Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Have you spent any time this week thinking about what God wants? Like, what does God want?
[00:00:08] Like, not, like, what does he want me to do?
[00:00:13] Or whatever, but, like, just, like, getting into his head about what he. I don't know if you ever think about this about anybody else. Like, do you think about, like, what your friends want or what. I mean, I know you think about what you want.
[00:00:26] Do you think about, like, what your friends want or what your. Maybe your spouse wants or what your kids want? Or you think about what other people want?
[00:00:36] Think about what God wants.
[00:00:41] I like to think about what God wants. I like to think about. Because honestly, I'm not really good at knowing what's good all the time. Like, I.
[00:00:52] Something will happen that I. That. That, you know, that isn't right. And my first response is like, oh, well, I'll deal with that. And the way that I deal with it, I don't. I'm not really.
[00:01:04] I'm not really good at dealing with things correctly all the time. I have to, like, funnel it through, like, okay, what does God want? I have to kind of almost reverse engineer my actions. Like, instead of starting with, like, well, I know how to fix that. I have to start with like, okay, what does God want out of this? And then work my way back from, like, what can I do to be a part of what God wants? So I asked what God wants a lot, mostly because I figured out I'm really bad at doing good stuff on my own.
[00:01:35] So I like to look in the Bible to see what God wants. It helps me. And I think it's just generally I found that I feel closer to people when I think about what they want. I married somebody that isn't shy about what she wants, and I find that very helpful. I don't have to, like, I don't have to wonder. I get to feel close to her because she's very clear about what she wants and I can be a part of that. I like that.
[00:02:00] So now you're all going to be like, tell me what you want all the time. Thank you. I appreciate that. Not that I will always do it for you, but I like to know what you want.
[00:02:09] There's this passage that I read in Jeremiah that made me.
[00:02:13] I don't know, it just felt very tender to me and, like, thinking about what God wants, He says, Jeremiah 3. 19. I've always wanted to treat you as my children and to give you the best land, the most beautiful inheritance on earth.
[00:02:30] I wanted you to call me Father.
[00:02:37] I don't know if you've ever liked, wanted a relationship with somebody, maybe somebody you were close to at some point, and then for whatever reason, they kind of, like, abandoned you or kind of turned away from you, and, or like, they just decided they didn't want to be friends with you or maybe even closer than friends, whatever that was.
[00:02:59] You wanted to have a relationship with them, and they didn't want to reciprocate that relationship. And you think about the tenderness of saying, I wanted to love you and I wanted you to love me.
[00:03:14] And, you know, and the other person said, well, I don't want that back.
[00:03:20] You know, that's where God is here in Jeremiah. He's talking to the Israelites, right? When they're on the eve of their most.
[00:03:29] I mean, one of the toughest spots in their history.
[00:03:34] They're just about to lose everything.
[00:03:37] And God isn't starting all this from the perspective of, well, I'll show you, you did wrong. And I know how to deal with that. I know how to fix that.
[00:03:46] What he's starting with is like, this isn't what I want at all. All I want is to be close to you.
[00:03:54] I want us to be family.
[00:03:58] I, I, As I was reading this, you know, I thought, like, man, what would it be like if, if one of my daughters or both my daughters were like, I don't, I don't want to call you dad anymore. Like, you're not my dad. You know, like, that would be devastating.
[00:04:17] When I'm reading the Bible, when I'm reading the Old Testament, sometimes I can be, I can read what God's saying. I can see, I can see some of the actions, some of the choices that he makes. And I can think of, man, that's really harsh. Like, why is he doing that? Like, that seems very, almost cruel. Some of the things that he does. Like, why is he. That punishment seems like over the top or something like that.
[00:04:42] But I think we're missing the key to his heart. Like, none of the stuff that we think is harsh has anything to do with what he wants. There is something behind it that gets to what he wants. A restoration of relationship. That is what he wants.
[00:05:03] It's what he would enjoy. And it's literally life and death for human beings. Like, what he wants here isn't just like, oh, it would be nice if we were in relationship. Like, your very life depends on this. You don't understand that for eternity, you're like, I am the source of life. Like, to not be in relationship with me, it hurts me. And it's the End of you.
[00:05:29] Like, I want this, and I want this for you. And so anything that we see after that, that seems harsh, we have to read it through the lens of what his goal, what he's trying to accomplish in humanity, in helping to break these hard hearts and to change these people so that they can live, so that we can live.
