Sermons tagged with Parenting

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This last week on Wednesday, it was Lily's spring break. Lily's my seven-year-old daughter. She's going to play prominently in the following story. It's her spring break, and so Jen said, can you take the day and come with us to the zoo? Which I have a love-hate relationship with the zoo. I love the fact that my kids get to see animals. John, my two-year-old son, he'll be two in a couple of weeks, he loves animals. He says all the animal names. He's probably in that room right there saying animal things right now. Like, he just loves animals. So for him to be able to see animals for the first time, super cool. So I love that part. What I don't love about the zoo is literally everything else about the zoo. It is a cacophony of annoyances, particularly for me. I'm a man that probably has a disproportionate amount of pet peeves. I'm not saying I have a right to them. I just have them. I don't really know what to do with them. The chief among those are people who are walking slowly, just anywhere, just slow walkers. What do you, like saunterers in general, what are you doing? And then like if you're injured or something, I get it, okay? I got patience for that. But if you're just slow, I don't, like, move it along. And then another, like, huge one for me is when somebody seems to have no awareness whatsoever that there's anybody else around them that might need to use the same space that they're using. You know, like the people who just walk around like this, and they'll just stop. Like, it's crowded, okay? It's a beautiful day. It's spring break. I've never seen this many people at the zoo. It's so crowded. We're shoulder to shoulder, and some people are just going, oh, I'm sorry. Like, what do you mean you're sorry? Like, there's every, everybody's walking. You didn't, you thought that you were the one who was just alone and there was no one behind you. So anyways, I was just kind of on edge all day, right? And you go, and then the other thing, just so I can get this off my chest, I've got, I've got my two-year-old son. We got to, first of all, he doesn't want to be in the stroller. So when you put him in the stroller, you better be moving, baby, because he's going to start wiggling out of that thing. And I'm not going to buckle and unbuckle him every time. I can't be opening and shutting all those buckles. So then we're going and we get to the thing and you got to pick him up. My back's been hurting me. If you go to the zoo, it's like an eight mile hike. It's forever. It's the world's biggest land zoo. Big deal. Put the animals closer to me so I don't have to walk so far. I don't care about their habitat. Make them depressed and lifeless. Just I want to see them. So I got to pick up John, and I'm walking over to the display to look. And the thing that galled me is there's adults there. They're grownups, okay? And they're the ones standing in the front looking at the animals. Like, buddy, you're 35. Like, you've been to a zoo before. Can you just move out of the way for the kids? Like, I have no problems with kids standing and gawking, but, I mean, grownups, like, let's go. You got like a 10-second window. There's the giraffe. All right, move on. So anyways, I'm just going through this whole day. We get to the middle, we get to the junction, it's time to eat. I don't have a lot to say about what was there, except the wait was extraordinary. And we got two cheeseburger meals and a kid's meal and two bottles of water, and we paid $57 for it. And it was, this is not an understatement, atrocious. It was terrible. It was frozen brick burger that some guy tossed on the flat iron thing until it was warm enough to put between buns. Cheese wasn't melted. I have never, I have never had a greater discrepancy between the amount of money I paid and the quality I received. Never in my whole life. That's lunch at the zoo that day. Then we still got North America to go. There's Africa. You walk through Africa. I'm just halfway through the day. And I'm trying to hold it together. Jen's like, you know, it's kind of obvious when you get a little bit frustrated. And I'm like, what did I do? I was trying to be nice. Like, cause I'm, I'm trying to not ruin family day, you know, cause I can get over the edge and now everyone's having a bad time. So I'm just trying to mind my P's and Q's and white knuckle it to happiness. And she's like, well, it's, I said, well, how can you tell that I'm frustrated? And she, and this is what she said. I thought it was hilarious. She goes, it's just the way you hold your mouth. What do you want me to do about that? I'll ask for pictures. I don't know. So we go through North America. We start to go through North America. And Lily's seven. We've been hiking for four days. So she starts to just start in with the seven-year-old whining, just normal whining stuff. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I need a snack. And in my head, I'm like, John's two. He's entitled to whining. I can't handle you whining too. So just suck it up, kid. Like, let's go. So that's starting to fray a little bit. And we get done. We're all exhausted. We get in the car. We go home. It's nice and peaceful and quiet. And you're resting because that's a whole thing. So everybody's exhausted. We get home. We rest for a little bit, eat a little bit of dinner. Lily's got soccer practice. So we go to soccer practice. She does great. We're walking back to the car, and we play at the Y. I don't know if you've been over to the Y off of Strickland. There's the lower fields that are a good half mile away from the car. The parking situation there is miserable. So you've got to walk up. I'm just a grumpy old man today. I don't know why I said today. You got to walk up to the car. It's a long walk to the car. So we're walking up to the car and Lily starts in with the whining again. My feet hurt. Daddy, can I have a shoulder ride? No, baby, you can't. Because earlier in the day, I gave John a shoulder ride. That's all she wanted all day is a shoulder ride. I'm like, you weigh 70 pounds and my back hurts. Like not today. I'm sorry. You should have had a younger dad. So I'm like, no, I can't do it. She keeps whining. My feet hurt. I'm like, well, there's nothing we can do about it. We got to get to the car. Daddy, I don't want to walk anymore. And finally I was like, sweetheart, you got to stop with the whining. I don't want to hear any more whining. Not another, not another word of whining, or I'm going to have to start taking away screen time tomorrow. Stop it. So then we're walking, and she's not saying a word of whining, but it's, I'm like, oh my gosh, I just want this day to end. She's exhausted. I'm exhausted. We get to the car, and she was supposed to make her water bottle before she left. Jen told her to do that. She forgot. I noticed that she forgot. I made her water bottle. I threw it in there. Then we get to the car, and she starts complaining that I didn't give her enough water. And I'm like, you wouldn't have any water if I didn't notice it and make you some. So literally any water that I gave you was enough water. And then we start this back and forth. She's