David faced fear his whole life, and his only confidence was in God himself. Think about it, a middle-school boy with some scraggly sheep sees a mountain lion or a bear. He's got a club and a slingshot. Wouldn't you be scared? Then he faced nine-foot Goliath. He is a young teenager, who annoyed his brothers. They mocked him. He took a slingshot and five stones and cut off his head. That had to be scary at first. 20-year old David fought in the Israeli army. He was touted as killing 10's of thousands in hand-to-hand combat. That had to be scary. But then he faced a terrifying enemy he never expected, King Saul. When he left Saul, he left behind his best friend and his wife. David fled from Saul for almost a decade (7-10 years). Saul hunted him like an animal to Nob, the place where the tabernacle stood (Psalm 52) where he wanted to seek God's will, grab Goliath's sword and beg for bread for his starving men. He was chased to caves of Adullam, the wilderness of En Gedi, and finally to Philistine territory where he had to pretend to be a madman to gain entry. Psalm 27, a psalm written by David, is an example of Hebrew poetry. Instead of rhyming words, David rhymed thoughts. THE LORD IS MY LIGHT AND MY SALVATION: WHOM SHALL I FEAR? THE LORD IS THE STRENGTH OF MY LIFE: OF WHOM SHALL I BE AFRAID? Light is utilized to see and be aware of one's surroundings amid the darkness.. 186,000 miles per second. One of my dear friends, a Vietnam vet was buried alive, clawing his way out to safety. Andy knew the light promised rescue, air and light. Light brings: Purity, power, direction and hope "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), He is claiming that deliverance from darkness comes through God. Salvation, as seen in Psalm 27:1, can also be thought of as deliverance. David utilizes three terms to describe God as the Deliverer: light, salvation, and stronghold. If God is David's Deliverer, whom should he fear? Don't you want Jesus to shine His light on you today?

“And beginning with Moses and all the prophets He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the scriptures.” “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for Moses wrote of Me.” “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill the law…” “…the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy…” We sing in one of our Christmas carols “Come Thou long expected Jesus.” The first words from Mary’s lips were, “He raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant – As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from old . “ Lk 1:69-70 The most dominant theme in the Bible is the person of the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Christ. The Old Testament anticipates Christ. The gospels manifest Him. The book of Acts proclaims Him. The epistles explain Him. Revelation awaits His return. One of the first Sunday School ideas bestowed upon a child is “the New is the Old contained. The Old is the New explained.” It is trite because it is true and oft repeated. In prophecy Christ was anticipated. The Messiah. The Chosen One. The seed of woman who would crush the serpent’s head. (Gen. 3:15) The one who would give rest from the curse. (Gen. 5:29) The seed of Abraham who would bless the nations. (Gen. 12:3) The son of Judah to whom the scepter belonged (Gen. 49:10) The one who like Moses would stand between God and men. (Deut. 18:15-19) The star of the king who would arise from Israel. (Num. 24:17) The Davidic descendant whose kingdom would have no end (2 Sam. 7:12-16) and come forth from Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2) who would be betrayed (Zech. 11:7-14) who would die for man’s sins (Is. 53) who would rise from the dead (Ps. 16:9-10) ascend to Heaven (Ps. 110:1) bring salvation to the Gentile nations (Deut. 32:21) return and judge the world and establish the kingdom of God. (PS. 110:2; Zech. 12:10) He is also seen as pre-incarnate in the “angel of the Lord” who continually appears in the Old Testament to defend, lead and deliver Israel. Whenever he appears he is recognized as God and yet is distinct from God as he speaks to and of God. And yet he disappears after the book of Zechariah and is never seen again as there is no need for a “theophany” or appearance of God since man has an “incarnation” of God, when God enters into humanity and becomes a man and unites himself with man forever. The lesser glory of the angel of the Lord will disappear in the greater glory of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is also prefigured in the pattern of the Tabernacle and the symbols of the Old Testament worship. Christ is called “Christ our Passover” and “the lamb of God that bears away the sin of the world.” His body is called the parted veil that allows access to God. His sacrifice is called the “mercy seat” that propitiates God’s wrath. He is our high priest that enters within the veil. Rightly does the author of Hebrews call the Old Testament a “copy, shadow and pattern of the good things to come.” Christ is also seen as the purpose of Old Testament law. Its purpose is not to be a final set of rungs of a moral ladder whereby we can gain access to heaven on our own. Rather the law is to show us our sin and drive us to our need of Christ’s salvation. “The law came in that transgression might increase, but where sin increased grace abounded all the more… through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 5:20 21) “The law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ….” (Gal. 3:24) And Christ also fulfills the Old Testament promises. A prophecy tells of what is coming. Promises tell of why. That of God’s veracity. Paul said, “Christ has become a servant to the circumcision (i.e. Israel) on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers…” (Rom. 15:8) “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes…”(2 Cor. 1:20) Indeed is Christ called “the Amen.” (Rev. 3:14) “He hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant as He spoke by the mouth of His hold prophets from of old.” Luke 1:69-70 Let all God’s people say, “Amen” to our Incomparable Christ.

There is a particular kind of shame that shows up in my office more than almost any other. It sounds like this: “Everyone talks about feeling God’s presence. I don’t feel anything. I must be doing something wrong.” For most of the people who say this to me, the problem isn’t their faith. It’s their nervous system running a prediction it hasn’t updated yet. NOT A SCAR. A MISCALIBRATED ALARM.. For a decade, the dominant popular image of trauma has been that the body stores it — that a wound gets lodged somewhere in the tissue, waiting to be released through the right technique. It’s a compelling picture. It’s also, according to newer work in computational neuroscience, not quite accurate — and it’s drawn real, credible pushback from researchers who’ve taken a closer look at the evidence. The more precise model — and the one I’ve moved toward in my own clinical thinking — comes from predictive processing. Your brain isn’t a passive recorder of experience. It’s constantly generating predictions about what’s about to happen and updating those predictions against incoming information. After trauma, the brain doesn’t file the event away in the body like a scar. It over-weights the danger prediction. It starts assigning excessive confidence to threat, even in rooms that are actually safe, with people who mean no harm, in moments — like prayer, like worship, like stillness — that should feel like refuge. What’s disrupted isn’t tissue. It’s flexibility — the brain’s capacity to fluidly move between different states depending on what a moment actually calls for. Researchers describe this loss of flexibility as a collapse of metastability — the loss of a system’s ability to hold together while still moving freely between states. “In him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17 I find that image theologically striking. Coherence was