Greeting and Introduction
Well, good morning, everybody. My name’s Conrad. I’m one of the pastors here at Surrey CLA. It is nice to be with you this morning.
So, time for honesty. Who was second screening during the intro video? You guys know what that is? It’s when you have a primary thing that you’re watching. And then you have a second screen where you’re doing something that’s more interesting than whatever’s actually happening. So it could be your phone, your tablet, your laptop. Yeah, that’s called second screening.
And I feel like, uh, that’s something that people do during the intro. They’re like 47 seconds. I mean, I’ve seen this already. Surely something else I can do for the next 47 seconds.
Yeah, it’s funny, you know, like we have had this surge of social media over the last couple of years, hey? Like if you’re watching on YouTube right now, then welcome to social media. If you clicked the Facebook link to get here, that’s two. Um, you know, the young people are on TikTok. The old people are on Instagram. They think they’re hip, but trust me if you’re on Instagram, you’re old. And then you have people like me who are on Twitter and everyone’s like, what’s that even for? Amen.
Yes. Kim is of the generation that decides we don’t need that. You know what? She’s right.
The Problem with Social Media and Loneliness
The funny thing about social media is that I think that it’s been misnamed. I think that it is anti-social media. It’s anti-social media.
You know, there’s been surveys that have done that gauge all sorts of various subjective things about the way people see themselves. And one that I thought was particularly interesting is loneliness. Right? If you look at the GI generation, this before the boomers. And loneliness was not a huge factor for them, right? The baby boomers. Loneliness was not a huge factor for them. You start to see it crop up a little bit with Gen X. And then with the millennials, it just sort of goes up like a hockey stick. And the Gen Z just keeps on going up.
And so you think to yourself, but we’re more connected now than we have ever been. How are you people so lonely? You see some of these people, like the youth, and they have 700 friends. Like 700. How can you possibly be lonely with 700 friends? That seems like a lot of friends.
See, because we’re an inherently social animal, right? That’s the way God made us. God made us in his image and by his very nature, he’s 3 people. He’s a community all by himself. So that is something that he built into us, and we desire to be social. And so we chase down social media because then we’re being friends. Right? Now we’re friends.
Well one of my very good friends that I’ve had for years. I haven’t seen him since before my son was born. My son will be 9 in March. But we talk every once in a while on Facebook, so we’re still friends, I guess.
You’re laughing because you know it’s not true, right? But the desire is that we want to be a part of something. We want to be part of something that’s bigger than us. We want to be part of a group. We want to be part of a social circle. We want to be part of something that matters. Whether or not we are able to articulate that and put it in those exact words, that’s what it is. That what we’re looking for.
The Desire for Belonging: An Example
And I’m going to give an example here. So today, I’m going to need extra grace from everybody because I’m going to say 2 things today. One, that might offend people outside the church and one that might offend people inside the church. So equal opportunity offender, just have some grace with me as I go through today, okay?
So when I thought about examples of people who are trying to fit into a group that will give them meaning and purpose and that social thing that they’re looking for. The one that popped to mind is the LGBTQ plus community. Right? It’s very in vogue right now to be part of this group. And this is the flag.
Now, you guys might be familiar with the left side of this flag that’s been around since the late 70s. But the chevrons and the circle on the right side are new. This is the latest version of the flag that came out in 2021. I can’t remember the artist’s name who added these chevrons to the side. But if you’ve ever looked into this community, it’s very interesting because they have all these sort of subgroups, and these stripes and chevrons actually all represent different groups of people, right? Like, I forget, one of them represents, um, you know, black people who are part of this community, and one represents intersex people who are part of this community, and there’s all sorts of different things that are meant by these stripes. They are not just random colors. And it’s because people want to fit into this group.
And so you see all of these things come up, and some of them are super duper interesting. Like, there’s one subgroup within this larger group. I don’t I’m not even trying to remember the names. They sort of make sense when you read them, but I can’t remember them, but there’s a group of people who are romantically attracted to people, but don’t have sexual attraction. That’s a group. There’s people, a group that has sexual attraction, but no romantic attraction. That’s a group. There’s a group of people that have no attraction in that way of any kind. That’s another group. There’s people who are only romantically attracted to themselves. That’s a group.
