Who Are You Following

Pastor Robert and TaQuaris Smith

Robert: No pressure, right? No pressure. Praise the Lord. It's good to be back home. Hello, family. It's good to be back home. It's been a couple of weeks, right? But we are doing good, getting strong. But don't get used to us too much because vacation is coming up pretty soon. But we love you. It's good to be back, fellowship amongst family and friends. I want to welcome all of my friends that are visiting today. It's so good. See It works, Hope. You invite and they come, eventually. I invite people every week. It's not a bragging; it's just sometimes they don't always come that week or two weeks, but you keep inviting and they will come. So don't give up; don't get discouraged. You know, everything's about timing and in the right time, those that you invite will come. Amen.

It's good to be here. It's good to be again with my life partner who makes me better. I appreciate her, appreciate her ministry, which number one is loving me. She does a great job of that. We are excited. I'm excited about the word that the Lord has placed on our hearts this morning. It's good to be in a place, like hope, where we have good sound gospel, where the pastors ourselves can be fed. It's important. We need to eat too to continue to grow, to continue to learn, to continue to grow closer to Christ. You don't become a pastor and then that's it. And you are done. Because last time I checked, I still have flesh. Pastor Brian still has flesh; Pastor Jeff still has flesh. Sometimes we have to work on that flesh. What better way to do that and to get strong meat. I think we are past the milk stage. I think we can chew the meat. It's good to be in the place where we can chew on the good meat of the word to make us better servants for you and the Lord. Amen.

We've been here for about over a year, almost a year and a half now. Seems like longer than that. But hopefully you kind of know what I like. And I like the church. I'm a church guy. And so a lot of the times the Lord gives me inspirational messages for the church, for the growth of the church. Sometimes those messages are, yeah , yeah, yeah. And sometimes those messages are like hmmm. The intent of that is to make us grow as a church both a local church and the corporate church. Because I'm not just called to the local church. As you saw last week, I'm called to the corporate body. God has given... sometimes my wife is like, are we really going to do that? I'm like, yeah. That's what the Lord inspired me to do.

I'm going to tell on her a little bit. She is shy, so she'll talk to me later about it. We are getting ready for the lesson, and to her, it was kind of a serious message. And she is like, how can we make this not so doom and gloom? I said, just make sure to smile. Make sure we smile, sweetheart, throughout the message. Okay?

We have a burden in the church today to cry out to people, to cry out for them to come and to be a part of us. That's a good mandate for us to have. Many, you hear this cry louder amongst the churches, and I mean the church, big seed church, the corporate church, the body of Christ. Sincerely, many of those churches believe that they are mimicking the Lord when they are crying out for the call to come and to be a part of him, just like he did for them to come and to be a part of him. But if we are really honest with ourselves, I think the evidence shows that although the call to come is there, the lingering question remains, what happens when the people come?

You see, Jesus gave the cry to come, but he also gave an imperative to follow me, follow him, follow Christ. That following involved discipleship and discipleship involves teaching, and teaching involves doing what is taught. You see, being a Christian without being discipled is like getting into a classroom, sitting at a desk without learning. There is no difference from the one that's not in the classroom. Claiming to be someone or claiming to be following someone without obeying his guidance is as much as not following that person at all.

TaQuaris: We all follow someone or something. In fact, we follow someones or something. Some of us follow sports team, like I love the Cowboys, and some of us follow different music groups, different artists. Let's not forget good old social media. You are following someone on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So just think about, we are all following someone or something.

Robert: But my question to all of you that have come in this building and come online today, is who are you following? Who are you following? You see in the gospel, we see that the call to come to Jesus. We see this in several places, but we want to read the gospel of Matthew chapter 16, verse 24.

TaQuaris: Then Jesus said to his disciples, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. Take up your cross and follow me.

