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[WW] I'm Fine: Self Care · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley Word.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get started tonight.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Again, we looked at defined last few weeks if you if you hadn't been with us, sort of defined uh who we were as Clemson Wesley, who we are as us, and also sort of last week looked at how we are defined not by our failures, but the way that we respond and that sort of stuff.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh that was last week.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're moving on to a new series this week that I'm excited about.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we haven't met yet.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I should introduce myself.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Steve Simeno, I'm the campus minister here uh for Clemson Wesley.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um in my ninth year here, I was also a student here a long time ago, Go Tigers, and uh just again love being here.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I want to start by telling a story, and yeah, I may have shared this before, I can't remember, but um I last time I went sailing was about uh 20 something years ago.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was like 10, like around Coleman's day, 20 or 11.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I was gonna die that day, right?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: We were uh sailing on the off the coast of Gulf Shores, Alabama.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was a Gulf Coast kid growing up in Louisiana and Mississippi, and my uh my mom and my aunt and my uncle had this great idea to go um you know charter this sailboat for an evening and go sailing.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the seas were harsh that day, right?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the wind was blowing really strong that day.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being in the sailboat as a little kid, and what seemed to me like looking over, like laying flat up against the boat, trying to keep it from tipping over and seeing the ocean down there, like we're about to fall in, right?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: The waves were going, the wind was blowing.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure they're like 20-foot sharks circling around us and stingrays, like it was dangerous, we were gonna die.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember praying that day, God, if you get me off this boat, I promise I will never go sailing again.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I I lived that promise, right?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't gone sailing again because I know that like I'll probably get swapped by a whale or something up like Jonah, it'll be bad.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I haven't gone back yet.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was scared to death of the waves that was going on there, right?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any footage of that day, but I do want to show sort of what in my mind it felt like being on that sailboat that day.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so there's a little force gump force there.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and maybe you've never been on a on a on a sailboat thinking you're gonna die by sharks.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you never thought that you're gonna be there with um, you know, forcing Captain Dan out, right?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Force like, I'm scared, Captain Dan's like, you're never gonna take me, right?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Cussing at God, that type of stuff.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe you've been through some storms though, right?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe your story has sounded something like this in the past, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um you've had a fight with your roommates and you're not talking because of stuff with them the past week, right?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that same week you lose a loved one or someone's at home that's sick and not doing well, and you just got all this stuff going on.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're wondering if you pick the right major, right?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is this gonna lead to a career for me?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got all these things going on in your life.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're feeling a little bit homesick.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: You you failed that first quiz, that first test of the semester, you're like, what am I gonna do?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're four weeks in, and you're like, I just don't know what to do.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you and and you maybe you react like one of those two, maybe you react like like um forrest, and you're like, look, I'm scared, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you're like super resilient, and you're like Captain Dan, like, you're never gonna sink me, right?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Just the best you got.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you're like most of us, including me, when you have all that stuff going on and someone asks you, How are you doing?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do we respond?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fine, right?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fine.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we just sort of press it down and we we hold that down.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want us to look at this, and this is our new series for the next four weeks, looking at I'm fine, and we're gonna talk about different things that we say.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what I what I want you to do and think about is that I think as a people that are created by God, that God doesn't want us to just be fine.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want us to just be fine.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: If we think about Psalm 139 and how we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and we'll look a little bit at other passages as we talk tonight, about this great creation that God has made us.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: God does not make us to simply be fine or to push down what's happening and to say, yeah, I'm I'm fine, right?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I want to stop us here and say, and then you've heard this phrase, maybe not often up in the church, as we should say it in the church, but I do want us to know that it is also okay to not be okay.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to not be okay wherever it is that you may be here today.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to feel like you have to fake it until you make it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to feel like you have to put on a happy, smiley face to come into Clemson Wesley and to say, I'm fine, no, I'm good, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And just keep those struggles deep down within you.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: My hope is that over the next four weeks that we will talk about things that sometimes we say we're fine, but actually we're not fine about, and some of the topics that I think we wrestle with as college students and sort of looking at how we might overcome them, how we might deal with them, how we might work with them, so that uh we don't feel like we're on the side of a sailboat that felt like me at 10 years old and I'm fine going over the edge and going to you know, meet my maker at the bottom of the ocean.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh trauma, sorry.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right, but how how can we go from just saying I'm fine to actually moving there, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so tonight's topic, and this is something I talk about every year in some kind of form because I think it is super important as we are as Christians, is that oftentimes um we say that we're fine again, but we're not, right?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I've I found a meme, a popular meme, you've probably seen this as well or something, right?