The blast felt like a furnace. Opening the door to greenhouse number seven, I could not believe I was going to walk into that atmosphere. The blazing dry heat confronting me was easily 120 degrees. A couple of shoppers came into the nursery looking for a peanut cactus, and earlier in the cool of the morning. I had spotted a flat blooming in number seven. Walking over to the third bay, I picked up a tiny cactus covered in hot pink blooms and quickly made my escape to the balmy 100 degree temperature found in retail. I hoped my customers were going to love this little beauty. As they finished making their purchases, my co-worker asked them, “May I interest you in a bottle of ice-water?” Flushed and dripping in sweat they said, “Yes! Oh, that would be wonderful.” Whenever the temperatures started soaring, we were quick to push complimentary cold water because fainting into some thorny plant was just not a good business plan. I loved everything about my job at the cactus nursery. I was born and raised in Arizona, but in serving my customers I found myself falling in love with the beauty of the desert in sweet new ways. I loved the lessons I was learning about growing drought tolerant plants. I love the camaraderie I experienced with my co-workers as we physically labored together. I loved the ice cream bars my boss stuffed in the freezer for a quick cool down delight. I loved it that someone was paying me to lose weight and I loved it that I was sleeping soundly after a day of physical exercise. But this was not the job I had dreamed of or the job I had trained for. For thirteen years, I had planned my reentry into the work force by commuting from Tucson to Phoenix to pursue a master of theology degree. It usually doesn’t take that long to finish a seminary degree, but my schooling was often interrupted by the needs of my family. Praying out loud to stay awake on these late night drives, I would joyfully release my future ministry to God. You can imagine my disappointment and confusion when I was the only person in my graduating class who did not get a job after seminary. Even the other women in my class found ministry positions. I thought I was doing what God had called me to do. And, while in the past I could have been nominated for volunteer of the year, I now needed to work. My husband and I had two children in college and I deeply desired to use my new education to help pay our bills. If you had told me that God had planned next for me after graduation was to work at a cactus nursery, I would have never believed you. Sometimes, I find it is easier to obey God when I don’t know the future. Surprisingly, though, working at the nursery became a real blessing to me. It wasn’t long before I began to sense my time among the cacti was more than a job to help me pay my bills. It was an extension of my seminary training. Bible verses that talked about living “in a dry and weary land where there is no water” began to jump off the pages at me. I knew from my schooling Israel’s topography was similar to the state of Arizona, but laboring in this dry heat was highlighting spiritual truths from a fresh perspective. One of those passages I fell in love with was Isaiah 35. Reading about a physical desert coming into bloom made me ponder what it would look like if my personal spiritual desert came into bloom. I know I am not the only person who has struggled with disappointment and loss, with dashed dreams and unfulfilled expectations. Many have also lived for years with a dream or a desire that they fear is simply in danger of evaporating. As we go about our lives we may be privileged to experience a physical desert like Tucson. But all of us, whether we live in a physical desert or not, will at one time or another experience a spiritual desert; times in our lives when we feel dry, when we feel God is not speaking, when our spiritual lives feel like they have withered up and died. Perhaps we don’t think of God at all and don’t know we are in a spiritual desert, but we know something is missing. Examining how life prospers in a physical desert will give us insights into how to bloom when we find ourselves in what we think is a spiritual desert. What would it take to see a spiritual desert come into full bloom? This is our quest. Because of God’s amazing provision, we are going to be set free to bloom in places we once thought of as desolate. God is going to open our eyes to the beauty hidden in the desert. In the past, we have been tempted to label our lives as barren and in our narrow viewpoint, we may have missed the fact that God has moved us to a landscape free of mosquitos. We are not barren and neither is the place where we live. Maybe roses don’t grow especially well here during the month of June, but that doesn’t mean this is not a place filled with majestic beauty and rich nutritious soil when we grow the right kind of plant. It is true that the heat has been a huge distraction for us in the past and always before we could not imagine blooming under these circumstances, but we need to get ready because refreshing water is coming to the desert, life-giving water. Water is always a game changer in the desert. In our journey, we will discover there is a special irony about learning to bloom in a spiritual desert. Blossoming will feel good to us, but it will also bring God much pleasure. Flowering enables us to reach our eternal purpose and at the same time brings God glory. If God has taken us to a place that feels like a hot dry land, we need the assurance he has brought us here to bless, us not to curse us. This is God’ promise from Isaiah 35:1-2a The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. ESV God poetically equates blooming in the desert with gladness, joy and singing in this passage. In my early confusion when I read these words, I was tempted to believe that God must be using a different dictionary than me. I knew I wasn’t defining my desert experience the same way God was. How could dryness be a good thing? At the nursery, God introduced me to the incredible flowers which only bud on a cactus. From that graphic visual, I began anticipating what beautiful blooms might sprout from my disappointments. Consider these questions about your spiritual deserts: 1) What circumstances make you feel spiritually dry? Make a list as long as you need to. Before you move on invite God into each circumstance you wrote down or thought of. Don’t rush this process. If you need more than one day to process this dry and weary land it is okay. Ask God to receive glory from these circumstances which feel so lifeless to you. When you are finished with this exercise, go on to the next question. 2) What dreams of yours are in danger of evaporating? After compiling your list, one by one give these dreams to God. Again take your time. Ask God to be exalted in your dreams. Ask God to bless you even if these dreams die. In the coming days, begin reading Isiah 35 as often as you can. This chapter is only ten verse long and is a great source of living water for these days of drought. In the coming lessons, we will dig deeper into Isaiah 35 and the eternal purposes of God revealed in our spiritual deserts.

The instructions were simple, but I was struggling to actually believe them. “Make sure you transplant the cactus and succulents with dry soil.” Really? These directions confused me because before I came to work at the nursery, I was an avid grower of African Violets. African Violets are a rainforest plant and I had been growing them in a desert city, Tucson. Early on, I learned when transplanting African Violets to always work with wet soil, and water immediately after transplanting. Now here at the cactus nursery, they wanted us to transplant with dry soil. When we were transplanting a cactus, we never used wet soil. Not only that, but after we had transplanted them, we didn’t water the cactus for a week. This was true whether we were putting them in a new pot or transplanting them into the landscape somewhere. The reason we did this was because cactus and succulents are more susceptible to rot when their roots have been damaged. The stored moisture within a succulent will easily sustain the plant for more than a week. The truth is the roots of a succulent need to heal before it can take in moisture. Just like the cacti, I have noticed that God often uses my deserts so he can heal me. When I have been wounded or my roots have been disturbed, may be a quiet dryness is exactly what I need to heal. God is very intentional in what he is allows into our lives. One of the major reasons we find ourselves in what feels like a dry land, is God’s desire to heal us. Before we move on, let’s review for a moment. Remember that in past lessons we learned that Isaiah 35 is a passage of Hebrew poetry and prophecy about the restoration of a kept garden. Within this chapter, we will also discover how God uses spiritual deserts. Today we want to focus on the next verse in the chapter, Isaiah 35:3. Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. ESV Isaiah is speaking poetically about two parts of our bodies, weak hands and feeble knees. The way he words this, by choosing phrasing like “strengthen” and “make firm”, implies the need for healing. One of the principles we learn about our desert experience is that if we want to bloom in the desert, we must see the desert is as a place of healing. Another passage that speaks of the healing God performs in the desert is Hosea 2:14 Therefore I am going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. NIV God speaks tenderly when we are hurting and he blesses us in circumstances which are of his choosing, not ours. These circumstances initially may feel dry and lifeless. One of the key purposes of us coming to the desert is healing, but there is an amazing spiritual paradox for desert dwellers. Once we have been healed, our newfound spiritual health can lead others to peace. We will talk more about this in future lessons, but I mention it now because there is a profound mystery at play here. We can’t love others if we are constantly unkind to ourselves. It is not selfish to recognize we are wounded and need healing. Acknowledgment of our wounding can lead us to the wise step of seeking God’s healing. Look at Hebrews 12:12-13. This is a good companion passage to Isaiah 35:3 Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. ESV Notice that the writer to the Hebrews uses similar imagery to Isaiah 35, drooping hands and weak knees which need to be cured. He goes on to explain that we need to be healed, so we will not become disabled. Many times when we have a small physical injury like a twisted knee or a sprained wrist, it does not feel very serious and we may try to ignore it. What happens if we don’t pay attention to this small problem? It can lead to a much worse ailment, even causing a disability or the need for surgery. The writer to the Hebrews is pleading with us to get help while we only need to be strengthened and before our injury leads to a disability. It is almost like he is saying, “You need to get physical therapy, because if you are not careful, you are going to need major surgery.” One of the main purposes of a desert experience then, is to seek God’s healing. We know we can’t do anything to bring about our own healing, but we need to understand God values our willingness to be healed. We need to realize our time in the desert will expose our wounds to us. Dry experiences do not cause our hurts, but they illuminate them so we can learn to be kind to ourselves. God meets us in a quiet, dry place to show us our deep fears. When we are able to identify our fears, we know where we have not trusted God, where we have been unable to see him as bigger than our problems. We must be able to identify our real fears before we can believe God and trust him. Self-discovery is an important part of this holy adventure in which we allow God to lead the charge and teach us about our real needs. Each time we are wounded it is an opportunity to trust God in a new way. Identifying our fears will always be the first step. The cause of our hurts will be numerous, but the first temptation will always be the same. When we are hurt, we find it more difficult to trust God. God takes us to a dry place to sort out these emotions. He speaks tenderly to us there. In difficult circumstances, he woos us and is always asking, “Can you trust me with this?” Today, do we hear his voice? Take a moment to apply these principles. 1) In today’s lesson, we learned that a time of dryness might actually protect us when our roots have been damaged. When we can’t drink in refreshing liquids, we need to be safe from the danger of root rot. Has a time of emotional dryness ever exposed or revealed an area of hurt to you? Explain. 2) How can you practice being more kind to yourself today? If in your reading God is illuminating a specific wound which is festering, please don’t feel you are being selfish by recognizing you have a need. We must first learn to practice genuine selflove. Maybe it is time for you to talk with a professional counselor. Whenever we experience a drought, we need the assurance that blooming is God’s idea. God is on our side and he equates blooming with gladness and joy. God wants to heal us. As we continue our study of Isaiah 35, keep reading the chapter. These ten verses are a deep well of sweet water worth the exertion it takes for us to haul up the bucket.

