He Just Said Okay and Went Home

He Just Said Okay and Went Home

Read John 4:43-54

He just said okay and went home. When I try and put myself in the place of this father, I cannot fathom that response. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that judgmentally, as if he didn’t do enough for his son. Afterall, he had walked the 20+ miles from Capernaum to Cana just to find Jesus. I guess I am more in awe of him because he took Jesus at his word. By turning around and going back home without Jesus in tow, he was not only saying he believed Jesus, he was living as if he believed Jesus.

I don’t know if I could do that if I were in his situation.

We’re told his son was near death. The man wasn’t just coming to Jesus for a 2^nd opinion; he wasn’t just trying to avoid some hospital bills. You don’t walk or ride a donkey for an entire day for the sake of a few dollars or a little convenience. I think John wants us to understand that this guy probably saw Jesus as his last chance—his son’s last chance. If Jesus couldn’t or wouldn’t help, his son was going to die.

That alone would make me the biggest pest, the most insistent, annoying guy around. I would beg, implore, bribe, badger, threaten, shame—anything I could think of to get him to come with me. If I was that father and Jesus had said to me, “go home your son will be fine,” I think I might have gone down to the village marketplace and hired the 5 biggest guys, no, the ten biggest guys—wait, he had 12 disciples—an army of the biggest guys I could find to grab Jesus and drag him bodily to Capernaum.

I think of myself during this age of the coronavirus. What if one of my sons or, a better example, Chione, since many of you know her, had severe chills, and body-aches, and shortness of breath and a high fever? What if I packed her up and raced to the hospital, left her in the car and charged into the emergency room? And what if, grabbing the first doctor I could find, I explained her condition to that Dr. only to have the Dr. say, “take her home; she’ll be fine by the time you get home”? No Covid-19 test, no cursory exam, no, “open your mouth and say Awww,” not even a glance at her; just, “take her home; she’ll be fine by the time you get home.”

No. I wouldn’t, couldn’t just say okay and go home. I know, Jesus isn’t just any doctor, but your child is your child.

Back to the father in the story. I would have so many questions for Jesus before I even considered heading home.

“Go home, that’s it? Don’t you have some form of special prayer for me to pray over him, or some kind of holy water to sprinkle on him? Should I go home by a special route, sing some kind of chant as I walk home, or dunk him in a pond seven times or face him to the east or something? I’m a helpless parent here and you’re not letting me do anything to help.

“And what am I supposed to tell my wife when I get home? I can see it now. She’ll meet me at the door, look around and ask, ‘where is he?’

“He’s not here,” I’ll answer.

‘What did he say?’

“He said go home, I’ll answer--and it will sound just as ridiculous to her then as it does to me now

‘And you just went?’

“…No, Jesus, I’m not having that conversation with her.

“And another thing, you’ve never even seen my son. How do you know who to heal? How do know where to send the healing angel or spirit or whatever you use to do your remote healing? Are you doing some kind of mind-meld with me as I think about my son laying at death’s door? Can you get my address from that? Or, are you doing some sort of DNA scan on me so you can find a match in Capernaum? Is that how you’re going to find him?

“Jesus, I know you’re a great teacher, and maybe you’re the Messiah, and I should probably trust you, but this is too much for me. Won’t you just do this my way and come with me? And, if you could hold my hand while we’re walking that would help me too.”

That would be me in a nutshell.

I would have missed the point just like everyone else missed the point--except the father.

Maybe it would be helpful to go back to the beginning of the story so we can understand what is going on here.

John tells us that Jesus leaves Samaria and goes back to Galilee. He then prefaces the story with a couple of statements that seem to contradict each other. We’re first told that Jesus himself said that a prophet is without honor in his own country. But then John turns around and tells us that the Galileans received Jesus because of what they had seen him do in Jerusalem while he was at the feast. At first glance that might be confusing, but it is making the precise point John wants us to see.

When the father first comes to Jesus, it appears that Jesus actually reprimands him. That made me a little uncomfortable. This desperate father, probably exhausted from a long journey, begs Jesus for help and Jesus scolds him—or at least seems to.

