The Transformational Power of Jesus

Well, praise God.

And thank you, Brandy.

Like she said, my name is Jared Martin.

I'm one of the pastors here at Sacred Mission Church.

Years ago, I was uh when I was a youth pastor, it was my first annual youth retreat I was leading.

And we always did three sessions.

And so uh it was a Friday night, a Saturday morning, and a Saturday night.

And I decided I was gonna teach on three different miracles that Jesus performed.

So Friday night I was really gonna capture the youth their attention by starting off with a passage that we're actually talking about today, where Jesus turns the water into wine in John 2.

And so what I did was to really capture their attention was I had a table that I set out in front of me where everyone could see, and I had two glass pitchers.

One was full of crystal clear water, and the other one was empty.

And so as I began to teach, they just sat there, and the youth looked at them and they noticed them.

They knew exactly what they were.

And I got to the point in the text where Jesus then turns the water into wine.

And in that moment, as I was talking about that, I began to pour that crystal clear water from the one pitcher into that empty pitcher.

And the moment it hit the bottom of that glass pitcher, it turned this beautiful red wine color.

And I'd done exactly what I had hoped.

Got their attention, their mouths dropped, their eyes were wide open, and it was like, who is this guy?

Like, I mean, I had used going, is that real wine?

Like, literally asking questions out loud in that moment.

And then I took a drink of that wine, and it was some of the best wine I ever had.

No, I'm just kidding.

It was a chemical reaction, and I made sure no one took a drink of that wine or that water.

Um, what was interesting though was I had accomplished exactly what I had set out to do.

I got the kids to really focus in on that moment.

But looking back on that evening, I really missed the point.

I did exactly what the majority of us do when we come to this passage ourselves, when we read through it.

We begin to focus solely on the miracle of the water being turned into wine, and we actually miss the point of why John, the gospel writer, was including it in the first place.

See, the miracle of Jesus turning the water into wine was an incredible moment.

It was an incredible feat.

It was something beautiful.

But John is using this miracle in this moment to point us to something better, and I don't want us to miss that this morning.

So let's jump into our text today of John 2, 1 through 12, to understand why John uses this miracle and what he's pointing us forward to.

And I broke the passage down today into two different sections, verses 1 through 7 and verses 8 through 12.

And so if we were to summarize our first section of verses 1 through 7, it would be this: the old is gone.

The old is gone.

As we begin chapter 2 of John, we're immediately brought into a wedding.

John helps us understand, we're brought right into this setting of this wedding taking place.

And you have Jesus' mother there, and then you have Jesus and his disciples are there as well.

And this really helps us grasp and understand that the wedding party was either close family relatives of Jesus and his family or some close family friends.

There's a connection there.

But in order to understand how incredible what takes place, we have to understand the problem that John tells us right from the get-go.

Jesus' mother, we find, has some type of role at this wedding because she has this inside information that not everyone else knows about.

And she comes to Jesus to inform him that the wine has run out.

Now, during this time and in this culture and in this setting, weddings could go on for upwards of a week.

The celebration would just go on for day after day after day.

And so if the event goes well and nothing happens, then everyone's happy and you move on and you talk about, hey, remember that wedding we went to and everything's fine?

But if you were to run out of a supply like this, such as wine, before the event is even over, shame would be put upon the family.

Culturally, it would have been an embarrassment in that community that you lived in and you would be talked about as if you didn't have enough money or anything like that.

I'm sure you've all been to an event I have where you go there and they run out of something cake, food, whatever it might be, and you just go, okay, and you you walk on.

But in this setting, it would have been a catastrophe.

It would have been a major faux pas.

So when the wine has run out, we read in verse 3 that Jesus' mother comes to him and informs him that the wine is now gone.

Listen to how Jesus responds in verse 4.

Woman, what does this have to do with me?

My hour has not yet come.

Well, let's get the, you know, the big elephant in the room.

Like, let's address this situation here and get that out of the way.

When we read woman here today, we immediately put our understanding of that on there.

And we're thinking to ourselves, man, Jesus was rude.

Like, how could he treat his mom like this?

But that's not the case culturally in what's taking place.

We can understand this later on in John 19, when Jesus is on the cross and he looks down upon his mother and the disciple whom he loved, John, and he says this when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son.

So this would have been something similar to in English by you prefer you uh talking to a woman and calling her lady, or in French madam.

