The Seven Pillars (Part 8) - NT Community & Spiritual Friendship - Rod Mills

This is a series on the 7 Pillars of the AeroNova spiritual family, the DNA markers of who God has called us to be as a people. 
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 In this teaching on the third pillar, New Testament community, we talk about the heart of the great commandments and the heart of discipleship: spiritual friendship. This is how Jesus loved the disciples, cultivating deep, spiritual friendships with them. “Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.” Psalm 84:5

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):




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​All right. Before we, before we start our study segment, somebody was asking about our little brief discussion on the peace of God on per counsel night on Tuesday night for those of you that were there. So I said, Well, I'll say it a little bit more and try to clarify. But I think Brad corrected MIPS Philippians, four, seven, not for 17, the peace of God shall guard or that's the word. It's also used for Watchmen, I think, your hearts and minds and then if Colossians 315 says the peace of God shall rule your hearts and minds. And one of my spiritual fathers and mentors taught me many years ago, before I even studied it myself, that word rule is to umpire your heart, one of the lexicon says umpire or to call the shots, so to speak. And I learned early on that this is the way to make decisions. Because what it does is, is it tunes us into God's courses of action. And God's courses of action give us a peace in our hearts and our spirits that we cannot produce on our own. And that's that, that so literally, what's happening is, as we pray over smallest, what I found is the best way to learn this is in small decisions. Have you ever done something like, I'm trying to think of an example, where you go to the store, and something just tells you buy this brand, but you're not? Nah, this one's cheaper, I'm gonna get this one. And then you take it home, and you're like, I didn't listen to that still small voice, I knew it, and it breaks, and you got to take it back and you go through this hole? Well, many times God will bring these little things in our lives to teach us to follow peace, teach us to listen to His Holy Spirit, it's a lot cheaper to learn this lesson, in the small things, then the big things like when you go buy that house that God didn't tell you to buy, right? Or something like that. Have you ever done that? I mean, there's all these, we all have these stories, the older we get. And I shared this, that Beth and I learned this early in first year of our marriage, to follow that piece as a couple, not in every single little thing, but really, as has to do with two kinds of decisions, life decisions, and major decisions, or B or, you know, considerable decisions. And we had to define those like we had to, in our own family, we had to decide, okay, what's a major decision? Because what would happen is, if one of us went and bought a $200 piece of furniture, and we got it home, and the other one goes, I don't like that. You know, what it's like, well, what do we do now? You know, because we share the whole house together. Or maybe you don't, maybe you guys, you have a man cave. So that's where it goes, you know, if you bought it, it goes in there. And we learned that we had to be in agreement, not just in agreement, but on the peace. And what I found was, if Beth didn't have peace about something, I could push, shove, twist, talk into all those things. But it never worked. In other words, she might say, Okay, I'll go along with it. But something was bothering her and I could tell, and then we make the decision. It didn't work out. So well. God gives us this as, as couples, husband and wife to protect us. And that's in essence, what we were talking about. I've seen guys say, you know, I've seen guys say, Well, you know, I'm the husband and final decision. I gotta make a decision, you know? Well, yes, you do. I've seen wife say, Well, my husband, he didn't have a prayer life. And I do. And I know this is the will of the Lord. You know, no matter what reasons you take, it's very important as couples, that we come into agreement, but that agreement has to be in the peace of God. Now, when you do that, as a couple, we just saw the example of what happens in your lives, the testimony you gave what's happened the past two years and how you overcame the obstacles together. Because you were in agreement. You had that peace. And I'll tell you I've found that the peace God, I can, I can go into horrible circumstances if God's given both of his peace. And I've been in a situation where I'd been offered a six figure, salary. And I had everything going for me and I just got a house, half the price it was worth, and all these things, and yet I didn't have peace about it. And the Lord says, You can't do this, you got to go another direction. And so literally sold the house, left the job, didn't take the job, went across the country didn't know how I was gonna feed my family, because I had to follow that piece of the Holy Spirit. Now, what do you do when you have the piece, but your spouse doesn't, we don't go, I can't tell you what to do. But we don't do it. We don't buy it. We don't, whatever you fill in the blank there. And you know, I had to learn the hard way that you you can't talk peace into your wife's heart. You just can't do it. You can, you can argue until you convince her. But that's not peace. Same way, with the wives to the husbands. You can't, there's no way the peace of God cannot be manipulated, right? If the peace of God cannot be one over like you talk talk talking in now, sometimes God will let us do something and say, I'm not calling you to do that. But you know, I'll let you do it. And so what this does is it saves us from Gods third, fourth, fifth, sixth best is what it does. Or sometimes it is the call of