Sermons tagged with Family

I felt like maybe I should dance a little bit at the end of that. Good morning, everybody. Like I said earlier, my name is Nate. It's so good to see you. If you are here when it's 39 degrees and raining, you really want it. So I'm glad to see you. I really do appreciate your being here. A round of applause for yourself, I guess. That was fun for those watching at home. We are in the middle of a series here at the beginning of the year called Known For, where we're just thinking about what are we known for? What is our reputation? In the first week, week one, we looked at ourselves. What are we known for? What do we want to be known for? And then most importantly, what does God want us to be known for, which is our love. And then last week, we talked about family. What does God want your family to be known for? What do you want your family legacy to be? And then next week, we're going to look at what does God want his children to be known for? Our faith in our culture, within the American culture, what does God want his children to be most known for? And how can we as individuals and as a church contribute to building that reputation in our culture that frankly does need to be rebuilt. And then this week, we're going to look at grace. What do we want grace to be known for? This church, right? And we talk about this a lot. We talk about what's our vision and what's our focus. I open the service by reminding us that we do everything that we do to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. In the fall, in September and October, we did a new series called Five Traits of Grace where we said, hey, if you're a partner of grace, if you're someone who calls grace home, here are the five things we want you to exhibit in your life and be building towards. And we believe in those things so much that we actually have scrapped our material for Discover Grace, our kind of our newcomers class, and we placed it with talking through what those five traits are. If you come to Grace, here's what we want to try to build you into spiritually. Which, speaking of Discover Grace, that's going to be the first Sunday in February. It's where you can just find out more about grace, who we are, what makes us tick. If you want to become, you probably think of it as a member. We don't have members, we have partners, because real quickly, members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. So we ask for partners of grace. If you want to become a partner, then that's how you do it. You can attend that class and there'll be some stuff to fill out. Or you can just come find out more about who we are. Or I would say if you've been coming here for a really long time but you've never been to one and you're curious about what happens there, you're welcome to come. There are snacks involved. You know you have to sign up. You can just come eat snacks and say hey to everybody and leave. I don't really care. But that's going to be in two weeks. So sign up for that if you want to do that. There's plenty of ways that you can sign up for that. But as we thought about reputation for this week, what do we want grace to be known for? And I kind of meditated on that as a pastor, thinking about the reputation of a church. My mind immediately went to Revelation chapter 2 and 3. Now, some of you know why I instantly thought of Revelation chapter 2 and 3, the Bible scholars in the room. Others of you are thinking, why Revelation, weirdo? Well, here's why. Because yes, Revelation is about the end times, and we did a series on that a little while ago. And in that series, I skipped over chapters 2 and 3, because I said chapters 2 and 3 are kind of parenthetical to the discourse in Revelation where Jesus kind of takes a break and he writes seven letters to seven churches. And in those letters, he tells those churches what they are known for. When I think of you, here's what you're doing well. Here's where you can improve. So when I thought about what does God want the reputation of his church to be, individual small little churches, I thought what better place to go than the one place in the Bible where he addresses seven of them and says, here's what you're known for. And some are good, some are bad. There's only one that gets totally good marks, and that was a church that was being persecuted the entire time. And so they were just bearing up under that persecution, and Jesus praises them for that. But there's another church, probably the most famous church in this discourse, the church in Ephesus, where Jesus tells them that they are known for a lot of things, but there's one thing in particular they're not known for, and they need to get their act together again. This is what Jesus says through the disciple John in the book of Revelation as he addresses the church in Eph false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, where you outside in, you're doing a bang-up job. You're doing, the words that we would use, you're doing great ministry. You're doing great ministry. You're firing on all cylinders. Everything's great. Your Sunday morning services are good. You're really ministering to people well. You got things cranking in small groups. Children and students is going really well. Your care is really good. You are doing ministry well. You are executing church well. And on top of that, you have really good theology. You don't let bad theology get into that church. You guys are really nailing it there. You're executing church at a very high level. Good job. However, you have, in that execution, fallen away from the things you did at first because you've fallen away from your first love, which is to be Jesus. And you're no longer doing the stuff that you used to do that poured out of a love for Jesus. So you need to refocus yourselves and start doing the things that are fueled by the love of Christ. See, they stopped doing the very deeds that can only be done when they are fueled by a focus on and love for Jesus. They lost their way. They started doing the business of church well. And if you think about church, you can do a lot of church and you don't need Jesus' help at all, right? We have very sophisticated marketing strategies now. We have people in the church who are marketers. We could form a group and we could find out how to do a social media blitz and we could send out mailers and we could get people here. We could have more butts in seats. This row would be so full right behind the Turnburgs there. It would be great if we marketed. It would be fantastic. There are strategies with children. There are things that you can do. You can put on a song up here. You can play songs three in a row together with good transitions and excellent thoughts in between. And you can do all that without Jesus. And I hate to admit this, but it's true and you guys know it's true, so let's just all fess up together. I can preach without Jesus. I can just get up here and get worked up about stuff and tell funny ha-ha jokes and then we can all leave and everybody will be like, I guess that was good, and we'll just all go home. I can do this without having to pray about it. And I know that because I've failed you over the years and done that a couple of times. It's possible for churches to lose their way and start to execute ministry with excellence, forgetting their first love. And then they stop doing those little things that are only done, that are only fueled by a love for Jesus and his love for us. And so as I thought about grace, and I thought about what our reputation is, I thought, you know, in some ways, it's kind of like the opposite of the church in Ephesus. Because I do think that we love pretty well. And I do think that we stay focused on Christ. And it's almost like, hey, at grace, how's your Sunday morning service? Well, there's a poll. And sometimes, sometimes our sound just cuts out. Sometimes, we've been in here when Aaron just like bailed on a song. He's like, we gotta restart this. This is garbage. And then we just, we start again, you know. Sometimes it doesn't go exactly as we want it to go. But man, those people love each other. What if we were known for that? How's your children's ministry at Grace? Well, listen, we've got the best children's pastor. She loves those families really, really well. But, you know, hallway's a little tight, and sometimes there's just random grown-ups back there, because it's the only place we have restrooms. We do our best. And, you know, if you've got a kid in kindergarten to third grade, you're going to have to walk through the rain past the aquarium store down a dark hallway. I don't know why the hallway's always dark. We have lights there. We still turn them on on Sundays. But let me tell you something. The volunteers back there, man, they love your kids. It's the same faces that show up every week, and they love our kids. How's your small groups ministry? Well, Nate keeps saying he's gonna do better at it and then he doesn't. But we always have room for more people and we always find uncommon community there and we love well. When I think about grace, I think about a church that does love well. Now, are we just going to let everything else go? No. We're going to pursue excellence in everything. But we're going to stay focused on loving well. And it just kind of made me think, like, what if we were known for how well we loved? What if that's what we were known for? As a church, when people come in and out of this place, when they visit for one time or they visit for a month, as you talk about church with your friends who don't live here, as people who have moved into grace and then maybe they had to move away, different part of the state or different part of the country or whatever, what if the way that they remember grace is how well we loved? Because I'll tell you, that's all I've ever wanted to be known for. I grew up in church. I've seen a lot of church. At a young age, I began to become aware of what kind of goes on behind the scenes sometimes and how that can hurt people and how egos and agenda can come out there. As a member of a church staff, frankly, I've been a part of a church that lost its way. Started executing ministerially very well, but took our eyes off of Christ. And so all I've ever wanted in leading a church is to lead a church that loves well. All I've ever wanted in leading a church is a church that every week we focus on Jesus. We declare him. Every week our prayer for you is that you leave this room a little closer to Jesus than you were when you walked in. All I've ever wanted to do is be a part of a church that loves well and loves authentically. We say what we mean, we mean what we say. All I've ever wanted to do is be a part of a church that if you start to serve more, if you start to get a peek behind the curtain, if you become an elder or a committee member or you serve during the week and you see us do our day-to-day stuff, that what you find out is there's nothing going on back there that ain't going on up here. It's just an authentically loving place. And what's so great is the