It would be something like that.

It was more of a connotation of honor and uh and not disrespect.

So Jesus is not disrespecting his mother here.

But he goes on to say, My hour has not yet come.

When he refers to this, what he's talking about is the event we just celebrated last weekend, his death and resurrection.

It's not time yet for Jesus to go to the cross.

Jesus still has work to do.

There's still things that must take place.

But Jesus' mother goes on to say, All right, just do whatever he tells you.

Just go ahead to the servants.

Now in verse 11, we read that this was the first miracle that Jesus ever performed.

So we don't want to read into the text and think that Mary just assumed that Jesus was going to do something miraculous.

She's never seen him, according to what the Bible tells us, she has never seen him perform a miracle before.

She doesn't believe he's going to do that.

Remember, Jesus was the firstborn son.

And after Luke 2, when Jesus is 12 years old, this is the last time recorded in the Bible we learn anything about or is mentioned anything about Joseph, Jesus' earthly father.

So it is believed that at some point between Luke 2 and now, where Jesus is kicking off his earthly ministry like this, that his father, Joseph, has passed away.

He's no longer on the scene.

And so culturally now, it would have fallen on Jesus to be responsible for the family as the firstborn son.

He was now responsible to provide, to take care of them.

So it makes sense that when Mary approaches Jesus, she's looking for help.

She's looking for something to be done.

She needs something done to protect this other family from embarrassment, from shame.

So what does Jesus do?

Well, naturally, when we read this, we jump to the incredible miracle of Jesus turning water into wine.

But along the way, we jump way past an important detail that John mentions.

And he mentions these jars.

And he mentions the size of the jars and how many.

And so if you're anything like me, you begin to do the math right away.

Well, there's six jars, 20 to 30 gallons each.

You're talking 120 to 180 gallons.

Wow, this is a lot of liquid.

The servants are going to be filling these things up for a while.

But we jump past an important detail of what these stone jars were used for originally, their purpose.

John tells us that these six stone jars were used for the Jewish rites of purification.

Most of us, because we don't even know what that means, we just blow right past it.

You might kind of go, I wonder what that's for.

And then you just keep on going.

And you just go right to the miracle.

You're like, this is incredible.

Jesus turns water into wine, unbelievable.

And you're like, I have no idea what that even meant.

But what were these jars originally used for?

Well, when they were filled with water, they were used for a couple different purposes according to the Old Testament.

The water was used for ceremonial cleansing and the consecration of the Levites.

Numbers 8 7 says this.

So who were the Levites?

They were dedicated to the Lord, they were from the tribe of Levi, one of the tribes of Israel, to take care of the tabernacle in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament priests were selected from the tribe of Levi, but also this water was used for the purification and to cleanse a person if they came in contact with a dead body.

Numbers 19, 11 through 13 says this Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days.

He shall cleanse himself with the water on the third day, and on the seventh day so be clean.

But if he does not cleanse himself on the third day, and on the seventh day he will not become clean.

Whoever touches a dead person, the body of any one who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the tabernacle of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from Israel, because the water for impurity was not thrown on him.

He shall be unclean, his uncleanness is still on him.

So when Jesus tells them to fill these jars with water in this moment, the water, the jars used for the rites of purification, he's pointing forward to something better.

So what do the servants do?

They fill them up to the brim, literally to the top.

D.A.

Carson, a New Testament scholar and a theologian, he says this filling jars with such large capacity to the brim then indicates that the time for ceremonial purification is completely fulfilled.

The new order, symbolized by the wine, could not be drawn from jars so intimately connected with merely ceremonial purification.

In the past, these jars were used for the cleansing of impurity, but something better is going to come from these jars.

Why?

Because someone better is here, someone who will cleanse you from your impurities forever, and that person is Jesus Christ.

So what happens?

And this is where we come to our second part of our passage today in verses eight through twelve.

We had the old is gone, and now we have the new has come.

The new has come in verses eight through twelve.

Listen to what Jesus says in verse eight.

And he said to them, Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.

So they took it.

Now Jesus knows at this moment that he does this and he tells the servants to take this water, now become wine, that everything will change.

Up to this point, Jesus had lived a very private life.

But now at this moment, everything will be different.

You can imagine if once people find out if Jesus can do this, what else can he do?

If Jesus could turn water into wine, how can he help me?