tired. I know she's tired. She's fatigued from a very long day. I know she is. Her emotions are spilling out on me. I know they are. But eventually she said that one more thing before we pulled out of the parking lot. And I slammed my hand down on the center console. She immediately starts crying. And in my head, because I'm a jerk, I think, good. And I turned around. I turned around and I let her have it. You have been like this and this and this and this all day and I'm done with it. I'm done. Stop it. Do you hear me? And she looked at me and she started to say something back. I said, stop. She's crying. I drive home. It wasn't good. I'm telling you that story not because I'm proud of it. Far from it. I actually think that the rapidity with which I get annoyed is probably my least favorite thing about myself. I do wish I had a lot more patience. I do wish I didn't get annoyed at people just enjoying the zoo, but I do. And I do wish that I wouldn't blow up at my daughter because she doesn't deserve that. And I don't want her to grow up in a home where that's part of the climate and just a regular thing. So, you know, we went back and made that right. But I share that with you because I think that we've all had those moments. I think that we've all lashed out at people in ways that we regret. Most of us in this room are parents. I'm pretty sure that you all have your stories too. If you don't, please buy me lunch and tell me your secrets. Unless it's medication. I don't want to go that route. I think we all have those times when we get overwhelmed and we're feeling so many different emotions that we don't know what to do. And so we blow up or we have a blowout and we lash out and we slam our hand on the center console and we yell at a seven-year-old until they cry to make us feel better about the situation. I think if we're not parents and we haven't blown up in that way, we're all kids. We all have parents. Maybe we've blown up at them. Maybe we've lashed out at friends, co-workers, up the chain or down the chain. I think we all have those moments that we're not proud of when our emotions get too big and we act in ways that we wish we could change. And so that's what this series is about, big emotions. What do we do when we feel overwhelmed, when we are going to have a blow up or a blow out? And we'll talk about what does God want from us in these moments. We'll talk about what did we do to bring this on ourselves. We'll talk about how it affects other people. We'll talk about what do we do when somebody else lashes out and blows up on us. But because we all have those moments, we thought it would be worth it to take six or seven weeks here in the spring and just kind of ask the question, what are we supposed to do with big emotions and those moments that we feel overwhelmed or the people around us are acting out because they're overwhelmed? So I hope that that's helpful for you. And I will also confess the way that I write sermons is I kind of write half of it during the week. And then on Sunday morning, I come in really early and I make myself say it out loud in the hallway over there and kind of piece together really what I want it to be. And after I finished it this morning, I drove home and I said, man, my sermon has really convicted me and I feel terrible. And I'm really going to work on this. So if you guys don't like this, I do. This has been really helpful for me. But I hope that it's useful for you too. We're going to start the series by looking at the story of Peter cutting off the ear of a guard in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Because I think there's some foundational things in this story that are going to resound and help us for the rest of the series as we move through kind of this question of what do we do with big emotions. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it's in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I think the most helpful detailed version is in John chapter 18. And so if you have a Bible, you can turn there. We're going to be in there a little bit looking at the story. But what's going on is Jesus has just gotten done praying in the garden of Gethsemane. It's after the last supper. Then he goes to the garden to pray. Then he gets the disciples. He says, all right, it's time to go. And they're walking back to the house where they were staying. And the guards from the high priest come to arrest Jesus. And in John's account, there's this amazing scene where I don't know how many guards there were. I've always assumed dozens, but I really don't know. They came to Jesus, and in other tellings of it, you see this is when Judas betrays him with a kiss. And then the guards say, are you Jesus? And he says, yes, I'm Jesus. Except he doesn't say, yes, I'm Jesus. They say, are you Jesus? And he says, I am he. And when he says that, this is amazing. When he says that, everybody who came to arrest him stepped back and fell down to the ground. Do you understand that? I don't know how that happened. I don't know if they were in like really tight formation and the first guy stepped back and it was some sort of domino situation where they just all fell, but I don't think so. I think when Jesus utters those words, I am, that they were an echo of Exodus 3 and 4, Moses at the burning bush, when he asked the burning bush, when he asked God, what's your name? And God says, you can't hold me to a name. I'm bigger than names. I'm not going to let you reduce me to that. I am. So God is the great I am. It's the great unutterable word. And Jesus says that, I am he. And they all step backwards and fall down to the ground. At which point, if I'm one of the people who's sent to arrest Jesus, I'm going to get up and dust myself off and say, there's been a misunderstanding. Mr. Jesus, very sorry about this. I'm going to go back to Caiaphas' house. But when that happens and they go to arrest him, this is what Peter does. Peter has a blowout. Peter lashes out. Peter really has had an emotional day. Peter really has had an emotional week. Five days before this happens, they're riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the disciples up to this point in Jesus's life still believe that Jesus came to establish a kingdom, but it's a physical earthly kingdom. Their brains, their minds can't wrap around what an eternal kingdom would be with a heavenly king. So they think it's going to be an earthly kingdom. And they really think that Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, that he's going to overthrow King Herod, that he's going to overthrow Roman rule, that he's going to sit on the throne of David, rise Israel to national prominence, and that they're going to rule the world with him. That's what they think. And so when they're entering into Jerusalem, Peter and James and John are arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president and who has to be the secretary of the interior. Like that's what they're arguing about. They think they're going to be in these positions of political prominence, right hand to the king. And this whole week has started to move really fast. The whole week has been emotionally charged. The whole week has been expectant. And