Yellowed and shriveled up, the sight before me was inconceivable. The cactus looked dead but was flush with flowers. Gently and carefully my coworker moved around the thorns to pick up the forgotten pot and return it to retail. The soil had shrunk and its dryness made the plastic container easy for her to lift, but the cactus hung precariously over the edge of the pot and seemed eager to plop out. It desperately needed to be transplanted. Why was this homely and neglected cactus, mysteriously in full bloom? I often found my coworkers’ scope of knowledge about cultivating cacti was better than searching google. From my perspective, it seemed like my co-workers were all plant savants. Resolving the bizarre mystery of why this half-dead cactus was flowering was a good example of their innate wisdom. Back in the retail section, my boss explained that plants often go into bloom because of stress and drought conditions. Blooming is often a last-ditch effort by a species to reproduce itself, because blooming is the first step in producing seeds which allow the species to survive. You can’t grow seed from a plant without first growing a blossom, after the bloom the fruit grows and finally from the fruit comes the seed. Blooming is hard work for any plant. Producing fruit is even harder and it takes a lot of resources. Unfortunately, like the desert flora it often can be stress that causes us to bloom. Flowering is something we naturally do when we are close to death. It might be the death of a dream or it might be a physical death, but we blossom and show our true colors when we are near the end of life as we know it. The first time I witnessed this principle was when our young pastor and his wife, Roger and Julie Barrier, lost their first child. During that awful tragedy I watched our church grow spiritually as well as numerically because Roger and Julie were learning lessons only discovered when you survive a death. It was while I was caring for my dying my parents that I first caught a glimpse of my own desert flowers. Near the end of their lives I was also busy teaching two different Bible studies. Friends often suggested I take a break from teaching during this stressful season, but I was experiencing the presence of God as I studied for teaching and those times of refreshment were sustaining me. Both studies flourished in spite of my deep sorrow and one even experienced an evangelism explosion. I hated losing my parents, but during their death I also witnessed God’s favor. Recently, I have experienced another great loss, the love of my life and my husband, Gary Shrader, died of a brain tumor. Though I am sad, I am grateful he is no longer suffering. Surprisingly though, during my grief I am able to reset my priorities and again catch the scent of desert blooms. Isaiah 58:11 says, “And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.” ESV One of the many purposes of blooming spiritually is to manufacture seeds for the next generation, so faith can survive and reproduce again and again. In a parched land we wake up and realize how short is the time we have to make a difference, how fleeting are the days we can live for Jesus. Facing the reality of a loss allows us to see the true condition of our surroundings and with a sobered heart we now can pray with genuine surrender. In our last lesson we focused on Isaiah 35:3, Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. ESV We learned from this verse that one of the reasons we make a trip to the desert is so that God can heal us. God takes us to a quiet, dry place and he speaks tenderly to us in our hurt and pain. God desires to bless us and restore us to spiritual health. Why did Isaiah choose these two parts of the body for healing? Why didn’t he say we needed to heal our broken hearts or our troubled minds? Why does he use our hands and knees? I think he had something very important in mind when he began writing poetically about our weak hands and feeble knees. Specifically, I believe Isaiah was referring to the healing which needs to take place in our lives, so that we can pray. In scripture we are often urged to lift up holy hands in prayer, a state of worshipful prayer, and we also are taught to bow our knees in prayer. So, the next principle we see from this passage is if we want to bloom in the desert, we must surrender to God’s plan and practice worshipful prayer. God wants our prayer life to blossom. God heals us because he wants to know us and be known by us. Prayer is one of the main practices God uses so we can know him and learn to trust him. What is the international symbol of surrender? We lift our hands up so everyone can see that we are holding no weapons. When a person is about to be arrested, lifting up their hands is a signal to the police they are unarmed. What does your toddler do when she wants you to hold her? She holds up her hands and by this nonverbal sign she is saying, “Mommy, hold me.” When we lift up our hands in prayer to God, we communicate our willingness to surrender to him and our desire to be held by him. Secondly, when we think of bending a knee, visions of surrender again fill our mind. Whether it is a man humbly falling to his knees and asking his girlfriend to marry him or a subject bowing before a sovereign king, a bended knee is another international symbol of surrender. I once heard a pastor preach on giving a blessing to others. He shared that the Hebrew word most often translated “to bless” in the Old Testament means “to bend the knee”. So figuratively speaking, healing our spiritual knees is critical if we are to engage in surrendered prayer. Both lifting our hands and bowing our knees involve prayerful surrender to God. Can we express our surrender and worship if we are hurt, angry and don’t trust God? It would probably be difficult to do this with any genuineness. A feeble knee will not bend and a droopy hand cannot be lifted until healing occurs. We must let the dryness of our personal desert become a place of rest and health. It is important to understand that surrendered prayer is not a passive form of prayer and neither is it an attitude of self-protection. Sometimes we are so obsessed with a desire to eliminate the heat in our desert that we think we are surrendering, but we are really choosing a form of self protection or passivity. All of us who work with children have experienced the child who on them surface seems to be obeying, but is resisting our directions in a very polite way. When I taught art, I had students in my class who were so polite I hardly noticed they were not doing what I told them to do. True surrendered prayer, worshipful prayer comes from a heart of trust. We can’t surrender when we do not trust God. Can we preempt a desert excursion by choosing to surrender in prayer without an emergency motivating us? Yes, of course. At the cactus nursery our preferred method for making a cactus flower was not to create stress, but to produce blooms by fertilizing the cactus. We needed plants at their optimal best for customers to find them appealing, so we avoided stressing them; unless we uncharacteristically lost one in the bowels of a distant greenhouse. Like plants in the natural world, we prefer to blossom without enduring stress. We worship and seek God’s face because he is worthy of all our praise. While this is reason enough to seek his face, great refreshment comes to the worshipper who lingers in the Lord’s presence. The next time we find ourselves living in a parched land, we need to remember it is ok to ask God to hold us. In Psalm 34:18-19 the psalmist said, The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. ESV God desires to know us and be known by us. If we want to bloom in the desert, we must recognize that in the desert, surrendered and worshipful prayer grows. Consider for a moment these thoughts. 1) Have you ever bloomed in a spiritual drought? Explain. 2) Have you ever needed God’s embrace? Explain. Surrendered prayer means coming to grips with the goodness of God’s plan for our life. When we surrender, we are saying that we believe God is on our side. In our strength we think we know what is best for us and our loved ones. In reality, we simple do not have all the facts to make an informed decision for our lives or for the lives of others. Our scope of evaluation is very microscopic and limited to what we can know in the present. We can’t envision what God is protecting us from in our future by allowing us to experience this parched earth today (Isaiah 55:8-9). God and God alone can see the end from the beginning and as the author of time, God is not bound by his creation in any way. God lovingly embraces us as victors because he knows with certainty that we will be victorious in the end. Keep bathing in the truths found in Isaiah 35. Consider reading this passage as often as you can. Take a moment now and review what you have learned in five lessons about three short verses.

