Imagine that you're going on a journey - destination irrelevant. What's the first thing you need to know before you know how to get to your destination?

You need to know where your journey begins or else the directions to your destination will make no sense.

With this sermon, we begin a journey through a new sermon series called God's GPS where we will learn about how God guides us in life through gratitude, prayer, and faith. But here in this sermon, we actually begin with our starting point, where we begin our journeys of faith - Creation.

In the first creation story of Genesis 1, we learn that all of us - regardless of gender - are created in God's image, and that is our starting point. It is in that creative, loving beginning that each of us start our journeys together, so we will explore what that even means - being created in God's image - and let that ground us for our journey through the rest of the series.

As you prepare to listen to this sermon, I hope you'll take time to read our passage from Genesis 1 as well as our gospel lesson from Mark.

Last week, while on vacation, we spent some time at Wallis Sands State Beach in New Hampshire. According to the life guards, the water was a whopping 57 degrees when we first arrived, getting as warm as about 63 degrees. Sandra and I didn't spend much time in the water. We could hardly get Micah out!

For the most part, he just spent time dodging the waves - jumping up just as it arrived in order to be carried back by it or sometimes diving under the wave just before it arrived. He had a ball!

Waves can be fun or waves can be damaging depending on the size of the ripple and how one can respond to it.

What waves do our lives of faith make, though? That is part of my focus for this sermon. So, in preparation, I hope you'll take some time to read the Scriptures for it: Psalm 82 and Matthew 7:24-27.