The Lutheran Podcast

Today's gospel is one in which we find some stunning decisions. Some lead to great increase and new responsibility; others lead to a no good very bad terrible day. The Gospel isn't concerned with what we produce, but that we use what we're given somehow. The talents given are grace-filled opportunities to do what we can with what we have. How will you respond?

Psalm 46 speaks of the desolations God brings to the earth, and it's our habit to think of floods and disasters. What God desolates is the implements of war — the bow, the spear, the chariots — the M-16, the Tomahawk Missile, the tank. The ongoing work of reforming our hearts is the never ending process of tearing our wars apart. 

Jesus calls us to see God's kingdom, not as a place of easy living, but of living together in good times and in bad. What does this vision inspire in you?

Note: I read the Gospel and begin the sermon from one of the pews, rather than from the pulpit. I move to the pulpit after a couple minutes. It may be impossible to know this from the audio context.What does it mean to apologize; to forgive; to reconcile?How do we judge the value of these things, and how do we recognize sincerity?God offers us grace without any price, but grace always comes at the cost of settling for new opportunities for renewed relationship rather than an evening of the scales.How do we find what God proclaims to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus for our sake, the joy of forgiveness without any expectation that we'll return the favor?

Immediately preceding this reading, Peter confessed Jesus to be Messiah, and Jesus told him "good job!" Well, essentially. This week we see a different side of Peter and a different message from Jesus, who tells Peter in no uncertain terms that love requires sacrifice. God is providing the lamb. Anyone trying to distract him from this is at odds with God's will.What do we do with this?

This sermon takes place the week after a challenging congregational meeting. I don't mean "challenging", as in code for "look, the roof is fire and the floor is fire and everything is fire!". I mean it in the sense that we had a couple of important decisions to make, and a member spoke from the depths of their heart and then left the meeting when the vote went another way. It was **challenging**. But challenging is healthy, and we need to do the hard things sometimes.During the week between these Sundays, I was in a person's house with whom I'd had a "challenging" conflict in September 2021. In this case, I mean "challenging" as code for "look, the roof is fire and the floor is fire and everything is fire!". The exceedingly short version is during this visit they disclosed to me that I hurt them deeply, that they felt ignored and marginalized after. More, I followed up ineffective attempts at reconciliation by accepting the terrible advice to "let it lie so it will settle". this made them feel like I didn't even find them important enough to worry about, and deepened their hurt and anger. As people of God, we're called not to hold grudges. In that vein, I don't believe this person is holding a grudge. I believe they're still wounded, and I believe I left it open and seeping by not pushing harder to help them dictate what healing looks like.All that to say this: So I wrote a sermon, and all this is its context. Grace & Peace,pew

Gospel: Matthew 9:35-10:8The Holy Gospel according to Matthew, the ninth chapter.  Glory to you, O Lord!35Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”10:1Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. 2These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.5These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.' 8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 9Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, 10no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. 11Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. 12As you enter the house, greet it. 13If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. 15Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. 16“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.The Gospel of the Lord.  Praise to you, O Christ! Plenty, but of what?It feels like we're interrupting something in all three scriptures today. In Exodus, Moses and the Israelites were camping out at the base of Mt. Sinai. They left Egypt ate manna, and though Moses went up to the Lord on Mt. Sinai, they won't receive the 10 Commandments for a little while yet. Paul begins this passage with the phrase “Since we are justified by faith…”. This being Paul, we arrive at the beginning of Chapter Five knowing that Paul spent the entire first four chapters of this letter setting up all that follows “Since”. But what does it mean to be justified? What is this faith? Where does it come from?Jesus went around cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news, curing illnesses and casting out demons — but who is this they, anyway? What's the deal with laborers and harvests? What in the world is Jesus doing sending his disciples out alone with next to nothing like sheep among wolves? Honestly, it's been a whole world of interruptions lately. We're in the middle of graduations and new beginnings for those graduates and their families. We're are in the middle of breakups and heartache. We're in the middle between active addiction and recovery. We're in the middle the latest test or screening and receiving the results. And sometimes, it just feels like we're in the middle of the water, treading for all we're worth.My own family's in the middle this week. On Wednesday morning I'll fly to South Carolina to pick up my aunt and drive her to our house to live with us, and my br

