What is prayers role in handling conflicts or tensions?  Join us as we chat about this important topic 

Bio: Since 2007, Duncan has served as a bi-vocational minister with International Christian Ministries (ICM), Compassion International, Cadence International, and Larger Story (LS), where he regularly contributes to LS vlogs, webinars, and podcasts. Duncan brings his passion for trinitarian-relating and relational development, along with years of rich cross-cultural experience to every person and place he serves. Since 1994, Colorado has been home to Duncan and Angie and is the birthplace of their four adult children.

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The PAPA Prayer 

Transcript

Kep Crabb: Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on Relational Spirituality. The podcast brought to you by Larger Story. I am joined today by a familiar voice. As you hear the intro to this podcast, you might recognize the voice, but now you get to see the face as well. Good friend of mine and a colleague, Mr. Duncan Sprague. Thanks for joining me today, man.

Duncan Sprague: Hey Kep, it’s great to be with you again. I love being with you and chatting through whatever important topic we’re going to talk about.

Kep Crabb: We’ve been talking about prayer and we’ve really been focusing on and looking at The Papa Prayer in respect to how that impacts our prayer lives and what is our prayer life about?

But today we’re going to go a little bit off of that. I think it still stays within the context of prayer, but it’s, how do we resolve some of the tensions or some of the conflicts that we run into? Those might be with friends, those might be with colleagues, those might be with spouses. Where do we start on some of that? I think that’s something that I think a lot of people are interested in and no one is immune from. We’ve all had tensions. We’ve all had struggles. We were just chatting through this. We’re doing this at the last minute.

Also, I apologize. I’ve got a head cold now, so if I start coughing or something, please bear with me. I’ve got some water over here, but I guess it is that cold and flu season coming up, but just a little head cold going on. 

Dunc, I wanted to start off by saying you’ve been married now for how many years?

Duncan Sprague: 33 years coming up on 34.

Kep Crabb: You and Angie. I know your wife. I know both of you guys. We’ve been in a couple of different small groups together and are currently in one. You guys have never had an argument or a disagreement or anything like that?

Duncan Sprague: No. I love your dad’s famous line of, “When we get in conflict, she repents and then we’re okay.” I’ll put my lightning rod up right now. 

Kep Crabb: Good thing she’s not sitting next to you. That was always Dad’s joke when he was talking about mom and some of that conflict.

Duncan Sprague: Yes. Everybody out there knows that it’s a joke and if you don’t, please don’t write letters. It is a joke.

Kep Crabb: No question. I know Duncan’s wife well, she’s one of the sweetest ladies on the planet. When you go through some of those kinds of things, we’ve talked about this whole conflict issue. And no one’s immune from it. We all are going to be subject to it at some time and some of us in some depth of ways that kind of scare me, with brothers who won’t speak to each other anymore, or people who used to be very close friends now can’t hardly be in the same room.

What do you do about that kind of stuff?

Duncan Sprague: I think one of the first things that I do is, it does drive me to prayer. I always have to ask God, “What of this is mine? Search my heart oh God, know my way. See if there’s any wicked way in me.” Because there’s plenty of it there that gets in the way of relationships. That’s the premise I always begin with. Conflict is neither right nor wrong. It’s inevitable. It’s coming whether you want it or not. It actually is the sign of a healthy relationship where two people come together and engage with one another. I know I’ve done lots of premarital counseling and I stole a line from your dad. I don’t know where he stole it from, but the common line is, getting married is like a tick on a dog relationship. The problem is that there’s two ticks and no dog. And that’s the reality. When you come into a marriage, when you come into a relationship, you have two people that are desperately needy.

What’s Pascal’s famous line? “Inside every person is a God shaped vacuum trying to suck life, a God shaped vacuum that only God can fill. And yet, we try to fill it with every person we come across, especially our spouses.” And that’s why conflicts inevitably show up, because I’m asking something of my wife that she was never intended to give. It’s at that point when the collision happens, the marital bliss turns into a marital battle. It’s at that point that you start to ask, so how do you work through conflict? And I think the important word is through.

