Who Do You Think You Are? with Pastor Ryan Braley

My name is Ryan.

I'm the pastor at Central.

It's great to be with you guys.

I do want to say, yes, if you are able to help pitch in once in a while at 10 o'clock with our Pathfinders and again the bar is pretty low if you can kind of tolerate little kids a little bit or pray about, then we'll take you, we'll train you.

Isabel and Ben and others will help you kind of figure it out.

But even just once a month, once every other, whatever you can do, we would love to be able to shepherd those little ones at this time at 10 o'clock.

So I asked the 830 as well and they're going to thank and pray about it.

We are in the middle of our series on Genesis and we're calling it.

How Did we Get here?

And the reason.

I think these ancient stories can speak to us today.

These are old stories.

They read like old stories and oh, let me get my sign out, since we got this cool sign so we can't let it go to waste.

Look at this.

Let that wash over you this morning.

Look at that.

All right, and how did we get here?

I think that the Bible, and Genesis in particular, speaks profoundly to our existence today and answers, or at least helps us address and conversate about, a lot of these existential questions that we have.

I'm not convinced that the book of Genesis was trying to be some kind of a treatise on science and these kinds of things or like biological life per se.

That's not what they were trying to do.

They were trying to instead explain our existence, what God is like, relationships and how we're to be in relationship with God and each other in the world.

And so if you're here and you wrestle with the science of the Bible, don't sweat it, for now that isn't what the Bible is trying to do.

A lot of times it's rather trying to talk about a theological sort of framework for how we can live in the world, and these things they dealt with back then, we still deal with today, and so that's the thread I want to pull on is how did we get here?

So the title of my sermon this morning is who do you think you are?

Are you ready?

Quick recap we're in Genesis 27, I think is what Paul read.

Genesis 1 through 11, so way in the beginning is really a preamble to the character that we know as Abraham, the father of the three major monotheistic religions today Judaism, of course, christianity, as Paul writes that we are now sons and daughters of Abraham in the Christian faith, and also Islam.

And so Muslims the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world trace their lineage back to Abraham through Ishmael, whereas Christians go through Isaac.

And so he's this very prominent character in the whole Hebrew Bible, but also in Genesis, and everything 1 through 11 is like a lead-up to Abraham.

So you have Adam and Eve and things start well.

There's a garden, there's plenty enough for everybody, there's grace and mercy.

They're walking with God.

It's beautiful.

And then things begin to spiral out of control rather rapidly.

You have the first murder in Genesis 4.

Cain kills his brother Abel, and then Lamech does all kinds of shenanigans and things begin to just sort of become a mess very quickly.

And Mech does all kinds of shenanigans and things begin to just sort of become a mess very quickly.

And then in Genesis 6, god says he looks at the world and sees that every heart is corrupted and deceitful.

And so he's like what do I do?

And so God, I would argue, baptizes the whole thing into wash it clean, cleanses it in order to restart, to refresh, renew it, and there's always this line of faithful people, so Adam, and then his son Seth, and then Noah, and then Shem, and then Abraham, and through this line of people and their families, god tries to reconcile and make things not a mess any longer.

So in Genesis 11 and 12, he comes to Abram, or we call him Abraham.

He says I'm going to bless you.

I'm going to drag you, not drag you.

I'm going to call you out of this country All you've ever known.

I want you to risk it all and leave and go to where I tell you to.

I'm going to bless you, not so you can just become, you know, this fat cat who has all this money and a castle on the hill, but no, so you can bless the whole world.

And if we're sons and daughters of Abraham, as Paul writes, that's our job.

Whatever blessings we received from God, we're to share them around and make the world a better place.

God says, with Abraham, I'm going to create a new humanity through you and your family, a community of peace and justice.

So live like this.

In my ways, I'll teach you how to do it, and then you'll be a blessing and show the whole world how to do it.

Fair enough, okay, thank you.

Thank you, sonia.

So then God blesses Abraham, and then abraham is told you're gonna have a bunch of kids.

And he sort of laughs because he's old and so is his wife, sarai, and we call her sarah.

And they keep getting older and decades go by before finally they have a son and they call him laughter, because when you're old and have a kid, like what else we're gonna do?

Just laugh at this, because god is wild sometimes.

And so they laugh, they.

They call him Isaac Esau, which means laughter.

And then God asks Abraham to sacrifice his own son.

Wild story.

I don't like this story but, as I mentioned last week, so go back and listen to the sermon last week.

I believe God is rewriting their understanding of religion, of God and that relationship.