church that hired me wants exactly that too. I think that's why it's been such a good marriage for nearly six years now. And so when I think about the church that I've always wanted to be a part of, I hope very sincerely that it's the church that you've always wanted to be a part of. That it's a church that we can say about ourselves, you know what, whatever else is true, we love well. We always focus on Jesus. And we always love one another well. Before the service, the worship team kind of gathers, and we just kind of talk through the service, and then we pray. And Aaron says, is there anything we should pray about? And I said, yeah, today feels weird. Today feels weird. I won't tell you why. It's just family stuff. Kids are sick and yada, yada, yada. But I'm coming in here with my hair on fire this morning. Erin Winston, our children's pastor, she's coming in here with her hair on fire. Things just kind of, they just kind of felt weird this morning and we just stopped and we prayed as a worship team, God, would the things that matter to you go really well this morning? Would the things that don't matter to you, would they not matter to us at all? Would we not care about them at the end of the day? And at the end of the day, God, would you just focus us on you? We want that to be our prayer every week. We want to love Jesus and love others really well every week. And so I thought, you know, it's one thing to make the point that we want to be a church that's known for loving well. Sure. That's great. I don't think any of you would disagree with that. I'm not going to make more arguments that that's what we need to do. If you don't want to be a part of a church that's known for how well it loves Jesus and loves others, then this ain't the place. But if you do, I thought what I would do is now use the rest of my time this morning to give you some practical ways to love others. What can a church practically do? How can we put meat on this bone? What can we actually do to love others well as a church and to build our reputation in the community and in the people we serve as a church that loves well? And so actually what I've done is I've come up with a list. And if you've been here for a while, you know I don't like listy sermons because listyy sermons are disengaging and boring and frankly, lazy in their preparation. But this one needed a list. And then I went extra pastor on you and I alliterated it. How about that? Each point starts with the same first two letters. Point number two, just know that when I get to point number two, I'm really proud of both of those words that I was able to think of them and make them mean what they need to mean. Okay, this is where unusually listy and alliterated today, but let's go. Let's go through our list. Now listen, here's why I don't like listy sermons, because you can't remember a list of five things. All right, no one's going to leave here and commit them to memory. The whole series I did on the five traits of grace, I'd be surprised if any of you could list more than one of them. So I know you're not going to remember all these. So my encouragement on the front end of the list is that you maybe take one and think, yeah, I can lock onto that and I can do that. And that's how I can love others well while I participate in grace. So let's go through the list. How can we love well? How can we build a reputation of loving well as a church? Number one, unselfish attendance. Unselfish attendance. Here's what I mean. Here's what I thought about it. I, for almost 20 years now, have been getting paid to go to church. I don't know if you realize that, but pastors, we get paid to be here. And I don't really know what motivates people to go to church. I was trying to think about that this week and I just had to be honest. I don't know. I have to go. So I don't, I haven't walked in your shoes. I don't know why you got up and showered and braved the elements. I assume you showered and then braved the elements to come in today. But I would imagine for many of us, if not most of us, we're kind of thinking about ourselves. I want to go to church because I'm going to get something out of it. Because God speaks to me there. Because I kind of get some Jesus. See my friends, and that's good. I'm not saying that that shouldn't motivate you. I'm happy that motivates you if it does. Maybe we're serving somewhere. Maybe we want to just see our friends. Maybe church or our people. I've talked to some folks who have kind of fallen into the habit of over COVID watching the service online, but every now and again they come back to church because it's like those are our people. We miss them and we love them. Maybe it's to participate in corporate worship. That's my favorite part of every Sunday morning service is just standing right there and getting to sing. Getting to worship with the rest of you guys. Hearing my church praise my God. Maybe it's like an obligation. You kind of feel like you just need to do it. I got a big sale coming up this week and I'm going to need a big man's blessing so I'm going to go and check the church box. Maybe it's for your kids. I don't know. But I would bet that there's some sort of, and I use this word but I use it because it's accurate. I don't use it to be derogatory. There's some sort of selfish motive to come here. And it's okay. Church should serve everyone who comes. But can we also add to that some unselfish motives? Can we begin to think about what it looks like to come for other people as well? A great example of this happened this morning. Some of y'all got here and it was raining. And there was people out there with umbrellas walking you to your car. My hope is that they prioritize the mamas with babies and maybe the older ladies who aren't quite as quick as they used to be and the dudes that are about their age. You just stood there and laughed at them and watched them walk through the rain without offering them umbrellas. That would be ideal out there. But I was out in the lobby as the first song started taking care of something, and I saw Phil over here, our head usher, who I give a hard time for his huge ego about being our head usher. He's out of control, man. He's soaked. His hair's soaked. I fist pounded him. I was so excited. I saw how wet he was and how much he had just been out there just serving people without ever being asked to. Nobody asked him to grab an umbrella. He just did it. And I fist pounded him really hard. And he was like, that stung really bad. My hand's freezing. Also, Phil's a sissy. But Craig Holiday was out there. He grabbed an umbrella. And one of my favorites, Kyle and Ashlyn, now Ashlyn Tolbert, yes, they got married last weekend. They got back from their honeymoon last night, decided to come to church. He's not even being paid for this. He's not on the clock. He got here and then said, I gotta get an umbrella and just immediately started walking people in. All that is unselfish church attendance. Say hey to somebody you don't know. Long time grace people, I'm being serious about this. If you come to church and the only people you talk to at church are your people that you already know, they're the only people you acknowledge or shake hands with, that's a little selfish, isn't it? Let's reach outside of our circles. We're small enough that we know new faces. Let's say hey to them. Let's make sure they feel welcome. Unselfish church attendance looks like serving in the children's ministry so that mamas and daddies can sit in here and experience what God has for them in the worship service. It looks like inviting people to sit next to you that you might not know. To me, this is going to sound weird, one of the things that unselfish church attendance is, is singing loud. I can do this. When Aaron lays out and he's not singing and it's just our voices, which is always really beautiful to me, I sing extra loud. If you sit around me, you know. That's the penalty for getting here late. You got to hear my voice. But I'm singing loud to make space for you to sing too if you don't want to sing so loud. When we come to church on Sundays, let's not just think about our experience and what God has for us, but let's think about ways that we can be used by God even while we're here so that the folks who come here can feel loved every week. The next one. The second thing we can do to love well is to offer untethered inclusion. How about that? I'm telling you. Untethered inclusion. One of the ways that I think about grace, and I've thought about it like this from the beginning, and it's not something that I articulate a lot, because frankly, it wasn't something that I was totally comfortable with. But the more I think about it, the more I embrace it. I really think about grace as kind of a triage unit for those who have been hurt by church. We all know, we all have stories of people who got used up and spit out and burnt up at church. Of people who did get behind the scenes and find that there were egos and agendas involved and those hurt. Of people who served faithfully at church and then hit a rough patch or a hard time and the people they thought were close to them abandoned them. Or maybe they watched leaders fail. Or maybe they watched elder boards disappoint. Or maybe they watched their kids be mistreated. Or any number of things that churches can screw up. But here's the thing. We're not above any of that. Matter of fact, we're going to do something this year to hurt somebody in this room. And I hope when it happens that we're the first ones to see it and apologize and make it right. So I don't want to pretend like grace is some bastion or oasis where we do everything perfectly. But we try. We try really hard to be authentic and to love well. And one of the ways that we can do that is to make this a place of respite and rest for those who have been hurt by church. Does that make sense? Untethered inclusion means you come here and we're going to include you in everything we do. We're going to love on you. We're going to invite you to things. We're going to fold you into small group. We're going to talk to you on Sunday morning. We're going to treat you like you give the most, like you serve the most, like you love the most, and we're just going to let you rest. Our inclusion of you into circles and pockets in the church has nothing to do with what you give to the church or how you serve the church. I've been a part of churches in the past where everybody was just made to feel like a cog in the machine, right? We're reaching the community for Christ. We're doing this. We're going to go plant this thing. We're going to go do this thing. And what's your part that you can do? And the people in the church who were valued the most were the ones who showed up the most often and served the hardest and gave the most. And I just don't think that's the way that God wants his church structured. I just don't think that those in leadership in the church should care the most about the people who do the most for them to scratch their back. I think our inclusion and our love of other people