God Our Father – Timothy Keller [Sermon]

let me read you psalm 103 just the middle part really uh the introduction which is verses one to two and that middle section eight to eighteen praise the lord o my soul and all my inmost being praise his holy name praise the lord o my soul and forget not all his benefits the lord is compassionate and gracious slow to anger abounding in love he will not always accuse nor will he harbor his anger forever he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities for as high as the heavens

are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him as far as the east is from the west so far has he removed our transgressions from us as a father as compassion on his children so the lord has compassion on those who fear him for he knows how we are formed he remembers that we are dust as for man his days are like grass he flourishes like a flower of the field the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more but from everlasting to everlasting

the lord's love is with those who fear him and his righteousness with their children's children with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts this is god's word uh back in march we looked at this passage we looked at the whole psalm but we looked at the beginning of it and it just just killed me not to be able to go to the meat of it and tonight today we are uh last week we laid down a thesis and that thesis is going to serve us for a series of studies on the

uh the nature of god who god is and the thesis goes like this in action movies especially with the kind of movies we see in the summer in action movies all the players are cartoon characters they are one dimensional they're either heroes or villains or uh or they're stereotypes of some kind they're not nuanced they're they're they're simple and they're one-dimensional and as a result there's no personal engagement with them i mean we're not supposed to have personal engagement with them so when they're blown away we just applaud it to special effects doesn't bother us

see there's no personal engagement with them they're one-dimensional cartoons now most people still even in western society most people still believe in god but the god they believe in is a cartoon god is a one-dimensional god oh there are all kinds of varieties they might believe in god as a kind of great force of energy or they might believe in a god who is a kind of benevolent grandfather or god is a stern judge or a wonderful loving friend or a god who is the unmoved mover the cause of the of all that is and

so on but almost every case as we were talking about this last week people's views of gods are flat they choose from the many metaphors that's my god and and uh you know after all this is a culture of choice but when you do that when you choose the metaphor and there's so many metaphors come out of the bible for god you you choose the one if you choose one or two over another one or two you come up with a one-dimensional god you come up with a cartoon god and as a result there's again

no personal engagement and we said that what the bible teaches us is that god because he's a real god is complex he's a father and he's a friend and he's a king and he's a judge and he's all these various things and if you choose one or a couple in favor of another if you refuse to hold them together as he reveals himself to be in the bible if you have a if you have a loving god who never judges or punishes anybody i don't believe in that or if you have a holy god who

you have to just really really try very hard to be very good to please him or else he'll smite you if you have any one of these kinds of gods there'll be no personal engagement and it's not the biblical god the biblical god is a complex god the biblical god is as we looked at we're going to look at these for four weeks is a father and a friend and a lover and a king and frankly that's how you become a christian the day the penny drops that he's all these things he's a real god

and that's also how you grow as a christian because it's always one of these kinds of love or some of these kinds of love that aren't vivid to us that has to be rekindled in our life or rekindle in our heart rekindled in our mind and it's always one of these kinds of love i submit to you that is what will heal you or get you unstuck because we get stuck or we get stagnant it's because of some aspect of god that we don't see or know therefore we're looking for these four weeks at these

various sorts of love these various images of god each one of which is absolutely critical you can't just choose one over the other what makes you a christian what helps you grow as a christian is to be able to hold them together to understand them receive them all these to various kinds of love and respond to them appropriately and today what we're looking at is the fact that god in the bible is a father that god's love among other things he's other things but we're going to look at this today is father love so let's

just ask two questions of this text classic text on what that means let's ask first the question what does it mean that god's a father and then secondly how should we respond that's all what does it mean that he's a father what is that getting across to us about god and then secondly how shall we respond now first what does it mean obviously all these metaphors go like this what we're being told in the bible is if you reflect on the very best possible kings the very best possible lovers the very best possible friends and

the very best possible parents you will learn something critical something uh absolutely crucial something irreplaceable about god that you have to take into consideration if you're going to relate to him and so what does it mean that god's a father let's look at three things that are in the text it means absolute safety compassionate anger and ultimate home absolute safety compassionate anger and ultimate home that's the three things it means let's take a look first of all absolute safety verses 13 and 14 as a father has compassion on his children so the lord has compassion

