Rahab - Week 2: The Mystery of God at Work

Erin Davis: Well, pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee, hot tea, hot apple cider, lemonade, whatever, and grab your Bible. I’m so glad you’re joining us. You’re going to be listening to some friends who I know you’re going to love.

We are walking through the study of Rahab: Tracing the Thread of Redemption. I’ll let them introduce themselves to you in a minute, but before you do, I want the women listening to feel like you’re right here with us. You are. We’re thinking of you. We’re talking about you.

I want you to feel like you are walking through the study of Rahab with us. We’re not here to download all of our wisdom about this story to you. We’re not here because we have all of this figured out. We want to open our Bibles with you and look at Rahab’s life just like I hope you’re doing in your church, in your neighborhood. I feel like that.

Sometimes we’ll be serious. We’ll be talking about really deep stuff. And then the next minute we might not be. We might talk over each other. We might interrupt each other a little bit. We will share stories from our lives. We want you to feel like you’re a part of that.

So by way of disclaimer, I want them to know what they’re getting into. I want them to meet you. I know they’re going to love you as they listen to you talk to them about this study. So I’ll let you introduce yourselves.

To my left I have a dear friend of mine. We work together at Revive Our Hearts. Tell them your name, maybe where you’re from, and I want to know what are your favorite kind of books to read.

Leslie Bennett: I’m Leslie Bennett, and I live in South Carolina. My husband and I have been married thirty-seven years, and we’re empty nesters. I have two adult children and a wonderful son-in-law. I don’t have grandchildren, so can I tell you I have a Labradoodle?

Erin: Yes, sure.

Leslie: She’s adorable, named Bella. As far as the kind of books that I enjoy reading, I’m kind of a nerd about leadership. I love to read books on leadership. That’s fun for me.

Erin: That’s great! Okay, over here I have another friend. Tell them about you, whatever you want them to know, and what kind of books you love to read.

Lisa Whittle: My name is Lisa, and I’m from North Carolina. Okay, books to read. I love to read. I’ve been reading for a long, long, long time. I love a good memoir. That is one of my favorites. I love, love a good memoir. I read non-fiction some, but because I spend so much time writing books, it’s hard for me to read a lot. But I read books by old, dead guys. Can I say that?

Erin: You sure can! We do, too. I feel like there’s community here at this table with that.

Lisa: I love reading all kinds of people’s wisdom. It’s a little different when you do it for a job, and you have a podcast yourself, and you read books that way. But you read for pleasure, and there’s all kinds of stuff in there.

Erin: I’m surrounded by Carolina girls. But you don’t really have Carolina accents.

Lisa: Well, I’m not from Carolina, so my accent is confused. I have grown up all over the United States, so no one knows where this accent is from.

Leslie: Sometimes you slip into it . . . you can talk pretty southern.

Erin: Well, I’m Erin. I’m from Missouri. I don’t know . . . do I sound like I have an accent to you? I haven’t slipped out any y’alls—maybe I’ve said y’all. But I’m from Missouri. I don’t have an accent, so that’s good. And I don’t know what my favorite kind of book to read is. I like to read widely. If you looked at my bookshelves, you’d be like, “Man, what does this girl like to read?”

There are times I like to read old, dead guys, and there’s times I just want to read something mind numbing, just a really good story.

Lisa: Even just a magazine sometimes.

Erin: Yes, a magazine.

Leslie: I’m fine with a good, old-fashioned magazine.

Erin: Just a cereal box sometimes can keep me engaged. I don’t know that I have a favorite genre. I was hoping that one of you would say you like to read mysteries, because that’s a little bit of what we’re talking about today. Do you like to read mysteries?

(All together): No.

Erin: Not really. Do you know what I do if I ever do read a mystery? I read the last chapter.

Lisa: Oh, me too!

Erin: You do?

Lisa: Yes, oh, wow!

