TRANSCRIPT

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good morning friends how you doing good to see you if you’re visiting my name is Alex I’m one of the pastors here it’s great to have you visit if you’re a regular part of South you know I’ve been gone for a few weeks back on what I lovingly call the mother ship back over on the other side of the uh Atlantic and while I was gone a couple of minor events happened right there was this Fourth of July celebration that I’m still getting used to and then I don’t know apparently the apps want something or something it was a big deal um but um but I just tried to block the ABS part out and then I read a book that said it was a had a whole chapter about if you if you love the Yankees you don’t have to hate the Red Sox and I was like man maybe I have some growth here maybe I could learn to love the ABS um and and maybe we’ll see uh we’ll see how it goes I’ve still got years here hopefully so we’ll see how it goes we’re jumping into a new series this week it’s a series designed around my experience at least of summer summer gets a little bit funky in some ways Maybe your parent you have this moment where suddenly your kids aren’t six hours a day somewhere else and you’re trying to figure out what that looks like maybe you’re a grandparent and now you are the six hours a day uh that that takes over maybe you just are traveling a lot there’s a whole bunch of other things going on we we change rhythms and that can throw us and sometimes what we need is we need not necessarily a reset but we need ways that we can do spirituality a little bit differently that maybe kick-start some of the things that were kind of questioning in in what we might call our relationship with Jesus now you might be in all sorts of places spiritually you might say I’m kind of in on this Jesus thing I’m I’m maybe On The Fringe maybe I’m all the way in or maybe I’m just asking some questions what the series is designed to do is to give you some avenues that maybe allow you to explore that in some slightly new ways because I don’t know about you but but I have deep need for things that can help me look more like Jesus the other week I was driving to church and I’d done everything that I was supposed to do I was ready I had you know the keynote stuff done and I’d I had taken a stroll I’ve done some praying before the message I’d taken a shower I got a clean shirt just some Basics that you have to do if you’re going to stand up in in front of people and I was driving down Broadway all was well until I got to the junction just down the road with with Arapahoe and somebody pulled out in front of me and just just swung into my lane no Collision but I had to slow down which I wasn’t a fan of at the time I was like what are you doing in my life so I I did what any good person would do I shook my fist at them and I just jammed my hand on the horn pretty proud of myself that I was demonstrating to my two young daughters how to deal with other drivers how to educate people on how to move about our city streets and then that person pulled into the south parking lot

