Endure Hardship as Discipline

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, welcome to the Vine Life Church podcast. We're in Boulder, Colorado, and we're following Jesus by staying rooted in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission so that hearts are awakened with his awe-inspiring love. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us at VineLife.com. For now, here's a short sermon from last week in Avine Life. Again, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Good morning, everyone. Good to see you guys. Thank you, Jeanette, for the walkthrough. She's done a lot of work this season as we're coming into the fall for our groups. It's gonna be great. We got different options for you. The one thing that is non-optional, though, is do not check out, do not be passive this fall season. Um, it's crucial right now in the body of Christ that we are engaging one another, we're growing up into everything that God has for us. Amen. So, hey, if we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Luke. And uh so excited to uh to be with you this morning. And we are gonna dive into the word today. And uh how many of you guys love the word of God? Thank you. Thank you for that. Um it is our nourishment, it's the bread of life, it is the word to us and in Jesus is what we feed on this morning. So I hope that as we open the word this morning, let's let's snap out of the kind of the normal sit in my seat, listen to a guy talk thing, um, and let's engage that there's something the Lord wants to say to me. There's something the Lord wants to speak to you. I I'm always shocked after a sermon when somebody comes up to me and says, Man, that was awesome. I loved when you said this. It led to so much breakthrough for me, and I'm thinking the whole time, I actually never said that. And it happens all the time. Like I never said that. I think there was somebody else speaking to you in that moment. It happens all the time. And uh and what that means is the Holy Spirit wants to speak to you. The Holy Spirit's a better teacher than I am, Holy Spirit's a better pastor than I am, and the Holy Spirit is here to teach you. So let's pray together. God, we thank you this morning for your spirit. We thank you that even now, as we share this space together, that it is holy and set apart for you. And as you've drawn us into this room, as you've drawn us to this live stream today, we thank you for your intentionality towards us. I thank you, God, for your commitment to us, your commitment to our maturity, your commitment to convincing us of your endless love. And today, God, would you open us up? Let us be fertile soil, let us be a fruitful vineyard vineyard on a fertile hill, ready to receive all of the seeds of kingdom thought this morning. And it's in your name we pray together. Everybody said, Amen. So, hey, listen, um, if you've been journeying with us this year, we have been walking through the New Testament, just little vignettes, kind of a pretty swift uh walking through the scriptures. If you haven't joined us, you can always go to vinelife.com/slash Bible, and uh there's a sheet that'll catch you up. We've been reading Monday through Friday. This last couple weeks we've been in Hebrews, and uh we will be moving on to the Gospel of John next week, which is my favorite. Uh it's my favorite book in the New Testament, and um I'm excited for that one. So this week, start reading through John. Um, but we're gonna be in Hebrews today. If you have your Bibles, open up to Hebrews chapter 12, and uh and while you're doing that, your Bibles, your iPhones, even if you don't have it on your iPhone, just pretend that you have it on your iPhone and you can just read it from the screen. Just don't want you to miss out, guys. Don't want you to miss out. So Hebrews is a dense, uh, meaty letter in the New Testament. Uh the author is uh the author of this particular book uh is disputed. Some say Paul, others would, over the last hundred years, other scholars would say we're not actually sure who it was, but we know that the author was writing to a primarily Jewish, uh messianic um audience that they would have some understanding of Hebrew scriptures and Old Testament references. And so it's they they cover a lot of ground. The author of Hebrews covers a lot of ground. If you were not here last week, our good friend John Peterson was here. He did a pretty swift walkthrough some of the covenants that were that were rolled out through the book of Hebrews and how Jesus was the fulfillment of all three of those covenants. Um but today we are going to be coming into chapter 12. This last couple chapters is helpful for us. This is an important little movement at the end of Hebrews. Um chapter 11, you might know as the chapter that many call the hall of faith. It's the hall of faith. In chapter 11, we read through bits and pieces of uh men and women all throughout scripture who were invited into the story of God, Abraham and Gideon and David and Moses and all these men and women who and Rahab and who participated in the story of God and even their participation, they never quite got to see what they had joined in for. They never quite got to see the fulfillment of the promises. It's the same for many of us. We will never see the fullness of what God wants to