In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Philippians 2:5

This is a Sunday, so it’s a good time to talk a little more about the faith aspect of this weekend’s big wedding.

I was really pleased – privileged – to be invited to a Friday morning men’s breakfast designed to provide Johnny with some inspiration and encouragement on his wedding day.

This means a lot to me because I am very much a newcomer in Johnny’s life, having first met him when Lindsay brought him to Wake Forest just a short while ago.

I instantly liked Johnny: he’s intelligent and engaging, he’s a top-drawer soccer player, he obviously adores Lindsay, and he is a very deliberate follower of Jesus.

More than half the guys at breakfast were Johnny’s “tribe” – the young men who have loved, supported, and hung out with him for the past few years. The balance were men with a little more experience in life.

What I told Johnny, essentially, was that if he wants to be a leader in his home, then the only way to do so would be to lead like Jesus. And Jesus led with humility; he was a servant leader.

Jesus “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2).

Rebekah picked up on that theme in her message at the wedding ceremony. She encouraged the young couple to look forward into a future where their shared witness to light and grace and service tells the deep truth of the Gospel of Love through the way they live their faith out loud!

Wow! What a powerful yet fragile truth.

The excitement, the energy and the life that pulsated through this weekend, the life that is running on into the beginnings of Johnny and Lindsay’s new life together, is nothing without their passion for Jesus and their mutual commitment to live as humble servants and real-life disciples.

What a great context to begin a new family! This – and all the positive energy I saw from so many of the young people this weekend – is one of the reasons I believe in the future with such confidence.

It’s the kind of confidence that faith brings. – DEREK