Hello, family, Tyler here. I wanted to take a moment to invite you to Bridgetown's

8th annual Holy Spirit Conference, January 23rd and 24th at Portland's Keller Auditorium.

The theme of this year's conference is going to be the healing after the healing. We'll be exploring

how the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit

is often just the first step to the deeper, slower soul level healing. Like the man

born blind in John 9, each part of us God heals only exposes a deeper part of us awaiting

healing from the same God. And the deepest healing is often the slowest kind.

We're so excited to be joined by contributors like Ruth Haley Barton, Kurt Thompson, Ken Shigamatsu,

and Brooke Lichertwood. Tickets are available now at Bridgetown. Church slash Holy Spirit.

I hope you can join us.

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, and pray for us too that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains.

Pray that I proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity.

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to

answer everyone. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. I have always done my clearest thinking first thing in the morning and always done my most

honest praying while walking.

So in my 12 years in New York City, I walked pretty much the same lap around my neighborhood

and prayer every single morning.

It was early enough that it would still be be dark out and so I was almost always nearly

the only one on the typically crowded sidewalks with one consistent exception. There was this

one bar in my neighborhood that stayed open later than everywhere else and it was one of those

kind of rough around the edges joints that always smells like stale beer and cheap burgers.

And there was the same woman who would always be wiping down the counters of this place

...