Maybe Jesus was a little tired and grumpy after his own long trip. Something must be going on, right? The last time we see Jesus, he is this excited, enthusiastic guy who tells his disciples he doesn’t even need to eat because his food is to do the work of the father, and now he rebukes this father who understandably wants Jesus to save his son. Wouldn’t that fall under the category of “his Father’s work”?

Granted, Jesus had just come from an experience where an entire village believed in him because of what one woman had said about him. He didn’t have to heal anyone, or feed a crowd or cast out a demon. They heard and believed. Now he comes to his old stomping grounds and people want proof.

One of the reasons Jesus sounds so harsh is that what is actually happening here gets lost in translation.

The problem is that English doesn’t have a plural form of the word you. The closest thing might be y’all.  But now that I think about it a friend of mine from Mississippi told me that y’all isn’t plural. The plural form of y’all is all y’all. That was probably too cumbersome for Bible translators to use here, so most of them just put the standard English you. So, it sounds like Jesus is talking to the father and accusing him of merely wanting a sign instead of desperately wanting his son to be saved.

Some of the modern translations use the term, “you people”—“Unless you people see signs and wonders….”—to try to clarify what is happening here, but that doesn’t really help much. Most of the time when we use the phrase, “you people,” we are lumping one person in with a bigger group—in essence meaning “people like you.” So, when John says Jesus addressed the man and says “you people,” we get the picture that Jesus is saying to the man, “people like you are always looking for signs.”

The term translated “you” here is a term used to address a crowd rather than refer to a crowd. So here is what I see happening:

Jesus looks at the man but addresses the crowd around him, “hey crowd, unless you guys see signs and wonders you don’t believe.” The implied second clause to that sentence is, “but this man comes to me because he already believes.” Jesus isn’t lumping the man in with the group, he is setting the man apart from the group.

The man gets it. He is focused on his task. “Sir, come down before my son dies.” This wasn’t a man looking for a show. Neither was this a man grasping at straws; this was a man expressing a conviction. If you come with me my son will live. He wasn’t asking Jesus to prove anything,\; he was asking Jesus to do what he was already convinced Jesus could do.

Jesus’ eyes don’t waver from the man’s eyes, “Done.”

The man took Jesus at his word and goes home. This isn’t a man who heads for home unsure of what he’ll find, he’s convinced, he’s satisfied, he’s weak in the knees, he’s elated. In my version of the story he turns, throws a fist pump into the air and starts jogging for home.

John draws a parallel between this story and the previous story. The people of Sychar believed because of the word of the Samaritan woman;+ this father believes because of the word Jesus tells him.

The problem with the Galileans was that they made a priority of the signs instead of what the signs were pointing to.

Whether you like Facebook or not, it is a useful platform for communicating with large numbers of friends and family members without having to send out individual emails, texts or phone calls. When Facebook first started to become popular, I had a co-worker at Warner Pacific who decided it was her goal to acquire 1000 Facebook friends. Every morning when I saw her, she would announce the number of friends she was up to.

One morning I asked her what kind of things she posted on Facebook.

She said, “I really never post anything. My life is just not that interesting and I really don’t want everyone to know what I’m doing every minute of the day anyway.”

That confused me a bit so I asked her, “then why do you want people to friend you?”

“So I can say I have 1000 friends.”

That was the Galileans. They were enthusiastic about collecting the signs that Jesus did, but they missed the whole point of why the signs were there.

Jesus didn’t feel the need to prove anything to anybody. There are times in the gospels when the religious leaders demanded that he tell them where his authority came from. That demand never impressed Jesus. He never showed much of an inclination to answer it.

Sometimes I hear people say things like, “I don’t believe in a God who would___________”(you fill in the blank). That kind if statement befuddles me. It seems to indicate a grave misunderstanding of who is God and who isn’t. If God needs to meet our individual criteria in order to be God, then God isn’t God. We and God have switched places. This doesn’t mean we cannot have questions, but it does caution us about demanding certain answers, or specific actions.

John finishes this story by telling us that this is the second sign Jesus performs. That seems a little odd since Jesus rebukes the crowd for demanding a sign. But for John the purpose of signs is to point to Jesus is, not to prove that he meets somebodies threshold for divinity.