Erin: I don’t like the suspense. I don’t like it in movies either. If they could just tell me the ending, then I’d watch the movie. I’d still enjoy it. Well, it doesn’t really help us because we’re going to talk about mysteries, but we can read other kinds of books.

Leslie: This is a different kind of mystery. I mean, this is on a different level.

Erin: It is. This is a kind of mystery that we love to read and love to talk about. I am such a bottom-line girl. I’m like, “Get me to the bottom line.” Maybe that’s why I read the last chapter of mysteries. Even when I’m doing a Bible study like we’re doing, I want to know: What’s the big idea? What is it that we’re getting ready to look at?

And what I love about this study is it gives us the big idea every day. Today, the big idea is that God’s work is often a mystery. We don’t always know what He’s doing. We don’t understand it. We can’t see the end of it. It isn’t linear. We can’t always flip to the back of the mystery novel and understand, “Oh, I see. That’s what he was doing.” So we’ll talk about His mysterious ways—that’s a common saying. God does indeed work in mysterious ways. We’ll see that in the life of Rahab.

We’re walking through the story of Rahab, and in the last episode, we made it all the way to Rahab 2 . . . I keep saying Rahab 2 . . . we made it all the way to Joshua 2, verse 1. We didn’t make it very far. We’re going to pick up Rahab’s story together here. I’m going to read to us, Joshua 2:1–4. There are some cities in Joshua 2:1 that I’m terrified to say. I don’t know if I can get them right. There’s kind of a little bit of fear when I say them that I’m going to spit into my microphone. So, yes, it will be okay.

And Joshua the son of Nun senttwo men secretly from Shittim as spies, saying, “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” And they went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab and lodged there.

There’s our girl, right there in Joshua 2:1. All we know about her is where she lives—in the city of Jericho. And we know her occupation. She’s a prostitute.

And it was told to the king of Jericho, "Behold, men of Israel have come here tonight to search out the land." Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, "Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land." But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, "True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from."

Whoa! There’s a lot happening in these four verses! We go from, verse 1: All we know is Jericho. All we know is that she’s a prostitute. To here is where the mystery is really starting to unfold. We see these new characters. We see that Rahab the prostitute has the spies of Israel in her home, which, that’s mysterious. Why did they go to Rahab’s home? Why did the king know they were in Rahab’s home? I’m not going to try and wrap it up in a bow, but it’s a mysterious thing. There’s a lot happening.

I do want to back it up just a little bit to Joshua 1:2–4. It’s really important we get context when we’re studying the Bible. I always try to avoid what I call “the claw”—you know those claw machines . . . They’re just a waste of your money. Right? You drop them in, and they pull something out. Sometimes we do that with Scripture. We extract a little bit, what sometimes you have to do because it’s a big book . . . But let’s get context when we can.

Leslie, can you read us Joshua 1:2–4?

Leslie: Yes.

“Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.”

Erin: So it’s theirs! This place on the map that we’re spending our time talking about, Canaan, the Promised Land, Jericho . . . it’s been promised to them. Why did Joshua send spies into a land that had already been promised? What’s your theories? We don’t have the answer, but it’s mysterious. Why did they need spies in the Promised Land?

Leslie: I can only think that the Holy Spirit must have put it in his heart and his mind to send the spies. I think it was a prompting, because He had a plan to save one woman. I think that’s what it was all about. I don’t know.

Erin: That’s a good thought. Any thoughts, Lisa?

Lisa: I think there’s always the obedience thread. Like, “Here’s what I’m going to have you do. It might not make complete sense. A lot of this stuff won’t make sense, by the way, along the way, but here’s what you need to do. Now, the ball’s in your court for the obedience factor.”

So that’s what I always think in the kind of mysterious.

Erin: Yes. I thought the same. Yes, the land was promised, but God’s people still had to move in faith. It wasn’t like, “We just want the house of cards to fall. We just want it to be over, for God to speak, and it will be over.” Which, He can do, and there are places in Scripture that He will and does do, but in this case, they had to move forward in faith. They had to trust God’s promise, and they had to fight for what God had called them to do.