and I had this moment where I said of all the places you could be going on so I’m in front of everyone in this town coming to South but this specific person I did not want in our parking lot on that day I was just it just it was just so I wrestled with do I just keep driving uh my kids are gonna find it weird but but maybe we need to go to a different church today maybe I’ll call I call Dan Elliot and just say Dan do you have a back pocket sermon you could deliver I’m uh I’m sick there’s something wrong with me anyway but I didn’t I did I did the brave thing I pulled into the parking lot and and to my relief discovered the other person was just as embarrassed as I was they’d actually pulled in here to hide briefly and then gone about their way and weren’t coming here at all but it was that moment of of just I’m so disappointed in myself and the moral of the story is uh if you’re coming off a rapahoe road turning onto Broadway don’t pull into the middle Lane you might ruin some poor Masters Sunday morning and that’s just not a good thing it it was that moment where there was not not a physical Collision but life collided with me in a particular way and all of the things that I thought I was for a moment were brought into question and my guess is you’ve probably had some similar experiences at different points the writer Tish Warren Harrison says this is this moment of planning her day and then there’s this moment of I have lost my car keys everything is mapped out for what she expects and then this thing happens and it’s a tiny thing but doesn’t it have the potential to ruin everything what she goes on to say is this I have lost my car keys with them goes all sense of perspective with them goes all sense of perspective it’s interesting she’s a 21st century American female writer but look at this from a fourth Century African writer Augustine of Hippo late have I loved you oh Beauty Ever ancient he’s talking about God ever knew late have I loved you created things kept me from you the world the things that I encounter they kept me from interacting well with you aren’t they in lots of ways across a couple of Millennia almost saying the same thing really what they’re saying is life got in the way something happened life got in the way collided with me and I collided with it and all of the things that I hoped I was in a moment were brought into question I’m like am I really that person now wherever you are in that Faith Journey what I would guess is there’s a way that you want to live there’s a type of person that you want to be and there’s moments where we we question that because something happens something occurs I need somebody to follow I need someone to become more like and the person I have picked is Jesus or maybe he picked me but but I picked Jesus precisely for the reason I’m not a good sort of metric for for what to do and how to act I need someone that I can look at somewhere that I can engage with and yet at times I realize I’m just not as much like him as I would like to be so how do I change that how how do you and I continue to take next steps with God when life is is well life that’s what this series is designed to do it’s designed to take some of the things that we encounter regularly and ask how we can tweak them just a little bit to give them this moment of or flavor perhaps of spirituality how can we can enter into them with with New Perspective in new ways and and Learn and Grow for them how can we take things the rhythms of life and and just throw them just a little bit with a new thing a different thing that might help us become that person we long to become like the person that looks like Jesus and so the first one is one that I picked because it’s something that I’m passionate about it’s something that some of you may look at and say I don’t know if this is like spiritual enough for me I don’t know if I can get on board with this yet but just hold for a second and we’ll see where we end up with it this is the first everyday spirituality thing I’m inviting you to enter into it’s this take a walk take a walk now you might you might find that the walking is maybe a polarizing thing amongst us some of you may love it as much as I love it uh my question I have up here is how do you feel about walking because again in Colorado especially there’s got to be some people out there that that adore you you get to get out into them the middle of nowhere you get to explore this beautiful state you get to wander you get to maybe Ponder as well I took a couple of pictures of a walk that I love back where I just was in Cornwall this is the Cornish Coast it’s got a coastal path that runs all the way around it you can walk for miles and get lost and you get these beautiful landscapes and sea views that look something like a mix of California and something else I don’t know it’s just just this place that just I just feel so connected to and love being in some of you probably feel like I do about specific places you love walking and some of you might say I hate walking so much I have specifically tried to control the number of steps I have to take from my living room to my garage where I get in my car and that’s the only walking I ever want to do by choice maybe some of these different phrases that are genuine quotes to park rangers about walking resonate more with your view of walking escalators would help on steep uphill sections

Trails need to be wider so people can walk while holding hands ah this is so cute Trails need to be reconstructed please avoid building trails that go uphill

too many bugs and leeches and spiders and spiders webs please spray the Wilderness to rid the area of these pests

the places where Trails do not exist are not well marked

some of you guys saying stuff like this I just want you to know no judgment but just a little judgment McDonald’s would be nice at the trailhead this is like one of those cultural things apparently if you go to the Great Pyramids of Giza just off the famous iconic shot just to the side is a McDonald’s and a bunch of other stuff and it doesn’t look anywhere near as you’d imagine it to look apparently some people want to create McDonald’s on the trailhead uh chair lifts need to be in some places so that we can get to wonderful views without having to hike them and that Taps into like the angstrikes for some people say I want the view but I don’t want to have to do the work to get there there is something about walking that is a little polarizing maybe maybe you would love to walk and are unable to walk physically right now and that’s a heartbreak that’s a heart maybe you love it and do it all the time and it’s just a way that you engage with the world and maybe as I say you never want to do it but but why am I suggesting take a walk as a spiritual activity why am I saying that you might bring it in your own Journey with Jesus if that’s something that you are trying to do so here’s a couple of things firstly walking is common it’s something that that most of us almost all of us will do yes there are some people yes maybe you’ll hear it and you don’t get to do that and that might be a heart but it but it’s so common it’s maybe the first thing we ask after an accident someone gets into an accident and the question we might ask is will they ever walk again it’s it’s this thing that we just connect with human beings it’s the thing that we champion and celebrate with our kids when we think about the first things that they do there’s the first words that they might and then we get excited about that first step that they might take I found this video of my middle child Gigi uh doing just that that’s not nearly as impressive I don’t think she can get up there we go

you got ironic go the other way turning around look at me it sounds so ridiculous

