Sermon
Where Did Your Soul Come From Before Birth_ What The Bible Actually Reveals (No Ads)
Publisher transcript
Transcript
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Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there
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are no ads on this video because YouTube has demonetized
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our channel. To support us, you can scan the first
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QR code to join the Bible Stories podcast app, where
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you can listen offline and access exclusive episodes. Or, if
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you simply want to give, you can scan the second
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QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
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keep these Bible Stories going. Your soul was not in
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a place, it was in a person's knowing. That is
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the answer Scripture gives. There was no waiting room in heaven,
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there was no earlier life you finished and forgot. Before
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God formed you, there was no you at all. What
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existed was God, and God's thought of you, and God's
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love set on you before you had a face to love.
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Most of us would rather hear that we have always
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existed somewhere, But the Bible offers something better than that.
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It offers a beginning that came from the hands of
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God himself, and a love that was already in motion
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before you took up any space in this world. If
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you have ever felt like an accident, like your birth
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was a complication in somebody else's plan, then hold on
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to this. You did not come from nowhere. You came
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from God, and the God who gave you your first
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breath has not once looked away since. So, let us
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open the Bible and see what it actually says about
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the beginning of a human being. Notice what the Bible
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never does. It never tells you where your soul was stored.
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There is no chapter describing souls gathered in a heavenly room,
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no verse about waiting your turn, no description of what
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you saw before you came. For a book that speaks
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so freely about heaven, angels, the throne of God and
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the world to come, that silence is loud. Scripture is
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not shy. If souls lived somewhere before birth, we would
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have been told. Instead, every time the Bible touches the
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beginning of a person, it turns the question around. It
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stops asking where and starts asking whose. The answer is
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always the same. You came from God. You belong to God.
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The life in you was handed to you. As you
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do not know the way the Spirit comes to the
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bones in the womb of a woman with child, so
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you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.
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Ecclesiastes 11.5 That is Scripture admitting out loud that nobody
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understands how life arrives in a body. The wisest man
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in Israel looked at a pregnant woman and said, I
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cannot explain what is happening in there. God is at work,
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and the work is hidden. There is real freedom in
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that sentence. When someone tells you they know exactly what
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your soul was doing before you were born, they know
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more than Solomon did. But hiddenness is not absence. The
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same book that says you cannot trace how the spirit
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comes to the bones also tells you where it comes
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from and where it goes. and the dust returns to
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the earth as it was, and the Spirit returns to
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God who gave it. Ecclesiastes chapter 12 verse 7 Look
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at the word gave. A gift returning to its giver
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is a different picture than a traveler going home to
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a place he remembers. Your spirit did not sit in
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God's presence, get handed a body, and go down. Your
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spirit was given. Given means there was a moment when
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you had nothing, because there was no you yet, and
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then God gave, and you were. That single word protects
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us from a lot of confusion. It also settles something
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in the heart. If your life was given, then your
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life is held. Nobody gives a gift carelessly and then
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forgets it. Here is the passage almost nobody brings into
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this conversation, and it changes the shape of the question.
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The writer of Hebrews is arguing that the priesthood of
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Melchizedek was greater than the priesthood of Levi. His proof
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is strange to modern ears. Abraham met Melchizedek and gave
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him a tenth of everything. Levi was Abraham's great-grandson, generations
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from being born. And yet the writer says this. One
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might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid
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tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins
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of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. Hebrews chapter 7
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verses 9 and 10. Levi was somewhere that day. He
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was in Abraham. That is how the Bible speaks about
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a person before birth, carried in the body of a
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father who had not yet had a son. To the
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Hebrew mind, descendants were already present in an ancestor, the
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way an oak is present in an acorn, without a
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single branch existing yet. So if you want a biblical
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answer to where you were 300 years ago, here it is.
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You were in your ancestors. You were in a line
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of people who worked and married and buried their dead,
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most of whose names you will never learn, stretching back
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through every generation to the first man God made from
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the ground. That is the only address Scripture ever gives you,
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and it is more meaningful than a heavenly waiting room
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would be because it ties you to the human story
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rather than lifting you out of it. Paul uses the
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same logic when he writes that in Adam all die.
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You were in Adam. His fall reached you before you
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had a name, which is why the whole race is
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broken in the same way. It is also the reason
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the rescue had to come the way it did, through
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a man who entered the same line and did not fall.
