Sermon Transcript
Our Scripture reading for this morning comes from the book of Proverbs chapter 3. My son, do not forsake my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops.
Then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine. My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father he delights in. Well, this summer, as you likely already know, we are in our teaching portion of our service services, we’re doing something a little different. Normally, we would teach through maybe a book of the Bible or certain sections of books of the Bible, but this summer we’re hearing from each one of our elders and some of our church staff how God has worked in their lives. And we want to show, and we have shown, that God works in very similar ways today in our lives as He has always worked throughout history, and particularly in the lives of the people that we find.
In Scripture. And so, this morning we are going to hear from one of our elders, Austin, who you will learn him and I have a long history together. And Austin is going to tie his story to this passage of Scripture to say how these truths have been reflected in his lived experience and God is still in the business of what He was doing in Proverbs. I will give you 2 disclaimers about the book of Proverbs before we really get started this morning. One is Proverbs gives us wisdom that is generally true on earth and ultimately true in heaven, generally true on earth, ultimately true new heavens and new earth when God redeems everything.
It is a book of wisdom for how to live a beneficial and constructive life. It is not— you can’t take some of the things that are in this passage, for instance, as some kind of quid pro quo binding agreement and demand that God produce because you followed your end of the deal, right? Like here where it says, um, honor the Lord with your wealth and, you know, your barns will be overflowing. And you’re like, I did honor you with my wealth, where’s my barn? Okay, it’s generally true on earth.
It’s ultimately true in heaven that anything we do for the Lord is absolutely secure in new heavens and new earth, but it’s generally true here. Too. Austin isn’t going to touch on that specific verse, so I will. It’s generally true here that you’ll have more financial peace and freedom if you honor a portion of your income to the Lord. They’ve actually found this out in some recovery programs helping people get off the street and transitioning into permanent housing.
One of the things that they have discovered is if we give them a very small amount of money as part of the recovery program and teach them generosity that they will, uh, they have more success in finding, uh, you know, a permanent stable life, you know, getting pointed in a constructive direction. It’s because there’s something that happens in our minds when we start focusing on others. We let go of our— we let go of the kind of tyranny of selfishness that hangs over us. Um, and so we’re not always thinking about how do I get a little more, how do I get a little more, how do I get a little more. If we focused on someone else, it kind of breaks that.
And if you are someone who is in a recovery program, it really helps to get you back on track. Okay, so generally true on earth, you won’t literally get a barn, probably. Ultimately true in heaven, I do believe there are literal barns there, right? He goes to prepare a place for us. Second disclaimer on the book of Proverbs is there is only one person who has trusted in the Lord with all his heart and submitted to the Lord in all his ways.
There is only one son who from verse 1 kept the commands in his heart, right? And that is, of course, Jesus. We all in some way or another fail the wisdom of Proverbs, but one of the counterintuitive aspects of the Christian life is the main way that we will align ourselves with the wisdom in Proverbs is not so much by just white-knuckling it, trying harder to do the wisdom that’s in the book, although effort is certainly part of it. The main way that we align ourselves with the wisdom of Proverbs is to worship the One who fulfilled the book perfectly, is to trust in the One who earned everything that’s in the book of Proverbs and gives us the credit for what he earned. He fulfilled all the wisdom of the book of Proverbs in our place.
And actually, by trusting that that has already been fulfilled and that he accomplished all of this for us, by trusting in that, worshiping the one who did it, we actually begin to align more to the book of Proverbs ourselves. Okay, so those are the 2 disclaimers on book of Proverbs. Generally true on earth, ultimately true in heaven, and there’s only one perfect Son who fulfilled it, the book of Proverbs, but He did it in our place, and we receive the credit for all of His effort by trusting in Him. With those disclaimers out of the way, let’s welcome up Austin, and I’ll pray for you before you get started. Father, thanks so much for Austin and bringing him to our elder team.
His life experiences which tie very closely to this passage, Lord. We pray that what he shares will be a blessing to many and will help conform us to your image. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you, Dan.
Well, I’d like to start by being honest and saying that when I was asked to do this, my first thought was no, and my second thought was no. And my third thought was also no.
