Rediscovering the Gospel - Part 7

Lord, thank you for joy. And something Chris said at the

marriage morning which really resonates with me is there's

something very honest about joy. I know I just feel really joyful

and I know that's something that you give freely without

judgement. You just give us joy because you

are joy and it's honest. And so we receive that gift

today. We receive what Peter says, the

inexpressible joy of the good news.

And I just bless Bill as I kind of have this picture of another

piece in the jigsaw puzzle. I bless him today as he brings

that piece to bring more and more clarity as to that cosmic

event of in history, in our material experience of the life,

the death and the resurrection of the Son of God that changed

us and changed everything forever changed our experience

of material reality. We just bless us to have one

more piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the mystery that Paul says is

now revealed in Christ. The mystery of your love and

your goodness and your kindness and your welcome into the

fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit.

And we just learn from God through Bill today.

Amen. Amen.

No pressure, hopefully. Thanks, Alice.

I'm going to start with a question.

What's Christianity all about? What's Christianity?

All it's it's a rhetorical question.

OK, I asked lots of rhetorical questions and I know people like

Andrew and Peter love to answer them, but really, really shut

up. Only kidding.

OK, so what's Christianity all about?

This is what I I became a Christian when I was 16.

This is what I thought before I became a Christian.

OK, This was my impression of what Christianity was all about

before I became a Christian. It was about rules.

It was about morality. It was about keeping the rules

and not breaking the rules. And it was about rewards and

punishment. Rewards for keeping the rules.

Punishment for breaking the rules.

And so my picture of God was he was fundamentalist.

His job description was to be a judge, OK, to adjudicate the

rules, the laws, the regulations, to decide who's

good, who's bad, who's in, who's out.

And that was my perception based on very little knowledge.

That was just my, the impression I got about what Christianity

was all about. Then at age 16, I, I actually

met him, I met God. Long story.

But fundamentally my perception changed of what Christianity is

all about. And I can remember very early on

someone said to me, but Bill, it's all about a relationship.

It's all about a relationship with God.

It's about love, it's about mercy.

And the picture of God changed in my mind from judge to father.

OK. And I guess one or two of us

can, can identify with that shift.

It, it really was a transition. It was a, a transformation of

understanding. And it's, it almost felt like

opposites moving from one extreme to another going on that

journey. And and that transformation in

my mind was echoed by my experience, my experience of

God. He seemed to me much more like a

loving, merciful father than a kind of impersonal, distant,

objective judge. But here was my here.

Here's the thing I noticed right from the start when the subject

turned to the gospel and understanding the gospel and

listening to people explaining the gospel, it felt like we were

back on the left hand side, your left.

That the articulation of the gospel was all about breaking

rules, doing things wrong, and it was about judgement and

punishment and the fact that we deserve punishment.

And So what are we going to do about that deserving of

punishment? How are we going to solve that

problem? It was expressed in those terms.

Now I know I'm speaking in broad brush terms, but do you get what

I'm saying? Do you understand?

OK, And you may say, but that's a terribly crude generalisation,

this either or thinking it's that's that's really simplistic.

I agree. OK, I agree with you.

That is a very crude generalisation and that's very

simplistic. But here's the thing.

There's a big argument going on in Christianity Today, both

academic theologians and also church leaders, about what is

the Gospel. The reason I'm doing this series

is because that argument is going on and it centres around

this question of what happened at the crucifixion.

You know, why did Jesus die? What did it achieve and how did

it achieve it? How does it bluntly, how does

the crucifixion work? To put it crudely, the technical

term is atonement. How does the atonement actually

work? How should we understand it?

And what I notice is that this argument, if you listen to

churchy people and academic theologians having this

argument, it sounds like that that's the tone of the argument.

That's what the argument feels like.

OK, now I know I'm speaking in big, broad brush strokes, but

that's my perception of the argument in very good terms.

And my problem is that my experience of God is on the

right of that picture. That's what Christianity feels

like to me. But I'm a Bible person.

My passion is the Bible and I want to understand Scripture and

I noticed that most of the arguments on the people on of

the people on the left are biblical arguments.

They tend to be Bible people. They quote lots of verses.

And so my experience puts me on the right hand side, but my kind

of orientation, my, the way I think what I'm interested in

kind of puts me on the left or it should do because I'm that

kind of person. Do you see what I mean?

