Dena Davidson [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Bible Study Pod. I am joined by Wesley Towne from our Davis campus. Say hello, Wesley.
Wesley Towne [00:00:06]:
Hello, Bible Study Podcast. Stoked to be with you today.
Dena Davidson [00:00:10]:
Yes, we are in our next series and we are talking about Not Without Faith this week. And I'm really excited you're on, Wesley, because you just took how many weeks through this chapter that we're about to study?
Wesley Towne [00:00:21]:
5 or 6 weeks.
Dena Davidson [00:00:22]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:00:22]:
Talking about Hebrews 11.
Dena Davidson [00:00:24]:
So we're going to cover in a way shorter amount of time this incredible passage from scripture that literally has been called the Hall of Faith. It's all of these biblical heroes that displayed the type of faith that God is looking for. So we are going to do something a little bit different. Curt is not here today, so I didn't ask him permission for this. We're just going to do it. We're going to mix it up. We're going to not set a deadline, like of, we're going to go through all these verses. We're literally just going to start reading, start unpacking, exegeting what the text says, and we'll see how long it goes.
Wesley Towne [00:01:02]:
Let's go.
Dena Davidson [00:01:02]:
All right, perfect. All right, so it starts 11:1. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Start us off, Wes.
Wesley Towne [00:01:15]:
Oh, I'm starting off?
Dena Davidson [00:01:16]:
Yeah, you start off.
Wesley Towne [00:01:16]:
Well, I think first of all, when we talk about faith, it's important to understand the basic of the concept, the basic nature of faith, Greek term here is pistis, or pistuo would be the verb form. It simply means trust. There's a sense of belief or trust in an object or a person. And so what he really is doing here in verse 1 is describing faith. Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for. So it's this confidence in ultimately not a reality in the future, not an object that we're going to get in the future. But the essence of faith is confidence in God because God is the essence of hope. It is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see.
Dena Davidson [00:02:07]:
I love that.
Wesley Towne [00:02:08]:
There are things in life that we believe, but we aren't yet at the arrival point of seeing it come to fruition.
Dena Davidson [00:02:16]:
Yeah.
Wesley Towne [00:02:16]:
And I think when we start out this idea of faith, important to realize this is not faith in faith. This is faith in God. That's the starting point of faith. I just wanted to read this verse from Genesis 15:6, which I think is maybe the most important verse about faith that the New Testament picks up over and over again. It says in, uh, Genesis 15:6, Abraham believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. A lot of people, Dena, think that in the Old Testament it was about following the law, like the Ten Commandments, and that brought you near to God. But that's not true. Abraham was brought near to God, was brought into a relationship with God, not by any work that he did, but by faith in God.
Wesley Towne [00:03:05]:
Same thing for the people of the Exodus. Same thing for Moses and the people that entered into the promised land. Every child of God, every person of God, every notable example of faith in the Old Testament started with a trust in God himself.
Dena Davidson [00:03:21]:
That's so good. So, okay, talk to me. We jumped right in, which I love doing, but let's take a step back for a second and think about the context of Hebrews, because I feel like Hebrews is one of the more understudied books of the Bible. And so I can rattle off for you like, oh yeah, Ephesians written by Paul and just like all it's to Ephesus. But tell us a little bit about the book of Hebrews and what makes it different in nature and tone, maybe, than all of the other New Testament documents.
Wesley Towne [00:03:53]:
Well, in my fourth year of New Testament Greek, we studied every word in Koine Greek in the book of Hebrews.
Dena Davidson [00:04:03]:
Amazing.
Wesley Towne [00:04:03]:
Which is amazing.
Dena Davidson [00:04:04]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:04:05]:
And one of the fascinating things that I learned was that, first of all, we don't know who wrote Hebrews. Unknown author. So many different ideas. But for sure, I could say it's not Paul because the language that is used in Hebrews is so different than the language that Paul uses. Words, phrases, grammar, style, like so different than Paul. Hebrews is essentially written to Jewish Christians who were being persecuted and pressured to turn back to the Old Testament realities of faith, meaning Jesus isn't the Messiah. We're gonna go back to sacrifices and offerings. We're gonna continue to anticipate that the Messiah's gonna come, but we're gonna reject Jesus.
