A River or a Bog? - Pastor's Choice

In this Pastor’s Choice message, “A River or a Bog?”, Mark Medley brings a vivid and searching question to the center of everyday discipleship: are we living as people through whom God’s blessing flows, or are we becoming stagnant by holding too tightly to what we have been given?

Beginning with Proverbs 11:24-25, Mark points to the surprising wisdom of God’s kingdom: “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.” Generosity is not merely a financial principle; it is a way of life. Those who refresh others are themselves refreshed. From there, he traces the picture of rivers throughout Scripture, from the river flowing out of Eden in Genesis to the river of the water of life in Revelation, bright as crystal and bringing healing to the nations.

Rivers in the Bible speak of God’s presence, nourishment, cleansing, comfort, new beginnings, and life that moves outward. A river remains fresh because it flows. It receives and releases. It blesses what is downstream. A bog, by contrast, turns inward. Its waters grow murky. Its ground becomes unstable. It traps, grips, and paralyzes. Through a striking story from the Mourne Mountains of Northern Ireland, Mark shows how unforgettable—and dangerous—the bog image really is.

This message presses the question into personal life, family culture, business practice, and church mission. There are seasons when God draws us close for healing, strengthening, and restoration, but we are not meant to remain permanently closed off in self-protection. God heals us so that life can flow through us again.

Mark then turns to the book of Acts, contrasting the early church in Jerusalem, which experienced power and community yet struggled to move outward, with the church in Antioch, a diverse, praying, fasting, sending church that released its best people for the work of God. Acts 1, Acts 8, and Acts 13 become a challenge to every believer and every church: will we resist the outward call of Jesus, or will we become a river for the nations?

The message concludes with Zechariah’s vision of a Jerusalem without walls and with Jesus’ invitation in John 7: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” Christ is the source of living water, and those who come to Him are invited into His generous, outward-moving mission. God is calling His people to be a river, not a bog.

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Transcript

Open Hands And Generous Wisdom

Mark Medley 0:01

I'm gonna start in Proverbs chapter 11. So if you want to turn there, that's great. We're gonna start in the middle of the of the Bible today, but we're gonna go all over the Bible. The theme of this message today is all through the whole Bible. It's everywhere. So are you okay with a lot of scripture this morning? Great. By the way, I I have compiled a list of books that have been really helpful in my Christian life. And um I want to make that available to you guys if you if you want it. You can message me or message the office and we can get that to you. Just look just books that I have read through the years that have made me a stronger Christian. And um it's pretty simple. There's 66 of them. And um there's 37 in the Old Testament, and there's 29 in the New Testament. And these books, I promise you, if you read these books, you can do it in about a year. If you read these books, it will make you a better Christian, I promise you. So if you want that, you can you can get that. So okay, chapter 11 of Proverbs. Wisdom of Solomon. Most likely Solomon wrote this. The wisest man who ever lived. So we should we should hear this, right? Let's hear his words. One gives freely, yet grows all the richer. Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want. A generous man will prosper. He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. That's the wisdom of the Word of God. So I'm going to go from there to the very first part of the Word of God, right after, right after creation, in Genesis chapter 2, verses 9 and 10. And let's read this. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge and of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. And there it divided and became four rivers. So in the beginning, in God's paradise, one river multiplying into four rivers, flowing outward to the surrounding lands. And we're going to go from the front all the way to the very back of the book, okay? The very last chapter, chapter 22 of the book of Revelation, verses 1 and 2. And the angel showed me a river of water, of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. Also, on either side of the river, the tree of life, with the twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. So at the end of the book, when all is restored, God is causing all things to flourish by a river that flows from underneath the

