Freedom!

 

Text: Galatians 5:13-25

Focus: The Spirit

Function: Helping people see the power of God in their lives

¹³For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become enslaved to one another. ¹⁴For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁵If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

¹⁶Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. ¹⁸But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. ¹⁹Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, ²⁰idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, ²¹envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²²By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. ²⁴And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

Good morning to the beloved of God!

I have a lot of feeling about this passage and there is a lot to unwrap.

It encompasses two of my favorite preaching themes, Love and the Power of the Spirit and it talks about how they are controlling us so that we can honor Christ with our lives.

In John 3, When Jesus teaches Nicodemus about being born again, he also contrasts the flesh and the spirit like our passage does. This passage seems to explain the concept of what it means for us to be new creatures, born from above by the Spirit of God.

John 3:⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Believers are those who are born from above, or born of the Spirit or born again. The concept here is that when the Spirit of God comes into a life, it will cause that person to be more loving, kind and thoughtful of others. It will cause them to love others so much that they consider their duty to love as if, as the passage says, they are slaves to love.

“Slaves to love” is a good way for us to live lives of passive resistance in days when evil reigns the kingdoms of men.

So Paul talks about how the Spirit comes to fruition in our lives and overflows in positive ways in contrast to the worldly values and negative ways that he lists here in the passage.

I believe that Paul might be trying to explain what Jesus meant when Jesus said what is born of flesh cannot obtain the peace and love that the Spirit brings to our lives.

When Jesus said the Spirit is like the wind blowing and we cannot track it, I believe he is speaking of the mystery of the filling of the Spirit in the lives of the believer.

My theology states that God created everything and therefore God is in everything and permeates everything and therefore, everyone.

I believe every single person has access to the Spirit in the form of a conscience according to Romans 1. God speaks to everyone in nature and through random acts of kindness, especially those perpetrated by believers.

But there is a difference with those who call themselves believers in the way the Spirit resides.

Throughout the book of Acts, and the Old Testament, we read different times when the the faithful were mysteriously filled with the Spirit and accomplished extraordinary feats.

And he calls us as believers to be filled with the Spirit.

It is a mystery as to how the Spirit fills us. But I seem to notice that for me it has to do with our attitude of surrender to God in our lives.

When we are baptized, we symbolize this new life that Jesus speaks. We are washed clean by the water and under the water, we surrender to Christ’s will for our lives.

Baptism represents that choice to surrender to Christ.

And when we surrender to Christ, we live by faith in the promises of God for us. We have the power and freedom to love.

We live believing that when we decide to go against the spirit of this world and show mercy, even when it costs us something, God will continue to lead us into more and more of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Now he gives a brief warning to believers in the passage for them to not fall back into the pattern and values of this world and to continue to walk in love.

The warning doesn’t come with implied judgment, but it is a call to allow the Spirit to have control over our reactions.

So, Paul is contrasting being born again with worldly values. There is value to the statement: Born again. It represents a fresh start to a new way of living.

And Paul explains the differences between living by the flesh and living by the Spirit in the passage when he gives us the lists of either living in the flesh or walking in the power of the Spirit.

He is writing this to us, the Church, because it might be possible for us to backslide from living lives of love to living lives for ourselves.

But again, the passage is not a negative warning full of judgment, but an explanation of the positive effects of the Spirit in our lives.

The spirit of the world, the flesh, is the pattern of revenge and retribution instead of love. He implies that before our commitment to Christ, we were slaves to hate and now we are free to love and experience the power of the Spirit.

Free to experience the power to love is a deliberate phrase.

The passage we are studying starts out with the fact that we are called to freedom.

Freedom to love others unconditionally because God has our backs when we walk in love.

Freedom to love because we are now new people allowing the Spirit of God to change us into loving people.

We are truly free in Christ.

Living by Faith

 

Text: Galatians 3:23-29

Focus: faith

Function: to help people see that loving others is living by faith

²³Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be reckoned as righteous by faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Good morning to the beloved of God!

I titled this message living by faith because that is an underlying theme to this passage of scripture.

Simply put, the OT law, or Old Testament is a bunch of rules designed to show what loving others looks like. But without the Spirit’s help people failed.

However, at face value, this passage of scripture is about who is included, or called part of, the family of God.

And the Apostle Paul makes a case throughout his writings that the real children of Abraham are the Children who are there by faith in God. He says that in verse 7 of our chapter.