I'm experimenting with some different things, and one of them is moving to manuscript preaching after not using them in about fifteen years, except rarely. This sermon focuses on the idea that our own stories and the stories of those around us make a real difference, well beyond what we'd typically consider. December 2020. Now that's a month to tell stories about.I was concluding an interim at The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer in Foxboro — I have a feeling y'all might be familiar with that town for some reason or another. I was working full time as a hospice chaplain in Fall River, and preparing to begin my call as pastor here at St. John. On Christmas Eve I led four services, two in Foxboro and two at St. John, then drove all night to see Lauren and Willoughby in South Carolina so I could spend Christmas with the rest of my family. It was a hard moment, because I began my time in Foxboro as a supply preacher in November 2019. Their pastor began medical leave in an effort to recover from an illness he'd been fighting for over two long years; an illness that the congregation had walked through with him, and as irascible as that man was, those people loved him even when they didn't all always like him. After about two weeks, the medical leave became a medical retirement, and in the summer of 2020, he died.That funeral was something to tell stories about.It wasn't just a funeral for an old pastor, though in my experience those are some of the most powerful services I've ever attended — and St. John does not disappoint in that regard — this was a funeral for a pastor who was teaching confirmation, preaching, visiting the sick, and tending his flock even in failing health until only a very short six months before.But those months? We'll be telling stories about those months for the rest of our lives, because just after Ash Wednesday 2020, the world ended for all of us.I know, it sounds dramatic. Honestly, if I told Past Eric that week that the world had just ended, I'd've laughed it off by saying something like, “It's only going to be two weeks, a month tops. How long do you think this could really last?”. How long could the end of the world really last? A lot longer than you'd think, apparently.It wasn't hard to leave Foxboro, but it was hard to leave those people in that pandemic foxhole who welcomed my family in a moment when we were still reeling and grieving and adjusting to life after a move from South Carolina to have our Great Adventure. It was hard to leave those people in that pandemic foxhole who I nurtured and came to love when they were still reeling and grieving and adjusting after their most recent loss in their great adventure.But I remember reading the paperwork for this congregation around July or August 2020. I remember the interviews by ZOOM, and the unparalleled awkwardness of preaching for the call committee from a side room in our house over zoom. I remember realizing that I was once again following Larry Wolff, and nearly fell out of my chair laughing at the fact that I'd been doing that in one way or another my entire career.And I remember telling Lauren that there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that St. John is a place we'll tell some amazing stories about.I met this congregation in earnest for the first time on Christmas Eve, 2020. For the first time since Ash Wednesday — March, y'all! — the congregation gathered for worship in person. We stood in the parking lot, and I described the order of worship this way, “all we're going to do is pray, read the Christmas Gospel, maybe I'll say something, then we'll pray, and we're going to sing Silent Night by candlelight at Noon and seven”. That's what we did. I believe most of us cried in that parking lot that Christmas Eve.Now that's one heck of a story.It's a story of faithful resilience; courage in the face of fear. It's the

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote in his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” that his opinion had become that the white moderate was the biggest obstacle to the cause of justice for black and brown people. He defines them, not by their ideology, but by their actions that frustrate the advancement of civil rights and prolong the suffering of black and brown people because the white moderate is more devoted to “order” than justice; prefers a negative peace which is lack of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of  justice; approves of the cause, but not direct action; sets a timetable according to a myth that liberation must wait for a “more convenient season”.In a season of temptation to leave well enough alone, the Church is called to stand at the front of the cause of justice to be, in King's words, the headlights rather than the tail lights on this ride to justice. 

