Transition/transition5l

I'm hoping to do today some of you were here yesterday some of you we picked you up new today I realize that but mostly what we want to do today is unpack what we talked about yesterday So I've I did a lot of yacking yesterday more than I like to do But we wanted to get to a certain point yesterday that would give us today in the six hours or so that we have together To kind of unpack what it is to live as we started we start at the first of the day saying the whole life of the new Covenant is that we would live the love and And that then we would love the new commandment I give you love one another as I've loved you So can't love each other until we know what it is to be loved by the father and that's got to be in real Practical terms that's not just theological constructs to me It's not just a matter. We have a theology about God's love, but in fact I know The father's disposition for me as I wake in the morning as I go through my day I am aware of father's love of father's presence of his life in me And I'm learning to live as we say yesterday that mutual Interpenetration the father's in the son the son is in the father and we are in them in the language of John 14 The Jews invites us to experience that kind of life So we're not just with God when I just near God We're to live in him and that's that's what the cross was meant to purchase So we talked about the cross last night this afternoon was to help us see the cross not as appeasement for an angry God or as punishment so that God's need to punish is expelled But in fact the cure God and the son father and son Arranging in themselves to take our sin into themselves and to condemn sin and the likeness of sinful flesh in the language of Romans 8 Made him who knew no sin to become sin for us in the words of 2nd Corinthians 5 So that in Christ the wrath of God as the cure for sin not God's Anger and punishment and that vindictiveness, but God's wrath as God's love that consumes But destroys the object of his affection. So that's kind of where we wandered yesterday. You missed it Then that's all you need. It was two minutes. So there you go What I'm hoping to do today is unpack that we kind of set up this construct yesterday Which we're gonna talk a little bit from I'm gonna review a little bit more on the cross some things I didn't say yesterday that I Want to say this morning and then I said to you we begin very early Which is you got some questions that you on our insights that you had yesterday as we talked about the cross Then we'll turn to that pretty quickly. We had this construct Which I think really represents a lot of the language of the New Testament and we'll see it even more so today We did it from the prodigal son is where we began this that there's the younger son is living a life of rebellion And he's he goes off into sin and Indulgence and ends up in slavery and then finally comes back to his father's house the older brother is out Living in the fields and slaving for his dad But what we said is neither one of them knew what it was to have the relationship with the father that the father wanted with Both of them they both missed out and basically said there's two ways to hide from God One is to hide from him in rebellion and sin and all that and the others to hide from him in religion Religious constructs of performance and trying to earn God's approval and and I don't mean religion just being an Institutional environment. I don't mean that at all. I mean the whole mentality I know lots of people who have left institutions who still live religiously Who still live with this performance and guilt and trying to figure out and earn God and trying to get God on their agenda and Using the Bible as a tool to manipulate God, which I always think is hysterical It totally misses the point to be quoting scriptures to God saying well, you must do this because your word says does and And mostly when I was doing that anyway, I won't speak for you I'll speak for you mostly when I was doing that I was trying to get God to fulfill my agenda for my life and I don't even mean my sinful agenda necessarily but my Godly agenda the things I wanted to be for God and do for God and Neither one it just it is a fruitless endeavor to try to think and live Religiously in God So we're talking about how to live relationally and the real part of that happening if we still have pins here So I pins here I think the bridge this week this line. I drew yesterday. We didn't talk much about it But I said this is the law of sin and death And both religion and rebellion work in the in the land of sin and death It's in it's in that construct of the soul that sin shall die in a tainted world and both of these have to do with performance This is performing well obviously and this is performing not so well in the religious construct But it still has in mind that sense of performance and I'm valuing on performance and my approval comes from performance And this is I don't care. I'm going to do what I want anyway And this is I'm going to work really hard to try and earn God's approval Okay And neither one of them rise to the kind of life that we want to talk about here how to live in this relationship Which as we said yesterday the access point to that is the cross itself This is what Jesus said I'll go to prepare a place for you and the going is the preparing I'm opening a door through dealing with and here's here's the main things the cross needed to deal with that We talked about yesterday just for review and we didn't we didn't Numerate these quite this way, but one it had to eradicate shame If we're going to be comfortable as fallen beings In the presence of the holy god then what the cross had to do Was eradicate our shame had to deal with our shame so that in the words of romans 8 There is there and how much condemnation to those who are in christians how much See none I know about you, but when I lived in religion the number one Struggle I had with other believers who would come to me saying we just pray for him and there's so much condemnation I'm under so much guilt Would you pray for me and I'm thinking why are we praying about this If romans 8 is true and not just theologically true, but pragmatically true Then it would come it was standard reason as I'm learning to live my life and Jesus there would be how much condemnation in my life None It's not something I deal with it's nothing I overcome It's not something I fight against it means none it means I wake up today Without this consciousness of shame and sin and feeling unworthy and boy god I'm going to have to do something to make you like me today. I'm not going to have that But religion as we said yesterday religion is a shame management system. It doesn't cure shame It doesn't want to cure your shame. It wants to exploit your shame to make you work hard So the group extends its approval to you if you conform to the group It's addressing your shame. And if you don't conform to the group Then it marginalizes you doesn't it Gossip is a great way to do that and talking about those people don't come here anymore And we're not sure where they are and they're not allowed And the group extends great approval when you conform to the group And it gives you great disapproval when you cease to conform to the group and all that's doing is manipulating our sense of shame What amazes me about the gospel stories Is even before the cross as you watch jesus relate to a woman caught in adultery A woman at a well that's been married five times now living with a man that isn't her husband Zacchaeus the biggest crook in the jericho village On and on the people that jesus engages. Do you ever see jesus? Exacerbating someone's sense of shame It's even before the cross You don't You see jesus pulling shame off of people I think one of the biggest identifiers that you need to know of whether you've got brothers and sisters in this kingdom Is if there are brothers and sisters near you who are intensifying your sense of shame You can take a step back from that and say, you know what? They might be brothers and sisters and just you know slow and ignorant and lost in religion themselves So i'm i still get to love them But the same time i don't have to respond to that attempt to manipulate my sense of shame. Does that make sense? And when you find brothers and sisters who are interested in getting shame off of you say hey, what do you mean? God's bigger than this in you. God can take care of this. I think you get too much responsibility and stuff when you hear people lifting shame off of you Then you know, oh my gosh, these are brothers and sisters i can walk with Because there is therefore now no condemnation the cross eradicate shame shame is not god's tool to change people In religion shame is god's tool That's how religion looks at it So we don't mind using shame at all and even that old I don't think we do it much as parents now because the the world seemed to get this quicker than christians