so then they get to Friday and they have the last supper. They celebrate Passover together. And Jesus says that Judas is going to betray him. And Judas leaves, which is weird. And all the disciples are trying to figure this out. And then he does this weird thing where he takes bread and he breaks it. And he says, this is my body that's broken for you. And they don't know what that means. And then he takes the wine and he pours it. And he says, this is the blood that spilled out for you. And they don't know what that means. Jesus has told them, I'm going to die. And on the third day, I'm going to raise again. And they're going, what does that mean? They have not figured it out yet. He's going to be the king. Then after this weird last supper where Jesus does the weird bread thing, he says, come and pray with me. They go to Gethsemane and they're praying. Jesus is praying. He's praying ardently. He's praying so ardently that sweat is kind of coming out of his pores. And we're going to talk about that in another one of the sermons in this series. And he's trying to get the disciples to stay awake, but it's late at night and they had wine with dinner, so they're sleepy. So they keep falling asleep, but Peter can tell something's up. And then Jesus gets them. They walk back to the house and on the way back to the house, here come the high priest guards to arrest his Jesus. And he freaks out. This is not, what's happening is not what's supposed to happen. This is not the way this is supposed to go. So what does he do? He lashes out, he grabs his sword, and he cuts off Malchus's ear. Now, here's what's important about that. Peter wasn't aiming for the ear. He's not like, I'm going to teach this dude a lesson. Clearly, he was going for the kill shot. Clearly, he was going for the head,chus moved or Peter was bad and it just got his ear. And in the other accounts, we see Jesus stoop down, pick up the ear, reattach it to the head and tell Peter to chill out. Peter lashed out. Peter slapped his hand on the center console and started yelling at people because he wanted to control things. And what I've always wondered about this story is that from when I was a real little kid and I encountered this story for the first time, I have always wondered this. How did Peter think his outburst was going to go? How did he think that was going to go down? What's your plan after that, Peter? Kill the first guy and then heroically sword fight your way out of danger with Jesus in tow? You and James and John, you're going to take down the whole guard of Caiaphas? Those guys are soldiers. They have armor. You're wearing a sheet and you have a sword on your hip and you're a fisherman. This is, what's the plan, buddy? Where do we go from here? It's honestly, and I'll meet him one day, and I don't think I'll apologize for this because I think he would agree. It was stupid. It's just dumb. What's your plan, buddy? And as I reflected on that more, what occurred to me is that in those moments when we feel overwhelmed and we lose our composure, we're admitting something. Losing your composure often admits your intimacy or your impotence. Losing your composure often admits our impotence. Not always. We're going to see an instance with Jesus losing his composure, and it certainly was not impotent. But most of the time in life, if you think about it, when you lose your composure, when you let it go, when you have a blowout or a blowup, really you're just confessing your own impotence and powerlessness to do anything that matters in the situation. What was Peter doing? Something impulsive. It was the only thing he could think of to do. It was completely useless, completely unhelpful, and he did it. And honestly, he made it worse. And Jesus had to cool things down. And when you think about when you blow out or blow up, when you yell at somebody, when you lash out, when you lash out at a colleague, or when you talk poorly behind someone's back, and you lash out at them unreasonably, or you lash out at your kids, or whatever it is, when you do that, when you blow up, when you lose your composure, aren't we often just confessing our impotence? Isn't that what I was doing in the car with Lily? What was going on in her is a combination of fatigue and being a seven-year-old and a heart that needs to develop gratitude and somebody that needs to understand, yeah, I made that water bottle for you so the correct attitude is to just be grateful for anything that's in there. But yelling at her until she cries is not going to teach her the heart lessons that she needs to learn to not do that again. It's completely impotent. It's helpless. It's frankly stupid and unuseful. And now in the same way that Jesus had to clean up Peter's mess by grabbing the ear and putting it back on Malchus's head, so does Jesus have to reach into the heart of my daughter and heal the wound that I put there because I lashed out in impotence. Our prayer as parents, I think, is that there's just not scar tissue because we ask Jesus to do that too many times. But as I think through the times in my life when I've lashed out, it tends to be because I just didn't know what else to do. And I felt things so much that they had to escape. Sometimes this lashing out and this impotence is more easily seen because sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes we're overwhelmed and we retreat into the bathroom or we retreat to our room or we retreat to the house we retreat to the car, and then we just let it go. And isn't that, those tears, that sort of breaking down, isn't that an admission of our powerlessness as well? So in the story of the arrest in the garden, Peter gives us a great example of what not to do when we are overwhelmed. But it also begs the question, and this is really the guiding question for the series, what should we do when we feel overwhelmed? What's the right thing to do? How should Peter have handled that situation? How should I have handled my frustration on Wednesday? Well, if Peter, this is pretty simple stuff, if Peter is the bad example in the story, then Jesus must be the good example. So we look to Jesus, and we see how he handled the situation. A couple verses that throw, that shed some light on Jesus's handling of it. I'm going to look at verse 8 in chapter 18. Jesus answered very casually. I just love how matter-of-fact he is. I told you that I am he. I told you that I'm the guy that you want. So if you seek me, let these men go. Like, I'm the one you want. It's not them. I'll go with you. And then down in verse 11, just a reminder of what we read earlier, Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? And then we see, I think, an even more useful response in Matthew chapter 26. Then Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send more than 12 legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? So Jesus is calm, he is collected, he is wise, he is gracious, he is peaceful, he is patient. And I would point out, from a very human perspective, Jesus is dealing with all of Peter's emotions tenfold, probably a hundredfold. When they're going into Jerusalem and he's being welcomed as a conquering king and his disciples, those chuckleheads are behind him