Rewired by Love | Joyful Belonging

Good morning. It's great to be with you all

today. It's cold outside, but it's it's

warm in here. I'm glad for I'm glad for heat

and I'm glad for community. This morning we are continuing

our series Rewired by Love. We're in week 4 of this series

in which we're getting super nerdy about how we change.

We're considering what transformation looks like in the

way of Jesus based on scripture and spiritual formation, but

then also bringing concepts from neuroscience and attachment

theory. If this is like your first time

here, it's not quite this crazy. Every week we're I'm, I'm kind

of setting a new bar for nerdiness today.

If that's your thing, you're welcome.

If not, I'm sorry, but I'm super excited about this.

I'm excited to dig in and at its core, really what we're going to

be doing today is looking at the question of how community

functions in the process of transformation.

Over the last three weeks, we've kind of looked at the problem,

which we'll be talking about more.

And in these next three weeks, as we kind of pivot in this, the

series beginning today, we're looking at what the solution is,

how we can, in the way of Jesus, experience a transformation.

This morning I'd like to start with a bit of a strange story.

In the 1960s, there was a psychologist by the name of

Michael Gazinaga who was invited into a very strange research

project. He was presented with a group of

people who had had a bizarre surgery.

They had suffered from severe epilepsy and in attempts to

curtail the seizures that they were having, a surgery had been

performed on their brain in which the two hemispheres of

their brain were literally cut in half.

The corpus callosum, which is attaches the the left and right

hemispheres of the brain was severed in these patients to

help with the the epilepsy problem, which had largely

worked. But now this presented

researchers with a very unique opportunity.

There was an opportunity to look at at certain brain functions

and certain brain systems in independence from one another in

a way that had never previously been possible.

So Gazinga designed these experiments and and brought

these patients together to to explore how the brain really

functions and and, and how does it function when the part that

is specialized for language planning and conscious thought

is separated from this part, that which governs much of our

relationships and our emotional life and our intuitions and

reflexes. In one experiment he used a

trick of the visual system to present information to just one

hemisphere of the brain at a time.

And so they would flash images on a screen again in a, in a pre

designed way that would only allow one hemisphere to interact

with it in a given moment. So for instance, there was an

image of a hat that was flashed onto the screen.

And if, if, if the patients in the experiment were able to see

this image of a hat with essentially their their their

left hemisphere, the side that governs conscious thought and

language, they would readily be able to say in response to the

question, what did you see? A hat?

OK, they saw it. They were the same as image.

The question, what did you see? The response would be nothing.

I didn't see anything. But if you gave them a set of

flash cards and said, could you point out what it is that you

saw? They were able to do it.

The visual processing center recognized that, even though

there was not language for it. And why is this interesting?

All right, this is where it gets really fun.

If you're tracking with me, I get that this is kind of

confusing. All right, so there was then a

process, the next stage in the experiment where there was

actually a a command or a prompt given to the people such as

walk. And when the the the right

hemisphere, which again is governing some of this action

and response and reflex, but doesn't have the ability to use

language, was given this prompt, The patients would get up from

their chair and start to walk. OK, they would start to move in

response to the prompt. Well, this is really

interesting. They would be then asked, why

are you walking? Why did you get up just now?

Now the left hemisphere, which controls conscious thought and

language, didn't have any access to the prompt.

Their left hemisphere hadn't seen it.

Their left hemisphere did not know why they were moving.

But in the moment, they would immediately generate a very

plausible and coherent explanation.

Oh, I'm going to get a Coke. It was manufactured after after

the fact. All right, so This is why I am

explaining this. Our brains have both the default

reactions, but then very often they also have the meaning

making Jonathan Height in his book the Happiness Hypothesis

describes these two brain systems in images of an elephant

and a rider. The elephant is the part of our

our is an image for the, the non non linguistic, reflexive,

automatic, emotional, relational parts of our brain that that

operates on default. OK.

It's the part of our brain that shows up in the spaces when

somebody spills coffee on us and we're like, whoa, what do I do?

How do I react when somebody comes at us and says, Hey, I,

I've been wanting to talk to you about something.

Can we have a conversation about, and we get the sense that

I'm about to get impending feedback, right?

It's, it's the, it's the part of our brain that engages

automatically when somebody doesn't text us back and we're

sitting there wondering what's going on, right.

Our defaults, our impulses, our, our actions happen on automatic.

This is controlled by this elephant, so to speak.

But on the elephant, there's also a writer and a writer is

this image for the conscious part of our brain, the part that

does have language and explains things.

And this analogy is helpful because height explains that

although the writer has some level of control, we can direct

our willpower attention. We can direct our focus in

different ways. The very often in our lives, in

our bodies, the elephant, if you will, we will be off eating that

bag of Doritos late at night. We'll be running on automatic in

the way that we responded to our partner, in the way that we

showed up under stress and and our bodies are already out

moving along the journey. And then our writer, so to

speak, starts to give an explanation for it.

Often times the problem is, is that in in the West in

particular, and in the church, very often we have an, an

approach to transformation that that brings a, a, a that that

operates from an underlying philosophy that we just need

more information and more willpower to change.

Like if we just, if we just read our Bibles more, if we just

studied more, if we just attended more consistently, if

we just had more information or if we just tried harder, if we

just muscled up and worked at it more than surely we could get

there. The problem is, as we looked at

in week 1 of this series, God wants our change, not just at

the level of the mind, although that's very important, but also

at the heart, the soul strength. He wants all of us to be changed

by love, shaped by love, as we talked about here at the Garden.

So the question I want to look at today is so how are we

changed? How do, how does transformation

happen? What does the Scripture have to

tell us about transformation in this embodied, wholehearted way

that gets not just at the rider but also at the elephant, not

just at our reflexes, not just at our beliefs, but also at our

reflexes? So in Week 1 of this series, we

talked about the difference between knowing that and knowing

how. We explained that.

You could know like facts such as where you live.

You could know facts such as Jesus rose from the dead.

And that's a good thing. But it's that different system

from knowing how to drive a car or knowing how to respond when

somebody shows up with feedback. In in Week 2, we talked about

our our attachment for filters, our instincts to how our

experiences shape the way that we show up in response to

things. That's the elephant, so to

speak. Last week we talked about how

our riders very often attempt to use shame and fear to get us to

go where we want to go right. How often in our internal

conversations and also in the church, the very often we

leverage these tools of shame and fear, trying to prod,

cajole, coerce ourselves in the direction of change.

We named the limits of that. Sometimes we'll get a a short

term burst of pressure, but often wind up hiding in

performance or self protection. And we may even train our, our

bodies, our our elephant, if you will, to associate God or

spirituality with, with anxiety, with fear, with stress.

So this morning I want to look at this question of how do we

change in the way of Jesus, not just in our minds, but all the

way through. And this is where our passage

today, I think, is so significant.

This text of Scripture in numbers Here in Numbers chapter

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

6, we find language which will be familiar to many of us in our

church community. We tend to recite this week

after week as part of our benediction.

And, and it says here we find in Numbers chapter 6 that that God

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

tells Moses to tell the priests to give the people this

blessing. You'll have the priestly

blessing as a, a header over this little section of Scripture

and many of your Bibles here. And, and the blessing goes like

this. It says, may the Lord bless you

and keep you. May He make His face shine upon

you and be gracious to you. May He turn His face towards you

and give you peace. All right.

And then we see at the end these final words.

So they will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them

in verse 27. Now there are two things that

both relate to community and both relate to transformation

that I think are embedded in this text today.

And admittedly this is not a prescription for training your

fast track system or training the elephant, but I think God

created us. He created our bodies, He

created our minds. And we also see much of this

wisdom latent in Scripture. And so here we see in Numbers

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6, the first thing that that God begins with our

identity. God begins with our identity.

He says, they will put my name on the Israelites and I will, I

will bless them. This is such a profound truth in

Scripture. It's a truth that we come back

to over and over and over again. It's the truth we talked about

last week. God doesn't begin in his

relationship with us with a list of demands and duties.

He, he doesn't give us a bunch of instructions to follow in

order to be good enough, in order to be worthy enough, in

order to be accepted. God starts with blessing.

He starts with identity. He starts with this commitment

to the people. And we see this not only here in

Numbers, but throughout the Scripture.

In Exodus, we read the words, I will take you to be my people

and I will be your God. There's this adoption that

happens first into the family of God.

As the New Testament talks about it.

We first become family and then learn what it means to live as a

family. It's not about performing your

way into the family or or being good enough that at the end of

the day you find out like, oh, I passed the test.

God starts with adoption. He starts with belonging.

He starts with blessing. He says these people are mine,

and this is so important to us. As it turns out, God's pattern

of beginning with identity is important.

Neuroscientifically, brain science confirms that a huge

part of how this, this elephant, if you will, is formed comes

from our most significant attachments.

Now let me talk a little bit more about this.

So the, this, this, this, this elephant in your brain, if you

will, this, this implicit system that we've been talking about

it, it operates much, much faster than our slower verbal

system. In fact, it, it operates more in

terms of pictures and images than it does in terms of words.

And one of the primary jobs of this system is to actually craft

our identity stories and to help make sense of who we are in

relationship to the world. So in the book, the other half

of church, Jim Walder and Michael Hendricks talk about how

this system in the brain 6 times a second is capturing a picture

and presenting it to our brain 6 times every second.

And, and, and it's asking who am I?

What is the situation? How would my people show up in

this situation? Like what do we do here?

How do we respond to this? And so when it says my people,

who is it? Who is it talking about?

Who's who's Wilder and Hendrix mean by this?

Well, they're talking about the people with whom we have the

closest attachment bonds, the people that we are most

connected to. Where do our reflexes come from?

Where do our gut instincts of how to respond to conflict in

that moment come from? They come for the people we're

closest to. They come from those embedded

relationships. We look to them for a reference

point of of how do I respond? Right now I'm under stress.

How do I respond? We're having a conflict.

How do I respond? Like in this moment, do I resort

to to shame? Do I hunker down and freeze up?

Or do I operate in faith in this moment when somebody is bringing

emotional intensity at me? Like can I stay regulated?

Can I take care of myself or do I need to lash out and fight

back? These aren't things that we kind

of in the moment when somebody's coming at you or cut you out in

traffic, you're not having an internal conversation with

yourself. You're saying, Gee, I wonder how

I should respond in this moment, right.

The elephant is already down the road.

We've already responded before we had time to make sense of it.

The writers not on board yet. The elephant is already out

front. Often times the writer has

relatively little control. But how does that that elephant

decide what to do? By these pictures, by our group

identity, by our group attachment.

And and so if we act like our people in these moments when

we're under pressure, when our character comes out, I think the

question is, who are we most deeply attached to?

If these relationships form us so significantly, What models

are we learning? Who are we being discipled by?

And this is a, a point where I think we have to talk about a

problem that we face in our culture of what I would just

describe as thin church. In a thin church culture, we

don't have deep relationships, right?

We might not know the people who are next to us on a Sunday.

We show up for 90 minutes a week and we hear great sermon,

there's some great worship music.

We have a cool experience, and then we return to our lives.

Thin churches is disembodied. It's it's the product of a

consumer culture in which we relate to religious goods and

services in the same way that we relate to so many other things

in our lives. Everything about our world

trains us in a posture that says like, if it fits you, great, and

if not, move on. Shop somewhere else, move

somewhere else, consume somewhere else.

It ought to be tailored precisely to you.

We live in a universe of incredible customization.

You can have dark screen or you can have locked light screen on

your phone. You could choose the font size,

right? You can even make the widgets

exactly how you want. But when you show up in

community, as it turns out, one of the things that's very

difficult for us is you can't do that.

Other people show up and they're a mess.

So how do we, how do we navigate this?

How do we handle this? Well, it turns out the only way

to grow new, to grow new neural networks in our brain, new

patterns of attachment, new patterns of relationship, is if

we are in thick relationship with one another.

That means if you're not vulnerably and consistently

showing up with other people, you can't have the kind of

experiences with other people that that rewire you in ways of

Kingdom living. And this is a problem.

Our culture is so fast-paced. We're moving 100 miles an hour.

There's information everywhere, and it's so cool to get the

dopamine hit of an incredible communicator.

Like there's a new clip on social media.

It's fantastic. There's a YouTube short.

But as my friend Dan White Junior says, discipleship is

more than a solo endeavour surrounded by your favorite

books, podcasts and YouTube clips.

It's a local journey with others in availability and

vulnerability. Friends, we have a a problem.

We can only transform the writer if we exchange and leave our our

leave our engagement with others at the level of ideas only as we

begin to share life with one another in a way where we're

actually seeing how that person shows up when they have a

conflict with their parents. When we see how that person

manages their finances, we see how that person navigates things

when their boss is stressing them out, making unreasonable

demands. Can we begin to be transformed

in the way of Jesus, where our lives begin rewired in the way

of the Kingdom? Friends, we have to find ways in

our community to develop attachments with one another, or

at least with some people who are following Jesus at a level

where they can become primary, where we can actually be rewired

in love and learn what it means not just from our family of

origin to show up, but actually from one another.

This takes availability. It takes a vulnerability to not

only be present, but also to allow ourselves to be seen.

This is what we see throughout Scripture.

It's assumed in the New Testament that this kind of

thick community would exist. 59 times over the course of the New

Testament, exhortations are given to the body of Christ of

how they should show up with one another, love one another,

forgive one another, be patient with one another, bear one

another's burdens. They go on and submit to one

another, spur each other on. Here's the thing.

You cannot learn forgiveness without having someone who you

need to forgive. You cannot learn humility

without having someone close to you who irritates you.

You cannot learn patience without actually staying in

community with somebody who moves slower than you like.

God wants us to be transformed, not just at an ideas level, at a

wholehearted level. But it takes thick community.

In order for that to happen. We must be thickly attached to

one another. This is what it means to

cultivate a rich group identity. It means developing the kind of

shared relationships, the shared vocabulary, the shared practices

that begin to change us. We do lots of things to try to

be intentional about that here at the Garden, because in a lot

of ways we're a diverse community and we want to be a

diverse community. But you can't just be a diverse

community if you're just a diverse community in in the

sense that it's a bunch of different people who are all

hanging out in the same way as Ritual.

Lotus likes to say you're just the same as a subway car, like

you might be travelling somewhere, but it's incidental,

right? Diversity, unless it's locked

together, glued together by something stronger than the

difference, doesn't work. The good news for us is that we

have an invitation towards that. We have the gospel of Jesus

Christ, we have the family of Jesus Christ.

We have a shared destination together that we can move to,

that can hold us together across our differences if we'll allow

it to. Every week when you come into

the auditorium here, you pass a banner on the way in that has a

list of value statements on it. I invite you to take a a look at

that. Just notice it on your way out.

Now remember when our team was wrestling with these and

thinking about like, what are what are the values that are

defining for our family? What are the values that we want

to be defining for our community?

One thing that we did that was really intentional is we started

each of these values with a we statement.

It wasn't just like at the garden.

There is a value for hospitality.

It was we practice hospitality, we attune to the Holy Spirit, we

imitate Jesus, right? Because these are ways of

living. These are our practices that we

share that we want to walk out together as a community that

become defining so that in those moments of stress that we know

what to do. We know that we're going to look

to Jesus. We know that we're going to

attune to Holy Spirit. We know we're going to stay

thickly rooted in community because this is what it will

take for us to be transformed, not just at an intellectual

level, but at a wholehearted level.

Friends, I have to ask this morning without any pressure or

shame, but I'd invite you to consider like, who are the

people that you are attached to this morning and how and how are

you attached to them? How are those relationships

forming or shaping who you are today?

Jim Rowan famously said you are the average of the five people

that you spend the most time with.

If that were to be true, what is being formed in you?

Because it it will be like if the people who are closest to

you are operating under the assumption that that good

parenting means a great education that sets up your kid

to be a high earner, you'll notice whatever you say on paper

that your values start to look that way.

If you notice that the people who are closest to you really

think that the most important thing in life is to be able to

have awesome vacations, even if it means maxing out your credit

card to do it, you'll notice that you start to behave.

You start to operate. You start to assume that same

thing. If you, if you notice that in

your life that the ways in which you you show up are, are defined

by vocational attainment or educational attainment, look

around. I bet there are some factors in

your community that are shaping those things as well.

And look, I'm not trying to guilt trip anybody here.

There's not any mandated way to do this.

I'm not even saying that it has to be at the garden

specifically. But if you want to grow in your

transformation, if you want to grow in your relationship with

Jesus, it's important that your relationships also are connected

to people who are on that journey, who are pursuing him,

who are loving him, who are growing in their ability to show

up like he did. I want to go back to Numbers

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6 because before we close, there's another thing

that you have to see here. It's actually arguably at the

heart of this. In Numbers chapter 6, not only

Numbers 6 · chapter mention

do we see that that God declares belonging before there's an

invitation to behaving. Not only is there this this

group identity which is to be rehearsed and declared over the

people of God, but also he wants to remind them of something very

important. We read here that God says

declare this over them. May the Lord bless you and keep

you. May he make his face shine upon

you and be gracious to you. You know, I think again, God

knew what he was doing when he designed us.

God knew what he was doing when he wrote Scripture.

Neuroscience suggests to us that the face is one of the first

things that we pay attention to as kids.

In fact, that elephant that we've been talking about, the

elephant is all about paying attention to faces.

It looks at a tunes. You notice this whenever,

anytime you, some of some of us in here either are round babies

or have had babies and man, you just have this pole and the

babies do too, to just gaze into each other's eyes with warmth

and delight. Maybe you've experienced this in

a romantic relationship. When you're first falling in

love, everybody just wants to gaze deeply into each other's

eyes. You're practicing attunement.

You're practicing connection. This is what helps to form and

forge these strong, thick relationships that shape us.

It's what signals to the elephant part of our brain that,

hey, it's, it's OK. You're welcomed here, you're

loved here. I'm paying attention to you.

Your needs are going to be met. I'm going to take care of you.

And when God decides to give his people a blessing, something

that he wants to have repeated to them over and over and over,

he says, even though theologically we know that we

don't like see the face of God, God says, hey, I want to give

the people that image, my face shining over you.

Alan Shore talks about joy as being the experience of being,

quote, the sparkle in someone's eye.

How does it make you feel when you walk into a room or

experience a connection? And there's just that delight,

that joy. You can tell that this person

just treasures you, that they're so happy to see you, that they,

they adore you, they love you. They want to be connected to

you. They want to be close to you.

They're paying attention to you, God says, This is how I want my

people to feel. This is what I want them to

know. This is how I relate to them.

My face shines upon them and is gracious to them.

My face turns toward them as a source of peace.

Friends, when we feel the joy of God's shining face, when we get,

when we experience not just know in the rider, but when the

elephant really feels, experiences, encounters the deep

transforming delight of God, there's something in us that

just unlocks. We move out of protect mode

where we're working in our fear based strategies to try and keep

ourselves safe and we move into connect mode where we open, we

can learn. God shines his face towards us.

He looks at us with delight and joy and invites us to to receive

his countenance to soak in it. Maybe you've wondered at some

point why we don't just have a long sermons every week.

We do kind of have long sermons every week.

Why, why we don't why, why we don't just make the sermon the

whole thing or Bible teaching the whole thing.

The Bible teaching is super important.

Some of what we do up here in the worship moment is allowing

ourselves to not just hear, not just consciously process these

things, but to allow our our souls to kind of soak in it, to

receive it, to imagine it, to connect with it.

Because these truths aren't meant to just change our minds,

they're meant to change our entire being.

That's what it means to be shaped by the love of Jesus.

When we're in shame based striving, our rider is just

bullying us, trying to push us, coerce us, make us do better,

work harder, be better in order to be accepted.

But when we're in this connection with God that He

offers to us if we'll receive it, His face shining upon us

with delight and joy, His eyes sparkling at the goodness of who

he has made, transformation becomes a natural outflowing of

who we are. It starts with receiving the

goodness of God. And this is what we see over and

over and over again in Scripture.

Jesus says, you are my people, He declares.

When creation happens to the first humans, he says, he looked

at them and it was very, very good, right?

He declares over his Son at his baptism.

He says, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

Before Jesus performs or produces or preaches.

In fact, we see this in the epistolary structure of the New

Testament. Almost every epistle starts with

this deep theological treatise on who we are, our identity 1st,

and then after chapters and chapters of who we are, it gets

to and then this is how you should live, because both are

important. How we should live is important,

but we also need to receive this identity as one who is beloved.

I think, friends, that it's so important that God doesn't just

give us these ideas in Scripture.

He doesn't just model them to us himself.

But then he places us into an adopted family created by by

baptism in the blood of Jesus, where we get to walk this stuff

out, where we get to remind ourselves who we are, where we

get to practice these new ways of relating and showing up

because of what Jesus has done. There's a new family that's been

created. We don't need to hustle our way

into it, but once we're in it, we learn the ways of living in

that family. And as we show up with each

other in the same ways that God shows up with us, not with

condemnation, not with judgement, not with anxiety, not

with pressure, but with joy, with delight, with care, with

attunement, something in US begins to unlock and we can live

more fully and more deeply into the reality of who God has made

us to be. Friends, what does this look

like for us as a church community, as a family is trying

to walk this out together? Probably a lot of things.

We're going to talk about some more of those things over the

next couple of weeks in more detail and point to some

specifics in Scripture where we see these patterns playing out.

But I think first of all, it means actually beginning to

relate to each other. Not as nuisances or obstacles,

not as people we have to find time to schedule with.

Like what if we really related to one another as beloved

children of God? Like what if instead of just

rushing past each other to get somewhere, what if we allowed

ourselves to just actually lock eyes with the other person for a

minute and to appreciate them, to rejoice in them, to extend

some of that that goodness that we have received from God to one

another. Say, hey, you're, you're wanted

here, you're loved, you're cared for.

It sounds so cheesy, but it's so real.

Friends, God wants us to experience this.

And, and we don't experience this in some kind of solo

journey. We have to learn how to show up

with each other that way, and we have to learn to allow more and

more of ourselves to be seen so that we can be healed at the

deepest part of who we are. I remember one thing that's been

so significant to me as I was thinking about how this has

happened in my own life. This week was early in my dating

relationship with Ali. I came into the relationship

with some pretty meaningful scars.

I'd had some big wounds, some traumas, I would say, and there

were some trust issues, some shame issues that were pretty

deeply embedded in the relationship and in my operating

model for the world. And I'm not going to tell you

what they are because I don't know if you all are as safe as

Ali is. But I do remember in, I remember

specific moments in conversation where I named some things that I

felt a lot of grief around, some things that I had done that I

wish I had to take back on. Some moments in my story where

things had gone sideways and I'd been partly at fault.

And I remember she held that in a way that was probably more

representative of Jesus than anybody I'd countered up until

that point. Instead of judgement or

condemnation or disgust or alarm or incredulity, condescension,

I'd experienced all of those things.

She just had deep, genuine care. She had curiosity.

She showed up with an open heart.

And that experience for me was, was deeply transformational.

Because there were some things that I, I already knew in my

head that like the writer was already aware of the good

theology. But my body carried the wounds.

I held the score of some of these these things that I had

been through. And when Ali honestly just

modeled Jesus to me, it allowed for me to begin to just breathe

a little deeper, to feel a little freer, to step a little

further out of hiding, to be a little bit more honest.

It created more profoundly more intimacy in my life, not just

with her, but with my dad in in, in relationships of friendship

with Caleb, with others. She showed up with me like

Jesus, with compassion, with care, with delight, and there

was something in me that was healed through that experience.

Friends, how often do we do this with and for each other?

Like being a community is all about reading Scripture

together. It's all about praying together.

Those are good, important things.

We talk about those things all the time.

We need to keep doing those things, press into those things.

But it also means being a community that can like confess

together. They can care for each other

when we're in freeze or shut down.

They can show up for one another in ways that demonstrates the

belovedness that is real because of Jesus.

As we wind down this morning, I want to invite you just into a

brief practice. It's going to be by way of

response today. I just want to invite us to to

take a chance to risk getting in touch with the way in which God

delights in US. And I say risk because like for

some of us, actually allowing ourselves to feel delighted and

feels intensely vulnerable, doesn't it?

You know what I mean? We like almost feel this, this

irresistible urge to like crack a joke or to look away.

If you don't believe me, try to like maintain really intentional

eye contact for 30 seconds after this.

It's weird. It will mess you up.

OK, like we, it's hard to tolerate being seen because it

it generates all that vulnerability for us like, but

but if I'm really, if I'm really seen, if I'm really known, if

they really get what's true about me, will they reject me?

Will they push me away? So I want to invite you this

morning as we move into a time of response to actually sit with

a verse of Scripture. And this is just about making

space to notice God's love. You're free to to listen, to

imagine, to rest. Whatever comes to mind is

enough. This is a verse that that speaks

of God's joy and delight. So if you don't need to generate

some profound theological insight here, but I want to

notice, I want you to notice how it actually feels to be in your

body as you sit with this truth in a personal way.

So as we begin, I want to invite you to just go ahead and take a

deep breath in and a long breath out.

One more time. A deep breath in and a long

breath out. If you're comfortable, you can

close your eyes or lower your gaze to the floor.

There's no right way to do this exercise.

Just come into the present moment.

I know I'm feeling a little bit of anxiety in my body just from

being up here in front of a bunch of people and thinking

about things. So just notice what's true for

you right now. Pay attention to your feet on

the floor, your body and the chair.

Any sensations that you're feeling, you don't need to

change anything. Just notice.

How am I in this moment? My tense calm somewhere in

between. And as you listen this morning

for the first time, I want to invite you to allow the words of

this verse to just wash over you.

You might begin to imagine what's being described in your

mind, almost as if it's playing on a movie screen.

I'll pause after each reading for a moment of silent

reflection. I'm going to read Zephaniah

Zephaniah 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3 and verse 17, which says the Lord your God is in

your midst, a mighty one who will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by His love. He will exult over you with loud

singing.