All right, all right, join the Journey family, friends, and guests. You're listening to Join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter. Thanks for joining. Today, we are reading the book of Micah, and I am in the podcast studio with Faithful Watermark Member, Jonathan. What's going on, guys? Jonathan, it's your podcast debut, or at least you're

joined the journey podcast debut. That's right. For those who don't know you, would just share a little

bit about what God's done in your life and what you're up to today? I would love to. So my name's Jonathan Linder. I'm a community director here on staff. I've been on staff almost five years. The first, about four. I worked in student ministry here. And kind of going back before I came on staff,

the things I would share with you, maybe just and kind of going back before I came on staff, the things I

would share with you, maybe just to kind of give a little bit of a recap of my story would be,

I grew up in a small town, about 45 minutes south of here. It's called Midlothian. And I grew up

in a Christian home with two parents who love the Lord. But the phrase I would use to describe

growing up for me was going through the motions,

at least as it regards to my faith.

And so as I got older in about middle school and early high school, I wouldn't have

been able to articulate this at the time, but the thing I kind of found myself believing

was, hey, church is just something you go to on Sundays and it means that you pray before meals.

And that's really the extent of our faith, or at least mine at the time. And so it was kind of like,

hey, if that's what faith is, then I'm going to have to find my worth and identity and value in

something else. And the three places or buckets I kind of put my value in were relationships

with girls, sports, and popularity. And my freshman year

of high school, I got cut from the baseball team. I never had a serious relationship with a girl,

and I was always just on the outside of the popular crowd. So I feel like I went 0 for three on the things

that it was a rough time. And so I really found myself isolated struggling kind of

reaching and grasping for things to find life and put my hope in but couldn't find them anywhere

and you would think I would get to the end of high school and realize oh man there's no life found

in these things but really I think my heart was in this place of going no if I just actually

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