The Real Reason You Can't Slow Down

based on that song by Take 6. I need a little help for this, though. So would you join me in welcoming to the stage my friend Regis Jones, AKA K-Drama, Grammy nominated hip-hop artist from our very own 513. Christian hip-hop artist. And while he's setting up, I'm going to tell you that we've actually had a secret mission in this series. I don't know if you've caught it or not. But we keep showing that verse, right? Matthew 11:28-30. That's because secretly, we hope that you would accidentally or maybe purposefully memorize these words of Jesus when he says: Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. And Jesus says you will find rest. Everybody say, rest, for your souls. He says for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So we're going to have some fun with this. First of all, Regis, tell people a little bit about yourself. All right, so I go by K-Drama.

I've been doing Christian rap since I was in high school. I was one of those acne filled kids as well, you know what I'm saying? Ninth grade is when I started and, um, since then I've also been doing music production. I produced a lot of my songs, um, and full circle moment, now I teach music production as an elective at Aiken High School. So I've been doing that for a few years. Yeah. - I know when I was in high school, none of my teachers were this cool dressed. So I'm just saying. Just a blessing that you are investing in the next generation in that way. And speaking of investment, this is quite an investment. You got quite the machine here. In fact, we got a camera. I want you guys to get a look at this. What is this thing? What is this? - Okay. So this is called the MPC which stands for Music Production Center. - Okay. Okay. - It looks like your traditional drum machine, but you could do more with this. You can hook up keyboards and play loops in here, or you could sample your very own sound. So like I got sounds, traditional sounds that everyone's probably heard like this, like, you know, your standard DJ sound.

I even went back on YouTube, got one of your classic sermons and, um, I sampled that in here where you say something like this, like: Can I get an amen, somebody? - I like that. Yeah. No, give me that Barry White voice, I like that. - Let's see if we could do that. Hold on, hold on, hold on. - Can I, can I, can I get an amen somebody? Can I get an amen, somesomebody? Can I get an amen, somebody? - You can get lower but, yeah. Yeah. - I like that. Okay. So but you were saying like, man, great production, Dr. Dre, Kanye, Lil Jon. - Usher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was produced all on this thing. Yeah, for sure. - All right. So we got the right guy. Can you agree? We got the right guy. We got the right guy. All right. So we want to just like, you know, I was telling you, this came back to me because I was listening to some lo fi and lo fi is like old school hip-hop kind of smoothed out. You know, great study music. And so I kind of love listening to that. I read to that, all that kind of thing. So, if you were going to do a lo fi scripture memorization tool for our church based on Take 6 and Matthew 11:28-30, where would you start us out?

Wow. Okay. All right. So, so we're gonna remix it. - Gotta remix it. - We're gonna remix. Let me get my my fingers straight first. All right, let's see. Let's see what we're working. So there's 16 pads and they each have something different. So let me, okay. [music] - Okay. Okay. - [music] Come on to me. Come up to me. - Yeah. Put your hands together, y'all. Oh, I love it, I love it. - Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay. That's not Lo-Fi. - That's not Lo-Fi. That's actually club fi. - Yeah, that's like club Fi. You know, that's like, if you like that kind of music, you can, you can look me up on Spotify. You'll hear stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? Shameless plug. You know what I mean? Okay, let's lo-fi. Let's focus. Focus. All right.

[music] Can I get an Amen, somebody. - Oh, here we go. - Yeah, that's Lo-Fi. - That's Lo-Fi. I can study to that. I can study to that. Yep. [music] - Now where would you take it from here? Where did you take it from here? Oh yes. Yes. Keep that going. We're gonna join you. Sing this with me, y'all. [music] - Come on, sing it with me. - You gotta be a part of the band. Come on.

