As of Sunday, we have finished with the sermon series, “Through the Valley to Joy.” Not that we’re through walking through valleys! While some can be walked fairly quickly, others take years to work our way through. I’m so thankful to hear from many of you that the series was helpful for you. I still need to re-record the two that didn’t get recorded and get them online. I’ll let you know when they’ve been uploaded.

As of tomorrow, Lent officially begins. The sermon series during Lent will be called, “The Disciples’ Journey.” As you can imagine, when you encounter the Son of God in the flesh, He changes you. There are not many people in the Gospels who are actually named and even fewer who are named more than once. We’ll take a look at some of those whom we can follow “over time” and see how God changed them. Our prayer will be that by knowing how God has worked in the past, we can see Him work in our lives in the same way.

I didn’t make it as clear on Sunday as I could have, but this new series follows nicely on the heels of the previous one. When we travel through the valleys well, they lead us to worship God more and to accept His will for our lives. Worshiping God and following Him are the keys to joy. What we’ll see in the lives of the followers of Jesus is that they were transformed by God when they came to know Him better and accepted His plan for their lives.

This transformation from “our way” to “His Way” can be pictured very nicely by the image of the cross. That instrument which Jesus willingly picked up that lead to His death and resurrection is the same instrument that He teaches us to (figuratively) take up. Jesus said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) That cross will be the image that is held before us during Lent as we make our way toward Good Friday, then Easter.

The people that we’ll be looking at are: