If you’re anything like me, you’ve had several phases to your career. Early in my career I was the lead engineer at a company who designed and built custom manufacturing equipment. I would design machines on a CAD system, then go out to the toolroom and fabricated all the components and put the machine together. I became known as a person who was really good at designing and building machines, but then I got a new job at a new company managing groups of people and directing projects. The people who knew me as the machine builder had a hard time thinking of me as anything but a machine builder. Fast forward in my career and I made another change. I left the company where I was known as the guy who leads large teams of people working on strategic business projects and started my own business selling wood and building custom furniture. I had a team of one (me). Those who knew me as the business leader had a hard time imagining me running a sawmill and building furniture as my fulltime job. Then most recently, I left my business to join the pastoral staff here at Calvary in Greenville, and those who knew me as a professional woodworker had a hard time thinking of me now as a pastor, and, if I’m being honest, so did I.

 This Sunday morning we’ll be looking at a story out of Luke 7 where two people were known by their community as being certain types of people, but something radical happened to one of them that changed their entire life, however the other person had a hard time imagining them as anything other than what they had been known for. Have you ever had that experience? Have you ever been known for something in your past that you just couldn’t seem to shake? No matter what you do, it seems that people define you by your past, not who you are now?

 We all long to be loved for who we are not for what we’ve done. Spoiler, there is someone who sees us exactly as we are and loves us for who we are regardless of what we’ve done. His name is Jesus, and he loves you unconditionally. We need not hide with Jesus; we are fully known by him and there is no greater love than the love that he bestows upon us. Would you join us this Sunday as we dig deep into this well-known passage of scripture and ask ourselves the question, “what am I known for?”

Guest blogger ~ Matt Mead