How secure are those included in Christ? They are sealed – shut in – by the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Feel it today, friend – feel deeply the comfort of knowing that you belong to Jesus. Though all hell might break loose outside, though you might be attacked and assailed on many sides, though you will inevitably face trials of many kinds – you are safe. God has laid claim to us, and we are His.

There are all kinds of questions that come about when you read the story of Noah in Genesis 6 and 7. Most of the answers are left to the imagination. For example:
Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah (Gen. 7:8-9).
They came to Noah? What was that like? Was it orderly? Were the animals friendly to one another? Lots of questions, but ones that the Bible is not particularly concerned with answering. The overall point seems to be that God told Noah it would happen, just as He did with the flood, and so it was.
Here is another moment in the same chapter that might cause us to wonder:
The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in (Gen. 7:16).
“The Lord shut them in.” What a wonderfully mysterious and imagination-stirring little sentence that is.
How did He shut them in? What did Noah and his family see, if anything? What did it sound like as the door was closed? We don’t know.
What we do know is that however it happened; whatever it looked like; whatever it sounded like – it was secure. Because the Lord shut them in. Sealed the door. And when the Lord shuts you in, you are in.
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It was the great missionary William Carey who said in the late 18th century: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”
That resonates with most Christians; we want to see God move mightily, and we want to play a part in it. We want to see our homes, communities, countries, and world reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But where do we begin? Where do we start?

We might get so fixated on “attempting something great” that we miss the opportunity right in front of us—an opportunity that is readily available and also very simple. The best opportunity you might have to impact your community right now is through hospitality. What’s more, that’s not a new phenomenon.

Hospitality was vitally important to the spread of the gospel in the days when the church was just beginning to flourish because when traveling to a new area, people were at the mercy of the people who lived in that city. Christians took hospitality seriously, and because they did, the gospel was able to take root as it spread through displaced Christians who were welcomed into the homes and lives of others. It’s not wonder, then, that the biblical authors of the New Testament put such an emphasis on hospitality:

“Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality” (Romans 12:13).

“Don’t neglect to show hospitality, for by doing this some have welcomed angels as guests without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).

“Be hospitable to one another without complaining” (1 Peter 4:9).

From a purely pragmatic perspective, the early church had to practice hospitality in order for the gospel to continue to move throughout the world and for the church to grow. But there’s also a deeper reason why hospitality is so vital – that’s because practicing hospitality is one of the simplest and most tangible ways we model the truth of the gospel.

How often we see the state of someone else’s life – their home, their car, their kids’ behavior – and we become discontent with our own station. That discontentment has an allure to it – it’s easy to let it settle in and take root in our hearts. But our discontentment is not merely a longing for more – it’s actually a subtle charge against the manner in which God has chosen to provide for us. For that reason, we must also be on guard to take thoughts of discontent captive for Jesus.