I can't hear you burn. [music continues] - Can I get an amen, somebody? Can I get an amen, somebody? - Come on, let's give it up for Regis Jones, K-drama. That was so fun. That was so fun. And if you want a fully mixed version of that, you produced that for us just as a blessing to everybody. You can tap that sticker on the front of your seat and you can get access to that. So if you want to study that, read to that, use that to memorize this verse, you can thank Regis Jones for that. Thank you man. Thank you. Was that fun? That was fun. Right? That was fun. Ask all your other Christian friends if they got to hear a NPC make music in church today.

I promise you, I know the answer to that question. Awesome. But this is -- I wanted to do that because all we're trying to do in this series, all we've been trying to do, is just sit in this soul satisfying promise of Jesus. Just sit and let these words sink deep, deep, deep into our spirit. We're going to do more of that today. That's all we're doing today. So the first week of this series, Kyle talked about the fact that one of the things that gets revealed here is the heart of Jesus, that if Jesus were going to define his heart, he would say it's gentle and lowly. And he talked about what does it mean to receive that? And then we went into the next week where Alli said we've got two operating systems working in our minds and in our lives, the operating system of control. But we can shift to the operating system of trust. And when we do, there's something good for us. And then last weekend, Brian Tome was back. Our senior pastor was back, had that backpack on. And he said, the issue is not that we don't have any load to carry, but what Jesus wants to do is give us a custom fitted load, a load that is easy and light.

And today I just want to build on that with this big idea, which is you can reduce anxiety in your life and who doesn't have a little anxiety in their life? You can reduce anxiety in your life when you find rest for your souls in Jesus. That's where we're going today. Let me pray as we get started. God, thank you for the truth of your promise. Thank you, Jesus, that these aren't just aspirational words, but they're invitational words. You invite us into a relationship with you where we find rest for our souls, in the midst of our real lives, in the midst of our crazy lives, in the midst of hard things, we can still have rest for our souls. I pray today that you would do what only Your Holy Spirit does, which is take my simple words and through them, translate them to life. May they, as imperfect as they're going to be, may you make them perfect for what every person in here needs to hear today. And I believe that you'll do that. And I pray that in your name, Amen. So last week we talked about this idea again of a yoke. And I don't always title my messages, but this one has a title and it is A Better Yoke.

I want you guys to say this, say a better yoke. This idea of a yoke is something that first century listeners to Jesus completely understood immediately, because they were used to seeing this image of two oxen, in this case, yoked together as a farming equipment that would help two animals kind of walk at the same pace. And what they would often do as farmers is they would take a younger, maybe a more anxious animal, and they would yoke them together with a more seasoned, a more calm, a more mature animal. And so what Jesus is saying in this invitation in Matthew 11:28 is, if you would link your life to me, you will find rest for your souls. That's the idea that he's going to. And it has everything to do with how our anxiety can lower. Am I the only person who has these moments when you're talking to someone you care about, maybe a loved one, maybe a roommate, maybe a friend, maybe a parent, and you're like doing the thing. You're like, uh-huh, uh-huh as they're talking to you, but your mind and your body is somewhere else.

My wife, my dear wife, Maria is a victim of this regularly. When I come home from work, she's got words, she's got sometimes a lot of words. And so we're talking and she's kind of maybe telling me about her day, or she's telling me about something with the kids or something she's thinking about. And I'm like, doing the thing, uh-huh. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But I am thinking about the email that I didn't finish at work. I'm thinking about the conflict conversation that's coming up tomorrow. I'm thinking about the fact that I gotta preach this weekend, and I need more time to get this message finalized. Right? And so I'm looking and nodding, but I'm not really there. And it's easy for me to say, oh, it's because I'm so distracted. Yeah. But I wonder if sometimes our distraction is really anxiety in disguise. That underneath the distraction, underneath the busyness, there's actually anxiety that the data would bear out, that we have anxious hearts. I want to share with you some information that as I share it, I just want to have empathy for people who, like me, have realized like, man, there's a level of this anxiety that is medical and I need to be on medicine for it.

