Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 14, 2020 | Expresso - MaryAnna Curry

Transcript

January 14, 2020 | Expresso - MaryAnna Curry · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, if you could, if you have spoken at Espresso before, could you raise your hand?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you were terrified when you did it, could you keep your hand up?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Connie has this joke that she likes to tell us who gets suckered into doing this.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Don't let her tell you that I volunteered, because I did not.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, it's just like having coffee with a friend, like 50 or 60 friends.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of friends.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not good at estimating, but it feels like a lot more than one.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyways, my my uh yeah, her pastime question, that was a funny joke.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Currently, my favorite pastime is stacking my dining room floor to ceiling so that the carpets can be cleaned.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: But the carpets are clean, so if anybody wants to buy a house, call me.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm gonna do a little face-to-face time here for a minute because then I'm gonna be like this the rest of the time.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um my name is Marianna.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um Connie told like all of my intro part, so just give me a second.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I tried really hard to get out of this in the past couple weeks because you know, I mean, who really wants to do this?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm up here.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So um I'm just gonna read this because I feel like that's okay.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not nervous at all.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Just keep the emergency exits clear, just in case.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um funny joke.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I actually prayed for an ice storm.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: But apparently, God and I got mixed up on the dates.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I missed out on that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote that in case anybody was wondering, that joke was written.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: My husband gave me a really great joke for tonight.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: He said, you know, like you take public speaking in college, and it doesn't matter how long of a speech you write, I could always get that done in a minute.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he's funny.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the last year of my life was a little chaotic, and uh the holidays, believe it or not, hit me kind of hard.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I've been kind of in a little bit of a slump.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I really didn't want to get up here and talk to you guys because I feel like a little bit of a fraud after going through a little bit of a pit.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um the more I thought about trying to get out of it though, the more I realized, A, Connie would kill me.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And B, the best time to get up and talk about your faith is when you're struggling, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because boy, did that force me to look back and reflect on my faith and how deep it is, and the solid rock that I really do stand on.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I definitely needed to be here tonight uh lamenting the fact that it happened to be in January, right after the holidays, but God is so good, and obviously this was exactly what he wanted for me.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I hope this encourages you guys.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um I broke this down into phases in case I got like lost in my notes, which is totally plausible.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I've been a Christian most of my life.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um as a little girl, my mom led me to Christ, and um I was homeschooled.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the fifth of seven children, so it's loud in our house.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um but we grew up in a quiet neighborhood, and I was homeschooled, and so um the world kind of felt just really quiet and safe, and that was kind of how I grew up.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um I was raised in church, and I most certainly believed in Jesus, but I didn't really make my faith my own until I was older.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um when I was in my early 20s, I became very sick.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've kind of battled my body my whole life.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've we've always kind of known that there's something just not quite right with my body, but never really been able to figure out exactly what it was.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um as a kid, I was always overweight and just never really thriving.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my parents did everything they could to help me, but it didn't seem to matter how many doctors we went to.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody kind of told us the same thing, you know, there's just nothing wrong with her, and they would say, Oh, she's making it up, or it's all in your head.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there was just really nothing to do with it.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up as I was growing up internalizing a lot of negative feelings about myself, um, thinking, you know, that those that I just kind of lived under these labels, like stupid and lazy and fat and just worthless.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I always thought if I could just lose the weight, if I could just feel good and do well in school and accomplish this or that, then I would feel good about myself, and then people would really see me for more than just an awkward overweight kid with no real talent to speak of, and that's kind of how I felt growing up.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um when I was 20, I went to K-State, and I finally got sick enough that we were able to go to a clinic in Texas and get treatment for hypothyroidism, which really helped me quite a bit.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I felt better than I ever had.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a long few years of really hard work, but I was able to lose the weight, and um I ended up running a half marathon, and I graduated from nursing school with honors, and I married an incredible man.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um my faith grew exponentially through those long years.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh in 2012, it was kind of in the middle of that period, I set out to read the Bible cover to cover, and I did it, so it can be done.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it only took me three years.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: But something in me stirred as I read through the Bible that first time that um just kind of stirred up something in me and um kind of set me on a different path.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um I grew a lot in the last couple years of college.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I had a really good friend who um was a solid Christian and she had a really deep faith, and that really pulled me along and encouraged my faith.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so um so then after college I met my husband, and um he was such an answer to just a lifetime of prayers, um, and he's unbelievably great.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you are lucky enough to know him, like he's hilarious, he's just the sweetest guy ever, and he's just the best.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um we got married in April of 2014.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, here's my half marathon.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's me on the end.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's me and you know, the cutest guy on the planet.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um a month after we got married, um, my husband was starting school and we were expecting, you know, like he'll be in school, but it'll still be great.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: We were gonna move to Kansas City and have like this really fun, fabulous life.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then a month after we got married, I got pregnant.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Not on purpose.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that threw a little bit of a wrench in things.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, that week that we found out we were pregnant, my husband's motorcycle also got stolen.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he had an MRI to check for a brain tumor, so that was fun.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know that little saying that nobody will ever give you more than you can.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is she okay?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: We had a crowd of nurses, and that was amazing and really cool.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um we'll kinda we'll just go back, we'll go back into this.