The book of John is structured around 7 or 8 signs depending on who you talk to. The first two, turning the water into wine, and the healing of the official’s son, are identified for us by John. Finding the rest is sort of a treasure hunt—John lets us read the clues and identify them for ourselves.

What is interesting about this being identified as a sign is that father is the only one who witnesses it. He was the only one who heard Jesus say the boy would recover, and also see that the boy actually did. As far as we know, the father traveled back to Capernaum by himself. There is no indication or even a hint that anyone else was with him when his servants met him on the road to tell him his son was well. Here we have one of the signs John shaped his whole gospel around and Jesus gives it as a gift to an audience of one.

The importance of believing without proof is a theme echoed toward the end of John’s gospel. Even though Jesus had appeared to the other disciples, Thomas refuses to believe that Jesus rose from the dead unless he can poke his finger in Jesus’ nail holes, and jab his hand into the wound in Jesus’ side. Later Jesus appears to Thomas and shows Thomas his scars to which Thomas replies, “my Lord and my God.”

Jesus then says, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

This all makes me wonder about how much I grope for proof; how frequently I am just interested in collecting signs. How often do I want Jesus to do a particular thing for myself or my family instead of taking him at his word when he says things like:

“I will never leave you or forsake you.”

“I am with you always.”

“Take heart, I have overcome the world.”

^“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Sometimes we just want things fixed. Sometimes we want to know how things are going to be resolved. We want Jesus to take care of us, but we want it in a way we can see and touch and understand like a paycheck or a full bank account or a stimulus check from the government, or a coronavirus vaccine. I don’t doubt that God uses those kinds of things, but perhaps there are just times when no matter how things look to us, we just need to take Jesus at his word, say okay and go home.

Hands and feet of Jesus

We are living in a time when the people around us need a touch from Jesus. Take a moment to respond to this post to share when, in the last few days, you have had the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus for someone, or you've seen someone else be the hands and feet of Jesus.

The Samaritan Woman

The Samaritan Woman

Read John 4:1-45

We are the woman at the Well

Most people who know the story of the Woman at the Well have some pretty set opinions on the history and character of the Samaritan woman with whom Jesus strikes up a conversation. Some of those opinions we may have formulated ourselves, and others may have been passed down through sermons or songs or Sunday school lessons. But the truth is we know very little about her. We know she is a woman, a Samaritan, a person who has been married 5 times and she lives with a man who isn’t her husband. We also know that, at least on this particular day, she came to the well at a time when it was likely that no one else would be around.

That’s not a lot to go on, but somehow we manage to create an entire history and character type for the woman. Through most of my life I have had, and the church has taught, a picture of a woman of questionable character and loose morals who had relationship issues.

I know, it is not unreasonable to make those assumptions. After all, 5 marriages are a lot in our culture today; in 1^st century Palestine it was an inconceivable number. But just because an assumption is not unreasonable doesn’t mean it is true nor proper.

Women could not initiate divorce in that culture, so she couldn’t divorce anyone. The husband is the only one who could initiate divorce. That doesn’t automatically mean that she was completely innocent, but it does give a moment’s pause. If she was continually discarded because of infidelity, it seems likely that in a village as small as Sychar the word would get out after just a couple of marriages.

The Samaritans revered the Torah like the Jews did. Barrenness is one of the few reasons the Torah allows for a man to divorce his wife for. Children, particularly sons, were considered a sign of God’s favor. When I think of Sarah and Rachel giving their handmaidens to their husbands just so they could bear him sons, it is not unreasonable for me to think that a husband might set aside a wife by divorce because she was barren. Again, you would think that if that was the case, word would get out pretty quickly in a small village, but still….

Life was hard in 1^st century Palestine, and the life expectancy, especially for a man, was not particularly high. Being children of the Torah, the Samaritans would have observed the Leverate Law (where a man is obliged to marry his brother’s widow). It is not unreasonable to think that she might lost a husband and gone through a brother or two somewhere in those 5 marriages.

And, we don’t even know the woman’s age. Most pictures of the encounter Portray Jesus talking to a young attractive woman, but she may well have been an older woman. You would think it might take some time to work through 5 marriages. It is not unreasonable to think that she might just have outlived a husband or two.

