As I’ve shared recently, this passage of Scripture has great importance to me personally but for these next few weeks I want us to see that it is a vital part of our corporate identity. It’s a passage that reveals Jesus’ work and the Father’s desire, it literally defines reconciliation and then it takes everything that God has done for us and puts it in our hands to do for the people that live with and around us. If we are going to understand refuge, walk in the ministry of reconciliation, live by the message of reconciliation and become full-fledged ambassadors of Jesus it will have to be done through and according to this passage of Scripture. In this passage I believe we see the character of our King and His desire for His kingdom, we see what reconciliation looks like and I pray we will discover what it means to not only be hidden ourselves by God but to learn how to bring others under the safety of the shadow of God’s wings as well. This morning we will continue with our verse by verse approach to this passage and my prayer is that we will begin to build toward reconciliation. As I shared last week, true reconciliation requires a surrender. For this to happen there has to be an understanding of who we are surrendering to and what exactly it is that we are laying down before Him. We aren’t just giving God our sins, our brokenness, our hurts, our fears, our anxieties, our pasts or our futures, we are giving Him the fullness of who and what we are. The surrender that leads to reconciliation is a laying down of our very being: our hearts and our minds, our past and our present, our hopes and our dreams, our victories and our defeats, even our heritage and our traditions. The surrender that leads to reconciliation is not when we say “Jesus, take what I’ve messed up and what I’m not sure how to fix”; it is when we say “Jesus, take me, all of me, all I am, all I was and all I think I’m supposed to be, take all of me and do what You desire.” It initially sounds romantic and many of us hear that and say “Amen!” before we realize that this means I don’t get to be what I thought I was going to be, I don’t get to carry the torch that I thought I was being handed, I don’t get to keep the traits I like or the mindsets I’ve become comfortable with, I have to hand myself over and willingly be changed into someone and something I may have never thought of or considered before. There are too many of us right now that have given Jesus our sins to be forgiven but have kept for ourselves the conditions, mindsets, beliefs and attitudes that led us into those very sins, that is not reconciliation or transformation. Let’s decide, today, before we even get into the bulk of our message that we will not settle for a forgiveness that does not lead to reconciliation or a salvation that does not lead to transformation. We are not calling on Jesus to do what we desire from Him we are surrendering to Jesus so that He can make us into who He desires us to be. Today my prayer is that we will continue moving through this passage and that we will answer three questions that begin to point us in the direction of reconciliation: Where do we all stand? Why did Jesus die? How are we supposed to live?