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Shall We Look For Another?

By Jared Warner

Willow Creek Friends Church

December 14, 2025

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Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili

Matthew 11:2–11 (ESV)

² Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples ³ and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” ⁴ And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: ⁵ the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. ⁶ And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” ⁷ As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸ What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. ⁹ What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. ¹⁰ This is he of whom it is written, “ ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’ ¹¹ Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

John was out in the wilderness, standing in the middle of the river just outside the land promised to his ancestors. He stood there crying to the multitude, Repent! Turn away from the life and lifestyle you have been leading and return to the ways of God.

He was not crying to the ones standing in the wilderness. He was crying into the land of promise. He was crying toward those who claimed to be living for God. It was the faithful he was calling to repentance.

This thought has been running through my mind all week. Yes those that are not following the ways of God, those who do not claim the name of Jesus, need to change directions. But so do we. We can get comfortable in our own minds. Justifying actions that we condemn in others. We see this all the time. Nearly every week there is some scandal within the church that rips me apart. There are several YouTube channels dedicated to criminal activities committed by church leaders and how they have been justified by governing bodies. We need repentance. We need to be called out just as much as everyone else. We need to repent.

John spoke these words boldly. He knew them intimately. He was raised in the religious machine that was Jerusalem’s temple. He watched leaders, he was trained by those leaders. He had learned to read the teachings God inspired Moses to record from the leaders he was not crying out to. And it broke him.

John faced what we might call deconstruction today. John saw the hypocrisy within the industrialized religion and he left. He went out into the wilderness. He rejected every benefit his position as a son of a priest might have and he went to the desert mourning over his people.

He faced this crisis, and yet he knew that there was something more. He knew the story of his own birth. When your parents are older than your contemporaries’ grandparents, you cannot question the validity of the story. And everyone told the same thing. John knew the miraculous events surrounding his life intimately. And he knew that his parents were some of the few leaders that he could trust. Why else would God bless them with this gift of life in the golden years?

This did not change the reality of their culture. Some understood that God was at work. And this inspired them. They had received a sign from God when the priest was unable to deliver the blessing to the people. The age of quietness had ended. Unfortunately the excitement soon went silent and everyone returned to the routine they were familiar with.

This happens often in life. Our students go to church camp in the summer. They are excited for God, and then the PlayStation or the soccer teams draws them back. They once had a discipline to pray, study and read scripture, but the struggles and routine of everyday life returns and they are back where they started. We saw this shortly after the attack on the world trade center. Churches throughout the country were filled with people wanting to pray, but all too soon those prayers became quiet as people again began to travel. This is was happening in Israel. They were excited, and then the busyness of life once again took hold.

John left the house of the priest and entered the wilderness. He went out into the unknown. He went to find what was once lost. He had to go out because he could not find the whispers of God within the religious system. He was seemingly alone.

But he had a cousin. Not many talked about him in polite places, but his mother spoke of him with words of awe. His cousin Jesus, confounded him. As they grew, Jesus was right there with him. He answered the questions asked by their Rabbi with conviction. Yet he was often overlooked because people questioned his heritage. John listened and observed. He watched as this wise child grew, his character was such that many forgot all about his questionable origin but then just as they were ready to give him a blessing, they were reminded of the past.

Imagine living your entire life like this. John’s mom would talk about Jesus with reverence, and others would often spew venom under their breath. Yet John saw. He observed.

Now they are adults. John had returned from his wilderness wanderings, and stood on the banks of the river. He stood just outside the land of promise, crying out for repentance. And he did not hold back. He looked beyond facade that was often raised. He did not let people overlook the shortcomings of their leaders. And he bold exposed that their current king, was not worthy of to hold a position of authority over the people of God. He had stolen his brother’s wife while he remained living, and he had a tenancy to lust after his own step daughter and niece. This king had disqualified himself from leadership. He was a vile predator willing to justify any action as long as it gave himself the benefit.

King Herod Agrippa is a corrupt, greedy, pedophile.

John’s words caused discomfort among the people. He is our king, he is chosen by God to lead them they might have said. I do not agree with all his policies but his heart is in the right place others might defend. His father funded the remodeling of the temple we should give him some respect. Everyone was making excuses but John did not. He instead cried out in the wilderness, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

His words had consequences. The broad of vipers struck and attempted to silence the prophet. They imprisoned him because his words offended the leaders.

Jesus though had begun to emerge. John had watched him grow. He watched as this cousin of his was so often overlooked, yet he continued to live a life blessing others. He had heard the stories his mother told him. He remembered how his mom once said that Jesus’s mother was visited by an angel just like John’s father, and this angel said, “Do not be afraid because you have found favor with God. And you will conceive a child by the Holy Spirit and this child will be called Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.”

