Sermons tagged with Blessing

Well, good morning. Good morning, Aaron and the band. Thank you for that. That was a sweet time of worship. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. Thanks for being here in person. Those of you who are able to get up and come and brave about the two and a half minutes of rain that we've had today, if that was your window getting here, God's trying to tell you something. I don't know what it is, but he's communicating to you. You should listen. The purpose of this series, just to highlight it again before we launch into today's sermon, every spring the purpose of the series is to prepare our hearts for Easter, to prepare our hearts for what should be the greatest celebration of the year. And so a lot of our attention and effort and devotion goes into that. To that end, we've planned the Good Friday service that's going to be next Friday. And I really do hope that you'll make it a point to be there and allow God to use that service to prepare your heart for Easter. I was just going back over it with Aaron Gibson, our worship pastor, this week with what we've got planned for you. And I really do think it's going to be a special night. The other thing is, the main reason we put Big Night Out two weeks ahead of the Good Friday service is so that I can mentally make note who shows up to Big Night Out and not the Good Friday service, and then judge you accordingly. So now I know if I saw you last night, you've got to come. That's the deal. But all kidding aside, I really do hope that you'll make it a point to be there. This week, as Mike so expertly said at the beginning of the service, we're going to look at the table for provision. To do that, we're going to look at what I think is probably the second most famous meal of Jesus's life. I'm not sure that there's a ranking out there where we rank all the famous meals in Jesus's life, but certainly the first one has to be the last supper, right? Like that, that takes the cake, but number two, right behind it is the feeding of the 5,000. What's really interesting to me about this story is that it shows up in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This story is in all four Gospels. I don't know if you know this, but there's only 11 events in Jesus' life that are recorded in all four of the Gospels. There's only four events that happen in Jesus' life that are recorded in all four of the Gospels outside of crucifixion week. So once we get to crucifixion week and the triumphal entry of Jesus, when he goes to Jerusalem and all the things that are set in motion and all the things we know about the week of crucifixion and, and, and his arrest and all the, and the resurrection and all those things, there are seven events there that are recorded in all four gospels. There's four outside of that in the first 33 years of Jesus's life that are recorded in all four gospels. this, the story of the feeding of the 5,000, is one of them. I think it's Peter's profession of faith, the anointing of Mary, and then there's one other story that I'm forgetting, but this is one of the four that's recorded in all four gospels. So all four gospel writers, for whatever reason, thought it was very important that we mark this moment in Jesus's life and that we learn from it. And I would think, seek to apply it to ourselves and ask, what can we learn from this story? So if you haven't heard the story of the feeding of the 5,000, good news, I'm going to tell it to you today. All right. So you can leave here at least knowing that. But most of us probably know it already. Now, in our series, we're moving through the book of Luke, and it is in the gospel of Luke in chapter 9. So if you have a Bible and you want to turn there, you can, but I'm going to be reading from John chapter 6. I like the account in John chapter 6. It gives us more detail. If you're mad because I'm veering off course, we've agreed to walk through the book of Luke together, and you want to be stubborn, open to Luke 9, and you can parse it together as I read. Or if you'd like to be compliant, just John chapter 6. I'm going to read the story, and then we'll kind of talk about what's going on in the story as is our pattern. John chapter 6, beginning in verse 5. Lifting up his eyes then, seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so that it's dirt? They're hungry. So the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus took the loaves, and when they had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish as much as they wanted. If you read on, you find out that there was even leftovers. So let's understand what's happening here. I think most important to understand about Israel in this point in history is that it was a depressed country. It was not a wealthy country. The people there had a lot of need. The Bible tells us that there was 5,000 men there. If there's 5,000 men there, unless it was just, maybe Jesus was leading one of those hokey men's wilderness retreats, and they were doing man stuff. They had just finished all chopping wood together. I doubt it. They had their families with them, most likely. So there was women and children there too. And so most scholars would agree that based on 5,000 men, there was 15 to 25,000 people. We really don't know, but there was a small stadium full of people. And those people were there in the middle of the day because they didn't have regular employment. They didn't have jobs. A lot of them I've been taught were day laborers. They just looked for work where they could find it. I remember the thing that I always think about, because we can compare this to the Depression era in the United States in the 1920s and 30s. What I think about is that movie that Russell Crowe was in years ago called Cinderella Man. I don't know if you've seen it. I'm not recommending it. I don't remember if it was any good. I think he was a boxer. No idea. But I remember this one scene. He needed work. He needed to feed his family. And so he wakes up and he leaves the small house that they have and he goes to the docks. And at the gates of the docks, there's hundreds of men clamoring to get inside the gates. And there's one dude up on top of like stacks of wheat or barley or something. And he's picking out the men who look strong and capable. I would have not made any money in these days. He's picking out the men who look strong and capable. He's bringing them in. They get to work for the day. And hundreds of men are returned to their homes, and they have to go home, and they have to tell their families, we're not eating today. When they get home and their kids look at them expectantly, do we get some food today? The answer is no. I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it would be to live in that way, to have to live that kind of life. But what we see in this story and what we know historically is that many of the men and many of the women, many of the families in this story were living that life. Why else would there be thousands of them in the middle of the afternoon following Jesus and hungry? And so Jesus looks up. He had been teaching. He had healed somebody on the Sabbath. Then he was teaching the disciples in private. And then he looks up and the people have learned where he is and they are coming to him in mass. And so he looks, he looks at Philip, one of his disciples, and he says, hey, we're going to need to feed these people. What do you think we should do? Jesus knows what he's going to do. And Philip says 200 denarii, 200 days wages would not feed this stadium of people, Jesus. Like, we're going to need more resources than what we got. I don't know what your plan is, but I don't have a good one for you. We can't just call Chick-fil-A and get them to bring 20,000 box lunches and hope for the best. That's not going to work out. And then somebody says, hey, there's a kid here. He's got five loaves of bread and two fish. And at some point or another, Jesus says, get it. Now, I don't know what this experience was like for the kid, right? I don't know if the disciples walked up to him and they said, hey, give me, buddy. That's ours now. I don't know if Jesus asked for it. I hope, I like to think that the disciples were nice about it. Hey, do you mind if the Messiah, the Savior of the world, has your lunch today? But if you're the kid, I don't really see a lot of options here. Like, you've got your lunch, right? Like, you're good. Those people, hungry. They need some food. Me, I've got it. And I think that we normally ascribe to him that it's lunch because it's midday, but I think it's just as likely that he had been sent to the market somewhere with a couple of coins and was sent back home with dinner for his family that night. It's just as likely that he was running an errand. The text really doesn't tell us, so we don't know, but we can guess it's either lunch or it's dinner for the family. He's got his. And now Jesus is going, can I have that? The boy has no choice. He says, all right. And he gives it over to Jesus. And then he sits there and he watches as Jesus breaks and breaks and breaks and breaks and fills and fills and fills and fills. And then those baskets are carried to the people who need it so desperately. And they don't understand that their Messiah is providing for them. They don't understand that this is a whisper of the manna in the desert that was provided for them, their ancestors thousands of years ago. They don't understand that the bread of life is breaking bread for their sustenance. They don't understand the fullness of the provision that's happening in that moment. They don't know that they're sitting in the midst of history and will be remembered for centuries. All they know is I was hungry and now I'm not because that guy fed me. They had no options for eating that day. If Jesus had not provided that sustenance for them, they would not have eaten that day. That's the story of the feeding of the 5,000, and that's the great miracle that Jesus performed. As I think of that story, as I consider that miracle, and I consider it for us, I think that that story is in ways very difficult for us to relate to. I think we have a, and when I say we, I mean an American audience, particularly a North Raleigh audience. We are in an area of affluence. We are doing okay. People from all over the country are flocking to our neighborhoods because of the opportunities here. If you're in North Raleigh, you're doing okay. And I think it's difficult for us to relate to the need represented in the people and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 and then therefore appreciate the provision that Jesus gave that day. I think it's difficult for us to understand and relate to this story because we are history's spoiled billionaire trust fund babies. That is us. Historically speaking, I'm going to explain this. I know that you didn't expect to be writing trust fund babies down on your notes today, but here we are. Here's why this is us. And here's why it's important to understand this. First of all, I don't know if you guys follow this. I don't know if you guys pay attention to any of this stuff, but there's been research coming out in the last couple of decades, and there's some very, very high wealth individuals, some billionaires like Warren Buffett comes to mind, Bill Gates comes to mind, these men and women who have a ton of money. And what they're saying with their money is, I don't want to leave it to my kids. I want to leave it to other things. Because studies and history has shown that when people just fall into wealth and never have to earn it, that they don't learn some of the very important lessons that come in life from struggling and from trying and from having to be self-sustaining. One of the reasons, and I don't mean to denigrate billionaire trust fund babies. I'm sure some of them are very, very wonderful people and that I would be happy. I was about to say I'd be happy to be friends with them. Of course I would, dummy. I'd be on a yacht somewhere. But that's not the point. The point is I'm not trying to say they're people of bad character. I'm not trying to run any of them down. What I'm saying is when you fall backwards into wealth, you grow up without having to fight some of the battles on your own that teach you some things that are intrinsically necessary for life and adulthood. And so your development is hampered in that way. Incredibly wealthy people are figuring this out and deciding it's more valuable for our children to struggle than it is for them to have wealth. And they want them to learn those lessons. What I want us to see, and I know I'm not trying to step on any toes or hurt anybody's feelings, but I do think that this is helpful or I wouldn't press it. What I want us to see is that historically speaking, if you exist in the United States in the 21st century, compared to all of history, you are the world's spoiled billionaire trust fund babies. You were born into a wealth that you do not perceive. You were born into a wealth that you did not earn. You were born into a wealthy country that you did not build. This is true of all of us. It's so difficult for us to relate to the people and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 because many of us in this room have no perspective for what struggle is at all. And I know that I need to be careful here because there are some in this room, I am sure, who do know what struggle is. Who do know what it