If you would turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 18, this will be what you call a topical message. And I apologize if we move around too fast as far as references go, but feel free to jot down those passages that maybe you don't have time to turn to and study those in the days to come. We're talking about our identity tonight as children of God and learning how to embrace my identity as God's child. And if you had an outline, it was very hard for me to put an outline together, but I came up with these three points. Number one is the lost childhood. Number two, the lost fatherhood, which we'll explain. And then number three, the new identity. Many times in life we learn things again or fresh that we knew before, but something will happen in life that teaches us the truth that we didn't understand earlier. Even though we knew it in our mind, we memorized it in Awana, and we could quote it and we could give the context of the passage. But Jesus said something interesting to his disciples one time. He said, the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life. And so if you have God's word in your hand, you've got thousands, hundreds of thousands of God's words to you. But until he speaks them to you, you might not get the full meaning of those words. And so tonight I'm not gonna be sharing anything new. There will be no new verses read tonight. But hopefully we'll have, if we allow God, I think he will maybe transfer some of the things that we know maybe a little deeper into our hearts and then out into our lives to make them really have effect. The Word of God will not return void. He promises that. So that's my prayer for tonight. And turn to Matthew 18 and we'll just jump right in here. At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus saying, who's greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it be better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. And I almost left verse number six out because it really brings the gravity right to the front, but it belongs there. So tonight we're gonna start by looking at children, or a better way would be to become a little child, to humble myself and become as a little child, literally lowering myself in my heart, in my mind, and I would say in my imagination. Now, we know that Christ is speaking this to people who have not yet entered the kingdom. They weren't saved. He was going to accomplish that work. But looking back, there's all kinds of application for us who are believers. And I say that with the understanding that there could be someone with us tonight that does not know our Father. He does not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And if that's the case, stay tuned. The gospel, it will be all through this tonight. But generally, I'm speaking tonight to those of us who are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. But tonight we want to focus in on this childlike nature. And we'll separate it right off the bat from what we would call childish, childishness. Someone that's being childish, there's kind of a negative connotation there, right? And so we might use the word foolish. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. And so I'm not going to be talking here There's a philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau that kind of postulated that children are basically perfect. They come unflawed from the maker's hand and it's their environment that just ruins them. Now, are there any parents in the room that would say, my children didn't come perfect from the maker's hand? Yeah, so I'm not here to say that children are perfect. But if we can differentiate between the child likeness that Jesus called us to, not just as a recommendation to becoming a part of the kingdom, but as a requirement to be like a child. Separating that from the childishness, the foolishness that we need to leave behind. Remember Paul said, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought and understood like a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Right? But for those of us who are believers, there are things that we don't want to have put away. in regards to our childlikeness. So let's talk about what it means to be a child for a moment. Childlikeness. There are several secrets to the kingdom here in these first six verses of Matthew 18. And to make a point for the disciples who are kind of squabbling about who was the greatest or who would be the greatest, Jesus picks a little child and puts him in their midst and tells these other guys that they've got to humble themselves and become as a little child to be able to enter the kingdom of heaven. But then he says, to be great in the kingdom of heaven. And then he kind of turns it around in verse five and says, whoever shall receive one such little child in my name receives me. And in another passage, Jesus says that unless you receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child. And so I always thought that this meant, and I'm sure it does still mean it, but that as a little child, I need to accept what God is offering, accept Jesus Christ, accept my need for a savior, and in humility, recognizing that I can't save myself, I can't make myself righteous like the law requires, So I'm going to depend on him just like a little child trusting in a heavenly father. And that is true, but there's also I think an application on the other side where we find out, it says something about us when we look at how we treat little children. And someone has said that you can look at a civilization and see how moral it is or how it's on the decline based on how it treats the weakest, the least among those, which usually turns out to be the very young, all the way down to the fetus, the unborn child, and then it goes all the