WEBVTT 00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:04.160 So this morning I want to speak more directly to our ladies. 00:00:04.959 --> 00:00:06.480 So guys, you're along for the ride. 00:00:06.559 --> 00:00:09.119 I think you'll still get something out of it. 00:00:09.839 --> 00:00:12.240 Some of you are moms, uh, some of you are not. 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.080 I love what Christy said at the beginning. 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:16.239 Some of some for some of you this is a sad day. 00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:21.039 Maybe your mom has passed on, or for some of you it's a sad day because maybe you just didn't have a good mom. 00:00:21.839 --> 00:00:28.160 Some of you want to be moms, and it hasn't worked out yet, and that's incredibly frustrating and grieving. 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:35.840 Some of you are moms, and you're wondering what you were thinking at times, um, how that happened. 00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:39.200 Well, actually, I know how it happened, but you're wondering how you are thinking. 00:00:39.359 --> 00:00:52.000 And I just want to begin by saying, um, you know, like when you're scrolling through an Instagram feed or you see a picture of yourself or you see a reflection of yourself in the mirror, um, that's not your whole story. 00:00:52.159 --> 00:00:58.079 And that's what I want to say this morning is that your physical self is not your whole story. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:07.280 Your story is not what that selfie projects, or your address size, or your job title, or the job you don't have because you're at home with your kids. 00:01:07.359 --> 00:01:11.599 Um, your whole story is not how beautiful your home is or how beautiful your kids are. 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:17.359 Your whole story is not how much feedback you get on a social media post that you put up. 00:01:17.519 --> 00:01:26.239 Your whole story is not how well you serve this church, how much money you give, or whether you're here every week or you're not, or uh, or how well you serve your neighbor. 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:28.480 That's not your whole story. 00:01:28.799 --> 00:01:31.599 Your whole story is not what the culture says you should be. 00:01:31.760 --> 00:01:33.359 That's not your whole story. 00:01:33.599 --> 00:01:34.640 And you know this. 00:01:34.879 --> 00:01:37.200 You know this deep in your soul. 00:01:37.439 --> 00:01:38.239 You know this. 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:47.280 You know that the core of your inner self must be centered on something more than those things before you ever come to those things. 00:01:47.599 --> 00:01:56.000 So now I want to talk a little bit about the ancient world that Jesus was in, that the scriptures were in, that we read about. 00:01:56.079 --> 00:02:02.400 And so in the ancient world, in the in the Greco-Roman world, the value of a woman was very little. 00:02:02.799 --> 00:02:04.879 Uh it was incredibly demeaning. 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:08.080 I mean, women were seen as property, not as people. 00:02:08.159 --> 00:02:16.719 Uh, Roman law stated that all sons had to be raised, but only the only the firstborn of the girls. 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:26.000 And so what this meant is is there, I think there's like 140 uh men for a hundred women. 00:02:26.159 --> 00:02:35.520 A lot of times there's more men than women because because even discarding of baby girls would occur because they weren't a boy, wasn't a boy. 00:02:36.639 --> 00:02:37.280 This happened. 00:02:37.360 --> 00:02:38.479 I mean, this this was normal. 00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:48.240 In ancient Athens, girls had little or no education, uh, and women were classified as a child, even in adulthood, they're classified as a child because they were they were property. 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:49.840 Women were property. 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:55.439 It's just the cultural value that was put on women. 00:02:55.680 --> 00:02:57.840 Almost nothing, almost nothing. 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:11.759 And Jesus shows up into this horribly demeaning world, and he speaks what should be basic value to any human being, but is unbelievably radical at the time. 00:03:11.919 --> 00:03:33.199 And so I want to look at this in two different places this week that I ran into this week as I was studying and listening to sermons and reading, and I ran into these different places, two different stories where we see Jesus speaking quite radically, and maybe perhaps you've heard these stories, you just read right through it, you just read right by how radical Jesus' words would have been to esteeming a woman at that time. 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:39.919 And so the first one's in Luke chapter 10, and this is the story where Jesus enters a village, and there's two sisters there's Mary and Martha. 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:44.800 Maybe you've heard the story, and he comes into their home, and Martha gets busy. 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:48.560 She's busy, she's doing what the culture says she should do. 00:03:48.719 --> 00:03:52.000 She's prepping the meal, she's making sure everything's okay. 00:03:52.159 --> 00:03:54.800 And Mary sits at Jesus' feet. 00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:57.120 Here's what it says jumping in, verse 39. 00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:01.759 And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. 00:04:01.919 --> 00:04:04.560 But Martha was distracted with much serving. 00:04:04.639 --> 00:04:07.520 Now that's usually where we usually teaching comes out of that. 