3rd May || Rooted In God || Ben Gardiner

He introduced himself and he was he was Pastor Josiah.

And I was like, oh, pastor, what?

What do you do? What do you do?

He's like, no, no, no, you misunderstand.

I'm the pastor of the fields. He was a farmer, but he really

wanted a title. And I just thought it was the

most we're going to be looking and we have been looking at a

series in Joshua. And this kind of sermon

continues from the the Walls of Jericho.

OK, so a little bit of context for you.

And the walls of Jericho have just come tumbling down, OK?

And it's one of the, you know, the key moments in any good

children's Bible is the walls of Jericho coming down, OK?

And so the Israelites win through this incredible act of

worship, OK, glorifying God. And they do so in a way that

over 4000 years later, we're still talking about, like I

said, it's one of the the stories that most people within

around the UK, being in a Western society, would have an

understanding of what's gone on. OK.

And so they fought this incredible victory, the lights,

which has never been seen before and arguably ever again.

They stood before a fortress and they watched the walls come,

come tumbling down. They marched around and Joshua 7

starts with the expectation before another battle.

So the people are continuing to claim the the land that was

there, this promised land. Really, we're clever with

titles. The reason it's called the

promised land is because it's the land that God promised.

It's really is that simple and they've just seen God do this

most amazing thing where they really didn't even need to

fight. They kind of just they walked

around a bit and sung like in a nutshell, like there's way more

than that and there's spiritual stuff.

But but realistically right to the average person, they walked

around a wall 7 times and it came cumbling down like that.

That was pretty much it right now amazing God.

But realistically, for the average dude watching that

right, he literally was told to sing, maybe blow a trumpet and

March, and everything kind of worked.

And so they're going into this battle fully expecting a similar

kind of victory. Or to be fair, even if it was

double that, do you know what we'll do?

Double the work, We'll March, double the time, We'll do it.

You know, 14 instead of seven. It seems like a reasonable

expectation up until that point to be fairly smug and assured of

your victory after Jericho. But like that was a reasonable

expectation and Joshua we read this it says Joshua sent spies.

This is Joshua 7. I'm reason from the passion

translation just because I like it and it says spent spies to

it's AI, but I think it's I we were talking and this isn't by

the way, some like futuristic thing of like a sermon around

AII was tempted. Me and Libby were talking about

that this morning. Anyway, they returned to Joshua

and they reported to him. There is no need to trouble the

whole army to conquer this. The people are so few that 2 or

3000 men could attack it and take the city.

So Joshua sent 3000 troops to attack the city, but they were

routed by the men. The men of Iya chased them from

the gates, down the hills as far as the quarries, cutting them

down. As they fled.

They killed 36 of Joshua's men. And when Israel heard of their

defree, their hearts melted away in fear.

Now, this is a very peculiar passage of scripture to me

because I would argue in most military senses, if you took

3000 people and only lost 36, that would be considered a

victory like that that seem but for them, 36 of them die and

they leg it. Like, I don't know what their

expectations were. Maybe it was because of Jericho,

but up until that fight, the Israelite people were a fighting

people, losing 36 out of 3000. Somebody's good at maths.

There's a percentage in there somewhere.

But put it this way, it's not very much, OK, but it only took

36 individuals to die for them to start running away.

And I thought, well, maybe there was a reason that the Bible put

down 36. And so if you know me and know

anything about me, I spent enough time trying to work.

No, there isn't. OK?

I, I tried and I spent stupid amounts of time looking into

like the Greek and Hebrew history, well, Hebrew history of

the letter, that there's nothing, OK, there is no

significance around the 36. It seems to be that the reason

the Bible puts down the 36 people died is because 36 people

died. And it turns out sometimes when

the Bible says something, it literally just means 36 people

died. That was a lesson for me.

Honestly, it was concerning how long I tried to look into this.

But anyway. And so we have this kind of

thing, like there was no real mention of it.

Oh, there we go. I even, I was even reading

something called the Talmud, which is the oral tradition

that's supposed to be attached to the Toran and things like

that. Nope, there is nothing.

OK, so I did look, there is nothing in there.

And so the question then became to me of this kind of thing of

like, what went wrong? Like they had this expectation,

the walls of Jericho comes tumbling down, this absolute

victory expectation that God is going to move and they're going

to conquer. They even spent sent spies in.