way up to the very elderly, the infirm, and what some people would say they just, they're taking up space. They're using up all our resources, right? So how do I receive little children? How do I receive my little children? How do I receive your little children when they come up to me in the hall? Something to think about. One of the things about being a child that I think God is pointing at is the sense of wonder that we had, and some of us still have, but that childlike surprise that we meet things that we see in nature And it blows us away a lot of times when we see it for the first time. I like to introduce my children to the moon. And so this last few months, whenever I see a nice moon outside, I'll take Quentin, who's two years old, and I'll point up and say, you see that? That's the moon. And to see his eyes just light up, wow, the moon. In Psalm chapter eight, verse two, and then again in Matthew 21, 16, It says, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, nursing infants, you have ordained strength. And when Jesus quoted that, he says, out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, you have perfected praise. And in Psalms, it's in context of God's enemies who are against him and they have all their devices and schemes that they're trying to pull off. And he kind of overturns all of those with things that you would think were weak and simple. And in the same way, the gospel kind of refutes the whys of this world with simplicity. And the rich things and the powerful things in the world, God confounds those with the small things. So it's interesting that he points to children in that way. There's also this sense of imagination. If you look in Mark chapter 10, And then in verse 13, we have almost a parallel passage, but there's some different points that he is suggesting to us. Mark 10, verse 13, and they brought young children to him that he should touch them, and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. And why do you think they rebuked these mothers or parents of these children? Maybe they thought Jesus was busy. Maybe they thought Jesus was too important. Maybe the children wouldn't give the Messiah the proper dignity. They wouldn't respect him enough. They wouldn't treat him with the proper decor. But Jesus, when he saw it, he was much displeased with them and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God." So can little children come to Jesus Christ? The question is, if you've been listening, the question is, can adults come to Jesus? Because he says we've got to become like little children in humility, in acceptance. But then he turns it around and says in verse 15, verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. So again, is he talking about receiving the kingdom like you're the little child? Or is he talking about receiving the little kingdom like you would receive a little child? And I think the answer is yes. But you can search that out for yourself and try to figure out maybe which application fits best. Children have good imaginations and adults should have better imaginations. But a lot of times we kind of put those things aside as we're growing up. Our child likeness or our innocence or whatever you want to call it can kind of get knocked out of us or beaten out of us or humiliated out of us or embarrassed out of us, whether it's on the playground or in the locker room or at home. There's all kinds of whacks that we get, all kinds of trauma. They talk a lot about trauma these days. There are wounds that we receive, some from enemies, but sometimes from friends, which is even harder. Sometimes from close family members, which, that really hurts. And so all the things that happen along the way, you can think about Satan's plan that he has for you. Satan has a wonderful plan for your life. And he wants to steal and kill and destroy. And isn't it amazing the lengths that he goes to him and all of his minions? It's not just Satan. But the things that he does to us, a lot of times starting off as little children, he gets at us that way. And some of those hurts will stick with us for decades. And God wants to heal those, and that's kind of what the point of the message is tonight. As our Heavenly Father, he has, redemption for all of those hurts, all of that pain, all of the grief and loss and misery that the sin-cursed world we live in throws at us. He wants to redeem that. There is some spiritual understanding that is readily accessible to a child that sometimes adults kind of pause at and even resist sometimes. When Jesus came on the scene preaching the kingdom and preaching the relationship with a father God, it riled up the religious leaders of his day. And we'll see a little more of that here in a bit. Luke chapter 10 verse 21. In that hour, Jesus rejoiced in his spirit and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hid these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed good in thy sight. That phrase, it seemed good, it can also be translated, it was your good pleasure. And keep that in mind. because later on we'll see that same phrase show up and it will shed some light in that context. So the question is, why do we need to be converted or changed before we can enter into the kingdom? What child-likeness has been lost? If foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child, then that means, I think, the way I read that is that the heart of the child is not the problem, it's the foolishness that's bound up in it. The heart is a very important place in each of your existences, in your soul and mind. Our heart is the, how does it say, you better keep or guard your heart with all diligence because out of it are the issues of life. The heart's a very important place. The child heart is a very important thing. It's