Full Transcript for The Connection: The With-God Life | Mike Goldsworthy

I'm just sort of casually looking at the screen, and as I'm going through it, I'm looking for Oakland. 00:04:53.380 --> 00:04:56.500 Oakland, Oakland, Oakland, Oakland is not there. 00:04:56.580 --> 00:05:00.180 The next like four hours of flights are there, and Oakland isn't there. 00:05:00.340 --> 00:05:02.420 And I was like, that is strange. 00:05:02.820 --> 00:05:06.420 Now, what you need to know is that there are three airports that I can fly out of from my house. 00:05:06.580 --> 00:05:08.820 Long Beach is the closest, 12 minutes away. 00:05:08.980 --> 00:05:11.620 The next closest is Orange County, John Wayne. 00:05:11.700 --> 00:05:13.380 It's about 25 minutes to my south. 00:05:13.540 --> 00:05:19.780 And then when I really hate myself, I'll drive 45 minutes to the north to go to LAX, which I try to avoid at all costs. 00:05:19.939 --> 00:05:21.780 But as often as possible, Long Beach. 00:05:21.860 --> 00:05:25.780 So I assume I'm flying out of Long Beach, but I'm looking up there and I'm not seeing Oakland. 00:05:25.939 --> 00:05:30.740 So I pull up my phone to look at my ticket, which says Orange County. 00:05:31.939 --> 00:05:38.660 Very quickly, I get out of line, I get on the lift app and order prior, like pay extra for priority pickup. 00:05:38.820 --> 00:05:40.820 As soon as I get out to the curb, the car is there. 00:05:40.980 --> 00:05:44.100 I jump in the car and I tell the driver what's going on. 00:05:44.180 --> 00:05:49.700 That I was like, hey, my flight is boarding right now, but it's not boarding at this airport, it's boarding at that airport. 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:53.620 Like, I need to try and make it because Lawrence has the day off. 00:05:53.780 --> 00:05:55.460 I'm supposed to be preaching. 00:05:55.620 --> 00:05:57.380 This is the last flight of the day. 00:05:57.620 --> 00:05:58.980 I need to make it. 00:05:59.140 --> 00:06:02.420 As we are driving down there, there are two thoughts that are going through my mind. 00:06:02.580 --> 00:06:06.180 The first thought is like, what am I going to do if I don't make it? 00:06:06.260 --> 00:06:08.340 And I start figuring out how long it takes me to drive up here. 00:06:08.420 --> 00:06:12.820 And I think, okay, what I can do is I can get back to my house, I can get in the car, I can drive through the night. 00:06:12.900 --> 00:06:18.420 I will get to Benisha with a couple of hours before service so that I can take a nap and then get up and preach. 00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:20.580 And I'm figuring out, like, okay, I could do that. 00:06:20.820 --> 00:06:21.620 I'm thinking that. 00:06:21.700 --> 00:06:25.460 The other thought that I'm thinking is, why was I not paying attention? 00:06:25.700 --> 00:06:29.300 Well, why didn't I pay attention to where my flight was leaving from? 00:06:29.460 --> 00:06:32.820 Why didn't I bother to pay attention? 00:06:33.140 --> 00:06:35.140 And get to Orange County Airport. 00:06:35.380 --> 00:06:37.620 TSA line has nobody in it. 00:06:37.780 --> 00:06:46.260 I get through it, I get to the gate, and as I get to the gate, I'm one of the last people to board before they close the doors, which told me this. 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:50.340 I could leave a lot later than I've been leaving to the airport. 00:06:50.500 --> 00:06:52.180 I have plenty of time. 00:06:53.460 --> 00:06:54.660 But I almost missed it. 00:06:54.740 --> 00:06:59.060 I almost missed it because I didn't create the space to pay attention. 00:06:59.380 --> 00:07:00.340 You ever do that? 00:07:00.500 --> 00:07:08.020 Does that ever happen to you where you're just going through life and you're going through life and you're doing these things, but you're not actually there. 00:07:08.180 --> 00:07:09.380 You're like somewhere else. 00:07:09.460 --> 00:07:13.300 You're not fully engaged in that thing wherever you are. 00:07:13.460 --> 00:07:24.340 Like, have you ever had this happen where you start driving and suddenly you end up at work and you stop in your parking lot at work and you're like, it's Saturday, and I was going to the grocery store. 00:07:24.580 --> 00:07:26.740 How does that ever happen to you? 00:07:27.060 --> 00:07:29.060 Because you just went on autopilot, right? 00:07:29.140 --> 00:07:34.340 Like you had other things going on, and your body went into autopilot and it just did that thing. 