do, likely, in our in our lifetime, and many, many won't, but that doesn't mean that we don't pursue the things of God. We just said that it's so much bigger than what we'll be able to see. What God is doing is so much that it's so much more expansive than our small lives, and yet with our lives, we're able to give what we have into the story of God. What a gift, right? What a gift to be able to enter into the promises of God. So, chapter 11 talks about these men and women who followed the Lord, and many of their lives did not end well. Um, it went very badly for them. We read about those who were fed to lions, we read about those who were sawn into, we read about those who died at the hands of sinners, including our Savior Jesus. And even earlier this week, I was I was reading this recounting of what happened to all of the early disciples and all the apostles and what church history would say happened to pretty much all of them. And it was not pretty. Um, definitely R-rated for a church service to talk about these things. Um I was reading what happened to Peter, what happened to Nathaniel, what happened to James, what happened to just kind of the list goes on and on and on. And we read this list of men and women who gave themselves into this pursuit. They received the gift of life and gave themselves to it, even to the point of death and atrocious deaths. And so the writer of Hebrews is writing to a people who are undergoing hardship and suffering, a lot of hardship and suffering. And he's trying to encourage them. He said, Listen, there's a whole list of people that have come before you. And then in chapter 12, he he starts to shift the conversation to how they are assured, how they should think about the hardship they are going through. Now, when we think about hardships we face, it's a little difficult when you read passages of scriptures, you read about men and women dying horrible deaths, and we're and we're thinking, well, my life isn't quite as bad as that, so what am I supposed to do here? And to be clear, for most of us, it's not the same as first century believers. We live in a part of the world that most of us, at least from what we can see right now, um we we don't hear stories of martyrs within the United States of America in 2021. Will that happen later? Who knows? But at this point, that's not most of our experiences. And yet in modern times, even without extreme persecution, many of you uh maybe walk through hardships of different kinds, right? And and and you've heard of, and maybe you are currently walking through what you would consider hardships, whether that's external circumstances of things that have happened outside of your control, the loss of loved ones, sickness, disease, that kind of thing. Maybe it's the loss of employment, just the this moving around, the loss of relationships. Some of us in this current time, I have a lot of conversations with men and women where you wouldn't, you wouldn't, you wouldn't look at their uh their lives as extremely hard per se, and yet there's an unraveling of faith. There's confusion, there's questions that seems to lead to this kind of disintegration of faith. And so I think even in our context, as we approach Hebrews chapter 12, um, and even in the church, many are walking around with a spirit of heaviness, a spirit of what do I do with the things that I'm experiencing? And so that's kind of the vantage point I want to jump into this chapter with. And one of the questions that I believe we can ask as we come into this chapter, one of the things we can ask about our lives is, is it possible for us to get to a point where we actually look forward to hardship rather than live to avoid it? I just want to just just let's just let that question provoke you for a second. Is it possible for us to get to a point where we actually look forward to hardship rather than live to avoid it? Does it make you squirm a little bit? Is it possible? Or maybe another way to phrase it is can we look forward to the opportunities presented to us in hardship rather than live our days to resist and avoid anything that feels uncomfortable. Okay? Let's read Hebrews chapter 12. Open up to chapter 12, verse 3, and I'm gonna read uh let's see here. This is the ESV. Actually, let's put it up on the screen. I'm just gonna read it from the screen here because I think this is the NIV. Is this chapter is this verse 3? Alright, let's just start here. Therefore, I think this might be verse 1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joys that before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Let's just stop there for a second. Consider him who endured such opposition to Jesus, what the weight of what was put against him from the outside in, external forces pressing in. Consider him so that what? You will not what? And so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Let's consider him so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. Let's go to the next slide. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as as a father addresses his son? Okay, so at this point, the writer of Hubis pulls in Proverbs, a proverb from Proverbs chapter 3. Okay. So he quotes this proverb that he's that the audience would have known. Because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. And then that reference to end quote there, and this is the next verse. Endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as his children. Let's continue. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the father of spirits and live? They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. So let's stop there. So as the writer is helping them frame in what their experiences in this picture of hardship, he he he he kind of flips, he he he starts to overlay a metaphor on top of it that might seem a little off. I mean, they're they're experiencing persecution. This is 65 AD. Things are pressing in against the believers. And he says, Here's what I want you to think about this. Have you forgotten that the father disciplines his sons, sons and daughters? We'll just say that might cause us to be curious for a second. It's like, how can we take persecution against the church and start to overlay this family relational dynamic? Does it have anything to do with the father's doing? No, there's enemies out there that are coming against me. There's things that are happening. And the author of Hebrews says, no, no, no. Have you forgotten that the father disciplines his sons? Because he loves his sons. And anyone who's not disciplined is considered ill illegitimate. But the father, out of his goodness, disciplines us. And what he gets to in verse 7 comes down to really a key verse for us, a key verse to help us frame in a new paradigm through which we experience any kind of hardship, whether big or small, and it's this endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as his children, for what children are not disciplined by the Father. Passion translation says it like this fully embrace God's correction as part of your training. The footnote says, What you endure is meant to educate you. So here's why that's important. Many of us get tripped up, we get confused on what circumstances are from God and what circumstances are from the enemy, or just our enemies, or just our mistakes, right? So if we walk through difficult things, you've lost your job, your wife is mad at you, your husband has left you, you are um your car is breaking down, you you you can't figure out this next season of life. Whatever that looks like, whether it's personal, whether it's global, cultural things that we're walking through, this really just makes it easy to sum it all up. Endure any kind of hardship as discipline. Well, did it come from God, or this was just my own mistakes and shortcomings? Doesn't matter. Regard all hardship as discipline from the Lord. That doesn't mean God caused everything to happen, but the invitation here is endure hardship as if it is discipline. It is a training from the Lord. Notice that the word discipline, the key word in the word discipline is what? Disciple. You are disciples. You are a disciple of Jesus. The Father is discipling you. And there's things coming at you in your life. Now you can treat yourself, you can treat it as a victim, you can treat it as a not taking responsibility for it, or the the flip here is what happens if we treat all hardship as disciples, receiving it as the training of the Lord. You guys with me? To even understand the discipline of the Lord, though, we have to we kind of have to back up and look at our lives and ask, what is even my relationship with discipline? What was discipline like for you growing up? How did that work for you with your parents? And I don't want to open up a can of worms, but I'm going to. Because we we we we will not be able to relate to the actual nature of the good father unless we kind of tee up and we square our experience growing up with what we see here. Because what we see here is a picture of discipline that should be desired and wanted. But yet for many of us, when we grew up, that was not the situation. I don't know what your situation is. I'm guessing there's a few boats here. Maybe you grew up in an era that kind of an authoritarian discipline, like that was the name of the game. So you did one thing wrong. Any mistake you make, you were just you were uh verbally abused, emotionally abused, maybe even physically abused. Real stuff. And and and what you learned in some of those environments was I cannot, if I if I'm disciplined, there's something wrong with me. It means that God hates me, or my my parents, what I learned was my parents hate me, and and and there's something inherently wrong with me. And so there's a visceral reaction when the idea of discipline comes in, because it was always, it was never done in love, it was only done as a reaction to what's wrong with us, right? Maybe that's your experience. Now that wasn't my experience. My my parents were very loving and compassionate towards me. Fortunately, I don't know why. Um I I stayed pretty close to the apple tree as it relates to, I didn't do anything too atrocious or vicious growing up. So I don't have a lot of strong memories of just crap hitting the fan in my house, you know, and me having to be put, you know, a lot of like harsh discipline happening. But some of you, maybe that was your experience. The other, the other experience maybe you have was, you know, the authoritarian that was a harsh rendering when something is happening, something needs to be corrected. That maybe that was your experience. Some of you, maybe