I shared the following notes with a pastor friend who was preparing a message addressing sexual immorality and gender confusion. It’s a different approach, a verse by verse brief commentary on a passage. (I started with the last part of Ephesians 4 because it’s the foundation for Ephesians 5.) These are tough issues, and they’re not going away. Now more than ever, Christians must consider how we can communicate with those with whom we disagree. The more we speak to these issues with grace  and  truth, not just one or the other, the better we represent Jesus and the gospel. By the way, my friend preached a great message that truly was full of both grace and truth. His pastor’s heart was expressed clearly and many hurting people came to him in tears afterwards. Confused, disoriented, and deceived people are not our enemy—Satan and demons are our enemies. I hope these reflections are helpful: Ephesians 4 17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the  futility of their minds. God warns us against not just wrong behavior, but also against the wrong thinking that’s behind it—including the notion that sexual identity is disconnected from the body, as created by God and demonstrated by our sex organs, chromosomes, and DNA. It is a modern futility of the mind that sexual identity is a matter of personal preference as influenced by our life experiences. 18 They are  darkened in their understanding , All cultures historically recognized that boys are boys and girls are girls, but our culture is flying in the face of science by determining that sexual identity isn’t about the body with its parts and chromosomes and DNA, but is about our thinking and feeling, which are easily influenced by the Fall, and by personal experience, the stories of others, and propaganda, including teaching in school classrooms. alienated from the life of God because of  the ignorance that is in them. While we pride ourselves on our degree of knowledge, making ourselves feel superior to cultures of the past, much of what we now “know” about gender is steeped in ignorance of scientific and historically affirmed realities. (C. S. Lewis called this “chronological snobbery”—the belief that modern opinions are always automatically better than ancient ones.) due to their hardness of heart . Our problem isn’t just mental or cultural but spiritual. The world, the flesh/sin nature, and the devil are all working against us so that we keep getting it wrong about important matters of human nature and sexual identity, resulting in the corruption of our culture, parallel to the moral downward spiral of the once great Roman empire. 19  They have become  callous. We have violated our consciences so long by entertaining wrong notions about human sexuality that our hearts are hardened, and we are now believing falsehoods that are lies of the evil one, designed to harm people who Satan hates because we are God’s image-bearers. (This is another example of how the evil one has a special hatred of children, and in this case, targets them with gender confusion. He wants to kill them, and he lies to facilitate and cover his attempts to destroy them.) and have given themselves up to sensuality Giving up means surrender. It’s putting ourselves under the lordship of a false god rather than the one true God, who tells us the truth about gender and sex. It’s letting the world, the flesh, and the devil take over our minds and our lives, rather than letting God transform us through the renewing of our minds ( Romans 12:1-2 ) by meditating on Scripture, which is the source of truth and contradicts the lies about gender and sex. greedy to practice every kind of impurity When we unselectively feed our minds with whatever’s on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, or network television, it will twist and undermine a Christian worldview and will inevitably lead to immoral thinking and living. (This is one reason I recommend VidAngel to screen out sex acts, profanity, and blasphemy.) 20  But that is not the way you learned Christ!—  21  assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as  the truth is in Jesus The truth is  not  in what the world serves up to us about sex and gender. Rather, the truth is in Jesus, as revealed in God’s Word. 22  to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and  is corrupt through deceitful desires, We do not naturally believe what is true—our opinions are deeply skewed and our natural desires are deceitful because of the Fall. We are inclined to follow them even though they are lying to us. They are Satan’s manipulative efforts to derail us and our children from following Jesus and enjoying a healthy sexual identity and lifestyle. 23  and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, The battle is won or lost in the mind; that’s why the current efforts in public schools and society to negate Christian morality and to undermine God’s teaching about avoiding sexual immorality and our identity are so dangerous. 24  and to  put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Just as we put on one set of clothes instead of another, we must take off the wrong clothes of our sinful identity and choose to put on the right ones, those true to who we are in Jesus. “Putting on” requires effort and discipline. We must affirm not the fallen creation that tempts us, but the new creation in Christ that grants us righteousness and holy standing before God—this is the power source for  thinking  righteously about sex and gender, and  living  righteously. Actions flow from thoughts. Satan seeks to poison our minds so our actions will displease God, and therefore destroy ourselves and our families. 25  Therefore,  having put away falsehood We must first  discern  what is false (for example, what our culture is saying about gender and sex and abortion, etc.), and then we must  affirm  what is true, what God’s Word tells us. Finally, we must  live by  what is true, which is not only good but also smart and always in our best interests. let each one of you  speak the truth with his neighbor We owe each other the truth, and we must boldly speak it—all the more because lies are undermining the worldviews of unbelievers  and  many believers. There are churches, families, and individual believers being undercut in their walk with Jesus because we are not studying and loving the truth and sharing it with each other. for we are members one of another.  26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,  27  and  give no opportunity to the devil. The devil is an opportunist. He is eagerly waiting for you to give him a chance to take control of your life, destroy you, and ruin your relationship with Jesus. “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” ( 1 Peter 5:8 ). If he’s looking for you, you’d better look out for him! He goes after Christians who settle for the world instead of Jesus, and who isolate themselves from the flock where there is some safety in numbers. The people you choose to hang with and the places you choose to go (including over TV and internet) will determine your spiritual future. Sexual identity and sexual behavior are two of Satan’s favorite targets. Every time your eyes and mind go toward what displeases God and pleases the devil, you are casting your vote for Satan. Be quick to stop, repent, and step away from sin—give no opportunity to the devil ( Ephesians 4:27 )! 28  Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.  29  Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths This includes sexual jokes and innuendo, and also telling children that gender is a choice instead of a gift from their Creator, and that their body should be denied or changed to conform to what they are presently feeling. This is corrupting talk, and God detests it . but only such as is  good for building up , We affirm God’s plan and His directives  not  to tear people down but to build them up. Satan pretends to build people up while sabotaging their lives. as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. What builds people up is not always what they want to hear, but what they  need  to hear. We are not just here to make ourselves and each other  feel  good but to help each other  be  good. Grace is always vital, as is truth—Jesus came full of grace and truth ( John 1:14 ), and so should we. We should never heap guilt on someone experiencing gender confusion; instead we should listen and care lovingly and genuinely for them, and recognize we too are confused about aspects of our life and identity. All of us need to look to the God, who created us as He did for a glorious reason. 30  And  do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God He is the one we should desire to please, and when we sin we hurt Him. by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.  31  Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice . If we address our culture’s gender confusion and sexual values from a posture of animosity, we will confirm their perception that we are haters, and we will lose the opportunity to have meaningful relationships from which we can speak into their lives. As we approach our brothers and sisters in Christ who are genuinely struggling with who they are and what their culture is telling them is normal, we need to be sure our hearts and words to them are wrath-free, anger-free, clamor-free, slander-free, and malice-free. We are to put away such things, and only Jesus has the power to do that life-changing work in us. But we do need to desire to change and to repeatedly ask His empowerment to do so. 32  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one  another, as God in Christ forgave you. We are not to encourage sin in each other, but we are to be sympathetic to each other’s struggles, including struggles of sexual identity, which can be terribly difficult. But the answer is never to give in to the struggle, but INSTEAD to call upon God for His grace and empowerment. Even if our desires don’t change, we can say “no” to them, just as we are called upon to say no to other temptations. If this means never engaging in sex and remaining single all our lives, that is  not  the worst-case scenario. It is, in fact, exactly what the most fulfilled person who ever lived did—Jesus. And He had dear friends and family just as we can. Ephesians 5 Therefore  be imitators of God , We’re not to be imitators of our culture or its idols. as beloved children.  2  And  walk in love When you take a stand for God’s created gender design and for sexual morality, be sure you speak with genuine love, not as a self-righteous moralist Pharisee who loves to condemn others. as  Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,  a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Christ is the model of how we are to address gender and sex issues, so that when people call us haters, others can see and say, “No, they disagree, but I think they love me and want the best for me.” 3  But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you , as is proper among saints.  4  Let there be  no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving . The answer to filthiness, foolish talk, and crude joking isn’t just cleaning up your act, but giving thanks to God. When we give Him thanks in all things, it pulls us toward Him, and it pushes away what dishonors Him. 5  For you may be sure of this, that  everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God . Let’s not ignore or quickly explain away this verse, as in, “Of course, this doesn’t mean sexually immoral and greedy people aren’t saved.” Clearly God is saying something vital here, that should shake us to our core if we are leading lives of immorality and materialism. Notice how God links sexual immorality with greed and materialism—some Christians are quick to condemn immorality when in reality, the immorality of greed permeates their lives. Everyone knows church leaders shouldn’t be sexually immoral. Why do we fail to realize they also shouldn’t be greedy and materialistic? 6  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for  because of these things the wrath of God comes  upon the sons of disobedience. We should repent of sexual immorality not only because it is wrong but also because it is stupid. Unless we forsake it, it will destroy us. 7  Therefore do not become partners with them; To tolerate or laugh at sexually immoral jokes is to mock God, and to remain silent is to endorse them. 8  for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light Our job is to recognize who God has made us to be in Christ, and live according to that reality, not according to sin, the world, the flesh, and the devil. We need our Lord and each other to do this. 9  (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), 10  and  try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord . We need to stop trying to please people and echoing back what our culture is telling us. God is the Audience of One—Paul says, “If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Jesus” ( Galatians 1:10 ). We’re to live according to what God has told us in His Word. 11  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. It’s critical to refuse to do the works of darkness, and quickly confess and repent when we do. But it’s not enough to  abstain  from them. We should also  expose  them, which means having the courage and the love for others to call them out for what they are.  Do not compromise , even if speaking out about our culture’s denial of truth and goodness costs you friendships or your job. 12  For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret . We shouldn’t be unnecessarily graphic so as to tempt, though it is sometimes necessary to clearly show the evil of something God commands us to expose. 13  But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible,  14  for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “ Awake , O sleeper,  and arise from the dead… The death we are to arise from is rebellion against our Creator and Savior.  Colossians 3:1  says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” The rising in Christ is what He has both accomplished (already) and promised us (“not yet”). …and  Christ will shine on you.” It all comes back to Jesus. We need to wake up to what’s happening, and speak the truth in love to a lost and increasingly confused, disoriented, and deceived generation. To shine with His light, we must first allow Him daily to shine His light upon us. We are to live the loving life of people risen in Jesus and covered with His righteousness. It’s all about Jesus. He must increase, we must decrease ( John 3:30 ). And when we do this, we will be the happiest of all people, because He made us not for sexual confusion and immorality, but for His glory and our good. He is the Audience of One. We must stop trying to “fit in” to our culture, and instead “be blameless and pure, children of God who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine like stars in the world” ( Philippians 2:15 ).

