Are We Admiring Jesus or Following Him?

There's a big difference between admiring Jesus and following Jesus, and that's what we're gonna, for today's sermon, that's what we're gonna dive into. This big question, are we admiring Jesus, or are we following our Lord and Savior? Because there's many people who admire His teachings.

Many appreciate the kindness in which He interacted with others. Many respect His influence on history, but Jesus never simply invited people to admire Him. He invited them to follow Him.

The best analogy I could come up with, because I've gone on some backpacking, hiking trips where you go off into the wilderness of the woods. I one time went backpacking in Wyoming with another large group of people. Imagine you're on a trail in the woods, and you're completely lost. You have no GPS, you forgot to bring a compass, things are not going well, the weather's changing, night's on its way, like you can start to see the sun going down, and you have no idea where you're at. You have no idea how to go forward. There's different paths that keep coming across, different forks in the trail, and you stand there staring at both routes saying, I'm not sure. You've tried some, it's not leading you out of the forest, and you're starting to get that uncomfortable, really uncomfortable feeling like you may be spending the night in the woods, lost here, unprepared, not ready for what's going on. And then out of the woods on another trail comes this person who's a guide. You could tell he's a guide because of how they're dressed. They got the good boots on that you're supposed to have out in the woods, the ones that you don't have. They're dressed for the weather. They look like they're comfortable. They had a backpack that you assume. It's a good size pack. It's not one of these little, like, fanny packs. It's a big size pack. You assume he's probably got some water in there, some food, maybe a first aid kit. You could see there's a rope hanging from his pack in case he needs it for something, or in case, because you could always use a rope for something. And again, you can tell, you're probably assuming he's got a poncho. He's got some other clothing in his back. If he has to switch out something, or if it starts to get cold, he can put a jacket on. He's prepared, and you can tell this because he's got a great looking pair of sunglasses on, too. I mean, the coolest, the guides that know what they're doing, they come prepared with the cool sunglasses. And so he comes across and says, are you okay? What would you say to this guide in this situation?

I'm fine. Don't worry about me. I'm just walking along my path here on my way out of these woods.

I would be insane, right? It would be insane not to offer, like, to let them know that you need some help and ask if he obviously knows what he's doing out here, if he could lead you out of these woods, right? Out of this place that you found yourself, out of being stuck. There's no question that you believe that this guide is real, right? He's not just an imagination in your mind. You can see that he looks well-equipped, like he knows what he's doing. He's been out in these woods a time or two.

But the truth is, you have an option to either follow after this guide out of these woods or to say no, that you're okay. I did that one time, not quite the same. I was mountain biking, going down a steep hill. It was okay. I was doing fine, but I hit gravel on a mountain bike at high speed. I don't know if I've ever told you guys this. I wiped out the hardest I've ever hurt myself that I can remember. One of those that you hurt so bad, you just hold your breath because hoping the pain will just go away, but then the pain keeps lasting for a while.

The silly part is, some guys saw me go down behind me. They stopped and were like, hey, are you okay? Guess what I told them? Oh, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm good. I could barely get the words out of my mouth. I was in so much pain, but yeah, I was stupid. That's what I told them. Yeah, I'm fine. And they're like, okay. And they went on riding by. I might have had it. I'm not joking. I may have had internal injuries. The bruise on my side is the largest I've ever seen a bruise be, and it didn't go away for months. So I think God, it was at the feast. I think God healed me, because he's like, I need you around for a bit. I did that. I told him, I'm okay.

Would you do this to this guide in the woods when you are completely lost, unprepared? It's starting to get dark, and you realize I have no idea what I'm doing out here, and I am ill-prepared.

This is the invitation that we've received from Christ. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus we repeatedly gave simple invitations to those he was talking to, and these are the five aspects that we're going to cover today, but also with the campers in much more detail. Jesus said, hear my voice. He said, come to me. He said, learn from me. He said, love me. And he said, you follow me. These are not just five separate invitations. These are five steps in one journey, one invitation, and this is the journey that we will explore with the campers this summer. So, the question again I'd like us to consider. Are we an admirer or a follower of Jesus?

This is one of the most important questions a believer will ever ask in his life. Am I truly following Jesus, or am I admiring him from a distance? In our world today, it's easy to associate being a Christian with attending church, being a good person, providing for your family, having well-behaved children, and checking off a few other spiritual boxes along our journey. But Jesus never called anyone to just be an admirer or a fan of him. He called us to be followers. And following isn't a spectator sport. It means there needs to be action, intentionality, purpose, direction. And as we looked at a few months back in November, as I was thinking through this message of doing some personal study, it means discipleship.