Blessed is the onewho does not walk in step with the wickedor stand in the way that sinners takeor sit in the company of mockers,but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,and who meditates on his law day and night (Ps. 1:1-2).
There is a definite progression in these two verses. The man described here did not intend to keep company with the wrong crowd. At least not at first. At first, it was just a conversation that led to a decision. Just walking along. But then walking turned stationary and the man was a little further along. Until eventually he took up some kind of residence with evil. He walked, then he stood, then he just sat down. Deeper, deeper, deeper. Further, further, further.
Here is the creep of sin. Sin starts small, but it never stays that way. We walk with it, then stand with it, then sit down right in the middle of it. And the most frightening part is that we never really intended to. It just sort of happened. Like an untethered boat in the middle of a lake, we slowly drift into a place we never intended to be.
And that small beginning almost always begins with the mind. With the thoughtlife. With harboring and then dwelling on what begins as the hint of a suggestion until it grows and grows and grows. No wonder, then, that the Bible pays so much attention to our minds and thoughts, because that’s where it all starts.
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Nobody likes to wait.
Not for food, not for service, not at the DMV, not for a lull in the video streaming—not for anything. One of the reasons we hate to wait comes from our culture. We live in a culture in which everything is measured against time. Everything must be better—faster—at virtually any cost. We want what we want, and we want it now. And if we can’t have it now, we demand to know exactly how long it will take in order for us to get it. Hence the rise of the “time guarantee”—whether it’s the delivery of pizza, shipping on a product, or a repair on a kitchen appliance, if we have to wait we want to at least wait with a timetable. It is, after all, our sovereign right as a consumer.
This is problematic for the Christian, though, because we worship a God that doesn’t give timetables.
God is perfectly content to operate in His way, and in His time, and is not obligated to tell us what—much less when—He is going to act. There are, then, many times when we find ourselves believing God will make good on His word, and yet we do not know when.
This is not a new phenomenon, though—because God is the Rock who does not change, He has always operated in this way with His people.
Think of the children of Israel, enslaved for 400 years, trying to hold onto the promise given to their father Abraham that they would have a land of their own, and yet having no timetable on when God would make good on that promise. Or consider Abraham himself who was promised a son that would be the beginning of an entire nation, and yet the decades came and went without God scheduling a baby on Abraham’s calendar. And then there are the promises of the Messiah who would come and deliver the people of God, and yet these promises did not contain a specific date or time in which God must perform this service or the service would be free.
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Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Thorn, Poland on February 19, 1473 as the son of a wealthy merchant. He studied law and medicine at the universities of Bologna, Padua, and it was while he was there that his interest in astronomy was stimulated. He lived in the home of a mathematics professor who influenced him to question the astronomy beliefs of the day.
At that time, the predominant theory had been in place for over a thousand years, since the days of Ptolomy. In that theory, the earth was the center of the universe and was motionless with all other heavenly bodies revolving around it. And though all of his observations of the skies were made with the naked eye, Copernicus disagreed. Sometime between 1507 and 1515 he began to first circulate a different theory, this one with the sun at the center and the earth moving around it.
Copernicus did not live to see the reaction to his assertions, but he probably would not have been surprised at them. The reactions were, of course, angry. Though there were many purported reasons for the anger, if we look a little deeper perhaps we would find that at least part of the root of that anger…

The idea that the earth—filled with human beings—was actually not the center of the universe.

Keep that in mind as we turn to another moment, this one actually happening several centuries earlier. This moment was not set in scientific laboratories and the study of the stars, but instead on the dusty road between Jerusalem and Emmaus:

Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.Luke 24:13-16

These two men, despite claiming to have a good working knowledge of everything that had happened in Jerusalem, were really missing the entire point. But not only were they missing the point of those recent events; they were missing the bigger and more majestic point at hand. This second point is actually the point of everything—
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Who can know the mind of the Lord? His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. We must be careful, then, not to impose our own sense of logic and timing on our circumstances. Because what we perceive to be a step back is still a step forward – one that, even if it might seem to be “lesser” in some way – God has been preparing us for.

God’s sovereignty is a comforting thing, especially if you find yourself in a life circumstance that doesn’t seem to make sense. This is not a scenario of sin; it’s not a circumstance that came as a result of bad or unwise choices; it’s just a season that you have “fallen into”, in a sense, and you wonder how you got there.
Perhaps it’s a time when you are in a job you don’t enjoy or you don’t feel like makes the most of your abilities. Or maybe it’s a time when you had to move into some kind of temporary housing because the house you were trying to buy fell through. Or maybe it’s a time when you moved to a new place with great hopes and you haven’t been able to make good friends. These are tough times, and in some ways, times like these can feel like a step in the wrong direction. That is, you were at one point in your life, and then things went backward despite your best intentions and attempts to follow the Lord’s will.
These are moments when it’s good to remember that:
A king’s heart is like channeled water in the Lord’s hand:He directs it wherever he chooses (Prov. 21:1).
and…
{God} changes times and seasons;    he deposes kings and raises up others.He gives wisdom to the wise    and knowledge to the discerning.He reveals deep and hidden things;    he knows what lies in darkness,    and light dwells with him (Dan. 2:21-22).
Even when it seems like you have taken a step backward in life, God is sovereign.
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Time passes, and we look back, and from the benefit of a future vantage point, we can see things we were blind to in the moment. We get a slight glimpse of what possible good could come from something that felt, at the time, so bad. And from that vantage point, we would never look back at the disease or evil or pain we experienced and call that “thing” good in and of itself, but we might, by God’s grace, be able to see that time and time again God took what was evil and painful and trying and brought good from it.