So I wonder, can you think of a time or an area of your life where victory is promised, but you still have to fight, or you still have to obey, or you still have to move, or you still have to scope something out? Is there an area of your life where it’s very clear what God is going to do, but you still have a battle to fight?

Leslie: Erin, can I say that I am battling in prayer for so many things in my life and so many people who I love who have not yet come to Jesus or are not walking with Him. I believe that they will in faith, so I keep praying for them.

Erin: I say that about you all the time, Leslie, that you’re not a prayer warrior, you’re a prayer general. And that is true. You are praying, and you are praying in faith. I listen to how you pray. You’re not praying wimpy prayers at all. And you’re not praying, (whiny voice) “Answer this if You want to, God” prayers. You pray with power, but you still pray.

Leslie: Yes. “Lord, do what You promised You’re going to do.”

Erin: Yes. I love that!

Lisa, can you think of an area in your life where God’s promised the victory, but you’re still fighting?

Lisa: I think about that with parenting. You’re still in the trenches. You still have to obey and follow and battle through and parent. Right?

I think about that in ministry. I think about where I feel like God has promised to me that He will use my life, and yet I still have to walk in obedience. Sometimes that feels really tricky, and I have to get over myself.

Even in the intangible . . . We had a piece of land that we owned for about ten years. We had this dream of what we wanted to do with it—it involved ministry and all kinds of stuff. For ten years we thought, This is never going to have closure. We’re never going to actually own it. (There was some lawsuit around us that had nothing to do with us.) I say all that just to say it looked bad. I felt like it was ours. We bought that in faith, but for ten years, there was no visible sign,

Erin: So you could have put that land up for sale at any point. “Well, I cut my losses.”

Lisa: Right. And in full disclosure, we actually tried that. But I feel like that was something intangible. We believed that God . . . because you can’t see what God’s going to do. That’s the sovereignty of God that we don’t have access to. But we just did believe that. I will say, not all stories end with, “And now this happened . . .” But I will say that this summer, that did come to a full closure. We get excited to move forward. It doesn’t always happen that way, but . . .

Erin: I think about, even just the Bible, God has promised that He will change my heart through His Word. It’s a promise. But He didn’t just give me a USB drive by which He plugged His truth in.

Lisa: Wouldn’t that have been nice!

Erin: But I still have the obedience part. Yes, God will give me a victory in a way of sanctification through His Word, but I have to open it—every day—or, again, if it’s been a while. I have to open it. I have to choose.

There are times when God’s going to do what He says He’s going to do, but we don’t sit back and wait. So this is part of that. Maybe He sent spies just for Rahab. I never thought of that before, Leslie. It’s beautiful. Or maybe they were going forward as a step of obedience. I don’t know.

But God’s about to do something amazing in the city of Jericho, which is a pagan city, which is a really unexpected site for the story of redemption and some unexpected circumstances. Rahab is a prostitute, and not just a prostitute, she’s a lying prostitute. When the king sends a message to Rahab and says, “I need the guys that are in your home”—I’ll pick this back up in Joshua 2:4. She says:

But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, "True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them."

But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords. And the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out (vv. 4–7).

If we were prepping for Sunday school, let’s say that you’re teaching middle school girls, you’re teaching adult ladies’ Sunday school class, or I’m teaching kindergarten, and we get this lesson with Rahab—the lying, pagan prostitute.

Lisa: Right. That’s a tough one.

Erin: We’re going to be, like, “I’m sick! Can you send somebody else that can teach this lesson?” You talk about wrapping up in a bow, this story doesn’t wrap up in a tight bow. There’s a lot of mystery here, a lot of intrigue, a lot of questions that we can’t just slap some Christian-eze and go, “Well, this makes perfect sense.” It’s messy!