God. But it's the wrong timing. And you guys heard me tell story after story after story, that it wasn't God's timing. This is the power of the peace of God. I tell you what it works every time guys, what I'm telling you right now, if you just forget all the teaching today, I'm telling you, you can take this to the bank. I've never seen it fail. But I have seen people move out on something that was either not the will of God or the wrong timing, because one person had peace and the other one almost had peace. Not enough. You got to both have the peace of God, not the constraint, peace of God, not the twisted peace of God not to tuck that in, tucked into peace of God. But then No kidding, peace of God. And couples. This is why it's so important. To be honest with each other. completely honest. Do not. Please hear me what I'm saying right now. This is so easy. I people be married 3040 years. And then they find out that their their spouse wasn't really in agreement on it. They just said they were. And I've seen this happen again, again, this is so important, this piece of God. It can save you so much heartache in your life. So anyway, whoever that was for, take it, and God bless you in it. And I pray all of the blessings of heaven. All right. What did we talk about last week? By the way, all of the broadcasts are up and published except for I think last week's, which includes our series in the mountains as well. What we talked about last week, if anybody does anybody remember what we talked about? Guilt based living. That's right. And what I said at the beginning was that we were mostly going to talk about guild based living. Now the reason why I say spiritual friendship is because they both go together. Today, we're going to talk about spiritual friendship. Now, I did a small teaching of this, about five years ago, some of you were there, some of you were not. But today I'm going to we're going to go a lot deeper into this. So I want to encourage you to take notes, but it's very important to go back and listen to guild based living, it will get you so excited about this way of life, that I think many, many lives will change because of this, this concept of Guild based living. And really it's just a term to give us a different lens into what New Testament living is all about. So if you if you weren't here, or even if you were matter of fact, I would say hereby go listen to it. I would say listen to you know, what I do is most teachings I listened to three times at least because I find that on the second third time. I get a lot that I didn't get before. So spiritual friendship. We'll talk about this today. It's the heart of the great commandments and it's the heart of discipleship. I'll say this much, many times, disciples It is discipleship is taught outside of the context of spiritual friendship. But Jesus didn't do that. Remember what he said, we talked about this love Jesus style. He said, As you Love one another as I have loved you. And how did Jesus love the disciples in community, they did it together, they walked together, they ate together, they traveled together, this was the way he loved. And this is how Jesus discipled you cannot disciple just by having a program, you will disciple the nation's we will disciple the nations by cultivating spiritual friendship. When you guys go to Central America this week, your number one task is not to preach. Your number one task is to make friends in the kingdom. That's your number one task is to make friends, even if you never preach, even if you never just eat together, break bread together, pray together, share the Word together. That's the number one task now the other stuffs important, but the kingdom of God operates on relationships. So there are many people trying to do discipleship in programs and God honors that he doesn't dishonor that. But it's not enough. It has to be completely immersed in spiritual friendship, the way Jesus taught us. So it's the is really the heart of the great commandments and discipleship. And it's the key ingredient into the powerful New Testament apostolic church. When we read these passages in Acts, we must see how they lived and related to one another. And sometimes we look at them through the lens of the modern church rather than the lens of how Jesus did life and ministry in the kingdom. So that lens is important. I'm going to read a passage Psalm chapter 84. By the way, the series I taught this in I don't, we didn't have our broadcast yet on. So it's, it's not on the podcast, but it's called spiritual friendship, pilgrimage and soul journey was the series that came from and this is just a segment from that that's been beefed up. Psalm 84, verse four, bless it are those who dwell in your house, they will still be praising you. I love that phrase. Sayla. Stop, rest. Think about that. They will still be praising you. I'm sorry to say I have a lot of friends that serve God for 1020 years, and they're not still praising Him, not saying they're, they're not all Christians, but they're there. There's a difference. They, when it says they will still be praising you, man, there's a lot to talk about their spiritual energy. Blessed is the man who string and that means woman to bless. It is the man whose strength is in you. It says, Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. Why? Because this life is a pilgrimage. This life is a journey. This life is not our home. It is just the pilgrimage to our destination as they pass through the Valley of Baca. And by the way, that word Baka means weeping. As they pass through the Valley of Baca. They make it a spring. And and if you study the Valley of Baca, I believe it was a desert Valley. The rain also covers it with pools so there are springs and pools in the desert. And I love this. They go from strength to strength. It doesn't say they go from strength, to seasons of great weakness, back to strength, back to seasons of great weakness. I don't know about you, but I will Yeah, I