Have you ever watched enough how-to videos on YouTube that you start thinking you could probably do it? If you watch enough cooking videos, you might start thinking you could compete with Bobby Flay, but then someone hands you a skillet. Watching someone cook doesn’t teach your hands how to cook.

Learning is a great place to begin, but a terrible place to stop. Learning prepares you to actually do, it was never meant to replace doing.

And this might be the greatest spiritual danger in the American church because we’ve never had more access to the Word of God than we do right now. The problem isn’t that we’re learning too much, it’s that we’re comfortable stopping there. Access is not the issue, change is.

We assume that because we’ve heard something, we’ve done something, or that because we agree with something, we’ve applied it.

Follow
Sunday is full of information, and we learn so much, then Monday comes, and nothing changes. We think we’re following Jesus, but we’re not. And maybe part of the problem is that we’ve redefined one of Jesus’ favorite words – follow.

Think about the word “follow.” Today we “follow” tons of people online. Following is casual, convenient, and completely on our terms.

We say we’re “followers of Jesus,” but what we really mean is that we like His content. Following Jesus has never meant casually consuming His teaching. It’s always meant to obey and do it.

What happens when hearing becomes a substitute for doing? Why is it so much easier to hear God’s Word than to obey it?

It’s not that we don’t know what Jesus said, it’s that we know exactly what He said, and we know it’s going to cost us something.

Every time we’re faced with that decision, whether we’ll stay comfortable or become obedient, that’s where the gap is created. The gap between hearing and doing isn’t knowledge, it’s obedience.

How To Receive
There’s a process to gardening. You have to pull out the weeds, break up the soil, and prepare the ground to receive the seed. The seed isn’t the issue, it’s the condition of the soil, the foundation.

Before James tells us what to do with God’s Word, he first asks whether we’re actually prepared to receive God’s Word. The issue isn’t that God’s Word lacks power to transform our lives, the issue is whether the soil of our hearts is prepared to receive it.

James 1
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. 21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Humility
Have you ever had a direct or difficult conversation with someone and you start by saying, “Now before I start, I don’t want you to get angry?”

• Be quick to listen
• Be slow to speak
• Be slow to become angry

All of those things share a common trait: preparation.

James says: Come to the Word of God and God’s direction in your life with the same posture. Lord, what do You want to say? Lord, you have the floor, I’m listening.

James tells us we need this approach because if we don’t, we don’t become people who can receive what God has for us. Real faith begins when we stop arguing with God’s Word long enough to let it speak to us.

Therefore
A good rule in studying the Bible is that anytime you see “therefore,” go find out what it’s “there for.” How do we prepare to receive the Word humbly?

James 1
21 Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

First remove, then accept. You can’t do one without the other. Our hearts were never meant to be storage units for two competing voices. You can’t cling to your sin and fully receive God’s Word simultaneously.

James uses strong language here: moral filth and the evil. He’s describing anything in our lives that competes with God’s authority and voice. This means we need to get rid of the obvious sins in our lives that make the news every night and then get rid of the ones that no one knows about.

Sin in our lives isn’t just open rebellion against God’s Word, it’s a reasonable explanation for why we think some things are okay when Scripture tells us they’re not.

James 1
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Mirrors
When you get ready in the morning, do you do it without a mirror? Probably not. Imagine getting ready for church without a mirror, then heading over to the mirror, only to see a project. Then imagine walking away and doing nothing about it. The mirror isn’t the problem, ignoring what it showed you is.

Don’t just look into the mirror and admire it, do what it says.

James 1
 22 Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

James doesn’t say you’ve fooled other people. He doesn’t even say you fooled God. He says you’ve fooled yourself.

You can’t see clearly because you’ve distorted the truth for yourself. The real danger isn’t ignoring the mirror, it’s thinking you responded when you really didn’t. That’s self-deception.

James 1
25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. 26 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.
27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Chatter & Compassion
The first place you’ll see God’s Word is in your words.

Luke 6
45 Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Your words are a window into your soul. But it also changes how you see people, widows, and orphans. Widows and orphans because in James’ time, they represented the most vulnerable people in society. And today, we still have widows and orphans. But James isn’t asking us to identify broken people like they’re projects, He’s asking us to move towards vulnerable people.

If we want to live out a religion that God accepts, we need to be a people who embody love towards those who are vulnerable or in need of relationship. Become a family where someone doesn’t know what family feels like.

Character
In verse 27, James isn’t talking about isolation, he’s talking about the world's influence on us. If someone spent a week with you, would they conclude your life is being shaped by Christ or cable news?

God’s Word changes what comes out of your mouth, who you move towards, and who you become.

It’s almost as if James is saying that he doesn’t want to hear another sermon, he wants to see one. God is calling you forward, which means there’s probably something you need to leave behind.

When we obey God’s Word, that’s how real faith grows. And it’s not in one giant leap, but one obedient step after another.

A porch doesn’t prove itself while you’re building it, it proves itself when it starts carrying weight. No blueprint ever says “tested under pressure,” that’s learned later. The test always comes after it’s built, and faith works the same way.

Sunday is where we talk about trusting God. Tuesday is where we find out if we actually do.

If we’re honest, this is where many of us struggle with faith. We struggle because we’re planners. The problem is life doesn’t always cooperate with the plan. And that’s what leads us to find out what our faith is actually resting on.

When things get heavy or outside of our control, there’s a default question we ask, “God, why is this happening?”

James invites us to ask a much better question: “What is God producing through this?”

When life becomes difficult, with trials, suffering, and a loss of control, we assume that God has left. The problem with that is that faith was never meant to give you control over your circumstances.

When life becomes difficult with trials, suffering, and losing control, we assume that God has left. The problem with that is that faith was never meant to give you control over your circumstances. It was meant to give you confidence in God when your circumstances are beyond your control.

Who is James?

James is one of the key leaders of the early church in Jerusalem, but before that, he was Jesus' brother. What’s even more interesting is that James didn’t believe Jesus was Jesus until after the resurrection, which changed everything.

James has a very direct personality, and he’s writing to Christians who have been scattered because of persecution, and he certainly doesn’t begin by promising that God is going to fix all of it. He begins by teaching them how to endure it.

James 1
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:
Greetings.
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.
17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

Perspective
James is not saying that trials are enjoyable, that pain is good, or that suffering doesn’t hurt. Christians shouldn’t deny reality, we should interpret it differently.

Why? Why should we change our perspective during trials?

James 1
3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 

The key is that joy doesn’t come from the trial, it comes from the knowing. It comes from what you know about God during the trial. The trial reveals what’s there, and God uses the trial to build what’s missing.

That’s why James tells us to let perseverance finish its work. Don’t interrupt what God is producing. Let God finish what He started. That’s maturity. There are 3 verbs James uses in these verses:

• Consider it joy.
• Know that God’s at work.
• Let perseverance finish its work.

These are all passive. James is quietly teaching us surrender.

Wisdom
How do we live through this changed perspective? James answers immediately.

James 1
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

He tells us to ask for wisdom. Why? Because wisdom is what you need when life is no longer under your control.

We want explanations, but we need to stop asking God to tell us what He’s doing, and it’s because we actually don’t realize what we’re asking.

When we ask God to reveal what He’s doing all the time and why he’s doing it, we’re asking God to grant us the power and personality of God without needing the person of God. We need to ask for wisdom because He’ll give that, generously.

And when you ask for wisdom, ask for it wholeheartedly. James is talking about divided trust. He calls it being double-minded. A double-minded person wants God’s help without surrendering control. God’s not going to give wisdom to someone who’s asking for it only for their version of faith.

Real faith is humble and submissive. Ask for wisdom because He’ll give it.

What The Trial Reveals
James then takes a strange turn, answering what a trial reveals.

James 1
9 Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.

The thing trials uniquely reveal is whether your life is built on something that won’t endure. For many people, that’s money, so James starts with rich and poor, saying:

“If you don’t have a lot, rejoice!”

“If you have a lot and lose it, rejoice!”

Why?

Both scenarios help us see that money is not a solid foundation to build your life on. It can be taken away. But if you persevere under that kind of trial, if you remain steadfast to God in the trial, the Lord has promised a crown of life to you.

Then James shifts from trials to temptation. In Greek, trial means difficulty or hardship, and temptation means an opportunity to sin. And the reason we need this distinction is that in almost every trial, there’s a temptation to sin.

James 1
13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.
17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

Every trial eventually presents a temptation, but no one should say, “That’s from God.” The temptation is to look somewhere other than God for life, security, comfort, identity, or relief. Every trial eventually asks you one question, “Where will you run to now?”

When life hurts, where will you go?

When you can’t control the outcome, what will you reach for? What coping mechanism do you reach for?

James 1
14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

James says, “It’s enticing, it looks good.” Be careful of the life cycle here.

Desire leads to sin. Sin leads to death.

Don’t be deceived. Temptation doesn’t come from God. What does God come from?

James 1
17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.

So underneath every trial, there’s one question: Do you still believe that God is good? If you do, you can endure almost anything.

That’s the challenge behind this passage. We read it quickly and think James is asking whether we can handle suffering or surrender control, but he’s actually asking whether we believe God is good.

It’s time to ask yourself… Where is your faith carrying the weight right now? James gives you 3 invitations.

1. Change your perspective – If you’ve spent months or years trying to figure out why something is happening or how you get more control around the trial, maybe it’s time to ask, “What is God producing through this?
2. Ask for wisdom – Don’t ask for another explanation. You don’t need another YouTube sermon or podcast.
3. Pay attention to what the trial is revealing – Maybe something you’ve been leaning on has been exposed. Maybe God loves you enough to shake what cannot hold you down.

When you build a porch, there’s only one way to find out if it was strong enough. Eventually it has to carry weight. And maybe that’s where you are. Maybe you’ve been wondering where God is, but don’t mistake the weight for God’s absence. The weight may actually be the place where God is doing His deepest work.

God is using this in your life to mature and shape your faith.

The God who is good on Sunday is still good on Tuesday.

A home improvement job might seem like a great idea at the onset. Then, you start getting to work, and things might get messy. The goal isn’t straight ahead anymore, and that leads to struggle. This is especially true in trying to live our lives out with God.

We know obedience is hard, but we think after taking the step of obedience things will get easier. The world around us lures us with the promise of easy and simplicity, like the red “EASY” button from Staples.

Everything is supposed to be about our lives getting easier, being made easier. From DoorDash to smartphones, this is a promise offered to us that always has a price tag, a transaction. Have you ever noticed that life doesn’t get easier, even with all those things?

Trust vs. Weight
Matthew 11:30
My yoke is easy and my burden is light. 

Any of us would take easy and light in a world where everything seems heavy and hard. But what it doesn’t mean is, “Do what I say so your life is simple.” It’s very different.

That seems to make much more sense in our life experience. Following God is rarely easy and sometimes feels really heavy.

This isn’t a trust issue at the outset, it’s a weight issue. We trust God with the call, we just struggle with the consequences, especially when things get confusing, disappointing, or messy. When we feel the weight, it causes us to question, which erodes our trust.

When we understand how God works, even if we aren’t sure what He’s doing, it can help build trust rather than weaken it. Instead of confusion when it comes to the what, when, and how, you get clarity when it comes to who (God is) and you (the part you play).

In the story of Abraham and Lot, in Genesis 13, Lot is Abraham’s nephew. They’re both wealthy, they both followed the call, the herds are growing, the land can’t support them both together in the same spot, the families are fighting, and God’s promise seems like it simply has produced problems and not a lot of payoff.

The natural response is to protect what you think was given to you, even if you think it was given by God. Don’t just hold onto the WHO of the promise, hold onto the WHAT.

The Promise
What’s the thing you’ve been given that you guard?

Genesis 13
8 So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. 9 Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”

Lot is younger, the beneficiary, not the one who should have been given a choice. Lot goes and grabs what looks like “the promise.”

Hold onto the promise with trust.

