John 4&5 the water of life and the diagnosis of our problem

Everything in this church is operates out of relationship.

That's because we have a theology that the self giving

love within the Trinity is the place that everything else

emerges out of. So that's why when we have a

meeting, we'll have a BBQ. It's why we have breakfast in

the morning, it's why we'll have a church lunch.

It's why we host people spontaneously and sporadically

because we believe that life, the ministry flows out of

relationship because that's how God the Godhead operates.

He within the Godhead is self giving love and out of that self

giving love God creates. So it's there's thought behind

it. It's intentional rather than

unintentional. So I'm really excited today.

We've got Paul. He's been going through the

Gospel of John, and we're about John 4, John 5, so you can

follow the last two. You can find that particular

series in on our podcasts. So I'm just going to pray for

Paul now. And then there's going to be a

response time at the end with Sam and Olivia hosting worship.

So at midday, we're going to have a response time to what we

feel God's doing because we really want people to kind of go

away having a sense of encountering God and

experiencing him. Thank you so much for Paul and

thank you for his journey and all that is embodied in him.

And we receive what you have through him today, particularly

we we always continually pray this prayer that the eyes of our

hearts might be enlightened, that we might know you better.

We have may have revelation of you and experience you.

Amen. Thank you Alice everyone.

I was looking for a talk I did some time ago but I couldn't

find it. It's one of the Hope podcasts

where I did John 4. So I was thinking, should I do

John 4 or John 5 today because I wanted to do John 5.

Then I realised I actually did John 4 previously.

It is there somewhere. So if you want John 4, then you

can go dig back through. It's one, it's one of them in

the last couple of years I did, I did it.

I will refer to a couple of things from John four and but I

really wanted to zone in on John 5.

Before I do that though, I've got, I've got a couple of

announcements slash promos. So one is next month, May the

30th. So Saturday the 30th, we have a

conference here, those of you doing the ITTF course with

Baxter Kruger. So Doctor Baxter Kruger is going

to be here with us and also Jason Clark who hosts the

Rethinking God with Tacos podcast and a couple of others.

So we, we've, we've got an event on the Friday which is somewhere

else. And then on the Saturday we're

here and Sunday morning Baxter will be here with us as well.

We've currently had about 130, a 140 booked in for that Saturday.

Very few people from Hope that conference, I'm fairly sure is

going to sell out. Like we've got people flying in

from around the world to come to that one.

And people always leave it to the last minute to book.

If you want to come, I think you should come.

And if you want to come, I really think you should book

like sooner rather than later because those places are going

to go if you don't want to pay for a ticket.

They're only, they're only 2750. But if you don't want to pay for

a ticket, I could also do with some ushers and people who could

volunteer to help. So please come and speak to me

about that would be great. But I think it's going to be

it's going to be a really fantastic time actually having

those guys with us. And on a Sunday morning, you

know, we we have Alice and I were joking about our hard time

stops. You know, well, on the Saturday

we don't have hard time stops. So we'll get to really go deep,

deep dive and have sort of extended times and whatnot.

So please come the information for that is in the hope

newsletter. But if you don't know where that

is or aren't on the mailing list, then you can get it from

my website as well, which is championsofhope.co.uk.

And if you still didn't note that down, forget it.

Come up and speak to me and I can send you the link.

So that's number one. Number two is my book is out.

A few people have been asking me about it.

We've got, we have a, we have a load of these up there.

I've brought some today. If people actually want to get a

hold of them. Better to get it from me

directly than to buy it from Amazon because Amazon is

terrible. And also even by you can buy it

from my my publisher. But if you buy it online, it

automatically adds postage. And if you hear you don't need

postage, you can just get it straight from me.

So I've got a bunch of them. So the book, the book's called

Damascus Encounter the Unexpected crisis.

It's not about the apostle Paul. It is kind of half about me.

It's a I'll just read you. I'll read you what?

Paul Young, who wrote The Shag. He's a good friend of mine.

I'll just read you the endorsement that he wrote.