needs to be untethered to whatever service they're offering the church. So we love without expectation of reciprocity here. It is untethered to any other requirements. We're just going to include you and love you. So if you have been hurt by church, come and rest here. I've had meetings with people where I'll go out to lunch with a guy and he'll say, yeah, you know, I used to play an instrument back in the day. I used to play for churches. I got burnt out on that, so I don't do it anymore. And I'll tell them. You can ask them. I'll tell them. All right, I'll give you a year. I will not tell Aaron on you so he doesn't come after you. I will not bring it up again. I will not ask you to serve in that way for a year. At the end of the year, I'll just check on you. See if you want to serve. And I mean it. And we'll let people come here and we'll let people rest. Now what I would say to the people that are resting, resting is not retirement. At some point or another, we've got to get to work. But if you need rest, you can rest here. Because we're going to offer you untethered inclusion. Next thing we're going to do to continue to build a reputation of love is we're going to offer unforgettable care. Not required care. Not bare minimum care. We're going to offer unforgettable care. Last year, somebody brought a gentleman to our attention who lives in Capitol Towers. He's confined to his wheelchair. He can't even get out of his wheelchair on his own, so he sleeps in it. And he lives in an apartment over there. And we were told that he would want to come to church with us, and so we made some arrangements to come to church. It was very easy to do. But there was two people in our church that wanted to go see him and meet him. And so they went to this man's apartment. And I can only imagine what an apartment would look like when the sole occupant of it cannot get out of his wheelchair. But I'm guessing to say that it was not tidy is probably the most generous description of the way that it looked. Those people cleaned that apartment for six hours on their own. No one asked them to do that. They just saw a need and they met it. That's unforgettable care. That man will never forget what they did for them. I have seen in our church unforgettable care offered time and time and time again. People who don't just meet the minimum requirement of, yeah, I am praying for you, but who actually show up and do the thing. You know what Stephen ministry offers? Unforgettable care. To walk with you in life in a way that you'll never forget the time Jesus put that little angel in your life to walk with you through that hard part. So every church has opportunities to care. All of us will have opportunities to care at some point or another, and my challenge to you is when you do, offer care that is unforgettable. And do it because your desperate hope is through offering that care, they will see Jesus in how much you cared. The fourth thing we can do to continue to build a reputation of love is offer uncommon community. I think it's one of the things that defines grace. Uncommon community. At the first Sunday of the year, well, that we met, because the first one was the first, and we didn't meet because, you know, we chilled out. But on the 8th, we met. And I got into a conversation with somebody afterwards who wanted to talk about the Christmas Eve service. They're like, man, listen, I got to tell you. He said his brother-in-law was in town. He lives in South Carolina. So his brother-in-law was in town. And after the service, which he praised and thought was good, and I said, which one did you come to? And he said, the 330. And I said, oh, that wasn't even a good one. The five was way better. And he said that after the service that his brother-in-law was like, man, what's the deal with this place? He's like, what do you mean? He's like, the people are incredible. The service was great. Sermon was good. Worship was good. But the people are unbelievable. I've never experienced community like this. And my buddy was just like, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's cool. We love each other here. It's really great. He's like, no, no, no, I've never experienced anything like it. And he's like, I know, we feel really lucky. And they just kind of moved on. Two full days later, brother-in-law's still at his house, grabs him, pulls him aside. And he's like, no, listen, man, I'm not kidding. What's the deal with that place? I've not been a part of church for a while. I want to be involved in a church like that. How can I find what you have? That's you guys. That's the people. And I thought this week, how do I describe what that person experienced on a Christmas Eve service, the community that he saw, and put that into replicatable behaviors that we can do moving forward. And I don't know. So here's the thing, okay? Here's the really smart thing I'm going to tell you so that we can continue to have uncommon community. Just keep really liking each other is the thing. This church here is a church that's built on friendships. I would be thrilled to have lunch with anybody. I don't know if I want to take an eight-hour road trip with anybody in here, but I'd be thrilled to have lunch with anybody in here, talk to you, get to know you. I see rich and deep friendships in this church. I see the way new people are incorporated. I'm so proud of how well we love each other and how much we really do genuinely like each other. And so maybe that uncommon community beyond just liking each other a lot comes with being intentional about spending time with each other outside of church. Just, you know, being like friends. But whatever it is, whatever's there, that's what makes grace go. It's not me. It's not the worship. It's the people. That's why we have Big Night Out. We're doing another one. March 24th. First one in three years. Mark your calendars, baby. It's going to be a big one. Where's Doug Funk? Is he in here? Hey, Doug. We're doing your retirement party, baby. We were supposed to have a retirement party in 2020, and then the Lord sent COVID, and we didn't get to do it. But we're going to do it now, man. It's going to be really fun. March 24th, we're going to hang out. And when we hang out, we go somewhere. We go to Compass Rose or somewhere like that, and the owners say, do you just want us to reserve the whole space? And we say, no way, because we want other people from the community to come and see our community. And we want to invite them into it. We want you to invite your friends so they can look around and be like, you guys all like each other. Yeah, we do. We're pretty tight. At Grace, we want to continue to have an uncommon community that comes from having a genuine affection and appreciation of each other. And then finally, you can't make this list of what we can do to build our reputation of loving well without noting this. We need to be a church of unbroken focus. Unbroken focus on Jesus. I quote this passage a lot, Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. As grace, we are running a race. We are doing our part. It is our time on the field. We are going and we are loving and we are trying hard. How do we run our race well? Throw off the sin and the weight that entangles? 12.2, by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We forsook all things for the sake of the cross. Guys, none of this, none of this is possible without Jesus. Nothing that we do as a church is possible without Jesus. And I hate to break it to you, we don't have any strategies here. We did a campaign a while back. We did it all wrong. We had no strategy. We just thought, well, you know, if it's important to God, we'll raise the money. If it's not, we won't. It'll be all right. We're going to do another one. We're going to have the same attitude. There will be no strategies. We have no strategy for church growth. We have no strategy beyond just loving well and loving Jesus. That's all we got. We're just going to do it every week. And none of these things are possible, unselfish attendance, offering untethered inclusion. None of this is possible if it's not fueled by Jesus. What was Ephesus guilty of? They lost sight of their first love, and because they lost sight of their first love, they stopped doing all the little things they did at first that can only be fueled by a love of Christ. So this is the one. I told you there's going to be five and just pick one. You can't do all of them. Everybody has to do this one. Everybody has to do this one. We can only be a church that loves well if we have an unbroken focus on our Savior. On a personal level, on a corporate level. I'll say it again. I always say it. There's nothing more important that we can do in our whole life than wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. We need to pursue Jesus on our own. We need to come every week and we need to celebrate Jesus. We need to walk out these doors and be determined to show people Jesus. And in those ways, we will love in all the little ways and we will do all the little things that the church in Ephesus forgot to do that will keep our eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we will be a church that is known for exactly what God wants us to be known for which is loving others as Christ loved us. So that's my commission to you. Let's continue to be a church that's known for loving well. Let's do it by leaning into those things that I mentioned and by never forgetting to keep our eyes focused on Christ in a way that is unbroken, in a way that is consistent, and in a way that is urgent. Trusting that love to fuel all the other things he wants us to do as a church. Let's pray. Jesus, we love you. I pray that everything that happens here would draw us more close to you. God, I pray that a desire for you, a desire for your spirit, a desire for your son, a desire for your word would burn in all of us. That we would be fueled by it, that we would wake up because of it, That we would love well because of it. And that that love that we have for you would spur all of these little things that conspire to make this church a place that's known for loving well. God, would you use grace however you see fit? Would you use this little church with our little community and our friendships to advance your kingdom? And would people who come here week after week, whether it's their first week or their hundredth, would they leave this place a little bit closer to you than when they came? Would they leave this place with a greater desire for you, Jesus, than what they walked in here with? And will you just give us a heart to repeat that every week? We love you and we need you. 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.

