Auto Transcript from the sermon Overcoming the Orphan Spirit Part 2.

All right, let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for each and every person that's here.

And Lord, for those who are out sick today, even the emails and the text messages I received this morning for people who are just soreness and not feeling well and just recovering from surgeries and all the things that are happening in this world, Lord, I ask that you would be not only with us in this room as you already are here, but that you would be with each and every person who's watching online, whether it's live or it's later, Lord.

That whatever ailments they have, you know better than even I do, that you would heal them, Lord, that by the power of your spirit, by the power of your Ruach HaKodesh, that you would just give them peace, that you would put tendons back together, you would remove achy muscles and bones, and you would do whatever is necessary to bring healing to those individuals, Lord.

And so we just lift them up before you as they are your children in the name of Jesus.

Amen and amen.

All right, we're on part three of part four, a four-part series on the orphan spirit.

And so today, real quick, I wanna look at the last couple of weeks, kinda catch up on this part three.

We've looked at what the Bible defines as an orphan, someone who is fatherless.

We've also looked at even extending to the time of Jesus, how this could be somebody who had an earthly father, but did not allow God as a heavenly father, somebody who had a present father, but somebody who maybe didn't have a healthy father.

What the Bible defines as attributes of an orphan and the orphan spirit, what God promises to orphans and to those who oppress the orphans, and how this concept continues to play out not only in the example of Jesus, but also those around Jesus in the New Testament.

What the Bible defines as the fruit of the orphan spirit, how Jesus modeled walking as the perfect son, how Jesus did what and was given to him by the authority of his father, God Almighty.

How we become sons and daughters through dying to ourself and walking in obedience, and how God tells us we can forsake the orphan spirit.

And when we do that, he makes us sons and daughters through adoptions.

Last week, we looked at the principles of adoption into God's family and the principles of inheritance, and that we need to allow God to be a father, and we need to be moldable, the pot or the clay, and that the hope of God's glory is really our only hope.

Again, if you're looking for me for hope, if you're looking to other people in this room for hope, sooner or later, we're gonna fail you.

And this is why church hurt exists.

A lot of times people come in and they trust a man, they trust a woman, they trust a process.

They're all gonna fail you, they're all going to be inadequate.

There's only one person who is not inadequate, and there's only one person who has never failed.

And the Bible says they never will fail, and that is God.

And so today, I wanna continue to look at a series that I hope is self-reflective for you, no matter what your childhood was, no matter where you're at with your earthly relationship with your parents.

I hope that you will be self-reflective on what we look at in the scripture, and ask yourself, am I operating in any form of an orphan spirit?

Is there an area of my life?

I've been very transparent that this was not exactly a sermon series I wanted to do.

This is a sermon series that I felt like I didn't, it wasn't applicable to me.

And the Lord spent the entire first week showing me just how stupid I was.

I should have known that, should have already guessed that, but sometimes we get in ourselves, and when we get in ourselves, the Lord has to come and reveal and scrape out.

It's kind of like a dentist, like, hey, my teeth are clean, and they're like, no, under the gum line you got a plaque, and so the Lord comes in to the plaque of your heart, and he just slowly shows, I know, you don't like plaque of your heart, that's good.

We're gonna talk about healthy bodies today, too, so Russell, I love where you're going with this, brother.

The Holy Spirit is already like, if you don't like plaque of your heart, brother, hopefully you don't like plaque of your teeth, we're gonna get there.

Because we've already gotten weird, I'm just gonna go ahead and say, I am not a doctor, I am not a dentist.

I cannot give you any medical advice whatsoever.

So whatever we talk about today is from a metaphoric standpoint, not from a medical standpoint.

So, but we should fear God.

We should fear God in a way that should drive us to obedience, that should force us to run back in the arms of a loving Father like never before.

Through the story of the prodigal son, which is where we kind of left off last week, you're either in one of two places.

You're either the brother who walked away from the fullness of God, didn't necessarily walk away from God, but he walked away from the fullness of God.

Or you're the brother who remains steadfast, but yet, when God shows mercy and grace to another person, because of our steadfastness, there's a resentment, there's a disbelief in what the Father's rights are, or actions are, it's like, how can you be graceful?