arguing about stuff that they don't know what it means. He's just walked through three years of ministry. He knows what's coming. He knows what's five days away. He knows where the nails are going to go. He knows where that crown of thorns is going to rest. He knows where the cross is going to hang. Jesus knows that. He knows the grave is waiting for him. He knows that the Romans have scientifically studied the most painful way to kill somebody and that that's going to happen to him. He knows what lays ahead, the cup that he has to drink. And we see his knowledge of that in his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. He knows Judas is going to betray him. He knows the disciples do not understand. He's frustrated with the disciples because they can't stay awake. Can you imagine being Jesus? I need one thing from you. Can you please pray for me? After three years, I'm about to die for you and go to the grave for you, and you can't stay awake to pray for me? Can you imagine how frustrated he would be? And if anybody had the right to lash out at anyone for being ungrateful, it would be Jesus. And yet, when they came to arrest him, and when Peter does dumb stuff, he's quiet, and he's gracious, and he's peaceful, and he's kind. What Peter should have done in that situation, feeling overwhelmed, is look to the face of Jesus. If Jesus is peaceful, I can be peaceful. If Jesus isn't freaking out, I don't need to freak out. When we feel overwhelmed, we should look to Jesus. That's what I take away from this story. If Peter would have simply, as the guards approached, if he would have simply, like we sang earlier, turned his eyes to Jesus and looked at his face and see that he was nonplussed, that he was not worried, then he could have responded accordingly. But he didn't. He didn't look at Jesus. He looked at everything else and he acted impulsively and he lashed out. If he would have looked to Jesus, he could have responded well in the moment. If I, in my car, had had the wherewithal in my frustration to look to Jesus instead of at my daughter or at myself or inwardly at my own frustration and decided it's time to vent them. If I would have had the wherewithal to go to Jesus in prayer, I said, Jesus, I'm really frustrated. What should I do here? Please help me. Please show me what to do. Jesus, I'm frustrated. Please navigate my response for me. I'm fairly certain that if I had done that, that the nudge I would have felt from the Holy Spirit would not have been, you should really turn around and let her have it. She's got it coming. The nudge from Jesus would have been, calm down. She's wrong. She's also seven. You're an adult. Get her to bed. Talk to her tomorrow when you're both clear and you're not angry. That's what Jesus would have reminded me to do. But I didn't give him a chance. I just cut off that ear anyways. And then he had to clean up my mess. When we feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed with sadness, overwhelmed with grief, overwhelmed with anger, overwhelmed with frustration, overwhelmed with whatever it is that's piling on us and it's just too much, before we blow out and before we blow up, if we can teach ourselves to simply turn our eyes to Jesus and look to him, then in those moments when we feel overwhelmed, we will handle them in ways that we do not regret later. We will cut off far less ears. Here's the other thing about Jesus' response in that moment. I think that the reason, the main reason that Jesus was so calm and placid in this moment is because he knew the plan. Look at his responses. What does he talk about? Peter, what are you trying to do? I have to do this. Stop it. I've got to go. This is part of the plan. Would you have me not obey my father? He says, do you not think I could do something different? Do you not think I could bring down 12 legions of angels right now and handle these guys? Like it wouldn't be a problem. I just knocked them down with my words, Peter. I'm not going anywhere I don't want to go. But Jesus knew there was a plan. He knew the prophecies. He knew that he needed to fulfill them. He's known this plan his whole life. And so he knew that even though everything around me seems chaotic, you guys are just actors. This is all part of the plan. I have to go. And it's what allows him, I think, to fulfill the prophecy that he was going to be like a sheep led to the slaughter. Peter should have looked at Jesus and trusted that even though he didn't know what was going on, seems like he's got a plan. Seems like he knows what's happening. And it seems like I should just trust that. So I would say that when we feel overwhelmed, we should know that Jesus has a plan. And even if I can't see the details of his plan, I can trust it because I can trust him. Jesus has a plan for my Lily. He sees the young woman that she's going to become one day. He's asked me to steward her into that. It's his plan, not my plan. And those of us who are parents would do well to remind ourselves that Jesus loves our children way more than we do, even though we can't really fathom that. And that he has a plan for them. And even when we can't see the details of the plan, we can trust the plan because we can trust him. So we turn our eyes to him and we place our faith in that. I actually love that there's a baby making noise right now. Because it's... I just met her this morning. I'm sorry. Everyone's going to look at you now. I'm very sorry. She's never going to come back. Shannon, I apologize. She's never going to bring any more friends. I get it. I know. I know. This is bad. You don't have a clue who that kid's going to be or where he's going to go. But Jesus sees that whole life. And we can take solace in that. We can take comfort in that. We can't see past our own noses. Jesus sees all of time. So when we feel overwhelmed and it feels like there's not a plan and we don't know what to do and we want to just blow up or we want to just give up or we want to just bow out, we look to Jesus. We trust him. We trust his plan. And we take faith in that. And if we'll do that, if we'll remember when we feel overwhelmed that we can look to Jesus because we can trust him, I think that we can be people that cut off a lot less ears. We can be people that require less healing for those around us. We can be people who are more like Jesus, who as we look to him, we are kind and we are gracious and we are patient and we are peaceful. And that's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of dad and husband and pastor and friend I want to be. And I have a feeling that that's the kind of person you want to be too. So let's pray that we would more habitually turn our eyes to Christ and be filled with his wisdom and grace and not give ourselves over to being overwhelmed. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for sending your son. We thank you that your son died a death that he did not want to die so that we might be with you. Father, we confess we are impatient. We are at times ill-tempered. At times we cut off ears around us because we don't know what else to do. And Lord, we pray that you would bring healing when we lash out. And we pray that you would bring peace to our hearts when we feel like doing that. For my brothers and sisters who can be like me and at times just grow in frustration, would you remind us in those moments to turn to you? That we might be peaceful and that we might be reflections of your wisdom and grace and sovereignty. God, for my brothers and sisters who feel overwhelmed and who do blow up or blow out, but maybe it doesn't look like anger, maybe it looks like frustration, or maybe it looks like giving up, or maybe it looks like just being overwhelmed and sad and grieving. Would you be with them too and remind them to turn their eyes towards you? That they might be comforted. That even though they can't see the plan, they can see the author of it. And God, would you help us to be people of peace? For those of us that need it, would you just help us cut off a few fewer ears this week? 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.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm DJ Hill. I'm a partner here at Grace along with Laura, my wife, and three daughters. Today's reading is from Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9 through 12. Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two can withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Thank you. Thank you, DJ. I was pleased to discover that you're literate. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the fourth part in our series called The Traits of Grace, where we're going through and we're just talking about the things and the aspects that make grace, grace, that make us who we are. Part of it is getting to pick on each other a little bit. And so this week is one that is, this is near and dear to all of our hearts. If this is, If you have been at Grace for any amount of time, then this is something that resonates deeply with you. It's something that characterizes us and who we are, and it's something that we choose over and over again in the way that we structure ourselves, in the way that we do things, and in the kind of church that we want to be. And so this morning, we get to talk about the fourth trait, which is that we are partners at Grace. We are partners. And we say that we don't have members at Grace, that we have partners instead, which is actually kind of funny to me that I'm such a stickler about having partners instead of members, because I've been doing vocational ministry 20 years. And one of the things I've always thought is kind of funny about the church is the way that we like to name stuff. Like we're super cool and we're coming up with new things. I was the small groups pastor at my previous church and I watched those things. First, when I was growing up, it was called Sunday school, right? And then in the 90s, we changed it to small groups. Now we're fancy. And then small groups weren't fancy enough, so we started calling them community groups or life groups or discipleship groups. And then there was this whole movement in the last couple of years to start house churches. And you're like, well, what's a house church? Like, well, you gather together and you kind of pray for each other and you talk about things you worship. I says, oh, it's like a small group. Like, no, no, no, house church. Well, what do you do on Sunday? Well, we go to big church together. Oh, so it's a small group. Like that's what we do. We like to rename things so that outsiders can't figure out what's going on in here. And it's really, it's just stupid. And I did it too. I was talking about this with my wife, Jen. And I was like, what are some other dumb church names that we've come up with over the years? Like on Sunday mornings, instead of calling it the service, we call it the gathering. And instead of calling it a sermon, we call it the talk, right? Because we're just trying to be cooler and more relevant in what we do. And she got on to me. She was like, you were guilty of this. She said, what was your ministry called in your first church? The first church I worked at was in Franklin County, Virginia, Rocky Mount, close to Smith Mountain Lake. And I had a buddy that started a church called Covenant Community Church. I believe it's still going. And we met in this old colonial home out in the middle of nowhere in the farmland of Franklin County, Virginia. We had about 30 people who came every week, which, by the way, we're about the same size as Grace is now based on the amount of families that stood up. We don't have space but for 30 people a week if you guys, if you families come every week. But I led a ministry. It was the student ministry, and I called it One because it was based on, I believe, Luke 15 where Jesus is talking to Mary and Martha, and he tells Mary, you need to worry about but one thing, and it's loving me. And so I called it One, which was aptly named because that's about how many kids I had per week on the Wednesday, right? And then I get to the big church with 200 kids in the middle school, and that was my ministry, and I called that Up and Out, right? Well, what's Up and Out? Well, it means love God, love others, love up, love up, love out. Oh, that's great. Well, who's it for? Well, it's for middle school. So it's middle school ministry? No, it's up and out. It's up and out, right? And this is what we do. We come up with dumb names for stuff and they're unnecessary and we don't need them and Grace is guilty of this too. I don't know if you know this, but if you haven't been going to Grace for a long time, you might not know that this is called Grace Hall. Now, I've never called it that, but the people who came before me call it that. This is an auditorium, and really, that's insulting to auditoriums. This is a big room with a pole in it, right? That's what this is. So I'm real big on just call it what it is. If it's Sunday school, call it Sunday school. If it's a small group, call it small group. But if it's ministry, call it ministry. So why am I such a stickler about, no, no, no, at Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. And I catch heck for this. I'll be talking to elders or leaders in the church or people who have been going here for a while and they'll be like, yeah, yeah, well, how many members do we have right now? Or what's the membership vote on that? Or are they a member of the church? I'm sorry, they're partners of the church. Like, we got you, buddy. We'll help you carry this load of calling things partners. And everybody kind of giggles at me that I'm a real dummy for insisting that we use the term partners. And I understand. I would make fun of me too if I were you. But let me tell you why I'm such a stickler about this word partner and why it really does define who and what we are at Grace and what we're trying to do. The first reason is not the main reason, but the first reason is the one that I repeat often. A lot of you can probably say this as well. You probably know how the sentence ends, but members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's one of the first reasons. At Grace, we have partners, we don't have members. Members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute, right? If you become a member of something, what do you become primarily concerned with? What are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this