Communing with God is like eating with someone around your table in your dining room. In that kind of setting, you can let your guard down; there’s no need for pretense. Dining with someone is an opportunity for you to listen to them, to get to know them, to enjoy their company. It is an opportunity to share your heart, to communicate something of yourself. There is a mutual give and take that happens around a table. You listen as the other person speaks, and then you respond in dialogue with that person. And as you do, your relationship with that person grows deeper as you get to know them better.

The man was a scoundrel, certainly not worthy of the invitation he had just received. He had stolen before—he had even stolen from the king’s treasury. And now he was eyeing the fat purse on the richly-dressed nobleman headed his way on the main road, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
Oh no, he though. Caught at last.
“Sir,” a voice behind him said. He turned around.
“Sir, the king is giving a wedding feast for his son.” This was clearly one of the king’s servants. He continued, “He has prepared the dinner, his oxen and fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready.”
And what would someone like me have to do with that?
“The king would like you to come,” the servant said. “Come to the wedding feast.”

And those servants went out into the roadsand gathered all whom they found,both bad and good.So the wedding hall was filled with guests.(Matt 22:10)

Let Us Draw Near
Imagine—the sovereign, holy, all-powerful Ruler of the universe invites lowly, finite, severely flawed creatures into his presence.
This is exactly what he calls us to do. The end of Hebrews 10 contains such an invitation:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb 10:19–22)
“Let us draw near.”
This idea of drawing near is an important focus of the book of Hebrews, evident by its presence in the three major climaxes of the book. Here in chapter 10:22 we find the second of these climaxes. The first is found in 4:16, which says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” And the final climax of the book is 12:22, which says, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,” and that phrase “you have come” is a translation of the same Greek term translated “draw near” in Hebrews 10:22.
Not only does this concept of drawing near appear in the book’s main literary climaxes, but it also appears in several other places in the book as well. Hebrews 7:25, 10:1, and 11:6 all focus our attention on the call to draw near to God, the basis for drawing near, and the means for drawing near. The concept of drawing near is critical in this book.
So what is the importance of this command? What does “drawing near” mean?
This idea of coming or drawing near is a translation of a term that means more than just a casual coming toward something. Rather, it specifically refers to approaching God, and we can see this by how it is used in the book of Hebrews; we find commands to draw near to God, draw near to the throne of grace, and 10:19 implies that we are to draw near to the holy place of God’s presence. So it is clear that this drawing near is coming to God, and throughout the book of Hebrews the author compares this idea of drawing near to the Hebrew worship practices—they are in chapter 10 as well, terms like “holy place,” “the veil,” “high priest,” “sprinkling” and “cleansing”; drawing near to God is what the author defines as the essence of worship—communion with God.
Drawing near to God in worship permeates the storyline of Scripture. It is what Adam and Eve enjoyed as they walked with God in the cool the day (Gen 3:8). Exodus 19:17 describes it when Moses “brought the people out of the camp to meet God” at the foot of Mt. Sinai. He had told Pharaoh to let the people go so that they might worship their God in the wilderness, and this is exactly what they intended to do at Sinai. It is what Psalm 100 commands of the Hebrews in Temple worship when it says, “Come into his presence with singing and into his courts with praise.” It is what Isaiah experienced as he entered the heavenly throne room of God and saw him high and lifted up (Isa 6). To draw near to God is to enter his very presence, to bask in his glory, to fellowship with him. It is the plea of the psalmist when he says,
One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple. (Ps 27:4)
Koinonia
This idea of “drawing near” is a central picture of communion with God throughout Scripture, but the word most often translated “communion” or “fellowship” in the New Testament is the term koinonia. The core meaning of this term helps to further uncover the essential nature of communion with God.
At its root, koinonia simply means sharing something or having something in common with another person. For example, Luke uses the term to describe the “partnership” in fishing shared by Peter, Andrew, James, and John (Luke 5:10). Similarly, Paul uses the term to describe the sharing of material goods to meet the need of Christians in Macedonia (2 Cor 8:4).
This helps us begin to understand that communion is not something mystical or mysterious; rather, it is a relationship between individuals in which they share of themselves with each other.
Tri-Unity
The Tri-unity of God presents the perfect example of, and is indeed the ultimate source of this concept of communion. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each individual and unique persons within the singular godhead, experience perfect fellowship one with another. The very truth of three-in-one and one-in-three reveals the amazing communion shared by the persons of God. Their communion is so complete that to divide their being would be to divide God himself; as persons they are distinct, but in essence they are One. Jesus himself tells us of the unique relationship that he has with his Father; it is a relationship so profound that in reality, no one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father (Matt 11:27).
This reality about God—something that is unique to the God of Scripture compared to the gods of other religions—provides the basis for all discussions of communion with God and with others.
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Helena, Cat, and Grace will be labeled transphobic and hateful for speaking up, but their transparency offers a message of warning and of hope for real care that parents, policymakers, and people all around the world need to hear: Mangling healthy bodies is a sickness, not a cure.

The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters” is a cautionary tale that exposes not only how influential the spread of trans ideology is on social media and in doctors’ offices, schools, and therapy sessions, but also how that same ideology weaponizes vulnerable young women’s identity struggle against them.
The film from the Center for Bioethics and Culture documents the testimonies of three women — Helena, Cat, and Grace — who went through various forms of so-called “gender-affirming” prescriptions and procedures only to discover that the wrongly named “treatments” marketed to make them feel better about their bodies did more harm than good.
The featured women do not shy away from mentioning the irreversible procedures and damage this mutilative movement had on their bodies and souls, but they also don’t leave viewers feeling hopelessly doomed in a world that works overtime to normalize the destruction of healthy bodies.
Social Contagion
The documentary starts with the women explaining not just how they learned about transgender ideology but why it appealed to them.
“I don’t think anybody would have described me as gender nonconforming, or a tomboy or anything like that,” Helena admitted.
Though Helena said she never would have been considered “gender nonconforming” or even a tomboy, after hours of scrolling Tumblr, the social contagion of transgender ideology took root in her mind and began fueling her mental health problems.

“By the time I was about 13, I started to feel really depressed. I started self-harming. I started developing an eating disorder. That kind of isolation led me to go on Tumblr because I was spending a lot of time online generally,” Helena said. “I was introduced to a belief system that it had a lot to do with gender, but it was more like, ‘If you don’t fit in, that’s a sign that you’re trans. If you don’t like your body, that’s a sign that you’re trans. And if you transition, all these problems will be fixed.’”

Similar to Helena, Cat’s interest in “transitioning” was piqued when she was 13 after she visited a website boasting all things trans, prompting her to determine she had gender dysphoria.
Grace testified that she had “a lifelong like preoccupation and discomfort with my body” that turned out to be a “very normal sort of young adult female issues.” It’s not uncommon for children and young adults like Grace to feel uncomfortable in their growing bodies, but the vast majority outgrow their sex-related woes if left alone. For instance, in one Canadian study of boys with gender-identity disorder released last year, over time, nearly 88 percent of the subjects “desisted,” or abandoned their desire to identify as the opposite sex.
Grace, however, wasn’t left alone. After years of feeling “lost,” suicidal, and depressed, she jumped at the opportunity to alter her body. Grace also attributed her eventual decision to take testosterone and go through with a double mastectomy at 23, something she said she regrets, to “trans influencers” online.

“I was looking at trans influencers who had the body that I wanted and reading all of that stuff like the happy testimonials, also feeling the hysteria of the online trans community which was really freaking out because Donald Trump was president and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be illegal to transition.’ It felt like it was a little bit of time pressure,” Grace said.

How could vulnerable young women not entertain the idea of “transitioning” when it is marketed as the end-all to their mental distress? Especially since it is plastered all over social media, and “doctors” advertising castration and mutilation get endless positive press coverage.
There’s plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that kids, especially girls, are heavily influenced by this shameless online trans peddling and the ideology’s popularity among their friends. That’s why “transition” procedures on U.S female adolescents alone quadrupled between 2016 and 2017.
The online world of trans ideology is so pervasive that when Grace began to question whether amputating her breasts was a wise decision, she admitted that she believed she was experiencing “internalized transphobia.”
As Helena explained, it was easy to get swept up into the world of “social justice ideology” with just a few taps on a screen:
In this social justice ideology, there’s kind of a hierarchy of who is the most oppressed versus who is the most privileged. The further along you are on the oppressed scale, that means you know that your opinion is listened to more. I found myself in this place where I had found the only community of other girls who are more like me in terms of personality.
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Now “public witness” means using the right words when most favorable and discarding them when they become too unpopular (or talked about by the wrong people). Public witness is no longer about being martyred but being welcomed in the most prestigious institutions. Which, to be frank, is all well and good, though it’s been said that we aren’t supposed to want power and influence.

At this point in time, it’s hard to imagine a Christian leader intentionally forcing “wokeness” (as in “woke church”). However, it’s not for the reasons you think. Apparently, the word “woke” was a completely redeemable word as of 4 years ago. We could use it like Stretch Armstrong, pulling it this way and that. It fell within the boundaries of linguistic colonization (or should I say contextualization) to take the philosopher’s concepts and repurpose them within the church (like Paul on Mars Hill in Acts 17). We’re supposed to “plunder the Egyptians,” taking worldly concepts and submitting them to Christ. Why? Because it showed that we heard, cared, and wanted to answer the concerns of the world. We want to meet the needs of the world. Therefore, we were to wokify the church. This was very much in vogue in 2018.
“Woke” Hits its Expiration Date
But now, after all the hubbub about wokeness, the word is seemingly past its expiration date for evangelical thought leaders. Apparently, there is more to that word than meets the eye and it is no longer redeemable. What changed? Did those who coined “woke” hide their intentions? Not particularly. The etymology of “woke” was created and utilized by the same crowd that denounces the patriarchy, believes men and women are interchangeable, and believes capitalism is racist. So now that the word woke is alive like Frankenstein’s monster, there has been a retreat from its use. Not to mention, any critics of woke ideology are immediately written off as unserious thinkers who have been watching too much right-wing media.
Four years ago, using woke was all the rage. Now, taking woke to task by naming and describing what woke means is uncouth because merely by using the word woke you show how unsophisticated you are. Are you beginning to see the game?
Take a worldly ideology, repackage it for the church, use it until it blows up, and then make fun of the simpletons (or just don’t listen to them) who criticize the word and ideology it represents.
No Longer a “Useful Analytical Tool”
The same is true for critical race theory. Only a few years ago you were permitted to listen and learn from CRT. It was a useful tool of analysis. It may not have the right solutions but it has a good diagnosis.
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