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:11.199 You know, it's better to rest, don't always be distracted, always be busy. 00:04:11.360 --> 00:04:12.879 Good teaching, good lesson. 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:14.159 And she went up to him. 00:04:14.319 --> 00:04:16.800 So Martha goes up to him because she's been busy and there. 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:18.319 Mary is just sitting at Jesus' feet. 00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:19.279 It'd be a little frustrating. 00:04:19.519 --> 00:04:21.600 Your sister doing this, so that's even more irritating. 00:04:21.839 --> 00:04:25.360 Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:27.120 Tell her then to help me. 00:04:27.279 --> 00:04:34.000 But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. 00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:39.360 Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. 00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:45.600 Now, what's radical in this teaching is that Jesus is esteeming what Mary's doing. 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:49.920 And there's this phrase, there's this phrase in here to sit at someone's feet. 00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:57.040 And this was a phrase used when a man as a disciple sat at a rabbi's feet to learn. 00:04:57.199 --> 00:04:59.920 This was a position that a man would take. 00:05:00.079 --> 00:05:02.399 This was not a position that a woman would take. 00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:12.480 And for Jesus to esteem what Mary was doing, he was esteeming Mary, who was breaking every conceivable cultural rule. 00:05:12.639 --> 00:05:15.120 He's saying she's doing what's right. 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:25.519 I mean, still today we're not, we're not even as radical as Jesus was in this moment of breaking the cultural rule of what a woman should be. 00:05:26.399 --> 00:05:32.160 He was daring to see a woman as absolutely equal. 00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:33.839 Here's another story. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:50.480 It is actually the longest recorded conversation we have with Jesus, with somebody else, and it was with a woman, which would have been insane at the time for him to do that as a rabbi, and then to record it, and then for uh for people to read this, this would have been mind-blowing. 00:05:50.639 --> 00:06:02.959 For Jesus to have been conversing with this lady for this long, and then somebody thought it was a good idea to record this and document this, all of that would have been culturally just out of the box. 00:06:03.199 --> 00:06:09.839 And here he is, Jesus, and he's talking to the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4, and he's talking to her at the well. 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.680 A lot of you know the story, and so he comes to the well, it's the middle of the day. 00:06:13.759 --> 00:06:23.519 So what this means is it means that this lady has something to hide because the women would have drawn water early in the day, but no, she's there in the middle of the day, which means she was avoiding all the other women. 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:29.759 And once you get into her life a little bit, you can see that she's probably avoiding them out of shame. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:33.680 She's ashamed for the way that her life has turned out. 00:06:34.160 --> 00:06:39.759 So she's avoiding them, but Jesus comes and he's ready to talk to her and to esteem her. 00:06:40.079 --> 00:06:50.240 And this is where in John 4, 13, Kristen read it, Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again. 00:06:50.399 --> 00:06:52.399 So he's talking a lot, he's metaphorical here. 00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:57.279 The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. 00:06:57.439 --> 00:07:02.079 And the woman said, Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty, or have to come here to draw water. 00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:04.000 So she's not picking up on it right away. 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:06.720 Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here. 00:07:06.959 --> 00:07:08.879 So now he's getting into her life a little bit. 00:07:09.120 --> 00:07:11.920 The woman answered him, I have no husband. 00:07:12.079 --> 00:07:19.199 Jesus said to her, You're right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:20.879 What you have said is true. 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.279 So he says, You've had five husbands. 00:07:23.519 --> 00:07:29.279 Maybe there's some commentary on her loose sexuality, but we don't know what the husband's situation was. 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:30.399 We don't get the background. 00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:32.079 We don't get the background of what those husbands were like. 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:34.879 We don't get the background, maybe some of the husbands died, maybe there's doors. 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:40.639 We we don't get the background of all of that, but we do know is there's some shame attached to all of that. 00:07:41.439 --> 00:07:45.600 We do know that life's been incredibly hard for this woman. 00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:57.199 What we also know is that back then a man could bring in a poor woman into his house as a slave and as a concubine, but not as his wife. 00:07:57.600 --> 00:08:01.360 And that this would be a means of survival for some women. 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:06.079 And maybe that's what this lady's doing. 