I’m not trying to make fun of these people. I’m not saying, like, this is ridiculous and absurd, okay? Now, our specific views of this might differ within the room or online. I’m just saying that you have all of these people who are like, I want a stripe on the flag. I want to be part of this group. I want to be part of this movement, this worldwide movement that is giving people purpose, that is giving them a direction forward. Right?
But what’s interesting is that the more of these symbols that are added to this flag, the less each of them seems to mean. Like to consider yourself part of this movement, because you have no romantic or sexual attraction of any kind, feels weird to me. Like it doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense to me. Um, But it’s the desire to be part of something that’s bigger than you.
So if you’re looking to a group like this, to find membership and belonging to find purpose in your life to find an identity. You’re not gonna find it here. Um, So I was gonna, I was gonna get that clip from Apocalypse now where Robert Duvall says, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Because that sort of feels like a little bit of what I did here just now. But I’m going to come back to this. We’re going to hit pause on this and I’m going to explain myself better after we take a look at our verse today, okay? Yeah, so let’s move on to our scripture for this morning.
Scripture Reading: Mark 1:16–20 (NET)
We’re still in the book of Mark chapter one, starting in verse 16. I’m reading out of the new English translation this morning. Is that right? No, that’s 14 and 15. Uh oh. I’m just going to read it out and you’re going to follow along.
As he went along the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people.” They left their nets immediately and followed him. Going on a little further, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in their boat mending nets. Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
It’s going to be good this morning, I think. I hope, let’s pray, and then we’ll get into our study.
Opening Prayer
Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for what you’ve put on my heart to share today. I pray that you would give me clarity as I share. I pray that you would give the hearers grace if I stumble or trip on my words, and that we would come away from this with a better understanding of who you are and what the purpose of the church that you have built is. So thank you for that. Thank you for your love and for your grace. Thank you for all that you do for us. And I pray that you would turn this morning’s message into something that’s useful and beautiful for the hearers today. Amen.
The Fishermen and Their Call
So the first thing I want to say is, if you’re like me and you’ve been reading these passages for a long time, you’ve often heard it said fishermen and fishers of men. So if I say fishers of men, know that I mean, you know, men as in mankind or humankind or people kind, if you’re the prime minister.
So, rather than going through verse by verse, I know sacrilege, this is the 2nd week in a row, but rather than going through verse by verse, the 2 verses or the 5 verses, excuse me, have a sort of echo. So we’re going to go through them thematically, okay?
Now, the first thing is the fisherman, right? Now, what’s interesting is that the fishermen or the fish analogy is not new. Okay? This is something that we see throughout the prophets. Now, if you know how the Bible sort of came into being. You know, that the prophets were at the end, right, of the Old Testament. And then there was a period of 400 years of silence. So after the period of 400 years of silence, Jesus comes in and he picks up again talking about this fisherman thing. And Jews of that time, surely would have picked up on this. So even though the New Testament authors don’t hang a lantern on it and say, hey, look at this thing, it’s still there, if you look for it.
And I’m going to give you a couple references if you’re a note taker. We see this in Jeremiah 16:16, in Ezekiel 29:4, and the next few verses that follow, in Ezekiel 38:4, and Amos 4:2, and again in Habakkuk 1:14 to 17. This fisher, fisherman, analogy is used over and over and over again.
So then the next thing I want to talk about is the fishermen themselves. Right now, I don’t know about you, but when I would hear people talk about these fishermen, I always pictured like these schlubby blue collar workers. Um, the silence tells me I’m the only one. So this might be just for me. But I always pictured the worst sort of stereotypes of blue collar workers, you know, like he’s got a beer and he’s belching and Jesus is like, I don’t know, you.
But the fact of the matter is that in the Greco-Roman world at that time, people were not having steaks, chicken was not a thing. The primary food ingredient that was used, the staple food of the region was fish. Right? In fact, the sea of Galilee, where these men worked, was about 6 miles wide, 12 miles long, and had 16 ports on it. 16 ports. Three of them were named specifically after the fishing industry. And so if these guys are going to be there and competing in a very competitive market, like fishing in that era, they would have had been very good at what they do.