your your parents weren't even around. That wasn't even a thing. And so it was just a distance, it was an absence of that. So there was nothing, there was no feedback coming from those who were supposed to be that you were supposed to be entrusted to. And it was just radio silence. And so you you never maybe you learned in that kind of environment that you never felt um cared for or loved or safe. And so so again, what happens is if that's an environment you grow in, it makes it difficult to even relate to what is this, how is God wanting to discipline? What does that mean about me? Because that was never my experience, okay? So that was some of you. What's interesting in my generation when it comes to parenting styles and discipline, and you guys have seen this, there was such an overreaction to the authoritarian stuff that Gen X and millennials just resisted any potential for the perception of appearing unloving to their kids. And so the big critique of my generation is that we kind of we kind of just let our kids do what they want because we don't want to be considered the oppressor in our home, right? We don't want to come down too hard on them because I would hate the idea of them ever misunderstanding or feeling any sense of pain or failure or disappointment. And so, you know, kind of the stereotype of that, that, you know, that kind of parenting style is one actually called, psychologists have called the helicopter parenting, where I am so concerned about my kids' well-being and their success in life that I'm literally going to hover over them in every decision they make. Because God forbid they ever experience pain or failure or disappointment in their life and become awful human beings. Right? And so there's kind of this helicopter thing that happens. And so, you know, the extremes of that is you know, you send them to you get the mail from the mailbox and you have to strap a helmet on their head to do so. You know, anytime they go out to the sun, they get a hundred SPF sunblock every time they go outside. And we just have to think through every possibility of where something could go wrong and protect them from that. No, I I think at the core the impulse isn't bad. Nobody wants Our kids to none of us want our kids to experience pain, but we've seen where the studies have shown us uh that that the Gen Z, the ones who are growing up in homes where there is never direct, concise uh discipline, where there was never a calling into something, and this these are the boundaries, this is what's right, wrong, this is what's acceptable and not acceptable. Um, what's happening in Gen Z is the anxiety levels have only increased because it comes with the fear of failure, it comes with the fear of risk because they've never were taught how to endure anything. And so what happens is it creates a weak generation that is never allowed to mess up, make a mistake, get a bad grade, fail at sports, um, disappoint anybody, and it leads to a weak and resilient, uh unresilient generation. And we see this as well. And it's hard when you grow up in that kind of environment, it's hard to relate to the fact that the father actually has things he does want to correct in your life. And if all you've ever known was parents who just shield you from every possible thing, then you won't be able to relate to a father who not only loves you endlessly, but he has specific things. He's calling you up for your own maturity, right? And so it's possible for us to confuse discipline with punishment, but Hebrews 10 talks about Jesus died once and for all. So there is punishment has to do with payment. So discipline is not punishment, discipline is growing up into the things of God and Christ's likeness. In Hebrews 10, it says that that um that Christ was offered for all time a s he offered for all time a single sacrifice for his sin, uh, for sins, and he sat down at the right hand of God. So that means that when the discipline of God comes into our life, it's not for the sake of paying debts. That was already that's already happened. Christ has already paid our debt for past sins. Rather, discipline is to help us grow into maturity, to share in his holiness, and bear the fruit of righteousness in our lives. And why is this important? Why is it important that we look at this idea of discipline? Because what happens is when we experience various hardships, it's hard for us to discern what God is doing within the midst of our hardships. Some of us think we experience something hard in our lives and we think something must be wrong with me, and God is punishing me for that, like we were just talking about. Others, we just get disillusioned because we feel like God is absent. We get disappointed because we think God wouldn't, God would never allow me to experience failure or loss or disappointment. But the truth is that God is unconditionally loving and yet doesn't always, the Father doesn't always fix our pain, our disappointment, and failures. He uses them to train us up within them. And so what we tend to see as external problems are actually internal invitations. That is, I think, what's at stake for us. There's a many, and even in the church, we live our lives, we wake up each day, and we're we're combating all these external things that we need God to solve us, solve for us, and the