a very precious thing. And as sinful as our children can be, they're awfully precious to us. And many times we see things in them that really teach us about our Heavenly Father and what it means to follow after Him and to look to Him as a child. I mentioned things that can knock the childlikeness out of us. There's kind of a theme in literature about this loss of innocence or loss of childhood. If you think about Peter Pan and the Lost Boys in Neverland, they didn't want to grow up. There was a commercial about Toys R Us kid. I'm a Toys R Us kid. I don't want to grow up. I'm a Toys R Us kid. I just want to play with toys all my life. What's so bad about growing up? Well, if you think about it as a grownup, there's a lot of things you have to deal with that didn't seem to be an issue when you're a kid. And we talk a lot about the good old days. which I think could be better named the good young days because I see my children, you know, squabbling or being ungrateful or different things and I just want to try to impress on them how good they have it. And boy, There's a comic strip called Calvin and Hobbes, and you talk about the difference between a child and a child's perspective of the world, and then a parent's. His dad is kind of, he's, you know, always having to worry about work and paying the bills and all of these things, and Calvin's just running around having a good old time. So is there something there that we do want to get back and get the spiritual significance of, and I think there is. If you've been abused or neglected in your home, if you've been humiliated, a lot of times on the playground, you know, kids can be very cruel. Some children are forced to grow up too fast. They're just thrown into a situation, whether it was their parents' fault or not, they just have to grow up. They don't have the right amount of support or supervision at those crucial periods of their lives. And so they have to kind of skip over a lot of the joys of childhood. And that's when we'll talk about a lost childhood. Some of us get embarrassed on the sporting field or in the academic world. We don't measure up. We feel like a disappointment and our performance is lacking. Some through an addiction of one kind or another squander away what's left of their childhood and enter into a never-ending adolescence where they're dependent on some kind of activity or some kind of substance. And I can attest to that, I know how that is. To be saved at a young age, but then to, through just not having the right balance in life, not having the right understanding about how Christianity really works, getting caught up in things that really steal a lot out of our lives and are damaging in our relationships going forward. For some, there's a misunderstanding of what Christianity is really about, and somewhere along the line, they could fall into the trap of some kind of a performance-based religious version of Christianity. And that will cause them to maybe get very sophisticated in their Christianity and maybe try to get everything figured out and approach scripture and doctrine and theology more from the scholar or the student angle instead of from the child angle, the child of God angle. So there's all these different things that can maybe steal our childhood. I now want to turn and kind of look at it more from the father's angle. And you can also think of that, a lot of this applies if you're a mother too. But as a father, you know, the world we live in, there's a stereotype of dad. And most of the time, it's a negative light. Dad is kind of a bum. He's very passive, very selfish. He's very entitled. He comes in from work, falls into Lazy Boy. When's supper gonna be? I think Bart Simpson, kind of the stereotypical dad, unfortunately, and the reason it's laughable is because it's, a lot of times, very close to the truth. But it doesn't have to be that way. Many of us and many of you have experienced good aspects from your fathers and those of us who are dads, parents, trying to pass on some of those good things that we received. It's been said that many times we're so focused on trying to give our children the things we didn't have when we were growing up, we actually forget to give them the things we did have when we were growing up. There is a commercial that came out several years ago. When I saw it, I was just blown away because it placed dad in a good light. And some of you may want to jot this down, just you could find it on YouTube. And I almost was going to play it here for you, but I think it'd be best if you just search it out on your own. But it's called How to Dad, and it's a Cheerios commercial. And I'm going to read a little bit of what the guy says in this commercial because it really brought me a lot of good feelings. He says, I'm proud to be a dad, as all dads should be. Why? You know why. Kids think we're awesome. We get our hands messy. We tell hilarious jokes. We never say no to dress up. We build the best forts. We do work work, and we do homework. We lead by example. We blow their minds. Being awesome isn't about breaking rules, it's about making them. Scraped knees aren't boo-boos, they're badges of bravery on the playground. When you're a dad, hugs can be bear hugs, but they can also be high-fives, fist bumps, and next-level handshakes. Kids, they're our best friends, they're our greatest fans, and they look at us the same way we look at superheroes, up, because we're taller. Now, dadhood isn't always easy. When a rule is broken, we're the reinforcement. I said that wrong. When the rule is broken, we're the enforcement. But when a heart is broken, we're the reinforcement. And we wouldn't have it any other way because being a dad is awesome. And this, this my friends, this is how to dad. Now go home and watch