is to literally not know where your next meal is coming from, who literally have been reduced to prayer for provision. But for most of us in this room, for a vast majority in this room, for those of you who I know well, what I know is we have never struggled. We have never wondered where our next meal was coming from. Unless we were on a missions trip to help people who do struggle and we just literally didn't know where that food was coming from. We don't know what it is to go home and tell our kids, we're not going to eat today. We're going to have crackers again. We have always, in our lives, had a plan, haven't we? We've had a strategy. Even when times are down, things will get tight. We'll tighten the purse strings a little bit. We'll put our resume together. We'll apply for more jobs. We'll figure it out. We'll sell this. We'll do that. We'll trim down. We'll move in here. We'll get rid of this. We'll cut that expense. We'll cut that membership, whatever it is. We've got a plan to move forward. Well, we really don't have to worry about material gain, material sustenance. We don't have to worry about our plan. Very rarely in our lives has our primary strategy for provision had to be prayer. You see? I bet there are very few people who will ever hear me say these words, whether you listen online or whether you're here today. Now, some of you have, and again, I want to be sensitive to that. But a vast majority of us in this room have never been reduced to prayer for provision. Very few of us have ever had to pray the prayer, God, if you don't provide, I don't know what's going to happen. If you don't bring food today, I don't know how my kids are going to eat. We don't know that life. I've been in the hillsides of Swatopeki, Honduras, and I've seen kids running around with two different shoes on their feet, different sizes, because it's all their family could cobble together. I've seen their dirt homes. I've watched the joy in their faces when we simply bring them a stove. If you're in this room, you probably don't know that life. I've been to Quito, Ecuador, where there's a community of people who live in the Quito city dump. And every day, trash trucks from around the city bring loads of trash and dump them onto the heaps of trash that already exist. And the men and the boys are in there. If you're lucky, you've got some waiters on. They're in the trash, picking through it, trying to find things that their family needs, trying to find food for that day. And they take it back to their shack, literally made of tin and pallets. We've never lived that life. Now listen, I don't want us to feel bad for that. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes or make us feel guilty for what we were born into. I just want us to see that most of us were born into this. Most of us do have, comparatively speaking, a wealth unknown to a vast majority of humans who have ever existed. Just think for a second. I'm a history nerd. I like history. This may not hit with you, but maybe it will. What would it have been like to have been a Viking? As far as wealth is concerned, just put your family in 1483 Denmark. And the comparative wealth that you have now and the ease that you have now, like how difficult it is to even see what it is like to have to lean on God and to be self-sufficient. This is why I think Jesus says in Matthew 19, 24, that again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. I think Jesus says this because when we have, when we are wealthy, and you may not feel wealthy compared to the rest of this room and the rest of our neighborhood or our community, but historically speaking and even now presently speaking compared to the rest of the world, you are wealthy. When we have wealth and self-sufficiency, it is so very difficult for us to see our need for Jesus. We've very rarely been reduced to a place where prayer is our primary strategy for provision. Because that's true, because we are history's haves, not the have-nots, it occurs to me as I look at the story of the feeding of the 5,000, we are the boy, not the people. We're the little boy in the story. We've got ours. We've got our lunch. I've got my family's dinner. We're squared away. I'm going to leave here. I'm going to pass the tent community. I don't know how they're going to eat, but I'm good. I've got mine. Historically speaking, we're the boy. We're not the people. If you're born in this century into this country, we're the haves. Right? And so I think it's helpful as we look at this story, instead of fighting really hard, because this was my task this week, right? Is how can I get us to relate to the people in the story and to see God's miraculous provision for us? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized we're not the people. I don't have to do that hard work. We're the boy. We're the haves. We have our lunch. And if that's true, then it's far more helpful, I think, to this room to think through the story from the perspective of the boy, not the people. So what was the experience of the boy? I think one of the first things that occurs to me is the boy saw more clearly Jesus' provision for them than for him. He saw much more clearly Jesus's provision for the people than for himself. He showed up with his lunch or his dinner. Jesus borrowed it and broke it and gave it to them. Look at the miraculous way that Jesus provided for them. And then because Jesus is Jesus and he's exponentially kind and unendingly patient and gracious, I am certain, even though it's not in the text, that that boy was returned his food. I'm pretty confident since they were leftovers, if he wanted more than five loaves and two fish, he had it. I'm pretty certain that he was able, if that was his family's dinner, he took home more than mom and dad were expecting that day. But in that, I wonder if he saw Jesus providing for him, or if he only saw the provision that Jesus was offering to others. He took my lunch, and he made it their lunch, and then he gave my lunch back to me, and he went on. And so in the story, it's very easy to see Jesus's provision for the people. But what about the boy? If you could talk to him, hey, where'd you get that lunch? Where'd you get that food? Well, I bought it at the market. How'd you buy it at the market? Well, I had money. Who gave you the money? My dad. How'd your dad get the money? Well, he's got a job. How'd your dad get a job? Well, it's a family business. His dad had a job. Oh, so your dad was, he was born into that job, pretty much. Well, yeah, you could say that. You see where I'm going? Who allowed him to be born into that family? Why was that boy's dad from the family with a job and money and that boy's dad from a family with no job and no money. Why did that happen? It's God's divine providence. It's the way of the world. But in that boy that day, I don't know, maybe I'll meet him in heaven one day and I can ask him all the questions, but I wonder very much, was there any awareness at all on his behalf that man, those people don't, that the gifts and talents and abilities that his mom and dad had to either have a job or manage finances well, that provided for him to be able to eat that day, was all given to them by God. That was all God's providence. That was all God's goodness. That was all of God's love bestowed on his family. That had nothing whatsoever to do with him. I wonder if any of that occurred to that boy. I think what we find is that wealth often blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. I think what was happening potentially with that boy and what happens with us a lot, and when I say us, I mean me. If it applies to you, fine, but I know this happens with me, is that our wealth blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. Again, our primary strategy for provision is almost never prayer. When's the last time we prayed and we thanked God that he put us in a country where we didn't have to want and where we didn't have to struggle? When's the last time you prayed and you thanked God for your job? You thanked God for the gifts and the talents and abilities that allow you to work in that place. When's the last time we looked at literally everything we have and acknowledged that it is but by God's grace that I have these things. These are his provisions for me and the same way that these meals were a provision for the people 2,000 years ago. When's the last time the goodness of God's provisions occurred to us? Or have you, like me, so often in your life been blinded by the illusion of self-sufficiency? That somehow this American fable is true for you too and you picked yourself up by the bootstraps and you earned it all yourself. Did you now? I'm pretty sure God had something to do with that wiring. If it's true, what I preach all the time that we find in Ephesians 2.10, that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them, and that God created us and imbued us with a purpose and with gifts and abilities and talents to accomplish that purpose. And it just so happens that you've used those gifts and abilities and talents to also make you some money? Did you provide for yourself or did God provide for you? I think having often blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. And I don't say this to make us feel guilty. I don't want anybody here to feel bad for what you have and for what God's given you. But I think it's important to identify with the boy. To identify with history's haves. To identify with the person who has their lunch. So that we can appreciate the fact that the boy's life was profoundly changed because he gave. That boy, and I'm guessing, I would be willing to bet anything that his life was profoundly changed that day because of what he watched. Don't you know when he got home, he had a story to tell? Don't you know when he came home, and I honestly think he was coming back from the market with dinner. It could have been lunch, but I think it was dinner. Don't you think that when he got home and he had a whole basket full of food and his parents were like, who did you steal from? He was like, boy, do I have a story to tell you. I would love to hear him tell that story. And think about this. This to me is a sweet thought. Think about being that boy. And seeing those huddled masses. Hungry. You know they're hungry. And you you have food, and you're keeping it jealously. And Jesus asks for it, and you begrudgingly give it to him. And you watch Jesus break, and break, and break. How long does it take before you realize, oh, there's a miracle happening here? And he fills basket after basket after basket. And you see the joy in the eyes of the fathers as they're relieved that day that their family is going to eat. You see the children light up because they're going to get meat for the first time in two weeks. You see the mamas relieved making sure their families have it first. And you know that this came from your lunch. This was my food, and now I'm watching your family experiencing joy because of this. I don't know what the boy did, but if I were the boy, I would have grabbed a basket. I would have said, can you fill this one up too, please? And I would have taken it to the families and long since forgot that that was my lunch and just look at the joy on their faces. Can you imagine how it changed him to walk in the middle of that blessing, to watch that provision that he thought was his, that he gifted back to Jesus, to watch it multiply and be used in that way? Can you imagine how profoundly it changed that boy's perspective to give and to be invited into what Jesus was doing? He didn't do anything. He didn't ask for it. He didn't look for it. He didn't sign up on a volunteer sheet. He was minding his business, taking dinner back to his family, and Jesus is like, let me have that. Do you understand that he invited that boy into a joy that he might not have matched again in his life? What would it have been like to watch those children running and laughing and playing? To watch the mamas cry when their families are fed? Knowing that because you gave what you had, Jesus did this. And what a blessing did Jesus invite him into that he had nothing to do with. And so all of that makes me wonder, what could God multiply? How could God multiply the gift of our provision? And what is he inviting us into when he asks? How could God multiply the gifts of our provision? And what is he inviting you into when he asks you to give? God has provided for you. If you're in this room, your history's halves. How could he multiply the gift of your provision that you would give back to him? What is he waiting to show you when you give? Who could possibly be impacted thousands of times over when you give your provision back to God? And what sort of blessing might he be inviting you into? You're just trying to get home. I've got my lunch. I'm good. My family squared away. This is mine. I'm just trying to get home and give it to my family. And he grabs you and arrests you and says, hey, you've got this great opportunity. Do you think for a second that Jesus needed that particular bread and those particular fish? He could have changed the rock he was sitting on to bread and started to break that. He could have fabricated it out of thin air. There are myriad ways Jesus could snap his fingers and everyone just has baskets full of food. He did not have to invite the boy in at all. And yet, for some reason, perhaps to bless the boy and to let him