00:08:07.839 --> 00:08:11.439 I mean, maybe this is her only means of survival. 00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:14.720 John Orberg, pastor and author, he tells it this way. 00:08:14.800 --> 00:08:17.360 And Jesus says, I know you. 00:08:17.759 --> 00:08:19.279 I know you are a woman. 00:08:19.439 --> 00:08:20.959 I know you are a Samaritan. 00:08:21.360 --> 00:08:22.800 I know you've been rejected. 00:08:23.040 --> 00:08:24.240 I know you're poor. 00:08:24.480 --> 00:08:26.240 I know your life is hard. 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:29.439 I know people don't give you much honor or glory. 00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:32.240 I know your story, and I care about you. 00:08:32.559 --> 00:08:39.120 And this Jewish rabbi sits at a well and engages in a deep, personal, serious theological conversation. 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:45.759 He takes her mind seriously, he takes her soul seriously, he takes her life seriously, he takes her identity seriously. 00:08:45.919 --> 00:08:49.679 Is there any wonder she couldn't stop talking about this man? 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:52.320 He is doing something real subversive. 00:08:52.480 --> 00:09:01.200 He is treating this poor, rejected Samaritan woman like somebody who has an identity on her own. 00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:06.320 And see, that was radical at the time. 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:31.039 And I heard that this week in a sermon, and I said, that's what I want to talk about this morning, because what is easy for us to do, what's easy for us to do is to take the piggy bank, and it says approval and worthy, to take the piggy bank of the inner self, and just get in the cycle of making deposits by our work. 00:09:31.279 --> 00:09:52.159 You know, we're gonna overcome our shame or our inadequacy by our work, by another good work, you know, our home to be more beautiful, for our reputation to be better, for our children to be better, and it's just gonna be work after work after work, and then I'll feel approved, or then I'll feel worthy. 00:09:52.240 --> 00:09:56.240 And what nobody tells you is that there's no end to it. 00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:57.759 There's no end to it. 00:09:57.840 --> 00:10:01.519 You'll never fill that piggy bank of the inner self. 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:05.919 But we just keep doing it over and over and over again. 00:10:06.159 --> 00:10:13.039 By the way, my seven-year-old was very happy to find out that I was adding money to her piggy bank when I borrowed it. 00:10:14.639 --> 00:10:15.519 A couple points. 00:10:15.679 --> 00:10:19.440 The first one is this is you are more than the deposits you make. 00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:21.840 You are more than the deposits you make. 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:25.600 A couple of quotes, a bit of reading, you hang with me, it's it's in your handout. 00:10:25.679 --> 00:10:27.440 These are these are these are pretty awesome. 00:10:27.679 --> 00:10:31.360 I actually looked at trying to cut them down a little bit, and I said, I don't want to cut them down, they're too good. 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:32.559 So we printed them out. 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:40.240 Uh the first one is uh it's a Washington Post columnist of Bridget Schulte, and she wrote this book, Overwhelmed, Work, Love, and Play. 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:42.639 And it's about role overload. 00:10:42.879 --> 00:10:44.000 Anybody? 00:10:44.399 --> 00:10:48.639 Any moms want to say, yeah, any ladies know about role overload? 00:10:48.799 --> 00:10:50.639 Here's what this lady says. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.240 This was in an interview she gave about her book. 00:10:54.399 --> 00:11:00.879 You've you're expected to be incredibly creative, to give 110% and take this ball and run with it and create something new. 00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:04.960 Nobody's really working a nine to five punch the clock job anymore. 00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:15.200 And if you are, you're not gonna, you're not going to last very long because there's competition and there's globalism and there's this constant feeling that the lawnmower is going to take your head off at any moment. 00:11:15.279 --> 00:11:19.039 So you run as fast as you can to stay relevant and up to date on technology. 00:11:19.279 --> 00:11:25.919 There are a lot of pressures at work, of course, but then there's email, you just say that word and people's hearts start beating faster. 00:11:26.159 --> 00:11:28.879 Just trying to keep up with email can be a full-time job. 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:31.200 So there are all these pressures at work. 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:43.600 And then at home, there are pressures that I certainly experienced as a middle class mother to be supermother, to stage birthday parties, I staged D-Day for one child, I turned the backyard into Mount Olympus for another. 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:53.919 You know, whatever happened to pin the tail on the donkey like I had or the lopsided angel food cake with a few neighborhood friends, why is that not enough? 00:11:54.639 --> 00:11:57.679 Why did I feel like that wasn't good enough? 00:11:57.919 --> 00:12:02.799 Of course, part of that problem is the guilt associated with working mothers. 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:09.759 The cultural expectation that if you're a working mother, you're somehow not as good a mother. 