Robert: We've been in the church, the pastors, we've been talking about several aspect of this, of what Jesus is saying, what Jesus' invitation is to. We've been learning different aspects of the way Jesus did things, as we call it, the Jesus way. We've learned some different perspectives on what it is to carry our cross. As those messages have been hitting home, and I've been reexamining the scriptures--- how many of you know, when you study the word, I don't care how many times you've studied it, how many times you've read a scripture, if you allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you in time and place--- there is nothing new. God is not revealing new things, but our understanding can grow. There are different insights that we can see.

I've read these scriptures, gospels, both academically and devotionally, maybe thousands, literally thousands of times. But it's amazing what you can see when the Holy Spirit opens your eyes at a particular time and season. And how many of you, that's for a reason. It's not just something that, that you are casually doing. He is trying to say something which seems new to us. It's not new to him, it's just the timing in our lives where he is showing. And so here it is with, even with this passage and even as the messages that been gelling together in this congregation. Like Pastor Jeff, I think that we have expounded upon, take up your cross enough. So we are not going to focus on that today.

But the Lord showed me some interesting things. We like to skip ahead when we read things, you know, even when--- You know, we have younger children. As we have younger children that are developing their reading skills, oftentimes for homework, they have to read their assignments to us. Both of them are very excellent readers, especially for their age. But every now and then we have to tell them, wait a minute, you skip something. They skip over a word or a sentence or two.

We do that with the scripture sometimes, especially when we bring our own biases to the scripture. We already have our things that we like and we want to go directly to. But sometimes we have to slow down because I believe the things that were pinned on the scrolls at the time were very intentional, in that every word is important in the way that things were put down and even the way they were translated is very important. There are different aspects of this call. I know preachers like us, we have emphasized the taking up your cross, you know, more so than any other things. But Jesus is saying a lot in this call that he is given to his disciples. He is saying a lot more before he even gets up to take up your cross.

This call, this invitation is one, first and foremost is a call to repentance because there is no way that you can come to Christ unless you first repent. He comes and he finds people living in sin, and he bids them to come and follow me. Remember he goes out to sinners. He doesn't come out to people who got it all together already. We don't come to Christ because we are already saved. We come to Christ because we need a savior. We need to be cleansed. We need to be forgiven of our sins. He reaches out and he calls the sinner, and he bids them to come and to follow him.

But see, that's following, if you really pay attention to the pattern in scripture, it gives us the implication that following Christ, there has to be a radical change. When he called his disciples, they gave up stuff immediately, their lifestyles changed on the spot. We have this watered-down version of what of coming to Jesus because I don't think we are as tough as people back in Jesus time. I don't think we are. I think we've gotten so soft.

Could you imagine being at the time with Jesus if you had soft skin, you weren't going to make it. Jesus said some raw stuff to folks. But the way Jesus did it, you still felt like he cared about you. I don't know about the Pharisees if they felt like that or not, but every person that Jesus came in contact with, he didn't hold any punches, but they still felt loved. They still felt the invitation to come and to follow him. But there was radical change in their lives. Fishermen gave up whatever they were doing to come and follow him. As we'll read later, we see one person who had many possessions couldn't do it; that was just a little bit too radical for them to be able to come and to follow the Lord.

To repent means a change of mind that affects a change in one's life. Behavior comes after the thinking is changed, Not the other way around. Your behavior doesn't change until your mind has changed. The way you look at sin has to be different in order for you to turn away from sin. Because I don't know any of you, when you were sinning, I loved the sin that I was doing. I had a good time in my sinning. Maybe you were a miserable sinner. I don't know. I was not. I sinned to the fullest.

But my mindset is totally different than when I was in the lifestyle of sin. My mind is different. I look at those things differently. My heart grieves. If I sin now and I disappoint God, I'm not only disappointed; I'm disappointed in the fact that I disappointed God. That's kind of like, and I'm not David by any means, but the heart of David. When David messed up, and if you read about the life of David, he messed up a lot. But he was still honored as a man after God's own heart because the weight of what he did, the accountability of his sin weighed upon him because he grieved this holy God who does not abide in sin.