If it weren't for the grace of failure, you would have become a

horribly dangerous man, leaving a multitude of dead bodies in

your wake. Don't get me wrong, I still

think you're a dangerous man. Only now in the best of ways.

So I don't know. I don't know if that sells it to

you or not, but I've got, I've got a bunch of them here.

We'll, there's an audio book version, which you do have to

get online. There's an ebook apparently as

well. I think you do have to get that

from Amazon. And there's a video course as

well and a study guide if you're interested in those.

But in any case, the book's the main event.

I've got a bunch of them. They're 15 lbs.

So come and see me. I can do cash or or bank card if

you want to, if you want to do that.

Anyway, Grace and I, we were just in Italy.

We were, we took the girls, but we want to, it was a kind of

bustman's holiday, you know, preaching and beach at the same

time, which is nice. But also when, when we were

there, there was with the Waiwan base in Italy, the, the DTS

course and that was just a phenomenal time as well.

Something really exciting is going on with that group.

Again, people sort of flew in from all over for a week

conference on the back of this DTS that that Waiwan were doing

there and I visited. I feel like Holy Spirit's

speaking to me or trying to get my attention about Saint Thomas.

And the reason I say that is because a couple of years back I

was, I was on a trip in India and to Chennai.

And the first day we were there, the the hosts took us to the

Cathedral of Saint Thomas like a or it was like a monastery area

up on a mountain. So Saint Thomas, if you know the

history tradition, record, Saint Thomas went to India, that was

his evangelistic mission. And there's the Temastic Church

which began around his Apostolic ministry in India.

And it sort of formed the basis for the Church of the East in

India. Probably monks went from there

to China a few 100 years later. And you know, it was part of the

whole ecosystem for the first 5-6 hundred years or so.

What was going on in Asia was happening with, with India and

Iran, what the then Persia. These were sort of major centres

of the Gospel. And so I was out there and we,

we went and visited Saint Thomas anyway, down in Italy, we just

took a day trip to the, the next town down.

And I didn't know we were also at the equivalent Saint Thomas's

Basilica, the, the cathedral there in Italy, where history

records that Thomas's body was brought back after he was

martyred to Italy. And it's, you know, the

Catholics like to have their reliquaries, right?

So they kind of store the the relics of the Saints, which is

is nice and gothic. But anyway, you can go down to

the the relic query where they've got, you know, Thomas's

body in the in the in the casket there.

And it's a beautiful church, you know, really just beautiful,

fantastic, loads of cool stuff in it.

But I felt like, OK, 22 for two, right?

You know, these suddenly, I'm not intending to go on sort of

pilgrimages to learn anything about Saint Thomas, but I felt

really definitely Holy Spirit saying something about Saint

Thomas. So I don't know if you've

anyone's got any insight on that.

Come and come and tell me. Maybe you've you've got an angle

on Thomas and you've done a lot of reading or research about

him. That would be great.

This is Thomas who's doubting Thomas, where they usually call

him doubting Thomas. He's the one who says I'll only

believe it if I see it right. If if Jesus turns up physically

resurrected from the dead, if I can get a hold of him myself,

then I'll believe. I'm not going to believe it just

because anybody told me. So he gets his reputation as

doubting Thomas. But of course, he was the the

founder of the Indian Church, you know, major Apostolic

figure. And I think there's something,

there's something in that maybe we'll explore as time goes on.

But anyway, Italy was fantastic. Thank you for those who who were

praying for while we were out there.

And yeah, there's, there's cool stuff going on.

I think around the world, people are waking up to the gospel.

They're getting clear on the gospel.

And it's like my friend Baxter puts it, the gospel is like

Windex. You know, if you've got a, if

you're looking out through a pane of glass and it's all

dirty, then the gospel clears that off, clears the vision.

So the so that you can see clearly that's what John's

gospel is about. And I'm going to dive into a

couple of points here again, for those of you who've been

following this study. I really tried to resist doing

the kind of the classic systematic line by line or

chapter by chapter through John, Partly because if we did that,

we would be here for years trying to do it.