on those who fear him for he knows how we are formed he remembers that we are dust absolute safety notice first of all the deep emotion of god for us now you say i didn't see any and that's right well one of the problems is uh it there's almost no way to get this across right you know the new international version which we have printed for you a modern translation of the bible translates this particular word compassion the old king james bible says pity as the father pities both those words don't work very well the

hebrew experts will tell you that the word is being used here of god is a surprisingly remarkably i'm going to try to flesh out here for you an unbelievably deep emotional word and by the way it means to be viscerally overwhelmingly in love with something viscerally overwhelmingly and it tends to be usually used i'll get back to this in a second for mothers and with regard to mothers there's two particularly memorable places with the words used one is in isaiah 49 verse 15 was talking about a nursing mother and god speaks to his people and

says can a woman forget the baby nursing at her breast can she fail to have compassion on the child that's sucking at her breast yes she may forget but i will not forget you now what's going on here first of all the word compassion as i said it's hard to really get across but i'm beginning to it's talking about an incredibly visceral love there is there's a kind of love there's a kind of compassion it's overwhelming it's visceral and here god has the audacity to identify this word rightly actually with this word which has to

do with the biologically rooted overwhelming love that a mother has for an infant as her milk's coming in and there's another place where this very same word is used with regard to mother love it's very vivid the another place that this word is used is in first kings 3 26 and it's a very famous story about a woman whose infant baby boy dies at night and in her despair and in her anger she goes and finds another mother who's asleep with her infant baby boy and steals the child while the mother's sleeping the next day

the true mother the mother of the of the child realizes what has happened and drags the mother who has stolen the child to the king solomon and king solomon hears the dispute and after listening to the dispute and how in the world is he going to know who's telling the truth he finally says i got an idea let's do this cut the child in half and give one to her and one to one half to her and we're told in first kings 3 26 that the true mothers were told was moved with compassion was viscerally

moved and said i'm the liar she's the mother give her the child now you know to say to the king i have lied before you i have committed perjuries practically possibly a capital offense and what it meant was here's the mother love here's the love that comes in when when when when the milk comes in here's this unbelievably overwhelmingly emotional visceral love she's realized what's going to happen and is willing to sacrifice her life and give her child to the liar to the thief to save the child and god has the audacity say that's the

kind of love i feel for you for my children and by the way this is a small tangent it's going to take about 30 seconds but it's worth saying the reason why there's always you know people say why is the bible so often talk about god as father does that mean god is a male deity in the bible and this kind of mixing and matching shows that no the bible is not saying that father's in the image of god but mothers are not this is showing us that both father love and mother love all parent

love is rooted in the heart and the and in the image of god himself see and the point here is first god is using an unbelievably emotional word and says i feel that love for you but now look we're not quite done with this look at verse 14 why does he love us like this why well verse 14 4 which means because see verse 13 is this incredible emotional uh involvement with us verse 14 tells us why and it says he knows we're dust you know at first sight and i'm sure if people are going

to say this at first sight if i asked you look at verse 13 14 why does god love us why does god love his children and right away he'd say well it's because we fear him god loves those who fear him but if you look carefully and hebrew always loves parallelism notice fearing him and being children of the same thing in verse 13 it says as the father is compassion as children so the lord has compassion on those who fear him for in other words those who fear him and we're going to get back to

this near the end to live in fear which means awe and wonder and to be children is the same thing so it's he's not saying he loves you because no the word because is there the word four is there why because you're a wreck because you're flawed see dust is a metaphor for falling apart dust is a it's a metaphor for being broken dust is a metaphor really for being almost you know you're falling apart broken flawed sinful and here's something weird we know from the bible says and you know from common sense you know

you know from the bible says is that when you're good that when you're right when you're doing what god wants you to do he loves you more and yet we're also told that when he's you're doing bad when his children are doing poorly when his children are falling apart he loves you more i mean does this sound like a non-sequitur to you god is emotionally deeply involved with his children because they're such idiots because they're so stupid because they're such dust does that mean is that a non-sequitur to you listen you don't understand parents one