The word “sovereign” can be either an adjective or a noun.
As a noun, a “sovereign” is a a person who has supreme power or authority. As an adjective, the word is used to describe someone with supreme rank, power, or authority. And while we might use either form to describe an earthly ruler, we know that using the word like that has some inherent qualifications.
For example, to use the word in reference to, say, the British monarchy, implies great power and authority. And yet even in such a case we know there is a limited sense to that sovereignty. King Charles, the British sovereign monarch, cannot control how much rain falls on London.
That’s important to understand because when we call God “sovereign” we mean something similar, but different, than when we use that word in another context. And that’s because there are no limitations to God’s sovereignty. Rather, God’s sovereignty is the exercise of His power of His creation.
The weather? The orchestration of world events? The flight patterns of birds? Yes, and more:
“In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water    that he channels toward all who please him” (Prov. 21:1).
It’s true, then to say that God is sovereign over all earthly sovereigns. Job sums up this truth well in Job 42:2:
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
That might be a terrifying truth for you. To know that there is a God who is directing all things to His ultimate ends. It might make you feel ridiculously small and feeble and weak… and it really should. But it’s only terrifying when it’s not blended with the truth of who this God is who is sovereign over all things.
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John 13 is full of bombshells.
After having traveled with Him for three years, the disciples likely thought they had a handle on this thing. Though they never quite knew what to expect from Jesus, they knew enough to expect the unexpected. Three years, after all, is a long time to breathe the same air as a person. But then came the trip to Jerusalem.
There was the foot washing and the objection and misunderstanding of Peter. Then it was the uncomfortable truth that there was a traitor in their midst. And then, to top it all off, was the prediction that Peter, of all people, would actually deny any association with Jesus not once, not twice, but three times that very night. The result of all, no doubt was troubled hearts. Hearts of anxiety. Hearts of confusion. Hearts of pain. And it was to those hearts Jesus spoke:

Your heart must not be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you. If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. You know the way to where I am going (John 14:1-4).

Though these words were meant for comfort, they only seemed to inspire more questions. And Thomas was the one who verbalized them for the room.
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The beginning is a commitment to more time in His Word. More time in prayer. More time in reflective silence as you consider His promises. And, of course, the flipside is also true. That along with making those choices you believe will lead to delight, you also start to make choices to cease delighting in other things. 

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
For most of us, this is an aspirational verse. Yes, we have had moments of excitement – even elatement – in the Lord, but is our general posture one of delighting in Him? Probably not. We would like it to be, but the reality is at least a little bit different.
It’s not that God is not “delightful” enough. We know that He is, with all His power, creativity, love, grace, mercy, and everything else. He has brought us into His family, adopted us and given us an eternal inheritance in Jesus. He has ordered our steps with providential love and care. Surely there is more than enough for us to delight in.
So why don’t we?
What if the answer to that question – of why we fail to delight in the Lord – is incredibly simple? What if the main reason we fail to delight in the Lord is because we haven’t tried to do so?
Maybe a little illustration to help.
My parents will tell you that until roughly the age of 18, I did not eat a vegetable unless it was slathered with cheese sauce or wrapped in bacon.
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While it’s true that talking and planning and strategizing and analyzing has much value, what is also important is for people to just take action. Or at least it’s true when it comes to jobs like foot-washing which offer no notoriety or adulation; jobs that comes with a willing acceptance of dishonor. But jobs that nevertheless need to be done.

It had been quite a week.
A few days earlier, Jesus had entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey to the adulation of the crowds who welcomed him there. The next day, Jesus performed one of His stranger miracles, cursing a fig tree and then driving out the profiteers from the temple grounds.
He came back to those same grounds and engaged the religious leaders head on, and then predicted His own death and resurrection. The city, meanwhile, was swelling with Passover pilgrims and visitors, and those same religious leaders began to put their assassination plot into motion.
And now, in the midst of this whirlwind of activity, controversy, and anxious nerves about what was to come, Jesus came into the Upper Room. Once there, He did something that astounded His friends, though at this point, it might not should have: He washed their feet:
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him (John 13:2-5).
This was, of course, not a job befitting Jesus. Or at least it wasn’t in the eyes of His disciples. It was a dirty job; it was a role reserved for the servants of the house. But there He was, the One they had followed, doing that which was so clearly beneath Him.
At least one disciple was indignant about it – Peter objected that Jesus should not be doing such a menial task. There might have been others – nervous looks; coughs; sideways glances – all feeling at least a little uncomfortable at what was unfolding.
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