Also because I'm here like once every six weeks or two months or

so doing it really would be years and years.

And the other reason is I think we have this tendency to

approach the Bible. Our starting point is we want to

read it very close. It's like we want to zoom in

really close. What does this word mean?

What does that word mean? And we want to kind of get right

into the, the, the sort of the, the atoms and the molecules of

the Scripture. And I raise this point because

this is relevant to some key things that Jesus says in John

John 5 · chapter mention

chapter 5. So this is a general point, but

it's also a specific point. I think that when we, when we

zoom in really close, that's, that's fine, but it's only half

the story, or maybe it's even less than half the story

actually, because the the Bible is not really written to us in

this from that, that basis of you're supposed to read it very

close. You're actually supposed to read

it very far right from you're supposed to see the big picture.

It gives us the big picture. And then from the big picture,

we then start to understand the little picture, those individual

parts. This is one of the, if I could

say I am ambivalent at times with a lot of contemporary Bible

scholarship because it's almost universally accepted that the

way you do Bible scholarship is you do close reading.

You have to zone in what does this word say?

What does that word say? And then you put it into the

historical method, which is, well, how does how does this

relate to what happened in history at the time?

What did it mean to them? And all of that is fine.

I'm not, I'm not against it, but it's like the only thing that

goes on a lot of the time in Bible scholarship.

And frankly, it's kind of lifeless.

It's like a friend of mine said, it's all very well and good with

the parable of the lost coin. Having this understanding that

the lost coin was probably a wedding coin and that the woman

was wanting to go for a wedding and she needed the coin for the

wedding and it was part of the headdress and all these other

sorts of things, all the historical part about it.

But it's like, So what? Who cares?

Honestly, Who cares? Who cares really if the pool of

Siloam was on the West side or the east side of this thing?

Like what? What on earth difference does

that make to anything? Right?

The Bible was not written for a historical education.

It was written to blow you up. Blow the flipping doors off,

right. It's Sunday morning on a podcast

in a family church. So I can't do the, the proper

quote supposed to blow the doors off.

It's not supposed to sit there. So we think, Oh yeah, nice.

I, I come out feeling slightly more educated about this book.

I go out slightly clearer about what Jesus might have meant when

he said this versus that, or slightly clearer about what the

Jews were thinking at that at that time.

And I just think like, like who honestly, who cares?

The gospel John says at the end of the gospel, I've written

these things so that you may believe and in believing you may

have life not I've written these things so that you may be a

little bit more historically educated about what was going on

in New Testament times so that you can publish another book to

keep your faculty happy and justify your job right.

Again, all nice, all good to have that that side of things.

But if it is not, if it's not bring like my my book is called

subtitled encounter because I just think if it's not about

encounter, then what what we're doing here.

If it's not about encountering Christ in US in each other in

life, if it's not about that, what's the point?

Baxter again quoting him, you know, he said if the if the

fullness of life that Jesus promised is basically this, I'm

all right, thanks. I'm out.

You know, it's just not really good enough.

If that's really what the fullness of life means.

If it's just that we've got a nice kind of it's nice community

time, connection time, all this is good, fantastic.

And we, you know, we kind of learn a few things about the

Bible and we do this and we do that and you know, just

basically muddle through. If that's the fullness of life

that Jesus promised. I think I've been mis sold.

So I want encounter with reality.

That's the only reason I'm a Christian.

I'm not a Christian because somebody gave me a good

apologetic or they've got nice arguments about why you should

believe in God versus not. I think probably the

intellectual arguments against believing in God are

intellectually probably better than the others, frankly.

But it's not about an intellectual argument.

There's there's something more fundamental and clearer and more

powerful and more true, which is not the intellectual side.

The intellect is going to going to constantly leave you falling

short. This is about encounter, it's

about life, it's about reality. So having taken most of my time

in trying say come and book in on December the 30th and you'll

get unfiltered, unmediated, unscripted and unconstrained by

time, more or less. If that sounds good, then come.

