Christianity is not a religion

Christianity is not just a worldview that you adopt one day because conveniently it looks good to you. Its not like your "Get Out of Jail Free" card. You don't just join this sect of people and you won't go to hell anymore. Here's the card. Just hold on to it until the end.

Christianity's not even really a religion. It's not a codified set of doctrines and beliefs that dictate how you live the course of your life in this world. I derive a whole new worldview, not because I decide to move from this worldview to that worldview, but because the Father came and planted Himself in me.

It started with the testimony amongst twelve people. Then it proliferated and proliferated one person to another, then to another and another. The radical spread in the first 400 years of Christianity was person to person. It was one person's redemption, to another person's redemption, to another person's redemption.

The story of Christianity is God revealing himself. And the nature of revelation is that it creates internal pressure that's uncomfortable. It lodges something deep within you that you will need to work out. It creates pressure against all the ways that you see the world and yourself. This pressure builds up and it mounts and it can drive you absolutely crazy. 

But that's the whole point because it won't let you go. The Father won't let you go.

Join Joshua Hoffert as he talks about how Christianity is an encounter that changes everything.

For more about Joshua Hoffert and Wind Ministries, visit www.windministries.ca.

Transcript

00;00;21;29 - 00;01;12;23
Joshua Hoffert
They don't want to tell you that. But today I really do like this prince watching her a number of times. Steve Broder, who's he's fond of saying, you're in the middle of the storm. I could never get through that. Really? It's amazing when you recognize that free do not at the end of your story isn't missed the moment and you're not at the beginning of your story, but that within your story, the redemptive nature of God can always be seen.

00;01;14;18 - 00;01;46;21
Joshua Hoffert
You know, struck a little bit during worship. How what we're singing about is really you know, someone wrote a song, right? That's what we're seeing, is someone wrote a song this reflective of the journey of them finding the grace and strength and redemptive and redemption in the nature of Jesus. So we're literally singing through testimony, and someone's testimony becomes my testimony.

00;01;46;21 - 00;02;21;24
Joshua Hoffert
And, you know, this is the nature of Christianity, right? Is that it started with the testimony amongst really 12 people. And then just proliferated and proliferated one person to another, to another to another. The radical spread of Christianity in the first 400 years of the existence of Christianity was person to person. It was one person's redemption, to another person's redemption, to another person's redemption.

00;02;24;23 - 00;02;49;08
Joshua Hoffert
You have this grassroots movement where people who were touched and changed by the life of God went and touched and changed people through the life of God. And Jesus said Jesus called it this. The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. And it's funny. We kind of impute all kind of meaning to that type of phrase, you know, that what is a kingdom?

00;03;04;27 - 00;03;06;19
Joshua Hoffert
Okay, well, here we go. Let's do this.

00;03;11;11 - 00;03;42;16
Joshua Hoffert
When I was. When I was 18. I'm 41 now. So now I've lived enough more past those 18 years than before those 18 years. My parents separated when I was 18 and, you know, typical. What's become all too typical of a story in our modern day where divorce is a way of dealing with life's problems. And, you know, it's just kind of become a way of life.

00;03;43;22 - 00;03;59;29
Joshua Hoffert
And it's really sad. It really is in our present age, in our present culture, that this is the way that we deal with things. And, you know, I'm not there's not I'm not trying to put any shame or guilt on people that have wrestled through the issue of divorce. I'm not saying that, just saying that it's really devastating when it happens.

00;04;01;09 - 00;04;28;14
Joshua Hoffert
And it's really sad when it happens. And I was the recipient of my parent's broken relationship and that was very difficult. And soon to tell you a story. When I when I was 18. Right. My parents divorce and within about a month I was dating this girl within about a month, I just couldn't take living at home anymore.

00;04;28;20 - 00;04;52;05
Joshua Hoffert
I mean, I remember moving my mom from our house and driving from put packing stuff up into my jeep that I had and driving stuff from our house to her, her new place, her new apartment, and just bawling my eyes out in the drive. I mean, it's so painful, right? I didn't you know, it's funny how those kind of emotions sometimes, I don't know.