the commercial tonight on YouTube. Cheerios, how to dad. And when I saw it, I was like, wow, how did this get through into media? How did this make it to television? Because it's so backwards from what has happened in our culture today. So we're talking about fatherhood, and I've got this book that Amber and I, over the last couple years, have been through some marriage counseling, which I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to have a better marriage. If you need to work on communication, If you need to work on your family of origin differences, if you want to work on your parenting, all of these things, I would highly recommend a good God-centered, Bible-based, you know, newthetic or whatever you want to call it, counseling. Because we've learned a lot. But I'm going to read a little bit here that just blew me away when I first read it. It's talking about the roles of our parents. mothers and fathers, and a lot of it overlaps, obviously. We learn things from our moms and our dads. But on the mother's side of things, it talks about learning, and most of it in those first couple years of life, actually. It's just a crucial time. But learning bonding and trust, attachment, the ability to give and receive affection. But in the father's side of things, it says, I'll just read a paragraph here, Although our mothers' and fathers' roles overlap in many areas, there are few basic values that only our fathers can give us. It's our father's role through love, discipline, and mentoring to release us into our identity. In primitive cultures, this is called the rite of passage. It's the father's natural gifting to help a child, especially around puberty, to identify his or her special talents and giftings. Fathers naturally encourage us to go for it, take chances, while mothers tend to be more protective. It's in taking risks that we discover our identity and potential. It is His role not only to call these attributes forth in us, but also to encourage and mentor their development. Does that remind you of the Heavenly Father and the way that He gives us our identity and He speaks things into our lives that Before he spoke them, before he called them, they didn't even exist. God is a God who calls things that were not and all of a sudden they are. And he's called us his children. And reading a passage like Ephesians chapter one, he is saying these things to us and it's true because he said it. But he's calling that out of us too. And he's giving us identity. So this is partly the role that a father has in our lives. And we can all identify with how important it is to have our father's approval. So if you grow up with a father, without a father, or maybe the father is dysfunctional, disinterested, perfectionist, emotionally absent, you're going to suffer uncertainty about who you are. And there may be confusion about your worth and your special uniqueness. Think about how powerful it would be in the negative if a dad is yelling at his children, telling them how worthless they are. Or maybe he's expecting great things from them on the basketball court. Elliot and I played basketball yesterday together, and there at the gym, there was this dad with his seven-year-old son, and with the best intentions, I'm sure, but basically he was coaching his son, and I was just thinking to myself, performance, and some parents, I think, maybe tried to relive their lives vicariously through their children, and always setting the bar a little bit out of reach for them. But anyway, I'm getting off track here. No matter how good a father or a mother is, many of the clients that this person's worked with says they had a father, they didn't have a father to release them into their identity, so they spent their lives looking for themselves in all the wrong places. And this book, by the way, it's called The Genesis Process, talking about real change and how God works to renew our minds and actually bring about change practically in our lives. And the author was Michael Dye. He's done a lot of work in change groups and some addiction recovery and counseling and mentoring in that way. So that's part of the problem in our world and in our lives is we've all been dropped in one way or another. You think of the story of Mephibosheth who was dropped by his nurse and to no fault of his own he gets to go through life now lame and crippled. And later on when David goes to show him kindness because of Jonathan, his father, the oath that David made with him. Mephibosheth was invited into the king's house, and for the rest of his life he had the opportunity and the privilege, the right, to sit at the king's table. And how must that have felt for him, and how does it feel for us as children of God to be invited to the table, and yet sometimes we draw back? The poem we shared a few weeks ago, the invitation is open to come and dine, but we draw back for different reasons, and part of that is we have a hard time separating the view of our heavenly father from what we just have naturally experienced from our earthly fathers. And there's a broad spectrum of earthly fathers, and how good some of us had it, how bad some of us had it, but no matter how good your earthly father was, there's a huge gap, an infinite gap between what you've experienced from your dad, your daddy, here in this life, and what God wants you to experience from him. He wants you to experience him and he wants to reveal the father heart that he has for you, to you. In spite of their best intentions, dads have a way of dropping the ball with their children. I'll just read a few examples here and you can probably relate whether it's on the child's side or on the father's side. You think of Adam. Adam strikes me as a passive kind of guy. He wasn't really there. I mean, he was