Kep Crabb: I think the thing is, you start to talk about marital issues. I think of myself with Kimmie, we’ve been married now going on 30 years, we’ll be celebrating 30 years in a couple of months. We’ve got some experience under our belt a little bit. We’ve had our fair share of conflict for sure. It’s interesting how, when you first get married, you’re standing up there and it really is that tick on a dog kind of a mentality. You’re excited, what are you going to do for me? You make me feel in a certain way. And then as you go through it, I guess the next thing that happens is you get very disillusioned and discouraged. You just feel this is not what I signed up for. And then as you continue to move through that, because the one thing Kimmie and I know with you and Ange as well, we just said, there’s no backdoor here. We’re not ever going to shut this deal down. There’s nothing that can do that. So no matter what we go through, we’re in it till the end. Which was really interesting because she comes from…

A little bit of my wife’s background. Her mother’s been married a handful of times and and currently single. There’s a lot of that. So when she met my family, she thought, wow, this is interesting. You’ve got a mom and a dad who still love each other. It’s just a fairytale thing. I didn’t know anything different, but after 30 years, I think we look at each other now and say, we’ve been through some deep waters, but we’re really experiencing that oneness that I think scripture talks about in a way. That’s new in the last few years, even since her diagnosis. That’s just an interesting thing. We’ve moved through those conflicts and we’ll talk about how to do some of that, maybe some thoughts on it, but you really come out of that with a better understanding of what that friendship or what that relationship, what that marriage, whatever that may be, of the depth of that and how you really do start to care for someone more than yourself. That’s what I’ve seen. But as you’re going through it, the conflict can be hell and can be very painful. Yeah. What about some of that, Dunc?

Duncan Sprague: The hellish elements of it are the ones that you realize, it really isn’t hell, but it echoes it a lot because what is hell? It’s isolation away from the presence of God. And if God’s presence is not there, then that means it’s isolation from any presence. It means that you are utterly alone. So that is where I think every marriage goes through that, where you say, I feel abandoned. I feel alone. I feel like they’re not hearing, they’re not understanding. I think that’s the part that Satan really wants to get you lost in those scripts, where it will just replay in the theater of your mind, all the vengeful things and what does love do, but doesn’t keep track of wrongs done. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t remember them, but it doesn’t hold it up as part of the scorecard.

I think that’s the part that I go to in those hellish moments. It’s easy to grab the old violations and go, see doing it again. Instead, God says, no, put that card away and see how much I’ve forgiven you. I think that’s the part that always gets me, we can love because He first loved us. We can forgive because of how much He’s forgiven us. I think the difficulty, and I’ve seen this in multiple marriages that have ended, it’s when the person says, I will not look inside any longer. I will not self evaluate. I am not to blame. It’s the other person. That’s when our prayers even change at that point.

Here’s the one piece, and I love this part about the Apostle Peter. He’s the only apostle that we’re certain was married, because we know Matthew tells the story, and actually in Mark, actually it’s recorded, I think, in the synoptic gospels, the three that are the same, or that are similar. We find out that Jesus has healed the mother in law of Peter. So we know if there’s a mother in law, there must be a wife. So Peter then in his later writings gives us this anecdotal advice for living with a spouse. So I know he’s speaking from experience and this is what he says in he has a whole section in 1 Peter 3 on husbands and wives, but the verse that we really want to camp on because it gives us great advice of what it means to live with our wives. So it says, “Likewise, husband – so this is to you and me – live with your wives in an understanding way.” Now, we don’t know fully what he means by an understanding way. We have some ideas, but then we always get lost in this next phrase, “Showing honor to her – to the woman – as the weaker vessel.” We get lost, especially in today’s climate where women say, I’m not weak but we lose the whole context here and we get lost in that phrase. It’s like a speed bump now in the text and we don’t go on to see why. “Since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.” That’s what it means to honor. They’re equal heirs with you in the promise of God so that, and this is still talking to the husband, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

We missed the fact of why Peter’s saying this. He says, I don’t want your prayers to be hindered. We’re in a quarter that we’re talking about prayer. Here’s advice to husbands. You want to keep a good prayer life, live with your wife in an understanding way. I just want to unpack what that means.

I think the physical side is where most scholars land. They say, okay, they’re weaker in a physical sense. Not in labor pains and those kinds of things, but just in strength of bodies, bone structure and all that kind of biological makeup. But I think that it’s even more the fact that he calls us vessels and calls her the weaker vessel. We’re called vessels elsewhere. 2 Corinthians says that we’re all vessels. God has put His riches in vessels of clay, in earthen vessels. So it’s not that either one of us are strong vessels, neither one of us are. There’s weak and weaker. Why would God make weak vessels?