It means following exactly the path that he puts in front of us. So this is a fun theme to be able to share with the teens this summer. It's a fun theme to share with all of God's people, because it hits me right between the eyes. Like I said, going into these meetings, I was ready for like, oh, I don't know how this is going to go. What if we missed the mark? And I was shortsighted, because I was too worried about following me instead of trusting and following Christ. So this theme is powerful. This theme is exciting. And so let's look at these five aspects, just very briefly. We'll take about five minutes each to cover through these.

Are we admiring Jesus? Are we following Jesus? That first one, again, hear my voice.

Let's open our Bibles to John 10 and verse 23. Hear my voice. We find Jesus among his disciples and among others who were questioning him in an insincere way. John 10 verse 23 says, And Jesus walked in the temple into Solomon's porch, and the Jews surrounded him and said to him, How long do you keep us in doubt? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.

Jesus answered them and said, I told you in what you do not believe. So there's an aspect in following Christ that there has to be this belief. And the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep, as I said to you, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

So before anyone can follow after our Savior, one must first hear his voice. And at times, this is hard with all the distractions that we have around us constantly all day long. The list of distractions is long, and it's really noisy. The problem isn't that God's voice has disappeared. The challenge is that many other voices are louder. And this is not a challenge just unique to our time of life or our society today. When we think back to biblical stories that existed, noise and the challenge to hear God's voice was always a battle. I thought about King Saul. Remember, he was the appointed king. He's leading the nation of Israel. And then he gets instructions to go and to battle the Amalekites. And one of the things that he was to do as he's battling the different groups and nations around him, in one instance, he was told to wait until Samuel arrived to offer a sacrifice. But what happened? He didn't wait. Samuel was delayed, or it took after seven days, Scripture says, and this is in 1 Kings, I believe one of the early chapter, chapter 18, chapters 11 or 12, if you want to go back to it later. But, Sam, after seven days, Samuel still hadn't arrived. You know what happened to the armies and the people around them? They got nervous. They were hiding in caves. Do you think they were letting King Saul know that they were fearful? That they... what are we doing here? This doesn't make sense. There's a lot of noise.

So he took it upon himself to offer the sacrifice. And then who shows up right after he does it? Samuel, right? Good timing. This was a major no-no before God. It actually robbed King Saul of being able to remain king on a perpetual basis. There's noise coming from the people. He yielded to them. He listened to them. He didn't follow God. Later on, just a few chapters later, a similar then occurred. This time it was a little bit different. But again, there was a voice. There were people. There was concerns. God had instructed him to completely wipe out all the this nation, including the livestock. But then Samuel shows up and he hears the bleeding of animals. And they kept back the good. And Saul was like, well, the people did that. The people wanted to keep back the good. More noise. Harder to hear God's voice in that moment.

So we're not immune to the challenges of noise today. I thought about oh, I'm blanking now. Oh, Elijah, prophet Elijah.

He had done these, been praying to God. He'd seen these miracles. He had served God tremendously. But then there's an evil queen, Jezebel, who threatens his wife. And then what does he do?

He runs. For over 200 miles, he runs to get, he ran to get away from her.

Do you think there was a lot of noise in that? Being threatened with your life is noise. I'm not going to deny that. Anybody who's ever been threatened with a legitimate threat against their life, that is nothing to just be like, oh, no big deal. He had that. He ran. Well, in the beauty of this story, how did God talk with him on that mountain side when he finally stopped running?

In that quiet, still voice, God asked him, what are you doing? What are you doing out here?

What we are challenged with to hear Jesus's voice, to listen and to be able to hear that, is nothing unique to just our time and our life. But God has given us so much to be able to hear him in these moments of pausing, of prayer, of meditation, of seeking out, of being here together, of talking with one another. There's so many avenues, and it allows us to cut through the noise and to hear his voice. So this is one of those aspects we're going to dive into in much more detail. We have to hear his voice. The second aspect is to come to me. Come to me. This is in Matthew 11 verse 28 that we'll use as our core scripture.

Matthew 11 verse 28. One of the neat aspects with this theme this year is that all of these are direct quotes from our Lord and Savior. So this is not just ideas that we came up with, or a catchy theme, or a great way to kind of segue from one to the next. These are his exact words to you and to me and to all. Matthew 11 verse 28. Jesus says, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden.