John heard the stories. The praises from his mother and the gossip from the community. He watched as Jesus did not let the gossip hinder him from living well. Once Jesus came out to visit John while he was preaching in the river, he came out into the waters and wanted John to baptize him. John said, “I need to be baptized by you, yet you come to me to be baptized?” John knew Jesus in a way we cannot know him. He saw Jesus completely. He saw him as the child, the young man, the adult. He knew Jesus was honorable, and John knew that Jesus was a better man than he was.

John is now sitting in prison. He had announced to all the people that were around him, “Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” Yet, he is in chains. John had given his entire life to this moment. He had given up the lifestyle of respect and honor that was offered to priests. He spoke truth to power and now he sits condemned by the world.

He watched his people move to God and fall away. They still claimed faith, they still performed the rituals but his cry for repentance still rang true. He stood for truth, he stood for righteousness. He boldly called sin, sin. And he was judged by the world. But he knows Jesus.

He sends his few disciples to talk with him. These disciples were likely disciples of Jesus as well, but he sends them with a question. “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

We often ask this question. Maybe not in the same words, but we ask it. In essences he is asking am I doing the right thing? Have I followed the proper path? Has this been worth it?

We can easily question our faith, because life is hard. John had literally given everything to pursue and answer the call God had placed in his life even before he had been born. Yet John is human. The voices all around him were saying he needed to change his tone, maybe round off the edges a bit. They wanted him to stop calling the leaders a broad of vipers, because they were basically good people and no one is perfect.

The messengers deliver the question to Jesus. They like John, wait in anticipation. They too yearn for the advent of Messiah. But they did not know everything that John had known. They did not know the full family background, they had not seen the full life that Jesus had lived. All they know is what is right before them. And Jesus is different than John.

Jesus does give them an answer. “Go and tell John what you hear and see; the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

Tell John what you hear and see.

I want us to think about that answer for a moment. We cannot know the fullness of someone’s soul. We cannot know their intentions, or their reasoning behind the decisions they make. All we know are the things that we can hear them say, and what we see them do.

I do know my wife loves me. Yet there are times I question this. I question because I do not hear the things I once heard, and at times I do not see her doing the things she did when we were first married. I question because I cannot know what is going through her mind and what dwells in her heart. All I can do is respond to what I hear and see. The worst part though is I am nearly deaf and blind, and too aloof to notice things.

But this is what is going through John’s mind. He knows Jesus, John had proclaimed to everyone once that Jesus was the one. Yet he has questions. Doubt is part of life. It is not a sin to doubt. In fact it is one of the most honest aspects of faith. When we doubt we force ourselves to look at things more closely. We begin to listen for the nuances and compare against what we have observed. We seek and we find.

All too often we criticize and condemn doubt. When someone expresses doubt we get scared and we challenge them, we ridicule them, and chastise them for a lack of faith. This is worse than the doubt itself. Because those that have doubts, are listening and observing us. They are yearning for us to give them something to believe, and they do not know how to express what they are looking for.

Jesus tells us how to approach those that doubt among us. Tell them what you hear and see. Show them what you believe through your actions.

Nearly four hundred years ago a young man named George Fox had doubts. It is said that he was a tenderhearted man, he came from a good family and everyone called his father Righteous Christer, because George’s dad reflected Christ through his life. Yet George struggled. He traveled throughout England looking for answers, wanting to know, wanting to have a reason to believe. Yet the answers he received we platitudes. You should just find a wife, then you would stop worrying about faith because you would be distracted. You should partake of the latest medical advancements, which at that time was blood letting and smoking. You should join the military and get some discipline in your life. And one priest yelled at him before he could even ask his questions because he had stepped off of the path and crushed his flowers.

Fox recorded these accounts in his Journal, and I am often reminded of them. George had extreme doubts and unfortunately the church was not helpful. In despair George took his book of scripture out into a field alone. And he sat in that field completely rejected and lost. When you read the journal it almost seems as if George was in such despair that he was contemplating ending his life. And in that stillness, alone with the scriptures he heard a voice crying out in the wilderness. “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to your condition.” And George said his heart leaped at that moment. In that moment everything changed. He began to look deeply into the life and lifestyle of Christ. He began to formulate every aspect of his faith and his life to reflect the things he learned through what he heard and saw through the testimony of scripture, and listened to the Spirit that Jesus promised would come and never leave us.

There were moments where he challenged traditions, and he was imprisoned. There were moments where people were silenced through his words. And there were times people tried to set him up to sin, yet what they saw and heard resembled one another.

The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

John sat in the prison doubting. And Jesus said to look at what you see and listen to what you hear. Are these things reflecting what you have known about the teachings of the prophets and the commandments given to Moses?

Jesus responds, not with condemnation, but grace and encouragement. What drove John out into the wilderness? What drove the people out to listen to John? Did they go out because they wanted to be pat on the back for being good people? No, they went out because they knew something was not quite right in the world and they wanted a reason to believe again. They wanted to know that the kingdom was at hand. They wanted the world to change and for messiah to come.

Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

I said last week that John lived during an era of history that is often reflected today. It is reflected within every generation that has ever existed on this earth. There is this cosmic battle between good and evil waging all around us. And at times it is difficult to see who is on what side. Jesus does not condemn the doubt, he instead encourages us to listen and observe, but not merely observe instead to join and participate. Jesus asks John, what are the things the Messiah is supposed to do? Who are the people that the Messiah is supposed to care about? What does God care about throughout scripture?

The nations are judged based on justice. They are judged by how they respond to the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners living among them. These are the people that are the most vulnerable within society. They are the ones that have nothing. No one to care for their needs, and are often exploited because they have no advocate to speak for and with them. Jesus later says that the poor will always be with us. Does this mean that they are sinners? No, it means that there will always be exploitation in the kingdoms of men. There will be leaders within the kingdoms of men that will use their power to take advantage of others, that will neglect those in need, and will claim righteousness even when their lifestyle goes against everything they claim they believe.

For George Fox, he formed a religious society where people would wait in expectancy for the Spirit to speak and lead. He waited. He yearned to know the ways of God. He like John was asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Fox and the early Friends, did not celebrate Advent, they lived it. They waited in expectancy, and they examined what they heard and saw. They compared it to what they knew, and what the observed and then they acted.

It is ok to doubt, as long as you continue to seek. It is ok to try and to fail. It is ok to ask questions and to find answers. But as we go let us go, Loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others.

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Straight Path in the Wilderness

By Jared Warner

Willow Creek Friends Church

December 07, 2025

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Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili

Matthew 3:1–12 (ESV)

¹ In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ² “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” ³ For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ” ⁴ Now John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵ Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, ⁶ and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁷ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸ Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. ⁹ And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. ¹⁰ Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ¹¹ “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

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John the Baptist is one of my favorite characters around this time of year. We do not talk a great deal about him except around this time, but he is important. I have spoken about how the community would have been watching this man because of the miraculous things surrounding his life. His advent announcement was not hidden from the nation, but was present before everyone. His father was the one priest that was that went into temple to burn incense in the holiest place within the temple. The priest went in carrying the prayers of the nation to the very feet of God, and he would return to bringing the blessing of God to the people.

The problem with this is Zachariah went in to pray, but when he returned he was mute. He was unable to deliver the blessing. Everyone stood waiting. Every eye was on him, and he could not speak. Did God hear their prayers? Did God remove the blessing to the nation?

John had all eyes on him. He was raised as a son of a priest, and when he was of the proper age he would have started training to become a priest. We often forget that about John. We forget just how many people would have had a vested interest in his life and his future. We forget, or probably more accurately we did not know. John had all these eyes on him, but he did not follow in his father’s footsteps. He did not dawn the linen robes of a priest, instead he took a different path.

I want us for a moment consider the religious framework surrounding Israel during this time period. The temple had been destroyed about 500 years prior as the people went into captivity in Babylon. A couple of generations they lived in exile and then their ancestors had returned they rebuilt the walls of the city, they rebuilt the temple. And then they again faced a foreign foe as the Macedonians under the leadership of Alexander the Great conquered Persia. They survived that conquest. But something dire happened shortly after. One of Alexander’s generals took control over the land as the empire was divided after Alexander’s death. They lived under Hellenistic rule, and the Macedonians did not treat them as the Persian treated them. The religion of the Persians was Zoroastrianism. This religion is in many ways similar to the faith of the Hebrews. Their focus was on the struggle between good and evil, truth and the lie, order and chaos. And they worshiped in a temple without idols, instead they had a flame to represent the presence of their god. The Persians did not believe that their religion and that of the Hebrews were equal, but they saw that the teachings were similar enough that they gave them liberty to worship freely.

The Greeks did not have the same views. They did try to protect and respect Hebrew culture, but the Greeks felt that their culture was the greatest in the world. And Alexander sought to take that culture everywhere. The Greek culture is important. Other than the Bible preserved by Israel, the philosophies of the Greeks have been one of the greatest influences of the western culture. But there were some that resisted this foreign influence and eventually Antiochus IV got tired of constant push back from the religious leaders. He wanted control over the people and that control meant that he would need to take control of the temple. He outlawed the Jewish traditions, and installed a Greek-Jewish hybrid cult as the religion and it is said that he took a great swine into the the temple and sacrificed it on the alter of God as he dedicated the temple to Zeus. He then forced the Jewish priest and leaders to eat the swine’s flesh. This is what would become known as the abomination that caused desolation, which Jesus refers to later in the gospels. It corrupted the temple. It prevented the people from worshiping as they once did.

The people revolted against this blasphemy and they drove Antiochus from the temple and they fortified within the temple. The temple now being under their control, they then needed to purify it, but they only found enough sanctified oil to last one day. In faith they light the holy lamps and begun the rituals of purification, and miraculously the oil which should have only been enough for one day burned for eight. This was a sign that God was with them, and that he had blessed the temple once again. And this miraculous light inspired the Jewish people to push the Greeks out of Israel, giving them full independence after centuries of occupation.

The miracle of Hanukkah, or the Feast of Dedication, has been celebrated by the Jewish people from that moment until today. Even Jesus celebrated this feast. In the minds of the people God was again with them. But then something changed, a new empire was gaining strength. This newly founded nation was nervous about being reconquered so they drew up a treaty with this emerging empire that would provide protection from the Greeks. But this new empire seemed to just incorporate the entire world. Anywhere they marched became their territory. The Jewish people found their freedom, and slowly over time Rome they seemed to just merge into the Roman empire. With each generation they lost just a little more freedom, and were more beholden to the the Emperor. Until the last of the Jewish kings had died, and Herod the Great, the husband of a Jewish princess took over, he killed all the remaining members of royal family and secured his throne. And then he gained favor with Rome by building a city dedicated to the emperor and gained favor with Israel by expanding the temple of the one true God.

This was the world that John was born into. They had this temple that God blessed through the miraculous oil, but that temple had been commissioned by an outsider, a convert, someone that married into the covenant. And John’s father went into the temple to offer the prayers of the people, and he came out unable to speak the blessing.

All eyes were on John, but John left the temple. He did not follow his father. Instead he went out into the wilderness. There was tension building. They felt to the core of who they were that the Messiah would soon come, but then there were things all around them that seemed wrong. Some teachings at the time said that the Messiah would not come until they cleansed all the land from unrighteousness. They thought that if they could only purge the uncircumcised from land then the Messiah would come and establish the kingdom. Some taught that it was not the uncircumcised but their own sin that needed to be purged. Others thought that the philosophies of the Greeks had merit similar to the teachings of the Persians and they wanted to make room and broaden the reach of the mind. While there were others that just thought they should continue doing the things they had always done, just keep the traditions, perform the rituals, and celebrate the feasts.

They had nationalistic zealots, they had liberal thinking progressives, they had traditionalists, and they had ascetics. John and Jesus came into the world during a time where the cultural divide is mirrored by our own. What we see today resembles what we see in the pages of biblical history. This has lead many to believe that the time is near, the advent is upon us. I do not want to be an alarmist but it is true that it could be soon. But I am a skeptical person. I know that my parents believed that the end was near. I know that my grandparents, and great grandparents thought the same. Every generation since this time has felt as if Christ could come at any moment. And it is true he could. And that is what the people in first century Israel thought too.

The priest stood silent before the people, the blessing they anticipated had been withheld, what could this mean? The son, promised to the priest had come and the priest could speak once again the moment his name had been announced at the naming ceremony. The boy was called God’s gift, John. But John, God’s gift to the people did not enter service. He went out into the wilderness, and when he returned he did not dress as a favored spiritual leader, instead he was clothed with camel’s hair and a belt. He ate locusts and wild honey, he stood just outside of the land promised to their forefathers and cried out, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

This statement says a great deal. Repent means to stop and go the other direction. But John does not just yell this out to the people that society regarded as sinful. He cried out to everyone. He called out to the tax collector, the Roman soldiers, the men and women from town, and even the religious leaders. He went so far as to say, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

We know what repentance means. We know that it means that we should turn away from the things of this world and return to the things of God. But John was yelling this to everyone. He was urging them to reexamine their lives. I have said many times that the Quaker Queries are our gift to the spiritual disciplines of faith, but nothing is new under the sun when it comes to God. John was encouraging everyone to examine their lives. He was encouraging them to consider their thoughts, their actions, their intentions. Why are you doing what you are doing? And where is God?