So please don't hear me saying today, if you just have enough faith, you won't have to take anxiety and depression medications. That is not what I'm saying. What I am saying is my own experience has been there is an invitation to more. There is something about my anxiety that isn't about the medical reality, and it's about a spiritual reality. That's what I want to get into today. So hear my heart on that as we look at information like this. So Pew did a study and they looked at millennials and Gen Z's and asked them to rate their mental health. And I want you to see this because this is the most recent, 47% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials rate their mental health as poor. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of our young people, a lot of people in some of our sites, a lot of our students would be in this category of rating their mental health as poor, even if they're showing up at church smiling. And it's not just young people, lest we think it's just a young person's problem. This is another data point, and I like this one because it's longitudinal. They asked the same question of all Americans, old, young, and what they found is from 2001 to 2019, the number was exactly the same, 43% rated their mental health as excellent.

The number never changed. We had a lot of stuff that happened in those years, right? We had wars in those years. We had challenges as a country in those years. So you could say, oh, it's the situation. No, no, no, it might not be just the situation. Now in 2020, it drops, understandably so, there was a little thing you might remember called COVID. That makes sense. But what I want you to see is, post COVID, we are not recovering back to 43%, but in fact, the percentage of Americans who rate their mental health as excellent is going down, down, down. We have anxious hearts. We have anxious hearts. And if we're honest, many of us in here, even if we identify as followers of Jesus, have anxious hearts. There's an old saying that says anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow., it just empties today of its strength. And maybe you feel that sapping of strength because of anxiety. Now I'm using that word. I need to define it. And here's the definition I'm working with today. Anxiety is persistent worry about things we can't control.

Can anybody identify with that definition of anxiety? That's what I'm talking about today. And there's good news if you do, which is that Jesus offers you and I a rescue. What is his rescue? It's a better yoke. But we gotta deal with the reality of our anxiety. See, I used to think my anxiety was a speed problem. If I would just slow down, you know, if I would just take time on a Saturday to go and sit in a field with my journal and my Bible and pray that I would solve all my problems. And guess what? It's really good to do that. And I connect with God that way powerfully. And yet, there's a deeper question we've got to ask, which is: why am I hurrying in the first place? Because let's be clear, there's some things in life you and I do not hurry around. No one hurries to get back to the DMV. You don't have a thing ticking down the days for when you gotta go back to the DMV. None of us are hurrying around that. How about this one?

None of us are hurrying to pay our taxes. Now, hopefully you pay them on time or file an extension, but you ain't hurrying to pay somebody else some more funds. We're just not doing that. We're not hurrying. Nobody hurries when you get an email from HR that says, "Can we have a quick chat?" No, you pray first, then you respond to that text. I mean, it's just true. There's some things we don't hurry toward. And here's the reality, you rush toward the things you're most afraid of losing. That's what our hurry reveals. And so the question to ask is, what am I trying to run towards? Or what am I trying to run away from in my hurry? You know, if you're average Cincinnatian, average Lexingtonians, that's what they call themselves, Lexingtonians, average Columbian, wherever you're watching from. It's probably similar things. A lot of us, we hurry when it comes to our career progression because we feel like, man, I just got to get to the next thing.

And that's a place where we hurry. A lot of us have our identity and our worth tied up in our work. And so we, can get hurried and anxious around work. For a lot of us, maybe our hurry is around a relational status that we haven't yet attained. You're single and you want to be married, or you want to be dating. You want to be in a relationship. And there's a sense of anxiety. The biological clock is ticking. There are things that make us feel anxious about those things. For maybe a lot of us, it's financial security. And we just feel like, man, I just, I need a little bit more to not be as anxious. And then what you'll realize is when you get a little bit more, you know what you'll say? I need a little bit more to not be anxious. Like it's an ongoing process and cycle. And I actually want to give you a hot take, which is when it comes to your anxiety, I don't think your primary problem is your busy calendar. Here's a hot take: I don't think your primary problem is your cell phone or your social media usage. I'm not saying those things don't play a factor, but underneath all of that, our anxiety is the fact that we have given someone or something else the power to determine our worth or our wellness in life.