If it doesn't, then maybe you don't want to come.

I don't know. You can buy the book instead.

So having said that, what? So over the over the last few

sessions I've done, I've tried to establish the point of John's

Gospel, begins John One in the beginning.

God in the beginning was the Word and the Word was face to

face with God. So John is reminding us of

Genesis One in the beginning God created the heavens and the

earth. So Genesis 1 tells us what God

did. He created.

John One tells us how God did it, what was going on behind the

curtain. Genesis 1 is in front of the

curtain. John 1 is behind the curtain.

Behind the curtain, the Father and the Son are face to face in

relationship, eternal oneness in the Holy Spirit from eternity

past to eternity future. That's what Alice was talking

about. Other focus, the other focused

self giving love. That is the reality of the

Trinity. That is where everything came

from. John's showing us that in John

1. Then everything else that comes

in John's gospel is governed by that first section.

He's like, I'm setting out the the big picture here.

And you need to keep that in mind as you go through the

gospel because it's going to come up again and again.

The same themes are coming up again in John 5.

We have the same themes coming up in John 4.

It's about the water of life, right?

So if you want to go and track back to that, that podcast I

did, the summary is Jesus said, you drink the water I give you

from within, you will rise up a spring of living water.

And then in John 7, it says, and then the one who believes that

spring will become a river. It will go forth from you.

That's the that's the basis of the Kingdom of heaven is in you.

And as you connect and engage with that experientially, it

comes up within you. And then that educates you in

terms of belief. And it's like, OK, now I can

step out and do something with that.

The water flows forth from you. Like that's the summary of that

part. Then we're in John 5 and

actually at the end of John 4 is where we had the, the turning of

water into wine. And that's important because I

forget this, which theologian said that Jesus started his

ministry by turning water into wine.

And the church for the most part has spent 2000 years trying to

turn it back into water again. That's what I mean about this

kind of the educating the mind, right?

You can read the Bible, you get educated about things and it's

like it's water in the sense of it's got no punch to it, right.

But why is the symbol of wine used?

And particularly when we know that alcohol, wine is quite a

destructive thing in so many people's lives, that why is that

being used here? Well, the, the point is that

the, the image there, it's a, is that when you receive the wine

of the spirit, it actually takes you out of yourself, right?

It knocks you out of it into an altered state of consciousness

that is no longer controlled by the world system, but you've

been knocked into the consciousness of the Kingdom of

heaven. Paul talks it.

He uses the word ecstasis. He says I am in ecstasy is where

we get the word ecstasy from. Ecstasy means literally to stand

outside of yourself. The wine of the spirit takes you

into a kind of out of body experience it.

It's pulling you out of the pattern in the system of the

world, which is like a dreamland shadow land that CS Lewis calls

it. And it's it's drawing you into

the life and the experience that is the wonder in the father, son

and spirit. It's it's an ecstatic

connectivity with the reality of that life.

Thomas Merton said. If the Father were to remove his

love for you at the count of three, you would disappear into

nothing at that very moment That you are sustained moment by

moment by the love that is between the Father, Son and

Spirit. That is what the whole of the

creation is upheld by. That is the light of life that

gives light to everyone. John One says that the Father,

Son and Spirit have a pre-existing relationship with

the entire cosmos as creator and sustainer, and the force of that

sustenance is the 4th force of other focused self giving love.

I went into a debate with an old friend of mine on social media a

few weeks back where he said well I just don't accept that

the Bible says that love is the essence of God.

And I said well you're absolutely wrong.

The Bible is emphatic that love is the essence of God.

In fact, it's John the Apostle is the one who says that God is

love, not God is loving, God is love, and therefore because God

is love, we see his attributes, holiness, justice, all of these

things are are extensions of his love.

They're not antitheses to his love.

They're not opposite to his love.

Working in tension, this ridiculous word, they're not

working in tension. God has no tension within

himself. God is fully integrated, God is

love, everything he does is an extension of that.

And that's what we're created and sustained and held by.