of the things that's so interesting and this is this is the point here god is emotionally involved and doesn't matter what his children do whatever you do good or bad whatever you do it just he just loves and loves you absolutely and completely safe in his indissolvable emotional commitment now the reason we have to bring this out under father and not under friend lover and king think for a minute you know what friends can be patient but at a certain point if you if your if your friend continues and continues to divulge your secrets continues

and continues to uh divulge your confidences you just can't keep doing the friend thing right i mean at a certain point you got to stop doing the friend thing if your friend thing acts like that your friend acts like that or love you know you can reach out to hug and kiss and you know your lover can push you away and you're having a bad day all right but you know over and over and over and over and over again if your hugs and your kisses are again and again and again and against burn you

gonna you're gonna stop doing the lover thing you know at a certain point the friend has to stop doing the friend thing if the other person is not being a friend and the lover has to stop doing the lover thing if the other person is not being a lover and even kings at a certain point if their citizens are trampling on their laws has to you know you can't be in a good relationship here but even us below average parents and there's many many of us you know at least 49 percent even us below average

parents know something that when you have three or four or five children and one of them is the most stupid and one is being the most the worst son or daughter and one is being the most messed up if anything you feel more parent love you your heart goes out more to them parents know that almost almost as soon as they're born your heart locks on and you realize that no matter how this child acts for the rest of his or her life you're never going to be happy unless they're happy and god has audacity

to say the reason for that is because parents even you bad parents even you below average parents are made in my image that's how i am i'm father you are absolutely safe in my love that's the first thing you absolutely his children are absolutely safe in his love that's what you need you need family love you need counter conditional love you need love no matter who you are no matter what you do you in fact you need love just because you're a child not because of anything you're giving to the father and mother just because

you're the child we all need love like that and god says it's with me that's where it is that's what the thing that you most need in the world is you need that absolute safety you're not going to get it from anybody else you're not only not going to get it from friends and lovers and kings by definition you're not even going to be able to get it from fathers and mothers here on earth because they are broken to some degree their dust too but i'm not absolute safety number one the second thing it means

compassionate anger this is the next thing we need i know some of you are saying what well look verses eight to ten the lord is compassionate and gracious slow to anger abounding in love he will not always accuse normally harbor his anger forever he does not treat us as our sins deserve or pay us according to our inequities now what do we see here on the one hand and on the other hand on the one hand we see a god a father because that's who we're talking about here whose anger is not a payback anger

it says right off the bat in verse 10 the anger is not paying us for our sins the anger is not tit for tat anger the anger is not requiting us for our sins the anger is not retributive now by the way if and this happens all the time and because i'm a below average parent it happened a lot to me if when your children inconvenience you or humiliate you or cause you pain in some ways a very very natural thing is to let the child experience pay back anger and pay back anger you're trying

to frighten the child you're trying to scare the child you're trying to just you're trying to maybe emotionally sort of beat up the child and what you're doing is you're trying to basically pay the child back it's pay back anger you made you humiliated me i'm going to humiliate you you hurt my feelings i'm going to hurt your feelings see you created unpleasantness for me i'm going to create incredible unpleasantness for you and i want you to know that payback anger in a family never ever works it always poisons payback anger is not like the

anger that passes over us it's not like the rain that passes over us and leaves everything lush and green for it it's more like the the rain that parks over us and just swamps and floods and destroys everything and the reason why payback anger never is ever works ever works in a family it's because our families are just images of god our parenthood is just an image of god's parenthood and god never to his children gets paid back anger but on the other hand this is a god who gets angry you know one of the

things that struck me i'm trying to meditate on this you know to to in order to bring it to you and to teach it to you first and i suddenly realized one of the implications of verse 9 it says he will not harbor his anger forever but what does that mean it means he will harbor anger i mean i mean he won't harbor forever but that means god harbors anger this is not a humanistic god this is not a god who never gets angry this is a god who gets angry but who does not give

