Vince Vitale [00:00:00] Welcome to Ask Away. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Vince. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:00:03] Hi, I'm Jo. 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:00:03]  And in this episode, we're going to share about how the last few years have impacted our understanding of apologetics and of ministry more generally. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:00:11] In future episodes, we're really looking forward to diving back into your questions. We've received some great ones from you over the past few weeks, and at the end of this episode you'll hear more details about how you can send us your questions. A lot has happened in the last few years. Two years ago this month, we sold our house in Georgia, packed up our [inaudible] with a one year old and two year old in the backseat and started driving west. At the time, Vince looked at me and said, "Isn't this the sort of thing you're supposed to do after college with a couple of buddies? Not at 40 with two kids." Though, we arrived in East Palo Alto, California, on a Saturday night, and the next morning we gathered with the house church that meets in the front yard of the place where we were staying, and actually where we still live now two years later. You could refer to our church as a house church. But it's not about where we meet. And actually we don't meet in a house. We used to meet under a tent in the front yard. Now we meet in a garage. But probably the best way to put it is that it's a family church. It's small and messy and raw and real, and we're striving to live life together on a daily basis. 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:01:12] On that first Sunday, our pastor Peter asked us to introduce ourselves. And I don't think I had planned to, but in that small setting I felt comfortable just opening up and sharing what we had been through and the baggage that we were arriving with. There were only a dozen of us or so who were there. And I remember turning to Joe at lunch on that first Sunday and saying, "This is really good. The whole church already knows." And I had never thought about the blessing of small church for those who have been through something traumatic. But we experienced that blessing from our very first day here in East Palo Alto. Many people went through so much more than we did, but we share some of this just to honor God for how incredibly good he has been. Because as we drove across the country, we were praying, Lord, would you please embed us in a healthy Christian community? And we were praying that in part because we knew we wanted to run from that all together and just hide away in a cave somewhere. But we knew that healthy community is what we needed and we were praying for it metaphorically, in some sense, to embed us in a healthy Christian community. But God really one upped us and literally stuck between our pastor on one side, the prayer garage on the other side of our place, and our church gathering right outside our front door. And we really want to thank Dumbarton Church, this church family that we've been welcomed into. Just this past week, our four year old confused his teachers at school because of how adamant he was that one of the girls in our church is his sister. And they were like, "Wait, we thought you only had a brother?" And they actually had to ask for clarification from us. But you know what? Our little guys is right; church is supposed to be family in that deep sense, and we're just so grateful that he's experiencing church that way. And we want to thank all of you who welcomed us into our Dumbarton Church with such open arms, because that is the context in which so much of our thinking about life and also about future ministry has been impacted over the last two years. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:03:14] The most common question we've been asked over the last few years is are you back in ministry yet? Often followed by the words I hope you can get back to ministry soon. Something we felt a strong conviction about from very early on, was that we needed to resist the language of seeing this as a time away from ministry. So much of Jesus ministry was about loving the hurting and the marginalized and the oppressed. And so if we see responding to abuse as a break from ministry or is not the real work of ministry, doesn't that reflect a serious problem in the way that we often conceive of ministry? As one of our dear friends Shawn Hart shared with us a couple of years ago, don't rush past the suffering. And that just seemed like a significant word to us because the temptation is always to do just that. But when life, as we had known it, came to an abrupt and painful holds, felt like perhaps there was a severe mercy in that moment, because it forced us to really pause and look around and to listen and learn and re-evaluate and ultimately repent of various ways of being and ways of doing that we'd fallen into simply because perhaps in part we'd become over busy doing the work of ministry. We strongly sense that if we did not take that time to wait on the Lord and to ask Him to do some deep heart work within us, much of which we spoke about during the last episode, then we would not become who we needed to be to serve him or his church well. 

‍

[00:04:35] During the last few years, we've also been strongly reminded of a really critical truth. That ministry is not about what you do from a stage or, say, into a microphone. It's not a profession or an exclusive vocation for the select few super spiritual Christians, ministry is simply Christian faith in action. It's about learning to lay down our lives for others as Christ laid down his life for us, asking the Holy Spirit to teach and transform us so that our love looks more like his love and that we might learn to serve as Jesus served. And there was a particular day when that truth hit us once again. We hadn't spoken publicly in front of an audience for about eight months by that point, and we were still living in Georgia when someone came to our house to do some repairs. That as they were working in the house, they broke down and shared with Vince that actually even just the day before their brother in law had died in a motorcycle accident and his sister and children, they'd been left with no support. And so he'd actually taken the job that day, even though he was in total grief, because he wanted to earn some money to set aside for his sister. And so, Vincent, he just had that moment of just listening and loving this guy, the guy who turned up on our doorstep, who was right in front of him. And and as he listened to him, just had the opportunity to share something of God's love and just to be able to pray with him. And and it wound up being a really significant moment for that guy as God really met him in his lament and in his devastation. But it was also a significant moment for Vince, because as he was just talking to this guy, it was just this reminder to us of  ministry isn't about what you do on a platform. There will always be people to minister to. They come right to your doorstep. 

‍

[00:06:11] And in a way, it was helpful for us during a time of crisis when so many things in our life were up in the air, that that we were able around that time just to take the time out to kind of list the things that were not in jeopardy, even when other things in our lives were. And on that list of things that we identified as not in jeopardy in our life with a love that God had for us, our family, both the one that we have here on Earth, but also our status as adopted children of God, but also our calling to share the gospel. And with that last one, we knew that wasn't in jeopardy because you can do that anywhere. And God is literally bringing people right to your door, to minister to you. You know what it really looks like to share his gospel of peace, that it may take different shapes and different seasons of life, but there will always be neighbors who don't know Jesus. There are always going to be people you run into every day who don't know how loved they are by God. And so what an unbelievable privilege it is that Jesus could actually use us in any small way to bless another person. I think one thing we've just reflected on more and more is that he hasn't asked us to be impressive. Our job isn't to save the world, that is his. He's just called us to be faithful and abide in him. He's the one who will prune us to make us fit to bear fruit. And he gets to decide what kind of fruit and what sort of yield it will be. It's just our job to say, "God, we're here and we're willing for whatever you want to do with us in whatever season we may be, and we just want to wait on you." 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:07:34] Yeah, I'm so I'm so thankful that guy came to the door when he did. That was just such a significant moment. Sometimes you have interactions in your life where the person's face is just impressed in your mind moving forward. And there's something that God is saying through that person that you're not going to forget because you don't forget their face. And I'm so grateful for that. The other thing that God really impressed upon us early on was that this season of response to everything that had happened was not only ministry, as Joe has been saying, but it was also a apologetics ministry. Very much so. When people ask me what I think is the hardest objection to Christianity to respond to, I often say something along the lines of if the Holy Spirit really comes to dwell within and transform believers, why do we see such hurt and abuse in the church? If the Holy Spirit is really living within Christ Church and is as powerful as we say he is, isn't he supposed to make life look very different? This is perhaps the apologetic challenge of our time. So even though you haven't heard from us in almost three years, we don't feel like we've been on a break from ministry or even from apologetics ministry. We feel like we've been doing some of the most important ministry of our lives, and we're so grateful to God for speaking clearly to us about not rushing past to this season. And also about the fact that there will be no getting back to normal. There's this temptation when you go through a public crisis or a crisis of any sort to keep wishing for things to go back to normal, to keep waiting for things to go back to normal. But especially over the last few years, we've come to embrace the fact that there is no going back to normal in the Christian life. And that's actually a good thing. We shouldn't just resign ourselves to that fact, but we should actively embrace it. 

