Hey, welcome back to church. Last week off, how was your fourth? Yeah, you're like, I was awful, I wasn't at church, I missed it. No, seriously, welcome back.
We are, as Alex said, we're talking about rest of the night. But I thought it was interesting how it tied in with something that Pastor Josh talked about probably three weeks ago. Now, do you remember when he talked about the spiritual discipline of remembrance, right? Where it was like, we looked at the Psalms and he said, here's what happens when we forget.
When we have spiritual amnesia, we forget what God is like and what he's done. Here's what happens. And then here's what happens when we actively remember when we make it a discipline to remember what he's done. And we looked at kind of the consequences of that.
And it's a spiritual discipline, but I love that Josh included this in his message. He talked about God's strategy for this rule, right? He's saying, like, remember, it's a command. But then he says, hey, do you like the party?
Sure do. How do you feel about eating a lot? I'm on board. Great, let's tie together celebration with remembrance, right?
And so he institutes these feasts and God in his kindness actually gives a methodology for us to receive the order, the command, the spiritual discipline in a way that's actually congruent with how he designed us. Right? Some of us were raised in traditions where it's like who you are and what you're like is bad, less of you, more of God. But God is actually going, I designed you this way.
Our desire for celebration wasn't something that happened after the fall of man. It's like who we are. And he says, here's how you're going to actually do this thing that I've called you to do. You're going to love it.
I'm going to bake in all these things that you love into the act of remembrance. And so this spiritual discipline actually becomes something we look forward to, right? The people of Israel would look forward to these giant feasts and the purpose of it was remembrance. And so I believe that there are certain spiritual disciplines that take work.
I'm not saying that if we don't feel like it, there's probably not God. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that God in his kindness and his good character can actually do things that we go, oh, that feels right. God in his leadership goes, you need this.
And you go, yeah, you're right. And it just kind of brings true with us. And so we're going to talk about rest tonight because I believe that that's another discipline that we can just celebrate and go, oh, I want that. Right?
It doesn't take work for us or does it? Let's talk. Let's talk. We are going to talk about rest.
And I couldn't go any further without giving a shout out to John Mark Comer. Has anyone read the book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry? Hands up. If you've read it.
Yeah, it changed my life. There's John Mark Comer, people like Dallas Willard, they've given so much of their time and energy into looking at this topic. And so I just want to get credit for credits to do. I've been so impacted by their stuff.
And so if you've read that book and you go, yeah, that's kind of like what he said there. That's why. Okay? Well, let's talk about how we are terrible at rest, huh?
We live in America. And objectively, this is the single most chaotic, busy culture in the history of mankind. That's not hyperbole. That's not exaggeration.
It's not close. The modern West is the most chaotic culture, the most anxiety movement driven culture that mankind has come up with so far. And that's where we find ourselves. And so whether we want to or not, we're raised in a culture where we're addicted to activity and movement and the kind of spinning turmoil of things.
And I don't say the word addicted is like a buzzword. I mean, in like the diagnosis of what's going on is actually addiction. Look at this, right? This is when you look up, like what are the attitudes of those who are addicted?
Lack of control with that thing. You're in line at Starbucks. There's only one person ahead of you. And it's like, oh, why did I do that?
It's just when there's dead space. I just grabbed my phone. This is kind of embarrassing, but you probably can relate to this. My wife and I are having a conversation and we're like, in this conversation, it's like, yeah, it's powerful.
This and the other thing. And then one of us has to get up to go to the restroom. And it's like, OK. And it's like, we don't know how to have dead space.
We don't know how to have time. We just immediately go to our phones. And I'm picking on the phone, but it's more than that. It's not just social media.
It's like the websites, like the news app. Or we look at our schedule and when we see that there's three days free in a row, we go, how am I going to fill it? And we're fully aware that we're overburdened. But when there's three days, it's like almost out of our control, we just go, yeah, I just got to fill it.
I just got to fill it. And there's this kind of drive in us. Another mark of someone who's addicted. An inability to stay away from certain behaviors.
That's that scheduling thing. You should rest. It's like, I literally, I just can't not fill my schedule. That's how so many of us are.
Ignoring risk factors. How many studies do we need to hear? Hey, you should slow down. Hey, there are ramifications for living like this.
Yeah, it's not. Right? There's this thing that's inside of us that's kind of always churning, always busy. And this isn't just for extroverts.
