(And Who You’re Becoming Because of It)
The follow button is forming you
Be honest. You can find the Instagram icon on your screen without even looking. Your thumb just goes there. We all do it. We follow a few thousand people, most of them strangers, and we let them fill the feed that fills our minds. In this Summer of Sermons message, Daron asks a question that is hard to shake: who are you actually following, and who are you becoming because of it? Because when you follow other people, you slowly start to become like them.
What you follow is what you become
Daron gets honest about his own follows, from a guy who does hilarious pet voiceover videos to the icons he tried to copy growing up. Robert Sweet. Tommy Lee. Bono. He wanted to walk like them, talk like them, dress like them. We do the same thing with celebrities and influencers today. We give them our attention, our time, and sometimes our money. Then we wonder why we feel so anxious, lonely, distracted, and quick to hate. So Daron drops a challenge that is simple and a little uncomfortable: delete social media off your phone for one month. Most people won’t. But the ones who try start to notice how much of their life they were quietly handing away.
The invitation Jesus actually offers
Jesus has a short, personal invitation for everyone: come, follow me. Not apply and get selected. Not believe the right facts and grab a ticket to heaven. Here is the part that stops you cold. The word “Christian” appears three times in the New Testament. The word “disciple” appears over two hundred times. The goal was never to collect information about Jesus. The goal is to be with him, become like him, and do what he did. That is the difference between an invitation to information and an invitation to imitation. You only get one life, and who you follow is shaping it right now. Want to go deeper? Email me at daron@daronearlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
We follow people all day long. Influencers, icons, feeds, and the five voices we spend the most time with. The problem is simple. We slowly become like whatever we follow, and most of us never stopped to ask if those things are worthy of our lives.
In this Summer of Sermons message, Daron Earlewine walks through Jesus’ shortest and most personal invitation, come follow me, and exposes how Western Christianity quietly swapped imitation for information. We turned discipleship into a golden ticket to heaven instead of a daily apprenticeship that actually changes us.
The stakes are real. A life built on the wrong foundation looks fine until the floods come. Following Jesus is the difference between a house that stands and a heap of ruins.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
⚡️ The word “Christian” appears three times in the New Testament. The word “disciple” appears over two hundred. The goal was never to be a Christian, it was to become like Jesus.
⚡️ Your real beliefs are not what you say in public. They show up in where you actually go for wisdom and who you actually follow.
⚡️ Following Jesus means being with him, becoming like him, and doing what he did. Information alone never makes anyone look like Jesus.
GOING DEEPER
Who is the one voice you follow that you might need to stop following? Drop it in the comments and tell us why. If this challenged you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: DARON EARLEWINE: SUMMER OF SERMONS 7-1-26
Hey everybody, it’s summertime. The weather’s nice, sunsets are later, backyard barbecues, all the good stuff. And here at the Daron Earlewine Podcast, we like to change things up too. We’re bringing back the Summer of Sermons. You know, I do the podcast, I do books, I do speaking, all kinds of stuff. I get a chance to speak a lot of Sundays, usually at a church here in Annapolis called Mercy Road Northeast, and sometimes at other churches around the country. What we love to do in the summer is grab a couple of the greatest hits from the past twelve months and share these sermons with you. It gives you a chance to hear me communicate in a different way and get more immersed in the content. You gave us great feedback last summer that you loved the Summer of Sermons, so we’re bringing it back for 2026. I hope you enjoy all of the greatest hits we pulled from the past year. Welcome to the Summer of Sermons. Created on purpose and for purpose.
I love that God has given us this gift of music. One of the things I love about songs is that somehow God has hardwired our heart, soul, mind, and strength so that music weaves them all together. As we go through those songs, maybe new to some of you, I’ve probably played some of them two hundred times on the drums through the years. And as they’re being sung, I go back to seasons and times where God showed up in my life.
That’s one of the amazing things about serving a living God who walks with you. In the great, amazing times in life, God walks with you and you sing songs of joy. And in the seasons where you’re dry and it seems like your prayers can’t make it through the roof, God sings songs of comfort and encouragement with you. And in seasons where your heart is broken, God walks with you. And he sings with you. He is an amazing Father. An amazing God. And he gives us a soundtrack.