I’m gonna have to pave him to show these kind of videos soon

uh we get up you go you’re getting up on the wrong footage

up you get an off you go isn’t that what we talk about with kids there’s this first moments of steps and then as a parent it’s very easy to start to Envision well what comes next there’s more steps and faster steps and then steps down aisles with other people waiting at the end of them or steps into new areas of life new parts of the world there is this this movement tapped into walking that affects us in very particular ways there’s the last steps that we’ll ever take the the moment where suddenly walking isn’t accessible to us anymore and that weakness that Humanity will affect every single one of us at some point there’s something about it that is deeply common deeply normal deeply every day but what I wonder is this do we not at times separate what’s spiritual from what’s common a little too much do we not separate what’s sacred from what sort of every day just a little bit too much and I just wonder whether there’s something about walking that actually can be just as spiritual as it is common there’s something about it that enables us to think about God and our relationship with him in a different way the the writer Thoreau though not a Christian would say this I’m alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily without getting there in spirit even for him there was a connection between what was going on inside him internally what was going on in his spirit with what he was doing physically and then when we get to the Bible these writers that put together these books walking is all over it within this first book Genesis it is almost the most present metaphor and I would question as we get further into this whether it is actually a metaphor but but in terms of language it’s all over this Bible that we read Genesis chapter 3 verse 8 says this then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day Genesis and the writer of Genesis will say this man’s earliest relationship with God was centered around a walk not as a metaphor at this point as a present as a real activity something that they participated in God In This Moment is almost anthropomorphized he’s doing things that human beings that he created do and he’s participating with them in that a few chapters later will read that a guy called Enoch walked Faithfully with God and and the text leaves us with that delightful ambiguity what do you mean by warped do you mean really walked or do you mean just was on a spiritual journey with that he was no more because God took him away in this famous verse in a book called Micah what does God want from you the Lord require of you but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God if you struggle with all of the rules that seems like Christianity comes along with really this sort of unpacks a lot of what God hopes for from people do justly love mercy and to walk humble humbly with your God and then the prayer book of the Old Testament this book Psalm says show me your ways Lord teach me your path Guide Me In Your Truth and teach me for you are God my savior throughout this Old Testament there is this constant use of the idea the image of walking and this this sort of whether it’s a metaphor not stretches all the way to Jesus appearance where he appears in the Galilean Countryside collecting followers simply saying to them come and follow me we have a big sign outside on the wall it says living in the way of Jesus it might just as easily say walking in the way of Jesus for a long time the idea of Christian Life following Jesus as a journey has been present these biblical writers yes they speak of walking as a metaphor they speak of it as this idea that Jesus Longs for relationship with you and invites you into a journey with him not a journey just to get to a destination but a journey where the journey is kind of the point that that somewhere in their understanding of this Grand Story his death and Resurrection make that possible and he invites you in and and that is the key to life that is what he that is what God has for us somewhere there is that language of metaphor Paul the writer of much of the New Testament gets in on this sort of language follow God’s example therefore as dearly love children and walk in the way of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us that language is everywhere you are invited into a relationship that could be characterized as a war could be characterized as a journey that you are participating with him in but this is my question as we get to the physical aspect of walking if is it also not more than a metaphor is it not maybe more than a metaphor let’s go back to Jesus for just a second the idea of God walking with Adam and Eve yes present right at the beginning and then this this story in evolving where walking is constantly reference referenced and then Jesus starts collecting these followers and and follow me can have that sense of yes sir a metaphorical Journey but also for them it was deeply physical deeply every day and practical in the first chapter of Mark one of the biographies of Jesus life we read all of these different places that Jesus physically journeyed at that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan a journey of some miles after John was put in prison Jesus went back to Galilee a journey again of some miles verse 16 as Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee this constant movement to what Jesus is doing quite often wondered why Jesus wasn’t born at a time where he could have shared his message more quickly maybe some of you guys have heard people at some big churches say something like I need the church to buy me a jet because it will enable me to reach more people that’s a genuine thing in certain areas of the church my question for them is often why didn’t Jesus do that if speed if getting around as many places as possible was the main purpose there were better times for him to to have lived than a time where the common practice was to walk at around three miles an hour and to cover ground slowly Jesus invites 12 guys into a relationship where they will wander