[00:05:55] So I want to go back and look at kind of an arc here throughout the Old Testament a little bit and see just a quick look at, like, what was happening to get to this point that they were no longer willing to call him Father. He says, I've always wanted you to have the best land, beautiful inheritance on Earth. This is like.
[00:06:13] To have land was to have, like, means of surviving. You know, you could work the land.
[00:06:20] Purpose, meaning, a sense of place, of belonging.
[00:06:23] Having land wasn't just like, oh, yeah, you get to be rich.
[00:06:26] It's like, you get to be a people that has meaning and to be able to be able to work that land and to be able to provide for your family.
[00:06:40] This goes all the way back to Genesis. Like, God creates Adam and Eve and he places them in this good land to work. Adam and Eve are made to work this land. Why, this is what he wants for them from the start.
[00:06:55] Not simply to just, like, sit around and eat grapes all day and to, like, lounge in the pool. Like, he wants them to have purpose and meaning and to find their worth in cooperating with God in the. Participating in the.
[00:07:10] In his good creation that he's. That he's built. He wants that for him. For us humans turn away from God. We call it the Fall. Sinners into the world.
[00:07:21] So much death takes place, so much hurt and pain takes place. And then you see. You see God do a series of actions all throughout Genesis where he's working to, like, help bring humanity back to him. And then you get to Genesis 12, 12 and 15, that area. And Abraham comes on the scene, and there's this really neat relationship where you see God actively. Like, you could see this clear. Like, I am going to use you to bring about what I want.
[00:07:55] That thing that was lost in the fall, where you called me Father and you had purpose and you had this belonging. I'm gonna work with you to restore that. I'm gonna make you the father of a great nation of many people. I'm gonna give you a sense of place. I'm gonna give you this land. You're gonna call it the promised land. I'm gonna give you this space. You're gonna be able to reclaim some of what was lost. We're gonna begin, you and I, restoring this thing that I've always wanted for creation through humans. I've wanted this for you from the start. And, Abraham, you and I are going to do this together.
[00:08:29] And they start off with. They call it a covenant. A covenant was just like this promise this.
[00:08:36] It was like, you know, like a contract that'd be written between people. But we're like. We write contracts and we say, like, I'll do this and I'll do that, and if not, like, we'll have to go to court. They would write these contracts. They would say these covenants, I'll do this for you.
[00:08:55] I will be your God and you'll be my people. That kind of thing. And they would.
[00:09:01] This was very common. This is like, everybody around here did this. They would take these animals, like, he took a.
[00:09:07] Took a cow, took a goat, took sheep. You'd cut it in half, pretty bloody. And you'd put one half of the animal over here and one half of the animal over there, over there and over there, over there and over there. So there's this. Like, there are these animals cut in half and laid open this way.
[00:09:26] And you and the person that you made this covenant with walked between the animals.
[00:09:33] In the Bible, in Hebrew, it actually says they cut a covenant. Like, you walk between the cut, you walk in the cut. And. And when you did that, you were saying, if I don't fulfill my end of this covenant, may this happen to me.
[00:09:50] All right? They didn't have, like, jails and prisons. They didn't have excess money. They didn't have systems like, we have to deal with people that break their promises, break their vows. How do you. How do two people say, we're going to.
[00:10:06] Like, we're going to honor this agreement.
[00:10:09] You said, I will die.
[00:10:11] I will die if I don't like your word meant something because your life meant something. If you didn't like, if you didn't honor your word, your life was forfeit. And when you cut that covenant and walk between it, you were acknowledging and saying, my life is forfeit. I will sacrifice my own self if I don't stand up to my end of the covenant.
[00:10:34] Different times, things are different now. That seems odd to us. But that's what it meant to cut a covenant in these ancient times.
[00:10:41] Well, so what's supposed to happen is the two of them walk through this covenant together. But this interesting thing happens. Jesus, or. I'm sorry, after Abraham cuts this covenant, lays it out, he then immediately falls asleep. It's heading towards nightfall and he just passes out. I imagine it was exhausting cutting those animals in half. He lays them out. Before he can participate in this covenant, he falls asleep. And while he's asleep, he has this vision. It says, Abraham fell in. This is Genesis chapter 15, starting with verse 12.