do know about you. I want to go from strength to strength, like we were praying over you guys today from faith to faith. And when when God says faith to faith or strength to strength, have you ever noticed the kingdom it always gets better? I'm not saying you don't have trials, not saying there are hard times. But it always gets better God layers it with the better in the better. That's why the Scripture the Psalms, I believe it was it said the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn. It's not like the light of dusk. The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn. It gets brighter and brighter to the full day. In other words to the high noon is what that means. In other words, when we end our journey Many on Earth to begin our journey in the heavens. That's our high noon. For everybody else that's not that doesn't know the Lord. That's the worst day of their lives. But for us, it's the best day of our lives. It's the brightest day of our lives. That's countered to the flesh, isn't it? Because the world doesn't think that way. It's just the opposite. For us, it's getting better and better, brighter and brighter, to the full day. This promise to those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage is in the plural, not singular, as in some passages. Can you think of one like Psalm one, Psalm one starts out and says, Bless it is the man, it starts out that way. But this one doesn't start out that way. It starts out in the plural, those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage, if you will, in fact, I'll just reread the first part before that it says, Blessed are those who dwell in your house, those plural, who dwell in your house, this is a plural activity. This is a family activity. This is a friendship activity. There is no dwell in the house of the Lord by yourself. There is no by yourself. Yeah, there's a quiet prayer room here and there. But this is a family spiritual friendship activity. The Psalmist reveals, these promises are to get this word, accompany of friends, there plural. It's a company of friends who are on this pilgrimage together. And the rich benefits, then overflow and trickle I won't even say trickle. Because that's not a big enough word, they overflow down to the individual hearts. So that's why you see this pattern in this versus alternating plural to singular, plural to singular, you see that? It says those in verse four, then it says the man in verse five, it says they in verse six, and seven, and it says each one in verse eight, you see what's happening? The blessing is in the plural, the company of friends. There's a lot of people, they want the individual blessings, but they don't want God's way of getting it. And that's not blessing, right? It's not blessing, and it's not the way to get it. I want to read this again. Now watch this, the company of friends to the individual, the company of friends to the individual, blessed are those who dwell in your house, they will still be praising you stop and rest and think about that blessing as the man whose strength is in you. Now he goes to the man. Then he says, whose heart is set on pilgrimage as they pass through the Valley of Baca? Aren't you glad you don't have to go through the Valley of Baca by yourself? We don't have to go through the valley of sorrow by ourselves. I'll tell you one of the worst things in the world is loneliness. aloneness, and you guys know, people can be surrounded by people and be completely alone. It is it being around people does not mean that you're not alone. It's this the friendship, the spiritual friendship is what brings that aloneness. Right, that company of friends, it says, they make it a spring, the rain covers, by the way, I don't make it a spring, we make it a spring. That's how it happens. The rain covers it with pools I love this. This is a God says, Hey, you and your company of friends, you might be in a valley, you might be in a hard place, you might be in a dry place, you might be in a place of sorrow. But guess what you and your friends, it's going to be a spring to you. And not only will you make it a spring, but I will bring heavens provision also. So here's the spring that you guys made. You dug this well, if you will. And then God says oh, by the way, I'm just going to pour the rain out. I'm going to bring all kinds of what you want water, I'm gonna give you all kinds of water, and he pours out in heavenly provision also. And then it says they go from strength to strength. So think of that in the plural and the singular, the plural and the singular. And this is a pattern and promise of group blessings followed by individual blessings. When we walk in and I say this supernatural friendships. Supernatural friendships are different than natural friendships. We'll talk about that a little bit. The individual blessings come because the spiritual friendship blessings come. If you don't get the spiritual friendship, blessings, many of those individual blessings will not come to you. There is a way in God And it must be honored. So now let's talk about the atmosphere and the energy of praise. I love this, they will still be praising you. It's sustained. Right? Like, in other words, I love the volcanic nature of this. Did you ever notice the kingdom is more volcanic than it is mechanic. And so some people treat the kingdom like it's formulas, and there are axioms of the kingdom. If you do this, then that if you do that, then this, but God, God gives life to it. So it doesn't mean well, yeah, they're going to be together and this, this blessing is going to come this way. Therefore, then, oh, they're still going to check the block and praise you. It doesn't mean that it means they're volcanic these people they are the energy of Heaven is in them. It's not something you manufacture. It's not a block you check. It's when we live this way, in the spiritual companies have friendships in the house of God that is dwelling, what ends up happening is