How can you be merciful?

Some people in this room right now, you struggled with things that are generational curses.

You struggled with things that were passed down to you from your earthly father, from your earthly mother, and you wrestle with them on a regular basis.

And sometimes you get resentful from others who don't struggle with those things.

Not always, but sometimes.

Sometimes we squander the gifts that God's given us.

So you're in one of those places in some area of your life.

And what we have to remember, no matter what side, no matter what side of the family we're on, is ultimately the Father's the head of the family.

The inheritance we get as sons and daughters is His, it's not ours.

And just like Jesus, we should do the will of the Father.

Not the will of the younger brother who runs away and squanders everything and has to come back and fall on the mercy of God.

Not the older brother who somehow thinks he's more self-righteous than the other one, and he's mad at his dad.

This is why we need to act and model God the Father.

Whatever son you are, they aren't the models of Jesus.

And Jesus walked in perfect sonship of Yahweh Elohim.

So much so that it says that all majesty, authority under heaven and earth.

Sometimes we get involved in the temporal, in the things we can see.

Human beings as a whole, we like to quantify, we like to dominate, we like to control.

Even if you could do all of those things here, all authority here, and in a place where the only authority we'll ever have will be delegated to us.

Jesus has all majesty, all authority, all glory has been given to Him.

This week we're gonna continue to look at what it means to walk in sonship.

As Romans 8 tells us, Romans 8, chapter 8 tells us, how we have been adopted into the family of God and that we must understand that what we do in our life, how we walk, how we model that in our homes, our prayer closet, and also into the church is extremely important.

Genesis 5, one through three, this is the book of generations of Adam.

When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.

Male and female, He created them.

And He blessed them and named them man when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, He fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.

Even in Genesis 5, God connects His fatherhood from the dawn of creation to ours today.

Now while Adam was made in the image of a holy and perfect God, His son was made in the image of Him.

And so, like we talked about in the first week of this, generational curses compound.

If your father's father's father's father's father had this problem and nobody decided to deal with it, nobody decided to throw themselves on the mercy and grace of the Lord, repent and be healed, be delivered, be set free.

If it compounds down through the generations, we're made in the likeness of the father before us.

This is why God ties His fatherhood from creation to ours so that we know that no matter what our lineage is here on the earth, no matter if I can say I'm the son of Mark, I'm one of two sons, at the end, we all have the opportunity to rewrite through God our history and our lineage.

If my father, I had two fathers, but if my father wasn't around and I had no idea of what it was like to be a man, I didn't see an example, or God forbid you saw what it was like to not be a healthy man, God says that doesn't have to define you anymore.

You can be defined through adoption with me.

And your lineage now becomes my lineage.

Your inheritance now becomes what I give you.

And here you can rewrite your history.

How amazing is that?

How amazing is it to think of you could have a do-over?

I play golf with lots of mulligans because I'm bad at golf.

I'm also as bad as walking out the Bible sometimes.

Sometimes I get caught up in myself and I know I'm the only person in this room that that happens to.

But sometimes, I've been from the pulpit, I've told you.

Way to bring me humility, brother.

But you can change your lineage.

You can change your direction, not by anything you can do, but by you allowing God to adopt you into the family.

Also says that God will put his spirit and his heart in you.

Pretty cool, huh?

That in the end, the same guy who walked through the covenant of the pieces with Abram is willing to enter into those covenants and uphold the parts that, for whatever reason, we just are like Israel.

We just cycle and cycle and cycle and fail and fail and fail.

Now, God did so by replicating Adam the same way that we try to replicate his image in our sons and daughters.

God isn't chaos, God isn't fear, God is order in life.

So, and I ask a lot of people when we meet, if there's order and there's chaos in your life, then it's, where's God?

If there's order and chaos in your life, where's God?

God is either in the midst of the chaos, normally, with a calling, trying to provide order.

Most of my experience, and I know we're not alike, we're all different, most of my experience is I create chaos because I wouldn't allow God to keep order.

That's the wrestle.

It's not that I know I shouldn't do something, it's that, well, there's a gray area here, if I do this, or maybe God's gonna give me a free pass today, and when I do that, it takes and unleashes chaos in my life, or God forbid, it unleashes chaos on somebody else's life.