That's the thing underneath the thing that drives so much of our anxiety. I'll put it to you this way. Hurry is what it feels like or looks like on the outside when something other than Jesus is reigning on the inside. And I know that from my own experience. Because guess what? You can fix your schedule. You can give yourself more margin. You can regulate down your cell phone usage and your social media usage, and maybe you should, but you'll just find something else to worry about. You'll just find something else to be anxious about. I had a theology professor put it this way. He says Satan doesn't have to make you bad if he can keep you busy. He's really good at keeping us busy about a lot of things, you know? And here's the lie. The lie is, well, if I just get to the next thing, if I'm a student, once I graduate; if I'm at a job, once I get this promotion; if I want a house, once I buy the house; if I want a relationship, once I get in the relationship; well then I'll smooth out. Then I'll be able to be less anxious, and it is a lie. It's a lie. I know it's a lie because I bought into the lie hook, line and sinker.

I'll never forget the day that all changed for me. You know, when I was call it from 18 to 30, man, I was doing the thing. Graduated, you know, toward the top of my class in college. Like I was crushing it, got a great job. I was on the promotion track with Proctor and Gamble, taking more and more responsibilities. When I was 30, I had the company car, I had more money than I thought I would, I had the wife, I was living downtown Cincinnati. I was leading a sales team across three states. Like I was doing the thing and it was working, until it wasn't. Here's the day it all changed for me. I was actually leaving one of my sales reps in Akron, Ohio, driving back to Cincinnati. It was on 71 South. And if you're familiar with 71 in the Columbus area from my Crossroads Columbus folks, I was at the Polaris Parkway exit. And I'll never forget being at that exit, driving, of course, in the fast lane and I blacked out. Thankfully, for only a second or two, I don't even know how long, but when I came to, I was drenched in sweat.

My heart was beating outside of my chest. I was afraid. I didn't know what happened. I finally got to a point where I could pull over and I went into a restaurant. I'm like, "Well, maybe I didn't eat enough this morning." My blood sugar might have gotten low. And so I eat, and as I'm eating, I'm like, what in the world happened? And I remember calling my wife. And this was one of many moments when I'm like, I married the right woman because I called her and I'm like, "Babe, I don't know what happened. I almost blacked out in the car. My heart's beat. I don't know what's wrong." And she's like, "Why are you calling me? Call the doctor." "Yes, yes, I should call the doctor." Got myself together, got settled. Called my doctor. They said come in right away. I literally went from Polaris Parkway to my doctor's office. He looks at me, African American profile, and he's like, "Man, I'm just concerned, maybe something happened with your heart." And so they gave me a halter monitor for three days, came back. Heart was fine. Maybe you had vertigo. And so then he got me tested for vertigo. I didn't have vertigo. So test after test after test after test. And so after all these tests, nothing showing anything.

And I come back to the office. And have you ever had a meeting with your doctor where they're extra nice because they got bad news for you? It was one of those. He always had a good bedside manner. He was like extra nice. And so in his extra nice tone, he's like, "Man, all these tests came back negative. I think you're struggling with generalized anxiety disorder." And he gave me some medication. He gave me some other things to do. But for like the next year, I could -- I continued to have escalated anxiety attacks, literally waking up thinking I was about to die, heart beating out of my chest. I had more of those blackout moments, like it was scary. And when I was at my lowest, my lowest point with my anxiety journey, what I realized is that there's an invitation God has for me here if I'm willing to accept it. If I'm willing to not stop the medication and have more faith. That wasn't what happened. But if I'm willing to just examine why am I anxious in the first place, there was something that God wanted to teach me.

And the first thing God did was he said, "You've got to be clear about what this is." See, it's PC to say I struggle with anxiety. It's not PC to say I'm a fearful person. But my name is Chuck and I'm a fearful person. This is fear. This is what I was dealing with. And in that, I think about the New Testament. The word for anxious in the New Testament, the word for fear is actually a word that means to be torn into pieces. And isn't that what it feels like when fear is gripping your life? Because it's not just one fear. You got 12 fears underneath that fear, right? And I want to just stop and pastor those of us who follow Jesus and who struggle with anxiety. Because I think there's another layer to this for many of us, which is this: not only do we feel the fear, but we feel ashamed for feeling the fear because we're like, "I'm a Christian, I pray. I've asked God to take this away, and I'm still struggling with this fear." And I just want you to give yourself grace.