I was crushed when I read the letter. The homeowner’s association had the audacity to call them weeds. The first tiny sprouts had promised me red tubular flowers set against deep green foliage. Serendipitously for me, the birds had planted firecracker red penstemons in my front yard. They would not bloom for two years, but when they did, hummingbirds would be dive-bombing at each other in aerial gymnastics trying to stake out this territory as their personal nectar garden. These drought-tolerant flowers could potentially transform the hot gravel landscape our builder had installed into a lush oasis filled with colorful life. Every time I thought about it, I was delirious with joy. Then the notice came from the HOA. I had thirty days to pull my weeds. Didn’t they know my little babies were anything but weeds, and how do you challenge a HOA’s decision anyway? Couldn’t they tell from looking at my yard that I was an experienced gardener? What were they thinking demanding I pull up perfectly good flowers that don’t need a drip line to come into full bloom? It wasn’t long until I had exhausted myself wrestling with the HOA’s implied authority over my landscape. In the past, I would have given up in anger, pulled the sprouts and resigned myself to thinking that I was a fool for buying a home in a subdivision with a HOA. But this time, because of God’s healing, I chose to react very differently. I was beginning to believe that God was on my side. This didn’t mean I knew what the outcome would be with this conflict. I did know that it did not honor God when I gave into thoughts of self-condemnation, like calling myself a fool. I reminded myself that I was now a professional gardener working at a cactus nursery. Before moving forward, I prayed and surrendered the entire situation to God, and then I asked others to pray for me. I desperately wanted God’s will to be done with this struggle. Feeling spiritually strengthened, I dug out some gardening books full of bright pictures, drove down to the management office of the HOA and inquired about how one would challenge a HOA ruling. A delightful woman greeted me. She walked me through the process and the paperwork I would need to submit to contest a decision made against my property. She graciously made color copies of the flowers from my gardening books, and with her favor, I won the reversal of the original notice to pull my weeds, praise God. I was able to move in faith without knowing how God was going to resolve my issue. As we’ve read and reread Isaiah 35, we’ve seen that this is a passage we read by faith when we need to break free from fear and find assurance that God is going to win. Isaiah 35 is a picture of the end of the story. It is a snapshot of what is going to happen when the children of God are revealed and nature has been freed from the curse of decay. It is a poetic description of what it is going to be like when God again keeps a garden. Look again at Isaiah 35:3-4. 3) Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4) Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. ESV Once we have been healed in the desert, out of our newfound spiritual health, others will come to peace. Our healing always comes first, though, before we can help others. This doesn’t mean we have to be perfect or have it all together before God can use us. It just means that before we can encourage those who are fearful or anxious, our anxious heart must be put to rest. With God, our desert experience is never just about what is happening in our lives. He is always working on a larger scale. God allows dry and weary times, so we can learn to trust him. Trying to understand our current circumstances will exhaust us, but trust will keep us close to God. Everything we learn on this parched earth is going to be useful for loving our neighbor. The source of our peace will help another put her fears to rest. Speaking to the fearful is an act of faith. When we want to bloom in the desert, we will see our healing has a higher purpose. In Mark 12:30-31 we see the response Jesus made to a scribe who asked him to state the greatest commandment. Jesus answered, “...you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ESV Jesus said the most important commandment was to love God with all we have. We go to the desert to learn God loves us. When we believe the truth of 1 John 4:19, loving him back will be our most natural response. We love him because he first loved us. ESV We love God because love for God comes first, but there is a second commandment, which is also import for us to obey and it hinges on our ability to love ourselves. If we have no self-love, no self-respect, we will not be able to love our neighbor. Recognizing our need for healing is one of the kindest and most loving understandings we can hold for ourselves. This brings us to a spiritual paradox. We can’t love others if we are constantly unkind to ourselves. God has called us to a ministry of mercy and reconciliation. Without our struggle and subsequent rest in God, we are useless to speak peace to others. Our ministry is born out of our past spiritual conflicts. It is through these conflicts that we learn how to comfort those who are suffering from the same fears we have experienced. People who are anxious, need to know that God will act in justice concerning their wounding. They need to gently be told the truth when they have been tempted to believe God is not being good to them. The great and mighty God is holy and incapable of committing any sin. He will come and save us if we call his name. The story of our dry personal struggles can bless in a mighty way those trapped by fear and deliver them from their anxious ways. Take a moment to consider what loving yourself might look like practically. 1) Make a list of the activities that refresh and restore you. Maybe your list would include going on a walk or getting enough sleep. Maybe it would involve taking the time to see a friend or setting aside the money to date your spouse. After you have compiled your list, choose at least one activity and enjoy it today. 2) In the next seven days, look for a way to love your neighbor as yourself. For example, would your neighbor like to go on a walk with you or share the produce from your garden? Find a way to express love to your neighbor in a practical way and record what you did and the impact on you and your relationship with that neighbor. 3) How can you grow to honor God with your self-talk? While I was working on this lesson, I developed the stomach flu and I had a new opportunity to practice healthy self-care. I wanted to get off the couch and go write, but I felt miserable. Finally, I felt God say to me, “Jan why don’t you practice being kind to yourself and let yourself rest?” After that message, I knew God was calling me to rest. I had to practice self-kindness before I could write or speak on the subject. Before we go to the next lesson read Isaiah 35 using a new or different translation.

June is a brutal month to live in Tucson. With our triple digit temperatures soaring to 115 or worse, the prickly pear cactus pads grow as thin as paper. Everything is thirsty and at the nursery we water all of the cacti weekly to keep them looking their best. Miraculously, though, near the fourth of July all this oppressive dry heat suddenly moves out. The arrival of the monsoon rains in July makes most Tucsonans deliriously happy. Watching the promising storm clouds form is one of our favorite pastimes. The coming rains signal the end of the most intense heat we will have all year. Soon though, desert dwellers are diving for cover, because the monsoon rains are typically packed with electricity and breathtaking lightening displays. Tucsonans have grown to respect the monsoon’s power, as our desert washes fill quickly and turn into raging rivers that make driving on our normally dry roads suddenly dangerous. Living through a drought will make anyone grow to appreciate the rain. Experiencing intense heat will cause us to value cool refreshment for ourselves and others. Amazingly, the story of how God healed our lives can bring life-giving water to others. If we want to bloom in the desert, we must see the value of our own story. When we testify of God’s faithfulness, friends and neighbors will put their hope in God, trust in his salvation, and be healed spiritually. Returning to Isaiah 35, look at verses 5-6a. 5) Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6a) then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. ESV The blind will see, and the deaf will hear when they put their trust in Jesus. The lame will leap like a deer and the mute will sing for joy because they have experienced the salvation of our God. Is physical healing promised for today or is this just something we enjoy in heaven when we die? The answer is both. God continues to heal today when it serves his higher purposes and I have witnessed many physical healings. I have also experienced God choosing not to heal someone I loved. Over four hundred people prayed in faith for God to heal my beloved husband and instead God chose to take Gary to his reward in heaven. Our ultimate healing will come when we see Jesus face to face. In the scriptures our salvation is often portrayed as a spiritual healing. Our story of trusting God with our fears, and putting our faith in him, imparts his most important healing to others, restoring their spiritual relationship to their God. But first we have to open our mouths to comfort the anxious. We have to tell of God’s faithfulness to us. We have to speak to the fearful with the comfort God gave us and thereby give them an opportunity to trust God. Like water breaking forth in the desert, comfort stills an anxious and fearful heart. Notice what happens next in this prophecy. 6b) For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7) the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; in the haunt of jackals, where they lie down, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. ESV When the fearful put their trust in God they are healed and their changed lives are God’s evidence, the faithful revelation of those who are the true children of God. The truth is that those who put their trust in God live differently. Now we mustn’t get this reversed. We can’t live a certain way to earn God’s favor. It is impossible to live a godly life apart from Christ. But, if we have found God’s favor, his gracious gift of salvation, our lives will give evidence of that fact. Verses 6b-7 then are the natural progression, which occurs in the fulfillment of this prophecy. Creation has been longing for the day when the children of God will be revealed. All nature waits in eager expectation, so she can be set free from her bondage to decay (Romans 8:19-23). Physical streams of water will break forth in arid lands when the children of God have been revealed. Waters will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert will flow. In the parched land where there once was only burning sand, a pool will be found. There the thirsty ground will turn into a bubbling spring of water. In the place where only jackals used to live, the grass will turn into reeds and rushes because of the abundance of water found there. Water is always a game changer in the desert landscape. Even the mighty saguaro will grow faster when it is fed extra moisture. Water changes everything. It all starts, though, when we can see the value God places on our own story. God has privileged us with a ministry born from our own pain. When we begin to boast of the wonderful mercy and healing he has given to us, we offer hope. When we begin to comfort those who are struggling with our former fears, we bring healing. In John 7:38 Jesus said, Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ESV It all begins when we choose to offer life-giving water to those still anxious. Do you value living water? Has your time in a dry and weary land cultivated in you an appreciation for a cool monsoon rain? Our journeys into the desert are never solely about ourselves. God heals us so we can become healers. Before going on to the next lesson carve out some time to work through this exercise. 1) On three separate pieces of paper write one of these words at the top of each page: Before, How and After. Spend some time alone asking God to speak to you about the value of your desert story before beginning this assignment. 2) After your time of prayer, on the first piece of paper marked “Before” jot down some thoughts about your life before you experienced a spiritual drought. Include both good and bad experiences in your “before” story. 3) On the second piece of paper marked “How” tell what the desert felt like. Write about how God used the dryness to expose your fears to you and healed you. Tell of God’s nearness to you even when it was difficult. Talk about learning to trust God and how you grew confident he was on your side. 4) On the last piece of paper marked “After” describe the beautiful flowers that grow in a dry and weary place. Tell how you grew to experience God’s pleasure. Boast of God’s goodness to you in spite of the fact that you did not deserve his mercy and favor. Keep these three pieces of paper for future work. We will come back to this exercise after the next lesson. If you find that you are not ready to write about your desert excursion, it is ok. Please remember the importance of being kind to yourself as you walk through this drought. Keep soaking up the goodness of God’s love and revelation. He will tell you when you are ready to write or share your story. When you are finished, return to reading Isaiah 35 as often as you can.

