Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
7 Signs: Lent 2025- Ian Graham: Water Into Wine
Pastor Ian Graham begins our Lenten teaching series looking at the seven signs in John’ gospel.
As I mentioned, we're in our first Sunday of Lent, so we're starting a new teaching series that focuses on the miracles, or what John calls the signs, in John's Gospel. And in John's Gospel he will point out that there are seven signs that proliferate throughout the course of John's telling of the story, and so we're going to walk through those seven signs as we move towards Good Friday and towards Easter, and so these signs will be our invitation to join with Jesus on this Lenten journey as we seek to align our lives more with God and his kingdom. So we're gonna start at the first sign that seems appropriate In John chapter two. So if you have a Bible, you can turn over there. We've got the words for you on the screen as well and you can open up with me. I'm going to read the word of the Lord together. John 2 begins here.
Speaker 1:On the third day, a wedding took place at Cana, in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, jesus' mother said to him they have no more wine, woman, why do you involve me? Jesus replied my hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants Do whatever he tells you. Now, this is a great passage, one of my favorite passages. When I get to perform weddings and we have some dear friends that are going to be getting married here in the summer that they'll hear a little bit of these words from John too. But today we want to focus on Jesus' invitation to follow him and what it means as we start to assess our lives in light of God's kingdom. So we have Jesus at a wedding and sometimes we miss. It's good news that Jesus was at a wedding. I don't know what your perception of God is, but Jesus was the kind of person that you would want at a wedding. That's good news, right? Like we've all like for those of us who have been married, like you curate those guest lists pretty intentionally. It's like somebody's going to be a big wet blanket, and sometimes our perception of Jesus is just esoteric, cosmic sayings kingdom of God, right, and he's going to show up at your wedding and be like, oh, don't do that. It's like that's not really who you want around, right? Jesus was invited to a wedding. Jesus embodies the kind of God that you would want when you are celebrating life, and Cana was near Nazareth, so it's likely that Jesus and his family knew. The bridegroom's family Weddings in this culture would last up to seven days, and I know there's some cultures around the world where this is still tends to be the case.
Speaker 1:Most of the village would be invited, work would cease, and in an agrarian kind of culture that's no small statement, right, running out of wine was obviously a problem. From an immediate standpoint, the party is in danger at this point, right, but it wasn't only that. The party itself would end. You see, one of the fundamental paradigms of people in this culture was a sociological construct called honor and shame, and essentially your actions in public determined whether you had honor amidst the community or you had shame. And so it wasn't just that the party was in danger of drying up. It's that these actions could have lasting effects for the family, and it wasn't just one of those things where okay, two months from now they'll all forget about it. These lingering shame effects tended to transpire over the course of years, sometimes generations. And so a wedding was a joyous, exuberant affair, but it was also a signifier of your family's honor, and the guests who would come to the wedding would bring gifts that were appropriate to the family's honor. And so there's this whole honor and shame economy that's taking place all in the midst of this wedding at Cana, and so we're brought right from the beginning into the midst of a crisis and Mary alerts Jesus to the reality of the crisis.
Speaker 1:Now again, I don't know what your perception of Jesus is, but you may have heard Jesus' response to his mother and thought, jesus, you probably shouldn't talk to your mother that way, like, oh, they're out of wine Woman Amongst all the guys in the room. Don't refer to any woman as woman. Just a little advice here. So what's happening here? Why is Jesus seemingly being so curt in his response to his mother? Well, again, there's some cultural differences that we have to traverse. First of all, jesus is not being harsh with his mother. Well, again, there's some cultural differences that we have to traverse. First of all, jesus is not being harsh with his mother. He responds to her in a way that would have leveled the playing field between his mother and other women. Now, for those of you who are mothers, especially to sons, the idea of your son treating you like any other woman might feel equally terrible. So I want to acknowledge that.
Speaker 1:But in Jesus's culture, the primary center of gravity was the family unit, both the nuclear and the extended family unit. And so Jesus, in responding to his mother in this way, is not being harsh with her, but what he's doing is he's saying you are like all other women to me, because Jesus is the firstborn male in a Jewish household, so for him the cultural expectations are very heavy that he will have as his fundamental orientation the demands of his life as a son, an eldest born male. And throughout John's gospel we see that Jesus takes his directions from a different source. He will say I don't do anything that I don't see my father in heaven doing. And so John is trying to very intentionally illustrate that Jesus's sole source of authority, sole source of direction, is what the father is up to, not the demands of his culture, not the demands of his culture, not the demands of his sonship. And so Jesus's response here, though it strikes us as a bit harsh, is actually doing something deeply significant. But he responds and treating her as any other woman, and he says to her my hour has not yet come.
