Hi, I'm Susie Larson. Thanks for listening to this podcast from Susie Larson Live.

I'm always honored to get to spend this time with you.

In fact, I look forward to bringing you conversations every single day that hopefully

inspire you in your faith walk, deep in your understanding of God's Word, and that heightens

your awareness of his very real presence in your life.

Well, here's a question for you today. You're ready? Have we complicated Christianity?

Have we made it so hard to understand too complicated to find accessible and too confusing to the

rest of the world that people don't even want it anymore? When asked what was the most important

commandment of them all, Jesus says, you must love the Lord

your God with all your heart, soul, all your mind, and all your strength. And the second is

equally important. Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.

You know, I think one of the casualties of complicated Christianity is joy. You know, it's so hard,

we make it so hard that we lose our sense of childlike wonder,

and I think another casually, for sure, is love. We're so focused on sin management that we forget

about the power of sacrificial generosity, of compassion of love, loving people who don't

look like us or vote like us or act like us.

Well, here to talk with us about that today is author and pastor Joshua Gagnon.

He joins us.

We try to get him on every month.

We're going to draw from a message that he recently shared with his church.

And it's fantastic.

We're going to try to link it up on the show page if we can. can also want to highlight his book because we've talked about it a few times and I want to get him back and talk about it again. It's titled, It's Not Over, Leaving Behind Disappointment and Learning to Dream Again. This is one of those books that kind of shoots adrenaline into your

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