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is fine, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is fine, everything's right.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I I had to edit it, I had the real one I wanted to show, but I couldn't.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Christopher, I actually edited out because I thought I'd get in trouble with the church, right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But that's really where we're at a lot of times, right?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're looking at the world around us, and sometimes instead of saying I'm fine, we just need to be like, well, you know, this, you know, right?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they watch me in the cameras in here, and I don't want to be on 10, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes we just need to express that like the world is burning and like, well, dang, like this is hard.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is tough.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you can go back for there, right?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Chris, for working on the back there.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right, but tonight I want to look a little bit about self-care.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Talking about self-care.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: When we say we're fine, but we as people really are not, and how we might take care of ourselves or at least put some practices in place that might help us to not you know to be more than just fine.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: To be more than just fine, right?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Think about um the sailboats here.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and you've heard the analogy of the ducks, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: It looks full cool on top of the water, but underneath their their feet are just paddling away, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, these sailboats, you know, they have a have a keel up on a ballast that's attached to them, and they go deep down into the in the water on these sailboats, right?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what saved my life that day when I thought I was gonna die in the Gulf of Mexico, right, was the keel of the sailboat that was keeping us from tipping over, right?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the metaphor there to use that is to know that there are gonna be storms in our lives, right?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be stuff that you go through.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be times you're sitting there, you feel like the whole apartment's on fire, and sometimes you're gonna say, I'm fine, sometimes you're gonna be like, okay, well, crap, this is like not good, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: What we're looking at is how can we develop a keel system?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: How can we develop some ballast system that will keep us, even when we feel like we're going back and forth, will keep us from completely being submerged, from completely tipping over and being stuck out of there.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing as we think about what it means to take care of the self is to take care of the spirit, to take care of your spirit and your soul.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we see this um throughout scripture.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read a few, I don't know if we have those or not, Christopher.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, first one looking at Exodus 20, and this is what we see um in 20 verses 8 through 11.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: When God tells us to remember the Sabbath day and to keep it holy.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: You shall not do any work.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: You or your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or your alien wretch, like no one should be doing anything.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that was in them, but rested the seventh day.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore the Lord blessed it the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then we see in Leviticus, right?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Leviticus, all right, some good stuff here.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: In uh verses three, uh six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in the field.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest, even for the land, a Sabbath for the Lord.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard, you shall not reap, but the aftergrowth of your harvest, right?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: You may eat what the land yields during its Sabbath, you your all right.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Take a Sabbath on the seventh year, right?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I got lost in my words there, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Even the field, right?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Give break there.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then in Matthew uh chapter eleven, verses twenty-eight through thirty, we hear this this passage often here.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Come to me, all that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think God would command us to take a Sabbath, one to worship God, but also to restore our souls.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think Jesus would say, Come to me, all who are weary and in need of rest, and you will find it in me.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: If he didn't know that us as the people of God would be weary, that we would be in need of rest, that we would work ourselves sometimes literally to death, to where we need to be reminded that Sabbath is important.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Rest is important, and rest and renewal for your weary soul is just as important as sleep is for your tired bodies.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Where we get renewal for our spirits matters.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes it's important to go to the source to find that renewal for our spirits.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I went to a summer camp as a kid, and I was telling some Asbury Hills folks when I worked there this summer.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: I went to a camp in Tennessee.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is still around.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I checked it out.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: If they still did what they did back then, they'd probably be shut down that now.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it was a lot of fun back then in the 90s.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was a cool time.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: But outside, I was three weeks away, and it was in the mountains of Tennessee, but um near the senior camp where high schoolers and middle schoolers were, they had this natural flowing spring where the water just came down the mountain and out and they had this spring system set up and it was just always flowing.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the coldest water that I've ever drank in my life.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was the freshest.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I think of like water, like living water, that is what I think of.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: This spring at at Camp Marymountain, Tennessee, where things just flowed out there, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember like no matter where we would be on at the campgrounds, whether we'd be playing soccer or hiking, like when we were worn out, tired, you know, whatever, we could not wait to go back to the spring and refill our water bottles.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, by then we didn't carry water bottles, we just had these big pipes and we would just like buzz it all right straight out of the nozzle.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: But like that water was so refreshing and it would refuel us no matter where we were in camp.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: We knew we had to get back there to be refueled.