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Speaker 1: Life audio strength is easy to admire. Honesty is harder.

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Speaker 1: In our world and sometimes even in our churches. Leadership

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Speaker 1: is measured by competence, confidence and visible results. But the

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Speaker 1: Gospel begins somewhere else. It begins with confession, with need,

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Speaker 1: with mercy. The leaders who endure are not those who

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Speaker 1: have mastered the illusion of self sufficiency, but those who

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Speaker 1: have learned how to receive. If Christ is truly alive, present, active, speaking,

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Speaker 1: then leadership is not first what we accomplish for him.

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Speaker 1: It is how awake we are to His life at

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Speaker 1: work within us and among us. Hello friends, I'm Alan Faddling,

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Speaker 1: and you're listening to the Unhurried Living Podcast, where we

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Speaker 1: inspire you to rent us deeper, live fuller, and lead better.

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Speaker 1: If you're carrying responsibility today, guiding others, holding tension, feeling

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Speaker 1: the quiet pressure to keep everything moving, this episode is

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Speaker 1: for you. We're going to explore shared weakness, a living Christ,

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Speaker 1: and the kind of spiritual receptivity that sustains a burning

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Speaker 1: heart over the long haul. After a word from our sponsor,

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Speaker 1: I'll move into our theme for today. In nineteen ninety six,

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Speaker 1: seven Trappist monks were martyred in Algeria. One of them

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Speaker 1: described his calling in this way. He said, a monk

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Speaker 1: is simply a sinner who joins a community of sinners

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Speaker 1: who are confident in God's mercy and who strive to

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Speaker 1: recognize their weakness is in the presence of their brothers.

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Speaker 1: Now that vision is not just for monks, It's a

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Speaker 1: vision for the whole church. Shared weakness, though, is not

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Speaker 1: the story America tells about leadership. We prefer personal strength.

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Speaker 1: We admire competence, certainty, and visible success, and we are

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Speaker 1: not always sure we want to share our strength with

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Speaker 1: anyone else, let alone our weakness. But Christian leaders are

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Speaker 1: still sinners in need of mercy and grace. I have

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Speaker 1: been a Christian leader for more than forty years, and

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Speaker 1: I feel my need for mercy more deeply today than ever.

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Speaker 1: In recovery groups, I have witnessed something quietly transformative. Men

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Speaker 1: and women introduce themselves not with their achievements, but with

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Speaker 1: their truth. They name their need, they confess their brokenness,

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Speaker 1: and together they learn to trust that a merciful God

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Speaker 1: is truly present among them. Not once they improve, but

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Speaker 1: right there in the middle of their honesty. It will

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Speaker 1: require real courage to embrace this kind of leadership in

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Speaker 1: a culture that prizes impressive competence over honest confession. But

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Speaker 1: this is the leadership our time requires, and it may

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Speaker 1: be the leadership our souls have been longing for all along.

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Speaker 1: That kind of honesty only works if mercy is more

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Speaker 1: than an idea. It only works if God is not distant,

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Speaker 1: not theoretical, not waiting for us to get our act together.

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Speaker 1: Shared weakness would be crushing. If all we had was

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Speaker 1: a memory of what Jesus once did, it would leave

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Speaker 1: us trying to manage a legacy, trying to keep something

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Speaker 1: alive through our own effort. Our faith does not rest

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Speaker 1: only on the memory of Christ's life, but on his

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Speaker 1: present life among us now, and Christian leadership is not

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Speaker 1: primarily our effort for him, but our openness to what

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Speaker 1: the living Jesus longs to do within us and through us.

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Speaker 1: Andrew Murray once asked a piercing question in a little

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Speaker 1: book titled Jesus Himself. This is what he wrote. What

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Speaker 1: is the difference between a dead Christ whom the women

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Speaker 1: went to anoint, and a living Christ? A dead Christ

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Speaker 1: I must do everything for a living Christ does everything

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Speaker 1: for me. Of course, Murray is picturing that quiet Saturday

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Speaker 1: between Crucifixion and Resurrection, when the women went to anoint

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Speaker 1: a dead by. In that moment, love looked like tending

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Speaker 1: something lifeless, caring for what could no longer act, honoring

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Speaker 1: what once was but was no longer. And if we're

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Speaker 1: not careful, that is how our faith can begin to feel.

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Speaker 1: We admire Jesus, we serve his mission, we intend to

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Speaker 1: carry his work forward. But underneath it all there can

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Speaker 1: be a subtle assumption that everything now depends on us.