Heavy burdened. You're carrying this weight. And he says, I'll make it lighter. I'll give you rest. He says, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. He goes, For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. This invitation reveals the heart of our Savior. He wants us to come to Him, not because He's like, Okay, here's the list of requirements. Here's everything you got to do. Just follow after me. He says, I want to show you a better way to go. Because you've got burdens. You've got heavy things in your heart. You've got brokenness. And I want to take that from you. I want to show you a different way to go. So come to me. He doesn't say, Clean yourself up first. Get yourself ready. He doesn't say, Fix all your problems, and then come to me. He doesn't say, You've got to become worthy, and then come to me. He just says, Simply come. Many people spend their lives carrying burdens they were never meant to carry. Thus, they never fully come and follow after Christ.

We all carry at times guilt. We carry shame, fear, regret, anxiety, brokenness.

But the only way that we can release these burdens is if we bring them to Christ and seek after Him.

Because when we come to Him, He wants to show us a better way to go. He wants us to show how to handle these challenges as they come up. He wants us to show us the hope and the plan that He has and the Father has for us. He wants to take our brokenness and then say, This is a better way to go.

And He will help fix us from the inside out. So there really, again, is only one option.

And that is to come to Him. The third aspect is to learn from Me.

Again, from Matthew 11, verse 29, that we just read, Take my yoke upon you and what? Not just carry it, not just bear it, but then learn from Me. Understand what it's like. Learn what it is to think like Christ thinks. To behave, to have love, to have empathy like Christ does, to have compassion like Christ has. Jesus doesn't just call us to Him and then leave us struggling to figure out life on its own because you and I would be like, Now what? We're here. And He goes, Well, that's great. You're here.

And we'd say, So now what? He says, Learn from Me. Learn from Me.

God provides instructions and leads to transformation one step at a time.

And inherently, I believe most people, we want to learn. We are, I think, by nature, students. We like to grow in knowledge. We like to learn new hobbies. We like to, most people like schooling if they have a good teacher and the materials presented in a way that they can understand. Right? Now, not every subject is our favorite, right? And some are really hard.

But one of the things I did enjoy school, and I still, I enjoyed college and I enjoy learning still. And one of the things is when you get that syllabus, or you realize, Hey, I'm going to sign up for chemistry this year. See, that sounded fun to me because, Hey, I want to learn. And you mix some chemicals together, you get some fun colors, maybe an explosion. Our class, they had a hood, one of those things that you could would suck all the bad stuff out of the room. So when you mix chemicals, or many explosion happens or anything, I'm thinking, this sounds like fun. I'm going to enjoy chemistry. And then I got into the class, and it was a lot of math. All right. And all of a sudden, it wasn't so much fun, and actually became really hard. That learning became difficult.

At times wondering, am I going to pass this class? I thought the same thing about physics. Hell, yeah, pooies, weights, shooting rockets up into the air. That sounds like fun. We're going to have a good time with this. More math. More work, more challenges, sometimes more bad grades. You guys can always probably think of certain classes that you really looked forward to, but then when you got into it, and it became hard, that learning wasn't as much fun. There wasn't as much hope.

Like, yay! This is, we like to learn. We want to grow, but what do we do when it gets hard? We've looked at John chapter 6 many times about how Jesus's disciples, he had many more than 12, were following after him, and then he starts with some what they referred to as hard sayings, right?

And when they couldn't process these hard sayings in a way that made sense in their mind, they walked away from the best place they could have been. They walked away from Jesus. And this moment and said, we're going to go back to our work. We're going to go back to our hometowns. We're going to go back to our families. This we're done. But I love what Peter says in this passage because Jesus asks Peter a question in John 6 and verse 68. He says, do you also want to go away? He's asking it to the 12 disciples that would remain with him to the end. Do you also want to go away? But I love Peter's reply because it speaks to, I think, all of our hearts.

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Did Peter just wake up one day and be like, hey, I've got this amazing revelation. I've got the understanding of the keys to eternal life. He didn't. He learned it by coming to Christ and then doing what? Learning from Him.