00:07:34.500 --> 00:07:39.620 You end up missing where you want to go because you're not fully engaged in paying attention. 00:07:39.860 --> 00:07:41.540 Or I don't know if this ever happens to you. 00:07:41.700 --> 00:07:42.740 Have you ever been reading something? 00:07:42.820 --> 00:07:52.020 You're reading a book, you're reading a PDF, you're reading somebody's Substack, you're reading and you get through several paragraphs and then you stop and you actually have no idea what you just read. 00:07:52.180 --> 00:07:52.820 That right? 00:07:53.140 --> 00:07:55.700 Yeah, you got to the end of it and you're like, what was going on there? 00:07:55.860 --> 00:07:57.300 Because you're thinking about all the other things. 00:07:57.380 --> 00:08:01.860 You're thinking about some friends of yours that are in a fight, and you're thinking about like, how do I help them resolve that? 00:08:02.020 --> 00:08:04.980 You're thinking about your grocery list of what you got to get. 00:08:05.140 --> 00:08:10.020 You're thinking, like, oh, I saw this guy at church and I said, let's hang out. 00:08:10.100 --> 00:08:12.180 And I told him I would text him and I didn't text him. 00:08:12.260 --> 00:08:13.620 Who, what was his name again? 00:08:13.700 --> 00:08:14.820 You're trying to remember that. 00:08:14.980 --> 00:08:22.900 All the while this is going on in your head, and you're like looking at the words, you're reading the words, but you're not actually paying attention to the words, right? 00:08:23.060 --> 00:08:28.340 And so you're not actually doing the thing that you want to do because you're not fully paying attention. 00:08:28.900 -->

00:08:32.419 Or I don't know if any of you have ever done this or if this has happened to you. 00:08:32.500 --> 00:08:38.500 I hope that it has, because uh it happened to me a few months ago for the first time ever, and I'm I'm pretty embarrassed by it. 00:08:38.580 --> 00:08:40.580 So I hope that I'm not the only one who has done this. 00:08:40.740 --> 00:08:49.220 I was at the gas station, I was filling up gas, I got out the the squeegee and I was cleaning the windows, and I was just kind of in my head. 00:08:49.379 --> 00:08:54.659 I was in my head about stuff going on, like life stuff, about family stuff, kids stuff. 00:08:54.820 --> 00:08:57.059 Like I was just kind of in my head. 00:08:57.220 --> 00:09:01.860 I was not on my phone, I wasn't scrolling, I wasn't doing the phone, it was in the car, it was just in my head. 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:06.500 I I finish washing the windows, put the squeegee away, I get in the car and I start to drive away. 00:09:06.579 --> 00:09:09.059 And as I drive away, I hear a huge thud. 00:09:09.459 --> 00:09:21.299 And I stop and I look in the mirror, and there is a gas handle hanging from my gas tank that has detached from the gas pump and it's just hanging there. 00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:24.339 And I thought, what do I do now? 00:09:25.939 --> 00:09:32.500 Do you ever find yourself so scattered and consumed with other things that it's hard to find the space to actually pay attention? 00:09:32.740 --> 00:09:39.860 And when you're not paying attention as a result, you miss where it is you want to go or what it is that you want to do. 00:09:40.819 --> 00:09:48.259 And as we spent time in the series called Steps, we've been processing through how like how we don't want to stay stuck. 00:09:48.339 --> 00:09:50.659 And what do we do to not stay stuck? 00:09:50.819 --> 00:09:59.299 How do we break out of these cycles, these continuously repeating cycles that we find ourselves in that are just destructive, but we keep ending up in them? 00:09:59.539 --> 00:10:07.379 How do we even like have a pathway of growth in life, regardless of where we're at in life, that there's some sort of way we can keep growing and keep moving forward? 00:10:07.539 --> 00:10:19.299 And where we're at today on step 11, in order to take this next step for our own growth and our own healing, it requires us to create the space to be present and to pay attention. 00:10:20.100 --> 00:10:26.819 And friends, the thing is that if we don't do that, we'll have made so much good progress. 00:10:27.139 --> 00:10:38.740 We'll have gone through 10 steps of work, we'll have done so much work, but what we're gonna find is we're gonna find ourselves getting stuck and stalled out at such a crucial moment of our growth. 