00;04;52;05 - 00;05;10;12
Joshua Hoffert
Maybe this is just a guy thing. I don't think it is. But I didn't expect to drive and be overwhelmed with grief. I was just helping my mom. Right. And then I get halfway through the drive, which is a five minute drive. You know, it wasn't a long drive. I'm just undone. And I had to tell my mom I couldn't help her anymore.

00;05;11;18 - 00;05;40;10
Joshua Hoffert
It was a devastating time of life. It was very hurtful time of life. So then within about a month, I couldn't really stand being home anymore. So I moved in. I was dating this girl. I moved in with her, and within probably about a month of dating her, she was pregnant and I was not very engaged in following Jesus at that point in my life.

00;05;44;14 - 00;06;06;01
Joshua Hoffert
And I went, I remember going to my mom and talking with my mom, and I was terrified to go talk to my dad and just feeling like I had no place to turn. And my girlfriend was she was convinced that she couldn't have this baby because her parents would just freak out. And so she wanted to have an abortion.

00;06;07;21 - 00;06;42;29
Joshua Hoffert
So I didn't know what else to do. And I ended up driving her to the abortion clinic. And a friend of mine came with me. And I remember standing outside of the abortion clinic when she went in and she aborted the baby. And I was devastated, but I didn't know what to do. I remember standing outside of the abortion clinic just crying that those moments, you know, the result of life's choices was not because she I mean, I'm not absolving myself of guilt.

00;06;42;29 - 00;06;45;25
Joshua Hoffert
Like I carried guilt from that moment for a long time.

00;06;49;28 - 00;07;21;03
Joshua Hoffert
Life's Choices. The book of Proverbs says it's the foolishness of man that perverts his way. You know, no one forced the choice upon me. I made the choices that I had to bear the consequences of. And, yeah, you know, my parents divorce. They separate all that thing. And as hurtful as that was, I still make choices in the midst of them, you know?

00;07;22;25 - 00;08;03;06
Joshua Hoffert
So I spent about seven years just kind of walking away, weirdly, at that point in my life. You know, like we say, working on our testimony. That's one way of putting it. Yeah. How about totally disintegrating your life? Because, see, match meets Kindle, It's put everything on fire is progressively getting more depressed, more anxiety riddled, more broken relationships.

00;08;05;01 - 00;08;27;23
Joshua Hoffert
You know, this undercurrent of guilt from what I had done never left. And I know eventually Jesus and fast forwarding through the story on my watch as fast you look at it, you don't look at the watch. Yeah.

00;08;30;29 - 00;08;59;07
Joshua Hoffert
Jesus arrests my life at about the age of 25, 24, 25. And the result of my my friend who was a pastor's kid, who we would go out to the bars and get drunk every night and he would just pester me all the time. You need to go back to church just, you know, still am. And we're shutting down the bar, right, Trying to figure out where to go next.

00;08;59;07 - 00;09;19;07
Joshua Hoffert
And just you need to go back to church. And so on Saturday nights when we'd do that, he'd go on Sunday morning to church and play on the worship team that was he actually met. So it sounds his life was very broken. He's a dear man and has a wonderful family now, but we were both very broken individuals.

00;09;20;13 - 00;09;38;00
Joshua Hoffert
And so eventually he convinces me right to go back to church. And I and I agree, not so much because I want to go back to church because I was raised going I was raised going to church. It was because my friend just get him off my back, you know? And so my excuse was, I'm just going to go watch him play drums.

00;09;38;05 - 00;10;10;10
Joshua Hoffert
He's a pretty good drummer, so I wasn't going for God or anything like that I was going for. And God will use any excuse. So I walk in and I'm standing in the back and my dad's remarried. And so he's there. He's at this church is the church I had grown up going to is a vineyard church and my dad's there and I'm standing in the back, you know, and I'm recognized by basically everybody because I went to that church.