Rivers From Eden To Eternity

Mark Medley 3:10

throne of God, blessing the nations. Okay, so rivers are really important in the Bible. So you can, in fact, you see this image of a river, if you will, flowing through all of Scripture. It's everywhere. We're going to be in maybe uh maybe 10 or 12 of those books, those 66 books during this sermon. We're going to refer to or read from a bunch of it. And you're going to see this river motif is all through the Bible. And God reveals part of his plan for mankind through this metaphor of a river. And in the Bible, rivers signify life, they signify healing. They signify spiritual nourishment and divine presence and comfort and a place of cleansing and a fresh start. A line of demarcation from the past and the present and the future, rather. A line where the past ends and the future begins and destiny is changed. This is all this is in that symbolism of a river. And in Ezekiel, we won't read it, but in Ezekiel chapter 47, the prophet sees a river flowing out from the temple of God. And the water is flowing, and everywhere the water flows, it flourishes. It's just teeming with life. There's many fishes, it says, many fish. And it's caused the lands all around it to flourish. So from the garden of God's perfection, a river. From the throne where God reigns in the inn, a river. From the temple, this picture in Ezekiel, which is the uh significance of the temple, is it's God's presence on earth flows a river. And when we look at the Gospels, in John chapter 7, Jesus said that out of every believer flows a river. There's a river from out of you. If anyone thirsts, Jesus said, Let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And this he said concerning the Spirit of God. Out of us comes this river. It's not for us, it's out of us, it's for others. So what do we know about rivers? Rivers always are flowing out, but they're constantly replenished. And there's life all around a river. And the flow keeps the water cleaner, and so it's able to sustain life. Rivers are always taking their blessing further downstream. They're taking it to other places. And so by the rivers, we find centers of life. We see cities, we see communities all around the river. Why do they build cities on the river? Because there's life there. There's life and there's transportation, there's movement, there's prosperity, and they affect people. I mean, the river here affects people in the

The Bog That Traps And Breaks

Mark Medley 6:20

next county, in the next state, and sometimes it in the next country. But Ezekiel in chapter 47 also wrote of a different kind of a body of water. One that doesn't flow out, one that holds itself, its water in, and we could call it a bog. You know what a bog is? Yeah, it looks more like this. So a body that's an enclosed body of water. It is stagnant, it's dirty water, because there's no flow outward, so it's it's just not healthy. When you're in a bog, the water is murky, which means you you don't have any clear vision. There's layers of decayed plant debris on the ground, so the floor of it is not solid and it's too soft to support a body. If you go into a bog, you go into a bog, you sink, you get stuck. That's a bog. And I was with Philip Adams a few weeks ago in France, and he told a story about a bog that I want to share with you. And about 25 years ago, they were in um uh Belfast, Northern Ireland, and from his church, a group of fathers got together, 12 or 14 dads, and they decided to take their teenage sons camping. So they went up into the Moorin Mountains, which are gorgeous and wild, and they camped for a week. And he said, as they were going up toward the end of the week, they were going up one of the peaks. Uh they they had their equipment, they were walking together. It was a great time together with their sons, but there's no trails in these mountains. And uh oftentimes there are these bogs, just bogs everywhere, large bog fields. And so they were jumping from tuft of grass to tuft of grass. They were like trying, you know, doing what they could to not get into the bog. Um, one of the young boys, a 15-year-old boy, slipped off of a tuft of grass and fell into the bog. And he went up to up to his waist, one leg up to his waist in the bog. Because this is what happens. It's just there's no real bottom to it. You just sink all the way up to here. The problem is his body weight kept going forward. The forward motion of his body weight went forward and his femur snapped. That's a bad story. I know. But it you probably will never forget it. But and Phil said it was just it was gruesome and it was horribly painful, and it took multiple men to work his leg out of that bog, and then they had to carry him, take turns carrying him down uh the mountain to the ER. You get stuck in bogs. You can break bones in bogs. Bogs are dangerous places. Bogs also do have life forms in them, but they're parasitic. They're leeches. They're the kind that grab onto you and suck the life out of you. It's not a place teeming with life. It's a place that's turned in on itself and it's unhealthy and it's infected. It's ingrown. Everything's nasty. Do you see the wisdom of Solomon now? There's one who gives freely but grows all the richer. There are those who hold back more than what they what they should give, and they suffer want or

