Sermon Transcript
August 2, 2026
You know, we saw Jesus in the boat. He was asleep in the boat, remember, when the storm was going on (Matt 8:23–27). And we talked about how we were called to sleep in that boat when things get rough. We were supposed to be able to cuddle up next to Jesus and recognize that everything’s going to be fine. So, Jesus was telling us to chill out.
But today, I’m going to tell you that sometimes Jesus likes to rock that boat. And we’re going to see Him do exactly that. You see, Jesus is not afraid to upset the status quo. He’s not afraid to look at people, no matter how religious, important, strong, and powerful they are. He will look them dead in the face and tell them, “You’re messing up.”
We saw it just a few weeks ago when we were seeing Jesus call Matthew, also known as Levi, who was a tax collector (Luke 5:27–32). This would have been one of the enemies, not just of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles. Nobody likes the tax man. Well, He calls a tax collector, and He starts having a dinner at the tax collector’s house, and everybody gets upset with Him—particularly the religious people, the scribes and the Pharisees—and they start complaining. They look at Jesus and they say, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” (v 30). And Jesus responded, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (v 31–32). He is their healer. He is their doctor. And He is giving the sinners a new opportunity to live a healthy life.
But that was only the first half of their interaction. Today, we’re going to get to see the second half of that interaction, and Jesus is going to absolutely drop a nuke on their entire religious tradition world.
So Church, will you please rise with me as we read Luke 5:33–39:
Then they said to him, “John’s disciples fast often and say prayers, and those of the Pharisees do the same, but yours eat and drink.”
Jesus said to them, “You can’t make the wedding guests fast while the groom is with them, can you? But the time will come when the groom will be taken away from them—then they will fast in those days.”
He also told them a parable: “No one tears a patch from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. Otherwise, not only will he tear the new, but also the piece from the new garment will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins, it will spill, and the skins will be ruined. No, new wine is put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine, wants new, because he says, ‘The old is better.’ ” (CSB)
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.
Father, I come to you right now in Jesus’ name, and I ask that you would fill this place with your Holy Spirit. I pray that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit. Open my mind’s eyes to see the things that I must say. I pray that you would take hold of this sermon. I pray that you would speak through me so that we would all be galvanized, including me, into action to rid ourselves of any dead traditions that inhibit the power of God to accomplish your mission through us.
Do not let me speak from the flesh today. May it only be your words. And I pray that you would also protect everyone in here from distractions. Help us all to put our pain and our sorrow on the back burner just for a moment so that our souls can be fed, our pools refilled with the living water. I pray that you would tap on that faucet within us and make sure that the living waters that you have put in us through the Holy Spirit, may they be springing forth.
And then for those who are just on the fence, Lord Jesus, who maybe do not even swim within your waters yet, I pray that you would open their eyes to see what kind of old religious traditions they are bringing that are preventing them from seeing the sweet truth of Jesus. I pray that you would protect us from that wicked serpent and help us to be fed by your word today. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
We see that the text today opens up with the pronoun they. As I said to you, the they here refers to the scribes and the Pharisees (Luke 5:30) because they come from the previous section, and you see they are bringing a complaint to Him (v 33). But the question that you must ask when understanding this text—because if you don’t get this question right, you will miss the whole point of this text; I’ve even read commentaries, and I think some of these commentaries miss the point of this text—the question that you must ask yourself is: Are these men complaining because they believe that Jesus and His followers are not following the word of God? Or are they complaining because they believe that Jesus and His followers are not following man-made traditions?
Here’s what I’m going to tell you today: I think it is clear that they are complaining because they are not following man-made traditions. How do we know that? They say to Jesus, “John’s disciples fast often and say prayers, and those of the Pharisees do the same, but yours, eat and drink” (v 33). In fact, we know that it goes even further than that because in Matthew 9:14, the parallel passage for this event, it says that they are sad. So this is a mourning fasting. And they are sad while they fast, and they’re wondering “why in the world, while we are not only abstaining from food and praying, you guys are having a feast? Why?”