The vineyards stretching before us seemed to glow in the early morning dew. After rounding a deep curve on a winding road, a quaint monastery suddenly appeared in the verdant landscape urging us to stop and explore. Surprisingly, the ancient stone structures were still in use by modern day monks. Motoring on, we spied a fifth century walled fortress perched precariously on a hilltop overlooking a rolling valley. Its red tiled roofs could be seen for miles in the brilliant sun. Mesmerized, we journeyed to the bottom of this hill, parked our car and with anticipation climbed the steep incline to visit the old fortress village. Peeling plaster and intricate wrought iron balconies only added to the antique town’s charm and mystery. On cobblestone streets, we encountered tiny shops bulging with pottery, cheeses, and the local vintage begging us to sample and make a purchase. Gary and I had saved for five years to travel to Italy and celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Touring through the glories of Tuscany in our tiny rental car, we were in no hurry and had no set destination. This is a wonderful way for a person to travel, but it was not the norm for us. Unfortunately, the road I have traveled probably more than any other in my lifetime is the stretch of I-10 between Tucson and Phoenix. I can’t tell you how many times I have driven that ugly road. To make up for the lack of scenery, I usually sew or read in the car if I am not the driver. In fact, throughout marriage Gary and I have often disagreed over who would drive when we had to travel to Phoenix because neither one of us wanted to look at that boring monotonous stretch of highway one more time. Why do people build highways? Why do people drive on these roads? People build and drive on highways not for the scenery but because they have a destination in mind. When we were traveling through Tuscany we didn’t have a specific locale we needed to arrive at. We were celebrating twenty-five years of marriage. We meandered along country roads and explored whatever we felt like discovering. When we get on the I-10 though, we need to get to Phoenix, and the view is not very important. At the end of Isaiah 35, Isaiah introduces a new metaphor, a “highway” in verse 8. At first glance, this might seem like a strange visual to insert when we have been discussing blooming in the desert, but soon we see their compatibility. When Adam and Eve rebelled in the Garden of Eden, God was deeply hurt by their choices. Their actions were also devastating to every other aspect of life. It destroyed the ability to have a relationship with God, yes; but it also destroyed their ability to have a relationship with each other and with the earth they were given to steward. Selfishness and sin had entered the world. God foresaw this grief even as they were only becoming aware of what it was going to mean to move out of Eden. The effects of the fall of man are still reverberating across our globe. That very day, God put a plan in place to restore everything which was lost to mankind and the earth by Adam and Eve’s rebellion. From day one he prepared to do this because blooming in desolate places is his idea. Without God’s initiative, we are still helpless to enter into a right relationship with him in our strength. No matter how hard we try we can never be good enough to meet the standards of perfection found in God alone. We need a savior; we need a rescuer to again restore us to Eden. Through Jesus, God is going to build a highway to heaven; and once again, people who travel this road will arrive in paradise. Jesus is going to become a highway of holiness, because without holiness, no person can see God and live. Look at Isaiah 35:8-10, 8) And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. 9) No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10) And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing: everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. ESV With this metaphorical change, we see that the desert is not just a place in which we bloom in; the desert is only our temporary home. We were created for eternal paradise. When we want to bloom in an arid land, we will see the highway to heaven is Jesus. Without God providing this highway of holiness, we would never be find or be fit to live in heaven. Jesus used words similar to those in Isaiah when he taught about his mission to earth in John 14:6. Jesus said to them, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” ESV We cannot be holy unless we are made holy through Jesus. The holiness that is imparted to us was purchased by Jesus’ death on the cross. We are forgiven of our rebellion to God, which we inherited from Adam, because Jesus stood in our place on the cross and paid the price for all our sins. (Romans 5:12, 15-21). When we travel on this highway, we are declared holy even though we have been rebellious in the past. Through this new relationship with God, we will no longer act foolish. Everything we used to do, because Adam’s sin was seeded in us, can now change (Romans 5:12-15). It doesn’t happen overnight, but slowly Jesus begins to transform us from the inside out (2Cor. 3:18). This is why Isaiah 35 poetically describes our new relationship with God as a walk on a highway. Jesus puts his holiness inside of us and like learning to walk physically, each day we will grow in our ability to commune with him. Just as Adam and Eve once walked in the garden with God, we will now enjoy fellowship with God. Spiritual deserts always have tremendous purpose. God is not the author of evil, but he is never thwarted when we encounter evil. His designs for us are good. He woos us to the desert to bless us (Hosea 2:14). Experiencing Jesus’ unconditional love for us is the pinnacle of God’s eternal plan for our lives. Consider these questions about your personal spiritual desert: 1) Because of Jesus sacrificial work, personal communion with God is again possible. If you desire this restored relationship, please pray this prayer with me. Lord Jesus, thank you that you have made a way for me to know God. Thank you that by your sacrificial death, you built a highway to the Father. Thank you that you are going to restore to me everything I lost when Adam and Eve rebelled in the Garden of Eden. Please forgive me for my sins against you and give me your eternal life. I give you my life and choose to love you. Would you please give me your life and restore to me all that was lost in Eden? Amen If you prayed this prayer for the first time, it is important you share your decision with someone. Remember verbalizing your new hope will comfort others. 2) Have you prayed a prayer similar to this one before? Is it time for you to tell your desert story? Review lesson 7 and prepare for this blessing. While we have breath, we will continually learn more about how to walk with God on the highway to heaven. It is a walk and not a run. Trying to choose a different path besides Jesus will not bring us back to Eden. Sorrow and sighing flee only as we continue traveling on this road. It is true that some days we won’t like the view, but our eternal destination will always make the scenery we encounter relevant to our desire to keep flowering in desolate places. In our next lesson, we want to explore the principles that contribute to our ability to become repeat desert bloomers.