So they did the right thing. They they surveyed the land and

the guys even said, you know what, we could do this in two 2

to 3000. And they still chose the larger

number. We'll send the 3000 yet 36 of

them full and the whole thing. And it says that they are now

filled with fear. And so Joshua 71 tells us, and

this is how the story actually starts, but I deliberately

missed it was this. The Israelites acted

unfaithfully, regarded their devoted things.

And then the passage continues. So I looked into this.

The Hebrew word means to break faith unfaithfully.

It's not just that something was broken or stolen.

The issue becomes a microcosm for the reality of the Israelite

story. It actually becomes like this

covenant or betrayal in the words of one of my favorite Old

Testament scholars, a guy called John Golden Gay.

He says covenant is a way of speaking about a relationship

that involves both promise and expectation.

It infirm affirms Yahweh's commitment to Israel and

Israel's responsibility to Yahweh.

So it isn't this relationship of just like a nice idea or you

know, we're seeing each other. A covenant had the expansion of

of almost till death do us part. If you broke a covenant, the

expectation that you would be killed, it was that serious.

And the language of this betrayal is around this kind of

thing that the Israelite people had done something that had

caused a break in this covenantal relationship.

So in chapter 6, we read that God has declared that everything

in Jericho was to be given to God alone, but a man called

Ashen took some of it. And later in Joshua 7, we read

the full account and I'll look at, oh, there we go, Joshua 7

Joshua 7:21

verse 21, which says, yeah, summary of the story is he

took some stuff, OK, He took silver, he took gold and he took

some pretty things. Go concentrate the people.

And next morning Joshua said, my son, it is true, I've sinned

against the Lord and God of Israel.

This is why I've done it. What I saw in the plunder of the

beautiful rose from Babylonia, 200 shekels of silver and a

wedge of gold weighing 50 shekels, I coveted them and I

took them. They are hidden in the ground

inside my head, my tent. So we have this language of

covet, took and hid. And I was looking into this and

actually there was a deliberate reason.

It's really important that we understand this pattern.

While researching this passage, the most scholars seem to agree

that Joshua was trying to link back to the pattern of the full

of Adam and Eve, the symbolic reconciling of the symmetry.

OK. And so just the sin and Eden

disrupted the relationship with God.

This interrupts, disrupts Israelites relationship with God

in the land. And like Eden, the sin becomes

hidden. So the kind of thing with Adam

and Eve was they saw the fruit, they took the fruit, they eat

the fruit and hid in this similar kind of language.

They're trying to indicate a similar kind of thing of this

breakdown of just basically kind of like what the heart of sin

is. I see, I take, I hide.

It seems to be quite a pattern that actually, if you follow

most of Scripture and probably most of your life, when you look

at the context of your own personal sins, you don't need to

share them. Don't worry.

It's a very similar kind of thing of we see, we take, we

hide. And so there's this kind of

understanding of looking in this, of trying to grasp the

heart of what Joshua's saying. So the sin becomes hidden.

And in the context of the Scripture, the treasure is

buried beneath the tent, and what is hidden from the people

can never be hidden from God. And now, like I said, this

symbolism is essential to grasping the heart of the

passage. When reading Joshua 7, it could

be easily be wondered why God is punishing the people for the

actions of only one person. But by linking it to the story

and language of the full, we see the uncomfortable truth that

Joshua is trying to get us to understand.

The whole nation suffers for the sin of one in the beginning.

In Joshua 7 it says Israel has sinned.

It doesn't just say one person. This reflects the biblical idea

that God's people are a covenant community and so when one sins,

the whole community fell and broke.

To put it into potentially more modern or Pauline language, the

actions of 1 member of the body affects the whole body.

I've got a tiny literally, I mean, I'm, I'm a weakling, OK?

My wife's AGP and I hate hearing about her day at work because

it's gross. I, I have a tiny blood bister on

my finger right now. I have never been more aware of

this finger at the moment than this.

But how many of you are conscious of the fact that you

can breathe through your nose right now?

I guarantee that when you have a cold, that's all you think

about, and you can see that within that language.

That's why Paul uses this language of actually the impact

of one small thing. Literally the ability to breathe

through your nose can actually ruin your day or your sleep and

all of those kind of things. And so there's a deliberate

understanding of actually the impact of such a small thing can

affect the entirety of whom we are.

So the sin that we saw, he thought it was committing just

this private thing. I'll just take some stuff and

hide it in my tent. But the consequences soon became

public. 36 soldiers dies, Israel army flees, the people lose his

heart and doing this, Joshua's experienced sorry, exposing A

harsh reality and even harder truth.