us payback anger what are we talking about here i'll tell you what verse 8 this is compassion driven anger it's slow it's utterly under his control the compassionate is permanent see verse eight says and nine compassion is permanent and the anger is uh temporary why because compassion is driving the anger it's deliberate it's intentional it's totally it's purposive what are we talking about just this there's two kinds of parents that will destroy your life two kinds of parents that'll make you feel like orphans because you are one is the completely permissive kind of parent so

detached that he or she just never gets angry never lays down standards never engages never confronts detached permissive do what you want we call that neglecting parents and on the other hand you have abusive parents payback anger lots of anger lots of confrontation and i want you to know that either a neglecting parent or an abusive parent destroys that child [Music] either a neglectful parent or a pay or you know an abusive parent makes the child say i don't know who i am i don't know if i'm loved and that's because pay back anger or

no anger means the child is not loved you say what do you mean no anger if you love you get angry you know my favorite quote on this i haven't used it in a number of years but it's great from becky pippert's book hope has its reasons and becky pipper quotes a man named e.h gifford i've never been able to find this quote she doesn't footnote it but he says the more a father loves his son the more he hates in his son the drunk the liar and the traitor and then she goes on and

says if god were not angry over how we are destroying ourselves he wouldn't be good and he certainly wouldn't be loving for anger isn't the opposite of love hate is and hate is the ultimate form pardon me and the ultimate form of hate is indifference i screwed that up didn't i anger isn't the opposite of love hate is and the ultimate form of hate is indifference on the one hand if you don't have a parent that gets angry at you you're not loved if on the other hand you have a parent who is ever paying

you back you're not loved either way you're going to feel like an orphan either way you're going to not know who you are and here's what's interesting he said well then what kind of anger are we talking about anger that looks at your flaws anger that looks at your dustiness anger that looks at what's wrong with you and very deliberately and very persev purposively is concerned is upset the anger is emotional and yet it's under control because it's unselfish and says i'm going to bring into your life a disciplinary action you can't go to the

party you can't do this you can't do that i'm bringing pain into your life but only so that it'll wake you up so it'll change you so you can avoid the destructive pain that will surely come into your life later on if i don't do this now you and i need compassionate anger desperately i need someone emotionally involved enough with us to get angry but unselfishly so with no acts to grind with no desire to make you uh to to wreak vengeance or retribution on you we need that more than anything and god says i

got it the thing that you need that you look for which you get only partially elsewhere i got it i'm father i'm the father and lastly it means ultimate home it's for god to say i'm father i'm the father is to say in me and in me alone is absolute safety secondly in me and me alone you have the the wise guide the compassionate anger [Music] you know in a context of absolute safety unconditional love that you need but then thirdly i am ultimate home why let's look at the third place verse 15. as for

man his days are like grass he flourishes like a flower the field the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more why does that last line get me why does that last line get you or at least it will as i let you think about it for a minute its place remembers it no more the place you grew up the place you grew up remembers you no more there is nothing worse no worse nightmare than that place in it's a wonderful life the frank capra film where jimmy stewart

member george bailey he sent back to oh what's the place bedford falls new york right and his place remembers him no more he remember that he's sent back and it's as if he'd never been born he goes to see his mother mother has no idea who are you get out before i call the police he goes to see his brother well his brother's dead because remember that he's in the cemetery because george wasn't around to save him he goes to see his wife his wife mary doesn't know who she he is goes to his house

his house his home now what is home home is the place you know every other place you fit in but home is the place that fits you home is the place where the chair is where you want it where is this house this is the right home a real home is a place where the colors the architecture the furniture everything is where it ought to be the smells the fire the chair by the window the ultimate home fits you ultimate home has everything you want and he goes to his ultimate home the perfect home and

it's a ruin and it's a nightmare and he says it's a nightmare of course it's nightmare he goes back to the place where he grew up first 16 and his place remembers him no more he's a man without a place he's a man without a home what a nightmare right why why is it that uh america foreign-born americans spend 10 billion dollars a year going back to where they're from to see it why is it that so many of you always sit in the same spot every week why you know why is it why is

