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Navigating the Journey
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This is a KUNV Studios original program.
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The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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And welcome to the Black Ball Triple Seven Productions podcast, Faith, Knowledge, and College Edition. I'm your host, the Black Ball himself, Jibri Foster, and I'm here with my special guest, Dylan Rice, leader of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and member of Central Christian Church, Henderson. How are you doing today, Dylan?
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Doing very well, Jabri. Thank you for having me on.
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No problem. And Dylan Rice here is also the creator of a group here at UNLV called InterVarsity Expression. My assistant, Case, here, he's going to read a couple of questions. So tell us about InterVarsity Expression.
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Yeah. So this started like maybe like last year. I was going through a program at Central Church called Celebrate Recovery, dealing with all hurts, hangups, and habits. I was in there for my struggles with anxiety and lust, and it really just changed me and the way I respond to things.
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During one of my times in a varsity, I would say I was definitely in a really tough spot. I was going through a lot of insecurity problems. I was so insecure about myself that I was lashing out on others and just taking it out on others or just going at people like punching bags instead of turning a cry splint times like that got rough. And then it got to the point I'm like, yeah, nope, I would never get called out on this. But then I was
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in a meeting with our area director, Kevin Cotton, at one point, and then he like brought to the surface like issues I've been going through and he was mentioning things that he saw me doing that I knew I was going through or comments I was making about others and I'm like my my first instinct was to like straight up get defensive about it and being straight up denial about it I'm like nope nope not me not me not at all no and then I realized okay you know what I got nothing to lose, screw it.
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I'm just gonna go ahead and admit it. I'm just gonna admit what I'm going through. So I did, I told him, yeah, I'm going through insecurity problems. I don't know how to deal with it the adult way. I just, you know, I was like, telling him all my issues
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and then we talked about it. And then, because of that, he told me that I should probably also start making amends with people and just making things right with people, especially because this is a community that's like really like changed me for the good. Like it got me closer to God. That's,
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this is all stuff that was leading up to celebrate recovery. And then during my time in celebrate recovery, there were times I'm not kidding when I was going through it. I mean, it's such a life changing experience, but it's so difficult trying to commit to recovery that there were times, I'm not kidding. I was super close to just throwing in the towel
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and calling quits. And I realized, you know what? You can't move forward with recovery unless you are gonna be vulnerable about it, unless you're gonna be out truthful and honest about yourself.
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So I realized, you know what, I'm gonna have to do that. I'm gonna have to get out of my comfort zone on stuff and be like someone that I'm usually not. Like it just, it changed me for the good. And then I graduated my 12 steps from Celebrate Recovery and realized, okay, you know what, I can't be the only
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college student, especially in inner varsity, that goes through issues like this. And I would say there are many others that probably go through these struggles as well. So I'm like, you know what, why not just create a group that's similar to that, because you know, that's kind of where Inovarski Expression is. I got my inspiration from Celebrate Recovery. So I told our area director, Kevin Cotton,
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I'm like, hey, I think we could use a group that is designated around college students who are going through the issues and struggles of a fallen, broken world. And especially at the time that I had introduced this, this had happened right after the shooting on campus had happened.
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So people were really going through like the hardships and like being so scared to like be vulnerable and just, you know, be their authentic selves. So I'm like, I think we need to create a group. So we created that group and we started like around, I introduced this to him in January
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and then around March is when we officially launched it. And we got, it was two leaders, or three leaders, I'm sorry, at the time, it was me, Vanessa, and Marcus. And we just set it up, and because this is a group where we're being vulnerable and we're being out about stuff that we usually are not comfortable
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being out about, especially in front of people, definitely had to set guidelines in place to make sure that we all feel safe in that environment. And with inter-birth expression, I've had people come up to me and tell me that they really enjoyed it, that they found it so beneficial, that they could really be themselves and just their authentic selves and just really embrace that love in them.