At the age of thirteen, I deceitfully hid her desert saga inside my textbook during class, trying to steal any precious reading time I could find. I was tempted to skip meals, but I didn’t; and with a flashlight, I wanted to read underneath the covers late into the night, but I didn’t. I simply could not stop devouring The Hiding Place. This early obsession was not a sign of an addiction to romance novels; The Hiding Place was the story of a true heroine. This was the story of a repeat desert bloomer. Few observers of Corrie ten Boom’s early years could have predicted that she was going to be such a glorious desert bloomer. She never married or had children. She and her older sister Betsie were still living at home well into their late forties, and she predictably followed her father into the family business. Corrie’s father owned a small jewelry shop in the city of Haarlem, Netherlands. The family lived above the shop where watches and clocks were repaired. What might not have been easy to recognize on the outside surface of her life was that Corrie ten Boom had a thriving love for her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While some biographers might be tempted to cruelly label Corrie and Betsie old maids, their vibrant faith kept them busy finding ways to flower for God’s glory. First, their love for God compelled them to create a weekly Bible class for special needs children; and unintentionally, they met and blessed a tired group of lonely parents in the process. Then, Corrie and Betsie were inspired to start a second class for teenage girls in their neighborhood to learn Christian principles. Through these two very different Bible studies, these two career women developed community and fellowship with their neighbors. Then in 1940, the Nazi’s invaded the Netherlands and Corrie and Betsie were ordered to stop their ministry to young people. Corrie could have wrung her hands and cried when she was forced to abandon her ministries. Instead, during the spiritual desert of Nazi’s occupation, Corrie ten Boom chose to bloom. This unassuming, and middle-aged unmarried woman quickly embraced a new clandestine career. With an extensive network of neighbors that she knew she could trust, Corrie became the mastermind behind a daring adventure to smuggle Jews out of Haarlem. Their ancient home above the store was uniquely fashioned for such a twist in the plot. Over multiple generations the house had been remodeled and added on to as the growing family needed more space. This unconventional architecture made it difficult to determine the actual size of the house when looking at it from the street. Using the cabinets of old grandfather clocks, the Dutch underground smuggled bricks and mortar into the jewelry store to build a small hiding place behind Corrie’s closet that was undetectable, yet big enough for six people. In two short years, Corrie’s hiding place helped over 800 Jews escape the Nazi’s reign of terror. Even though Corrie and Betsie were eventually arrested, they never lost a single Jewish person they hid within their home. After their arrest, Corrie and Betsie were sent to Ravensbruck, a Nazis concentration camp, for their crimes against the Reich. As they were being imprisoned, Corrie was able to smuggle a small Bible into the camp in the folds of her skirt. Huddled at night, in a crowded barrack filled with fearful women and biting fleas, Corrie and Betsie again chose to bloom as they courageously taught these captive women God’s word in a new spiritual desert. On December 16, 1944, Betsie died because of the harsh physical treatment she experienced at Ravensbruck. With her dying words, she prophesied to Corrie of the near future. “...(We) must tell them that there is no pit so deep that he is not deeper still. They will listen to us Corrie, because we have been here.” One week before all the women her age were sent to the gas chamber, Corrie was released from the camp due to clerical error. With Betsie’s words resounding deep in her spirit, Corrie knew how she wanted to flower next. Since Betsie and Corrie had always worked as a ministry team, Corrie knew flowering wouldn’t be easy, but she understood how God was leading. As the war came to an end, Corrie was moved to create a rehabilitation center for the victims of the concentration camps. She designed a community where the physically, emotionally, and spiritually wounded could recover and be restored. At the same time, she started writing about the spiritual drought she experienced throughout the war. Her central message of recovery was to call victims of the concentration camps to forgive their abusers. Corrie believed that healing was directly tied to forgiving our enemies (Luke 11:2-4). When her writings unveiled her desert saga to the world, at age 53, Corrie began a speaking ministry. Over the next 33 years, she would blossom again and again as she traveled to 60 countries sharing the life-giving message found in Jesus Christ alone. We see in Corrie ten Boom a woman who was able to consistently flower in scorched earth. Repeat arid bloomers like Corrie can continue flowering because they take in nutrition in the offseason. In every desert there are seasons flush with flowers and seasons when cacti and succulents store nutrients and water, so they can bud again. The off-season is just as important in the desert bloom cycle as the flowering season. Like the water-wise cacti, Corrie ten Boom faithfully collected living waters in her heart, years before she was called to courageously lead 800 Jews to safety. Her long-held habit was to pray and read her Bible daily. She also, worshipped with other believers in her home church and devotedly loved her neighbors as herself. If we are interested in flowering more than once, we will need to begin storing life-giving water now for future bloom cycles. As we wait on God, much can be accomplished. We too can blossom in desolate times, if as people of integrity, we stock-up on spiritual fuel when no one is watching except God and the angels. Repeat bloomers can continue budding in drought conditions because they joyfully anticipate in prayer the next bloom cycle. Repeat bloomers know that even though a time of rest is needed between flowering, rest is only a temporary state. Even on Betsie’s death bed, the vision for Corrie’s next ministry was already taking shape. God had been speaking to Betsie and she knew the lessons they were learning in the desert were not just for themselves. Others were going to benefit from the shared wisdom. While still in Ravensbruck, Corrie and Betsie began praying for these distant buds. Finally, from Corrie ten Boom’s drought, we learn that repeat desert bloomers can keep flowering because they practice community. Corrie needed her friends and neighbors if she was going to fully bloom (Eph. 2:10). Without her service to her community, she would have never established the relationships of trust with her Bible students’ parents. These safe friends helped her obtain rationing cards for food, find hiding places, and smuggle Jews out of Haarlem during the war. After the war, relationships still mattered to Corrie as she worked to restore wounded lives. Like Corrie, we will be able to flower in the desert only if we practice community. God’s desire is for us to live in dependence on him and each other. If we could blossom alone, we would get the glory instead of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 12:4-7). Take a moment and consider your next bloom cycle. 1) What might change if you started practicing or extended your practice of community? I used the word “practice” because sometimes community is difficult to establish. We may need to practice for a time. Often, we are tempted to wait for an actual emergency before we truly desire fellowship. Unfortunately, safe friendships can be hard to find during a season of suffering. Remember that Corrie found community by serving her neighbors. 2) What future bloom cycle could you joyfully begin anticipating through prayer? For more ideas about blooming in the desert, read of Corrie ten Boom’s triumph in her book, The Hiding Place.

Introduction The concept of “cancel culture” has contaminated our society. Many people think they can cancel whatever person, community or ideal that does not agree with their version of reality or their idea of truth. As discussed in last week’s sermon, truth is defined as a divinely authorized absolute standard by which reality is measured. This absolute standard coming from God has authority in our lives to distinguish right from wrong and to gauge the validity of our thoughts, ideas and beliefs. People often choose to reject God’s standards because they desire to continue in their unrighteousness, sin and rebellion against God. They do not want to be held accountable to God and what His Word says. Rejecting God’s standards and authority causes the suppression of truth. However, we cannot reject God’s standards without realizing God’s wrath. Scripture clearly shows that the consequences of suppressing truth are divine judgment, divine abandonment and greater human depravity. In Romans 1:18-21, Paul explains that people are without excuse because God’s power and other attributes have been revealed in creation. They have everything they need to show God the glory He so richly deserves. When people glorify creation over the Creator and persist in their sin, God will then release or abandon them to follow their own sinful desires. As a result, the depravity of mankind grows and grows until sin and evil become normative. Chaos and confusion fill the space that truth once occupied. These effects of suppressing truth can be seen in our society today. The solution for believers who want to live according to God’s truth is for them to make a commitment to return to God by submitting to His will and walking away from idols or things that have taken higher priority than God in our lives. Unless we return to God, things will only get worse. Return to God, to His person, to His power and to His principles. Be rooted in the truth of who God is and what He has taught in His Word. Getting Started 1. What are some of the latest things or people that our culture has “canceled”? How much do you think something like “cancel culture” affects the way we think on a daily basis? 2. We are bombarded with different messages by the media today (e.g., commercials, news and movies). What is one message that you have noticed is presented as truth but is actually a harmful lie? Let’s Get Personal 1. Rejecting God’s standards could lead to further sin and invites God’s judgment. Have you been rejecting one of God’s standards? You can share this with your group if you feel comfortable, but if the issue is more personal in nature, pray about it and take some time to write about it in a journal. 2. Are you prioritizing God’s truth above your own thoughts and opinions and the opinions of others? How can you begin training yourself to go to God’s truth first (the Bible) and have His statements as your starting point? 3. Is there an idol in your life that you have been unwilling to surrender? How can you be held accountable this week to confess that idol to God and take steps to remove it so that God can be the highest priority in your life? Take the Next Step 1. What resources or influence do you have that you can use to make a difference in your community? How can you begin to help people in your community return to God and commit to truth? 2. What are ways that you can reinforce God’s truth in your life? Brainstorm about ideas that would be useful to you. Here are some ideas to get you started: memorize Scripture verses by posting them on notes around your home; find apps that help you read the Bible daily and track your progress; read a book about developing a strong and consistent prayer life; start using a prayer journal. What other ideas do you have? 3. Want to go deeper? Take time to look at the following passages: Job 12:7-9; Psalm 19:1-6; Isaiah 6:3; 40:18- 31; Matthew 5:6; John 1:9; Romans 2:15; 2 Timothy 2:9; Hebrews 12:14; 2 Peter 3:5. Renew Your Mind “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” Romans 1:18-19