And he ends the story by saying, hey, I don't want you to sacrifice your son.

He's rewriting their idea of sacrifice, relationship with the gods, these kinds of things.

And he says, hey, I'm not the kind of God who demands a sacrifice, I'm going to provide for you instead.

And Abraham's like, or actually Isaac's like, that was close.

So Isaac grows up and here's where this prominent character, abraham, begins to fade or recede into the background.

And I was remarking this morning how oddly similar to our lives this is.

You know, think about your heroes when you were younger, your sports heroes, your celebrity heroes.

Where are they now?

A lot of them have sort of faded into the background or exit stage left.

This is how life works.

We're on stage for a brief moment and then we're not.

We're kind of invited to exit stage left and whatever is beyond, and we don't really know.

That's kind of how life works.

So Abraham begins to recede and his sons begin to take center stage.

So Isaac grows older the one who was on that mountain was going to be sacrificed.

He grows up and he has twin boys of his own.

And that's what we read today Jacob and Esau.

And we're told that Jacob is a smooth-skinned man, because sometimes young men are smooth-skinned.

You know what I'm saying.

But Esau now listen, here's the deal.

Most of us will never be mentioned in the Bible.

Okay, that's a joke.

None of you will be mentioned in the Bible.

Okay, and this guy was.

Here's his one shot.

He will be remembered throughout all of history Like this is his moment and, as he's watching, like he's mentioned as a hairy man.

Oh my, you've got to be kidding me, god.

What are you talking, god?

I think you misspelled handsome.

No, esau, you're a hairy man.

That's what it is right.

So we're told he's a hairy dude, he loves the outdoors, he's an avid hunter.

He's favored by his father.

Isaac favors Esau.

He's the oldest, he's a rugged man's man.

He loves to hunt Imagine Ted Nugent, but with sandals on, or maybe like a Near Eastern version of Teddy Roosevelt, something like this right.

He loves being outside.

He loves to hunt and and uh and make stew out of this game.

He's like a man.

He's a hairy, hairy boss too.

But his brother, jacob, is the opposite.

He's favored by his mom.

Bit of a mama's boy perhaps, stays at home all the time.

He's a smooth skin, young, young fella, and he likes to cook.

And his mom, rebecca.

Rebecca favors jacob.

So already from the jump you have these twin brothers who are kind of like wrestling in the womb, we're told.

And this conflict continues to brew.

So you don't have to be a family systems therapist to sense there's this conflict brewing between these brothers.

And no, conflict brewing.

Is not the name of a Minneapolis brewery, bobbrew, correct.

Okay, it's not what it is, but there's this tension already in the family.

These two brothers begin to have this sibling rivalry Isaac, the father, favors Esau, his hairy son, and the mom, rebekah, favors Jacob, the young, fair-skinned or smooth-skinned one.

And so when Isaac gets older, as is the custom in the ancient Near East, he calls his eldest son, esau, to his bedside.

He's going to die.

He wants to give him his blessing as the firstborn son.

This was like a very prominent ritual for fathers to do in this patriarchal society.

He calls Esau to his bedside to give him this fatherly blessing.

And so it's this meaningful, significant symbolic gesture, loaded with meaning.

And this is what he says.

He says Esau, prepare me the kind of tasty food I like.

I know you hunt, buddy, so go get me some game, bring it back, we'll eat it together, then I might give you my blessing before I die.

By the way, the word I so it says so that I may give you my blessing.

The word I actually isn't I, it's the word nefesh.

In Hebrew, everyone say nefesh.

Here it is for you, there it is.

Nefesh means soul.

So Isaac is saying hey, come to me, bring me this game, we'll make some stew together or you'll make it for me.

I'm old, I'm going blind, I can't hardly hear anything and my soul wants to bless you.

So what he's saying is hey, something deep within me, in my innermost being, the deepest parts of myself, I'm going to take that, I'm going to give it to you, my son Esau.

This is what it means to have a blessing.

I'm going to give you from my nefesh, from deep down in here.

I'm going to give this to you from my innermost being.

So Isaac sends him out.

Rebecca, the mom, hears this and is livid because she favors the other brother, jacob.

So she concocts a plan.

It's like jacob, come here, go dress up like your brother and and and put on his clothes.

And you know, you're not that hairy, you have to figure it out.

So he goes and gets goat skins and puts goat skins with hair all over his body.

You know, like you did the last time you stole your father's blessing, get the goat skins on.

And he must be like what am I doing?