So that's kind of, it's not really a question, but that's

the question I want to ask this morning, how to make sense of

that situation. And paradoxically, is there

anything the Bible tells us that helps us to make sense of this

situation? That's my my question.

And specifically, the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to

look at a couple of verses, because there are certain key

verses which are used again and again and again by the people on

the left of this argument to put together that argument.

And they tend to be an awful lot of them are in Paul's letters,

and an awful lot of them are in Romans, which happily is what

we're looking at. OK.

So I'm going to just take a couple of verses from Romans,

which really are, they're kind of central to this argument,

along with some others. And I'm what I want to ask is

what do they really mean? OK, what do they really mean?

Is that all right? Does that make sense?

So here we go. Here are the 2 verses, Romans

321 and 22. Now this really is the hinge

point in the first bit of Roman. Basically, Paul spent a couple

of chapters laying out the problem, the problem of SYN as

he calls it. And it's at this point that he

changes tack and starts to talk about the solution.

So this is his introduction to the solution.

OK. And what he says is this.

And now I've chosen the NRSV, the new revised standard

version. Normally when I speak on a

Sunday morning, I use the NIV because it's just easier.

It's easier English. The NRS feeds slightly clunkier,

but that's because it follows the Greek more closely.

OK, It's closer to a word for word Greek translation,

translation of the Greek. And so that's that's why I've

chosen it this morning. So here we go.

This is what Paul says. But now, but now, OK, now as a

result of the death and resurrection of Jesus, but now,

irrespective of the law, the righteousness of God has been

disclosed and is attested by the law and the prophets, the

righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

For all who believe this familiar territory, some of us

familiar with these verses. OK, So what I want to do is take

a closer look at these verses. Now, clearly what Paul is saying

here is we all need some righteousness.

We've all fallen below the required standard, and that's a

problem. We're all guilty.

But now, as a result of the death and resurrection of Jesus,

this righteousness of God is available, and we can have some

of it, and we can, if we have faith in Jesus, we can get some

of that righteousness of God for ourselves.

And the guilty will be declared not guilty.

We'll be free of condemnation. Clearly that is what Paul is

saying here, is it not? You're wise not to answer, but

that's often the argument that's put to me.

It as though saying these verses settles it.

You know, you don't need to go into it anymore.

It's clear as day. This righteousness is what the

the death and resurrection of Jesus gets us.

We just have to believe and we'll get it.

God will declare not not guilty, the judge will set us free,

etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, Yeah, right.

So the keyword in these two verses, it happens twice, is

righteousness. And in a way what I want to ask

this morning is what does righteousness mean?

What does the word righteousness mean?

I mean for a start, in this picture, where would you put

righteousness? Is it more a left hand side

question or a right? Is it a pink question or a blue

question? A blue word?

More blue? You really.

It's all right. These are rhetorical questions.

Don't you worry, I'll answer them.

OK, here's my first question. OK, that line down the middle,

how much is it a solid line? How much is it an either or

situation? For example, just in our

everyday lives, is it not the case that some laws are about

relationships? You know, if you think about

important relationships like a business partnership, is there

not a legal aspect to a business partnership or an international

treaty between two nations? That's a relationship at

national level. But is there such a thing as

international law governing those relationships?

Yes, there is. What about marriage?

Marriage is one of our most important relationships.

Does marriage have a legal aspect already?

We see that maybe that line down the middle isn't quite as solid

as the picture suggests. It's slightly fuzzy.

There seems to be a both and in the middle of those two blocks

of colour. In fact, is it not the case that

our most important relationships can often be expressed in legal

terms? And that's that's kind of a

measure of how important they are.

They often have a legal aspect. So even in our everyday lives,

there does seem to be some overlap between the left hand

side and the right hand side. Now here's my question.

Might God's rules, might God's laws, be that kind of law?

Might they be laws about relationships?

Well, what we find is they're exactly that kind of law,

exactly those kind of rules. And it's a bit of a surprise

because most of us, I think, assume that if this is God's

law, then surely that means it's universal and unchanging.

These are unchanging standards and rules that apply to all

people at all times and all places because they're God's

laws. It's obvious, isn't it?

Well, no, it's not. If you look at how the rules are

framed, they're an expression of the relationship between God and

his people. It's a contract.

It's a deal. God invites Israel to be his

people and to be different from all the other people.

And they agree, and they say, yeah, we're up for that.