And so when we preach this gospel, if we are going to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, I believe first and foremost, like I've told you, we have to remove our biases. We have to have untainted hearts where we love all people, but the loving of all people does not mean that we sugarcoat the gospel. Keep giving the invitation to come. But like we preach a few months ago, you don't come and stay the same. There is a change that happens and it's a radical change. Just ask my friends who I was sin in with, is there a radical change in Robert's life? And they be the first to tell you.

And guess what folks? And here's what I tell young people all the time, because they are so afraid of making a difference sometimes. I haven't lost one of those friends. I have not lost one of those friends. I can still call all of those friends up today and they will give me the shirt off their back. Now, comparatively, they are not living all living. Some have radically changed, but they are not all comparatively living the way that I'm living now. But they respect the fact that they knew where I was. And I am the different guy than where I was back then in the sense of my behavior and sense of my lifestyles. I think lifestyle is a better choice of word. My lifestyle is different.

Here's a beautiful testimony of how sinner can stand up for you. I remember going back, visiting a friend who, let's just say, we used to fellowship in a different lifestyle that introduced me. He introduced me to a whole different, his whole new circle of friends, and there were certain activities going on. I didn't have to say a word. It's like he jumped in, literally jumped in front. It was like, no, he doesn't do that. I didn't have to say anything, because there was a radical change. I've lived with people. When you live with someone, they really know who you are.

There is a radical change that happens in your life. There is a process, and sanctification is a process. But the mindset needs to radically, radically change. Even if the lifestyle, even if there is a struggle, and I'm not being insensitive, that there is not a struggle, but there should be a conviction. There be, there should be some tension. That's going on. When you decide to follow Christ, don't tell me that there is not a tension when you follow Christ, when you decide to give up. You have to contemplate, do I, do I really love him? Do I really want to give this up? And if there is a heart transformation, if there is a born-again experience, the answer is a resounding yes, then it's like, okay, flesh, now you gotta get in line. Because I've made this decision to follow him. Now you gotta line up with me. Amen.

No one can follow Christ without truly repenting. Let me qualify this a little bit too, because I want us to really focus on that word follow. I've seen too many times in the history of the church, we have these great meetings. People respond to great preaching. As speakers, we can learn, lack of a better term, the tricks of the trade. We can move a crowd. We know how to play on people's emotions. Okay? Praise the Lord. I'm at a place where I don't experience that in our shepherds. That's a loud amen for that. But we all know how to do the stuff, but we choose not to.

It's like the Apostle Paul said, we didn't come to you with flattering words. You know, the false teachers at the time, they moved people by using big words and they sounded so good. Apostle Paul said, you can't use that on us because we didn't come to you that way. But unfortunately, I've seen in the history of the church where those things have been used and we've moved on the emotions of the people, and we've gotten an emotional response. And people have rushed to the altar and they've said the sinner's prayer. And we got excited. And then what happened? No discipleship, no teaching, no learning, no change. But we got hundreds and thousands of people saved and then we dropped the ball.

What am I saying? I'm not satisfied with you coming up saying a prayer after responding emotionally to a message. I want you to be transformed in your mind, in your heart, that you are making a sound decision and commitment that I'm going to follow this man Jesus. And I'm going to challenge my life. I'm going to change my life. I may not know all how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but because I'm responding to what I heard of the message, that this man can show me the way I'm making a decision to trust him, to show me the way. And I'm going to follow him, which is not a one-time event. It's a lifelong committed journey to continue to follow him.

There are days that I don't feel like getting up, coming to church. Oh, I thought you were going to throw something at me. But I come because I made a commitment to continue to follow him, to go beyond how I feel. There are times I don't feel like praying for you. My wife is like, Hey man, I know it's supposed to be transparent, but come on now. There are times where I don't feel like doing a lot of things.

