What does First B Jackson teach about saying yes to god?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First Baptist Jackson, the teaching on saying yes to God begins with a simple but honest observation: you will almost never feel ready. Glenn Owings shared his family's adoption story across two Sunday messages in March 2023, and the thread running through both was that he and his wife Liz did not have enough money, enough patience, or enough strength when they started the process. Their qualifying income cleared the required threshold for India by exactly $56. Their first agency went bankrupt. Ethiopia closed before they could finish. The conditions never looked right on paper, and Glenn said that in retrospect not thinking too hard about that was probably a good thing. His point was not to hold his family up as an example to admire. It was the opposite: they just said yes, and then God sent other people alongside them to say yes with them.
The passage Glenn returned to was James 1, which frames the testing of faith not as something to survive but as an opportunity for endurance to grow. That framing shaped how he described every setback in the adoption process, not as signs they had heard God wrong, but as the normal texture of obedience. Whatever good came out of the story, Glenn attributed to God's provision rather than to anything the family did on its own. He also said what haunts him a little is imagining the alternate path where they had made the safer financial decision and said no. Their daughter Sealy would still exist and still be who she is. She just would have been somewhere else.
That same call to a willing response appears in Pastor Ray's Advent message on Luke 1, where Mary's answer to Gabriel, "I am the Lord's servant. May everything you have said about me come true," became the anchor for everything he said about what God is actually looking for. Ray described a steel sculpture he made in art school, a figure with no arms and no head, and said he stripped away the arms because the arms were not the point. The image behind both messages is the same: saying yes to God is not about having enough resources or certainty. It is about being available.
Taught from James 1:2-4 · James 1:22-25 · Ephesians 1:5-6 · Luke 1:26-38 · James 1:12-13
The passage taught · Ephesians 1:5-6
5 having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire,
6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved,
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- March 12, 2023 We Just Said Yes A Wyoming family shares how saying yes to God led them through a years-long international adoption, and what that obedience might look like for anyone willing to trust Him.
- March 12, 2023 We Said Yes Glenn shares his family's adoption journey from India and how saying yes to God, despite fear and uncertainty, shaped their faith and family.
- December 15, 2013 A Willing Body Mary said yes to God's grace before she understood it all. The pastor traces the word "grace" through Luke 1 to ask what willing surrender looks like for us today.
Mentioned along the way
- January 5, 2014 Proclaiming God's Word in Ephesus Paul in Ephesus shows what faithful gospel proclamation looks like: go where God leads, work hard, preach Christ, engage people in your path, and leave results to God.