thing? If you joined BJ's, what are the rights and privileges I get? Costco, you get a dollar slice of pizza. That's a pretty good right and privilege. You join Northridge Country Club, what are the rights and privileges afforded me as a member of this place? Right? When you're a member, you kind of sit back and you go, well, what's in it for me? What do I get out of this? What can I consume? When you're a member, you expect a certain experience. You expect to consume a certain experience. And then when you can't consume it, you critique it. Until you do get to consume the experience you want. As a pastor, I don't really want a church full of members who consume an experience and then critique it when it's not what they want. We want partners who partner with us because partners tend to contribute. Partners take ownership and what they're partnered in and see it as their personal responsibility to see the success of this thing work out. And really, the more I thought about it this week, because we're going to talk about how this is true, but the more I thought about it this week, the more satisfied I was with understanding partners this way. Partners share the burden. That's what partners do. Partners share the burden in myriad ways. The greatest picture of partnership that I've seen in the Bible, and I love this picture in the Bible. I don't have any tattoos, not because I think they're sinful or something, but there's nothing I want to put on my body that I'm sure I'm going to want there in 20 years. So I haven't done anything yet. But if I were going to get one, it may very well be an image of this story. When I think about this story and this scene in the Bible for too long, I'll tear up. I'll start to cry. And I'm going to read this to you, and you're going to think, why is this dude tearing up at this story? Listen, first of all, the older I get, the more I tear up at. Jen and I are back onto watching the Great British Baking Show, and we cry at the end of every episode because we're so happy for Juergen that he gets to call his wife again. Like, we're so thrilled that we tear up, and then we look at each other, and we laugh. And the older I get, the more stuff I cry about. And if you want to judge me for that, I'll tell you right where you can put your judgment. But when I think about this passage and the picture here, it moves me to tears because of how powerful it is. So what's happening is we're in the book of Exodus. I'm going to read from chapter 17. And in the book of Exodus, God's children are wandering through the desert. They're being led by Moses. And a man named Amalek comes up against them with his army and he attacks the Israelite people. He attacks the Hebrew people. And so Moses sends his general, Joshua, out to battle. And he says, I want you to go and I want you to fight against Amalek. And I'm going to go up on the top of this hill and I'm going to hold my staff over my head. And when you're down there fighting and you look up at me, as long as my staff is up over my head, you will prevail. So go and fight. So Joshua does. He gathers the army and he goes and he fights. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. It's such an incredible picture. Moses says, go down there and you fight that battle. And I'm going to hold this staff over my head. And as long as I hold it up, you guys will prevail. But you know, holding a stick over your head burns the shoulders a little bit. It fatigues the muscles. And so every now and again, he had to shake it out. He got weary. He got tired. He couldn't hold it up. He couldn't carry that burden. And as he got weak, the men on the battlefield began to suffer. And so he had to find the strength and pick his hands back up again for as long as he could to carry that burden. And eventually Aaron and Hur, H-U-R, burden. The burden was too great for Moses. The responsibility was too much. It was too much for one person to handle. There's not a single person here who could have held that over their head for the duration of time that it would require for Joshua to defeat Amalek. And so he needed help because it was too much. And so God sent him partners to bracket his arms, to hold up the staff when he was too weak, to carry that burden when he couldn't. And it is, to me, one of the most poignant pictures in the Bible of community and friendship. And if I'm honest with you, I think that's exactly why it's in the Bible. Whenever you read anything in the Bible, you've got to ask yourself, why is this so important that God wanted me to know about this thousands of years later? Why this detail? Why this story? Why not just write Joshua defeated Amalek? Why not just write Amalek came up against the forces of Israel and God blessed Israel and Israel won? Why not just skip it and go on through? It doesn't matter. I'm sure they had plenty of skirmishes over the 40 years that they were in this desert that we don't know about it because they're not recorded in history. Why this one? I'm convinced. This is just me. I didn't learn this in seminary. Okay, this isn't gospel truth. But if you were to ask me, why is this in the Bible? It's because it's a picture of community. It's a picture of partnership. And it's to show us that there are times when we can't carry the burden on our own and we need people around us to bracket us and hold it up. There's times when the people who we love very much are weary and they can't hold the burden up anymore. And we come and we bracket them and we hold their hands up for them until their strength returns. It's such an incredible picture. And so at Grace, that's what we are. We are partners. We see and we notice when the burden gets too much. And we bracket and we put our hands on the people that we love and we help them carry the load until their strength returns. At Grace, we are partners. And so that word partner is so much deeper to me than a simple, clever replacement for member. That comparison, members consume and partners contribute, that's just the surface level of what a partner is at Grace. Partners carry the burden. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We partner in the things that God would have us do here. This starts at the staff level. We have staff meetings every Tuesday. And we talk about everything that everyone is doing. And no one carries their burden by themselves. We talk about when Summer Extreme is coming up, we talk about it in staff meeting. We begin talking about it in February and March and saying, Aaron, our children's pastor, Julie, what can we do to help you? How can you use us? The weeks leading up to Summer Extreme, I tell the staff, hey, we all work for Aaron. She's our boss. Whatever she needs the next couple weeks, that's what we do. When we're heading into the Christmas series and the Christmas service, we work for boy Aaron, worship leader Aaron, the bad Aaron. We work for him. For two, three weeks leading into that, what can we do? How can we help you? What do you need? We speak into everything that we do. What's going on in student ministry and how can we help? Before we do a series, we all talk into it. Before I do sermons, we all talk into them. We share the burden across the