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Speaker 1: We must keep the movement alive. We must compensate for

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Speaker 1: our weakness by working harder for him. But shared weakness

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Speaker 1: only makes sense if Christ is not a memory we maintain,

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Speaker 1: but a presence who moves among us. If Jesus is alive,

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Speaker 1: truly living and risen and at work, then we Caniness

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Speaker 1: is no longer a liability. It becomes the place where

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Speaker 1: Jesus meets us. I am not tending a body in

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Speaker 1: a tomb. I am walking with a risen lord. I'm

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Speaker 1: not preserving a legacy. I'm participating in a life Jesus

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Speaker 1: has invited me into. Now. The writer of Hebrews tells

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Speaker 1: us that the Word of God is living and active.

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Speaker 1: And perhaps that's not first the description of a book

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Speaker 1: bound in leather, but of the Sun himself, present, speaking, acting.

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Speaker 1: The question for me is not simply what I will

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Speaker 1: do for God today. The deeper question is whether I

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Speaker 1: will recognize what the living Christ is already doing. I

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Speaker 1: find myself praying in this spirit. Lord, awaken my heart

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Speaker 1: to all of this. Free me from the exhausting illusion

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Speaker 1: that everything depends on me. Teach me to notice You

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Speaker 1: at work. May my leadership, my service, even my repentance

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Speaker 1: begin not with my effort for you, but with your

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Speaker 1: life and me. And yet, even if we affirm that

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Speaker 1: Jesus is alive, many of us would admit that we

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Speaker 1: do not always feel like he is. We confess the resurrection,

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Speaker 1: but we still wake up as if everything depends on us.

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Speaker 1: We speak of his presence, but we can move through

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Speaker 1: too many of our days largely unaware of it. The

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Speaker 1: issue is not whether Christ lives. We know that he does.

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Speaker 1: The issue is whether our hearts are awake to the

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Speaker 1: one who lives among us, who lives within us. Andrew

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Speaker 1: Murray understood this gap. He knew there is a journey

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Speaker 1: between knowing the doctrine of a living Christ and experiencing

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Speaker 1: the reality of his living presence. And he described that

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Speaker 1: journey in three simple stages. Let me read something from him,

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Speaker 1: and then I'll unpack it. He says. The first stage

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Speaker 1: is ignorance. The second stage is that of unbelief, the

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Speaker 1: doubting heart that cannot take in the wonderful truth that

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Speaker 1: Jesus lives. But then comes the third stage, the burning heart.

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Speaker 1: Murray suggests that awakening to the living Christ is not instantaneous.

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Speaker 1: There is a progression in the soul. First, as he said,

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Speaker 1: comes ignorance, not defiance, not rebellion, just simple unawareness. Christ

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Speaker 1: is alive, but we move through our days distracted, preoccupied,

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Speaker 1: absorbed in tech asks and outcomes. We confess his presence

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Speaker 1: on a Sunday, but by Tuesday afternoon we may be

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Speaker 1: functioning as practical atheists, not because we deny him, but

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Speaker 1: because we are inattentive to him. Ignorance is where we

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Speaker 1: all begin. Then comes on belief. We begin to sense

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Speaker 1: that something more is possible, that Jesus is not merely

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Speaker 1: an idea, but actually a present Lord. And yet somehow

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Speaker 1: we hesitate, We struggle to trust what we cannot see

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Speaker 1: or measure. We believe in the resurrection historically, but we

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Speaker 1: find it harder to believe in resurrection power in our

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Speaker 1: meetings and our conflicts and our fatigue. The doubting heart

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Speaker 1: cannot quite take in the wonderful truth that Jesus, and

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Speaker 1: then Murray says, comes the burning heart. That's not a

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Speaker 1: matter of manufactured emotion. It's not spiritual hype. The burning

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Speaker 1: heart is a gift of grace. The spirit warms what

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Speaker 1: has grown cold. Awareness deepens. We begin to notice Jesus

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Speaker 1: scripture may come alive in some new way. Prayer feels responsive,

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Speaker 1: our obedience feels more relational than just duty. Weakness no

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Speaker 1: longer feels like a threat because we are no longer

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Speaker 1: alone in it, and this burning heart is not sustained

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Speaker 1: by intense moments, but by daily dependents. Murray writes further,

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Speaker 1: what we need every morning is to meet Jesus and

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Speaker 1: to say, Lord, here is the day again, and I

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Speaker 1: am just as weak in myself as ever I was.