did unfortunately But that growing up shame shame on you you shame you bad you bad That's supposed to make kids be better and boys some of us as parents Because i was raising my kids in religion for most of their journey I did raise them in a lot of shame based stuff And i've gone back to them since and owned that and talked to them through it and And my kids were in their mid-teens about the time sarah and i started waking up to some of these realities So we got to go back and talk our kids through some of that, but we did use shame to manipulate We did use my affection with them based somewhat on my approval of them And uh, there's a big disconnect there. So we'll talk more about that today Now secondly the cross had to break the power of sin So that in fact i could live if if the cross just forgives sin And i'm still it's victim and i'm still captive to it. Well, what good is that? That's paul's whole language about this freedom from sin and no longer having to Strive to be free from sin and then everybody writes him or questions him saying oh So now we just continue in sin that grace may abound and paul's answer is always so Talking about why would you want to be forgiven from something you can't be set free from you can't know christ You can't live in him and not be transformed into his image. This is not about god's okay with sin He doesn't care sin all you want. He's a great forgiving god. No big deal It's the only way to be changed is to live in that love and to live without shame And as you learn to live without shame and learn to live in father's affection Then we'll talk about that more today too sin gets displaced So it's invite us to a new freedom of life in him and the final thing the cross had to do Was reassert with the garden destroyed? Which is reassert our freedom to trust god his father And the cross does that too which we haven't talked quite about how it does that yet, but we'll get to that And one of the things we said we'd cover yesterday son china. I think you raised it and we didn't get to it Um Was about this statement from the cross my god my god. Why have you forsaken me? Because that's the language we use to say, okay One that's the language we used to think that god and jesus are separated on the cross That's one of the things it does is that somehow god is not present in christ in the cross So that god's a bystander and as we've heard it explain At that point of jesus being sin for us or becoming guilty of our sins Because god can't bear to look on sin religious rule number 312 God then at that moment of the son's worst tragedy And worst pain and worst need and the father has to abandon him Sorry son can't handle this can't bear to look on this So you're on your own and walks away and that's what we get from that portion of scripture unfortunately I think there's something else going on there that scripture makes clear in a number of ways that that's not what's happening One the language my god my god. Why have you forsaken me? Where does that come from? Remember? The psalm psalm 22 specifically Read psalm 22 sometimes it is the most schizophrenic psalm in the book It's david beginning with my god my god. Why have you forsaken me? I've cried out to you and you're my enemies are Oh, I'm paraphrasing. I didn't memorize it Uh, my enemies are welling me. I'm all lost. You're not coming to help me and I'm all lost abandoned forsaken I'll never survive this There's four or five verses of that then there's four or five verses of But I know that's not true I know you never forsake the one you love. I know you always come through in the end You always redeem you always give life as many there's four or five more verses But not this time This is the worst and I I've wet my bed with my tears crying out to you and you've ignored me You're not coming this time and I'm left all alone and there's one more bright verses of oh, yeah Well, I know that isn't true either and so you've got this incredibly schizophrenic moment Which does not this describe moments in your life When you feel absolutely abandoned by God who said I will never leave you or forsake you But you're in the middle of stuff and you're crying out for stuff and God's not doing the stuff You think God should be doing and your prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling and top of you And you're not getting anywhere and you feel have you not ever been there? I've been there And yet we know God never leaves. God never forsakes God always redeemed. He doesn't do it the way we want him to do it I think when Ephesians 3 20 said God does in us exceedingly and abundantly beyond anything we can ask or imagine Which is one of those promises that people stick on the refrigerator and say yeah that great one You know that boy if I'm praying for a two bedroom house God will give me a four bedroom house and if I'm praying for a Toyota God might give me a lexicon that we've taken that verse And just absolutely destroyed what means Because what it means is when you're praying for something And you think you've got the best motives in the world And you think this is just a very godly thing and God's not doing what you think he should be doing That's when Ephesians 3 20 says to you he's doing something exceedingly and abundantly beyond anything you can imagine And usually what we can't imagine is our own pain and hurt And our own struggle and difficulty. That's what we can't imagine We can imagine sitting under the palm trees, you know eating grapes and being fanned in the coolness of the hot afternoon Yeah, we could do we could imagine that What we can't imagine is that God's going to let us go through very very dark periods as he Works out the sin and brokenness in us As he takes us to the end of our rope. So we'll stop trusting in ourselves and learn how to trust in him He will do that and we can't imagine that Jesus. I believe on the cross because What he despised most about the cross remember was shame That if the cross was real if he became sin for us and he entered into the shame of our sin Then it would be true that Jesus being on the cross could no longer see the father who was right there with him I think the language of my god my god why have you forsaken me is exactly what is in psalms It is the perception of the sun Not the reality of the father. Does that make sense? So the sun feels abandoned absolutely feels forsaken He was tempted in all ways like we are yet without sin. He knew what it was to feel get this For eternity the sun has never known fatherlessness ever How did jesus decide what to do when he woke up on a saturday morning? You remember how do you do it? You pull his little uh junior messiah Palm pilot and take a look No, what did he do? I only do what I see the father do Only say what I hear the father saying jesus lived every day of his life with his eyes and his heart on father I'm just living with father He he's been like that for all he's been in the father and the father in the sun to all eternity Now they're still in each other. I god was in christ reconciling the world to himself We ready yesterday god didn't go anywhere guys. I got a little seat in heaven saying uh boy I'm gonna watch this is really bad. Sorry son. You draw the short stick or whatever. That's not going on God's in christ But when jesus enters into the fullness of our sin and shame he can no longer see the father who's right there He feels abandoned and he cries out my god my god. Why have you forsaken me? That's what he feels That's the reality of what he's going to learn to trust in the midst of And he does trust The next words from the cross are Father Into your hands. I commend my spirit to the god. He can't see To the father. He still knows And in the in the midst of that utter I hear you've got a great contrast. You've got adam and eve In the most pristine of environments The greatest innocence imaginable All the trees everything god's provided eat eat freely enjoy yourself Just not this one the day you eat this one. You'll surely die in that environment adam and eve couldn't trust the god who had made them We'll talk about that more a little bit in the end You've got jesus in the most despicable of circumstances He's on a cross. He's become sin itself for us. He's drinking the wrath of god that as we talked about yesterday The chemotherapy chemotherapy that antidote to sin is being consumed in him in that hole. We lose the sight of who father is And in that moment this jesus trusts Father Into your hands. I commend my spirit And he becomes when glacial is 220 talks about the faith of christ jesus and it's a passage we'll get to Later today as well I think as we do some unpacking as we get to that point We're going to see in glacial is 220 that the faith of christ jesus is that absolute confidence in father Even when it makes no sense at all when I can't see him can't feel him can't touch him when I just Stand before him a serenade. This is a prayer serenade. I have prayed a lot on this journey Because