Deep Well Discipleship

This week all over the country High School students will take "the walk", they will take the step from students living at home to young men and women entering the world.  Some will head to college, others will start a career, and many will enter into the armed forces to serve.  The opportunities seem limitless when your 18 years old and the world is your oyster with endless possibilities.  Parents, like mother birds, watch their children leave the nest headed out into the unknown.  we celebrate their achievements and watch them at one of the first big mile markers of their lives.  My prayer as pastor is always that we have prepared them for this time.  That they are ready to face the world through the lens of scripture and that Christ will be their focus.  The desire from my standpoint is that we have taught them more then morals (do's and do nots), and shallow theology, but deep truths of scripture that lead and guide them out into the world. Ch...

Matthew 4:19 And he [Christ] said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." (ESV) I remember hearing this call in my life.  I was 9 and sitting in the front room of my parents home in Shelbina, MO.  The youth pastor, Denny Daum, sat in the mustard colored swivel rocker and I on the footstool.  I don't remember if it was spring or fall.  I can't recall if it was sunny or cloudy.  I can't remember if anyone else was present.  But I remember in the moment of that conversation when I heard the call, the voice that pierces to the very core of who we are, the deep awakening of the dead man (or boy at the time) to come to life.  In that moment of our conversation I realized I needed to repent and follow Christ Jesus.  That walk ever since has been one of intrigue, difficulty, indelible grace, joy, peace, sorrow, grief, trial, tribulation, miracles, hope, and more than I would have ever imagined in my finite mind. When Christ call...