it that adopted children many of them feel this unbelievable need to find their birth parent why do so many of us want to go and find we can't really enjoy going back to the place we grew up and seeing all the changes why is that so awful why is it so terrible to realize your place remembers you no more why is so terrible not to have a place not to be from anywhere why you know what's intriguing is uh there was a the utne reader which is we call the liberal reader's digest uh the august

edition had a whole it was a theme a whole lot of uh articles on the new mobility the fact that nobody lives where they're from anymore everybody has to migrate around to do business everybody's got to travel there's one place where um eva hoffman wrote a really incredibly great article i can't give it all to you here but she says at one point she says we feel people today feel tend to feel ejected from our first homes and our landscapes from our first romance from our authentic self an ideal sense of belonging of tuning in

with others eludes us i wonder if in this world of easy come easy go sliding so easily among different places and meanings without a lighting on any of them for very long if we don't risk being overwhelmed by what milan kundera calls the unbearable lightness of being being it's the illness that comes to unanchored people those who travel perpetually to new moments and sensations and to whom no internal feeling is more important than another why do we need home why do we need a place i don't know we do it's incredibly important we need to

know there's a place where our chair is where we want it right by the fire right by the window looking over the water or something like that and it's another reason why some people are working so unbelievably hard materially to make enough money so they can buy that ideal place because see the place they were from is no more or they don't even remember it and they're going to find a place they're going to make a place why is place so important i don't know but the one thing we do know is this is the

human condition that's what eva hoffman is trying to say over and over and over again we go back and we find our place remembers us no more no matter how hard we try houses crumble we can't make the mortgage people break up people get divorced children won't speak to you that beautiful field you always remember it has a shopping mall in it now why what is what is this what is this getting at what it's getting at is we all need a place we all need a sense of home and until we're being told you

realize what your heart is really after you're going to spend all of your life chasing a little the wisps you're going to spend all of your life working too hard you're going to spend all of your life searching for something and where can you find it where's the only place you can find it take a look at the contrast it's amazing its place verse 16 remembers it no more but verse 17 well what's the replacement for that from everlasting to everlasting the lord's love is with those who fear him the lord's love is the home

the lord's love is the place the lord's love is the only place that when you go there they have to take you in the lord's love is the only place where the where the fire never goes out the in the fireplace the lord's love god jesus christ says to his disciples i go to prepare a place for you where in my father's house there are many rooms the ultimate home your heart's looking for is in there the ultimate absolute safety you need is in there the ultimate compassionate anger that you need is in there that's

what it means to say god is the father that's what it means when it says as a father so the lord now what do we do about this what do we do how do we get that into our lives and i'm going to tell you four things you got to do four things four steps if you want you know we like steps all right four steps and they're all here if you want that absolute safety in your life if you want that compassionate anger in your life how can you know you're unconditionally loved by god

in other words how can you know you're a child of his secondly how can you have in your life his compassionate anger not a sense of indifference from god nor a sense of being constantly punished and chastised how can you have that ultimate sense of home so deep in him that it doesn't bother you so much that's in so many other ways you're not able to go home that family that's broken up that shopping mall next to that in that beautiful pasture you know that house that you've that great house that you've really never been

able to get how can you get this into your life this way four things number one first is a preliminary step it's not really a step but i have to i'll call it a step primary step is realize that being a child of god is not automatic it's not automatic look who it is who is he giving all this to look at verse 18 with those who keep his covenant a covenant is a contract and you keep a covenant only because you've made a covenant it means there's a spot where you got where you where

you weren't in covenant and then you are there's a spot where you weren't in a relationship and then you are now the reason i have to say this is because the average person today in america has an idea of god and even has an idea of god as a father but believes that aren't we all god's children now the answer is yes and no but mainly no here's why if you think of the metaphor of parent parents give you three things your existence your resemblance and a relationship first of all parents give you your existence

if someone is your parents because you literally sprung from their body secondly resemblance all of your genetic code came from one or the other all of what you look like all of who you are in all those those senses comes from one or the other so existence resembles in the last of our relationship because that's what we've been talking about so for a parent doesn't just give you existence and resemblance but also has to create absolute safety also has to bring you into a place of guidance and personal engagement and compassion and anger and create