00:10:39.059 --> 00:10:49.219 Because what we won't realize is that in order to keep going and in order to keep moving, we actually have to hit a point where we slow down a bit. 00:10:50.579 --> 00:11:07.379 And I wanna remind those of us who have been here for these weeks, or maybe if you're with us for the first time, I want to let you know what we've been doing and building together over the last uh several months, that we've been using the time-tested guide of the 12 steps as a roadmap for how do we grow. 00:11:07.620 --> 00:11:10.419 The 12 steps is this time-tested program. 00:11:10.500 --> 00:11:13.699 It's a helpful and important pathway for all of us. 00:11:14.019 --> 00:11:21.059 Regardless of whether you have an explicit uh substance addiction or not, it is a helpful and tested pathway. 00:11:21.139 --> 00:11:29.939 And we're paying attention to where the 12 steps intersects with what it looks like to have an invitation to a faith-filled life. 00:11:30.419 --> 00:11:37.539 And the thing about the 12 steps is, and those of you who've been a part of it, you know this, that it works if you work it. 00:11:38.740 --> 00:11:52.339 And so we've been methodically working through each step because each one builds on the one before it, and each one is important and significant, and we don't skip them, we work through them because it works if you work it. 00:11:52.740 --> 00:11:56.419 And we're getting close to wrapping this up on step 11 today. 00:11:56.500 --> 00:12:00.179 And step 11 is about a conscious paying attention. 00:12:00.659 --> 00:12:02.100 Here's how the big book puts it. 00:12:02.179 --> 00:12:16.899 Step 11 says this that we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. 00:12:17.779 --> 00:12:21.459 I want to spend a bit of time focused on one particular phrase in there. 00:12:21.620 --> 00:12:26.419 We sought to improve our conscious connection with God. 00:12:26.899 --> 00:12:40.579 That we hit this point of growth where it's not just simply like keep going, keep going, and do more and more and more, but it's about an actual intentional slowing to pay attention in order to improve our conscious contact with God. 00:12:41.219 --> 00:12:52.659 And the thing that we discover as we improve our conscious contact with God is that God is already moving and God is already working, and God is already doing things in our lives. 00:12:52.899 --> 00:12:56.339 And what we discover is that we don't have to go looking for God in special places. 00:12:56.419 --> 00:13:08.500 It's not like that there are holy places, places like church that we have to go to in order to connect with God, that like if you don't come here, that that God is only residing in this sort of space, we discover that that is not necessarily the case. 00:13:08.579 --> 00:13:24.339 And we discover that it's all it's not that you only hear from God when you are doing certain specific religious activities, but instead to improve our conscious contact with God means that we learn to recognize God's ongoing active presence in our everyday, ordinary moments. 00:13:24.819 -->

00:13:32.980 To improve our conscious contact with God is to learn to pay attention in all of the places of our lives. 00:13:33.620 --> 00:13:40.740 In fact, this is what happens in this Jewish story that's found in Genesis 28 that Sherry read for us earlier. 00:13:40.899 --> 00:13:44.659 It's a story that centers on a guy named Jacob. 00:13:44.980 --> 00:13:48.419 Here's how Genesis begins this story. 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:50.579 Chapter 28, verse 10. 00:13:51.059 --> 00:13:54.339 It says Jacob left Beersheba and he set out for Haran. 00:13:54.579 --> 00:13:59.779 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. 00:14:00.899 --> 00:14:03.299 When he reached a certain place. 00:14:37.620 --> 00:14:39.379 And so he's leaving Beersheba. 00:14:39.459 --> 00:14:41.139 But there's another place that's named. 00:14:41.299 --> 00:14:42.980 The other place that's named is Haran. 00:14:43.059 --> 00:14:44.419 That's where he's headed to. 00:14:50.339 --> 00:14:57.299 It's where God says to Abraham to leave his father's household, to go to the land that he'll show him, and that God will be with him. 00:14:57.779 --> 00:15:03.379 He tells Abraham that he'll bless him and that his descendants will be numerous. 00:15:03.939 --> 00:15:06.100 So Jacob knows about these places. 00:15:06.259 --> 00:15:12.500 He would have heard stories about his father and his grandfather and the encounters that they had with God in those places. 