Most of us don’t wake up on Monday mornings, smile, and exclaim, “What a great time to be alive!” We’re hit with stress, time crunches, deadlines, kids, emails, or anything that makes us want to rip our hair out.

But we’re faced with bigger things too. And when we follow God and then run into all these obstacles, not only does it demoralize, drain, and distract us, but it also causes a small crisis of faith.

What if we heard God wrong? What if we’re doing it wrong?

Our culture doesn’t help because everything in it points to a faulty idea that a good life, the right life, is a succession of big moments – mountaintop to mountaintop. But our lives aren’t like that.

What if Monday morning isn’t an obstacle to God’s call, but part of it? What if it’s not opposing us, but shaping us? What if it’s not a sign of getting the call wrong, but getting it right?

At the end of Genesis 12 and into 13, there’s a lot going on. This was after God’s great call and promise a few verses before.
Leave your country, go to a land I will show you.

• I will make you a great nation, I will bless you.
• Who you bless, I will bless, who you curse, I will curse.
• You’ll make a huge impact, and all people on earth will be blessed because of you.

Who wouldn’t want this? Even if there’s risk and uncertainty, we’d all probably take the chance. So, Abram gets up, heeds the call, and takes the big step. Then… Monday morning comes.
Famine hits the land.

• Moses lies.
• They bounce from place to place.
• Conflict breaks out close to home.

There are the wide-open moments where we have a sense of the grand design of things, the big picture:
When you find the love of your life.

• The first time you hold your children.
• When your vision makes a difference.
• Those sacred moments at the end of something and the beginning of something else.
• When you feel connected to something or someone.

But a lot of our lives are lived in the “Monday morning:”

• Putting out the latest fire.
• Dealing with the result of cutting corners.
• Getting kids out the door.
• Navigating uncertainty.

In all of these moments, the bigger picture of calling and purpose gets lost. It doesn’t seem applicable or relevant. There’s no time or energy for it. It’s the last thing on your mind.

What if God is Building You?
God uses Monday mornings to build something in you that you need for the calling. The question isn’t, “What is God saying?” The question is, “What are you going to do now?”

Romans 5
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us.

We hear or feel God's call. The big moments. That’s hope. But right next to it is something we don’t expect. Suffering.

This speaks to the physical suffering of following the call of Jesus. But suffering is more basic than that. It’s when our expectations for how we thought things were going to go aren’t met. It’s obstacles, frustrations, distractions, things that feel physical, emotional, or even spiritual. At the moment, we have a choice – become cynical or fight for hope.

But then Paul says something we don’t expect, and that’s how suffering, when we’re grappling with the aftermath of a call, leads us somewhere.

These are things that we need to live out the call of God, and they’re things we don’t develop any other way. They’re not big moments, they’re becoming (and staying) faithful through thousands of small decisions.

How Do We Live it Out?
We have to develop a cold-blooded commitment to God's calls in our lives. On the day you’re not feeling it as much as on the day when you are, keep moving. On your worst day as much as your best day, keep moving. During opposition, suffering, uncertainty, or setbacks, keep moving. On Monday as much as Sunday, keep moving.

We want revelation, God gives repetition. Our problem isn’t that God hasn’t spoken, it’s that we haven’t built Monday around what He said on Sunday.

Monday mornings aren’t obstacles or missteps, they’re what makes the call itself possible. Give oxygen to the fact that this is hard.

It’s not about one great moment – one vacation, trip, experience, new toy, or big thing. We aren’t formed by a moment, but by the presence, repetition, and faithfulness. Keep showing up in the small things and remember the importance of your Monday mornings.

Have you ever ventured onto the high dive at your local pool? If you have, you’re not afraid of heights or water, but how about that space in between? The space between jumping and landing.

This depicts our faith journey, as well. We can exist at our starting point even if things are less than ideal – our past, pain, questions, struggle, or the need to move forward. We can see a future where things are different and life makes more sense. We see growth, change, greater impact, and purpose. We’re even okay with temporary discomfort.

So, what stops us from acting in faith?

• Uncertainty – We can’t see a clear path from here to there.
• Loss of Control – We can’t control the sequence, direction, or pace of events between here and there.

This is what puts us in a place of uncertainty and loss of control, and despite our faith in God, many of us experience great discomfort with the gaps.

Jumpers and Waiters
We talk a lot about faith and taking faith-filled risks, stepping out for God, and, at the same time, still waiting on God. These two things seem to be at odds. So, which is it? When do we wait? When do we move?

To answer this, you need to ask yourself if you’re a jumper or waiter.

Jumpers are the ones who run ahead, while waiters are the ones who hesitate to move. The problem is that you can spiritualize both. Many of us have stood on the high dive of life, facing a gap looming before us. How do we respond? What do we do next?

Thankfully, we’re not alone in our struggles with facing the gaps in our lives. We have God. Consider the story of Abram. Abram was a wealthy, successful man, with generational wealth and a very comfortable life. Yet his wife Sarai is barren. Abram receives a call from God.

Genesis 12
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.

God promises a destination and descendants but hasn’t shown how either of these are going to happen. God asks Abram to abandon his home for a promised, but unseen new home. This isn’t like moving to a new state. God is unknown to these people. If the promise is to come to pass, it will be supernatural and require a LOT of faith.

For you, it may not be as dramatic, but God calls us to leave comfortable places and to follow Him in faith. To wait on Him, depend on Him, then walk with Him.

We want God to speak, explain, and guarantee before we obey. All we get before we need to obey is God speaking, with His reveal coming after we obey. This is what faith is all about.

Hebrews 11
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

God Speaks After We Move
Genesis 12
7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

How does God call you into the gap?

• Out of a place of strength into a place of weakness – God rarely truly works from our strengths unless we’ve been humbled first.
• Out of a place where we feel big into a place where we feel small, and God has to be big.
• Out of a place of control into a place of uncertainty. Walk towards our fears, not away, where we must release our control rather than try to keep it.
• Out of a place where we’re defined by accomplishing into a place where we’re defined by following. Abraham was a self-made man of high status. He became a nobody when he followed God.

What’s the gap in your life that God is calling you into?

• Maybe you already feel like you’re in the middle of it.
• Maybe you’re standing on the edge of it, getting ready to take that first step, whether big or small.
• Maybe you’re trying to figure out what to do next.

How do you know your gap is from God?

If what God is calling you to doesn’t require Him, it’s not from God. You either need to act or wait. Remember that God calls us to step out in faith, but also wait on him (Jumpers vs. Waiters).

What do you struggle most with? Finding courage or relinquishing control? If you don’t know, ask your spouse or a friend. Both are about facing fear. Fear of the unknown or fear of uncertainty.

We need to lean toward our biggest struggle (act vs. wait) and away from our most familiar impulse.

For the waiters, act. There is no bigger enemy of courage than comfort. Uncertainty doesn’t disappear before the first step of the journey, it only disappears looking back.

For the jumpers, wait. Faith is moving in God’s direction, but sometimes waiting is God’s direction. If your direction is premature action, it’s the opposite of God’s direction.

Remember, it’s all about having faith in the right places, before, during, and after the call. Many of us had heard about the importance of having faith in Jesus, but did you know that Jesus has faith in you too?

He chose you for the gap that’s in front of you. He chose YOU. Who you are and where you are. He’s with you. You are His best plan to impact the world. You are His first choice.

Because we’ve seen movies and heard the Bible story as kids, and because we know that the Israelites make it to the Promised Land, it’s easy for us to imagine that this is like a television episode, everything gets wrapped up and resolved in 44 minutes.

But that’s not what happened.

Moses comes down from the mountain, and he’s not happy. He throws down the tablets of the Law, grinds the cow into powder, and makes the Israelites drink it in the water. But it gets worse, Moses rallies the Levites (one of the tribes devoted to God), and they kill about 3,000 of their family, neighbors, and friends. They famously had not bowed down to the golden calf and had stayed faithful.

This is something most of us might wrestle with because it seems messed up and very harsh. But this is how serious sin is.

Moses is not the only one upset, God is extremely upset. God promises punishment down the road. It’s the ultimate, “just wait until your father gets home” moment. But then something interesting happens. God still promises an angel to lead them to the promised land.

And even as this is going on, Moses starts pleading with God to relent. Even as judgment is happening, Moses starts appealing to God to be merciful. And God says, “Moses, you and I are good, but I’m done with the rest of them.”

God Feels, God Grieves
In Exodus 33, God tells the people to get moving, but that He’s not going with them because He’s still angry. The people realize they were wrong and are contrite. This is like when you have a big fight with someone, you’ve really blown it, and you come back to them, but they’re still not ready to reconcile.

So, they get on the road again. And although God is not in their midst, He’s still around. As much as God is justified in leaving, judging, or even destroying, He can’t and won’t quit them. He’s never going to give them up.

Exodus 33
9 As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. 10 Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshiped, each at the entrance to their tent. 11 The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.

His presence is hanging out in this tent. Far outside the camp, but still with them

This goes on for a while, but we see something we wouldn’t expect. Moses starts arguing with God. He actually reminds God of what’s true, and what God had already promised. They go back and forth, and then it seems God changes His mind.

Exodus 33
15 Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”
17 And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

God Shows Up
God shows up, not on the mountain, but in the valley. The place where it makes a difference is where God shows up. And He shows up most powerfully after our failure.
We see that you can appeal to and even argue with God by appealing to His character and promises. This is why it’s so important for us to know what God has promised to us.

Joshua 1:9: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

Deuteronomy 31:8 "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

Isaiah 41:10: "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God."

And because His nature, character, and faithfulness never change, as followers of Jesus, we can claim these promises too.

Sometimes we might not feel like God is there or that we don’t deserve for Him to be there.

And some of us can’t imagine a God who wants to be with His people, right in the center of everything in our lives and not just on the periphery. But He does because that’s who He’s always been and who He is.

How do we bring this into our lives?

Know God and set the intention to meet Him.

• Even when things seem tense.
• Even when you’ve fallen short.
• Even when God feels distant.
• Even when you don’t think God would want to be in the middle of whatever your life is.
• Even when things are good.

How do we do this?

Create a place and a space. The time doesn’t make the difference, the place doesn’t make the difference, but places and spaces create intention. Being in church on Sundays is intentional, but we can do some form of this daily. Some “tent” where we go to meet with God. We can get to know Him, His promises, His nature, and His faithfulness. We can appeal and even argue. Knowing that He made the relationship possible, and He is never going to give up on you.

Have you ever gone somewhere with someone who knows it very well? It’s more foreign to you, but they know every turn, every stop, every expected bump along the way. What happens if they disappeared? You’d be lost, longing for something or someone else to fill the void and help you find your way.

That’s where the children of Israel are in Exodus 32. And instead of sitting in the discomfort of uncertainty, they reach for something else.

Human nature is to worship. We are all designed to worship something. The question isn’t whether you worship, it’s what you worship, and there’s potential danger in that.

The thing might not just be important to you, it might be functioning as “god” for you. It might be sitting at the center of your life. And whatever sits at the center of your life doesn’t just shape your behavior, it shapes your affection.

So idolatry is never just about having the wrong priorities, it’s relational. We are giving something else the trust and affection that were meant for Him.

When we give the ultimate trust, love, value, or dependence on something other than God, that’s idolatry. It’s looking to something other than God to give us what only God can provide. But the problem underneath idolatry isn’t rebellion, backsliding, or paganism, it’s impatience.

Israel didn’t build a golden calf because they stopped believing God existed. They built the calf because they got tired of waiting for Him.

I Don’t Know
Exodus 32
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

As a parent, you constantly ask, “Who did this?” And almost immediately you’re greeted with an “I don’t know.” And it usually doesn’t mean ignorance, it means discomfort. And in verse 1, they actually do know, but don’t have a timetable on it.

As Christians, we sometimes do the same thing. We hit a season when God feels slower than we want, less visible than we want, or harder to understand than we want, and suddenly we start talking like we don’t know things we absolutely do know.

When we’re uncomfortable, we start saying things based on how we feel rather than on the eternal truth about God. When you do that often enough, you start to believe it, and the world around you does too.