present, but he really didn't engage when Eve, his wife, was being tempted by the snake. And later on, when one of his sons is killing the other son, there's not really any mention of him being around. And we only get a little glimpse into that family, but I would say dysfunctional, right? Later on we look at someone like Isaac who makes it pretty clear that Esau was his favorite son. And think of the problems that that caused. And Jacob then carrying that on into his relationships. We see a lot of mistakes in parenting and a lot of generational problems in the Bible, and then we see them in our lives. It's hard to pass that baton on. And we talk about being a second or a third generation Christian, but the truth of the matter is there's no such thing as that. That's a way to talk about it. But every generation of Christians is first generation Christian, because you can't ride in on your parents' coattails, right? So in Exodus chapter 34 verse 7, he talks about how God is keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. And there is a reality to what we've heard about generational curses. Things get passed on, right? Now we've all received from our For father, Adam, we've all received sin from him. The seed of the man kind of carries that along. And every one of us has had a earthly father, except Jesus Christ, who Pastor was talking about last week. That's part of the reason why he didn't have sin, because no one passed it on to him. It had to be a virgin birth. That's something to think about. Fathering, I have seen, bring out the worst of me. And I struggle sometimes with feelings of being a failure or dropping the ball and, oh no, how am I hurting my children? How am I setting them up for failure and all of that? Sometimes I'm trying to strike a balance between giving my children what they want and giving my children what they need. And as children, we think that we need all these things that we want. And I think part of growing up, part of parenting is teaching them to want the things that they need, like vegetables, right? And other things like that. But if we try to be good and we just kind of permit a little bit, it's very easy to just start spoiling, you know. They take it and run with it, and we see their sinful natures kind of rise to the surface like, ah. So then we reign back and we try to get back towards balance, and then we can become very rigid and, you know, the disciplinary and authoritarian. That's how it's going to be. And so there are no perfect parents. We've all Experienced that and if you're a parent or even a grandparent you are experiencing that now on being on the other side Wow, they had it rough. Someone said that a child is someone who thinks their parents are perfect and adolescent is someone who finds out that they aren't and then an adult is someone who Forgives their parents for not being perfect because they start to recognize the weight that that adults that parents carry around and So let's move on to the last point here, and they don't have any big clocks in this room, so I guess I'll pull out this clock here. We're doing all right. We'll wrap it up. The last verse in the Old Testament is very interesting. In the silent years that come after, you just think of this verse echoing through hundreds of years, the waiting for the promised Messiah. Verse 5, he talks about sending Elijah the prophet, who we find out was John the Baptist fulfilling that, coming before that great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. So, part of the plan of redemption has to do with this key relationship. And remember we talked about how intense Satan is on in destroying that relationship. When we talk about marriage problems, we'll point to the, I think in the book of Galatians, Paul talking about maybe it's Ephesians, the importance of the marriage relationship as being a picture of the mystery of the communion, the love that Christ has for the church. And so if Satan looks at a Christian marriage and sees glory just emanating from that because of the love that they have and the unity and the mutual submission and the the sacrifice, he hates it so much he's gonna do everything in his power to stop that. And we can see the war on marriage, the war on purity, the war on faithfulness, right? But next to that, and I don't know if it would be above that or next to it or what, but think about the father-son, father-child relationship that Jesus came in, he came on the scene preaching that and fulfilling Malachi. And so think about how Satan then has to set his sights on that relationship. And part of what I wanted to do tonight is for each of us to have a little experience here, and we'll probably close out the time doing this. Put yourself back in your child, your little child self, and try to remember what it was like. Try to remember part of the nostalgia, you know, those carefree summer days where you didn't really have to worry about anything. And also look at those caregivers that you really learned love and trust from and try to use our imagination to where the words that Jesus tells us, the words that Paul then helps to kind of explain about God as our Heavenly Father, how can we transfer that from, I've learned about the left and right sides of the brain being a little bit different, but in the left side of the brain, I memorize verses, and I learn theology, and I give assent to doctrines. And so in the left side of my brain, since I was a child, I knew that God was my Heavenly Father. But the right side of our brain is more of an emotional processor. And a lot of the memories that we have, some of the earliest memories that we have, are very emotional memories. The way that the brain stores things, if you have an emotion linked with it, it really sticks. some of the