this journey is I mean I think it's the best journey in the world. I wouldn't trade it for anything I wouldn't go back to my life before for anything in the world. I love being on this journey But there are dark days on this journey When god reaches down into the core of my soul and he wants to rip out of me That which seeks wane's approval in whatever environment i'm in That's not just a pleasant afternoon. I think i'll take this out for you wane That's days and weeks and months Of having your reputation shredded by people you love And not seeing god fix it not seeing god change it and something in you is dying every day And it is that death to wane's need for significance And wane's need to approve for approval that god's getting his finger on that took two years for a big chunk of that to die I'm not dumb enough to think it's all gone yet. I just not that bright But a big chunk of that was two years in those two years people were telling others in the town I'd lived in for 20 years and been a pastor that I'd had an affair and cheated on my wife It was not true And before I knew that that was the rumor they were going to use to discredit me God asked me if I would trust my reputation to him Sounded like a great deal at the time. I thought god really loved my reputation as much as I did I you know, I missed that little part about jesus being of no reputation I missed a lot of that stuff in the old testament about isaac saying how long, oh lord Should I shared these things and god says to isaac until everyone in israel rejects you now. There's a calling Put that in bible school. When am I done? You're done when everybody hates you. That's when you're done See, I missed all that stuff and god said wane would you trust your reputation? I mean, of course I would god and then the rumors start Wane's had an affair when cheated on sarah. That's why we're doing the things we're doing to wane And I'm going oh crud so four times in two years I'm writing a letter to the mailing list in my computer to clarify The lies that are going on about me and I had a great brother who I'd read them to And he would say oh man, that's a great letter, isn't it? He says it is he's not going to mail it, are you? Of course, I'm going to mail it. Doga is time for truth. Truth is what needs to reign here And he would say you know what you told me a few months ago You were going to trust your reputation to god. This doesn't sound to me like you do That I'm going to know I've done that for a couple of months Obviously God's inactivity demonstrates that he wants me to take care of it now And he goes I don't think so he has a little grin on it. I don't think so But if that's what you got to do that's what you got to do and I hated that I oh I'd go back and I'd finally god it would just make clear to you all the variety of things The last one was the worst But I just I couldn't I didn't mail any of the four letters I wrote over two years, but I can tell you many times going through those two years And hearing the rumors come back to us by various ways Whether it was sarah hearing it in the store or me hearing it with an unbeliever. I've been sharing god with We would many times and I'm saying more than a couple of dozen Sarah and I would end up in our bedroom at night Just holding each other standing by our bed and just crying our eyes out and we'd pray this prayer father We don't know what you're doing in this But into your hands we commend our spirit. We're just trusting you with the whole deal Told me not to I'm not going to I'm gonna trust this all to you I can't tell you how wonderfully god sorted all that out my reputation in that town It's amazing now even people that spread the rumors have talked to me sent saying they knew they weren't true when they were spreading them And uh, so god took care of that in but you know what? That's not even important to me anymore What god got to in me through that process? I would say 90 of what drove me in quote unquote ministry before this time about 10 12 years ago Was wanes need for significance and wanes need for it was all about me It wasn't about you. It wasn't about people. I was touching it was about me To those two years god ripped that out of my being It's the darkest two years of my life. I could tell you sarah's story. She's not here. So I won't tell you the detail She went through something tangential to that. That wasn't really her pain She went through some family things in her life that were the darkest most brutal brutal days her parents dying in our home with cancer lies being told about her husband our income and Ministry opportunity had been stolen by best friends of 15 years Her sister was suing her dad for money and then when her dad died sued sarah for money, that's all this deal Sara went through the darkest days of her life. I was coming out of mine at the time as she was plunging deeper into hers I now kid people if you knew sarah prior to 1994 and if you know sarah post 94 You would swear i've had two wives Because they're not any way close to the same person Not anywhere close And sarah was amazing the pre 94 sarah was amazing It's the woman. I fell in love with it was the woman. I married it was beaver cleaver's mother it was the Ultimate domestic the ultimate submitted wife. She just never contradicted anything I had on my heart to do It was she meals on the table house spotless kids immaculate yard beautiful It was all that play piano led bible studies did none of it was real It was sarah fitting everybody's else's expectations of her life And sarah at 94 comes crashing down realizing I have no idea who I am I've met my mom and dad's expectations early in life. I've met yours talking to me Through this part of my life. I have met the church's expectations of me as a quote-unquote pastor's wife And I have no idea who I am And god changed her She's a very different woman now She's a better woman wouldn't trade her for the pre 94 sarah. There were times in this transition. I would have There were times in this transition quite honestly I wasn't sure we were going to get through it and I would even say to sarah i'd sit on some night said Are we going to get through this? She said what do you mean? I said is our marriage going to survive what we're going through She said yeah, I think so So you don't I said no Because see because her life had so revolved around my expectations for her which I didn't I don't think in any way consciously put on her. I was very nuts about us being one and every decision We'd make I'd say honey. What do you think and she she'd give me back what I wanted to hear and I would say I would be suspicious That's how you really feel. Let's talk blah blah. She said yeah Yeah, but see what was going on in sarah was who am I to offer any other? I'm a nobody I got nothing So even though I don't agree with what Wayne's talking about Who am I to disagree and scripture tells me to submit anyway? So it's just easier for me to say yes honey and just say whatever I wanted to hear But in every bit of that sarah's denying a little bit of the woman. God's made sarah to be She's being diminished by that in the language we used yesterday understand so she becomes yes externally A wonderful person everybody knew sarah's thought she was fabulous and every she's whole life was in order and blah blah blah Inside she's dying And no one knows and she's got no friends that reach into that because it's a place She doesn't even show to me and then when God started dealing with it. I was the enemy Because I had been part of the expectation she had conformed to so when I would try and pray with her through it My prayers were just another way to manipulate her Oh, it was nasty I would sit there and say I probably stopped praying for I said I don't want to do with you woman I don't want to be your enemy. I want you through this and she said I'm going to get to it It's between God and me just give me some space And that was that was that was it that was really it when my daughter got married five years ago We had people come to our wedding Our daughter's wedding pull who hadn't seen sarah since 94 They would pull me aside and say What have you done with sarah and who's that woman you with? And I would look him say isn't it true. She's a totally different woman She is the woman god has made her to be on the planet. She's discovering that she still is And it's changed her changed the way she relates to people changed the way she relates to us Now we making decisions. We have discussions about everything Sarah has an opinion about every conceivable thing we worked through Our family discussions now take a lot longer than they ever took before because yes was easy to say and I'm not sure And here's why it takes a little longer But now I'm not in love with an illusion I'm in love with a real person And what god shows her and god shows me and as we sort through those together so that we mesh and become one What we do together Is greater than anything I would