Wesley Towne [00:04:51]:
And the writer gives the most robust commentary on the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies in the person and work of Jesus. So this book, Hebrews, is very Old Testament-ish. Yeah. Allusions and verses and concepts and promises, like all throughout this book. So by the time you get to chapter 11, Hebrews is now in chapter 11 giving us notable examples of faith in the Old Testament. All of these people of faith.
Dena Davidson [00:05:26]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:05:26]:
Which ultimately leads to chapter 12, Christ. So I think this is a cool book because it is taking the Old Testament and teaching how Jesus fulfilled all of these things.
Dena Davidson [00:05:39]:
Yes. And what I've always found interesting about Hebrews, you know, we don't know who the author is, but the, the message of Hebrews was so clearly in sync with the gospel, in sync with what the early church was teaching, that it was just it had to be included in the canon because there was no doubting that in the history and tradition of the church that God had been using this book as his divinely inspired word. So even like overriding the fact that we didn't know who the author was, and usually one of the requirements for canonicity is that they would be able to link the book to an apostolic author, they were like, "Hey, the message of Hebrews is so clear and it threads. It brings together the Old Testament and New Testament. And I love that. I think that context is so helpful. The reason it does that so beautifully, it brings together the Old Testament and New Testament, is it was written to Christians who were contemplating, because of the intense pressure they were under, of going back to an old way and rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. But this book does a great job of explaining, oh no, no, this is one story.
Dena Davidson [00:06:49]:
We're just in a different chapter. Let's step into that chapter.
Wesley Towne [00:06:53]:
Yeah.
Dena Davidson [00:06:53]:
So good. Okay, so, all right, help me with this. So I am part of the team that's producing these placemats for our next series. And so, yes.
Wesley Towne [00:07:02]:
I know nothing about the placemats, by the way.
Dena Davidson [00:07:04]:
That's totally fine. So they're these tools that we've developed to help families have conversations around their table with their kids, which as a parent, this is exactly what I want. I want to talk about my faith with my kids, but I don't want it to be awkward and I don't want them to hate Jesus because of it. So one of the things I had to do is I had to take this verse, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." And I had to think about what's it like to read that and hear that as a child, right? Because as an adult, and this is all of Hebrews, there's a lot of weighty words in that one sentence, assurance, faith, conviction. And I think like just boiling it down to this idea that we have confidence in what we hope for. Like, we have confidence in what we hope for. And I love how you bring it home, like, that confidence in what we hope for is not necessarily anything that God is going to bring to us, but in God himself. God himself is the bringer of good things.
Dena Davidson [00:08:07]:
God himself is the restorer of what's broken. And our hope is not just in what he will do and accomplish for us, our hope is in the person, God himself.
Wesley Towne [00:08:16]:
That's why we can have total assurance and confidence. Yes, because it's in God. Can I backtrack for a minute? You said something interesting.
Dena Davidson [00:08:23]:
Sure.
Wesley Towne [00:08:26]:
Hebrews— nobody can be dogmatic about the authorship of Hebrews. This is a Bible Study Podcast. So let's talk about it. Let's do it. However, one of the tests for canonicity was that the book had to be written by an apostle or an associate of an apostle. We know for sure of all the candidates, the good candidates for Hebrews, one of them was an associate of apostle, Apollos, Barnabas, like so on and so forth. So I think definitely this fits in the canon, and I don't think there's any more thorough scholarship of the Old Testament bridging the New Testament fulfillment of Jesus than this book.
Dena Davidson [00:09:07]:
It's incredible.
Wesley Towne [00:09:08]:
So, amen, this book definitely fits within the scope of like biblical inspiration, revelation from God for his church. And, uh, I just think that's an interesting thought.
Dena Davidson [00:09:20]:
Yes. Okay, for those not familiar with that word canon or canonicity, can you unpack that concept?
Wesley Towne [00:09:25]:
Yeah, canonicity basically is answering the questions: which books in the Bible are biblical, authoritative from God, divinely inspired. And a lot of people think that Christians just sat around one day and chose the books. Or people in the Old Testament were like, "Oh yeah, I like this book and this book and not this book." But there was actually a grid by which the people of God would accept books over time. And the term canon comes from a Greek term, kanon, which means measuring rod. It later became a word that meant catalog or list. So we say it's the catalog or list that we believe is the divine, divinely inspired teachings, books written down for God's people over history that teach us the beginning, creation, God's intention, all the way to the end, revelation, God's unveiling of his final plan of redemption through Jesus Christ and his second coming. I think that canon is an interesting term. It's like, what books of the Bible should be in the Bible?
