Welcome to the Jesus Image podcast.

Now let's get into the scriptures.

Thank you, Joel, regarding the generosity of Jesus.

Get ready to take notes as we are entering a season of sacrifice and generosity.

Before I get started, I do want to just shoot the elephant in the room with an elephant gun, not with a BB gun.

My coach always used to say, if it was a tough tournament, don't go hunting elephants with a

BB gun, boy. Make sure you've got the weaponry. So I want to kill and just slay that elephant in the room.

Oftentimes, and this is, it's sad that this happens this way. But oftentimes we allow the

sin of others to tempt us into sin through an overreaction.

I've learned, and I'm still learning, that there are a few phases in the temptation process where the Lord tries to teach us and guard us from.

The devil is really amazing at the initial temptation. He has 6,000

years, depending on your old earth or young earth view, or some of you think, anyway, anyways,

okay. There's all types of places I could go there.

Depending on your view,

maybe he has much more than 6,000 years of just messing stuff up,

but I don't want to go there.

Nonetheless, he's experienced.

And oftentimes it comes, like a wave of warfare hits us with that initial temptation. He's hoping that we

bow our knee there and crumble and fall into his counterfeit blueprint that is always counterfeit

to what the Lord has for us. For those of us that do not say yes

in the moment, he is also very good at using overreaction so that we would fall into a ditch on the other

side of the road,

...