Or to encourage you to read John's gospel with that in mind

and read it quickly. When we read it slowly and we've

got days in between 1 chapter to another, we miss the repeated

themes. You know, it's like if you're

listening to a piece of well crafted classical music, there

are themes and those themes continue to repeat and they

continue to vary and there's a constant revisiting of those

themes, right? That's how you got to read John.

You have to have an intuition, a sense of what those themes are,

and then you realise what the point is as they're coming up

over and over again. So this issue of revisiting

Genesis 1 is one of those themes.

John is taking you behind the curtain.

That happens here in John 52. You get in John 516.

So Jesus is doing healing and miracles.

And they say because Jesus was doing these things on the

Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

So in the synoptic gospels, the thing that gets Jesus crucified

is he challenges the Sadducees over their relationship to

money. In John's Gospel, the thing that

gets him crucified. This is a theme that from this

point continues on into John. The thing that really upset them

was that he was breaking the Sabbath.

And the implication of him breaking the Sabbath was that he

was equating himself with God. That's the issue in in John.

It's a different level that John is taking us to.

So this issue of the Sabbath is really important.

Why was it so important to the Jews?

Well, in the Jewish history, the Sabbath breaking was given as

the reason why they went into exile.

Why did the why did the Jewish nation go into Babylon?

According to the story, it's because they did not keep the

Sabbath. Interesting.

This question of Sabbath keeping comes up again over and over in

the New Testament. Hebrews also touches on it.

It's super important, but look at what Jesus says verse 17 in

his defence, Jesus said to them, my Father is always at his work

to this very day and I too am working for this reason.

They tried to kill him. Not only was he breaking the

Sabbath, but he was calling God his own Father, making himself

equal with God. I don't know if you how weird

this is. So much of John's gospel is

weird. When I say about water into wine

and the church trying to turn wine back into water, if we try

and make John's gospel less weird, we're turning the wine

back into water. It is weird.

If anybody tells you this stuff is clear and makes sense, they

haven't understood it. It's not clear and it doesn't

make sense. It's not supposed to.

It's supposed to shock you out of the the, the natural mind

which seeks to control. It's an environment by

understanding everything. If I get a yes and if I've got

an answer to know all 360 degree understanding of my environment,

I can control it, I can master it, I can be safe.

The gospel will not allow you to do that because it's blasting

you out of the natural minds tendency and need to control.

My good friend Paul Young often says the why question is almost

always about control. Why did that happen?

God, why are you like this? God?

Why is it this way about control?

I'd feel unsafe with uncertainty.

I need certainty in order to get a handle and a control on my

environment, because then I will be competent and safe.

The gospel is not going to allow you to do that.

So I don't want to make this try.

I don't want to turn this back into water.

It's supposed to be something that begins to work on you, and

we need to talk to Jesus about it.

It should form the basis of our prayer, basis of our communion

with one another and our life encounter.

We need to encounter the real Jesus, not a fake Jesus, not a

facsimile Jesus, not an outline of Jesus.

We need the real deal. I need the real deal.

Anyway, why does he say this stuff about the Sabbath?

Well, it's interesting. My father is always working.

Well, back to Genesis 1. Genesis 1 says the Father is not

always working. You remember it says on the 6th

day he created man, and then on the 7th day God rested.

So what's going on here? Well, go, you can talk to Jesus

about it. What's going on here?

Jesus? Genesis once says the Father

stopped working, but you say the Father's always working.

You see how the you see how the Pharisees and the Jews might

have had a problem with Jesus? 19 Jesus said very truly, I tell

you, the Son can do nothing by himself.

He can only do what he sees the Father doing.

Whatever the Father does, the Son does also.

For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.

Why is he telling us this? Again, back to John 1 The in the

beginning was the Son face to face with the Father.

The whole point of this gospel is trying to reveal to us, Jesus

is showing us what is the life that he has with the Father from

all eternity past, because that's the life he's come to

bring to us. That's the life he's brought

into human flesh. It is.

He's transplanted it into the inside of us, Right?