This voice is coming not from within Israel, from the one in the wilderness. The wilderness is extremely symbolic in the religious thought. It is the place of unknown. Danger lurches in the wilderness just as it sneaks around in the darkness. In the wilderness we are alone, vulnerable, at risk. Anything could happen. Robbers and bandits were in the wilderness. Those incapable of living within a community were in the wilderness. When the sins of the people were placed on the goat on the day of atonement, the sins were not placed on the one that was sacrificed to God on the alter, but the sin was transferred to the goat that was later chased out into the wilderness. That goat, the goat that carried the sins was not for God, but was for Azazel.

What is this Azazel? Some have said that it is place, like a cliff. Some say that it just means the goat that goes away, but if you were to look up the word in Leviticus 16, you would notice that it is used as a proper noun, and in our English translations it is capitalized. This has led some to believe that it is not merely a place or a description, but an entity. The goat was going to the demon of the desert. It was from Azazel that injustice, and greed came, this desert demon is the source of all sin because in the desert there is no civilization only survival. You take what you must. You look out only for yourself because if you do not you die. The desert, the wilderness is uncivilized and unrighteous and on the day of atonement the priests were sending back to Azazel the sin, the selfish and antisocial aspects of the community.

John was in the wilderness. He was out in the place where the demons ran free. And he cried out to the ones living in the civilized world, repent. And then the Gospel writer references Isaiah:

Isaiah 40:1–5 (ESV)

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The world in John the Baptist’s day was filled with many opinions. They were in the midst of a culture war much like we see today. They had people willing to commit political violence, they had people selling out to the government, people devoted to traditions, people living what they believed to be good lives, and people many thought were just terrible. There is a voice crying out in the wilderness. Its calling all around us, in the places that hold us paralyzed in fear. There is a voice is crying out.

We see John out in the wilderness crying into the land of promise to get ready because the dam is about to break. But when we look at Isaiah, it says, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”

It is not a call to isolationism. It is a call to action. It is not a call to remain where we are it is a call to mission. John is calling us to examine our lives and see where God is and where God is leading us. Examine our lives and see if we have been living according to the mission God has given. He is urging us to repent. To turn around and go out into the wilderness, to take on the things that once held us captive in fear. To go out and explore the things that were once unknown and bring them into the light. To go out and participate in and finnish the mission that God had once commissioned our first parents to do.

In the wilderness prepare, make straight in the desert a highway. I looked up the words we translate as prepare and make straight. Each of these words are interesting. The word prepare in some places can be used to speak of turning, clearing, and moving things toward another. In some ways it almost sounds as if it is similar to repent, but there is more to it. It is not only making a decision to turn but to get what is needed to move out into that unknown. The term make straight is a term for leveling, evening out, but there is an aspect to this word that implicates tearing down and destroying along with the positive aspect of establishing a level foundation to build a highway.

I want us to think about the preparation and the leveling as we are called to go out into the wild. What is keeping us from living the life you know, you sense, you hear the spirit calling you toward? What is keeping you from turning, from preparing?

I have said many times that I had received a call to ministry shortly after I returned from Ukraine nearly twenty-six years ago. That is when I began to turn. When I began to prepare and start the leveling. Prior to that God was still working, I just did not want to pay attention. I had my own plans, my own desires. I wanted to do my own thing. And why would he call me, I was just a quiet nobody from the middle of nowhere. Yet when I received my first bible at and began to read in elementary school, I read the whole thing. Early in life God was working, preparing me for what he would eventually do. And I still do not know why. God leveled. He prepared. And he tore down things in my life. He is still doing it, because there is more to do. I am only one person and there is a highway to be built. What will God need to do? And what in your life needs to be torn down and moved out so you can respond?

Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The life, the lifestyle, the very thing you were created to be is within your grasp. But are you looking? Are we too focused on the things of Azazel? Are we focused on what I want and can receive? God is building a highway through the wilderness. God is leveling the things within the world, lifting that low places and cutting down the heights. And he is calling out, He is calling us to join him. Will we respond? The work needs to be done, and he will raise stones to be children of Abraham, he will find whoever, and what ever he needs to get the job done. The Kingdom of Heaven is and will be established. It is established when we answer the call in our lives and take a step into the unknown wilderness and reflect God’s light and lifestyle where we are at. It is established when turn from our quests for the profits of this world and refocus on the things that hold value to God. God will tame the wilderness, God will build the path through our era of history. Will we respond and join Him in the work?

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