entire time the Father is like, You want me to solve all these things, but all of these things are actually invitations from the inside out for you to grow into a person of love. Do you know that God is committed to growing you up into a person of outrageous love, and he will use anything to get to that? I can tell you really enjoyed that one. So to bring this down just a little bit more, I think it's important for us to see hardships can be external things. But one of the things I've learned is hardships are any place in our life that we find is provoked on a daily or weekly basis. Like even today, I I I bet you, even today on your way to church, you were provoked about a dozen times before you ever got to church today. So I'm going to church to meet with God, I'm gonna hear what he has to say here. But the entire morning, there are other things happening in your life. You woke up and you maybe you looked at the news and you saw what a world leader did that was that offended you. And you and you took note of that, and you just kind of moved on from that. It's something that's happening out here, but there's something that happened in here too, right? Maybe you were in your car this morning, you got stuck behind somebody that didn't agree with the pace at which the road should be traveled, and that did something to you. There's there's something that happened within. You were trying to go, you're on your way to go get to where God is, and yet something pinged you on the way. And you got frustrated. Maybe you got here today, the person that you wanted to say hi to you didn't say hi, they just went and did their own thing, and that confused you and disappointed you. Maybe you came today and you saw that sign on the door that said to do something with masks or whatever. And if you just checked in, you said that sign actually did something to you, provoked you in a certain way. So we thought we were waiting until we got to church to meet with God, and yet he was meeting us the entire time, inviting us to be trained by him into his goodness. He was inviting us to pay attention to what is being provoked so that each and every moment we can see he's growing us into maturity because he's a good father. See, what happens is we kind of compartmentalize our lives into these are the places that God is, and these are the places where I am. And I wonder what would happen is if we changed our mindset to endure all hardship as discipline. What if we wake up every day asking the question, not how do I get through today and survive? But Father, what's on the training schedule for today? What if we asked that question each and every morning, Father, you were committed to me that I would share in your holiness. You were committed that I would bear the fruit of righteousness in my life. So, what's on the training schedule for today? See, that to me, that's more fun. A few years ago, I signed up for this race called the Spartan. It's really an absurd idea. You pay like a hundred bucks and they just put you through hell for like two hours. And they take photos of you and give you a medal. I love it. Like a hundred years ago, they're like, what? You paid a hundred dollars to go walk through the mud and climb walls and go under like barbed wire. And so it's a five-mile race with like 25 obstacles. But there is something inside of me, I may I don't know. I guess it's it's it's a symptom of being a uh, you know, living in the suburbs, a white middle class dude, you know, middle-aged dude living in the suburbs. I need more adventure in my life, apparently. Um, I'm not a hunter, so I can't do that with my friends, and so I gotta go pay to, you know, to crawl through the mud. And um, and uh but but what I loved about it was there is something about it, it it there's something that shifted in my in my thinking. Because when I showed up, I knew that okay, these guys are gonna try to, these guys are trying to stop me. Everything here is designed to hold me back, but I am going to, I'm gonna start this race. I'm gonna do every single one. I'm gonna push through, I'm going to do, I'm gonna see all of these are challenges to me finishing well. I've I've heard other people talk about that too. Um uh what if what if we change the way that even our relational interactions, every conversation, what if we experience every day as okay, today I'm gonna wake up, there's gonna be about 25 instances of people trying to get me to not love them. What if I experienced every single person through the lens of I know what you're trying to do? You're trying to get me to dismiss you, to reject you, to be disappointed in you, to to to to curse you as my enemy, but it's not gonna work. You're just an obstacle. And listen, I signed up for this. You were part of my training schedule for the day, so thank you. Thank you for an opportunity to love you viciously. You are welcome. It just it just it just shifts something when we turn from survival mode to training mode. And God is training us. We are in a training time, God is training the church later on in Hebrews chapter 12. He moves on from the discipline metaphor to say, let me just remind you that that God will shaking everything on the earth and in the heavens, and everything that can be shaken will be shaken, so that the things that cannot be shaken