Abraham was considered to be a just or righteous person because he feared God and lived his life trusting in God’s promises. Abraham lived by faith and that pleases God. Remember, faith, hope and love are the three pillars to our spirituality. And studying the life of Abraham will give us a picture into what living a life by faith entails. Hence, the title of the sermon.

Living by faith helps us love others.

So the reason why Paul writes this passage is to overcome some religious racism that had crept back into the Church. And it was simply that some Christians thought they were better than others.

And Paul writes this to remind them that in Christ Jesus, we are all part of God’s family. In Romans 11:17 he tells them that we gentiles are grafted into the family tree b y the Holy Spirit.

Paul makes the case that Israel is a spiritual nation, symbolically representing the Kingdom of God. God will bless Israel and those who bless Israel. But Israel is not the nation state anymore; it is the people who live their lives by faith in God.

It is sad in a way that he has to write this since Jesus said in John 13:35 that we will be known by the love we have for each other. And some Christians were not loving others equally.

So, how do we live by faith? We do it by loving others sometimes to the point of sacrifice.

Remember that faith is trust, or rest.

We trust God enough to go against the value systems of greed that control this world to living lives of faith whereby we share the love and blessings that God has given us.

God said to Abraham that God will bless him in order for him to be a blessing to the rest of the world.

And Abraham was a blessing. He taught us how to live by faith and trust that God will keep God’s promises.

And Abraham did it at great risk to his own life and that of his family.

I point that out because living by faith does not mean that we live lives without any risk, problems or struggles.

Sometimes they come through circumstances like physical ailments and we learn to find God’s peace in the midst of a trial. Sometimes they come because we took a stand for a cause that is right and it cost us something to be witnesses to God’s peace in a world that considers the mocking and humiliation of others to be a moral good instead of an indication of how far we have sunk.

God does not want us to be afraid anymore. He speaks in the passage about how the OT law didn’t succeed in causing people to love others as much as they love themselves.

That, according to scripture, is a function of the Holy Spirit as we allow the Spirit to lead us in our lives.

The OT law of judgment was full of retribution. The NT law of love is directed by mercy.

When I try to picture in the whole the life of Jesus the Nazarene, I think I can sum up his teaching with the verse from Micah 6:8: He has shown you, what is good and what the Lord wants from you: Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly with God.

The greedy system of this world tells us that we are here to accumulate more and more for ourselves as if somehow having more when we die and cannot use it is a moral good.

We are conditioned to believe it is a moral good.

And there is nothing wrong with money, we need it to function in our culture.

But as Christians, money is merely a tool to survive and bless others. We know that the love of money, not money, but the love of it, greed, is the root of all sorts of evil.

So part of living by faith is living in a community whereby we acknowledge like the early church did that sharing in community, like we do here at Painter Creek, is living by faith.

It was that sharing community that caused the early church to grow so quickly. They literally shared everything so that everyone had enough and they had extra to obey Christ by feeding and caring for the poor.

And when we read in our text that there is neither Jew now Greek, slave nor free, Male or female but all are one in Christ, we read the baptismal vows they made.

When joining the Christian community, the believers renounced racism -Jew or Greek- Sexism, -male of female- and Classism, -slave or free.

Believe me, this upset the ruling class and fierce persecution broke out against Christianity.

But it continued to grow because it is a planting of God’s Spirit. It cared for the least of these in obedience to Christ and was beautiful in the way that it gave the poor and the outcasts a chance to survive. Basically for them, living by faith was not hoarding wealth but sharing their extra resources to love their neighbor.

If the greatest commandment is to love God by loving others, then living by faith is living in a way that is attempts to treat everyone else as well as we treat ourselves.

When Hope Thrives

 

Text: Romans 5:1-5

Focus:

Function:

5:¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Good morning to the beloved of God.

Today we are going to look at some of the theology of the Church given to us in the book of Romans. In this passage, Paul talks to us about the power of hope. Remember, in 1 Corinthians 13, the great chapter of Love, he reminds us the there are three pillars to Christianity: Faith, Hope and Love, the greatest of which is love.

I preach love almost exclusively since Jesus made that his most important commandment but when I think of Faith, Hope and Love together, I get the image of a three legged stool, serving Christ isn’t going to work without all three legs providing support.

So today, let us see how hope supports us in our journey to love God by loving others.