00;10;10;10 - 00;10;30;00
Joshua Hoffert
Right. And I was so annoyed by that because I was like, the prodigal son returned. Right. And that wasn't why I was there. I wanted everybody to know I'm not here because I'm interested right. I'm kind of stubborn like Don. And I didn't anticipate that, you know, everybody walking up to me and saying, Oh, Josh, it's great that you're back.

00;10;30;00 - 00;10;59;29
Joshua Hoffert
And I'm like, No, you don't understand. That's not why I'm here. So anyway, I'm sitting in the back, worships happening and totally disengaged from the moment the Lord speaks to me and says, You haven't been here in seven years because you've been mad at your dad, you know that It was a revelation to me. I mean, it was the most I think if you knew me, it would be the most obvious thing to point out about me.

00;11;03;12 - 00;11;26;28
Joshua Hoffert
I, I, I love playing basketball and now realize at 41 I can't do the same things I could do when I was 20. But I can still play. But I remember at one point I was in a city league and I was just I had this constant resentment and bitterness and anger bubbling under the surface in my life.

00;11;28;25 - 00;11;50;13
Joshua Hoffert
And and I wouldn't have characterized myself as an angry person. It's funny, you know, when you struggle with anger, you don't really characterize yourself as an angry personal see yourself that way. You know, Paul gives all these these lists of things that are abhorrent and sinful and all of this. Right. And nobody characterizes themselves that way. Nobody actually says, well, that's me, you know, when you're wrestling with it.

00;11;50;24 - 00;12;17;15
Joshua Hoffert
I was fun and jovial. And then one thing would happen and being in this basketball game and the ref made a really bad call. And I contend to this day that it was a very bad call. And I got so mad that he could possibly make this call. So I just screamed at this ref like, I mean, I just let him have it.

00;12;17;15 - 00;12;44;20
Joshua Hoffert
So he gave me a technical, which meant you had to you were sit on the bench for 5 minutes. So that didn't alleviate the anger. So I went to the bench and I grabbed the first chair that I saw. This is Josh. Okay, you guys know me, and I just threw it on to the court and I grabbed the next thing I saw and I just threw it onto the court.

00;12;45;12 - 00;13;34;27
Joshua Hoffert
Threw I kicked out of that league. So you could see that is I was just I was a very angry young man. Again, the shame and this guilt and anger just bubbling under the surface. Right. So when the Lord said to me in that worship service, you haven't been here in seven years because you've been mad at your dad, what dawned on me is that the life decisions I had made, I had made because of this underlying anger, this underlying bitterness, this underlying resentment, the shame that I was carrying, that this unbeknownst to me, had dictated the decisions I had made.

00;13;39;29 - 00;14;00;05
Joshua Hoffert
And so agreeing to driving my girlfriend at the time when I was 18, driving her to the abortion clinic was a two hour drive. It wasn't like a close place, but I made that decision. I made the decision to leave my parents house. I made the decision to do all those things and I carried the shame and the guilt of it.

00;14;01;23 - 00;14;22;17
Joshua Hoffert
But that policy, this is the thing, okay? This is the thing. So Christian Christianity is not just like a set of moral ethics where it's not just like a code of conduct. This is right and this is wrong. But it's easy to mistake that because you see so many times where Paul says something like This is what it means to walk as a child of light.

00;14;22;17 - 00;14;39;02
Joshua Hoffert
This is what it means to be influenced by darkness. Like Paul makes those distinctions. Many times are Jesus. Even in the the the Sermon on the Mount part, it looks like if you read it just at face value, it looks like what he's saying. Is that it? Well, if you're a Christian, you act like this. And if you're not, you act like this.