And I want you to know that God gives you grace. He knows our real lives. He knows what it's like to live in this world. And actually, Jesus does have a promise for you, he has a promise for me when it comes to how to deal with this world. Here's his promise in John 16:33, Jesus says: In this world you will have tribulation. Thanks, Jesus, that's not exactly what I was hoping for. But Jesus says, hey, expectations are everything. And if you buy into the lie that just because you follow Jesus, it's going to be all up into the right all the time and happy clappy all the time. That is not true. And can I just be honest and just tease a little bit? Church folks, we make it worse. We make it worse because you can come in here and you talk to a good Christian. How are you doing? Oh, I'm blessed and highly favored. Okay. Okay. Wonderful, wonderful. And it's okay that you had a bad week. Too blessed to be stressed. Lucky you, lucky you.

Amen. I got an amen on that one. Right? We make it worse. We make it worse. Jesus says: In this world you will have tribulation. But I'm so glad that's only part A of this verse. He goes on to say right after that: But take heart, for I have overcome the world. See, when you follow Jesus, it isn't that you will have a trouble free life. It's that trouble doesn't get the last word. Fear doesn't get the last word. Grief doesn't get the last word. Difficulty doesn't get the last word. But it doesn't mean you won't have challenges. And so Jesus is inviting us to a different way to be yoked differently to him. And if I were to summarize it, I would say it this way. What Jesus says is we find peace, we find peace when we let Jesus reset our pace. That's what Jesus wants to do. He wants to reset your pace. I'm so glad he doesn't want to just fix your calendar. I'm so glad he doesn't want to just deal with your social media uses. No, he wants your whole life. He wants to give you rest for your souls.

So hear again these words of Jesus is an invitation. Again, we just dwelling on these same beautiful words over and over again. Jesus says: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Notice he doesn't say you'll work for it. He says, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart -- And you will conjure up rest for your souls? You will engineer rest for your souls? You will muscle your way to rest for your souls? No, you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. I love Jesus and I love his heart for us. Jesus isn't shaming you for being anxious. He's not somewhere with his arms folded in disappointment because you just don't have enough faith to figure it out. No, you know what? His arms are open. And his invitation is actually practically begging, "Would you just link up with me?

Would you bring all the fullness of all your life and all the things that are out of control, would you bring all of that to me? Because my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." See, there was a second definition of that word yoke in Jesus's day. Not only did it apply to the animals that we saw earlier, the oxen, but spiritual guides in Jesus's day would say my way of following God is my yoke. So there was this group of people called the Pharisees, who thought the way to follow God was to try to keep all the rules and judge all the people who don't. And they had what was called the yoke of the Pharisees. Hey, you want to follow God? Do it my way. Read the Torah the way that I interpret it. Do the spiritual practices the way that I do. And if you read chapter 11, this is the end of chapter 11 when Jesus says these words, he's been railing against the yoke of the Pharisees for the whole chapter. He's saying their yoke is a broken yoke. It's not a good yoke. You need a better yoke. "So come to me," he says, "because my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I think it's why I love this translation, actually, a paraphrase of Jesus's words from the Message version of the Bible was written by a pastor, Eugene Peterson, who puts it this way. He says: Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me, Jesus says, get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. It's probably my favorite line. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. This is what Jesus is offering a free and light life in the midst of your real life. This isn't pie in the sky, you're ignoring the reality of difficult things, it's that you've got something that transcends that because you're yoked to Jesus. I had a unique experience a couple of weeks ago, unique for me. Hadn't done it before. I got to do iron forging. Has anybody ever done that, iron forging, like blacksmith stuff? It was cool.