Dena Davidson [00:10:37]:
Yes. Yeah. And this is actually a great conversation because different segments of the Christian faith, we have a different list. And so that's a whole different podcast. But I think the encouraging thing for me is that this is not a shrouded conversation. It's exactly what you said. It's not a group of people sitting in a room a long time ago, a couple thousand years ago, and being like, I like this one. I don't like that one.
Dena Davidson [00:11:02]:
That one, and the process is something that's inscrutable. No, you can actually go back and understand what were their criteria, and the most important by far is, has this been historically, in the short life of the church, been understood to be canon, to be the received word of God? How has this been used in the past? Because we're not all of a sudden going to one day decide this book gets to be in when for the past couple hundred years of the church it's not been used in that way?
Wesley Towne [00:11:32]:
And a great saying is the people of God did not determine the canon. They discovered it. Yeah, that's good, because each of the books of the Bible within its internal nature has the essence of divine inspiration. In other words, God is speaking, and you know, while there are some debate between like the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible with the Apocrypha, Most people don't realize it wasn't until the time of Martin Luther that the Apocrypha was accepted as canonical writings in the Catholic Church. So there's a whole history behind that as well. We don't have time for that, but this is a part of our faith as well.
Dena Davidson [00:12:14]:
Absolutely. And I think, let's keep going in this, but just like a last thought I want to throw in there is that this is a faith process as well. Like, we can study the human, but part of this is our faith, our confidence that God himself is a good communicator. And he is really good at communicating with his people, as we can see through the way that the Bible has been stewarded over time.
Wesley Towne [00:12:42]:
Totally. Agree. Agree.
Dena Davidson [00:12:44]:
Perfect. All right. So going on to verse 2, we'll start back at verse 1. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it, meaning faith, for by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. Any Wes commentary?
Wesley Towne [00:13:10]:
He just starts with Genesis. He's like, okay, verse 2, this is what angels were commended for. Now he starts to just list out aspects of faith, and it begins in the creation story, Genesis 1 and 2.
Dena Davidson [00:13:22]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:13:23]:
How, uh, God created something out of nothing.
Dena Davidson [00:13:29]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:13:29]:
The Hebrew term is bara, which when you look at all the, all the usages of that term, the majority of them are God creating something out of nothing. Creation ex nihilo is the phrase that is used as well. And so God creates the world. He speaks it into existence, and by faith we understand that to be true, even though we might not understand all the nuances of science and, you know, all the history of that. Like, we— now, some of us, you probably studied that a bunch. I studied that a bunch as well. But the average person just trusts that God is powerful enough to speak things into existence.
Dena Davidson [00:14:06]:
Yes. And I think, as someone who studies apologetics, Like this verse, if you do not understand what it means that God created the universe out of nothing, then you are going to be troubled by every miraculous occurrence in the Bible. And I'd say like, hey, walking on water is not a problem for you if you believe in creation. How did you say it?
Wesley Towne [00:14:32]:
Ex nihilo.
Dena Davidson [00:14:33]:
Ex nihilo. Creation ex nihilo. If you believe in that, walking on water, saving someone who's in the belly of a big fish for a while, feeding 5,000, resurrecting from the dead. All of these things are the lesser things. The great thing is having the power to speak from nothing into existence. And so I love that he starts the faith journey, rooting it in Genesis. Like, in the beginning, God. God before everything.
Dena Davidson [00:15:05]:
That is the first big idea that we have to wrap our minds around when wrestling with Christianity. And I love that it's here because it tells me, all right, the ancient people, the people reading this, the original audience, they were not so far removed from the scientists of our day. The scientists of our day have different data, but we really do actually have the same questions. What is the nature of reality? Is it all physical? Or is there something beyond the physical?
Wesley Towne [00:15:33]:
Yep.