And then she sends him in there so he can pretend to be his brother, the hairy one, esau.

And so jacob does.

He puts on his brother's clothes, covers himself with goat hair and goes in there to his dad pretending to be Esau.

And yeah, and then Isaac says hey, who are you?

He can't really see.

He's getting old and he goes.

Well, I'm your son, this is Jacob.

He goes.

I'm your son, your firstborn Esau.

Go ahead, smell me, feel my hairy body.

Jacob insists that he's somebody else.

He pretends to be somebody he's not in order to take what didn't belong to him in the first place.

And here's the thing it works.

Isaac is duped.

He can't quite tell.

Some things seem a bit off, but he rubs his arm, he smells the clothes, like, oh yeah, that's right.

And so he then, in that moment, takes this thing that's deep within his soul from his nephesh, this innermost being, this blessing, and he gives it to the wrong brother.

He gives it to Jacob when it belonged the whole time to Esau.

This is a serious offense that Jacob commits.

An offense to his brother, of course, esau.

Yes.

An offense to his dad, isaac, he lies to his dad.

It's also an offense to the whole family.

I'll explain what patriarchy meant in the ancient world in a minute.

But it's an offense to all of them.

And then esau comes back in and isaac tells him I already gave it to your brother, dude.

And esau is furious and he vows before our father, actually after our father dies.

Once he's dead, I'm gonna kill you, kill you.

Jacob takes this as a subtle hint that now is a good time to go ahead and leave town and he splits.

He's going to kill him, and so he runs.

Now here's the deal.

I was in Target the other day and this woman next to me sneezed oh God, bless you.

How pastoral was that right?

Thank you, I'm out doing the Lord's work at Target, bless you.

I'm out doing the Lord's work at Target, bless you.

Now, if she had said oh, it wasn't me, it was this guy over here.

Oh, my bad, I take it back, bless you instead.

You're welcome Elk River community.

But that's how it works, sort of in our modern idea of blessing oh, I bless you, I bless you, and we sort of flippantly give out these blessings.

This is not how it was in the ancient world at all.

Remember, this thing came from his nefesh, from his soul, deep in his innermost part of his being.

He takes this thing from his soul and he gives it to his son.

It wasn't nothing, it was something.

It was something that they thought could be stolen, like you could hold it, maybe, weigh it, measure it.

It was like this thing that was deep and profound and substantial.

A blessing now is just sort of like complimenting or gesundheit, or bless you, whatever.

That is not how it was in the ancient world.

It was much more substantive back then.

It had a weight to it.

It could be stolen.

You know, the things that weigh the most in life often cannot be weighed at all.

The things that weigh the most often cannot be weighed at all.

The things that weigh the most often cannot be weighed.

And so this thing from the father, from his nefesh, he gives it to the wrong son and it's this thing that sort of has substance.

It's not some meaningless, you know, offhanded remark, it's his blessing from the father to the son.

And once you give it you can't take it back.

So Esau's like hey, bless me too.

I already gave it to your brother.

That thing that was so meaningful and powerful.

It's already been done and I cannot undo it.

Now here's the thing In the ancient world they had this system of organizing the family called a patriarchy.

I know patriarchy has sort of gotten a bad rap today, and for good reason.

But back then a patriarch was the father who owned all the material wealth and had all the possessions, not so he could be just rich and live a lazy life and boss others around.

That's where it gets a bad rap, because some people do that today.

Don't do that.

The role of the patriarch was to be a blessing to the whole tribe, take care of the whole village.

If someone got lost, you would use the resources as the father of the patriarch to go and get them, go find them.

If someone was sick, you'd use that whole family tribal money to go and take care of them until they either got better or died off.

The patriarch was this magnanimous figure that was to take care of everybody.

Patriarch was a was this magnanimous figure that was to take care of everybody.

Now, when he died, they had to pass on that blessing and the wealth of the family to the next son, the firstborn son.

Now, it's an ancient story and it reads like that.

Okay, that's kind of how it was.

So they would call in the firstborn son and he would take on the mantle of being now the patriarch of the family, the one that takes care of everybody, that uses the resources that belong to everybody to make sure everyone had enough, they were all taken care of, they had enough food to eat, they were safe and secure.

They were the ones that stayed up at night worrying about all the budget and the checkbook and all that kind of thing, and so then he would pass on that to the oldest son.

Now that meant that all the goats and the cattle and the money and the rice and the wheat fields or the land, it would all go from you to the firstborn son.

That's how it worked.