00:12:09.919 --> 00:12:13.919 So you're constantly looking for ways to try to prove that you are, to make it up. 00:12:14.080 --> 00:12:19.919 But in a weird way, you're throwing parties for other people, not necessarily doing it for your kids. 00:12:20.080 --> 00:12:21.919 So motherhood standards are higher. 00:12:22.159 --> 00:12:27.519 Fatherhood standards are also higher, and partly because men want to be more involved than perhaps their fathers were. 00:12:27.679 --> 00:12:29.039 They don't want to be distant. 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:34.799 They want to know what to get when their son says, Surprise me for Christmas. 00:12:34.960 --> 00:12:38.960 Whereas a generation ago, fathers would have had no idea, oh, talk to your mother. 00:12:39.120 --> 00:12:51.919 So the roles of men are changing as well, and along with that fear of missing out feeling because of Facebook and technology, for anyone and everyone, there are so many options out there. 00:12:52.080 --> 00:13:02.240 It creates this harried restlessness, the kind that leaves you saying, Oh my goodness, I better be doing something interesting and productive, and I better be constantly improving myself. 00:13:02.399 --> 00:13:07.039 So lots of people feel this role overload. 00:13:10.879 --> 00:13:24.399 And I think that comments on how we then easily begin to live out of guilt and out of fear for these roles in our lives rather than out of a more secure, loving, uh rested place. 00:13:25.840 --> 00:13:27.360 Here's the second quote. 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:30.960 Ruth Whitman in New York Times did a series on anxiety. 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:33.759 She wrote an article called Guilt Trip. 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:38.399 Like many women, I have the capacity to feel guilty about almost anything. 00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:49.840 There's the basic glossy magazine guilt package, the fetishly complicated skincare regimens and man-pleasing instructions, the bikini bodies and never-to-be-cooked recipes that give rise to them. 00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:53.679 These provide the background hum of failure. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:55.600 The specifics cut deeper. 00:13:55.759 --> 00:14:01.600 I feel guilty that I almost certainly hurt my mother-in-law's feelings when I said that thing on the phone to her the other day. 00:14:01.759 --> 00:14:07.039 I feel guilty that it has taken me three weeks to respond to my best friend's supportive and lovely email. 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:16.799 I feel guilty that I throw my recycling in the regular trash when no one is looking, and that one of my son's earliest two-word speech combinations was mommy's wine. 00:14:17.039 --> 00:14:28.240 Most of all, I feel a crippling self-loathing that I am wasting time worrying about any of this self-indulgent nonsense when right now there are children starving in Africa. 00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:33.039 Such is the awe-inspiring flexibility of the guilt muscle. 00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:38.720 It can be activated by any given action and also its exact opposite. 00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:53.600 Hence, I can spend a week at home with my son feeling guilty that I am neglecting work and haven't written a single word, that I am letting down my editors and myself and failing to make use of the education my parents worked so hard to provide. 00:14:53.759 --> 00:15:04.320 Yet now, as I type, the guilt bubbles up for the fact that my son is languishing in daycare while I am busy not appreciating the minute-by-minute wanderama that is his precious early childhood. 00:15:04.559 --> 00:15:06.240 Not that it will work. 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:09.919 Guilt is usually pretty ineffective overall. 00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:17.919 Despite its lofty claims to stand in the way of wrongdoing, guilt is really just closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. 00:15:18.159 --> 00:15:25.440 It also allows us the luxury of hedging our moral bets instead of making a choice and standing by the consequences. 00:15:25.600 --> 00:15:30.879 We behave as we please and then cash in our moral credits by feeling bad about it afterward. 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:49.919 So if you've been around here, this is why we hammer home over and over and over and over again that the weight of law and standards is good for you, gives guide for you and boundaries for you for what your life should be and could be, and yet it crushes us because we never live up to it. 00:15:50.080 --> 00:15:55.519 So the only place of true motivation for life and relief for life is grace. 00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:57.279 That's it. 00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:00.399 So our second point. 00:16:01.519 --> 00:16:07.519 You have a core truth beyond your roles and beyond your results. 00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:25.039 So if we go back to the piggy bank, and we've been in this process, just making deposits, making deposits over and over and over again to become approved, to think we're gonna have a all of a sudden have a sense of approval based on our work. 00:16:25.200 --> 00:16:33.679 And the entire time, the reality is that we are already approved in God's grace. 00:16:33.919 --> 00:16:40.320 We're already justified, we're already forgiven and relieved of that guilt, of that shame. 00:16:40.639 --> 00:16:43.519 We're already His beloved. 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:50.320 So the path forward is not one of living by our work to become approved. 00:16:50.480 --> 00:16:52.240 You don't have to give your life to that. 00:16:52.480 --> 00:17:01.360 The path forward is to remember and rest in the approval you already have by God because of his work and his grace toward you. 