around the Galilean and Judean Countryside learning from him engaging in different towns and during the course of that they will walk about 3 000 miles together when Jesus invited his first followers to follow me that invite included around 3 000 miles of walking around the Judean Countryside some person actually looked at every Journey that Jesus is recorded as having made and counted up all of the miles that it added up to and said Jesus walked a lot and his followers walked with him and almost every one of those verses we looked at they have almost moments where the text Will skip over a big period of time and almost every single moment is based on walking these followers of Jesus learned by physically walking alongside him engaging with him we don’t get to do that I almost feel like we missed out but as we wrestled within our series on acts there’s this idea that the acts presents this this follow-up book to to the Gospel of Luke it presents this idea that the spirit inside you is better than Jesus alongside Jesus beside you but but I still wonder whether there’s something about physically walking that might actually be important for my Spiritual Development in actual fact I don’t wonder I know because I’ve done it there was a time in my life where I was pastoring the first church I was asked to pastor and I just had a bunch of questions about where I was what my life looked like and and just feeling a little bit lost in the moment and so I remember just going out for a walk with no particular expectation but the belief that I might be able to take some of the questions I was asking some of the prayers I was praying and just speak them out during that time and I remember this moment of just starting to just Express just out loud just some of the things I was feeling and then becoming deeply aware that I felt not alone wasn’t that I saw a picture of Jesus next to me or saw some specific image it wasn’t like it was a vision but it was just this awareness that I was actually stepping a journey with somebody else but not quite with somebody else what I got this deep sense of was that I was on a journey and that Jesus was just a little bit behind me I was walking ahead making my own plans directing everything trying to make stuff happen and that he walked maybe just behind just out of sight and what I deeply felt in that moment was I needed to get back into step with him get that sense of what do you have for me where are you leading what does it look like for me and my life to look like you and your life in my particular season and I just longed to experience that and during the course of that Journey just felt that our steps got back into rhythm I got to hear from him what I felt like I needed to hear which was I’m not mad at you I’m not disappointed in you you’re going to be okay and I’m going to lead you through this season and I am still with you and amongst all of The Angst that I felt and all the struggle I felt in that particular moment I deeply needed him to walk alongside me and that’s exactly what I got there was something about entering into that activity that enabled a person who deeply struggles with sitting still and being quiet to engage with God through my prayers through the passages of scripture that I’ve been reading through all of the other spiritual things that I’ve been doing to actually take all those things and engage in them in this physical activity and I would honestly say that that became a profound change in my life and has regularly been that way since why why is it that walking might be something that enables you and I to enter into the way of Jesus in a more particular way why might it be that the physicalness of it is actually a value why might he be something that you want to incorporate in into what it is for you to follow Jesus I would suggest in choosing to walk we are invited to slow down we’re invited to slow down and that’s something that many of us do very poorly we live in this busy world the writer Richard swiggle says we live in a fast-paced society walking slows us down it enables us just to reduce the pace just a little bit we’re limited to our footfall we’re limited to three maybe four miles an hour the things that we think that we can control we can no longer control the things that we’re trying to change just by our sheer hard work by giving more hours than we should give by pouring every single piece of into us by allowing them to own us suddenly we can’t control them in quite the same way suddenly when we walk a distance our ability to walk back is is controlled by our energy by our Humanity there’s something about walking that enables us to do that and maybe it’s what we deeply need in our lives the British writer J.R.R Tolkien hated Motor Cars he was famous for getting rid of his after having it for just a few months he said this it is full me time by the trees and grass now but the heavens are full of raw and Riot you cannot even hold a shouting conversation in the garden now unless the days too foul to be out how are the infernal combustion engine had never been invented there was a deep hatred for him as it came to cars now I don’t know we necessarily need to take every view that he had as as correct he also hated chainsaws and every time you saw someone chopping down a tree with a chainsaw he would go up to them and yell Orc in their face because he felt like they were destroying the world that they’d been presented with but maybe in this he’s right maybe there is something about the words raw and Riot that describe how we experience the world was so busy there’s so much happening we never get to stop there’s all of these different expectations on us we are busy busy busy people the Japanese writer kasuki kiyama says this we live today an efficient and Speedy life we are surrounded by Electric switches some of which cost us ten dollars and others may even cost two thousand dollars we want more switches humongous dislikes efficiency in a smooth going comfortable life but let me make one observation I find that God goes slowly in these educational process of man the some things that are only learned over time and when you read back across the Old