Okay. Pluck out your eye if you blessed. All right, I'm going to let that one really hurt. I'm not going to try that one again. You know what? Like I'm not going to try and do all the religious commands and I keep trying to.

00;19;00;16 - 00;19;08;13
Joshua Hoffert
Fill it up and it's like nothing sticking again. And I got all these holes and I don't want anybody to see this.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because then they'll realize I have.

00;19;10;01 - 00;19;12;06
Joshua Hoffert
Holes.

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Joshua Hoffert
I want them to see it filled.

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Joshua Hoffert
I want to see it complete, you know, And then and then, you know.

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Joshua Hoffert
The accomplishments don't work. The relationships don't.

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Joshua Hoffert
Work. And then I start getting angry.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because life hasn't turned out as it's supposed to.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I recognize with anger.

00;19;42;28 - 00;19;43;20
Joshua Hoffert
I can kind of.

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Joshua Hoffert
Like hold one thing there because.

00;19;47;25 - 00;20;04;28
Joshua Hoffert
I've got enough power, because I'm angry. But, you know, eventually that one slips through, too, because now I've turned to lust and I can hold one thing there with lust because I can placate a desire. But now the anger is gone.

00;20;05;01 - 00;20;06;25
Joshua Hoffert
Like, Oh, okay, on and off.

00;20;06;27 - 00;20;07;23
Joshua Hoffert
That anger gave me a lot of.

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Joshua Hoffert
Power.

00;20;08;13 - 00;20;13;20
Joshua Hoffert
Because I can manipulate my relationships, but I can't ever keep, you know.

00;20;13;27 - 00;20;22;13
Joshua Hoffert
Okay, I can keep that one together. I can keep that one together. But now we've got to move. I've lost it all. And I.

00;20;22;13 - 00;20;25;09
Joshua Hoffert
Start turning to external desires and.

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Joshua Hoffert
Outworking.

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Joshua Hoffert
Of emotion to manipulate the world around me to get what I.

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Joshua Hoffert
Want.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I might be able to hold two or three in there, but I can't sustain it for long. And eventually it falls apart again.

00;20;39;09 - 00;20;40;17
Joshua Hoffert
Over and over and over again.

00;20;40;17 - 00;20;48;03
Joshua Hoffert
The cycle repeats. This cycle is repeated throughout all of human history. They just didn't have connect or.

00;20;48;05 - 00;20;53;00
Joshua Hoffert
Yes.

00;20;53;03 - 00;21;00;11
Joshua Hoffert
But then something happened 2000 years ago as as.

00;21;00;13 - 00;21;04;19
Joshua Hoffert
Maximus the Confessor said, you know, Nikita read.

00;21;04;22 - 00;21;05;10
Joshua Hoffert
The nothing.

00;21;05;10 - 00;21;07;11
Joshua Hoffert
About the Incarnation diminished his.

00;21;07;11 - 00;21;09;05
Joshua Hoffert
Gardener's.

00;21;09;08 - 00;21;11;02
Joshua Hoffert
But everything about the Incarnation.

00;21;11;02 - 00;21;22;26
Joshua Hoffert
Impacted our humanity.

00;21;22;28 - 00;21;26;16
Joshua Hoffert
So now he comes to us.

00;21;26;18 - 00;21;44;04
Joshua Hoffert
And then. And then we have an encounter because we are a people of encounter. And something shifts in our life.

00;21;44;07 - 00;21;52;28
Joshua Hoffert
And for the first time, we start to see what love really looks like. And we see that.

00;21;53;00 - 00;21;53;14
Joshua Hoffert
Someone.

00;21;53;14 - 00;21;57;07
Joshua Hoffert
Sees me through the brokenness and through the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Pain we've encountered in.

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Joshua Hoffert
Who.

00;22;04;20 - 00;22;05;05
Joshua Hoffert
Starts bringing.

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Joshua Hoffert
People around us, people that love us unconditionally, people that show us with the Father. Heart of God is like spiritual Mama's and spiritual.

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Joshua Hoffert
Topics that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Begin to lay a foundation of love and acceptance.

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Joshua Hoffert
In our life because they see past that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Veneer.

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Joshua Hoffert
All the empty holes they see. They're there, but they love you anyway. And you go, I can have him Dehors and be loved. But I didn't know I could do that. I thought I had to have them all perfect. And in fact, they don't always line up. But we start seeing.

