But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well.

Matthew 6:33

As we conclude our long study through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and as we prepare to see Paul commend brothers and sisters in Christ and send greetings to the church, I am increasingly reminded how blessed I have been in my life with great mentors and friends in the faith. I believe, at some time or another, either in these Jym Shorts articles or from the pulpit, I have mentioned all of these people, but it bears repeating again briefly as we stress the importance of discipleship, pursuing God, and application of our faith to our daily lives in these concluding remarks from Paul to the church he helped establish in Corinth.

After coming to faith as a teenager, my older brothers, Matt and Charles (we call him “Buddy”), discipled me in the faith. Matt tended toward the intellectual side of the faith and encouraged me to be in God’s word daily and to get my questions answered by seeking the truth in Scripture. Buddy, although not dismissing the intellectual side, stressed an emotional connection with God and with other believers. He was more demonstrative in his faith, while Matt tended to be more reserved and thoughtful. I’ve found that, over the years, I have moved more in Matt’s direction, but I have always been very thankful that I experienced and benefited from Buddy’s discipling and his more passionate approach to the faith. God gave me a very healthy and balanced perspective from the very beginning of my training.

After these older brothers left for college, I turned to a Friday night Bible study group for much of my discipling. I was still attending the Roman Catholic Mass every Sunday at my parents’ direction, but was allowed to meet with a very eclectic gathering of believers in the home of one of the most influential women in my life, a retired math teacher named Marge. Marge’s husband had abandoned her and her children when she was still young, and she remained single the rest of her life. She opened her home, a beautiful Victorian-style turn-of-the-century building located in my hometown, once a week for study. Marge did not teach; she simply supervised and facilitated discussion among believers who gathered from multiple denominational backgrounds. We came with our questions from our Bible reading each week and then discussed them as a group. I grew leaps and bounds during the three years I met at Marge’s home and came to love her dearly. There were some strange people who wandered in and out of that study, and some extremely deep and thoughtful believers as well. Some of the teaching was not good, and Marge helped me discern truth from error, while some of the good teaching remains with me to this day. Christianity draws people from all walks of life, and some of those people are just plain nutty, with very little biblical depth. I learned to weed out the chaff and search for the kernel of truth in that study. Marge passed away twenty years ago, to my great sorrow but to her great joy.

During my final two years of high school, two close friends entered my life, Joe and Shawn, both young believers like me. We spent endless hours together, challenging each other to grow in Christ and holding each other accountable. Both follow Christ to this day, and I owe much to both for helping me remain in the faith during those difficult years. We still connect via Zoom a few times each year. As I moved on to college, away from friends and family, the grounding I received as a teenager kept me from going astray, even though my first few months away were touch-and-go. A random knock on my dorm room door on a Thursday evening from two guys inviting me to an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship gathering made all the difference, and God used it to grow my faith even deeper and teach me about leadership during the next six years of undergraduate and graduate studies. I will never take the Providence and Sovereignty of God lightly, having seen him work so extraordinarily in my own life in ways I could never have orchestrated. From my salvation to my Christian growth, it has all been a powerful work of God. Dedra, my wife, was also invited to that same Inter-Varsity group, and our friendship grew into an attraction, and then to love. “Jym and Dedra sittin’ in a tree…”

Hundreds of other people have come and gone in my life who have impacted my faith in positive ways, some of them right here at LifePoint Church. But these were my early benefactors, and I will be grateful, I trust, throughout eternity for them. When I came to know the truth about Jesus, I could not get enough information fast enough. God was there to meet me as I sought his face. He will do the very same for you, my friends. Seek him with all your heart—he has promised that if you do, you will surely find him (Jer. 29:13; Acts 17:27; Heb. 11:6).

Grace and peace,

Pastor Jym

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