What can he do?

The crowds will come, people will surround him.

There will no longer be a life of privacy.

It will be one that is thrust out into the open.

And now Jesus' ministry is about to begin that ultimately will lead him to the cross.

The time has come when everything will change.

And Jesus doesn't hold back.

He doesn't prevent anything from taking place.

What does Jesus do?

He tells the servants, draw the water out, take it to the master of the feast.

Now, who was the master of the feast?

This isn't someone in the wedding party.

This would be someone like the head waiter of a restaurant or someone that would be kind of like the event coordinator there that knows how events like this take place.

The master of the feast, he tastes this water, now become wine, and he is very confused.

Let's pause for a moment because before we jump into the Master Feast confusion, we need to examine what has just taken place.

What was water when it went into the jars now has come out as wine.

Bah how?

If you understand anything about the process of making wine, you understand that it's not an instant process.

It's not a quick solution.

It's not like coming up and formulating a beverage that you order ingredients, you ship them to a manufacturer, they put it in a big tank, they mix it up, they emulsify it, they bottle it and ship it out.

It's not like that at all.

It can take a minimum of three years for a vine after it's planted to be ready to produce grapes.

Then once the grapes have grown, you have to harvest the grapes, you have to crush and press the grapes.

There's the fermentation process, there's the clarification process, then finally the aging process.

If you talk to wine experts and people who really know really high-quality wine, they will tell you it can take anywhere from 10 to 20 years for really good wine to age.

But here in this moment, Jesus changed the water into wine in an instant.

Josh Moody, who's a pastor in Chicago and a commentator, said this about changing the water into wine from Jesus.

He says, How can water become wine?

Naturally, it cannot, at least not in an instant way.

John is not making a claim to Jesus having discovered some hidden property of H2O.

The point is that Jesus is the creator and the sustainer of all things.

To move molecules and atoms and change the basic biochemical reality of a substance is not difficult for him.

It takes no effort.

He does not work up a sweat.

It is not demanding.

Why?

This is what the Apostle Paul says about Jesus in Colossians 1, 16 and 17.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Now, if this is true and we believe this to be true, then would it be a difficult task for Jesus to turn water into wine?

If everything was created through and by Jesus, if everything is held together and sustained by Jesus, then Jesus turning water into wine is nothing for him.

He's not like the person overseeing the vineyard who has to break a sweat to cultivate those grapes and those vines and get them to grow.

Jesus instantly turned them into wine.

F.

F.

Bruce, who was a 20th century biblical scholar, he said this about this moment.

Jesus' action was, in C.

S.

Lewis's terminology, a miracle of the old creation.

The creator who year by year turns water into wine, so to speak, by a natural process, on this occasion, speeds up the process and attains the same end.

So the master of the feast, he tastes this water now become wine, calls the bridegroom and questions him.

Now remember, the master of the feast has no idea where this wine came from.

He's just now tasting it and he's realizing something is better, something is different.

Only the servants had any idea at this point what has taken place as they filled the jars up with water, and you can imagine as they pulled it out and there's wine, going, What just happened?

Now, as wedding celebrations typically lasted multiple days, it was typically normal for you to serve the best first.

You would serve the best wine until you ran out and then people had drunk freely, then you'd start serving the less quality, right?

You want people at their sharpest to taste the best at the beginning.

Because that leaves the best taste in their mouth.

That's what they're gonna remember.

And then you start serving the rest.

But the master of the feast reaction here was far superior to anything that had been served up to that point.

You almost wonder, and I ask myself a lot when I was reading through this text, you almost wonder if this was the best wine he had ever tasted.

See, in the same way that Jesus was revealing something better by using the jars for the Jewish rites of purification, we are shown that something better is here with Jesus providing better wine.

Now, whenever we typically talk about this event of Jesus turning the water into wine, we always call this a miracle, which it is.

But have you ever noticed what John actually calls this event in John 2?

John doesn't actually call this a miracle, he calls this a sign.

Verse 11, this the first of his signs.

John calls this a sign, not a miracle.

Why?

Well, what is a sign?

What is a sign?

A sign is not the end all be all.

A sign prepares you for something else.

Up until Chelsea and I got married almost 15 years ago, she grew up and lived in Evansville her whole life.

I had lived in Evansville, Indiana for a few years, but after we got married, I took her east and we did not live in Indiana again.