To learn who is my master, who's my rabbi, who's my Lord and Savior. What does He teach? What's important to me? What should I, what should my focus be? And in this time of spending with Jesus, Peter had learned the words of eternal life and getting that knowledge and allowing it to sit on his heart and through God working, right? Can't minimize that. Peter now knew, there's no place else for me to go. This is the only place for me to be. When everybody else is going different directions and leaving and saying, I don't know if I can stay here anymore, Peter says, where else am I going to go? This is it. I have learned from you that you have the words of eternal life, Peter is saying, in a nutshell. So Jesus says to all of us, learn from me.

The fourth aspect, He says, love me. Turn to John 14 in verse 23.

John 14 in verse 23.

Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

I can't help but think about that original question that I asked at the beginning. Are we admiring or are we following Jesus? Because this concept of loving Him ties right back into that.

We often admire people and appreciate people who show love and kindness to others, especially when they show it to us. Because we all want to be loved.

We all enjoy that feeling. We all need love.

And so when we see someone else who is showing love and compassion and empathy and kindness to another person, or is that just who they are? Those people are enjoyable to be around.

But love is much more than just an emotion.

There were a lot of people who enjoyed being around Christ because they saw the loving way in which He cared for others and He treated others. They admired it. They said, that's a wonderful trait. Probably a lot of the multitude continued to follow Him because they saw the way that He would lovingly even touch a leper, which was the biggest no-no pretty much in the land. This guy is different. This guy is special.

But did they love Him truly with all of their body, mind, spirit, heart? Because love is much more than an emotion or just something that you admire or appreciate. Because anyone can sing about love. How many songs are out there written about love? Anyone can write about love, poetry, stories, books.

Anyone can talk about love, counselors, teachers.

But Jesus asks us to live love.

And that's a big difference because there's a lot of people who talk and sing and write about love. But living love goes so much further than that.

The world says, follow your heart. Jesus says, follow me.

The world says, put yourself first. Jesus says, deny yourself.

The world says, get even.

Jesus says, forgive.

The world says, take. The world says, take. And Jesus says, give.

True love is revealed when obedience becomes costly. I like that phrase. It's not mine. I came across it in preparation of this subject and other the studies I've been doing for camp. True love is revealed when obedience becomes costly. When loving someone else endures a cost from you that you're willing to pay, then that's real love.

We're in John. I wasn't sure if we turned here, but let's go ahead. Since we're in John, John 3, 16 and 17.

Just saying John 3, 16 probably brings the scripture to mind. And the cost that was paid, the priceless cost that was paid out of love. John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but what out of his love that the world through him might be saved.

This is the cost of love and the price.

And God himself has not held back spending the greatest cost that the world could ever could never afford.

But yet he gave his own son and Christ submitted and fulfilled his role to become our savior. So if we want to learn something from somebody who knows the thing about love, then our savior is the one we have to emulate and follow after.

And so in his own example, he says, love me.

Love me.

And then we get to the last aspect that we're going to dive into. But one I think is maybe the most powerful all week. I hate to say that because how do you minimize loving Christ? How do you minimize coming to him or following him? Or following him? But there's a unique aspect, a unique story that sometimes we can gloss over, where he told one of his disciples, you follow me.

And this is the last aspect that we're going to focus in on.

In the story of the disciples' relationship with Jesus, we come across an entering account where Peter falls into a trap that we can also fall into, of comparing our journeys of life with other believers' journeys.

And playing maybe, well, is this fair? Asking that question. Or is this too much? Or why don't they have the same trial or the same difficulty that I'm going to have? Peter falls into this trap and it gets messy.

Let's look to John 21 and verse 1.

Because there's no surprise that we have been called each on our own journey and our own path with God.

There's no question that we're all unique, our journeys are not identical. But at times, we can get frustrated, we can get burdened, we can feel like I've got this too much, or even I've been in the church all these years and then someone new comes in.

What about all the time that I've put in? What about all the sacrifices I've made? What about all the trials or the job losses or the difficulties? Peter falls into a trap that is one that we need to consider for ourselves today.

John 21 and verse 1. It says, After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. So he has died, been resurrected, and sent it to the Father. And then he's back with the disciples again, this third time showing himself. And in this way, he showed himself again. It says in verse 2, Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin, Nathaniel of Cana of Galilee, and the son of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. And then Simon Peter said to them, Well, fellas, I'm going fishing.

Because there's questions. Was they unsure of their path forward?

Were they discouraged by what had happened? Were they unsure of now our saviors? Obviously, resurrected. He's not going to walk with us. He told us he's not going to be with us much longer.

So what's our job now? Where do we go? Peter says, I'm going fishing.