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: As you think about what it means to renew your spirit, to take care of yourself by taking care of your spirit.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I invite you to think about where can you find living water?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where can you find stuff that will fill you, that will nourish you, that will quench your thirst, that will help you to feel refreshed.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as you think about what it means to renew and take care of your spirit, I invite you to go to the source.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Spend time with your spirit, spending time with God, spending time in prayer, spending time in quiet, spending time in Sabbath, spending time just sitting and being in the presence of God and praying that God might work in you and through you and to restore and renew your spirit.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to talk about that more, we talk more, but but I think it's important to remember that spirit care is just as important as some of these other things in self-care.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: The next thing we want to look at is um part of self-care is also taking care of your body, right?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Part of self-care, part of making sure that you're fine, or being more than just, you know, not lying and saying that you're fine, or also moving towards thriving and that sort of stuff, is making sure that you're taking care of your physical self, not just your spiritual self, but your your physical self as well, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know like this sounds kind of bad because we fed you like ground beef and queso and all that kind of stuff, but you know, like what are you eating, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: What are you eating to help take care of yourself, making sure that you're on the top of your game?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Are you exercising, right?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are you sleeping?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're like, Steve, it's Sunday.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had football games and I got homework and just shut up about sleeping, right?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: But sleep is important.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sleep is important as you think about making sure that you're at your best self, right?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: It helps take away a lot of stress and that sort of stuff.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you getting the rest that you need, not just for your soul, but also for your body, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are you are you allowing body stress to take place by some of the relationships that you might be in, that sort of stuff, and how might you work in or out of that?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Side note, I'm excited for the spring.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do a two-week series um on relationships, not your typical, like, oh, who should I date type thing?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we're gonna do week one on what do healthy relationships look like.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then week two is gonna be ending well.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited to do that, right?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do you end relationships well?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, maybe if you've got to wait to break up somebody, just wait till February's gonna be great.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you I'll walk you through it, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh anyway, you know, thinking about the relationship.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they they also need to go to help you in your self-care.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, ridiculous plug there, right?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so take care of your spirit, take care of your body.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the third thing that we want to talk about here, I think it's important to mention in the church, is you also need to take care of your mind.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: You need to take care of your mind.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we do a great job with our bodies, sometimes we do a great job with our souls, but sometimes, and especially in the church, we tend to forget about the minds and taking care of ourselves there, right?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and what I mean that I'm talking about like mental health and dealing with making sure that your mental health is good and talking about um how we some of the folks are struggling or battling with mental illness.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes in the church, especially, right, and I'll sort of um confess this that we like to sort of put it away and put it in a dark space and say, oftentimes you maybe hear people like, you know, they're struggling with different mental health stuff, and you'll hear maybe in the church you've heard like, well, they just need Jesus, right?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: They just need to pray more, they just need to pray about it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there's sometimes in life when you've got something going on, and and I I encourage you to pray and to go to God in prayer.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes just being in prayer or journaling or reading through scripture will sort of give you a sense of peace or calm, and you're like good to go.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we also recognize that there are more, there's sometimes the mental health goes a little bit deeper than that and it's a little bit harder.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something we can just say, oh, you know, that person, you just need more Jesus, you just need to go read the Bible more, you just need to pray about it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes when it comes to taking care of yourself, sometimes when we just say we're fine, what we really need to do is to actually get real help.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to encourage you as a pastor standing in front of you to say that I don't want the church to put that into a dark place and to say that we need to talk more about this idea of mental health and making sure that people are where they need to be so they can be them best, their best selves.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so I encourage you, if part of what you need to do as part of self-care, if you find that your your mental health is sort of struggling there, is to reach out and to find a counselor, find someone that you can talk to, get the help that you need.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: I confessed to y'all last year, I was, you know, 2020 was crazy for me.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I like was just on the verge of sort of breaking down.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: I went to see a counselor for the first time, and it was the best thing that I have I've ever done as far as that in my mental health.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm able to talk and share and help me work through some stuff.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so if that's something that you need as a part of being being whole, I encourage you to do that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to find those folks and to reach out and to do that.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, again, Jesus was seeing James, right?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Reminded that, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Where James talks about, you know, if someone asks for, you know, clothing or food or that sort of stuff, who among you is just gonna say, Oh, God bless you, be on your way, we'll pray for you, without actually giving them the clothing and the food that they need.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing when it comes to mental health here in the church and making sure that you are you are whole and that you are at a good place where you need to be.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to just say, oh, we'll pray for you, but we want to find ways that we might actually be able to encourage you in that.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of that, a little side plug, this is not for, this is not a counseling thing, um, because we gotta be careful there.