embarrassment we felt as children or in our peer groups, we can just think about that memory and it's like we're right back there and our heart starts beating faster or maybe shrinking and our body is even affected by those feelings, right? So part of the experience of being a Christian is letting God's words enter into our hearts and actually affect us. and have an experience with them, and allow feelings and emotions that God created us with to have their proper place in the Christian life. And I mentioned, I was talking with someone the other day about showing up, I think it was Pastor Vic, showing up on our anniversary at the doorstep with some flowers and chocolates and saying, Amber, I brought you these, you know, it's our anniversary, and I just really feel that it's my duty as a husband to offer these gifts on this special occasion so that you will know that I take our marriage very seriously. What's for dinner? Is that how any of you guys do it? I did that one time. No, no. No, that's not what it's about. Now, is there a duty that goes with being in a marriage relationship? Oh, yeah. Is there a duty that goes in being a child of God? For sure. But as a motivator, duty is never going to lead us to the kinds of loving acts of service and sacrifice that love will lead us to, whether it's in our marriage, in our parenting, in our relationship with God. So, if you'd like to jot one other thing down, I'll skip over something that I was going to share. When Jesus came on the scene teaching us about the Father, the Heavenly Father. He taught us how to pray to the Father. He taught us that He was the way to the Father. He taught us and demonstrated the Father's heart and saying things like, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. You don't need me to show you the Father. I have been. This is what the Father feels towards you. It's this way that He would act towards you. Jesus lived his own life out of intimacy with the Father, and he said that, I don't do anything of my own will. I'm actually doing the Father's will all the time, which means I've got to be in constant communion with him to get the marching orders. You know, what's next? What's next today? Jesus pointed to the goodness of the Father, and he asked that one man that said he was a good teacher, he said, why do you call me good? There's no one good except for the Father. There's a misunderstanding about Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him and the Father, and I don't know if it's like a Catholic kind of a sentiment. I know it can even bleed into our Christian circle, where it's almost like God is the bad guy, and then Jesus steps in and kind of protects us from God. And in a legal sense, some of that is taking place. We talked about that a few weeks ago. A pastor was kind of working through some of that, how Jesus vicariously took our sin punishment on himself and appeased the Father in that way. But a lot of the things that Jesus was trying to demonstrate to us was the love that the Father has for us and how he came to show that. He is not there to protect us from the Father. He's there to introduce us to the Father, to bring us to the Father. No one can go to the Father except through Him. And in John, he actually, later in John, he actually told the disciples, he's like, there's coming a day, you know, I'm not going to be around anymore, but there's a promise I'm going to give you that the Father is going to send the Holy Spirit. He's going to send you a helper. In that day, you won't ask me to pray the Father for you, you can ask the Father yourself in my name. And then we recognize that when Jesus died on the cross, something happened in the temple nearby, the veil that was symbolizing his body was torn so that there was that open access. So, things that I have learned about being a child from my children. I'm learning to grow up and be more childlike because I have children, and I get to see some of their interactions with me, and then I read a scripture and it has a whole new light to it, and that's what we'll kind of close out with here. Fathering has brought out the worst of me, but it's also brought out the best of me, I think, in helping me to understand some truths that God wants me to learn. I'll start with my oldest son, Elliot. From the time he was just a little guy, he has been fascinated with nature and specifically the animal kingdom. And he will catch critters and inspect critters and just enjoy nature. And I had a chance, I've had the chance to kind of re-experience and re-discover God's creation along with him, whether it's snakes or turtles or fireflies or birds. He's caught a lot of birds in our backyard. It's a wondrous thing. And so I thank Elliot for that opportunity to see things through his eyes. One thing Ada has taught me is tenderness and gentleness. And you talk about being wrapped around someone's finger. My girls have captured my heart in that way. But Ada, when she was just learning to talk, she would just come and stand and look up and she would say, upy, upy. And I don't know how you're gonna resist that. Right? I will try to stop what I'm doing or at least put one thing down so that I have a hand free. I want you with me. I want to be in God's presence. I want to be on his lap. I want to be in his arms. And when she asks me to pick her up, the feelings that I feel towards her in that moment, I believe God feels towards me all the time. And when I wander away like a lost sheep, When I am stubborn and when my heart is hard, I can be going like this towards God, but He doesn't do the same thing on the other side. When you get your act together, you come back and we'll see. You go think about what you've done, and then come back, do some penance, and we'll see if I accept you back. It's