there is a volcanic eruption of the grace of God and your like, praise him. You know, I remember one brother shared that he had died and gone there and didn't die went to heaven. And he said, every time they would say the name of the Lord, the angels would just go praise him great. God, Jehovah prayed it like every time he said, it was Craziest thing. It was like a trigger word. You know, you'd, you'd just be saying a sentence and somebody would say, God, and they would, or Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, and immediately all angels go pay God, you know, just this intense eruption. And it was not mechanical. That's the way it is around the throne. By the way, you know, I ran into a lot of religious spirits out there that used to criticize us. And some of you know where we've been what we've done, because we've seen same verse more than once. They're like, wow, you know, I'm saying birth from everyone. You know, it's like, you know, like, that's unspiritual or something. And I get tired of going anywhere saying the same verse five times. And I'm like, You're gonna have a hard time in heaven. And you're like, What are you talking about? I said, the angels have been singing one verse with the same word three times in a row, over and over and over for billions of years. And that's not mechanical. I like what one pastor said. He said, they don't. They're not just going, Oh, holy, holy, holy, like this. He says, what they do is they look into God, and they see something, they didn't seek a whole lay. And then they look again, at holy, and it's like a fire. It's like a volcanic eruption, because they look into God. Don't ever think it's boring around the throne of God. It is the most fascinating, the most exciting, the most revealing the most extraordinary place. In all of everything created and uncreated. Is the round the throne of God. Man, are you loving this? I am. It says they will still be praising you. So in other words, there is a divine energy and a divine atmosphere, in and around people who live like this. And this is why I said a few weeks ago, people say, Well, how do you do this? How do you get victory? This how'd you do this? I said, I'm not an a stronger, better than anybody else. I'm just like the rest of you. My family is broken. Just like other families. I'm talking about my lineage and my, my, my heritage. We're just like all the other people, we got all the broken places, and the errors and the problems and the sins and the hidden sins and the open sins, and all that stuff. And I mean, some of us probably be on it. Some of you're too old or too young to remember this, but we could some of them could be on the Jerry Springer show, you know, crazy stuff that I won't repeat here because it goes out all over the world. Asked me later, and I'll tell you. But my point is that I just learned hang around people closer to God than you are hanging around people hear God better than you do. Walk with people who are stronger spiritually than you are walking live with people who pray more than you do. Now tell you, we can all do that. Because there's everybody in this room does something better than I do. So I can hang around you and you can let some that rub off on me. You can do some impartation. And that happens in spiritual friendship. It doesn't happen just because we sit side by side in the same pew or we have the same membership in the church, right? It happens because there's a friendship and that friendship is those power lines, that imparts that power from one to another. and it says they will still be praising you that atmosphere of their lives is praise, not sarcasm, optimism, not negativity. That's that this is why, well, it's light, not heavy, right? You ever been around people and even Christians, so everything's heavy, something's negative, something sarcastic, but you know, on and on and on, they need to get around some people like this. And live life with people like this. It's helium like not led, like seeing and hearing all things through God's lens. Now remember, we use this illustration a few weeks ago, said, if you want to look into the heavens, and you want to see the mysteries of God, get around a group of astronomers in an observatory, get in the observatory, be around those who look into God. Right get around those who live around those spiritual telescopes get around those people who look into the mysteries of God, and they live this way. This is the way to live. And it can happen in the simplest of places. In fact, I would say that many of the places that are Grande, in a church world often do not hold these characteristics. It's those groups who go out from the church and spiritual friendships who go out from the church building, I'm saying, they are the church, and live in the spiritual friendships. And these companies have friends and they do life together, and they do the kingdom together. And they minister together and they share and they submit to one another. This is the atmosphere of the people who live this way. This is not talking about someone who is fulfilling their praise duties when he says and they will still be praising you. It means that there's so much spiritual energy, they just can't hold back. You wake up in the morning, God, what? It's like you go to bed at night, Lord, what do you say it? Jesus, in the middle of the day, you stop and you pray, and God speaks and does things in our lives, because we are tuned in to the one member of the Godhead who is tangibly here, not symbolically, here he is here He is the Holy Spirit of God. You see, if Jesus in bodily form came walking through that door, a sense of great honor, and all would come over us all. Yet Jesus says, I must go to the Father, so that the Holy Spirit can come. And he starts given the reasons why. And he is among us, let us honor him. Now he will, He is the Spirit of Jesus, He will always honor Jesus. But let us honor the presence of God in our midst, this person of