a home a place where you can grow and nurture a place that fits you and so on and so the third thing is relationship now if you ask those three things is god the father everybody in the first sense of course god is the author of everybody god is the creator of everybody and paul talks about that you can say that i can say that acts 17 paul actually says we are all his children of course we are in the first sense if you primarily think of god's fatherhood in terms of the source of your

existence we're all god's children but the bible doesn't primarily think of it that way because it's really not the most important secondly if in the other hand you say primarily his fatherhood means resemblance in that case nobody but jesus is his child if you think primarily the first one existence basically everybody's this child if you think of the second one resemblance nobody but jesus he's the only one that's just like his father he's the only one that's perfectly good perfectly loving perfectly honest so if you look at those first two aspects of fatherhood in this

metaphor either everybody's a child or nobody's a child but we all know from what the bible says that that's not the primary part of the metaphor that god is using it's not the primary part of the metaphor the biblical authors have in mind when they talk about it john chapter 1 verse 12 says as many as believed received him as many as believed in his name he gave rights to become children of god there it is the first thing you have to understand is being a child of god is not automatic except in the most

general sense it's a relationship you can enter into you're either not in the family or you can come into the family that's the first you got to know that or you'll never get in if you don't know you're out you're never going to get in okay number one number two first was the preliminary step secondly the transformative step and what's the transformative step you have to have your heart melted into a relationship of filial love toward your father by seeing how it's possible that the great king of the universe would be your father but the

universal judge of the universe would be father how could that be see if you understand the complexity and the reality of who god is you're going to ask that question if you don't ask that question if you don't say how could god do this how could he love us like this how could his anger be not pay back anger how could he never ever ever ever ever pay us back how could god accept us like this if you never ask that question it's because you've got a cartoon god just loving and who doesn't isn't judge

isn't holy doesn't have standards that's a neglectful god that's not a that's not a loving god so the question is how could god do this and here's the answer george bailey that was just a story but what a nightmare his place knew him no more he had no place in the world what a nightmare but then it was over [Music] but there's someone who came [Music] and who said foxes have holes birds have nests but the son of man has no place where was jesus home by the way i mean he would visit his hometown

but he didn't have one and on the cross when jesus christ turned to the turn to god i want you to know that every time every time in the bible every every every every time you see jesus talk to god he says father my father our father holy father abba father he every time but one only one when he was on the cross he says my god what was happening there his place knew him no more he lost the spirit of sonship the door was closed no fire no light from within the ultimate nightmare something

vastly deeper something unimaginable cast away out of the family out of house out of the home his place knew him no more he was gone he felt gone it was like going to hell forever and worse why see he lost the spirit of ship so we could have it his place knew him no more so we would have a place the door was closed on the ultimate home so the door could be open for us why because jesus paid the penalty for our sin and somebody says i don't believe in that i don't believe in

a god of justice listen don't you want your father to be the big guy don't you want your father to be the ultimate power because you see don't you want your father to be real and the real god created the universe how will he not be powerful and the real god made us to love our neighbors ourselves and we haven't done it so the real god will be a judge but here's the great thing jesus christ allows in a sense i say it reverently you to have the ultimate judge the ultimate guy the ultimate warrior

the ultimate power in the universe be your loving heavenly father because his justice has been satisfied the greatest power in the universe now you can call him at 1am and ask for a glass of water and he'll come because great kings do that even for their little kid nobody else you can get on his lap nobody else can get on the king's lap he'll listen to you no matter what he'll love you unconditionally only if you understand that jesus christ his place knew him no more so that you can have a place so do you

believe that do you see that as it move you that's the transformative step the penny dropping and thirdly there's the contractual step you have to make a covenant that's what it says what does he do there how do you do that what you do you could do it today i hope you some people will i hope at least a few i hope that when we go to prayer some of you are going to say i always knew you were god and i tried to be good or i thought you were loving and i was always

