 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to Unfiltered. Pastor David, welcome. Oh, thank you. Pastor, on December 27th of this year, you will be celebrating 53 years walking with the Lord. That's amazing. That's a number, a number of years walking with the Lord. Yeah. So, this kind of leads from there as you have in your Christian walk with the Lord, probably have a good understanding of the gospel of grace with backgrounds that you've come through in terms of what you had to go through until you became saved. And so, God's grace, I know, has been a big part, a component of your life. Oh, yes. But there still seems to be not so much of the church here or anything, but there can be this outward appearance that's still a concern for people, that it's not about what God has done in the inside, but there's this concern of having an outward appearance that can seem to quote-unquote add the law to grace, which people can be turned off by the church, where their hearts are hardened, adding rules to the grace of God, and can have a tendency to put shackles on people. What would you say in regards to this? I can understand in some ways, John, the concern that some very genuine and sincere believers have as they look at the church today, because in many ways you see and can see if you're involved in ministry, quite a number of professing believers whose lives don't measure up with the gospel, they really don't. Now, I always assume that a new believer is going to come in with a lot of baggage that are habits of the flesh that need to be discarded through confession, repentance, and all of the things that are necessary for the work of sanctification to take place in somebody's heart. And I understand that. You know, somebody comes forward and they have sexual habits, they're involved with somebody, and they're not married, and those things are obvious things that need to be dealt with. And they will be, if the person is genuinely repentant, they will turn from those things, and what at one time was regarded as just the way they are. Oh, yeah, they're always hooking up with whatever. This guy's changed. This guy's not running around playing with girls' hearts anymore. He's become stable. You know, maybe he was lazy, he begins to work, works an honest job, makes an honest dollar, things like that. But it takes time sometimes for some things to be as clearly seen as others. Some men's sins go before them, Paul said, and others follow after. There are some things that you can see immediately in other things, and it takes time to be able to see. So when it comes to salvation, it's by grace. It's through faith in Jesus Christ, and there are changes that will take place. Some of them are gradual. Others are immediate. When I first got saved, I had a very profane way of speaking. I swore constantly, and that was my habit of speech. And one of my friends who had known me all pretty much most of my life said to me, I know that you're saved, and I said, how could you know such a thing? He says, Dave, you don't swear anymore. So there are things like that that took place in my life very quickly. There were other things that took some time. And so I believe that what happens is people begin to look at the life of somebody and then add to the grace of God. Well, if you really were saved, you would be doing such and so. And whatever it may be, we were just sharing this last week on our study of Acts 15, where, excuse me, I'm fighting a cough, where some professing Christian Jews, Pharisees, were demanding that the Gentiles be circumcised and begin to obey the law. And with this, they came to the church in Antioch, a church that was the majority of it was Gentile. And now they're putting the yoke of bondage on them, the yoke of the law. Peter and the apostle Paul and Barnabas disputed as it was sharing with the council in Jerusalem, but Paul and Barnabas rose up as they were doing it in Antioch and had no small disputation with them. It became the thing in the church where it was the first time an actual council had to be convened in order to deal with such a strong issue. And so they determined that you don't put the law upon a believer. Now, there are certain elements, we'll say, of the law that are necessary and we'll be looking at that this upcoming Sunday. But in terms of circumcision, obedience to the law, and things of that nature, he said, no, it's by the grace of God. And so John, I think that the church today needs to walk in the grace of God, in the faith, in the spirit, and to love. Because even in the pastoral ministry, I see pastors who are very much legalistic. Even in the Calvary movement, I encounter them on occasion who are vehement, but they think it's the right thing to do and you should do this. And these people, they have this attitude. And my pastor, Chuck, really believed and he taught us and poured into us by example, by receiving people like me and others like me, hippies that were rejected by the world, but accepted by Christ and loved by our pastor. He showed me that God has a way of cleaning the fish once the fish is caught. And there are a lot of Christians who are out there in the fish cleaning business, and then they need to probably spend a little more time looking into the mirror to see what kind of things they need to be cleansed from. So anyway, yeah, I think that after 53 years this month of walking with the Lord, the one thing that keeps resonating in me is that I'm a sinner saved by God's grace. I don't want to become that a proudful person that regards myself to be more than I really am. I'm just a very grateful sinner and I think that maybe the church needs to remember that we're all sinners saved by the grace of God if we've really been saved. And to check our hearts and attitudes at the door, because there are people who come into that and to our church, a church who can be rejected by people, but they'll be accepted in a bar. You know, they're accepted at a party, they're accepted at a club, but they're not accepted amongst the people of God. So, yeah, let's be careful to walk in the grace of God. Come in, Pastor. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And we do want to invite you to our Wednesday evening service at 7 p.m. Pastor has taken us through the book of Ecclesiastes. Chapter three. And it's been fruitful and everything is vanity under the sun. Yeah, that's what he says. And so we look forward to continue that. Want to invite you guys to come out and join us. And again, that's at 7 p.m. We do have childcare. So we do look forward to having you out and join us. And then just looking forward to Ed, on Sunday, we have our 830 and 1045 services that can come join us as well. And you can actually go to our YouTube, our Facebook, our Instagram page to get information, our web page to get information on our Christmas Eve and Christmas services that we'll have coming up. We do look forward to spending and celebrating Christmas with you guys as well. God bless you. Thank you for tuning in. Pastor David, thank you for sharing with you. God bless you guys.