 A radiant church family, we love you. Believers all over the globe, we love you. So glad you've joined us for this message. This is part of our Out of Egypt series. We're working our way through the book of Exodus and the whole story that I believe that God is breathing on in this particular hour for his church about what God is doing behind the scenes in his people during this hour. I know that there's so much that is put out there on the news and on different social media platforms about things that are happening, statistics and diseases and shifts and trends and curves and distancing and all of that kind of thing. And it's important for us to know all of that. The most important thing that we can grab ahold of though right now is to be people that have ears to hear what the spirit is saying to the church in this hour and make no mistake about it. God is speaking, the Holy Spirit is speaking. I believe that he's speaking a word of transition in this hour to his people that the church, especially in the West finds itself in a season of transition and changing also of preparation. And that's each and every one of us individually. We can look at the big picture and say, well yeah, God's doing that on a big global scale, but what does that mean for me? Well, the way that God moves big things is he does it in little pieces. And the way that God shifts entire entity called the church is he does his greatest work on an individual level. So each and every one of us are like clay in the hands of the potter and God is at work in us to bring us out of Egypt and to bring us in to the promises of God. And so as a part of this series, we're doing a semi smaller series within it called Lessons from the Wilderness. And so I wanna draw your attention, turn with me in your Bibles. Hopefully you have your Bibles out or your iPad or whatever, but it's important that you see it for yourself. Get your journals, your Bibles and turn to Exodus chapter 15. The title of the message this weekend is called Bitter into Sweet. Bitter into Sweet. God is in the business of taking the bitter things of our lives and turning them into sweet. And I wanna start by drawing our attention to verse number 22, starting there. And it says this, then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea and they went into the wilderness of sure. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Mara, they could not drink of the water of Mara because it was bitter. Therefore it was named Mara. And the people grumbled against Moses saying, what shall we drink? And he cried to the Lord and the Lord showed him a log and he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule and there he tested them. Saying, if you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God and do that which is right in his eyes and give ears to his commandment and keep all of his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians for I am the Lord your healer. And then they came to Elam where there were 12 springs of water and 70 palm trees and they encamped there by the water. Now by way of recap you'll remember last weekend we didn't even begin the subject of Mara and Elam because we were just introducing the idea of the wilderness. And I have personally experienced wilderness wanderings seasons in our life. A lot of us would kind of describe what we're in the middle of right now of having to stay home. The question marks concerning our health, our jobs and our families. We would describe that as a wilderness of sorts. Most wildernesses are physical challenges that we encounter that develop spiritual disciplines or endurance within us. And as I said by way of recap last weekend the wilderness has a purpose attached to it. The wilderness always has a purpose. God doesn't do anything. God doesn't allow anything that he doesn't utilize for his purpose. And the wilderness has three purposes. Number one, the wilderness is a test. You'll notice it says that God tested them. At the end of their 40 year wanderings in Deuteronomy eight verse two, God says, and the Lord tested them for 40 years in the wilderness. Number two, the wilderness is a revelation. It's God revealing himself as he really is to his people. It's also a revelation because in finding out and seeing who God really is, we discover who we have always been meant to be. So it's a revelation and then number three the wilderness is a highway. It's God's pathway into the promised land. The wilderness is not the easy way but the wilderness is the only way to inherit the promises of God. So as God by Moses was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, they were celebrating on the other side of the Red Sea and now they've traveled three days through the wilderness and they're thirsty. They want water. There's not a lot of water in the desert. So you've constantly have to be looking for an oasis or a water source. And so on this particular part of their journey, they came and they found this area three days into the wilderness that looked like it was gonna satisfy their thirst. And so they ran to the water, it looked good. There was lots of it. Remember, there's hundreds of thousands of the Israelites. And when they came up to the water, imagine being so thirsty of not having anything to drink for three days. All you can think about is quenching your thirst, being refreshed. And from a distance, you see that body of water and they ran to it. And when they got to the water, their anticipation was that this water was going to quench their thirst, renew their bodies and their spirits and give them strength for them to continue