Choosing River Living In Every Season

Mark Medley 10:10

they tend to poverty. So, what I'm telling you is we have to decide how to live our lives. If we're going to live ourselves, live our lives as a river or as a bog. And this principle applies to individuals, it applies to me and my own life. Am I going to live with my hands open or with my arms folded and my hands shut? Am I going to allow what God has blessed me with to go through me out to others or not? It applies to my family. Going to the culture of my family. Is it going to be hospitality? Is it going to be generosity in the way that we bless people or we've uh we give our finances? It applies to our business. Is my business, does my business have a serving ethos? Is this what we do? We bless people. This is what we're here for. And it also applies to our church. Our church can be a river or a bog. And let me just stop a minute and say we are not taking an offering up at the end of this sermon, okay? Let me just let, okay, just you can just breathe. All right. This is not what this is about, okay? Let you know. Well, it would be a good time too, wouldn't it? I know. You're right. But we're not going to do that. That's not the point. But I believe God has a word, particularly for this church. I I want to it up it applies on different levels, but I think it's specifically for this church. In this season, I believe this church is supposed to be a river church. And those of you who have been here a long time, you know this has been a prophecy over this church for many years. This is a motherlow church. This is a resource church. This is a church that's not for itself, it's for others. It's it's to flow out. God wants it to be a river, not a bog. So I want to uh apply this principle of being a river to our church. And I also understand we have to be sensitive because there is sometimes as church, as a church, and sometimes as uh individuals as well, we have to be sensitive to our seasons. There's sometimes when we're going through difficult times and we have to circle the wagons. And we have to kind of pay attention to our families or pay attention to the health of our church and allow God to strengthen us and dress our wounds, and we abide in Him and He prepares us, He repairs us. Um, you know, that's that's what happened to me personally, you know, five years ago when Melissa died. I had to just, okay, circle the wagons, allow Jesus to heal me, allow Jesus to shepherd my soul into a healthy place of grieving. And he did. He's faithful. Uh, but I don't believe we're supposed to stay there. There are those seasons, okay? So, and I I acknowledge that, but I don't think we're supposed to stay there. I think he heals us so that we can be healing to other people. I believe God will not allow us to stay there, actually. I think he won't let us do it. So maybe a look at the book of Acts will help us. Is it okay? More scripture? Is it all right? Okay, good. When we think of the early, it'll help us understand it if we look at the early church. But when we think of early church, maybe you're thinking of the Jerusalem church, right? The very first church in the earliest years, right? Um, and we read about that in the first half chapters of the book of Acts, but but that church, for whatever reason, that church did not actively do what Jesus told them to do. Which is strange. Because he said, Go and make disciples, go into all nations. He said, Go and outward. And I don't know why. I've been thinking about that this week. Maybe it's because they were just trying to manage the explosive growth that was happening. This never happened before. Everything was new, and now suddenly you got thousands of people you have to deal with. Or maybe they were trying to handle the new problems that came up, like you know, the the widows not getting the right kind of uh help and all this stuff. And they had to, there were some things they had to tend to. And and or maybe they just still had this mindset of Judaism because the the whole idea of Jewish worship was there's a place and there's a manner in which he worship. You all come to the temple. People came from other places to the temple. The temple was the centralized place of worship. So there was a centralized mentality of Judaism right there, the way they worshiped. That was their world built around the temple. And the church in Jerusalem had power, they had miracles, they had amazing community, they shared what they had with one another, they cared for one another's needs, but they did not obey the command of Jesus to go to all nations. But what God knew, and the leaders of this church did not know, is that in just a few years, that centralized mindset is going to be blown apart. Because in a few years, that temple in Jerusalem was going to be destroyed, which nobody saw coming. Nobody could imagine the temple being destroyed. The centralized place, the place where God dwells on earth, the place where we come to meet him in a prescribed way is going to be destroyed. And you can't do it that way anymore. And God knew that was going to happen. In fact, I think it happened because God wanted to do a new thing. He wanted to bless the nations with the gospel of his son. So if you look in chapter 1, verse 8 of Acts, it says this. So outward, as a river flows, God wanted the message of his son to go out to the nations. And yet they largely stayed in Jerusalem. So that's chapter 1, verse 8. Let's look in chapter 8, verse

