Resurrection Sunday // 4.5.26 || Sermon by Cody & Tirsha Thornbury || Worship by Zoe, Jeff & Andi

Jacob wrestled with God and he walked away with a limp. And he's like, I feel like you've been in the season of wrestling with God and not in a, you know, me thinking I'm right in any way, but more in a, God, things have been so hard. It's been so painful. What what is the point of all of this and how do I how do I get beyond it? Because the truth is when we're focused on the past, we can't move forward into the future. And I really felt like the Lord was saying to me, it's time to let go. It's time to let go even just the hurt, it's time to move forward. It's time to move on. [00:59:41] (36 seconds)  #LetGoMoveForward

He sees Jesus. He's like, hey, I wanna follow you. Now any good leader knows that when somebody says, wanna follow you, you say, awesome. Let's go. But Jesus doesn't. He instead paints a picture for him of like, hey, have you really thought about what it is to follow me? Because I'm not living in the lap of luxury. I am not I'm not walking around with so, you know, all of this this comfort in my life. And he wants to really show this man, have you really thought about what it means to follow me? [00:53:09] (35 seconds)  #CountTheCost

So Jesus is not saying ignore your family. He's actually saying, if the most important thing that we can do in this life is care for those who are around us and love those who are around us, then following me is even more important than that. He he's literally setting up the most important thing we can do and say, and remember to follow me even above that. Does that make sense? He's putting our priorities in order. He's not saying that this taking care of your family is not important. [00:56:09] (30 seconds)  #PrioritizePurpose

And that just hit me. It just, struck me so much how intentional and focused Jesus is for our sake. And I I think the invitation to us today and the confrontation really is that when we see Christ revealed in our own lives, we are confronted with a decision. What are we gonna do about this? Because you really cannot have Christ revealed in your life without actually making a decision on what you're gonna do and how your life's gonna change. [00:47:05] (33 seconds)  #ChristCallsForDecision

And we can be driven by the emotion of, wow, this is awesome. We've seen it time and time again, people come in and they're like, this is so great. And they make a quick commitment but they haven't counted the cost. And so then when that feeling fades or the hard things come, it's easy to kind of go, oh, I didn't sign up for this. This is tough. And I believe that Jesus wants us to really count the cost and I believe that there are some of us who and like this person can be overly concerned with our present comfort. [00:54:09] (33 seconds)  #NoQuickFaith

And so I I wanna really be clear about this because if you misinterpret what Jesus is saying here, you can get a really really wrong view of how we're supposed to treat our family because the truth is throughout all of the old testament, there's so many scriptures about how we are supposed to take care of our families. We're supposed to set up an inheritance for our children. We're supposed to I mean, one of the 10 commandments is that we obey our mother and father. I mean, this is so important. Jesus is not saying ignore all of that. [00:55:21] (29 seconds)  #FaithAndFamily

And so Jesus is not saying, don't care. Jesus is saying, don't delay your obedience to me. Don't be so focused on your future and your future security that you miss out on what I have to give you right now. Give me your yes right now. Don't delay. And then the third one, I believe is a person who represents somebody with a divided heart. Again, Jesus is not saying be rude to your guests that came over for a party and now you're just gonna ignore them. He's not saying that. He's just saying, don't be so focused. You had people over That's you've already left, [00:58:09] (38 seconds)  #ChooseObedienceNow

He instead paints a picture for him of like, hey, have you really thought about what it is to follow me? Because I'm not living in the lap of luxury. I am not I'm not walking around with so, you know, all of this this comfort in my life. And he wants to really show this man, have you really thought about what it means to follow me? Have you counted the cost? Today, we're having baptisms and this is something that's been really impressed upon Cody and I and our leadership is that we really don't want people just to come in and be driven by emotion because the truth is you walk into a a service, you hear something about Jesus, you hear a worship song, and man, you can be so filled with peace and joy. Right? Because that's that's what you get when you're in God's presence. [00:53:19] (50 seconds)  #BeyondEmotionalDecisions