He explains that our relationship with God doesn’t come by obeying all the rules of the Old Testament. It come by trusting God with our lives and resting in God’s promises and living by faith in God which justifies us before God.

Remember, it is a three legged stool, faith, hope and love.

About love: Jesus spends most of his teaching ministry explaining and demonstrating just how far love goes in our journey together with God.

Love is important, but one of the main reasons why we love is because we have hope in God’s promises to keep us in God’s love regardless of the circumstances of our lives. So he speaks of how suffering and trials bring us closer to God.

Paul explains all this in chapter 4 based on the life of Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith. Abraham loved others in obedience to God and lived his life trusting that God would take care of him.

And it was at great risk since the world was populated with tribal nation states and the only way to be safe and not be exploited as a foreigner was to not be a foreigner. And yet, in response to God’s call, he left the security of his home among the God-fearing people of UR, which is now Northern Iraq and journeyed to the land of Canaan which is now Israel, where the people did not live as if God would judge their actions.

That last statement is important. Part of living by faith was living with the knowledge that God will ultimately judge whether or not our actions are just and loving and therefore we live in what is called the fear or respect of God. Proverbs calls this true wisdom.

So, Abraham takes risks based on God’s promises and gives us the pattern of life that lives by faith in God’s promises in spite of his circumstances.

And the neat thing about Abraham is that although God gave him faith, sometimes he screwed it up and didn’t trust God enough and let fear control him. Then he relied on himself and got in trouble. But God still kept their promise to him and blessed him.

That is the faith element of the three legged stool and it isn’t possible without hope.

Love is the action element of the stool, faith and hope are the spiritual blessings endowed on us by God to help us love.

It is important to remember that these three elements of our spiritual walk come from God and are not manufactured by our own imaginations or willpower. It is a gift of God. It is God’s Spirit leading us to have faith, to rest in God and it is God’s Spirit leading us to have the hope to allow the faith to work through love.

I was going to mention that hope and faith are something we have a choice to allow in our lives. They are something we have some sort of control over.

But I was reading our current copy of Messenger, the COB publication and this one focuses on Hope.

Don Fitzke, moderator elect at our Annual conference wrote an article that places it in a better perspective considering the fact that hope is not something we manufacture, it is a move of the Spirit and God is the one who gives it.

So what choice to we have if God gives it and we can’t make it happen? Although, we can choose to accept or reject God’s gifts to us, that isn’t the point. Don Fitzke’s article points out that it is more than a choice, it is more like a muscle that we exercise. Hope is a spiritual muscle that we develop and strengthen. Sometimes through trials.

I think the idea is picked up when the text says that we boast in hope of sharing in the glory of God.

Paul speaks of our own tests and afflictions. Do we have hope in the midst of trials?

Trials can be painful at the time, but my experience is that God does something in the end that we did not expect or plan on. He is reminding us that God can use these trials to draw us closer to them.

What is cool about Abraham is that sometimes Abraham lost faith in the midst of a test and God still kept him safe anyway because could see his heart wanted to love and please God.

True wisdom is when someone lives their life acknowledging the fact that God ultimately cares and will reward that person based on the way they love others.

Don Fitzke’s article also mixed the metaphor about resistance and hope being a muscle and muscles need resistance to grow and thrive. Our hope should lead us to resist evil as well.

Jesus resisted evil to the point of his own death and has called us to take up our cross and resist as well.

It takes faith and hope to resist. Love is going to make demands of us, sometimes even sacrifice for the welfare of the other.

For example, in 2016, when the Governor said he would ban Muslims, the Church I served, Hope Church, by the way, decided to sponsor a Muslim family with the hope of saving their lives before the ban took place. They knew that Love requires action.

And it was a real blessing to us. We got to know the Muslim family well. It cost us hundreds of hours of volunteer time as we helped them learn the bus system, how to drive, how to apply for school, and we also provided all the furnishings in their home for their family of 5.

Some criticized us for helping people whom they believed to be enemies of the faith. But we knew that it is love that softens hearts and draws people to God.

We resisted, but not with violence. By welcoming the stranger, we danced upon injustice.

It was a sacrifice of time and somewhat a risk of credibility to our community, but obedience to Christ is living by faith and demands of love. And that resistance that we felt? It merely served to exercise our muscles of faith and hope.

When hope thrives we strengthen our faith and our love as our obedience to Christ by the power of the Spirit fills our lives.