see it and to let his disciples see it, he invited the boy into what he was doing. You are the boy. He's inviting you into what he's doing. He doesn't need you. It'll get done. He'll feed them and he will reach them. But man, he's inviting you into something big. Years ago, I was in Honduras with a team of high schoolers. And one was a student named Allison. And Allison was speaking to me one night after devotion. And she was just sharing, and I appreciated her bravery. And I think all people go through this. She was just sharing that she had some doubts about her faith. And she just didn't really know how this lined up and that lined up, and she wasn't sure. We kind of talked about it a little bit. The next day, we were in a village, and I don't use that term derisively. It was a village. And we had a pickup truck full of sacks of rice. And we were handing that out to the women. And the women formed a line. And I got in the back of the truck and we let the students give it to the people because we like for the students to see the look and the eyes of gratitude and for them to get the thank yous. And it is a sweet thing. And so Allison was at the end of the truck and I was handing her the bags rice, and she was turning and handing them to the ladies. And I noticed at one point that she had tears in her eyes from the joy of giving. And so later that day, I just sat down and I scribbled her a note. And I just said, hey, I know you're struggling with your faith, but Jesus has invited you into giving today. And the Bible tells us that what we do for the least of these, we do for him. You did Jesus' work today, and you felt his presence today in those women. Faith won't always make sense. And when it doesn't, cling to moments like that when God shows up in your life. When we give our gift of provision back to God, sometimes it helps us find Him. Sometimes it shores up our faith and it strengthens us. And it gives us these moments to grasp onto that reason can't really touch. Sometimes when we give, we find God there. I would argue, eventually, all the time when we give, we find God there. The other thing that happens when we give God our lunch back is I believe that we find purpose there. I believe that our life is immediately imbued with significance when we give. And I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about all of us. I was spending some time with somebody this week, and we were talking about this a little bit, and he just made the comment. He said, you know, my whole life, financially, it's been about me. My whole life plan has been about me. In my career, I just wanted to make enough money to retire comfortably, and then in that retirement, I didn't want my children to have to pay for me. I didn't want them to be responsible for me, and I wanted to be able to leave them a little bit as well, which I think is probably a pretty good summary of most of our financial goals. And he said, but it was such a mistake. It was all about me. And it's not supposed to be about me. I've learned now that I make it so that I can give it because of what Jesus is inviting me into. And I thought about here the propriety of enumerating the ways and the places that you could give to if you feel that Jesus is tugging on you to give, if he's asking for your lunch today. But I don't think I need to do that. You guys are smart and you have things you care about and you see places that Jesus is working. Give there. If you'd like more ideas about where to give, you can talk to me. That's not a joke. I'm not making a joke about getting money at Grace. I'm saying I know of other people who are doing amazing things, and we can talk about that too. But I would leave you with that question as we pray. How could God multiply the gift of our provision? And what is He inviting you into as He asks? Let's pray. God, You have given us so much. We thank You first for the relationships that You provide for us. For the friends and the loved ones and the families that we have to lean on. For the supporting people and the safety nets that you place around us. Father, I pray if there's someone here who needs the provision of relationships that you would give that to them, please. For those of us that have those deep friendships, who have families that we're able to lean into, God, we thank you. We thank you that we were born into a time and into a place where we, our histories, have. We pray that we would be good stewards of that. That we would see your provision in that just as we see it anywhere else. God, if our wealth has blinded us with the illusion of self-sufficiency, Lord, would you help us see through that? To see you as the provider? And finally, Lord, where we have opportunities to give, would we do it? And watch what you do with the provision that you gave us? Help us more and more, God, to be a generous people and to find you in that generosity. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning there, holiday weekend crowd. Thanks for being here and making grace a part of your Sunday. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and we are launching the new year with this series called Known For, where we're thinking about our reputation and why it's important and why it's actually valuable to God what His children are known for. And so last week, we talked about you as an individual. What are you known for? More important than that, what do you want to be known for as we sit here at the top of a year? And it's the time of year where we should be thinking about those kinds of things. And then even more importantly than that, what does God want you to be known for? And we see that he actually cares very deeply about how his children are known. And so this week, we want to broaden the circle a little bit and ask, what is your family known for? What do you want your family to be known for? And this question means different things to us at different seasons in our life. For many of us, young families are kind of the fastest growing area of our church, and so we have a lot of folks here who are in the throes of it, like me and Jen. We've got a seven-year-old, and how old is John? 20 months? 21 months? It doesn't matter. He's like one and a half, all right? He's about to be two in April. And so we're in the middle of it, and I was actually talking with somebody earlier in the week, and we were talking about family, family legacy, family reputation. And he used this phrase that he uses with his kids sometimes and that we hear kind of thrown out there. Like, you need to understand that you're representing your family. You need to, what you do stands for your, you're like, you need to think about what your family name stands for. You need to do honor to this family. And I kind of laughed and I said, it's been a long time since I thought about like honoring someone's family name because our kids haven't yet reached the phase where they can bring disgrace on our name, right? She's seven. What's she going to do, you know, that's going to bring us shame. But I can see potential shame from here, you know, like it's coming when they get a little bit older and they can start making some really questionable choices. And so some of you are right in the thick of it, like Jen and I. You're at the beginning of kind of establishing your family. You're looking ahead to who you want your children to be, to what you want their reputation to be, to what your family plan is, to what your goals are. Right now, we kind of talk about in our house that when John and Lily are adults, when they're in their 20s, we'd like to release them into the wild with as few reasons to go into counseling as possible. Understanding that if you grow up in my home, that's tough. It's going to be a challenge. But really, our goal for them is we want them to love Jesus, to love us, and to be people that we respect. Now that may change over the course of time, but that's kind of what we're shooting for. But you have what you're shooting for, and you have how you define those things. And like I said, maybe you're in the middle of it. Maybe you've got young kids and you're kind of projecting forward. Maybe you're like a lot of folks in the church and you're a little bit younger. You just got married, you're not married yet, or you are very single. You are so single that you have not spoken to a member of the opposite sex in like months and months and months. You're very, very single. And so the idea of thinking about family is a little bit awkward for you, but hopefully this is something where we can kind of project forward and think about what kind of family we do want to have, what we want that family to be known for, and who we can look for to help us build that kind of family. Or maybe we're on the other end of it. You've got teenagers. You know, you're kind of in that thick of it. Your family reputation has begun to be established, or maybe you have grown kids. But if you have grown kids, then maybe one day they have families, and maybe you can use what we learned today to guide them as your role in their life shifts. But I think for all of us, that as we think about what are our families known for, there's input from Scripture that can help us think about that maybe in a more clear-headed and healthy way. And so as I thought about what we want in our families, I was reminded of a conversation that I had with a friend of mine who's a photographer. And in her role as a photographer, she gets to take a lot of like family portraits. Just the kind of portraits that typically the wives randomly decide it's high time that we dress in our nicest clothes, pretend to be happy, and take pictures for an hour, right? This is the thing that we're supposed to do. And one of the things that we got to talking about that I thought was interesting, because there's a trend in my segment of the population to take family photos that look very similar. And I won't get into that trend and what they are, but they look the same. And I was talking about this with her, and she said, you know, it's interesting that different ethnic groups all like to take slightly different family pictures, like to dress a little bit different, like to pose a little bit different. They like to posture themselves, put themselves in a little bit different environments. And she can kind of tell what kind of family it is and where they're from based on what kind of family portraits they want to take. And I thought, oh, well, that's really interesting. And she thought about it for a second and she goes, yeah, I really just think it's just the different ways that different cultures portray success. Because when you take family photos, that's what you want to portray, isn't it? We've got it together. Things are going all right for the Rectors. How else would I afford this fancy quarter zip, you know? Like you want, oh, that seems like a nice home. It's nice and bright and white and sunshine spills in everywhere. They must be doing okay, right? That's what we want with our Christmas card when we send that out. We choose one that kind of projects success, projects that we're doing okay. Even like the zany ones, right, where the little kid is crying and everyone's making a silly face and they're like, just real life over here. It's like bull crud. You're all wearing matching outfits. OK, give me real life on Saturday morning when you're all disheveled and the baby's been crying. That's the real life I want. But if you're wearing matching outfits and making silly faces, that's not like we're just being real. No, you're not. You're trying to be funny. And it's not that funny, just for the record. And through that conversation, it kind of helped me see when we think about families and our goals, we all want the same thing. It may look different, but we all want our families to be successful. That's what we want. We want our children to be successful. We want in our marriages to be successful. We want our grandchildren to be successful. We want to be known for being successful. Now listen, we can define that in different ways. There's myriad different ways to approach success. Like I said earlier, right now, Jen and I try to keep it pretty simple. We want our children to love us, to love Jesus, and we want to be able to respect them. And that may be a pretty high bar. I don't know, but that's kind of idealistically how we think about things right now. You may have a different definition of success. Some are good, some are not as good, but I'm not here to critique any of them. Maybe we want our children to climb the corporate ladder. Maybe we want them to marry someone who's really, really respectable. Maybe we want to be able to respect their kids. Maybe we want to see really good spiritual health developed in our children and to see them be spiritual leaders. Maybe we want monetary success for them. I don't know what we're trying to set up for our families or what we're trying to pursue, but I bet that when it gets to the end of it, that what we're really pursuing is success. And the root of this, this desire for success, we can just admit together, okay, we don't have to tell anybody outside of this room, at the root of that desire for success is pride. Just self-centeredness. It's just we want people to think we have our act together. We want people to think we're good parents. We want people to think we did well. We want people to think we're making wise choices. We want people to think our