never meant to be something we manufacture through effort. It was meant to be sustained. Trauma disrupts that sustaining coherence at the level of the nervous system; it doesn’t touch the deeper truth that all things, including a dysregulated brain, are still held. This isn’t a character flaw. It’s a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do to survive — and it’s also not permanent. Predictions can be updated. That’s the whole basis for healing, and it’s also, not coincidentally, the shape of Lamentations 3:22–23: His mercies are new every morning. Renewal isn’t a technique here. It’s a declared fact about who God is, offered on a daily rhythm — which happens to be exactly the rhythm a stuck prediction needs in order to change. WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN IT SOUNDS LIKE IT SHOULD This distinction — stored wound versus miscalibrated prediction — isn’t just a technical correction for neuroscience nerds. It changes what we tell people in pain. “Your body is holding onto this” invites people to go looking for the trauma somewhere inside themselves, as if the goal is excavation. “Your brain is still predicting danger” invites something different: retraining. Not digging up a buried thing, but teaching a hypervigilant system, patiently and repeatedly, that this room, this relationship, this moment of prayer, is actually safe enough to update its guess. I’d also gently push back on a popular version of the body-based trauma narrative that can, without meaning to, crowd out the mind and heart — as though healing only happens through sensation and somatic release, and reflection, meaning-making, and relationship are secondary. Scripture never separates the two. We are not bodies with wounds attached, or souls trapped in unreliable flesh. We are integrated — body, mind, and spirit called into the same healing. This is where Dan Allender’s decades of work in narrative-focused trauma care become genuinely useful, even though his lens is theological and relational rather than neurobiological. Allender’s model holds that healing happens as a person re-enters their story in the presence of others who can name both the wound and the goodness still intact underneath it — not excavation, but re-narration, held in relationship. Put in the language of prediction: a stuck threat-forecast doesn’t update through insight alone. It updates through repeated, safe, relationally-held experience — which is exactly what a well-told, well-witnessed story provides the brain. Neuroscience explains why the forecast got stuck. Narrative work, done in safe company, is one of the ways it learns to change. WHERE THIS MEETS THEOLOGY I’ve worked with complex dissociative presentations for over sixteen years, and one thing I want every pastor, every small group leader, and every well-meaning friend to understand: a nervous system stuck in a threat prediction is not a spiritual weakness. It is, more often than not, the last honest trace of a protection that once made total sense. EMDR works, when it works, not because it dislodges something buried in tissue, but because it gives the brain repeated, safe opportunities to update its prediction — to learn, through structured processing, that the danger it keeps forecasting already happened and is not still happening. “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” - Psalm 147:3 Stated as something He does, not something conditional on the sufferer getting the technique right. The therapy is the means. The healing itself belongs to Him. I find Scripture strikingly compatible with this reframe more broadly. Psalm 139 says God formed our inward parts, knit us together — He is not surprised by a nervous system that learned to over-predict danger, because He built the very system capable of learning and re-learning in the first place. Philippians 1:6 promises the One who began a good work will carry it to completion — not instantly, not through willpower alone, but through process. Updating a prediction takes repetition. So does sanctification. WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS THE FORECAST CHANGE If trauma is a threat-prediction stuck on repeat, healing is whatever gives the brain safe, repeated evidence that the forecast is wrong. That happens through more paths than any one modality can claim alone — which is itself a clue that the real mechanism is the change in flexibility, not any single technique. Graded, structured exposure — cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, EMDR — works by walking a person back into the feared material in small enough doses that the brain can update instead of flood. Mindful attention to bodily sensation works the same way, though it has to be titrated carefully; for someone with severe trauma, going straight into the body can overwhelm rather than correct, so the pace matters as much as the practice. Movement and exercise, and simple absorbing, skillful engagement — what researchers call flow — retrain the brain’s capacity to shift states at all, which is often the deeper injury underneath any single symptom. And there’s a gentler entry point worth naming, because not everyone is ready for exposure-based work on day one: self-compassion as a clinical strategy, not just a nice sentiment. Aundi Kolber’s popular framework — “try softer” instead of white-knuckling through — argues that a nervous system in survival mode cannot do its healing work under pressure; safety and gentleness have to come first, because force just re-triggers the very threat response we’re trying to resolve. I’d frame that a little differently than she does — I don’t think the trauma is “stored” in the body waiting for gentleness to release it — but the clinical instinct is sound either way: a hypervigilant system responds to kindness before it responds to willpower. "A Bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." Isaiah 42:3 And Zephaniah 3:17 goes further — God rejoicing over His people and quieting them with His love, not with pressure. Gentleness isn’t a therapeutic trend here. It’s a description of God, stated as fact, long before anyone had language for nervous systems at all. Underneath all of it is relationship. Curt Thompson’s work on interpersonal neurobiology makes a case I find more clinically precise than most: our nervous systems were built to regulate in connection with other nervous systems, not in isolation. A prediction of danger gets corrected fastest and most durably in the presence of a safe other — a therapist, a spouse, a small group, a church community that can hold the story without flinching. “It is not good for man to be alone.” Genesis 2:18 That’s not a modern therapeutic insight so much as a very old one. It predates the fall entirely — not a response to sin or trauma, but a stated truth about how humans were made, from the very beginning, before anything had gone wrong. And for the reader who has been failed by every human “safe other” available to them, Hebrews 4:15 offers something further still: a High Priest who is not distant from human weakness but was tested in every way as we are. Thompson’s neuroscience explains why co-regulation matters. Scripture supplies the one relationship that can never ultimately fail to provide it. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE PERSON SITTING ACROSS FROM YOU If you are the person reading this whose body won’t cooperate with your desire to feel close to God: you are not spiritually deficient. Your nervous system is still running an old forecast. Now it needs help — patient, repeated, often professionally guided help — learning that safety is possible, so that the forecast can finally change. If you are the pastor, the friend, the spouse: the most spiritually faithful thing you can offer someone in this state is not a better argument for God’s nearness. It’s patience with their pace, and a referral to someone trained to help a stuck prediction find its way back to rest.