Speaker 1:Now, as we read through the New Testament, we're given four cohesive, comprehensive pictures of Jesus's life. They're called the four gospels. People have called them biographies of Jesus's life. We call them spirit-inspired biographies. But each of these four gospel writers Matthew, mark, luke and John has a different perspective, different emphasis that they're trying to bring us in on, in revealing who Jesus is and what that says about God. And I love how John sums this up. He says I've written these things so that you might believe. But if I were to write down all the things that Jesus had done, I suppose that not all the books in the world could ever contain the stories. I mean that is good, but each of these artists are trying to bring us into their way of experiencing life with Jesus, inspired by the Spirit of God.
Speaker 1:John is an artist and, if I might be a little bit snobby for a minute, john is an artist among artists and so he has theological vocabulary. He's layering things on layers. He is bringing us into his way of seeing, and one of his primary vocabulary terms for what Jesus is up to is Jesus' hour. And John will talk a lot about the hour of glory. One of John's consistent themes is about the hour of Jesus's glory.
Speaker 1:And you think about our perceptions of glory. We have our own signifiers of glory in our day right that which is lifted up that which is exalted right. We have our own ways of glorifying people, and they didn't have. Their expectations and perceptions weren't that much different than ours, especially as it pertains to what God was up to in bringing his kingdom. They expected a certain kind of glory, a certain texture, and Jesus, when he performs these signs in John's gospel are certainly signifiers of that glory. But at the moment where Jesus's glory is revealed the most fully, it's not the texture that we would expect. It's not Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, it's not Jesus feeding the 5,000. These are not the full expression and manifestation of his glory. Rather, it is when Jesus ascends to his throne, which is not a throne of gold, when he dons his crown, which is not a crown of jewels, but when he ascends to the throne to be lifted up, in John's words, so that all people would be drawn to him. It's when he receives the crown of thorns that's placed upon his head, overcoming the curse that we have brought into the world.
Speaker 1:You see, john's glory is a paradoxical glory indeed, and inviting us to behold Jesus for who he is. And so Jesus from the very beginning. This is his focus, my hour, the hour of my glory, and he responds to Mary in her bringing Jesus into awareness of this lack of wine. He says woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come, I don't know why. Mary's undeterred by Jesus's seeming protests.
Speaker 1:John tells this story in a very concise way, by Jesus' seeming protests. John tells this story in a very concise way, and so John just continues on and says well, mary was undeterred by Jesus' seeming distancing himself from this problem. And she simply says to the servants that are assembled there do whatever he tells you. And for us, as we begin this first Sunday in Lent, we're invited to this call to discipleship, which is just a fancy way of saying following Jesus, trusting in Jesus, do whatever he tells you. Just as Jesus says that he is doing whatever he sees his Father in heaven doing, we are invited, compelled, commanded, to do whatever Jesus tells us, compelled, commanded to do whatever Jesus tells us. We live in a culture where the notion of demand, of responsibility, of finding our place kind of within a broader story, rather than sort of developing a story for ourselves, a sort of self-actualizing story, these things have largely gone by the wayside. We've replaced demands with discovery, expectations with expression, responsibilities with authenticity. But the call to discipleship is a call to the loving demand of Jesus. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously reminds us, when Christ calls a man and a woman, he bids them come and die.
Speaker 1:Martin Shaw is a British storyteller who talks a lot about spiritual realities and fairy tales and for a long time Martin Shaw was just kind of one of those vaguely spiritual people, especially people that are informed a lot by mythology, tend to have kind of an awareness of spiritual things but also that kind of cool distance from it. It's like I don't really believe all of this but yes, they make for good stories and Shaw's kind of built his life and reputation in this world. But Something funny has happened over the last several years is that Shaw has found himself moving away from a vague spirituality to a very concrete and specific faith in Jesus and he talks about the dynamic that so many of us have experienced where, if you are willing to assume the posture of the seeker, there's sort of endless allowance given to you because you're not demanding too much, you're not claiming too much for yourself, you're like I'm humbly seeking the truth If you're willing to kind of say at some point oh, I think I've found something. Especially in our sort of cultural appropriation. There's something quite different, a quite different posture that we're greeted with, and Shaw talks about this dynamic and I love what he writes. He writes of his life and background. In telling stories he says I certainly got a lot out of searching Hundreds of them, big ones, small ones, funny ones, deep ones.