If you talk to any archaeologists, they would say when you go, if you find a pristine vase from antiquity, you found a really rare thing, because what you mostly find is shards of broken pieces, because every clay pot is intended to hold something, but at some point it breaks. It cracks. Our tendency is, let’s patch it up. But God says, no, I put the riches in you so that as you are broken, my riches will pour out. I think that part of what Peter’s after is saying they’re a weaker vessel. So when my wife prays, there is rarely a time that she doesn’t end up in tears because her prayers are so close to the feeling of what’s going on. We just said goodbye to our son, launched him officially to his first full time missionary job, and she was leaking everywhere. She set an example for me where I refuse to be broken. She is willing to be broken. So I live with my wife in an understanding way that when she is broken and the riches pour out, honor her. She’s setting an example for me so that my prayers are not hindered. 

This is where I go that I think the best example is you can look at Genesis. Look at how Adam’s conversation changed with God before the fall and after the fall. Before the fall, “Oh, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Whoa, man, this is a woman. You can see that.” And then after the fall, he no longer lives in an understanding way of her, he lives mostly in an understanding way of himself. “It’s the woman you gave me, Lord.” His conversation changed. Prayer became a point for blame accusation. Don’t let me take any consequences.

I think Peter as the only married apostle gives us great advice to live in a world that will break us and then to let the riches pour out. 

Kep Crabb: Yeah, I didn’t know we were going to go this direction at some level. That’s interesting. As you start to say some of this, even in respect to prayer, this has been my big thought for the last several weeks and months really. The only thing that we’re aware of that the Lord was asked by the disciples is teach us how to pray. I’m sure they asked Him other things too but the only thing that we’ve been told in scripture. There’s something really important about that. When you’re talking about understanding your spouse without having your prayers being hindered. That just brings chills to my neck.

What does it mean to have your prayers hindered where they aren’t doing what you’re asking of them? Praying in a way that allows you to have that connection with the Lord in a relational connection, that’s the whole notion of The Papa Prayer. How do we meet God? It’s so easy to come to God and say, I want this and I want this and I want this. And the whole notion of prayer from what I understand is really a legal term, it’s to petition. We’re redefining it as an opportunity to get to know the God of the universe.

How does that then impact when you’re in a conflict ? You’re having a fight with someone, whether it be Angie or someone else. How does that then impact that moment?

Duncan Sprague: One of the things that I think is, I have to know what my default mechanism is when I get in conflict. We often talk in terms of when conflict happens, we have one of two responses, fight or flight, but I actually think that there’s more. We don’t just flee conflict. We flee it. We fight it. Sometimes we do both. Both of those are when we are stuck in a battle. I think that Ephesians 5 or 4 when Paul talks about he’s given some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be these things so that we might grow up in our faith so we might mature.

Then he says, by speaking the truth in love, what maturity looks like. Truth. Not pretending to love, not pulling back. Those two things are always at play in any conflict. So in a conflict, I’m always saying, is this true? I’m going to fight you over the truth of the matter, or is there a value of relationship that’s in jeopardy?

You said at the very beginning, friends and brothers and siblings that no longer talk to each other, relationships that have gotten lost, and at some point, they’ve said the truth isn’t worth fighting for, and the relationship isn’t worth fighting for, so I flee. I run from it.

Kep Crabb: There’s other things too. I know we’ve talked about that, but I always wonder this. I talked to a friend of mine just the other day, who has a friend who just got divorced after 50 years of marriage, and I just never understood that. Of course, I don’t know the details, but I’m guessing that marriage has long been dissolved or dead or whatever we want to call it for years. They just finally decided to call it a day. But I’ve never understood how someone would put so much time into a relationship like that just to say, I’m done with it now.

That’s where I think the whole notion of the way you’re talking about when you feel the Spirit leading through you. I’ve seen this the last little bit when Kimmie and I’ve had some conflicts and some tensions. What does it mean to really put her first? It’s been interesting because the fights are different and we’ve had some in the past that I’m just not proud of in any way shape or form. 