Since the fall of man, the sacrificial lamb represents the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus. Portraits of Christ in the Old Testament – Lesson 1 Typology – The Lamb of God “Are you telling me your God is a carnivore?” said Sanjay. “No, absolutely not, God is not a carnivore or an herbivore,” Gloria said fast. How did Sanjay reach this conclusion? Quickly, Gloria backtracked trying to discover where their Bible study had made a wrong turn. When Gloria and her husband befriended a college student from India, she dreamed of a day when she might share a Bible study with him. Years later, after many holidays and family dinners her dream was now a reality, but she had not fully appreciated Sanjay’s Hindu background as they began the story of Cain and Abel. And, his conclusions about God’s acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice were definitely obscuring the true message of the gospel. Without a clear understanding that God is prophesying through the story of Cain and Abel, we too will draw the wrong conclusions from this passage. The story of Cain and Abel is an example of Old Testament typology. Typology is the study of types or pictures of Jesus which foreshadow the coming of Christ in human history. Cain and Abel’s story in Genesis 4:1-10 is the first portrayal of a lamb in the Old Testament. In John chapter 1, John the Baptist calls Jesus “the Lamb of God” and with this pronouncement he identifies a portrait of Christ first introduced in the Old Testament. Why did God choose a lamb as a metaphor to picture Jesus? Animals usually adopted as a symbol for a group to rally around are picked because they are ferocious in some way and will look intimidating or menacing to an enemy. Nobody picks a lamb. For example, both Mexico and the United States use an eagle as part of their symbolism. Other groups have chosen lions, tigers, bears, and even sharks. So, why was God choosing a lamb? Look again at John the Baptist’s words in John 1:29, “…Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” When lambs appear in the Bible, they are usually in a story of sacrifice. Sheep are docile animals that have been domesticated from early times, but John isn’t just referencing sheep. Specifically, he speaks of a lamb, a baby sheep. Lambs are playful, helpless, innocent, pure, and willing to be led to the slaughter. Jesus is gentle and does not force his will on anyone. A lamb, then, is a perfect picture to illustrate Jesus’ mission and his character. He would go to the cross willingly, live a sinless life and lay down his life for the sins of humanity. As one of my professors used to remind us, “If we would follow Jesus, we must remember we are following a lamb.” In Genesis 4:1-10, God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but rejected Cain’s. Abel, a shepherd, brought a first-born lamb from his herd to be sacrificed to God, but Cain, a farmer, brought a sacrifice from the produce of the land. God accepted Abel’s sacrifice because it pointed to Jesus. If you want to understand the portrait of the Lamb, you must see God is prophesying through this story. In Hebrews 11:4, the writer wrote this, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.” How was Abel’s choice of a sacrifice an example of faith? In Luke 11:51, Jesus references Abel as a prophet who along with other prophets gave their lives to proclaim God’s truth. So, God must have told Abel what sacrifice to use. Abel’s obedience then becomes an example of faith. He worshipped God through the only way which was acceptable to God; God designed worship to be done through the blood of the lamb. Scripture does not say how God endorsed Abel’s sacrifice, but theologians have speculated by examining other passages where God approved of a sacrifice. In Genesis 15:7-21, God provides the fire for the sacrifice which Abram made to him. Additional Bible passages record God himself supplied the fire during the offering at the dedication of the tabernacle in the wilderness (Lev. 9:22-24), during the dedication of Solomon’s temple (2Chron. 7:1-3), and during Elijah’s battle with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18:24, 36-39). Whatever method God chose, he made it clear that Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s was not. Not only does God use the events of this sacrifice to prophecy, but in the next lamb snapshot we learn that God alone can provide our sacrifice. If you want to understand the portrait of the Lamb, you must see God alone provides our sacrifice through this story. In Genesis 22, we find the story when God tested Abraham’s devotion by asking him to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mt. Moriah. Isaac was the son of the promise God had given to Abraham. Yet, Hebrews 11:19 records Abraham trusted God as he climbed Mt. Moriah reasoning that God could raise Isaac from the dead. While on that mountain, God miraculously provides a ram for Abraham, so Isaac could be spared after he saw Abraham’s willingness to obey God’s call no matter the cost. Listen to the angel of the Lord’s words to Abraham in Genesis 22:11b-13a, “‘…Abraham, Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns...” Did you catch the parallels between Jesus’ sacrifice and this story? The ram God provided to save Isaac’s life is literally wearing a crown of thorns. In Genesis 22, God provided a ram, so Abraham would not lose his only son of the promise, Isaac. At Golgotha, though, God would give his one and only son as a substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the entire world. Abraham’s son was saved while God’s only son was slain. We cannot in our strength provide a sacrifice good enough to meet the demands of a holy God (Rev. 1:5b). Without God’s plans of deliverance and Jesus’ willingness to go to the cross, we cannot be set free from our sin (John 10:17-18). When God provided the ram caught in the thicket, he was foreshadowing Christ’s sacrificial death for the sins of the world. Lastly, in Exodus 12 there is one more Old Testament event we need to examine to fully see the importance of the Lamb’s typology. If you want to understand the portrait of the Lamb, you must see God is protecting through this story. This episode is an example of a community’s shared faith in the power of the Lamb’s blood. In this piece of history from the Exodus, we find the final plague sent to Egypt, when God executed his judgments against the gods of Egypt (Ex. 12:12). To protect the Israelites from the Destroyer of the first born, the lambs not only were slain, but their blood was poured into a basin and sprinkled over the door post and lintels of their homes. When God saw the blood, he passed over the houses under the protection of the blood of the lamb. Like the Passover Lamb, Jesus’ blood is our only means of deliverance from God’s future judgment and wrath, and it also speaks of our need for personal application (Heb. 9:22). Many of us have a theological understanding that Jesus is the Lamb of God, but we have never applied his blood to our lives. We possess head knowledge, but not real heart knowledge. His sacrifice will not spiritually protect us without a personal faith in the power of Christ’s work on the cross. Nothing but physically applying the blood of the lamb to their homes could defend the Israelites from the death marching on Egypt. Those who mistakenly trusted in the palace’s shields were helpless to protect even the son of Pharaoh from the terror of that night. Likewise, our only hope is trusting in the power of Jesus’ blood sacrifice. The picture of the Lamb is one of the greatest portraits of Christ in the entire word of God. It is a metaphor illustrating God’s mercy embedded in the pages of Genesis and found all the way through to the book of Revelation. In Christ, God did for us what we were helpless to do for ourselves. Jesus’ sacrifice restored our broken relationship with God when he willingly paid the ultimate price for our sins. Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world (Rev.13:8). If you want to understand the portrait of the Lamb, you must see God is prophesying about Jesus’ coming (Gen. 4:1-10), providing the way of salvation (Gen. 22), and protecting us under the blood (Ex. 12) through this Old Testament portrait. Before engaging in these questions stop and ask God to speak to you and then begin. 1) God’s long-range plans to rescue humanity are quite surprising in their depth and detail. What would change if you believed God’s plans for your life were that long range? 2) Scriptures teach we come to God through Jesus’ sacrifice and not our own attempts at good works (John 14:6). What might change if you believed God prescribes the way we come to him? 3) Many people believe Jesus is the Lamb of God, but have not personally applied his blood to their lives. If Israel had only shed the lamb’s blood, but had not applied it to the door post and lintels of their homes, the Destroyer of the first born would not have passed over their abodes. The spiritual protection of God is found under Jesus’ blood (Rev. 12:11). Have you personally applied the blood of Christ to your life?