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There is comfort buried in this for anyone who has
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felt like the wrong branch of a bad family tree.
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you were carried by people who never knew they were
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carrying you god worked through generations of ordinary and imperfect
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lives to bring you here whatever your parents were whatever
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your grandparents were the line held long enough for you
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to arrive that was not luck Think about how much
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had to hold. Famines came and people survived them. Wars
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swept through villages and someone walked out. Two people who
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had no idea you were coming met and stayed long
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enough for one more generation. Every single link in that
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chain had to hold and none of them knew what
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they were holding. The Bible gives us long lists of
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names that most readers skip, and those lists are the
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record of exactly this. God moving a family through centuries,
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mostly through people nobody remembers, so that a promise could
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arrive at the right moment in the right town. Your
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line is not written down in Scripture, but it was
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not invisible to God either. He has been working with
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families a long time. To see how a person actually begins,
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we go back to the second chapter of Genesis, to
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the closest look Scripture ever gives us at the making
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of a human being. Then the Lord God formed the
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man of dust from the ground and breathed into his
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nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a
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living creature. Genesis chapter 2 verse 7. Three movements in
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one sentence. God forms. God breathes. The man becomes. Now
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look at what is missing. God does not bring a
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soul from somewhere else and put it inside. There is
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no delivery. There is dust. There is breath. And out
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of the joining comes a living being who did not
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exist a moment before. The Hebrew word here that older
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Bibles translate as living soul simply means a living, breathing creature.
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Genesis does not say the man received a soul the
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way a man receives a coat. It says the man
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became one. Body and breath together, joined by God, make
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a person. That is why the question, where was your soul,
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contains a small mistake inside it. The question assumes the
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soul is a thing that travels, that has luggage and
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a root. In Scripture, your soul is what you are
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once God has given you life. Before the giving, there
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is nothing to locate, and that breath is the important part. Job,
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sitting in ashes with everything gone, still knew where his
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life came from. The Spirit of God has made me,
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and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33.4
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Present tense. Gives, not gave once and left. The breath
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in your chest right now is being handed to you
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this minute by God. This is why every human life
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carries weight that no achievement adds to, and no failure removes.
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You are not a machine that happened to switch on,
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you are dust that God breathed into. A body without
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that breath is a grave, and breath without a body
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is not a person yet, and God is the one
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who holds the two together for as long as He chooses.
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The prophet Zechariah gathers all of this into one line.
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He calls God the one who stretched out the heavens,
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founded the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him.
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The same hands that unrolled the night sky worked in
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the dark of a womb to make you. Same God,
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same care, and one of those two works was aimed
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directly at you. God forms the spirit of man within him, within,
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not somewhere else, and then delivered. The forming happens inside
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the person, the way a craftsman shapes something that did
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not exist before his hands touched it. The letter to
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the Hebrews gives God a title that carries the same weight.
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It calls him the Father of Spirits. Your parents gave
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you a body and a name and whatever they had
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to give. Behind them stands the one who gave the
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life itself. That is why you can honor the people
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who raised you without needing them to have been the
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source of your worth, and why you can grieve the
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people who failed you without concluding that your life was
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a mistake. They were never the ones who decided whether
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you should exist. There is one verse that settles this
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question in a single line, and it appears in a
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chapter most people read for a completely different reason. Paul
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is writing to the Corinthians about resurrection bodies. He compares
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the first man with Christ, the earthly with the heavenly,
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and then he states the order God works in. But
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it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural,
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and then the spiritual. 1 Corinthians 15.46 Natural first, spiritual after.
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Paul is talking about resurrection, but the principle he states
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is the pattern of everything God does with human beings.
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He does not begin with a spirit and then find
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it a body. He begins with the earthy, ordinary, physical thing,
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and then he brings the spiritual. That is the order
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in creation, when dust came before breath. It is the
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order in salvation when you were born once in the
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flesh before you could be born of the Spirit, and
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it is the order in resurrection when the body that
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was buried is the body that will be raised. If
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souls came first and bodies second, Paul had the perfect
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chapter to say so, and he says the opposite. This
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matters for more than settling an argument. It tells you
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that God is not embarrassed by your body. A lot
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of people carry a quiet belief that the real them
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is a spirit trapped in flesh, and that the aches,
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the tiredness, the failing eyes, the slowing hands are the cage.