Well, good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. And I actually am kind of laughing to myself because this morning's sermon is about family. And during that worship set, I think we got some good illustrations of family. Power goes out, it goes wrong. You guys kept singing. It was actually really beautiful. And I was proud of you in that moment. I just want it to be stated for the record that there was a surge back there, and there's a button that turns on all of the equipment that the sound comes through, and I remembered that and hit the button. That's right. I saved Christmas. The other really funny thing that happened up here that I just want to share with you guys because families have inside jokes, and this is a good one one for us. In the song, Hark the Herald, I'm going to do it, Aaron. In the song, Hark the Herald, Angels Sing, there's a verse where it said there's a line that says, like, hail incarnate deity. But that's a tough line to sing, and Aaron can't quite get it. So when he says it, he sings hail incarnate deity, like carne asada, like tacos, right? And you can't hear him sing the song and not hail the incarnate deity, which is pretty great because he is also the God of carne asada. And so I swore I wasn't going to look at him. We were laughing before the service about it in rehearsal. I swore I wasn't going to look at him. I didn't want to throw him off. So I didn't, but then he backs off. You know, he does the thing where he backs off the mic, right? and everybody sings, and it's a spiritual moment. It was not spiritual in Hark the Herald. He had to compose himself. So then I lean over to Jen and tell her what he's doing, and then he sees me talking to her. I'm sorry. And so then he starts laughing again. So then he gives you guys a spiritual chance to sing the song again while he composes himself. So anyways, that's what happened during Hark the Herald. But yeah, this morning is about family because when we think of Christmas, we think of family, right? It's inevitably a part of the Christmas season. And that means different things to different people. For some of us, it means really good things. For some of us, when we think about Christmas and we think about the holidays and we think about seeing our families, our moms and our dads, our grandparents, our brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, all that stuff, it's a good, sweet time. We're really excited about it. We're really looking forward to it. And if that's you, that's fantastic. For others of us, it's stressful. I talked to a couple people this morning. You got big Christmas plans? And they go, yeah, we got to get lots of places, you know, or we got lots of people coming over, lots of big stuff to do. And for those who say, gosh, it feels stressful because there's so many people coming over, there's going to be so many folks there, or I've got so many people to go see, like, man, there's a lot of folks who'd be pretty jealous of that. Those are the golden years, man. Soak those up. For others of us, when we think about family at Christmas, it's stressful. We know we're going to be stepping into an environment, we're going to be sitting around a dinner table, where there's certain landmines that are going to be laid for us, and we better not step on them. And some of you want to step on them real bad, right? And your wife's like, please don't do it. Please don't say the thing. The conversation gets political. You want to say your thing. You know you shouldn't. Some of us are stepping into stressful situations, and not even just in a silly way, but family's just tense. Family's hard right now. And then there are others and these are the people that I think about the most. And if this is you, just know that I may not be praying for you by name, but I'm praying for you in general and your situation as often as I can remember to do it. There are others for whom thinking about family during Christmas is hard because either there's loss or there's loneliness, right? Christmas is hard because this is the first Christmas with that empty seat where someone's not where they're supposed to be and everything's going to feel different. Or it's been five years since the loss, but it still hurts the same when you sit around. I know that when my family lost my papa, Christmases were just, they just were never the same. They just weren't. I haven't had that much joy in a Christmas since we lost him. For others in our body, Christmas is a time of loneliness. It's a time when everybody else goes to their families and we might not have ours around us or at all. And if that's you, I pray for you often because I hate that for you. But I think that no matter where we are on that spectrum of good, dreading, where it just hurts no matter where we are, and for many of us, for most of us, we're probably a Venn diagram of all of those, right? As we approach, I doubt anyone's only good and anyone's only bad. There's just a good mix in there. But I think that the principles that come out of the Bible around family can actually encourage and inspire us no matter where we sit on the spectrum. And I've actually been really excited and looking forward to sharing this sermon with you because this sermon is one that kind of came through a little aha moment in my office. I knew that I was going to be preaching about family, and I didn't really know what I wanted to preach. I had no great inspiration. None of the ideas that I had sounded any good to me. And so I was just kind of sitting in my office thinking, and I do, when I don't know what to preach about, I do what I would assume most pastors do or should do, is I just kind of sit down with the Bible and I'm like, all right, God, what does your Bible say about this thing? And I just go through passages or I open up the Bible and I read passages until one catches me and I go, oh, that's the thing. That's what grace needs this week. And then I preach the Bible. And so I wasn't sure what to preach about. And Aaron Gibson happened to be in my office at the time. So he was my guinea pig that morning. And I said, hey, man, I got to preach about family. Here's what I'm thinking. Can you kind of help me make sense of this? Does anything click with you? What should I pursue? And so we started talking back and forth about this idea of family. And I started thinking through, well, how does the Bible address family? Where does it talk about family? And to be honest with you, the Bible is pretty scant in terms of passages that directly address family and tell parents how to parents and kids how to kid and grandparents how to grandparent. Like it doesn't have a lot of that in there. So I'm trying to figure out what is God, what does your word say about family and how does that apply to grace? And Aaron said something that triggered a thought in my head, and as often goes in these conversations when I'm trying to figure out what to preach, and I'm just talking to whoever is closest that I can grab and will listen to me. He said something that triggered a thought, and I started going through scripture in my head, and he was still, he was, he at that point became Charlie Brown's mom. Like, there was words coming out, but I'm looking out the window window and I said, I got it, man. Thanks so much. I'm excited. And so I just thought about family over the course of scripture and what it's supposed to be and what it's supposed to do and how God designed it. So if we look in the Old Testament, where we do have more directives about family, one of the first things we see is that family makes the top 10 list, which is actually pretty cool. It's in the 10 commandments, right? One of the commandments, honor your father and mother and the Lord for this is right. And that commandment looks different for different people at different ages. It looks different for me to honor my parents now than it did when I was 11, and it'll look different in 20 years than it does right now. And it has different implications in different family scenarios, right? Blended families and stuff like that. And so honor your father and mother is this just profound principle that comes out of the Old Testament where God prioritizes it enough to put it in the Ten Commandments. And implicit within that commandment to the parents is, hey, act in a way that's worthy of honor, right? Earn the honor of your children if they're going to be commanded to give it to you. And then there's other places in Scripture. Proverbs has some things to say that if we obey, our parents will live a long and fruitful life and that parents are told to raise a child up in the way they must go and they will not depart from it. So we raise them up by teaching them God's principles. But there is one passage, it's actually two different passages in the same book that say the same thing that really kind of outline for us or show us, depict for us the purpose of family as God intended it. So we can find this in Deuteronomy 6 or Deuteronomy 11. They say the same things. I just like the way Deuteronomy 11 is worded just a little bit better. So I'm going to read that to you now so we can see God's design for family. He's just taught them his law, told them how to live, basically giving them what their version of the Bible was, and this is what he says as a result of it. You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, listen, parents, I just taught you my law. I just shared with you my love and my truth. Now, I want you to put those all over your home. I want you to bind them on your hands. I want you to bind them on your forehead. I want you to write them on your walls. I want you to write them on your doorpost. And I want you to talk about them with your children when you're waking and before you sleep, as you come and you go, as you sit down for mealtimes, talk about my word with your children. And so what we see, and this is a profound thing, what we see is that God has designed the family as the primary delivery system for his gospel. God has designed the family as the primary delivery system for his love and for his truth. Now, they wouldn't have called it the gospel in the Old Testament, but we call it the gospel. The gospel is the story of the good news of Jesus. It's God's love and God's truth. And we can see from Deuteronomy and from the way the family is structured in the Old Testament that it is God's design for the family, that it would be the primary delivery system of his love and his truth in the life of children as they grow up. That the purpose of family from a spiritual perspective is to create the safe space to incubate the faith of our children so that they can grow up knowing who their God is. And then there's a generational implication in this where we do it for our children and for their children and for the children's children. And there's a responsibility forever to turn around and teach the previous generation the faith that you inherited from your mother and father. That the divine design for families is that a mama and a daddy would impart their faith on their children. You can't overstate how important this is. That our children, listen, if you have kids in your house, listen, that our children would grow up looking at our faith and knowing that this is the faith that they can learn. This is the faith that they can mimic. This is the faith that they can follow. They ought to grow up in our home looking at a godly marriage and