That's not God.

That's not the Holy Spirit.

That's me, that's you, that's our spirit, that's our flesh, cooperating with the spirit that's not of God.

Order is God.

We must understand that.

We must understand that, and what God is doing in this church over the last 10 months.

When we talk about wanting to see the power of the spirit of God, a lot of us come from a background, a family tree, let's just use that analogy with a family.

I'm gonna go there.

Tomorrow I saw a meme on Facebook, and everybody knows that the clocks fall back tomorrow.

Well, there's a meme on Facebook that's got Benny Hinn in his jacket like this, and it's happy Benny Hinn day.

Why?

Because you're gonna fall back.

So some of us have come from environments where we've watched people, and I'm not saying Benny Hinn has perverted this, but I know that Benny Hinn recently has talked about times where he did things that he knew didn't necessarily just align with the scripture.

If it doesn't align with the word of God, then it's not God.

It might be us, it might be something else.

So when the Holy Spirit is operating, the Holy Spirit does not operate in conflict with the word of God.

The word of God, the Son of God, and the Spirit of God all come together to make up the beauty of God as a whole.

So if you start seeing things, or you start acting in ways, and you're like, man, the Holy Spirit told me to do this, I can tell you right now how I can tell you whether the Holy Spirit told you to do that or not.

If it's contrary to the word of God, the Holy Spirit didn't tell you to do it.

You told you to do it.

I've spent years of my life doing things I thought the Holy Spirit was telling me to do.

And it took some catastrophic things in my life to realize that the only sonship I was walking in was under another man or multiple men.

And again, the kingdom of God does come with a hierarchy and Jethro and all the things that are there.

But at the end of the day, who is driving the force?

The Spirit of man, the Spirit of the devil.

Sometimes they can be one and the same.

Or the Spirit of the living God.

And sometimes our spirit can be in line with the Spirit of the living God.

We're kind of that weird thing in the middle where we like to swing the pendulum.

But my example to my children, been a father for 15 years this month, 20 years of being a husband, what I do in my life should model God to them.

Give you an example.

Yesterday, my daughter gets in the car.

And she says, dad, is it okay if I said this word on accident?

Said, absolutely not, it's not okay that you said that word.

And she's like, well, you used to say that a lot.

And was it an accident when you said it?

Like, thank you, God.

Because no, the truth is, is when I used to say it, it wasn't an accident.

I knew what I was doing.

I made the decision, I didn't stop, I said it.

All kinds of other words, I chose to do that.

And by default, the example that I showed her, now, almost a year trying to be sober and clean from those types of words, now my daughter says it on accident.

If then, if you do this, there's consequences.

If I did these things, doesn't mean that's who I am.

No, God's healing me, he's helping me.

I used to be every other word, cursor, cussing, sorry.

I gotta make sure I keep my theology correct, cussing.

But here we are a year later, and my daughter is saying something that I influenced her over a year ago, and the model of behavior in between the time is not there.

So what we model either points people closer to God, or they point people closer to destruction.

This is part of the issue that we have with fathers, that we have with parents.

The opposite is also true.

If you grew up in a home with a father or a mother who was abusive, who lacked empathy, there's nobody in this room that lacks empathy.

People who were gluttonous, or people who were abusive, mental, spiritual, physical, whatever, and then all of a sudden they say, well, I won't accept God as a father because the only thing I can accept from him is what I have witnessed.

What I've witnessed, I don't like, and because I don't like that, I'm not willing to open myself up to get hurt by this daddy God, this spiritual being I can't even see, because the father I did see in the earthly realm, I want nothing to do with that.

What we model as behavior here has massive ramifications out there, up there, down there, whatever your theology is.

On the positive side of that, I made a massive change in my home about a year ago.

I decided that if our number two in the state baseball team was playing during church time, I wasn't going and coaching anymore.

Just wasn't gonna do it.

And again, I've been a Sabbath keeper, whatever you wanna call, I'm a non-denominational Christian, but whatever you wanna call yourself, there's been times I've gone and I've coached baseball during the time of Sabbath services.