If you’re new here, I’m glad you’re here. Because what I don’t have to tell you, what you already know, is that you’re going to have seasons where things are great, seasons when things are dry, and seasons when your heart is broken. And if you don’t yet know the love of a God who would walk with you, sing with you, comfort you, encourage you, and guide you, we’re going to tell you about that God this morning.
The crazy, amazing thing about this God is that he’s a God of invitation. He invites us to follow.
Aren’t invitations great? Remember the first time you got invited to a birthday party as a little kid, and you thought, my gosh, I got invited, I’m going to have some friends. Maybe the first time you tried out for a team or a club and got that invitation, maybe just your name on a wall or an email, and you were like, I’m in. Then the stakes go up. Maybe sometime in high school you invited that special someone to be your boyfriend or girlfriend, or to go to prom, and you were so scared they were going to say no. Whether you were inviting or you got invited, it was special. And then some of us got to a place where we actually invited someone to become our spouse. When you get invited, it’s powerful.
Jesus has a very simple, very short, very personal invitation that he extends to everyone. And this is it. Come, follow me.
So my brain begs the question, who am I following? Have you thought about that recently? Who am I following?
For me, the thought immediately went to social media. It’s probably the place in our culture where we have this language most readily available. Somehow on Instagram I’ve been able to acquire just over three thousand followers. That’s not that many, but it’s kind of crazy. There are three thousand people who at some point were like, I want to follow Daron Earlewine. Most of them don’t know me, and I don’t know many of them. But there’s this connection where it’s like there’s something about that person that I want them to populate this feed that is shaping my life. I went and looked this week, and I follow about two thousand people. Most of them I don’t know at all. Some of them I wish I didn’t follow. Except this one guy. He posts these awesome pet voiceover videos. I can’t remember his name, but I can’t take it. I’ll be on Instagram and all of a sudden it comes up and he’s voicing over a donkey at a petting zoo talking to people, and I’m crying, I’m laughing so hard, and my kid’s like, what’s wrong with you? And I’m like, you’ve got to come see this cat talking. I love it. He’s my favorite follow.
What I’ve begun to realize is the connection between the things we follow and who we become. Honestly, what I’ve been noticing about our culture is that I think we have made all of this into a kind of god. I think about all these people we follow, and we give them our attention, we give them our time, and sometimes we even give them our money. And it’s amazing to me, the difference, where Jesus comes and says, come follow me. Our goal, and what we’re going to talk about for the next month, is this idea that we really want to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, and to do what Jesus did.
Then I take a look at our culture and our lives and I go, I wonder why we’re so anxious. I wonder why we’re so depressed. I wonder why we’re so lonely. I wonder why we’re so spiteful. I wonder why we covet other people’s stuff so much. I wonder why we’re so distracted. I wonder why we’re so lustful. And I think it’s starting to make sense. It’s because we’re following each other, and we’re not God. For hours a day we just sit and bow down and worship our gods. Tell me what to think. Tell me how to dress. Tell me how to live. And guess what? They do.
But the question is, am I becoming something that’s actually worthy of my life? Because when I follow other human beings, guess what I become? Another human being. The amazing thing Jesus invites us into is this. He says, here’s the deal. I want you to come and follow me, because what I want to teach you is how to become like me. And he says things that are amazingly hopeful. He says, I’m going to teach you how to become the salt and light of the earth. I’m going to teach you how to be loving and patient and kind and gentle and to live with self-control. I’m going to let you become faith and hope and love in other people’s lives. I’m going to guide and direct you to become what human beings were created to be, people made in the image of God to reflect his love, his character, and his creativity. That’s what we could become. But instead we follow other human beings, and then we’re surprised by the result.
Here’s a little call to action. Most of you will not do this. All of you will be somewhat offended by it. Here’s my challenge to you, just for this series. For the next month, would you be willing to delete social media off your phone?
How will I waste hours and hours of my day every day, Daron, ignoring the things that really matter? How can I sit in the living room, Daron, and ignore my spouse for at least thirty to forty-five minutes at a time? How can I ignore what my kids are doing and the attention they might need, as I mindlessly scroll through other human beings doing mindless things, Daron? How will I ever be exceptional at my job if I’m not wasting at least a day of work every week scrolling in my office, hoping my boss doesn’t check my screen time? How can I become who I was born to be without reading how every person I follow has now become a geopolitical force of understanding for how the complexities of our society function, Daron? How will I know who to hate, Daron, if I’m not told by other human beings I follow who is so stupid that I should have vitriolic feelings toward my neighbors? Well, that’s not me, Daron. Really? Because it’s me.