When God Forces A Church Outward

Mark Medley 16:35

1 of Acts. And Saul approved of his execution. That's Stephen's execution. And then there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. They had become a bog, and God wanted a river. So God came with his earth movers and he drudged up that bog so that water could get out of there. And if you study church history, it seems that periodically God allows things to happen or causes things to happen. Certain people, certain events that instigate change inside the church, and it gets the church from where they are into where God wants them to be. I call it God's Ways and Means Committee. Whatever it looks like. It looked like persecution, which it seems like a bad thing, right? Persecution doesn't seem like the blessing of a God. But this is what God wanted to do. He wanted them outward. So I have a question. If if um it were left up to the Jerusalem church as they were functioning, would any of us have heard the gospel? Probably not. Because this is their mindset. They were all bogged up. But you know, God had a plan. He had a ways and meets committee. It was fine. Um they didn't have any clue in the Jerusalem church that this was for Gentiles as well. Although God had been saying it forever. If you go back to the very beginning in Genesis, well, when Jesus when God called uh Abraham, he said that you will be all peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. And in Psalm 67, it calls for God's salvation to be to be made known among the nations. And in Isaiah 60, it says, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. And Jesus also quoted that. And Jesus was prophesied in Haggai as the desire of the nations. So the nations is always on God's mind, and yet they're bogged up. The Jerusalem church turned inward and taking care of itself. No thought about God's bigger mission. So we go a little farther in the book of Acts. In chapter 11, we see another city. It says that the gospel was scattered, they were scattered out, and they went as far as Antioch. Antioch is a different kind of church. So those that were persecuted went to Antioch. But it says if you read there in chapter 11, they still only spoke the word of the gospel to the Jews only. They didn't speak it to the Greeks, to the Hellenists, the Gentiles. They spoke it on, isn't that strange? Okay, they're forced out, but they're still only speaking to the Jews. They're speaking the gospel, but to the Jews alone. And it says that later those people who came from Cyprus and Cyrene came and spoke the word to the Hellenists. Cyprus is an island, Cyrene is northern Africa. It took those people from outside that little bog paradigm to understand this is for everybody. This is actually for the nations, this message. But why did it take outsiders from a small island and from North Africa to break the mold and start preaching to those from other cultures? Because Jerusalem had become a bog. And Antioch things began to change. So Antioch is a center of operations. If you read in the book of Acts, it says, Many people believed in Christ, and so Barnabas was sent down to encourage them. And Barnabas encouraged them. He saw the grace of God there. And so Barnabas went and got Saul, and he brought Saul, who is Paul, and Paul was there for a year, and he laid this foundation in Antioch. And it says that the people, the believers in Christ were first called Christians in Antioch. And so you see this life starting to function there, this growth, this healthy mindset. And look what happens in chapter 13. More scripture, okay? Is that right? Okay, good. Chapter 13. Let's see what a river looks like. Now, there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Menaeon, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. Okay, so there was diversity in the leadership in Antioch. It's beautiful. Multi ethnic. We see people from Probably looks like three different continents here in this leadership team. There was also multi many different socioeconomic groups. There were some who were friends of the king, some that were not so much. Differing spiritual gifts. There were prophets, there were teachers. Okay. It's multi multiculty, right? Multicultural church leadership team, right? They were faithful to pray and fast and minister to God. And when they did, God initiated the call. Okay, send me out these two. And I don't know the other guys because we don't know that much about them. But I know we do know a lot about Paul and Barnabas, right? And you don't want to lose them. If you got Paul in your church, you don't want to let him go. You got Barnabas, he's the one who came first and encouraged him and saw the grace of God upon him. He was a says a man of faith, full of faith and full of the Holy Spirit. You don't want to let those people go. It's like, Lord, just take the other guys. Can you just take, like, we have other people and the other leaders, they're pretty good. Could you take them and use them? And Paul's or God said to through the Holy Spirit, separate these two. I want your best. That's what he was saying. And you know what they did? Because they were spiritual people, they were good leaders, they let them go. They said, okay, hands laid on, send them out. Because we're a river. We're not a bog. We're not gonna get all clogged up and nasty. We're gonna let our people go. God gave them great resources. This church, men and men and women, in order to bless others. Antioch was the base from which the gospel flowed like a river out to the to the others. So Jerusalem had become a bog and God made it into a river. But then Antioch, like they got it from the beginning. They were a river. And I thought about that this week. How could the Jerusalem church, which was led by some of the heroes of our faith, Peter was there, James was there, John was there originally. These are people who literally physically heard Jesus' words. You'll be my witnesses. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, utterance. They heard him speak it from his lips. How could they not obey? But maybe we shouldn't be too critical because it's pretty much a normal mindset, isn't it? I mean, it's why should we say, yeah, those people, why did they not? Because we understand it's safe to stay like you are, right? Our tendency is to play it safe to hang on to what we have, bog ourselves up, bog our churches up. Don't take chances. Don't release. Don't release our best, at least. So this has been an issue for thousands of years. God has worked with his people throughout the generations to enlarge their thinking so it fits his. So I'd like to end with going more scripture,