And if we read in John, which we will be later. We know that Simon and Andrew, they were brothers, but James and John, who Jesus recruits next, were partners with Simon and Andrew. So the 4 of them were partners together. And we know that Zebedee, the father was there. So now we have multi-generations, and they leave the nets with who? Zebedee and the hired men. So they’re making enough money that they have employees. So I think the real story of these guys is that they were skilled at what they did. They probably spoke not only their local language of the area in Galilee there, but they probably also spoke Greek, so that they could conduct commerce with the rest of the world. So these guys were blue collar workers, but they ran their own company. These guys were not, you know, yokels in the back country somewhere.
So I think it’s important that we understand the people that Jesus is calling here, are people who are good at what they’re doing, okay? And that’s interesting because we know that, like, they’re not yet members of the 12. This is not the call of the 12. This is the general call to the disciples. He’s going to sort of winnow that group down later, right? But we know that they’re going to be part of that group later. And so it’s interesting that he chooses these people.
Why is it interesting that he chooses these people because of the traits of fishermen? If you’re going to be in that competitive field, you had to be hard workers, right? You are not going to work 12 to three, 4 days a week and survive in that sort of environment. You’d have to handle stress well because of the immense competition that you’d be facing. You’d had to have patience to know when and where fish are. I bet you those guys knew the Sea of Galilee inside and out. They knew where the deep water pockets were, they knew where the shallow water pockets were, they knew where the fast currents were, they knew where the slow currents were. Any type of fish that you wanted or seafood for the Gentiles. They knew where that was. And along with that dedication, dedication to their craft to become good enough to be multi-generational employers, right?
So, these are the fishermen that he says, follow me to. Right? Follow me. And if you’re going to follow Jesus, the traits of a fisherman are going to really be really helpful, right? To be a hard worker, to put in the time and effort that it takes, to handle stress well, because I’ll tell you what, if you’re following Jesus, that’s when the enemy’s going to attack you, right? Do you remember we talked about that a couple weeks ago when I was here? When you’re riding with Jesus, the enemy is like, we need to take this guy down immediately. So you got to be able to handle that stress. Patience. Anyone who’s ever done evangelism understands. You might be the seed planter. You might be the seed waterer, you might be the harvester. Unlikely you get to be all three. We’re all working together for the kingdom. And then, of course, dedication to see it through over the long haul.
These are all things that are helpful for followers of Jesus. But what’s also interesting is that Jesus, when he says, follow me, is not, it’s not placing a request. It’s like, hey guys, would you be interested in joining my movement? Have you heard about the good news of Jesus Christ? It was a command. It had authority. There was an expectation there. He’s like, follow me, let’s go.
So it always sort of reminded me of this non-sequitur clip from the Terminator. Come with me if you want to live. And that really is the call that we’re making out to people too, right? Come with me if you want to live.
So come with me, and then what happens? What’s next? I will make you into fishers of men, right? Or fishers of people. Excuse me. I will make you or turn you into fishers of people.
The Call to Sacrifice and Identity
Now, we have this idea in our culture, and you’ve heard me talk about this before. So I apologize if it’s getting old, but it needs to be said. You’ve heard this in our culture before that people feel like they’re not good enough. I noticed that especially in our youth, I wish that they were able to stay in here today, but they’ll often feel like, I’m not good enough. And I’ll tell you right now, the only reason you feel that way is because it’s true. You’re not good enough. And that’s okay.
When we start feeling like we got this. I’m good enough. That’s when you get into trouble. I don’t know if you guys ever watch Jerry Seinfeld stand up, but he has a bit from the 90s. Hilarious. I should have got the clip, but he talks about this guy. We’ve all seen this guy. He’s driving down the freeway at 100 kilometers an hour, and he’s got a mattress strapped to the top of his truck with bungee cords. And without fail, this guy has his arm out the window, holding the mattress, because he thinks, if the wind catches this giant rectangle at 100 kilometers an hour, it’s okay, because I’m using my arm. Got this.
Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. Because once you get overconfident, you can end up in situations like this, and I’m sorry this might be painful for some of you to watch, but it needs to be shown to illustrate the point.