Because we’re following each other and becoming like each other. So it’s just a challenge. Get it off your phone for a month. You can get on your laptop if you want. Jump on a desktop if you have one. But you’ll feel like a much worse dad than you already do if you pull a laptop out and set it in front of you and ignore your spouse. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t work. Go into your office and get on your computer, and after about five to ten minutes you’ll be like, I’m a loser, I’ve got to go do something. The phone is easier. I look like I’m doing something important. And I’ll do that every opportunity I get when I don’t have to give my attention to anything else. And you do the same thing.
Just walk around this week and notice how many nanoseconds it takes for every human being around you, when they have a moment of boredom, to do this. How many of you don’t even have to think about the exact place on your screen where Instagram is, and your thumb just goes there automatically? That’s called addiction, friends. I’ve done the challenge for this year so far, and it’s way better. Although I have now built an amazing farm and a lumberjack office on my phone, so I have not quite broken the addiction. I’m really good at saving a wasteland and building water towers and things of that nature.
If it’s not Instagram or social, it might just be iconic people you want to become. This is a little deeper. There are icons in our society we want to become. And what’s interesting is that these people become so influential that they only need one name. Most of us need two names for people to know who we are. But when you get to god-like status, you can get one name. Elvis. Madonna. Prince. Then if you really get to the next level, you don’t even need a name. Prince didn’t have a name for a while, he just had a symbol. And then there’s MJ. Michael Jordan is so famous and so iconic that he doesn’t even need a name, he can just have two letters.
These are people we follow, and we actually say, I kind of want to become like them. I want to dress like them. I want to walk like them. I want to talk like them. For me, growing up, my first icon was a guy named Robert Sweet. He was the drummer from the band Stryper. I wanted to be Robert Sweet so badly. I wanted to play like him. Then I discovered Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe. I bought his drumsticks and learned to play like him. And if I had a million dollars I would have built a drum riser that came up out of the ground and spun around three hundred and sixty degrees. Then I started getting more serious about following Jesus, and I thought, I don’t know if I keep following Tommy that I’m going to look much like Jesus. So I upgraded, and I found Bono from U2, who is so famous he only needs one name. And that’s not even his real name, which is the great part. You get so iconic you can make up a name and people still dig it.
I wanted to be Bono so badly through college, and I probably still do today. I dressed like him, I had sunglasses like him. I wanted to be Bono so badly that when I sing karaoke, I always sing a U2 song and do my best Bono impersonation. And I’m good at it. When you do a Bono thing, you’ve got to move kind of weird, and whenever you sing a powerful part, you do one of these. That was good. I’m so into becoming Bono that there’s a part on the YouTube footage of the PopMart tour in Mexico City, I think during With or Without You, where Bono is talking. It’s the chill part, and he says, Bruce, turn the lights off. Bruce must be the lighting guy. Then Bono goes into this whole thing, and he says, Mexico, thank you, Mexico. Thank you for giving us a great life. Mexico, thank you for the burritos. I have literally done that entire speech singing karaoke in a bar before. Multiple times. And people have to be like, what is this psycho doing, thanking Mexico for the burritos while singing karaoke? But I’m not, I’m becoming Bono right there in that bar.
Or you could be like Tay Tay. She’s so iconic she just gets a nickname. But we don’t worship her, dress like her, sing like her, get every wristband she has, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to her concerts, and then think and act and become like her. And we don’t get so wrapped up in worshiping and following people that just seeing them literally brings us to tears. Wait. Yes we do.
So we don’t have an issue following anyone. We’ve got that in spades. The question we have to ask, and we’re going to do our best to ask over the next month, is this. Are these people worthy of your life? Because whether you pay attention to it or not, they are shaping and creating you in their image.
God, I had notes. Just so you know, there’s no chance this sermon gets done in thirty minutes, just letting you know. That’s why you had parking problems when you came in today. Somebody actually came in and said, we thought maybe you were preaching, because the parking lot was a disaster. I said, bless you, child of God. So if you’ve got reservations at Golden Corral, cancel them.