family looks good, that our marriage looks good, that our kids behave themselves, that they've grown up and become respectable adults and they're raising respectable children. I mean, one of the things when you have kids our age, one of the things that's almost unavoidable is trying not to parent for the moment and trying to parent for the person that they're going to become, right? We're not trying to raise well-behaved eight-year-olds. We want a good contributing to society 28-year-old. Those are two different ways to parent there. And so a lot of our desire for success and the way that we can kind of lead ourselves and lead our families is rooted in pride, which is why this next truth really bums us out sometimes. The problem with wanting our families to be successful, with wanting our families to be known for success, with wanting everyone to perceive our family like the Christmas card we send out, is that family is messy. Family's messy. There's no such thing as a perfect family. There's no such thing as the family that actually does have it all together. You think about that Christmas card and that perfect nuclear family, the husband and wife smiling, hugging each other. The children are smiling, happy to be there. The dog that's obedient, which is just a waste in a Christmas card. And they look good. They look like they have it together. Meanwhile, that marriage, that marriage is dead, man. Mom and dad haven't flirted with each other in years. They can't remember the last time they did married people things. He hasn't taken her on a date in a long time. They are two ships passing. But for that picture, they can smile. Those kids see it too. Or maybe one of the kids has developed a behavioral thing that the parents are trying to keep under wraps because they're embarrassed to mention it. Maybe mental health has slid into the picture and it's starting for the parents and for the family to kind of chip away at this image they want to portray. Maybe the husband's job or the wife's job is not going as well as they want it to go. The guy's like one of those guys that just wakes up every day and puts on his work clothes and leaves the house so that his wife doesn't know that he was fired months ago. Maybe there's an unhealthy relationship with alcohol or with pills. Maybe there's stuff going on in the shadows of those lives that we don't know about. Maybe one of those kids is going to grow up to be a royal disappointment. But here's what we know. Because we're all in families, they're messy. They're never what they seem on the Christmas card. And that really jacks with what we want to be perceived as. It really messes with our idea of perfect family that we all want to portray to everyone else. But you know what? That's okay. That's okay because Jesus' family was messy. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but Jesus came from a really messed up family. In Matthew chapter 1, we can see his lineage all the way back to Abraham. So if you have a Bible, I would invite you to turn there. But Jesus did not come from a picture-perfect, cookie-cutter family. I'm just going to pick out one little snippet, verses 5 through 7, and you're going to read them with me. This is the genealogy of Jesus. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to Jesus. It's just a list of names, and it seems boring. This is one of those passages in your Bible reading plan that when you come up on Matthew chapter 1, you're like, God, I can skip this, right? Like, you don't really need me to read all these names. We'll still be good. I can still get my spiritual checkmark for the day. Because we don't often focus on this, but this passage has so much in it. So let's look at Matthew 1, 5 through 7. The author writes, was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam. And it goes on and on. There's generations before and generations after. But I want to take just this snapshot so that we can all see how imperfect our Savior's family was. The first name we mentioned is a guy named Salmon. He was married to Rahab, and they had a son named Boaz. Now Rahab, my Bible scholars know, lived in Jericho. Part of the deal with being a good Hebrew is that you trace your lineage all the way down to Abraham. You are purebred. Nothing but Hebrew blood runs in these veins, except if you're Jesus, there's this foreign woman from Jericho named Rahab that is now diluting the gene pool in your perfect little picture-perfect story. And Rahab, to boot, besides being foreign, was also a prostitute, which you wouldn't expect to find in the lineage of the Messiah, and yet there it sits. And they could have just said that Salmon begat Boaz, but they didn't. The author wanted us to know for all of history that Salmon married that prostitute that saved Joshua and Caleb when they were spying, and God honored Rahab. And he honored Rahab not just by saving her family, but by keeping her in Scripture for all of history so that we would know that her life is woven into the story of our Messiah and his imperfect family. And they had a son named Boaz. And Boaz eventually married another foreign lady named Ruth. It was a little bit, I don't know if I can say this in church, but the only way I'm going to find out is if I say it and then people get mad at me. So Boaz and Ruth had a little bit of a sugar daddy situation going on. He was older. She was younger. He was rich. She was not. He married her because she looked good. She married him because he was nice and had money. That's the situation. Now, I'm sure there's more to it than that. There's genuine affection. But when they showed up at the family reunion the next year, people were like, Boaz, dude, you sure about that? You could have just like, you know, left her at the house or something. It was an uncomfortable scenario. They had a son named Obed, who we assume was normal, but we only assume that because we don't have any details. I bet if we had some details on him, we'd find out some stuff about good old Obed. Obed had Jesse. Jesse had David. David is the second king of Israel. He was a man after God's own heart. He wrote most of the Psalms. He is a spiritual hero, but he had his son Solomon with a good friend's wife named Uriah. Again, they could have said by Bathsheba he had Solomon. They didn't. They said by Uriah's wife. They wanted you to know that David was a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. He had the guy killed to cover up the fact that he impregnated a woman that was not his wife. That's messed up. You know. And then David was a terrible father. One of his sons accosted one of his daughters. Another one of his sons, Absalom, tried to overthrow him from the throne. Mounted up an army, kicked him out of Jerusalem, ended up dying in the battle, and David lost a son who was trying to lead a revolution against him. Then he handed off the kingdom to Solomon, who was very wise and yet also a really bad dad. And he left his kingdom to Rehoboam, the last person we mentioned in the passage, who was such a jerk and had such a bad relationship with his brother Jeroboam that there ended up causing a civil war out of the line of Solomon. And all of this is in the line of Jesus. And sure, I've picked out an easy portion to pick on, but I would tell you that it's only easy to pick on because that's who we know the most about. But there's more stuff there. Even Jesus' immediate family. At some point or another, we don't know why, the Bible doesn't offer us details, his dad disappeared from the picture. We presume it was death, but we're not sure. And so Jesus grew up in a single-parent home. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with a single-parent home, but what I would assert is that very few people decide to build a family without a spouse to build it with. That being a single parent, while perfectly fine, was probably not in anyone's design when they started their family. And yet that's the family in which Jesus grew up. And he had half-brothers and sisters. He had a different dad than him. And I don't know what kind of relationship he had with them when he was alive, but I do know that when Jesus was dying on the cross, that he looked at his disciple John and said, my mother is now in your care. Will you take care of her for me in my stead? He did not trust that to his brothers and sisters, and I don't know why. But Jesus' family was messy. And if Jesus' family was messy, what shot do you have, man? But that's okay. I heard someone else say this, and I thought it's such a good point. The family that Jesus came from indicates the families he came for. The mess that Jesus comes from tells us the mess that he came for to sit in the middle of. So we should be comforted by the mess in Jesus's family. Because in a way, it shows us that he's ready for our mess too. And can I just say this? I don't know what your family plan is. I don't know what you value in your family. I don't know what you hope for for your children. I don't know what you hope for for your children's children. I don't know what you project forward. But if your family plan doesn't make room for messiness, then you are just planning for disappointment and resentment. If the plan that you have for your children, if the plan that you have for your marriage and for your spouse, if the plan that you have for your grandchildren and for your legacy does not make room for messiness, then you are simply making a plan to be disappointed and then have other people resent you for that disappointment. You're like my old buddy John back at my old church in Atlanta. He reached out to me one day and he said, hey man, listen, I'm just having some anger issues. Can we sit down and talk about it? I'm just mad all the time. I'm mad at work. I'm bringing it home to my wife and my kid. I don't want to do that. That's not the guy I want to be. Can we meet? I need to talk to a pastor. Sure. I skipped counseling for ministry in college, but let's see what we can talk about. And so he comes in, and he's just telling me, he's like, man, I'm just so angry. day. I get so angry at work, and then I carry it home, and I'm tired of that. And he was a general contractor. And I said, okay, man, well, like, what is it at work that makes you angry? He's like, you know, like, you get in, you've got a plan for your day, you show up, you're ready to do the cabinets, but you can't do the cabinets until the plumber's done, and the plumber's not there yet, and so we're sitting around all day waiting for the plumber to show up, and I'm wasting my money on my hourly employees. We're sitting there twiddling our thumbs doing nothing, and I'm losing money on this project, and it's driving me insane. Or, you know, I'll show up, and one of my guys didn't show up to work, and so I've got to work overtime, and I miss my sons, whatever. Or I show up, and the work is shoddy. They did a bad job. We've got to take the cabinets down. We've got to redo it. We've got to do this. We've got to do that. Or, you know, we forgot a tool. We got to go to Home Depot. We don't have the right screws. We got to run to Ace. Whatever it is, there's always these things that show up in my day and they throw off my plan and it never goes how I want it to go. And it just makes me mad. And then I get so mad. I spend my whole day worked up that when I get home, I'm still that way and I don't want to do it and I don't know what to do. And I said, well, John, I said, I have a little bit of work, a little bit of experience in that field. For six months after we got married, I was a trim carpenter, believe it or not. I was not good at it. I just was one. And I'm frankly grateful to have all of my digits the way I was using a chop saw back then. And I said, I said, John, listen, our experiences aren't the same, but I only had that job for six months. But there wasn't a single day in those six months where I showed up and everything went according to plan. There wasn't a single day we didn't have to run to Home Depot for something where everybody showed up on time and worked hard and diligently. It wasn't a single project we did where we didn't have to redo something. We had to plan for it not to go according to plan. And if your happiness requires everything in your day to go exactly as you need it to go so it can be the smoothest day possible. The only thing you're planning for is anger. So keep that as your standard if you want, but you're just going to exist angrily with maybe one day a week where that doesn't happen. And he's nodded his head. He was like, you're right. And I was like, good. I've solved that problem. You'll never struggle with anger again. Let's move on. When our family plan doesn't make space for our spouse to grow and change and become a different person in their 50s than they were in their 30s, then we're only planning for disappointment and resentment. If our family plan doesn't make space, isn't generous enough to expand and adapt the way we think about faith, church involvement, spirituality, then we're just making a restrictive plan that will lead to resentment. If our family plan doesn't make space for our children to struggle, for someone to get sick, for someone to be hurt, for our children to choose hobbies and interests that don't align with ours, if our family plan doesn't include space for our children to become a different kind of adult than we would have chosen for them, if it doesn't make space for our children to go through