The Transfiguration is a moment that gives a foretaste of completion — not just of the Law and the Prophets, but of an old covenant as the disciples witness the birth pangs of a new one and wonder what they've really become a part of in following Jesus. And the voice says, “Listen to him”. And we, as ever, are bad at this. And now here we are, faced with a new reality that God is not only creating us, but we learn that God always was, is, and will be planning to make this deal much more one-sided. Jesus is the completion of the Law and the Prophets. Now we're living in the after. 

Jesus raises the bar for what it means to love each other and to live in community by saying that words can kill, men can't wantonly discard their wives, and putting a finer point on our accountability for what we promise and how. Life in God's community means a deeper consideration of our role as saints and sinners, and what it means to be both. Though we flip flop between the two, God remains constant. 

This is a song I wrote for Christmas this year. It's a rough recording, but love cone down is always a little rough — and even more welcome for its roughness. Merry Christmas!I'll post the lyrics later. 

So often our belief and understanding of love is limited to our own fragile capacity. God's love is not fragile. What difference can this make?

We spend a lot of time looking up, forward, and backward trying to figure out what will happen in a future we aren't guaranteed from the perspective of events and pasts we can't change. Jesus reminds us that God is *here* with us, and knows what to do with us even if we don't know what to do with ourselves. 

My plan for Christ the King's sermon was much different before waking up to news of the tragedy at Club Q. This didn't happen in a vacuum, but it the predictable result of increasingly bigoted rhetoric in our cultural, political, and even religious dialogues. Every day is the right time to say plainly that love leaves no room for any ideology that leaves no room for someone else. 

We often think hope to be a function of love. It is. Yet hope in the midst of loss isn't something that always heals. Sometimes it has a dampening effect on our healing because it feels like a gloss over our woundedness for the easing of the present's awkwardness rather than a soothing balm for our wounded heart.Love sits in pain, cleanses the wound, and walks forward with us. Jesus' pronouncements of blessedness in times of trouble aren't meant to offer easy fixes, but invite us into a deeper consideration of what reality is in the reign of God.

Ten lepers were cleansed, one returned to give thanks. There's something about being sick, either chronically or terminally, that robs a person of an identity separate from that illness. In a world where we often mistake cures for healing, this story forced us to explore what makes the one who returned well in a way the other nine somehow missed. 

“The Pharisees, who we're lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.”This was their response to the poorly named  Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and was the reason Jesus told this parable about Lazarus and the Rich Man.  It isn't that Pharisees we're particularly uncaring or insensitive, it's more that they were comfortable as a social class, privileged as a religious class, and seemed to be people who thought more about systems than people. I often wonder if that's why Jesus runs afoul dog them. I believe it's reasonable to consider that Jesus is possibly a Pharisee or some other privileged member of the synagogue himself, given the fact that he preaches and teaches there without anyone asking why, so part of the Why is that we criticize the people most like ourselves the most. Also, Jesus preaches and teaches that people are more important than systems when the systems become a burden rather than a boon. As some of the most wealthy people who ever lived on this planet, many Americans have more in common with the Rich Man than we do with Lazarus. How can we learn the lesson of Jesus that loving concern for others is more important than wealth or comfort when we too are often too comfortable to take this seriously?

When Jesus praises a dishonest manager, it brings about an uncomfortable moment that challenges the idea that Jesus brings morality — or at least a morality we understand. This is a chance to reconsider what true currency is, what a proper relationship to wealth, and who God really favors. 

When we hurt, it's human nature to shy away, to blame, to react defensively. What we see through the witness of God through Christ, in the account of God's people worshiping another God, from the example of David who engaged in deep repentance is that it's only by turning into what hurts us with an open heart and mind that we can heal. 

“What in the world are you doing?!?” are words we often hear during times of trouble. Less frequently, we hear the question, “why?”.It doesn't end there though, because too often we react to what happens rather than ask with true curiosity why someone might have done it, affording them the best of intentions. Moving from what to why is the act of rehumanizing “them” AND us in order to learn what it really means to love. 