grumpy that you weren't answering my prayers but now i realize what your son did for me and now i want you to accept me into your family because of what jesus did i'm going to live as a child of yours in absolute confidence and trust and that's the last thing the last step is see that it's not automatic that's the preliminary step realize what jesus did for you that's the transformative step make the contract cross the line that's the contractual step and lastly wonder and wonder and think and praise and meditate and reflect and celebrate

the father love of god into your heart till it changes you for the rest of your life what do you think verses one and two why did i put him there did a whole sermon on this back in march and actually if you didn't hear that you might want to get that sermon tape and listen to it along with this because look at what does verses one and two tell us this entire psalm who is it addressed to who is the psalmist saying as a father has compassion on his children who is it saying from

everlasting to the lord lord's love is on those who's he talking to god no god knows it others no you would have thought so why did i put verses 1 and 2 in praise the lord o my soul all of your problems come because your soul does not know that you're a child of god you've forgotten do you know that he absolutely loves you you'd never have a problem with rejection listen hebrews 13 where it says jesus christ suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his blood let us then go to

him outside the camp taking his disgrace for here we do not have an enduring city but we're looking for a city that is to come what is he saying jesus christ was thrown out so that we could be brought in jesus christ was was taken out now here's the point if you know you have the father's love does it matter if you're disgraced does it matter who rejects you why are you so upset with criticism why are you so upset with with the fact that someone has criticized you why are you so upset with the

fact that somebody that you valued has seems to have gotten cold to you why are you so devastated why do you struggle with problems of self-worth i'll tell you why you don't know your soul doesn't know this you're living as if it isn't true praise the lord soul listen soul [Music] it give you another example some of you are so mad at your parents but there are no perfect parents you're so mad because they haven't given you this kind of love god says how could they if you are parents or if you're ever going to

be parents you won't be able to do it either some of you desperately are too dependent some of you are too mad at your parents some of you are too dependent on your parents you're desperately looking to them god says they can't give it to you i can free you from your family the bitterness and i can free you for your family or money you know over and over when the bible talks about don't be worried about money don't be afraid don't try to make too much money don't be greedy don't drive yourself into the

grave in order to make money it always says because father knows what you need if you're just if you're worried about money all the time you don't believe he's your father or if you're working like crazy so you can build that beautiful dream house i want you to know it won't work it won't be enough it won't be enough [Music] if you tell your soul if you wonder in amazement that you're a child of god if you know you're a child of god you keep telling yourself you push it and push it and push it

in you'll be free from the need for of approval you'll be free from either bitterness or overdependence on your family you'll be free from the need for money or the worry for money or for overwork and one more thing when bad things happen to you terrible things even happen to you you'll relax you know what's interesting about all these other metaphors lovers are contemporaries kings and citizens are contemporaries friends are contemporaries but father is 45 and you're four and that means father's always bringing things into your life that you don't get and most four years

or four year four years old our four-year-olds are much smarter than us because most four-year-olds get real mad for a while when you say no you can't do this no you can't do this and they just you girl upset and then they forget about it why because they know they're four have you heard that i'm four okay i'm four i mean what do i know they seem to know that they they don't know and they can kind of relax and say yeah mom and dad i don't know but you know what they come through when

bad things happen to you do you say i don't know can you relax what a load off if you realize you're a child of god dear friends do you does your soul know this tell your soul praise praise the lord of my soul as father you're forgetting the benefits all your problems come from that know that let's pray our father there are some people here who need to take the contractual step and who need to say that they don't know what it means to live as a child of god but that they want to so

i pray father that the people who right now in silence and in prayer are saying accept me because of jesus receive me unconditional in unconditional love because of what jesus did who are saying i trust you because jesus paid for my sins so i don't have to get any payback anger from you again those people who are trusting you for jesus sake today i pray that you'd help them you come around them and let them feel your father's love immediately secondly those of us who need the last step we need to wonder we need to

be amazed we need to fear we need to have awesome uh awesome loving wonder before all of these great truths help us to put them into our lives to celebrate them into the middle of our lives so that we can know that you're our father we pray this in jesus name amen name amen name amen name amen name amen name amen name amen name amen name amen thank you for listening today gospel life's ministry is supported by generous partners all over the world your gifts allow us to share the gospel message with millions of people

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