A Bigger Rebuild And Living Water

Mark Medley 25:40

all right. Okay, good. We're gonna go to Zechariah. We're gonna go to another prophet, okay? The book of Zechariah. I want to look at an example of how God did this. What his mind, um what I want you to see this morning is the heart of God. Okay, not just individual um stories, but the heart of God is to expand. It's to take this message out to others. So God had taken Zechariah, just a little quick uh historical tour here. Zechariah had six six visions in his little book. And they're pretty crazy visions if you read them. But he had taken, uh God took Zechariah on this journey of visions that described how he wanted to reorient his people uh for the future and for his purpose. And this was like two generations after Jerusalem's wall and the temples, wall, the wall around the temple had been broken down, and her, the inhabitants were dispersed. Now God wants to rebuild, but he's not gonna rebuild it the same way. The visions that God gave to Zechariah were about enlargement and about reorientation. It ain't gonna be the way you think it's gonna be. It ain't gonna be the way it was. That's basically that's my paraphrase of the book of Zechariah. Okay, so we're talking about rivers and bogs today, but but in the first vision, God spoke to Zechariah about trees. He said, There's two kinds of trees. I want you to look at Zechariah. There's the there's the the cedar, and the cedars of Lebanon were like huge, really tall, impressive, solitary trees. And so, I mean, you could think like a giant sequoia, they're not that big, but think about that. It's like this is oh my, this is an amazing tree all by itself. But he said, the cedar tree has to go. I want you to think differently. I want you to think like a myrtle. A myrtle? A myrtle. A myrtle is a small, unimpressive tree that is almost shrub-like, and it grows its roots together under the ground so it's strong, so it can actually thrive anywhere. It can thrive in the desert, but it thrives because it's interconnected in its roots. Okay, and God was saying, okay, it's not singular, solitary, impressive cedar tree. It is uh it's and it's a redistribution. And so in the second vision, or actually Zechariah's third vision is what I want you to read about here in Zechariah chapter 2, and we'll start at verse 1. So I lifted up my eyes and I saw, and behold, it was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I said, Where are you going? And he said to me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length. That makes sense. We're going to rebuild. Yeah, let's look and see where were the foundations originally. And behold, an angel, the angel who talked with me, came forward, and another angel came forward and met to meet him and said to him, Run, say to that young man, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and the livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord. I will be the glory in her midst. Up, up, flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord, for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. So God said, Stop. Don't build it like it was before. In fact, you're not gonna have walls. In fact, I'm gonna be your wall. In fact, I'm gonna be the glory that lives in the midst of you. In fact, I'm spreading you out. Because God wanted Israel to be a witness of him to the nations. He wanted them to be a river. And they were in this vision, they were this guy was like digging out this bog, the same bog that was before, this little place. And and God said, No, I'm gonna spread you out. I will be your walls. It sounds a lot like the book of Acts, doesn't it? It's not this one single solitary tree temple, but I'm gonna spread you out. I'm getting rid of the temple as a reference for God's presence, and your reference point is going to be different. In fact, you are going to be my temple. This is the message of the New Testament. God is building with living stones, all of us, a new temple, a dwelling place for Himself, so that wherever you go, you're carrying the presence of God. This is what a river is like. And that's us. Okay. So when we're going through just a personal application, when you go through personal times, like devastating times, sometimes the most dangerous challenge is the temptation to think that God wants to rebuild us the way we were in the past. You know, I He wants to just restore us the way we were. When God wants to do something bigger, greater, He wants to lift our eyes up so that we can see His vision. And it's change. And change is challenge. Right? And insecure, to be