And he says, OK, well, this is how it's going to work.

Basically, these are the commitments I'm going to make to

you. Solemn promise.

This is what me being your God involves.

And I'm going to give you these rules in order to help you to be

my people, to guide you about what being my people looks like.

This document, these laws, they will govern, they'll guide,

they'll strengthen, they'll reinforce our relationship.

That's exactly what God's laws are all about.

How did Jesus summarise all the Old Testament law in Matthew 22?

Someone says to him what are the greatest commands, and he says

there are two of them. Love the Lord your God and love

your neighbour as yourself. And then he says all of the law

and the prophets, all of the Old Testament hangs on those two

commands. Now, what are those two commands

about? They're about relationships.

They're about a good relationship with God, and

they're about a good relationship with our neighbour.

We're in that middle ground. We're squarely in that middle

ground. Here's the picture I would

suggest. In fact, I think that's a very

good definition, at least a working definition to begin

with, of what righteousness looks like.

We're in the Bothan territory. Let me give you an example.

Marriage. Emma's going to enjoy this.

Marriage is one of Paul's favourite metaphors for the

relationship between Jesus and the church, the relationship

between a husband and a wife. Now if I said I have a perfect

marriage, which of course I do, but if I said I have a perfect

marriage and you said to me, what do you mean by that?

Well, thanks, Andrew, that's very good of you.

It's a good question. And I'll tell you what I mean by

that is I stick to the rules. I have never committed adultery.

Absolutely. Would you not agree that that is

a perfect marriage? Because I've stuck, Because I've

stuck to the rules and you'd say you're an idiot?

Surely it's more than that, you know.

Where is love, as Emma often said?

But we know, don't we, that marriage is a lot more than

keeping the rules. So then if I said, well, we love

one another, we love one another and it's not about the rules, so

I can sleep with whoever I like. What would you say to me then?

You're an absolutely. You're an idiot if you think

like that. You either don't understand

relationships and love, or you don't understand morality.

You don't understand the rules. They work together in any

healthy relationship, both are pulling in the same direction.

They work together. That's how you know it's

working. It's what righteousness looks

like. OK, so next question.

Is it a 5050 partnership between rules and relationship, between

morality and love? Are they kind of equally strong,

equally important, or is 1 central and one in a supporting

role? Well, what about the Pharisees?

What was the distinguishing characteristic of the Pharisees?

What did their religion consist of?

What was the most important thing to them?

The rules? Absolutely.

They made the rules central. That's what it was all about.

How did Jesus get on with the Pharisees?

Not well, it has to be said. But here's the really

interesting thing. When they fell out, what?

What did they fall out about? What kind of situation, what

kind of conflict sparked off that argument between Jesus and

the Pharisees? It was exactly this situation

when you've got love on one hand and the rules on the other,

which gives way. As far as the Pharisees were

concerned, the rules come first and Jesus said you don't know

what you're talking about. The the classic example is

healing on the Sabbath. There are 7 different examples

of a clash about healing on the Sabbath, and it's obvious to

Jesus that the loving thing to do in this situation is to heal

the guy or the girl. It's not at all obvious to the

Pharisees. And so I would suggest that in

this relationship between rules and in this relationship between

rules and relationship, it's relationship that comes first,

that if they clash, if they conflict, then the central thing

is love, because love is the foundation for all the laws.

In Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to all

these people sitting there on the mountainside that their,

their righteousness needs to exceed that of the Pharisees.

And it probably blew their minds because no one was more serious

about righteousness than the Pharisees.

And I can see them thinking, what are you saying?

That we have to work harder at the rules than the Pharisees do?

Well, that's impossible. Jesus, for a start, they're the

experts. And we're, you know, look at us.

But I don't think that's what Jesus is saying at all.

What he's inviting people to do is to rethink what righteousness

really means, what righteousness really looks like.

I think he's still inviting people to think that today.

So here's my working summary, my brief summary.

Righteousness, I would suggest, is about being a good person,

being a good person. And central to being a good

person is loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself.

But here's the thing. If you are truly a good person

who loves God rightly and loves your neighbour rightly, it will

look like keeping the rules, but it'll be keeping the rules just

like a fruit, like fruit from a tree, like a by product.

It'll be obvious. I might even suggest it.

It'll be easy. It'll be natural.

If you love, it's like the rules are like the scaffolding around

a building. You know, if you're building a

building, it's useful to have the scaffolding.

