Thanks for joining us here at Life Church where we are one church meeting in multiple locations

and reaching around the world with the help of church online. If you have any questions or you'd

ever like to learn more about us as a church you can always check us out online simply by going

to Life.Church or you can stay connected throughout your week and everywhere you go with the Life

Church app available today wherever you download your apps from. Coming up today we start in all

new message series called I Want to Believe but a series that helps so many of us that wrestle with

believing in a God we cannot see and today we'll address a question many of us ask and that is

if God cares about me why doesn't he seem to answer or listen to my prayers? It's a great question to

ask and one will address today as we join our senior pastor Craig O'Shell.

Hey I'm really thankful to have all of you with us today as we're launching into a brand new message

series it's called I Want to Believe but and as we dive in I want to tell you a little bit of the

heart behind this message series it's a little bit cool to me that this is the exact week in 21

years ago we actually launched the church so this is the 21st birthday of our church it's I'm

I'm really thankful for it and what that means is that we are now old enough to have real wine

in our communion that's what it means so whatever that's worth and a little bit interesting to look

at what's changed in 21 years 21 years ago where I live which is kind of called the Bible belt

it seemed like the general population generally believed in God over 21 year period I would say there

are a significant number of people who now would say I don't believe in God I'm an atheist I don't

believe God exists at all but there's a there's a newer category there's always kind of been I

believe in God I don't believe in God there's a little bit in my opinion just as a pastor a newer

category of people that are saying I want to believe in God but I'm struggling too it could be someone

that grew up in church and then had what I might call a crisis of faith you know I prayed for

...