The Tension of Israel and the Nations

This Sunday at The Gathering in Colorado Springs, I shared a message called The Woven Covenant | The Tension of Israel and the Nations, built around a prophetic dream, the imagery of tuning and resonance, and a call to hold the tension of Scripture without collapsing into easy answers. The message is available as a replay on YouTube.

There are moments when the Lord does not seem to be giving us something brand new, but asking us to return to what He has already spoken and steward it more faithfully.

That is where this message began.

The day before, during our first open Company 318 class, we talked about stewarding dreams, stewarding revelation, and learning how to hold a word from God over time. Not every promise is fulfilled in a week. Not every revelation opens all at once. Sometimes the work of faith is not to rush to fulfillment, but to remain in agreement while God deepens our understanding.

That conversation stayed with me.

I found myself freshly aware that God is faithful to His promises, even when He refuses our interpretations of how those promises should unfold. He is not intimidated by our disappointment. He is not threatened by the long process of alignment. And often, what feels delayed is actually an invitation into maturity.

Rest Is the Atmosphere of Communion

One of the strongest threads running through the message was this: the atmosphere of communion is the atmosphere of rest.

Before the fall, humanity’s life with God began in communion, not toil. We were made for fellowship before labor, for union before striving. That means rest is not a reward for the spiritually successful. Rest is our starting place in God.

This reframes so much of how we think about revelation.

Chris shared during the Company 318 class that the Lord often meets us in dreams because we are not striving there. We are not trying to perform. We are not managing outcomes. We are not wrestling our way into understanding. In sleep, we are brought back to the posture we were always meant to live from: rest.

That landed deeply in me.

The Lord does not only speak to the productive. He speaks to the yielded. He does not only meet us in our labor. He meets us in communion.

And perhaps that is part of the correction many of us need right now. We have lived as though spiritual maturity means exertion, intensity, and constant effort. But the invitation of Christ is deeper than that. He is bringing us out of labor and into the finished work of God.

The Harp, the Heart, and the Sound of Resonance

Before getting into the main dream I wanted to revisit, we returned again to Chris Berglund’s harp dream.

In the dream, David is tuning a harp. The harp is shaped like a heart on one side and a bowl on the other. The strings must be brought into perfect tension—not so tight that they break, not so loose that they carry no sound. As David says yes to the Lord, even in suffering, the strings are tightened into the right tension and begin to release a sound.

Then the scene changes.

David is now in Saul’s bedroom, playing the harp. As he plays, there is a horizontal effect that breaks confusion in Saul’s mind, and a vertical effect like incense rising to God. But in the dream, no wind instruments are allowed in the bedroom. Trumpets and shofars have their place, but proclamation must come after intimacy. Declaration without inward alignment is only noise.

That dream has stayed with us because it speaks to order.

There is a sound that can only come from a tuned heart.

There is a proclamation that only carries authority when it has first been formed in communion.

And there is a difference between noise and resonance.

We also heard Bill share a powerful picture from his childhood. His father, an amateur radio operator, would carefully tune transmitter and receiver frequencies until the two sine waves matched. That is resonance. That is intentional adjustment. That is the fine-tuning required for clear transmission and reception.

It felt like the Lord was underlining something for us as a people: we are being tuned.

Not merely inspired. Not merely stirred. Tuned.

The Woven Covenant Dream

From there, I returned to a dream Chris was given on June 1, 2025—a dream that has become one of the foundational revelations for Company 318.

In the dream, Lou Engle and a team are watching a master weaver at a loom. He is weaving a garment or blanket with cross threads of various colors. The weaver says the garment requires the threads of Song of Solomon 8, 1 Kings 18, and Isaiah 49. Each thread is distinct, yet all are interwoven with a scarlet thread. The final garment cannot yet be seen. It is still being formed.

The dream says this garment can only be made at the speed of surrender and the inward working of Christ’s life in the people. Unity helps speed the work, not because we are manufacturing something ourselves, but because we are yielding together to the One who has already opened the door of covenant in His own life.

That image arrested me again this week.

What is God weaving?

How do these passages fit together?

What kind of garment is being formed in this hour?

I am not pretending to have the final answer. This message was not a triumphant declaration of having solved the mystery. It was a submission. A leaning in. A willingness to sit with the tension and say, “Lord, show us what You are making.”

Song of Solomon 8 and the Mother Who Taught Us

As I sat with Song of Solomon 8, I was struck by language I had never quite heard the same way before:

“Oh, that you were like a brother to me, who nursed at my mother’s breasts… I would lead you and bring you into the house of my mother, she who used to teach me…”

I offered this carefully, knowing it is theologically tender ground: what if, in one sense, “the mother” here can be seen as Israel—the one through whom covenantal understanding came, the one through whom the Messiah entered history, the one from whom the Church learned something of God’s covenantal dealings?

If that reading holds even partially, then the longing in the passage becomes profound.

The Church, in love with the Beloved, longs to bring Him into the house of her mother.

That is, the Gentile Church does not replace Israel. She does not despise Israel. She does not sever herself from the story. Rather, she longs for Israel to see and receive the One she herself has come to love.

That reading reshaped the passage for me.