have ever thought of on my own I wouldn't trade this sarah for anything sunshine. Do you have a comment? Yep Yep Yeah, I kind of blew that didn't I Yeah, yeah, sarah got stung and uh, you know, did she die from the beast things and I got another woman So actually i'm just lying to you all it could be true The truth is at that point sarah, we didn't know how allergic sarah was she'd had some reaction to think She did have a reaction to the beast thing. It was a mild reaction We were able to drive to the hospital and just as we got there her breathing was getting really ragged and yeah, she's fine So, yeah, we that that's good But it was uh, because the point of that story was obviously her willingness to put her life at risk for the health of her son And not even think about it. It was it was never a thought running to him I'm allergic to bees. I probably shouldn't be doing this. I should stop and wait for Wayne It just never dawned on her And uh, yeah, so yeah, she's fine Yeah And now she we got these killer bees in our house and i'm not there And sarah said she killed six of them in the house last night think darling Would you go stay with julie till i get home? I don't come home and have you get stung in the middle of the night or some crazy things a little bit sarah's not as worried about as i am so there you go but yeah So when god seeks to change us and we're going to talk about now How do we live in this reality and the reality is we've got we've got to come through the cross We've got to let the cross deal with our sense of shame I can walk you to the actual spot on the planet When six months after my hearing the teaching of the cross for the first time Through this whole season of just praying and asking god to give me a revelation of the cross and give me And i don't mean to say this was just an experience because it wasn't but it was the culmination of that whole six month journey and Praying and asking and reading and listening and thinking through and meditating on it One morning i was walking down a road And uh And i could walk you to that spot now where i knew it's it's it was a little dirt avenue in a field then it's now a paved road in the city But all of a sudden the reality of this came home If i never wrote another book never taught another sermon never counseled another life never led anyone in the world to jesus ever again for the rest of my life This father would not love me one bit less than he loved me in that moment And that everything i've been doing to earn god's approval was absolutely not needed And i can remember i i can remember this the sheer Joy and delight i felt like that little abba kid on his dad's lap all i've been working for for 44 years unnecessary I always was loved The joy was learning to live loved Not trying to earn the love that i already had and that's because i said i think that's always a revelation That god has to give us when paul says to the glations before your eyes jesus clearly portray discreet if i He's not talking about they went through a teaching on the cross I said yesterday what i words i'd say to you the words on these recordings that you know They fail me a lot of that's in he loves me the whole living love that moving from Appeasement based to affection based across it's in that book people have read that book and that book will not change you If that book opens you to jesus in a way that changes you that's great But he's the only one that does the changing And people write me say oh your book changed my whole life and i write them back and say we both know that isn't true We both know something in there ushered you into jesus That's fabulous and you've got a shot on something you didn't fabulous But this is a work he does and if it takes six months if it takes two years I had a woman i was talking this way to in a group in massachusetts and this woman came up to me afterwards and She's in her 40s Mid to late 40s somehow and and she would just she was saying could you pray for me and i said yeah, well you don't Be pray about and She just Couldn't figure out how to say it And she finally just kind of teared up and she said you know i really can't say can you just pray for me I said yeah, I would be happy So i started to pray for her and in the course of praying for her I just had this image in my head of a five-year-old girl dancing through a meadow with jesus And so i just prayed for this gal and i said god just help her like a five-year-old girl just dance in a meadow with you She just busted out in huge sobs And they weren't good sobs they weren't like this was healing it was like this was painful And i stopped and let her collect herself a minute and i said what what just happened there And through tears she is what i didn't want to tell you what she said I hear you talk about god's love and i really want to believe it i mean i see it in scripture I i know it's true and i'll but i don't i don't live it She said when i was five years old my older cousin took me into a meadow and raped me And she said every time i get close to god's love i think of that how could a god who loves me let that happen to me She said so what are you talking about a five-year-old girl dancing in a meadow And i said i obviously had no idea what that would evoke in you I said i think what god might be saying is He wants to he wants you to free you to live with him Beyond that experience and that somehow god's love Can contain it I said i think god's love gets purpose to it god god allowed it for a higher purpose. I just don't find Comfort in suffering at that level we live in a world of chaos And we are sometimes victimized by the sin in others and we sometimes victimize folks by sinning us That's just true people get hurt despicable tragic horrible things happen But what god's love is god's ability to crawl into that situation and somehow redeem the person beyond it Doesn't make sense of it doesn't fix it But it heals the brokenness it heals the hurt and i just said i don't have to tell you other than let's pray Let's just ask god and i said just every day until it happens Just ask god and i said i don't mean that to be an incantation so if i could skip a day god's not going to do it I don't mean that but as often as you think about it just say god i give that to you Would you be would you teach me how to dance in the meadow of my brokenness? That's kind of how we say it Six months later i got an email from her And she said wane i'm so discouraged she said i've prayed i've sought god on this i pray what you've said You know most days i'm remembering to say something like that and i'm not any closer to it And the day you work here is there any hope for me and blah blah see and i i know the way god works enough I just wrote her back and i just said you know what it's just It's not quite done yet Just keep on this Someday you'll get it someday i'm gonna i can't tell you if it's two months out two years out I don't know but the only thing i can say is he is the healer and until we get to him and just keep coming and What am i doing wrong? I'm not doing anything wrong When god's going to heal something that deep in a life that you think that's just uh, you know a two-hour deal For her it was an eight month deal Two months later i get an email from her same email and it's titled i get it So i'm going oh this could be good. I click on it in 124 point font I get it exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point When i want you to know i've had a breakthrough with god's life and i boy god has somehow now resolved that pain in my life and I know he loves me. I know i have the father's affection And i've i've i just cried when i read it. I just sent my computer who had so cool And she has lived on in that freedom Now did god wait eight months did it take eight months worth of prayers? It was god not counting and let's make sure we get everything right. No, we say yes. Say god's not counting what it meant was There was a lifetime of stuff god has done in this woman including part of what i was there Including the prayers after all that time god is doing the deeper work God doesn't heal the outside of the cup god heals the inside of the cup God's not interested in slapping a band-aid on where you hurt He's interested in working out in you the source of that pain and then we see it when it surfaces We're going oh, well, he did it. Well, he didn't do it eight months later He was doing it the whole time eight months. Later is when it finally surfaced and we could see Two years i went through this brutal thing on approval issues in my own life and it was Painful and i didn't know god was working on approval issues. I didn't know that's what was going on I just knew that every day i was being lied about and every day i was hamstrung from defending myself in the way I wanted to and it hurt like crazy I do know the day it broke and it was over And i look back now. I know what it was about. I didn't know what it was about then It was brutal But now i