Their complaint is not over disobedience to the word of God. How do I know that? Because there is only one event in Scripture that mandates a fast for the Jewish people, and that is the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). There is nothing in this text right here that says they are fasting because of the Day of Atonement. They are fasting because it is part of religious Jewish tradition. And that’s the real complaint here. Why are you not following along with our traditions?
This is not the first time or the only time that the Jews complain that Jesus is not following Jewish tradition. And I am talking about tradition that is not found in Scripture. They say to Him point-blank in Matthew 15:2: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?”
Not the Bible. They are upset because Jesus is not getting in line and doing the things that they think make you holy—tradition. So this was not from God, but this was from man. And what we are going to read today as we look at the parable that He tells and His response, we are going to learn what Jesus thinks about man-made, externally focused tradition. They are dead and worthless, and we must do everything within our power to get rid of them in this Church and in our private lives.
That’s why the main point of today’s sermon—if you are new with us today, I want you to know we follow a sermon leaflet so that you can follow along and take notes, fill in the blanks—the main point of today’s sermon is: We must give up any traditions that constrict the power of God’s Spirit to fulfill the mission through us.
Jesus gave us marching orders. Amen? Those marching orders are what, Church? It’s found in the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20):
Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (CSB)
That is our mission. You jump over into the acts of the apostles (Acts 1:8), and you see the Holy Spirit was given to God’s people so that we can do what? Have the power of God to fulfill the Great Commission. Today’s text shows us that if we are not careful, we will allow man-made traditions that will inhibit us from being used by God’s power to fulfill that mission, and we must not let it happen.
I want to give you guys a caveat. Yes, I am in my thirties. I am the pastor of a 237-year-old church. And many of you have lived three times my lifespan. Do not fear; I am not here to tell you that it’s time to burn everything down that we have been doing here for a long time. My goal here is simply to help us do an internal inventory of everything that we do and ask, “Is this stopping God’s Spirit from using us in the way He wants us to be used?” And it’s not me; it’s because that is the main point of today’s text.
Dead Traditions Blind You to God’s Victories
To compel us to do that, to find the dead traditions in our lives and in our Church, we must listen to the three reasons that Jesus gives us why we must give up these dead traditions. And the first one is: Dead traditions will blind you to God’s victories (Luke 5:34–35).
Victories in your life, in your marriage, in your spouse, victories in your Church. The small things that God gives you, little bitty wins on a day-to-day, you will miss them if you are dead-set focused on continuing to do everything just because that’s the way you’ve always done it. “I yell at my husband because that’s what my mama did. If he doesn’t like it, too bad.” It doesn’t have to be a religious tradition. It can be how you treat your spouse, how you treat your children. It could be how you handle your own pain. Do you run to the bottle, to the bar? Do you run to shopping? All of these things are also traditions, and they’re incompatible with the power of God. So the first is that it will blind you to the victory.
To understand how that is a point that Jesus gives us—a reason for getting rid of these dead traditions—we have to look at verses 34 and 35 (Luke 5:34–35). So Jesus begins to give them the answer. The complaint is: “Why don’t you do our traditions?” And Jesus gives them a very terse answer, and it’s an image (v 34): “You can’t make the wedding guests fast while the groom is with them, can you?”
I wish I had Jesus’s public speaking skills. This Guy is able to find the perfect images. You know, you speak the perfect image, and it causes people to just shut up. They don’t have a rebuttal. And that’s what Jesus does here. He gives them an image that floors them. It stops them dead in their tracks because He’s doing multiple things with one phrase. First, He’s answering their question on why they’re not fasting. Second, He is condemning them because He is saying, “You are missing a victory at hand.”
We’re going to see what that victory is that they miss. But first, I want to help you understand why they are not fasting. So the phrase that He uses here, “the wedding guests”—I know that English translations are all over the place on how they translate this phrase. Some will say “wedding guests.” Some will say “sons of the bridal chamber.” I think that’s what’s in the King James. But this phrase is just a Semitic phrase that refers to the servants and the friends that are close to the groom. And it was Jewish tradition in the first century for these people, the guests of the groom, to hang out with the groom and have a feast every day for seven days.
Today, we pay $50,000 for a good, solid wedding to last for three hours. Can you imagine feeding your closest friends and servants for seven days? Well, that’s the tradition, folks. And the rabbis of His day have even written that it would be offensive for the guests of the groom to do something like fasting or religious duties if it inhibits the celebration that must be at hand. So Jesus is saying they are not fasting because it’s time to celebrate.