00:15:12.740 --> 00:15:16.100 Those places, Beersheba and Haran, those are holy places. 00:15:16.339 --> 00:15:18.100 They would be significant places. 00:15:18.259 --> 00:15:20.579 They would be memorable places. 00:15:20.819 --> 00:15:24.259 People would go looking for God in those places. 00:15:24.500 --> 00:15:31.459 In fact, later people would take pilgrimages where they would go specifically to those places in order to encounter God. 00:15:31.699 --> 00:15:35.379 Beersheba and Haran, that's where you go to meet God. 00:15:35.539 --> 00:15:38.500 That's where you go to experience God. 00:15:38.659 --> 00:15:40.579 That's where you go to hear from God. 00:15:40.740 --> 00:15:46.980 If you want to have conscious contact with God, you go to Haran or you go to Beersheba. 00:15:47.459 --> 00:15:51.299 So where Jacob ended up for the night, it doesn't really matter. 00:15:51.459 --> 00:15:53.139 It's not a significant place. 00:15:53.379 --> 00:15:55.059 It doesn't have a name. 00:15:55.299 --> 00:16:01.459 It's just an ordinary, nondescript place that happened to be between two places of significance. 00:16:01.860 --> 00:16:04.019 He's leaving a place of significance. 00:16:04.259 --> 00:16:06.419 He's headed to a place of significance. 00:16:06.659 --> 00:16:09.860 But where he stops, it's just a certain place. 00:16:10.419 --> 00:16:11.939 It's an ordinary place. 00:16:12.980 --> 00:16:18.019 But it's in that ordinary place that he begins to have a significant encounter. 00:16:18.899 --> 00:16:21.059

Here's how the story goes on. 00:16:21.459 --> 00:16:25.459 It says that taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and he lay down to sleep. 00:16:25.939 --> 00:16:36.019 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching up to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 00:16:36.659 --> 00:16:40.740 The stairway that he sees, it's connecting heaven and earth. 00:16:41.219 --> 00:16:49.059 That there's something that's happening in this nondescript ordinary place of no significance that actually seems to be connecting heaven and earth in some sort of way. 00:16:49.699 --> 00:16:56.819 It reminds me of a phrase that the ancient Celts from Ireland would have that they would use to describe places like this. 00:16:57.059 --> 00:17:00.899 Places where it seems like heaven and earth feel so connected. 00:17:01.139 --> 00:17:08.660 Where our experience of heaven and earth, where it seems like they've shrunk, that you can almost feel it. 00:17:09.460 --> 00:17:12.500 They would call those places thin spaces. 00:17:13.220 --> 00:17:19.299 Because it's like in this place, the distance between heaven and earth has gotten so thin. 00:17:21.140 --> 00:17:24.740 Maybe you've encountered spaces like that before. 00:17:25.539 --> 00:17:33.700 My guess is that we all have places that when we go to, it feels like a thin space to us where heaven and earth feel so close to each other. 00:17:34.339 --> 00:17:38.580 This last week my family was in Yosemite, and Yosemite is one of those places for me. 00:17:38.660 --> 00:17:42.900 I try to go every year because it's one of those thin spaces for me. 00:17:43.140 --> 00:17:52.660 That there's something about being there in the beauty and the grandeur of it all that does something in me that it's like, oh, this space between them has gotten so thin. 00:17:53.700 --> 00:17:59.140 Or the other day, I experienced it not in a particular place, but with particular people. 00:17:59.460 --> 00:18:08.019 Just a few weeks ago, and we were in downtown Long Beach, and we're walking to dinner, and my wife and I holding hands as we're walking, and in front of us is my son and my daughter. 00:18:08.259 --> 00:18:13.380 My son had just spent a year in Norway studying abroad, and he had come home just a few days earlier. 00:18:13.460 --> 00:18:14.740 So he hadn't been home in a year. 00:18:14.900 --> 00:18:19.300 My daughter had just finished up her first year of college, living away at college. 00:18:19.860 --> 00:18:24.900 And we're standing behind them and they're walking in front of us and they're just kind of chit-chatting and catching up. 00:18:25.060 --> 00:18:33.460 And I was had one of those moments where it was like, oh, how many more times will we get like this as they're growing up and kind of building their own lives? 00:18:33.620 --> 00:18:39.940 And I had this moment because of who I was with, where it felt like heaven and earth that they got so thin.