And that's what's wrong with the one part of this culture, Pastor Brian that: it's based on feelings and likes. And so that produces a lack of commitment. Faithfulness, endurance. That's why we have to have the mindset to follow him. It's like a pastor just told me recently when I was sharing some thoughts on this, he said a lot of people don't want to follow continue because Jesus was headed to the cross. Jesus’ destiny was the cross. Hey man, I got to go to the cross. Wait a minute. Not realizing that that cross is the reason why he is glorified today. Praise Jesus.

But the other aspect that we miss a lot in what Jesus is saying to his disciples, and this is where really the meat of the decision is made. He says to not only come if you want to be a follower of me, he said you must give up your own way. And that giving up your own way is a bid for you to come and die, die to yourself. You can't continue to follow Jesus without dying to yourself. Let's see what he has to say in the same scripture, same gospel.

TaQuaris: If you try to hang onto your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life, for my sake, you will save it.

Robert: The born-again process, I like that term, born again other than saved, you know, because born again speaks more to, to that process of changing your mind to sin, changing your lifestyle, responding to Jesus in his fullness. That happens by faith. But if we continue on this process of following Jesus, that dying to self is a continual process. That's called sanctification. It is a continual dying to self. That dying to self, to me is spelled out. What it really means to give up your own way. Because before Christ and outside of Christ, there are ways that we would govern our lives that do, do not line up Pastor Jeff, with the Jesus way. And we cannot follow Christ. If we don't give that up, then we are not truly following.

For example, when in any point in our lives we have been wronged from people, by people. What does secular culture tell you? If you've been wrong? If you've gotten got, you need to get. You've got to get yours. It's the old eye for an eye. But Jesus came and gave something totally different than eye for an eye. That's the Jesus way. He changed that. He said, you have heard, but I now tell you. It's the same way in our lives. We may not be Old Testament Jews, but we were worldly gentiles that lived a certain way. And Jesus is saying to us you may have lived by this set of moral codes, but now I tell you to live by a totally different set of moral code. You can't claim to be a follower of Jesus and still follow the old way. Then you are not truly following him there. Go ahead.

TaQuaris: Sorry sweetie. I just want to say, it doesn't mean that again, that you won't make any mistakes. So for some of you, even online, they might say, well I try, but I keep struggling. That's the difference. Sometimes you do struggle, but that's why we have the Holy Spirit that's inside of us that will help us and guide us. And in the word also says, a righteous man falleth seven times, but get back up. And I think I said this before when we spoke before, but that means a lot because the Bible didn't say a man falleth seven times. He said a righteous man falls seven times. But what makes him righteous? What makes him righteous? The fact that yes is they are getting back up.

So I just want to also just encourage you that if you do make mistakes, not to just feel so guilty. Yes, conviction is good, but condemnation is not. Condemnation will keep you down. When you do make a mistake, be quick to repent. Be quick to trust in God and he will help guide you and show you the way.

Robert: If I'm telling you to give up your own way, and in this context I'm telling you, give up your own way. Jesus said give up your own way and follow me, that requires a certain level of trust. That's where faith comes in. And that's why I say it's impossible-- when I say it is impossible to follow Christ without doing these things. That's because it is. But what is the fuel that keeps you going is your continued trust in him. To continue to follow him in the journey You have to continue to trust him beyond the way you think, beyond what you see, beyond your understanding.

If I'm saying Lord, I'm going to give up my way, that means I'm trusting that you have the way I'm trusting you, that you are going to create this pathway for me to follow. Although I may not know the outcome, I'm putting my faith and trust in you. Even though my thought process cannot figure this out, I'm leaning upon you. And I think it's best said in the wisdom book: Jesus is wisdom in the person. So the Book of Proverb, my building blocks friends, is Jesus too. That's a little building blocks plugged there.

TaQuaris: Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will and all you do, and he will show you which path to take. I want to speak to this verse just a little bit and just express what kind of stands out to me. Seek his will in all you do. And we don't always get it right. I don't always get that right, that "all" word. We seek his wisdom in certain things, but what about the times you think you have it together? What about the times you think you already know which way to go? Do you still just take the time and pause and seek his will?