Testament you’ll read moments where we’re told that God takes a whole group of people and lands them in a Wilderness in a desert and he leaves them there for 40 years apparently to learn one lesson the lesson simply is will you walk with me will you Journey with me God teaches things very slowly at times it seems and moves at speeds that that aren’t our speed we are busy rushed people walking forces us to slow down he goes on to say this God walks slowly because he is love if he is not love if he was not love he would have gone much faster love has its speed is an inner speed it is a spiritual speed it is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed it is slow yet it is Lord over all of us speed since it is the speed of love it goes on in the depth of Our Lives whether we notice or not whether we are currently hit by storm or not at three miles an hour it is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks there was something about the gentleness of that idea that I longed for in my own Journey with Jesus there is something about the simplicity the compassion there’s something about it that says to me I am so busy and maybe I am too busy why slow down what happens when we slow down what’s the advantage of it is there any problem with just continuing to to be stretched continuing to rush continue to to achieve to do all the things that we want to do I think there’s a deep disadvantage and the disadvantage might be this we miss so often seeing God in our worlds when we are too busy we miss seeing him in action around us we miss seeing him in our own lives in the lives of our friends and families in the lives of our community we miss hearing him we miss the conversation we miss the opportunity to sit with him as we might sit with a friend to to engage with him if you’re in a place with your own spiritual journey where you’d say I I would still feel that God is a very distant sort of mystery I would still feel very separate from him and I I’m trying very hard to walk in the way of Jesus but the the relationship still feels missing I would just question whether a practice like this might be something that might allow you space to see and to notice that that language that we started with in Genesis chapter 3 verse 8 then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day I just want to go back to that cool of the day expression for just a moment it’s a really bad translation of a of a Hebrew phrase the phrase is low ruarkis it’s a play on the word ruak it means the Breezy part of the day the the comfortable part to walk in the the moment where you might stroll with someone together and that seems to be the language of walking that the Old Testament picks up on here this isn’t a rush this isn’t a race this isn’t walking to get somewhere this is almost on purpose for walking this is relationship work walking this is this is this French word this word flanner the ability to one that detached from society with no purpose other than to be a cute Observer this is God and man together with a restful heart not stressed not overworked not panicked not desperate this is man and God at peace with each other there’s an idea somewhere that that in Japanese alphabets the the picture for the word that is is peace is man in a garden with God and that’s what this is right this is peace this isn’t Rush this isn’t achieving it seems like this slowing down this this moment this restful heart gives the ability to notice something that we might miss when we’re rushed around and when we are rushed we do miss so much when I was back in England I heard this beautiful story about missing a moment it was during the Queen’s Jubilee celebration it was 70 years of the queen being the Queen of England this is out her her with that this is her out walking something she loves to do particularly up in Scotland and one of her royal protection officers was asked to tell a story about her and so he said I’d love to tell you about this time I was protecting her up in her place in Scotland and we went out for a walk together as we did regularly and she loved to say hello to people just to greet them and and so she said he said as we were out walking we saw a couple walking towards us and as they got closer she just stopped and said hello are you having a good day and it was two American tourists out on a walking tour and they were obviously busy to get somewhere else but they stopped faster for a few moments to be played and during the course of their short conversation just said so um do you live around here and she said no well I I live in London but I have a holiday home just over the hill holiday home may be a a loose expression for Castle but that’s the expression she used and and she said yeah I have a holiday home that my parents built just just over the way and and uh and they said oh how long have you been coming here she said about 80 years and and and the Royal Protection Officer says you could see them starting to put a couple of things together and so they they they looked at her and said huh uh the queen lives around here doesn’t she and she said yes and he said they said have you have you ever met her and she with this completely dry weight looked at them and said no but Richard needs them all the time maybe meets her all the time and and of course you know this was this moment where they were very excited that this person had met the queen and so they turned to him and said well can you tell us what is she like and he said I’d protected her for quite a while at this point so I knew her fairly well and so I looked at them and said well she’s a cantankerous old thing but she’s got an amazing sense of humor uh and and so they had this moment where they were so excited to meet someone who’d met the queen that they took out their camera handed it to the queen and went and put their arms around this Royal Protection Officer and said can you take a picture of us so we go we go home and we tell someone we met someone that has met the Queen of England and and being the generous person that she is she uh she then handed the camera to the Royal protection office and said I’d love to get a picture with you as well