It was hot, actually, but it was really cool. And, um, man, when I'm in an environment like that, I'm always trying to learn, like, what does this have to do with life principles or even spiritual principles? And I got some powerful connections as I had this experience. I think we have a picture of me at that experience. [laughter] Well, it's not exactly what I look like, but that's what I felt like working with metal. That's what I felt like. This is what I actually looked like. But I remember being there. I remember being there and, the guy gave us some instruction before we started. He was like, "Hey, you're going to have hot metal. You're going to be banging on the anvil." He said, "Let me tell you something, when you hold that hammer, do not grip it tightly. Do not grip it tightly, because metal against metal has a rebound effect. And I've had a lot of people get that hammer right in their forehead. So you want to hold it loosely when you're hammering." And I thought about that and I'm like, man, anything I've ever learned in the physical realm, that principle always applies.

I went rappelling for the first time, kind of going down ropes down a mountain, did that at Red River Gorge some years ago. And I'll never forget, they give you these thick gloves because, you know, you can get rope burns. And they said, "Hey, but here's the way to not get rope burns. Resist the temptation to grip the rope tightly while you're going down a rope, or else it's going to burn your hands." And they're right. You might want to ask how I know that. I'll let you figure that out. What I had to learn in rappelling was the best way to repel is you're using the rope as a guide. Great, but you really want to sit back and trust the belayer down at the bottom who is supporting your weight. That's really the way to do that. When I learned how to ride a motorcycle, you do not want a death grip your handlebars. You actually want to have a little bit of give. No matter what in the physical realm, it never is right to grip tightly. There's no instruction that ever says grip this thing as tightly as you can. That never works. In the physical realm the best way to approach these things is to release your grip.

And guess what? In the spiritual realm, the best way to approach your anxiety is to release your grip. That's what Jesus is saying in these words to all of us. Maybe that's why when the Bible describes Jesus's role in the cosmos, the whole universe, it says this, it says: And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. How can we release our grip? We can release our grip because there is a God who's gripping everything. The person yoked to us has a grip on the entire world, so you don't have to figure out how to have a grip on your family. You don't have to figure out how to have a grip on your finances. No, you can release your grip to the one in whom all things hold together. Maybe that's why when Jesus died on the Cross, one of his final words in John 19 is it is finished. Which is actually a financial term. And what Jesus was saying is the debt has been paid.

So if you think you've got to work your way to God, friend, it is finished. If you think you got to be the way to figure out how your family comes back together, Jesus would say it is finished. If you think you gotta be the one to secure your identity and your worth and how you matter in this world, Jesus would say it is finished. Because of his finished work you and I can release our grip. We can release our grip. And it's in releasing our grip that we learn to live freely and lightly. So we're going to finish today with a song. We're going to play this at all of our locations. And this song is really an opportunity for you to do business with God. As you listen to these words, I want to give you an invitation. And here's the invitation. What is the thing you're gripping most tightly right now? What is the thing in your life that you are holding on to for dear life? If during this song you want to say to Jesus, "Jesus, I want to release my grip," I'm going to ask you to just do that. I'm not going to prompt you when, I'm not going to tell you how, but if at some point you want to communicate to Jesus, "Jesus, I want to release this to you," just want to ask you to open your hands.

For some of us, maybe we're releasing something that we've released many times before, but we need to release it again. Maybe for some of you, this is a first act of surrender to Jesus. Maybe today you've heard something that's like, huh? I hadn't thought about a relationship with Jesus in this way. I thought it was just about religious rules. But what you're saying, Chuck, is it's about relationship. It's about him actually helping me to make sense of my life. And I can give that to him and I can experience something through him in that relationship. Yes. That's what Jesus's invitation is. And so maybe today, as you open your hands, it's a first act of surrender to Jesus, and man, if that's you, if this is your first act of surrender, can I encourage you, wherever you are, to connect with a prayer volunteer before you leave so that they can just walk you through that choice and how to continue to follow that. I want to encourage you to keep coming around here and keep being a part of this community, because we're all on the journey of learning how to release our grip to the one who holds everything and promises that when we link up to him, he will bring rest to our souls.