Introduction On a football team, there is a kicker and that kicker has one aim -- to kick the football perfectly between the two goalposts and to score points that will hopefully bring the team to victory. As believers, our aim should be to speak the truth in love. The two goalposts represent truth and love. The football represents our words. As believers, we need to aim our words directly in the center of the goalposts. Truth without love is information without heart. Love without truth is heart without clarity. Both truth and love must exist together. When believers communicate the truth lovingly, we become equipped for service. Speaking the truth in love helps us become more like Christ, deepening our spiritual maturity (Ephesians 4:15). Loving, truthful communication also promotes unity in the church, the body of Christ. Speaking truth that can bring people closer together might seem counterintuitive. Often, truth is not popular. It's not what people want to hear. But the truth spoken in love according to the Word of God, will unite believers as brothers and sisters in Christ. Remember this: truth is God's perspective on any subject. We need to learn to go to God first, then to communicate truth lovingly to others by following these principles: speaking God's view of the subject, sharing God's heart on the subject, and sharing God's character on the subject. Our words should be consistent with who God is, reflecting His standards, His goals and His righteousness. People should be hearing God through us when they hear from us. God is so good that He provides benefits or "perks" when we communicate the truth with love. God draws closer to us with each loving word. We get to enjoy a more intimate relationship with God as we speak with His clarity and kindness. We will also begin to see more answers to our prayers as we grow in our sanctification - the process of becoming more like Christ. Finally, our failures can be mitigated by how we have loved and helped people with God's truth. As we communicate God's love and truth more, we will experience less of God's judgment and consequences because our desires and actions will align with what God wants and requires of us. Be expectant of how God will move in your life as you passionately pursue truth. Getting Started 1. When is the last time you told a lie (small, medium, or large)? What was the lie? 2. What was the last lie someone told you? How did that affect you? Let’s Get Personal 1. How has your view of truth changed in light of this sermon series? How has what you have learned impacted your relationship with God and relationships with others? 2. Has there been a time when someone has spoken biblical truth to you? Was it difficult to hear? How did that experience affect you? 3. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best, how well would you say you communicate the truth in love? How do you think your friends and family would rate your ability? Which aspect is more difficult for you, speaking the truth or speaking with love? Take the Next Step 1. Where are you lacking in showing the love of God to others? Think deeply about this and discuss with your group practical ways that you as individuals and your entire group can show the love of God to others in your church and your community this week. How can you share God’s heart and His truth with people you see every day? 2. Has your prayer life changed since the start of this series on truth? How can you pray more regularly and intentionally this week so that you can begin to see more answers to prayer? 3. Is there someone you love who needs to hear the truth from you this week? Spend time in prayer asking God for the words to say so that you can show this person God’s love while still speaking the truth. If needed, write down what you plan to say first, and have someone in your group read over it for you. 4. Want to dig deeper? Take time to look at the following passages: 1 John 3:16-18; 1 John 4:7-21; Ephesians 4:25-32; 1 Corinthians 13:6; Psalm 141:3; Proverbs 18:21; James 1:26; James 3:2; Matthew 12:34-37; 1 Timothy 6:3. Renew Your Mind “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head — Christ.” Ephesians 4:15

Let’s do a little Bible study together in I John 2:3-11, and I John 2:15-17 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,  but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. The New Commandment Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. Do Not Love the World Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Some General Observations John uses the word, “know” four times in verses 3-5 and 26 times throughout the book. Anything repeated is important. What does it mean to “know” according to the scripture? There is the knowing of something intellectually, but there is also the knowing of experience. The word, know, is used in this passage to denote knowing something by experience. Notice in verse 3 that John says we have, “Come to know.” This is experiential. We know God through our experience with him, guided by his word. Thus, the person who doesn’t know him does not have a real experience with God through his word. There are six “Whoever” statements. This is a reference to people who claim to know God. John draws a contrast from those who do know him to those that don’t know him. EXAMINATION (v.3) “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” The Greek word used here means to “Keep and observe.” It denotes a careful attention given to God’s word and our role in imitating what it says. It’s like when Paul told his readers, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” (I Corinthians 11:1). (v.4) Whoever says, “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” John’s writings tend to be chocked full of emotion and graciousness. But here he makes a black and white statement. You’re either a liar or not. You either have the truth or you don’t. This flies in the face of our modern society. Our secular society tends to ridicule absolutes, right and wrong. But John’s writing is clear. Just as there are absolute rights and wrongs, so too, we either know God through Christ or we don’t know God at all. Scripture says, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (I John 2:23). Traits of “lair” and one who actually knows Christ. Knows Christ • Keep his commandments (v.3) • Love perfected (v.5) • Walking in his ways (v.6) • Walks in the light (v.10) • Does the will of God (v.17) A Liar • Not keep his commandments (v.4) • Hates his brother (v.9) • Loves the world (v.15) (v.5) “Whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.” Notice that John ties together the concepts of “keeping” God’s word and the concept of experiencing God’s “love.” We often think of love as an emotion, a feeling. But God’s love while being emotional, is also tied to truths. Remember Paul’s words in I Corinthians 13:6, “ rejoices in the truth.” We cannot have the love of God perfected in our lives without that love being guided by the truth. In fact, in many places in Paul’s writings, wherever love is mentioned, some kind of mention of truth is not far behind. (vs.5-6) “By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” Obedience is a sign of our salvation. Not the cause of it. If a person claims to be a Christian but makes sin a habit, then that person does not know the Lord. This is similar to Jesus’ saying, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves… Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-20). I was once taken to task because I dared to say on social media that Hugh Heffner was probably in hell. Some people scolded me saying that he could have come to Christ at the last minute. Yet, God rarely works that way. Usually, God allows the decisions we make in life to be the same decisions we make in death. And just like Jesus said, you will know them by their fruits. If you don’t have obedience to the scriptures, then you do not have salvation. Here it is that we should pause and note that many Christians often struggle with these things, often doubting their salvation, that they really know Jesus. Why do we sometimes doubt our salvation? • We commit a repeated sin. • We don’t sense God’s presence. • We struggle with the concept that God actually loves us. • We doubt God’s promise of salvation, we think we are “too bad.” • Probably the greatest reason: we are not living a life of obedience and feel cut off from God. (v.8) “It is a new commandment that I am writing to you.” John is not saying that he is giving them a new commandment that had never been heard before. In v.7 he notes that it is an “Old commandment,” meaning that is previously came from Jesus. To quote Jesus: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). The command to love is a new command because Jesus is the standard, not us. Consider, we are commanded in Deuteronomy to love the Lord with all out heart, mind, and strength. Yet Jeremiah tells us our hearts are wicked. Paul tells us we need to renew our minds and bring every thought captive. And our strength, our bodies, are weak. So, how am I to love the Lord with my wicked heart, depraved mind, and failing strength? By making Jesus’ heart, mind, and strength our own through trusting the Holy Spirit by faith to believe him. To love others carries a price. Just like it cost Jesus. (v.10) “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light.” In a previous lesson we noted that in the scripture, “light” is a symbol for “righteousness.” We’ve also noticed that where love is, truth is not far behind. There’s a contrast here with the next verse in v.11 where it says, “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” Notice the phrase, “Does not know where he is going.” This reminds me of an episode of Mythbusters on TV. One of the hosts was to walk in a straight line across and empty field while blindfolded. The result? He didn’t walk in a straight line. He made all kinds of curves and turns, and even went in circles—but the whole time he thought he was traveling in a straight line. This is the same as spiritually walking in darkness. Without Christ as our light we do not know where we are going. There is no clear direction in life without the light of Christ. (v.15) “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” To what kind of “world” is John referring? People? Culture? Earth? The “world” in this passage is a reference to the sinful world system. It is a way of living that does not include Jesus as the supreme affection of life. In a world lived without God, sin has free reign over a person. We see an example in scripture of one person who traveled with the Apostle Paul. It was Demas, of whom Paul said, “For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me” (II Timothy 4:10). As an example, what exactly did Demas love? John begins to define this next. (v.16) “For all that is in the world—the lusts of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” Notice the three definitions of what is in the world system: • Lust of the flesh. • Lust of the eyes. • The boastful pride of life. What do you think the lust of the flesh is? Eyes? Life? Let’s see these three things in operation elsewhere in the scripture. Look at Genesis 3:1-6. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting food. There’s nothing wrong with wanting pleasant things that look good to us. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting wisdom. We are actually commanded in Proverbs to seek wisdom. But in this passage, each of these are twisted, turned around to be pursued without God. In this case, they are wanted apart from God’s promise and law. Thus, Eve disobeyed God and sin was brought into the world. (v.17) “The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” This literally means, “The world is dying.” Then notice the contrast. The world is dying, but you will live forever. What does it mean to do the will of God so that we will remain forever? There are, in general, two ways to do the will of God. 1. To believe in Jesus Christ (“And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ” – I John 3:11) 2. To obey Jesus Christ (“…and love one another just as he commanded us”) To believe is to acquire salvation. To obey is to prove our salvation. INTERPRETATION What is John’s Big Idea? 1. Keep his commandments. 2. Keep in love. 3. Keep away from the world. In John’s writings, “Loving” and “keeping” are often used together. John 13:15, “If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love.” John 14:21, “Whoever has may commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.” John 14:23, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.” Paul’s writings are known for their focus on faith without works of the law. The law and good works don’t get us to Heaven. Only by faith are we given the free gift of salvation. However, good works demonstrate that our hearts have been changed by faith. In these passages, John is essentially using “love” as the defining behavior to prove that someone has true faith in Christ. It’s because of love that we keep his commandments. It’s because of love for Christ that we resist the world system of sin. APPLICATION Our application is the same as our interpretation. 1. Keep his commandments. 2. Keep in love. 3. Keep away from the world. To keep his commandments, I need to know them. That means spending time everyday reading scripture and giving those principles attention in my daily life. To keep in love, I need to cultivate my relationship to the Lord in prayer and how I express myself to other people. I must always ask myself, what motivates me right now? And to keep away from the world system I need to keep my focus on loving others, even sacrificially. But it all starts with keeping Christ’s commands.