[00:11:16] Abraham fell sound asleep and great terror overwhelmed him in this sleep. It felt.
[00:11:23] It felt. He felt evil in his heart.
[00:11:28] When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot with a flaming torch passed between the animal parts. Now, this is really.
[00:11:38] Those images were specifically things that were normal to like. Like ward off evil spirits or to, like. These are. These are light in darkness. They were power, they were fire and the smoke. Like, these are. These are images that would would have come to mind if he was thinking, I am. I'm in the presence of evil and. And I am clinging to what is good, to. To the power that can defeat evil. This is imagery that would come to his mind as one of these people when he.
[00:12:10] As he was dreaming. And it says, that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham to your descendants, I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River.
[00:12:22] Now, he doesn't say, like, I will give this land.
[00:12:26] It's given. This is yours now. It's a done deal.
[00:12:30] It will be established over time. But it's already settled. I've already done this for you.
[00:12:35] The. Really, if you were reading this, if you were one of Abraham's contemporaries hearing this story, you would have said it didn't.
[00:12:45] The covenant wasn't like, it's not done. You never walked between the animals, Abraham, since you didn't walk between them, you didn't. You never said, may this happen to me.
[00:12:58] Your part of the covenant didn't take place.
[00:13:01] You're not on the hook for anything.
[00:13:04] There's a covenant that's being made here. Both people say, my life is forfeit if I don't do this. I will make all the sacrifice if I do something wrong and God says, go to sleep, Abraham, I've got this.
[00:13:21] I.
[00:13:22] Not based on you doing anything right, not based on your descendants doing everything right.
[00:13:30] I have decided that I'm going to make what I want to happen, happen through you, with you, despite you.
[00:13:43] I will make the sacrifice whatever it takes.
[00:13:49] This is something that Christians would look back on very often as they're looking to Christ and looking at the sacrifice that God made through his own son, and say, this is something that is unique to the character of God among people, among all the false gods. The idea that.
[00:14:06] The idea that God makes the sacrifice on our behalf shows up at the very start of his relationship with humans and restoring humanity back to what he wanted in the first place, for us to call him Father.
[00:14:22] Well, it's a good thing, because Abraham didn't trust God's promise, but God still kept his covenant.
[00:14:29] He ended up sleeping around with another woman in order to have kids that he thought God couldn't bring the way God said he was going to. His own son lied his grandson Jacob deceived his father, stole his brother's blessing. Joseph's brother sold Joseph into slavery, like, every step of the way.
[00:14:51] This story is so weird if you compare it to other ancient stories. Like, the heroes in the story are epically awesome.
[00:15:01] In ancient stories in the Bible, the heroes are awful heroes, terrible heroes. They're constantly failing. It's, like, abnormal for an ancient story for the people to turn out this, like, this lame.
[00:15:20] But the point of the story wasn't that Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or any of their descendants were the heroes. The point is, in the story is that God is the hero.
[00:15:32] He is the one that cut the covenant. He's the one that said, I will take the sacrifice.
[00:15:39] I will make this happen through you, despite you.
[00:15:45] While the Israelites do get the promised land, the story, I love reading Joshua because it's, like, one of the high points the Old Testament. It's like, man, they, like, finally get their act together. Like, so much lame, like, excuses and whining and, like, it's so hard to read some of that stuff in Genesis where they're like, oh, things were so much better back in Egypt. Like, no, it wasn't. Like, that was terrible. But they're like, oh, I hate it now. Like, they're constantly whining about stuff. And then finally, this generation gets raised up while they're in the desert, not under good times. They enter the promised land, and they are like.
[00:16:20] They're like, only be strong and courageous. They're like, yep, let's do that. They went in and they, like, they followed God to a T. Okay?
[00:16:28] They did what they were supposed to do. And then, like, immediately, the very next generation, they go back and they do things that make every previous generation look like child's play.
[00:16:38] They end up doing things that are so thoroughly disgusting that you're like, why in the world would God have ever thought that these people would be the ones that he would fulfill his covenant through? This is from Judges, chapter three. Judges comes a little bit after, like, right after Joshua. This is like before. This is when the Israelites are like coming into the promised land, living without a king. First, they're supposed to be living under the rule of. Rule of God written on their own heart because they want to follow God, because they are the people of God. They don't have a king telling what to do. They should be doing what they do, like us. No one has a king telling you you have to follow God.