Private sin is never truly private among the people of God.

It can't be because we are a covenantal people.

Like it's actually impossible or you know, that kind of thing.

Oh, it's just me. It actually, biblically

speaking, it doesn't seem to be the case.

I think it's really important to notice the wording of God's

response to this sin though. It says I will not be with you

anymore unless you destroy whoever among you is devoted to

destruction. God doesn't say I defeated you,

He simply says I will not be with you.

And this is a key understanding Israel problem is not that God

attacked them, but simply that he withdrew himself from them.

You can actually see this pattern a lot throughout

Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, like for example,

when the Babylonians invade and take over and take the Israelite

people, it says the same thing that God removes his hand from

them and the and the Babylonians came.

It's quite a common theme that actually the protection of God

or the relationship with God is the thing.

And so when people point to God and say, Oh God, you did this,

it's actually quite often in Scripture.

No, God just removed himself from that very, very different

kind of understanding. So rather than viewing God as

this deliberate attacker, actually it's this removal.

OK, I said this, you've done this, OK?

My, my daughter's and my children are learning to ride a

bike. And Elias was very, very

adamant. He's like, don't touch me, don't

touch me, don't touch me, OK? And he fell.

He got back up and kept going. But there is a level of that

where God is gracious and merciful.

He'll give you exactly what you asked for.

And His expectation is covenant relationship.

And these are the standards that He set.

And when you don't meet those standards, God in His mercy goes

OK, and He just removes himself from the circumstance in the

presence. The problem is God's stepping

back. And this goes back to the

nature, as I said, of this covenant or relationship.

God is holy and by His nature perfection and imperfection

cannot coexist. Either the imperfection taints

it's perfection, making perfection no longer perfect, or

the imperfection is destroyed to protect or hold on to

protection. I said that a lot with a lot of

different words. I do actually.

I teach. I'm a teacher, for those of you

who don't know, and I teach this quite regularly with my class.

And what I often do is I have a white piece of paper and ask the

students what colours the paper and they go white.

I go temp temporarily points, well done.

And then I put it against the white board.

And inevitably, because my white board has got marks across it, I

asked them again, well, what colour is the white board?

And they go white. I'm like, OK, compare it to

that, what colour is the white board?

And they go grey. I'm like, OK.

And so we move it around all the different whites that we've got

around the classroom, usually against my skin against, you

know, all those sorts of different things.

And we come to this conclusion that white isn't as simple as

you think. It depends on what it's

surrounded by. And it's the same kind of thing

within the context of when people say, but I'm a good

person, why can't I be with God? Because there's a massive

difference between goodness and perfection.

God is perfect. And so the moment you have any

imperfection, like I said, if I had this piece of paper right

here and I put just the tiniest mark upon it, it would no longer

be a perfect piece of paper. It doesn't matter how big the

the OR small the imperfection is, it taints and destroys the

very perfection. And God by his nature is I am.

And so you cannot have imperfection and perfection

coexisting. They are oxymoronic.

And you have two options, destruction of the imperfection

to keep the purity or the perfection itself gets becomes

just less and imperfect. And God cannot become less.

And so because of that reason, God removes himself because he

is. So until perfection and

perfection can be together, you can't have both.

By the way, This is why Christianity is so flipping

cool, because the only one who can meet the standard of God is

God, which is why Jesus comes. And that's the whole premise of

Christianity. I love it.

Any religion that tells you to meet the standard of a God, I

can't. Christianity says you still

can't, but I'll do it anyway. Beautiful.

Anyway, that's not even my notes.

Just you can't get enough of Jesus.

And so like I was saying, OK, so we have this kind of thing of

there is yeah, This is why the wages of sin is death.

You cannot have eternally perfect being and non internal

input being coexisting in a covenantal relationship because

covenant implies equality. And so within this kind of thing

you have to one, well, something has to give.

And often the problem is that we think individually my actions

affect me, but in the Bible covenant means my actions affect

us because we don't stand alone, we stand in relationship with

God and the people of God. And so God has two options in

this destroy the relationship or remove himself from it.

And this is where we see as the consequence.

Not God causing destruction, but simply removing himself.

And the benefits of his presence for the people are gone.