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So I notice, as someone who has attended, celebrate recovery at least once and given my limitations I unfortunately couldn't go. But I got to say, you've done a really good job leading Celebrate Recovery so far and not Celebrate Recovery, excuse me, InterVarsity Expression so far. I would definitely say it can be hard to encourage people to attend sometimes. But yeah, are there specific prayers that you guys do during the InterVarsity Expression Meeting?
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We have, there's a prayer out there, it's called the Serenity Prayer, and it's basically a prayer that I've come to use so much in my prayer life. It's one of my go-to prayers if I'm going through a hardship. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time,
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accepting hardships as a pathway to peace, taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
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and supremely happy with you forever and the next, amen. And every week we recite that. In fact, that's actually something that we were having to recite when I was at Celebrate Recovery. Like, at the end of every meeting, we would have to stand and recite the Serenity Prayer.
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And that prayer just, from there on, really just touched me. I'm like, where has this prayer been all my life? You know, I'd never heard of this prayer before, because, you know, growing up, we're all introduced to the Lord's Prayer, and that's the one that usually gets used.
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But Serenity Prayer, it's like, doesn't, I feel like it's really underrated. I feel like it doesn't get appreciated as much as it should. I think something like the serenity prayer, it really should be one of those prayers because we're all going through,
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especially as Christians, we're going through hardships. We're going through those battles. Something like the serenity prayer, it really helps me. Since I use that prayer all the time, I'm someone that could definitely walk you through, like, line by line, word by word, what each of that stuff
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means to me, you know, like, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I've always had a difficult time trying to accept things that I can't change and trying to let go of things that are out of my control, like, there were times, you know, during my childhood as well, like, or even now in my adult life like I'm trying to like control things that are out of my control But then and saying that prayer I'm realizing I got to accept the things I can't change and then Encourage the change of things I can I just am someone there were times where I just I didn't want to change the things that I
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Could I instead was wanting to change the things I couldn't change Instead of changing what was in my control and then you know the wisdom to know the difference like just trying to balance and separate the difference between the things I can't change and the things I cannot change and then um, living one day at a time enjoying one moment at a time I'm someone that you know I do struggle with like
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dwelling on my past a lot to the point where things in my past will like come back and haunt me and it'll give me like all these thoughts and just cause my brain to just go nuts and just turn into scrambled eggs, basically. And then if I'm not dwelling on my past, I'm thinking way too much about my future or what the future holds to the point I can't even enjoy the present. So it's like, you know, living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.
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I feel like, you know, I've got to live in the present. Don't think about the past. Don't think about the future. Think about the present, the present. It's basically like, you know, enjoy what you can right now, because you've really got to appreciate the moments right now, because you might miss it one day when it's gone.
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Yeah, it makes me think of the verse in that one verse in the Bible. I don't know exactly, I don't remember exactly where it is, but it says, Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own. And, and before coming to record this episode. I was, I wanted to encourage our listeners here to, to write the, to write this down, to record it on their phone. Like if you're, if you're listening to this and you're struggling, I'm sure there's a lot of people struggling today. You see it everywhere. I know you may not be, you may not believe in what we're talking about, but trust me, it'll make it, it'll make a difference. And Dylan over here is my witness. is my witness. So what I'm going to have Dylan do is recite this to the prayer again but a little slower like so get your phone, get a piece of pen and paper or use your phone to record this if you're driving.
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You can find this podcast. I'm sure you'll be able to find this podcast somewhere. So if you're a student at UNLV this will be posted at KUNV as well. You'll be able to find it there. So you can repeat after Dylan if you want. You can record it. You can write it down, voice record it, or come back to KU1V later to check this out.
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So Dylan, could you repeat that prayer, but a little bit slower? Absolutely. So, like Jabri said, if you want to repeat after me, I'll just pause in between sentences just so you can like repeat that and I can give you time to say it. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,
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and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace, taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever and the next. Amen.
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Amen.