 Wherever there are people, there will be disagreements. One of the most unhealthy habits any community can exhibit is letting mean and hurtful comments in community spaces go unchallenged. Safe, loving space means the calling to let the consequences of hurtful words or actions rest on the one who say or do them, because to do otherwise is to comfort the offender while telling the wounded that it's their problem because we don't want the offender to feel bad. The calling of the church is a calling to make this community a space where conflict is loving and humanizing, so we can learn to live together in the love that heals. 

When God shows up, it doesn't happen at convenient moments. In every instance of God appearing is an interruption. The call to living a life of faith is also a call to be interruptible. We are called to be open to the concept of Sabbath that tells us not to be so concerned South what we want to do that we don't miss what God is calling us to do. 

Roberts was 51, and I never met him but his family made me feel like I've known him for years. They wanted something less traditional for music, so we settled on me playing Imagine and Hallelujah For the prelude, Amazing Grace as a hymn, and Three Little Birds as closing hymn. This will be a funeral and family thatI carry for a long time. Thanks be to God for the chance to carry this with me. 

We hear words of challenge, and often stop listening when it becomes uncomfortable. Jesus says that he brings fire, but it's a fire that heals and makes whole. How do we encounter and embrace the wholeness that comes from what scares us and recognize the dangers of what it, on its face, comforting?

This passage begins with a word of comforting hope, but concludes with a  warning to remain watchful. Even so, this warning was a word of hope. Where does your hope reside in times of Covidian crap or the griefs that mark every life?In the community of God's presence and calling. God is most fully experienced together. 

Today is the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub massacre. June 17 is the anniversary of the murder and martyrdom of the Emanuel 9. Human evil is ambitious in its reach, yet even so, God's Breath of Life continues to inspire and resurrect what is lost to good purpose. What makes it love isn't that God jumps into action, but the promise to dwell with us as we heal. 

Uvalde and Buffalo are points of great pain. The disappointing failure of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton to name as racist the actions of the bishop and leadership of the Sierra Pacific Synod. The joys and sorrows of change. Healing grief requires attention, intention, and community. 

“Love one another”. It's simple but hard. How do we love like God loves when it feels so foreign to us?

It's okay not to be okay, and where we're together in God's love, just because we aren't okay doesn't mean we aren't alright. 

Whatever we do leaves its scent in the nostrils of those around us. Sometimes it's pleasing, sometimes not.As people of faith, how can we leave God's aroma wherever we go?

Sometimes what's missing is louder to us than what's present. This Sunday, we have the parable often called The Prodigal Son. What I often remember is the insistence of the Father, the looseness of the son, and the hardness of the older brother. This time around, I noticed the absence of the mother, the father's wife. Lent is a time of exploration of mysteries. Today we explore the mystery of the mother's absence.

Since this is a manuscript sermon, the text is too long to paste in here. So this is a link to the manuscript in Google Docs! This sermon is my attempt to communicate the most important parts of being the Church together, and address some of the things that hold us up along the way.

Here we are again: are we coming to the end of COVID or another beginning? This isn't fun, and I'm done with it. But here we are again in a space of not knowing and wrestling with the anxiety, fear, and anger that go with it. People are struggling. Now what?

The next few weeks we'll be dealing with John 6, which is called the Bread of Life series by pastors. In John 6, Jesus feeds five thousand people and drama ensues.Jesus wrestles with what he's really called to do - are the signs and miracles the point, or is it something else? If it isn't the signs that are important, what really is?The disciples wrestle with their exhaustion, their fear and disbelief, and face the real possibility that following Jesus won't lead them anywhere worth going when the crowds finally abandon him. Their test of faith leads to a climax in John 6:66-7.The crowds are wrestling with their own hunger, physical and spiritual, and struggle mightily with the answer they hear.