knowing this is what I want one day. What I want one day is the way my father loves my mother. What I want one day is the way my mom loves my dad. That's what I want one day. Our kids should grow up in homes and be able to say that. They should grow up in homes where they are discipled, where we parents take it as our responsibility to impart what we know about our faith onto our children. Can I tell you that now that I have two kids, you know what keeps me up at night theologically when I think through difficult questions or truths of scripture or realities of walking with God? Do you know who I'm thinking about when I'm trying to figure those things out for myself? Because it ain't you. It's not my church, it's my children. I want to impart a good faith onto them so that when they enter into adulthood, they have a firm foundation. That they encounter less hiccups than I did. That's our job, parents. Our job in the home is to create a safe space for our kids to grow up where they know that they are loved by their God and by their parents and that their God and their parents are proud of them. We create that incubator in the home so they grow up in this safe space and they have a good family and then they turn around and they do that to their kids. That's clearly the divine design of family in the Bible and it's clearly what our families are supposed to do for us is to be God's delivery system of his grace and truth and love in our lives. We should be able to look at the generations that came before us and see what it is to have a heart for God and walk in that. And grandparents, you're not off the hook, okay? You might be thinking, well, my kids are, that ship has sailed, my kids are grown, they're out, what happened happened, and now we have to live in that reality, and that may be true. But this commandment in Deuteronomy was given to a culture of people that lived intergenerationally. They lived as clans. They lived together. So this isn't just for parents and children. This is for grandparents and adult children and grandchildren. And those of you who have adult kids, can I just tell you something? I don't care how old they are. They'd be 41, like me. They'd be 31 or 21. We still need mamas and daddies, okay? We still need parents. We still need people that we can look at and ask questions to. We still need an older generation that we can be vulnerable with, that can have grace with us, that can watch some of the mistakes that we're about to make and say, hey, hey, brother, I love you. Don't do that. Older generations in this room, my generation, we still need mamas and daddies. You never get too old for that. And those of you who are older than me and you have parents who are still alive, you know you still need them too. And you know you still miss them. This responsibility never fades. It's our job to love on and demonstrate to the generations that come. And my generation, it's going to sound like I'm making jokes because I make jokes because I'm a dummy sometimes, but I'm not making jokes right now. We need to watch people age gracefully so that we know what it is to do that. We need to watch people care for their aging parents so we know how to do that with tenderness and grace when it's our turn. We need to watch how you interact with your adult children who don't make some of the choices you want them to make or who do. We need to see how that's done. We need to watch that. We need that in our lives. And so this family, as the delivery system for God's grace and goodness and truth and instruction in our life, that never fades. And we never graduate out of that need. And now some of you, as I say this, you have good families. You're like these couples that I get to marry sometimes. I do a fair amount of weddings every year, and one of my favorite things that I get to do on occasion within a wedding ceremony is when the couple will talk to me. I always talk to them in premarital counseling about their families, and what was it like growing up in your home? How are your mamas and your daddies and that kind of thing? And every now and again, I'll be working with a couple and they will say, we had great families. We had great parents growing up. I loved growing up in my home. We want our home to look like their home. They were wonderful and yada, yada, yada. And I'll say, well, do you want to honor them in the service? And they're like, yeah, that would be great. And so what I do is after the exchanging of rings, I always pray over the couple. And what we'll do sometimes is we'll surprise the parents and I'll invite them up in the ceremony and I'll have some words written about how they understand that they're standing on shoulders of their parents who gave them this great upbringing and they're so grateful for it and they want to do the same thing in their home. So they want to acknowledge their parents in the wedding ceremony as they create a new family and their parents come up and lay hands on them and I get to pray over all of them. And that's just a sweet moment to see that generational love and faith, to see parents who took this seriously and kids who realize that their parents did that for them. So some of us come from good families. And those of us that do, Jen and I come from great families. We should acknowledge that we were born on third base. We did not hit a triple. God gave us a good set of cards, and we should be grateful for that. So part of today is just encouraging us that we should praise God for our good families. If you come from a good family, if you have a mom and a daddy who took this seriously, who modeled God's love for you and who taught you their faith, will you text them today? Will you call them? Will you tell them that you're grateful for that? Will you acknowledge the goodness that you come from? Because as I talk about this, what a family should do, how God designed the family, how he purposed it, I know that there are plenty of people in this room who feel bad because they weren't that. Who feel angry because my family didn't do this for me. Yeah, that's what a family's supposed to do. That's what a dad's supposed to do. My dad, he walked out that door when I was eight, so I didn't get this, man. I didn't get that idyllic childhood. I'm not looking forward to Christmas. It's going to be tense. It's going to be difficult. Sometimes we have families that let us down. We come to church, and everything's good, and everything smiles, and everybody's buddy-buddy, and behind the scenes, the wife knows and the kids know, he is heck to deal with. The husband knows and the kids know, man, mom's not the same person when she's not at church. Well, we come from broken families. We come from abusive families. We come from addicted families. And we feel like spiritual orphans because we just don't have somebody pouring into us like God designed family to do. And others of us, we had a great family. And then there was the diagnosis. Or the accident. And then there was loss. And we don't have that family that we used to have. We don't have that person to look to like we need to. And so I think the real question becomes, yeah, this is what God designed family to do, to be the divine delivery system of his goodness and his grace and his truth and his love. But for many of us, our families have fallen short of that. So the question becomes, what do we do when our family hasn't done what it's supposed to do? What are we supposed to do when our family has left some gaps? My parents didn't teach me their faith. My dad left. My mom left. My childhood was not good. I love my dad. He taught me faith, but he's gone now, and I don't know who to ask. I love my mom. She taught me faith, but she's gone now, and I don't know who to talk to or who to go to, and I don't know how I'm going to navigate these adult years on my own. What do we do when our family doesn't do what it's supposed to do? And our situation is less than idyllic. To that question, I began to think about the New Testament. We talked about what the Old Testament has to say about family. What does the New Testament have to say about family? What's the language around family after Jesus comes on the scene? Once Christmas arrives, how does that impact family? And when I thought about the New Testament, I can't think of anywhere in the New Testament that specifically addresses family and family behavior. There's stuff about children honoring parents. There's stuff about gender roles within a family, but there's not anything about family dynamics in the Bible where it's specifically addressed in the New Testament that I'm aware of. But I began to think through the times where family is mentioned in the New Testament. And do you know that most of the time that family is mentioned in the New Testament, it's mentioned as imagery for how the church ought to behave? It's mentioned to help us understand how we, the church, should behave towards each other and begin to understand one another. That most of the family language in the New Testament is not actually about physical family. It's imagery about our spiritual family. I'll show you what I'm talking about so that you know that I'm not making this up. On your notes, there's a list of references there. We're not going to put all of them up on the screen. I just want you to know that if you want to go back and open up your Bible and double check me on this, there you go. There's the footnotes. You can do that. But in Ephesians 2, Paul talks about, he introduces this idea of a spiritual family. He says that we're no longer aliens and sojourners. We're no longer spiritual orphans, but that we are now, we now have membership in this heavenly family. And so he introduces to us this idea of an additional family. And then in 1 Timothy, I like this passage, in 1 Timothy chapter 5, Paul is writing to his disciple Timothy, who he's sent off to Ephesus to be the pastor there, the church in Ephesus, where we see the book of Ephesians. Timothy was the pastor pastor there trained by Paul. And 1 and 2 Timothy are letters of advice to him as he leads this church. And in chapter 5 of the first letter, he says, when you have conflicts with people, let me tell you how I want you to handle it. If you need to confront a man who's older than you, confront him as a father. If you need to talk to a woman who's older than you, confront her as a mother. If you need to talk to a younger man, one of your peers, talk to him as a brother. A younger woman, talk to her as a sister. And so what it tells me as a pastor is that when I talk to you in meetings and conversation, on Sunday morning, when I preach, I preach to you as if I'm preaching to my own family. I treat you like I would my own family. And I do not think that that instruction, though it's not explicit in the text, I do not think that that instruction is limited to just pastors and elders, but all of God's children. That you would regard men who are older than you as fathers, women who are older than you as mothers, and then your peers as brothers and sisters. That we should treat each other as