But what about Jesus? Why is it somewhat difficult to wrap our minds around following him? I think this might be true. There are certain situations in life that reveal our beliefs. I’ve talked to you about this before. I think there are three levels of belief. There’s your public belief. This is what you want people to believe you believe. So if we say, was Jesus the smartest, most intelligent, most brilliant, most creative person who ever lived, you would say yes. Because that’s the churchy right answer, and you want people to believe you believe that. Then there’s your personal belief. This is what you actually think you believe. Then there’s another level, what we’d understand as our core beliefs. Most of the time we don’t know what these are, but they manifest themselves in our lives. So publicly we’d say, yes, I believe Jesus is the source of all truth and life. However, if we look at who we spend the most time following, and if we look at where we go for answers or wisdom in life’s most difficult things, and if Jesus isn’t the first place we go, then the actual core belief is that we don’t think he’s the smartest person who ever lived.
That’s a tough one to wrestle through. Dallas Willard says it like this. Can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb or uninformed? Once you stop and think about it, how could he be what Christians take him to be in every other respect and not be the best informed, most intelligent person of all, the smartest person who ever lived, bringing us the best information on the most important subjects? But when you think about Jesus, do you think that? And do you believe it? If not, you’re going to struggle to follow him.
Another thing that might come up in our brains is, yeah, but everybody lived twenty-five hundred years ago. This is 2025. We’ve got big-time stuff now, crazy stuff these days. I don’t think Jesus would understand exactly what’s happening now. If you think that, what it reveals is your core belief that Jesus isn’t currently alive. Never thought about it that way, Daron. But if Jesus is as alive today as he’s ever been, in fact more alive, and he’s offering, come follow me and I will guide you in the most difficult things of life, not only will I guide you, I will send my actual living Holy Spirit into you to guide you, direct you, and empower you to do all the things you need to do to live life as it was meant to be lived. If we actually believe he’s alive and that he’s the smartest person who ever lived, it would be very easy to say, I must follow him. Fair?
I hope you wrestle with that this week. It’s a great thing to wrestle with. If you get to the place where you realize, Daron’s right, I don’t think Jesus is very smart, he just says riddles and parables and walks around and does stuff, how does that relate to me, then that’s great, because then you say, okay, this is where I really am, I need to grow here. And if you realize, I kind of always think of Jesus as ancient and not really alive, then that’s something God is trying to teach you.
One of the interesting things about Jesus is this. In ancient times when Jesus walked the earth, the Jewish educational system had about three levels. The first you got into at about five years old, and you’d begin to memorize the Torah and learn to read and write and your basic stuff. Then at about ten, you’d move up to what we’d understand as a kind of junior high or high school level. You’d memorize the rest of the Old Testament, learn about life and oral tradition and how to ask good questions. Then you’d go to the next level, which was less schooling and more a community of learning. And right in that period, the best of the best students would apply to be selected by a rabbi. Rabbi means teacher. If you were the best of the best, a rabbi would go through the application process and say, come follow me. And you would come and walk and follow this rabbi. The goal was to be with the rabbi, to be like the rabbi, and eventually to do what the rabbi did. In that time, a blessing they would give people was, may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi. Meaning, may you follow so closely behind him that the dust coming off his sandals would cover you.
Jesus shows up and completely flips the script on everyone. Where students had to apply and be selected, Jesus comes along and says, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, me, that whosoever believes can come and follow me. Jesus says, this is not about applying and getting selected. What I’m saying is that I am choosing everyone. Everyone is invited to come and follow me. That is really good news for people like you and me. We are all invited to follow.
Now the interesting thing, as we go deeper, is dealing with what we’re becoming and what we think that looks like. This is a challenge in the way our culture has treated this thing we call Christianity. Because Jesus’ idea was, come follow me and be with me. Meaning, spend a lot of time with me so you can become like me. What does that mean? It means my character will become your character. You will become like Jesus. You will become patient and kind and gentle. You’ll be full of faith and hope and love. You’ll heal people. You will do and be like Jesus, and then eventually you’ll do the things that Jesus did. That was the plan. They called that discipleship, or apprenticeship. Being with, becoming like, and then doing what they did.