There's no building there. What's the point in the

scaffolding? But it's it's the building

that's important. It's the relationship that it's

that's important. It's the love that matters.

If we find that the rules are saying one thing, that morality

is saying one thing and love is saying another, If we experience

a tension between the two, then it's time to start asking

questions. What is this asking us about our

understanding of morality? What's it asking us about our

understanding of love and what God thinks love looks like?

It might be an early warning sign that something is is out of

out of line. One more example on this, and

probably my favourite in Matthew's telling of the

Nativity story. In Matthew chapter 1, Joseph

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

discovers that his fiance Mary is pregnant.

And Matthew says because Joseph was a righteous man, he resolved

to separate from Mary quietly. Now, The thing is, if Joseph was

a stickler for the rules, then discovering that if your fiance

is pregnant, what's the law say? What does the Old Testament law

say? Yeah, it's public humiliation

and shame at the very least. You know, if you want to keep

the rules, it's not, you know, keeping it on the lowdown.

It's public humiliation for his fiance.

And so Bible translators cannot get their heads around this

because they think that righteousness means keeping the

rules. So what does the poor old NIV

say? It says because Joseph, her

husband, was faithful to the law.

And then it adds 2 words that don't exist in Matthew, that

don't exist in the Greek. It says and yet he did not want

to expose her to public disgrace.

He decided to separate from her quietly.

There's no and yet in Matthew. And so the NIV has to add a

little footnote and give the real Greek down below, but they

have to add and yet in order to reverse the meaning, because

what Matthew says is because Joseph, her husband, was

faithful to the law, because he was a righteous man.

Matthew says he loved her. Yes, he thought she'd betrayed

him. Yes, he thought she'd let her.

She'd let him down, and so he was within his right, legally to

make her publicly humiliated. And yet he chose not to do that.

Why? Because he was a good man, and

so he didn't exercise the law. The NIV can't cope with that

because it has a different understanding of righteousness.

The NIV righteousness is all about keeping the law.

Matthew understands righteousness better than the

NIV does. It's quite.

Do you see what I mean? I love that.

It's interesting, isn't it? Joseph is truly righteous.

He's a good man. Even though Mary, Mary he thinks

has betrayed him, he still wants to do the best for her.

He's merciful. He's merciful because he's

righteous. So back to Romans 3.

There's one more thing twice here it says the righteousness

of God. OK, we're back in in Romans back

to Paul and Paul talks about the righteousness of God.

Now just in in kind of linguistic terms that can have

two meanings. Technically it's either a

subjective genitive or an objective genitive.

And so sorry, I'll explain it was frowning at me.

It it can mean it can mean a righteousness that God creates

that he manufacturers that he gives no a righteousness that he

makes happen something that he produces.

But it can also mean equally valid in grammatical terms is

the righteousness of God being a description of what God is like

a characteristic of God, God's righteousness, his personal

righteousness, like the wisdom of Alice, the foolishness of

Bill, the righteousness of God. It's a quality that he so so

grammatically it can be either. Both are entirely valid

translations of the righteousness of God.

Most English translations say, well, of course it's obvious

that it's the former because why is anyone interested in the

righteousness of God? Because we know God's righteous.

That's not for that. He makes the rules.

He's bound to keep them. It's just not interesting.

But here's the thing. What does Paul actually say?

He says now, irrespective of the law, the righteousness of God

has been disclosed and is attested by the law and the

prophets. Now what is the law and the

prophets? It's the Old Testament, OK?

What Paul is saying here is we've read about the

righteousness of God in the Old Testament, OK?

Now if you look in the Old Testament and look for the

phrase the righteousness of God, what's it talking about?

Most of the time it's talking about who God is, God's

righteousness. Righteousness is a quality of

God rather than something he manufacture.

In fact, the idea of something he manufacturers, something he

makes. Righteousness is quite rare in

the Old Testament. So why?

Where does it come up in the Old Testament?

What's the idea that's often expressed?

Well, here's a perfect example. Psalm 143 Lord, hear my prayer.

Listen to my cry for mercy in your, in your faithfulness and

righteousness come to my relief. Do not bring your servant into

judgement, for no one living is righteous before you.

So what's the the psalmist saying?

What he's saying is I've failed. I deserve judgement.

I've let you down. I've not kept my side of the

relationship. And so he asks God to be

righteous. He asks him to be faithful and

righteousness, faithful and righteous.