Perhaps an odd man rush against the wings. Now, lift up, center right. What is? Baby. Oh, and skip past Kluchin. Oh, the Vancouver goaltender. Lindstrom right at center ice, folks. Stuffing it in. Dump it in on net, will be a rebound. We can get a four check established here. And that just goes right through the glove hand of Ben Cluche. Yeah, we had some moaning and groaning throughout the crowd after that one. Yeah. Our hopes were dashed. Detroit went on to win everything that year.
But that’s what happens when we get overconfident, right? We think we got this, and instead of doing basic goalie 101, slide over and get your body in front of it, he hot dogs it with the glove out and misses it, right? And that’s the thing about hard work, the traits of a fisherman. We want to put in the time because God honors our effort. We can’t say, God will make up for our shortfall, therefore, I can do nothing. That’s not how it works. God honors the effort that we put in.
So if you’re doing everything that you can. Then you can rest assured that God has set up a brick wall behind you. Nothing is getting in that net. if you’re putting in the work, right? And that happens by submitting ourselves to God. Excuse me, because God is not calling you for what you are. Okay? Alright. Go to the wired backup. There we go. I feel more like a stand-up comic with the wired mic.
God’s not calling you for what you are. He’s calling you for what he will make you into. Okay, let’s say it again just in case we missed on the stream during that transition. God is not calling you for what you are. He’s calling you for what he will make you into. Okay, that identity, who you are comes from him, and he fills all those gaps.
So then we’re onto the 4th part of our thing for today, which is leaving behind, right? So he calls fisherman. He says, follow me, I will turn you into fishes of people, and what is their response? They leave their nets. They leave their boats. They leave their father, and the hired men, and they go and follow Jesus.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read this, the 1st time many years ago, I always thought, that was amazing. Like, here’s this guy just walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and he’s like, you there, in the boat. Let’s go. Dang. That is authority.
But then the atheist comes in and they say, oh, not so fast there, Mr. Christian. Um, I need you to explain to me how Jesus calls Simon and Andrew 3 times. Yeah, that’s right, 3 times.
And I love that objection because it’s one that people make when they don’t want to understand. You know this? You ever have, like, someone who, like, my kids do this all the time. They’ll get angry about something and you’ll point out why the thing that they’re angry about isn’t something worth being angry about or they didn’t understand and they’re angry about a misunderstanding. And rather than admit that they’re wrong, they’ve sort of decided like being angry. No, I like this. I’d rather be angry right now. This feels much more satisfying than being humble.
So anyway, pot shots at the atheist, I guess. I’m not gonna put these verses up on the screen, but I am going to read them. And we’re going to talk about it, okay? So here are the 3 times that Jesus calls Simon and Andrew.
In John, the Gospel of John chapter one verses 40 and through 45. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the 2 disciples who heard that John, who heard what John said and followed Jesus. He first found his own brother Simon and told him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated as Christ. Andrew brought Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of John, you will be called Cephas, which means Peter.
Then we have one in Matthew, which is the same as the one in Mark. It will sound really familiar. As he was walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw 2 brothers. Simon called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people. They left their nets immediately and followed him.
And the last one, the longest one is in the book of Luke, chapter 5, starting in verse one. Now Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. Now, I should just say, if you read about the sea of Galilee, the lake or sea of Geneseret and the lake or sea of Tiberius, they’re all the same body of water. Just depends where you enter it from. So Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing around him to hear the word of God. And he saw 2 boats by the lake. But the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. So he got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put it out a little way from the shore. Then Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water, and lower your nets for a catch. Simon answered, Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing. But at your word, I will lower the nets. When they had done this, they caught so many fish, their net started to tear. So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, right? That’s John and James. And they came and filled both boats so that they were about to sink. But when Simon Peter saw, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. For Peter and all who were there with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. And so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons who were in Simon’s business partners? Excuse me. Then Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid from now on, you will be catching people. So when they had brought their boats to shore. They left everything and followed him.
So what’s going on here? How are all 3 of these events not the same event? They’re clearly not the same. What’s happening? Well, you see, the 1st meeting, I read them in the Chronological order that they happened. The 1st one in John, we see him rename Peter, which, by the way, is a total awesome move. Like, what a boss move. What’s your name? Simon? No, Peter. But then in Matthew and in Mark, we see them say, Simon called Peter. So at this point, Jesus had already given Simon the new name.