That Pentecostal Power

 

Text: Romans 8:14-17

Focus: The Spirit

Function: to help people see the Spirit inside of themselves through Pentecost

¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Good morning to the beloved of God!

Today we are celebrating Pentecost.

The title Pentecost derives itself from a miracle that happened during the Jewish festival of Pentecost which happens 50 days after the Passover, or for us, Easter.

The miracle is explained in Acts 2 and it unfolded like this: It was at least 6 weeks since Jesus had died, rose from the dead and ascended up to heaven in front of the disciples.

When Jesus ascended, he told them to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit, to wait on God, before they took action and fulfilled their divine calling.

And God timed the coming of the Spirit just right on the day of Pentecost when there were Jewish citizens from all over the world who were present for the celebrations and they witnessed it.

And what happened was the disciples, about 120 of them were gathered together in a large room and they were praying in accord with the Jewish holiday.

And suddenly there was a loud noise like a rushing wind that could be heard throughout the city. People noticed and came to the source of the noise which was this place where the believers were gathered. The first sign was a noise.

And then a second sign from heaven appeared: Flaming tongues of fire descended on the believers and all of a sudden the believers started preaching about Jesus to the crowd that had gathered, but miraculously, they were speaking in the foreign languages of the crowd around them even though they didn’t know the language. God gifted them with a supernatural ability and everyone heard about Jesus in their own language.

So, these two signs, the descending tongues of fire proceeded by the sound of a mighty wind which attracted the crowd is what we call the birthday of the Church.

So, to the Church, happy birthday!

The miracle goes on. Because of this sign, and the way the crowd miraculously heard the good news in their own language about 5,000 people joined the church in a single day.

And that leads me to this morning’s text which is a teaching on the Spirit of God and a little bit about how she works in our lives.

(Throughout the OT, the Jewish people referred to the Spirit in the feminine, that is why I use the pronoun she.)

The first thing he emphasizes is that this relationship with the Spirit of God places us in the family of God. He emphasizes that we are indeed, now, the children of God.

Everyone is God’s child. Those who are allowing God’s Spirit to lead them are the people who are walking in relationship to God.

When we are living for ourselves we are not walking in the Spirit and are not living out the values of the family of God.

The point I am making is that it is the connection to God through the Spirit that makes us the living family of God here on earth.

He emphasizes the personal nature of this relationship when he tells us to call the Father, Abba. Abba is a term of endearment spoken to a father by a child. We would use the term Daddy.

When we walk in the Spirit, we are the children of God and we get to call God: Daddy.

I see the term as a call to prayer. When I hear that I can call my God, daddy, I want to come to him with my fears, hurts, and my joys.

The wonderful thing about this daddy that is different from our earthly fathers is that we can bring to this Father our shame as well.

Shame affects us all and I believe it comes to us straight from the pit of hell itself. I makes us feel unworthy and less.

We want our fathers to be proud, but God knows us deeply and knows even the things we are ashamed about and loves us still.

The Spirit of God overcomes our shame and is here to empower us to be able to live out the Christian life and love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.

God is a loving father who has our best interest and development in mind. God directs the path of his children through their relationship with him in the Spirit.

The Spirit of God gives us power. The Spirit of God gives us the power to love and forgive.

He calls it the Spirit of adoption. And he contrasts that to those who are enslaved.

Enslaved people have their will taken away by a master and in the social order have lives that are worth less.

But that is not the case with us! We are indeed sons and daughters of God and have the right and privilege to pray and seek out God in our lives.

So, he says we are heirs, joint heirs with Jesus himself to the privileges of being a child of God.

The the text takes a twist that I would like to explore.

He speaks to us of this power and privilege and he places a condition on it, if we suffer along with him.

Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Paul said it this way, “Present yourself to God as a living sacrifice which is the reasoable way to worship.”

And we symbolized that in our baptism. We symbolically expressed to the world that we are being buried to selfishness and are coming alive to the community of the family of God with all its rights and privileges. Praise God!

And I love the way Paul gives us something to do in worship, to give ourselves over to love and service. Our best worship is not singing, but service to the King.

When he says to suffer with Christ, I remember that suffering for the kingdom is a privilege because Jesus said we are blessed when it happens and the disciples rejoiced when they suffered for Christ.

Most of us don’t get the privilege of physical persecution, but living a selfless life in contrast to a world that values selfish living is indeed a form of suffering with Christ.

His command is to present ourselves. To be willing to serve the master for we have given our lives to him.