However, while I was preparing for this message, thinking about why I wanted to say no, I realized it’s because I don’t think I have a remarkable story. I’m definitely still on my faith walk. I’m still learning. I’m one of the younger people up here doing this, sharing, and I do honestly feel like I could learn way more from y’all than you could learn from me. However, after hearing other stories and being encouraged, I realized that maybe learning is not the goal here, and maybe it is encouragement.
Or maybe there’s just something about each other’s stories that God uses to help us relate to each other and to him. So I’m going to share some stories that are important to my faith walk with the hope that you are encouraged. And so let’s dive in first by introducing myself. As you probably already know, Dan, I’m on the I’m on the slide here. My name is Austin, and I’m an elder here at the church.
I’ve been an elder for just under 2 years, and I live here in California, and my family lives down in Campbell. I should have a picture of my family. Yeah, there it is. You can see my youngest there is Jack, and then my oldest— Jack is almost 1 year old. My oldest is Dean.
He’ll be about 3 years old in about 2 months. And then there’s also my beautiful wife, Ellen, whom we’ve been married for about 7 years. So my wife Ellen actually grew up really close by but didn’t attend this church until a few years after college. To give you an idea of her proximity, I looked it up. She grew up 0.7 miles from here on Apple Maps or 0.6 miles on Google Maps.
So I’ll let you debate amongst yourself which one is correct. Uh, I grew up a lot farther away in Atlanta, Georgia, in North Atlanta, actually in a town called Alpharetta. Uh, I have a degree in computer engineering from Georgia Tech, and I moved here in 2014 after graduating with said degree. And I’m in a very run-of-the-mill common Silicon Valley occupation of software engineer. Uh, I’ve been coming to Bridges the whole time I’ve been in California.
Uh, I was a member of our YOPros life group, and later I’m now in the life group, The Gathering. I’ve also served in youth ministry for 8 years. I’ve since taken a break in my service in youth ministry in 2023 when my youngest Jack was born. But I don’t think I’m done serving youth. But right now God has me focused on my family and elder obligations.
And that’s my high-level story. But let’s talk about my faith story. I grew up in a family that always went to church. I don’t remember not going to church. I got baptized when I was between the 2nd and 3rd grade.
And at that time, I did believe and profess Jesus as my Savior, but I was very young, and I’ll say now that my faith was not my own. There were, however, a few formative experiences in my elementary years that I still remember. I was part of a program that encouraged scripture memorization. One of the first scriptures I memorized has become a foundation of my faith, and that verse is Proverbs 3:5-6, which I still have memorized as, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Trust in the Lord, and he will make your paths straight. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, he will make your paths straight. That is a core part of my faith story, which I picked up in elementary school. But if we fast forward a little bit, in middle school and high school, I was a common person to see at any church event. I went to all the camps, had all the camp highs.
I even participated in my church worship ministry. Playing saxophone in a traditional worship orchestra. I don’t know where they are, but sorry, Nate and Laura, I’m not playing much anymore, but maybe one day.
Oh, there he is. Now, one other interesting fact, and I’ll dig into this a little bit later, but while I was in high school, I participated in a small group run by a seminary student doing an internship at the church. His name was Dan Stockum. So yes, that’s right, Pastor Dan and I have known each other for a very long time, much longer than I’ve been in California. But more on that story a little bit later.
Also in high school, one practical aspect of my life that I thought was a blessing, but now realize was setting the stage for a struggle, was that my grades came easy. I wasn’t valedictorian or anything, but I got good grades and didn’t have to work very hard for it. And from a young age, Georgia Tech was always my dream school. I knew I wanted to be an engineer, and being in-state in Georgia meant that I could qualify for a scholarship that would pay all tuition. It’s a pretty good deal.
All Georgia in-state students have access to this scholarship, and therefore, the marginal benefit of going to a better school out of state would come at a very high cost. So I only applied to one school, Georgia Tech, and I got in early admission. So I get to Georgia Tech, and it’s funny because right about the time I started going to Georgia Tech, Pastor Dan was starting a campus ministry.
Also at Georgia Tech.
One of the youth leaders at my church who also knew Dan told me, hey, Dan is starting this thing and you’re going. It was not a, you should go. I distinctly remember it was a, you’re going. And I really think the Lord was guiding me there. I’m not sure I was at the trust in the Lord stage yet in my life, but he definitely was guiding my path.