Even Jesus’ statement that the man she lived with was not her husband does not necessarily have to carry the baggage we tend to assign to it. It was shameful for the head of a family to have even a member of the extended family be uncared for—particularly a widow. While the wording used does imply some kind of relational possession (“the man you have is not your husband”) it is not unreasonable to think that she might have lived in the home of a brother, or brother-in-law, or a cousin.

I’m not arguing for any of these. I just am trying to show that there are a number of scenarios or combinations of scenarios that could explain how the woman’s life took the route it took, and none of them are less reasonable that the assumptions the church has made for years.

But that is not even the point I want us to see.

What I want us to notice in this story is that none of this mattered to Jesus. I don’t mean to imply that Jesus didn’t care about the condition of the woman’s life. What I’m saying is that Jesus understood that the woman was where she was, and that where she was at that moment was more crucial than how she got where she was.

Did I lose you? Let me try and explain.

I’m going to put you in a couple hypothetical situations and let’s compare your responses to them:

#1—You’re sitting in a coffee shop with a gentleman (I know that may be hard to imagine in the present quaratine conditions) and he is telling you his story.

He says, “I lost my wife. She had an affair and left me for the other guy.”

What is your gut response to that? What are your feelings toward the man? What would you say to him?

#2-- You’re sitting in a coffee shop with a gentleman (I know that may be hard to imagine in the present quaratine conditions) and he is telling you his story.

He says, “I lost my wife. I was a drunk and a partier. She begged me to stop. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore and left. Now She’s found someone else.”

What is your gut response to that? What are your feelings toward the man? What would you say to him?

Were your responses any different from each other? How? Why do you think they were different?

If you’re like most of us, you might find it hard to be as compassionate toward a person who is suffering because of his/her own choices, own foolishness, or own selfishness. That may just be human nature. We may honestly hurt for the man who’s wife was unfaithful, but for the man who drank his marriage away it is awfully easy to think, “Well, I feel bad for him, but he brought it on himself.”

But I think Jesus would respond the same to both of them because he would understand that at the present moment the first sentence (I lost my wife) is where they are. It means they are both men who had lost someone they dearly loved. Nothing they can choose or do will change that. They can make changes in their life, make better choices, clean up their acts, repent and apologize until they’re hoarse, but it won’t change what happen to get them to this point. Both men are suffering in the same place.

The Samaritan woman had been married 5 times and lived with a man who wasn’t her husband. That’s where she was. Whether or not it was her fault didn’t alter that. No matter how much effort she put in now in making better choices, going to Husbands Anonymous meetings, participating in support groups or committing to New Years Eve resolutions, she could never undo the events and choices that got her there. She was where she was, and she probably wasn’t particularly confident about what might come next, and that’s exactly where Jesus met her.

We don’t know more about her life because John doesn’t say anything else about her. I think John didn’t say anything else about her because he didn’t know anything else about her or the conversation. Remember, the disciples weren’t there during this exchange. They only knew what Jesus must have told them later. I think John didn’t know anymore about her history because Jesus didn’t tell him any more about her history, and I think Jesus didn’t tell his disciples any more about her life because that wasn’t the point.

Conventional wisdom has interpreted Jesus’ statement to the woman, “Go get your husband and bring him back” as Jesus’ way of pulling the woman’s covers. If this scene, as I previously understood it, was in a movie, you would see Jesus, somewhat out of the blue, make this request, “go get your husband….” The background music would dramatically go “dun, dun dun.” The woman, caught off guard would steal a panicked look at Jesus and then stutter, “I don’t have a husband,” to try and throw him off the scent. But instead, she falls right into Jesus’ trap.

Actually, that’s not what happens at all. Jesus’ request that she go get her husband fit right into the conversation. Jesus had offered to give her a gift, living water. She agreed. The custom of the day didn’t allow a man to give a woman outside of his family a gift. He would give it to the husband who would share it with the wife if he chose. The request may have caught her off guard in the sense that Jesus was suddenly taking seriously a conversation she might have thought was merely banter, but it definitely was not a request that came out of the blue.

It was his next statement that sent her into the Twilight Zone.

“I don’t have a husband.”

“That’s true, You’ve had 5. And the man you have now is not your husband.”

Now Jesus had her attention.