So this is what he's kind of doing.

Isaac calls Esau.

Of course, jacob sneaks in there instead and he gives him all the stuff that the patriarch owned.

So, yes, the blessing is like goats and coins and land and these kinds of things.

It's sort of like a last will and testament of the father.

There's this very social or socio-juridical element to it.

But it's not just that.

It's not just money and land and goats.

It's from his nefesh.

It's something deeper, more powerful.

It's his words of blessing over his son, this thing that weighs so heavy it cannot be weighed, and he gives it to the wrong son.

That's what it meant to be a blessing.

It's not just a compliment or a passing remark.

It's not just coins and land, these things are fine.

It's something deeper and even more substantive.

See, these words have deep power.

These symbols, these rituals that we engage in have deep meaning and power.

It's like there's something alive in them.

The great Walter Brueggemann says this about this passage.

I love this.

This is what he says.

He says the narrative, this one we're reading, presumes that symbolic actions have genuine and abiding power.

Symbolic actions like a laying on of hands.

They're not empty gestures signifying nothing.

They're not nothing, they're something.

The ritual act is a decisive event in which something has been done irrevocably, it's been given.

I can't take it back.

More happens than meets the eye.

This narrative assumes and affirms that spoken words shape human life.

If I asked you, have you ever had someone speak words over you?

And those words, that ritual, that symbol, it shaped your life?

I bet I'd hear dozens of stories about how that happened in your life.

He goes on and says the narrative presumes that symbolic action oh I sorry.

Language is not simply an exercise of propaganda.

It's not just propaganda and manipulation like our modern world tends to treat them.

Words here are not a matter of indifference which may be attended to or not, as is convenient here, when words are spoken in the ancient world by authoritative persons in proper context, are spoken in the ancient world by authoritative persons in proper context.

They have substance, they mean what they say, and they must be handled with respect for the means toward life or death.

Or, as Proverbs 18 puts it this way death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Friends, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Your words have meaning.

These things, we do, have meaning.

And what Isaac does when he blesses his son, the wrong son, has power.

It has substance.

What we say rituals, prayers, laying on of hands, water, wine, juice, bread these things have meaning.

When we stand and sit down and we pray out loud and we read the Bible, these things have meaning, they have substance, they have power in them, they're significant.

This is why Jacob craves so desperately his father's blessing that was meant for Esau.

He wants it, he longs for it.

He longs for the firstborn blessing that belongs to his brother.

He craves it so desperately.

And he craves it so desperately he dresses up like someone he's not and pretends to be something he's not in order to lie to his father.

Now here's the deal.

You and I are not that dissimilar, are we?

We crave the blessing of other people.

I mean flattery and compliments, sure, but we want someone to look at us and for them to know us and to say I love you more than anything in the whole world.

There's no one like you.

You are utterly unique.

I accept you for who you are and I wish you blessings and goodness and grace and mercy From there, nefesh, from deep within.

We long for this.

Last summer I was on a camping trip.

It was a solo camping trip with this experiential thing out in the woods in Michigan with Kent.

Dobson was the leader of it, if you were here when he, when he preached and like the middle three days were spent.

We were solo camping and fasting.

It was incredible, awesome experience.

But when we began, we would gather, he goes hey, if anyone has any dreams, I do dream work.

He said come in the morning, we'll talk about your dreams.

I'm like all right, cool, cool.

And that first night, that first night, I had a vivid dream.

It was very short, so I come to breakfast next morning, I'm gonna tell him my dream, so we're all talking.

He goes hey, who had a dream last night?

I'm like, well, I did.

What was it?

So here's the dream.

I had a dream that I was in a car with grant stoltman.

You guys know Grant Stoltman.

He was here at the 830 gathering earlier.

He's a college kid, he's a sophomore, and my son, Logan, and him played baseball against each other when they were little and then with each other at the high school.

He's maybe a year younger, I forget but and his mom was here too this morning and they were both in the back of the car.

So it was Grant and his mom and I'm driving, vivid, and I'm driving, and I felt in that moment compelled.

I've known Grant since he was a little boy and I'm like.

I felt compelled in my heart.

And, by the way, carl Jung would say that things in your dreams are symbolic.

So I don't think this meant anything to Grant necessarily.

So I'm driving in the car and I felt compelled to turn around and bless him and to give him this benediction.

So I did, I turned around and you know, in your dreams things aren't like real life.

I was not concerned at all about running into anything.