their journey into the Promised Land. But when they tasted the water, it was bitter. The water was bitter. The name of the place became known as Mara, which is a Hebrew word that means bitter. It looked good, but when they drank it, it was brackish, it was polluted, it was bitter and it wasn't something that they could drink. Imagine how disappointed that you would be in that moment. Imagine how disturbing that that would be, how frustrating that would be. To go to drink this water that looks perfectly good, but to realize that what you thought was going to meet your immediate need and quench your thirst did not. They were bitter because the water was bitter and they began to grumble and they began to complain against God and looking at Moses and saying, now what, what are we gonna drink now? I mean, immediately they're thinking about death, they're thinking about the level of their thirst and the fact that there's nothing anywhere near them other than this water. Imagine the level of disappointment that they felt. And it was in this moment where God tested them because it was in this moment of their disappointment that what was on the inside of them came to the surface through their grumbling and their complaining and their fears and it became a revelation that God wanted them to see about themselves. And then it also became a revelation about God that he wanted them to see about who he was because disappointment is typically what causes bitterness. When you talk about bitter water, water that is bitter or water that is brackish looks good. It's like looking out at the ocean that's full of salt water. And if you never knew that that water was undrinkable, you would look at it and say, I've got an endless source of water to quench my thirst until you drink it. And then you realize it's never gonna be something that you can utilize. It looks good, but it's not going to satisfy you. Imagine that level of disappointment that when they tasted the water, they realized it was bitter. What came to the surface? Their own bitterness. Bitter water becomes bitter because a good source of water under the surface has been contaminated either by minerals that are deeply deposited that have been crystallized like salt or sodium or sulfur that were not removed in the digging of the well or a perfectly good well has been filled with poison, sediment or a dead animal. Something has fallen into the well. Something has fallen into the source that has contaminated the water so that it's no longer drinkable. And it was in this moment that God not only revealed to the children of Israel some things about them, but he also revealed to them some things about himself. But let's stop and let's talk about how the wilderness oftentimes will take us to places in our life that are a reminder of our disappointments and of our wounds and of our hurts. And God will oftentimes bring us in seasons of wilderness to those places because he wants to deal with them and he wants to heal the bitterness of our hearts. He wants to revisit the places of our disappointments. See part of our journey towards the promises of God is we have to deal and God knows us. We have to deal with the deep issues of our hearts and the wilderness and places like Mara that we visit in our life when we come under times of testing and times of trial. It's about the only thing in our life that will dig deep enough into our soul or trigger us to actually bring those things from the deep place of who we are up to the surface so that we can deal with them. Most of the time, we're really good at masquerading them. We can live our lives looking good on the outside, consciously saying the right things, doing the right things, going through the motions because we've learned how to live life and we've learned coping mechanisms and we've learned what other people expect of us and we lived most of our lives much like how Mara looked from a distance. It looked good until you got near it and you drew water out of it and you tasted it and you realized that what looked good from a distance was actually bitter up close. This is a picture of why God brought them tomorrow and it is a picture of why God as a good father is not content to leave the deep, unresolved issues of our life untested. It's because he knows that bitterness in our heart will actually limit our capacity to inherit the promises of God. This whole area, this whole test was a picture that God was projecting back on the Israelites and he was testing them and he was showing them their own bitterness, not to destroy them, not to condemn them and say, see what terrible people you are, see how rotten you are, you're just as bitter as this water. No, God was doing it because he wanted to refine them. And you'll remember what Proverbs says, it says that the crucible is for gold. I love that and it says in the furnace or the crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold but the Lord test the hearts. The only way that you refine silver and gold is you have to apply heat, why? Because the deep sediments and the contaminants that hide and are laid hidden inside of the precious metal, not obvious to the naked eye, it takes fire to bring those things up to the surface not to condemn or to destroy and say, this is a waste of time, but to actually purify so it has more value and more worth and listen, more strength after it has gone through the crucible. God doesn't reveal to us and take us to places that are difficult in our life. What we would call wandering journeys. He doesn't lead us to these places of triggering and allowing things to come