The traditional interpretation of the story would now say something like, “Jesus was gently laying her sins before her.” I don’t think that was Jesus’ motive at all. I think that when Jesus revealed this knowledge of her life, he was saying to her, “I see you. I know where you are. I understand how uncertain your life is right now.”

We’re all like her. We’re at a certain place in our lives and as much as we may want to, we can’t go back and change the circumstances and choices that got us here. Some of us may not want to change those circumstances and choices, others of us might be desparate to.

We live in the days of the coronavirus. How we got here is of little importance because that is done. But it is easy to focus on that. I’m teaching an online class that started on Monday. I had each student write a post to introduce themselves and tell the rest of us something about their lives. One student told us that he works in security for a big high-end restaurant in Portland. I guess when a restaurant goes to take-out only, they don’t feel as much of a need for security. He wrote, “You can’t believe how hard this has hit us. If I had gone to college right out of high school instead of messing around I wouldn’t be in this mess.” He is where he is, and as much as he may want to he can’t change the circumstances that got him there. We have to start where we are. Jesus understood that with the Samaritan woman; Jesus understands that with us.

Some of us may have been laid off of jobs. To some of us the virus may present more at risk because of our age or health issues, some of us may actually have  a few extra rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom cabinet. But none of us are very sure about what might come next.

I’ve seen Christian articles and blogs that say the virus is God’s punishment for humanity’s sin. Others have said that the coronavirus is God winding up for his end-time knock out punch.

I don’t believe that. I think Jesus is present, saying, “I see you. I know where you are. I understand how uncertain your life is right now.”

It's the Water

During their encounter Jesus and the woman have a cryptic conversation about water. It appears to me that she takes it as banter while Jesus means exactly what he says. At our church staff meetings we occasionally use this saying: “God was doing something up here (the speaker twirls her/his hand above his/her head) while we were looking down here (speaker twirls her/his hand about waist high). I think that is what was happening here. Jesus is talking up here, while she is listening down here.

The Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water.

Jesus surprises the woman by asking her for a drink.

She quickly reminds him that she is a Samaritan woman and he is a Jewish man. That was a problem because adult men did not speak to women who were not family members. If a man needed to communicate with a woman who was not in his family he would talk to her husband if she was married, or to her father or brother if she was not.

Jews also limited their contact with Samaritans. The NIV here says, “For Jews do not associate with Samaritans,” but the literal translation is “Jews do not use dishes Samaritans have used.” She was likely pointing out that Jews considered Samaritans unclean so even if she wanted to give Jesus water he wasn’t allowed to drink out of her bucket.

It's at this point where Jesus suggests to her that she should be asking him for “living water.” Living water would not have been a new or unknown term for her. That was the term they would have used to refer to running water or moving water such as rivers or streams or even a rainstorm. Moving water, as it rolls over stones and gravel, is self-cleaning, and self-renewing. Water that sits in a stagnant, stationary place doesn’t have that ability.

Every morning I try to get into Newberg at least an hour before the office opens and walk the neighborhoods. This morning (Thursday) I parked at the office and walked down to the Willamette River at Roger’s Landing. I took this picture:

I noticed that the River wasn’t much different than it was the last time I was down there. It was sunny, and the last time I was down there it was raining and there were little dimples on the surface of the water, but the river itself was still flowing bringing life to everything around it. It’s life giving, living water.

I know all the stuff about the Willamette being poluted so I’ll use another image. When you are hiking or backpacking, and you need to fill up your waterbottle (filtered bottle of course) wisdom says that it is best to find moving water (living water) such as a stream or creek, rather than use still water such as a lake or pond because it will likely be cleaner.

Water makes up about 60% of our bodies. When we take a drink, the water doesn’t just lubricate our tongues and hydrate our mouths, although that is what we feel. It travels throughout our bodies giving life to every part of us.

Let’s take Jesus’ metaphor even further. While our bodies as a whole are about 60% water, our brains and our heart are about 73% water. So water is the biggest ingredient in the parts of our bodies that give us life and allow us to process the world around us. So the water we take in becomes the very thing that keeps us alive and through which we understand the world. What would you choose to supply your life-giver and world-filter, living water or stagnant water?