And so it's very important that as believers and following Christ, that we get to the place where we cannot only just trust in him, but we also seek in his will in all we do. Because God knows best for us. Sometimes we can be down this road and we think this is the right road and everything looks right, everything is adding up, and it's a good thing. But then we find out later that it's not a God thing. So sometimes things can be a good thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a God thing, and we want to do it God's way, the Jesus way.

Robert: Along with that, what's a natural flow from that is call to follow me is a call to obedience. Like the teaser I sent out this week. Are you following Jesus in obedience to his teaching? Because that's the mark of a true follower. You what, what's the sense of saying you follow someone, but you don't do what they say?

TaQuaris: Follow me means Jesus takes priority over everything. Jesus takes priority over every earthly relationship. He takes priority over every earthly possession.

Robert: You know, sometimes, we can have this, this age old, "but I'm a good person" syndrome or I'm not that bad. We compare ourselves to other people. Well, I don't do that. Or we get into this, I've shared in conversation with Pastor Brian a few times, we get into this spiritual elitism where we start comparing ourselves. We segment ourselves into, well, "I pray 24 hours a day" type of thing or I quote a thousand scriptures in a month. I fast 200 days out of the year. I don't really know anybody like that. But all these things-- We see this here, illustrated in this gospel of Matthew chapter 19. I want to read that and then I want to make a few points to that.

TaQuaris: Someone came to Jesus with this question. Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life? Why ask me about what is good? Jesus replied, there is only one who is good, but to answer your question, if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments. Which ones the man asked? And Jesus replied, you must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I've obeyed all these commandments, the young man replied. What else must I do? Jesus told him, if you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, then come follow me. But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Robert: I told someone recently, I said, your acceptance of my wisdom can't only be when you agree with my wisdom. Sometimes wisdom, sometimes what's right for us goes against everything that we are believing, seeing. So if the Lord tells us, if we say he is Lord, then we can't only obey him in the things that feels good to us. We have to obey him in the hard place. Because often, doing the Jesus way goes contrary to the way we would do things. That's why following him requires relationship is not a checklist of dos and don'ts. You can have your checklist, I checked the list, but what happens when he tells you something directly to do right then and there? But I did A, B, C, and D.

It's like King Saul; King Saul did exact the opposite of what the Lord told him to do, but he made a sacrifice. And the Lord, I don't want your sacrifice, I want your obedience. I want your heart. I want you to do what I ask you to do. I want you to respond to me in relationship, and in that relationship that sometimes I'm going to tell you things for your own good that may not agree with the way you are thinking, but because you put me in a place of trust as Lord, as God as savior, then you are going to respond to me when I speak directly to you.

TaQuaris: Sometimes as believers and Christians, we think because we are doing something good-- and I just want to speak to us as far as like serving in the house of God or just doing different things, that's a good thing. I think sometimes we confuse that because, oh, I did this. Oh, I pray, like you said, Pastor Robert. I pray every night I get up at two o'clock in the morning, I fasted for 200 days. You know, oh, I went and did this for my sister and I went and did this for my brother. And I've been serving in church all these years. I know I'm great. Sometimes that don't mean anything to God. I know that can be confusing or sound really bad, but it just kind of reminds me of the scripture. I can't quote the scripture, but it goes something like where these guys, these people went up to Jesus or the Father and they were like, Lord, I delivered in your name or Lord I did this in your name and Lord I did this. And God said, apart from me, you work as of iniquity. I knew you not.

And that just spoke volumes to me because sometimes we can do so many different things. How can I did all of this, God, and you still not know me? And I did it in Jesus' name. That means you can do all of that but still not even have a relationship with God. And as believers we really need to just really ponder and really think about that and take that in, that it doesn't matter what you do. If it wasn't what God told you to do, it means nothing. It doesn't matter how many times you pray, it doesn't matter how many times you fasted. It doesn't matter how many good things you did, if it wasn't what God told you to do, it means nothing because it's based on relationship.