to the surface of our life to condemn us and to remind us of how broken we are. He does it to heal us. He does it to reveal himself to us and he does it to refine us. That's what the testing of the Lord is. The testing of the Lord is actually out of compassion for us, not out of hatred against us, not out of indifference towards us. God is not indifferent. God reveals himself as a jealous God. Jealousy, not in an unhealthy type of jealousy, but the God who says, I'm not letting you go. I'm not just gonna leave you as you are. I'm not going to be intimidated. I'm not gonna be scared off. I love you so much that I am going to test you. And in the testing, the flame is gonna bring some unpleasant things to the surface. You're gonna taste life and you're gonna realize how bitter it has really become. You're gonna have to be reminded of the sediment that has fallen into your heart, the disappointment that you've experienced and just tucked away, the frustration and the thirst that you've tried to quench with other things of this world and other people and other relationships in the pursuit of the things of this world. It's fallen into your heart and you've allowed minerals to harden and crystallize when you've gotten in fights and relational disbelief and things that have broken previously healthy relationships or lies that you've believed, lies that the enemy has whispered to you and they've become not just sediment that have fallen into your heart but they've actually crystallized. So now every time life begins to flow out of you, like Proverbs says, out of the abundance of the heart, the issues of life spring forth as your life begins to come forward, that water that was meant to be satisfying and life-giving to other people and even to you has now become brackish, contaminated by the crystallized disappointment and the lies of the enemy and the deceptions that you've bought into and the dead things of life that have fallen into what is supposed to be life-giving springs out of your heart and it has caused you to become bitter. It's caused me to become bitter. God knows that we are easily embittered. Proverbs says that a man even knows the bitterness of his heart. Why is that? It's because we all know the pain and the disappointment and the things that we've experienced that don't make sense have hurt us, traumatized us, disappointed us even sometimes when it comes to God. The greatest bitterness in the human heart is the result of us responding in the wrong way to God when it seems that he's let us down. But God is such a jealous God that he will not allow the bitter places of our life to go untested. It's like, if you're one of the children of Israel, you could ask the question, God, why if you're taking us into a land that flows with milk and honey, and if you've given us an inheritance, why would you bring us to this place? Why would you lead us into the wilderness three days where the only source of water is undrinkable? Why would you do that? That just seems cruel. That just seems disappointing, God. We could become quickly disappointed with the Lord if we are not careful. But we need to realize some things about bitterness that God wants to say to us. Because even now, you know, it's tempting for us to even question God about the circumstances many of us are facing. God, why would you allow me to lose a job or to have to stay home? Why would you allow me to be separated from the people that I love? Why would you allow this to happen to the church? God, I thought you said that you were gonna provide for me, but yet here I am and I don't have any money. I don't know how I'm gonna pay the bills next month. Lord, you know that I'm a people person. Lord, why would you quarantine me right now? A lot of us right now, as we're going through a wilderness in this hour and in this season, remember God always has a goal of progress that is the end result of the process that we find ourselves in. But if we're not careful, we can say, God, why are you doing these things? I don't understand. And if we're not careful, our disappointment with the loss of things, our disappointment that things did not go the way that we thought they were going to or that we believe God wanted to or that we had planned on. It's like, I've got plans. I had travel plans. I had a new business venture. I had dreams for my kids. I was looking forward to vacation. God, I'm so disappointed if we're not careful. We can become bitter. But if we are spiritually aware, listen right now in this hour, our ear can be open to say, God, I'm standing on the banks of what could potentially become bitter in my life. And instead of allowing my heart to get any more bitter, I need a revelation of who you are to speak to me in this moment, not just to get me through this moment, but to actually hear what you're saying about the depths of my life, things that maybe I've tucked away, not dealt with, things that I've hidden, things that have been polluting my life, polluting my relationships, polluting my words, polluting my faith, polluting my prayers, polluting my praise. And I don't want them to be there anymore. I don't want my life to just look good on the surface. God, I want you to dig down deep. I want you to reveal the bitter waters and I want you to heal them. Let me talk to you real quickly about bitterness. Number one is bitterness in our lives is often the unseen source that is poisoning our lives and limiting our capacity to walk in the promises of God. It's hidden, it's an unseen source, but it's there nonetheless. Have you ever asked yourself, why does it that I seem