get to live in the freedom of that I got an email the other day from a senior pastor telling me i was a heretic and deeply diluted and It just was a cute note So i put up on my blog and i kind of put on my response to him and i've gotten the most incredible emails Who was saying oh wait i'm sorry this must devastate you and i'm going gosh i never thought about it devastating me because 12 years ago it would have devastated me Now i live in the freedom where that kind of thing doesn't it's just i feel more for him And what god needs to do in him then i feel like wow i've been slaughtered by this guy or Something and i just it's a wonderful freedom to live in so that's part of this process Okay, so that's what we want to unpack and we've almost taken the whole day talking about it. So Let me stop a minute and just ask you Are the things from the cross yesterday or anything i said yesterday about living in the life of the father That you'd want to make sure we talk about today or you don't ask a question about or make an insight about Let's start there anybody yeah The question here was whether jesus felt more pain from the physical wounds that were part of the cross experience Or from what was going on spiritually inside of him Well, you know, i don't know that scripture makes a clear point one way or another But i think what we do know is what he despised what he despised most was the shame of it So i would think in my understanding of it is i would extrapolate from what we talked about yesterday I would think the physical pain was nothing Compared to becoming sin for us for the wrath of god to consume sin in the sun I mean it's expressed to some extent by the physical things are also expressing that he is He is taking on himself all the Anger and vengeance of a world that hates righteousness So he's he's enduring that and i think that's part of the wrath of god consuming the sin in him So i don't know it's important to parse out where the pain came from most But i would have to think in the long run What he most despised about all of that Was knowing what you and i live in every day which is shame And separation from his father And if father's the one giving him the cup of wrath Father's the source of the healing but so also the source of the pain When i watch my friend go through chemotherapy And the pain and hurt that that caused i mean that that is poison flowing into his body. He hates it It is also the cure for his disease It's also that And the doctor who's giving to him loves it loves him more than maybe the rest of us who would save him that pain And also save him the healing so what we get from the cross is sin was a real sin and shame Or a real disease that god needed to heal. He wasn't just going to wave his little magic wand and say it goes away Now we're going this is real stuff what sin is a real deal Shame's a real deal Wrath is a real deal and the way god uses that and did it in the sun to consume sin and the likeness of sinful flesh That's all very real deal that cost him more than we could ever conceive A god would pay For us to have that kind of life I think he does feel the excruciating pain of all that i do And uh out of that he shows us they sometimes you're going to feel like god isn't anywhere present Doesn't mean he isn't and doesn't mean at those times that's that's how I encourage you to just lean into him a little more And what what religion teaches you is that pain in your life Or blessing in your life isn't that part of the reward punishment system So if you're doing well, then god rewards you with good things and if you're not doing well, then you're going to go through hurtful times If that's your construct about pain and that is quite frankly what we get that from is deuteronomy Deuteronomy is all about if you do good you'll get good if you do bad you get bad you keep my covenant I don't be good to you keep your enemies far away bring your reins in the seasons and all that stuff If you don't follow my covenant, then i'm going to bring your enemies in and pestilence and drought and So do good get good do bad get bad. So we bring that construct into The reality of the new testament which has now changed. It's not performance based But if you live with a performance based god in your own thinking then when you hit your worst trial Where's god? He's back on the other side of the trial again See if trials are punishment For not getting performance right then at your worst moment. God's the furthest person away And what jesus is showing us the reality is no at my worst moment. God's right there. I may not see him I may not have any idea what he's doing and there's often days when that kind god I have no idea what you're doing this. I have no idea But i'm with you. I'm yours. I'm in this whatever you want to show me today show me I'm going to walk with you through this Now at my worst moments god is the constant companion in religion You're getting what you deserved The friend that helped me write the jake colson book as a hospice chaplain and he was dealing with a woman dying of cancer she'd been a believer for years And uh, almost her whole life and she was dying of cancer and now he asked me one time He said how many believers do you think die in peace? I said well, I would hope a lot. He said almost none He said because religion is all about control And death is the ultimate loss of control You're not controlling anything This woman in her 70s 80s dying of cancer. She's got four daughters who are trying to take care of her She's horribly depressed. I've been a godly woman elder in the fellowship. They'd been part of her husband Now she's got cancer. She's dying. She's depressed and and they can't figure out why she's so depressed She can't either and one day Dave comes to the house and they're saying ask her about tithing He goes what we heard the other day in the room. She was just screaming about tithing. She's screaming something Ask her maybe that's a key. So he went in there and she's On the bed and she's very near death And he says, you know, the daughter said they heard you saying something the other day about tithing She said yes, I now know why I have cancer. She said this is what's bothered me so much She said after all I've done for god. Why would he give me cancer? And I've it's just it has devastated me and then I now have figured it out. She said In 1942 I had four young daughters at home And my husband was overseas in world war two fighting in germany And she said one of those months I couldn't tithe I didn't have enough money to tithe and and I and feed my girls So I kept the tithe and I fed my girls with it and now I know this is why I have cancer And Dave's just the best person in the world. You want to say that kind of stupid thing too Because david just turned to her and said oh my my You really think god would do that to you And it just led to a discussion that actually transformed this woman on her deathbed To understand a god she had missed for 70 some odd years Because she lived with a god of performance And then eventually catches you at some point. He'll catch you It's incredibly liberating life. I mean this is the way to live in god's love and be transformed is incredible somebody else anybody else Anything we've talked about. Yeah, great At this point I was asked a question by one of the folks About scripture saying vengeance is mine. I will repay says the lord Specifically in light of circumstances in the old testament such as aiken the man who He and his family were executed At god's command for taking some of the spoils From the conquest of kanan, which god had forbidden them to do How does that sense of god's vengeance fit into some of the things i've been talking about here about god's love Sure, I understand absolutely Um, well the vengeance is mine. I think it what you're referring to is roman's 12 scripture And it really is asking us not to take vengeance on other people because god will take care of things Which is to me a real different idea than what the aiken story is So I think what god is saying listen Don't settle accounts because i'll settle accounts. He's the judge of the whole universe. He'll get things right And I think we do from the old covenant and our Displaced religious notions about the old testament We come out with things that they're kind of strange like uh, I'll hear believers in meetings and some prophetic personal Say judgment is going to be visited on this city or that thing and we should pray and hold off god's judgment And then the boy you you never get people praying more fervently than when they're praying back god's judgment because like nobody wants god's judgment And yet if you read the Psalms The very thing that's causing the trees to clap their hands and the hills to dance is what? God's coming to judge. He's coming to judge the whole world Why are we so emphatically praying against the very thing that caused creation to delight god Because judgment to us means the mean old god's coming