So what happens is in John, Andrew, Peter’s brother, is a disciple of John the Baptist. So after Jesus gets baptized, they say, hey, we found the Messiah, that’s this guy. And so that’s the 1st time that Peter meets him. Or Simon meets him and gets renamed Peter. Then Jesus is walking along the sea and says, come and follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people, and they follow him, and they go up to, um, excuse me, I was sick last week. My brain’s not working. But they go up to Capernaum and then they end up coming back down and they go to Peter’s house and heal his mother who’s sick and she gets up. She’s sick and can’t move. Jesus walks in, says, okay, you’re better now. She gets him and makes dinner. I don’t know. It’s not the 1st thing I’d do if I was feeling better, but whatever. She gets up and makes dinner. And then they go back to their jobs, right? Just because they’ve left these things behind doesn’t mean that they’ve burned them down. Right? They left them with the hired men. They left them with the father. We see after Jesus dies, they go back to fishing. How could you possibly do that unless someone was running the company in your absence?
And then the 3rd time in Luke, now it’s time. We’re going for real, this is it. Let’s go. And what’s interesting about this is you see Jesus has taken his time, right? He’s not commanding that you instantly become the thing that I need you to be. He’s working on you. You coming along. Right? He’s taken his time because God is not impatient. He has all the patience in the world, and that is good news for us. Amen?
So God is a God of patience, and more than that, God is a God of evidence. They see, uh, um, who is it? Andrew sees the heavens open. Remember we talked about this last time? Mike was teaching on this. The heavens were torn open and the voice of God comes down. Andrew was there for that. Pretty awesome. And then Peter goes and sees his own mother being raised up, you know, from being horribly ill to making dinner for the clan. God provides evidence. He shows what’s happening, right? We also have the casting out of a demon. All sorts of events happen during that little trip up to Capernaum and back. And Peter gets to see the disciples get to see over and over again what Jesus is doing. He’s not expecting you to have blind faith. Okay? I don’t even really understand what blind faith means. You can’t have faith in something blindly. There has to be something that you’re putting your faith in. You would never, you know, sit on a chair and assume it would hold you up unless you had sat on a chair before and it had successfully held you up.
So, God’s a God of patience. God is a God of evidence. And so you say to me, Conrad, that’s a great harmonization of those 3 disparate stories in the gospel. But what are you getting at? The sacrifice that’s required is what seals the deal. Okay? And God’s not going to make you give up everything at first. What does Jesus call Peter and Andrew to give up in their 1st encounter? Nothing. It’s the 2nd time. When he says, follow me and they leave behind their nets. Right? Okay, so let’s try to tie this all back together. Pray for me.
So you remember what I said at the beginning, about claiming membership as part of the LGBTQ plus community, and how I said that that is not going to scratch the itch that you think it is, that it’s a finding identity there. And there are 2 reasons why I think that’s true and they’re related to each other. Okay? Groups like the LGBTQ plus community are not bound together by a common identity purpose and vision. Okay? They are a coalition of individuals who share one or more passions. Okay? Do you catch the difference? It really matters.
So to give an example of a coalition that has one or more similar passions, you could think of our current minority government, right? If the liberals want to pass some kind of law, they need a quorum to do so, and they don’t have it, that’s why they have a minority government. So they say to another group, most likely the NDP, hey guys, we’re trying to pass this law. If you guys join in and we get one vote from the Greens or something, then we’ll be able to pass this law. So they form a coalition of those 3 groups to accomplish a goal. Once the goal is accomplished, the coalition has no purpose anymore. Right?
And so the same thing is true about the LGBTQ plus community. And the 2nd thing is that it doesn’t require anything from you to be part of this community. There’s no sacrifice that’s required. There’s no investment that’s required. There’s no sort of skin in the game. You can leave a coalition at any time that you want, with no cost to yourself.
Now, I want to be clear here. I’m not picking on the LGBTQ plus community. God loves you guys. We love you guys as a church. You know, we want you to be part of what we’re doing. It’s the only reason I chose them is because it’s a worldwide movement that people really seem to want to be a part of. Hence all the chevrons in the flag. But I could have just as easily chosen something like, um, fandoms, Star Wars or Marvel or pro wrestling fans, right? Or collectors. If you collect stamps or bottle caps or video games or even your book club or beer hockey league, these are all coalitions.