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All righty, moving on to our next question. So what kind of topics are usually discussed
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in InterVarsity Express? Usually a lot of the topics that get discussed is usually stuff that's currently going on in our lives or sometimes like I've had a few people that shared about their childhood or some of the rough things they had growing up in their childhood. I really shouldn't, I'm not going to go too specific about it. No, no, we're not going to go into details about someone's personal things.
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Yeah, no, definitely not, because I want to respect their privacy and respect, in case they don't want that out there.
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Should have been a little bit more specific. But like, do you know anything that any, any types of topics that without necessarily going into any of those details?
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Basically, a lot of people in there tend to talk about like, what they're currently dealing with at the moment, or what they're currently dealing with in their life. Like within the usually is what gets shared. It's usually like, we don't have any like specific things we go to. It's more like a space that's like, you know, if you want to vent about something or you just want to get something off your shoulders or you just want to let something out that you've been holding in for a really long time,
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you know, we have people that will come into that space for that very reason. So do you believe the expression, the diversity expression has helped people who attended in the past? Absolutely. I think people who've attended IV expression in the past have felt like it's been beneficial for them, especially because, you know, given the fact that we are in community and we are together, you know, all of us as Christians, you know, we're not perfect. We're broken, living in this broken world. You know, even all of us in this room today,
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we're all broken. We're all going through something in our lives and none of us are perfect. Like, if you take a look at what's going on in this world right now, like all the issues going on right now, nobody's perfect, even when they pretend to be or act like they're perfect. Nobody's perfect. The only person that is perfect is Jesus Christ himself. You know, it says like in John 3 30, you know, he must be greater and I must become less Which is completely opposite of what the world says the world says you and I have to be greater But none of us are the Savior of the world
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Jesus is the one who's the Savior of the world God sent him down here to live a really perfect life he gave up that perfect life to basically die on the cross for our sins so that we can be forgiven and live freely. And I just, you know, anytime, like, even if I catch myself thinking I'm greater, I gotta remind myself, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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I'm just saying because I notice a lot of people, especially unbelievers, I notice a lot of them tend to think that we seem to come off as better than them because we have Christ, because we go to church all the time, because we pray, read the Bible all the time. That type of mindset is not correct,
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not biblically correct at all. And I can speak, I'm speaking for myself because I've experienced church hurt. And we at Inner Varsity, we definitely acknowledge that. And especially those at Central, we take that extremely serious. And I know I've come across some street preachers who have done nothing but condemn people,
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thinking that they're better. But while other other street preachers I've come across are very encouraging, they're very, they're very welcoming. But I remember talking to students in the past, feeling like, oh, I can't be saved. I can't be saved. But yes, you can be saved.
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Anybody can be saved. All they have to do is accept Christ as Lord and Savior. He died on the cross for our past, present, and future sins. We're gonna mess up. We're gonna... We're going to mess up. We're going to feel like, you know, oh, I've done this or that. But then again, we can't do anything on our own, on our own power.
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That's where the Holy Spirit comes in. So when they talk about one saved, always saved, that means, oh, I can go party and get lit and all of that. But that's not Holy Spirit led. And I'm kind of I'm kind of going off on a rabbit hole. Like, and in regards to Ivy expression, yes, we're still going to have our struggles. We will have trials and tribulations.