family. And I'm going to get to it in a minute as to why I think this. But I think that is such a profoundly good teaching that we should treat each other like that. Then in Matthew chapter 12, Jesus says this really interesting thing where he's preaching to some people and he's talking with a crowd and somebody kind of cuts through and says, hey, Jesus, your mother and your brothers are here to see you. And Jesus just says, my mother and my brothers are the ones who obey the will of God. Like they're family, this is family too. And then in Galatians, we see Paul again talk about this concept of family and how we've been adopted into God's family and we are heirs to the throne of God. And this is locked in for us most in Romans chapter 8. So I'm going to read this to you here. Romans chapter 8 verses 14 through 17 really tells us a lot about our spiritual family. Paul writes this, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And that really should say sons and daughters of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but have received the spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, we are Christians, and again, to be a Christian, you simply believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. If you believe those things, then the Bible teaches that God has given you the Spirit as a down payment on your salvation in heaven. And what Paul tells us is when we receive the Spirit, then we are adopted into God's family, that we are heirs to God and co-heirs with Christ. We are brothers and sisters, and Christ is our brother. And so as you think through what the New Testament has to say about family, and you try to answer that question, what do we do when my family doesn't do what it's supposed to do? I think we accept the reality from the New Testament that through the gift of Jesus, we also receive the gift of a new supplemental family. And I meant to change that word supplemental to spiritual. But through the gift of Jesus, through the arrival of Christ, once Jesus shows up in the gospels, the Bible starts to talk differently about family. It's God's way of acknowledging, just like he did the rest of the world, yes, I intended for each and every boy and girl who is born to grow up in a family with parents who love them, who teach them about God, who show them God's love, who model for them maturity in their faith, and who surround them with other people and kind of create this incubator, this safe space for kids to grow up where they know they're loved and they know that God is proud of them. Yeah, that's the design. But God also acknowledges that when sin enters the world, things start to break down and the family is not immune from that. And so what do we do when our family doesn't do what it's supposed to do? We take solace in the fact that we are given a new supplemental spiritual family. And this is probably my favorite thing about grace. It's how much grace feels like my family. It's how much when the power goes out, we don't care, we're going to keep singing. Can I just tell you, I wasn't one bit worried. I wasn't like, oh gosh, what are we going to do if the power went out? You know what we're going to do? We're going to cut the fourth song and I was going to come up here and yell at you. That's what we're going to do. And you know what you guys were going to do? You're going to be totally cool with it. Nobody would leave and be like, that place stinks. And if you did, okay. Sorry. Nothing we can do about it. There wasn't one ounce of stress because you guys are family. Because we love each other. Because we show up for each other. And I was thinking about this reality in just mine and Jen's life. Six years ago, we moved away from our families. And though we have great families, that move created a void for us. Lily and John, our kids, they have great grandparents, but they didn't get to see them as often as we'd like. And so you know what God and his goodness did? He put us in a church that has people that are a generation older than us who love us and who love our children and who we consider to be our Raleigh grandparents, who we can call and say, gosh, something came up. Will you come sit with the kids? And they love to do it. We were given, you know what I was given? I think about this a lot, and I don't think those of you who fit into this category, I don't think you know how grateful I am for you. I have a really good dad. But when I came to this church, I was given a bunch of spiritual fathers who are older than me, who have walked through seasons that I haven't, who pour into me, who love me, who advise me, who befriend me, and who encourage me. And it has become my spiritual family. Jen has women in the church who are a generation older than her, who love on her, who we can go to, who we can ask questions to, who have become our Raleigh mamas and daddies. We have brothers and sisters in this church, in our small group, who we walk through the same seasons of life together, and we can lean on each other, and we're not alone. And that spiritual family here doesn't for one second replace our genetic family. It doesn't for one second replace the families that we were born into, but it supplements those families. And sometimes, even in the loss that we've experienced, sometimes we can get such joy out of our church family that just for a second, we don't think about that as much. So I want you to know that in grace you have a faith family. You have brothers and sisters who want to watch out for you. You have mamas and daddies who want to pour into you. There are children in this church who need your love. There are children in this church who need your direction that you can get involved with and turn around and pour into the younger generations. But this church needs to, according to Scripture, operate as a supplemental family that fills in the gaps that are left behind by the families that we were born into. So what do we do if our family doesn't do what it's supposed to do? We allow the church to be the place that is the primary delivery system of God's love and of God's grace and of God's truth. We're not just the children, but everybody who's here knows that they are loved. They're loved by their brothers and sisters. They're cared for by their brothers and sisters. They are cared for by their spiritual moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas. And that we believe in them and in who God created them to be and in watching them grow up to become those people. And when I say grow up, I don't just mean 10-year-olds becoming 25-year-olds. I mean someone who is 50, but spiritually they're two, and we get to watch them grow into their faith. So first, know that grace is your family. That's what we are here for. Second, as a family, we want to share the love that we have with everybody who comes in here. We want people to feel like family as soon as they walk in the doors. One of my favorite movies at the holiday season is Family Stone. And it's not, I'm not going to get into the plot of it, but one of the underlying themes of that movie, and they don't address it directly, but I think one of the reasons I love it so much is that that family is set up and you can just tell that everybody who walks in that door is loved and everybody they bring home with them is loved too. And I want Grace to feel like that. That everybody who walks in those doors is loved and is part of our family as soon as they wanna be. And everybody that you invite, we're gonna love them too. No matter who they are, no matter where they've been, no matter what they've done, we're gonna love on them. But I know that some of us have families that have let us down. Some of us had families that don't feel the same. Let God's family of faith be your supplemental family that fills in the gaps. And then that way, we can love each other, encourage each other, and continue to push each other towards Christ. And then once we feel that sense of family here, let's look out and see who God is bringing in and love on them too. I'm going to continue to use grace, faith, family in my language moving forward. And this overview of family in the Bible is exactly why I'm going to do that. I'm going to pray and then we've got some instructions for you after the service. Father, we love you. We thank you for being our heavenly Father. God, we thank you for our good families. Those of us that have them, we're so grateful for them. We thank you for good moms and dads that aren't perfect but love you well and love us too. God, I pray for those walking into Christmas who are walking into stressful situations or hurtful situations. I just pray that you would be with them, that they would see you, that they would know that you were loved, that you would show up in those spaces. And God, I pray that grace can be a place that fills in the gaps for those who are a part of us that were left by the families that they were born into. Give us good, rich, deep relationships, God, that push us towards you and that help us grow and help us know that we're loved by those around us and by you. Let us be a faithful family of faith. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Welcome to Grace. It looks like I'm a little inside information, give a little praise to Gibson, Aaron Gibson and his team. A couple months ago, Aaron, our worship pastor, sent me an email with a link to that song, Honey in the Rock. And he said, hey, what do you think of this? And I listened to it for about 20 seconds and said, I think it's dumb, but you know, do it if you want. And that was it. I didn't like it. I'm not a fool I mean, that was great, wasn't it? That was really, really good. So Aaron, I don't know where you are, but listen to me less. But, you know, another reason that it could have been good is he didn't sing. So that was also helpful. But that was a really, really good worship set, guys. Thank you very much for leading us in that way. As we begin our series, Merry Christmas season to everybody. I'm excited. I love the Christmas season. I love Christmas carols. I spent more time than I should have this last week making this year's Christmas mix for me. It is the only thing that will be playing on my Spotify for the rest of the month. And I just, I love this season. And this week, the idea was to bring an ornament. There's an angel tree out front. You take a card off of that that gives you the opportunity to give charitably to a family that needs it and replace it with your ornament that represents your family. And in that way, that's the Grace Family Christmas tree. So if you didn't do it this week, bring an ornament next week, hang it on the tree, and we'll see a bunch of different ornaments that represent us as a big family. Because we are family and because this is a fun part of Christmas, next week is one of my favorite weeks of the year. We started it last year, and I thought it was great, so we're bringing it back this year, but it's Christmas Jammy Sunday. So dress in your best Christmas jammies. We want your families to be matching. There will be an award that