The Father loves the Son, but then he says the Son can only do

what he sees the Father doing. Now, anyone who's still in this

penal substitution thing about Will, the Father is separated

from the Son on the cross. Nonsense.

Can't be the Son can only do what he sees the Father doing.

The Father and the Son cannot be doing two different things on

the cross because the Son can only do what he sees the Father

doing. Simple Trinitarian orthodoxy one

O 1 right here. The Father is in the Son, and

the Son only does what he sees the Father doing.

Let's skip down. Just as the Father raises the

dead and gives them life, Even so the Son gives life to whom he

is pleased to give it. Who are you pleased to give life

to? Jesus.

That's a good question. You should probably ask Jesus.

Who is it you are pleased to give life to?

Moreover, the Father judges no one but is entrusted all

judgement to the Son. If you think that the judgement

question is simple, the Father judges no one.

How like, how often have you had this image that God the Father

is like the judge on the throne and Jesus is kind of the defence

attorney between him and the Father.

Formal heresy, by the way, that's formal heresy.

The Father is not the judge on the throne.

He says he's entrusted all judgement to the Son, and it

says below, just as the Father has life in himself, so he is

granted the Son also to have life in himself.

And he's given authority to judge because he's the Son of

man. The fact that Jesus has the

authority to judge is because he's a human being.

Talk to him about that. What does that mean?

Jesus? If I test about testify about

myself, my testimony is true, but there is another who

testifies in my favour and I know that his testimony is true.

He's talking about John the Baptist.

He says John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you

chose for time to enjoy him. I have testimony weightier than

that of John for the works that the Father has given me to

finish. These very works I am doing

testify that the Father sent me. John came from God.

The the John the Baptist came from God.

He was sent from God to do something.

But Jesus is also from God, but in a different way.

He says my testimony is greater than the testimony of John

because it is grounded in the eternal reality of the life I

have with the Father. John was sent out from the

presence of God, but he's still a creation, just like you and

me. Christ is not a creation.

That's why the Creed says he's the only begotten Son of the

Father. It's begotten, not created.

We see that here in in the Gospel.

He's telling us what I've come to bring you.

Is not that the word of a messenger who's been tasked to

give a message? What I've come to do is bring

you the very life and reality of God.

I have come from the other side of the veil to your side.

When the veil is torn in 2, the crucifixion, it says it's torn

from top to bottom, not from bottom to top.

Makes a point of saying top to bottom.

Why? Because it's showing us this is,

this is about the, the, the, the mystery that was hidden behind

that veil has come out. It's not so that we can go in,

It's so that it can come out. This is also John 4, the water

of life coming up and out. Because in John and in most of

the New Testament, the physical body is the temple and the the

corporate body is the temple from which God proceeds.

Anyway, I'm down to my last couple of minutes, so let me,

let me land it. He says the Father sent me and

he has testified about me. You have never heard his voice

or seen his form elsewhere. Jesus is going to say everyone

who came before me is a thief and a liar.

Do you believe Jesus when he says that?

Who came before me? Abraham, Moses, Elijah,

Jeremiah. And Jesus is willing to call

them thieves and liars, not expecting that Jesus don't try

and turn it into water. Drink it as wine.

See what it does. Right here's my my clincher for

you and why I was just talking about water into wine.

Verse 39. You study the scriptures

diligently because you think that in them you have eternal

life. These are the very scriptures

that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have

life. How much of modern church,

contemporary Bible scholarship ministry does exactly the same

thing that Jesus is critiquing right here in this chapter?

You study the Scriptures because you think in the Scriptures you

have life. No, you don't.

The scriptures testify about me and in me you have life.

That's different. It's not Father, Son and Holy

Bible. The Bible is holy, but it's holy

because it draws out within us and connects us with the

testimony of who Jesus is. And it's in him that we have

life, so we don't want to stop at the door, AW Tosa said.