to have a bad attitude? Why is it that I have a way of destroying healthy relationships? Why am I always so judgmental? Why am I always criticizing other people? Why do I get upset when other people are blessed? It may be that there's an unseen source called bitterness. Number two, bitterness is the result oftentimes of deeply traumatic events and disappointments in our lives. A lot of times we can trace the bitterness or we don't oftentimes recognize it as bitterness but that's exactly what it is. We have childhood memories. We have a breakup. We have a divorce. We have something in our life that was deeply traumatic and painful to us. Deeply, deeply disappointing to us. Moments that marked our lives that we can go back to and say, you know, I was never the same. You know, right there when that happened, I made a vow on the inside that I was never gonna be hurt like that again. Who I am was shaped by this thing that took place in my life. For some of us right now, the enemy is devising a weapon against you. He's wanting you to be so traumatized about what you're going through right now that it shapes you for the rest of your life and actually becomes a lid that limits your capacity. You don't even know that it's happening but just like God is working when you don't see him, let me tell you that the enemy is also working when you don't see him. He's trying to build his preferred future for your life and it is not one of abundance or of life. It is to steal, to kill and to destroy every purpose of God from your life. But oftentimes bitterness comes up in our life because of traumatic pain or disappointment at number three. Bitterness creates a construct, a belief system about God and ourselves. That's what bitterness does. It affects us, it actually defiles us just like dead things and sediment and poison that go into a perfectly good source, a well, an oasis, a body of water and it contaminates it in the same way the enemy comes into moments of pain, moments of our trauma, disappointments in our life. He speaks lies and when we embrace those lies they become like sediment that begins to settle in and build a belief system. Build a belief system about God and about ourselves based on that pain. That's where bitterness comes from. In Hebrews chapter 12, it talks about how the father, God is a father and how he's always at work in believers' lives. And oftentimes the way that God works in our life is he disciplines us, that's what all good parents do. And Hebrews chapter 12 begins with looking into Jesus who's the author and the finisher of our salvation, running our race with endurance. The whole concept of Hebrews chapter 12 is about the journey out of Egypt through the wilderness of life into the promises of God and into the purposes of God. And then the writer of Hebrews zeroes in on how God gets us there. It says that he disciplines us. Or another way of saying discipline is he tests us. He's at work in our lives correcting us. Listen to what the writer of Hebrews 12 in verse 11 through 17 says about this. It says, for the moment all discipline or testing, it seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift up the drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame or bitter may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone for holiness without which no one will see the Lord and see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. Listen to this, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. That no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward when he desired to inherit the blessing he was rejected for he found no chance to repent though he sought it with tears. So bitterness is pictured as a root or a contaminate that gets into our soul somehow. And not only does it create bitterness than us but it actually defiles others. In other words it poisons others. It comes out of our source and what is it the result of? Well, oftentimes it is the result of how we respond to disappointment and pain and even testing. We find ourselves in the middle of a test. God's beginning to bring correction to our lives. He's doing it so that we're healed so that what is out of joint in our life can actually be set so it can heal. Have you ever broken a bone and it hurts so bad you don't want anybody to touch it. When I was in high school I was playing basketball in wet pavement and so I went up for a layup. Actually it was a dunk on a nine foot rim but it ended up becoming a layup because as I went up I slipped on a wet leaf and I came down and I smashed my wrist on the ground and when I came up my wrist was bent like four different ways. It was broken all the way across on the outside and it was bent and like my hand was turned up like that and it hurt so bad. And so the guys who were with me they picked me up and they're like trying to hold my hand and I'm like no, no, no, don't touch that. They immediately took me to the hospital and when I went into the hospital I thought, well they're just gonna put it into a cast and they're gonna give me some painkillers and it hurts so bad. And the doctor looked at me and he says, no we gotta set it. I'm like, what does that mean? He says, I'm gonna pull, this person's gonna push and it's gonna hurt like crazy. Well he did not lie. It was one of the five most painful things that I've ever experienced in my life. It hurt so bad. But what would have happened had they not said it? What would have happened if I would have said, no, this hurts, don't touch it and left it like that? It would have healed, broken and it would have lost its functionality. This is what