1/19/2026
Hello, My Dear Friends,
You might not believe this, but in high school I was shy. I was really shy. I studied, I got good grades, but I didn’t go to parties, I only started dating because a girl asked me, and I didn’t drive a cool car (I drove my mother’s Ford Falcon station wagon). However, I could play the drums. Midway through high school, I became part of a rock band called Shattered Glass. All of a sudden, everyone knew my name. The girls knew my name. This became my whole world, and when you put a guy who is halfway cute behind a drum kit, all of a sudden, he becomes a whole lot cuter. This was my world in high school.
At these parties and dances, for the first time in my life, I found myself around alcohol and pot, and here I was a young Christian. I never once smoked anything, nor took a drink of anything. I wasn’t just being disciplined; it just didn’t appeal to me. I was there for the music, and the fact that people knew my name.
As I went through my junior year, I can still remember that sense of, “This isn’t what I have for you.” I remember where I was sitting in that smoke-filled National Guard Armory in Salisbury, when I tried to explain to the band that I was quitting. I didn’t say anything like, “You know I’m a Christian, and Jesus told me,” as I didn’t have the courage for that. I had no other reason than I just knew that I knew. And for me, as a sixteen-year-old kid, I think that’s the first time I really practiced being a Christ-follower.
On the calendar today, we remember the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. When he got his Ph.D., Dr. King had the opportunity to stay in the Northeast and become a professor. He could have taught and railed against the evils of racism in the South and all that was going on in states like Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana. He would have been safe, and he would have been right. But he felt a nudge. It was a moral imperative, to leave the comfort of the Northeast, and to come to the dangerous world of the Southeast, to not simply talk about, but to model and to lead. It cost him his life. It was taken from him in his obedience to what he felt like was the call of God.
Somewhere between these two stories is you. Because you probably will not have to die for a decision you make to become a follower of Jesus, and most of you are already out of the eleventh grade. But if you are a Christ-follower, and you decide to take the next step, it’s going to cost you. There may be no repayment in this life. Whatever is in your hand, you’re going to lose anyway. But you have the opportunity to give your life for the sake of something that can’t be taken away from you later. Don’t miss that opportunity!
Everyone dies of something. But you might die for something. And, my friends, that’s a good decision. That’s a really good decision.
Are you a spectator, or a follower?
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