Jesus didn’t come to the Samaritan woman and offer to erase 5 marriages and whatever other harsh and unwelcome experiences she might have had. Instead, he offered her a new way to be a woman who had lived through 5 marriages and all those other experiences—a way to let those experiences make her stronger and wiser and more Christlike rather than just being an excuse to let herself and others stereotype her as a certain kind of woman.

We all know that one of the best things we can do for our bodies is to keep them hydrated, particulary in times of anxiety and stress. That defines our world right now. 

We can be used by Jesus to show the world a different way to be if we keep taking in that living water. I think that is what Jesus means when he says, “abide in me….”

The Change

Not only did Jesus offer the woman living water, he also chose her to be the first person to whom he would reveal himself as Messiah. In the previous chapter he sat with  a Jewish teacher who was obviously also a seeker. But Jesus chose not to reveal himself to Nicodemus. Instead he chose a woman who was from a people that jews considered unclean, who had been through 5 marriages and lived with a man who wasn’t her husband. That might be important to remember next time we’re contemplating how Jesus might feel toward people who act differently than us or think differently than us.

Because of the encounter the woman was changed.

When the story opens, the woman is coming to the well to draw water at a time when it was most likely that she could avoid other people. After her encounter with Jesus she leaves her waterpot, runs into the marketplace in the city and begins tell even the men what had happened to her. She wasn’t hiding anymore. Because of her the whole town comes to hear Jesus, and he and his disciples end up staying with them for 2 days. It’s important to note that in the Bible whenever a man or woman meet by a well a wedding ensues. That’s what we see here—a whole new people becoming the bride of Christ.

But the woman was not the only one who was changed by the encounter. Jesus was changed.

When the story opens he was sitting by the well and he was weary. Maybe he was avoiding people a little bit, too. Jesus, who usually drew crowds and engaged crowds, sent his disciples into town, without him, to get food. Maybe he was hoping for a little alone time here by the well in the heat of the day.

But by the time the disciples get back from town Jesus was pumped. They offered him food, but he wasn’t hungry any more. His spirit had been fed. He had come so we might have life and have it abundantly, and someone actually got it. A woman, an outcast, a person with at least a questionable past and hopeless present had gotten it. This is what he had come for and it happened. He didn’t need anything else.

If Jesus was this happy over one woman jumping all-in on his offer of living water, just imagine how he might feel if all of his children would live like we’re fueled with living water.

Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind

It was a cold and rainy morning. The cold was seeping through my layers and into my bones. My mind was running through all of the tasks I needed to complete for work and family. Distracted, I walked briskly toward home from the kids school. As I grew closer my driveway came into sight. It was empty! In the blink of an eye my brain panicked, “my car, someone stole my car.” Almost simultaneously I remember, nope I had driven the kids to school because Audrey was on crutches. I had just walked home in the freezing rain on autopilot. Isn’t it intriguing that because we do something over and over (I have made that walk from school to home thousands of times in the last six years) that we can get fixed thinking or doing the same thing. This is true in our walk with God, too. Often we need the equivalent of a freezing cold walk in the rain and panic about a stolen car to illuminate our stuckness, illuminate autopilot thoughts and transform our mind. 

Have you experienced the equivalent of a cold walk in the rain? For me, my walk in the rain was one little preposition shift. Prepositions defined by Webster are  a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause. They are tiny little words that make a world of difference in the meaning of statement and when changed can really change reality. Just try to picture the difference here. The cat is on me versus the cat is in me.  To totally different scenarios, am I right? I have found that this is true in the shaping of my understanding of who God is and who I am as well. Changing the preposition I used to describe who God is and my relationship with him created huge shifts. This happened to me when I read the book With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God.  I had been living a life of under or for or from but not with. All of a sudden I had a new way of expressing how I can be walking with God and how He is with me. John puts it this way. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be WITH you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells WITH you and will be in you.”  Next came the challenging rethinking of what Jesus’s life and death mean. Reading Executing God challenged my understanding around the punitive restoration theories. As the Holy Spirit worked in my heart one way he re framed my understanding was to replace “the died for my sins'' to “died because of my sins.” It allowed me to be open to new understandings of scripture and Jesus life and death. What will God use in your life to help you better understand Him, to shape your understanding? 

Thanks for reading Janelle Garman