the Godhead, and the father and the son in the name of Jesus. They just keep going. These people, they just keep going. It's like when I told you guys about Annie, who was born 1876. And I met her when she's 105. And she had buried five husbands. And she told me, she was looking for another one. Remember, and she told me she said, Son, I was there to minister to her. She said, You need more of God. She immediately saw the depth. I was there for ministry. And she saw the deficit in my life when I walked in. And I thought, how could this woman sitting here in this nursing home in a rocking chair, rocking really fast, she was a fast rocker 105 Be more full of energy more full of hope, more full of faith more positive, and praising him more than me. I got my whole life ahead of me. How is this possible? And I witnessed the miracle of what we see right here. This is the power of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of God among those who live as spiritual friends in the company of spiritual friends of the kingdom. Oh, it's a description of people who live in a certain kind of spiritual energy. Now tell you, I've known a lot of people who know the Bible and you know, in my profession, as a professor, I know people have a lot of degrees and they know the Bible well, and people that all these things that know, but they don't all live like this. These are the people I want to live like. Because these are the people who walk in close proximity to God. This can only be tapped into in the circles of spiritual friendship that he describes here on the pilgrimage journey together. And this is why the psalmist always describes this in the plural than the singular. There are a few swaths of believers who attend church but they don't necessarily live as God dwellers. I'll read that passage again. Blessed are those who dwell in your house. Some people think that means who go to all the meetings at the church. And that might be some manifestation of it. But it's talking about those who dwell in the house of the Almighty, that is, the dwelling of God is among his people, not necessarily a certain building. These are God dwellers in his house. And we understand that the church is God's house. But ultimately, it's the people right? Not the building. It's their gathering, in friendships with Jesus, where two or three are gathered together, in my name was he say, I am there. It's not just their gathering in that building. In David's time, when this was written, he was talking about people who live in close community and friendship, dwelling together and God's presence. Now a good illustration of this I like to use is like these, have you ever seen these railway electrification systems, they're the trains that have the, the the wand or whatever they call it, that touches the wire, you don't ever want to reach out and grab that wire, because there's electricity flowing through that. And it's not enough for the train to be present on the tracks. It's not enough for the train to have people in it, it must be tapped into the electrical system that's there. And there are many believers who are present on the track. But they enjoy, they miss the enjoyment and much of the power that comes because they're not tapped into the spiritual friendship, much of the power. And we see this in Paul's writings again, and again, we talked about him last week, many things that are imparted from God, are done through the people of God to the people of God. And we went through some of those passages last week. So we're tapping into that power through the people of God, not just on our own, even though we could do it on our own. Also, there is a similar description of this in the New Testament Church, and I'm going to read x four. And I'm gonna read verse 3132, when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together, was shaken. I like this. I like it when God's people pray, it is not. It might be uncommon here. But in many places, there are people who pray and things happen. There's a shaking, God begins to shake the physical circumstances. When people pray and believe God, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they spoke the word of God with boldness. Now, the multitude of those who believed were of one heart, and one soul. How do you get there, guys? How do you get to one heart and one soul? Now it's, it's not just coming from beat fill the Holy Spirit, one heart and one soul is coming from the connections, the friendships that have joined together, many of these disciples had been walking together for three and a half years with disciples. I mean, with Jesus, you guys know, there wasn't just 12 men that walked with Jesus for three and a half years, there was a whole company of disciples, and extended family and friends who worked closely with him the 70. And we know some of those disciples left, but there were many still there. And they had all things in common. So we see they prayed together, they were filled with the Holy Spirit's presence together. They spoke God's words together, they were of one heart and one soul together, they had all things in common together. This is spiritual friendship in one of its purest forms, because we're experiencing God together in many of these ways. So there are individual blessings of extraordinary strength and God to each of us. But there's a supernatural, heavenly mindset. To those who live in spiritual friendship. Now, guys, I know people who try to be positive and optimistic and they're pretty good. Some of them are pretty good at it. You can do this in the natural and you'll have a certain amount of success. But there is a supernatural optimism. There's a supernatural faith. There's a supernatural friendship. There is something that is other worldly. And this is what we're talking about. When we talk about friendship. It is natural to first notice. Well, let me just back up and say this Psalm 84 Five, says, Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, whose