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Scripture never treats you that way. God made the dust
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first and called it good, and when he came to
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save us, he did not send a message. He took
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a body. So the weakness you feel is not proof
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that you are less spiritual. It is the honest condition
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of a creature made from the ground and kept alive
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by borrowed breath. God knows exactly what you are made of.
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He is the one who chose the material. Nobody watched
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you being formed. That is the strangest thing about your
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own beginning. The most important construction project of your life
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happened where no human eye could reach, and every detail
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of it went unrecorded by anyone who loved you. except one.
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David could not sleep, and out of that long night
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came the most personal passage in the Bible about the
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making of a human being. For you formed my inward parts,
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you knitted me together in my mother's womb. Psalm 139.13
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Knitting is slow, close work. It is done by hand,
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one loop pulled through another, with the whole pattern held
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in the mind of the one working. That is the
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picture David reaches for, and he keeps going. He says
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his frame was not hidden from God when he was
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made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
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Then comes the line that answers our question better than
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any other verse in Scripture. Your eyes saw my unformed substance.
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In your book were written every one of them, the
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days that were formed for me, when as yet there
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was none of them. Psalm 139.16 Read what David actually claims.
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God's eyes saw him when he was unformed substance before
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he had a shape. What God watched was a body
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in its earliest stage of becoming, hidden from everyone else
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in the world and already fully seen by him. And
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then the days, written in a book before a single
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one of them arrived. David did not exist yet, but
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David was not unaccounted for. There was a record before
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there was a man. Job says something similar out of
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his suffering. You clothed me with skin and flesh, and
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knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted
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me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved
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my spirit. Job chapter 10 verses 11 and 12 preserved, guarded,
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watched over, like something entrusted to careful hands. Job was
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arguing with God at the time, and even in the
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middle of the argument, he could not deny that his
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life had been handled with care from the beginning. The
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parts of your life that nobody saw are not the
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parts God missed. He started with the part nobody saw.
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If God was attentive in a place where you could
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not even ask for help, where you had no words
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and no awareness and no ability to earn one moment
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of his attention, then his attention to you has never
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once depended on your performance. What about the ones whose
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lives barely started? The pregnancy that ended in the tenth week,
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or the baby who lived four days, or the grandchild
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who was named and prayed for and never came home?
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If a person begins when God gives life, then those
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children were persons. That truth cuts both ways, and I
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know it. It means the loss was a real loss,
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and not a medical event, which is exactly what grieving
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parents have always known in their bones, while people around
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them searched for lighter words. But it also means those
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lives were not empty. David wrote that his days were
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written in God's book before one of them existed. He
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did not say a certain number of days had to
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pass before God started counting. Scripture gives one moment where
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a man speaks openly about a child who died in infancy,
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and it is King David. He had spent seven days
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on the ground, refusing food, begging God for the boy's life.
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When the child died, his servants were afraid to tell him.
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David heard them whispering, asked directly, and then did something
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nobody expected. He got up, washed, worshipped, and ate, and
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he explained why. But now he is dead. Why should
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I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall
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go to him, but he will not return to me.
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2 Samuel 12, verse 23. I shall go to him.
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That is not a man talking about a grave. That
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is a father saying his child is somewhere and that
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he is going there. David does not give us a
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full doctrine of what happens to children who die. This
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is one of the secret things. But he gives us
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the direction his hope pointed, and it pointed forward toward
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a reunion in the confidence that God is good and
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that his son was safe with him. If you are
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the one who has been carrying that grief, hear this much.
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The child you lost was never merely potential. God saw
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an unformed substance and knew a person. Nothing about that
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life was wasted, and nothing about it escaped his notice,
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and your years of quiet aching over someone almost nobody
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else remembers are known to him too. Before I formed
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you in the womb, I knew you, and before you
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were born, I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet
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to the nations. Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 5 Many people
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read that and picture a soul standing in front of God,
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waiting to be sent. But watch the sentence itself. Before
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I formed you in the womb. The forming happens in
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the womb. What came before the forming was not Jeremiah.
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It was God's knowing of Jeremiah. And the knowing is
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the heart of it. The word behind new is the
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word Scripture uses for the deepest closeness between two people,
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the knowing that carries love and commitment and belonging inside it.