Encountered by the Spirit John Beeson 1 Corinthians 2 So I don't know if anyone else had the troubling experience in your childhood of growing up in a sugarless cereal home. Anyone else subnavigating that trauma? Yeah, yeah. Cheerios, Grape Nuts, Wheaties, and none of this. I remember as a kid, you know, watching the proliferation of ads for sugared cereals on tv, and, man, it was just like a whole other kingdom, right? These happy people eating from you on happy charms. They're magically delicious. I mean, it really did seem magical, that other side of childhood, right? The magical life of sugared cereals. And then I. I had the opportunity to taste frosted Lucky Charms. It was not magical. These marshmallows that I thought would be the size of my hand were tiny little things I thought would be fluffy and, well, marshmallowy. And they tasted closer to cardboard than to marshmallows. You know, it's funny, right? Like, so true about our life and our world. The promises of magic, of the supernatural, of the spiritual experiences in this world so often fall flat like lucky charms. We're going to navigate today the reality of an invitation into a spiritual life. And it's not the kind of spiritual life that the world, the world offers. You see that the spiritual life of the world, a natural spirituality, if we could call it that, is maybe pushed up, created by, by their own longings and desires for something magical, and yet falls flat. 30% of Americans today consult astrology, tarot cards, etc. You could, you could Google this. It's. Those are not scientifically verified. In fact, they've been found to be false. To the extent that there is spirituality in those types of things, it is not a spirituality of God. And then you have people reacting against that. A more scientific mindset, a naturalistic mindset. I. What, what is, is. That's all that is in the world. A world shut off from the supernatural. A world that looks at the rainbow and says, yeah, that's not magic, my friend. That's called refraction. Right? It happens in the world of religion, of Christianity too. You have certain types of churches that seem to gin up an experience, a spiritual experience, but then you peel back the layers and it's. It's false. Unfortunately, there have been churches that have been found to fraud people on this. Churches that claim that there's holy dust clouds of God coming down, only to be discovered that they put literally gold glitter in the ductwork. Churches that fake healings, false, fake spirituality. And there's churches that are so afraid of that spiritual world, so buttoned up that heaven Forbid you experience a single emotion in a service churches of legalism and of tradition and of starched colors. We've been walking through this sermon series called Good News in the Real world. And in 1 Corinthians 2 today, as we navigate the book of First Corinthians, we're going to see that Paul tells us there is a true spiritual experience that God has for us, that God has created us to be spiritual beings and God, the Holy Spirit, desires to encounter us. You are meant to to encounter the Holy Spirit of God. And that's an invitation for both sides, whatever side you are on. For some of us it's going to require setting down a woo woo lucky charm spirituality. For others of us, it's going to be opening the door to something spiritual. When we've tried to shut that all down in our lives, our spirits were designed to encounter the Holy Spirit of God. Designed. In this series, Paul's about to get to issues that are facing the church and he pauses at the beginning to say, but before we get to any issues, before we try and tackle those, you have to be we looked at this a couple weeks ago. You have to be focused on Jesus Christ last week. You cannot trust simply in knowledge, in the wisdom of the world today. Specifically, you have to have to be in harmony with, led by the Holy Spirit of God. It's the only way. So let's go to the passage 1 Corinthians chapter 2, beginning just in the first couple verses. And I when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. When I came to you, I, I wasn't preaching with fancy words. I wasn't preaching to you with, with great oratory gifts. I came with simplicity because I wanted you to meet Jesus. Jesus, not simply intellectual truth or my speech. Jesus, that is who you need. Now there's a truth in this passage that will unfold as it goes. To the extent that we say Jesus is here, or we're in the presence of Jesus, or we hear God whisper to us or speak to us or guide us in all of those things. What we really mean is the Holy Spirit. Anytime we feel God directing us, we feel the presence of God. We feel Jesus with us. It is Jesus and the Father who are with us through the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Paul continues, he says, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the spirit and of power. That your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I did not come to you with, with convincing words of wisdom that were going to convince you of truth. I came in weakness. That you would have the spirit of God inside of you, changing you from the inside. Now it's not that Paul is against knowledge, against study. We're to love God with all of our mind as well of all of our heart. You see, there's truth that goes past the mind's ability. There's truth that goes deeper than our ability to comprehend. I, I don't understand. I, I, I look at all of creation. Sometimes I simplify it down to little things I like, like fruit. I don't know how a watermelon grows from a watermelon seed. You can study, you can look it up and no one knows. The best answers in the world come down to some miracle that happens and out comes a watermelon. I don't get how a kiwi, you cut open a kiwi. A kiwi is beautiful. You look at the kiwi, just, it looks like this star exploding from the inside and that all these little dots or seeds make another kiwi. I don't get an orange, for lack of a better word. A collection of, of all kinds of little small pouches of orange juice that are gathered together in a tight cluster and sealed in a, in a little shell and then put together in this circle all around these shells. And how that causes a seed to grow into another tree, I don't know. I don't know. I can study. And yet you still come down to a miracle of God somewhere in the midst and life begins. Paul saying there's truth that is deeper than human ability to comprehend or study. And if we're going to get to these issues, one truth. We have to get down. We have to, we have to come allowing our spirit to be in touch with the Holy Spirit or we'll never be able to enter that truth. Our spirits were designed to encounter the Holy Spirit. It's true Christianity is not anti intellectual, but it, it invites us to this, this place of, of recognition. There's a, there's a stopping point of our intellect. It's like trying to explain color to a colorblind person. I was looking at some of these mysteries this week. Scientists say that much of our universe is made of dark energy and yet can't fully explain what Dark energy is. I remember as a high school student taking chemistry and learning that an electron is a wave and a particle, and my mind melted. How could it be there? There are deeper truths of this world that we can plumb as human beings. But the Spirit of God is meant to meet us and illumine our minds, illumine our hearts in understanding. Paul continues down in verse 10 he says this. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the Spirit of that person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. So packed in those two little verses are these incredible depths of understanding in who God is and who we are. We are, if you want to use the $5 words of theology and anthropology. And they point all the way back to the beginning of the story. Paul, I mean Greg last week took us back to the beginning of Genesis. I want to do that again. Genesis one, it's the very first book of the Bible. Speaking of the creation, Chapter one, verse two speaks of this triune God, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons, and specifically of the work of the Spirit in creation. Listen to Genesis 1:2. The Earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The Spirit of God is the part of God that reaches, extends out to creation, that manifests God to his creation. From the beginning is acting the Spirit like a dove over her brood, over her, over her chicklets. God hovers in his Spirit, draws near to his creation in his spirit. And so it continues to be God. The Spirit encounters us. And how does God encounter us? In our spirit. We were created by God to have a means of encountering God, the Spirit. We see that in Genesis 2 as God creates Adam. We hear this Genesis 2 7. Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. Now our English translations are using that word breath. It's the Hebrew word ruach. R U A C H is our transliteration. Can you say that? Ruach, Ruach, ruach. It's the same word for breath and for spirit. When we say spirit, we're also saying breath. And so the. There's this profound reality that God has made human beings as dust, as material, and then breathed in, spirited into them. We human beings are material plus spirit. We are spiritual Beings. We are material and spiritual beings. God has breathed his breath into us from the very beginning. The very creation of human beings made in the image of God were made so that our spirit was made to encounter the spirit of the living God. You hear it spoken today as a popular phrase. I'm spiritual, but I want nothing to do with God or with church. Now, it's true that human beings have a spirit in them. It's true that there is a spiritual realm and nature in all the world. So that in culture, in art, in music, there is a spirit to things. But our spirits were designed to connect with the Holy Spirit, with God himself. We see it as the passage continues to unfold. Pay attention to how the word spirit is capitalized or left with a small S. For we have a spirit, small S. There is a spirit of the world, small S. There's a spirit in music and culture, small S. Even if you connect that to the demonic of a spiritual realm, it is small S, capital S, meaning God. Passage continues in verse 12. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, small S, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit of God, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. If we are Christians, we connect to God spiritually and the Spirit opens our eyes to be able to see God. In fact, it continues, verse 14. The natural person, that's a. A person without the Spirit of God. There's still a spirit, but not the Spirit of God. A natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. A natural person can't understand God, the glory of God, the splendor of God, not without the Spirit of God touching them from the inside. It's why if we're sharing Jesus with somebody and we get frustrated, we share and we share and we share and they just don't get it. The answer in that equation is not that we have to be more creative in order to convince them of the truth. The answer to that equation is that we must pray God. Take the scales off and let them see. Make them new on the inside. Help them feel your presence. We are designed to connect with the Holy Spirit. Now we might. We might hear that and think, well, do I have the Holy Spirit? Do I have the supernatural power of God, the third Person of the Trinity, making me new on the inside? Do I have The Holy Spirit. And the answer to that question, if you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit, whether you're aware of it or not. If you are a Christian, if you have surrendered your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit in you. Salvation and receiving the Holy Spirit are not two separate things. They are the same thing. You receive the Holy Spirit when you become a Christian. So a passage that spells this out pretty clearly is in Romans, chapter 8, verse 9. It says, you, however, talking of Christians. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit capital S. If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. If you have the Spirit of Jesus Christ inside of you, you are a Christian. If you do not have the Holy Spirit inside of you, you're not. So if you, if you've surrendered your life to Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you, you might say, well, okay, but then how, how do I get filled with the Spirit? How do I walk in the Spirit? How do I connect more in the Spirit? We could go through like a 12 week series just on that. Maybe we will someday. One verse that probably helps solve that more than any other is in Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 18. It introduced a passage that simply says this. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. But be filled with the Spirit. Don't get drunk with wine, but be. Get drunk with the Holy Spirit. Don't get drunk with wine, but go into your pantry, grab a bottle of the Holy Spirit and drink away. And get drunk on the Holy Spirit. You said, fantastic. But I don't have a bottle of the Holy Spirit in my pantry. How, how, how would I get drunk on the Holy Spirit? And the passage itself gives us four concrete answers to that, four participles. Right after. Get drunk with the Holy Spirit. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. That answers that first is he is. Greet one another with psalms. Greet one another with psalms with the Word of God. This word is tethered to the Holy Spirit. And while it's possible to approach it from just an earthly wisdom point of view, this word is God, breathed Ruach. God spirited. It is tethered to the Holy Spirit. You want to get filled with the Holy Spirit? Come to the Word of God, Surrender to the Spirit and let him fill you. Greet one another. Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs making melody to God in your heart. I would say, how do you, how do you get filled with the Holy Spirit in the Word of God? And in singing Worship to God. There's a reason that in our worship services we go to the Scripture every single week. Why? Because it is tethered to the Spirit of God. There is a reason why when we gather for worship, we. We worship in song and we sing to God. Why? Because God inhabits the worship of his people. He inhabits the praise of his people. We can interact with the Holy Spirit in His Word. We interact with the Holy Spirit in song. In Ephesians, chapter 5, in that passage he says, greet one another. Then with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs. Giving thanks. A third means giving thanks. Gratitude. Come and be filled with the Spirit and the Word of God. In worshiping him in music and in gratitude, just reflect on all the favor God has shown over you in life. And in gratitude you meet the Holy Spirit. And the last one that he gives us an example of in the passages, in submitting to one another, we don't think of it in the gathered community of God's people. As we set aside our preferences and we submit to others mutually, we find the Holy Spirit of God, who Father, Son and Holy Spirit have beautifully submitted to each other for all eternity. So he says, come and be filled with the Holy Spirit in the Word, in worship, in gratitude, in the mutual submission of the body of Christ. Do you hear what Paul's saying to us? Listen. There's a false spirituality in this world, a lower case S spirituality, a lucky charms, magically delicious spirituality in this world. I'm not talking about that. Talking about the Holy Spirit encountering you, the real thing. Now, if any of you are like me, this was a convicting week for me as I sat in the scriptures and prepared for this. I'm a guy who's more comfortable, like neck above. That's safe zone for me. You get below the neck and feelings and emotions, like it's less comfortable for me. Talking about being drunk, in the spirit, filled with a spirit. These are things that even parts of me has like caution flags against. There is abuse there, there's abuse there. But there is a real spiritual encounter that you were made for. And if you shut down that world because of cynicism, because of self protection, because you're more comfortable with a faith that's lived up in your mind and not impacting your heart, you are missing out on what God has made you for. I was convicted. I was listening to a series of podcasts about just kind of some of the work that appears to be happening, especially in America, but around the world as well. A kind of a fresh work of God in 2024, May of 2024, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a small little college campus called Asbury in Wilmore, Kentucky. Started all with a. Just a regular chapel service. This is a Christian college, regular chapel service, mandatory attendance. The guy who preached at that chapel service, his name is Zach Mere Crebs. He actually said it was a dud, texted his wife. That was a stinker. After he preached. And the Spirit of God showed up. And people began to linger afterward. And then more and more began to join as the Spirit of God was poured out in repentance and in worship in his people. And for 16 days around the clock, people gathered in worship in repentance, and the work of God was poured out. Now, I'll just confess as I even, like as I heard about this as it was happening. And there's just this cynic in me that like, has questions about those types of things. And I'm not here to tell you what is and isn't authentic in terms of the work of the Spirit of God. That's. That's not my job. That's for. That's for God to tell. But I'll share. Even just this week, as I was listening to that pastor who preached that stinker of a sermon where in the Spirit of God showed up. He gave testimony to some of the work of God there. And it began to convict me of my own cynicism to the work of the Spirit. I want to share one story with you that he shared. This is Zach Meerkrebs. He shares this story. We had this basketball, basketball player who's kind of bad news. And he was pretty much still on our campus because he was really good at basketball Christian College. And he just sat there in that room for days. He wasn't a believer, but he sat in that room for days because his girlfriend was a believer. And he ends up giving his life to the Lord. And he walks out of the room and he runs into a man in a wheelchair with some tumors that you could see around his face. And he goes back, he grabs his girlfriend because he had seen others in that space praying for healing. He was like, well, now I'm a believer. I can pray for him. And he prays for this guy. And this guy was healed. Tumors visibly disappear. This is a basketball player who'd known Jesus for 30 minutes. Why did God work through him? And then this is Pastor Zach Mercre's answer. Because he didn't know any better. And so many of us know better. I don't Know, if that's you, that can be me, I know better. And so I live in a world that's protected from this scary place where the Spirit of God can actually show up and encounter us because of a cynicism in my heart, because I've sealed off my spirit from the spirit of the living God who longs to encounter me and who longs to encounter you. We were made to encounter the Spirit in the Book of Acts. There's three circumstances in which there are disciples of Jesus and of John the Baptist, disciples who did not know about the Holy Spirit. They weren't in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost. And so while they believed in Jesus and they were followers of Jesus, they didn't know about the Holy Spirit. And the apostles would come in contact with these groups of people, and they say, have you received the Holy Spirit? They said, well, we don't know what that even means. I was like that a little bit. So when I became a Christian, I was 15 years old, and I grew up for those years of high school in a really solid discipling church. It was a puritan church, and Puritan churches have lots and lots of godly strengths. The movement of the Holy Spirit is not one of those strengths. If you want to get grounded in the word of God and learn to trust and obey God, appear it in church is fantastic. If you want to learn to surrender to the Holy Spirit, to have the Holy Spirit guide your mind and your heart, not so much. So I grow up through high school learning about God. I was a Christian. I had the Holy Spirit inside of me. I just really wasn't aware of what that meant. And I go to college, and in college I was a part of a very charismatic campus ministry out of a church in Fort Collins. And I would say it was not that doctrinally grounded. It was. That was not his strength. It had Holy Spirit stuff going on. In fact, it had abuses of Holy Spirit stuff, like, all over the place as a regular part of worship. And I'm not. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'll say I learned for the first time about really the existence of the Holy Spirit, about the third person, the Trinity, and how there was supernatural power available to work in me and that I could partner with that by surrendering to that, by coming under that, by welcoming that, and it changed my life. There's an invitation here. Do you hear it? Paul is instructing the Corinthian Church, and they have all kinds of issues and they have all kinds of issues, by the way, with the Holy Spirit. But before he gets to the issues, say, we've got to set everything aside. There's not a chance we can go into this fairly. If we try to understand, if we try to go in with our own strength, our own minds, our own ability to study our own knowledge of God's word from a human perspective, there isn't a chance. We have got to be surrendered to the Holy Spirit. And there's an invitation here for you and me to go beyond the measures of a natural world, to surrender, to live with the Holy Spirit. Today we usually close our sermons here at New Life with application. How do we take this into our lives? Instead, today we want to close with three invitations to prayer, three prayers to pray. As we step out of this sermon, we're going to actually create space after the sermon as we, even before we go into worship, to respond in those prayers. And they're prayers we also want us to take into our weeks. This week, the first prayer is simply this. Spirit, would you open my eyes? Spirit, would you open my eyes? Maybe you're in that place where you're like, yeah, I believe in Jesus. I believe this is the word of God. I believe in this stuff, but I've never stepped into it. I've never given my heart. I've never met the Spirit. Spirit to Spirit, would you pray? Spirit, would you open my eyes? There's an invitation there, even for repentance. Spirit, forgive me, God, forgive me for the way in which I've depended on myself. I've shut you off. I've created this religious life without you. Spirit, would you open my eyes? Second prayer is this. Spirit, would you keep me in step with you? Would you keep me in step with you? Over in Galatians, Paul has a similar passage to Ephesians. Ephesians, he talks about it being filled with the Spirit. In Galatians, he talks about it being in step with the Spirit. Here's what he Sundays. In Galatians 5:25, Paul says this. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. That is to say, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you've given your your life to him, if you've entrusted yourself to him, then what is it to be connected with the Spirit of God in your life so that you're living in step with him, you're listening to him, engaged with him. Greg's already given some of those footholds. Over in Ephesians 5, listening to the Spirit of God in his word, in worship, in gratitude, in submission, connected to the community of God. Maybe there's one of those in your life that you're out of step with, that you're like, yeah, not that one. I'm not going there. I'm, I'm going to cordon that one off. I'm going to protect myself, remain in control of that area. There's probably repentance there for a lot of us today. God, forgive me for the ways in which I have not been in step with you. Forgive me for the ways in which I've tried to do this life on my own. Second prayer, Spirit, would you keep me in step with you, Spirit? Would you open my eyes, Spirit, Would you keep me in step? A third prayer, Spirit, would you open the eyes of the one I love? Maybe it's a spouse, a friend, son or daughter, parents, neighbor, brother or sister at Christ, you know, someone, and they, they. I don't know. I've known people, for them singing, like engaging in worship is this which not only pushes away singing, it pushes away the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit's inviting us in, he's saying, I want you to experience. I want to be in you. I want to flow through you. I want you to grow with me in your mind, in your heart. So perhaps we're praying for ourselves to have our eyes opened more. Perhaps it's a prayer for ourselves to keep in step with, be filled with. Perhaps it's a prayer for someone else. Now, at the close of every service, we always open up the altar and say, if you're in need of prayer, would like someone to come alongside, you know, please come down. And, you know, our norm is maybe a dozen people or something like that come down. Because we're not really a come down church. Back to strengths and weaknesses. We're not a, we're a, hey, God will meet me right here. Not moving very much. Fine. He might meet me in my car on my way home in the safest environment. I know. But we're going to perfectly kind of open up the altar more to a type of an altar call this morning. Maybe the Holy Spirit is nudging you. Say, I want, I want more of you, Holy Spirit. I want to surrender to you, Holy Spirit. Open my eyes. Help me keep in step. Open the eyes of a loved one. And so we're going to have a time as we close, where we're going to have a few minutes of just quiet music. And I would invite you to come forward. You might say, well, can the Holy Spirit meet me in my chair just as much as if I come forward. Maybe, but he's nudging you. Respond. Don't let it slip by. Respond. There. There is power in responding to him, in moving to him, in bowing down before him, in receiving. So I would invite you to come forward. Just have a time of prayer for more of the Holy Spirit in your life. After a few minutes of quiet, the music will turn into our closing song. And so if you'd like someone to pray with you, prayer team will be up here. Just give a nod or glance. Someone will be glad to pray with you, for you, over you. If you'd like just private space to kneel down and pray, please come, let's pray. Lord, I. I pray over myself and over us. Corporately, you, Holy Spirit. You are God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. We want more of you. Want to surrender to you. Would you immerse us deeper into your presence? Propel us deeper into you. Consume us. Heart, soul, mind, strength, all that we are. That as spiritual beings, we might live this day in a continual encounter with you, Holy Spirit. So I ask that you would anoint this time of prayer, that you would draw us as a whole family deeper into your presence. For more of you, for your glory and for our good. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Psalm 32 and 51 are twin poems that describe David's prayer of brokenness and repentance. Psalm 32 paints a portrait of his emotional pain and how he became healed in the arms of his Heavenly Father.

The foundation of our faith completely rests on Jesus. Just as a building cannot stand without a cornerstone, you and I cannot truly understand who we are without giving our hearts to Jesus.

Jesus calls us to a lifestyle of serving, making disciples, evangelizing the world and reflecting the right view of the real God to those around us.

In the 14 chapters of the book of Zechariah we find a call to return from the Lord to His people. Zechariah has 8 visions in one night that speak to the activity of God with His people even though they find it difficult to see Him at work. God is always more present then we may know. More than any other Minor Prophet, Zechariah points directly to Jesus. The New Testament quotes or alludes to Zechariah over 70 times, especially during Passion Week. There’s much hope for modern day followers of Jesus tucked within these pages and the message of Zechariah. TRANSCRIPT: The Book of Zechariah 14 chapters (can be read in 20+ minutes) Historical Setting: Scholars note that Zechariah ministers alongside Haggai during the reign of Darius I (520–518 BC). The people had returned under Zerubbabel almost twenty years earlier (cf. Ezra 1–6), but opposition and discouragement caused the rebuilding of the temple to stall out… The prophet addresses a community suffering from what many commentators call "post-exilic disappointment." Book OUTLINE: The Call to Return to God (1:1-6) *(relational reengagement, not just rebuilding) Eight Visions and Rule of Priest (1:7-6:15) Question on Fasting (ch 7-8) (what is God asking) First Burden - Enemies without & Shepherds within (ch 9-11) Second Burden - Messiah’s Arrival (ch 12-14) Zechariah is one of the richest books in the Minor Prophets. It is both deeply rooted in Israel's post-exilic situation and astonishingly forward-looking toward the coming Messiah. More than any other Minor Prophet, Zechariah points directly to Jesus. The New Testament quotes or alludes to Zechariah over 70 times, especially during Passion Week. Zechariah 1:1-6 NLT In November of the second year of King Darius’s reign, the LORD gave this message to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah and grandson of Iddo "I, the LORD, was very angry with your ancestors. Therefore, say to the people, ‘This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. ’Don’t be like your ancestors who would not listen or pay attention when the earlier prophets said to them, ‘This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: Turn from your evil ways, and stop all your evil practices.’ "Where are your ancestors now? They and the prophets are long dead. But everything I said through my servants the prophets happened to your ancestors, just as I said. As a result, they repented and said, ‘We have received what we deserved from the LORD of Heaven’s Armies. He has done what he said he would do.’” After a sober reminder - to start the book (1:1-6), Zechariah is given eight visions covering different facets of the protection God provides from the unseen dangers facing these people…(1:7-6:15) - Horsemen among the myrtle trees — God is watching the whole earth - Four horns and four craftsmen — the powers that scattered Israel will themselves be broken - A man with a measuring line — Jerusalem will overflow its walls, and God himself will be a wall of fire around it; protecting them. - Joshua the high priest in filthy clothes; cleansed and reclothed — the coming Branch will remove guilt "in a single day”. - A gold lamp stand and the two olive trees — "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit" (4:6) - A flying scroll written on both sides — judgment on sin in the land. Two hidden sins (lying and thievery) can eat the heart out of a culture seeking to rebound spiritually. God will seek out, root out and deal with both. - A woman named Wickedness sealed in a basket, carried away — sin removed from the land. “Wickedness” is symbolized as a feral woman who gets removed from Israel and taken to Persia where she is enthroned. - Four chariots patrolling the earth — God's rule extends over all nations. Zechariah finishes his visions the way he started, with angelic patrollers among the strong empires. ===**But Israel has someone coming who will unite the roles of King and Priest to lead them into the future. Dallas Willard famously said: (tying to: Zech 4:6) "Grace is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning." These