‍

[00:09:27] God doesn't waste things, he changes us through them. And so we always move forward in a new way. God doesn't merely resuscitate old life. He resurrects into new life. In our experience, we found that the sooner we could come to embrace this fact, that there's no going back to normal, the sooner we could start actually making healthier decisions about how to move forward. So how do things look different for us now? What has changed about how we think about ministry? There was a point when we were still in a very heavy season and didn't have the energy to look to the future with hopefulness. But there was one day during that dark season when we were praying and talking and we felt like God in his kindness gave us a glimpse of hope for the future and something we could hold on to. Not even so much in terms of future ministry, but more just about how he was asking us to process what we had been through and who he was asking us to be in the future. The theme that framed our prayers and discussion that day was one of reconciliation, and in particular reconciliation in three respects. Reconciliation to God, reconciliation with others, and reconciliation in the self. And as we processed where our minds were drawn to that day, we didn't have a clear sense about how this might or might not fit into ministry moving forward. But what was clear to us was that this was what God was calling us to as a family. If we could get to the end of our lives and be deeply reconciled to God, deeply reconciled with others, deeply reconciled in our own identity, we thought, you know what, that would make for a good life and the life that would be pleasing to God. And so we decided on that day to adopt this framework as a sort of family mission statement and to take steps to live into it. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:11:15] What I loved so much about that was we weren't actually doing anything new so much as returning again to some ancient truth. This is the very same framework that the Apostle Paul used to define what ministry actually is as he wrote in two Corinthians 5:16. So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. That we once regarded Christ in this way we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone, the new is here. And all of this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the Ministry of Reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. From my teenage years, this has actually always been one of the passages of Scripture that is most impacted me when I thought about my own sense of of what it meant to be a Christian, my purpose and calling in Christ. And so it was actually massively confirming to you Vince, talking about it afresh in these terms for how we want to live our life as a family and how we want to live missionally moving forward for this to be that framework. 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:12:37] And so this idea of holistic reconciliation vertically to God, horizontally with others, internally within the self, it started as a family mission statement, and over time, it increasingly began to be a lens or a framework through which we found ourselves conceiving of apologetics. We realized that in some sense, as Jo has said, we've always been in reconciliation ministry. But in the past we had focused largely on one dimension of it; vertical reconciliation between people and God. And that's critical. But as critical as that is, as the church, we can't call people to reconcile to God with integrity if we are not ourselves reconciled and reconciling. We need to invite people not just to reconcile to God as if that's some discrete event detached from the rest of life. But rather we need to invite people into a reconciled life, one that is unified and integrated and healthy and whole. And so increasingly we are seeing that it's so important for there to be consistency across all three of those dimensions of reconciliation, the vertical, the horizontal, the internal. What would we say of someone who says they love God but does not love their neighbors or someone who says that they serve God but refuses to serve the poor? 

‍

[00:13:59] We'd say that there's a clear inconsistency there. That attitude would actually show that our love for God and our service of God is not sincere. Vertical love of God overflows horizontally. Vertical service of God overflows horizontally. Likewise, vertical reconciliation with God ought to overflow horizontally. That's the natural flow of the Christian life from the vertical to the horizontal. If our reconciliation to God is not overflowing into our relationships and our communities, then we need to ask some hard questions about whether we have truly understood and responded to Jesus's call to be ambassadors of reconciliation. And we personally found and continue to find those to be very hard questions. And we certainly are not saying these things from a perspective of having figured things out or arrived somewhere. But we have experienced reconciliation in the last few years in some very beautiful ways. And when we have, it has just been so clear to us how close to God's heart it is, and it's made us want to put it at the center of our lives. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:15:05] And biblically, this is a big deal because it's actually supposed to be our greatest apologetic. John, 13:34, says, "As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another." John 17:20 "I pray also for those who will believe in me through that message, that all of them may be one father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me. That they may be one as we are one, I and them, and you and me. So that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." I just find that so convicting. Those verses, that final prayer Jesus before he goes out to make reconciliation possible because is this what people are seeing when they look at the church today? Are they seeing such radical unity by the power of the Holy Spirit that it convinces them of the truth of Christ and the love of God because it's so distinct from the conflict that they see everywhere else? I think the sad thing is that many are seeing the opposite of this, and that's in part why so many are deconstructing their faith. I think of that image Jesus gives of the church being like a city on a hill. And it just how would you feel if you're in darkness and you're struggling and limping along and just wondering, is there hope anywhere? And then you see this light on a hill and and you're immediately drawn to it. You think, oh, perhaps I'm finally going to find shelter and and warmth and a community and hope, and perhaps a hospital for the sick. 