And we always lived in a way, though, that we would travel down through Louisville and then we'd cut over across Indiana to Evansville on Highway 64.

And it was always the same thought process for me.

I'd come, we're about two miles away from Evansville, and you crest this hill, and off in the distance there's these two large green signs.

Evansville, two miles.

And I was always thrilled to see these signs.

Not because these signs are the most beautiful road signs I've ever seen.

There's nothing glamorous about them, but because these two green signs point us to our final destination, that we have arrived.

This is it.

And this is exactly what John, the gospel writer, is doing in this moment.

The sign that you just witnessed, the first sign of many, means he's here.

He's arrived.

Who?

The Messiah, the promised deliverer.

Everything you've been waiting for from the Old Testament is now here.

It's been pointing forward to this moment in time, the one you've been waiting for.

Everything is going to be different now at this point.

And how do we know that?

Because John tells us in verse 11 that Jesus, being Jesus, manifested his glory.

This should remind us of what we read back in John 1, verse 14.

John 1:14

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory.

Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

When we grasp what it means to see God's glory or have Jesus manifest his glory, it should remind us of what would take place in the Old Testament, where we can read about the manifestation of the presence and glory of God in the tabernacle or in the temple.

What this should show us in John 2 here is that Jesus is revealing that he is God and He is here.

And how do the disciples respond to Him?

Verse 11.

The disciples believed in Him.

What they just witnessed, what Jesus' transformational power changing water into wine, but this is just the beginning.

It's going to get even better because Jesus' transformational power not only changes water into wine, but is about to start changing people's lives.

That's what brings us to our main idea this morning, and it's this Jesus' transformational power changes lives.

See, in the same way that every time before this point came up, before Jesus arrived, before Jesus did this, every time you became unclean in history, you would have to go through that cleansing process.

And guess what?

If you failed to do it just right, if you failed to carry out the Jewish rites of purification, you would have been cut off, meaning you were out.

But Jesus comes along and changes everything.

When he used those jars and water was put in and wine was brought out, Jesus was showing us that guess what?

You no longer need the sprinkling of water to be cleansed.

It would no longer be through the law that Israel had lived under for years and years and years.

It would now be through him with what he was about to do when eventually his hour would come.

Where he would go through that horrific death and resurrection, what we celebrated last Sunday.

Where he would rise again from the dead, where now we can have a transformed life.

Let's be honest with ourselves, everyone, and I'm not even just talking about us in this room, but everyone around the world wants a life that has been transformed.

They want a life that has been changed.

How do we know this?

How do I know this?

Because we can examine the self-help industry that's out there.

It is estimated that every single year, 15,000 self-help books are published.

Every single year.

We're not talking about they're adding on to those 15.

15,000 new books in the self-help industry are published every single year.

They estimate by 2025 that the self-help industry will be a$14 billion industry.

You hear that information and you can't help but believe that people want to be changed.

But let's be honest with ourselves.

We don't have to hear those stats about the self-help industry to believe that, because deep down we all believe that.

We all want that.

We want to be transformed, we want to be changed.

But here's the problem with self-help.

It leads us to believe that something in us is good enough if we just make it better.

So if we can narrow down what we need to fix or we can implement some changes and we can have a transformed life.

And guess what?

I'm just as guilty as anyone else.

I love to have something else to do after I wake up before I eat breakfast.

I love to have a list.

I gotta accomplish that.

I gotta do this.

I'm just as guilty as anyone else.

I can be better.

And the problem is we begin to believe that we can transform our lives apart from Jesus Christ.

Which leads us to our story today, and it's this.

Our story is this.

We live as if we don't continue to need Jesus.

Here's what that means.

We believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

None of us would doubt or say, listen, I don't believe that Jesus died on the cross.

No, no, we do believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that by putting our faith and hope in him, our life is better.

It's changed because of his life, death, and resurrection.

We believe that.

But then after that, we go, well, now it's up to me.

Now it's on me to get better.

Here's why the self-help industry is so appealing to followers of Jesus Christ.

Because life isn't easy.

It's hard.

It's difficult.

Maybe in your marriage you've you've hit a rough patch and your marriage isn't as easy as it once was.

You've gone past that honeymoon stage and now things are difficult.

For Chelsea and I, it was year three of our marriage.

Might have been because we've had our first baby and we realized a lot of things.