00;14;40;21 - 00;15;01;18
Joshua Hoffert
But that's not really what he's saying. And that's not really what his his life presents. The message in it is heralded by John the Baptist, but then taken up by Jesus. You know, it says that Jesus from from the time forward after he was baptized and I think it's in Luke four, says that after that time he began preaching, repent, the kingdom of God is at hand, or the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

00;15;01;23 - 00;15;27;29
Joshua Hoffert
But there's no actual recorded statement of Jesus saying that because his life was the message, he never actually says, Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He lives, repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then everything that he teaches and everything he says in everything he does sums up that message. The Christianity is not just a worldview that you adopt one day because conveniently it looks good to you.

00;15;37;11 - 00;15;59;13
Joshua Hoffert
Christianity isn't like you're like like I know my ways that it's being characterized. It's not like your get out of jail free card for you Monopoly players there who just join this sect of people and you won't go to hell anymore this year. Get out of jail free card. Here's the card. Just hold on to it until the end.

00;15;59;21 - 00;16;28;12
Joshua Hoffert
Presented at the pearly gates and you'll be good. You know, these are ways and this is ways. This is just ways that we live it or we think about is the ways the culture perceives Christianity around us. It's not your quick route to a blessing. Like, Well, okay, well now my life is no good now, so if I go do this, it'll be prosperous.

00;16;29;14 - 00;16;49;02
Joshua Hoffert
It would be the byproduct. There may be prosperity, but that's no guarantee. Look, I love I love looking at the examples of men and women in Scripture and then in church history, because you've got someone like Abraham, right? Abraham had an incredible amount of wealth. Everything he touched, it seemed like he couldn't he couldn't help to generate more wealth.

00;16;50;00 - 00;17;15;07
Joshua Hoffert
And God bless him and mean he's the father of the faith. Right. And it says that throughout through his seed, the the the the all of all of history, in all of creation, everything was an find blessing through Abraham. Right. It was a pretty awesome promise. And everything he did is like he can't help but generate wealth. And then you get someone like John the Baptist is like completely the opposite, right?

00;17;16;26 - 00;17;45;24
Joshua Hoffert
So it's not like it's this get rich quick scheme, blessing or prosperity or whatever, right? Like you just give enough money and you'll get enough money in return. Business. This is not what it is. So in a way to escape your problems. Okay, well, I don't have to do it now. I've got God. He'll deal with the problems.

00;17;45;24 - 00;18;08;02
Joshua Hoffert
I don't have to deal with them anymore. Like, you know, it's just a funny thing. In my experience, what happens is God goes, okay, here's the problems. Let's dive into them now and we'll deal with them together. You don't get to ignore them. It's like, see, the thing is, in that moment when the father spoke to me and said, You've been here in seven years because you've been matters your that actually full disclosure.

00;18;08;02 - 00;18;34;02
Joshua Hoffert
Okay. Obvious hasn't offend anybody. This is what this is specifically what the Lord said to me always kind of water this one down. He said, You've been here in seven years because you've been pissed off at your dad. That's what he said to me. You take that up with him. It's like I didn't have like I had nothing figured out in my life at that point.

00;18;34;02 - 00;19;02;29
Joshua Hoffert
Right? My life was an absolute mess and a disaster. It really was. I was living at that time in a house that had been plagued by the police as the drug house in the city. We'd had parties almost every single night, and one of the guys I was living with, he dealt marijuana and painkillers that he'd stolen generally and that he would he would sell them.

00;19;03;17 - 00;19;34;04
Joshua Hoffert
So we were always coming to our house to buy drugs. Like that was our house. And the cops were always showing up at our house to kick everybody out in the middle of the night. So my life was not together when the father came and said, You haven't been here in seven years. My life was not together. When he sent my friend who was broken and all his glory, you know, drunk as a skunk hung over in the morning playing on the worship team, hiding his lifestyle from the people around him.

00;19;34;09 - 00;19;58;27
Joshua Hoffert
Like like none of our lives were figured out. And the father still came because, again, it's not a code of ethics. It's not a code of conduct. It's not a get rich quick scheme. It's on a get out of jail free card. This is not what this is. You know what I'm and I'll try and say this. Look at that one.