Right? I'm not just picking on personality types, because introverts still have to go to work. Introverts still have social media. Introverts still live in a culture that pressurizes everything for performance.
And so this isn't a personality type. This is something that all of us have kind of constantly on us. And the modern Western expectation demands that we know what's going on. So I'm not just talking about scheduling stuff.
I'm talking about your internal world. I'm talking about this information age that we're in. There's a demand on you from your culture that says you need to be informed. You need to know what's going on.
Not just about this one topic. Come on, it's a big world out there. You need to know about this. And not only do you have to know about it, you need to have an opinion about it.
And there's this pressure to know things all the time. And if we don't, then we're minimized. We're sticking your head in the sand. We're just disengaging.
It's like there's not an option to disengage. I'm going a billion miles an hour and so are you. There's this current. You think about it like rapids.
You get dropped into the rapids and it's like oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. And you're just, you're taken away because the climate that we're in is so fast paced. It's so unrelenting in how it bombards us with information. Pastor Josh said this a while back.
But the information that we're ingesting as humans today is twice what it was like five years ago. It's doubled in five years. In other points of human history, it would take a thousand years for information on the earth to double. Five years.
And we're living through this kind of constantly spinning rapids going what is going on and we're being bombarded with this thing. You need to keep up. You need to go. You got to go.
You need to know. You got to think about it. You need to have that conversation. By the way, value self-rest.
You're drinking enough water. What do you want to bet? You're continually hit and there's no break from the to-do list. We're not even talking about work but how many of us work a job where it's like no, it's go time.
And it's like, well, you've said that every second of my job. Yeah, but it's go time and there's always this expectation. Here's the thing. It's not about productivity.
It's about efficiency. Because if I got done everything that I needed to in 30 hours, it's like, what are you going to do next? Are you lazy? It's like, fill the time.
It's not about efficiency or the value of hard work. It's about busyness. You can see this in advertising. Who's the picture of success in the Lexus commercial or whatever?
It's the CEO tight suit. He ties up here. He's getting in the cab. He's climbing the corporate ladder.
He's a go-getter. That's what we're saying. This is success. That's what we're all trying to somehow go after.
And then that's not even talking about just kind of all of us in our experience. I used to work a sales job, go figure. It seems like a whole other life ago. I used to work this sales job.
And busyness was like the flex that you would do with the other guys. You're at the conference and it's like, yeah, I was on four planes last week. It's crazy. I've just been on the phone nonstop.
It's crazy. Man, it's so busy right now. And it's like a way to break. And so what we're seeing through all of this is there's a value that the world has put on busyness.
I have a mentor. And when I talk to him sometimes about how things are going, he just pauses and goes, so how's that working out for you? And he just invites me into sitting back and analyzing the state of things. It's a great question.
You can steal it. What's that working out for you? I want to look really quick at what it's actually doing to us. Because psychologists have actually begun to diagnose people with something called hurry sickness.
It's not made up. That's a legitimate diagnosis that a medical professional can give somebody, saying, you are, there's something wrong with you because you cannot decompress. You cannot slow down. You've been caught in a cyclone.
And even when you're removed from the immediate circumstances, your brain is going nonstop. You can't stop. And it's a medically diagnosable thing. Here's what they say about it.
It's a hyper awareness of time that often masquerades as efficiency or multitasking. So we justify it. We don't think there's a problem because we go, I'm just multitasking. Again, going back to the picture of success like this is what we do.
This is how I gain my value and my success. And we find all these other names for it. But here's the thing, multitasking is not real. Biologically, you cannot focus on two things at once.
Your brain is just really, really good at switching back and forth between things. But you can only focus on one thing at a time. But you know what happens in this motion when your brain goes from this to this? The amount of energy that your brain needs to expand in that transition saps your ability.
This is medical, you guys. It's almost like a hundred percent when you approach that next topic. Some of us have been in that like the work zone where you're in a flow and it's like, wow, I just feel like I'm getting so productive because I'm just in one lane. But we've kind of glorified the ability to do multiple things at once.
But every time you switch, 20% of your capacity disappears. So now you're engaging with this topic in a way that's less than optimal, to put it that way. Your body starts to fight you. You start to get less done.
Your brain space is now in this position of information overload, which is a, again, a medical thing where it's going, I can't take more information. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start to sacrifice parts of me that I don't think are valuable, so I can try and process more. The ability goes out the window because I don't have the space to actually think in abstract ways. It's fully gone because there's an immediate need right now because we're filling our brains with information constantly.