and so they took a picture with her and and as they walked off the Royal Protection Officer said she looked at him and said you know I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they get home and show their pictures to their friends and family was this moment of luck we met this old lady out walking there’s something about that story that reflects on our inability to notice there is an interaction there between you and someone that you would rarely get to interact with and there’s something about my moments of walking as a spiritual practice that have enabled me to interact with God in a way that for whatever reason I don’t seem wired to do in the same way when I’m trying to sit still when I’m trying to make my prayers work when I’m trying to achieve when I walk there’s a surrender to slowness there’s a surrender to my own limitations there’s a surrender of control that is deeply valuable and for whatever reason in those moments I slow down and I get to see more clearly I get to see more clearly where I am on my own journey I get to see more clearly how God might be working get to see more clearly clearly ways where I’m not living out the way of Jesus in a particularly healthy way get to see ways where I’m not operating particularly well as a husband or a father or a pastor or a friend all of those different things that I might call my identity I get to slow down and I get to see more clearly I wanted to write See Clearly but I wonder if that’s too much for any of us Paul in his new testament rhyme says we see in a through a glass Darkly we never get the complete picture but there is something about slowing that allows me to see a little more it brings things into a little more Focus and that seems like a good thing perhaps the next step is this not only does it let me see more clearly but it does give me that sense of what next steps might be in a particular situation and maybe you’ll find that too maybe if you can take time to slow down take time to walk maybe you get to see clearly but maybe there’s that moment of guidance that moment where you get to hear Jesus as a friend say to you this is the way this is what I have for you in this moments of heartbreak when the world seems at odds with you when it has collided with you maybe there’s a way that Jesus in that moment says you’re going to be okay in this moment I’m still with you in the Heartbreak I’m still with you in the heart I’m still with you maybe those moments where in life and ways we’re operating there’s there’s things that might be it might become clear where we we get to see no this isn’t the way to live this isn’t the way to act as maybe ways where Jesus comes alongside and says I have more for you than this my son or daughter this thing may seem like it brings satisfaction but in actual fact it doesn’t maybe there’s just ways where we get in this moment to experience what it is for Jesus to come alongside us as a friend might come alongside another friend the poet thinker writer Albert Camus is accredited with saying this I’m not sure he actually said it but it’s the best source I could find don’t walk in front of me I may not follow don’t walk behind me I may not lead just walk beside me and be my friend and and this past this this idea this phrase gives me some tension because I recognize I’m supposed to be following Jesus somewhere and that’s important for me I recognize that sometimes I feel like I’ve left him behind but actually what I often want is to know what it is for Jesus to Walk alongside me to whisper the things I need to hear him whisper to guide me in the ways that I need him to guide me quite often what I long for in life is Jesus to say I am with you even when you can’t sense it and that seems to happen more when I take time to slow down and in those moments I get to see more clearly and it gives me those next steps maybe that’s what this writer of Psalms was getting to when he said show me your ways Lord teach me your paths and guide me in your truth and teach me for you a God my savior in Isaiah when it uses the metaphor of walking he says in those moments you might hear God say this this is the way of walk in it in our busy stress-filled lives I wonder how much we get to hear those things and I wonder if somewhere something that allows us to slow down something that enables us to see more clearly might provide us with the next steps that we long for we are called to walk in the way of Jesus the good news for you and I is this that begins with his goodness and Grace and that extends into our journey what I hear so often from Jesus in those moments of walking and those moments of slowing is that I’m not mad at you because I tend to beat myself up a lot tend to have this constant Demand on me and I tend to start with Grace and I tend to forget it very quickly I begin healthily with God’s goodness to me Jesus worked for me and I quickly end up with my own energy My Own Strength my own sprinting and when I slow to three miles an hour and invite Jesus to Walk With Me something wonderful that happens in those moments I walk with God to let him work through me and that’s what I’d like to invite us to today

Jesus in all sorts of different places in our spiritual journey you can meet with us for some of us we acknowledge fringe-ness we’re not even sure about this thing we’re not even sure that we’d buy it

I pray that you would speak to us for those of us that are struggling and wrestling and on the verge of giving up and we know that we are limped in here today singing was a struggle and listening and sitting was a struggle and praying might seem like an impossibility and the whole thing seems like a collision

and you can meet with us and some of us come in thriving and leaping and you can meet with us

thank you for your invite to us to Journey with you

and for those of us that need it my prayer is that we might slow down enough to walk

and that when we do that

we may see more clearly here you speak know you as a friend walking alongside

and that you might guide us give us next steps help us figure out the answer

thank you that you love us and are with us on this journey and we’re going to be okay amen