I just turned around and started talking to Grant, started blessing him and his mom was watching him with this look of fondness in her eyes, as moms often do with their kids, and I was just blessing him and I was done and I turned around and I kept going and that was the end of the dream and I'm like and then Kent was like okay, why did you feel so compelled to bless him?

I don't know, just in this season of my life my kids are getting older, my role as a pastor here, I'm getting older and I just feel like I just want to bless people and I want to speak good over them and just speak words of goodness when the when, all the time, people are being torn down and cut down with words.

I want to be a blessing to people.

And then Kent goes okay, cool, cool, as a pastor in Ryan who does this for you, I started crying, just started sobbing, because I crave blessing.

We all do.

We long to have someone look at us and to know us and to speak good over us from deep within their soul, from within their nefesh, for someone to say hey, there's no one like you.

I love you for no reason.

You're utterly unique.

You're a gift.

We long for this.

We ache for blessing, not just compliments and flattery those are fine, but we long for blessing and we're so desperate for it.

Many of us will dress up like somebody we're not in order to get it and we'll pretend to be something that we're not in order to hear the blessings or the praises or the accolades of other people.

We all do this because we long for blessing.

Now, jacob couldn't get it, so he concocts this plan and he dresses up like his brother.

He becomes so different, he hides and pretends, and the father, isaac's like hey, you smell like, remember, he's getting older, he can't really see.

You smell like Esau, you feel like Esau, your clothes smell like Esau, but something's not quite right.

You're not quite Esau.

He knows, at least for a moment maybe.

But we all do this, don't we?

Many of you probably hate your job.

Or let's say it this way Some of you might hate your job, but you've got to stick with it because you've got to get that paycheck, to get all the things that will earn the accolades of the people that you want to impress.

You want their blessing, and so you stick with that job that you hate and there's a drain on your life because you want the blessing so badly.

Maybe you're in a relationship because you know if you dress up and look the part and say the right things, that person will give you their blessing, and so you pretend for years sometimes to be somebody you're not to get the blessing of somebody else.

Maybe in your family you grew up in a system where you had to pretend to be something that you weren't in order to earn the blessing of your parents, and you wanted it so badly but you had to pretend.

Maybe you're here this morning because you know if you show up in church and look the part, others will be like hey, bless you.

Because you know, if you show up in church and look the part, others will be like hey, bless you.

I know nobody in this room, probably, but maybe friends of yours that you know of Other churches have that Because we desperately want the blessing.

The problem is, after many years of doing this, we forget who we actually really are.

Like, who am I?

I've been dressing in goat skins my whole life.

I forgot who I even was.

I'm pretending to be so-and-so or such-and-such.

I forgot who I really and truly am.

This is partly, I think, what Jung calls the shadow side.

So Isaac has one final test for his son, who's a charlatan.

He says, hey, come here and kiss me, I want to test.

So he says, come, kiss me, my son, and in that moment, jacob gets what he's craving for.

He has his father.

Look at him and give him this blessing from his nephesh.

He hears the words he's been longing for his whole life, this blessing of the firstborn son.

The problem is he's not Esau and it's just not the same.

It's never the same, by the way, when we do this kind of thing.

Here's a quick takeaway I'm just gonna aside, or maybe not an aside, but if you're a parent in this room, it is your job to bless your children, all of them.

By the way, the bible story is really, I think, dramatically showing that god doesn't just bless one person, it's always.

The whole thing is blessed, and perhaps these ancient patriarchs are still living a bit with one foot in the ancient world and one foot what god is doing, and god's just keep coming this way.

So god's intention was always to bless the whole world.

So, parents, your job is to bless all your kids, to know them, to spend time with them, to speak good over them, say I love you for no reason.

I see you, oh, you're so good, I'm so glad you're here.

You're unique.

There's nobody like you.

I love you.

That's your job as parents to bless them.

But what happens if your parents didn't do that for you, or maybe you haven't done it for your kids yet?

Well, you can start.

But what happens if you grew up in a screwed up family?

Isaac realizes what he's done, by the the way, when Esau the real Esau comes back and he's like hey, I'm here, father and Isaac, what are you talking about?

I just blessed you.

And Esau's like what?

And Isaac says I can't take it back.

Then he says this I gave the blessing to the other son and indeed he will be blessed.

He can't take it back.

So it's like Isaac relents.

Because here's the thing Way back when the two boys were in the womb, the mom Rebecca goes to the temple.

They get a prophecy about the birth of the two boys and the prophet says hey, the older one will serve the younger one.