And what that will look like is having mercy, forgiving him.

So as far as the psalmist is concerned, that the psalmist

question is, will God be righteous?

Will he love live up to his side of the contract?

I've let him down. I've walked away from the

relationship. Will he stick to his promises

and continue to be faithful to me, continue to love me,

continue to treat me as one of his people and be merciful,

'cause that what? That's what righteousness will

look like. Does that make sense?

So what the psalmist isn't saying here is please obey the

law. Please stick to the law because

that will mean judgement. He's asking for righteousness.

What he's doing is asking God to remember the relationship, to

remember his promises. Do you see the parallel with the

Joseph and Mary example? It's exactly the same principle.

Righteousness means having mercy.

And the question is, will this person be righteous?

Will they put relationship above rules?

So here's my understanding of what these verses mean.

A key thing to understand is that at this point in Romans,

Paul is talking to Jewish Christians.

From the context, we know that he's talking to members of the

church in Rome, but in particular the members of the

church in Rome who come from a Jewish background, a Jewish

context. And he's addressing them in

particular. And I think what he's saying to

them is, you know, the righteousness of God, question

whether God is still faithful to his people.

And that was the big question for all Jews at that time.

They knew that they had failed. They knew that they'd been

exiled. And since the exile, there'd

been radio silence. The big question was, has God

forgotten us? Has he also walked out on the

relationship, like we walked out on him?

Or is he faithful? Is he true?

Is he righteous? That was the question the Jews

were asking. And what Paul's saying is, look

at the death and resurrection of Jesus.

There's your answer. God is still in business.

He hasn't forgotten us. It's still possible to be God's

people. It's still possible to enjoy a

relationship with him, His righteousness.

The opportunity of that relationship is available and we

know it's available because of the death and resurrection of

Jesus. And we can have it.

We can say yes and be restored to right relationship with him

through faith in Jesus. I think that's what Paul is

saying in these verses. But that's very, very, very

different from the interpretation that I was always

taught. Final thought, if you're online

a lot, if you're one of these people who lives on Twitter,

then there's lots and lots of talk about narratives.

And one of the biggest insults you can lob at someone is you

only think that because you have this narrative going on in your

head. That's the way you understand

the world. You've got this narrative, For

example, immigrants crossing the channel in small boats.

Who are they? They're all criminals.

You only believe in that because you believe a right wing

narrative. Who are they?

Well, they're all genuine asylum seekers and refugees.

Well, you only think that because you believe a left wing

narrative. OK, get it?

So the story that's playing in your head affects the way you

read the news, basically, and it acts like a lens, like a

philtre. You take in and accept and

absorb the stuff that agrees with your beliefs, and you

reject the stuff that doesn't. And the The thing is, we're

always brilliant at spotting other people's narratives.

Yeah. You only think that because

you've signed up to this terrible narrative.

Whereas me, I have a deep and clear understanding of the

reality of the situation. I think you'll find.

But it's human nature. We all have these narratives.

It's the way we believe stuff, it's the way we make sense of

the world. It's just we all do it, or it's

very, very hard not to. You got to work really hard not

to. Now here's my question.

Do you think that applies to Christians or are we somehow

exempt? So if you've been told a story

of this is what the gospel is and this is how the gospel

works, my question is, how much does that narrative affect the

way you read Scripture? How much does it act like a

philtre or a lens? That means we read something,

especially something familiar, and we say, yeah, I know what

that means. It's just a question.

Are we at least open to the possibility that we might be

doing that? Are we willing to read Scripture

again and maybe take a fresh look?

Alice. Yeah, I think anthropologists

might say we're storied creatures, so we're formed

through the stories we believe because ultimately there is a

story that is reality. And our conversion or

repentance, which is continual change of mindset, is, is living

into the reality of the actual story.

That's true. CS Lewis called it the true

myth. So for every single one of us,

what I'd love us to do now is to humble ourselves before God and

and repent, as in have a change of mindset about the thing God

wants us to see more clearly about the story.

Like I loved Bill talked about his original conversion was the

nature of God as judge to the nature of God as Father.

So that's a conversion, but we have multiple conversions.

In fact, we're continually transformed by the renewing of

our mind, but that because of our agency in Romans 12, that

happens because we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice.

So the he respects our agency. He's non coercive by nature.

He's relational and Invitational.

