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
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.