struggles that we wouldn't pick for them, then all we're doing is planning for disappointment and resentment. And in some of that mess, listen, in some of that mess, not all of it, but in some of it, don't you know that God is working? In some of that mess, in some of that pain, in some of that hurt, in some of that illness, in some of those struggles, in some of those choices that you can't understand, in some of that growth, and in some of that that change don't you know that God is working in the midst of that I went through things when I was a kid that my parents would have wished away if they could if they could have prayed it away they would have said don't let Nathan deal with this anymore they would have prayed it absolutely out of my life but yet as an adult in my role I know that God was working in those things to fashion me into who he wanted me to be, to use me how he wanted to use me, and it would have been to my detriment to pray those things away. We sat here and we sang loudly, I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. We declared loudly that there's nothing better than God. No, there's nothing better than you. I heard you sing it. You're trapped. I've got you now. If you meant it, that means you believe it for your families too. That means you believe it for your marriages too. That means you believe it for your children too. And that even though at different times in our life those elements of our families are walking paths that we might not have chosen for them, we trust that God is in the midst of them, working in what we feel like is a mess, working in the situations that we just casually leave out of the yearly update letter that we don't portray in our Christmas card. And it's not that we shouldn't pursue success. But I was having a conversation with somebody this week, Chris Sasser. A lot of y'all know him. He used to be a pastor at Grace. Now he's moved on to a church that's not quite as good. And he's the family pastor. No, it's a really wonderful church. He does a great job. He's a family pastor at a large church out in Wilmington. And when I was preparing for the sermon this week, I called him just to get his input on family reputation. And actually, Sass is going to be here at the end of the month for a special parent meeting, a special parent seminar that Erin, our great children's pastor, is setting up. The last one she did was before COVID, and I was just telling her the other day, there's things that she taught me that night that still run through my mind as I parent Lily. So if you're a parent, this is absolutely worth attending. If you haven't heard about it yet, just contact Erin, and she'll give you the information. But at the end of the month, SAS is going to come meet with us and kind of teach us how to be better parents, at least in part. And so I called him, told him what I was preaching about, what I was talking about, and asked him for his thoughts. Then he suggested this, and I loved it. He said, maybe we need to reshape the way we think about success. The messiness in families forces us to kind of redesign what success is. And he said, my suggestion to families is that they make health successful. So what I would propose to you is that healthy families are successful families. Healthy families are successful families. And it's important as I say this that we understand that the true definition of health is inviting Jesus into every aspect of our lives. The true definition of physical health, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health is inviting Jesus into every aspect of those things. And I love that word health because I had been talking with Aaron about this idea. Aaron, our children's pastor, not our worship pastor. I don't talk with him about anything. He's not very interesting. But Aaron, our children's pastor, and we kind of said that successful families are gracious families. We kind of honed in on this word grace because she made the great point that the family, the family dynamic is really, according to God's design, is really the first place where children encounter true grace. And if a child grows up in a home where they don't experience grace, how can they be expected to show grace to others? Or, sometimes more damagingly, how can they ever learn to show grace to themselves if no one else shows them grace? And so we were talking about that. The problem with grace is just saying that we want to be gracious families, is that there comes this tipping point where grace becomes enablement. And we don't want to do that. Because there's definitely scenarios and messiness in which the very last thing that husband needs is more grace. What he needs is a swift kick in the pants and some truth. And to look himself in the mirror and to change things. What he needs is a wife that's going to stand up to him and say, no, no, no, that's not what we do here. Sometimes what children need is the exact opposite of more grace. I've met 20-year-olds who had way too much grace growing up. I don't want to be friends with them. So we want to be gracious families. And I would even say we want to err on grace. If we're going to make a mistake, let's make a mistake towards being too gracious, but we can all agree that there comes a point at which grace is the last thing people need. What they need is some truth. What they need is some tough love. So that's why I think this word health is so much better. Because if we understand healthy to be inviting Jesus into every aspect of our life, then what a healthy family does is when the mess is made, they go, Jesus, how would you have us clean this up? Jesus, how are you using this in our marriage and in the life of our children to bring your glory? Jesus, how could this be shaping them that I'm not aware of? Jesus, should I be careful to pray this away because of what you're using this for? Health looks like when we admit that our marriage is broken and that we've become kind of co-CEOs of this family entity. Sitting down and actually praying with your spouse and saying, Jesus, we're broken. Will you show us how to fix this so that this is a marriage that reflects your love to the people around us? Health says, Jesus, my children are not doing what I think I raised them to do. Can you soften their hearts towards you and can you help me see them through your eyes? Health says, Jesus, I am sitting in the middle of a disappointment here. I am sitting in the middle of a mess, and I need you. Will you show me as a father? Will you show me as a mother? Will you show me as the child of an aging parent how to portray you in this situation? Healthy families don't run scared and hiding from messes because they know they're going to happen and we have the grace and patience for those. But in the midst of the mess, we say, Jesus, will you please come down here and help us? Will you please be here? Will you give me your spirit so that I will know the words to say and the prayers to pray and the things to do so that we can be a healthy family here? I think we need to do away with this ideal picture perfect family. Because we know enough of life to know that that family doesn't exist. So let's be the messy family. That isn't ashamed of it. That accepts it. That knows if we've got three kids, one of them is probably going to be a screw up. And let's live and love and invite Jesus into that. And it just makes me wonder, what if your family was known for being healthy? What if in your neighborhood, the other kids that run around, the other families interact with, the folks that you'd invite over for a barbecue, what if you weren't known for being perfect? What if you didn't try so hard to seem like you had your act together all the time? And what if you just let it be enough to be known for being healthy? What if we were known for handling our kids with grace? What if the neighborhood kids knew that because of the way you talk to your kids, they can trust you with hard things too? What if the other couples on your ball teams and in your workplace and in your neighborhoods saw your marriage and said, you know what, they're not perfect, but it does seem like they love each other. And were willing to come to you when theirs was struggling. See, here's what I think about healthy families. Last week, we said that God cares a lot about your reputation because there's nothing more convincing than a name. There's nothing more convincing. You take someone who's not a believer, they don't have a faith, and what we said last week is they probably got a reason. And if we just sit down and try to talk them out of it, that's largely a waste of time. The better thing to do is to love them like Jesus would over time. What's more convincing towards the faith than someone who claims to love Jesus and then actually loves them like they do? Similarly, what's more convincing towards the faith than a family who claims to love Jesus and yet in the midst of the messiness honors Jesus through it all, invites Jesus into it, portrays grace to the members in the family, doesn't try to project this false narrative about who they are outside of the family, and loves other families in the midst of their mess as well. What could be more convincing than that? At Grace, we get a lot of new families coming in. And I don't know what's going on in all the dynamics in all of those families. But if there are people who have been estranged from church for a long time and they come in and what we try to project as a good godly family is this picture perfect cookie cutter family that's so far from what they are and from what their experience is that it actually discourages them to see what a successful family looks like in this church. What if instead we had healthy families? They said, yeah, come on, get in our small group. We're a hot mess too. Just come on, we'll talk about it. Yeah, we also, we hate our children four days a week. It's just how it goes. Just come on in, We'll talk about this. We'll figure out how to pursue Jesus together through this. Isn't that so much more inviting? Isn't that so much more welcoming? Isn't that so much more convincing and approachable than trying to be picture perfect? So at Grace, let's be healthy. And when I say healthy, what I mean is, let's not pretend that we're not all messes. Let's just invite Jesus into that mess. Let's say, Jesus, how would you use this? How might you have us act in this? How might we clean this up? How might we portray you through this? And let's together, as a church family and as individual families, pursue health. A health that invites Jesus into every aspect of who we are and what we do. And offers the same grace to one another that he offers to us. Let's pray. Father, we do love you. And we do believe that there's nothing better than you. We do believe there's nothing better than what you offer us. God, I believe that many of us in this room have everything that we need for happiness and joy. We have everything that we need for a rich, full, rewarding life. Give us eyes to see those things that we might praise you, that we might worship you, that our hearts might be turned towards you so that we would invite you in more and more. Give us eyes to see your blessing. Help us to turn our eyes to you in the midst of messiness, in the midst of unexpected things, in the midst of disappointment, in the midst of hard marriages, or difficult children, or difficult family dynamics. Would we turn to you and invite you in and ask what you would have us do there? God, I pray that at grace you would raise up healthy families. For the mamas and daddies in the midst of it, God, give us a heart for that. For your son and for inviting him in. God, for the grandmas and granddads in the room who have now shifted to guiding their adult children. Would you give them the words and the wisdom to point them in this direction of help? To a place where we simply invite Jesus into everything that we're doing. And God, with the families that are hurting, that are sitting in the midst of a big mess, would you please just comfort them? Would you let them know somehow, some way, that they're not alone, that they don't have to be? Would you heal what hurts? For the parents that need it, would you give them a vision to see that you might be using this in ways that they can't understand, but they can trust you because you love their children more than they do? For those of us that might sit in the midst of disappointment or pain, I pray that you would be close to us. I pray that we would remember that you are the God that makes streams in the desert and paths in the wilderness and that you do new things. Would we trust those to you as well? We ask all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Man, that was good. I tell you what, I tell you what, I love you guys. I love this place. I love this church. It is so special. God's doing something here, y'all. He's doing something in me. He's doing something in y'all. And I fully, fully believe that the brightest days of grace are ahead, that he has a lot for us to do in us and through us. And I'm excited about those. This morning, we are starting a new series. And I got to say this too. I expected for this morning to be terrible. Can I just tell you that? I expected it to be dead in here, for there to be sporadic attendance, and for it to just be a lame Sunday. I'm coming back from South Africa. I don't know what day it is. I feel like eating lunch right