not like that. As far as we go, the Father is waiting for us. The prodigal father. who is very free with his love, free with his inheritance, free with his gifts. He's ready to run and meet us there, right? Molly has a very winning personality and a very angelic and precious look to her. But there was one night she got sick and She was sitting there on the couch, on the love seat, and she had that sad, sick look, and all of a sudden she just threw up. And in that moment, do you think I was angry about the upholstery getting dirty? Do you think I was worried about germs? No, in her mess, in her filth, in her sickness, in her condition, right then and there, I was broken. And I cleaned her up, I scooped her up, and it was very timely because I think there was like a Bible time or something that night, and I was like, God kind of spoke to me through that experience and said, you know, God loves us enough to roll up his sleeves, get in there, and clean us up. and he doesn't, he's not embarrassed by us as his children. That's very comforting. Cooper is not here tonight, but Cooper is the little me. He's the first one of our children that looked like either of us, which is kind of interesting, but he's the little man, and some of his outfits that he wears, he'll dress up, and whether it's working or being like a soldier, whatever it is, I just enjoy watching him, Many times when I'm working or looking at him or playing with him, I'm just imagining myself like, what was I like when I was five years old? And the phase that he's in now, he'll ask me all the time, 10 times a day, Daddy, can you play a game with me? And whether it's Dutch Blitz or Sorry or some of the games that I really don't like to play, it's hard to resist that. Yeah. And then we have Quentin, who at this time, he also really wants to be held. Can you hold me, can you hold me? A couple weeks, or last week, he started asking us to be nice to him. Because in his little mind, he's been told, oh no, you need to be nice to him. Oh, were they being nice to you? And so sometimes when I am lovingly firm and withholding something that isn't good for him, he'll say, Daddy, will you be nice to me? And I'll say, not all the time, but I do love you and I will be good to you, which is even better than being nice. Quentin really likes to help and multiple times I'll be getting ready to take out the trash, which some trash bags, you know, it's like a two-handed deal. And he'll say, Daddy, can I help? And I'm like, uh, yeah. So I hold him in one arm, and I grab the trash bag in the other arm. And then he grabs the trash bag, and we take out the trash. And then when I'm done, the other day, I was like, OK. And I kind of sighed, you know, breathed out, because I'm starting to breathe heavy now. And you know what he did? Okay. As if he had exerted himself. And you know what that tells me? He wants to take part in the work that I'm doing. And I'm ready and willing to let him take part. I want him to take part. And I will even give him the credit for the work that I did with his help. Now, God calls us to work, right? Does He need us? Does He need our money? Does He need our efforts? He delights to use us in that way. And He will even give us, He will even glorify Himself through us, which we were trying to parse that out the other day. Christ is glorified in us, but we're also glorified in Him, it says in 2 Thessalonians. I've also learned that children are very audacious and presumptuous in some of the things they ask for. They'll ask, and they'll ask, and they'll ask again. And if dad says no, they'll go to mom. And if mom says no, they'll go to dad. And they'll find ways to wheedle around what you've said. And that can be annoying sometimes, but you know, there was a parable about the unfortunate woman who kept on nagging that judge. And even though he wasn't just, he finally gave in. And the truth there was that how much more will your heavenly father respond to you and give you the things that you're asking, but how many times do we not have it because we didn't ask? Remember, your Father knows that you have need of these things, trusting in Him. Ask and you shall receive. Now, I've heard this phrase before, and I think it can be taken the wrong way, but they'll say things like, nothing you can do will make God love you any more or any less. And that is a true statement, I believe. But as parents, let's not talk about love. Let's talk about pleasing and grieving. There are some things my children do that really please me. Now, do I love them more because they did it? No. Do I love them less if they're grieving me? If you've experienced grief, you know that grief is only possible when you've loved. And whether it's a child that's grown up and gone astray, You talk about grief, all the love that's been poured out, and sometimes it's like they could take it or leave it. Now, if you've experienced some grief, think about the father who sent his son to be the savior of the world, and the son who came to his own and his own received him not. They rejected him. Think about the grief that God feels. In all of our grief, all of our sorrows, He shares a part. He grieves along with us. And we've had some lost loved ones, or not lost, we know where they are, but that's a form of grief that we experience when someone that was a part of our life is gone, and we don't want to shortchange ourselves on the grieving process. Because it's all right, it's good, it's natural to grieve, and the grief proves the love that we had for them. The grief proves that the emptiness, the empty place at the table, is pretty heavy, pretty weighty, because of the love. So, when Paul talks a lot to his churches, a lot of times he talks to them as little children. My little children in Galatians