Hi, welcome to Havelace podcast. I'm Havala and today I have a treat for you. A couple months ago, I spoke a message called False Endings. It was our Easter Sunday message. And we have heard so much feedback about this message. I wanted you to hear it. So we're going to pop in to the sermon on false endings. And I think

you're going to like it. Stay to the end because the last story might really surprise you.

And at the end of this whole episode, we'll talk about it. Otherwise, I will see you at the end.

Bye.

Open up your Bibles to Romans 828. If you did not bring your Bible, do not worry. God will judge you for that. No, I'm kidding. Don't worry. I will, I promise I'm going to stay in a very quick passage. So if you didn't bring it, no worries. I'm going to, I'll read it slowly and keep us all together. I'm thrilled that I get to actually speak today because several years ago, I almost lost an ability to speak

at this service, and I'm teasing, but we had a service called Good Friday. And how many of you

went to the Civic for Good Friday? Yeah, it was amazing. Three services, 40 to 80 churches

represented, thousands of people from around the city gathered

on our Good Friday service, and it was phenomenal. But we had our own, after COVID, we had our own

service here. And so we were asked to participate to somehow lead part of that service. And so I came in,

the back, and the one who was leading the service said,

hey, we're going to have all the leaders read a passage out of scripture and we're going to do worship in between.

So I said, great.

Well, they hand me this passage and it is a sheet long passage.

Now, if you know me and you probably don't, I am Havala.

I am the women's pastor here.

But the real truth of my life is that I'm dyslexic and I have reading and comprehension issues and I do not read out loud on purpose, right? Like,

I think the fact that I get to read out loud for my vocation is just mean. I'll talk to God about it

when we get to heaven, but I have always been the kid that avoids reading out loud. I mean, when I have scripture and my message, I have to read it over and over. And so immediately I go into an anxiety bubble. I'm like, this is bad. And there's no time to ask somebody else to do it. So I get the piece of paper and I sit in the front row right where Leslie is, and I am in anxiety. I am reading and rereading and reading and reading. Is anybody remember, you get something to read in class and you're reading that paragraph over and over? And I'm asking my husband, is this this word? Is this this word? And so I think I've done pretty well. I've got a lot of anxiety. But I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do it.

Got to take a risk. So they're going down the row. Each leader is sitting in the front row, and they would get up and read, and then we go into worship and they'd come back and sit down. So we did this over and over, and it's slowly getting to me, which also feels like anxiety, because you can feel, they're getting one by one are being taken out and you're you can feel it

and so I am I'm ramping up and finally I see I believe it's my turn so I come up on the stage and I read

the passage and I mean it wasn't like a home run it was like a two-based hit but I mean I enjoyed it

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