happens a lot. We experience trauma, disappointment. We come to a place called Mara. It's like, God, this is not what you promised. This is not what I had planned. This is not where I thought I would be in life. This is not what I thought I'd be going through. And if we leave it there, it's like a broken bone that's not set or a dislocated joint that is not set. It can't heal. But what does a father do? A father comes to those places that are out of alignment in our life and he allows us to experience the pain of discipline for a moment so that he can correct those things in our life, so that they can heal long term so that they can produce the fruits of righteousness. Afterwards, not in the moment, it doesn't feel good in the moment. But here's the thing about how God disciplines us. I want you to hear this. The very fact that you are being disciplined or tested, the very fact that God, and maybe you didn't even do anything wrong, but maybe it's something that he sees that's underlying in your life that in the end is gonna prevent you from going in and possessing the promised land. If God is dealing with you, that means that you are a legitimate son or a daughter of God because God doesn't mess with the neighbor kids. God only as a father disciplines his own children. But if you never experienced the discipline of the Lord, one of two things is true. Either one, you're not a legitimate child of God. Or number two, you are a child that has hardened his heart so much that now even when you go through difficult times, you'll weep, but you're not able to find repentance. If God is testing you right now, if you're in a place in your life where you're just like, God, okay, whatever it is that you're trying to bring to the surface, whatever it is, give me ears to hear. I don't wanna just smooth it over. I don't wanna tuck it away. I don't wanna grumble and complain against you because I'm frustrated and disappointed. I wanna be a child that says, God, what are you trying to say? I wanna learn from this. I wanna learn what you're trying to say to me because I believe you're trying to bring healing into my heart. I believe that you are trying to prepare me for what's coming, for the promised land, for the promises of God. And I don't want to be left out. You see, God was revealing about their brokenness, but he was also revealing to them his intentions, that there is an antidote for the bitterness of our heart. The places where disappointment, trauma, discouragement, frustration have limited us. There is an antidote. What did God tell Moses? Verse 25. And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw the log into the water, and the water became sweet. The water became sweet. What does that mean? Well, the log is a picture. It's a type of the cross, a cross of Christ. And the log was a revelation that God gave to Moses. Moses cried out, and he said, God, what do I do? There's no other water around. What do I do? These people are thirsty. What do I do? Imagine being the leader of a million grumbling and complaining thirsty people. And the Lord says, I want you to take that log, a log that Moses did not find on his own. It had to be revealed to him from the Lord. I want you to take that log, I want you to throw it in the water. And when you do it, the water's gonna become sweet. What was required of Moses? In order to sweeten that which had been bitter, it took faith, because in the natural, it's like that stick in that water is not gonna change anything. But it took faith to believe that if I obey God, if I take what he has revealed to me, and I respond to it, and I place this log into water, God is going to reverse the bitterness and make what was bitter sweet again. The log is a revelation of the cross of Jesus Christ, because a revelation of the cross, I'm not talking about a doctrine of the cross. I'm not talking about just the theology of the cross. I love theology of the cross. All the different writers throughout church history that have written about the atonement theories of the cross, what took place on the cross. I love the doctrine and the theology of the cross, but theology and doctrine alone do not have the ability to take bitter places in our life and actually make them sweet again. It takes a revelation from God, where we have stopped and said, God, I need you, what do I do in this moment in my life? I'm confronted with my fears. I'm confronted in this hour right now with my disappointments, things that I thought I had dealt with are now rising to the surface. What do I do with them? I need a revelation, and what we need is the Lord to take us to the cross and to remind us of the cross and to give us a revelation of how the cross transforms our life. You see, when Jesus, just before he went to the cross in Luke 22, 62, it says, they went out into a garden and he wept bitterly. Why? Because Jesus knew what was coming. Jesus knew the pain, the suffering, all of your disappointments, all of your frustrations, all of your wounds and your traumas. Jesus took them on him when he was on the cross. Isaiah 53 says that he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement, the discipline, the correction, the punishment for our peace. Put upon him and by his stripes, his suffering, we are healed. Even our bitterness, Jesus paid for on the cross. He paid it in tears, bitter tears so that you and I could be healed. Only thing that heals bitterness is a revelation of the cross. The gospel, the gospel itself is actually the only thing that can turn the disappointments and the hurts of our past and actually make them sweet