spectrum. And so we believe that trickles down to everyone in all that we do. And so at Grace, we partner in ministry. We don't just sit back and say, well, I hope the church is able to do that. Let's see. No, we jump in and see a personal responsibility. There was a great example a few minutes ago. I ran to the hallway after the children's dedication because I like to make sure that while I'm preaching, I don't need to use the restroom. I like to be 100% focused on you. So I ran over there to take care of business. And then I came back. And as I was in the hallway, it dawns on me, gosh, we've got a lot of babies being handed into that small space back there because we got child dedication today. I wonder if we're double staffed. And I looked at a lady who just happened to be standing in the hallway. She was just fodder. She came to attend the service this morning, and I looked at her and just presumptuously said, you might have to jump in that room this morning. She goes, yeah, no, I'm going to stick around and see. That's partnership. There's a need here. I'm a partner of the church. I'm going to step in and I'm going to help carry that. We're going to build a building. We have land we're looking to build. We need partners, which are not to stand back. I hope the church can do this, but actively, how do I partner with the church to make sure that this can happen? In our small groups, your small group leader asks a question, and it's a bad one. It's a dud, right? It's just a dead fish in the middle of the room. You're like, I don't know. I don't know how to answer this question. Your partner in ministry, bail them out, man. Say anything. Say what you're doing for dinner tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Just get the conversation going again. If Erin looks tired, if her hands look weary, if we see the same faces in those hallways and in that back room week in and week out, volunteer, step in, bracket, hold. We jump in. We are partners in ministry. We share the burden in what's happening here. We believe wholeheartedly in that. So at Grace, we are partners in ministry. More importantly than that, at Grace, we are partners in life. We partner with each other through all the seasons of life. One of the things that I've gotten to see more than ever in my position is the wisdom of Solomon when he writes in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that happens to you happens to everyone else. Every struggle that we walk through is shared by those who came before us and will come after us. And when I think about life and how I get to see these common struggles meted out through all the folks that God allows me to minister to, I just think of people coming out of college in their 20s. And that place where you are, where you're just trying to figure out, who am I? Can I get a job? I'm going to be homeless or live in my parents' basement forever. Can I figure this out? Who am I going to marry? Who am I going to meet? Do I want to build a family? Is that a thing that I want? And then you do get married and you're trying to figure out how can we make it together? What's going to happen here? And then maybe you build a family or maybe you start to build a career and you're just thinking about how do I take the next step? And you have people around you and you have all the same stressors. It's all the same stuff. How am I going to figure this out? How am I going to work out work-life balance? If I'm single, when am I going to meet the person that I want to spend my life with? If I'm married, is this the right person that I actually did want to spend my life with? Like all the things, right? And then you have kids and I'm standing up here and I don't have too many years as far as parenting is concerned on the people who were up here, but there's some with just brand new babies and I've got a six-year-old. I know that I don't know what's ahead of me, okay? So don't hear ignorant arrogance in this, but I also know that these folks over here that just have this tiny little baby and I've got my six-year-old, boy, there's a lot of space and stress to cover between six months and six years old. And so I know a little bit about what they face. And we know a little bit more about what to pray. And then those of you who have kids in high school or older, you know that I'm sitting at six years old and I'm going, gosh, I'm so stressed. And you're like, you don't know nothing. Shut up with your stress. You know what I wouldn't give to just lose an hour of sleep a night and know that my kids are okay? And then they go to college and then they get jobs. And then you look at your husband and your wife and you try to figure out, do we still like each other? Because we just ran a small business for 25 years. We were ships passing in the night trying to get things done. How do we figure out this marriage, right? And then it's not too long that you're empty nesters when you start to take care of your aging parents and all the challenges that are there and everything that awaits you doing that. There is nothing new under the sun. I have watched so many of my friends enter into that phase. And then you leave that phase and you get the joy of being a grandparent maybe. And then you start to age. And aging stinks. And you move into that phase. But in all of that, everything that you're experiencing where you are, all the folks who are older than you have walked through that. And all the folks who are younger than you will. And there is nothing new under the sun. And we face those things. And in the midst of those predictable cycles come the unpredictable diagnoses and loss and triumphs and promotions and surprises and tearful blessings. But it's all things that everyone else has experienced too. And so at grace, you should never walk through that alone. Whatever that is, whatever the fill in the blank is, if you're a part of grace, you should never walk through that alone. You should never, ever walk through parenthood alone, through trying to figure out what to do with this little human, you shouldn't feel like you're facing that alone. When your kids are in middle school, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you're single and you don't know if you're going to meet your person or not, that you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience tragedy, you shouldn't walk through that alone. When you experience triumph and celebration, you shouldn't walk through that alone. Is there anything sadder than someone experiencing tremendous joy, getting the best news possible, and not having anyone to share it with? No, that's heartbreaking. You shouldn't walk through caring for your aging parents alone. You shouldn't walk through empty nesting alone. We shouldn't walk through any of that stuff alone. We were not designed to walk through it alone. That was not God's intent. We are partners in life. We walk with each other. And we have a friend whose strength is failing. And she doesn't have the strength to fight for her marriage anymore. She's done. It's hard. Her shoulders are tired. We come beside her. We get her a seat. And we bracket ourselves against her and we hold her hands until she has the strength again. We