Get this, your IQ drops by 10 points when you're in a state of hurry and multitasking. They've charted it. You're getting dumber if you sign up for the back and forth lifestyle. It's actually lessening your ability.
Anxiety starts to kick in. Who's felt that? Information overload happens and suddenly we start to feel anxious. You know why?
Because when we're in that multitasking, I'm not even talking about like there's bad news. I'm saying I'm constantly multitasking. What your brain does is it releases hormones. Adrenaline and I just want all of you doctors to like me.
Adrenaline and cortisol. They're hormones that your brain reserves for dangerous situations. So if I'm getting chased by a bear, my brain goes, adrenaline cortisol, we need to focus right now. No time for creative thinking.
No, we're going now. Your body's biological reaction to hurry and multitasking is to release those same things. Do you know why? Because it knows you're in danger.
We're not supposed to do this. So we're going to start cutting things off. We're going to focus. But rather than listen to that, we just medicate it and say, no, because this is how we do it.
Wake up in the morning, grab my phone, check the news app. I'm going to go make coffee. I've got this super efficient thing that's going to make my coffee faster. And that's going to make me have more time to think somehow it doesn't.
Then we get in our car and we're trying to get the speed limit and go to work and we walk into work. I could bore us giving the details of all of our days and everyone of us goes, yeah, I've been there. I felt that. But some of us don't know it's a problem.
There's a value system that's been so pushed that it says this is how you gain acceptance. Are you the alpha male at the water cooler telling everybody how busy you are? Guys, it's not good for you. So we look at the design that Jesus has for us and we say, man, is this actually possible?
Right? Is it possible? We're going to get out of it because if I just got dropped in the rapids, is it possible to live any different? So many of us, your parents, or you have a smartphone or you have a job or any of these very normal things you're going, I can't just stop doing that.
Right? We're going to do a little exercise here. Okay? We're going to do an exercise.
So we're going to take a moment. We're going to ask the Lord to speak and just with everything that I've just said, we're going to ask him to speak. And we're just going to listen. Okay?
Just see what he says. Turn a little music on. I'm enjoying that. What do you guys hear?
Gotcha. I actually want to do that because it's so flipping helpful to have that memory because that is what happens. We're saying, I'm trying. I'm doing my best.
I'm trying to get to try to hear the Lord. But the reality is, look, Ray starts playing every time that I'm trying to think. It's like, there's an atmosphere that is so non conducive to me actually dialing down and being with the Lord that then we start looking going, I can't do this. Right?
We hit that point where we say, I can't do this. We're a couple of weeks ago, power went out during the 330 service here. What happened, nerd moment, what happened was there's an electrical box in the back that is designed to have all the power flow through it. But there's a safety switch in it that says, if we get too hot, we need to shut down because it's not safe.
If that much heat starts getting in, there's going to be an electrical fire. And so it got heated up to a certain point and internal temperature switch goes, the power goes out. How many of you know that happens now on the regular to so many of us? We hit these moments where it's like, yeah, I just deal with panic attacks.
Yeah, I just have crippling anxiety. I mean, people are being hospitalized because their body is going not okay. We're not okay. Hey, seriously, here's a bunch of science fighter flights happening.
Man, you're anxious, not okay. We're not okay. And we keep pushing it because we go, I don't know. This is what I've been told to do.
Hustling grind. Be a go-getter. I'm supposed to multitask. I'm supposed to do all these things and the pressure is enormous.
And so we just continually lean into it until the safety switch goes off. I've shared about this super minimally, but guys, that happened to me last year. I was the guy that would have heard this message and I'm speaking to you directly. So listen up if you've already tuned out and said, yeah, this is for other people because I was that guy.
I was the guy that said, yeah, rest is important for you. But I don't know. I guess my capacity is just different. I guess I'm just able to do more and I can tell you the value of rest and I could give wise counsel in the pastoral meeting.
Let's get real for a second. I'm giving wise counsel in the pastoral meeting going, yeah, sounds like you just gotta be gentle with yourself. You gotta take a break, man. You gotta do it too much.
And inwardly, I'm going, that's great advice for you, but I'm rolling. But for me, I'm gonna roll because I can do it. And then I couldn't. And then my safety switch went off.
And I'm in the fetal position on the ground. I'm having a panic attack because my brain goes, I told you to stop and it's irrational and I'm gone. I'd love to say that it was one moment for months you guys, for months. My body was in like rehab going, you pushed too far.