visions communicate one repeated truth: God is far more active than His people realize. One scholar observes: "The visions pull back the curtain so God's people can see heaven at work while earth appears unchanged.” Another section of the book (Ch. 7-8) comes two years later where God reveals to a delegation sent from a resettlement of Bethel why he has not responded to their corporate fasting in the fifth and seventh months. They’ve been doing these corporate fasts to remember the destruction of the Temple - seeking God’s help… but little seems to be happening… And God reveals through Zechariah — It is because they have made a division between their religious and their moral practices, similar to Isaiah 58:1-6, “the fast God chooses.” God explains how his discipline and even wrath came because the Israelites separated their religious and moral lives, just as we modern believers often experience severe cultural pressure to separate and compartmentalize our lives. Live out your faith in God - authentically, in real time - have it impact how you live — don’t hide it…deny it or dilute it to ‘fit in’ with the ways of the world The Coming Shepherd - King (Chapters 9–14) This is where Zechariah becomes breathtaking. Nearly every major section points toward Jesus. One could really preach the entire final week of Jesus' life almost exclusively from Zechariah's prophecies… =This is not incidental. This reminds us that the cross and resurrection weren't a divine improvisation — they were the fulfillment of a plan sketched centuries earlier by a prophet writing to a discouraged, half-finished community. *Conservatively, Jesus fulfilled at least 300+ OT prophecies in His earthly life and ministry. (**UNBELIEVABLE VALIDITY TO HIS CLAIM OF BEING THE MESSIAH - THOSE ODDS ARE SIMPLE INCALCULABLE) The Gospel Connection Every section of the Book - ultimately leads us to Jesus. —He is: the Branch (3) the Priest-King (6) the humble King (9) the Shepherd (13) the pierced Savior (12) the returning King (14) Zechariah isn't merely predicting events. He's inviting us to trust in a Person. A Savior that is to come. *We know NOW - on this side of the CROSS - this reality: A Savior that did come - one who died, rose from the dead on the 3rd day, He ascended and reigns supreme — and will one day come again! 4 Quick takeaways for us as Followers of Jesus **1. God's call to "return" is the doorway for everything (1:3).** Before the visions, before the promises, before the glorious future, comes an invitation: come back to me. This is the offer of relationship restored. Every act of returning, repenting we make is met, not by a distant God tallying our failures, but by One who says, "I will return to you." In Christ, this promise reaches its fullest expression — experience. —we’re brought into a Father's house by His grace…adopted & brought home. **2. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit" - this reorders how we measure success (4:6).** Zerubbabel was staring down what the text calls a "mountain" — an obstacle too large for a small, discouraged remnant community to move with human strength. God's answer wasn't a new strategy session; it was a reminder of whose Spirit was doing the work. = Zechariah reorients us - it’s: faithfulness, not force, that’s the currency of God's kingdom. He will supply the strength needed…we are to stay dependent upon Him (Abide - Jn 15) **3. The cleansing of Joshua is our own story (ch. 3).** Every one of us stands before God in filthy garments of our own making. —The accuser has real material to work with…. But the gospel is precisely this: God doesn't dispute the charge, he answers it — by removing the guilt and clothing us in something not of our own. Something he supplies… If you are in Christ, this has already happened to you. You are not defending yourself against accusations; you are already reclothed, forgiven, redeemed. **4. The pierced Shepherd is the center of history, and the center of our worship (12:10; 13:7).** Zechariah lets us watch, centuries early, as the nation looks on the one it pierced and grieves — and that grief becomes a fountain that cleanses. When we come to the Lord's Table, we are literally doing what Zechariah foresaw — looking on the pierced one, mourning our sin, and receiving the cleansing Jesus opened for us - the forgiveness Jesus extends us. EXTRA **5. Holiness isn't reserved for religious moments or places (14:20–21).** The final image of the book isn't a temple scene; it's an ordinary marketplace where mundane / everyday objects — the harness on a horse, a pot in someone's kitchen — bear the same inscription once reserved for only the high priest's turban: "Holy to the Lord." The end of the story isn't an escape from ordinary life — it’s ordinary life fully saturated with the presence of God. ==All of life - can be lived as Life As Worship Your Monday commute, your inbox, your laundry, your parenting, your volunteering, your working, your hobby-ing, your leisure-ing — these are the "horse bells" of your life, and God's design is that they too become holy - places and practices where the holy and ordinary can meet together and God is present and active there…all the time

In this week's episode of The Dr. Leaf Podcast, we dive deep into why this happens and how you can rebuild real adult friendships without forcing those awkward "we should catch up" conversations that never quite materialize. The Quiet Fade: Understanding Adult Friendship Loss A lot of friendship loss after 30 isn't a dramatic blow-up or a specific falling out. It's the slow stuff: delayed text replies, plans that keep getting pushed back, long gaps between conversations that start to feel normal. And here's the truth; it's not just you. Adult loneliness is widespread, and research consistently shows that close friendships often decline after the late 20s as life responsibilities stack up. The good news? Understanding why this happens is the first step toward rebuilding meaningful connections that can survive the complexity of adult life. The Psychology Behind Shifting Friendships As we move through our 30s and beyond, several psychological shifts occur that directly impact our friendships: Emotional and cognitive bandwidth becomes limited. When you're juggling career demands, family responsibilities, financial pressures, and personal health, your brain quite literally has less capacity for maintaining social connections. It's not that you care less about your friends; it's that your mental resources are stretched thin across competing priorities. Your values and life stages may diverge. The friends who were perfect companions in your 20s may be on completely different life paths now. Some are focused on building careers, others on raising families, and still others on entirely different pursuits. These natural divergences don't mean the friendship was shallow—they simply reflect the reality that adult life creates different contexts for connection. The structure that once held friendships together disappears. In school or early career years, you had built-in proximity and shared schedules. Now, maintaining friendships requires intentional effort without those natural touchpoints. 5 Practical Changes to Rebuild Your Inner Circle 1. Conduct a Social Energy Audit Stop guessing who drains you versus who supports you. A social energy audit means honestly assessing your relationships: • Which friendships leave you feeling energized and seen? • Which ones feel like obligations or one-sided performances? • Where are you giving from an empty tank versus a place of genuine connection? This isn't about being cold or transactional; it's about recognizing that your time and emotional energy are finite resources. Investing them wisely means you'll have more to give to the relationships that truly matter. 2. Practice Emotional Transparency Without Oversharing Real connection requires vulnerability, but vulnerability doesn't mean dumping everything on everyone. Emotional transparency means: • Sharing what's actually happening in your life, not just surface-level updates • Being honest about your capacity: "I'm in a really intense season right now, but I want to stay connected" • Asking for what you need: "I could really use a friend to just listen right now" The key is matching your level of sharing to the depth of the relationship, allowing it to grow organically rather than forcing intimacy. 3. Build Friendship Rhythms That Survive Busy Schedules Forget the pressure of constant availability. Instead, create sustainable rhythms: • Monthly coffee dates with one friend • A standing text check-in with another • Quarterly catch-ups with long-distance friends • Annual traditions that give you something to look forward to These rhythms remove the burden of constantly coordinating and create a container for connection that can weather busy seasons. 4. Stop Performing and Start Connecting With Purpose So much of adult friendship can become performative—trying to seem like you have it all together, curating the "right" social image, or maintaining friendships out of obligation rather than genuine connection. Real friendship thrives when you: • Show up as you actually are, not as you think you should be • Choose quality over quantity in your interactions • Let go of friendships that no longer serve mutual growth • Connect around shared values and genuine interest rather than social expectation 5. Commit to Mutual Repair When Distance Shows Up Distance will happen. Life will get busy. Someone will drop the ball. The question isn't whether gaps will occur; it's whether you're both willing to repair them. Mutual repair looks like: • Acknowledging when you've been distant without excessive guilt or defensiveness • Accepting that reconnection might feel awkward at first • Giving each other grace for the realities of adult life • Recommitting to the friendship without dwelling on what was lost The strongest adult friendships aren't the ones that never experience disconnection; they're the ones that can navigate it together. The Bottom Line Your shrinking friend group after 30 isn't a personal failure; it's a natural consequence of how adult life restructures your time, energy, and priorities. But that doesn't mean you're destined for isolation. By understanding the psychological shifts at play and implementing these five practical changes, you can build an inner circle that's smaller but stronger, quieter but more meaningful, and designed to thrive within the realities of your actual life rather than fighting against them. Sometimes the friendship isn't "over"; it just needs a better structure for adult life.