This holds truth and emotion together. It’s honest and brings both insecurities and faith to God. “I don’t know,” is where idolatry starts creeping in.

The Calf
Exodus 32
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

Why a calf?

In the ancient world, calves and bulls symbolized strength, fertility, stability, power, and divine authority. They were creating a symbol of a god they could see, carry, and control.

We do this too. These people didn’t think they were abandoning spirituality, they were just reshaping God into something more manageable and emotionally satisfying.

Good Gifts
There’s a small detail we miss. They were slaves, so where’d they get the gold earrings? God. And then in Chapter 32, they take the gold they were given and turn it into a golden calf. Confusion and impatience will make you misuse the thing God gave you.

The very thing God gave them as evidence of His faithfulness and provision became the thing they used to avoid trusting Him. When you look to something besides God for security, identity, or stability, that thing can start replacing Him.

God+
But it’s not just replacing God, it’s also adding to Him.

Exodus 32
4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

Idolatry is rarely God or, it’s God +.

• God + financial security
• God + political party
• God + control
• God + my own plan

This is problematic because God loves us too much to share our hearts with something that cannot save us. And what makes this even crazier is where they’re doing this. On the base of the mountain. And what’s on the top of the mountain? The cloud was still there. The fire is still there. The presence of God hasn’t left.

And this is what makes idolatry so dangerous and sobering – proximity doesn’t equal trust.

God Feels
How does God feel about this?

Exodus 32
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.

God is upset. Up until now His language has been, “I am your God,” and “You are my people.” Now these people belong to Moses.

Exodus 32
8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

God feels, He’s grieving here. He’s deeply angry and personally affected because idolatry isn’t merely rule-breaking, it’s relational betrayal.

Exodus 32
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people.

While Moses is on the mountain receiving covenant instructions, the people are downstairs replacing God. That hurts. This is God feeling the pain of a rejected relationship.

This is why idolatry is a big deal, because God has committed Himself to us in such a deep way that when we replace Him, we are not only breaking the command, we’re breaking relationship and His heart.

But then something incredible happens.

Exodus 32
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. 

Even after rebellion, idolatry, and after the people replaced Him almost immediately, He relented. That means God ignored their sin. It doesn’t mean their idolatry didn’t matter because judgment still comes, but God is merciful.

God refuses to simply discard His people. God doesn’t just start over, even though He has every right to. His mercy is deeper than our failure. And because of our sin and idolatry, we deserve the consequences of replacing God with lesser things.

Ephesians 2
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

That’s the Gospel. Jesus took on the judgment we deserved so that we could receive the mercy of God that we could never earn. The cross is God’s way of telling us that although we wander, replace Him, or have a heart that drifts, He’s still pursuing us. And that alone is enough for us to return.

We need to stop running to lesser gods and come home to the God who sees us, pursues us, lovingly confronts us, forgives us, and calls us back to Him.

A lot of us think we aren’t angry people, but there’s more to what anger looks like and how it affects us than we realize. It’s said that anger is a secondary emotion, an indicator of something deeper that’s going on, but it’s not a strategy for lasting change. It has to lead you somewhere better.

They’re telling you something, and you should listen to them, but how to act in the moment probably isn’t what they are telling you.

Numbers 20
In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried.

Miriam was Moses’ sister, so his world is rocked. At this point, people had been wandering the desert for 40 years because they did not believe God’s promises. This is the second time the people had been to Meribah. The first was a year or two before, in an account we see in Exodus 17.

And there is no provision, again! God had provided in the past, but the same constant uncertainty continues, and it’s exhausting. Taking one step of faith can be hard, these people have had to do multiple. Two years later, not only have the people had enough, but Moses has had enough too.

Numbers 20
10 He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff.

Anger will invite you to try to become god in a situation where God needs to be God
Anger begins with feeling a loss of control that leads to frustration and then reaction. There’s a point at which things or your expectations need to change. The last time, they also got water from the rock, and God commanded Moses to strike the rock only once, that time.

God used the rock as a sign – to point to the Messiah who was to come.

1 Corinthians 10
4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

That first striking was symbolic foreshadowing of Jesus’ death. God’s purpose was that there was only one striking of the rock to foreshadow what was to come.

There’s the thing we think our circumstances or what we’re facing is about, but God is at work in a completely different way – a bigger one that we may not even understand yet, or ever. That takes faith! This perspective reminds us that God is in control, while anger is always a level of perception in which we’ve lost control.

Our need for control assumes that no one else is in control or that the one in control can’t be trusted with the situation. There may be something that God is calling you to right now that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

There can be long-term consequences to your short-term reactions
Moses came seeking an answer, and God gave one. Speak to the rock, not strike. But Moses does something else instead. He speaks to the people in a way that causes a loss of respect for himself, because they look to him not to be like them and to lead them somewhere better.

People are looking to you. Your family, friends, neighbors, or kids. And they’re looking to us to respond differently from how others have. We’ve all said something in anger, and we know the instant it comes out, it was the wrong thing to do. It feels so good to shout those words or slam that thing down, and it’s a release, but the wrong one. In the moment, it feels justified, but then the consequences hit.

Numbers 20
12 But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”

Because of this seemingly small thing, there’s a big consequence for Moses and Aaron. They don’t get to enter the land.

Anger is created by God as part of our humanity, and it can be good. But that depends on what we do with it, where we channel it, whether we let it in the driver’s seat.

Anger is an opportunity
Anger is a sign that something needs to change, an opportunity to reflect on ourselves to determine whether we need to change, and a powerful motivator to see things change.

Some of the greatest movements against injustice have started with anger. Some of the greatest changes we can make in our own lives begin here, too. But they can’t end there.
For us, it’s an opportunity to respond differently, redemptively. Anger has power, and it can be used for good or bad.

• Anger is a secondary emotion – Why are we angry? When we get angry, we need to take a step back and figure out what’s really going on.
• Anger needs proper release – You need to let it go the right way, otherwise, it will mess you or others up. It can cause you to sin.

But remember, this is not all on you.

Water still comes from the rock. He still provides. And we don’t do this alone on our own strength. When we take a step in God’s direction, He meets us so much more than halfway with both His presence and power.

If I can just get through this stage, this phase, this season, then it will be ok. But what if the “then” never comes? Because the moment one thing finishes, another takes its place. It’s not that we don’t want to rest, it’s that we feel like we can’t. What makes this hard for us isn’t theology, it’s reality.

Our lives are so busy, with so many things to do. And it’s not just the responsibilities and activities that keep us from rest, because most of us get a vacation. But even when we do stop, we don’t actually rest. Our bodies might slow down, but our minds don’t. Our souls don’t.

This goes deeper than having busy schedules because the issue isn’t just that we have a lot to do, it’s that we don’t know how to stop anymore. We are a society of driven people, and there is something good in that. But we just keep going. Not because we have to but because something inside of us tells us we can’t stop yet.

Eventually, you have to ask, “Where’s that coming from?”

When Israel came out of Egypt, they were physically free, but internally, they still thought like slaves. We are similar. Even though no one is standing over us with a whip, a lot of us still live as if everything depends on us. We are terrified that if we stop, everything will fall apart.

Sabbath confronts this. Sabbath confronts the belief that value comes from output, the need to control everything, and the fear that everything depends on you.

Because slaves can’t stop. This is because when Scripture talks about rest, it’s not talking about finally collapsing because you got everything done.

This is why Sabbath is so hard. There’s always more you could do. If rest only comes when everything is finished, then none of us will ever rest. But the Sabbath is God’s invitation into a different way of living.

Sabbath Gives Life
At the end of Exodus 16, God is speaking to the people, and He’s not coming up with something new, He’s calling back something that’s been there from the beginning.

Genesis 2
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

God rests, not because He’s tired, but because He’s setting a rhythm. When God does something, there’s always a why. He blessed it and made it holy. Is there anything else in the creation story that God blessed?

Genesis 1
22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.”
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

When God creates life, He blesses it. The interesting thing here is that God blesses something that isn’t a thing – it’s not an animal or a person, it’s a day. God blesses time. That means there’s a part of your week that God has designed to be blessed or set apart – holy. It’s not like the others. It’s different. How? It’s meant to give life.

Sabbath is Trust in Action
In Exodus 16, God gives a command to the children of Israel.

Exodus 16
21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’”

On the sixth day, they are to get twice as much.

Why?

Because on the seventh day, there won’t be any manna. No gathering. Just rest. This is how God works. He provided for them before He commanded them to trust Him. He’s made provision for the command because He’s given them double. Now they need to live it out.

It’s our trust in God put into action. Sometimes there’s a gap between what we say we believe and what we actually believe. And you can figure out how wide that gap is by how you live, the risk you’re willing to take, and the control you’re willing to surrender.

But faith is always an invitation to live out what we say we believe, and Sabbath highlights this painfully well. God has provided, but now life feels like a constant equation: “Do I have enough time, money, security to actually stop?”

God’s your provider? Great – prove it. You’re not overworking because you’re chasing success. You’re working because you’re trying to survive. Sabbath is not God saying to drop everything and hope for the best. That’s not faith, that’s chaos.

Sabbath is about having a reoriented heart. A heart that recognizes that God has given you everything you need, and so, we put that belief into action by taking time to stop, set a day apart as holy, and rest. It’s a practice in trusting God.

This is exactly where Israel is. God already provided, and now they have to decide if what He’s given them is enough. If what you have isn’t enough, you’ll keep going.

Sabbath is Remembrance
And it’s something we need to be reminded of again and again. But then in Deuteronomy, the context has changed.

Deuteronomy 5
12 “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. 13 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. 15 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

Because back in Exodus, Sabbath was rooted in creation. Here in Deuteronomy, Sabbath is rooted in liberation. God says, “Remember who you are and remember what I did.” You were slaves! And now? You’re not that anymore.

Slavery doesn’t look like chains anymore.

Societally, exhaustion almost becomes a badge of honor. Even when we’re technically free, internally, we’re still slaves to something.

• Achievement
• Expectations
• Comparison
• Anxiety
• Pressure

That’s why Sabbath mattered so much to God. Every time Israel stopped working, they were declaring that Pharaoh didn’t own them anymore, their worth was not based on output, and they trusted God enough to stop.

The Sabbath was never just about physical rest. It was about remembering that we are no longer slaves. You don’t just rest because God created, you rest because God rescued.

What is driving your life right now? Maybe the reason Sabbath feels so uncomfortable is because stopping exposes what’s actually controlling us.

God is inviting us into freedom, which means that somewhere in our lives, we need a rhythm that physically declares, “I’m not a slave anymore.”

Start small, intentional, and don’t overcomplicate this. Pick a block of time, and during that time of Sabbath rest and remember.

Sabbath is Resting & Remembering
Stop working, stop producing, stop trying to get ahead. Not because everything is done, but because you’re trusting God with what isn’t. You don’t need a perfect Sabbath formula. You need a moment where your soul relearns.

Remember that God is the provider, not you. God is sustaining your life, not just your effort. God rescued you, and it is enough.

The worst thing we could do with a message like this is turn Sabbath into another achievement, another thing to master, or another thing to do. That misses the point entirely. Sabbath becomes a declaration that you belong to God now and you’re not a slave anymore.

And because you are free, you can stop.

We live in a world where we’re trained to think ahead. Whether it’s retirement planning, kids’ futures, career trajectory, or financial security, we live in a “next” world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because trying to be ready is responsible and wise, but it’s one thing to think about what’s next and another thing to live there.

A lot of us don’t just plan for the future, we live in the future. So, we don’t just live today, we drag tomorrow into it. We’re constantly trying to make sense and control what’s next so that nothing catches us off guard.

It’s a subtle shift. We go from being responsible and prepared to restless and controlling. Our tendency in life is to rely on the “controlled” in life, and this isn’t because we’re bad people, but because we’re human and we don’t like the feeling of not knowing if we’ll be okay.