But celebration implies that there’s a victory at hand. And indeed there is. What is the victory? The victory is that God has given them the long-awaited groom.
To understand where we’re getting that from, we have to go back to Luke 4:18–19. Jesus, like a boss, goes into the synagogue, and He starts reading. He pulls open the Isaiah scroll, He jumps to Isaiah 61, reads verses 1 and 2, and He says, “Today as you listen, this Scripture has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:21). He is the long-awaited servant who has come to announce freedom to the slaves and victory to the oppressed. He’s the Savior from the book of Isaiah (Isa 61:1–2).
Why is that important? Because just a few verses after that—what you need to know is in Luke 4 when Jesus reads that, it is setting the stage, and now for the next few verses in chapters 4 through 6, it’s showing how Jesus is fulfilling the expectations of Isaiah 61. You follow me? Luke 4 has set the stage to show us how Jesus is fulfilling Isaiah 61. At the end of Isaiah 61, in v 10, it says this:
I rejoice greatly in the LORD,
I exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation
and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness,
as a groom wears a turban
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (CSB)
So if that wedding metaphor doesn’t win you over, it gets even better because in the very next chapter, in Isaiah 62:5, Isaiah develops the theme of Zion’s restoration—a prophecy of when God’s people will be restored as they were meant to be before we all fell in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3). And Isaiah 62:5 says:
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so your sons will marry you;
and as a groom rejoices over his bride,
so your God will rejoice over you. (CSB)
When Jesus says they are not fasting because they are celebrating, the groom is with them (Luke 5:34), He is telling them why they’re not fasting, but also, “You are missing the victory at hand. God has brought the long-awaited groom. God in the flesh is here to bring you back into a close relationship with Him as He intended in the Garden of Eden. And you are missing it because you are addicted to your dead, man-made traditions.”
How’s that for rocking the boat? The Pharisees and the scribes, they miss that God has come to unite them to Himself. So the first reason why we must do a search and get rid of dead traditions is: Dead traditions can blind us from seeing victories that God is bringing us.
Christianity and Dead Traditions Damage Each Other
But that’s not the only one. The next reason is that Christianity and dead traditions, they damage each other (Luke 5:36–37).
Jesus has already answered their question. By the way, verses 34 and 35 (Luke 5:34–35), that’s the question answered. He could stop right then and there, and it’s all solved. But now He’s ready to pull out the special briefcase, punch in the code, press the red button, and drop the nuke on their traditions. That’s what He does with the parable at hand. So in verses 36 through 37 (Luke 5:36–37), Jesus is going to show them how Christianity and dead traditions, if they stick together, they damage each other. In this parable, we are going to see some things that may be confusing to you.
Christianity Damages Broken Traditions
First, we have this image of an old cloth (Luke 5:36). Jesus is stating that there is damage in this old cloth, and He has to take a patch, create a patch. And so, He talks about taking an old cloth. What happens when you have old clothes that have already been washed? They don’t shrink. But what happens with new clothes? You wash them, and they shrink.
Jesus is saying that trying to take His teaching, His Christianity, His way, is like trying to take a patch from new clothing and putting it on something old. What happens after you have patched it and you wash it? The new shrinks, and it tears, and it rips, and then you’re worse off than where you started because the new is also damaged.
The other image that you get here is a wineskin (v 37). Anybody carrying their wineskin to Church today? I’m just curious. No? Okay, it’s probably in the dishwasher. That’s fine. A wineskin is a pouch that is made from the skin of an animal. I guess it adds to the flavor. They go ahead, they take all the fur out of the animal, and they—you know, they dry the hide. However, I’m not a tanner, but if you’re a leather tanner, you can illustrate for us later. They sew a pouch, and then what happens is it looks like a horn, kind of, and then they fill it with new wine.
And when you put new wine into a new leather pouch, that’s fine. Nothing’s an issue. Why? Because new leather has the capacity to expand. And that’s important for new wine. Why? Because if you have new wine, it’s still in the fermentation process, right? Any winemakers in here? Okay. So, you get it, though: New wine is releasing gas. It’s expanding. So that requires a new wineskin.