You bought into a system that produces anxiety and rather than address the system, you kept putting band-aids on it. The system's cranking out broken, anxious, nervous, and you're just putting band-aids on it and drinking a cup of coffee and pretending like things are okay. This message is me waving a giant flag and saying it's not okay. It's not okay.
And I have amazing news. Jesus isn't constrained by our culture. He's not looking at your life as crazy as it may be and going, gosh, yeah, I guess we'll have to just, we'll do our best. He's not intimidated by the chaos around us.
There's a way. There's a way where you can live in the middle of everything that you're living in and come from a place of peace. I promise. I want to read you guys a part of my journal.
Hey, I know. Because this has been a process for me. This, a lot of what I'm sharing is personal because I've lived through it and living through it in some senses. So I've been processing with the Lord a couple months ago.
I was kind of revisiting some of these same frustrations of going, and I don't know if it's possible. I'm frustrated at how difficult it is to hear your voice because LaCray keeps bumping every time. My life is just so busy. How is it even possible to hear you?
So I'm going to read you what the Lord said to me. I just journaled down what I hear him saying. And for some context, there was a game when I was growing up that we played. We'd wrap string around the top and put it in the thing and then you'd pull the string in the top and go, and it'd spin around this box and knock over little things.
And depending on how many you knocked over at 20 points you got, it was a blast. It was super noisy. And one of those games where my parents were like, do not play that if I'm still sleeping. Because there's a lot going on there.
And so that's the context that I have in my mind. The Lord knows that. And he speaks to me through pictures that I know. And so there's your context.
But here's what the Lord said when I said, is it even possible to hear you in the middle of all of this? He said, the spinning top of life creates a distraction and movement. I'm rarely found in those moments. I prefer the subtle invitations to the neon blinking signposts.
I guess it just builds relationship more that way. Your life is hectic then, no doubt. But it doesn't need to stay that way. If there are spinning tops all around you, will you try to hear a whisper?
You have two options. You can either leave the room or stop the tops. Or I guess you could just always ask the whisper to wait. Burn from God.
Learn this about my character, son. I am the whisperer. I am still talker. I don't clamor for attention.
No, I'm always speaking but never shouting. I'm always inviting but never demanding. If you can't hear me, it's most often because the external noise needs quieting. I have no interest in competing for sonic supremacy.
Battling for the peak of mount volume to finally earn the ears of my listeners. He's acquainted with a quiet heart and quiet mind. You'll find me there. He's not far off.
He wants to engage with you right now in a way that actually removes the spinning tops. As Alex said Wednesday, I'm teaching a class and we're going to get into a lot of practicals. Tonight's in more vision mode. I just want to cast vision for what if there's a different way than the rapids of culture that we're all caught in?
What if there's a different way of even seeing the world and how we view rest? What if there's a Jesus way where I can be in the same water but not be in the same speed? Is it possible? I just want to look at what Jesus says, what the Bible teaches us about God's heart for this?
What's not the root? How about this? So God designs man and he says, part of the design I want you to rest one day a week. He calls it Sabbath.
And because people are people, the Israelites go, you heard the man and we're not going to this or this or this or this or this. It's like, oh my gosh, because we found a way to systemize it and suddenly everyone has the anxiety and nervousness around Sabbath. Jesus comes on the scene and he does this beautiful clarification because someone calls them on the Sabbath and he's breaking the rules and now we do this. Rest.
And Jesus goes, hold on, hold on. Man wasn't made for just Sabbath. I wasn't designed to follow the rule of rest. Sabbath was made for man.
It's a gift. It's how it's a gift for you to function the way that you're supposed to. Here's a question that will just make you curious. Spark wandering your heart.
Why did God design us to sleep? Because like he for sure didn't need to. Right, he's designing man from scratch and he puts him in a garden. He says, well, there's work to do.
We're gonna multiply and take dominion and there's a project here. But if he was going for just optimal kingdom expansion, he wouldn't have designed us to sleep. And then we look at creation and we go, oh, all of creation sleeps. Everything that God created has a cycle of like activity and then rest.
And then you look at God and it's not that God got tired on the seventh day. It's not like he ran out of ideas. Right, he's unlimited in his capacity. He's unlimited in his intellect and he stops.