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God is describing a heart already turned toward a boy
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who did not exist. Isaiah says it even more tenderly.
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The Lord called me first. the womb, from the body
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of my mother he named my name. Isaiah chapter 49
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verse 1. God named the name before there was a
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mouth to answer to it. Now, Jeremiah was a prophet
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with a particular calling, and so was the servant in Isaiah.
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We should not turn their commission into a claim that
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every person was handed a career before birth. But the
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character of God on display in those verses does not
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change from person to person. The God who set his
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heart on Jeremiah before Jeremiah existed is the same God
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who was thinking of you before there was anything of
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you to think about. That is where love always begins.
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Ask any mother who prayed for a child for years.
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She loved a person who did not exist yet. When
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the child finally came, the love did not start, it
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simply found its object. Love that reaches ahead of the
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beloved is the oldest kind of love there is, and
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God has more of it than anyone. So when you
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feel forgotten, the question worth asking is not whether God
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noticed you. He was there before there was anything to notice.
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He watched something take shape that only He could see,
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and He wanted it. If the Bible is this clear,
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why do so many people believe the opposite? Why does
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the idea that our souls are ancient feel almost obvious?
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Because something in us knows we do not belong entirely
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to this world. That instinct is real, and Scripture does
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not laugh at it. People say they feel like old souls.
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They walk into a place they have never been, and
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something in them says home. They meet a stranger and
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feel they have known them for years. Those feelings are
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not evidence of an earlier life. They are evidence that
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you were made for God and for a world that
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has not arrived yet. The longing is pointed forward, not backward.
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You are homesick for a country you have never visited
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and mistaking it for a memory. This is why Scripture
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draws a firm line. And just as it is appointed
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for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.
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Hebrews 9.27 One life, one story, no cycle of returns,
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no second attempt, no slow climb through many lifetimes. That
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sounds heavy until you turn it over. If this is
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your one life, then this life is not a rehearsal,
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and nothing in it is wasted. The kindness you showed
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when nobody thanked you counts. The years you spent caring
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for someone who could not care back count. The faith
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you held on to when you had nothing else to
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hold count. You are not accumulating credit toward a better
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next round. You are living the one life God gave,
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and every part of it matters to him. And it
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means the wrongs done to you are not a debt
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you carried in from somewhere. Nobody is paying off a
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past life. If you were born into hardship, into illness,
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into a family that did not want you, it was
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not a sentence for something you did before you existed.
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There was no before. Some of it stays hidden, and
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Scripture is comfortable with that. The secret things belong to
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the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed
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belong to us and to our children forever. Deuteronomy 29.29
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What God has kept to himself, he has not neglected.
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He has simply not explained it, and there is a difference.
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A child does not understand most of what a parent does,
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and the not understanding is not evidence of being unloved.
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There is one more piece of this worth naming, because
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it troubles thoughtful people. If God knew me before I
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was born, was my life decided for me? Am I
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just walking through a script that was written without me?
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Scripture does not treat God's knowledge as a cage. God
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knew Jeremiah, and Jeremiah still argued with him, still complained,
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still wept and kept going, and made real choices every
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day of a hard life. Being known ahead of time
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left him free, and it left him with company and
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work that would have crushed a man on his own.
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Love that arrives first does not cancel the response of
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the one who is loved. Every parent who prepares a
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room for a child who cannot yet walk understands this.
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The preparing came first. The walking is still the child's own.
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So if you were not anywhere before your birth, what was?
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Love was. Not a vague, warm feeling, floating in eternity,
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but love between real persons, already ancient before the first
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star burned. On the last night before the cross, Jesus
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prayed out loud and let his disciples listen. In the
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middle of that prayer, he says something about the Father
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that reaches back past everything. Because you loved me before
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the foundation of the world. John chapter 17 verse 24
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Before the foundation of the world there was a father
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loving a son. That love did not begin. It has
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no starting line. And when the world was made, and
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when human beings were made from dust, they were made
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by a God who already knew how to love perfectly,
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because he had never done anything else. Jesus is the
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only one who can honestly say he was somewhere before
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he was born. He is the one true exception to
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everything we have seen. He did not begin in a womb.
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He entered one. He took the dust and the breath,
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joined the same human line that carried Levi and carries you,
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and lived a life with tired feet and real hunger.