Where were you twelve years ago?Today we hear the story of two daughters who each were in much different positions twelve years ago. One is a daughter of an important temple official, who is twelve years old and dies by the end of the story. The other is a woman who has dealt with hemorrhaging for twelve long years, whose faith makes her well.At the center of all of this appears to be Jesus, but what if it's not actually about Jesus at all, even though we experience the signs of God's kingdom through him? 

Jesus leaves the wilderness and comes to the city to declare, "Time's up! The kingdom of God has come near, so repent and believe the good news!". But the good news about what? What's so good about this news, anyway, in a world beset by greed, anger, violence, death, and all the things that scare us? The good news is that when we recognize the voice of our Creator calling out to us, all those things fall away and we experience something new. 

Can anything good come out of this place?Can anything good come out of me?Jesus answers by inviting us into the heart and mind of God so we can see in us what God sees.

A different Gospel for this day because this text grew on me this week. All Saints is a day when we commemorate the joyous hope of the resurrection, remember those we love and have lost, and ponder the mystery that God is present at all times and places.

Jesus held a coin struck with the face of the Emperor and an impossible questions from the good church folks, who knew that whatever he answered would get him in trouble: either with the the crowds who resented spending a dime in taxes to their Roman oppressors, or with the Roman authority who made it very clear that they expected people to pay them whether they wanted to or not. Paul found himself in the mountains for what may have been an attempt to relax, but unable to do so, preached so powerfully that people began to believe in Jesus before the locals tossed him out.Like the coin in Jesus' hand, there are lots of competing forces that brought it into being, but our task as people who follow Jesus is to identify whose minting truly defines us.

We hear a story of Ezekiel, who found himself brought to a valley of dry bones by the Spirit of the Lord and asked the question, "mortal, can these bones live?".We hear of the death of Lazarus, and witness Jesus meeting Martha and then Mary in the road to abide with them in their grief. Throughout Scripture, joy and sorrow messily mingle, yet we see that God doesn't hurry either of them. God is the One Who Abides. In this moment of forced abiding, we stand in a space between the world as it was and the world as it will be, or could be. How do we dwell in this space and learn from what it has to teach about both joy and sorrow?

Phil, Sergey, & Pastor Eric gathered for worship this morning. This is for those who aren't able to attend worship in person. What do we do when everything is crazy and we don't know which way to turn? We give thanks that even when everything has changed around us, God is with us.Scriptures:Psalm 23John Chapter 9 (all of it)

Phil, Sergey, & Pastor Eric gathered for worship Sunday morning. This is for those who aren't able to attend worship in person. Please sing along, pray along, and worship along with us!Scriptures:Psalm 23John Chapter 9 (all of it)Music:Amazing Grace, My Chains Are GonePrecious Lord, Take My HandJesus Keep Me Near the CrossJoin us in giving thanks to God in worship, trusting in God's mercy and love.

This is Part 1 of a two-part sermon, handily identifiable by the label, “Part 2”. (Here's a link to Part 2: https://www.buzzsprout.com/132881/2958346)Nicodemus went to see Jesus at night. Part of what he was looking for was whether this was a crazy guy who just drove people out of the temple due to his own delusions of grandeur, or whether this was the principled action of someone sent by God to call people to some renewed sense of faithfulness. I don't know that Nicodemus went in “believing in” Jesus, but I do think that he went in with a mind that had an openness to hope that perhaps Jesus was someone bringing renewal and restoration to God's people living under the oppressive Roman regime. Sometimes in the deepest night, even a glimmer of hope is enough. 

This is Part 2 of a two-part sermon. While you can listen to either one and have a “whole” sermon, part 1 is handily titled “Nick at Night (Part 1 of 2)”. (Here's a link to Part 1: https://www.buzzsprout.com/132881/2958247)Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, and he had some hard questions for Jesus. His most significant struggle was how to deal with Jesus' statement that he needs to be born again from above, and by water and Spirit, in order to enter the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus asks some heavy questions of Jesus trying to get him to bring some clarity to this whole situation. How can we hope to understand when someone who grew up in this culture couldn't even get it? What if light is so foreign to us that we can't even recognize what it is? 