What if it's actually a value that is part of God's character? Where he goes, man, every so often I just like to sit. Every so often I just like to take a deep breath and look around at things. Every so often I just like to pause.
What if it's how God is and it's manifested in every part of creation because it's meant to imitate him? What if it's not a weakness when we sleep? What if it's not a weakness when we rest? What if it's actually a partnering with God in how he is in his character by choosing to agree with rest?
Jesus, right, he's got three years on the planet as like full-time ministry Jesus. And he's constantly trying to avoid people. Like he's constantly pulling away or like, I just need to go, I just need to go. It's like, well does he have social anxiety?
No, he seems to love people really, really well. There's a value system that's driving Jesus where he gets something that we don't. You guys know that story, right? Jesus comes on a scene, John the Baptist season, behold, my God, in the world baptize dunk.
Jesus comes out and then he gets launched into his ministry. But it starts by the season in the wilderness. And I've heard it taught, and I think there's probably value in this, there's merit in this analysis where they say, see now, after he had been fasting for 40 days and he was alone in isolation, that's when the devil came to get him. And so the devil's gonna get you in your weakest moment.
The devil's a punk, it sounds like something he would do. Like I'm not saying that's not true. But what if it was actually preparation? What if Jesus knew I'm about to have a showdown with the devil himself, I need to be alone?
I need to rest. I need to just have all of the noise in the lacret music off for just a minute because I need to dial in here. What if there's a value in it? It's not just weakness that there needs to be overcome.
What if there's a value that Jesus is showing us in rest? And then there's that whole, you know, the story we've heard it before, but let's let it hit us different, right, where Elijah's trying to hear God and he's on a mountain and there's fire and there's wind, there's all this stuff and that says, and there's a quiet whisper and Elijah knew that's God. And he walked out. What if the prophetic isn't about the big giant signs and wonders it's about going, oh, I know it's whisper?
It's part of who he is, you guys. There's a value system that he has that's so drastically different. And then we come to Jesus and we say, yeah, but you didn't have kids. You didn't have an iPhone.
You didn't have a job. You didn't have my boss, that's for sure. He was talking to people who weren't like the comfortable ones. So he was always talking to people who were poor.
And if you're poor, what does that mean? He used to work your tail off to try and not be poor. He's talking to people that in that culture, in that climate, we're kind of the most like, I need to do something, because I need to put food on the table and he drops this line. Matthew 11, you've heard it before.
Come to me, everyone who's full of heavy burdens, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I'm gentle and lowly in heart. You're gonna find rest for your souls.
My yoke is easy. My burden is light. We've talked about this before, but the yoke is like a term that rabbis used for like, this is my way of doing things. Come under my way of doing things, that's what he's saying.
So Jesus says, are you super tired? Are you exhausted? Are you caught in the rapids? I'm gonna give you rest.
I have a way of doing things that's going to actually position you to operate to all of those things from a place of rest. And he's not saying, and now you're gonna quit your jobs, and abandon your children. We're gonna go move into the desert. It's gonna be awesome.
He's not saying that. He's saying, no, there's a different worldview, a different mindset. And all of, excuse me, all society knows the value of rest in a way and it's like, we're gonna work towards rest. We're gonna do all this stuff.
We're gonna work really hard, we're gonna grind. So that someday we can have rest. It's this carrot that it dangles out. But Jesus is saying, no, what if you operated from rest and engaged with everything around you differently?
I'm just saying, it's possible. Again, we're gonna talk practicals Wednesday, but I'm wanting us to get a vision for Jesus' view of rest and how we can actually partner with that. And if that challenge is you good, let's let ourselves be provoked by the difference between his way and the way that we're used to because we wanna grow. How about this line?
This is not like a popular preaching verse, but what if this line was actually super important? First Thessalonians 4, Paul, writing to the church, make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business. Preach, it's like that's what I want. I just want to have a quiet life in my own business.
I'm exhausted trying to keep up with what everyone on social media is doing and what every politician's saying and what everyone thinks is the right way. And the little, I'm tired of trying to be the fastest one in the hamster wheel, or we're all just looking ridiculous. I'm tired of it. What if this command that Paul gives where he says, make it your goal?
Here's what you're going after. Try and live a quiet life. Mind your own business. What if that was actually important?
Because we don't value that, but God seems to. God seems to say, hey, it's important that you slow down and just kind of make it your goal to do things quietly. He's different, guys. He's very different, but it feels right.