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The Bible even says that we'll have trials and tribulations. They're, I'm talking about small t tribulation. I'm not talking about the seven-year tribulation that's soon coming up. Those who are in Christ won't go through that, but I won't go into any details about that. But what do you guys usually do after the expression meetings, the IV express meetings? But uh
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What do you guys usually do after the expression meetings the IV express meetings um So I remember last year a school year I decide you know what to keep the community together and uh you know like a way to like you know For ourselves and whatever I decided you know what we're all gonna go out and eat somewhere So that you know we can all hang out as a community and get food together
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Maybe even talk about our day or maybe something's going on in our life. You know, just like a way that we can all stay connected, have a fun time, especially after some of the deep stuff we were just revealing, like within like a very like, in a very space that's like held in like full like confidentiality and anonymity, you know, now it's like, okay, I've shared my stuff with these people. It's like, I'm out about the deep stuff with them. It's like, okay, I think I can trust them now. So now we're all going to go hang out. We're going to trust one another. We're going to be there for one another. And
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we're really just going to have each other's backs. Yeah, that's definitely a good, that's definitely a great thing, because I,
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I can definitely attest to that. I remember we went to Angry Chicks a couple of times. I think once or twice. We went to, where else did we go? We went to, I remember another time we went to a Aloha Kitchen. Both were, yeah. Yeah, definitely if you're someone going through something, you want to join University Express.
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If you're a college student here in the Vegas area, we have students from Nevada State University and CSN as well. We would encourage you to come. I'll get more to that, to where they can find you towards the end of this episode. But yeah, it seems like a great place to be, having great conversations. I'll never forget a couple of moments of laughter here and there, especially at Angry Chicks, Aloha Kitchen. Like, we may not talk about our struggles. And another thing I forgot to mention,
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Dylan, we do keep everything to ourselves. We don't allow anyone to go talking to others about the topics, right?
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That's right.
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We don't, in fact, I even have guidelines that,
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these are some of the guidelines that I've like kept in place to like you know make sure that we're not gonna do that. Oh do you you have them on you? I do. If you can read them that way people will
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know those who may want to join that way they know what to expect. We are now
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entering the biggest part of our meeting space. This is the open sharing or expression portion of our meeting. In sharing we speak honestly out of our own experiences. We tell the truth about ourselves, knowing that our friends will listen to us in love and will hold whatever we say in strictest confidence. We try to keep our comments brief, taking care to leave time, plenty of time, for others. We'll use a 5 minute timer for each person, so I'll even give like a three or two or one minute warning
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like just by knocking on a chair, telling them, hey, you need to wrap it up, consider wrapping it up, you have this much time left. And then we address our statements to the group as a whole and avoid directing them towards any one person. We make straightforward personal statements saying I do or I think, for example, rather than talking vaguely about you or we. This is the most important one right here
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that I make super clear to everyone is that we are not licensed counselors, psychologists or therapists, nor are the group members. Our group is not designed to replace those needed professionals. It is up to the participants to include outside counseling
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to the program when they're ready. As a rule, we refrain from side conversations, giving advice to others, or instructing them during the meeting, believing that such conversations are best reserved for private moments between friends. And then everything that is shared in the session stays inconfidential. This means no sharing info with our spouses, someone we are dating, family members, co-workers,
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or friends. The only exception is when someone threatens to harm themselves or harm others. Any events of someone threatening to harm themselves or others, the group leaders have the responsibility to report this to the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff and immediately. At the end of our time, we ask that you silence your phones and put it out of sight so we can honor each other's shares with the presence and attention of our faces. So basically with this rule, actually make everyone like put their phones like in their pockets away,
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like out of sight, anywhere that we can't see them. Just to show that it's basically like to show respect for each and every person in the room. And then usually the leader in sharing will go first and then opens the floor. So it's like we'll say our name and what we want to share. And usually when the person says their name,
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so if I would say, hi, I'm Dylan, everyone would say, hi, Dylan. Hi, Dylan. Exactly like that. Just to show that I got everyone's full attention or whoever's sharing has everyone's undivided attention
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and then when the person's done sharing all of us at the same time will out loud say thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing. So how would you encourage someone to attend InterVarsity Express?