Remember, as I said to you, it was God who caused the walls of

Jericho to fall. They walked around and God did

the rest. Like I told you that the reason

that story's impressive wasn't because of the people like it

was God. Israel's problem is not that God

attacked them. Their problem is that God

stepped back. And when God's presence is God,

your strength disappears. Battle was not lost before the

walls of I, it was lost in one person's tent.

There's loads of parallels and messages that I was thinking

about I could draw from. But the thing that struck me

most was probably, as I said to you earlier, the body of Christ

today, the world, the church, throughout history and present

day, God is holy. And throughout Scripture,

holiness means that sin cannot exist comfortably in the

presence of God. And so when covenant of broken,

something has to give in that moment.

And God does not destroy Israel because they are the people of

God. That is their identity.

It was part of the covenant or agreement.

And so God removes himself from them.

Far more subtle, but probably more terrifying.

He withdrew his presence and in that moment, protection gone,

strength gone. You can't have peace if the

Prince of it is left confidence collapsed.

Only took 36 people to be killed.

It's because they were no longer, they were just the

people. I was thinking about this.

How many people would I need to see die before I ran?

Turns out it would probably be about one.

I was, I was looking at thinking, you know, 36 people.

It's not that many. But then I stopped and thought

and I'm like, if I'm running towards a wall with my mate and

he gets shot with an arrow, I'm running the opposite way.

Like it would not take many. Maybe that's just me.

See, the problem with this is not that God attacked, but now

they're facing life without him. And how do you be?

Or how are you the people of God without the God you serve in?

Colossians pulpits it like this. He says they refuse to take hold

of their true source. But we received directly from

him. His life supplies vitality into

every part of the body. This concept of being in Christ

is the most common theme of any Pauling letter.

It is repeated over 150 times across the letter of Paul.

Considering that man wrote, was it 60% of the New Testament,

something like that. And his most common theme is

that you are the body of Christ. Paul says the body only works

when it stays connected to the head.

We do a lesson again in school around the body of Christ and

one of the things we always talk about is if, you know, if you

could lose one part of your body, what would it be?

It's always interesting hearing kids just yell out different

kind of things. You know one eye, which one,

your left or your right. It's really bizarre why they

have opinions about that kind of stuff, but we always come to the

same conclusion. None of them want to lose their

head because you can't function without it.

It's amazing. If you stop there and think

about what you're willing to sacrifice, none of you would say

your head. There will be a ranking.

That's a whole different fun game you can play maybe over

lunch as well. If you had to lose which part

and why? It's a fun game, or at least

it's in my classroom. Maybe you can try it.

So you can't be a Christian without Christ, and you can't be

the people of God without God. Again, oxymoronic statements.

And Joshua says when Israel doesn't lose a battle because

they were weaker, they lost because they'd lost the

connection to the source of life.

And I wonder how often in our worlds it's the same and we

asked questions, or at least I asked questions of like, guy,

God, why is this happening or why are you doing this or what

have I done wrong? Well, that's probably not the

question. I actually asked the other ones

to blame God. It's far easier.

And the issue wasn't God suddenly turned against them,

but that sin had disrupted the relationship that sustained them

in Joshua 7. Israel didn't lose because they

were weaker. They'd lost because their

connection had been broken, and they became a people who drift.

Who turn, who root themselves in something other than God.

The problem is because of God's mercy and grace is that when we

step away from him, he lets us. There's a really interesting I'm

I'd love to preach on this at some point.

I've just never had the brain space.

There are three promises in the covenant of to be a covenant

people. There's promise of blessing,

promise of land and promise of descendants.

And what's really interesting is the reason that the Israelite

people are enslaved in Egypt, because the blessings of the

Lord were happening in Egypt. It says that in, in the

Scripture, you can read it, it says that the Israelites and the

Israelites continue to multiply and the Egyptians grew fearful

and it was really interesting. The blessing that God promised

them in the wrong location became the very thing that

enslaved them. Really interesting theological

kind of thing I'd love to unpack one day.

I just, I just don't quite know what it means myself.

So good luck. But that's quite terrifying.

And this was God's blessing. And this one is even worse.

It's the just the removal when God and his grace and his mercy

just allows you to go, OK, it's a really interesting kind of

perspective because a lot of people blame God, but in this

and when we read Scripture, it doesn't seem to be God's fault.

It's actually by his very nature he is and he's merciful and he

says, OK, go be free. The question is God's is God

absent or have we left? There's an interesting parallel

in language between the story in action and the story of the fall

and the language of Paul and Joshua and Ashen hides sin in

the ground Adam and Eve hid from God.