• 8:39
  unknown: I just want you all to know Rita was feeling a little hot.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't the first person to tell me it was warm in here.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm turning it down now.
• 8:47
  unknown: Sorry, my bad.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: We could we could probably just open that store stairwell door over there where it's 10 degrees.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe I was talking about um our first month of marriage.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we got pregnant very unexpectedly.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that kind of threw a wrench in all of our plans.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but in February 2015, our perfect little girl changed everything.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: There she is.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's pretty perfect.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um what a delight and a joy she is.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when I was pregnant, I was so angry.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I did not handle it well.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um it wasn't that I did not want her, I definitely, definitely wanted her.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that the timing was so not my plan.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um, even though I didn't feel it, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that she was a gift from God.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I so even though I was feeling, you know, depressed and angry, um, I knew the truth.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I did know the truth, and the truth was that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so we named her Karis Annie.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um Anna is part of my name.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm named after my great aunt, um, and so she carries that on.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but her name, Karis Annie, means God's gracious gift full of grace.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I struggled a lot with depression after Karis was born, so I threw myself into every Bible study I could get to.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I knew the remedy for what ailed me was more Jesus.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I obstinately fought back against depression and feelings of worthlessness with the only tool that's proven to work every time, the truth of God's word.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I was desperate for it, and it was the balm that my soul needed.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: One passage in particular that I've prayed a few times is if is Ezekiel 36, 26.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: In the fall of 2016, I took a Bible study on 2 Timothy called Entrusted, and it was during this Bible study that I first felt God calling me to ministry.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in the bot in the margin of my Bible, I wrote a little note that said, uh, God has a better plan than I do.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: At the time I had no clue what this meant or what he was calling me to.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I only knew that it was going to be one step of obedience at a time.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I hoped it wouldn't involve speaking in front of people.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's never been something that I've jumped up and down for.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I just kept going to Bible studies and reading and studying the word and taking one step of obedience after another.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: In 2017, um, we were trying to get pregnant with our second child, only we couldn't, which was a little surprising since the first one had come around without any intention whatsoever.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um that spring I was asked to join Women's Ministry Council here at TBC.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was surprised.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I really was.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: It feel like it felt like it dropped out of the sky.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it really seemed like exactly what God wanted.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so we decided to stop trying to get pregnant for a while.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I said, yes, I will do it.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the first meeting that I went to for Women's Council happened to be on my birthday, um, which is June 13th.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as I got up to P for about the hundredth time during the meeting, I sat there in the bathroom and I thought, I'm pregnant.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought God tricked me into joining Women's Council.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So in February of 2018, we welcomed this delicious little baby boy.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Assuming he would be a middle child and a natural peacekeeper, we named him Axel, which means father of peace.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yet another perfect gift from above.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he is delicious.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: So cute.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so 357 days ago, my husband was diagnosed with bladder cancer.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: This news really shook me to my core.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was just crippled by fear.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I remember in those first few days after he was diagnosed, asking God to keep my heart soft through all of it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was so afraid that I would harden my heart, that I would become angry.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I really went into survival mode the first part of last year, mentally and physically.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Shortly after my husband was diagnosed, I had to quit taking my hormones because I was having so many heart palpitations.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been off them since.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So this has just added a layer of dependence on God.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: As I've had to struggle with coping, with not feeling well on top of everything else.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: God provided so abundantly for every need that we had last year.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Financially, he sent us all the money we needed to pay Jason's medical bills for three years.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: When our car was hit by an underinsured driver, he even provided a free vehicle that was so much nicer than the one that was wrecked.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: One of the griefs of my husband's cancer is that we will not be able to have any more children.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: This that's a hard pill to swallow.