again. Romans chapter one says, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. The gospel itself, that Jesus went to the cross in our place, that Jesus himself was betrayed. Jesus did not wanna go the way of the cross. He said, take this cup from me if there's any other way. But Jesus knew something and it was why he was willing to go to the cross. The writer of Hebrews says that it was for the joy that was set before him that Jesus endured the shame of the cross. What was it? Jesus knew that the resurrection unto life only comes on the other side of the cross and death. In other words, Jesus had to die so that our sin, our shame, our hurts, our wounds, our offenses could die with him so that three days later, he could rise in resurrection power. That's why the cross is able to transform. See, because Mara in the place of bitterness was not God's final destination for them. It was a place of revelation. It was a place of testing. But it wasn't God's ultimate destination. It was a stopping point so that he could reveal to them his good intentions. It's where he could say, you need to learn to listen to my voice, but not the voice of the enemy. If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God and not harden your heart. And if you'll do the things that I tell you to do, keep my commandments, my statutes. Listen, if we will learn to believe and to trust the voice of the Lord over the voice of our past, over the voice of the enemy, over the voice of our sicknesses, over the voice of our disappointments, over the voices that have told you all the reasons why you are the way you are. You see, Israel had to learn to trust the voice of the Lord over the voice of their taskmasters. Israel had to learn to listen to the voice of the Lord instead of their voice of their fears. All of their lives, they've been disappointed. They've worked hard, never been complimented, work hard for an early grave, had no name, had no dreams, had no future, but now God is saying something different to them. And he's saying all that bitterness, you can put it away. All that bitterness, if you hold on to it, it's gonna poison your life. But if you'll listen to my voice, listen, God says, if you'll listen to my voice and diligently obey me, I will put none, none of those diseases. What's God saying? I'm good, you can trust me, you can believe me. I'm good, I'm your father, I'm for you. I go before you, I follow after you. I'm around you, I'm within you. And if you've ever wondered, why God? Why should I be able to trust you, God? Why should I be able to believe that you're for me? Nobody else has ever been for me. Why should I believe that you've got good intentions when everybody else has always exploited me taking me for advantage and they've set me up and it always leads to something painful, abusive, hurt. Why should I get my hopes up, God? Every time I've ever dreamed or gotten my hopes up, they've always been dashed on disappointment. And God says, you wanna know why you should trust me? Look at the price I paid on the cross. Look at the price I paid for you. If you'll listen to my voice, I'll put none of the diseases, I'll put none of the shame, I'll put none of the frustrations and the disappointments and hurts and curses on you, I've already put them on Jesus. And He's paid every single one of them. You can trust me because Mara is not where I'm taking you. Elam is. And God said, just like Jesus went through the cross to get to the resurrection, they had to go through Mara to get to Elam. Where was Elam? Elam was God's answer to their thirst. It says that they traveled on and He brought them to Elam, which means source or fresh, pure water. And they came to Elam where there were 12 springs and 70 palm trees. Ah, listen, this speaks of so much. 12 is the number of their covenantal identity. They were Israel, no longer Hebrew slaves. They were Israel, which means those that have prevailed with God. There were 70 palm trees. There were 70 elders. And He said, now you can find shade under the government of God and the kingdom of God, no longer under the heat of the taskmasters and the oppression of Egypt. He was speaking to their covenantal identity and their covenantal authority. And in the midst of that, He's saying, now I'm gonna show you who I've called you to be. You're no longer a slave, your sons and daughters. You're no longer operating under fear. You're now under the shade of my authority. And your heart, it can be healed. It can be refreshed. It can be renewed, even in the process. God wants to prepare us in this hour for the promises to come. I want you to bow your heads right where you're at. And I wanna pray over you and then we're going to worship one more time and allow God to come and the Holy Spirit to speak as He is about the places of healing and the places of refreshing in our lives. Lord, we look to you. We say, here's our hearts. Here's even the places of our life, Lord, that have been disappointments where I've allowed bitterness to solidify in my heart and in my mind and in my life. Here's the places where I'm out of joint that I know of. Holy Spirit, what are you highlighting in this hour? What have I depended on that has disappointed me and let me down? I'm reminded of Isaiah 55 where God says, everyone who thirsts, let him come and drink. Lord, in you is the fountains of life. And in your light, we see light. In revelation of you, we see who we are because you are the source of life. Holy Spirit, illuminate, not to condemn, but to correct. Not to destroy, but to refine. We welcome you and your presence in this moment.