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But uh part of our connections team is also working on a plan for folks.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you also just looking to like talk with someone one-on-one, not in like a counselor type way, because it would be like a peer-to-peer type thing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're looking for like a one-on-one, peer-to-poor, uh, peer-to-peer mentor type thing, uh, we're working on doing some of that stuff in the coming weeks as well.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I say all that to just uh throw that out there to say that it's important and it's a part of this wholeness that we're seeking as we look at self-care, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: To be careful how we care for our spirits, to be careful how we care for our our bodies, and to be careful how we care for our minds as well and our and our mental health, and to be able to say and hear from me that there's nothing to be ashamed of if that's something that you need help with.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there's something that I can help you with or help point you in the right direction.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to talk to you in the coming weeks and sort of and help and be there.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus didn't come just to pray for people, but Jesus worked for actual healing.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted them to be physically whole and physically healed as well.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So why are we talking about self-care, right?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we want to move from just being fine to really sort of living out there and living our best life?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: On the one hand, you've heard it often say that, well, you can't pour into others unless you're, you know, you yourself are full, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to pour from an empty cup.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've heard that before.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: We've had talks here on Sunday nights with that before, right?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also this thing called compassion fatigue, where if you just give and give and give and give, eventually you just sort of run out of this compassion and you're not able to give as much as you want to give.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's important.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we want to be able to serve, we want to be able to love, and want people to experience Christ through us.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something else, y'all.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Something else I think is important that we often look out, and right, yeah, we need the body of Christ to be on point so we can do what we need to do, but I also believe that God just plain and simply wants God's children to be whole.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: He wants us to be well.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: He wants you to be filled and full and holy and fully you as God has created you to be.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think about what God has to say about humanity, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: In Genesis 1.27, it says, So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Male and female, he created them.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then in Genesis 2, 7 says, Then the Lord formed people from the dust of the ground and breathed into the nostrils the breath of life, and became a living being.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Psalm 139, as I mentioned earlier, says, For it was you who formed me in my inward part, talking about God.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: You knit me together in my mother's womb.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful are your works that I know very well.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: In John 10, 10, I love this as well.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: It says, The thief came to steal and kill and destroy, but Jesus says, I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we want to be able to serve.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we want to be able to give.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the God who has created you and me and each and every one of us, the God that took time to knit you together in your mother's womb, the God that took the time to breathe the breath of life into you and to create you in God's image, doesn't just want you to so you can be good so you can serve.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: He wants you, as you as an individual, to be whole, to be more than fine, more than fine, to be able to thrive in this life.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the first steps that we do to do it to getting to that place that God has called us to be, and God's desire for us to be whole and to be full and to be well, is by taking care of ourselves, by taking care of our spirits and going to the source and the spring of that living water to be renewed and refreshed, to take care of our bodies, that we are getting the sleep that we're taking care of this temple that God has given us, and to be sure that we're taking care of our mental health as well, and doing the things that are necessary that we might be whole, because I believe that that is God's desire for us, not in a punishment way, but God has created you and wants you there to find that.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage you, there's any way I can help you in the in the as you're in your time here at Clemson.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: I am here for you.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if I can't, I don't have all the answers, but I'm willing to talk and listen.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a great listener, and I can also point you in the right direction and find stuff as you maybe wrestle with how you might do on this self-care journey.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: In the next coming weeks, we're gonna look at what does it mean to say I'm fine, but you're really wrestling with doubt, not just in in faith, but in life and what you're doing.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna look at what it means to say you're fine, but you're really trying to figure out what your purpose and what your calling is in life, or what it means to say I'm fine, but really you are scared as all get out on the inside, having no idea what's gonna happen.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna look at this idea of fear.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna look at this idea of doubt, we're gonna look at this idea of purpose.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: And as we do that, though, I encourage you to continue and down this self-care journey.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Holy gracious God, we give you thanks for this night, for a time to gather around tables and to share a meal with old friends and new friends.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: We give you thanks for this time where we can lift our voices up to worship you, oh God, and to sing praises to you and you alone.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: God, there are some of us that are singing boldly.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: There are some of us that are singing as a whisper because we're just not sure and we're we're we're you know just questioning.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we're thankful for a community that can sing with us and for us.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: God, we give you thanks for us and for these bodies that you've given us, for these minds that you've given us, for these souls and spirits that you've given us.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: We pray, oh God, that you would open our eyes, give us ears to hear and eyes to see the ways in which you are calling us, ways you are shaping us, that we might take care of ourselves, so that we in return might be the people that you've called us to be as we seek to love you with all that we have and all that we are, and our neighbors as ourselves.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: We ask all this in Christ's name.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, get out there and love your neighbor.