Dena Davidson [00:15:34]:
All right, moving on to verse 4, getting into some good Bible characters. By faith, Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks. This story is crazy to me. Okay, so unpack for me the story of Cain and Abel and their sacrifices. Everyone knows that Cain killed Abel, but I think the story about their sacrifices that Hebrews is recounting a little less thought about, a little less—
Wesley Towne [00:16:07]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I would say he begins by talking about a worshiping faith. He gives an illustration. Genesis 1 and 2, God's creation. Genesis 3, the fall. Genesis 4, we get to see the spreading of sin through the human story, and you have this family, and they have two sons, Cain and Abel, and They both go out to worship God. One of the sacrifices accepted by God, offering sacrifices, one of them is not accepted by God. A lot of people say, well, what's up with that? Like, why would God do that? Here's some explanation.
Wesley Towne [00:16:44]:
In Genesis chapter 4, verse 3, it says Cain brought some of the fruits. There's no indication that his offering was the first or best of what he had. He just brought something to God. The idea behind this text is that there was an appearance of worship that was not genuine. He gave God something to give off this appearance of worship, this appearance of a facade of faith in God, but it wasn't true worship. And then in Genesis 5:4, it says, Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. His offering was the first and best of what he had. So if Cain was a picture of a facade of religiosity that was trying to say, I have a heart for devotion for God, but I really don't, I'm not really worshiping by faith, I don't really trust God, I'm just trying to cause people to perceive that, then Abel is a heart that is devoted and dependent on God and willing to give God his best in worship.
Wesley Towne [00:17:53]:
That's why there's a distinction between these two offerings. It wasn't that God was like, oh, you know, I really like that and I don't like that.
Dena Davidson [00:18:00]:
Yeah, I like fat from animals, not fruit.
Wesley Towne [00:18:03]:
It was that God saw behind the facade. God sees every intention of our heart. And then later on, 1 John 3:12 says, do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous.
Dena Davidson [00:18:23]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:18:24]:
His sacrifice was not out of a heart of worship. It was actually convoluted by sin and evil. But Cain, it was worship and righteousness.
Dena Davidson [00:18:35]:
You know what I think for me underlies my misreading of that story? Is I sometimes in my sinful heart and mind, I am not comfortable with God requiring something of me. I want God to receive my prayers, my worship, my devotion, my acts of service as a kindness to him. Like, lucky you, God, that you're getting all these things from me. Now, what do I get back from you? I see it as more like a human relationship. Like, I don't owe you anything, right? So anything I do for you, you should be grateful for. And that is from the very first— or not very first, but very early human story. God is teaching us that is not the relationship that you are in. God requires something of man, and when man does not give that to God, something happens in the human heart that is terribly off.
Dena Davidson [00:19:33]:
Death creeps in and it spreads, and sin leads to death, and you can't keep this sickness inside of your heart. It spoils every human relationship, and it spoils your relationship with the divine. But yeah, for me, I think it's like a reconciling. If you're going to enter into this faith journey with God of being in a relationship with him, you have to reckon with the fact that God does require something of you. And that's early in the story. And so by faith, are we willing to be in relationship with a God that requires something of us? And not just something, the first things, the best things, the best of our heart. Because the story is, if we're not willing to give that, we can never be in right relationship with him. We can never be in right relationship with ourself, and we can never be in right relationship with each other.
Dena Davidson [00:20:26]:
So it's a great reckoning. Okay, I think we have one more. We're not even, like, we're not even going to get to Noah. We're not even going to get to Abraham. This is just, hey, go read Hebrews 11 because it's so good, and you're going to keep being inspired. We're actually going to end with Enoch. "By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God." Who on earth is Enoch? Help us, Wes.
Wesley Towne [00:20:59]:
It's an amazing story. He's a man that walked with God. If verse 4 is a worshiping faith, verse 5 is a walking faith. This human being in the early stages of humanity just walked with God. And he was taken. That's wild, right? Like, he was taken away. He was transported. The word literally means to to convey from one place to another.
Wesley Towne [00:21:27]:
There are two examples of this happening in the Old Testament. One is Enoch, one is Elijah. And both of these instances, you have Enoch who walked with God and he was not. I believe that's what Genesis says. And then you have Elijah who is a prophet of God, one of the greatest prophets in Old Testament history. And he was taken to heaven. Both of these are pictures of resurrection. Uh, they're pointing to Jesus.