Rahab’s not the only one whose story is messy. Let’s rattle off some other stories in Scripture that are messy.

Leslie: Well, what story in Scripture was not messy?

Erin: There you go!

Leslie: I mean, honestly . . . I’m trying to think of one that was actually not messy.

Erin: Well, there’s Adam and Eve.

Leslie: That was pretty messy! I can think of a lot of mess in that one, Erin!

Lisa: It lasted about a minute—a minute—and from there, it was just mess.

Leslie: Yes, honestly.

Erin: We could name them. We’ve got Moses who’s a murderer. We’ve got David and Bathsheba, who are adulterers.

Lisa: We’ve got Mary who became pregnant before marriage.

Erin: Yes, Mary, pregnant out of wedlock. We’ve got Peter . . .

Leslie: He’s a hot mess, messing up the whole thing, all the way around.

Erin: I tell my husband all the time that I want a trucker cap that says, “Struggle Bus Driver.” Maybe I’ll get it for Christmas. But Peter could wear the “Struggle Bus Driver” for sure.

Really, all the way through there are these messy stories. And yet, God is always using those stories toward redemption. Some people listening, they can’t see our hands, so we’ll give a “me” or a “yes” by a verbal acknowledgement. I imagine you’re in the exit row. I need a verbal acknowledgement from you if you’ve got a messy past.

Leslie: Oh, that’s a big, hearty “Yes! Me, too!”

Lisa: Amen!

Erin: And how about a messy present?

Leslie: Sure. I mean, there’s always a mess of some sort—probably in my house at this very moment.

Lisa: Yes—a literal mess!

Erin: We all have mess. And if we wanted to display that mess for all of our podcast listeners, they’d hear real messes—real messes—of every variety in our lives.

And, I’ve got bad news for us. We’ve got messy futures. There are messes around the bend. So I want us to call out the messes of the women we know who are listening. You love and minister to women. You’ve got neighbors. You’ve got women in your churches. You’ve got sisters. You’ve got daughters. Let’s think of them for a minute. What kind of messes are they in?

Leslie: Women have prodigal children and grandchildren.

I have a friend whose husband is a pastor. He was removed against anything he had done wrong. He’s still looking for a job. He needs an income for their family.

I can think of women who are estranged from family members, who haven’t spoken in years. I mean, that’s just the beginning of the list of women who are hurting deeply.

Erin: What kind of messes are you seeing—what messy women’s lives come to your mind?

Lisa: Oh, man. Porn. Women addicted to porn.

Erin: That’s a mess!

Lisa: Oh, it’s a big mess.

Eating disorders. Self-harm. Addiction to prescription medicine. The list goes on.

Leslie: Depression.

Erin: Anxiety.

Leslie: I know there are marriages that are really messy.

Erin: I don’t know what marriage doesn’t have some level of mess, but there are some women listening that it is a real mess.

There are women who are in messes at work. Maybe there are things that are beyond their control, and it’s just messy. Maybe it’s interpersonal; it’s messy. We’ve all got interpersonal messes.

There are women listening that are in messy churches. Every church is messy, but we’ve been in the middle of some real church messes. It’s messed up! When your place of worship where you’re supposed to go is supposed to be a haven from the mess of this world, when it’s the site of the mess, that is hard.

I think every woman listening is in a mess of some sort.

Leslie: I would agree with that.

Erin: She’s facing circumstances she never expected to be facing, and there is no bow to put around it. It’s messy. Maybe it’s going to be messy for a really long time.

She’s listening to this wanting us to give her some hope—and we do. We have hope to give her, because God is moving those messes toward redemption. He’s using messes to declare His glory.

That’s what He does in Rahab’s life. So Rahab, this prostitute—not just a prostitute, but a pagan prostitute; not just a pagan prostitute, but this lying, pagan prostitute—is about to make a profession of faith.

