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Transcript

A Light for All Our Paths · Faith at Work

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So even though we are
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: inside this morning, we were supposed to be outside.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And typically, when
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: do things outside, it's a different setting.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different vibe.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I prepare a more sit-down kind of message.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing that half of you are going to be about 150 feet away,
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: not going to hear anything I say anyways.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's less important that I have a real good train of thought.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I've traditionally called them sit-down messages.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And even though we're here this morning and not outside, it's a sit-down message.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so it's going to be less perhaps coherent with a lot more ums and ahs.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you all don't like it when people repeat themselves up here, but who knows?
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  SPEAKER_00: I may say things twice.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_00: We will just see.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we're looking at Psalm 119 this week.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Famous, famous psalm.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is the longest psalm that exists.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is actually the longest chapter in the Bible.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's 176 verses.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's what's called an acrostic.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the author of the psalm, You read Hebrew from right to left.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so the author of the song took the...
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: It actually is a song.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Took the...
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  SPEAKER_00: Hebrew alphabet,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is 22 letters, and wrote eight verses for every single one of those letters.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the section of the psalm that we're looking at this morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: 105 through 112,
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  SPEAKER_00: is the Nun letter,
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  SPEAKER_00: right there in the middle of the Hebrew And it's talking about the Word
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: of God being,
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  SPEAKER_00: of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: as we've said over and over this morning,
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  SPEAKER_00: a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
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  SPEAKER_00: And thank you very much, Dennis, for that.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right back at you.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it is a verse that is quite literally not meant to read in a room like this.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's meant to read outside.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is meant for people who are very aware of living in a world of darkness
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  SPEAKER_00: and needing to walk paths either in the early morning or even in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so the psalmist uses that imagery to talk about the word of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word is dabar.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it actually translates better as the matters of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: the speaching of God, the things of God, the things of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Really the idea of the presence of God in one's life and that Dabar, that Rhema,
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  SPEAKER_00: Spoken word becomes a guide, a light unto one's feet, a lamp actually.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: The lamps of that day weren't like the lamps that we have unless you live sort of in
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: an old order home.
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  SPEAKER_00: They certainly weren't like this, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: But they were a lamp to one's feet.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were clay jars.
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  SPEAKER_00: With olive oil in them and a wick.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the psalmist says it's the matters of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: the things of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: the spoken presence of God in the psalmist's life is like a lamp onto their hands.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a light to the path.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea is that it would just sort of,
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  SPEAKER_00: as they walked down the path,
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  SPEAKER_00: it would illuminate the path,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the psalmist talks about,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, a very hard life that he was living, snapping.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Stairs and traps and people, you know, wanting to devour his life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that feeling.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly have understood that feeling very much in the last days.
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  SPEAKER_00: I told you last week, you know, my father passed away.
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  SPEAKER_00: And wow.
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  SPEAKER_00: Really put some stumbling blocks in my path and in my life and in my joy and celebration.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, typically a very exciting person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Preachers used to say that when they would preach this message that
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: the folks would actually tie these clay jars on their feet so that they could walk
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  SPEAKER_00: the paths and see.
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  SPEAKER_00: And folks believed them, but that's just stupid.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever tried to carry a lantern filled with hot oil
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  SPEAKER_00: and burning wicks and walk.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just so you know, it doesn't work real well.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you'd be burning yourself all up.
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  SPEAKER_00: So it's imagery.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not real.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the idea is real.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the...
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  SPEAKER_00: The actuality of that leading us and guiding us and making it so
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  SPEAKER_00: that we're not falling into holes or falling into traps or taking the wrong path.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is what I have found over the years,
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  SPEAKER_00: that God's matters, God's things, God's spoken words in my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like the children's story,
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  SPEAKER_00: like Kara was saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: what we learn about God and the way God works in the Bible really has done that
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  SPEAKER_00: for myself and I think for a lot of us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the psalmist must have been older.
