This sermon focuses on the journey of surrender and obedience to God's calling, particularly in the context of marriage and family life. It delves into the struggle of denying oneself, stepping out of comfort zones, and being willing to sacrifice personal desires for the sake of following Christ wholeheartedly. The speaker shares personal reflections on the challenges and blessings of aligning with God's will, emphasizing the importance of being true disciples who renounce all to follow Jesus.

As a wife, there have been times in our marriage that it has been more of a leadership, Francis saying this is where I feel like God is calling us and there's times when I've had to say, okay, I'm just going to trust that and I'm going to submit because I believe that God is leading us through you. So, maybe because this is a bigger decision, this time in the Lord's graciousness, he has just been wrestling with me and dealing with me and bringing me to this place where I feel like I'm just right on the same page with him and it's just a blessing to me from the Lord. And I think it's, for recently, how it started for me was the scriptures that we've been reading as a church family going through 1 John over and over and then reading through Luke over and over and now into Acts, but I have to say the book of Luke just was rocking my world personally. I thought this commitment that Christ calls us to is so serious. You know, in Luke chapter 9 when he says, anybody who wants to come after me has to deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me because whoever wants to save his life is going to lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. And over and over in my mind, I would be thinking about this, deny yourself, and I think I don't know what it looks like to deny myself. I am such a creature of comfort and habit and safety. I even said to Francis recently, I feel like there's just like a gravitational pull on my life for safety and comfort. And it's almost like it's strapping me down in these rubber bands and I have to push against it. And I know God is calling me to push against it and to go outside of what I know and what is safe and what feels comfortable with my children. You know, for you ladies, I mean, as a mama, do I do I have fears about taking my four children to Thailand? Yeah, I do. Do I have fears about going to a big city like L.A.? Yeah, I do. Maybe that's funny to some of you. I know there's people that have given up so much for the gospel, but God is really asking me personally to say, are you are you willing to lay down your own life and the lives of your children for me? And as I was reading through these scriptures in Luke, it was chapter 14 that really stuck with me the most. It says great crowds accompanied Jesus and he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. And towards the end of that chapter, he says, so therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. And so stirring in me is just this desire to say, Lord, I want to be a disciple. I do want you. I do want to lay down my life. I do want to give it all up, even though in my flesh I don't. I want to cling to what I know. I want to cling to you because I love you and I know you. But God is calling us out and we can't deny that. And I pray that you would pray for us and I will be praying for you, too. But I'm praying that you would pray for me as a mom and just my own personal struggles. But there's nothing I want more than to hear the Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. And what kind of leaders would we be if we heard the voice of the Lord leading us and didn't obey? We would we wouldn't be anything to you then. And so I just hope that you will be able to pray for us and encourage us as we take a step of faith. That is not something we saw years ago. I think we would have both said, oh, we'll be at Cornerstone forever. But the Holy Spirit has said differently.