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: But one day I realized something.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we hadn't gotten unexpectedly pregnant, a month after we got married, we might have missed these.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: God's grace.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just pure grace.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: We laughed the other day when we realized we had named our children Grace and Peace.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Probably two of the biggest things that we need in our lives.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we've done for Women's Ministry Council this year is um each mim, each member of the council took a word that ends in full, and we've written devotionals.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if if you've all seen them or not, but um I wanted to share part of mine with you.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I chose to write mine on the word peaceful because of my year last year.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, oh, this is good.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to sit down and look at peaceful and really learn it for real.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: God taught me so much about peace this last year.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote this devotional.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Peace is a choice.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 26, 3 through 4.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: January of this year found me alone in a hospital waiting room while my husband underwent surgery to have a cancerous tumor removed from his bladder.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I remember sitting there crying to God, begging for peace.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I had none.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was utterly desperate for it.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I was filled with crippling fear for weeks.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I simply could not go on as I was any longer.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had to surrender.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: I had no peace for two reasons.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: First, because I was trying to be God.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than surrendering to his sovereignty, in my pride, I thought I knew what was best for my own life.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: But God's ways are higher than our ways.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: His thoughts are not our thoughts.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Who can understand them?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, because I had idolized my husband to a position he was never meant to hold.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had hoisted him up to sit on the high places of my heart and readily placed all of my hope and security in him.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I had to acknowledge the fact that I had put my trust in a place it was never meant to be.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I had to let go.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Surrendering my husband to God was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: But when I did, something shifted in me and my perspective changed.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: This was not easy.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, it was excruciatingly painful.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: But as I opened my trembling hands and surrendered my husband to God, as I surrendered to the sovereignty of God in my life, in my husband's life, and in the lives of my children, I came to recognize and understand that my hope is in Christ, the one who defeated death and not in man.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I came to that peaceful place of accepting the fact that God is sovereign and I am not, that God is big and I am small, that God is the only one that can be king of my heart and in whom I can safely put my trust.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: As I opened my heart and my hands in surrender and let them empty at the feet of Jesus, Yahweh, the one who hears me, the one who sees me, the one who knows me.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yahweh did not leave me empty.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: He took my emptiness and he filled it with himself.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: He took my brokenness and he made me whole.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now don't get me wrong, this does not mean that I walk around no longer affected by worry or fear.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: It means that when I detect that anxious feeling rising in up within me, I remember that I am not in control and never was.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I remember that I serve a good father, and I can trust him to work all things together for good.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: I can open my trembling hand, and I can lay down the pride of my own plans and trade them for the surrender of following Christ.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And every time I do, I am full of peace.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sweet friend, is there something clenched tightly in your hand?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Are you searching for peace but cannot find it?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Let go, let every little big and heartbreaking thing go.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Surrender and let yourself be kept in the perfect peace that comes only from God.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Place your trust in the only everlasting rock.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Peace is a choice to lay ourselves down and surrender to a sovereign God.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the little devotional that I wrote.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Last year it just felt like about five years.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Last summer I felt this distance in me spiritually, and I did not like that.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I made a point to spend a couple hours every afternoon on my back deck during nap time.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um just dug my heels in and I refused to quit, which you can ask my mom, but that's been a lifelong trait.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I read the Bible cover to cover.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just kept seeking, flooding my mind with truth.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: God took me through such a sanctifying process last summer as I just dug deeper and deeper.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um of the many, many things that he taught me last summer was um through two of the books that I read.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I read Uninvited by Lisa Turkhurst.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you haven't read it, it's really good.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I also read Nothing to Prove by Jenny Allen, also amazing.