will remain. And he's reminding them, listen, all these things that you're going through, you're just seeing them at face of value if you would see them through the loving discipline of the Lord. He's committed to you, being transformed by his love. He's committed to you, actually representing his love in a pure and whole way. He's committed to the fruit of righteousness that you would share in his holiness. And so he's okay with you being provoked. He's okay with your life being shaken every time something happens, like a little jostle. It's like, shake that apple tree, see what falls off. God is okay with letting us fail, he's okay with even letting us experience disappointment because he knows none of those things are as eternal as his purposes and his promises. I was at my son's uh both of my son's sports games yesterday, which is what we do on Saturdays right now. Um I was trying to help them not fail. No, I'm just joking. Uh I Asher was playing soccer, Noah was playing football. They both play teams that for some reason yesterday all these kids were like really tall on both teams. I don't know what they're feeding the kids uh uh out in Erie anymore, but man, these kids are getting like huge. And so they played both teams, they both got demolished. Both teams just got totally obliterated. And uh, you know, but one of the things I noticed is uh afterwards, the what I didn't enjoy seeing my sons lose, but I enjoyed the conversations afterwards because I got to ask them, how did you process that? How did that feel? What was that like? What did you learn? And then for them to see me that I am not concerned with whether they win or lose a particular game. What I'm concerned is who are you becoming as you're navigating these things? Who are you becoming before you hit your next game? And I wonder if that's a helpful metaphor for us here today. There's things happening in your life that are maybe confusing to you. There's things you're asking where God is at, and He's not He's not apathetic to those things, he's compassionate towards those things. But I wonder, I wonder what would happen for us in the church if we begin to put on our training lens. Some of us, you some how who actually pays for training in the gym here? Does anybody does anybody do training in the gym? Well, this is a very unhealthy congregation. Okay, we got a cup. All right, we got two people. And you're paying money for somebody to make your life miserable for a couple hours every day, every week, and it totally makes sense because you know that they have a vision for who you are supposed to become and what your body is supposed to be able to do. So you're willing to give into it for the full effect. Because you couldn't do it on your own. You needed the training, you needed the discipline, you needed them to design a plan for you to be in an environment that you would not have chosen. I never work out as hard when I'm by myself. When I'm with other people, I push myself way harder. If I ever get like tips from coaches, that kind of stuff, I push myself way harder. It's the same with us. God, He's He's allowing us to walk through things that we think is a heavy yoke, and He's saying, No, I am committed to who you're becoming in me, and I'm not afraid to allow you to walk through this because my promises for you are stronger than your present circumstances. Okay. One last thought, and then um I want to read something to you that I think is gonna be really important. I've been reading this uh book recently by Alan Kreider called the it's called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. The patient ferment of the early church. And he he makes the observation that when you look at the writings from the early church, the first few hundred years of church fathers as the gospel was taking root, um, you don't see them right they they actually don't write a lot about evangelism or church growth strategies or even going to the nations. That was just kind of happening, it was just kind of spontaneously going. It was this ferment that was like it was growing, but you couldn't quite see it or measure it. He said, but what they did write a lot about was the idea of patience and the people of God growing in patience. And several, there's actually several writings on the topic of patience because they were convinced that you know the that the way that the church expands, the distinctiveness of what the body of Christ shows the world is in the way that we um the way that we walk with God and the way we demonstrate a long journey that is not just reactive and and and always just full of um reactivity and and and trying to navigate circumstances, everything. But the church fathers were writing about patience, that the people of God must be able to uh must be able to demonstrate patience both towards the work, the slow work of God, and then the way that the work of God was actually moving out into cities. I just want you to think about that though. Um that they were writing about patience before iPhones and before the internet and before news and before social media. How much more for us that we need to learn patience as it relates to the discipline of the Lord God is not in a rush. If you haven't figured it out, he's not in a rush with you. He's just not. There's things that he does like