[00:17:12] You are free to follow God or not follow God. That's kind of the way it was in Judges. You're free to do it. Well, they instead Judges, chapter three. This is like early right says the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Over and over again it says each one did what was right in their own heart. There's not much different in doing what's evil in the sight of the Lord and doing what your own conscience tells you to do. Can you imagine your conscience and your conscience getting to the same spot all the time? Now imagine the conflict that happens because we each trust our own conscience and the justification we have in saying that my will be done over your will.
[00:17:49] Measure that out over time among people and imagine what you don't have to imagine. Just what happens in the world when everyone does what's right in their own eyes.
[00:17:58] Evil. Evil in the eyes of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God, and it says they served the bells and the Asherah. Now this is.
[00:18:08] These were gods that were normal in the area. There are several other gods that were mentioned. Jeremiah even says, like, every town and every person has like a number of gods they worship. That's like.
[00:18:20] It's as diverse as there are households. And that's actually true. So the way it would work is in your household you'd have like, say over your mantle place for your fireplaces, you would have like these little statues that are the gods that you'd worship. And. And your household might have like these six gods or these four gods, and your household might have these three gods. It's like Pokemon cards you're collecting different, like, this is my deck and that's your deck. And some combination of them speak to what your values are. And this is what I care about. Well, the two big ones were baal. He's like the guy with thunderbolts, like Zeus, really. He's like the powerful God and his consort. His wife is Ashoreth. She is. He is the God of like, power and rain and thunderstorms, and she's the goddess of fertility.
[00:19:04] They're the ones that collectively, both of them are bringing about all of the weather that's helping the crops grow and the crops growing, fertility and the environment. Everything that they need to survive is coming out of these two gods. They have other children and other gods that kind of flow out of that. But these are the two big ones that are mentioned.
[00:19:27] I mean, what's so bad about that, right?
[00:19:31] What's so bad about, like, you know, wanting to be prosperous?
[00:19:38] Well, there's a difference between being a good steward of your land and worshiping your land, being a good steward of your stuff and putting your faith in your stuff, believing that your stuff is what's gonna keep you safe, that's one thing.
[00:19:56] But also the way that you worshiped at these. Okay, I want you to take yourself outside of what you know to be okay first. Cause this is gonna sound crazy maybe, but it was very normal to worship BAAL by sacrificing your own kid, your firstborn son, for instance. You would like, literally, child sacrifice. Firstborn daughter, maybe. Firstborn. I'm a firstborn.
[00:20:28] Very common to kill off your firstborn kid in sacrifice of baal.
[00:20:37] Asherah.
[00:20:39] About fertility, it was very common to participate in crazy. Like, I don't know, for us, maybe it's, I don't know, maybe less and less crazy. But sex acts like it was all about fertility. And you're thinking fertility of the land, but it also dealt with fertility. And so like temple prostitution. And it just like, basically lots of sex with people that aren't your spouse as acts of worship. To talk about how important fertility, to make it a point, how important fertility was to you. You spent time, you know, having lots of sex. And so they had like deity prostitutes. And people who worshiped would participate in orgistic type stuff. Some like, numbers talks about it.
[00:21:30] And there's stuff outside the Bible talks about it.
[00:21:34] And I look at that and I think, like, can you imagine God's people?
[00:21:41] God gives them this promised land. He's like, don't. God's like, do not interrupt these other people.
[00:21:45] This is not the way you live. It's very important that you come in. I want you to be the people that reform what it means to be human for us to be in relationship where I'm your father and you're my son. But these other practices have nothing to do with what's good. You can't have anything to do with them. They go into their promised land, the very next generation, they're like, hey, my neighbors or having fun.
[00:22:09] I'm gonna do that.
[00:22:11] And you might Think like. Well, the whole, like, sacrificing your kids doesn't sound fun.
[00:22:15] This is gonna sound harsh, but I'm trying to. I'm always trying to think like, these people weren't more evil than us.
[00:22:27] These are humans. Humans are humans.
[00:22:31] What happens? Is there, like, a commonality here that might.
[00:22:37] Might ring true for us?
[00:22:39] And I thought, you know, in the 1960s, it became very common for us to express free love in our culture. And for sexuality become, like, the core of who you are, it's like a fundamental right that you can express your sexual. And for anybody to, like, judge anyone else because of whatever they do sexually is, like, wrong. Is considered evil. Like, sex is like a freedom that humans have, and it's even unhealthy to repress sexuality of any sort, like free love.
