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Our daughter, Kelsey, was 10 the day we first walked into a room to talk about an idea called Fellowship Bible Church. Our son John Austin, seven. As the idea eventually turned into an actual church, even at that age, our kids were under the influence of what God was doing through Fellowship’s mission to proclaim Christ, mature us in our faith and to help us learn to give our lives away. Then, just as now, the Spirit used the expository teaching of the Word, as well as the beautiful and broken people at Fellowship to edify, challenge, convict and encourage.

As suffering and death dominated the news out of Paris this past week, where did your thoughts and emotions take you? Many went to sadness and hurt for those harmed and their loved ones. Others to anger accompanied by a longing for swift and lethal justice on the perpetrators of evil. I think all of us sensed some level of fear and vulnerability that this could happen to us…maybe to me.

I first heard the good news in 1980 when I was a college student at the University of Washington in Seattle. I was a sophomore living in a fraternity house with a lot of friends. On the outside I appeared to have everything together, but on the inside I had a lot of questions and an emptiness I didn’t understand.

I saw our mission lived out in a special way this past Sunday afternoon at our core group gathering in Hillsboro Village (for those of you who don’t know, we are launching a third congregation of Fellowship in the Green Hills/Hillsboro Village area). Since early January, we have been discussing what it means to embody the mission wherever we are and with whomever the Lord brings our way.

The wood floors in our home had been lived on well for 18 years. They had witnessed the growth of our three children from pre-teens to married adults. They had felt the canes of aging parents and the pitter patter of our grandchildren’s early steps. Numerous pets had left their marks and the variety of things that have fallen on and been spilled on them is countless. They were well worn and needed to be repaired.

Here are a few things I’ve been surprised to learn about Abraham: For one thing, he wasn’t perfect. For example, he asked his wife to lie to the Egyptians and Pharaoh about not being his wife (out of fear of being killed). Much later, but less than three months after God had promised that Sarah would bear him a son, he gave his wife to Abimelech—a Philistine king! He fled to Egypt during the drought right after being told his descendants would be given the land. Then there is the episode where he allowed Sarai to take charge of the family planning. So faith does not mean perfection (thank goodness).

I want to walk by “SIGHT”… I’m not proud of that fact. It’s uncomfortable to say it to others. Yet every now and then when I feel a knotted-up tension deep inside of myself, I know that’s what’s causing it. I want to SEE that the number in my bank account is sufficient for what’s ahead. I want to SEE that my hard work will be rewarded. I want to SEE that things are going to work out well in my kid’s stories. I want to SEE that several friends I am praying for will find healing, salvation, and reconciliation.

Recently I was playing golf with a friend and as we were finishing the 14th hole, one of us (me) miss hit our approach shot to the green. The cart path went to the left of the green yet my ball was to the right, so we drove that way and discovered what appeared to be a shortcut around the green. We finished the hole, took the shortcut, and were proudly on our way.

My father led me to faith in Christ when I was 8 years old. I believed that I had sinned and that I could not do enough good things to make myself right before a Holy God. The Bible says that the wages of my sin was death (Romans 6:23). I was spiritually separated from God. I understood that Christ came to earth to live the perfect life that I could not live and to die in my place. I placed my faith in the fact that He died for me and that He rose from the dead. I remember the freedom that I felt in knowing that my sins were forgiven.

As I get older, I find there are fewer and fewer hills that I would be willing to die on. The primary one will always be that there is only one name under heaven by which we must be saved. Close behind that one is the truth that the Bible is the perfect Word of God—fully authoritative, fully trustworthy and sufficient for all matters of life—worthy of my time, worthy of my study and most of all, worthy of my trust and obedience.