That Pentecostal power comes when we surrender ourselves to that still small voice inside of us that leads us to love and forgive others.

When we walk with God this way, we are walking in the will of God and anything is possible.

Love Speaks

 

Text: John 17:20-26

Focus: The power of love

Function: to help people see how love points to God.

²⁰“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

²⁵“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

Good morning to the people who are the beloved of God!

The passage of scripture this morning is taken from what theologians call the High Priestly prayer of Jesus. It is the first of two prayers that Jesus makes on Maundy Thursday evening. This prayer is for the disciples right before he is arrested, crucified and risen.

He prays this prayer not only for the 11 who are still with him in the upper room that night, but as it says in verse 1, also us who trust in Christ because of what they say. He is praying for us.

His second prayer is in the garden where he focuses on himself to have the strength to face the torture he is about to experience.

Skeptics would ask the question: why would Jesus pray if he was divine?

And I answer with the proposition that he was both God and man. The Spirit of God possessed him in a mighty way and as he says in this prayer, has made him one with the God to the point where he dwells in constant fellowship with God, whom he calls Father.

Both of these prayers come from the human side of Jesus.

And he has a focus in this prayer that we are looking at today. And that focus is on Christian unity.

His prayer is that we too, be caught up in the power of God’s love permeating us through the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

When we go against the spirit of this world that endorses self centered living and allow the leading of God’s Spirit to help us love others without judgment, we too, are letting the Christ Spirit radiate God’s love to the world around us.

God shows their love to the world through us.

The main point of last weeks message was that we reveal whom God is to the world through the way that we show love. This prayer gives us the power to do just that.

We are the body of Christ, the manifestation of Christ’s love to the world entire.

There is a biblical connection to love and God. Look at 1 John 4:16b: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

I love the way that John the disciple who heard these words from Jesus, and is reminded of them by the Holy Spirit, explains it in this letter that makes it into the canon of Holy Scripture.

The second time, when he is teaching on love in his letter to all the Churches, he explains that oneness with God is abiding in God’s love since God is love.

So, when I read from Jesus’ prayer for us recorded in today’s text and I begin to wonder at the mystery and symbolism of what it means to be “One with God” I get the answer here from John’s explanation of it in his letter to us.

To be one with God is to abide in God’s love.

I am reminded that at the core of my teaching and preaching is this simple but clear and concise description of God: God is love.

When we love we are walking in God and when we don’t love we do not walk with God.

But I don’t want to focus on our failures. Instead, I want to focus on the enduring love of God for us.

With my son having open heart surgery, I had a stressful week, but we really sensed your love and prayers covering us and our son this entire week.

Instead of fear, we rested in the peace of Christ. To me, that is a miracle since so much was at risk.

I mention this because I am reminded that God is the power inside of us to do the love we are called to do as we are being led by the Spirit.

I am reminded of that every time I give a dollar to the homeless on the street corner. When I look into their eyes, I see love there and I let them see my love for them. It always seems to be a spiritual transaction, at least it is for me.

If we want to love and to be known as the disciples of Christ by the love we have for others, then that is enough, our willingness is compounded by God’s power inside of us. This urge to care for others, to love others, comes to us from God. It is the Spirit of God and it is different than the spirit of worldly notions.

I could get dismayed when I see the current culture of the world celebrate greed instead of the community generated by the idea of E Pluribus Unim: out of many, one. I could get dismayed when I see a culture that calls insulting others a moral good. If I live by those values, I am not representing Christ’s love.

However, the promise is the power the Spirit inside of us that wants to resist these worldly notions that keep people from loving others.

Jesus, and Paul later on, both said that loving others fulfills entire commands of the bible.

God is love and we are walking in God when we walk in love.

I used to wear that band on my wrist with WWJD? And the idea is to respond to every situation by asking oneself the question first, what would Jesus do?

Of course, Jesus might perform a miracle which we generally cannot do, so one of my Seminary profs changed it to “What Would Jesus Have ME Do?”

But since God is love according to scripture, I would ask the question this way: What Would Love Have ME Do?”

Jesus said love means we treat others as well as we want to people to treat us.

What I would need in that situation is what they need at that moment.

We all need security and safety. We all need to be loved. We all need a supportive community because we cannot make it on our own. We all need to thrive.

And Jesus came to give us that thriving life.

My experience is that this walking in love is rewarding because we are walking in partnership with God.