Speaker 1:I unexpectedly got a good living out of these stories and their exploration. The search took me from a black tent to working in one of the finest universities in the world, that's Oxford. I cheered yes and amen, but then, almost three years to this day, I had to admit something to myself. I had found something. Or more accurately, and I love this something had found me. My little boat had struck a shore, no longer gliding endlessly on shimmering and rather elegant waves, and I love this. Something had found me, and I love this phrase. And now I had to live with the intensity of that disclosure. The consequence If we keep searching, we may actually locate, not, as Moriarty reminds us, marvels, but actual, proper healing. I didn't even know I needed such a thing. I would have regarded that as a rather overblown statement, but I was wrong. I needed it. I was wounded, I was fallen in my way and I was hurting others.
Speaker 1:And what I hope, as we look at this story in Canaan, as we see the exuberance of the joy of God, as we'll see, there's no less exuberance in the demand of Jesus' invitation. And what Mary says to the servants that are assembled there do whatever he tells you is our invitation. This morning we see a glimpse of this here in John, chapter two, the servants are instructed to fill stone jars that are present there with water. Primary here John is so laser focused and keeping our attention on Jesus's voice. John is always locking in on what Jesus is up to. And primary here is the voice, the instruction of Jesus and the response of faith to actually do whatever he tells the servants to do.
Speaker 1:And there's often this distance between that which makes sense to us and that which we're trying to accomplish and that which Jesus is calling us to. And that distance is a great place to be, because it's called faith and we are invited to live by faith, not by sight. So you may be saying to yourself, okay, well, yeah, if Jesus were to be in the room and were to tell me right now, go do this, I'd probably do it If I could hear the voice of Jesus in my life, I would respond to it. Well, I've got good news for you, in fact, that we every week, open words that testify about Jesus, that proclaim of what he's done, that invite us to follow him and to be like him and to be conformed to the image of Christ. We have the words of Jesus giving us invitations and instructions to go and do likewise.
Speaker 1:Starting with Jesus' voice means that we have to attend to the words where we know that he has spoken Again. God has spoken so many different places. Hebrews 1 talks about this. God has spoken in so many places, in so many ways, but he has spoken fully and finally in his son, who is the exact representation of his being. Jesus is the disclosure of what God is saying. Yes, god speaks in creation Psalm 19. Psalm 8, we read it during our worship time. Yes, god speaks in all of these different ways, but it's all through the lens of Jesus, the crucified and glorified one.
Speaker 1:And so we have to start by attending to the life and the words of Jesus. His life is like the Rosetta Stone that helps us transpose across cultures, across languages, across time and distance, across our misplaced expectations of who God is and what he's up to, about our misplaced expectations on how God feels about us. Like, do you know? God loves you, he delights in you. The first sign of the kingdom of heaven in John's gospel is a wedding. He is trying to say with all the intensity of heaven God likes you, he is about your joy. It's not a cheap joy that you can build for yourself. It is a joy that God has won for you at a price, and the whatever he tells you for us is the Spirit's prompting and leading.
Speaker 1:In response to our interaction with the biblical story. The Holy Spirit will point us as we read the words. Yes, some of us like to sit and read a book. Others of us listen to Scripture. Read a book, others of us listen to scripture. We listen to scripture here collectively. The Holy Spirit is taking all of that into the harness of our lives and trying to say this is who God is. Thus, go and do likewise.