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Joshua Hoffert
More and more. We start seeing it. Then we experience his blessing.

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Joshua Hoffert
His presence.

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Joshua Hoffert
Comes in different places and different ways and begins to revitalize our.

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Joshua Hoffert
Lives.

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Joshua Hoffert
And one thing leads to another. And then I start.

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Joshua Hoffert
Getting into.

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Joshua Hoffert
Moments of real pain, real, real things where things went really wrong.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I want to.

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Joshua Hoffert
Show you something here. One of the one of the early fathers, he said this Gregory Nazianzus, you said this for that which is not.

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Joshua Hoffert
Assumed he has not.

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Joshua Hoffert
Healed, but that which is united to the Godhead is also saved, that which is not assumed. He has not healed. What did he assume? Humanity. Everything is meant to be human. That means that which he.

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Joshua Hoffert
Assumed he healed.

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Joshua Hoffert
Look at this. Okay. Second Corinthians, Chapter eight. We're going to get back to connect more in a second. I won't just leave it that way. Second Corinthians eight, verse nine, second Corinthians, chapter eight, verse nine, for you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is pretty good. It describes to you with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that though he was rich.

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Joshua Hoffert
Yet.

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Joshua Hoffert
For your sake, he became.

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Joshua Hoffert
Poor, that you, through his poverty.

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Joshua Hoffert
Might become rich. He emptied himself. He took on the form of a servant.

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Joshua Hoffert
He assumed.

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Joshua Hoffert
Humanity. He became.

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Joshua Hoffert
Poor. Why did he become poor?

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Joshua Hoffert
That you might be made rich. Now this has nothing to do with material wealth. Okay, so you can throw that out the window. It has nothing to do with him giving you money.

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Joshua Hoffert
What?

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Joshua Hoffert
It has everything to do with him. Healing your life, restoring and redeeming it. And then from that place, what he says in Matthew five, Be ye perfect us old King James, Be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. It's no longer a command you have to fulfill but a loving gaze you enter into.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because now I'm looking at the father.

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Joshua Hoffert
Now I'm encountering the father. And I don't have to try to be perfect because I want to be like him.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because I've got a vision, Because I've seen something, because I'm a person of encounter, because he comes to me.

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Joshua Hoffert
Not because I'm trying so hard to have an accomplishment.

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Joshua Hoffert
But because he came to me.

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Joshua Hoffert
But I'm starting to work through the weeds.

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Joshua Hoffert
Of my.

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Joshua Hoffert
Inner life and the things that have happened to me and then turn with me again. Isaiah 53. Okay. All those places where the accomplishment didn't do it, where that person hurt me, where physical abuse, verbal abuse, someone came against me. Whatever happened? Isaiah 53, verse three The famous passage regarding the person of Jesus.

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Joshua Hoffert
Who.

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Joshua Hoffert
Says he's despised and rejected by.

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Joshua Hoffert
Men.

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Joshua Hoffert
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we did, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he is borne our griefs. This verse bore and carried our sorrows. Yet we see him stricken. He was smitten by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.

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Joshua Hoffert
The chastised meant of our peace was upon him and his. By his stripes we are healed. See what he.

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Joshua Hoffert
Assumed. He also redeemed what he assumed. He also.

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Joshua Hoffert
Redeemed. So what did he assume?

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Joshua Hoffert
He assumed human rejection.

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Joshua Hoffert
And now all that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Space.

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Joshua Hoffert
That was so painful before that you couldn't hold on to anything.

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Joshua Hoffert
He assumed it and redeemed it because he was despised.

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Joshua Hoffert
There were people that didn't like him, that treated him poorly. And there are people that didn't like.

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Joshua Hoffert
You and treated you poorly. But guess what? He assumed it and he redeemed it.

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Joshua Hoffert
He was rejected. And there's people that rejected you. But now you assumed that rejection. He comes to you in that rejection.

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Joshua Hoffert
And you hold on to that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Now, it's not that the rejection goes away.

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Joshua Hoffert
But you see it because your.

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Joshua Hoffert
Gaze is on the father. Be perfect, be complete, be.

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Joshua Hoffert
Whole as he is.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I see what happened through the lens of his life and his light and his love because he assumed it. He redeemed it, and he showed me his nature in it. And I go, At the very least I go, You were rejected. I was rejected. I understand your heart. He was sorrowful. How many people had seen.

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Joshua Hoffert
He assumed your sorrow, Everything. It meant to be human. That baby in a womb was everything.