But like that was our toughest year of marriage.

And so in that moment, there's all these self-help resources on how you can get a quick fix for marriage so you don't actually have to dig down deep and work through the problem you're actually facing.

Maybe financially you're not in the place you hoped you would be or you are today.

And so there's this self-help resource out there that promises a quick way to get rich without doing some due diligence and hard work.

Maybe you've hit a tough time of parenting that's really stretching you, really difficult.

You don't know how to fix it.

You're trying to figure out how to parent your child better.

And there's a great self-help resource out there that promises a quick fix instead of the deep work of discipling your children.

So because it's up to me now, I have to go out and figure out the solution, and that shiny object of self-help is right there.

Jump on Amazon, two days later, you got a new book.

Implement those things, and your life will get better.

But think about the title of the industry, self-help.

The idea that you can do this all on your own, all by yourself.

This strips us away from our idea this morning, our main idea, which is Jesus' transformational power changes lives.

It's a continual process.

I didn't say Jesus' transformational power just changed my life as in past tense.

I said Jesus changes lives.

He continues to transform our lives.

Jesus doesn't pull wine out from the water.

Jesus took what was not wine and made wine.

He changed the water into wine.

And this is what Jesus does for you and me.

Jesus continues to change our lives.

And this is our gospel conviction this morning.

Jesus shed his blood to change our lives.

Look at what the author says of Hebrews in Hebrews 9, 13 and 14.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Now this is huge.

The author of Hebrews is showing us and revealing us that there's two types of purification.

One type is a purification of the flesh.

And the other is a purification of the conscience.

That first purification mentioned is one that the Jewish rites of purification was intended for.

It's to purify the flesh, the outside of the body.

But the second type of purification was one that is internal.

It's to purify our conscience.

So up until this point of Jesus' arrival, the only type of purification that took place was one of the flesh.

The Jewish rites of purification that Israel practiced could never purify the inner person.

So when Jesus used those jars of purification, he's pointing forward of what was to come.

The sign of a better purification, a purification of the conscious of what the writer of Hebrews says.

This is a purification of the inner person.

And only Jesus can make this change.

Albert Speer, maybe some of you have heard that name, maybe not.

He was credited with keeping the Nazi factories going during World War II.

He was a close friend and confidant of Adolf Hitler.

And he was actually one of 24 people who were originally tried at Nuremberg and actually admitted his guilt to what he did.

He ended up spending 20 years in prison and he wrote about this experience.

And later on, he was interviewed about what he had written.

And uh in this interview, he was he was asked if if what he had written was still true in his mind and in his heart.

And he said this.

He said, I served a sentence of 20 years, and I could say I'm a free man.

My conscience has been cleared by serving the whole time as punishment.

But I can't do that.

I still carry the burden of what happened to millions of people during Hitler's lifetime, and I can't get rid of it.

This new book is part of my atoning, of clearing my conscience.

The interviewer goes on to ask him, You really don't think you'll be able to clear it totally, your conscience?

He went on to say, I don't think it will be possible.

Albert Speer was doing everything he could in his own power to clear his conscience, but deep down, truly, when he was asked and interviewed, really believed and acknowledged that it was not possible.

Why?

Because the writer of Hebrews tells us that the only way to have your conscience truly cleared is through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Our first value here at Sacred Mission is Jesus, first and foremost.

And we believe what that means is that Jesus is the focus in every aspect of our lives.

And how we define that here is this there is not one aspect of our lives that is not impacted by the gospel of Jesus.

Our work, relationships, ethics, resources, etc., are all transformed and reformed to bring glory to God and serve for the good of others.

In the midst of relentless noise and unending distraction, we have to fight to make Jesus the focus of our lives.

Remember what our gospel conviction is this morning.

Jesus shed his blood to change our lives.

This is why Jesus is first and foremost.

This is why there is not one aspect of our lives that are not impacted and completely changed by Jesus Christ.

All because we have new life in Christ.

Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.17.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Do you understand what Paul is saying here?

Literally, when you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, your old life is dead.

It has passed away.

It was crucified with Jesus on the cross.

Behold, the new has come.

We have been transformed.

And that brings us to our gospel vision today, which is this.

We live as changed people, continuing to be transformed.

If you've been around sacred mission for any length of time, any amount of time, then you would understand what our second value is here.

It's this transformation, obedience, and righteousness.

What does this mean?

It means working with the Holy Spirit to restore God's image in us.

Now follow along on the screen as we explain that a little more, what we believe that to mean.

In the Christian life, the goal is transformation and the identity is Jesus.

We were saved for a purpose, to have the image that our sin marred and perverted, restored so that we reflect Jesus to the world around us.

God in the beginning made us in his image so that his image might be reflected as it filled the earth.

We are not called to fill the world with our image, but with him.

So because Jesus is our identity, remember we are in Christ, our transformation flows out of that identity, not vice versa.

Our transformation flows out of our identity in Christ.

It starts with Christ, Jesus first and foremost.

And what we understand this to be is the theological principle of sanctification.

That idea, sanctification, what that is, is the process where we are continually made to be more and more like Christ.

We are slowly being perfected.

How does this work?

When you profess faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ and God saves you, sanctification begins in that moment.

It starts.

The end goal is glorification.

The end goal is glorification where followers of Christ live in glorified, resurrected bodies with God in the new heavens and the new earth forever.

But in between these two periods, there's this process of sanctification that's happening.

Now imagine a line graph with me.

Salvation begins, glorification happens.

And we always say our goal is that it should be this upward trend.

Doesn't mean it's straight up, it's this upward trend of Christ continually to transform us and make us more and more like him, where we sin less and less.

Remember, we live as changed people, continuing to be transformed.

The goal is transformation.

God is actively transforming us every single day, whether we understand it or believe it or even can see it in the moment.

Towards the end of last year, I resigned from my company.

And these past couple months have been some of the hardest moments in my life.

A couple weeks ago, I was having a conversation with my wife, Chelsea, and we both sat there and I went, man, I don't think I've ever experienced something quite this difficult.

And she agreed.

Now, the preface had not financially, not as a husband, not as a father, has this been difficult, but spiritually.

I have found myself time and time again asking God, what are you doing?

And not arrogantly.

But God, what are you teaching me?

God, what are you wanting to change in me?

God, what are you trying to root out of my life?

How are you trying to transform my heart right now?

It was in the midst of some of this that a friend of mine had texted off and on, had coffee with towards the end of the year, and he reached back out and said, Hey, let's get together for coffee.

I need to hear what's going on in your heart and what's going on in your life.

And it's like, all right.

So I began to share, and I was talking, and I was talking and I was talking, and he finally got to the point and he said, Are you done talking now?

Yeah.

So can I share what I believe God has been laying on my heart as I've listened to you, what I believe you need to hear right now?

I said, Yeah.

He said, I believe that there is a control problem in your life.

You want to be in control.

You want to be in charge.

You don't want to submit right now to what God is actively doing in your heart, the way he's trying to transform you.

And just hit me.

And that afternoon, I started to go back to the Lord's Prayer that afternoon as I was reflecting on sitting with him and hearing what he had to say.

And right out of the gate, he starts with our Father in Heaven.

And it hit me differently than it ever had.

So as I was reading through it, I thought, Jesus doesn't say our Father in heaven, then just go on to the rest.

He prefaces everything he prays for with our Father in heaven.

That continual reminder that He is our Father, that He will take care of us, that He will provide.

And I got down to providing and asking God for a daily bread, and it hit me differently this time.

God had been providing for us.

He had been taking care of us every single day.

I found myself in the morning praying and asking God, Lord, give us this day our daily bread.

Give my family our daily bread.

And then at the end of the day, a rejoicing and a prayer of thankfulness to God that He did provide that day what we needed.

And guess what?

When you pray for God to provide for you, you realize real quick how you are not in control.

In that moment, God used a brother of Christ and the Word of God to transform me.

I would ask you this question: who do you have in your life today?

Who do you have at Sacred Mission?

Who do you have in your mission group that is willing to speak truth into your life?

Someone that will point you back to the Word of God, not your feelings, but your truth.

Where is God at work in your own life today?

What are you going through right now that you've been trying to push off and trying to figure out on your own, apart from God, when all along God is trying to use it in your own life to transform your heart and make you more and more like Jesus?

Because guess what?

God wants to change you.

When we go back to the end of our passage today and we read that Jesus manifested his glory, he didn't turn the water into wine so we would marvel at the miracle only.

Jesus turned the water into wine to point to himself who purifies us eternally.

Let's pray.