And so while most people that I hung out with saw me as a member of the marching band, or a member of the outdoor recreation program doing lots of whitewater kayaking or running said outdoor recreation program. Another key part of my time in college was being part of Dan’s ministry and his Bible study for all 5 years I was at Georgia Tech. I think if you found me in my first year and asked if I knew how to work hard and apply myself, I would say yes, but I definitely was not working efficiently. I kept doing what I did in high school, which is what I would say is folly and foolishness, to quote part of the scripture. Today.
I would say I was studying, but that usually just meant sitting by with a textbook open for a few hours but doing other things. Uh, needless to say, my first semester was pretty bad grade-wise, uh, and this scholarship that I told you about earlier actually had a minimum GPA requirement after the first year. I think you know where this is going, but so pretty quickly I realized I’m going to lose this scholarship if I don’t wise up. This was quite a surprise to me. Proverbs 3:7 says, do not be wise in your own eyes.
And I definitely thought I was being wise by working harder, but this wisdom was through my own eyes. It was not from God. I walked into college thinking it would be easy because school had always been easy. So I just worked even harder, but I didn’t know how to work. So I just put more hours of, you know, more or less sitting next to an open book, but not doing anything about that open book.
And so quickly you can say bye-bye scholarship. I lost the scholarship and it was really disorienting for me because suddenly something that had come easy to me, grades, was proving to be difficult. And I honestly thought I was working hard, but losing the scholarship helped me realize that I wasn’t. I was very disorienting. I was very disoriented.
And Proverbs 3:1 says, do not forget my teaching. And I had not. Proverbs 3:5-6 was still rattling around in my head. The Lord had laid this foundation in elementary school and seemed to now be asking me, Are you going to trust me? Are you going to acknowledge me?
Or are you going to continue doing things your way? And at that point, I dug in and I started learning what it actually meant to work hard and how to get myself to work hard effectively. But most importantly, thanks to Pastor Dan and his ministry efforts, I started to learn how to trust God. One of my favorite mottos, and I have no idea who to attribute this to, but it’s definitely not mine, is do your best and leave God to the rest. And that has become my life motto for a lot of things.
In this season of life, I had no idea where I was going to end up, but I was going to do my best and see where God took me. I started learning to trust God, and I’ll say it was not a 180-degree turn or a light switch moment. It was a time of hardship. I dropped multiple classes. I had to take multiple classes multiple times.
Uh, my grades were a slow improvement over the next few years, but I still graduated with Not a great GPA, but I did know how to work hard and how to trust God. But while I was struggling through, I was getting fed spiritually. Dan, as part of his ministry, would do a lot of his work through one-on-one lunches. And so we talked a lot about those struggles. He also had us reading books, and this opened my eyes to Christian literature, things like Mere Christianity by C.S.
Lewis or Crazy Love by Francis Chan, that kind of stuff. There are many more. Those are just examples. And it was like describing what I had been hearing all the time, but in modern, very relatable English. And these books were really, really impactful to me.
Between those books, the Bible obviously, and lunches with Dan, it helped me understand that there were no questions too hard for our God. I realized that doubts and questions are part of life, part of our spiritual journey. God will show up if we actually seek him through those doubts. And through those questions and through those valleys. And no matter the question, his word can defend itself.
My hope is that we can all be willing to ask away at the questions we have about our faith. If we’re asking questions in good faith, God will show up and he can stand on his own. There’s no question too hard for God. So that concludes my story up to college and my faith becoming my own. I have 4 more stories to tell you, but don’t worry, they’re quicker.
Most of these are stories of God’s faithfulness in various seasons. Now, I will say that some of these are examples of prayers that others, maybe you, have prayed as well and didn’t get answered in the same way. If some of these stories are difficult to hear because they are unanswered prayers for you, I’d urge you to remember that God is good and he is in control. And I’d also love to hear how I can join in some of these prayers. So let’s dive in.
Story 1. This is the story of finding a job. So at the tail end of college, I had this fear that I was going to walk across stage, get this diploma that I had worked so hard for, but not have a job lined up. After all, my GPA was not great, and what was the point of college if I couldn’t get a job? It felt like as soon as people left college, it became harder and harder and harder for them to get connected to open jobs.
Now, this isn’t completely true, of course. But it is how I felt in the moment. And so I prayed about it. God, help me find a job. And I would go out to job fairs and I would get rejected and I would get interviews and I would not get calls back.