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which means the God who made you out of the
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ground has since walked on that ground. He knows what
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it is to be exhausted, to be misunderstood, to have
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his family think he had lost his mind, to weep
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at a friend's grave, to feel a body give out.
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When Scripture says he understands your weakness, it is not
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a figure of speech. So the love that was there
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before you existed is not distant love. It is the
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love that came looking for you all the way down
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into your world. There is one more birth in the Bible,
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and it is the only one you get to choose.
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A religious leader named Nicodemus came to Jesus at night
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with careful questions, and Jesus cut past all of them.'
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You must be born again,' he said. And when Nicodemus
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asked how a grown man could possibly be born a
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second time, Jesus explained the difference.' That which is born
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of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born
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of the Spirit is Spirit' John 3.6. Your first beginning
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came through flesh and breath. It gave you life in
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this world, and it will end here. The second birth
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comes through the Spirit of God, and it does not end.
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Notice the pattern holding steady, natural first, spiritual after. The
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same order Paul described, the same order Genesis showed. God
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has never once reversed it, and He does not skip
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a step with anyone. Everyone starts as dust that breathes.
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Nobody arrives already spiritual, and nobody is too far into
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the natural to receive the spiritual. This is the answer
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to the ache underneath the whole question. People want their
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souls to be eternal in the past because they are
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frightened about the future. They want to have always existed
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so that they will always exist. But the Bible offers
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the thing they are actually reaching for and offers it
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from the other direction. You did not always exist. You
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will exist forever if you are joined to the one
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who does. And that offer does not depend on your record.
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There is nothing you did before you were born to
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earn it, and nothing you have done since that can
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put it out of reach. It comes the same way
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your first breath came. As a gift. You did not
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qualify for your first birth either. If you have been
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circling this for years, waiting until you feel worthy or
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until you understand it all, you are waiting for something
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that never comes to anyone. The invitation is open now
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in the state you are actually in, tonight in the
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chair you are sitting in. And this second birth is
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not a religious achievement to add to a life that
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already feels too full of demands. Look at how the
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first one worked. You were passive. You contributed nothing. Someone
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else did every part of it, and you woke up
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alive in a world you had not asked for. The
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second birth comes the same way. God gives and you receive,
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and the receiving is called faith. That is worth hearing
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for anyone worn out by religion. If you have spent
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years trying to be good enough for God, keeping score,
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listening to voices that told you the bar was always
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a little higher than where you stood, this is a
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different word entirely. You cannot be born by trying harder.
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Nobody ever was. We started with a question about where.
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We end with a promise about how long. Through the
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prophet Isaiah, God speaks to a people who are tired, aging,
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and afraid he has forgotten them, and he answers with
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the longest reach in Scripture.' Who have been born by
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me from before your birth, carried from the womb? Even
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to your old age I am he, and to gray
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hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I
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will bear, I will carry, and will save.' Isaiah chapter
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46 verses 3 and 4. One sentence covers a whole
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human life. From before birth to grey hairs, one carrying,
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never handed off, never set down. That verse is for
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the person who feels their strength going. For the one
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who cannot drive anymore, who watches the world get further away,
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who wonders whether anyone would notice a quiet exit. God says,
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I made you. I have been carrying you since before
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you knew there was such a thing as being carried,
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and I am not going to put you down now.
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So here is where the answer leaves us. You were
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not in heaven before you were born. You were not
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a spark in the universe, and you were not living
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some earlier life whose debts you are paying now. You
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did not exist. God formed you. God breathed, and you began.
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But there was never a moment when you were unknown.
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Before you had substance, God's eyes were on the substance forming.
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Before you had a single day, your days were written down.
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Before there was a mouth to say your name, God
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had already said it. And the love that reached toward
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you before you existed did not stop once you arrived.
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It went to a cross to bring you home. Your
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beginning was not an accident of biology. Your years are
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not a rehearsal for a better attempt. And your ending
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is not a return to nothing, because the breath that
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was given will go back to the God who gave it,
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and everyone who belongs to Christ will be raised. You
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came from God's hand. You are held by God's care.
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And you are invited tonight to walk the rest of
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the way with the one who wanted you before there
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was anything of you to want. If this video helped
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you grow deeper in God's Word, I want to personally
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