goes to the most festive and I will publicly ridicule the least festive. So let's all participate. The week after that is our first ever holiday hoot. If you've been a part of Grace, you know that hoot nannies are a big deal. So the first ever holiday hoot where we're going to have a Christmas party. Bring something shareable. We'll put it on the table out there. We'll just hang out for a little while after the service. Load your kids up with sugar and then send you home. So that's going to be great. And then, of course, we've got our Christmas Eve celebration. So I'm really looking forward to celebrating December with you as we celebrate Christmas and all that it means. In our new series, Not Home Alone, which is obviously a play off of, it's in my top three Christmas movies of all time. We had a team of folks here this week led by Aaron and Julie, not Aaron Gibson. He didn't have anything to do with it. He's gotten enough credit this morning. Aaron Winston. And Julie and a team of those folks who decorated this place. And it looks amazing, doesn't it? Like all the different Home Alone touches. Yeah, they did such a good job. There's even a Kevin McAllister battle plan up here if you want to come look later. That's really, really great. So they really did a good job decorating the church. But in this series, Not Home Alone, we're going to be looking at Christmas and the different ways that it reminds us that we are not alone. And that it points out that God has actually put people in our life for a reason, to remind us of his presence. And that God actually places us in the lives of other people and gives us eyes to see those who might feel alone. And so as we walk through this month, we're going to be reminded of all the ways that Christmas reminds us that we are not alone. And as we start the series, I'm reminded of this generation of people between Malachi and Matthew. I don't know if you know this about your Bibles. I'm pretty certain that most of you know that there's an Old and New Testament. If you don't, that's all right. But now you do, okay? And you should never be embarrassed again. But there's an Old and New Testament in your Bible. And in the Old Testament, it's a chronology of the people of Israel, of God's chosen people. But it moves from the very beginning of human history in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the flood, to what's called the first 11 chapters of Genesis, the prehistoric narrative. And then in Genesis chapter 12, we meet Abraham. And then the rest of the Old Testament is tracking the family and the descendants of Abraham through history. And it's a pretty good chronology of history starting in the Sumerian dynasty. That's when God shows up and calls Abraham out of the place called Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. That's the Sumerian dynasty. If you can remember all the way back to sixth grade history, that's probably when you learned about that. So for most of you, no, you don't know what I'm talking about. But some of us can remember back that far, and God called Abraham out of Ur. And he spoke to him, and he made him promises. And then the Old Testament tracks those promises, and we see his descendants in Egypt and struggling in the desert. That song, Honey in the Rock, is about that time in the desert. And then the period of the judges and the period of the kings and David. And then it moves into the period of exile and then post-exile when they come back. And then the prophets are speaking into this period. And so you can kind of read the Bible, the first 39 books of the Bible, and get a good chronology, a good history of the world all the way up to a certain point. And that certain point is Malachi. So if you're reading your Bible and you're reading it from page one to the end and you're turning the pages as you go and you're reading through this chronology of history and God's involvement in the generations. And now the Old Testament is important that we understand isn't laid out chronologically. But as you read it, you're getting snippets and you can reorganize it and it does flow from the beginning of history to this point in Malachi. But as you're reading it and you're turning the pages, when you read the last verse in Malachi and flip it over, the Old Testament's done. And then, I don't know, depending on who your publisher is, there'll be maybe a title page for the New Testament, maybe some explanatory notes, but you turn the page and it's Matthew chapter one. And in between the last verse of Malachi and the first verse of Matthew is what's called in church circles 400 years of silence. These are 400 years where there was no recorded books of the Bible written. Where presumably there were no prophets speaking. God didn't have any mouthpieces that he was using to speak to the people. Now I'm sure they were there, but they're lost to history. And I'm positive that God was moving in those generations, but we don't see them. So in the middle of our Bible is this 400-year period called the 400 years of silence. Because from the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been moving. From the beginning of time until Malachi, God had been speaking. From the beginning of time until Malachi, he had been assigning prophets and teachers to speak to his people and to copy down his words and to record his deeds and the deeds of his people here on earth. And in Malachi, that stops. And we don't pick it up again for another 400 years. And I always wonder, what must it have been like for what I think of as the silent generations? What must it have been like for the silent generations of those 400 years to see that God, he spoke to other generations, but he's not speaking to us. He moved in other generations, but he's not moving now. He sent prophets to others where in the past he's given miracles to Elijah and Elisha and he's given words of wisdom to, and he's given prophecies to Isaiah and to Ezekiel, but he's not moving now, and he's not moving here. Why has he spoken to other generations and he hasn't spoken to us? I can't help but wonder if they somehow felt like the neglected generation, the forgotten generation, the waiting generations, the lonely generations. They were unique in the history of Israel and God's voice coming to them. And I think that we can all relate to these silent generations. Because I think for us, we also have times in our life where we feel alone, where we feel isolated, where we feel like we are waiting, where we feel like we are praying and praying and praying and nothing meets us there but silence. And we must think, like the silent generations, we can relate to them by asking, God has shown up for others, why isn't he showing up for me? He's shown up for other people, why isn't he showing up for me? And what I mean can be isolating any number of examples. I remember when Jen and I were walking through our season of childlessness. We wanted very much to have a kid, and we didn't, and we couldn't. And the more you pray about something, and the more it hurts, the more alone you feel in that. And you look around, and your friends are having kids, and the kids you taught, I used to be a high school teacher, the kids you taught in high school are now having kids, and you're like, what gives, God? How come you're not listening to us? I see you blessing them. Why aren't you blessing us? What are we doing wrong? I see you loving them and answering their prayers. Why don't you hear our prayers? And I know the pain of going into meetings and lunches and being asked the question, and you give the painful answer. And in those seasons of loneliness and in those seasons of hurt and of waiting, even holidays like Christmas can feel painful because they only serve as reminders of what you don't yet have. They only serve as reminders of the things that make you feel more isolated, not less. I think of families who have elderly parents who are walking through the struggle of caring for them, who don't have a lot of good options. And my heart goes out to the families that have elderly parents, and those elderly parents have made arrangements and they have ways to take care of themselves, but it's the hard conversations and it's the hard reality and it's sometimes it can begin to consume you like you're facing it alone. But then my heart hurts even more for the folks in our church that I know who there are no good options on how to care for their family. They don't have the resources. Their parents don't have the resources. They don't have the resources. They don't know what to do. They're just stringing every day together, knowing that today is not enough to take care of tomorrow. And I don't really know how to take care of tomorrow either. I don't know what to do. And they're praying and they're crying out and they've got to be thinking, God, I see you moving for other people. Why aren't you moving here? I see you working things out for other families. Why don't you work them out for our family? I think of people in families where you're the only believer. Your spouse doesn't share the faith that you share. In fact, they deride you for it. Your children who you brought up to believe what you believe have walked away from what you believe, and you just feel alone. And you see other families, and it seems to work out for them. Their grandkids come to church with them, and I can't even get my spouse to come to church with me. God, why do you listen to their prayers and not mine? Why do they experience joy that I don't get to experience? I think of the people in our church who walk through depression and mental health disorders. And you see the joy that other people have. You see the laughter that other people experience. And you wonder to yourself, why can't I experience that? God, I see you giving them happiness. I see you answering their prayers. Why don't you answer my prayers? I think of stay-at-home moms who have so much to give and offer to the world around them. But because of seasons of life, they feel that they are reduced to a handmaid, to an 18-month-old tyrant. Not that we can relate to this in any way in our home. Or to an Uber service for the social calendar and practices of a middle school kid, and the world just reduces you to this shell of what you feel like you are and were, and you don't even know yourself anymore, and you feel so isolated in that. You feel so reduced in that. I think of people who have experienced grief, and the grief won't let go. The loss happened two years ago. It happened five years ago, and every now and again, God in his goodness gives you a little bit of reprieve from that where you forget that you're sad, but in your quiet moments, you're still sad. And in the times that you're reminded that God sees you and he's looking out for you, you agree with that in principle, but you don't feel it in your guts and you just feel alone. Or the people in the marriages that when you come to church on Sunday and you hang out with your friends, we're good. And when you're at home, it's hell. And you're just hanging on. And you both