now. I have no clue what's going on around me or where I am. We have a team coming back from Mexico that represents a lot of our core folks. Did you guys just clap for yourself? Is that what just happened? Good job, everyone. Yes, we are the best. We got students coming back from Metta. They're all ready to fall asleep. Yeah, this is great. And then it's the middle of October, and if you don't know anything about Grace in October, it's like July 2.0. Everybody goes to the mountains to see leaves, I guess. I don't know. They don't come here to see me, and so it's just kind of sparse here. And I thought this Sunday is going to be dead. And then I'm sitting here worshiping and I'm like, holy cow, God, this is amazing. That was some of the best, most energetic, enthusiastic, sincere worship I've heard come from us. And I'm just fired up, especially about what I get to share with you this morning as we start our new series called Great Prayers. So what we're going to do for six weeks is just open the Bible and look at some of the more impactful prayers that we see in Scripture. And hopefully by looking at these great prayers, we can become greater prayers, but we're not going to talk about how to pray. We're not going to talk about having devotions and that prayer time needs to be a part of our life. And here's why. We're simply going to look at some of the most impactful prayers and meaningful prayers in scripture and kind of ask the question, what can we learn about them for our prayers? And so the one that we're kicking off with is very near and dear to my heart. It's very special to me. This is my prayer over grace. It's what Rachel Gentile just read. As she got up here to read, I leaned over to Jen, and I said, she's just the best. And Jen has tears in her eyes because she loves Rachel. And she's like, I know. Maybe I'm just jet lagged. I don't know. And I don't love Rachel that much. Maybe I'm just fatigued. You're not a big deal, Rachel. It's whatever. We're glad you're here. But this prayer, it's the one that I pray over grace. My office at home, I've got it sitting in the corner now. I need to get it framed and then hang it up. But I've got this prayer written out on a big piece of paper in calligraphy that we had a friend of ours do for us. When I come and pray over children who are born at grace, this is what I pray over them. When I pray for grace, it's what I pray for grace. When I pray for my children, it's what I pray for them. When I pray for you, it's what I pray for you. And so for me, it's perfect that this prayer sermon is coming right on the heels of traits of grace, where we're saying this is what makes grace, grace, and this is who we are. And so now right on the heels of that, we say this is to me the prayer of grace. And I think it's safe to call it the prayer of grace because the greatest church planner of all time, one of the most influential Christians who ever lived, Paul, the apostle, is the author of this prayer. And what I think is cool about it is that it's really mirrored throughout the rest of the Pauline epistles, the other letters that Paul wrote to the churches. So for those of you who may not know exactly what Paul did, you just know he's kind of a name of one of the saints that we talk about in church sometimes. Paul wrote a third of the New, or two-thirds of the New Testament, as far as the books that are attributed to him. Paul planted seven to ten churches right after Jesus died. He's responsible really for the early church movement throughout Asia Minor. And once he was converted on the road to Tarsus, Paul spent the rest of his life traveling around these cities on the Mediterranean coast, planning churches and encouraging the church leaders and the people within those churches, and then writing letters back to those churches as he was going on his four different missionary journeys. If you count the journey on the slave ship that shipwrecks at Malta and then eventually makes it to Rome, then there's four journeys. And so all through those journeys, he's visiting the churches and then he's writing letters back to the churches that he's already visited or that he longs to visit. And in most of those letters, he has a prayer. There'll be a preface and it'll say something like, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And that's what we see in Philippians. And sometimes it says, whenever I think of you, I pray for you and here's what I pray. But if you'll read Paul's letters carefully, what you'll see in these prayers when he prays for those churches is that they're remarkably similar and that he essentially prays for the same thing for all the churches. And so it's interesting to me to look, what does Paul pray for the churches? What's the singular thing that he wants? What does he always pray for no matter what else is going on? But before we look at and examine what he prays for, I thought I would ask you what you think you would pray for. Put yourself in the shoes of Paul. You spent your life planting these churches, investing in these people. You want to see them grow. You want to see them flourish. You want to see the communities evangelized and reached. You're hopeful for these churches. Not only that, a lot of these churches exist in cities and in empires that are under persecution and oppression, where it might even be illegal to be a Christian and to be in these churches and definitely to be leading these churches. So if you were to write a letter to these churches and you were to include in that letter a prayer, here's what I hope for you. Think with me sincerely, what would you pray? What would you hope for them? What would you want for them? Would you pray for safety? I would. Would you pray for relief from persecution? Would you pray in a day and age when a life expectancy isn't long? Would you pray for health? Certainly you would know some people there who were ailing. Would you pray for the success of the church? May you reach the community. May your love abound so that others come to know Jesus. Would you pray for the health of the church, for the wisdom of the leaders? If you were Paul, what would you pray for? And then think about it in terms of the people that you do pray for. Hopefully, hopefully you pray for the people in your life. If you have kids, hopefully you pray for them regularly, if not daily. If you don't, that's okay. Maybe you have an eight-year-old and you're thinking, gosh, I have not really prayed for that kid very often the first eight years of their life. Okay. Well, they don't have to go any more years without you praying for them daily. So start doing that now. Hopefully you pray for your spouse. Hopefully you pray for them daily. If you don't, that's okay. They've gone however long they've gone without you praying for them daily. But start now and don't make them live that life anymore. Pray for them daily. Hopefully you pray for the people that you love. Hopefully you lift them up to God and you ask for what's best for them. And when you do, what kinds of things do you pray for them? If we pray daily, maybe there's daily prayers, but I think a lot of us probably relegate prayers for others to when there's something urgent going on in their life, right? When there's a tricky relationship, when they've reached a difficult season, when they're awaiting news for a diagnosis or they've received it and now they're undergoing treatment, when there's a difficult situation at work, when there's a difficult situation with their family, with their kids, or with their marriage, then we lift them up. And so when we do, it's often a petition, right? God, save their marriage. God, help them here. God, help me here. Help them do that. God, I just pray for protection for my children. We've got one girl in the youth group who recently turned 16. I'm very certain that her parents are praying prayers of safety on the road and for the other drivers who are around this particular young lady. Those are the kinds of things we pray for, like circumstantial help in this situation. And listen, those are good prayers. They're good prayers. And we see those throughout the Bible. We see David say that God is his fortress and his strength and he prays for protection. We see Paul at different places pray for healing. We see Paul pray urgently and petition God that communities would be reached and that the gospel would be expounded. So we see all of those prayers in scripture. But when we look at Paul's prayer, to me, as we read it, and I'll read it again here in a second, to me it speaks just as loudly what he doesn't pray for as what he does. And I think that we have a lot to learn from that. So let's look again at the prayer that Paul prays, and let's ask together, what is it that he's asking on behalf of the church. Verse 14 in Ephesians chapter 3. So here's what Paul prays. the triune God, that you would be strengthened by the Spirit, that you would be indwelled by the Christ, and that you would be filled with the fullness of the Father, resulting in knowing God along with the saints. So when we say knowing God this morning, we mean the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So Paul's prayer is that we would know God. That's the prayer, that you would know God. Not for safety, not that everything would be okay, not that the people would be healed, not even for success and growth of the church, not for anything circumstantial, but a singular prayer for them is that they would know God, that they would know him deeply and so commune with the other saints that know him. And it is my prayer for you that everything in life would push us to this place where we know God more deeply. It was the apex value for Paul. Again, do we see in other places him praying for those things? For safety and for protection and for growth and for the expounding of the gospel? Yes, absolutely, he prays for those things. But it's not the first thing he prays. It's not the apex value. It's not what's most important to him. To help us think about this idea of like this apex value, this thing that's so valuable to me, I'm going to pursue it above and beyond anything else. I'm going to tell you a snippet of the story of me getting home from South Africa, which is a heck of a story. But our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg kept getting delayed. And we had to catch a flight in Johannesburg from Johannesburg to Atlanta. And that margin of time between when we were going to land and when we needed to be at our gate kept shrinking. And I'm looking at my buddy that I'm traveling with, and it kind of dawns on both of us, because he's a more experienced international traveler than I am, and he didn't do me the favor of advising that I not check a bag. So this is really his fault, and he owes me money. But I didn't know not to check a bag, so I had a small bag, and I checked it, figuring it's an international flight. We're going to be there for six days. It seems like the time you check something. Anyways, I checked it. So we're looking at each other going, and he's like, dude, you ain't going to get that bag. You do not have time to go to baggage claim, go to check-in, go through security, and get to the gate. You've got to choose. Do you want what's in that bag, or do you want to get on that flight? Do you want that stuff, which, in that bag, or my Crocs, guys? I know. I know. Oh, man. That's great. If you're watching online and you don't know what just happened, I'm not going to explain it to you. You just got to be here. You just got to be here. So sad. But I know I want to get home. I want to see my family. I want to see my church. I don't want to spend more money on another ticket that's going to cost more than the content of my bag. So even though I really want that stuff and I like some of that stuff, it's just my apex value in this situation, my biggest value, my biggest priority is to go home. So even though it hurts a little bit, I'm going to make a choice to pursue the thing that I need the most. It was the apex value. My value is to go home, see my family, to be in my house. Paul's value for us is that our souls would go home, is that our souls would find rest. And if on occasion we have to leave a bag behind to get closer to the Father, so be it. If on occasion the sickness is what's acting in our life to actually conspire to bring us closer to God and drive us to a deeper knowledge of Him that we would be filled with his fullness, then so be it. Paul prays that our souls would go home, that our souls would find rest in God, that they would go there first and foremost, and that that's what we would want to sacrifice anything else for the sake of knowing God. Maybe this is why Paul writes in Philippians 3.8 that he considers everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. So if we want our prayers to mirror the ethic of Paul, then when we pray for ourselves and we pray for others, we pray that our souls would go home. We pray that our souls would find their rest in God, no matter what else we have to go through. So if we have a child who's wondering and they don't know about their faith and we see them making decisions that we might not make, the prayer to pray for that child is, God, would everything in their life that they're experiencing somehow conspire to push them closer to you so that they might go home? When someone is sick, sure, we pray for them to heal, but we layer that prayer at the end with kind of