But an old wineskin—one that’s been around the bars a few times—that one is not going to expand because it becomes brittle and stiff. Leather that has been used for a while will stiffen to the liquid, and it will not expand. So if you put new wine in an old, stiff wineskin, it will just burst at the seams. And what will happen is it destroys the wineskin, but it also destroys the new wine because it will run all over the ground.
Jesus is stating very plainly that what He is bringing to the table is absolutely incompatible with the old, man-made, dead traditions of first-century Judaism. They cannot work together. If you try to clean first-century Judaism’s rituals and practices by just patching a little Jesus sticker on it, it makes Jesus look bad, and it destroys the traditions anyway.
Likewise, if you try to bring the traditions into Christianity, you make Jesus look bad. Because what are traditions? They are external practices that try to make you look righteous from the outside. But Jesus is all about the heart. So dead tradition tells you, “Don’t cheat on your wife,” which means you just don’t go to the brothel—the external act. But Christianity steps on the scene, and we have a Savior who is telling us, “Don’t even look at the woman,” because adultery starts in the heart (Matt 5:27–28). That’s why they’re incompatible. Traditions are worried about the external, but Jesus is worried about the internal.
Now, in Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages—anybody read that book? Good job. Good job. So in Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages, the author talks about how so many couples get so frustrated because they feel like they are constantly showing their wife or their husband that they love them, but they hear in couples counseling, “I’m doing everything under the sun, and all I hear from my spouse is, ‘They just don’t love me.’ But I’m cleaning the kitchen. I’m going to work. I’m paying the bills.” And then they look at the spouse and they go, “What is he or she doing wrong?”
“Well, he’s just not telling me ‘I love you.’”
“What are you talking about? I just told you I loved you this morning!”
And what Gary Chapman shows them is there are love languages. Spouse A is trying to tell Spouse B “I love you” in the way that Spouse A likes to hear it. So that might be for Spouse A; they hear “I love you” when the spouse just takes a walk with them—recreational companionship—maybe plays a board game. But if Spouse B is not playing games with Spouse A, Spouse A is not going to hear “I love you,” no matter how much Spouse B does, because they feel most loved with recreational companionship.
Well, maybe Spouse A is playing games, but Spouse B feels loved when they just feel their spouse touch them—their hand on their hand, rubbing their hair. Nothing too sensual, just contact. Well, Spouse A wants to play board games, but she doesn’t like to touch him. So Spouse B says, “They don’t love me.” And Spouse A is confused because, “Well, I’m just playing games with you. You’re supposed to like that.” It’s a different language.
Judaism was trying to speak a language to God that He doesn’t understand. I think it started off with good intentions. After Israel was exiled into Babylon, they were trying to restore holiness. Nehemiah and Ezra, they returned to the Promised Land, and they’re given permission to rebuild the temple, and they’re trying to establish all of these laws and these rules to make sure they don’t screw it up again, to make sure they don’t worship these false gods.
And so, they have God’s law, but they said, “You know what? We don’t want to break this law. So, we’re going to add an extra tradition here, and we’re going to add an extra tradition here, and here, and here, and here.” And all these traditions were meant to serve as bubble wrap around God’s law to make sure that they didn’t break the stuff on the inside. And guess what happened? The traditions themselves turned into a language that was incompatible with the religion God designed in the Garden (Gen 2).
I think that’s what happened. And if Jesus does not confront them and say, “You need to change your language because if you don’t, this marriage is broken, and the spouse will leave you”—God will leave you unless you tell Him, “I love you” in the way He wants you to, not in the way you think you need to talk to Him.
So that is the dead tradition, and that’s what we need to make sure that we are not trying to do. You might have very good intentions for doing things the way you want to do them, right? Something as simple as Sunday dress: You might think you’re honoring God because you come in a suit. That’s fine; no problem with that. But you cannot impose that on other people and say they’re not honoring God because they do not wear a tie to Church. That is a dead tradition that will inhibit God’s movement among your people.