Speaker 1:You know, for many of us we look at the story specifically in places like Exodus. As the people are liberated from slavery in Egypt, god leads them in a very visceral, a very physical, tangible way. There's a cloud by day, a fire by night, and we say to ourselves. If I could just see God in that way, I would feel better about my sense of faith, about following him, and we long for that kind of experience. And in their great mystery and paradox, the scriptures are trying to invite us to see that the Holy Spirit who inhabits our hearts when we say yes to trusting in Jesus is a better and fuller manifestation of God's presence leading and guiding our lives. When the Spirit descends upon the upper room in Acts 2, it's a mighty rushing wind or a pillar of cloud and tongues of fire resting on each one of them. A pillar of fire. And the New Testament writers are trying to say angels have longed to look into that which you now have received, the Holy Spirit taking up residence not in a building not exterior to us, but within the confines of our hearts. That we have been given a deeper and fuller revelation. That Jesus' words to Thomas stand true of us, that blessed are those who believe even when we haven't seen, even when we haven't touched, because Jesus is revealing his heart and his fullness to us. The words of the Psalms, in addition to the words of Jesus, give us an invitation into this kind of life with God.
Speaker 1:If you've read the Psalms. Perhaps you've had this experience. You're reading a nice Psalm, you're like I like this, these are nice words about God. And then you keep reading and you're like I don't like that. Those are very strange words.
Speaker 1:My favorite one is like Psalm 139. He's like oh Lord, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You know whether I go far or whether I'm near Before a word is on my lips like you know it. It's like this beautiful meditation on God's intimate knowledge of us. And then, if you keep reading, it turns to like heavy metal section. It's like, oh, that you would slay the bloodthirsty. It's like, whoa, I was just meditating on the goodness of my life before you and now, all of a sudden, I'm thrown into a world of enemies and chaos. Because I'm thrown into a world of enemies and chaos?
Speaker 1:Because the Psalms are not first and foremost about decorum in the court before God. They're an invitation to be fully human and as a people. As a people, we pray the Psalms in order to take on the laments and the hurts of this world, in order to say, god, yeah, I may be living in the sunlight before you or, god, I may be in a sense of disorientation and despair. But whatever we are bringing into our life with God, we say this is a witness to the body of Christ, the manifold, every tongue, every tribe, every nation. That body of Christ and the Psalms are inviting us to a fully human life before God. And we can treat the Psalms individually, psalms like Psalm 23,. So beautiful, the Lord is, my shepherd, you know. Psalm 8 we read what is man that you are mindful of, like all these beautiful places? But the Psalms not only function in these kind of atomistic individual parts, but they function as a whole. And I want to look at the two bookends of the Psalms to see the arc of the life that Jesus is inviting us to here in John, chapter 2.
Speaker 1:So first let's read from Psalm 1. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night. Is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers, not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous.
Speaker 1:Begin with the word of blessing. When we attend to God's words, we find blessing, which is not just that. God has a nice disposition towards us. Blessing is a force. It is God investing his life, his words, his presence, his gifts into our lives. And then the psalmist invites us, within the confines of Psalm 1, to divert our paths from the ways of the wicked, the sinners, the mockers, and instead to delight in the law of the Lord and to meditate on his law day and night, to take these words and to sit with them, to allow them to wash over us, to allow them to show us their goodness, to do, as Mary tells us, whatever he tells you. All right, so we'll hold on to Psalm 1 for a minute.
Speaker 1:Let's go back to Cana. In John, chapter two, verse six. Nearby stood six stone waters, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons. Okay, these are big jars, right? Jesus said to the servants fill the jars with water. So they filled them to the brim. Then he told them now draw out some and take it to the master of the banquet Going back to Cana. The servants hear the words of Mary to do whatever Jesus tells them, and they listen. These stone jars are for ceremonial washing.
Speaker 1:We see that Jesus is accused if he and his disciples don't wash properly before they eat, and this was about ritual purification before meals. Jesus, seemingly deliberately throughout his life, especially in John, will choose these kinds of conflict points between himself and the Jewish religion and practice. Not because Jesus wants to directly confront that, because he is reorienting that story, the story of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, the covenant, the king, like David all around himself. We see this later on John 2. We had another sermon about John 2 in the fall. But that Jesus will say in the temple destroy this temple and I will rebuild it again in three days. And upon Jesus's resurrection they realize he's not talking about his body, he's not talking about the physical building, he's talking about his body.