00;20;00;13 - 00;20;42;20
Joshua Hoffert
Christianity's not even really a religion. It's not like a codified that we treated this way, but it's not really supposed to be a codified set of doctrines and beliefs that dictate how you live the course of your life in this world. So, you know, time passes, right? Like I said, and I sort of follow this Jesus guy and things are ironed things out and struggling with anger towards my father.

00;20;42;20 - 00;21;06;03
Joshua Hoffert
And I actually I called my dad up that Sunday after church and I said, Dad, I think I've been really mad at you. And he just goes, Yeah, I know. I didn't apologize. Right? I wasn't ready for that. He said, Yeah, I know. I worked for my dad, actually, at that point. So he had an angry son working in an office two of us in an office together.

00;21;06;20 - 00;21;40;06
Joshua Hoffert
So my poor father. But God slowly began in breaking into my life in one gracious moment after another, and eventually again. To make a long story short, getting back to what I was talking about in the first place was a shame. That's guilt. I carried you know, I was I moved up to Canada in 2007, and this is where I met my lovely wife, who you guys all know.

00;21;40;06 - 00;22;13;19
Joshua Hoffert
Of course, most of you anyway, who we absolutely didn't like each other when we first met each other. By the way, she was too weird and I was way too arrogant. One of us got better as soon you just impute your meaning to that statement all that you want, right? Anyway, what was I saying again? Getting myself in trouble.

00;22;14;18 - 00;22;37;14
Joshua Hoffert
So we're in this intern program, right? We met in this ministry school, and we have this guy. Actually, you guys know him? John Thomas. He's been here a number of times. He comes in, he speaks and he's teaching and we're talking about prophetic ministry and everything or having a time of prophecy. And John has a vision of an aborted baby girl and he says, it's someone here and he doesn't want to expose anybody.

00;22;37;14 - 00;23;01;04
Joshua Hoffert
Right. You know, there's 30 or 40 of us there. So it's this moment of prophetic worship and prophetic. But, you know, it's time to let it come. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's me. You know, there's there's and that I mean, that moment. Like, I'm stunned when he says that, right? Like, we're in the midst of a bunch of good Christians not supposed to have that kind of sin.

00;23;03;09 - 00;23;38;19
Joshua Hoffert
No one's supposed to know that. Like, can I even tell people about this? Will they still like me if I talk about this? So there's a modicum of healing when that happens. God seen this. He knows it. I remember one moment Austin at a friend's house, and this is probably after Aaron and I were married right around the time we were married 29.

00;23;39;07 - 00;24;00;06
Joshua Hoffert
And I have this dream one night where I'm standing in a room and I can I can feel all these people. There's this table in the middle of a room, just a nondescript table, like a coffee table. And I'm I can just feel so drawn to this table. I don't know why I felt so drawn to the table.

00;24;00;06 - 00;24;16;20
Joshua Hoffert
These people in this room and I'm embarrassed to go to the table because I think what do they think? If I go to the table, there's something so attractive about this nondescript table. Why would I go to this table? But and if I go, everybody's going to think of me. They're going to judge me. They're going to think, well, look how weird he is for going to the table.

00;24;16;20 - 00;24;44;13
Joshua Hoffert
And there's an obvious analogy with communion and the table that we come to, and we just did that today. And eventually I'm just so drawn and attracted to this table. I say, I don't care what anybody thinks. I'm just going to go and I get to the table and I pull a receipt out of my pocket and I know it represents the debt I owe for that dead baby because of the abortion that I willfully did.

00;24;45;10 - 00;25;29;22
Joshua Hoffert
And I dropped that receipt on the table and cried. It has her name on it. And I crumple into a ball in the dream and expend myself in weeping. It was the most freeing dream I think I've ever had. I wept for some obscene amount of time in the dream, and eventually it passed and I walked. And I actually I remember standing up in the dream and feeling light, and I woke up and it was, I mean, the sense of guilt, shame and all those that I let go of.

