Following Jesus is both wonderful and hard. It’s hard because he leads us to confront aspects of ourselves that we don’t like and that we struggle to overcome. But it’s beautiful because he gives us the resources to overcome whatever’s holding us back.
One thing we learn from the biblical Story is God’s patience as he works with his covenant people. We sometimes tend to idolize Abraham for his faith, but we might forget that he was an incredibly flawed man, and he passed on his sinful nature to his kids and grandkids.
In the message tomorrow we’ll look at Abraham and his family, focusing on how certain sinful patterns kept showing up generation after generation (dishonesty, favoritism, misogyny, sexual sin, etc.). But we’ll try to go a little deeper by reflecting on how similar patterns affect us all. As someone said, “Jesus may be in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones.” In other words, many of the things that are holding us back are things that have been in our family for generations, and failing to recognize this causes us to keep perpetuating a cycle of sin.
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