And yet Paul makes this really interesting thing, indicates

something different in Colossians.

He says your crucifixion with Christ has served the ties of

this life and now you are truly hidden in God.

So before when there was this kind of understanding that sin

was something that we took, we sorry, we see, we take, we hide.

It's still got that level of hidden.

But where we hide is different. We're now hidden in Christ.

Ashton hid in something in the earth and Paul says the

Christian life is meant to be hidden somewhere else.

It's not buried in secrecy, but held securely in Christ.

Ashton's sin was hidden in the ground and it belongs to the

ground. It belongs to the earth, but

we're rooted in something different and we belong to

someone different. In Colossians 3 it says this Set

your minds on the things of life.

Your life is hidden with Christ in God.

See the problem with virtual light is that it wasn't just

what one of them did. It's how they decided to do it

and where that security was hidden.

See, when something is hidden as a community, even though it

seems like it's an individual, it affects and impacts the

entirety of the community. And so the question then

becomes, well, what is our solution to this predicament?

Paul puts it like this. He says, put to death whatever

belongs to your earthly nature, because when you keep hidden

doesn't stay harmless, it grows. And that's exactly what we see

in Joshua. What he buried in the ground

didn't just stay buried it it spread and it cost lives.

It broke the people of God. It disrupted the presence of God

among them. And that's the pattern we try

and hide from God, but what is hidden from God separates us

from his presence. Not because God cannot see it,

but because hidden sin reflects a heart that is no longer

centred on Him. See, Israel's strength was never

in their army, it was always in their God.

Which is why it didn't matter how many men they sent, but they

put their faith into something other than God.

Went with 3000 and only took 36 to break them.

The strength was always the presence of God at the centre

though. The wonderful word in in Hebrew

is Shekinah or Shekinah. It means the divine presence of

God on earth. Leonard Nimoy, the guy who

played Spock, wrote a book on the Shekinah, by the way.

I would read it. It's fantastic anyway.

But also just hearing it as Spock says it is even better.

Again, not in my notes. Paul picks up the same idea.

And when he says our lives are now hidden in Christ and God,

that's the contrast. Something rooted in self, in

secretly, in the earthly desire. That was what the Jew he saw, he

took, he covered it, and it was mine, and he hid.

But something held securely in Christ is very different.

What we hide shapes us, but what we centre our lives on

determines where we remain in His presence.

And Israel's problem wasn't just that something had been taken,

it was something that was rooted in the wrong place.

And see, when God stopped being at the centre, everything else

fell apart. And the concerning thing about

this passage also just one person, one individual, and

everything else failed. See, the life of the people of

God has always been dependent on this one reality, staying rooted

in God, drawing everything from his present.

Ashen's failure wasn't just that he took something, it's that he

stepped outside of the dependence that he once relied

on. He acted as though God was no

longer the centre, that it wasn't belonging to him.

And what he buried in the ground reflected a heart that had

shifted away. And that shift is what broke the

life of the whole community. Because what we centre our lives

on will always shape us. And when God is no longer at the

centre, everything else begins to unravel.

Israel didn't lose because they were weaker or outmatched, they

lost because God's presence was no longer at the centre of whom

they were. And the same is true for us.

When God remains at the centre, He is our strength, our

confidence and our life. But when we drift, even subtly,

what difference does it make? It's only a small thing.

Who will really know? I can hide it it.

We stop being a people of God and we start relying on us and

everything starts to fall apart. And so the call of this

scripture seems to be a really difficult one.

Just keep God at the centre, not just in what we say, but in whom

we trust, what we pursue, and what we're allowed to take for

root in our lives. And the reason is really

important according to this scripture, because everything

depends on that. Like everything Israelites went

before, after Jericho, and all it took was one man's

selfishness and the whole community failed.

I'm hopeful and grateful that I don't.

Yeah, that maybe that's not the case today.

I don't know. I like, I was looking at this

and I was thinking about this in the context of Christ and us

being now in the people of God and all that kind of stuff and,

and all these kind of things. And I, there's almost like a

duality here that I want to kind of be like, you know, the, the,

the nice Christian part of me wants to turn to you and go,

your sin isn't that bad. Don't worry about it.

But then I look at the scripture and I go, your sins a real

problem. Please worry about it, not for

your sake, but for mine. Like I'm sure whatever you're

doing, like I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's not that big.