But it’s not just that. It could be something as simple as: How do you handle your finances when times get tough? You see, when times get tough, people tend to hoard, and they hold on because that’s what you did before you came to Jesus. Times got tough; now we don’t spend anything. But when you come to Jesus, you cannot bring that tradition of hoarding into your life with Jesus. Because your new life in Jesus says He’s our provider, not my nitpicky knuckles that hold on to the coins I got. You don’t stop being charitable just because your finances are hard. That’s a tradition that’s incompatible with the movement of God.
Do you see? Traditions can be anywhere. You have to ask: Are we, or am I, practicing anything that inhibits God’s movement? Because Christianity damages dead tradition.
Dead Traditions Contaminate Christianity
The old cloth and old wineskin represent the traditions of Judaism (Luke 5:36–37). When Jesus talks about patching the old cloth, He is stating your ways of doing things are broken. And as I already said, you can’t patch it; it will damage the traditions that are dead anyway. But also, the second thing is: Dead traditions contaminate Christianity. How do we know that? The wine spills (v 37). Jesus says you have to put the new wine into fresh wineskins (v 38) because they have the capacity to expand.
Here’s what I want you to remember, Church: When we have the gospel preached in Wake Forest, we have a very specific set of ears. We come from a cultural background that is very specific to Wake Forest. Well, guess what? We now have neighbors that are moving in from Maryland, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and their ears—how they hear God speak to them—is much different than the way that you have heard Him your entire life growing up in Wake Forest. You may not like that your northern neighbors are jumping in. Too bad. You don’t get to control what God does for you.
But you have to ask: How does our new mission field that has moved from up north come here? What do they need to hear? Because if you keep trying to play the banjo the way that you do in Wake Forest for people from New York City, they don’t want to hear you.
That’s the beauty of a new wineskin: It has the ability to expand and contract. The religion that Jesus introduced does not come with external practice requirements. Nowhere did Jesus say, “I am going to build this Church on this rock (Matt 16:18), and you must sing the Baptist Hymnal. You must have a printed bulletin. You must wear plaid shirts. You must wear dress shoes.” Jesus didn’t say that. Jesus said, “Worship me. Serve me (Matthew 22:37–40). Lay down your life for me (Matt 16:24). Go and preach the gospel (Matt 28:19-20). Love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:39). Serve God above everything else (Matt 22:37–38).” It’s all heart things.
The external things are the traditions, and that’s the wineskin. We should be able to expand and contract depending on the context we’re in. Our context is changing in Wake Forest. We have to ask: What is our new mission field needing to hear?
Okay? I’m not—by the way, I listed off a bunch of examples that we can relate to. I am not saying we got to get rid of all of them. I’m just asking: What do our new neighbors need to hear? We have to let our wineskins contract because the Spirit says in Galatians 5:1 that He did not come to give us a spirit of slavery, but He has come to set us free for freedom’s sake. The entire book of Galatians is about how Jesus has freed us from the law and dead traditions.
Dead Traditions Can Be False Gods
And the third reason we must get rid of dead traditions is because dead traditions can be false gods.
You know, there were some beautiful ministries that we had at this Church that thrived and flourished. One of the ones that I enjoyed hearing about was the WMU—beautiful thing, right? But it’s no longer thriving at our Church because the things that God has done—things have shifted. That doesn’t mean it failed. It just means that God is shifting and moving things. If our Church said, “No, we are going to continue to do this,” what would happen? You would say, “We’re going to continue to do this,” because you’re hanging on to an idol.
People who are listening to the Spirit and letting the Spirit guide their movement, they will say, “We understood that we had this beautiful thing going on, and it lasted beautifully. It had an impact. But I think God is telling us to go here now.” Well, if it’s an idol, you’re going to fight the Spirit on it, and you’re going to say, “No, I’m going to continue to do this tradition no matter what.”
That is what is happening in verse 39. In v 39, Jesus is anticipating their argument. He quotes a common proverb to the first-century Jews, and He says, “No one after drinking old wine wants new, because he says, ‘The old is better.’” Don’t believe me? Ask any Frenchman. Nobody wants new wine; the old, the aged stuff, it’s always better. And they know that. And that is the proverb that people who idolize or make idols out of their traditions—they will tell you, “The old way is better. It will never get better than the way that I’ve always done it.”