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so all of those years that I was deeply and desperately that I, or all those years that I worked so hard to accomplish, you know, the things that I thought were going to make me feel good about me, you know.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I thought that they would fill this aching hole in my chest.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um that just that feeling that I was just deeply and desperately not enough.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I thought graduating with honors and being fit and getting married would settle all of those feelings of emptiness and ache in the center of my being.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But last summer, alone on my deck, there I sat, a wife, a mom to two amazing kids.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I had this giant aching hole in my chest again.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: That deep guttural feeling was back.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: That feeling that even with all that I had accomplished, it still just wasn't enough.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: I am not enough.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: When I read this quote from Jenny Allen, I was wrecked, like ugly cry wrecked.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: She says in her book, she says, I am realizing that it's not my curse that I believe I am not enough.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's my sin that I keep trying to be.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: All the while Jesus is saying, I want to free you from your striving, free you from your doubt, free you from your pride that cares more about your achieving something than receiving something.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I am enough, so you don't have to be.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then I read Uninvited by Lisa, and this quote hits so close to home it's scary.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: She says, I know the thoughts of being set aside are loud and overwhelmingly tempting to believe in the hollows of feeling unnoticed and uninvited.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: But as you pray through your feelings, see if maybe your situation has more to do with you being prepared than you being overlooked.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: There is something wonderfully sacred that happens when a girl chooses to realize that being set aside is actually God's call for her to be set apart.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: This thought reverberated through my mind for weeks.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe my lifelong sorrow.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe all that enduring of hard things.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe all that not enoughness was all just grace.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: God's unbelievable goodness to allow some really hard, painful things into my life.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe without all of that, I wouldn't have needed him as desperately as I do every single day.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And left to my own pride and my own stubbornness, I could have missed him.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Last fall I led my first Bible study.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I got up there the first day, and I'm not kidding, I stood up there right here because it was in this room, and I said, I'm terrified to be up here right now.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: But as I led that study, I felt something I had had truly never felt before.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like I was doing exactly what I was born to do.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was terrified, but I was exhilarated.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: I felt so leaned into Jesus.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I have been so challenged by something that Jill Briscoe said.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: She said, courage isn't a feeling that you wait for.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Courage is doing when you don't have courage.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Courage is doing it scared.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: She also said, the release comes when first you realize you are indeed hopelessly inadequate.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then you realize for this I have God.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can't.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: He can.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: You are inadequate.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: He isn't.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: God has given me an absolutely insatiable appetite for his word.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: I can't get enough of it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I really can't.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: In preparing for tonight, I was flipping through my Bible, looking at all the notes and the margins and the dates written next to verses, and thinking about all those countless sleepless nights, disappointments, devastations, heartbreaks, sorrow, and many, many answered prayers.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yet through all of the suffering of this broken world, these words stay the same.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: They never change because he never changes.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: James 1.17, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: I believe my journey of faith all started with a simple prayer.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, please give me a new heart.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Take this stony, stubborn heart and give me a heart of flesh.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Put your spirit within me and cause me to walk in your ways.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: We may have times we just aren't feeling it.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: I may be there right now.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: But just because I don't feel it doesn't make these words any less true.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: The past few weeks I've been studying James, and it's been so timely.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't gotten past the first 18 verses.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its full effect, that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's the end of my very long paper.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: When I first wrote it, I was really worried that I was gonna be up here for about five minutes and then Connie was gonna kill me.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: But anyways, that's all I've got.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um thank you all for listening.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh one more thing.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot, there's my family.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank you, Mom.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: That you never ever gave up on me.
• 27:57
  unknown: That's awesome.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.