Will one of you read me Joshua 2:8—11? I don’t think there’s any tricky words in there, but if there is, I’m sorry. Does somebody have Joshua 2:8—11?

Lisa: I’ve got it.

Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, “I know that the Lord has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.”

Erin: You know what we’d call that in church language? We’d call that a profession of faith.

Lisa: We sure would.

Erin: She’s acknowledging who God is. Now, does she have God all figured out?

Lisa: No, not at all.

Erin: Her description of God is pretty simple. We see it there in.

Lisa: Yes. He’s the one true God. That’s what she’s saying basically.

Erin: Yes. She’s just saying, “He’s God! We know He’s God because we’ve heard of what He’s done.” And she says His fear has fallen upon them. Now, she’s a Canaanite. What she’s telling them is, “All of us are afraid of God. We heard what He did at the Red Sea. The stories of God have reached our ears.”

The Canaanites had a fear of God, but it was like they were afraid He was going to hurt them. But for Rahab it was different. She wasn’t afraid of God. She had a fear of the Lord. And how did that change in her? She wasn’t just afraid He was going to hurt her. How did Rahab respond to the stories of the Red Sea and other stories she’d heard?

Lisa: She believed them. Instead of responding in fear of, “God is going to come in to wipe us out!” She had faith. She shows faith instead. She chose to believe that He is the one true God.

Leslie: I think the distinction is kind of like a holy awe. There’s some fear there, but it’s a right fear. It’s not fear in the way we think of being afraid of something or the ramifications thereof. It’s acknowledging, “This is who this is, and in that place, I have this reverence,” which, by the way, we could all use some more of in this day and time, I believe.

Erin: Yes.

Rahab sees more than a one-dimensional God. Where the Canaanites see, “Oh, He’s powerful.” She somehow also saw, “He is also loving because, yes, He drowned Pharaoh and his chariots in the sea, but the Israelites were rescued through that.”

Sometimes when we only see one side of God—whether it’s His wrath or maybe it’s just His love—we don’t respond with that reverent awe. But when we start to see how big He is and how good He is . . . Yes, He’s a God of judgment, but He’s also a God of mercy, and all of those things, the fear of the Lord is the result.

The fear of the Lord is a phrase we see a lot in Scripture.

Leslie: Well, Erin, I think some of that can go with our backgrounds. If we were raised in a sort of environment, a church setting or whatever, that has felt very strict or legalistic or heavy, we can begin to see God in this place where we don’t understand how He is also in a loving place. He has all of that in His character. When we see that, there comes this holy reverence and awe. He is relatable to us, and He loves us.

He’s all those things at once, which separates Him from you and me. That’s what we love about Him so much. Our background plays into it, especially for some people, that’s harder.

Erin: Yes. I think of a twenty-something woman that I’m spending a lot of time with these days, having lots of coffee-shop conversations. That was her upbringing. She was raised very strict, “These are the rules. You do this. You don’t do this. And God really cares a whole lot about what you do and you don’t do.”

And now, it’s part of just what happens in your twenties when you’re re-evaluating your identity. She’s having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that God doesn’t want her behavior. God isn’t checking on her every day to go, “Well, did you do the things or not do the things?”

She is fun to watch. But it is hard on her heart for her to see the multi-dimensions of God and get a bigger view of Him.

Leslie: His full character.

Erin: Yes. And the end result is going to be worship like Rahab, but she’s wrestling.

Lisa: So many women think they have to clean up their act. “Before I come to God, I need to get it together over here, then I can come to God.” That’s not what He says. He says, “Come to Me.”

Erin: And somehow, Rahab must have seen that because she felt that she could worship Him, that somehow she had a place of declaring that, “He’s God!”

Lisa: “I can be one of His people!”

Leslie: And let’s not miss the fact, because we were talking about how maybe God just did this in this mystery to save this woman . . . It was generational, because He also saved the family. That’s God’s grace, love, and mercy.