that, but in much of our lives, God is patiently fermenting his work in us. So here's what I want to do. I want to read you something that came to us years ago here at Vine Life. Uh, a gentleman by the name of Graham Cook, who whom many of you know. He was here uh back in 2013 and he did a session at a conference he was here, and and he what he did was he he released what we would call a soaking prayer. It was a prayer that he wrote from the perspective of the Father and the Son and the Spirit towards us, towards the church. And and and it was for a much broader audience, but he reminded us a couple years later, he's like, No, that that was for you guys too. If you'll receive it, it's for you guys too. And uh, I want to read you just a portion of this. We can send the actual full manuscript out, but I think you should spend some time with it. It later was titled The Kind Intentions of God. So, what I want you to do here is uh this morning, as we come into land here, uh close your eyes across the room. And maybe for some of you here, some of this is kind of new, thinking of the Lord as a father and a good father, and actually He disciplines, He loves us, but He disciplines us too. So some of that is just it feels new, it feels fresh, and um I just want to invite you to continue to discover more of this as I read this for you. Every circumstance, every situation belongs to us. It does not belong to the enemy, it doesn't belong to the government, it doesn't belong to the economy, it doesn't belong to evil or unprincipled people. Every circumstance, every situation belongs to us, belongs to the Godhead, and we have plans also that you should overcome, that you should rise up, that every circumstance will give you confidence and will embolden you, that you would learn the joy of the Lord always, that you would count everything as joyful simply because you know that we are here with you in these circumstances, and we have a plan, and we have a purpose. The beloved Holy Spirit will declare disclose to you in those moments of stillness and joy exactly what that plan and purpose is, that you would never be in the dark. But you would have the light of our love and grace guiding you, that you would learn to trust us. There are times, says the Lord, that we won't tell you everything. We'll just hold out our hand, and the feel and the weight of our presence will cause you to trust without misgiving. We'll teach you how to walk in the wild side of heaven. We'll teach you how to walk into the unknown, confident, restful, joyful, and even when the enemy comes in like a flood, even when wolves come in against you, that you would know that your best friend is a lion, and you have no need to fear. There are kingdom realities here, beloved, that we intend to bestow upon you that you would rise up and become extraordinary people, astonishing people, amazing people. I tell you, says the Father, our love will make a mockery of your history. It doesn't matter where you failed, it doesn't matter where you have messed up, it doesn't matter where you have missed out. You are no longer present past, you are present future in our covenant with you. Consider everything as a joy. That joy will enable you to endure on the battlefield of this life and not to endure in any forlorn way, to endure joyfully because you know the outcome before the battle even starts. Perseverance is concerned with how to live joyfully in Christ above your circumstances because joy is your hiding place. We will teach you the joy of persistence. Perseverance is a place of delight and desire where you will experience our presence even in the upheavals of life. We have given you a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The earth may shake, but you may remain unshaken. So, Father, today, I thank you, Father, for a new paradigm, a new way of thinking and how we interpret our lives, how we interpret our experiences. We thank you that you are a good father. And you're fathering us across this room. Even if you didn't have a father, even if your father walked out on you, even if your father for some reason was removed from your life. Our father in heaven, he is good towards you, he is committed towards you. He's walking with you, he's educating you and training you in the things of heaven. So this morning, Lord God, renew our minds. Help us to consider it a pure joy when we face trials of many kinds. Help us to be ones who wake up in the morning chomping at the bit to see all that you want to reveal about who you are. I thank you, Lord Jesus, for a holy anticipation and a holy expectation. That we are not ones who shrink back, but we are the ones who persevere. And I thank you, Lord God, that all of our training we get to bring to bear with each other, we get to bring into an environment of worship and say, here's all the things that the Father allowed to be provoked in my life this week. These are the places where I was offendable and disappointable and where I was hurtable, and all of the things, and God, I just thank you that all of those things that were provoked, all of the things that get shaken in our lives, you you love and we bring them to you to get your perspective. And so I just thank you, Father, across this room, Lord Jesus, for the receiving of your discipline, the receiving of your love.