The tough part in the culture we’ve grown up in is that we’ve had different expectations. And to be fair, people like me have made it difficult to understand, because we’ve taught it in a way that created the culture we now have. I don’t think it’s the culture Jesus intended. When Jesus is talking about this in Luke 6, he says, why do you keep calling me Lord, Lord, when you don’t do what I say? Because the intention was, be with me and then be like me, meaning I tell you to do things and you do them because you’re my disciple. He says, I’ll show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. It’s like a person building a house who digs deep and lays a foundation on solid rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against that house, it stands firm because it is well built. But anyone who hears and does not obey is like a person who builds a house right on the ground without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it collapses into a heap of ruins.
Something to ponder this week. When you look at our society, does it look like a house well built, or does it look like a heap of ruins? I’m going to go with, it leans toward a heap of ruins. What Jesus is saying is, here’s what you’re getting. You’re not following me, and you’re not actually trying to be like me, therefore you’re building your life on a foundation that will betray you and your family and your communities. But there is an amazing option, if you would actually want to follow me, to be with me, because I’m alive, and become like me, because I will send my Holy Spirit inside of you to give you the desire and the power to do so. And then if you would join me to start doing what I do.
We get confused on this. Here’s the thing. Jesus’ idea was an invitation that leads to imitation. An invitation into imitation that leads to transformation. What we’ve done in Western American Christianity is we’ve decided the invitation is into information. Who’s the most mature Christian you know? You’d say, the person who knows the most about the Bible. You have a lot of information, therefore you must be a good Christian. No, you’re just a person with a lot of information. I’ve grown up my whole life around people who know a lot about the Bible and don’t look anything like Jesus. How about you? So what happens in our culture is we say, here’s what I’m doing, I’m going to get information, and when I think the goal is the accumulation of more information, I become a student and a spectator. I’m here to learn information and basically be entertained. I’m a student and a consumer. That’s what we have in Western American Christianity.
That’s how most churches build big churches. You get someone like me, or Ken, or Corinne, or somebody who speaks and gives people information, and you put on a good show and entertain people. And then people come to sit, gain information, and be entertained. The majority of church growth in America is not people coming to faith and following Jesus, it’s people who get bored of the show they were at and the information they were getting, and they go to the church down the street that has better entertainment and gives the information in a more compelling way. Some of you are here because your last church got too boring. It’s just true. You didn’t come here because the Holy Spirit told you, go to Mercy Road Northeast. The information just got too boring at the other church, and we had a better show. That’s how we build churches in America. Get a good talker, put on a good show.
Then we look at the Western American church and people say, I don’t know that that looks like Jesus. You want to know why? Because we never told anybody this was about an invitation to imitation. We told people, come, raise your hand if you believe the right information, and you’re in. We have this idea, and unfortunately people like me have made you believe it, that what Jesus is actually looking for is for you to believe the right information so you can get admittance. Invitation to admittance, not invitation to imitation. What do I mean? I give you the information about Jesus, you say, I agree with that information, and Jesus hands you a golden ticket to heaven. So I’m trying to get into heaven. Do you believe this? I’ll count to three and snap, because that’s what guys like me do. You raise your hand at the end of the service because you believe the information I gave you, then we pray a prayer, you get a ticket to heaven, and then you leave. Yes? A lot of times, yes. And then church people like me feel really good because we had six people raise their hands.
The problem is, Jesus didn’t do that. If you look at Jesus, he didn’t walk up to people and say, hey, do you believe this information about me, raise your hand right now, okay, I’ve got to go, bye, I’m just here to give you golden tickets to heaven. Is that what he said?
I know this sermon’s uncomfortable. How many times do you think the word Christian is used in the New Testament? How many? Take a guess. No? Okay. Three. The word Christian is used three times in the New Testament. So Jesus was not coming to make Christians. The word disciple is used over two hundred times. So what we have to get our minds around is that if you’ve spent your life trying to be a good Christian, that’s not the goal. The goal is to spend your life becoming like Jesus. To be a follower, a disciple, an apprentice of Jesus, where the goal of my life is to be with Jesus so I become like Jesus and do what Jesus did. If you’re here this morning and you say, no one ever told me that, Daron, I am sorry. That’s why we’re doing this series.
Because if we don’t have the intention to actually go where Jesus wants us to go, we’re going to find ourselves somewhere else. And it’s probably going to be somewhere given to us by the conglomeration of who we follow. The things we read, the things we watch, the things we listen to, the five people we spend the most time with, our chosen political party, whatever it is, we start to look like them. Instead of looking like Jesus.