We don’t mind trusting God when we can also see how it’s going to work. And for many of us, that doesn’t feel spiritual, it feels irresponsible because we all want to trust God, but it’s hard to trust what we can’t see.

But what if you could see it?

What if trusting God means something different?

Editing The Past
Have you ever talked with someone who finally left a job they hated as they started their new one? They might have a hard time adjusting to the new position, making them long for the old, reliable one they had, even if they were unhappy.

We don’t miss what was good… we miss what was known.

This is where Israel is in Exodus 16. They’re free but complaining.

Exodus 16
3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

They’re remembering Egypt like it was a buffet!

They selectively remember the food, whips, oppression, and the desperate cries to God for deliverance. And before we look down on the Israelites, we have a version of this, too. Slavery always looks better in hindsight when freedom feels hard.

It’s how we look back at scary times of “slavery” in our lives. Times that God brought us out of that we don’t recall as clearly because living in freedom is difficult. Why do we do this? Because freedom comes with uncertainty. We’d rather have predictable bondage than uncertain freedom.

We would rather stay with what is known and prepared than confront the fact that to be free means we’re not in control.

We don’t just need God to change our situation, we need Him to change our thinking about it. If we focus on always wanting things to be easy, we will revert to a time when things were more secure, when things get confusing or challenging.

Enough for Today
Exodus 16
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt,

God could’ve given them a week’s supply, a month, or a stocked warehouse in the wilderness. He doesn’t. Instead, He is retaining them to live a completely different way. Not by control, but by trust.

God doesn’t promise us tomorrow’s clarity, He promises to meet our needs today. He’s not telling us to stop planning, working, or using our brains, he’s telling us He will provide. It’s about seeing Him as our source.

Trust
Why does God only give us enough for today?

Trust is not built in one big moment. It’s built in a thousand small ones. This is what God is doing with Israel and us. He’s inviting us into a relationship where we experience His goodness, faithfulness, and provision over and over again.

He’s not just meeting your needs, He’s developing a daily rhythm, a practice that sees not just what He gives, but who He is.

Exodus 16
“In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt,

God isn’t just giving them bread, He’s giving them evidence. It’s not just, “God fed us.” It’s, “God is here. God is leading us. God is the one who brought us out.”

If God gave them everything up front, they might enjoy the provision, but they would miss the Provider.

We need to be people who can see and sense God's presence. We need to develop a daily practice of dependence and desperation on God, and on God alone, to supply our needs. It all comes from and is sustained through God.

Have you ever had just enough show up right when you needed it? That wasn’t luck, that was God. We need to recognize when things come from the Lord.

If everything we have comes from our achievement, striving, or control, we will never become  people who can see God’s movement in the world and our lives. That’s what God is saying to His people.

This isn’t just about bread. This is about belief. Because those two things are always connected.

• Grumbling… and knowing.
• Anxiety… and trust.
• Provision… and identity.
  
  

When we live as if we don’t have, it reveals that we’ve forgotten who God is, because if we truly knew Him, we wouldn’t live as if everything depended on us.

This doesn’t mean life is easy. It doesn’t mean there aren’t real needs, fears, or uncertainty, but it does mean that your response reveals your trust in God.

Hoarding For Tomorrow
Exodus 16
16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”
19 Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

They are told to take what they need for the day and not store it. And what happens? They hoard it or try to stock up. They doubt God’s provision, and it rots. Why? Because tomorrow’s provision only comes from tomorrow. You can’t stockpile what God will give you tomorrow today.

What if we became the kind of people who didn’t live in constant anxiety about what’s next, but actually trusted God enough to live fully present today? Not because life is easier, but because our trust is deeper, if that were available to you, would you want it?

This isn’t just a prayer, it’s a reorientation. It’s choosing trust over control and dependence over self-sufficiency. And what you might start to realize is that God is already providing more than you realized. You just haven’t been looking for it.

Have you ever moved to a new place? You don’t know where anything is or how to function efficiently on the onset. It can be overwhelming, possibly off-putting, and frustrating. We see some of that in the Book of Exodus. It’s about the Hebrew people leaving slavery in Egypt, wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, and finally getting to the land God promised them.

It’s quite the journey, and quite the story – one that movies are made of. But most of the book is not just about the Hebrew people becoming a new people; it’s about a people trying to figure out how to live in a new place and reality. They try to find their way around, from slavery to freedom.

As much as that difference between getting to a new place and then learning to live in that place was for them, it’s also for us. Now, most of us don’t feel enslaved. Most of us would say we’re free. But what is freedom?

The world around us thinks that freedom is the absence of boundaries, but that doesn’t bring peace, it brings chaos. It creates consumption and ultimately destruction. Think about what the world would be without restraint, laws, norms, moral expectations, or consequences. Yikes!

We don’t want to be ruled or tied to something, but we’re trading what we think will bring us freedom back and forth all the time. Think about when you get a job. You’re trading your time for something else you think will give you options, freedom, money, or resources.

So, none of us is actually truly free in the sense of having no limits. But what if the way we often live our lives in an effort to find it actually leads us in the opposite direction?

God offers it to us, but we not only need to step into it, but we also need to stay there. We need to learn to live there.

The Hebrew people had been slaves in Egypt for around 400 years. God raised up Moses, confronted Pharaoh, there were the 10 plagues, Passover, the consecration of the firstborn, and then the release from captivity. They’re headed out, and God does a strange thing. He tells them to turn back and set up camp at Pi Hahiroth. A place on the edge of the sea, but still in Egypt.

This is the first clue that God’s freedom might not work the way we expect. What seems like confusion to us is actually where God does the mightiest work. What if confusion to God wasn’t the ending point, but rather the starting point?

So, the Israelites pack up and leave. Pharaoh lets them go but then has second thoughts. So, he goes after them with his army.

Exodus 14
…What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services! 6 So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him.

When you start trying to live in the freedom God leads you to, captivity will come calling with knives out. But you didn’t set yourself free, God did. He’s leading them out, He’ll lead you out, He’ll stay with you, and because of that, you can stand firm.

But the Israelites don’t do that. They see Pharaoh, his chariots, and his army coming. They immediately forget everything they’ve seen. The provision, the miracles, gone.

Exodus 14
10 As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord.11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

It’s part of the human condition that we have very short memories when it comes to God's faithfulness, especially when we’re given what looks like an overwhelming obstacle. This is why we sing about God’s faithfulness, remind each other, remind ourselves, ground ourselves in the truth of God’s word.

When you begin to walk in freedom, there will be things that terrify you and cause you to forget what you’ve already experienced from God. The miracle doesn’t automatically change you. We might think that if we see or experience the big thing, we would be changed forever. But then something else comes and changes you. However, God forms you by standing and staying.

Exodus 14
“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

When you feel holes emerge in your life, with that sense of tension and anxiety rising because of what you think you don’t have, stand firm. Trust that God will fill those gaps. Stand with Him, stay with Him. He’s there, He never left.

He’ll do the miracle, but maybe not in the way you ever expected. And that’s where we can cling to the good news.

Exodus 14
14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.
15 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.
 
Move on. Keep moving. Step out. Keep becoming. Keep going.

Sometimes we think that if we see the miracle, we’ll move, but sometimes it’s more about listening to God call you to move and then seeing the miracle. In Exodus, they move on, God moves with them, and then they see the waters part.

And this isn’t just about Christian faith; it’s about faith in something you don’t yet see. Where do you need to stand firm or stand up? Where might God be calling to you to stay?

Have you ever seen a son or daughter run into the arms of their parent? They run, sometimes almost catapulting into their arms, because they are confident in the response they will be met with. The parent will pick them up every time they are able.

It changes how a child approaches their parent. They don’t approach strangers or even other familiar people the same way because a child knows who their parent is, what the relationship is, how the parent will respond, and that the love is there. It changes everything because the child is secure.

Whether we feel secure is something we love out of. It plays into how we see other people, ourselves, and even God. And what that looks like shapes everything.

When you know where you stand, you have confidence. When you have confidence, you find security.

The problem is that our natural inclination is to view our relationship with God mostly in terms of how it affects us.

Our search for security ends up being a destination rather than a foundation.

Are we secure?
There’s this idea in the American church that Jesus our personal savior, helping us personally. Similar to a therapist, stylist, or personal trainer. The historical church did not use this language. Subtly, our goal becomes getting and maintaining the relationship, rather than where that relationship takes us. But what if that personal relationship is a starting place that takes us somewhere, and not a destination?

The only way it does is if we’re secure.

1 John 5
11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

There’s the relationship, it’s how you know if you’re secure or not.

1 John 5
14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

Televangelists use this verse to communicate their brand of Christianity and what benefits them. It turns God into a cosmic genie or vending machine in the sky.

But it’s not about that.

Have you ever traveled with someone who had platinum status with an airline? You end up in some fancy-named lounge prior to take off with more comfy accommodations than if your traveling partner didn’t rack up a certain amount of miles.

You have elite access to God because of His status and your relationship. Both need to exist for anything to happen.

When we have confidence in our relationship with God, we can address God and the relationship boldly. If you don’t have confidence in your relationship with God just yet, God hears and wants to answer the prayers of His children, according to His will.

What is God’s will?
Matthew 6
33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

Follow God’s way of seeing, living, loving, and responding, especially to people. Then live it out. You will discover you have everything you need to do that. Insecurity always pulls us inward. We’ll only move outward when we know we’re secure.

We make approaching God and discerning His will about us and our needs or wants. John gives us a different application.

1 John 5
16 If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life.

What’s God really passionate about? Saving people, but also restoring them.

When you know where you stand, you have confidence.
When you have confidence, you find security.
But when you have security, you pray for different things than you did.

Security is not about your relationship or position anymore, it’s about where you go from there.

Confidence always leads us outward to other people.

1 John 5
18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them. 19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. 20 We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 21 Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

We don’t really think about idols in our modern age. An idol isn’t believing in no God, it’s about believing in the wrong god or in the wrong conception of God. God isn’t a genie in a bottle. Idols end up overwhelmingly being about our sense of security.

So, how do you know the right God? John says it. You stay close to Jesus.

Remind yourself of the relationship you have – who God is and the access you have as His child. Whatever is true, stay close to that, but then go stand in the gap for people. A confident church is an interceding church.

When you don’t feel secure, you ask for protection. But when you’re confident, you ask for opportunity.

You’re not coming to prayer just for you. You’re coming on behalf of others. When we pray, it should move outward, and those are the kinds of prayers God answers.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night because you heard a noise? The something-is-definitely-wrong-in-my-house noise that ends up being nothing. There’s no real issue, nothing actually happened, but the fear you feel is incredibly real.

It’s strange how something can be completely safe yet still feel completely unsafe. It’s not a moment of panic or crisis, rather a low-grade hum underneath everything. It’s comparable to when your phone is at 12%, you’re not in danger, but you’re not at peace.

For many of us, that hum doesn’t just stay in moments like that, it follows us and leads us to ask:

• Am I okay?
• Am I secure?
• Am I enough?

Now, not all fear is bad. Some fear is actually good, even necessary. Fear can protect you and teach you.

Proverbs 9
10The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

But that’s not the kind of fear John is talking about in 1 John 4. He’s talking about a deeper fear. Not the kind that protects, but rather the kind that positions you against people. The kind that pulls back, withholds, distances, protects, or hardens.

We’re living in a moment where this kind of fear is everywhere. It’s not just “out there,” it shows up in the church, too. Fear doesn’t just make you anxious, it makes you guarded.

Why does fear make us guarded?
Genesis 3 is a great example, through Adam and Eve. What happened when they did something wrong? They hid. Why? They’re not sure where they stand with God anymore. And from that moment on, humanity has been asking the same question, “Where do I stand with Him?”

Fear isn’t just emotional, it’s theological.

At the deepest level, fear is telling you what you believe is true about God, and what you believe is true about you. Because underneath all of it is the quiet belief that when we stand before God, we aren’t enough.

Our minds don’t stop there, they go on:

• If I’m not enough, then I’m accountable.
• If I’m accountable, then something is owed.
• If something is owed, then there’s a penalty.