As you're hearing this, you're like, oh yes. This is what I said before. This is one of those commands that we go, oh, praise God for that command. It rings true and I'm tired.
Here's the last thing I want to share with you guys, okay? This is a little golden nugget from the scriptures. Because like I said, I've been studying this stuff and trying to really make it mine in a personal way. And I was looking at that verse that many of us have heard in Psalm 46.
Be still and know that I'm God. And I was like, wow, that's profound. Like we should be quiet and it's good. And know that he's God.
And there's good stuff in it. But then I looked up what that word actually is. Still, what that word still means. And the word picture in Hebrew for that word is a limp rope.
So if there's a rope right here and I go, right? I mean, that's the word picture. Be limp. Other words that are translated throughout scripture.
That word's also translated helpless. It's used as a form of refrain, stop doing. And because we're a little narcissistic, we translated that still. Because that fits in our brains.
We go, yes, amen. It's still before the Lord. And it's like, yeah, that feels right. Because we can do something.
I'm going to choose still. It's like, no, stop. Stop. Limp rope, buddy.
That same word is used as like almost like laziness in the Bible. It's translated in different parts lazy. We all know better than to say, yeah, God's telling me to be super, super apathetic. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying we should be provoked by the word choice there.
If we're questioning, wait, are you saying I shouldn't do anything? That means that we're getting close to the root word. Because that's what that word picture is. Be still.
Be helpless. Be quiet. I don't know. There's these words that are thrown out there.
But here's the part that I thought was just so amazing. That word in Hebrew is pronounced rafa. Has anyone heard that word before? Jehovah rafa, which rafa, that same word, as it's pronounced, means healing.
To be healed, Jehovah rafa means God is a healer. There's like one little fleck in Hebrew that differentiates the physical, like how you would see that on a page. But in an oral culture, as people are reciting the Psalms, you could not tell a difference if they were saying, be still and know that I'm God or be healed and know that I'm God. You wouldn't be able to tell a difference unless you saw it.
It's one of these little things. I'm not going to say that. It feels intentional. I don't know.
But I'm looking at that going, oh, there's gold for us in that. There's a way where we go, man, I'm broken. I'm tired. I'm exhausted.
I don't want to go to work on Monday. I stop before I get home and just sit in my driveway going, I don't know if I can do this. Be healed. I know that he's God.
And how do we do that? It's that same word. Let's just be limp. Let's just let him be God and stop trying so hard.
This feels difficult, because again, we have all those very real things in our head going, yeah, but please, would you join us on Wednesday as we talk about the rhythms of rest? Because God has actually instituted principles and practices. And there's very practical things where we can actually come under the way of Jesus, the yoke of Jesus, do it his way. And as just a little teaser, I will say that me and my family have been actively doing these things for about six months, seven months, something like that.
And it works. There's a teaser. But it actually works where it's like, oh, I'm not just avoiding my life. I'm still engaged in it.
But I'm starting to enter into things from rest. And there's a way out. This is me waving a flag saying, there's a way out. All of the crushing, all of the anxiety, there's a way out in the way of Jesus.
Let's all stand. I want to be that old man when I'm older, that sitting in a rocking chair and just is undisturbed. How many of you have that grandpa where it's like, oh, grandpa, man, you don't get it this final for college that I'm doing right now? It's the craziest.
And he's going, oh. And then he's watching the news. And it's like, he's just undisturbed. I want to be that guy that grows in the way of Jesus to the point that I'm sitting there in my rocking chair, seeing the rapids go by.
And I'm just sipping my prune juice, rocking in my chair, convinced that I don't need to be a part of that anymore. I don't feel any shame about it. I don't feel belittled. Because I'm following the way that Jesus did it.
That's who I want to be. Jesus, we want to do it your way. Your way is so much better. God, we're so fed up with trying to keep pace with the world.
We receive your invitation to come under your yoke. We receive the better way. God, in every way that the things I'm sharing, feels like a contradiction in our lives. That's how you'd help us.
We need help here, Jesus. We need help. We acknowledge that we need help. We're not ignorance of the fact that your way of how to interact with the world is different than the way that we've been presented.
So we come under your yoke and we receive your way. We love you and we trust you. God, I ask that for me and my friends, we would leave this building and just take a giant deep breath. That we'd be still, that we'd be raffa.
You're anchoring us in something that goes so far beyond circumstances and we appreciate it. We love you and we bless you. In the name of Jesus, amen. Amen.