to whack stuff and we might get whacked too Judgment in the view of the old testament is god's coming to set things right God's coming to make right what is broken to bring justice where there's injustice To bring provision where there's poverty God's coming to make things right and there's nothing about judgment that ought to terrify us The aiken story when you get into the old testament god's shaping a people And and god was so emphatic about them not taking one thing from the land of canaan, but destroying it all That's what god was nuts about and the reason he was nuts about is because if you take it it will defile you and so it's god's Trying to preserve a people and trying to make aiken a demonstration of that preservation now God didn't often do that kind of thing he did with aiken very i mean they took some spoils of war And he hit it in his tent and they went out another battle and and they lost and guys guys died because Aiken had dishonored what god had asked to do so they go through this whole deal of casting lots right through the whole tribes of israel and down to the families and then finally got down to aiken And uh, he comes clean he confessed. Yeah, I hid that took some I saw the gold I liked that I took it hit him like that and so it was him his whole family everybody was was executed as a way to to atone or to make Right What was what was wrong what he had done what a displeased guy Now god sometimes does some incredible stuff like that I mean ananias and sapphires a big moment in the new testament It's a huge moment And I don't think we know really all that goes on there quite honestly. I did well they lied god whacked them Well, if god did that who would be around today I mean billy gramm said, you know if god didn't start whacking a few people He's gonna have to apologize to ananias and sapphira and I You really go man. He did it. Yeah, he did that And you've got peter doing this stupid thing in galatia where he's hanging out with the Gentiles until the jews show up And then he kind of you know does this racist thing and runs over to hang out with the jews and paul gets up and chews him out Guy doesn't do any whacking there So some we have to step back and say here's how we know who god is we don't know who god is By conclusions we make about the way he acts We were all growing up with our own kids Wasn't it true that our parents did things that we would say gosh my parents hate me or my parents Because they wouldn't do what we think they should do or they would do something that we just thought was mean and But when you're a parent and you end up doing those things you realize Dog god, sometimes there's a higher purpose here that kids can't figure out I'm sure amy my granddaughter doesn't understand when we tell her no about trying to get to the hot stove You know just no and she wants to touch it and she cries because you're telling her no and she doesn't get it So I think part of this has to be chalked up to the fact that we're not We're not dealing with a god who is like us This god is not like us He's absolutely loving and yes, you can watch things gods do and misinterpret what god does and misinterpret who he is That's why god sent the son and said he is The exact representation of my nature when you see how jesus treated the woman at the well how jesus treated zachias How jesus treated james and john the the sons of zebedee and the zealots that they were As as jesus taught merit treated mary and martha in bethany and mary magdalene and others now we know who god is through the sun People who look on my I like to think this is this is true I think is how we get really distorted about god sometimes people look at my life You could read everything i've written listen to everything that's on recordings of one kind or another and you would know a lot about me But you really wouldn't know me unless we spent time together And there are people who really literally have read just about everything i've ever written and i'll go be with them You're not at all what i expected Because there's a there's a deal about knowing about And there's a deal about knowing the person if you watched my life from a distance You could swear at times like this that guy's an extrovert that guy's out there meeting people doing stuff That's great stuff if you saw me at home I literally I can never leave my house for a week when i'm home I've got you know writing stuff and sarah's out doing all kinds of good stuff She comes and tells him what's going on in the world my car leaks. I record my mileage when I go somewhere and i'm telling you I've just been here in a week. What's wrong with me? I've never thought about leaving the house never had a reason to go anywhere Um You could swear i'm an introvert I'm really neither I'm a person and none of the labels ever really fit all of us I think the joy of living this life is you get to know people as individuals and that's good And we get to know that god doesn't fit Our expectations so there are moments when god for reasons. I don't know with Aiken I think it's pretty clear. I don't want you guys keeping stuff And so yeah, it's going to cost aiken and his family for you guys to get it Because I don't want you keeping stuff. They did anyway. He told me they want to make treaties with the people They got duped into making a treaty anyway, so And that entanglement of the canaanite way of life continued to harass Israel with false idols all the way down till christ came so God's agenda there is pretty clear with anaanites and sapphira Um, I first of all I we think it's judgment god killed them because they made a mistake and you know You can't lie the holy spirit. He'll whack you and that's how we come out of that story Religion wants us to come out of that story that way I think there was something god had to do in anaanites and sapphira that we don't know about I don't necessarily think it was their Entrance into hell that day very well could just be you know what? You're going to be a better blessing to the body up here than down there. It could be that we don't know that it's god Punishing them in sin is just removing him from the family in a way that they were going to corrupt it Their lives were going to corrupt it. We really don't know the conclusions about that But I think what where I come to settle out this vengeful god verse Is that god is absolutely just God's going to resolve all things in himself That this god as I see him in jesus And as he asked that the metaphors he chose for our relationship Is abba father to a little boy It's friend to friend For jesus, it's bride to bridegroom. It's it's god that took those intimate metaphors And said that's how I want you to think of my life your life in me So those are the ones I live with there are times in that. Yeah god does things. It's absolutely beyond And that we make whole theologies about them because it proves our performance based needs So we've had those embellished over time. So god is just I think most people is the kind of god you want about 20 miles away If I need him I'll call him But you know what I don't want this guy looking over my shoulder. We sing a little song I think it's the worst song to ever teach kids But because you could point to body parts. They thought it was a great song for sunny school I'll be careful little eyes what you see Be careful little eyes what you see for the father up above And I always said looking down in love, but you know what that sounded like divine cop to me That sounded like okay god knows what I saw god knows what I'm thinking god knows what I little hands are doing. Oh cred It doesn't make god endearing The god jesus talked about Jesus made this father endearing Jesus didn't come threatening people with hell to get saved most of us got saved because we figured that was better than going to hell Not much better Religion needs hell to thrive religion needs something worse than you have to sit through to get you to sit through its thing I think hell is absolutely important to religion Jesus didn't come threatening people with hell. He didn't dismiss its reality But see here's what jesus knew father is worth loving for himself If I can introduce you to father He's worth loving for himself. We don't believe god's worth loving for himself So we'd have to give people a worse alternative To get them to come to him Sure Excuse me while I break in again We had a discussion here for a little bit about these competing views of god from The old covenant being a severe god the new testament being a kind god And the conflicts many people feel with that that kind of provoked a discussion About the scriptures and what I think that's uh worth putting here I think most of us are have given a view of scripture if I can pause and talk about scripture for a moment that Really is beneath what the document is we take it and we even talk about like it's an owner's manual to your vcr So when you have a problem you go find something to read or or we treat it