And I made the decision I was no longer gonna do that about a year ago.

And so in doing so, I've witnessed out of my own children more of an emphasis on why church is important.

Now they wanna come over here on Fridays and run around and help set everything up, and just, there's a joy in coming to church when before there wasn't.

What changed?

I was a leader then and I'm a leader now.

It was the atmosphere and the behavioral adjustment that was necessary to change the trajectory of the opinion, of the joy, of the visual of my children.

We're either modeling the kingdom of God in a healthy way, or we're teaching our kids how not to be, and most likely we're teaching them how not to love God.

This is entirely important for the older portions of the generations in here, and it might sting, and I'm sorry if it's not applicable to you, let it go over your head.

There was a massive change in the home, in the church, in generational, when parents decided that Sunday morning, God forbid, Sunday morning church was optional.

When it used to be you got up and you went, and you went to a church that was in your community and you knew everybody, the gossips to the most holy, when they were praise breaking, you were praise breaking with them.

It didn't matter if you had two left feet, you were in it to win it every single week.

That was your home away from home.

Your kids were raised there, every potluck that Sister Betty did, you were in it, and all of a sudden there was a shift.

And the shift was, we can watch online.

So one week we're gonna be Protestant, the next week we're gonna be Saint, Mattress, and Catholic.

And there was this whole shift that happened in the home, in the environment of what was acceptable.

Your kids saw it.

You know how I know, because I was one of those kids.

I was one of those kids.

I know it's hard to believe, one point in time I didn't have gray hair and I wasn't old.

But I was part of the generation where church became more optional, and when it became more optional to my parents, God became optional to me.

I want you to hear that, Messianics, roots-based Christians, because one of the things we wrestle with is we do not need community, we do not fellowship.

That is a lie, 100% a lie.

Now I also wanna stand in front of you and apologize as a pastor of this church for seven years for creating an unhealthy community, a community that operated more out of what was the influence that could be versus are we witnessing the fruit in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And I'm partially to blame for that, and I take responsibility for that.

And I've tried all year to walk in a manner that would show the repentance from that and the power of God making adjustments in my own life.

You need a community.

Anybody who tells you you don't need a community is wrong.

You on YouTube will go down the slipperiest of slopes, and we talked about once you start spiraling, there's only two things that spiral.

There's only two things, and you ain't either one of them.

There's only two things that spiral and get flushed, and you ain't one of them.

You are co-heirs with Christ.

So think about that for a second.

You go off by your own, sheep goes off by their own, even the strongest of sheep, the wisest of sheep.

I'll have an internet shepherd.

Yeah, we have a lot of internet shepherds.

We have a lot of people who know the word of God and somewhere along the line didn't allow God to put whatever that artery was, and it's all plaqued up right there, Russell.

See, I'm coming full circle.

It's all plaqued up and didn't allow God to take the word of God and actually transform it into their heart.

And so we already have an example of that last week of God's life, Jesus's life.

We had some of the wisest men when it comes to the generational understanding of the word of God, and yet they were so far away from what God in the flesh said about God, the word, throughout the Torah and the prophets.

Our example is either pointing our kids towards God, towards his nature, towards who he is, or we're pointing them in the wrong place.

We must also understand that when God, throughout the scripture, shows us the multiple areas of him, when we emphasize one area over the other, we are skewing the example of our father.

If I were to testify to you exclusively about my dad as the businessman, and never talk to you about my dad, the guy who took me to opening day for the Reds, or the guy who tucked me in every single night, if I didn't talk to you about the other attributes of my father, when you come to think about my father, my earthly father, Mark, Raymond, Frankie, when you come to think of that guy, all you think of is, well, this was a business guy, and I know all about him as a business.

So we do the same things when it comes to God the father.

Sometimes we like to talk about God the father from the Old Testament, and then we say, but then let's fast forward, God the father from the prophets and he's angry, he's very angry.

And then we like to say, oh, well, then all of a sudden he didn't become angry anymore, he became very chill.

Come New Testament.

And we emphasize certain areas of God.

We can do the same thing when we talk about the word of God exclusively without talking about the life of Jesus, which was the modeling, the flesh, God in the flesh, or then talking about what it actually says about God the spirit.