chapter 4 verse 19, he says, I'm still travailing like a woman in birth for you because I want to see Christ formed in you. I want to see you grow up. I want to see you mature. But I've kind of been feeling towards you as a father feels towards his children. Also in the book of 1 John, we have that disciple whom Jesus loved. which all the disciples were loved by Jesus, but John had a special understanding of the love that Jesus had for him. And so he always makes a point of saying that. And when he then writes a book called 1 John, you might just look through that and look at the two things that I can see in that is my little children and love. Read through that and try to put yourself in the place of a little child receiving these things from his father. Jesus taught us how to pray to the Father, and at one of the hardest moments in Jesus' life, when the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane was on Him, He cried out to His Father. But He didn't just call Him Father, He called Him Abba Father. And there's at least two other times where Paul, in Romans chapter eight, says that by the, we haven't received this spirit of bondage to fear, we've received a spirit of adoption. And because of that, we cry out to Abba, Father, or Daddy, Father. The word Dad is a very uncomfortable word for many people, and Daddy is maybe even more uncomfortable because of maybe the lack that we have had in our lives. But when we come to our Heavenly Father, we need to learn to experience the perfect love that he has for us. And the difference between our earthly and heavenly Father has a lot to do with just the finitude, the finite nature of our dads. And if you're a dad, the finite nature that we have, we're not able to give what we don't have, right? It's very hard to give what I didn't receive from my parents, what they didn't receive from their parents, and you just keep tracing it all the way back. If I had infinite time, infinite resources, infinite love, I could be the perfect dad for my kids, but I don't have those things. And so the best I can do is to point them to their Heavenly Father and His perfection and offering them kind of a passing of the baton, if you will. Grow up in my home and learn what you can, but I hope that by the time you leave our house and my authority over you has gone down, that you will then have a very smooth transition into your relationship with your Heavenly Father, Abba, Father. It's the Holy Spirit that speaks that to our hearts, that we are sons and daughters of God, and because of that, we can cry out to Him as our Daddy. I'm going to do something now that's a little bit irregular. Instead of the normal kind of invitation, I'd like to just talk to you for a moment, And I think it might be best if we all close our eyes. And it might be uncomfortable, but try to become, as a little child, not just one time in our lives, in order to accept the gift of God, the salvation that he offered, and enter into the kingdom of heaven and all of that, but I believe it's a place that God wants us to be more comfortable just living with a childlike sense of wonder at the blessings that he's given us that are there for us every day, even just the life that we have, but also in a childlike dependence on God And the invitation tonight will be probably different for every person here. But if you can imagine either crawling up into your father's lap or just reaching up and saying, Uppy, Daddy, you might just tell him in your spirit that you're tired. that you've been carrying a very heavy burden and it's worn you out. Daddy, would you carry this for me? Would you carry me? Maybe you need to tell him that you are lonely and you feel forsaken or abandoned or maybe rejected by people that you love. Daddy, will you love me? Will you ever forsake me? Will you be with me? I'm afraid, Daddy. Please don't leave me. I'm confused, I don't understand what's going on. Help me understand, or at least just help me know what I need to do. Whatever it is that you need to say to the Father, and maybe you don't have the right words, We know the Holy Spirit will translate that prayer and intercede for you. We'll just be quiet for another moment and bring those requests to our Heavenly Father, to our daddy, our Abba, and know that he hears. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us today to live, the opportunity to fellowship with one another here, and to be a part of the body of Christ, to be your children. I thank you for the burden you've given me in this area, for the healing that you've given me. through the sin in my life, the hurts I've received and the hurts that I've done to myself, to others, you've been healing me and I know there's a lot more in store. But I know there's a lot of hurt represented in the room tonight. Thank you for pitying us just like a father pities his children. Thank you for the work that Jesus Christ has done, not just to bring us to you in a legal sense, to break down the wall that was between us, but the regenerating work that he's done in giving us new life and allowing us to walk in newness of life and for what that means to be able to live in relationship with you. Whatever the needs are here tonight, I ask that by your grace you would meet those needs and help us as a body to be able to love one another. We are members one of another and we need to be hurting together. We need to be rejoicing together. And so that we can glorify you and that your light would be shining out from us, from your body here in this world. And that the lost would see it and glorify you. They would come to know you. We give you glory for everything that you've done in our lives. And we thank you for your word and the things that we've learned tonight. We pray this all in Jesus' name, amen.