And then they said to him, We are going with you also. And they went out and immediately got into the boat. And that night they caught nothing.

But when the morning had now come, Jesus stood on the shore. Yet the disciples did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, Children, have you any food? And they answered him, No.

And he said to them, Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you'll find some.

And I can only imagine. So they've been at this all night, right?

They know they're fishermen by trades before following after Christ. They know how a net works. They know how to catch some fish.

They've been throwing the net, I'm sure, both sides, front, back, any option.

And he says, Oh, yeah, just throw it over to the side.

Crazy man on the shore.

So they cast. And what happens? And now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish.

Therefore, that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, It is the Lord. Because he couldn't... When you see the fingerprints of God, when you know what... When he's working in your life, you can't deny when something happens suddenly. And you're like, Oh, boy, this is the God moment. John saw that. He says, It's the Lord.

And now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment for he had removed it. And he plunged into the sea. He's like, I'm not even waiting to paddle the boat back. We're not even waiting that if it takes 30 minutes or 15 minutes to get back, I'm swimming back. He dives in.

But the other disciples came in the little boat, verse 8 says, for they were not far from land, about 200 cubics, about 100 yards, about the length of a football field, dragging their net with the fish. And as soon as they had come to land, they said they saw a fire of coals there and fish laid on it and bred. And Jesus said to them, Bring some of the fish which you have just caught. And Simon Peter went up and dragged the net to land full of large fish, 153. And although they were so many, the net was not broken.

And Jesus said to them, Come and eat breakfast, yet none of the disciples dared to ask him, Who are you, knowing that it was the Lord? Then Jesus came and took bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish. And it says, Now, this is the third time Jesus showed himself to his disciples after he was raised from the dead. But Jesus doesn't just stop there with the feeding, right? Come to me, learn from me. There's a calling and a heartfelt question that Jesus is going to ask Peter because Peter's track record with his Savior is not unspotted.

And Jesus needs him to recognize and reconcile a couple things. In verse 15, it said, So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, Son of Jonah, Do you love me more than these? And he said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

And Jesus said to him, Feed my lambs. Then he said to him again a second time, Simon, son of Jonah, Do you love me? Then he said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Tend my sheep. So he's given him responsibilities. He's saying there's a job that you have in front of you.

And he said to him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, Do you love me? Peter was griefed because he said to him the third time, Do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you. And Jesus said to him, Feed my sheep. And Christ goes on with the teaching saying, Most assuredly I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and you walked where you wish you got up when you wanted to, you had the employment, you went to work when you wanted to, you ate with your friends, you cooked the food that you wanted to, like he's saying, you lived your life the way that you wanted to live your life, and you were in charge of your life, and you could pretty much do whatever you wanted, because you were your own person.

But then he says, But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish. And so Christ is painting these aspects of life and decisions, and then God leading and moving us to another location and being the one who leads our lives. And it says to give some insight, Thus he spoke signifying by what death he would glorify God.

And when he had spoken this, he said to Peter, Follow me. And this is where it gets messy. And this is where it can get messy for you and me too. Because Christ says, Follow me, and where I want to, he says, Come after me, learn from me, love me. And it can get messy, because he also wants us to sometimes do the hard things. I can't imagine. I mean, I think we've all imagined giving our life for this message and for this calling.

But to come face to face or to be told, yes, it's not going to be pretty at the end. It's got to be a hard place to be. And Peter seen, verse 20, then Peter turned around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved. That's John, the author of this passage. John's letting it be known that he was the one that Peter looked at and says, who also leaned on his breast at the supper and said, Lord, who is the one who betrays you? And then he's referring, I'm sorry, he's referring in verse 20. He's pointing to John. John's making it known that it was him who he spoke to.

Verse 21, it says, Peter seen him, said to Jesus, but Lord, what about this guy? What about the one that you loved? What about the one who leaned against you? What about the one sitting here that just heard everything that you just expounded on and said, what about, is he going to get it too? And Jesus said to him, if I will that he remains till I come, what is that to you? You follow me. It's hard for me to not get emotional and excited at this part.

I'm conflicted. I feel the way that God has inspired this aspect to come together at the end of camp is amazing. It's going to present an opportunity for us to be able to turn this on through the teens and to say this is that individual calling and story that God wants to have with you. And it's the same one that he wants to have with all of us.