Wesley Towne [00:21:57]:
Like, these are not common. This was not normal, or normative, as we would say. These are unique stories that ultimately picture what would happen through Jesus Christ. Enoch just walked with God, faithfully walked with God, pleased God. And one day God took him straight to heaven without experiencing death. Yeah. That's amazing.
Dena Davidson [00:22:22]:
Yes.
Wesley Towne [00:22:22]:
That's a crazy story, right?
Dena Davidson [00:22:24]:
It's a crazy story.
Wesley Towne [00:22:25]:
But not as crazy now that we look back and we realize that when the book of Colossians says all of these things that happen in the Old Testament are a shadow of things to come, and ultimately the thing to come was Christ, the substance was Christ. So all of these stories, all of these festivals, all the things that we read about in the Old Testament, they're all pointing to Jesus. So Enoch, a picture of Jesus. Elijah, a picture of Jesus. Jesus would rise from the grave. He would rise from the dead in a miraculous way. And it— I think you mentioned a few minutes ago, miracles. God can do miracles.
Wesley Towne [00:23:11]:
Like God can take Enoch, who walked with him faithfully, into heaven without experiencing death. And that is incredible.
Dena Davidson [00:23:20]:
Incredible. Okay, I think I lied because you got me all fired up. So I need to fast forward to the end of this passage. It's so good.
Wesley Towne [00:23:30]:
Okay, verse 6.
Dena Davidson [00:23:31]:
Verse 6? No, I'm going like verse 37. You want to read verse 6?
Wesley Towne [00:23:34]:
Oh, verse 6 is so good.
Dena Davidson [00:23:36]:
Okay, verse 6. We'll do it.
Wesley Towne [00:23:37]:
Let's do both.
Dena Davidson [00:23:38]:
Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to fast forward and then we'll land on verse 6.
Wesley Towne [00:23:41]:
Okay.
Dena Davidson [00:23:41]:
Curt, I hope you're not listening. We're going very out of order. Okay. Verse 37, because I think, all right, I don't want to end on this note of like, and when you do everything perfectly and you walk with God, like you escape pain. I know that's not anything you're going to say. So it says this, "Women received back their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life." others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. He's literally like catching them up to the right now that they're in.
Dena Davidson [00:24:12]:
They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. So he's talking about the Old Testament saints, and he is saying, guess what? They lived such faith-filled lives, it did not always save them from the brokenness and suffering of their day, but they never received what was promised. But guess what? We're in the chapter where we get to receive it.
Wesley Towne [00:24:55]:
I just, It's amazing.
Dena Davidson [00:24:56]:
It's so powerful. Like, our faith keeps us connected to God, keeps us in the story of God. So we get to be living right here, like you, Wes, and me, like we're living in the better chapter, better than those Old Testament saints, better than Enoch, better than Noah, better than Abraham, better than everyone listed here, because we have what was promised, like the deposit of the Holy Spirit inside of us. Who's working his resurrection power now inside of us.
Wesley Towne [00:25:27]:
Yeah. Can I say something about that? Of course. I just love that you read those verses. It makes me think of this truth. Faith is easy when it's easy, and faith is hard when it's hard. But when it's hard, what rises to the surface of our life is the genuineness of our faith. And I think that's what you see in the Old Testament saints. When they were tested and tried and persecuted, imprisoned, flogged, all the things, even the New Testament saints, you see this genuine trust in God that is resilient in the face of death and pain and hardship and persecution.
Wesley Towne [00:26:10]:
And I just want to encourage people, you might be in that reality. Some of you, you're like, it's easy right now. Everything in my life is going well. Some of you right now might be thinking, oh, it's really hard. But let the genuineness of your trust in God become a resilient story of trusting God when it's hard.
Dena Davidson [00:26:31]:
Amen. I love that. So let's end with verse 6. I pray that word over you that Wesley just spoke, that you be greatly encouraged, because it says in verse 6, and without faith, it is impossible to please him, God. 'For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.' So exegete that for us, Wesley, and then tell us how we should apply that.