like a legal book When you ever read legal opinions, which I do now because of my work with rich builders Legal opinions look exactly like sermon texts because even got the little numbers with the colons You have paragraph the page 24 paragraph 12 and you look at that you're going How have we interpreted scripture legalistically? We go in there to find rules So we'll take this little bit from here and run it with this little bit from here And we bring these things together and and make all kinds of outlandish conclusions about god When really scripture is a story It's a story of god revealing himself in human history Through adam through through abraham through noah than abraham and then moses and on and on it goes And each each generation is picking up some new realities about who this god is until the last word is spoken in the sun And as we said yesterday the last The culmination of scripture is not scripture itself. It's not the book of revelation The culmination of scripture is the person of christ. It's the son himself He's he's what it's all about. It's to lead us to him Because we don't know that story We look for individual proof texts I've come to just quiver around proof texts because you can really prove anything by pulling a scripture from here and a scripture from here And a scripture from here as we even talked about some of that yesterday I'm nuts about us learning to see this as a story Of god's unfolding self and the reason why most people don't enjoy reading scripture a lot is a read scripture I'm getting out of it Well, if I gave you the lord of the rings and you had never read it before and one day you opened it up in red page 33 And then a couple of days later you opened up in red page 176 And then a few days later you opened up in red page 12 Then a few days later read maybe red pages 45 through 60 Over time, maybe saying this is a stupid book. I don't get anything out of this book Well, of course not none of us read a novel that way. It's a story the story begins Book one page one I've read the lord of the rings trilogy now so many times I can literally sit down and pick up the I pull the lord of the rings off myself Turn to any page I want and just start reading and I'm in the story because I know what happened before I know what's going to come after I've got the story I think that's what god wants us to do with scripture And I think to do that you don't begin with genesis because most people never make it through exodus And if you do they don't make it past leviticus because that'll kill you I really say how you start the to read the story of scripture I think you start with the gospels and you sort out who this jesus is Look at him as a person. Look how he treats people and just read his teachings as important as they are Get a sense of who he is and then how the early church embraced the post resurrected christ So the book of acts is just how do they live? How do they sort out this Living a whole new way no longer performance space land of sin and death Accountability conformity institutional thinking how did they live relationally in god? And you don't come out of the new testament with a sense that the early church started structures like we call church You get the sense that these were loosely knit groups of people in various communities who knew each other And people kind of moved between them sometimes and brought some connections. There was no official organization We call it a council in jerusalem and acts 15 But if you actually read the story there's people that saying you must be circumcised to be a christian There were people saying no you don't have to be circumcised to be a christian They got together with those that were the mature believers in Jerusalem and those that were visiting and they hashed it out And they came up with something to say and recommend to the churches But it wasn't a council in the way we think of councils there wasn't officials there to make a this was a living family That was learning how to follow g and then now you get to the letters of paul And what was he saying that made sense of things and john and peter and the writer of hebra's whoever he was and james And now you're getting a sense of well, this is who god is. This is how we walk with him now go back and start genesis Watch this god unfold himself through the course of human history Watch men and women misunderstand who he is because of things he did Instead of understand who he was by the things he did because now we know in christ The exact representation of his nature you do that and you do that enough over time That then the bible does become the story that i don't think it's the vcr manual I really don't i don't think it's the legal document to resolve our theological disputes I think it's the story of god's revelation. It is inspired to its core And i read it every day virtually i don't read every day like i've got to do it, but i i'm in there continually Because this is god's this the way god thinks about everything So yeah, i'm in it i'm in it because he's this is the voice of the god i know and uh All the more fun because i know him outside of the text That i also enjoy him in the text and i think we get a new fix on that and we get through some of the things like this But i love the question because i think we do grow up as we said yesterday the schizophrenic son of an abusive dad The good god the vengeful god and their times. Yeah read revelation. There's some stuff coming There's fire this wrath still has to consume this age it does For those who are in christ you'll never know the fire is coming It's that's just the thing about the the whole hen and the chick the fire is coming Crawl under me. It's going to go right over you Run out there and save yourself. It's going to you're going to get in life But it's got to come how else does god purify the world for himself How does he make a new heaven and a new earth if he doesn't? rid us of all the other stuff Anybody else did i answer your question? I know it's not a Yeah, I know it's not it. I know it's not an answer that says this is how we diagram god now And I don't think I can answer that I think the more we get to know him in christ And look back on those other events then we say yeah, those were god too But that was coming out of his love and affection not I just lost it one day and whack taken Which is what most of our anger was in parenting, you know, we lost it one day and Yelded our kids or did something that we later wish we hadn't done and we think of that as god's vengeance and god doesn't ever lose it he's doesn't He's very deliberate about what he does and he's very serious about what he does and we're giving this world to himself But what he wants us to know is you'll enter into my life through my tenderness So that's what god wants us to know. We can be safe in him as this abba father as safe as amy is That's my 18 month old granddaughter for those who weren't here yesterday as safe as she is on my life That's as safe as I am with father every day And she's absolutely safe on my lap Nothing's gonna hurt her Nothing's gonna get to her And that's how god wants us to enter into who he is But we're still gonna hurt ourselves. We're still gonna go through tough stuff But that's not a lack of his tenderness or love for us. Okay and bails Okay, let me talk about this for a minute. We're gonna take a break so you guys can do whatever we need to do And then we'll come back and do a little more for lunch, but The reason I give you this i'm not gonna teach you through this is not an outline So those of you who thought it worked, sorry I just want you to see a process here that I think I I've seen in my own life and the phrases underneath Are little bits of discovery That were part of my Getting it kind of moments The first one for instance on the front page is title living in fathers affection You have a father who loves you more than any other human being on this planet ever has ever will That's not a whole lot of value to you theologically and it's not meant to me I hope that's value to you relationally as you get near this five. You don't know that father yet And I I want you coming I want you getting to one day I want that kind of reality to be yours something you get not something you just heard me talk about Or someone else talk about nothing you do today will make god love you anymore and nothing you can do today Will make god love you any less god's love is the constant thing in your life That's kind of that means god approves everything you think do or say Of course not god doesn't approve everything we think do or say, but his love is there Um, I love this next one heard this when I was in uh, wales a few years ago God is not disillusioned with you because he had no illusions about you to begin with I just love that When god's breaking things into my life that's 42 that i'm thinking man Why didn't I get this at 22? Because god knew I was 40 years thick He knew it would take that much