It made me feel the ache in a new way.

The Tension of Israel and the Nations

We are living in a time when conversation around Israel is escalating, emotionally and theologically. That means the Church cannot afford flippancy. We cannot be too loose, and we cannot be too tight. We need the tension of God’s own heart.

This is where Galatians 4 and Romans 11 became so important in the message.

Paul does something startling in Galatians 4. He speaks allegorically about Hagar and Sarah, slavery and promise, earthly Jerusalem and the Jerusalem above. Whatever else we do with that passage, we have to let it confront simplistic categories. Paul is not building a theology around ethnicity as the final marker of belonging. He is insisting that promise, freedom, and inheritance are found in Christ.

And yet Romans 11 prevents us from moving into arrogance.

Paul says that as regards the gospel, Israel is in enmity, but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of the patriarchs. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. That means the Church must not move into replacement theology. We are not free to say God is simply done with Israel. Scripture will not let us.

But Romans 11 also will not allow us to join Israel in unbelief.

The broken branches are not life. The root is life.

Christ is the root.

Christ is the tree.

Christ is the fulfillment.

That is the tension.

We must reject replacement theology, and we must also reject any theology that implies Jewish identity, Torah observance, or covenantal history can save apart from Christ. There is not one door for the Jew and another for the Gentile. There is one Messiah, one gospel, one new humanity in Him.

That was the burden of the message.

Not triumphalism. Not contempt. Not detachment.

Clarity.

And prayer.

How Do We Stand With Israel?

That question matters right now.

According to Romans 11, we do not stand with Israel by affirming unbelief. We stand with Israel by crying out for grafting back into the root. We stand with Israel by holding fast to Christ, by refusing arrogance, and by living in such union with Him that Israel is provoked to jealousy—not by our politics, but by the life of God shining through a people who have been joined to their own Messiah.

Our cry must be:
God, graft them in again.
Open their eyes to Jesus.
Bring them into the fullness of their own tree.

That is not anti-Israel. It is the most pro-covenant cry we can pray, because every covenant promise finds its Yes in Christ.

Isaiah 49 and the Expansion of the Promise

Isaiah 49 opened another dimension.

This chapter begins with the Servant called from the womb, hidden like a polished arrow, named before birth. It is clearly messianic. It points to Jesus. But what struck me afresh is how the chapter widens. The mission is not only the restoration of Israel; it becomes the salvation of the nations.

That is crucial.

Jesus fulfills Israel’s role and then opens that fulfillment outward. In Him, the story does not narrow. It expands.

The Messiah comes through Israel, fulfills Israel’s calling, and then gathers both Jew and Gentile into one reconciled people.

This is why Ephesians 2 is so vital. Those who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. He Himself is our peace. He has broken down the dividing wall and made one new man in Himself.

Not by erasing distinction.
Not by glorifying unbelief.
Not by replacing one people with another.
But by reconciling both to God through the cross.

That is the woven covenant.

The Call to Fine-Tune Our Hearts

This message was not only about Israel and the nations. It was also about us.

Before there is amplification over cities, there must be tuning in the secret place.

Before there is a clear corporate sound, there must be personal resonance.

Before there is a people who carry the frequency of heaven, there must be individuals willing to let the Lord make tiny adjustments in the heart.

That may be one of the deepest prophetic invitations on the table right now.

Some of us have spent years battling at the level of circumstances, asking God to change the environment so we can have peace. But Scripture keeps leading us somewhere higher. Christ gives peace in the middle of suffering, peace in the middle of confusion, peace in the middle of the process.

We are not called into endless spiritual labor.
We are called into Sabbath rest.
We are called into agreement with the finished work of Christ.

That is not passivity. It is alignment.

It Is Finished

By the end of the message, that is where we landed.

Not in panic.
Not in striving.
Not in speculative systems.

We landed in Christ.

He is the root.
He is the covenant.
He is the door.
He is the peace of both those who were far off and those who were near.
He is the One in whom the Jew and Gentile meet.
He is the One in whom the Church finds her life.
He is the One in whom Israel’s hope remains open.
He is the One who says over all our labor, “It is finished.”

And maybe that is the word many of us most need to hear.

There are battles you do not need to keep fighting at the old level. There are lies you do not need to keep negotiating with. There are inherited frameworks that have kept you striving below the place where Christ has already seated you.

The invitation is not to work your way higher.

The invitation is to agree.

To fine-tune.

To come into resonance with heaven.

To sit where Christ has seated you.

To let Him weave your life into a covenantal people who carry both truth and tenderness, both mercy and justice, both clarity and love.

The garment is still being formed.

But the scarlet thread is already there.

Watch the Message

You can watch the full replay of The Woven Covenant | The Tension of Israel and the Nations — Leah Ramirez on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/live/XfNaFsq0cFM?si=Jgs-L3eASwJgJHme

If you are in Colorado Springs, we would love to have you join us at The Gathering on Sundays as we continue exploring the Gospel, communion, covenant, and life in Christ.

If this message resonates with you and you are longing for deeper connection, prophetic stewardship, and covenant friendship, Company 318 is growing as a national community for those saying yes to a life of prayer, union, and revelation.