‍

[00:16:38] But then you get closer, and what you see instead is smoke going up and loud noises and arguing and yelling and then people walking wounded out of the door. You're not going to want to go in that city if you see people come limping out, injured and hurting. I think it's so easy for us to get judgmental in all kinds of directions and stop pointing our fingers at those atheists who hate God or the church that just isn't relevant enough in its evangelism or our political enemies who've blinded people to faith. But what the Bible says is that the world will know the truth, and we, as the church, love one another with complete unity, which means we need to look to ourselves first and realize that our witness will inevitably lack power if we're preaching a gospel of reconciliation from within a community that is divided and unreconciled. No wonder God is so gravely serious about reconciliation that says in one John four, "For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen." And that is how strong the connection is between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of love and reconciliation. And I say that with a deep sense of fear and trembling, because I know that so many of those problems sit right in my own heart, which is way too often divided and unreconciled in my attitudes towards others. And I painfully feel that ongoing lack of reconciliation in some of the relationships in my life. So Vince has already said it, but I definitely don't want you to think we're talking about this today because we've got it all sorted. It's quite the opposite. It's such a burden on our hearts because we feel the divisions around us and we feel the divisions in our own lives so keenly, our relationships where we long for reconciliation and healing. And sometimes the steps to take are obvious. It's just our pride that gets in the way. 

‍

[00:18:23] Other times, we take a step only to realize we've gone about it in a totally clumsy way  that was actually really inadequate and maybe even made things worse. And hardest of all of the times when it just doesn't feel like there's a way forward, no matter what you do, when you feel helpless to know where to go from there. But even so, even with all of our fumbling and failings and the constant need to just throw ourselves in God's grace and ask for supernatural help to see in ourselves what we don't see and to do unto others what we can't do naturally by ourselves; we've nevertheless just been stunned time and again by the beauty of reconciliation that only God can bring in relationships that humanly we thought we'd done for. And so we know that it's by his power it is possible, and that when it comes, it is the most beautiful gift in the whole world. There is nothing else like it. And so that's what we want to strive for it with every breath so far as it depends on us. So all that to say when we talk about these themes of reconciliation, we don't feel as if we're moving away from apologetics somehow. Actually, we feel like we're getting closer to the heart of what it's all about. We do hope we're coming to a deeper understanding of what apologetics is in a way that aligns with God's Word and ultimately with God's heart. 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:19:34] And while the experience of the last few years has convinced us that God is very serious about reconciliation and it's so close to his heart, there are also some very deeply ingrained ways in which we personally and perhaps also the church more generally are deficient in this area. Maybe one way to put it, if I were to just encapsulate this realization in a single line, is that we realized we regularly adopt approaches to reconciliation that if God had adopted, he never would have reconciled with us. For example, there were times over the last few years when we would defiantly say to ourselves, "Don't own more than you need to own." Times when we were so concerned to only accept blame for the absolute minimum that we had to only where we absolutely couldn't avoid it. And this point is complicated because there are times when not owning more than you need to own is an important caution. If you are being oppressed or abused and your oppressor is demanding that you own your part, trying to blame you when you're actually the victim, then that's manipulative and unjust and it only compounds the hurt taking place. But that was not the case for Jo and me. We felt conviction by God, spirit, that we had hurt others. And so we really wrestled with this idea of not owning more than we needed to own. And over time we found ourselves thinking, man, I'm so thankful that Jesus didn't have that attitude, or he never would have owned all that he owned for me. Jesus didn't need to own anything, and yet he owned everything. And personally, at least speaking for myself, when I inspect my own heart, I eventually came to the recognition that I am not in any danger of owning more than is mine to own over the course of my entire life, because I know that I can be so good at rationalizing why things were not my fault. And I have often lacked the courage to bring into the light mistakes that I know I have made. 

‍

[00:21:37] Personally, knowing just the temptations of my own heart, I need to be far more concerned about owning less than I need to own, than about owning more than I need to own. One other temptation that Jo and I realized we really needed to fight against, which we share in case it's helpful for anyone else, was the temptation not to be willing to take steps of reconciliation until others were willing to meet us halfway. In some cases, we had simply wronged others and not been wronged. And so in those cases, this wasn't so much of an issue. But in some other cases we felt like we also had been wronged. And we found this strange desire in our hearts, even when we had been 98% in the wrong, we didn't want to admit it until the other person was willing to admit their 2%. And I think this is very common in all sorts of relationships and interactions. I mean, in some sense it's only fair. We think, sure, I got some things wrong, but you got some things wrong too. You were hurt, but I was hurt too. So I'll repent of where I wronged you as long as you also repent of where you wronged me. Let's meet halfway. But once again, I am so thankful that Jesus didn't take this approach with me, because if Jesus had waited until I was ready to meet him halfway before doing everything he could to pursue reconciliation with me, I would still be dead in my sins. Jesus went first, and as those who bear his name, I think he calls us to go first too. 