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Speaker 1: Come and feed me this morning with yourself and speak

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Speaker 1: to my soul. Do you see how that prayer circles

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Speaker 1: back to where we began, This sense of shared weakness

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Speaker 1: he says, I am just as weak as effort. He's

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Speaker 1: not pretending progress has made us more sufficient, especially not

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Speaker 1: self sufficient. And we don't graduate from dependence. We just

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Speaker 1: keep on returning to it. This is why Murray's vision

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Speaker 1: resonates so deeply with the spirit of the Twelve Steps

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Speaker 1: of Recovery. In them, we admit our powerlessness, not once,

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Speaker 1: but daily. We come to trust that God can restore us,

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Speaker 1: not abstractly but concretely, and we turn earn our will

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Speaker 1: over again, not dramatically, but quietly. We are fed, we

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Speaker 1: are led, we are loved. The burning heart is not

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Speaker 1: the reward for strong people. It is the gift given

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Speaker 1: to those who remain receptive. If the burning heart is

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Speaker 1: given to those who remain receptive, then receptivity is not

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Speaker 1: a minor virtue in the Christian life. It may be central.

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Speaker 1: What distinguishes spiritual maturity may not be productivity but openness. Now,

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Speaker 1: when we think of the saints, we often remember what

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Speaker 1: they accomplished, but aw Towzer suggests that beneath all they

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Speaker 1: did was something deeper, a sort of openness to God

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Speaker 1: that shaped everything else. This is something he wrote once

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Speaker 1: I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which

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Speaker 1: great saints had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in

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Speaker 1: them was open to heaven, something which urged them godward.

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Speaker 1: Without attempting anything like a profound analysis, I shall say

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Speaker 1: simply that they had spiritual awareness, and that they went

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Speaker 1: on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing

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Speaker 1: in their lives. They differed from the average person in

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Speaker 1: that when they felt the inward longing, they did something

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Speaker 1: about it. Now that phrase of Tozier's arrests me open

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Speaker 1: to heaven. He says the saints were not first remarkable

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Speaker 1: because they were driven, but because they were attentive. Their

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Speaker 1: gaze settled on God before it turned toward outcomes. They

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Speaker 1: cultivated awareness until it became the governing reality of their lives.

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Speaker 1: What followed their courage, their endurance. Their impact was fruit,

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Speaker 1: not proof. But what does that kind of openness actually

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Speaker 1: look like? What is spiritual receptivity in lived experience? Again,

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Speaker 1: toza Rights, receptivity is not a single thing. It is

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Speaker 1: a compound, rather a blending of several elements within the soul.

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Speaker 1: It is an affinity for a bent toward, a sympathetic

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Speaker 1: response to a desire to have. In other words. Receptivity

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Speaker 1: is not passivity. It's a posture, it's a leaning, It's

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Speaker 1: a holy inclination of the heart. It is the quiet

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Speaker 1: decision to turn toward God again and again and again.

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Speaker 1: It is is the willingness to admit weakness without panic.

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Speaker 1: It is the choice to believe that Christ is not

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Speaker 1: absent but alive. It's that daily prayer, feed me, speak

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Speaker 1: to me, lead me. Now, this is not dramatic spirituality.

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Speaker 1: It will not trend on social media, it will not

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Speaker 1: always feel electric. But it is how saints are formed

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Speaker 1: shared weakness, confidence in mercy, trust in a living Christ,

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Speaker 1: a burning heart sustained by daily surrender. And all of

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Speaker 1: it depends on receptivity. And perhaps that is the gentle

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Speaker 1: but profound invitation before us, not to become more impressive,

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Speaker 1: but to become more open, Not to work harder for Jesus,

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Speaker 1: but to learn how to notice and respond to the

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Speaker 1: life of Jesus already at work among us. So tomorrow morning,

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Speaker 1: before the emails and the meetings and the weight of

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Speaker 1: leadership descend, Perhaps the simplest and bravest prayer we can

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Speaker 1: pray is something like this, Lord, here is the day again.

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Speaker 1: I am just as weak as ever, Come and feed

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Speaker 1: me with yourself, Speak to my soul, make my heart receptive.

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Speaker 1: And then not in frantic effort, but perhaps in quiet trust,

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Speaker 1: we rise and walk with the Living Christ into our

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Speaker 1: new day. Thank you for listening to the Unhurried Living podcast.

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Speaker 1: To learn more about us, visit Unhurried living dot com.

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Speaker 1: In the show notes, you'll find helpful links and information

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Speaker 1: about our partner, Live Audio and all of their other

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Speaker 1: faith centered podcasts