00:18:40.100 --> 00:18:41.620 It was a thin space. 00:18:42.500 --> 00:18:52.500 If you were to think of your own thin spaces as probably connected to a significant place or significant people, which is what's so fascinating about this story. 00:18:52.740 --> 00:18:56.740 Because remember where Jacob is, he's in an ordinary place. 00:18:57.380 --> 00:18:59.540 There is nothing special about it. 00:18:59.700 --> 00:19:03.460 It is not Yosemite, it's just an in-between place. 00:19:04.100 --> 00:19:14.740 But it's in that in-between place that he's having an encounter where heaven and earth connect with one another and it begins to create this thin space in this ordinary place. 00:19:15.940 --> 00:19:22.900 In fact, notice the movement of the angels that the author writes, they are ascending and descending. 00:19:23.940 --> 00:19:30.340 Some of the ancient Jewish commentators would talk about how interesting it is the order of what the angels are doing. 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:31.380 They would say this. 00:19:31.460 --> 00:19:36.980 They would say, shouldn't they be descending and ascending rather than ascending and descending? 00:19:37.140 --> 00:19:41.060 Shouldn't they be going down and then up rather than up and then down? 00:19:41.220 --> 00:19:47.300 Because if they are coming down out of heaven, they would be descending first, wouldn't they? 00:19:47.700 --> 00:20:01.220 So what some of the ancient Jewish commentators and then what some of the ancient rabbis began to say, they begin to conjecture, is perhaps the reason that they are ascending and then descending is because they're already here on earth. 00:20:01.460 --> 00:20:04.500 They're already all around Jacob. 00:20:04.660 --> 00:20:08.580 And so they have to ascend, they have to go up before they can descend. 00:20:08.900 --> 00:20:12.900 Because they're starting off not in heaven, they're starting off on earth. 00:20:13.140 --> 00:20:19.779 This would actually begin a Jewish tradition of saying that there are angels all around us if we would just pay attention. 00:20:20.100 --> 00:20:31.540 That idea would even get carried into the New Testament where the writer of Hebrews would say, make sure that you show hospitality to strangers, because you never know when you are entertaining angels. 00:20:32.740 --> 00:20:36.100 This idea that they are all around you all the time. 00:20:36.259 --> 00:20:47.220 And so Jacob lays down to sleep in this nondescript ordinary place, and it's in that place where he has this vision, this dream of a stairway connecting heaven and earth. 00:20:47.380 --> 00:20:52.900 This nondescript ordinary everyday place becomes a thin space. 00:20:53.940 --> 00:20:55.860 And then his dream continues on. 00:21:00.740 --> 00:21:09.540 And he said, I'm the Lord, the God of your father Abraham, the one who I encountered in Haran, and the God of Isaac, the one who I encountered in Bathsheba. 00:21:09.779 --> 00:21:13.380 I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 00:21:13.860 --> 00:21:19.620 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you'll spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. 00:21:19.860 --> 00:21:24.660 All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and through your offspring. 00:21:25.380 --> 00:21:30.340 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. 00:21:30.580 --> 00:21:34.340 I will not leave you until I have done what I've promised you. 00:21:34.900 --> 00:21:39.940 It's the same promise, at least in its essence, that's given to his father and his grandfather before him. 00:21:40.100 --> 00:21:43.140 I'll be with you and I'll increase your descendants. 00:21:44.019 --> 00:21:46.980 But remember, like Jacob's not in any place of significance. 00:21:47.140 --> 00:21:51.700 He's in a certain place that happens to be in between two places of significance. 00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:54.660 And in fact, he's not even doing anything of significance. 00:21:54.740 --> 00:21:56.820 He lies down to go to sleep, a very ordinary thing. 00:21:56.900 --> 00:22:11.860 In fact, even to show the ordinariness of what he's doing, the author of Genesis does this really interesting thing and has his pillow be a rock, that it's just like he grabs a rock, this thing that just happens to be around him, and he sleeps on that as if to say there is nothing special about this place. 00:22:12.019 --> 00:22:17.220 And it's while he's in an ordinary place doing an ordinary thing that he has this important encounter with God. 00:22:17.380 --> 00:22:20.900 And so notice Jacob's observations about what has happened. 00:22:21.060 --> 00:22:30.420 Jacob awoke from his sleep and he thought this surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it. 00:22:31.300 --> 00:22:33.380 Surely the Lord is in this place. 