[00:23:15] And then right after that, abortion becomes like, a right.
[00:23:21] Because if you're going to have sex outside of your prepared being prepared to act on what comes from sex, you gotta do something.
[00:23:32] You either are stuck with the results or you find some way not to be responsible for the results of sex.
[00:23:41] And like, in our culture, one out of every four pregnancies is aborted.
[00:23:48] So every three kids that are born, there's one that's aborted.
[00:23:53] Vast majority of them aren't because of, like, health issues. It's just because of. It's not. It's a.
[00:23:59] It's. That's not why I had sex. And so now that we have this kid, it's a real problem for us. I'm not prepared to deal with the results of sex.
[00:24:09] I'm not even saying that to, like, the reason. I'm saying that when you look back at what the Israelites were doing, I don't think it's a lot different than us, honestly.
[00:24:24] They loved participating in the sexual practices of the people around them, and they appreciated having the ability to deal with the results of those sexual practices the way the people around them dealt with it.
[00:24:40] I can kind of understand why they were drawn to that.
[00:24:46] I think our culture is drawn to that.
[00:24:50] All that to say when I first read that, I think this is evil stuff. And then I'm like, okay, maybe this is human stuff, you know, maybe.
[00:25:01] Maybe it's not so different than what we're used to.
[00:25:06] All right?
[00:25:08] This is what God is dealing with. I want you to call me Father. I want to give you good things.
[00:25:18] And I know that I'm not going to depend on you, trust on you to make this happen. I've got to be the one to make this happen.
[00:25:28] But you're not doing it. You're falling so far away from me.
[00:25:33] The whole process of restoring this world through you is not happening. Something has to give.
[00:25:39] In Jeremiah 7:18, he makes it clear it's not even just the husbands that are doing this or the. He says, the children gather the wood, the fathers kindle the fire, the women knead the dough. The whole family is involved in making these cakes to the Queen of Heaven. The Queen of Heaven, that's Asherah.
[00:25:57] And they pour out drink offerings to their other gods in order to spite me. The whole culture has become wrapped up in this.
[00:26:06] These insane practices in worship to these other gods.
[00:26:13] When Jeremiah confronts the people with it, when he says, this is deep in. This is Jeremiah 44.
[00:26:21] By this time, they've already dealt with a lot of the repercussions of this.
[00:26:25] Assyria has come and already wiped out Jerusalem. At this point, Israel, he's just talking to Judah. At this point, Judah is like, on there. They're about to get taken over too. Like, Israel is getting wiped out little by little. And Jeremiah's like, this is happening because you.
[00:26:42] You're not understanding what it means for God to be your father. You're missing out on it.
[00:26:49] This response from the people to me is.
[00:26:52] Is devastating.
[00:26:54] Jeremiah says, you've got to stop.
[00:26:58] And in chapter 44, he says, we will not listen to the message. You have spoken to us in the name of the Lord.
[00:27:05] We will certainly do everything we've said we would.
[00:27:10] Everything we said we do we would.
[00:27:13] We will burn incense to the queen of heaven, to Asherah. We will pour out drink offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors and our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. I hear you. I hear you being clear about what God says that it takes for us to come back to him.
[00:27:33] We fully reject God as father. We will keep doing.
[00:27:38] In spite of everything that's happening, we will keep doing what we want to do. This is our right.
[00:27:45] This is the way we want to live.
[00:27:48] We hear you and we fully reject you.
[00:27:56] All God ever wanted was to give them a good life, to call them his children, and for him to call them Father.
[00:28:05] They said, I hear you, and we fully reject you.
[00:28:10] We want nothing to do with you.
[00:28:18] Jeremiah 11. This is previous.
[00:28:21] God's already predicting what's going to happen here.
[00:28:24] And he says, this is what's going to have to happen.
[00:28:28] I, the Lord, say this, I will soon bring disaster on the people that they will not be able to escape when they cry out to me for help. I will not listen to them.
[00:28:38] Then those living in the towns of Judah and Jerusalem will go and cry out for help to their gods to whom they have been sacrificing.
[00:28:46] However, those gods will by no means be able to save them when disaster strikes them.