That's not how it usually works in the ancient world, but again, flipping of the script in the Bible.

So all along, although the means by which it comes about wasn't good and it's not being endorsed, but like all along, the plan was for the line of promise to keep going through Jacob.

But Isaac wanted the other son so badly, the hairy one, the favored one, the man's man, the chosen one, the one who everybody liked.

Isaac wanted him to be the blessed one.

That was the tradition, after all, and you can't go against tradition.

But then he realizes, ah, I've been fighting against God perhaps all the while.

I give up, let God have his way and indeed your brother will be blessed.

He blesses him.

And indeed your brother will be blessed.

He blesses him.

See, we often think it's the favored one.

Esau will be blessed.

It's funny, some of the commentators don't even.

They suggest that the storyteller in this moment doesn't even like Jacob, like there's nothing praiseworthy about Jacob in the whole story.

He's like a mama's boy, he stays at home.

Nobody likes him.

It's like you wouldn't pick him.

Not even the storyteller likes this kid.

But that's who God blesses.

We think, oh, if I'm coming from a good family, good home, good upbringing, I'll be blessed, and if you came from a screwed up family, good luck.

Sorry, but over and over and over again, god chooses the wrong people.

I love it.

And this way God blesses the wrong person.

He blesses the most screwed up member of the whole family.

Like, yeah, give me that one.

These are not superheroes in the Bible, they're ordinary people like you and like me.

I love how Tim Keller says it.

He says this about this story.

I love it.

He says this he said God brings his scandalous intervening grace into the lives of people who don't seek it, who don't deserve it, who continually resist it and who don't even appreciate it after they've been given and been saved by it.

They don't even appreciate it.

This is who God saves and blesses.

And then he goes on to say this this is who God saves and blesses.

And then he goes on to say this God works sheerly through grace.

In case you are confused, it's all grace, baby.

God works sheerly through grace.

The outsider, the marginalized, the failure, the mama's boy and Isaac finally surrenders to it.

Here's how I want to end.

Would you please stand?

I'm going to do a quick theological turn and then we're going to do something later on, much later, jesus shows up and we're told in Colossians 1 that Jesus is the firstborn over all creation.

In a number of ways I would read it it, but I'm burning daylight here.

So just read on your own Colossians 1, read the whole chapter.

It's awesome.

He's the firstborn of all creation, the firstborn raised from the dead.

He's the chosen, the favored one right of the family.

But remember, god doesn't just bless the firstborn son so that the firstborn can buy a nice ranch in Montana and retire in a fly fish, all by himself, as lovely as that does sound.

He says I want to bless you so you can bless the whole world.

So he gives this from the soul if I could take the liberty here from the soul of God, the nefesh of God.

He pours out this blessing into his son, jesus, so that Jesus can bless the whole world.

And here's how he does it.

Paul says and I will read you this one Romans 8,.

This is what Paul writes about you.

I think I have a slide.

Yeah, he says the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

Now, if we're God's children, then we are heirs.

We're inheritors of the blessing of the goats and the coins of the land.

Fine, but something deeper than that.

The things which weigh the most cannot be weighed.

We're heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

You've been adopted, grafted in your sons and daughters of Abraham.

That blessing is now yours.

Do you hear me?

Okay, I'm going to have you close your eyes if you want to, I'm going to give you a blessing.

Here's how we're going to do it.

I'm going to have you take 30 seconds in silence and ask God to bless you.

Maybe you're here like I've never done this before.

Ryan, I'm not even.

I don't know if I'm a Christian or a person of faith.

I don't know if I believe in God.

That's okay, we can experiment together.

You can close your eyes and just ask God, the divine, the creator, what would you say to me If you were to speak to me now?

What image might come up in your mind?

What words, what saying?

What might come to you?

Let the spirit come and bless you.

Then, after 30 seconds, I am going to, from the deepest parts of my inner being, I want to bless you and speak life, if I could, over you.

So I'll take 30 seconds.

What might God say to you?

And you can keep your eyes closed or you can open them if you prefer, but now I want to bless you central.

May you know that there is no one like you.

There's not.

You are utterly unique and God loves you in the deepest parts of his soul.

God loves you as you are, not as you should be.

He's always loved you.

His eye is on you and you're to be a blessing, to receive the love and grace and mercy from God and to share it around.

The world desperately needs blessing.

May you know in the deepest parts of your soul that you are God's beloved sons and God's beloved daughters for no reason, that you are God's beloved sons and God's beloved daughters For no reason, and may you go and be a blessing, amen.