I know a lot of y’all have all been through that, but I just found myself staring at closed door after closed door. But I kept interviewing. I feel like it was at least a few dozen companies and almost all of them were in Atlanta. So I just assumed I was going to be in Atlanta after school. And I was looking forward to that, but the doors kept closing, kept closing, and kept closing.
Then God kept one door open. A company in Cupertino, California kept calling me back and then ended up sending me an offer. I thought that I was going to be in Atlanta, but suddenly I was in Cupertino. It was Cupertino. There was only one door open and no other leads.
Now I’m a Georgia boy. I didn’t even know how to pronounce Cupertino. If you had asked me back in the day, I would have said, I’m moving to Cupertino, because I had never heard it spoken, but now I know. So yeah, pack your bags, Austin, you’re heading to California. So that was about finding a job, and this was actually something that was hugely impactful for me with trusting God.
My prayer was always, Lord, you saw me through college, help me find a job, and he delivered. So the second story, I took a summer off, And then I moved to California in August of 2014, almost 10 years ago. I was trusting God that this was going to work, but I was definitely worried. I drove from Atlanta to California over 5 days, and when I arrived on Friday, I stayed at the Cupertino Inn right off of 280 that night. The next day, I looked for an apartment, and then on Sunday, one of our church attenders, Laura Baum, invited me to come to Bridges.
I knew I needed to find a church. My plan was this. I knew 3 people in the Bay Area who were Christians. My plan was to call each of them up and try out their church and see where I fit in and go from there. Laura was one of those 3, so I figured, hey, this is easy, I’ll start with Bridges.
And when I showed up to Bridges, we were in the gym. If you remember, it was after the great flood. It was only like a few weeks after the great flood where it— if you don’t remember, not the Noah flood, but the one that flooded this room.
If you don’t remember, this room flooded and it was quite catastrophic and we had to meet in the gym for a long time. And I’m sure some of you still have sore backs from moving the chairs. But when I arrived, I met Laura who had invited me. And as I walked in, I saw one of my other friends at the welcome table. And then I went to take a seat and I saw my third friend playing the drums on stage.
So suddenly what I thought was going to be 3 church visits ended up being 1. It’s the same church. So I guess I at least need to try this place out. God was working on my paths. So I joined the YOPROs life group, which is now called Thrive, and it was a really great time meeting a lot of people that loved the Lord at this stage of my life.
A year or 2 later, the pastor running that ministry departed and we had a vacancy on staff for a young adults pastor. God was in that as well, because at that same time, I went to a wedding that Dan officiated. We connected at the reception, and I mentioned to him that a pastor had just left, and he asked, well, are you hiring a new one? It’s a long story short, but God willed to bring him onto staff, and now he’s our senior pastor. So God has done a lot of great things here at Bridges, at least in my life, and I know he’ll do more.
I trust that he’ll do more. That was story 2. Story 3. About 1 year after being in California, I found myself trying to figure out life. Things weren’t as great as I had hoped, and my heart was still in Atlanta with my friends back there.
I had only put down shallow roots here, and I wasn’t sure how long I would stay in California if things continued this way. I felt and was praying at the time, God, what’s going on here? Why did you send me out here? I knew God brought me to California and that I needed to trust, but my trust was running out. So through that prayer and with the encouragement of the ministries of this church, I started really earnestly digging into the word and listening to other pastors teaching through podcasts, other pastors at other churches through podcasts.
And I was really trying to know God’s heart here, reading and listening, surrounding myself with teachings. This really helped me trust. In college, I made my faith my own. But this moment is when it was decided, alright, this is it, this is me, this is what I’m doing, trusting God. So I went on trusting that God had put me in California for a reason, and I was going to trust him to do great things.
In this stage of life, when things were uncertain, I decided that I was not going to attempt dating because I wanted to figure out life for myself first. However, I had been in that position for a while, And I was starting to trust God more. So one day when we were over in the gym, still after the great flood, we were doing communion. I was praying over my elements and the elements. And on this particular day, I prayed a prayer.
God, I think I’m ready to start dating again, but I’m going to trust you. I’m sure it was in a lot more words, but that’s the gist of the prayer that I was saying. Now, this is one of the wildest answered prayers in my life that I’ve ever had, but I kid you not. I said amen, we took the communion elements. Nate played the closing song.