[00:28:52] This is in spite of the fact that the people of Judah have as many gods as they have towns. And the citizens of Jerusalem has set up as many altars and sacrifices to that disgusting God BAAL as they have streets in the city.
[00:29:08] They're going to return away from me. They're going to turn to that God. In spite of all that, they're going to lose everything.
[00:29:17] They're going to experience utter destruction.
[00:29:21] I read that, and like I said, without the background, I think, well, this is harsh. Like, you know, they made poor choices. But why would God want to do this? God did not want to do this.
[00:29:34] God wanted them to be his children and for them to call him Father instead. They lost all of the blessings that come from having that father.
[00:29:46] They wanted the stuff that God had, but they didn't want a relationship with God.
[00:29:53] It's just like the story of the prodigal son. Dad, I wish you as good as I want my inheritance. In other words, for me, you're dead. I don't want you. I want your stuff. Let me be very clear about that.
[00:30:10] That's what they said.
[00:30:13] And God said, yeah, you're going to lose all your stuff.
[00:30:19] Now this is where it gets really interesting.
[00:30:21] Over the next several weeks, we're going to be looking at the story of Daniel. First seven chapters in Daniel, as you're reading through Daniel, as you're reading through the story, and as you look at the rest of the history of Israel, something, I think miraculous takes place.
[00:30:38] Ever since they, like, literally, from the time of Joshua, just as soon as the end of the promised land, they immediately started rejecting God. They started being unfaithful to God.
[00:30:52] They were like spiteful children.
[00:30:57] They lose everything. They go into captivity in Babylon. And while they're there, some of them begin to say, this doesn't work for us anymore.
[00:31:09] We have to follow God alone.
[00:31:12] God rescues them while they're in captivity.
[00:31:16] They come back to the promised land and they never worship other gods again.
[00:31:24] Something happened when, when God causes them to lose everything they wanted. They wanted the stuff and not the relationship. They go into captivity, they lose everything. The stuff.
[00:31:37] Intense humiliation, the degree of humiliation, embarrassment that takes place to lose your entire identity as a people and then for God to redeem you. There and to bring it back. And they said, we will never worship other gods again. This is when they actually became truly monotheistic, like right from Abraham. There is no other God, like he is the one and only God. But they kept acting as if there were other gods. Finally, after, after the captivity in Babylon, after they return, they finally understand what it means to worship one God alone.
[00:32:14] And I have to think there's something about. There's like a 500 year period from the time they get back into the promised land. They start to live as if there is only one God. I gotta say, I don't think they all.
[00:32:27] They don't always get what it means for that one God to be father.
[00:32:32] There's a lot of shoulds instead of wants in the way that they follow that one God. Because when they were dealing with their wants, they kept turning to all kinds of crazy sex stuff and like following after other gods. They didn't trust their wants anymore. But based on the shoulds, at least they started looking at all that law as should instead of want.
[00:32:52] They at least began to live as if there was only one God.
[00:32:57] Jesus is able to come into that culture and to begin to redeem the world.
[00:33:04] We're going to be looking at this turn, I think it's a part of the Old Testament that I don't think gets enough attention. The shift that happens in the people of Israel coming out of their captivity and back into the promised land, what happens there. And Daniel is a good person to look at, to see his character and his life that they bring back into Israel.
[00:33:27] And I think also as we're leading up to Easter, the fact that Jesus continually calls himself the son of man, the Son of man, he is pointing back to Daniel when he says that, to the Book of Daniel. There's something that's happening here in the Book of Daniel that's important for us to understand what it means for our covenant with God to be based on the sacrifice of Christ and for us to be finally fully submissive to him as our Father.
[00:33:52] And we can see that in the Book of Daniel over the next few weeks.
[00:33:56] Let's pray.
[00:34:01] Father God, I pray that we, as always, are able to approach your word with curiosity and with joy, knowing that all this was captured by people that had every reason to hide it. Lord, that they are revealing some of their darkest moments because it was more important to reveal your goodness than it was to hide their own evil.
[00:34:24] And Lord, it is for our good, because we see so much of us in them.
[00:34:33] But God, more importantly, we see you every step of the way, loving them and knowing that you love us too.
[00:34:42] God, I pray that you do not need to send us way to captivity to get our attention.
[00:34:48] But we know that no matter what, our relationship is based on you, not on us. And we are grateful for that.
[00:34:56] We love you. Amen.
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