Trust me, mine's worse than yours, OK, When it comes to sin,

I'm, I'm awful. Trust me on that one.

But but for the love of all that's holy, and I literally

mean that's like literally for the love of all that's holy.

Stop. Because we're not that good.

Turns out it only takes 36 people to die in front of us,

and 3000 of us like it. I don't know about you, but I'm

looking around the world and it does seem to see a little bit

more than 36 people seem to be dying.

And So what is the problem? We can point to everybody else,

that's a lot easier. But a life that isn't centred in

God doesn't just cost us, it costs the community.

And that's quite terrifying. And I don't quite know what I

want to do with that because if I'm really honest, I don't

really want to change. That seems like work.

I don't want to change for me because, well, we accept the

love we think we deserve. And that's always concerning,

isn't it? But am I willing to change for

you, for the ones that I run beside?

It's why community is so important, because everything

that we do shapes not just our lives for the lives of those we

run with. And we are a community of

believers. And so the challenge of this

scripture is we're going to have to take me outside and stone me

according to what actually happened in the end of this

story. And not just me, but all of my

cows according to that. If you read the end of Joshua 7,

that seems to be the punishment. And then you can burn all of my

things and put a bunch of rocks on top of me and everyone can

point to the fact that that's what we do to people that sin.

Fortunately, I don't think that's the solution today.

I'm really grateful that God like that Jesus says, you know,

that he is the fulfilment of the law.

But I do wonder if that what I knew would be the punishment for

what I do, would it change what I did?

And so we now stand in this weird tension, or at least I do,

of I want to be a person for God.

I certainly don't want 36 of my friends to die in front of a

wall, but I'm not going to get stoned anymore if I don't do it.

So what do we do? And that's the tension that I

come before you with this morning is I read this, I looked

at it and I kind of got to the end of it and I was like, well,

everything depends on this thing of living in holiness.

What do I do? How do I live?

What should I be? And then I can I turn to the

reality as I started with, and I said to you that the beauty of

Christianity is Christ, the by his stripes you are healed that

that he was the one who has paid this price.

And so we now live in the now and the not yet the tension

between what Christ has done that is finished and completed,

but still living in the brokenness of the world that we

see. And so we are still called to

live a life of holiness. I believe that with everything

we are still called to be a covenant people, yet the mercy

and grace of God is that when He steps back, there seems to be

Christ still walking alongside us.

And so we now wrestle with a new tension of one that changes to

conform and become more into the likeness of whom He is.

And as we slowly shift our perspective back onto being a

people of God and allow the Christ in us, the hope and glory

to be calm and grow and be that thing, it doesn't just change

us, it reshapes community. And so we now again, we stand in

the tension in the gap between the world that we want, the

world that we live, and the people that we are.

And in that place, Christ holds everything in tension.

Remember, you are now hidden in him.

He's got the whole world in his hands.

Kind of theology here. And so my hope with this wasn't

to make you feel really bad for all the bad things that you do,

but equally we need to change the bad things that we do.

And my hope wasn't to turn around and say it doesn't matter

because God's got this anyway because he does.

But we really need to change the bad things that we do.

And so that's where I stand. That's I don't have an ending.

I don't have anything more to say.

I, I'm just kind of in this kind of place of like, God help me

and God help us because the consequences seem to be really,

really dire, not just for me, but for you because of how I

live. That's an interesting kind of

perspective that how I live shapes my community.

And so often we look at our things and think it's only

damaging me. Well, he just saw.

I'll just bury some stuff in my tent. 36 of his friends ended up

dying even after a victory like Jericho.

I'm going to end and we're going to pray.

Father, as I prepared this sermon, you are, were, and is.

And so I thank you for whom you are, for who we are, and that we

are the people of God. Our identity has not shifted, it

has not changed. But I pray that we would become

a people that can reconcile this tension.

Father, I am grateful that I do not walk alone that your word

says. Your rod and your staff, they

are a comfort to me. Though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

But Father, what if that evil is in me?

What if I don't even recognize it because it is me?

What do I do with what I read? And so I come before you as

somebody who is, who is trying and failing and trying and

failing, but asking that we would be a community that is

hidden in you, secure in whom you are, and transformed into

the likeness of your son. My grace is sufficient for you.

My power is made perfect in weakness.

And Father, I am grateful that the minimum requirement of your

servitude of working with you is my weakness, because it seems

about all I can give.