sure. It there's there's insecurities there, but there's possibilities. And there's spiritual adrenaline if you let that in. There's this expectancy of what God wants to do. So the exile didn't destroy God's people, but it destroyed a mindset inside of them. An arrogant mindset, a small mindset, an exclusive mindset. It destroyed that so that they're thinking more like Jesus now. They're thinking more like God's purposes. They're gonna be the people who would bring the knowledge of Yahweh to the nations, preparing them, though they didn't know it yet, preparing them for Jesus who is to come. The desire of nations. God's moving his plan forward, but sometimes he's got to bust us out of our bog. And the purposes of God are always pointing to Jesus. And this is where I want to end today. It's always pointing to Jesus. All of this from Abraham. What is the seed of Abraham that would bless the nations? It is a person, it's Jesus. Who is it in the Psalms? Who is it in the prophets that's prophesied as desire of nations as the as the hope of nations? It's Jesus. It's a person. It's a person. Who is this river? Who is this source of life? Let's read this from John 7.37. On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Jesus is the water of life. Jesus is this river that brings life to you. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. But we can make a difference. We can make a decision this morning to be like a bog and close ourselves up. Or we can be like those who scatter and yet they increase. It doesn't make sense. It's the kingdom of God, it's God's math. There are those who scatter and yet they increase. There are those who hold more than they need and yet they are they tend to poverty. It's just kingdom mathematics. So this morning, we want to end focusing on Jesus because this is the whole point of it. He is the one who created the garden. He is the one who sits on the throne in the end of the book from which flows this river. He is the one who is this water of life. He's the source of it. And there's only one way to quench your thirst. And that's to drink deeply from the water of life. Jesus is your answer if you're thirsty this morning. No one comes to the Father but through him. And all of history is moving in a direction toward the glory of God's Son Jesus. And when we join with Him in mission, and when we decide to not be a bog but to be a river, to open up and join with Him. The Great Commission is a co-mission. It's a mission together with God. It's joining together with God and with His Spirit toward His purposes. And when we decide to do that, then we're becoming a river and not a bog. So I want to pray this morning. God has declared this church to be a river. And it of course it applies in your own life. But I'm just telling you, this place is not just for here. God is bringing us so many beautiful new people and resources, and we're going to stir them the best we can. But it's not for us. To grow and closed up and stagnant. It's for us to send out. So let there be a break in this bog mentality. Let's release the river. Amen. Why don't you stand with me today? It's just a change in mindset. It's just agreeing with God. That's what it really is. By your grace, Lord, we're going to line up with you and be rivers and not bogs. So first things first, as we're praying right now, um, are you thirsty? Are you thirsty? Do you know this man who claims to be the water of life? And do you hear him calling you to come and drink? And if you hear that, that's the Holy Spirit. And I implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. He wants you. He will abundantly pardon. He will have mercy. He stands ready to make your life brand new. It's just a matter of coming to him. Come and drink of this water of Jesus. And for all of us, how are we living our personal lives as a river or as a bog? How about our family? How about our businesses? Do you feel faith rising up in you to stop living closed up and to open yourselves up? Do you feel faith rising inside of you to step out and live generously? To live like a river? And how about this church? What might it look like to spill out over our banks and bless others? To bless our community, to bless our nations, to bless the places where God is joining us to. What are the beginning steps of co-laboring with God to resource other kingdom works? By God's grace, we choose to be a river, we refuse to be a bog. Lord, we choose to be a river, we refuse to be a bog. We choose to be a river, we refuse to be a bog. By your grace, make us make us a river of blessing to the nations. Let it be, Lord.