And when I think about that, I think about love. It's love. I love God, I love him with all my heart, with all my soul. Do I always get it right? No, I don't. But I love him that much that I'm going to trust him and then I'm going to allow him and the Holy Spirit to work through me. And just thinking about some of you guys that's married or have kids or have a special person in your life, like my husband, right? He is the head of our family. He is the head; he is my husband. I love him though. And therefore, I trust him to lead my family. But my motivation, if I ain't love them, I wouldn't be trusting him to be the head over my family. I will love you from a distance. But you know, no it takes that type of mindset that God is he truly about relationships.

And I said this before, he didn't make us robots. We have free will. He really wants to know that we love him and we are supposed to be producing fruit behind that. So when you talk about radically changing, like your life, radically changing, that's the fruit. Eventually something's going to come out.

Robert: I've been making bold statements. I have yet another one that there is no genuine Christianity without obedience to Christ. He leads, we follow in his way by his direction. We follow. This is one of the last points or two that I'm going to make as far as cleaning up some of our gospel presentation. I've counseled many people for many years that have been destroyed because of a wrong gospel presentation. And one of the things, and in other words, sometimes the way we present the gospel, we set people up for failure.

I would love that I could go through my life without having a problem in one in every single day, but that's just not life. And my life in Christ does not exempt me from troubles. Let me say that again because y'all got quiet on me. I don't care how many tongues you are talking in; I don't care how holy you are. Trouble will find you; suffering will find you. The gospel does not free you from suffering. Sometimes you suffer because of the gospel, because you decided to follow Jesus. But there is good news. I want TaQuaris to read this scripture. Then I'll let her say what she has to say and then I'll give you some lasting points.

TaQuaris: For God called you to do good. Even if it means suffering just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example and you must follow in his steps. Sometimes a spiritual life to which we are called, you know, it's not an easy path to walk. Christ himself warned us that in his life we will have tribulations.

Robert: Wait a minute; who warned us that?

TaQuaris: Christ

Robert: Who warned us that?

TaQuaris: Christ.

Robert: So why, how can we as preachers tell you something contrary to what Jesus already warned you? Go ahead.

TaQuaris: Many Christians believe that this Jesus life or this Christian life will bring ease and comfort. But Paul, he also reminds us that all who desire to live godly in Jesus Christ will suffer persecution. Jesus the Lord suffer for his righteous sake. We too were called to suffer for righteous sake, which also glorifies the Father in heaven. Christ, he gave us an example on how to live. He walked in spirit and in truth he depended completely on his heavenly Father. And he was guided and instructed in all things by the Holy Spirit, and he suffered on our account leaving an example for us to follow.

Robert: Now all of our suffering ain't for Jesus's sake. Let's make that clarification. Let's point that out. All your suffering ain't because of Jesus. A lot of your suffering is because you didn't do it Jesus' way. I don't regret a day that I decide to do Jesus' way because it saved me from a whole bunch of trouble that I didn't have to go through. When I didn't do it his way, I invited troubles that should not, or didn't need to come my way, because I neglected to obey the Lord.

So there are benefits in doing it his way, but that doesn't, that doesn't exempt us from going through fire. What it does is allow us to come out on the other side of the fire, but it doesn't escape us. We don't escape from the fire going through. We don't escape suffering. We can't. It's a fairytale. Just look at the inventory of your own life. There is no one here that I see that you cannot tell me that you haven't gone through any suffering. I don't care how many times you rebuked it. But thank God for Jesus that I can see all of your smiling faces right now because you've gone through it and hopefully prayerfully, it has made you better.

The great thing about going through those sufferings and trials in Christ is that we can ask what's the lesson we are to learn from this and how we grow? Also, it allows us to become more like him. I can go through any suffering as long as I got Jesus. Heaven forbid, I would have to without him just like the three Hebrew boys, I want him in the fire furnace with me. Nowhere else. Because if he is in the fiery furnace going through it with me and I know he is coming out, I know I'm coming out because he is with me and I am with him because I made a decision to follow him. And I'll follow him wherever he goes. Even if it's to the cross, I'll follow him.