00;25;30;14 - 00;25;55;27
Joshua Hoffert
Because here's the thing. See, I like it's not like I can cook up an experience like that, right? I can't fabricate an experience. Like I can't even tell when I'm ready to have an experience like that. But again, Christianity is not a code of conduct or a set of ethical values. We derive those things because of who the founder of Christianity is, you know, so to speak, would appoint us to.

00;25;59;20 - 00;26;30;26
Joshua Hoffert
But, you know, one of the one of the most earth shattering moments in terms of dealing with this, you know, these moments that God comes lovingly and gently was the day we found out Aaron was pregnant with Savannah. And I remember she Aaron went to bed and I was just I mean, just so overjoyed. And I was sitting down.

00;26;30;26 - 00;26;52;02
Joshua Hoffert
I remember that. I remember the song I put on to just spend some time with the father was it was I don't know if you know who Julie true is, but just a prophetic soaking music Rain Heaven's embrace. I remember this. I'll never forget the moment I'm sitting down in a little basement suite that we were living in at the time.

00;26;52;29 - 00;27;14;20
Joshua Hoffert
It's late at night. Aaron's asleep. I hit a 15 minute 15 minute song. I hit play and I just start weeping and weeping. And it's like the father. I was like, You said something specific, but I knew what he was saying. You know, you you just you receive what he's saying. And and the father was saying to me, and we'll hear it before I see that.

00;27;14;20 - 00;27;39;17
Joshua Hoffert
Here's the thing. Well, I'll say the father was saying to me, it doesn't matter what you've done, I've made you a father. You can't argue with me anymore. Because I realized I felt like because of what I'd done, I'd sacrificed the right to be a father. How could I possibly be a father? Spiritual father, earthly father, whatever. Because of what I'd done, because of what I had let happen.

00;27;40;08 - 00;28;12;05
Joshua Hoffert
And I've been complicit in, how could I possibly be a father? And the Lord said in that moment, he said, It doesn't matter how you see yourself, because this is how I see you. You think you've disqualified yourself, I've given you a daughter and so you can't argue with me anymore. Your father and I was undone. It was another so that my point is, all along the way, there's these little moments, little moments and big moments where the Lord's his revelation breaks in and something changes about me.

00;28;14;13 - 00;28;37;22
Joshua Hoffert
Something about the very way I perceive myself. I perceive the universe, I perceive gone, I perceive my history. Something changes radically because he comes and that and to me, that's the essence of Christianity, is that he comes. This is what it means to be a Christian is not to buy into a set of beliefs or doctrines or values or ethics or moral codes or anything like that.

00;28;37;27 - 00;29;05;12
Joshua Hoffert
It's to say he comes to me in the midst of my brokenness, my dirtiness, my filth, all those things. He comes to me and he doesn't come to me to say, Look at all those disgusting things you did. I'm perfectly aware of that. I don't need him to tell. Look at all those disgusting things you do, because I've already got shame and guilt built up from years of letting it hinder me and hamper me and build upon me.

00;29;06;15 - 00;29;43;16
Joshua Hoffert
But he says, Let me show you how I see you and who you could become. And everything in my life changes because of it. So I derive a whole new worldview, not because I go, I'm going to move from this worldview to this worldview, but because the father came and planted himself in me. Now, because someone said, Well, you shouldn't do this, but you should do this now, you know, that kind of instruction can be helpful, but it's because the father came and this is the thing the Gospels are.

00;29;44;11 - 00;30;04;07
Joshua Hoffert
So we've done it's such a disservice to the Gospels. We've put many kind at the center of the Bible, But God, the revelation of his goodness, his love, his tenderness, his kindness, his mercy and his compassion, that's the core of the Scriptures is the revelation that he comes to be with us. And you can't disqualify yourself from that.