The Bible is a book full of doorways and what most

Christianity does is stand there admiring the doorway and

discussing the doorway and what colour is the doorway and what

material is it made out of. And you know, is it, should it

be this doorway or that doorway? And he said the purpose of a

doorway is that you go through the doorway into an experience.

Tosa said we need to stop teaching and start testifying.

And he was talking about the Bible, said we need we need

people who can speak out of their experience of having

walked through the doorways of the Scripture, not those who are

teaching an an academic, intellectual or theological

idea. As correct as it might be, it

will not bring life. We're supposed to walk through

into life. Lastly, verse 45, having said

I'm the judge, he then says, don't think that I will accuse

you before the Father. All right, How does this work

out? So you've told me that you're

the judge, you have the power to judge everyone.

And then you said I won't accuse you before the Father.

He says your accuser is Moses, in whom your hopes are set.

If you believed Moses, you'd believe me.

But since you don't believe what he wrote, how are you going to

believe what I say? Isn't Moses the one who said

that God rested on the 7th day? Traditionally, if you're not

confused by this yet, you haven't understand the

implications. He is like slapping them around

with the salmon, you know, like kind of salmon fish and they're,

they're dizzy. It's like knocking them

sideways. Well, what, what, what else do

you think? It's like if you're going from a

A2 dimensional view of the world to a three-dimensional one,

that's going to feel a little bit disorienting.

If the Christian gospel is not disorienting, it's probably not.

You're probably not connecting with it, right?

We're probably not connecting with it.

It's extremely disorienting. We go from 2 dimensions to 3

dimensions. How dizzy does that make you

feel? This whole business continues

throughout. John about Moses says this.

Moses says this, but I say this and it it's connected with the

concept of law. It's connected with the concept

of Sabbath all the way through. He's trying to break us out of

this mentality that is locked in to this old dysfunctional

pattern and way of thinking so that we can actually experience

the life of God. He's constantly spinning us

around so that we that centrifugal force of being spun

around causes us to shed the false armour of Saul that

liberates and breaks us out into our true identity.

It's not something that's imposed from the top.

It's something that spins from the from within and it bursts

and breaks everything open. That's the image from the inside

to the out. That's the message of John.

That's what Jesus is doing here. I'm going to pray.

The guys are going to do some leading.

I think that's what Alice said. Jesus, thank you that you are

the new wine. Thank you that your words are

spirit and life. Thank you that we have all this

wonderful scholarship that educates the mind.

But, and if you can agree with me on this one, then you, you

agree with the Holy Spirit. But today we want to agree with

you and dethrone the natural mind as the leading part of our

life and give permission to our hearts and to the Holy Spirit to

meet us, encounter us and transform us from the inside

out. Thank you, Holy Spirit, you've

come to do that. We don't have to do it, but you

do. We give you permission and then.

Yeah, so Paul was saying that God is love, and he's really

kind to each one of us. Olivia had a picture at the

beginning of Jesus knowing exactly what each one of us

needs. He knows how to take care of us.

So as we're going to worship now, we can come to Jesus and

ask him to give us what we need, the revelation we need, the

insight into him being loved that we need, the fact that he

doesn't accuse us before the Father, the fact that the

Father's handed judgement over any anything that that Paul was

bringing just now. Ask Jesus to give us what we

need. And part of surrendering control

is trusting everything else to God.

He's interested in meeting our needs, giving us today Our Daily

Bread and, and he can take, He's got the shoulders to carry

anything else and everything else.

So I'm going to invite the Holy Spirit now to reveal to us how

Jesus is meeting our specific need.

Come Holy Spirit, we we know you're in us.

We know you're always with us, but we also know that you love

us to welcome you and say we partner with you.

And so I ask that we we get revelation of the specific needs

we have Jesus that you want to meet as we worship now.

And I pray if we need to reach out to someone and pray with

them and ask for help or or give help to someone else, that we do

that as well. Because you, you break the

broken bread is a community formation.

This isn't an individualistic walk.

It's a community walk. You give us as a community our

needs. So I bless us to have our needs

met. The need that you want to meet

today, may you meet it in our response now.

Amen.