Speaker 1:But what we see? If we kind of transpose what Jesus is doing here, jesus will take the rote, the programmatic forms of our religious expectation and fill them anew with. The new thing that he is doing and this applies to all of us is that God is wanting to shake up our paradigms, our expectations about what he is up to in the world and usually what he's up to in our own lives, and there's so many little profound acts of faith that are happening here in John 2. The servants responding to Mary, responding to Jesus's instructions, do exactly what he tells them, and it's in verse 8 that we just read that the tensions really build, and we are so often inoculated to the drama of these stories because we know the ending right. Oh, jesus is weeping at the side of the tomb of Lazarus. Oh, he's going to raise him from the dead in just a second. Like. Oh, jesus is weeping at the side of the tomb of Lazarus. Oh, he's going to raise him from the dead in just a second. Like. These are moments so pregnant with drama and tension.
Speaker 1:The servants have taken a bunch of water and put it in these jars, and now Jesus says take that cup, fill it with water, go bring it to the chief steward. The chief steward was somewhere between wedding DJ and tastemaker. He's keeping the party moving. You know, he's the guy who's like you give it up for the bride and groom for like a 40th time and everybody's like all right, cool. But he's also he's got some sort of cultural influence into how this wedding will be perceived in the local Us Weekly or whatever version you have of that in the first century.
Speaker 1:And so the servants take the cup. They know what's in the cup and I don't know if they're filled with some measure of dread about what's going to happen, bewilderment. They're like why are we doing this? It's a cup of water or just amusement. They're like this is kind of funny. But when the master of the banquet takes the cup that was brought to him, you know that smile that only your taste buds can form. You know what I mean. You ever have one of those kind of meals. It's like the bite itself, just like yeah, that'll do. Here is the good wine, and it's not just a sip, it's or a cup 20 to 30 gallons each.
Speaker 1:Like the party is about to really actually start the response to Jesus' words in the finest Cabernet Earth ever dreamed up, the obedience of faith results in praise, in exuberance, in abundance. The very first in the collection of the Psalms is about a call to a life of obedience. Let's scroll ahead to the last one, psalm 150. Because these work in concert, in harmony, together. They're saying if you respond and heed this call to delight and walk in this way, then you will have this kind of life.
Speaker 1:Psalm 150, praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty heavens, praise him for his acts of power, praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre. Praise him with timbrel and dancing. Praise him with the strings and pipe. Praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymb symbols. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. It sounds like a wedding, it sounds like new wine, and I think Ecclesia is. We are being invited into this kind of vision a life that gives praise.
Speaker 1:I'll just show you a little snapshot of the Psalms. The Psalms start with blessing that results in obedience. Blessed is the one. And it circles around to obedience bursting forth and exuberant blessing. We resound that blessing which God has spoken over us, and we give it back to him. Everything that has breath, praise the Lord. And there's this beautiful thing that happens at the end of the Psalms Everything that has breath. Praise the Lord is like that last chord or that last note at a symphony that just rings out forever.
Speaker 1:And we're invited to see this story and to soberly acknowledge. First of all, where's the wine got out of our lives? Where's the crisis? We have no more wine. Where's the joy been drained? Where is there shame looming? Where does it feel like, unless God shows up, that you are consigned to a life that is far from full For most of us? We have to place ourselves at this exact desperate moment in the story to see that we live our lives on this precipice, that either the music will stop and everybody will go home or Jesus will be present in such a powerful way we will respond to his word and we will see that there is new wine breaking forth. Do whatever he tells you. It's not a demand to diminish you, it's not to shove you into a mold. It's to invite you into the freedom that God has for us as his people.
Speaker 1:I think a couple of ways this manifests in our lives. First, we see that new wine springs forth from the settled forms of our religion and we are kind of an extemporaneous people as ecclesia right, our prayers are not all prescribed for us. We pray the Lord's Prayer, but for many of us we're praying. We have this facade of authenticity, of spontaneity, but so often those are just forms, in and of themselves too. Some people like those forms more, some people like them less, but for us, we can delude ourselves into thinking we don't have these settled forms that we've placed God into. Now. God is kind, he's gracious, he will inhabit those forms, but there are times where he's trying to say fill those stone jars that are made for this specific purpose and see what I will do with them. Expand your expectations of what I'm up to in the world. We have every reason to look at those stone jars and say there is no way that wine is coming out of there Except do whatever he tells you is coming out of there. Accept, do whatever he tells you. Accept the presence of the king is there in the midst of the party. Do whatever he tells us Obedience, faith, the second way. I think this meets us today, the sedimented parts of our stories.