You see today, by way of social media hierarchy, one reaches influencer status by the number of people that follow them. In other words, your influence on society, your success, your celebrity is determined by how many people follow you. In reality, although the increase in numbers may give an indication that you have a solid following, are your followers truly, deeply following you? Where is the relationship besides an occasional like or heart when they agree with your content? What happens when they disagree with your message or your content? Do they unfollow you?

Our following of Christ cannot simply be a matter of liking the content of the message when it's agreeable to our stance or our opinion or our flesh. We still follow Jesus when it's inconvenient, when it's undesirable, and even when it ruffles our feathers. You are committed to follow Christ until the end because the end is a destiny with him. So no matter what you have to go through, you can't lose. Because if I'm to follow Christ, the destination is him. In following Christ, the end goal is to be with him, but I abide in him even now, and he abides in me even now.

In the walk of this journey, I experience just a bit of heaven every moment I'm in fellowship with him now. And that's why I will follow him for all eternity and my desire that everyone I come in contact with will choose to follow Jesus all the way. Praise God. Thank you.

Brian: I heard somebody say one time, I'm going to love you to the end and this is the end. But the thing is, the Lord determines when the end is. We don't determine when the end is, so let's love them to the very end. Father, I thank you for this word that we are to follow you. Some of us come to repentance over a period of time. When Jesus saw you walking on the water, he said depart for me because I am, I'm an evil man. I'm a wicked man. He came to another place of repentance even though he had been following you.

And Lord, I do pray that repentance would be viewed as our friend, not something to be feared. Because as your spirit would speak to us and show us a better way, we could come into a greater conformity to your image. Your word instructs us to, to not just make a commitment, to follow you, but to actually walk with you and to be as you. As we do that, Lord, there are challenges. There are times where we would suffer. But your word says, bless you when you suffer for my namesake, for so did those prophets who went before you suffer the same thing.

And so Jesus, help us to know that whatever you ask of us, it always is for our best interest. You have our very, very best interest in mind. And the very best thing that we could ever do is to listen to your voice, speak to us, and follow you and to become like you. So every day that we miss that mark, every moment that we may miss that mark, we welcome your voice to speak to us and show us. Because when you speak to us, you don't speak to us with a pointed finger in condemnation, but you reach out your hand because we may have fallen and you offer us to stand again, to rise and to walk with you hand in hand. We don't have to go back to go. We don't have to not collect our $200. We don't have to start over. We just start there again with you. And we thank you for that.

We give you our lives again. I take this moment to dedicate my life again to you and say, even though I've heard your voice for many years, I never tire of hearing you speak to me. And even when you speak to me, when I have failed in following you as I should, those words that you speak to me are truly a comfort to me. And you placed in my heart the desire to want to be like you. And so I just pray today, Lord, for all of these people who are watching online and those who are here today, that our hearts would have a cry to hear your voice. And we invite you to speak to us, to lead us, lead us into your paths of righteousness. Lead us in the way of life everlasting. This we pray, Jesus, in your name and for your sake and everybody said amen. Amen.

I'm going to bless you in a second, but before we do, Jim and Brenda, you serve communion today after the service and we'll have people here at the altar to pray for you as well. I can already smell the lunch. Can you smell the lunch? It was a little hard to focus there for a little bit. Pastor Ken has done a great job. Our dear friend Ken has prepared the lunch here for us today, so everybody stay. And if you are within a few miles of driving distance of the church and you are watching online, get in your car right now. Take your pajamas off, get dressed and get here and we'll have some lunch for you as well. Love to have you visit with us.

Let's raise our hands together. And now, may the Lord bless you and may the Lord keep you. May the Lord make his faces shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his peace. And may you hear his voice speak so gently to you. And may you follow. This, we pray in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.

Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 3-5-23. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.