I have decided to FOLLOW Jesus.

Intro

Good morning church and thank you for being here with us this morning. Amanda and I are happy to be here with you together. A couple of weeks ago we got back from some time with family and my sister Jeannette surprised me with a bag of old family pictures. Some of these babies I thought were lost to time. Some of them I never knew existed at all. However, as we sat down and went through them as a family, I got to tell Amanda and Grace (who, if I’m honest started off strong in her interest and tapered off a lot later than I thought she would) about my family story, as it was. Its funny to think on because we rarely take the time to sit down and appreciate this stuff. I also want to acknowledge that right now parts of my wife are bubbling with happiness and vindication as I realize she has told me these things forever, justifying her obsession with being “that picture” mom everywhere we go we have to pose for roughly 75 pictures more than anyone things we should. But.. I digress.

Baby Pictures

Kids

Teen

However, this is where stuff got interesting for me. You see these pictures offer some sense of bitter sweetness. You see, all of them are tied to times that I can remember but this is more of a season that I remember all of these things through. You see, in this time my parents divorce was coloring my entire life. Its kind of like remembering that no matter what was happening in the shire you can’t tell the story of the Lord of rings without the fires of Mordor rising.

However, remember I didn’t say bitter, I said bitter sweet. It can often be the case that out of sadness hope can grow. Out of failure lessons can be learned. Out of darkness the warmth of light feels all the more powerful.

It was during that time i realized that even the sturdiest house would fall if it was built upon the sand.

It was during that time when I had no one i started to find new friends

It was during that time I started looking at the sin in my own life and what to do about it.

It was during that time that I started finding out about what church really was and what my role in it could be.

You see, I these pictures don’t bring up bad memories as much as they help remind me that God never was absent. That even while I was lost and scared he never stopped having a plan. When I had no one, he was stripping me of those things so he could show me a different pathway.

the more I got involved in the church the more my picture of who Jesus was, what he wanted to do in my life, and what it would take to get serious about following him would look like.

Tension

Truth

Pray

Exposition

Spaghetti Method

Trial and Error

Shotgun

Pinpoint

Landing