know the only reason you're in that marriage is so neither of you have to admit anything to your friends. We can feel isolated. We can feel alone. Sometimes it's because of choices that we make. Sometimes it's because of things that happen to us. Sometimes it's because we're simply isolated. But I think that each one of us has felt like, will again feel like, these silent generations. These generations of people between Malachi and Matthew who have seen God move for others and we just wonder why God isn't moving for us. I've tried to be your faithful servant, God. I know that I'm not perfect, but I try to do the right thing, and it just won't give. And God, if something doesn't give soon, I'm gonna lose my mind. My life is untenable, and I don't know how to hang on. And it's in those moments when we feel alone and when we feel isolated and we feel like maybe God has forgotten to answer our prayers that we most identify with these silent generations. And so if you feel that way, what can you do? Well, you can look to what the silent generations did. And what did they do? The silent generations clung to Christmas. The silent generations clung to Christmas. Now, they wouldn't yet call it Christmas, but they clung to the promises of God. They taught them to their children and to their grandchildren. And they kept them in their homes. And they upheld the law of God and the principles and the teachings of God. And they took their kids to synagogue every week. And they listened to the rabbis and they praised together. And they clung to the promises of God that they believed in in their Bible. It was called the Tanakh at the time, the 39 books of the Old Testament. They clung to the promises in that book. They remembered the promises of Genesis 12 when God isolates Abraham and he takes him to the land of Canaan and he makes him a promise. He makes him three promises that every generation of Jewish person clung to for those thousands of years leading up to Jesus. And the last promise that he made him was that one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth. One of your descendants is going to be the Messiah. He's going to be the Savior of the world. So just hang on, believe in me and trust me, and one day I will send him to you. And then those generations that followed, and Joseph, and in Moses, and in Joshua, and in the judges, and in Samson, they clung to that promise that God made to Abraham. And then we see David in the middle of the Old Testament, and David up and he starts asking questions and he starts praying and everybody's wondering when is the Messiah going to come, the one who is to come, when will he arrive? And God tells David he's not coming yet. But in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we see the Davidic covenant where God tells David he's not coming yet, but when he does, he's going to sit on your throne forever. And it's this reminder and this restoration of the promise that they've been clinging to that God gives them kind of as a lifting up in the middle of their history to David that Jesus is going to come. You should still look for him. You should still teach your children about him and cling to the promises of the Messiah. And when he comes, he's gonna sit on your throne forever. And then we move into the period of the prophets where God gave visions to some of these great prophets of old, Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Amos. And he gave them messianic prophecies. Prophecies about the Messiah who was to come. And Isaiah prophesies that when the Messiah comes, that the blind will receive their sight and the deaf will receive their hearing and that the people who can't walk will be able to walk and that prisoners will be set free. And we see Isaiah call him Emmanuel, which means God with us, God coming from heaven to earth with us. Isaiah promises that and that when he does that, he will be the king of kings and the Lord of lords and the prince of peace and his name will be called Emmanuel. And then we learn that by his stripes, we will be healed through his sacrifice and through his death. We will be healed and restored forever the way that God intended it at the beginning of creation when he walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That God has this grand plan to restore creation and you to himself. And so this Old Testament generation, the silent generations, clung to those promises that they could track throughout their Bible that they taught generation after generation knowing that one day God promised that he was going to send a savior. And then you turn the page to Matthew chapter one and you see the genealogies of all the people who were a part of Israel through the years or grafted into Israel and Ruth and Rahab. And then you see the arrival of Jesus. You have the very first Christmas. And in that Christmas, we see a God who keeps his promises. And I will remind you of this every year that you allow me to be your pastor and Christmas time rolls around, that Christmas is our annual reminder from God that we serve a God who keeps his promises. We serve a God who keeps his promises. Romans 5 tells us that we hope in him and in that hope we will not be put to shame. And I don't know about you, but every other thing that we have hoped in in our life at some point or another lets us down and puts us to shame. Especially if you're a UNC fan. There is nothing in our life that is guaranteed that will not let us down. There is no promise we can receive from anyone that is ironclad and will not eventually disappoint us. But God does not put us to shame. God keeps his promises, and Christmas is our annual reminder that we serve and worship and cling to a God who has not forgotten us, who does see us, that reminds us that we are not alone, who whispers in our ear in the book of Isaiah that the Lord is close to the broken heart, and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit, who reminds us through the Psalms that he is our strong fortress, that we can run to his wings for protection and that with him in Isaiah we are told that we will soar on wings like eagles, that we will run and not be weary, that we will walk and we will not faint, that he will give us strength. We know these things and we can run to him and we can claim those because he's promised us. And Christmas reminds us that he keeps his promises because he promised that baby boy for 4,000 years. For generation after generation, they said, he's coming. He's coming. When? Soon? We hope. But we don't know. He's coming. He's coming. And there's 400 years of silence. And they clung to it. He's coming. We know he is. And then he shows up. And the angels declare him. And the shepherds worship him. And the wise men bow down to him. And his mother Mary stores it all up in her heart. And those generations clung to Christmas. So what do we do when we feel alone? What do we do when we feel forgotten? What do we do when life feels untenable and I don't know the way out and I don't know how this is going to be resolved and I'm praying like crazy and God does not seem to be answering my prayers? What do we do? In our waiting, we cling to Christmas. We cling to what Christmas is. We cling to the reality that we serve a God who keeps His promises. And we acknowledge that not only did God in the Old Testament make promises to the generations before us that He fulfilled in the sending of His Son, but that that Son, when He came, He made us promises too. And the people who came after him made us promises in God's name. We cling to the promises of Jesus when he talked to the disciples and Jesus says, you know, in a little bit, I've got to go. And they're like, where are you going, man? We'll come with you. And he says, where I'm going, you can't go there yet. But I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm going to go and make sure that when you get to heaven, there's going to be a house for you. I'm going where you can't yet go because you're still in your mortal body, but when you are released from your mortal body, you will join me in eternity, and I am preparing a place for you there. It's a promise from Jesus. It's a promise from Jesus in the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation. That there's going to be the greatest banquet of all time when we get to heaven and he saved us a seat. It's a promise. Paul reminds us of these promises all throughout his writings, but most pointedly in Romans. When he tells us in Romans 8 that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. Not angels or demon or height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. If you know Jesus, if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he's the son of God, that he did what he said he did, he descended to earth, he took on human form, he died on the cross for our sins and he rose again on the third day. And that he's gonna do what he says he's gonna do, that he's gonna, he's gonna come back crashing into the clouds on a white horse. And on his thigh, it's going to say righteous and true. And he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. He promises us that. That he will restore this creation. And he acknowledges in Romans 8 that all of creation groans for that return. But as Christians in this era, we cling to those promises. We allow Christmas to remind us that God always keeps his promises. And like the 4,000 years of generations before us, and like the 400 years of silence in the generations within there, we cling to God's promises and we know that we serve a God who always keeps his promises and the last promise he makes to us in Revelation 21 that he is going to create a new heaven and a new earth and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain for the former things, all those things that bring us grief, all those things that make us feel isolated, all those things that make us wonder if God really hears us, the former things have passed away. That's a promise that we have from our God. And we are reminded at Christmas that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So let Christmas season be what it is. Let it be fun. Go see the lights. Decorate the tree. Buy your gifts. Spend your time with your friends, go to your parties, do all the stuff. But please, this December, don't lose sight of the fact that Christmas is a gift from God that reminds us that he keeps his promises. Christmas reminds us that he's done it once and we believe he'll do it again. He sent his son one time and they clung to that promise for 4,000 years. And it's been 2,000 years since he sent his son the last time. But we know that he's going to do it again. And when he does, he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue and all these former things will have passed away. So even when it feels like God can't hear us, he doesn't see us, we feel alone. We remember that generations before us have felt that way too. And so we cling to Christmas because it reminds us that he's done it once and we believe that he'll do it again.

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