Just to be honest with you folks who are watching us today, I had initially talked with a couple of different people and said, if we talk about this subject, should we bring Kimmie? I asked Kimmie, would you like to join me? Of course she’s not into doing podcasts or anything like that. But she also said, do you really want to know how you and I fought back in the day and let all those people know? I thought, huh, maybe not, that’s a good point. I handled it very poorly and very immaturely, but I’m seeing us fight now in a different way now that allows us to get to the other side in some ways. I really do want her to know that I care about her more. That’s so important to me.

Duncan Sprague: You’re battling for something different. This is the thing that I’m realizing, even as you were just talking. Before I am a husband to my bride, I am a disciple of Jesus. Jesus says it himself. If you’re going to be my disciple, if you’re going to follow me, the first thing is to deny yourself. That’s the beginning. We oftentimes put that up as the pinnacle of real maturity. No, the mature disciples, they are the ones who deny themselves. And Jesus says, no, you can’t. That’s the doorway into being my disciple. You begin by saying, I am not the point. Deny yourself, pick up a cross. What for? I have a friend who used to preach this. He used to say, “Marriage is God’s clever way to get us all crucified.” Isn’t that true?

Kep Crabb: I saw a comedian the other night that Kimmie and I were watching and he’s a Christian comedian. He said, God says to the angels, “Hey, come on over here. Watch what I do. I’m going to put this guy together with this gal. Oh, this is going to be incredible. Let’s just see what happened.” But you said something the other day that really stuck with me. This was maybe a month or so ago, but we were talking about some things and you said you were, in the middle of doing some counseling with some people. You didn’t name any names, but you talked to Dad and said, Larry, how can I break through? How can I help these people? How can I help save this marriage? And then Dad said to you and help me if I’m wrong here, but the marriage is already dead. This marriage is dead. And that kind of caught you off balance. And then he went from there a little bit more, unpacked that a little bit.

Duncan Sprague:  This actually goes back almost 30 years when I was actually studying under Larry. I was interning and I was counseling the wife. I found out he was counseling the husband. This was my first consultation with Larry and I’m thinking, we’re going in to save this marriage and we’re going to work together as a team. You can hear my assumption that the goal in counseling them is to fix this marriage. I said, so what do we do to help fix this marriage? That was the energy; we’re going to fix it. His response was, “Oh, this marriage has been gone for a long time. There is no resurrecting this one.”

I remember going, so what are we doing? What’s the purpose of counseling? And he said something really poignant. It’s stuck with me ever since. He said, do you think that God put these two people on this earth to be married to each other? Is that His number one calling on their life? The highest calling over there. I said it’s up there, isn’t it? He says, not even a close second. The number one goal for their lives is to glorify God and make them known. And I go, yeah. And he says, now your goal in counseling them is to help them become the most glorious divorced person possible, because that’s where they’re heading. Their identity isn’t being divorced. Their identity is still a child of God. 

All of a sudden, my categories got blown out of the water. It just put that as the first priority: whatever circumstance you’re in, whether married or divorced, your primary calling in life is to glorify God by putting Him on display in the ways that you relate, think, and live. We’ve got some dear friends that we know well that are in the middle of that same process right now. That was the first thing I said to them. I said, I’m not going to choose sides with you guys. But I am going to come alongside and say, how do you glorify God and not continue to destroy each other in this process and not destroy the children that are part of this marriage. That’s the rippling effect; not just one marriage that is destroyed. It’s a whole community of connections. 

Kep Crabb: That’s how we’re all linked. You said one time earlier, the whole notion of isolation is really where Satan wants to do his most impressive work by ourselves. We’re actually going to be doing a conference at the end of January in Tennessee. And we’ve titled it “Not Myself by Myself.” We’re meant to be in community. We’re meant to live in community. That’s where Satan doesn’t quite get quite the toehold that he wants to get as he’s coming at, as he’s coming at us.

So I guess as we’re thinking about conflict, even in the midst of prayer, how does prayer in the midst of community, as you’re going through conflict, allow you to get outside of yourself? I used to think, and this was always in retrospect until recently, in the middle of a fight, can I quit saying what I’m saying and get out of myself and say, Kep, you’re being really dumb here and you’re not thinking very well at all. You’re letting your emotions take over, take control, whatever. I always come to that conclusion a few hours after the fight’s over thinking, yeah, sure. Wish I would have handled it this way or that way. Now in the midst of that moment, I’m starting to think that way a little bit more. I think Kimmie’s responding to that in ways that are even to other people, if I have tension with them and conflict that I think feels better.