a tip of the cap to Jesus' prayer, to the Lord's prayer where it says, not my will, but your will be done. Yes, Father, I pray that they'd be healed. Yes, Father, I pray that they would be okay. Yes, Father, I pray that you would bring relief in this situation. But more than anything, I trust you and I trust your sovereignty. And I'm praying that you would use everything in that situation, use all the circumstances in their life. I pray that they would conspire so that they might simply know you more so that their souls could go home and find rest in you. That's what we pray. And when you ask me to pray for you, when someone's sick or someone's's marriage is struggling, or someone's child is wandering, or things are hard, I always pray the thing that you ask me to pray. But I always follow it with, but God, whatever you choose to do here, would the circumstances conspire to push them closer to you, that they might be filled with your fullness, that they would be indwelled by your Spirit, that they would be strengthened by your Spirit, indwelled by your Son, that they may be filled with the fullness of the wisdom of the Father, that they might know you. So I want to encourage you too, parents, as you pray for your children, pray this prayer over them. We can't possibly see all of the winding roads that may eventually lead them to a greater depth of faith. I can tell you in my own life, there's been two times in my life when I thought, I'm going to have to walk away from this. I can't believe this anymore. This is untenable to me. And one is way more recently than you think it was. But that when I walked through it, and when I got honest about the God that I was pursuing, and when I started pursuing answers to the questions that I had, God opened my eyes to a greater faith and a greater depth of desire for Him. And I feel like as I walk through those points of inflection in my life that God used them to bring me closer to Him so that I might desire Him more. We never know how God is weaving lives to bring us closer to Himself. So sometimes we don't pray away the circumstances that He has brought about to work in. Sometimes we simply trust Him. All the time we simply trust Him. And we say, God, not my will, but Your will be done. We say, Father, I just want to echo Ephesians 3 and pray that everything that happens in the life of this person would conspire to push them closer to you, that they might know you more, that they might know what it is to walk in your peace. That's our prayer for others. That's our prayer for Grace, that God, whatever you do here, if we languish in the small room with the pole in it for the next six years, who cares? God, with all the events that Grace conspire, that we might know you more and do greater things in your name so that other people might come to know you more through us. Who cares where we meet? If we move into a big fancy new building and we do it in a year and a half because God just decided that's what we need to do and hundreds more people come, who cares? God, with the events of these people coming, conspire so that they might know you more and be pushed closer to you. It's our only prayer. And if you were to ask me, Nate, why is this Paul's apex value? Why is this the thing that he feels is most important? Well, the first answer and the most important answer is this is exactly what we were created for. This is why God made us, so that he could share Himself with us so that we would know Him. That's what heaven is. I think we mess up. I think we make a mistake when we make heaven about our personal salvation. Am I in or am I out? Am I going to burn or am I going to be in there for forever? That's kind of silly. The purpose of heaven is that we would be reunited with our creator God and experience eternity in harmony with him forever. The purpose of heaven is that we fulfill our ultimate purpose of just knowing him. And so every inch we move closer to knowing God, every bit of depth that we gain in our knowledge of him, every bit of closeness that we experience in our relationship with him is a way to bring heaven down here on earth. And so not only we experience heaven, but those around us get a little glimpse of what heaven's going to be like with every inch that we move closer to the Father, with every embrace that he uses to pull us in as this small reflection of what heaven will be one day. That's why Paul prays that we would know him. But as I was thinking about it this week, writing this sermon on various flights at who knows what time of day it was, depending on the time zone, this thought occurred to me that, you know, we are at our most gracious and most peaceful when we are experiencing the most closeness to God. Another way to say it is, the closer we get to God, the more grace and peace that we walk in. The closer I get to God, the more I pursue Him, the more I know Him, the more I love Him, the more I experience Him, and I feel his goodness in my life, the more gracious I am with myself and others, the less annoyed I get in traffic, the less annoyed I get with my kids, the less obnoxious I think someone is, and the more I realize they're just a hurt person who's hurting other people, and they need God's goodness just like I do. Isn't it true? In the times in your life, when you look back and you would say, or maybe it's right now, and you would say, I'm as close to God as I've ever been, or in that season I was as close to God as I've ever been, weren't you also your most gracious with yourselves and with others? And isn't it a good indicator that we're not walking with God when we begin to lack grace for ourselves and we begin to get really hard on others and we become harsher versions of ourselves? And isn't it true that the closer we get to God, the more peace we experience? And the more we know him, the more certain we are that he'll take care of us. I did not know. I did not know if I was going to be home today. Catching that flight was, I don't think you can cut it closer. I really didn't know if I was going to be here. But I also really didn't pray about it that much. My only prayer while I was sitting there wondering if I was going to make it was, God, if you want me home, I'll be home. If you want me to preach, I'll preach. If you don't, I won't. And I'll get to keep my crocs. So Lord, your will be done. There was an upside to both, you know? But my only prayer was, Father, do what you want. I trust you. Whatever, if you want me to get home, we'll get home. It's kind of like, it's one of the things that raising the money for the building taught me. We did the campaign really, really dumb and it was just kind of like, well, you know, God, if you want us to have the money to buy the land, then we'll have it. If you don't, then we won't. Now we need to raise more money to get into the building. And you know what? If God wants us to have the money, you're gonna give it. And if he doesn't, you won't. Okay. The closer you get to God, the more peace you experience in life. And so I think it's, and honestly, the times in our life when we're drifting from God are sometimes the times when we get most honest and we try to seize the most things and we worry about the most things that we can't control. And then the closer we drift to God, the more of his peace that we feel. And so I think it's very true that the more we know God, the more gracious and peaceful we are. And as I was thinking about that, I was also reminded of the fact that Paul signs off almost all of his letters, grace and peace. He almost always says grace and peace to you, to the saints and wherever. And I've always paid attention to that. And I've always wondered why that is, especially if you juxtapose it or you compare it with the passage in Corinthians, where it says these three things remain, faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. Like why doesn't he ask for faith, hope, and love to you and all the saints? He doesn't do that. He asks for grace. He wishes them grace and peace. I've always wondered why. And maybe, just maybe, it's because Paul knows that grace and peace are byproducts of knowing God. Paul knows that if God answers his prayer in Ephesians 3, 14 through 19, and then Colossians 1 and in other places, that the people in the churches will know him. And if they know him, they will be people who are filled and who will walk in grace and peace. And so by blessing them and wishing upon them grace and peace, what Paul is really doing in his Pauline way is saying, I hope you know God. I hope you grow closer to him. And so I'm praying grace and peace unto you this morning as well. If you are a praying person, I hope that this great prayer can influence the way that you pray for others. Sure. Pray for the circumstances. Pray for protection and pray for health and pray for success and pray for reconciliation and pray for forgiveness and pray for all the things. But layer over them this apex value from Paul, that the person you're praying for, that the body that you're praying for, the family or the church or the people that you are praying for, would simply know God. That even in the circumstances that you're praying for, that all of them would conspire in some miraculous and unknown way to draw people closer to the Father, that He would use those circumstances to pull people near to Him, that they might experience the grace and peace of their soul going home with God. If you're not someone who prays for the people in your life regularly. Okay. You don't have to be that. If your children have not had the benefit of a praying parent, they can now just start. If your spouse hasn't had the benefit of a praying spouse, if your friend hasn't had the benefit of praying friends, if your co-workers haven't had the benefit of a praying co-worker, okay, they can. Anytime you want. So I hope you'll be people who pray for people. And when you do, I hope that you'll pray according to the ethics of Paul as he prays. That whatever happens, whatever they experience, whatever highs and lows they walk through, that if there's success in their life, celebrate that success, but pray fervently and ardently that it would bring them to a deeper knowledge of God. If there's struggle in their life, pray for a relief of that struggle, but pray first and foremost that that struggle would bring them to a deeper knowledge of their God that they might walk in grace and peace. As I encourage you to pray that for others, let me pray that over you as we wrap up. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you're doing in this place. I thank you for what you're doing in me. There's so many things to pray for. In this room, God, there are struggles that no one knows about. There are hurts and hangups that have not been articulated or that have. Our mind goes to places of stress and of urgency. And so, God, I pray that your hand would be in all those. In this room, God, there's also seasons of celebration, of goodness, of sweetness, of joy and blessing. Whether it's in the highs or in the lows, God, may we not forget that you are the author of those things. And may everything happening within them conspire to push us closer to you. God, I pray for grace. I pray that you would work in the lives of the people who are here and who are at home. And that all the circumstances that are working in their life right now would conspire to bring them closer to you. That they would be strengthened by your spirit. That they would be indwelled by your son. That they would be filled with the fullness of the father. Help our souls to find their rest in you, to go home to you, and so walk in the grace and peace that you offer us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. It's good to see you. Thanks for being a part of the Mother's Day service. To the moms, happy Mother's Day. We hope that it is all that you dreamed. I had one mom come up before the service and say, not that you asked for my opinion. She's a dear friend. I said, not that you, she said, not that you asked for my opinion, but just so you know, baby dedication on Mother's Day is not a gift to mothers. We empathize with you, mysterious friend, and I'm sorry, but everybody else really liked it. I don't know what to tell you. And to those for whom Mother's Day is difficult, Jen and I walked through difficult Mother's Days. For those to whom Mother's Day is kind of just a reminder of maybe something that you don't have or that you've lost or that you've hoped for, and that is unrequited. Our hearts are with you, and our prayers are with you. And I always say that in Mother's Day services, and as I look out now, I get to see some babies that I prayed for, that belonged to some mamas that I hurt for, and that's a real blessing. We're taking a break from our series in the letters of Peter this morning for really, I guess it feels silly to say it since I'm the one doing it, but a special Mother's Day message. But this is something that I will confess to you. I'm really excited to share. I feel really strongly and deeply about what I'm going to share with you this morning. And what I'm going to share with you is actually one of my primary motivators in ministry. It is one of my primary motivators to hang in there in ministry. It's one of the things I care most deeply about. And I will warn you, I've come prepared. I've been on the razor's edge of emotion this morning. I was supposed to pray at the end of the service. There's no