I think even for people listening, maybe the encouragement is: This might not just be for you. With your past, you may feel disqualified. But there might be children watching, there might be grandchildren that through your legacy of trust and faith in God, He can change a lot of things for a lot of people.

Lisa: How often do we see that God saves the wife or the mother first—I’ve seen this so many times in women’s ministry. Then through the woman, He’ll save the husband and the children and change the trajectory of that whole family who didn’t know the Lord.

Erin: Think of the prison guard in the New Testament. It tells us he came to Christ and his whole family was saved! There is a ripple effect. We’re going to see a big ripple effect for what He’s going to do in Rahab. It’s not that the Canaanites were not denying that there is a God. They were afraid of Him. But they were stuck in the paralysis that didn’t motivate any change of behavior.

But Rahab puts her faith in God to save her, and that changes everything. She’s willing to take these big risks for Him. She’s willing to embrace His people.

I think there are some other times in Scripture and in our lives that God chooses them to save, to redeem, to rescue some people groups. It’s a little bit surprising. I think of the Ninevites. Jonah did not want to go preach to those Ninevites. He tried to do the opposite because he knew God might offer redemption to them. And He did. And Jonah was all bummed out that they repented.

We already mentioned Saul to Paul. That’s surprising that there was redemption there.

We were talking about this before we turned the mics on. I asked each of you: Are there some people in your own life who chose faith, and it surprised you. And I loved your answer, Lisa.

Lisa: Well, besides myself? I don’t think that way, to be honest with you. And maybe it’s because I feel so much like Rahab or just the broken person. I always marvel at how Jesus could forgive me, and I feel very much in community with people who feel broken and people that feel rescued.

I don’t really think that. What I think is: There, He has done it again. There He goes again. Like, one decision can change everything. And, “Look at this!”

I really don’t question people’s conversion. I think over time it shows whether it was real. It’s not up to me. I’m just thrilled that someone else has come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

But when you’re talking about the Bible, I think even of Zacchaeus, who, people. . .

Erin: (singing) “He was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he!”

Lisa: What was really interesting to me is the fact that as soon as Jesus said, “I’m going to come to your house,” he had such a change. It was like he was almost waiting for someone to say, “I am okay with you. I love you. I accept you.”

Jesus so does that for all of us. I think we are really messy a lot of times in our conversions experience because we don’t know what we’re doing.

Leslie: Especially a lot of us who haven’t been in church.

Erin: We basically have what Rahab has—your God. That’s all we have at first.

Lisa: So we’re going to be kind of imperfect as we trudge through that, especially if we don’t know anything about the Bible. We don’t know the things we’re supposed to do.

I just think we can expect that people are going to have some stumbles even in their conversion.

Erin: Yes. I don’t know that I’m surprised anymore by who He can redeem. I think that comes with walking with the Lord for a long time. We become increasingly aware of all He saved us from and redeemed us from. I’m not over it.

I think of a man who got baptized in our church recently. I’m, like, “Really? That guy?” I live in a small town. I and everybody in that sanctuary knew that this was only a work of God, that this man would choose Christ and choose baptism.

I don’t know that it surprises me as much anymore, but it still lays me flat.

Leslie: That’s the most powerful story. What you’re saying right now is that there are not levels to who comes to know Christ. We may think, Oh, their story is not as powerful . . . Look, any time you get saved, you go from death to life.

Lisa: It’s a miracle!

Leslie: Right! But I do think God does something special when you’re able to go, “That guy?”

Erin: Right! “That girl?”

Lisa: Anyone can be saved! ANYONE! No one is too far, beyond God’s redeeming touch.

Erin: But salvation is mysterious because it’s not just for certain people. That would be a nice box, I guess, if we had that and wanted to be in a box. But it’s not just for certain backgrounds. We have backgrounds in this circle. Women listening have different backgrounds.