- I want to leave you with one tool to take in your pocket. And actually, you can literally have it in your pocket if you want this prayer that we're about to finish with, you can tap the sticker in front of you and you'll also get access to that. It's a prayer from Saint Patrick. Yes, the, the patron saint of Ireland and green beer. He was actually a deeply faithful man, follower of Jesus. And he has a prayer that's been known as Saint Patrick's Breastplate. Think of it as a protective prayer that you can take with you in the times when life starts lifing again. Because I know once you leave here, life's going to start lifing again. But this is a prayer that I found strength in and for many centuries so have many others. I invite you to stand and we're going to finish by praying this prayer together. Pray these words with me. Jesus with me. Jesus before me. Jesus behind me. Jesus in me. Jesus beneath me.

Jesus above me. Jesus on my right. Jesus on my left. Jesus when I lie down. Jesus when I sit down. Jesus when I arise. Simple. Powerful. Take it with you and find rest for your souls. Bless you guys. We will see you next weekend. - Man, I love that call out when life starts lifing again we want to be reminded that God is there, that he's faithful, and that he's got peace to bring in place of anxiety. That that's a trade and an exchange he's looking to make. Man, I'm thankful for Chuck's vulnerability, his authenticity, and that he sort of paves the way for us to not stay stuck in anxiety, but move into greater levels of peace. That's the goal, and if we can help with that in any way, I mean, like we personally, but also we Crossroads, we'd love to do that. If you go to Crossroads.net, you can hit the prayer button. Myself or a member of my small team would love to connect with you and pray for you about whatever you're going through.

- Yeah, yeah. And if you've enjoyed this series and you want some tools to just help you slow down or just keep you coming to Jesus, or even just handing over the burdens and the anxieties that, you know, Chuck was talking about. You can text the word "more" to 301301. And what you'll find, there'll be a page called the be still page. And there's a prayer experience that you can go through. You can listen to that prayer that we just prayed with Saint Patrick. And so it's available to you online. - Yeah. And as I mentioned earlier, we have all kinds of groups starting next week. And I specifically want to call out online host groups. If you're watching this online, this is for you. You might have looked at the groups tool, all the different offerings and made a little overwhelmed. You're like, man, I don't know if these people are cool or not. Well, we have kind of solved that for you. We've got online host groups. These are people that, you know, that you've seen on this broadcast that are a part of the Crossroads Anywhere staff team who are leading these things, like Jen Meade, who you often see. I'm not leading one this semester, but I did the previous. These are great groups.

And if you're like, man, I don't got time to drive someplace and do it. Hey, it's all online, so you can do it whether you're traveling, no matter where you live around the country. Now, we talked about next weekend, and I don't want to spoil the surprise or make it like reveal too much. But next weekend is like, just, it's going to be amazing. God's done something cool through Crossroads where we are just able to articulate things in a way that, at least for me and I know many others, has changed the way we experience our faith. And I want that for you too, particularly around identity, because so much, so much of how we experience life stems and flows out of how we experience our identity given by God or not. So join next week. It's going to be awesome. Talk about Crossroads live coming up. - Yes, we're on a mission, the church is on a mission, and you've probably heard ten cities in ten years. And so the next big mission for Crossroads is seeing what God has in store in Cleveland. So there's going to be a Crossroads live event in Cleveland September 12th.

- Live worship, live teaching. - Yes, an exact similar service as what you see online, but in person in Cleveland. And so make sure you, if you know someone that lives in Cleveland or you know someone that's close, let them know, let them know to pull up and show up. Also September 12th, Woman Camp is coming up this upcoming weekend. And so this is the last chance to register. And so if you are someone who's just searching, searching for connection or community or just a way to grow with Jesus, and you're just a woman that is looking to follow God. Woman Camp is for you. And so register this upcoming weekend before it happens. - Yep. Head to camps. Us for that. Guys, thank you so much for joining us. We will see you next week on Crossroads.