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:03.279 And that's not abstract. 00:17:03.600 --> 00:17:06.160 That's not just that's not just a philosophical notion. 00:17:06.240 --> 00:17:11.279 We know it concretely in the incarnation, in the person of Jesus. 00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:14.640 We know this in God's humility and love to you. 00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:19.599 Even when you don't act like that beloved approved child. 00:17:20.079 --> 00:17:26.640 Even when you don't think like that beloved approved child, he is still moving toward you. 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:32.720 See, Jesus says to you, I know you. 00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:34.880 I know you are poor. 00:17:35.119 --> 00:17:39.839 I know you are broken, I know you're not a perfect lady, I know you're not a perfect mom. 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:41.680 And I still love you. 00:17:42.079 --> 00:18:06.880 See, anything of sin and shame, whether it be behavioral or just that that position of trying to redeem yourself by your own work and your own pride, even that, all of that was put on God's humility and love and sacrifice that we know in the cross that he might transfer to you his perfect righteousness, that you are secure. 00:18:07.599 --> 00:18:08.880 You're secure with him. 00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:12.240 You're at rest, you're forgiven. 00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:16.000 See, this is about a deep, secure inner identity. 00:18:16.079 --> 00:18:28.319 And it comes not by circling around this deep truth that you are God's beloved child, it comes by resting your whole self there, by shifting faith from your work to his work. 00:18:29.279 --> 00:18:30.480 So that's point number two. 00:18:30.559 --> 00:18:35.200 You have a core truth beyond your roles and beyond your results. 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:38.079 And so that's speaking to the fact that there's kind of three things here. 00:18:38.160 --> 00:18:43.119 You kind of have identity, and then you have roles, and then you have results. 00:18:43.279 --> 00:18:50.960 Now, often we end up living in roles or results, and we like that because there's a lot of control there. 00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:56.079 There's a lot of we can get a sense of control, we can get a sense of pride. 00:18:56.720 --> 00:19:11.119 And even in the reaction, we can we can belittle ourselves, which is you know, sort of still the selfishness, the self-orientation, versus living in an identity given to you that is secure from outside of you and spoken to you. 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:19.200 And we all live somewhere, and the reality is we fluctuate some, we find ourselves living under some results, and then we go, what am I doing? 00:19:19.279 --> 00:19:32.319 This is so pointless, or you're living in your roles and you're like, oh, I'm exhausted, you know, and you have to keep finding and pushing yourself and coming back to the rest, found an identity given to you. 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:33.279 Here's what all this means. 00:19:33.440 --> 00:19:34.400 Here's what all this means. 00:19:34.640 --> 00:19:40.400 If you don't have children, if you don't have children, you have not missed out on a whole identity. 00:19:41.039 --> 00:19:42.240 You haven't. 00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:48.480 And if you have children, you are not bound by who they become. 00:19:48.880 --> 00:20:00.079 Because in both cases, your whole story is not based on your role or your results, but on what rather what God deems you. 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:12.400 So, ladies, the great thing here is that what you have to offer to your family or your friends or your spouse or your neighbors, the great thing here is what you have to offer is not your perfection. 00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:17.359 You don't have to curate that, you don't have to manage that. 00:20:17.680 --> 00:20:18.799 You can be at rest. 00:20:19.279 --> 00:20:23.200 The great thing here is the thing that you have to offer is your presence. 00:20:23.839 --> 00:20:33.119 And that is imperfection, that is vulnerability, but it is the reality that in that you are perfectly loved. 00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:35.200 It's what Jesus is saying to you. 00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:46.079 I know you, I know you are a woman, I know you've been rejected, I know you are poor, I know your life is hard, I know people don't give you much honor or glory. 00:20:46.319 --> 00:20:49.920 I know your story and I care about you. 00:20:50.079 --> 00:20:57.039 So, my brothers and sisters, may that be good news and great rest in a world of high demand. 00:20:57.200 --> 00:20:58.559 Let's pray together. 00:21:00.319 --> 00:21:10.160 God, thank you that while we are not perfect, you love us perfectly, and we do not have to live out of guilt or shame. 00:21:10.880 --> 00:21:23.359 Would you help us in greater ways to live out of the places of deep, secure identity that we are your children, secured in your work for us. 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:31.519 Even when we don't have the feelings of great security, would we still be at rest? 00:21:34.799 --> 00:21:38.480 God, would you help us to trust even when we don't trust? 00:21:38.720 --> 00:21:41.039 Would you give us joy when we don't have joy? 00:21:42.880 --> 00:21:51.359 God, I pray for these ladies in this room when they find their great story and the identity that you give to them. 00:21:51.680 --> 00:21:53.519 We pray all things in Christ's name. 00:21:53.680 --> 00:21:54.319 Amen.