knocking that much loving that much screaming from me Yellen and kicking he knew it would And he kept loving me through it and I kept seeking him in it And uh for us it took 42 years by the lady I talked about us in her 90s Now what I want you to see i'm not going to go through all these Now but I The reason I gave you this because it maybe thinks here we'll want to talk about you may have read some of these last night going Ooh, I want to know what you meant by that But there really is a continuum here. I think that scripture makes really clear number one If you're going to live this journey the first thing you've got to do is sort out what it means to live loved If you don't know at the core of your being that this father is an abba father for you today Then to me there's nothing more important to be praying and thinking about thank god Can you make that real to me this I want to live in Now how's god going to make that real to you? You're just going to have a eye opening moment in the trees one day. No It's going to be in the real circumstances of your life whatever you're going through might be job related might be spouse related Might be kid related might be neighbor related Might be just your own pain and psychosis and things that are stirring deep inside your being It might be your sins temptations and failures God's going to use the very real part of your life to make himself known in you This is a journey you go on and I every morning god. What do you want to show me today about yourself? I want I want to see you I want to live loved because until I live love None of the rest of this works the next thing we're going to talk about is trust the next thing on this chart is then Growth in trust I'm really talking about this right if we come back from break because I think we got the whole faith thing messed up. We turn faith into just another work If I can have enough faith and god will do what I'm asking him to do I think that's nuts But I think all of all of what if you get the first page My point with this little document if you get the first page Everything else on here flows naturally from it So these are not other things to get These are discoveries that will come to you when you know how much father loves you you will know how to trust him When you know how to trust him, you'll know what real freedom is freedom is not God giving me all the approval I need because I have these deep approval needs And so when I'm not getting approval of people I'm praying oh god like like david does so much in the songs Oh god let my enemies be ashamed that bring glory to me and my you know David's got all that praying to change the the issue on the outside not praying the issue on the inside When god sets you free from your need for approval that whole same thing now you get to know what freedom is Because you're not being manipulated by everybody around you who's rewarding you or not rewarding you based on whether you conform to what they want Now you get to live free And you get to and then the next thing is you get to love and share his life together as a family What the reason why I don't think that starts with church Is because mostly when you get a bunch of people together who are going to be church Our our thought is we're going to share religiously together a religious life And that's dead I don't know if you've experienced this I've experienced this not only in home groups I've been a part of I've been I've been in home groups all over the world We're starting a house church or a home group and we're going to get together We're going to do this and you watch people come into the room And you might have an a meal first or whatever bringing food people come in the door Talking how you doing what's going on? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. It's just all this energy going on And then whether you eat or do whatever somebody somebody goes. Okay. Well, let's start our meeting And all that energy goes Who knows where that's right somebody opens in prayer and death begins And there's this yeah, okay, so I know yeah, and there's this long meeting of Okay, well somebody's got some courses. So we sing that yeah Listen to see if God's saying anything and then you know prayer requests Oh gosh, I'm going to pray for everybody's agenda in the room that may have nothing to do with God's agenda But how can you not pray for somebody who says, you know play for my brother. He's in Iraq I don't want him to die Well, of course, that's yeah understand all that the real what are we praying God only let the pagans die in in iraq And if we if we are praying that then do we really believe That we as God's people who already know him aren't we the better position to die? And go be with him than those who don't know him yet. Why do we want them dying? We don't even believe our own theologies. We just don't live them practically And then somebody's got to share something from scripture We're going to try to have it up and it's going to be very forced and very stilted Except for the two people who really enjoy that kind of thing and they they get to mix it up all the rest of us God, I'll be glad when this is over and then somebody finally mercifully closes in prayer And then all that energy comes back into the room, doesn't it People on the way out the door you can hardly get them to leave because people are talking and they're sharing things They're going in their life You might see a couple people praying over there because somebody just shared something didn't come out in the Meeting as an official prayer request, but they're over there praying and some real stuff There's life going on and we try to contain the meeting. Why is that because God's not in meetings? Absolutely not. I think God can be in meetings I think we're still meeting religiously I still think we when brothers and sisters who are living this relationship get together Oh my goodness. You talk about a gathering that that is just there's no boring in that There is no gosh can't wait till this is over because we've learned not to live by our agenda We're not in a meeting because somebody's got this angst that they've got to be the next teacher in this So they've got to bring a teaching every week and bore the rest of us to death It's none of that because we're living together learning how to share God's life and be God's kids this thrives And then the last bit of this we'll talk about all this through the course of the day That's I'm just giving you this because this is where we're kind of kind of wind up in the next few hours We have together then this happens at the end incarnating his love in the world When you sort out how God loves you And you've learned to just share life with other brothers and sisters without putting hooks in each other Without manipulating people to get what I think I should get from them Just loving them for who they are and when we learn to love each other now We're ready to live dangerously in the world Because now we know how to love the Zacchaeus's and the woman at the well and it's not about changing their sin It's about introducing them to our father And that this to me this is how we get to live free and all of it. Yeah body life tons of body life Opportunities to share God in the world tons of opportunities to share God in the world I rarely have a conversation in the world today. Jesus doesn't come up. And you know what I never bring him up Only if the Holy Spirit says bring me up I don't I'll just get in conversation with somebody saying in a whole depot line trying to check out And we'll be talking about what they're doing projects, whatever and somehow Something about church. I my roof for the other day. He had something on his car It looked like a jesus thing and I said, uh, I said, oh, you believe her He said, uh, oh that he said I don't go to church. That's what you mean I said, I don't need that and bother me. I said, uh, what's going on? Oh church is so boring and started going on this whole thing and We had the most incredible time just talking to saying, you know, it's about jesus, isn't it? What do you mean by that? So I got into how you love him and follow him. You know, this is what I thought it should be I never heard this before So he was roofing the house. I give him a copy of the jake book He said, I haven't read a book in 10 years and he's back the next day. He said, I read three chapters of that book last night That's incredible There's not a con I mean, that's just when you it's not I live with this agenda I don't go into Because one of the greatest joys of this that we'll talk about today is being able to live agendlessly I get to share more about who jesus is with the world living without that agenda Then I ever did trying to manipulate conversations to get to him because I thought that was my responsibility Make sense Let's talk about that. Why don't we take a break take 10 minutes or so get something to drink if you want I don't know what's there something over there