Duncan Sprague: I would guess that if we were a fly on the wall, watching you in the new ways that you’re thinking in the middle of a conflict, my guess is we get in there and listen to what’s going on in your head. There’s another conversation going on besides just the one with your wife. There’s a horizontal conversation going, “Father, if I keep in my ways, I’m going to keep messing things up. What’s really true right now? What should I camp on? Because I want to bury and this is my way of relating with my wife.”

We’ve identified our normal ways of relating when we are our typical conflict strategies when we get it in the middle of a fight. I bury her with words. I just start to reason. I get real rational and I concentrate on the truth. But here’s what I do. I debase the truth because I make the truth something other than a person. What did Jesus say? I am the way, the truth. So the truth ultimately is not propositional. It’s personal. I get in this fight with her that avoids love and wants to only fight about what’s mostly true and my truth. So she will tend to flee things. I will tend to fight them. If she stops fleeing, her tendency then is to go to the opposite pendulum. So I’ll honor the truth and I want to value honesty and she’ll value relationship. 

Larry used to always talk in terms of, we oftentimes say that I’m a rationalist, I’m a reasonable person, or another person will say, I’m a romantic. I’m a feeler through life, but the reality is we must be both. We don’t get to say I’m one or the other, it’s science or faith. It really is. You have to live in both worlds, so it’s truth and love, and that’s where she lives only in that love side of things and denies truth. I’m not going to think about it. It’s too complicated. She’ll end up faking love in order to control love. If that makes sense. She’ll ignore the truth and really debase love. She’ll make it something cheaper than it is. It means I’ll just give in. And it’s the proverbial doormat who says, I’ll just let you walk all over me. But those are the extremes. So my extreme is I’ll fight it. She’ll fake it. But then at some point we start to come together. We say, okay, I’m going to stop fighting. So this is some of what may go on in your mind. I’m going to stop fighting God. And if it will help, if I force it a little bit, I’ll force a little bit of relationship, I’ll feel, I’ll try to use some sympathetic and empathetic words. I’ll force it. But she feels it every time. She goes, that’s not authentic. What she’ll do is she’ll say, if this will fix the relationship, that energy of fixing. 

The flesh has its operating instructions during conflict to flee it, fight it, fake it, force it, or fix it. That’s our way of dealing with it in the flesh. What God says is no honor, a hundred percent of the truth, honor, a hundred percent of the relationship and face it. I love what your dad used to say. Your dad used to say, I refuse to pretend about anything. I don’t want to get lost in honesty and start pretending. I love what Paul says in Hebrews, or the writer of Hebrews says, he says, we are not those who shrink back. So in love, we don’t shrink back. We stay present. And in truth, we continue to refuse to pretend. This is going to be ugly. The truth has come out, but it’s my ugly truth. It’s not just her ugly truth. And here’s the big thing: the only thing that’s going to bring us together when conflict happens, the only way to connect in connecting, is confession. Me confessing my sin, not hers. That’s the blame game. When I start confessing hurt for her, one of the folks in our small group says confession is just telling on myself. I think in conflict, if you don’t begin with self denial and telling yourself confession, you’ll never move on to connection.

Kep Crabb: I love that because those are some real practical things to think about in the midst of conflict, which is the most challenging time to get practical. It’s easy to do it before the conflict happens. Maybe you can apply some that are after saying, I wish I would’ve applied some of that. But one of the things that I hear you saying too and that really has been helpful to me is, how do you allow the Spirit to lead you in those moments when you’re having this conversation, not so much this, while at the same time having this conversation. What I’ve really tried to focus on in the midst of those moments is this conversation.

That’s the one going on in here, which only I’m privy to and Him, no one else is privy to that. It also allows me to keep this closed because man, this thing gets me in trouble. So much. I’ve had too sharp of a tongue in too many ways with too many people that cut very deeply. Those are things that I’ve had to apologize for.

Duncan Sprague:  I’m guessing it’s not until you’ve seen the effect of your anger. I think that’s where my wife has been the best mirror for me. I remember one time. We have four children and our second one was always the one that was testing things. He was pushing the buttons all the time. I remember one time he had just set me off and I was going after him. This is a picture of biblical submission. My wife steps in front of me as I was going after him. And she says, there are better parts of you than what you are about to give him right now. I just remember sitting there going, wait, she is not fighting for herself. She’s fighting for our son so that I don’t trounce on him. And she’s fighting for me. She’s submitting to God’s vision for who I can be so that I will give him the best parts of me rather than, I’m going to give you a piece of my mind.