Here’s the tough part for those of us who maybe grew up around this and call ourselves Christians. When we get serious, or get closer to actually following him, usually the cost of following him gets too high. Jesus is talking to a guy in Matthew 19. He comes to Jesus and says, hey Jesus, what do I have to do to get eternal life? What’s he asking? How do I get a ticket? How do I get admitted? How do I get in? And Jesus says, follow the commandments. And he says, I’ve done those. Jesus lists off these commandments, a handful of the Ten Commandments. But he leaves off one of the horizontal, relational commandments, which is do not covet. Because Jesus knows this man has a lot of possessions, and even more than that, Jesus knows this man’s possessions have him. So Jesus says, okay, here’s the deal, take all you own, sell it, give the money to the poor, and you’ll have treasures in heaven, and then come and follow me. If you know the story, it says the man went away sad, because he had great wealth.
I can read this story and condemn this guy. Yeah, that’s how rich people are. But you know what I’m experiencing in my own life? The longer I follow Jesus, he keeps saying things like, hey Daron, if you’ve noticed the way you’re loving people, that’s not how I love people, so if you’re going to follow me, you need to change that. And that’s tough, because, I don’t know about you, but have you ever noticed how fun it is to hate your enemies? Yeah, I do, because we’re on Facebook together. It’s fun because I follow these people on Facebook, and somehow they became geopolitical experts on everything that ever happens in the world last week. And instead of posting cat videos, now they tell me who to hate. I love that, because it feels really good to hate other people. But I’m a Christian. And Jesus said we’ve got to love our enemies, we’ve got to bless those who curse us, and that’s hard.
So the question for all of us, and I’m not yelling at you, I’m not mad at anyone, this is what Jesus is doing in my life and I’m really passionate about it, because, guess how many of these lives we get? One.
And I actually believe that Jesus is alive.
[A short stretch of audio here is unintelligible, likely during a moment of music or prayer. The transcription returned garbled, non-English text that cannot be reliably recovered.]
And we will step across the line of eternity.
Some of you probably read the news this morning. Last night, an amazing, promising, phenomenal eighteen-year-old boy stepped into eternity. And I got the opportunity last night to gather with maybe a hundred students, to pray with them, to try to help them process. One of their friends is gone. And I found comfort in knowing that a lot of those kids follow Jesus. And right now they’re going to have the opportunity to do what Jesus would do with the people in their lives who are broken, who are hurting, who are grieving. But I also sat in that locker room last night and thought about every one of the kids who, when they look around their lives, see it in ruins. Because they spend their whole lives following other human beings, and they don’t know the invitation to follow Jesus.
If you’re here and you’re a follower of Jesus, that is our privilege, that is our commission, that is our calling. Dallas Willard says it like this. The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as Christians will become disciples, students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the kingdom of the heavens into every corner of human existence. It’s our opportunity. It’s our calling. And there’s no plan B. Jesus has given this to us as followers, to see his kingdom come and his will be done.
So as we close today, I thank you for your grace and your patience. But if you’re here this morning and you’ve spent most of your life and you say, Daron, I’m kind of struggling here, because I think I’ve spent most of my life trying to be a Christian, and no one ever let me know that the whole idea was that I need to follow Jesus, to be with him, to be like him, and to do what he would do, and I just want to say yes. Okay. We put a great resource together right in that back corner. If you say, you know what, trying to be a Christian, I want to become a disciple of Jesus, go over there at the end of the service and get one of those kits, and we’ll help you figure it out. And if you’re here this morning and you say, you know what, Daron, my life is in ruins, and I didn’t know there was a living God, I didn’t know his name is Jesus, and I didn’t know he wants to actually guide and direct me and help my life flourish with faith and hope and love, and I’d like to start following that God, then go back to that corner afterward and say, I said yes, I want to become a follower of Jesus.
Our prayer as a staff is that this next month transforms many of your lives, so that you will look back and say, those were the days I began to be with Jesus so I could become like Jesus, and now I’m actually doing the things that Jesus did.
Father, be with us. Give us the humility and the courage to say yes, to come and follow you. God, I pray your presence upon the brokenhearted, your comfort, your compassion. I pray for each one of us who walks with the brokenhearted, that we would show up and be with them the way that you are with us. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.