But here’s where we need to recognize that it’s so important: Traditionalists were so preoccupied with their tradition, they missed what God was doing right in front of them.
Religious tradition is the obvious application here. But I want to draw your mind to how you might have pre-Christian traditions that are affecting you in your private lives, too, just because that’s the way you’ve always done it. Most of these are what we call habits—mind habits—but nonetheless, they’re tradition, and they’re dead.
I already mentioned one: kind of hitting the grind. Okay, before you knew Christ, your family tradition was for your parents to disappear into their work when they feel a financial pinch. Times are tough; Dad disappears. We don’t see him. He’s hitting the grind. So, he never goes to church. He never goes to a baseball game. He forgets his wife’s anniversary. If you’re not careful, that tradition can carry over into your new life as a follower of Jesus.
Your first response to a financial struggle should be to pray and ask the Lord for help, to open doors, to give you wisdom and direction (James 1:5). But if tradition rules your life, when you hit a financial struggle, your first response might be to disappear and go to work—to take a second, third job. Now, if you pray, God may in fact tell you to do just that. The point is: Is the tradition stopping you from seeking His will to begin with?
Another tradition that I see that Christians are carrying over from their pre-Christian lives is they live to please. Before being a Christian, you fought to be an overachiever to win the affection of your parents, your bosses, or your friends. And when you became a Christian, you let that tradition dictate how you do ministry. So now, you overcommit to all the committees. You serve in every opportunity available. And it’s not because you’re seeking to please the Lord; it’s because you have a hunger to please mankind. This is a tradition that needs to be broken. You ought to please your heavenly Father, and Him alone (Gal 1:10).
Another tradition: racism. Before being a Christian, you were surrounded by racism. Does the tradition of racism stop you from seeing the presence of God in a married couple from different racial backgrounds? The Lord says, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt 19:6). A married couple, man and woman, is a thing from God. Does racism stop you from seeing the beautiful, God-made matrimony between a black man and a white woman? Or is it odious and hideous in your eyes? That is a tradition that must be broken. They bear the image of God (Gen 1:27).
And then, probably the most common tradition is how we self-soothe with self-medication. Do you let the peace of Christ rule your heart (Col 3:15)? Or do you prefer to let your pre-Christian tradition of booze self-medicate? Is it the peace of Christ, or the self-medication through shopping? The self-medication through watching YouTube videos? Or do you go to your Father in your prayer closet when things get hard (Matt 6:6)?
In all of these examples, these traditions are rooted in idolatry. Instead of worshiping the Lord, you are worshiping yourself, someone else, or an object. And folks, dead traditions send people to hell (Matt 7:21–23). Dead traditions make you think you’re doing God’s will when, in fact, you are worshiping a false god altogether, which is probably the biggest reason to do an inventory in your life.
So ask yourself: Where is God calling you to operate? Does your wineskin stretch? Are you pliable? Are you willing to go and move in ways that God wants you to move, not just the way you’ve always done it?
Does He want you to reach people in a place you would have never stepped foot in? Does Jesus want you to eat foods you never thought possible (Acts 10:9–16)? Does Jesus want you to associate with people that you never would have dreamed of associating with, inviting them into your home? Can you eat with your equivalent of tax collectors and sinners? Who do you scoff at? Do they have blue hair? Will you invite them to dinner?
All of us need to stretch and ask ourselves: What are our dead traditions? And thanks be to God, He has filled us up with the Holy Spirit to get it done. Amen?
Closing Prayer
All right, let’s go to the Father.
Lord, I thank you for the beautiful reality that you have opened our eyes to today. Help us to be open to receiving new wineskins and filling us with new wine. We want to live according to the religion that you are establishing, Lord Jesus—the religion that is moving according to the context that we are in, that we are willing to expand and contract in ways that we’ve never done before.
I pray that you would convict our hearts in how we might be forcing others to live under our own traditions, or how our traditions are stopping us from seeing your power at work. Maybe our tradition is PTSD. Maybe our tradition is addiction. Maybe our tradition is self-worship, people-pleasing. Help us to walk away from it, Lord, so that we can serve the God who loves us well. Be with us and help us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.