Let’s do a little Bible study together through I John 3:19-4:4. First, let’s look at our passage. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. 23And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us. Test the Spirits 4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. EXAMINATION Let’s break down our passage verse by verse, looking for the main theme in our passage. (v.19-20) “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.” Every person who is a true Christian will be convicted about their sin, even during their Christian experience. If we have no conviction about our sin, then we may take that as a sign that perhaps we are not really in Christ. But, in this passage there is also hope. Because John says, “God is greater than our heart.” In other words, the believer has the forgiveness of God. Then John goes on to say (v.21), “If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” Here is the opposite. If we have no conviction about specific sins, then we should not worry and can be confident that our relationship with God is unbroken, uninterrupted. (v.22) “We keep his commandments and do what pleases him.” First, I want to ask, what pleases the Lord? Do we want God to take pleasure in our lives? We can recall what kind of joy and happiness we have when we see our kids or our grandkids learning and experiencing life and doing good. Imagine that same kind of reaction that you have being the kind of reaction that God has when he looks at your life, through Christ. He feels pleasure about your life as you follow and love him. Now, notice something else in this passage. Three times in two verses John uses the word, command. (v.23-24). “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God.” Remember that in the past we’ve said when something is repeated it is important. So, let’s stop down and ask why John uses the word, command so often in just two short verses. Look at the structure. First, he says to believe in Jesus is his command. Then he says to love one another is his command. Then he broadens it to saying that he who keeps these commands abides in God. Consider these questions: How can God “command” us to love him? Isn’t love an expression of the heart? Aren’t there people we love and don’t love and can’t help ourselves either way? Why is it legitimate for God to “command” us to love him? “God does not want us to perform for him; he wants us to please him. He wants our obedience to arise out of love for him not merely out of obligation” (“Sure of Victory,” Bible Studies for Life, Senior Adults, Fall 2021). (v.24) “By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.” Here is a follow-up to his use of the word command. John finalizes his statement by saying that the Spirit is within us. We follow his commands because the Holy Spirit indwells us. It is actually God who makes love for others, possible. When we were in Mongolia, I was challenged to love someone who was my enemy. I was accused of a crime by a former employee. She filed 46 counts of slander against me. In Mongolia slander is a criminal offense that carries a sentence of as long as 10 years in prison. Thankfully, the prosecutor threw out the case since there was nothing to it. But God had to work on my heart. I had to learn how to love this person, and forgive her, by faith. Eventually we reconciled and forgave one another our wrongs. It was only possible for me to forgive her through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, I can abide in love for someone who made me their enemy because of the power of the Holy Spirit to work forgiveness in my heart. (4:1) “Do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” What kinds of “tests” can we do to know that we are in Christ? And what are the tests we need to use to determine false prophets and teachers from the genuine? Now, there are two things going on here. First, we test ourselves to be sure we are in the kingdom. But these same tests can be applied to others to see if they are in the kingdom as well. So, let’s go through some tests we can apply to ourselves and others so that we can know if someone, or if we, are truly Christians. First, an example. I had an employee who confessed that she was a Christian. Said she was a Christian but in our last meeting she said about Jesus, “I hate him. He never did anything for me. I hate him.” Though she made a profession of faith down the isle, in reality, she was not a believer. No true believer can say they hate the Lord. I Corinthians 12:3 says, “I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says, ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” My friend failed the test of being a true Christian. John has already given us a few tests in our passage. Verse 20 gives a first test. It says, “For whenever our heart condemns us.” When we are convicted about our sin it demonstrates that we are sensitive to the Spirit’s conviction. Verse 22 says, “We do what pleases him.” What pleases God? Verse 24, “Whoever keeps his commandments.” What does it mean to keep God’s commandments? Verse 24, “The Spirit is within us.” How do we know we have the Spirit? We know by faith, trusting Jesus words when he says the Spirit will come to those who believe. Carefully consider what John says here: (vs.2-3) “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” There are other tests so that we may be assured of our salvation or know if someone is a true believer or not. Test by the scriptures. Acts 17:11 says, “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” If we examine our lives against the teachings of Jesus, what do we come away with? The people in this passage, the Bereans, tested the apostle Paul’s teaching against scripture and came to a positive conclusion about who Jesus is. We can do the same thing with our lives. Does it take away or add to scripture? Revelation 22:18-19 says, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” When you consider your life or the life of another against scripture, are you tempted to reject, or disregard, or ignore a passage because it makes you uncomfortable or contradicts something in your life? This is no different than changing scripture itself. We must not bend the scripture to fit our desires. And we must not bend ourselves to fit scripture. Instead, we must be broken before the Lord, submitting everything to God in totality. Break, not bend. We have the conviction of the Holy Spirit about who Jesus is. John 16:8-9 says, “When comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me…” If you have no conviction about who Jesus is then that is a warning sign that something might be wrong. There is a major test of authenticity that God gave us through Moses in Deuteronomy 18. It is the first test we are given about the genuineness of a prophet or teacher, and we may apply it to our own hearts as well. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 says, “The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” Here are more tests that we can apply to ourselves to see whether or not we, or someone else, are in Christ. We talk about the Lord. Notice what Moses said about this in Deuteronomy 6:7. “You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Surround myself with things of the Lord. “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:8-9). Love the scripture. Moses wrote in Deuteronomy 32:47 about the place that scripture should have in our lives. Scripture, speaking of itself says, “This is not an idle word for you. Indeed, it is your life.” Jesus reiterated this when he said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word…whoever does not love me does not keep my words” (John 14:23-24). Here’s one more from Deuteronomy, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6). Bring my thoughts under the control of the Holy Spirit. What do you think about the most? How often in a day, or even a week, do you contemplate spiritual things? The Apostle Paul said in II Corinthians 10:5, “Take every thought captive to obey Christ.” When we are faced with temptation or have troubling thoughts that disturb us, we should be engaged in intentionally submitting our thought life to the control of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes this takes work. We all have bad thoughts from time to time. When this occurs, we should confess them to God and begin to think of scripture or biblical principles that are the opposite of what we are struggling with. For instance, if I feel the temptation coming on, I say to myself, “No. I don’t want to go there. I will think and commit acts of faithfulness.” We want others to love the Lord. Consider what Jesus said in the Great Commission. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). This principle is built into the Christian experience. It is the primary command in scripture that tells us what we should be doing with our Christian life. If you have no desire for others to know Jesus, or to grow to maturity in Christ, then you may not have your heart right with the Lord. Love others as Jesus loved us. This is a little different than what I just mentioned. Jesus raised the bar when he said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). How did Jesus love us? He sacrificed himself for us on the cross. What greater love is there than this? Now, to be honest, this is probably the hardest way to love someone. And we don’t usually come upon it early in our Christian experience. But we should at least be growing in this direction. So, check yourself. Are you willing to become this kind of person? Consider the example of Jesus who forgave those who crucified him. Think about this for a moment. This is the first thing Jesus said from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Jesus decided to forgive them while they were in the process of murdering him at that very moment. What a difficult thing to do. Just like forgiving my employee, but the Holy Spirit can empower us to do that very thing. But a word of caution: When we examine the life of others, we should be careful that we do not do what the apostle Paul warned against. That is, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time” I Corinthians 4:5 says, “Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” There are some of whom it is obvious that they are not Christians, or they are open about their rebellion from Christ. These are the obvious who are not saved. But there are others who say they are Christians, but we have trouble seeing the fruit of that confession. We must be careful that we don’t accidentally judge them wrongly. (v.4) “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” The one who is in us is the Holy Spirit. The one who is in the world is the Evil One, the spirit of the antichrist as John mentioned in 4:3. The world cannot overcome you because the world system, which is run by the enemy, will some day pass away, but you, sealed with the Spirit, will live forever. INTERPRETATION What is John’s Big Idea? I think we can take away two major lessons that John wants us to remember. 1. You can know, beyond a doubt, that you, or someone else, is a Christian. 2. You can know, beyond a doubt, that you, or someone else, is not a Christian. Notice John’s progression in the text. He discusses the condition of our hearts, even using the word, “confidence,” about our relationship to God (v.3:21). Then he moves to what pleases the Lord, obeying his commands, then he gives a second assurance about abiding in Christ. How do we abide? By doing what he just commanded. Then he moves to testing the spirits, which includes testing ourselves. If you are in agreement with these things that test us, then you can know you are a Christian and do not need to entertain any doubt. But if you find that these principles are not growing in you, then you may have reason to doubt, or perhaps you are in a phase where you may be ignoring what God is doing in your life. Either way, the scripture gives us encouragement that we can get on the right track. In 4:5-6 John says: “They are from the world; therefore, they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” So too, we can know by these guidelines, these tests, if we are truly in Christ or not. APPLICATION Now, the tests presented in our passage are actually meant to apply to others. However, we must first always examine ourselves before others. So, I will apply these to us. But they can also be applied to others. Our application is rather simple. Test yourselves to see if you are in the kingdom. Go through each of these principles and answer honestly to yourself, does my life reflect this truth? If not, what must I do to make it true in my life? 1. Verse 20 gives a first test. Does my heart condemn me or not condemn me? 2. Verse 2, do I do what pleases God? 3. Verse 24, do I keep his commandments? 4. 4:2-3, Do I confess that Jesus Christ has come in human form? 5. Test myself by the scriptures. Acts 17:11 Do I define my beliefs by scripture? 6. Do I take away or add to scripture? I.E., do I prefer culture over commands? 7. Do I have the conviction of the Holy Spirit about who Jesus is? 8. Do I talk about the Lord? 9. Do I surround myself with things of the Lord? 10. Do I love the scripture? 11. Do I bring my thoughts under the control of the Holy Spirit? 12. Do I want others to love the Lord? 13. Do I love others as Jesus loved us?