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  SPEAKER_00: When he or she wrote this because it's this imagery of the small little amount
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  SPEAKER_00: of light that is sort of down along the path that would only throw enough light for
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  SPEAKER_00: the next step on the path.
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  SPEAKER_00: As a young man,
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  SPEAKER_00: Part of this journey of the death of my father has been me looking back
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  SPEAKER_00: at my ministry and my life and all of the different things that I have said and done
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  SPEAKER_00: in my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just beginning it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have always been a digital person.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so I...
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  SPEAKER_00: I have gone back through all of my computers that were laying on the floor
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  SPEAKER_00: without charging the batteries and all the many disk drives
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  SPEAKER_00: that I've been moving files to along the way and reloading them on my computer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Almost 30 years, three decades of messages I have found.
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  SPEAKER_00: I actually found in my files a handwritten Notebook from my 10 years in Italy
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  SPEAKER_00: with handwritten messages in Italian with ink faded.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some of it I can read, some of it I can't read.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to work on that translation and figure out what I said over those years.
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  SPEAKER_00: I kind of have an idea.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as I have looked through literally hundreds,
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  SPEAKER_00: hundreds of messages,
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  SPEAKER_00: literally hundreds of blog posts,
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  SPEAKER_00: letters,
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  SPEAKER_00: all kinds of things,
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  SPEAKER_00: I realized that when I was younger and preaching,
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  SPEAKER_00: I was preaching with a huge amount of perhaps put on authority and certainty
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  SPEAKER_00: about God and About this path that I was on and about where that path was going
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  SPEAKER_00: to lead and how safe it was going to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was preaching as if rather than carrying a little oil lamp that showed me
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  SPEAKER_00: the next step,
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  SPEAKER_00: like one of those spotting flashlights that you use for deer
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  SPEAKER_00: when you're hunting deer illegally at night.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of you know what those are, of course.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's these huge floodlights that just illuminate, you know, like football fields.
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  SPEAKER_00: They just illuminate everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: No way you could miss a divot in a field like that, along a path like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: So as I look back on how I understood spirituality,
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  SPEAKER_00: how I understood God,
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  SPEAKER_00: how I understood what Spirit of God was going to do in my life and for my life.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just clear.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just going to be great.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everything's going to be rosy and wonderful.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not going to hit any trips or bumps along the way.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as you all know, that's just not the way it works, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, we want to floodlight.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the Word of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: We want a floodlight from the Spirit of God that just sort of shines all the way to
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  SPEAKER_00: the very end so that it's just a straight path.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we were in Italy and people would ask us directions,
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  SPEAKER_00: we would say, which means just always go straight.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's similar in Spanish.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_00: Where do you go?
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  SPEAKER_00: Take a left.
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  SPEAKER_00: The path is clear.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been in a city, in a town, ain't nothing strange.
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  SPEAKER_00: Twists and turns and cobblestones and all those kinds of things.
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  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, as a young man, I was a preacher and missionary and whatnot.
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  SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know, this whole journey would be a floodlight event, but it's just not.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: It's just not.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the best that we can hope for is kind of what the psalmist puts here.
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  SPEAKER_00: That God's presence, God's things, God's matters, God's direction.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a promise there.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the promise is it's always going to be enough for the next step.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe one more, but that's about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so somehow in this journey,
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  SPEAKER_00: we have to get to the place where we embrace that, you know, and we trust that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we don't feel despair because we don't know the whole way.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't know the whole journey because it was never supposed to be like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be a walk of discipleship.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus said, you know, come.
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  SPEAKER_00: And follow me.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't know where Jesus was going or what Jesus was going to be doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: They certainly didn't think that it was going to end up at a cross.
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  SPEAKER_00: Him dying.
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  SPEAKER_00: And just sort of the whole thing just sort of going.
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  SPEAKER_00: Can you do that in church?
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  SPEAKER_00: I could have done it outside and nobody would have been bothered.