Yeah, I said it: Temptation is tempting.What?It is; otherwise it would be called “the thing that I saw but didn't feel compelled to take even a second look”; and part of what makes the temptation of Jesus an event worth mentioning is that in order for it to be called “the temptation of Jesus”, temptation has to be something that's tempting for him, too. Yes, the fact that the Divine and Human natures both exist within Jesus means that he has a capacity to resist temptation and fully trust in God's providence that we don't, but it's important that Jesus was tempted because it allows us to know a crucial thing about the love God has for us: God finds it important to share our experience.It's a good thing for us that God's love is strong; nothing fragile could stand in the face of our brokenness without collapsing.

Today's teaching is challenging for those of us who are human beings because it cuts to the heart of the most damaging and lasting effects of Sin and how it affects every aspect of our lives. This is a text where Jesus speaks clearly about divorce, but it's spoken in the cultural context of his time and place. Jesus speaks clearly about anger and swearing, and when we dig in deeper, we see that this is more complex than we might otherwise imagine. Moses urges his people to “choose life”. When we hear the law, often what we hear is the word of conviction, the word of shame, the word of guilt — words of death.How in the world can the law be seen as giving us words of life and hope?How do we live into the spirit of the law while not removing its letter?

Late post...this is from February 9...oops. :)When we hear that Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, it can fill us with some rightful dread because usually when someone talks about God's laws, it isn't because they plan to regale us with tales of God's love for creation.Jesus says in the Gospel that he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. What IS the law that Jesus fulfills? How can we ever live into the righteousness of God when we so often rebel against this law of which Jesus IS the fulfillment?

Late post...this is from February 9...oops. :)When we hear that Jesus didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, it can fill us with some rightful dread because usually when someone talks about God's laws, it isn't because they plan to regale us with tales of God's love for creation.Jesus says in the Gospel that he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. What IS the law that Jesus fulfills? How can we ever live into the righteousness of God when we so often rebel against this law of which Jesus IS the fulfillment?

We're a results-oriented society, and it's often challenging to think about doing things that we can't see to completion. This week we celebrated The Presentation of Our Lord, a minor feast day that commemorates the presentation of Jesus to the Temple, and Simeon and Anna were there to see him. Simeon was promised that he wouldn't die until he saw the Messiah. Anna was a widow who had served the temple for many years following the death of her husband. Both saw Jesus and rejoiced, seeing that generations of hope and faith in the promise of Messiah had been fulfilled in their own generation! We have many things that we're a part of that won't end, but we take part in them anyway. We think of people like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who is prominently featured in this sermon. He joined the long and continuing work of striving for equality for all people, and speaks poignantly about the fact that, like Moses, he wouldn't live to see the Promised Land, but that from the mountain top he can see the glory of the coming of the Lord. We too can see the hope of new life from the mountaintop; some of the fruit of this land is fruit we will taste, and some we will not. Even so, we follow faithfully. We share the faith faithfully, knowing that one day we'll all get there.****Correction***Nunc Dimittis means “Now you are dismissing”, not “Now Lord”. I'm bad at words.

This is from the 1030 service, and apparently my microphone failed. Thus, enjoy the unplugged version, featuring occasional pocket scratches and strange noises that I choose to interpret as the rustling of the Spirit... :) When we choose anything, we also choose against other options. One of the most challenging parts of discipleship isn't choosing those things that we like over and above the things we don't like, but making the choices that force us to choose against things we want — sometimes things we've wanted our whole lives. The disciples chose to follow Jesus, and in doing so they left behind their careers, their families, their old lives — and sometimes even their names — and engaged in a new risky venture with this new teacher who was taking on the mantle of John the Baptist's ministry. How do you choose when it's hard? What's something you might need to choose to give up in order to choose to follow the calling of God in your life?