have friends who are parents and they've given up and they don't know what to do. We bracket them and we hold them up. We have a friend who's facing addiction or sin and they feel like giving up. Their arms are tired, and they just can't hold out anymore. We come alongside them. We press up against them, and we hold their hands up in the fight until their strength is restored to do it again. We are partners in life. I am convinced that one of God's greatest gifts is that of community and friendship. There is almost nothing in my life I hold more sacred than the people who I love, than the friends who are close to me, than the people who have come alongside me and held up my hands when I was too tired, than the people who I've stood beside and watched them regain their strength and stand back up. At Grace, we are partners, and that means we are partners in life. And here's the other thing I'll mention. I had a lunch with someone this week. And I found out that over COVID, one of them lost both of their parents. Another one of them had to put their parents into memory care and separate his parents. That's an incredible burden. And they've been carrying it alone. And I told them I was going to say this. Grace, don't walk alone. They didn't tell anybody. How can the church do what it needs to do if you carry all that yourself? If you sit there on the top of the hill, holding it up, struggling, crying, failing, knowing that it's all going to have to collapse. Tell us. Tell us. Let us come alongside. Let us hold you up. And this is where I would press in and chide you a little bit if you're a longtime grace person. At grace, and I would assume most places, we love to be, are anxious to be, excited to be, happy to be the person who stands in brackets. We will do this for you all day long. We will do this for you for as long as it takes until your strength is restored. We're happy to do that. We do not at all want to be the person here needing help. But this doesn't work if we don't let other people partner with us too. So get over yourselves, Grace. Let people help you. Let people be your partner too. Finally, we are partners in faith. We do not walk the spiritual journey alone. Most importantly, we're partners in faith. We come alongside one another and we help one another grow. We're going to talk more about this next week, how we can be partners in faith when we talk about how we are step takers. But at Grace, we are partners in faith. We come alongside one another. We foster one another's spiritual life. I saw somebody say this week or last that they are convinced, and I am too. I totally agreed with this, the longer they are in the Christian faith, the longer they are in this Christian life, the more they believe that it is simply about hanging on. It's simply about clinging to Jesus. That's why I think when Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the full armor of God, he says, put on the full armor of God, and he goes through all the things that you're supposed to put on so you can stand against the wiles of the devil. And then at the end, he says, and when you have stood firm, stand firm therefore. Just another one. When you have done it, when you fought the good fight, keep fighting, keep standing firm, keep clinging. In every list of Christian attributes, you will eventually find perseverance. Just hang on. Just cling to faith. I'm reminded of what Jesus says to John the Baptist when John the Baptist essentially says, hey, I'm pretty sure you're Jesus, but you've kind of let me down here because I'm going to lose my life in this prison. And Jesus says, yeah, you are. And blessed are those who do not fall away because of me. Blessed are those who still choose faith in me when I've let them down because their expectations of me were wrong. I'm reminded of when Jesus told the gathering of people that unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And all the crowds went, that dude's weird. And they left. And he looked at his disciples and he said, are you going to leave me too? And Peter says, you're Jesus. Where are we going to go? You don't make any sense to me. I don't want to cannibalize you. I'm not into that. But I also know who you are. Where else am I going to go? That's faith. We know Jesus. Where else are we going to go? Even when he mystifies us, even when it doesn't make sense, even when it's hard to figure out, even when we're faced with those situations where we go, how does a good God let stuff like this happen? We cling to faith. And sometimes our hands get tired. Sometimes clinging to faith is hard. And so we need godly people around us who love us and who love Jesus to hold our hands up for us and help us cling to faith when ours is failing. That prayer that's prayed, Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. When we pray that, you know how he helps you sometimes? By bringing friends in to encourage you. A phone call or a text or an email or a lunch. So most importantly, Grace, we are partners in faith. We help each other cling. We help each other thrive. We help each other strive. We help each other take steps towards Jesus. That's what we do. That's why I asked DJ to read a 300-fold cord. I want us to use our tremendous community and our tremendously deep friendships to be partners in ministry, to be partners in life, and to be partners in faith. And my closing encouragement would be that if you were one who feels like you don't have that yet, pray for it. Pursue it. Ask God for it. You'll find it. If you are one who does feel like you have this, and you do have good and rich and deep friendships here, please know that God did not give you that community just for you or the people who are already in it, but that the job of a good, godly, biblical community is to turn outwards and to say, who else needs what we got? Because it's pretty good. Who else can we partner with? So when I say at Grace we have partners, we don't have members, this is what I mean. And this is why I'm a stickler about it because I believe it's that important. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are and what you've done for us. Lord, I pray that if there's somebody here who doesn't know you, who hasn't accepted Jesus as their Savior, that they would do that. God, I lift up once again these families that are represented today. Would their extended families partner with them in the raising of these children in godly homes? Would the friends of these mamas and daddies rally around them and raise their hands up when their arms are weary? For the people in this room and listening who are caring for aging parents, God, would you surround them with people to raise up their hands? God, for the folks here who need you, who are tired, in whatever it is, would you surround them with godly community? Would you surround them with partners who pick them up? And God, for those of us who need help, for those of us who are tired, for those of us who just don't know if we can hold it up anymore, would you give us the humility to reach out to our friends, to our community, and to our partners, and experience the life-giving goodness of your community, God. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.