And if there’s a penalty, then judgment is coming. If that question is not settled, fear doesn’t leave, it moves into every space and area in your life. As a result, fear starts to shape And if there’s a penalty, then judgment is coming. If that question isn't settled, fear doesn’t leave, it moves into every space and area of your life. As a result, fear starts to shape everything.

Without realizing it, we start relating to God from a place of uncertainty and insecurity. We believe in Him, we sing to Him, we love Him, but we’re not fully convinced we’re secure in Him.

What does Jesus say about all this?
Jesus didn’t come to help us manage fear, He came to remove it.

Have you ever been driving, minding your own business, when you saw a police car? Your mind and body react like you might be in trouble, even if you’re not. So essentially, you’re acting like you’re afraid of getting a ticket or being arrested for going 3 MPH over the speed limit.

Fear isn’t just about what’s happening, it’s about what we think is coming next. Our fear is connected to something… punishment.

Fear has to do with punishment.

In Greek, punishment means penalty. A debt that must be paid. This is courtroom language. Before a holy God, something is owed because of our sin. And John says that’s what fear is tied to – punishment. Not just what’s happening now, but what you believe is coming later.

1 John 4
17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.

Even though we have a debt to pay, we can stand before a Holy God in confidence. How? Because Jesus paid the penalty in full.

Romans 5
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

Paul says we’ve been justified. Declared right. Dept paid. Case closed.

Where does our confidence come from?
Our confidence is rooted in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

1 John 4:16
16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

Confidence in God comes from relying, not trying.

But finding that confidence is still hard. Why? Because we rely on our effort, not His love. Hebrews tells us that His blood speaks a better word – it speaks the final word on the penalty we deserve, and because of that, we can stand in confidence before Him.

“In this world, we are like Jesus.”

This means we stand before the Father the way Jesus does – fully accepted, connected, and secure.

We now share His Spirit. His life is in us. His standing before the Father has become our standing. It we can stand justified before a Holy God, we don’t have to live like we’re on trial anymore.

What does that mean?

You’re free.

You don’t need approval, control, or to secure your own future. You’re free to give, serve, and move toward people without needing something in return, needing recognition, or calculating the cost.

1 John 4
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

If fear is rooted in punishment, then the only way to remove fear is to settle punishment.

If love moves in, fear moves out.

Not because you forced it out by trying harder, but because something better took its place.

Love kicks fear out of the house. John tells us that when the love of God moves into your life, fear doesn’t get to stay. It doesn’t belong there. Again, not every day, normal fear, but the fear of punishment before God.

Presence changes things.

When His love becomes real to you, present to you, or something you’re actually relying on, it starts to change what lives inside of you.

The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We might read that and think it means if you’re a Christian and you’re afraid, you haven’t been made perfect yet. That’s not what John means. He means that someone who fears punishment hasn’t yet encountered the love of God in Jesus.

1 John 4
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Why does John make the connection between the love of God and us loving people? Because if fear is still ruling your heart, you won’t move toward people, you will protect yourself from people. You will create distance, you will dehumanize, you will dismiss.

When you know deep down that your debt is paid, that doesn’t just remove fear vertically, it removes it horizontally. It doesn’t just give us confidence before God, it gives us love for those around us.

The clearest evidence that you’re actually experiencing the love of God is not what you sing, say, or post, it’s how you love the person right in front of you.

Have you ever listened to someone else’s story? What happens when the story becomes personal? Once you see yourself in the story, it changes you. Now, there’s a difference between it being personal and important. Do you drive a little slower or more carefully after having kids than before? You always knew safety was important, but then it became personal.

One of the most complicated things with Easter is that the story is an account. As Christians, we believe Easter is a documentation of what actually happened. But even with that, it’s a story. It’s a great, inspiring, hopeful, and true story, but it’s very easy for it to stay just that. A story.

We can all recognize that this is an extremely important story, but for most, it’s not personal. It’s hard for it to truly become our story, unless we need it to.

A World of Stories
We live in a world where there are many stories, good and not-so-good. We take them and make them personal more often than we realize.

• There’s a story about how people are that has become your story.
• There’s a story about what will make you happy and bring you peace.
• There’s a story of what it will take for you to find and feel love.
• There’s the story you tell yourself about you, or the one someone else has attempted to write about you.
  
  

There’s so much power in a story, more than we realize. Stories move us. Stories drive us. And when we look at the worst parts of the world, there’s a story that’s behind them, too. Racism, hate, and horrible things done in the name of religion. Oppression, wars, and nations against nations. They all start with one story that people made their story. They made it personal.

What if the same old Easter story could become your story in a powerful way?

Luke 24
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

The women showed up not because they were expecting anything other than a dead body. They had come to finish a burial because Jesus had been hastily buried by some men before the Sabbath.

Wonder
The women wondered, and the people wondered. This is more than them just experiencing the events. Jesus had told them beforehand that they were going to happen. He told them the story at least 4 separate times – that He would be arrested, crucified, die, and rise on the third day.

Why?

Because they had so many assumptions about Jesus – who He was, what He would do – a religious sage, a rabbi, a political leader who would overthrow the way things were. They didn’t connect the dots, and it’s difficult for us, too. We all know this story is important, but is it important AND personal?

We have some of those assumptions too. From outside the story, we look in and make some assumptions. It feels strange when they’re challenged. We wonder what’s really going on because we don’t like not knowing or not understanding. It’s so easy to see wondering as a deficiency or a dead end, but it’s actually the beginning of a new journey.

Confusion
The contradiction we experience in wondering actually disrupts the assumptions we had, the story we’ve been working with.

Luke 24
5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’

The angels say things about looking for the living among the dead. That’s an interesting thing to say. These women and disciples are not looking for living among the dead but rather looking for the dead above the dead.

The angels are saying, “Everything you thought you were going to encounter is being turned on its head.”

And they’re not even condemned by the angels (or Jesus) for not believing, for wondering, or even for the fact that they’d thrown in the towel on the whole thing. As the angels did with them, they do with us. Why are we looking among the dead?

They challenge our assumptions, and we challenge our assumptions by going back to what Jesus said about himself.

Luke 24
8 Then they remembered his words.

Jesus said things like, “I am the resurrection and the life,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
 
Suddenly, the story was becoming their story.

These disciples and women loved Jesus. They followed Jesus. They believed in Jesus, and they still came to bury Jesus. Which means you can love Jesus and still live as if resurrection isn’t real.

The empty tomb shows that it was never your circumstances, past, or the powerful stories, people, and forces they animate. It was sin and death. And they are now defeated.

Everything you thought had the final word in your life doesn’t.

That’s where the story can become uniquely personal. It can change us. It contradicts us, and comforts us in our stories, along with the ones we’ve embraced and believed.

That’s the Easter story. The important part is that Jesus, the son of God, came, was crucified, died, was buried, but then rose again.

And not just as a spectacle, but to do something for you that you couldn’t do for yourself. To forgive your sin, to give you hope, to remove the specter of death (large or small) from your life.

This has to go from being just important to becoming something personal for you if Jesus’ words are going to snap into focus. Something you need. But if it becomes personal and important, it’s what you always needed.

We are all very confident about what we think we need. Not what we want, what we need. We say things like:

• I need this to work out.
• I need that person to change.
• I need the door to open.

The problem is that we actually don’t know what we need. We think we do, but we rarely get it right. And when what we think we need doesn’t happen the way we think it should, we get disappointed or disoriented.

We don’t just bring requests to God, we bring solutions. These aren’t prayers as much as demands. But what if we’re wrong about what we need?

If, Then Statements
We all have a story about what would finally make our lives okay.

• If this changes, then I’ll have peace.
• If this changes, then I’ll finally be able to breathe.
• If I can get around this turn, then things will get better.

And until that happens, we just hold our breath. With if, then statements, our peace, joy, and security in life are connected to something that’s outside our control.

Now, things on your list aren’t bad, but somewhere along the way, those things become functional saviors. Those outcomes are what will save us. We don’t just want salvation, we want a specific version of salvation.

That’s the fallen condition.

We often only come to God for what we think we need. But what if that’s not what we really need?

It’s possible to be passionate about Jesus and still miss the real Jesus.

We want the benefits of the Kingdom without the king of King He actually is.

Nothing in the Bible is accidental. There are no throwaway details, no filtered moments, no random travel choices. Every movement, object, or word is revealing something about who God is and what He is doing. The Bible is not just telling us what happened, it shows us what it means. So, when Jesus makes His entrance into Jerusalem, He is not just getting from point A to point B. He is preaching.

Luke 19
30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’” 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it.36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

Why the Donkey?
If you were the long-awaited Messiah coming to liberate your people with a crowd ready to crown you, you don’t ride in on a donkey. You ride in on a warhorse. That’s what conquering kings did. That’s what power and victory looked like. What you rode in on spoke volumes.

Jesus chooses to ride in on a donkey. He did it on purpose. He did it in public. Why? Because He was coming to meet their actual need and not their perceived need. Before His mouth even opened, He already confronted their expectations.

If Jesus came the way they wanted, He wouldn’t have come the way they needed.

The version of Jesus we ask for naturally is usually the one that makes our lives work best for us.

We ask Jesus to fix our situations, but He comes to fix our separation.

• We ask for relief, God wants to bring resurrection.
• We ask for control, God wants to develop surrender.
• We ask for situations, God wants to change our hearts.

If He gave them what they were shouting for, they would’ve gone back to their homes, still in their sin, still separated from God, and still in need of a savior.

That’s one of the greatest threats to our faith. Not that God says, “no” to our prayers, but that we reduce Him to answering the small things we ask for and miss who He actually is.

Luke 19
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives,the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

All of Creation is moving towards this moment of praising the King. So, their worship, joy, and expectation are real. They’re quoting Scripture, declaring truth, and recognizing Him as the promised King. And yet, they still don’t understand the type of salvation He’s bringing.

You can say the right things about Jesus for the wrong reasons.

It’s easy for us to sing the right songs, quote the right verses, and say the right things about Jesus, yet underneath it all, we’re quietly hoping He’ll just solve all the problems we’ve decided are most important to us.

So, how do we know when we’re doing that?

• If you ask Jesus to fix your circumstances but resist when He starts working on your character.
• You ask Him to remove the hardship, but He keeps forming perseverance.
• We want clarity about the future, but He keeps inviting us into trust.

Are we worshipping Jesus for who He truly is or for who we hope He will be for us?

That’s why the same crowd that shouted “Hosanna!” on Sunday would shout “Crucify Him!” by Friday. Not because Jesus failed. But because He refused to become the kind of Savior they wanted.

Luke 19
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side.44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

Jesus weeps over the city. Not because they rejected Him, but because they missed it. He says, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it’s hidden from your eyes.” Throughout Luke’s Gospel, this idea of peace shows up:

• At Jesus’ birth: “Peace on earth” (Luke 2:14)
• When someone is forgiven: “Go in peace” (Luke 7:50)
• Salvation brings us peace with God.

He literally came riding in on a donkey, and that’s a fulfillment of a prophecy in the Book of Zechariah.

Zechariah 9:9
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

A donkey is a symbol of peace. They missed it!

We all have our own idea of what peace looks like.

• The right schools.
• The right career trajectory.
• The right financial stability.
• The right person in office.
• Our plans working.  
  
  

But Jesus rides into moments like that and quietly says, “The peace you are chasing out there is not the peace you actually need.”

You can actually have all those other things and still not have peace with God. We think peace is when life becomes manageable. Jesus says peace is when your soul is reconciled to God.

Do you see Jesus for who He truly is?

Each day comes with our own Costco cart of needs. Things we’re convinced will finally bring us peace. But what we should do instead is bring those things to our King and let Him decide what salvation looks like.

Bring your list to Jesus, but let Him decide what stays on it.

The more we allow Jesus to be the King of our lives, the more we will see Him for who He truly is and what He’s really doing.