heart is set on pilgrimage. So it shows you that it's more than just a concentrate Don't being strong or being optimistic or being you fill in the blank. He's saying there's a supernatural impartation of strength that comes to you. And it comes from and he says you because he's talking to the Lord, it comes from God, wouldn't you rather operate on that than just caloric power? Right? Let you just, if you just operate on the energy that comes from your food and the calories that come from your food, you're operating on natural energy, but he's showing us a way in x four, there is a spiritual energy that comes from the Holy Spirit himself. And he delivers it in spiritual community, spiritual friendship, that community in that friendship brings that supernatural power. It's like that railway system tapping in to the power of God through His people. Now I know, you know, we're Protestants. But Protestant, sometimes we get so far into the individual thing, that God I can do this and I can receive Well, you know what, many times things God wants to give you he will not give it to you directly. Have you noticed that? Why does it say if the sitcom have people pray for him in the church? Why does it say there's prophecy? Why does it say there's exhortation? Why is it say there's revelation? Because you can't see everything? You can't reach into the heavens and get everything? Right? Because God doesn't want you to be a lone ranger, one man or one woman show, right? We are a body together. Right? What good is your hand if you cut it off, you can cut it off you, you know, if you cut your hand off, you know, and, and you hand it out, you this is your right hand. But if it's disconnected from the body, it becomes useless. as miraculous as that hand is, it is useless, unless it is connected to the body. And God's not talking about church membership. He's talking about spiritual connection, friendship, heart connection, right? Not sitting in the same pew spiritual friendship and relationship and Heart to Heart stuff. You know, not just a bread, how's your yard doing, you build that patio yet, not just that stuff, that's a good start. But we've got to get into the heart stuff. And that's the heart connection, not just the head connection, it is natural to first notice that blessing is the result of the one whose strength is in the Lord and whose heart is set on pilgrimage. But it's much more elusive, to notice that these individual abilities and blessings follow those who live in this kind of divine friendship, this kind of divine community, this kind of company of friends, what we call spiritual friendship. In other words, verse five doesn't work unless you're operating in the obedience of first four. Take a look at it. So what does this mean? This word? Let's go back and read the lesson are those who dwell in your house, they will still be praising you bless it is the man whose strength is in you. Whose heart is set on pilgrimages they pass through the Valley of Baca. They make it a spring, the rain covers it with pools they go from strength to strength. What does it mean? Each one appears before God and Zion, what does it mean when it says blessed it? What is blessed me? What is blessed mean? We haven't we say that you say, Well, how are you doing? I'm blessed. A lot of people say that. But do they know what it means to be blessed? Now, here's something that's interesting. It means happiness. Now, I'm not making this up. I'm looking this up in the original. You guys have heard me say this, I have many friends who are scholars. And they teach that God didn't promise you to be happy, they promise you about joy, but not happy. But joy, one of the translations in the lexicon of the original language is happiness. And in this case, one of the translations of blessedness is also happiness. Now, it's not natural happiness. He's not. That's what they really mean when they teach that this happiness is a super natural happiness. And this kind of happiness doesn't care how big your house is, how little your house is, what you have, how much you have, this happiness will come to those regardless, and it will not discriminate based on their circumstances. You know, I can remember having very little, and we were just as happy as we are today. I like one pastor said, he said, you know, he goes, he goes, I've been happy and joyful when I had little, and I've been happy and joyful when I had a lot, but a lot, a lot was better. But his point was that in both cases, the happiness of God, the joy of God, that supernatural blessedness that supernatural joy, that supernatural energy comes from God. It's not based on do I Like the kind of stove I have, or the kind of car I drive, right? How many kids say amen to that? I liked that. Another one. He says, how happy are the people? It's a heightened state of joy. It's implying divine favor. All right, so the psalmist is not talking about natural or temporal happiness. He's talking about other worldly happiness. This is probably a good place for us to break, because we're going to talk about more of this next week, guys, we've got more to teach on this. This is exciting. It's really exciting. You don't want to miss it. And we're going to be looking at some guys in history, one in particular who specialized in teaching and study and exploration, on spiritual friendship. This is powerful. Let's pray. Lord, we want to thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, we, we want to live in this psalm 84 way, we want to live in the company of friends, spiritual friends, this supernatural friendship that is different and deeper and more powerful than natural friendship. We pray that you will teach us this way in God. And Lord, oh, I can just see it now. Many who go out from here ministering to the nation's even the smallest amount of power, anointing, blessing or grace will have its conductivity and extraordinary ability in Jesus name. 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