00:22:33.860 --> 00:22:37.220 And I was not aware of it. 00:22:37.460 --> 00:22:39.460 I wasn't paying attention. 00:22:39.700 --> 00:22:41.779 I was thinking about other things. 00:22:42.019 --> 00:22:44.500 I was thinking about the significant place I left. 00:22:44.660 --> 00:22:47.700 I was thinking about the significant place that I was headed to. 00:22:48.180 --> 00:22:50.820 I was not aware of it. 00:22:51.140 --> 00:22:57.380 And it goes on, it says that he was afraid and he said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God. 00:22:57.700 --> 00:23:00.340 This is the gate of heaven. 00:23:00.980 --> 00:23:13.860 This ordinary, nondescript place a place that he has this encounter with God where his eyes are open to realize God has been here all along, and I just simply didn't notice it. 00:23:14.100 --> 00:23:15.620 And so he gives it a name. 00:23:15.779 --> 00:23:28.180 And the name that he gives that place is Bethel, which just means the house of God, a nowhere place that had nothing special about it, that from then on becomes known as the house of God. 00:23:28.580 -->

00:23:36.820 Because what happened to Jacob is that he began to live awake to the reality that God was in that place and he hadn't been aware of it. 00:23:36.980 --> 00:23:40.019 And so he starts to pay attention. 00:23:40.580 --> 00:23:54.900 That place becomes special, not because there was anything special about that place in particular, but because it's where he began paying attention enough to become aware of God's presence, to be conscious of his contact with God. 00:23:54.980 --> 00:23:59.540 And this, this friends, this is what it looks like to improve our conscious contact with God. 00:23:59.620 --> 00:24:17.940 It is beginning to live more and more awake to the reality that in the ordinary, everyday places of our lives, and the things that feel normal, and the things that feel like they don't have any significance in and of themselves, and the things that we like will skip over because we're going to something significant. 00:24:18.100 --> 00:24:24.900 It's in those places that God is present in those places, whether we are aware of it or not. 00:24:25.140 --> 00:24:32.580 And to learn to live with conscious contact is all about becoming more and more and more aware of it. 00:24:32.900 --> 00:24:38.500 In our everyday and ordinary parts of our lives, it's about learning to pay attention. 00:24:39.620 --> 00:24:41.220 And this is where it all starts. 00:24:41.460 --> 00:24:50.180 It all starts with recognizing that each moment and every place is pregnant with possibilities of sacredness and holiness. 00:24:51.140 --> 00:25:02.900 Jacob says that he is in the house of God, not because he has gone somewhere, but that the place where he is at already has that recognition. 00:25:03.540 --> 00:25:11.460 The ordinary place becomes sacred to him because it's there that he was awakened to the ongoing, everyday presence of God. 00:25:13.300 --> 00:25:20.019 I wonder how many times we have been in these certain places and we've missed God's presence. 00:25:20.420 --> 00:25:26.019 We've missed God's presence because it wasn't the space where we expected to encounter God. 00:25:26.580 --> 00:25:30.019 And if we have eyes to see it, every place is pregnant with that potential. 00:25:30.180 --> 00:25:37.140 If we'll pay attention, every place we're in can become a thin space, even if it's just for a moment. 00:25:38.259 --> 00:25:44.100 And it's in those places where we then begin to be able to hear and respond to God. 00:25:44.500 --> 00:25:52.980 Or the way that step 11 puts it is that we pray for the knowledge of God's will and the power to carry it out, which is about hearing and responding. 00:25:54.820 --> 00:26:04.660 I'm not often much of a poetry guy, but uh there's this one stanza in a poem that has grabbed me by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 00:26:04.820 --> 00:26:06.100 She writes this. 00:26:06.259 --> 00:26:16.660 She writes, Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush a fire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes. 00:26:17.940 --> 00:26:19.779 Earth's crammed with heaven. 00:26:19.940 --> 00:26:22.180 It's all around us all of the time. 00:26:22.340 --> 00:26:28.259 Everyone is experiencing, everyone is experiencing the common bushes, everyone is experiencing those same things. 00:26:28.420 --> 00:26:32.420 Everyone is there, but not everyone will notice it. 00:26:32.580 --> 00:26:45.220 Everyone will be in the same places with the same moments, with the same opportunities, all the same things, but not everyone will be able to say, surely God was in this place, and I actually was aware of it. 00:26:45.620 --> 00:26:49.060 But that kind of awareness, that kind of awareness doesn't just happen. 