When that same son was young, he was going after our youngest son. Josh and Ben. Josh was going after Ben, he’s two years older, and you know both of my boys. Josh was going after him, I said, if you touch your brother one more time, a spankin’s coming. He didn’t say anything, he looked at me and he started lowering his hand towards his brother. I’m going, don’t you touch him. He just kept lowering it and lowering it. And finally he puts it down and he gives me this little snide look and I just lost. I said, that’s it. A spank is coming. Get up to the bedroom right now. I don’t know why we sent them to the bedroom other than it gave me a moment to cool down. As we’re walking up, the waterworks begin, he starts crying and stuff. As I’m walking up, here’s my prayer. Dear Lord, if I spank him with all that’s inside of me, the anger that’s going on, Lord, I’ll kill him. Lord, help me not to kill my son. And so when we get up to the bedroom, I’m pacing back and forth trying to figure out how I’m going to handle this. This is where you were just asking, how does the Spirit, how do you invite the Spirit in? I think the Spirit will step in and just give opportunities for me not to get lost in myself. As I’m sitting there, I’m trying some of the old tried and true things. I tried the old line that every parent at least one time tries: it hurts me more than it hurts you. Son, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

We all know it’s a lie. I know that when I spank him, his bottom is going to hurt more than my hand. But it was as if the Spirit at that moment said, it should hurt you more. It just stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t an audible voice. But the phrase that came into my mind was, take the spanking for him. I’m having this internal conversation. What do you mean? Take the spanking for himself? Take the spanking. Lean over. So I said, okay, son, if I spank you with everything I’ve got, I’m going to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. So I’m taking the spanking. I lean over the bed and he says what do you do? He doesn’t get it. This is where real conflict management will not look as much like management as it will look like surrender. I’m surrendering to something more powerful. It’s what your dad used to say to you, Kep, you can hurt me, but you cannot destroy me. That’s essentially what I was saying to my son is, if I spank you, I’ll hurt you. If you spank me, oh, it might hurt a little, but not much. So he gets back and he swats me on the bum and I said, oh no. I’m more angry than that. And he backs up and he tries again. I said, Josh, if you don’t understand how angry I am, you have to put everything you have in it. And then all of a sudden he comes with all of his might pow. And he says, Oh, it hurt my hand. And I said it’s enough. You’re forgiven, Josh. We will never remember this again, except for when I tell it in a message or on a podcast,

Kep Crabb: I’d love to chat with Josh about that because I bet that was an impacting moment in his life and impact.

Duncan Sprague: He calls it his story. His story. That’s exactly what it becomes. Yeah, it’s my story of forgiveness. My story when grace was given to me because when he went downstairs, he says to Angie, leans into whispers, I just gave Daddy a spanking. My wife says, why? And his response then was, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s the piece where we always end with the grace of God. I don’t know why He loves us. So I don’t know why He died for me, but He did. He took the spanking for me. That’s when conflict isn’t managed any longer. That’s when conflict is surrendered to grace.

Kep Crabb: What a great story. I think that leads into the next thing that we’ll chat about sometime is parenting. You’ve got four kids. I’ve got two kids. They’re adults. Now my oldest is fixing to have her first child here in a couple months. So we’re excited about that. The whole notion of parenting. That story reminds me of so much of the way that Dad thought about how to raise kids because he wanted to get you to go, huh? What Josh said. I don’t know why I did that, but boy, it felt good and I feel good. That’s right. It did something to me that even now, 20 years later in this kid’s life, it’s his story. 

Dunc, this has been great chatting with you, bro. It’s so fun to unpack this kind of stuff. We all have a story. Each of our stories can be part of God’s larger story. That’s what we want to be. How do we live a life that fits into God’s larger story in the way that He wants us to?

Duncan, I really appreciate you meeting this time. Folks, thanks for joining us on Relational Spirituality today. Join us every Tuesday as we roll out some different thoughts and different things. We’re going to be changing things around in the beginning of the year, but we sure do appreciate you guys joining us. If you like what you’ve seen, please subscribe and have a great evening.