It’s not for a certain time period. Here we’re looking at Rahab from a long, long, long, long time ago. It’s for her. Why do some believe and some don’t? Why was Rahab the only woman in Jericho that made this profession of faith and the rest of the Canaanites were not? I don’t know. It’s mysterious. It’s not a formula.

God’s work in our lives and in our hearts and in our churches to draw us to Him in faith is mysterious.

Leslie: I love what Chuck Swindoll said: “Don’t try to unscrew the inscrutable.” I tell myself that so often, “Leslie, don’t try to figure this out! The secret things belong to the Lord, and you can’t understand it. Just trust Him with it.”

Erin: I love that!

I asked one of you to find John 3:8 for us, and I can’t remember who I asked.

Leslie: That was me.

Erin: Leslie, you’re our Bible reader this session. I so appreciate it.

Leslie: I love it.

Erin: Can you read us John 3:8?

Leslie: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Erin: Okay. It’s very mysterious.

Leslie: You can’t predict the wind! You can’t send it anywhere you want it to go.

Erin: You can’t predict it. It’s not a formula—this plus this equals this. It’s mysterious.

But here’s what we do know. Lisa, do you have Romans 10:9 for us?

Lisa: I do, and I love it.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There you go!

Leslie: How simple is that?

Erin: There it is! There are parts that are mysterious, but there are parts that are so simple.

Now, Rahab didn’t give us the Romans Road. She didn’t walk us through the story of Jesus.

Leslie: Didn’t have a tract in her hand.

Erin: She didn’t have a tract in her hand, but she said, “You’re the God of heaven and earth.” And she was saved. Rahab responded to the stories of God in faith, and the rest of the city didn’t. It’s a mystery.

Why and how God woos us to Himself. It’s a mystery.

Why God redeems broken sinners, as broken as me and as broken as you—it’s a mystery.

I hope that you did not pick up this study thinking you were going to get to the end of it in a few weeks and have redemption all figured out . . . and God all figured out.

Lisa: That won’t happen.

Leslie: I think it’s important that you’re even saying this because I do think that one of the things that trips us up a lot is that we don’t want to sit in the mystery. Right?

Lisa: It’s uncomfortable.

Leslie: Right! We feel like, “If I don’t understand it, then I’m missing something. I’ve gone off somewhere.” So we waste a lot of time trying to make this all make sense. There’s something freeing about saying, “I will not understand the mind and heart of God. I am to obey what God tells me to do. And what He reveals to me through the Bible and the Holy Spirit is amazing. But there are things that I will never understand.”

And for some personalities, that’s hard because they want to understand things more. But we need to be free.

Erin: Or it seems like you’re sitting in a room of women, and it seems like everybody else understands.

Leslie: Oh, that happens a lot!

Lisa: Yes!

Erin: It seems like everybody else has Him all figured out.

Leslie: Well, it seems that way, but it’s not that way.

Erin: That’s right—they don’t! I tell my Bible study leaders in my church: “You’ve got two answers at your disposal: I don’t know. And, I’ll get back to you. Say those a lot to other women!”

We don’t have to be able to understand all of God’s Word or all of God to be grateful for it and grateful for Him.

We open our Bibles to know God, but until everything is revealed, He will remain mysterious. I kind of like the challenge of that. I like that I’m going to get to know Him more and more and more, but I can’t ever fit Him in a box. I can’t ever figure Him out.

Leslie: And how exciting to think about heaven. I keep thinking about what I know about God now, and I’ll know that more fully in heaven. It just makes me so excited. I can’t wait to get there. I’ll see Jesus face to face and really know Him even more than now.

Erin: That’s the last chapter. You just revealed the last chapter!

Leslie: I did! I turned to the end.

Erin: Which I love, and I think that’s a great place for us to land today, that we won’t figure all of God out. We won’t figure all of His Word out. We can’t figure out all of this redemptive story we’re talking about—but we know the end of the story. I love that.

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