00:26:49.300 --> 00:27:03.620 We have to train ourselves to see it, which is why I love the language of step 11 saying that we uh we wanted to improve our conscious contact, that it is a choice and it is training and it is work and it is growth. 00:27:03.700 --> 00:27:07.380 It doesn't just happen and it isn't always wonderful. 00:27:07.620 --> 00:27:09.220 It is improvement. 00:27:09.540 --> 00:27:13.460 It is a little bit better today than it was yesterday. 00:27:13.779 --> 00:27:17.779 We train ourselves to be the kinds of people who have the eyes to see it. 00:27:17.940 --> 00:27:28.580 Otherwise, we'll keep being the people who keep missing it, who keep not paying attention and keep missing the places where we want to grow and the things that God is calling us into. 00:27:29.140 --> 00:27:35.140 And so we learn to attune ourselves, to be awake to God's ongoing presence in our lives. 00:27:35.220 --> 00:27:41.380 We learn to train ourselves to become more aware, to improve our conscious contact with God. 00:27:41.860 --> 00:27:46.019 And this is what intentional prayer does. 00:27:46.500 --> 00:27:57.220 This isn't all of what prayer does, but one of the things that prayer does for us is it helps us to improve our conscious contact with God in the everyday and ordinary. 00:27:58.180 --> 00:28:00.900 So we create intentional space for that. 00:28:01.220 --> 00:28:09.620 When we create intentional space for that, uh, we begin to become more and more aware of God in those everyday, ordinary moments. 00:28:09.779 --> 00:28:12.580 So let's look again at what step 11 says. 00:28:13.220 --> 00:28:26.740 That we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. 00:28:27.940 --> 00:28:32.340 So here's here's what I want to do with the rest of my time with you here. 00:28:32.500 --> 00:28:35.620 Uh, I originally was gonna walk us through three different ways of praying. 00:28:35.700 --> 00:28:42.340 And I was gonna talk about like three different ways for us to understand uh uh how we can pray and how we can improve that conscious contact. 00:28:42.580 --> 00:28:49.540 Here's what I've discovered when we teach on prayer is that it becomes a

thing that we all understand and we all talk about, but we don't actually do. 00:28:49.620 --> 00:28:51.779 And prayer is meant to be experiential. 00:28:52.019 --> 00:28:54.340 It's meant to be something that we actually do and we live into. 00:28:54.420 --> 00:29:05.380 So, what I want to do instead is I want to talk to you briefly about an ancient kind of prayer that helps us to become more awakened to God's presence in our everyday, ordinary lives. 00:29:05.540 --> 00:29:10.500 And then we're just going to walk through it and experience it together if you're open to that. 00:29:10.740 --> 00:29:17.060 So, this ancient kind of prayer has been passed down through the centuries through from women and men who've been praying this way. 00:29:17.140 --> 00:29:19.940 It's called examine, E-X A M-E-N. 00:29:20.580 --> 00:29:30.580 And the prayer of examine is a way to help train ourselves to have the eyes to see and pay attention to the God who's all what God is already doing in our lives. 00:29:30.900 --> 00:29:35.300 So, what we do in that prayer is just it's very simple, actually. 00:29:35.380 --> 00:29:38.100 There's five steps to it, but it's very, very simple. 00:29:38.340 --> 00:29:42.340 What we do is we ask God's spirit to help us review our day. 00:29:42.500 --> 00:29:45.140 If we do it at the end of the day, we review the day that we've gone through. 00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:47.940 If we do it in the morning like we are today, we review yesterday. 00:29:48.180 --> 00:30:03.700 And as we go through our day in uh partnership with the spirit, we just recognize the spirit is going to, there's going to be some encounters, some experiences, some times that we're going to notice and that the spirit's inviting us to pay attention to. 00:30:03.940 --> 00:30:08.420 Maybe it's somewhere where the spirit was giving us an invitation and we missed it. 00:30:08.580 --> 00:30:12.019 Maybe it was somewhere where the spirit wants to give us some encouragement. 00:30:12.259 --> 00:30:19.779 Maybe it's somewhere where we did lean in and we notice God's presence and the spirit's like, like, keep doing that, keep leaning in there. 00:30:19.940 --> 00:30:21.940 Maybe there's a space for us to grow. 00:30:22.100 --> 00:30:25.779 Maybe there's somebody that we need to reconcile with or go back to. 00:30:25.940 --> 00:30:28.740 Maybe there's something that we need to ask for forgiveness for. 00:30:28.980 --> 00:30:33.540 But we're reviewing our day with the spirit and we're paying attention to the invitation of the spirit. 00:30:33.620 --> 00:30:35.940 That's essentially what the prayer of examine is. 00:30:36.180 --> 00:30:40.100 And so what I'd like to do is to just walk us through an experience of that. 00:30:40.259 --> 00:30:45.860 And if this is the kind of thing that resonates with you, I would encourage you to make it a practice, to give it a try. 00:30:46.100 --> 00:30:56.500 In fact, I would encourage you to give it a try for the rest of this month, for the