00;30;06;27 - 00;30;34;22
Joshua Hoffert
You could do the most heinous things and he would still come and give you opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. You can reject it for sure, but moment after moment after moment, he breaks into your world the same way we see in the Gospels, the same way we see in the Old Testament, the same way we see throughout the New Testament that he continues to break into the world and make changes to who you are because he reveals his goodness to you.

00;30;49;25 - 00;31;24;01
Joshua Hoffert
So we'll say it this way. Okay. Participation in the Gospels come because God comes to you, because he said, I'm going reveal myself to you. You know, if we think like that, I mean, even the kind of terminology we use salvation, implying this like end goal is I participate in the life of God because he reveals his life to you.

00;31;24;23 - 00;32;11;02
Joshua Hoffert
This is what it's about, participating with him, being with him, loving him, being loved by him. If we can get the worship team up, maybe, hopefully so. The nature of revelation, God revealing himself, the nature of Revelation is that it creates internal pressure that's uncomfortable. It puts lodges something deep within you that you need to work out. And it creates this pressure against all the ways that you see yourself different than what's been revealed to you in this pressure builds up and it mounts and it can drive you absolutely crazy.

00;32;12;08 - 00;32;31;28
Joshua Hoffert
But that's the whole point because it won't let you go. You know that that moment that you hadn't been here in seven years because you've been mad at your dad to the moment where John has a prophetic words that someone here is holding on to an aborted baby, you need to let it go. God wants to heal you.

00;32;32;06 - 00;32;59;25
Joshua Hoffert
Those things deposit something in you that creates pressure within your life that forces you to begin to look inside and look at what's going on and address what's going on. You can totally try and ignore it. When Jeremiah says this, you guys, he is rejected by the people of Jeremiah the prophet in the Old Testament. Is this in Jeremiah 20 and 21, he's rejected by the people because they don't like his words and he says, So I resolved not to prophesy anymore, but the word of God became a fire.

00;32;59;25 - 00;33;19;15
Joshua Hoffert
Shut up in my bones. I could no longer hold it in Something deep was working its way through him about rejection and abandonment, of fear of failure, and whether these people are going to accept him and love him. And the father threw himself into Jeremiah, and Jeremiah said, I can't keep him inside anymore. I got to let him out.

00;33;25;04 - 00;33;45;02
Joshua Hoffert
So will every single one of us can point to something in our history and go, Oh, I might be too big, I might be too dark, I may be too dirty, too dangerous. And I want to touch that one. And that's your choice. You know, you can make that choice. You can leave that. You can keep that. There.

00;33;47;04 - 00;34;16;10
Joshua Hoffert
But I guarantee you, the father already sees it. The father already knows it isn't care if you have it all worked out. What he does care about you. He does care about your heart and he does care about who you are and who you're becoming. And he'll come right into that place, right into that space. The more room you give him, the more room he'll take.

00;34;20;21 - 00;34;39;05
Joshua Hoffert
And it will be a beautiful, glorious story. I can guarantee you that is he's going to pull something right out of what you thought was that dirty part. He's going to go, No, no, no, no. That's exactly where I want to come. I can possibly want to go there. We've got to forget those things. No, no, no, no.

00;34;39;05 - 00;35;20;00
Joshua Hoffert
That's exactly where he wants to come, is right into that moment. We're I'd hazard a guess that each of you are here because you've had a moment where the father invited you to participate. So wherever you are on the journey right now was like, you know, you could be in a really good place. You could be in really low place.

00;35;22;09 - 00;36;01;09
Joshua Hoffert
The father wants to come if he wants to celebrate the life that you've lived and the good things that are happening. And maybe he wants to go right into that difficult, hard moment. Collection of stories here in this building portray. A god who's active and alive. He's with each and every one of us working these things out, dealing with different things, putting himself in the midst of our lives, revealing himself, moving us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

00;36;01;09 - 00;36;05;18
Joshua Hoffert
It is the kingdom of heaven is in your midst. The Father is being revealed.