‍

[00:23:16] If Jesus was willing to die to take the first step toward reconciliation, even though he was 100% in the right and utterly blameless, then I can take the first step of repentance in the conflicts in my life. That's the very least that I can do. Over time, we realized that meeting in the middle, this idea of repentance in exchange for repentance is actually not repentance at all. If I won't repent unless someone meets me halfway, that's actually just another way of saying I won't repent unless someone pays me for my repentance. The cost of my repentance is your repentance. But here's the thing. If I require payment for my repentance, then I don't really believe I owe it to you. If I tell you I owe you lunch, but then when the bill comes I suggest we split it, then I wasn't being honest when I told you I owed you lunch. I was just being cheap. If I require payment for my repentance, then I do not really believe I owe it to you. And then it is not genuine repentance at all. And so here's the bottom line. When I stand before God, I'm going to be responsible for what I need to repent of, not for what someone else needs to repent of. 

‍

[00:24:32] And when I picture myself in the throne room of the Almighty, it sounds so empty in my head for me to defend myself with, well, he didn't repent either. He wasn't willing to meet me halfway. So I just stayed on the couch.  I know that I could never say those words to God's face. And if I know I can never say those words to God's face, then I don't want to make decisions now that will leave me with only those words to say then. And so my encouragement would be, don't let anything come between you and any conviction that God puts on your heart. Repentance is your gift as a child of God. It's granted to you by God Himself. And if God is asking us for repentance, we shouldn't let fear about how someone else will or won't respond keep us from responding to the Holy Spirit conviction in our lives. I recently heard someone say that delayed obedience is disobedience, and I truly believe we will never look back and wish we had waited longer to take steps of repentance. Steps toward reconciliation. We'll only ever wish we had been quicker to respond to God's conviction in our lives. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:25:41] To sum that up, there needs to be consistency and alignment between the gospel we preach and the gospel we live. Reconciliation always begins with grace, not with waiting for someone to deserve it. We're also convinced that recapturing a vision for repentance and reconciliation is not only biblical, but also so needed in today's culture specifically. You don't need me to tell you that the world is becoming more polarized, more angry, more traumatized. Forgiveness is less valued as a virtue and sometimes even seen as a vice, as the enemy of justice. It's easy to see how this is playing out across politics and social media. But closer to home, relationships are developing in more fractured ways as well. I read an article recently about family feuds based off of research by a professor at Cornell, in which the poll found that 27% of Americans over the age of 18 were estranged from at least one family member and 10% of those were estranged from parents, another 8% from a sibling. Is there anything more painful than being cut off from the people that deep down you know you are made to be and deepest relationship with. Friendships aren't doing much better socially. For example, if you belong to Gen Z, the generation basically born with a phone in your hand, you're statistically four times more likely to be lonely than those over 70. That really surprised me because I tend to think of the elderly as the loneliest generation. But what it shows is that we're exchanging friendships for networks. 

‍

[00:27:02] The quantity of your followers may be higher, but the quality of your friendships is often so much lower. In light of these realities, the CDC's latest report on teen sadness is hardly a surprise. Back in February, they reported that nearly three in five or 57% of US teen girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021, which was double that of boys and represented a nearly 60% increase in the highest level reported over the past decade. And these challenges are not just limited to upcoming generations. We see the same trends across all ages. And in response to the CDC report on teen sadness, one teenager commented in the New York Times that the worst part of this mental health crisis is how our generation responds to it. We don't. My friends and I are open about our mental health, but we typically say it's just how it is and that we're either too tired or too busy to really address our problems and anxieties, choosing to just ignore the problems and hope they get better or bottle our struggles up until we eventually burst open. We've known that we're in a crisis. We're just too tired to address it. I found those words just really devastating. 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:28:12] Things have really changed culturally. I mean, when I came to faith 23 years ago now, the big challenge was that so many people felt they were happy as they were. Why would I need God? Life is good already. I'm doing well on my own--- or at least that's what many of us told ourselves. But that's not how most people are experiencing life In 2023. All of the things that Jo spoke about, that brokenness, that division, that isolation. I asked a friend who's a clinical psychiatrist, what words he would use to replace "Happy as I am" based on what he's seeing today. And he immediately responded, "The mistrustful, broken hearted". And I thought, wow, how different those two phrases are. And, again, in significant ways, mistrust and a broken heart, that's actually a spiritually perceptive response to life without Christ. Who can we trust without the security of having an ultimate trust in Jesus? Our hearts are broken and need replacing with a new heart of flesh. And so I guess for so many, today's experience of life is an experience of a lack of reconciliation internally, horizontally, vertically, in all respects, in all of its dimensions. And so apologetics conceived of as a Ministry of reconciliation is perhaps an apologetics that can be of service in today's world. 

