This is the Salaback Church podcast.

It is great to be with you this weekend as we wrap up our Better Way series.

And throughout this series, we've been celebrating the reality that Jesus didn't leave us alone to blindly stumble our way through life.

He came, he lived among us, and he modeled a better way to live that he invites each one of

us into today.

And each week of the series, we've been taking a look at a different aspect of that

better way, of his better way, and this weekend, we're going to finish with one final aspect of the better way

of Jesus that will bring them all together. Now, this weekend in the U.S. is also Labor Day weekend

and the unofficial end of summer. Oh, right? Yeah, I know. It's kind of a bummer. I hope you had a

fantastic summer. I did, except for one week,

several weeks ago, when I did something that I have emphatically said that I do not do

for over four decades now. Camping. I tried it once when I was a kid. I knew immediately that I hated it.

And it's not that I don't like the outdoors.

I've hiked 56 miles in seven days in Glacier National Park before.

I love the outdoors.

I just don't like sleeping in it.

But when my son's assistant cross-country coach reached out and said he wasn't going to be able to make their annual altitude training camp that they do every year and asked me to

go along with them up into the mountains to run with the freshmen and sophomores, it put

me in a tough spot.

I said yes, just to put your mind at ease.

I said yes, and I immediately started scrolling through Airbnb listings. My wife Joy caught me in the act and reminded me it was a camping trip.

I reminded her that I don't camp, and I made the case that if I were there when everybody went to

...