In the beginning, God created humankind in His image. We have been creating God in our image ever since. But what you end up with is a god who looks a lot like us! That’s the God we’re dismantling in this series so we can discover the true God, the God of the Bible. And that God might surprise you. God in the Hands of Angry People April 7th / April 8th Speaker: Dr. Mark Batterson Scripture: Ephesians 2:10; Haggai 2:23; Zachariah 2:8; Zephaniah 3:17 Sermon Summary: In the beginning, God created humankind in His image. We have been creating God in our image ever since. But what you end up with is a god who looks a lot like us! That’s the God we’re dismantling in this series so we can discover the true God, the God of the Bible. And that God might surprise you. Sermon Series Questions: 1. What did God reveal to you? 2. What are you going to do about it? 3. What is one element of God’s character you learned? Sermon Specific Questions: 1. What was you first impressions of God? 2. How would you describe God now? How does it differ from your first impressions? 3. What has influenced your view of God? 4. Our faith matures as you do. Have you ever had to deconstruct and reconstruct your faith? What did you have to learn or unlearn about God? God in the Hands of Angry People Sermon Discussion Guide Digging Deeper Celebrating the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. Martin Luther King challenged the view of God in many eyes by challenging other’s view of Christ. Christ is the image of the invisible God. So, in his open letter to fellow clergyman in his Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963), he stated: But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So, the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?” With your group, reflect on Dr. King’s question: What kind of extremists will you be? Recommended Resources: To learn more about the legacy of Dr. King, the history of U Street, and race relations within America, check out these resources: Jesus and the Disinherited (1996) Howard Thurmon Race, Class, and the Cappacino City: An Indepth Study of U Street (2017) Derek Hyra Where Do We Go from Here? Chaos or Community (1967) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. White Awake (2017) Daniel Hill

Be Still We are designed for time spent in the quiet, simply being with our heavenly Father. In the stillness, we have opportunity to pay close attention and to listen well (Psalm 46:10; 1 Kings 19:11-12). Pray Talk to God about your speed bump. Be honest. He already knows. Be aware for what He is teaching you (Ephesians 6:18; James 5:16). Engage with the Scripture Trust the Holy Spirit-inspired Word of God to be your guide, wisdom, and strength for each speed bump. Allow Scripture to wash your mind and restore your soul (Hebrews 4:12; Colossians 3:16). Meditate on Scripture In Joshua 1:8, we are commanded to mediate on God’s Word. By mulling over and pondering the words of God, we can choose to face the stuff of our speed bumps without allowing them to dominate our life. Meditating on Scripture helps us place our focus on God rather than our situation (Psalms 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8-9). Give Thanks A grateful heart invites us to a shift in our perspective and in our relationship with God and others. In the offering of thanks, we are invited to journey from loss to trust and from pain to praise. This is the beauty of thankfulness. (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Search Your Soul Soul searching is hard, but the benefits of the discomfort and, yes, even the pain are so worth it. It is through the recognizing, acknowledging, and releasing to God of the hard things we find in the searching that we are helped over the speed bumps and drawn closer to Him (Psalms 139:23-24). Spend Time with a Soul Friend A soul friend is one who knows your history, knows your weaknesses, celebrates your strengths, and knows God intimately. Draw them around you in prayerful conversation and invite them to help you pay attention to the activity of God, always, but especially when facing speed bumps (Ephesians 4:16). Journal The process helps you slow down, pay attention, and be present (Exodus 17:14; Revelation 21:9). Practice God’s Presence Especially during our speed bump seasons, we must learn to live with an ongoing awareness of the living, active, Holy God (Psalms 16:8-9). Identify Your Spiritual Markers Spiritual memory is crucial in the Christian life and especially helpful during the times when life throws speed bumps your way. A spiritual marker identifies a time of decision, direction, or transition when you clearly knew that God guided you. These markers are a tool for aiding spiritual memory. Without their help, your spiritual bearings can be lost (Joshua 4:8). Speak Truth to Yourself Destructive inner dialogue, which can run rampant when we’re facing speed bumps, can do us in. Be aware. Don’t allow it. As soon as you recognize it, STOP! Take a breath and begin speaking the truths of the Bible to yourself instead. talking to yourself. Gospel truth is always constructive. It builds up and brings life (Proverbs 23:7 KJV; 2 Corinthians 10:5). Submit Jesus says to us, “Trust Me. Put aside your striving, your control, your manipulating….and simply trust Me.” In submitting, we choose not to make things happen for ourselves and not to control people or situations, even if we can. Instead, we choose to come under the Lord’s authority, wisdom, and power. We choose to trust His sovereignty (1 Peter 5:6). Worship Worship is the spiritual practice of praising God’s greatness, goodness, and beauty. Worship should become the constant undertone of our lives. It is the single most powerful force in completing and sustaining restoration of our whole being to God. It may take strong determination, but when facing a speed bump – worship (Luke 1:46; Revelation 4:11). In the pages of God’s Word, we are told that when we do something, we are to do it for the Lord and not for ourselves (Colossians 3:23). No matter our circumstance, regardless of the outcome, in every speed bump, we are to give thanks to the Lord and rejoice. It may be difficult, but we are to rely on Him, praying and trusting His plan, knowing He is in control www.deborahhaddix.com..