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Joshua Hoffert
It meant to be human. And that was the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Prophetic.

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Joshua Hoffert
Utterance of God that everything was going to change. Because now.

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Joshua Hoffert
Everything that it meant.

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Joshua Hoffert
To be human.

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Joshua Hoffert
The grief. How many people had grief?

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Joshua Hoffert
You know, we could put a couple of them in there for that. The grief of our life, the loss of a loved one, whether it's death or a divorce or whether it's the loss of a child or an it or a parent.

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Joshua Hoffert
Or a close friend.

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Joshua Hoffert
The loss of the grief is not just.

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Joshua Hoffert
Relegated.

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Joshua Hoffert
Like I remember one time before I've told you there's a story a couple of times, but it's been a while before Aaron and I moved to P.E.I., the ministry that I was running Streams Canada. We ended up there's a it's a long story. I'm not going to go into the whole thing, but we closed it.

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Joshua Hoffert
By.

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Joshua Hoffert
The end of the year in 2017 before we moved out here. And I remember packing everything I'd been running this ministry for. I've been involved with it for for the better part of the last decade. At that point. And I'd been running it for about six years and I remember packing everything into a little U-Haul van. It wasn't much you, or maybe it felt more accomplishment if it had been a big U-Haul van, but it was a little one.

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Joshua Hoffert
And I drove the you all van.

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Joshua Hoffert
Onto.

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Joshua Hoffert
The ferry to go to Vancouver Island. This is on the west coast of Canada and went to the that the president of our board. I went to his office to drop all the stuff off because we were closing the office. And I remember emptying the U-Haul van of computers and boxes and files and all this stuff, and then leaving the office.

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Joshua Hoffert
And there's a a very different sound, a full U-Haul van.

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Joshua Hoffert
Makes and an.

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Joshua Hoffert
Empty U-Haul van.

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Joshua Hoffert
Makes. And it struck me that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Everything that I had been building was now totally gone. And I'm listening.

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Joshua Hoffert
To.

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Joshua Hoffert
The empty U-Haul van, and I just burst into tears because it's all done. It's all dead. I'd been working with everything to build this thing, and it's all gone now.

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Joshua Hoffert
And the father.

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Joshua Hoffert
Came to.

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Joshua Hoffert
Me in that grief and he said this So category of my son. Why? Because he knows grief. Because he was right there. Because he sees my heart. And all of a sudden now I know he's there. And grief takes on a whole new meaning because he's there grieving with me, because he was a man acquainted with grief, because he assumed all that it meant to be human.

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Joshua Hoffert
You know, your grief. No grief.

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Joshua Hoffert
Like going back to when Nikita said.

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Joshua Hoffert
Your grief can.

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Joshua Hoffert
Never be too big for.

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Joshua Hoffert
Him. He was despised.

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Joshua Hoffert
People didn't esteem him. How about that one?

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Joshua Hoffert
They didn't like him, but he knows. And he took it. He took it upon himself so that when it happens to you, he can.

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Joshua Hoffert
Offer you a completely different picture. You know, we see him on the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Cross right where he goes. Oh, forgive them. They don't know what they do, because let me show you something totally.

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Joshua Hoffert
Different, a totally different way of framing what they've just.

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Joshua Hoffert
Done to you, because I know what it's like. And he adds more.

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Joshua Hoffert
He's borne our griefs, he carried our sorrows.

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Joshua Hoffert
He was stricken for us. He was hurt for you, and he hurts for everything. It meant to be human. He took on.

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Joshua Hoffert
He filled the empty gaps. I really think if Jesus, I connect for you What He used it.

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Joshua Hoffert
This one too smitten by God.

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Joshua Hoffert
I haven't even ever felt that one. The dealings of God in your life. Yeah. We could put in like, four for that one.

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Joshua Hoffert
I understand. It could happen to me. And I'm bringing you a totally different way of seeing it from a little baby in a womb. Everything is meant to be human. The father.

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Joshua Hoffert
Was going to see something.

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Joshua Hoffert
Totally different wounded.

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Joshua Hoffert
Bruised.

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Joshua Hoffert
Chastised it, all of it takes on a whole new meaning because of who he is, no part of his humanity diminished his divinity. But every part.

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Joshua Hoffert
Of his divinity.

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Joshua Hoffert
Transformed humanity. That the nature of the incarnation is one of the.