Speaker 1:You may be disappointed in God. The wine has given out and it seems that the years have passed you by. New wine almost taunts you. You're waiting on breakthrough in your relationships. Perhaps you would like to be married and just can't find the right person. For those of us who are married, we've all been in that place in our relationships where the wine has gone out and unless Jesus shows up in a powerful way, it seems as if the party will stop. Many of us are waiting for breakthroughs in our careers. You're not trying to build a resume for yourself. You're not following the world script. You're trying to say I want to serve Jesus with my life, or I want my life to have a different texture so that I can be more present for my family, whatever it may be. And you're just saying where, where God? Where is this newness? You've been praying for somebody in your life for a long time that hasn't come to faith. They haven't crossed that threshold. You're just saying why you feel like you've been waiting long past the point of reasonable hope.
Speaker 1:Again, we have to behold Jesus's presence at the wedding as the sign of possibility, as the signal fire of hope. And all we can do, ecclesia, because this is not about you somehow accomplishing something so that Jesus will respond to you. All we can do here is receive the word of grace, the word of gospel, to take him at his word. This is about what God is up to. This is about what God has done. This is not about you somehow conjuring up some measure of faith that God will honor and will respond to about what God has done. This is not about you somehow conjuring up some measure of faith that God will honor and will respond to. Yes, it may seem absurd, as it did to those servants. You want me to simply take this cup and offer it to the chief steward and act as if something is in this cup more than a cup of water. Yes, there is no inherent between the two things other than the presence of Jesus.
Speaker 1:And Cana tells us in no uncertain terms that Jesus is fully invested in our joy, a true joy that is not built of the stuff of this world or the empty promises of our culture, but of the presence of the king turning water into wine. I'm gonna invite the worship team forward. Isaiah, in his prophetic pronouncement of what Jesus will do in Isaiah, chapter 51, meets us in the depths of our despair, of our uncertainty of that place where we're at the precipice. He says the Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look on with compassion on all her ruins, he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
Speaker 1:John, chapter 2, verse 11, says when Jesus did what he did here in Cana of Galilee, it was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him. I'm going to pray for us, god, the invitation to see the signs of your presence, god, or an invitation to behold your glory, a glory that is manifest in suffering love on the cross. For us, the new wine that is poured out, poured out from your side, god, the blood that flows for us for our forgiveness, god, for our redemption. Lord, God, help us to see that these signs are not the miraculous bending of the laws of nature, lord, the earthly Jesus responding at his whim, god, but are signs of the new creation that is coming, the eternal wedding feast described in places like Isaiah 25, god where death is no more.
Speaker 1:God, where the brokenness that so often pervades our relationships and our lives is no more. God, where oppression and injustice, god, have ceased. And, god, if we could start there and just beholding you, lord, a glimpse of your glory, god, then we can invite you to meet us. Lord, would you shake up our settled expectations? God, whether it be theologically or just practically, lord, we just think this is who you are. This is what you're up to. It will continue to be so until we die. Lord, you would show us the testimony and lives of the saints, god, who have had their perception of you shaken and the world was never the same because of it.
Speaker 1:Jesus, god, I wanna pray specifically for those who are just in that place of it. Jesus, god, I want to pray specifically for those who are just in that place of disappointment. God, lord, we pray. Welcome, holy Spirit, welcome Comforter, welcome Advocate. God. Would you minister to places in the deep confines of their hearts? Lord, for those of us who have trusted in you, it's your literal address, it's your abode. God, you have taken up residence there. Would you do a work of healing in our midst, jesus, would you proclaim the promise that seems impossible, that, yes, new wine can break forth because you are here? Lord Jesus, would you quiet the voices of shame and accusation, lord Jesus, that tell us that the wine ran out and it's all our fault, and show us how you are there in the midst of the crisis.
Speaker 1:God, with your healing presence. Jesus, god, we give you this time in response, in worship. Lord, we allow your presence to have your way here. We pray and we declare all these things in the name of Jesus. We pray, amen. Ecclesia. I'm gonna invite you to stand and, just as we are, as a people, to respond in worship. We believe that the Holy Spirit is ministering here in this place. He will speak to you in the confines of his heart. He will declare that these things are true about him and true about you. Just allow him, by your attentive focus, to minister to your heart here. Let's worship together.