We can all pick out a certain voice. Our spouse’s, our child’s, our parent’s, and that’s because we’ve spent years with them, we value them.

There are so many things and so many people trying to get your ear. They are trying to get you to listen, then respond, and then follow. Some of these are innocent enough, others appeal to the broken parts of us, even the worst parts of us.

Sometimes the voices we respond to sound similar to God’s, but because we haven’t taken the time or placed a specific value on God’s voice, we mistake them for God's.

Whose voice we listen to and respond to in life has profound implications.

In 1 John, Chapter 4, we are in this early church. There were few written Scripture texts available, especially those that would become the New Testament, so the early church depended heavily on apostles, prophets, and teachers. Some of these had begun to spread false teachings that denied the true nature of Jesus in an attempt to “improve” on the simple, old truth of the Gospel.

1 John 4
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.

What is testing the Spirits?
You can have a spiritual experience that’s not based in Jesus Christ. These spiritual experiences, new teachings, new discoveries, or “improvements” can feel so compelling and appeal to something within us.

We often mistake compelling for true.

Whenever anyone says, “God says,” or “The Lord told me,” it should be tested. But how do you test it? By the Word of God. By who Jesus was, what Jesus did, and how Jesus did. This is why it’s so important to be rooted in Scripture. It allows us to see, taste, smell, or hear when something is off.

It’s a guarantee that there are other voices trying to position themselves as authority in our lives. They’re even using bits and pieces of Christianity and Scripture to do it. This is exactly what was happening in the early church.

Just because someone is quoting the scriptures publicly doesn’t mean they are honoring Jesus.

How do you test the Spirits?
They will always tell the truth about Jesus, and if they don’t, they aren’t. They’re not just a little off, they’re opposed. But if you hold onto the truth of Jesus, the firm foundation built in His word, there’s another promise you can claim or push back.

1 John 4
4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

If you embrace the voice that IS God, believe that Jesus IS God – fully God and fully human – it has undeniable implications in our lives, and our lives in others’ lives.

We listen to the voice of God and speak the truth of God into the world, but we go further than that. John has already challenged us not to love just with words, but with actions.

1 John 4
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

Have you ever had a crush? What happens when they make the first move? It changes everything. So, when we listen to God, He always calls us to something.  

God’s love always makes the first move.

God made the first move to you. He pursued you and loved you. Even when you weren’t necessarily looking for Him. Loving like God means us making the first move, even in places where it’s not our responsibility to make it.

Your story would be a lot different if someone didn’t make a move or did. But the good news is that God did! And when it came to your relationship with God, someone else did too. Our lives would be so different had God not initiated and pursued us.

Imagine what the story in the world around us could be if we took the initiative as a response to what God did for us.

1 John 4
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Think of the wind vs. the wind’s effects. We’ve seen what the wind can do, but do we live our lives professing that we don’t believe in the wind because we haven’t seen it?

This means that the world experiences God through His people. When His people learn to hear, then listen, then respond, and then do.

• Listen to hear
• Listen to process
• Respond
• Do

Most of the time, we don’t hear God in the burning bushes or voices from the sky, but rather when God’s people do to others what God first did to them – love, take the initiative, make the first move.

God shows up in the world when we show up in the world with God.

People see God through how they see us, and specifically through how we love.

Many Christians are fascinated with the supernatural – angels, demons, or power encounters – as a means of acquiring knowledge or gaining a higher plane of understanding. This isn’t about who knows the most, it’s about who knows God’s voice the best and then does something about it.

The world around us is fascinated by Jesus, but often not by the true Jesus. Who’s going to show them the true Jesus?

1 John 4
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

When you make the first move, when you love, it takes energy and effort. It requires investment and involves risk. Where you’re drawing from when you do this is absolutely critical. It’s like drawing water from a well.

What well are you drawing from? Yours? God’s? Someone else’s? Something else’s? Are you digging the right well deeper?

It’s easy to try to do God’s work while drawing from your own well, but at some point, your well runs dry.

How do we avoid this? By being deeply rooted and reliant first.

1 John 4
16 And so we KNOW and RELY on the love God has for us.

How do we KNOW and RELY?

• Know – Having an intimate relationship with something, like a marriage of many years. The voice you can’t mistake. This isn’t a big emotional or spiritual high, it’s something built consistently, humbly, and faithfully over time.
• Rely – Depending on, literally, to be saved by. This is saving faith, but also “stake your life on it” faith. For example, when you get on an airplane, you’re trusting it and can’t get off. You have to see it through.

You have to stake (build) your life on it. How much of your life would be different if your faith was removed from it?

What if we were the people who weren’t just casual about this, but prioritized it? What if we staked our lives there?

Lavish and abundance. We all like the idea. If it’s season tickets, all-you-can-eat buffets, or even that unlimited carwash card. Some of us try to accumulate enough money, things, relationships, or followers to try to feel this way. But it never holds up because there’s something hard-wired into our broken, fallen human condition that upends it. It’s called scarcity thinking.

Here’s what this looks like:

1. There’s a limited amount of love, goodness, money, talent, or opportunity, and I need to grab mine or someone else will.
2. I need to grab mine from someone else by taking from them, outperforming them, or cutting them down.
3. If I feel like I have “mine,” I need to protect it by being defensive, stingy, or insecure, or preemptively attacking others.
4. A sense of scarcity dramatically increases the price we are willing to pay (our lives, relationships, or health).

Scarcity isn’t an amount so much as it’s a mindset. Scarcity quickly goes from a feeling or an experience to an identity.

Some of us struggle with the idea that if we could get enough, achieve enough, be loved enough, accepted enough, have this opportunity, be recognized by those people, be in that relationship, then we wouldn’t feel scarcity anymore.

That’s not how it works.

The target always moves, and the mindset doesn’t disappear on its own.

When we believe in a god of scarcity, that god will never be enough. So, we are constantly seeking out others to make up the difference. That not only changes how we view God, but also how we view God’s love, other people, and why and how we love them.

Lavished
1 John 3
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 

Love always involves a relationship. And that relationship has effects beyond itself.

The relationship you have upward directly impacts the relationships you live outward.

There’s a huge contrast between how we should do it and how the world around us does it.

1 John 3
The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.

The manner in which we live should be something the world just doesn’t get. Not because we’re weird or hard to understand, but because we’re not playing from the same book as they are.

1 John 3
But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

A life of faith is having hope, moving in the direction of that which we do not yet see, but it’s not an aspirational hope, like hoping to lose weight or win the lottery; it’s more like a journey you take with a destination. You pack for the trip.

If we know how things end, it changes how we travel.

When you know something can’t run out, you’re much freer with how you give it away.

So, what does it look like to live that way? There’s a catch.

Laid Down
1 John 3
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

And this is where many of us get stuck. The idea of love, even the feeling of love, is compelling, attractive, and strong; however, there’s a price tag.

Love is faith with consequences.

1. To your sense of morality
2. Lifestyle and priorities
3. Time and resources
4. Reputation

Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. We lay down our lives for others by following His example. If your faith doesn’t result in action, especially when it comes to love, was it really faith at all?

The truth that we’re loved completely, Jesus is who made that possible.

James 2
17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

If there aren’t enough people who “believe” the right things, our world is drastically affected. In the absence of the people who believe in the right things and actually do something about them, our world becomes a race to the bottom, where the loudest, most forceful, and brutal voices win out.

As Christ followers, if we don’t like what we see in the world, God has placed His Spirit, power, and presence in us to change the temperature. And He’s done that for a purpose. So why don’t we do this?

Fear.

But if we have a limitless supply and we know how it ends, what is there to be afraid of?

Confident
1 John 3
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

We’re always subtly asking, “What’s in it for me?” That’s why we appropriate this verse to get what we want, and that’s actually worshiping the god of scarcity. But our God is different. God’s abundance is lavished on us. His love laid down. That’s what makes it possible to have confidence in asking.

Confidence in God gives you the right perspective to ask for the right things for the right purpose.

It’s about His abundance and our alignment. Not for our own walks, but for what we need in any situation to do His will. To walk the way Jesus walked, love the way Jesus loved, pour it out into our broken world, because His love will never run out, and there’s no situation that overwhelms it.

Be confident that God will give you all you need, and as you see need in our broken world, you can ask and ask with confidence.

Movies and moments within movies can be inspiring. Luke Skywalker declaring he will forever be a Jedi, Rocky yelling, “Yo, Adrian,” or learning that life is like a box of chocolates are all examples of this, and the message is clear: never forget who you are and don’t settle for less.

Now, movies have a knack for the dramatics, making it pretty easy to see what’s good and evil, but our lives are rarely that clear-cut. There’s a lot more subtlety in real life.

The world around us is always trying to get us to accept a false version of who we should be (Saul’s armor). This isn’t just true for Christians; it’s true for everyone. But for Christians, Satan will attempt to paint the picture of a weaker version of who we actually are in Christ.

It’s not that he’s trying to turn us to the dark side, because that would be easy to spot. He’s trying to get us to give up the high calling of who we are in Christ. He wants us to settle for less, to play small, to forget, or to stay caught up in fear and apathy, to get entangled in the issues and rabbit trails of the world around, and to live and act like everyone else.

We Need to Remember
This is exactly what was happening in the churches John was writing to, and this is what happens to us.

1 John 2
12 I am writing to you, dear children,
because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
13 I am writing to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
14 I write to you, dear children,
because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God lives in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.

In our Bibles, these words look different than the ones around them – like a song or poem. Think about any romantic movie, when you really want to win that other person over or drive the point home, you write a song or a poem.

John starts by telling us to remember. Remember who we are, what we’ve seen. Remember what God has already done and do not settle for less. Then, he sets up the contrast.

1 John 2
15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father (the Father’s love) is not in them. 16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

This is why all of us live up to our calling. We don’t want to live below it, but why do we? There’s something that the world and its way of living offer us that seems incredibly appealing. It pulls us in.

• Love – to have inner fellowship with (to give your heart to).
• The World – the things that perish and pass – the things and people that pull you in the opposite direction of God.

But there’s another word that takes over the passage – Lust.

Fire can be very good when lit in the right places. In the wrong place, it threatens to burn down an entire house. It takes over.

• Lust of the flesh – I feel something I need that I need to satisfy.
• Lust of the eyes – I see something I want to get. You don’t know it’s missing until you see it.
• Pride of life – There’s something I believe I deserve. Greatness, recognition, privilege, power, position, justice, payback, vindication, a relationship, way of life, or standard of living.

How do you get attached to something like this? You keep it in front of you, meditate on it, create and cultivate a space in your life that you believe it is supposed to fill.

When you feed your desires, they don’t go away, they grow.

Now, this sounds almost religious, like worship.

1 John 2
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

John is talking cryptically here. He’s setting up a standard of comparison – Christ vs. antichrist. When some of us hear that word, it brings to mind the end of times or an apocalypse. But the meaning is simpler, and far more mundane. It means "in place of" or "counter to" Christ. John says that there are a lot of them, not just one. And that’s true.

There are many other places and things we can worship, where we think we put them next to Christ, but they always take the place of Christ. It starts out subtle, but when given the driver’s seat, it will have us embracing a way of living that seeks to substitute all sorts of other things for Jesus as our Savior and our Lord.

We are all wired for worship, it’s just a matter of what, where, who, and when.

The lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life never satisfy or even last. We’re always going to be on the hunt for another one.

1 John 2
17 The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

So, how do we deal with something that’s as wrapped up in our identity as our desires?

We Need to Remain
1 John 2
28 And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. 29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

We start with remember and end with remain. Remember who you are, who God’s called you to be, and don’t live beneath that. But once you remember your position in Christ, remain. John says it 6 times in this passage. Don’t move on, don’t move past, don’t give up, and don’t graduate to something you think is better.

When the world pulls you, when you’re tired, when you don’t see results, when you’re tempted not to trust and to look around at other Jesuses – remain.

Sometimes we are asked to reset passwords. So, we make a new one, immediately forget it, and then live in a perpetual state of being locked out of our own accounts. What if that’s how people experience their relationship with God? Seeing access to God as fragile, like one mistake logs them out.