Wesley Towne [00:26:58]:
My thought of verse 6 is 3 things. He says, number 1, faith brings us into a relationship with God. That's the starting point. We enter into a reconciled, forgiven, redeemed, saved, whatever term you want to use, adopted into God's family, You're basically in a relationship with the living God, and that starts with faith. The second part of this is that faith believes that God exists, right? Like, this is a foundational belief in Christianity, that God exists. He is the one true God. This leads to a life of faith. And this is really good because in our Western culture today, there's a return to God.
Wesley Towne [00:27:43]:
Mm-hmm. Like, there's this major movement where people are looking at the last so many years of secularism and the pursuit of secularism and saying, what secularism promised us is not coming to pass in our soul.
Dena Davidson [00:27:59]:
Mm-hmm.
Wesley Towne [00:27:59]:
We're still empty. We're still lost. Mm-hmm. We're anxious. We're depressed. We don't know what the meaning of life is. And the meaning of life is we believe that God exists. We believe that he is the ultimate meaning of life, and he's the ultimate satisfier of our soul.
Wesley Towne [00:28:19]:
And then the third part of this, and he rewards those who earnestly seek him, is faith believes that God rewards those who earnestly seek him. A life of faith is pursuing God and his ways, and it will never go unnoticed or unrewarded.
Dena Davidson [00:28:33]:
Amen.
Wesley Towne [00:28:33]:
And I think that's so cool. Starts a relationship with God, believes God exists, and believes that God will notice a life of faith, and that will never go unrewarded. God's promises are certain. So whatever aspect of faith that you find yourself in, know that God sees you, and God sees every decision of faith when you wake up in the morning, and every decision of faith when you're tried and tempted, and every decision of faith when you go to bed at night, whatever state you are in your soul, in your life, in your relationships, in your mental health, or whatever, you know, context you're facing, like, God sees every moment of faith, and none of that is unnoticed by him, and none of that will be unrewarded.
Dena Davidson [00:29:23]:
Amen. I think my simple application thought is to spend some time saying, "God, what are you noticing?" That's good. It's okay to ask for encouragement from God, especially if you're in a hard season, like we just talked about. But even in the good seasons, just to say, "God, what are you noticing? Are you noticing something that I am doing well?" I like to hear it. I want encouragement from you. Obviously correct me if there's something that I need to change, but "Also, I wanna hear the things that you would commend me for, as you so clearly in your word, you saw people on earth and you saw things to commend them for, and you wrote them down in your holy word. Like, what am I doing right now? How am I living in such a way that you would commend me?" And just, it's one thing to hear it from a friend. It's one thing to, you know, notice it in yourself, but to hear that divine encouragement from the God of the universe to say, "I commend this faith in you," that's a whole next level of encouragement.
Dena Davidson [00:30:32]:
So—
Wesley Towne [00:30:33]:
Amazing.
Dena Davidson [00:30:33]:
That's my application.
Wesley Towne [00:30:35]:
Yes, yes, yes.
Dena Davidson [00:30:36]:
Any final thoughts?
Wesley Towne [00:30:37]:
That's all my thoughts.
Dena Davidson [00:30:38]:
Okay, all my thoughts. They were very good thoughts.
Wesley Towne [00:30:40]:
Thank you.
Dena Davidson [00:30:41]:
I am jealous of Davis that got 4 whole more weeks of your great insight into Hebrews.
Wesley Towne [00:30:47]:
Thank you.
Dena Davidson [00:30:48]:
So we're having an incredible time in the next series.
Wesley Towne [00:30:51]:
Yes.
Dena Davidson [00:30:52]:
Next week, next week, see what I did there? We would love for you to join us as we talk about "Not Without Prayer." So prayer is a word that sometimes just makes people feel guilty, right? Like, I'm doing it wrong, I'm not doing it enough. But essentially, we know that there are things that God has called us to do that we absolutely do not have the power or the ability to do without his strength and his help. And so How do we go to the God of the universe and talk with him and access his power, his insight, and his presence in our lives? That is what next week will be about. We will be on with Curt and one of our favorites, Kevin Thompson. So definitely—
Wesley Towne [00:31:32]:
KT, as we call him.
Dena Davidson [00:31:34]:
Maybe as we call him. KT. All right, I'll try that. Love you so much. Like this episode, share it, subscribe to it, and we will see you on the next episode of the Bible Study.