There’s no identity in that group, and the danger of finding identity in that group is if that passion is taken away from you. Your identity is lost. Right? If you’re part of a beer hockey league and you’re in some sort of terrible automobile accident, you lose both of your legs. You can’t play in your beer league hockey league anymore. If that’s who you are, if that’s where your identity is found, you have no identity anymore. Right?
And you hear that sort of language about taking my identity or taking away my personhood from members of the LGBTQ plus community because they’re looking to that community for something that it can’t give them. Right? You can’t take one attribute of who you are and make it everything of who you are. Right? In the same way that if your bottle cap collection got stolen. You can’t have your identity wrapped up in those bottle caps or you’ll be in trouble.
So, well, these groups, these clubs, these coalitions can’t do that. Christianity can, okay? And here’s my 2nd controversial statement of the day, and this one’s for people inside the church. Notice that I said Christianity can do that. The church cannot. Christianity offers you the identity that you’re looking for, the church does not.
If you’ve been around church for any amount of time, you know that there are terrible people who attend churches. There’s all sorts of politicking and mean spiritedness that can happen inside a church. Now, we can find community here in the same way that we could find it in other groups, clubs, and coalitions, but that vision, that purpose, that identity comes from Christianity from Jesus. Okay? And that’s why church attendance, what I call fellowship, is only one part of the stool. Do I have a stool? Yes, is only one leg of the stool that forms Christianity. Right? The other 2 are prayer and scripture reading.
So we don’t want the church to become just another club. Another coalition. Where we come here to feel good about ourselves and pat ourselves on the back for how wonderful we are. Instead, what makes Christianity different from the church is that Christianity requires sacrifice. We need to leave behind what? Everything. Everything.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have friends or family or a job. God wants you to have those things, but we need to be willing to lay it down. We need to be willing to say, God, I really wanted that job. And that’s happened to me just a couple of years ago. Yeah, last year, I think. But there was a church that had reached out to me and said, hey, Conrad, we’d like you to be our lead pastor. And I said, I’ll apply. And I applied, and it didn’t work out. And they were all amazed when I was like, God didn’t want it. It’s fine. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that piece? To get a pink slip. This happened to me also a couple of years ago, my boss called me into his office, said, Conrad, Shopify absolutely destroyed us. We have no money. I can’t even pay you out. You have to work your last 2 weeks. Also, you’re fired. Here’s a nice letter of reference.
Um, And I’m able to say, no worries. God’s got this. That’s the piece that comes with an identity in Christ. When you know that he has a purpose and a vision for you, that you can lean on and rest on. And that’s where Christianity is separated from the church. I hope I’m making myself clear here. And by saying that the church is bad, certainly not. Am I saying the church is full of broken people? Yes, absolutely I am. Absolutely I am. And that’s where we’re all working together on each other, trying to improve ourselves, right? By submitting to God, by submitting our jobs to God, by submitting our children to God, our housing situation to God. Whatever it is, we give it to him. And if he wants us to have it, he’ll give it back. And if he doesn’t we’re better off without it. Amen.
So, sacrifice is the thing that separates uh, the unified group from the coalition. So as you are moving forward in your Christian life, just remember that we need to be able to sacrifice. And if there’s a sacred cow in your life that you’re not willing to let go of, You’re basically telling God, no, I don’t want you to be part of what I’m doing. It has to be total surrender. Amen.
All right, as Trisha comes back up, I’m just gonna pray. And yeah.
Closing Prayer
Father God, thank you so much for your word, for the story that we see unfolding with Peter and Andrew and James and John. And I pray that you would help us to look at the evidence. Look at the work you’ve done in our lives and to trust in you by sacrificing everything that makes us, us, and adopting identity that’s grounded in you. Help us to revel in being grounded in you, to adore being grounded in you, and to be a part of what you want to do. Thank you God, that you have a plan that’s bigger than us. That’s bigger than me. And I pray that you’d give me the humility to be a part of it. In your name. Amen.