When you’re not sure if you’re in, your mind starts to wander, and you start to wonder.

• Am I still accepted?
• Am I forgiven?
• Have I gone too far?
  
  

That tension, anxiousness, and doubt is where John begins in Chapter 2 of 1 John. As Christians, we struggle with doubt – not doubt about Jesus but doubt about the relationship with Jesus.

And in a world where we don’t know who to trust, where everything feels unstable, where things are changing really fast, it’s easy to start living like our standing with God is fragile. The problem becomes when we think that our relationship with God is fragile. This leads to Christians who know how to do things for God but don’t actually know Him.

We need to know who we are and whose we are.

When most of us leave the house, we leave prepared. We don’t pack things hoping for a problem, we pack because we understand the reality.

1 John 2
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

John is not saying, “Don’t sin, but if you do, it’s okay.” He’s saying, “When you sin, not if, you have an advocate.”

Jesus doesn’t argue your innocence; He presents His righteousness.

If our hope is built on proving our innocence, we all lose. Instead, Scripture says we have an advocate. And our advocate doesn’t argue the quality of our record, He presents the sufficiency of Himself.

And He doesn’t say, “They’re innocent.” He says, “I have paid!” Our assurance with God isn’t grounded in how well our week went, whether our repentance felt sincere, or whether we’ve managed to keep our spiritual streak alive. It’s not about anything we do.

Our assurance is in Jesus alone!

John’s saying the atoning work of Christ isn’t just for people like you. The atoning sacrifice of Jesus doesn’t just rescue people we relate to; it reaches toward people we struggle to understand.

This doesn’t mean everyone automatically receives salvation, but it is saying that the provision of Christ is not limited by our categories. It’s a level playing ground at the foot of the cross, and His love is for all people, despite what we may think.

1 John 2
3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

The Word of God tells us that assurance in our relationship with God comes from doing what He commands. It comes from a life that bends towards obedience daily. Because if anyone says they know God and are a follower of Jesus but don’t do what He says, what does the Word of God call that person? A liar.

If you’re going to claim it, you need to live it.

There has to be action in your life that proves it. We all want to know we’re loved and accepted by God. We want maximum assurance that we are saved, but we want that assurance with minimal surrender on our part.

And John’s saying you can’t have one without the other. You’ll know that you are following God if you’re obeying God’s Word. Not perfectly or flawlessly, but genuinely, progressively, and willingly.

Obedience isn’t how we earn salvation; obedience is the evidence of salvation.

Ok, so how did Jesus live? What does that look like?

1 John 2
7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

To live as Jesus did means to embody the Love that God has for us.

John 13
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Assurance doesn’t come from checking a spiritual checklist; it comes from asking, “Is my life increasingly reflecting the love, humility, and surrender of Jesus?” That’s how we know we’re walking in Him.

1 John 2
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

John takes something we tend to keep abstract (love) and grounds it in relationship. Most of us don’t think we hate anyone. We define hatred in extreme categories and instinctively assume it doesn’t apply.

Hatred is more subtle and present.

• Dismissal – someone’s point of view isn’t worth your time
• Contempt – reducing someone to a stereotype so you don’t have to see them as human
• Indifference – deciding someone else’s pain isn’t convenient for you
• Dehumanizing language – it’s speaking about people as problems, enemies, and categories instead of image bearers of God who Jesus died for

Our version of hatred is often quiet, respectable, and aligns with whoever is in power. It’s a settled decision in our heart that other people aren’t our problem. That is NOT our call.

Hatred isn’t violence – it’s love withdrawn.

When we regularly live in ways that refuse love towards people we live in proximity to, we’re not being neutral. We are making an active, relational decision. We are engaging in hate.

Love looks like Jesus. It’s sacrificial, initiating, costly, patient, truthful, cross-shaped, and it doesn’t have an excuse. Scripture and Jesus don’t give us that permission.

When you notice it – nurture it.

When you notice someone God has placed in proximity – someone overlooked, frustrating, inconvenient, different, hurting, or hard to love – don’t drift past them. Nurture it. Love doesn’t grow accidentally. Love grows when we respond to what God places in front of us.

When reading the Bible, one of the most important things to do is start by asking a few questions. Why was the author writing this? To whom is the author writing? What was going on at this time? What prompted the author to pick up a pen?

The Bible wasn’t written to us; it was written for us. Throughout generations, across cultures and times, there is incredible consistency. We tend to think the world around us is progressing. There’s more information at our fingertips and more advancement, so it’s easy to think we’ve become more enlightened. But then, and always, human nature rears its ugly head.

In First John, John was writing a letter to THE church, all of the local outposts, not a specific congregation. And by way of history rhyming, and human nature not changing, he’s writing to us.

What John is Addressing

• Gnosticism – This was seen as a more enlightened, progressive moral and religious understanding and path.
• God’s Existence – God existed but couldn’t be known. Jesus wasn’t the son of God, but merely human with a divine spirit. He was a good, moral teacher who did some cool things, but he wasn’t God.
• Jesus Couldn’t Save – He wasn’t God, and by extension, we didn’t need saving. We could save ourselves by keeping the law and doing good works.
• Materialism and Pleasure – This age was coming where life would be all about materialism and pleasure, throwing off all moral restraints.

We have our own version of this in our time.

In every age, there’s a dominant cultural philosophy that needs to be pushed back against by the people of God.

The catch is that most of us can point to what we think this is, and it’s not us; it’s other people, but it’s part of all of us. Jesus spoke to this in the Gospels, where He said, You have a fine way of seeing aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! (Mark 7:9)

1 John 1
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.

John starts right out saying this isn’t a new teaching, but an old one. John was one of Jesus’ disciples; he walked with Him, had seen Him perform miracles, and heal the sick. But most importantly, he saw Him die on the cross and be raised to life.

1 John 1
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

He repeats the message that Jesus gave us. John is going to set up many contrasts throughout this letter, contrasting the way of the world and the way of Jesus. We need to do the same and recognize just how much the world around us can subtly shape us.

• God is Perfect – God is pure, He is light. Light shows things for what they truly are, what is real, what is true. It’s not possible to claim to know Jesus and refuse to acknowledge the reality of who God is, not what we make Him out to be.
• We are broken – We don’t like to hear this because this requires us to embrace the truth that we really are broken. Learning about the truth might ruin some of our favorite restaurants or foods. It’s a lot nicer thinking our favorite ice cream sundae is 0 calories instead of the 600+ it might be. We’d rather go about our lives without knowing, but we can’t live that way and follow Jesus. We have to embrace the light.

1 John 1
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

But there’s something good, not bad, that happens if we walk in the light, even if being seen as we really are is something we don’t want to do.

1 John 1
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 

The light shows us for what we are – sinners, broken, in need of a savior. Remember that John is writing to church people. He’s not contrasting Christians and non-Christians; instead, he’s contrasting the church people who have fallen for this new teaching rather than staying anchored to Jesus.

Christians have this odd thing we do when we don’t want to be confronted over and over again with our sinfulness, even when Jesus has offered salvation. We try to shift the spotlight. It’s one of the best ways to hide from our own sin or shortcomings and shift the spotlight to what “those people over there are doing.” But we remain broken, sinners in need of a savior.

This is precisely the reason you hear stories of Christian leaders who confront “sin” or “the world” who are outed for some scandal later in life.

1 John 1
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

• Jesus built the bridge – Jesus came to build the bridge between the truth of a perfect God and the reality of a broken people (you and I). But we have to live in some truth when it comes to this bridge, and that’s how Jesus is the son of God, righteous, died for our sins, and the sins of the world.

We all know that we’re not perfect, we’re flawed, fallen, and maybe even sinful. But we often act like the majority of the sin is “over there, not here.” John (and Jesus) is saying that the moment you begin that journey, you begin to make God out to be a liar, and the truth does not live in you.

You can tell the true followers of Jesus by their high view of God, awareness of their own sin, and humble embrace of Jesus.

God is perfect, you are broken, Jesus came to build the bridge.

What if our hope came not from your own good works, a higher plane of knowledge, a more sophisticated faith, or your ability to distract by pointing the spotlight in another direction, but a confidence? What if it was something certain, something strong? A humble confidence that, even as we stand in the light of God’s perfection, and our sinfulness is fully in view, Jesus came to build a bridge?

John goes on a few verses after this, reminding us that even if (and when) we do sin, Jesus stands beside us, as an advocate. We can have confidence.

The truth about God + the truth about you + the transformation that Jesus brings = a radical change in how you live and how you love.

How we live and love shows the transformation Jesus has brought, and what we believe is true about us and about God. How would the people around you answer those questions and solve that equation?

As a person whose heart beats strongly for those who have no access, no scripture, no hope, or no “good news”, Pastor Dan Hutton, who is a former missionary, was the perfect person to kick off our Beyond Our Walls Missions Conference, starting in the Book of Acts.

Acts 9
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
7 The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone. 8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

Saul the Persecutor
What is Saul doing? He’s breathing, operating systematically, and is being indiscriminate. Up to this point, Saul thinks he is pleasing God. He looks at this holistically – breath, system, action. Saul is not seeking Jesus, he’s persecuting Jesus. He is blind to what God is doing, which is ironic considering he ends up blind.

Jesus Interrupts Saul
Conversion begins with 3 things:

• Jesus’ initiative
• Jesus’ authority
• Jesus’ grace

In your story, have you seen all of these? Which do you still need to identify? Which do you still need to experience?

It’s a constant battle we all deal with. We want the grace without the initiative or authority of Jesus. Grace is nice because we treat it like a get-out-of-jail-free card. But the strangest thing happens: Jesus brings someone else into the story. Which is actually more common than not if you read scripture.

Acts 9
10 In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord,” he answered.
11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”
15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus.

A Random Disciple
Ananias – name means, God is gracious (from Hebrew Hananayah). In this case, there’s a level of grace to Saul, but also to Ananias. Listen to the instructions:

• Go to “the straight way/path”
• Go to the house of Judas

Ananias balks – “God, are you sure? Do you know this guy?” God knows the risk and the opportunity. He sees what Ananias can’t yet. Ananias knows God changed his life, but he had a sense of hesitation in this situation.

Saul is not Paul yet, but still a brother. He receives sight, receives the Holy Spirit, is baptized, and spends days with the disciples.

Maybe we need some of what Ananias offers because God is still gracious. Do you need family, touch, sight, the Holy Spirit, Baptism, or Community? That’s what Transforming the World Beyond Our Walls is all about.

The story of Paul and Ananias is the story of different callings but the same faithfulness. Ananias set the paradigm for all that God would do in and through Paul.

Saul will travel the Roman world, plant churches, and write half of the New Testament. Ananias will walk across town, enter one house, and lay hands on one man.

The church needs both, and Jesus honors both.

Ordinary disciples in familiar places take faithful steps and change the world.

The truth is that you can’t change something for everybody, but through the Gospel, you can change everything for somebody.

When most of us hear the word “reset,” we immediately think restart, but sometimes the problem isn’t that something is broken, it’s that you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. We assume something is wrong because we feel stuck, restless, or unfulfilled, so we restart. But nothing actually changes because we never stop to reimagine why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place.

Reset doesn’t always mean doing your life differently. Sometimes it means seeing your life differently.

Looking again at who you are, where you are, what you’ve been given, who’s right in front of you, and realizing that purpose might not be something you’re missing, but misunderstanding.

We all want our lives to mean something, to have purpose. Most of us don’t struggle with laziness. We struggle with misalignment. We want our lives to matter, but we’re not always sure how.

We look for purpose as something to be achieved rather than something to be received and stewarded.

We don’t need more potential because there’s always potential. It’s a matter of what happens with it.

Reimagining Our Purpose
Paul reframes everything in Ephesians 2. He starts with honesty, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins…” But then God did something about this that we couldn’t do.

Ephesians 2
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace…

God didn’t wait for us to try to find purpose. He made us alive for a purpose.