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  SPEAKER_00: But you know life just sometimes just goes like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when it does go like that, this song, I think, can be great, great comfort.
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  SPEAKER_00: God's presence,
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  SPEAKER_00: it will be enough to light the next step out of the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of you are nodding, you know.
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  SPEAKER_00: Martha...
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  SPEAKER_00: But I went to her house.
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  SPEAKER_00: What's she doing?
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  SPEAKER_00: What's the next step?
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  SPEAKER_00: Write cards.
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  SPEAKER_00: They bought her a chair and a little coffee table that turns into a desk.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think Alden was the culprit of that, maybe, right, Paul?
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  SPEAKER_00: And there she is, writing cards, the next step.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Martha, what are you doing?
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm riding cars.
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  SPEAKER_00: Look, I can stand up.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Martha.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, just taking the next steps.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we all, that's just what we do.
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  SPEAKER_00: We just take the next step.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that...
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  SPEAKER_00: Living with that attitude is more honest, I think, as Christians, as followers of Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is, I think, more accessible to people, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Or true to the way the world and life really works.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly something much more easy,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think, to carry along the way, you know, and to share with people.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how this is going to turn out either,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I do believe and know and experience that God's
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: going to help you the next step.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that can be so comforting,
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  SPEAKER_00: so helpful in the midst of grief and pain and trauma and confusion and uncertainty
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  SPEAKER_00: in our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have been talking a lot about, lately,
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  SPEAKER_00: the BARNA study,
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  SPEAKER_00: and again,
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  SPEAKER_00: it was a study of about 1,500 youth,
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  SPEAKER_00: questions that they're asking themselves and each other,
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  SPEAKER_00: the uncertainty about future,
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  SPEAKER_00: what does the future mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: what does the future bring,
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, what is God saying and doing or is it all here in the midst of all that?
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  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's definitely something that the youth,
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  SPEAKER_00: you young people, or I would imagine are working with.
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  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we're working with it too, trying to figure it all out.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we have a whole group of youth here.
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  SPEAKER_00: That are getting together at the National Youth Conference.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Rocky Mountains, going back to the YMCA and the Rocky Mountains where it all began.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the theme, our very own Tyson Hall.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping he's here today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Is Tyson around?
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, hiding up there with his shirt.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: There he is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come on down, Tyson.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Come on down.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyson Hall and others have been planning this,
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  SPEAKER_00: what I know is going to be an incredible youth conference in the Rockies.
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  SPEAKER_00: The theme is A Light Within Us, and the whole theme is from Matthew 5 about Carrying our light.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they're going to go and they're going to be talking about things.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're going to be hearing messages,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure, that are much better than the ones I've been preaching to you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth of the matter is, youth conferences are the best.
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  SPEAKER_00: Conferences in the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: They have incredible bands,
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  SPEAKER_00: awesome speakers that do silly stupid things up on stage
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  SPEAKER_00: and preach these incredible messages under the stars.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so we are going to move here to the commissioning of the folks that are going to
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  SPEAKER_00: that conference here in a little bit.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as you go,
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  SPEAKER_00: And as you go to ponder more of what it means to have this light within us,
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  SPEAKER_00: I just want to add,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: think about as you're there and you're carrying your light to other persons,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether young or old, really,
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  SPEAKER_00: because there's going to be old people there, too, like myself, just loving things.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going, by the way, but...
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  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to have gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as you carry your light and carry your hopes and carry your dreams
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  SPEAKER_00: and carry your experience of God, just remember that
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  SPEAKER_00: That is an intimate, tender thing for most of us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And my prayer is just that as you go,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: that God will give you,
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  SPEAKER_00: if you're nervous about what you're going to do or say or what
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  SPEAKER_00: that whole experience is, Just know that God's going to be with you.
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  SPEAKER_00: God's going to be lighting your steps, lighting your path through that whole experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it is going to be marvelous.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is going to be wonderful.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when you look back on it, you will be able to say, you know, God was with us the whole way.