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How would I encourage someone to attend InterVarsity Express? I would say, you know, if you're going through something you feel like maybe right now you don't have a space that you can't be out about yourself or whatever it may be. I mean, yes, we are a Christian group, but we also have people in our group who might not be believers, or maybe they're from other faith backgrounds. We're always open to that, even within a Christian space, we are open to that as well. If you're someone you want a space to share because we do have our Bible studies, but however in our Bible studies we're usually limited on time because we're so focused on the
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Bible that we don't have time for that community connection and really deep down connect with one another. So it's like why not have a space that is catered towards us being open about our authentic selves and just, how about the way that we go about our lives. So if you're someone, whether you're a believer or not a believer or maybe you're just looking for
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a way to be in community, intervarsity expression is something I recommend. Thank you. Is there anything else you would like to add? We meet on Tuesday nights at 7 30 in the UNLV Student Union. Check out the contact info on the social media pages. My phone number is on there.
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My Instagram is on there. If you have any questions about it, you know, feel free to reach out. Sounds good and yes we do we do welcome people of all beliefs and backgrounds to the University. I was a former leader of InterVarsity. I'm technically still a part of their community engagement team, though I haven't really had time because I'm a busy man. This is my last semester. But yes, we do welcome. I have seen plenty of non-believers there. They definitely feel welcomed and they feel happy. They're definitely happy to be a part of our groups. You can find InterVarsity. You can find them on Instagram they have a UNLV, University at UNLV, University at Nevada State.
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As far as I know they don't have a page for CSN but you could even blackball.777 productions on Instagram. You can reach out to me, I can get you connected with Dylan and other leaders if you're interested in getting to know what we're all about. I was going to say this at the beginning of the show but since we have a couple of minutes left. Yes, we at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, we believe that Jesus died, we teach that Jesus died on a cross for our past, present, and future
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sins, that he was buried, rose again on the third day, according to the scriptures. Like I said before, Ephesians 2.8.9, I didn't really quote the scripture, but, for we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, that is, it is the gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast. Which means, works don't get you saved and it's not a competition so we can't boost and James 2 10 says we're all sinners meaning that if you commit one you've committed them all but James 2 says James 2 10 says for whoso keepeth
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the whole law and yet offended in one point he is guilty of all so you may be asking yourself if that's the case how the heck do I get saved it's simple you saved. Simple. You believe that Jesus Christ died on a cross, the cross for your past, present, and future sins was buried, rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures. Say something like this, Dear God I admit I'm a sinner I'm sorry for all of my sins, I repent of my sins, please forgive me for all my
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sins, I believe that Jesus Christ died on a cross for my past, present, and future sins and I accept him as my Lord and Savior. And Romans chapter 8 verse 1 says, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Simply put, once saved, always saved. The Holy Spirit will indwell in you. He will guide you. And like I said before, we're gonna mess up, we will mess up from time to time, we're not perfect. And we can definitely
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I'm sure Dylan can agree that we've we all struggle with trying to Trying to stay connected with Christ right Dylan
0:26:32
Oh, I can confirm that without a doubt like I I would be lying if I said that my walk with Christ is the easiest thing in my life It's not and especially like in today's world or just like maybe even like being on campus It's hard to state. It's hard to stay true to my Christian self and it's hard to like Really like stay true to my morals especially in this fallen broken world or maybe even like being around people who are not believers like or
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maybe even ones that are like bashing Christianity, it's hard for me to really just like like a lot of times it takes everything in me not to just like lose it and just be like getting into a battle with them. And then I am also someone that struggles a lot with like spiritual warfare to the point it's like, what is going on? Like something doesn't feel right, you know, but that really is just me like experiencing my spiritual attacks.
0:27:29
Yeah. Especially with social media. Oh my gosh. Tell me about it. Like I am the worst with like social media. Like there are times where I even try to like stay off there, especially right now this season we're in right now with like you know the election going on, people in the media just like going at it with each other. It's like whatever happened to all of us just like loving one another. Facts and I can definitely agree with you.
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Well um thank you for thank you for joining us on the Blackball Triple Seven
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the black ball triple seven productions podcast faith knowledge and college the black ball triple seven productions podcast faith knowledge and college edition until next time god bless and enjoy your day
Transcribed with Cockatoo