How? By giving us a list of things to accomplish.

Ephesians 2
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

This is the HOW. But what about the WHAT?

Ephesians 2
10  “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Good work is not the point, it’s the product. Many people can read verse 10 and assume that our purpose is to do good in the world. The challenge with that is that before Paul wrote verse 10, he wrote verses 8-9.

There’s a progression here: grace, identity, works. Not works, acceptance, identity.

We’re not doing good things so that God loves us. God loves us, therefore, we aim to impact the world based on the love that we’ve been given by God. These good works have been prepared for us, they’re not something we manifest ourselves.

Recognizing God’s Handiwork
A masterpiece may have intrinsic value, but its ultimate and lasting impact is actually the impact on others, especially over time. You may not see yourself as a masterpiece, but God does! However, you need to have faith that God sees you differently than you see yourself.

There’s a reason we struggle to let our light shine or our purpose be seen in the right places in the world – it’s because it’s an incredible risk. Think of any musician who wrote their first song or author who wrote their first book. Taking that chance is one of the most terrifying things.

But God sees you and goes with you! He sees what happens when you start walking in purpose before you ever do because He created it.

Purpose doesn’t start with what you do – it starts with what God has already done.

It’s something we find or discover, it’s something we’ve been given. Now, God has done something, yes, salvation, but also wiring. He’s given us more than just salvation, but unique gifting and placement.

• Passion – What gets your heart stirred? Injustice. Connecting people. Solving problems.Passion is like fire – with boundaries, it brings warmth and life, without boundaries, it destroys everything.
  
  Passion rebels against discipline – but it needs it.
  
  Without discipline, it has little impact. Directed, channeled.
  
  
• Position – Everyone has roles. Great failures of our time are people who don’t show up to their positions, people who use their positions for themselves, or people who look at their current positions as a limitation, not an opportunity.  
  
  God places us where He has a purpose, not by accident.

• Proficiency – What are you good at? Where do things get better when you show up?
  
  Are you neglecting the gifts you have while wishing for the ones you don’t?
  
  Proficiencies aren’t just abilities, they’re also resources.God doesn’t ask what you don’t have, He asks how you’re using what you do have.

•  People – What relationships are you taking for granted, avoiding, or phoning in? Who have you already placed in proximity where your life could make a real difference, but you don’t see it or don’t want to see it?
  
  

So, how do we apply this? Ask yourself some simple questions.

• What excites you? (Passion)
• Where am I? (Position)
• What am I good at? (Proficiency)
• Who can I impact? (People)

Pastor Michael Hoddy sits down with Pastor Joey Monteleone to break down how we practically do this in our own lives.

When we come into a new year, it doesn’t automatically change the person we are going into that new year as. Much of the reset we reach for is triggered by something in our lives that isn’t working, or that we’ve come to realize needs to work better. This can be a good place to begin, and God brings those things into our lives to get us to reflect, consider, and change.

However, it also subtly pulls us into a way of thinking that reset is primarily about our lives. How we move, what we have to change, and what we reap from all of it. Basically, how it all works better for us. It’s easy for us to see it as some manner of self-improvement or life improvement because that’s how the world around us sees it. But reset is much more than that.

Those who devote themselves to themselves will ultimately have nothing to show for themselves but themselves.
~ Andy Stanley

Reset Involves Repentance
Reset is about realigning with God’s purpose, not just making your life better.

The irony is that it actually does make your life better, but there’s a catch. You can’t just reset in the “usual” way, you have to reset in God’s way.

Repentance produces realignment. Realignment returns us to God’s purpose for our lives. And when we reset, return, and repent, it returns us to our purpose.

Reset Requires Realignment
True purpose is a means to an end that is not you.
 
We come into this world wanting to be the end, and some adults don’t grow out of this mindset. Some believe their resources are about them being the end, their relationships are about them being the end, and even their religion is about them being the end.

In subtle or not-so-subtle ways, they are the center of their own universe. Our culture even reinforces this. But God sees reset differently. It’s about making your life, all the parts of it, a means rather than an end.

However, if this were easy, we’d all do it. Following Jesus will expose all of your insecurities and might even wound your pride. And both of those are shining a spotlight on some of the places where you’ve made your life an end unto you.

So, how does your life become a means to an end?

Anytime you take something that seems like an end in your life and make it a means to something great, you embrace purpose.

Pastor Michael Hoddy explains how it’s important to keep praying the prayers, but it also might be time to pay the price.

As we begin a new year, the calendar resets, and with it, we attempt to reset. That looks different for everyone, whether it’s a resolution or goal to hit, something to bring to an end or to begin – it’s making space for good things.

But what does reset REALLY mean? We try to drive our resets on willpower and vibes alone, without ever addressing what lies beneath.

A new year doesn’t automatically change the person you’re going into that new year as.

There’s this part of the human condition where we all try to find something to anchor ourselves to, identify ourselves by, or navigate our lives by. There’s nothing wrong with that because it’s normal to have a reference point, whether big or small.

Our lives are completely shaped by a series of reference points – some good, some not, some accurate, some not, some that have a grip on us, or some we’ve been avoiding.

Reference points are completely normal, but the problem comes when we try to reset without moving our reference point.

And sometimes we try to reset without clearly defining our reference points. They become driven by the world around us, telling us what we should be referencing, or we draw them up based on past trauma or circumstances. The problem is that all of these things eventually tap out.

Wouldn’t it be great to build your life on something greater now, rather than when all of those other things have tapped themselves out? As we reset as a community of faith, how can we address that?

It’s All About Jesus

Such a simple phrase, but harder than it seems. For people beginning a new year, and for a church, it’s important to ask: Are our lives really all about Jesus?
What are the implications of it really being all about Jesus?

• Why should I care?
• Why should I make Jesus my reference point?
• Why should Jesus be my reset?

John 14
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Thomas is focused on where Jesus is going. He’s looking for something to do, rather than someone to encounter. Thomas has been following Jesus for a while, yet he’s still missing the point.

We can follow Jesus and still miss Jesus.

Look how Jesus answers the question – the way is not a path, it’s a person.

John 14
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Jesus is the whole ballgame. He’s the only way to God, and if you know Jesus, you know God. That’s why it’s all about Jesus.

1. Jesus is the Way

Any path leads you to something and away from other things. You can’t take two paths, you can only take one. Jesus famously said, “You can’t serve two masters, you’ll love the one, and hate the other.”

2. Jesus is the Truth
What do you do with a reference point? You refer to it. You check your direction, path, and progress in relation to it. Different markers or maps might move or get changed; Jesus doesn’t. That’s why it’s so important to be intentional about coming back to Jesus.

3. Jesus is the Life
What energizes you? What makes you alive?

There’s the path you take, the way of following Jesus, there’s the truth of who you’re following, and then there’s the spirit, or life, which animates the truth. All three work together like the legs of a stool. If one is missing, the stool falls over.

In Luke 9, after Jesus sent the disciples out and after they saw the miracles, some people weren’t nice to them. “Do you want us to call down fire from heaven?” These are people who have followed Jesus, literally, but have missed the spirit of Jesus with devastating potential impact.

So, what does it look like if you’re on the path of Jesus?

You encounter Jesus. Jesus encounters you.

Jesus wants to intersect with every aspect of your life and transform it from death to life. Where is Jesus encountering you right now?

Things begin to change.

This isn’t just a spiritual experience, it’s a whole-life one. Not one-and-done, but ongoing. Maybe not your circumstances, but how you go through them.

• Jesus came to be Savior and Lord of all of us – priorities, emotions, pain, relationships, ambitions.
• What area of your life is on the table right now? We think transformation is this positive thing, and it is, but getting there can be painful.
• This is ongoing. Maybe that struggle, blind spot, that place you keep rationalizing and trying to avoid is where transformation needs to happen. It’s where you need a reset.

Join Jesus in His mission.

Mark 10:45
45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

We need to pour what Jesus has done for us out into the lives of others because, in doing so, they encounter Christ. Ask yourself, where am I being poured out right now? Maybe it’s your family or friends, but Jesus calls us to more. It should be your neighbors, people you’re serving, or faith-filled risks you’re taking. Maybe it’s the resources that God has given you – the time, talents, or treasure.

If you can clearly point to that in your life, maybe, as someone who wants to follow Jesus, you need a reset.

Pastor Michael Hoddy explains what our world could begin to look like if we took this reset seriously.

Nothing transforms a human being faster than the announcement of unexpected company, unless you are someone whose house is always ready for visitors.

Whether it’s last minute or something you’ve been expecting for a while, you live differently when someone is coming. And it’s not just company, because Jesus is coming back too, whether we are ready or not.

We love predicting, not preparing. We love solving mysteries. We love predicting the end times, unlocking timelines, or cracking prophetic codes. Why is this? Because when the world feels chaotic, uncertain, and loud, prediction feels like clarity.

Wars. Elections. Economies. Cultural Shifts. Moral confusion. Everything feels like it’s moving faster than we can process. And when life feels like that, we don’t want just hope, we want explanations.

• This is why this is happening.
• This fits here on the timeline.
• This means that prophecy is being fulfilled.

It’s then that the chaos feels manageable, but not because it’s gone, but because it’s organized. The problem is that you can correctly interpret the moment and still miss the calling.

Prediction takes us out of the moment, preparation plants us in it.

Prediction lets us stand outside the moment and analyze it, requires us to live inside the moment faithfully, and makes us commentators or even disciples.

Jesus doesn’t just want us informed about the times – He wants us formed by trust in the middle of them.

If we’re going to follow the Way of Jesus and the Word of God, we have to remember that Jesus never tells us to figure out His return, but He does call us to faithful living in the time we live in.

When prediction replaces preparation, we don’t become ready people, we become extremely people.

Living faithfully in the present is hard. We tend to drift one of two ways.

1. We ignore His return.
2. We obsess over His return.

Both extremes keep us from faithful, present obedience, avoiding the fact that if Jesus is really coming back and that how we live right now matters.

So, what does Scripture actually say about Jesus’ return?

God is a God of promises
John 14
27 Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid.
28 You heard Me say, ‘I am going away, and I am coming back to you.’

We serve a God who always keeps His promises. It’s the same God and the same Jesus that made us the promise of His return.

• Jesus will literally return.
• He will personally return.
• His return is imminent – could occur at any time.

And we acknowledge that there are multiple views on how and when He will return. But there is unity about the fact that He is coming back.

So, what does Jesus say?

Matthew 24
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

Jesus doesn’t know when He’s coming back. So, if Jesus didn’t give a date… why do we need one? If the Son didn’t have the date, maybe the Father wasn’t asking us to figure it out. Maybe he was asking us to trust Him without it.

Dates create deadlines, but trust creates dependence.

Deadlines aren’t bad, they’re useful, but they create the illusion that something can be postponed. They tell us that things can be deferred. And deadlines can do the same thing spiritually. Deadlines quietly teach us that obedience, faithfulness, staying awake – it’s all something we can deal with later instead of something we do right now.

That’s not the kind of thing Jesus is after.

Matthew 24
37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

“The days of Noah.” Jesus isn’t commenting on the sinfulness of the time or emphasizing how sinful people were, but how ordinary life felt right up until something imminent happened. The passage here isn’t to display wicked excess, it’s showing unconcerned normalcy. People were so absorbed in daily life that they ignored God’s warning through Noah.

Jesus tells us to be alert, and not because we don’t have the information, but because we ignore it. We need to be alert!

Matthew 24
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

The word alert doesn’t mean anxious, paranoid, scanning headlines, or decoding dates.

Alertness looks like daily faithfulness, not dramatic moments.

This is so that when Jesus returns, whenever that is and in whatever time, He finds His people doing what He’s asked us to do, not because we know when He’s coming but because we know WHO is coming. And when He does, He won’t find His people staring at the sky, He’ll find us living like He’s already King.

How would you live in 2026 if you truly expected Jesus to return?

Pastor Joey explains that being alert isn’t proven in what we say or believe, it’s revealed in this.