So in order to have a repentance, there are absolutely

times where it feels like we didn't give God permission at

all. He broke in.

But even then, even with Paul's Damascus Rd experience, I would

say there was a zeal in Paul that God was respecting.

He was respecting A genuine search.

And So what I'd love us all to do now is, is humble ourselves

and say we just don't know what we don't know.

We don't know what we don't know.

And this continual kind of revelation available for us.

So let's. Let's wait on God and ask Him to

show us the thing, the next thing about the reality, the

real story, the true myth we live in that will impact how we

sorry, just name that. Let's just name the joy and

slight strangeness of what's going on there.

Lord, I thank you that, you know, I just think of Paul's.

So many of Paul's prayers in the New Testament are that our eyes

will be enlightened and opened and that revelation will come

that we may know you or we may know the width and the depth and

the height and the length of your love.

It's like we just need this continual unveiling, you know,

we need to move from darkness into light in so many areas of

our lives. We need the lights to go on.

But we do see that you respect our agency.

You know, as, as Bill was speaking, I just thought about

what we call the, you know, I think slightly actually, I think

we get it wrong with the, the prodigal son, but the, the, the

father respects the lostness of both sons.

He just respects it. He doesn't try and fix or

rescue. He just lets people go, lets

people go to be hard, to be righteous just outside the

house, but bitter. And he lets people go to rock

bottom because he has valued that the fact He's given us

delegated authority to rule. And he will not take that back

unless we want to go back to partnership with him.

And so, Lord, we just welcome you to reveal reality to us, to

reveal the righteousness of God, which is instinctively, innately

going to be gentle and kind and merciful and pursuing and

compassionate and hopeful. There is only going to be the

joy of the Father that welcomes home the child.

There is only going to be a celebration and elevation to

that song to be a Prince. There is only ever going to be a

banquet table laid before the one who just just in their heart

just says, yes, I want this and I want you.

That's who you are. You can't violate that.

You can't do anything else or respond in any other way.

Even if we are faithful, we, we literally break faith.

We are faithless. You remain faithful because you

cannot deny your very nature, which is full of has said

unending, loving, loyal kindness towards us.

And so we just want to wait for a minute.

We just really, we just, we need healing.

We need healing of mindsets, healing of of lies.

We've been told stories we've believed about your nature.

Now I love that that thing in the nice in Creed that the you

are, that you are first of all our heavenly Father in the

Lord's Prayer. You're first of all, our

Heavenly Father before you are almighty, Creator of all things

holy. Everything is mediated through

that towards us. And so we pray you heal us and

we pray you speak to us. So I'm just going to have a

little bit of silence now to just wait on God for that.

The weightiness of the healing that comes when we encounter Him

as He actually is. I, you know, this is my kind of

interpretation of Jesus's very famous saying, you will know the

truth and the truth will set you free.

Know an experience of the same things.

Truth and reality are the same things.

So what Jesus is saying is you will experience reality and

reality will liberate you. Reality being the nature of God,

a righteousness that is by nature merciful and kind and

gentle and longing and pursuing forgiveness and grace and mercy.

And we need to have that change of mindset, that repentance

about reality. That is what you, you are like.

That is who you are. You are reality.

And the enemy is constantly lying to us about your nature.

Did God really say, is he really that good?

Is He really that abundant? Is He really that kind?

Is He really that protecting? Will He really come through for

us that that is the perpetual temptation of the human

condition every single day? And we say as a body and as a

community, yes, He is. He is that kind.

He is that faithful. He is that merciful, He is that

good. He does pursue us relentlessly.

He does invite us in. So what I'd love everyone to do

now is we've, if you need to pick up your children, please

do. But if you want to pray with

each other, if there's something that's come up that you just

know you don't, you need, you need to have more clarity on

what God's actually like. Pray with each other, or you can

come up here and be prayed for. But this is the biggest wrestle

of our life. If we build everything on a

faulty foundation, we believe lies about the nature and the

reality of God. Essentially, we can't live in

the garden with him. We can't live with him because

we're not in reality. So we need continually to be

transformed by the renewing of our mind.

And so if there's anything that's come up for us where

we're like, oh, there's something in me that that still

doubts his goodness and his nature.

And but I want to change that is bringing it into the light.

Pray with each other, pray with someone, me up front, elders,

anyone to just get breakthrough into the reality of that heaven

on earth space.