way that's going to happen. You'll see why. But I bailed out of that before the service started. Because I'm going to sit there next to Jen and feel the freedom to be a mess if I want to be. But I'm going to do something that I don't normally do this morning and just talk to parents. Those of you who dedicated your babies. This is for you. And those of you who are family members, this is for you. And then parents in the room, this is for you. And I don't normally do this because I don't want to exclude any portion of the audience, but I'm going to take the license and the liberty here on Mother's Day to just talk to the parents in the room. And as I do that, I wanted to begin by asking you this question and get you thinking about this along with me. What sort of legacy are you leaving for your children? One day when you're gone and your children, Lord willing, have their own families and their own people in their life who love them, what will your legacy be to them? Because we're all leaving one. Make no mistake about that. We are all of us legacy builders. We all leave behind something. And there are myriad legacies to leave. We could leave an affinity for a sports team. We could leave a legacy of being a Red Sox fan or an unfortunate Panthers fan, whatever your legacy might be. We can leave behind fandom if we like. I'm going to continue to pray for your children, Shane, as you bestow that legacy on them. It's unfortunate. We can leave behind a legacy of generosity, of kindness, of hospitality, of grace. And then we all know, and I think our greatest fear as parents is to leave behind legacies that our children do not want to emulate. To leave behind legacies that wound those who have been entrusted to us. Of sin and struggle and failure. And make no mistake, we will all leave some of those too. But God in his goodness can clean up that mess for us. But we all leave legacies. We are all building them. And I think it's good to remind us of that because it's a sobering thought. It's an arresting thought. And if we just go throughout our days, I don't think that we pay attention to that. I don't think that we are reminded of that. I don't think that we are aware of that. We can be so hurried and harried that we're just trying to get people to the next thing. All kidding aside, getting kids up and getting them bathed and getting them ready to be seen by the whole church and then having the whole church laugh at your child. That was nice. And Jen had to do it by herself. That's stressful. You're not thinking about legacy when you're trying to dry a kid's hair and just get them in the dang car. Can you just sit down? We've been doing this for six years, all right? You know the drill. Get in the car. You're not thinking about legacy. You're not thinking about legacy when you're driving them to soccer practice and when you're picking them up and when they're out of town and when you're just going throughout the day and trying to decide another day what in the world dinner is going to be today. You're not thinking about legacy. But whether we like it or not, realize it or not, we are every day building a legacy for our children to follow and to walk in. And so more pointedly, what sort of spiritual legacy are you leaving behind? What will they learn about God from you? How will they see his love in you? Mamas, how will they watch you love their daddy in such a way that compels them to either find someone like you or be more like you when they grow up? Dads, how will your children see you love their mom? Will it be in such a way that compels them to love just like you did or to demand that someone loves them like you? What sort of legacy of marriage and family will we leave for our children? What sort of legacy of godliness will we leave for them? Will they see you open your word daily? Will they hear you teach them the principles of God as is dictated to us in Psalm 78 and in Deuteronomy and in Numbers? Will they not only hear you teach those things, but watch you walk them out and believe in and trust in your integrity? Will they know in their hearts that who you are on Sunday is every bit who you are on Wednesday night too? And is every bit who you are as you go into and out of your workplace? What sort of spiritual legacy will you leave? Because I am convinced, having watched children grow up in the church for 40 years, Having experienced adulthood myself, having watched my friends and my peers enter into adulthood and into parenthood and go through life, I am convinced that this is true, that you cannot overstate the value for an individual of growing up in a home where that child knows, my God loves me and my parents love me and they believe in me. You cannot overstate the value of that truth in the life of an adult. God, my creator, loves me. My mom and my dad, they love me. And God and my parents, they believe in me. And I want desperately for this church to produce children who know those things are true. I pray most ardently for the families in this church who are raising kids that those kids will grow up and they will know my God loves me, my parents love me, and they believe in me. You cannot overstate the value of those truths and the impact they have on our lives as adults. And to that end, some of us in the room, as we all acknowledge that we build legacies, some of us are legacy carriers. Some of us inherited a rich and deep faith from our parents, and it is our job to pick up that banner and to carry it forward with faith and with consistency and with passion. And we stand on shoulders of people who have come before us, who have chosen to prize Jesus in their life and have bestowed that richness of faith upon us. And our job as the carriers is to pick up the banner and go with it. And if you are a carrier of a legacy, you know the blessing that that is. You know the advantage that gives you. If you lived any life as an adult, you know the wealth that that has to grow up knowing, man, my God loves me and my parents love me and they believe in me. And to enter into adulthood being certain of those things and to have your own children and not have to worry and not have to be confused. What does godly parenthood look like? Because your parents faithfully modeled that for you. So all you do is you take the baton and you run with it. So some of us are legacy carriers. And you know the blessing of what that is. Others of us are tasked with being legacy starters. Others of us have parents, grew up in homes that may have been wonderful, may have been full of love, and maybe your parents bestowed upon you some wonderful traits of kindness and graciousness and generosity, but you did not learn from your parents what it was to love Jesus. You did not see godliness and devotion to Christ modeled in your home on a day-to-day basis. And so you don't know what that looks like as an adult. You're a legacy starter. You're a legacy beginner. You are tasked with making the decision to say, the generations that came before me, they didn't value godliness. They didn't teach the love of Christ in their home. They just were clouded and they didn't see it and they didn't have it. And I've entered into adulthood and I'm gonna draw a line in the sand that from now on, the generations that come in my family that have my last name will know that Jesus loves them. And you make a choice that moving forward, the name that you're giving to your kids is going to mean something different than the name that you got when you were a kid. You're a legacy starter. And for you, I pray the hardest. I don't know if it's fair. I don't mean to neglect anyone else, but you're the ones I love the most. You are the ones for whom I carry the most hope because I know it's hard to start a legacy. I've seen the wounds that you enter into life with. I've seen how hard it is to choose faith when you don't know the way. And I, with you, hope that your kids don't have to figure that out. I hope that they don't have to learn the lessons that you're learning. I hope that they don't have to walk the path that you've walked. I hope that you can walk it for them so that they might be legacy carriers, so that they might carry the baton on from you. And I pray hardest for you because I do think that your path is more difficult and because that's who my parents were. I won't get into the details because it's probably not appropriate here, but for different reasons, each of my parents had to draw a line in the sand and say, our name is going to mean something different when we give it to our children. And it did. And they've said it. And I get the blessing of being a carrier. I get the blessing of standing on shoulders and I've watched them struggle and I've watched them try and I've watched them prize Jesus in our home. And for those of you who are legacy starters, I want you to grow old and look at your children and see the struggles but know that it was worth it. And if you play your cards right, one day, one of your children could be the pastor of a tiny church straddling an aquarium store. And church, as we seek to surround these families. As we seek to surround these families. And at the beginning of the service, we stood, all of us. We are part of building that legacy too. In our small groups and in the ebbs and flows of life. As passions might wane, as other things in life might seek to interfere with the goals of the families and the parents. It's our job as a church to step in, to rally around, to protect, to pray for, to support, to challenge, to convict, to hope, and to see these families through as we all leave legacies. Grandparents, you're leaving one too. Your children will remember how you loved on and cared for their children. It's great if you're the fun one. Be the godly one. Be the praying one. Be the supportive one. Be the one that fights for their marriages. Be the one that loves your children well. And your children will inherit that legacy too. And let us remember remember as we seek to build these legacies, as we surround the parents who seek to leave a wake of godliness behind them, that our goal is not to raise well-behaved 10-year-olds. Big deal. Our goal is to release grown adults into the world who know that God loves them, that you love them, and that God believes in them, and that Christ died for them. Our goal is to raise grown adults who know that God loves them and he cherishes them. When I pray for my children, I pray that they would know God better than I do. I pray that they would love Jesus more than I do. And I pray that I would see things in their walks and in their journeys that inspire and convict me. I pray that they will go further than I do. And to put a fine point on it, what we are praying for is Ephesians 2.10. Ephesians 2.10 says that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. And I love that verse because it tells us that God created us intentionally, on purpose, so that one day we might walk in the good works that he has laid out for us, that he has designed us for, that he has gifted us for, that he has turned us towards in our various bents. But as I think about it this morning, it occurs to me that that is the job of the parent, is to know and acknowledge that your children are God's workmanship. And they were created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has purposed them for before the beginning of time that they might walk in them. So as a parent, your role is to raise children who have ears to hear and eyes to see the good works that God has created them to walk in and then have the courage and the faith and the love and the passion and the freedom to walk in those good works. That's what we pray for. That's what we hope for. That we will release out of grace for generation after generation legacy carriers, not starters. That we will release generation after generation at Grace kids into the world who know that they are God's workmanship and they are seeking out the good works that they might walk in that God intentioned and purposed them for. That is our hope and our prayer for the families of Grace. And that is the challenge to the parents of Grace. And in light of that challenge, as we wrap up the service today, I'm going to invite the band up to sing a prayer over us. It's a song called The Blessing. And it's pulled straight from Scripture. It's pulled straight from Scripture most pointedly. You'll hear these words that are written in Numbers chapter six. The author writes this, the Lord spoke to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. You should say to them, may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace. This song is an amalgamation of a passage in Deuteronomy that tells us to teach the word to our children, to put it on our walls, to repeat it to them in our coming and in our going. It's an amalgamation of this passage in Numbers and even the passage that we read from Psalms, a generation after generation, that if we can establish a legacy, then generation after generation can take that baton and run with it. And so this song is a prayer. And I'm going to invite you to just sit and let it be sung over you, parents. And in the song, there's this word, amen. And in the case of this song, it means I agree, I affirm that, yes, Lord. So in light of our role as parents, in light of our responsibility to leave behind a legacy worth following, I hope that you'll receive this song as a prayer over you before we go back out into our weeks.