You follow me. Don't worry about what everybody else is doing. Don't worry about what they're not doing in their life that they should be doing. Don't worry about if their path is going to be easier than yours. Don't worry about if you're going to run into some really hard trials.

You follow me. This is life-changing, right? But this is taking it away that we're a church or we're a family or we're a group and saying one-on-one again, as God always does, this is about you and me and about where we're going together. These words are as relevant today as they were when Christ said them to Peter. Because the challenge is, just like it was for Peter, we live in an age of comparisons.

Man has always compared themselves. You go back all the way to Cain and Abel, right?

Cain was comparing his offering and he was jealous and he was upset. So what did he do? He killed his brother. Comparisons go all the way back to the earliest time of man. We compare success. We compare popularity. We compare talents, opportunities. We compare our appearances. We even at times compare our callings and our paths and our journeys in life to what God has tasked us to do. But discipleship? That's personal. Jesus doesn't ask you to follow someone else's path, and I'm so thankful for that, right? He asks all of us to follow him on our own unique path. Going back to our opening illustrations when we were lost in the woods, imagine this guide shows up. We agree to follow after him because we haven't lost our mind. And we're following him out of the woods. We can see the sun's even further down, and all of a sudden a fork in this path comes up and the guide starts to go down a narrow, winding, pretty steep path that is kind of on the dark side of the mountain. And it's not making a lot of sense because the other branch is wider, looks nicer, looks like there's more daylight. It doesn't look like the woods are as thick. I'm thinking we're going the wrong way here. And so I stop. We stop at the fork trying to, like, are we going to follow this guide? And he senses that we stop, and he looks back and says, is something wrong? And this guide who shows up to save us from our misery and our mess, what do we do?

We question. Are you sure that this is the better way to go? I mean, yeah, you got the cool sunglasses, you got the good hat, you got the right clothing, you got the backpack with food. You're the one who knows what you're doing out here. But are you sure? Because this path, I think, is the better one. This is where faith and trust intersects with our physical journeys of life, right?

Because Peter could have told Jesus in this moment when he says, this is how your journey finishes. It's not going to be pretty. And Peter could have said, you know what? This isn't for me. This is more than I can handle.

In fact, he kind of already had a track record of doing that at different times, denying his Savior, going back to fishing. He had an opportunity to say, this is where my journey ends. I can't do this. This is too much.

But we know he didn't do that. God has continued to call us to go forward. The future that God has for us can't be reached by living in yesterday's identity of who we were. It can't be achieved by living in yesterday's decisions. It can't be found by going back to what we were comfortable with at one point in our life. Peter knew this. And so what did he do? He went forward, and he finished his race. And it wasn't pretty. But he did it, not because of his strength or his power, but because God led him to the end. God is calling all of us forward to his kingdom. He's preparing servants, leaders, teachers, and members of his family. That's why what we do today matters so much. It's also why we can't quit. We have each received an invitation where God says, you follow me. I asked a question at the beginning of the message, are we an admirer or a follower of Jesus? In God's mercy and his grace and his love, he has called us from our path to go in a new direction with him. It's like that example of being lost in the woods, right? We were stuck. The problems were piling up all around us. We had that aching feeling in our stomach. We didn't know how this is going to end. We know people have died in the woods.

And we're not ready. We're not prepared. And the situation is becoming worse than a minute. But God. Turn with me to Ephesians 2 and verse 4 as we close.

Ephesians 2 and verse 4. These are, I've shared with you many times before, some of my favorite words, the two of my favorite words in all of Scripture. Because these words summarize everything that God is doing in man's wives. Ephesians 2 and verse 4.

Everything was wrong. Everything is a mess. Everything is going wrong. We can't escape our brokenness. Ephesians 2 and verse 4. But God, who is rich in mercy because of His great love, which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, did what? He made us alive together with Christ by grace who have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceedingly riches of His grace and His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Verse 10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So our journey continues, which involves following Jesus as He says, Hear my voice. Come to me. Learn from me. Love me. And you follow me.

The Christian life is not ultimately about rules. It's not ultimately about religion.

It's about a relationship. That's truly what it comes down to. It's about a relationship, a relationship with the living Son of God. And today He is still extending that same invitation He gave to fishermen, to tax collectors, to doubters, and to ordinary people. He's saying, I know you. I love you. I died for you. I have a purpose for you. Which brings us back to our original question one last time. Are we an admirer or follower of Jesus? Because our Lord and Savior is saying, follow me.