Normal Sunday, right? I get up to leave and someone said, hey Austin, I want you to meet Ellen. She is visiting the church. Ellen and I would get married a year and a half later. I was introduced to my future wife whom I had never met before, no more than 15 minutes after I was asking God to show me the way for dating.
And no, I had not noticed her in the service until I was introduced. So trusting in God has not failed me.
Story 4, my final story that we have time for is not my last story because I know that God is still working in my heart and in my life. This story is less of trust though, and more of me coming to understand God’s character. We can fast forward, it’s late 2021. Ellen and I are now married. And we have just welcomed our oldest son, Dean.
He was about 1 month old. For those of you that have had children, I don’t know if you remember this, but in this newborn stage, you see every hour of the clock multiple times a week. It’s so tiring. So we are tired and Dean is crying. It’s my turn, my shift.
Uh, it is— I’m gonna guess it’s probably 3 AM. I’m changing a diaper in I’m just so tired, I don’t even know which way is up. The whole situation is a mess, and I don’t think the diaper change is going well, but I’ll spare you those details. In that moment, I’m looking down at this child screaming, the reason I’m awake, the reason I’m sleep deprived. I felt frustration, anger towards Dean.
All I wanted to do was go to sleep. And then it hit me. I think this has got to be the clearest moment of my life where I think God has actually spoken to me. It was just like a flood filled my head. This child has done nothing to deserve my love, but he has all of it.
Nothing he could do can change that. This child is only sapping my strength. He’s only keeping me awake. He is not helping me make money, friends, or any other selfish thing. He’s stressing my relationship with my wife.
By all selfish measures, this baby is not worthy of the time I’m putting in. But I still love this baby, right?
You know this. There’s nothing that would get me to stop loving him. This is when I realized that this is how God sees us. God loves us. There’s nothing we can do that He hasn’t already taken care of for us.
We are His children, and in that moment, God was showing me His heart to us. So I’ll leave you with this thought. We know God sees us and gives us grace. We hear that all the time. But if we really stop to think, have we really stopped to think what we actually mean?
When we say that, we mean that the one true God, the maker of the universe who knows all the stars in the sky and the grains of sand, knows us by name and knows the hairs on our head. And he sees our innermost thoughts and knows all of our failures. There is and was nothing we could do on our own to bridge that gap between the perfect nature of God and our sinful nature. So God, knowing us by name, loved us enough to show us grace by putting Jesus on the earth to go to the cross. His Son was sacrificed for us, and simply by believing in him, we unlock that grace, grace and salvation, not by works but through faith.
When we really understand this, especially with an eternal perspective, I think it becomes easy to say, how can we not trust a God like that to make our paths straight in his own wisdom? Proverbs 3:3 says, let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. And I challenge all of us, may we all grow in our steadfast love, our faithfulness, and our trust in the Lord.
Amen.
So, I’ll invite Dan up here. I think he has some questions for me.
All right. Thank you.
We are so grateful for you and that God did bring you here and that all 3 of your friends were already here. Locked in. That’s such a neat way to find a church. Who is it that I know? Oh, they all go to the same church.
That’s amazing. So thanks for sharing that with us. Your story, like the book of Proverbs, is dense in wisdom because there’s so much that has happened in your life to ask questions about. But as it may relate to some of the needs in our congregation and people in general, I have Just 4 questions. So, question number 1, when you were wrestling and doubting in college and you were finding God big enough to handle the things that you were asking, what was one of the questions that you were asking as a college student?
I mean, I think the first one would be, why am I struggling with my grades? But in the more theological sense, I think, Being in an engineering school, one of the big ones was learning about the intersection of science and faith, finding out the Bible describes how our world works and science aims to also describe how our world works or understand how it works. And there are people out there that will tell you that they are incompatible. I’m no apologist, but I have dabbled, and that was one of the big questions that I was wrestling with in college to understand who’s right here. Can they both be right?
Yeah. What advice would you give to a current student? It could be middle school, high school, college, who’s wrestling with similar questions. One of the words in our cultural vernacular right now is deconstruction, which is, in some ways, can be very healthy. It’s like, is what I have always believed, is that actually in the Bible?
