Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.
Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.
Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.
Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.
Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