‍

Jo Vitale [00:29:39] I don't think that's something you need us to convince you of, certainly not right now. I know that so many of you are deeply burdened by the conflict all around us and just yearning for an end to the anger and hatred and the slaughter and injustice and death. It just feels so heavy right now. And what are the time of years so painfully highlights for us the distance between where we longed to be in our relationships and where we actually are than at Christmas time? In the lyrics of U2, Peace on Earth. You hear it every Christmas time, but what's it worth? And yet, when we look back on that first Christmas, we see that to God it's worth everything. In human terms, we so often think that the only way to get peace is to get away, primarily to get away from each other. And unable to find a way to get along or resolve conflict, it seems like our best recourse is just to cut people off. After all, we convince ourselves it's better to distance than to risk escalating into all out warfare. Yet, that wasn't Jesus approach. He didn't step back. He stepped forward. He stepped onto the battlefield. He crossed no man's land and he came right to us as the angels sang on the night of his birth, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth. Peace to all on whom His favor rests. Peace on Earth." Because peace had literally been born on Earth in the form of a person, as the Bible says of Jesus Christ. He himself is our peace. 

‍

[00:31:02] This wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of peace. He couldn't bear to stay off on a throne while the rest of us were all down here, warring within ourselves, warring with one another, and ultimately warring with him. Instead, he steps into this world at war, even choosing to bear the scars of that warfare in his own flesh and dying at the hands of those who called him enemy and came to kill him. Also, he could tenderly whisper to this battered and breaking world, "Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I've not come to you as a warrior to trample you. I've come to you as a savior to rescue you. I'm not your enemy. I come in peace. I don't want to fight with you. I want to be with you." Emmanuel, God with us. I think of those lines that he appeared and the soul felt it's worth. In this Christmas, if nothing else, know that you are seen, you are sought and you are loved with an everlasting love. And for those of you who are struggling right now under the onslaught of the wars raging around you and the wars raging within and you just long for peace in your life, I truly hope that this Christmas you could encounter for yourself the God who is truly at peace, and that in finding reconciliation with him, you might also find in him the still waters to calm the disturbances within your own soul and a peace that flows out from him to tangibly shape the way you perceive and engage with others. 

‍

[00:32:27] As you ask Jesus to help you become more like him, won't you preach his peace both to those who are far off and to those who are near. Hey, there is so much more we look forward to sharing with you about how the last few years have impacted us and what we're learning. But ultimately, if we had to bring it down to one idea, I think we're just starting to learn more deeply about God's heart for his children. Our Heavenly Father, he doesn't need us to do big things for him. We can live with him, whether what we do is seen as big or small or anywhere in between. But he does want us to live a reconciled life, always seeking peace with others, securing our identity and ultimately deeply reconciled in an intimate life giving relationship with him. That's what we're striving for as a family, and that is at the heart of how we hope to invest our time moving forward. After all this happened, in all of this time, we feel so thankful to all of you for joining us and journeying with us again. And we're very excited to continue to hear and respond to your deepest questions as we invite you to ask away. But for now, we just wish you the joy and peace of Christ this Christmas and that his presence would just be so tangibly felt in your home as you move into the New Year. We're so glad you joined us for Ask Away. 

‍

Vince Vitale [00:33:46] If you have a question that needs answering, we'd love to hear it. Send us an email at askawayquestion@gmail.com or call and leave a voicemail at 321-213-9670.

‍

Jo Vitale Ask Away is hosted by Vince and Jo Vitale, and produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

‍

Vince Vitale New episodes come out regularly, so make sure to subscribe.

‍

Jo Vitale The best way you can support Ask Away is to leave a review. All you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone, look for Ask Away, scroll down until you see “Write your review” and tell us what you think.

‍

Vince Vitale See you next time. And remember, if you have a question, it’s worth asking.

‍