rest of August as a daily practice, and see if you don't start noticing things differently in your day. 00:30:56.660 --> 00:30:59.779 See if you don't start seeing your ordinary experiences differently. 00:30:59.940 --> 00:31:09.220 See if you don't find yourself more awake and more aware of God's ongoing presence in your life if you do this as a regular practice, if you try it for the rest of this month. 00:31:09.460 --> 00:31:23.380 So I want to invite you, if you're open to it, to kind of get comfortable in your seat, to put your feet flat on the floor, to get, you know, things out of your hands, papers, phones, whatever, put your hands comfortably in your lap. 00:31:23.460 --> 00:31:28.820 And if you're even open to it, you can rest them palms up as just kind of a posture of receiving. 00:31:29.779 --> 00:31:38.259 And if you go ahead and close your eyes, and would you first take a moment to invite the spirit to help you review your day? 00:31:38.660 --> 00:31:44.019 And just simply say something like this like God, I invite your spirit to lead me in reflection. 00:31:49.940 --> 00:31:55.460 And then the next thing that we do is we take a moment to give thanks for the day as a gift from God. 00:31:55.779 --> 00:32:06.259 We recognize that God's grace enables us to experience the day, and that regardless of what happened on that day, having the day itself is a gift for us. 00:32:06.420 --> 00:32:12.180 And so would you take a moment and give thanks to God for the gift of yesterday. 00:32:20.019 --> 00:32:22.980 And then next, we're going to review the day with the spirit. 00:32:23.220 --> 00:32:26.820 We're going to pay attention to encounters, activities, and conversations. 00:32:27.300 --> 00:32:31.460 We're going to recognize where God's Spirit was actively present in the midst of those. 00:32:32.340 --> 00:32:36.980 It's kind of like a replay of your day, but you're doing it along with the Spirit. 00:32:37.220 --> 00:32:43.300 And I want you to pay attention to when one of those encounters, one of those activities, one of those experiences, when it stands out to you. 00:32:43.540 --> 00:32:50.740 That for whatever reason, you don't even need to know why it stands out to you, but something about it stands out to you, you pause and you spend time there. 00:32:51.380 --> 00:32:52.660 And you just invite the Spirit. 00:32:52.740 --> 00:32:54.660 What is it that you want to reveal to me here? 00:32:55.380 --> 00:32:56.420 Ask for insight. 00:32:56.580 --> 00:32:58.340 Is there something I need to learn or change? 00:32:58.500 --> 00:33:01.620 Is there something that I need to give thanks for or appreciate? 00:33:01.860 --> 00:33:04.980 Is there an aspect of my character I need to lean into more? 00:33:05.140 --> 00:33:10.740 Or is there something you were calling me to that I missed, or something that you're calling me to that I that I stepped into? 00:33:11.940 --> 00:33:19.060 Just take a few moments and start reviewing your day and see if there's a space that begins to grab a hold of you. 00:34:08.179 --> 00:34:12.739 But then finally, what we do is we pray expectantly for what's next. 00:34:13.059 --> 00:34:15.619 It's in the evening, we pray expectantly for tomorrow. 00:34:15.779 --> 00:34:19.219 But since it's the morning, we pray expectantly for the rest of today. 00:34:19.460 --> 00:34:21.300 And so you can just simply do something like this. 00:34:21.460 --> 00:34:26.259 You can ask God to help you be aware of God's presence as you go through the rest of your day. 00:34:26.500 --> 00:34:35.460 Ask God to help you live the rest of your day as a kind of person who God has called you to be that you would have the strength and courage to do what God is calling you to do. 00:34:46.339 --> 00:34:49.059 So amen and amen. 00:34:49.940 --> 00:34:59.779 And so, friends, may you experience living awake to the God who is around you in the everyday, ordinary moments. 00:35:00.420 --> 00:35:11.139 May you experience the God who is calling you more and more to God's own self and who's calling you to live out of the abundance of God in your life. 00:35:11.379 --> 00:35:13.460 Grace and peace to you, friends.