And, you know, if it’s not, what do I need to drop to come more in alignment with the Bible? That’s great. A different type of deconstruction can be, let me find something in the Bible that I think is not true and then somehow use that to undermine everything in the Bible and then kind of leave, walk away with no faith at all, which would be you know, detrimental obviously, but somebody who might be going through that kind of process, who has questions, who it seems like maybe the Bible contradicts, who doesn’t see how science and faith can align, who is struggling with the problem of evil, whatever, and they’re like, I don’t know if there’s an answer to this, and they’re in that moment, what advice would you give them? It’s a big question. I think First off, trusting God to give us wisdom and show us the light, but also earnestly seek Him.
If we— we all believe in a big God that is the Creator of the universe, and so trust— giving Him a little bit of trust to me seems reasonable.
I think a lot of times I see people who say that they’re deconstructing, but they have just gone off and they’ve completely abandoned the Scripture. They don’t go to church and they just read counter-literature, atheist literature, or whatever other literature that they’re chasing, but they’re not giving their— the Christian literature out there a chance. And so, they’re reading— they’re using their childlike— their child Bible stories, which are great for children, But they don’t stand up for us sometimes to adults. The way we teach people is different, right? But they go and they look at adult level or college level counter-Christian literature.
They’re not— you’re not playing equal there. So earnestly seeking God and then giving it time because this stuff doesn’t get solved in a day, prayer and and continue to read Scripture even when sometimes it feels empty. Yeah, that’s a great observation in that, you know, if God is big enough to make all of this, if we keep seeking Him, there is likely at least a response if not an answer. Right. Well, shifting gears a little bit, you talked about your academic struggles and how you realized at one point you got to knuckle down and just do it, do it, do it.
But I’m thinking about the people, students in this area in particular, who often feel the weight of academic expectations and can have a good bit of anxiety of, you know, am I good enough? Will I make it? So, they probably feel like they’re already trying super hard, but they also feel totally like overwhelmed. By trying hard to the point of despair. And so, like, what would you tell that person?
And I know you use the phrase, you know, try your best and leave God the rest. And so maybe that’s your answer, but like, maybe unpack that a little. How do we— what does that look like? Is that freeing? Did you feel this burden still?
Yeah, I think it— It was not night and day. I did not, uh, one day wake up and free of that anxiety of, am I good enough? Uh, but the do your best, leave God the rest is a— is, um, my motto. But I think when we look at it, everybody knows where they are currently, but no one knows where they’re going to be in the future. And so you never know what God has planned for you.
And I think drawing on scripture, uh, I actually thought of the Apostle Paul, who was trained in all the Jewish traditions and scriptures and literature of the day. He was a Jewish scholar, and God used that for a very different purpose than I’m sure he— than he thought it was going to be used for as he was being brought up. And so, we leave that future to God because we can’t control it. You know, I’m thinking of the Matthew verse, do not worry about tomorrow, from Jesus himself, but We leave that future, but all we can do is bring our best to God each day. And I think that that’s a very comforting thought that helps me kind of walk away from that anxiety a bit.
Yeah, awesome. I’m sure we can all learn a lot from that. Okay, last question. You said that being a parent has kind of informed your view of God. You realized, oh, this is what it means that God loves us like a father.
I get it now. But is there a reverse? Is there any way of like being a parent that has— or is there anything about God that has informed how you be a parent? So like being a parent informed your faith. Is there any way faith informed being a parent?
Yeah. I mean, I think that my faith has helped me understand that I need grace. And we all need grace, and my children fall under the umbrella of everyone. And so trying to bring that to my parenting, which is hard. Also just remembering that we’re all sinners and we have a rebellious nature against God.
And so we’re more trying to turn hearts to God so that he can do a lot of that work. It is not my It is not my role entirely to turn their hearts to God. God calls them. And also just, they’re God’s children. I’m not in control.
And so trying to relinquish that, it’s hard sometimes when you’re in the trenches day to day, but yeah, it just goes back to trust. That’s awesome. Um, it helps me actually, uh, to think about letting go. And these are— these are his kids, and he’s going to be a better parent than I ever would. So I can, uh, I can feel a little bit more free.
Uh, well, hey, thanks again. Let me pray for you, um, and then we’ll move on with our service. Father, thanks so much for Austin, um, and what you have done in his life and his family’s life and in the life of our church. We pray that his life as viewed through the lens of Proverbs 3 has been a blessing to many and can lead all of us into deeper relationship with You. We pray those things in Jesus’ name.
Amen. Amen.