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Joshua Hoffert
Most important events in all of history. You know, you look at the gospels and you can sum up the most important events as the Incarnation, the Transfiguration, the cross, the resurrection, and the Ascension.

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Joshua Hoffert
And those.

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Joshua Hoffert
Five.

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Joshua Hoffert
Moments are the whole story of.

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Joshua Hoffert
The Bible in a.

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Joshua Hoffert
Nutshell, what we.

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Joshua Hoffert
Focus on in the season is the fact that he took all.

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Joshua Hoffert
The stuff, all the wounds, everything. He took it all together. Can you come up worship and.

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Joshua Hoffert
See when you encounter him? He stops up all those leaky holes. You may not feel complete because now see all of these in here, they don't represent all the highlights.

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Joshua Hoffert
Some of them are right.

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Joshua Hoffert
This foundation. He brings a loving community around us. He pauses, love into us. But it's not like he takes away the grief.

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Joshua Hoffert
He meets us in the midst of it.

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Joshua Hoffert
Actually, and so much so that when Jesus talks about grief, you know, in the Beatitudes.

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Joshua Hoffert
Blessed are those who mourn, right?

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Joshua Hoffert
That's grief and sorrow. Not I'll take it away.

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Joshua Hoffert
I'm going to come and comfort them. So he he takes all the things that.

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Joshua Hoffert
Felt like holes.

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Joshua Hoffert
That felt incomplete. The man I had to add perfection.

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Joshua Hoffert
I had to add accomplishment. He takes all those things and says, I'm going to reframe all of them for you.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because of who I am and what I've done.

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Joshua Hoffert
For your sake. The Scriptures say Second Corinthians eight.

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Joshua Hoffert
For your sake.

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Joshua Hoffert
He became poor, that you might become rich.

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Joshua Hoffert
He saw this and went, I'm going to come.

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Joshua Hoffert
I'm going to redeem it. And you know what? And some of the difficulty with that that some of us have is that sometimes it takes two, three, four, five, ten years.

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Joshua Hoffert
Sometimes even longer.

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Joshua Hoffert
To see that leaky place filled. But he sees it because he took all that.

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Joshua Hoffert
It meant everything.

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Joshua Hoffert
It meant to be a human life he took. And then, as you said a couple of weeks ago, by the very nature of the incarnation, he said, I'm uniting that humanity with my divinity because. Everything needs to change.

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Joshua Hoffert
No more.

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Joshua Hoffert
Empty holes, but holes that have been totally redeemed.

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Joshua Hoffert
Totally transformed. I don't want to know.

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Joshua Hoffert
I just believe this morning, no, those places of God. Why did it happen this way? You know, as as we see a man acquainted with grief, with sorrow, despise, rejected, his stricken is afflicted, he's wounded, he's bruised. All the things that happened to him as a human, all the things that happened to us as a human, that he wants to visit those moments this morning and reframe those moments.

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Joshua Hoffert
Because where you may have felt unheard, misunderstood, unloved, uncared for, he's right there. Like like imagine every one of these gaps is a door that he's knocking and waiting for you to open it so that he can come in and say, Actually, this is how I see it. Actually, this is what happens and this is what I'm going to do with it.

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Joshua Hoffert
And that grief is going to become something radically different. That pain is going to become something radically different. And you can't get rid of the memory. You can't get rid of the events, but you can see him in the midst of it. And he stands at that door and knocks. And this morning, just as we enter into worship, see him knocking at the door.

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Joshua Hoffert
See him knocking at that door. It's an image he gives us in Scripture that he stands at the door and knocks and he wants to come in. He wants to come in and sit down. What happens? He says he wants to come in and sit down and have dinner with you. What do you do over dinner? You talk about life.

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Joshua Hoffert
You talk about dreams, hopes, wishes, longings. You talk about the things that have happened to you. He wants to in and share his life with you so that you see your life in the context of is. So Father would just ask right now as we enter into this space, father that you'd visit, that you'd stand before the door of our heart and not because we know redemption is a door turn away.

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Joshua Hoffert
That's all it is. Turn the knob. Redemption comes. So Father would just offer this moment to you. We're going to stay in this space for a few minutes. But just picture that the father's knocking in all those dark places when I don't know if I can go there. That hurt too much. But he's there. I understand. I took it on everything.

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Joshua Hoffert
It meant. I took it on. I get it. Is knocking. He wants to come in. So just in this moment, just picture that door opening up and the father flying in and just see what he does. Let's just go.