And this is a wrestle we have in our little corner of Christianity, because we went full in.

We bought all the stock, we went full in with our Trump dollars, and we bought all the Torah, because a lot of people came up with Jesus.

They came from an environment of Jesus.

And then all of a sudden we spent 20, 30, 40 years looking at God the word, and somewhere along the line we disconnected Jesus and the word, and the word became more prominent, and at some point in time we started talking about how the word might be equal to God himself.

What do we do?

And then we take that out, and then we don't even wanna talk about God himself in the flesh, saying it is for, John, it's for your benefit that I go away so that I can send you the helper.

I can send you the Holy Spirit.

The revolutionary time, God keeps upping the ante on the revolutionary, it was revolutionary that he gave him the Torah at Sinai, revolutionary.

It was revolutionary that a baby was born of a virgin that came to save the world, revolutionary.

But then that the fact that the Spirit of God no longer dwelt in one tabernacle of flesh, but it could be adapted in any tabernacle of flesh that would accept him and be a part of his family, that's revolutionary.

And we don't always like to go there.

Why is that revolutionary?

Because this is a part of the entire narrative, the entire motif from Genesis chapter five.

God wanted his will done on this earth as it was in heaven, or in heaven, still not sure.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

How was God going to do that?

Through sonship, through sons and daughters.

God was so committed to this process that when Adam, Abram, Noah, David, Moses, and all the others perverted the sonship, or screwed up, or made a mistake, that he took on flesh as the Son of God and came to perfect it.

That's how committed he was.

The Bible talks about the righteousness of David, and it talks about Moses, and it talks about all of these mighty men and mighty women throughout the scripture, but yet, God was so committed to his sonship to multiply his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, that when we failed, when our ancestors failed, he sent his own son to do it.

In the same way that your father perverted the sonship of God in your home, you learn from that, it's time for you to stop holding on to the bitterness of your earthly father.

It's time for you to fall out of agreement with that spirit, because you won't accept your heavenly father, who is perfect, who wants to perfect his sonship in you, because you're still holding on to the bitterness or the anger or the shame or the guilt or the condemnation that your earthly father showed you or modeled for you.

And I'm asking you to not do what we traditionally do, which is, if you had a very stern and strict father, you know, God the judge, and we like to just say God from the Old Testament is God the judge, God's kind of the judge all the time, just like he's kind of the father all the time, he's perfect, but if you had a very abusive or authoritative father in the earthly realm, normally what happens is the pendulum swings all the way to the other side, it's like, we ain't spanking our kids, we're not raising our voice, we're gonna let them have Zeviah, because God forbid they have Coke Zero, but like, we're gonna let them have Zeviah, because that's the holy water, we're gonna let them have that every Friday night.

Doesn't matter if they act it up or not, it's Shabbat, praise the Lord.

Sabbath, peace, Sabbath, peace, Sabbath, Sabbath, Sabbath, peace, Zeviah.

You let them have it.

You swing the pendulum too far to the other side.

Why, because we're earthly, we're fleshly.

Until the flesh dies, there's an area of you, your heart, your life, your mind, your modeled walk that is you, it's not God.

And I can't tell you I know exactly how to do all this, I'm in training.

But everything the Lord keeps doing in my life, he heals things that I didn't even know existed.

It's pretty radical.

And I've loved the Lord since I was a young kid, I grew up choir school, singing once in Royal David City, when I was not an alto, I was a soprano.

I love the Lord, there's only two years of my life I have not loved the Lord, but I'm starting to love myself less, I'm starting to forgive my earthly fathers or those who stood in those types of positions and being able to see that by forgiving the earthly fathers, I can start to see God as my father in those areas.

God's call to earthly parents is to prepare, lead and discipline children.

This is modeled after his fatherhood, not after the world's fatherhood.

First Chronicles 29, 12 says, both riches and honor come from you and you rule over all.

In your hand are the power and the might, and in your hand is it to make great and give strength to all.

He gives strength, he makes right, we do not.

Psalm 75, six through seven, for not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up the other.

See, this is that whole brotherly sibling thing.

We're constantly trying to judge and bring up and put down.

It is God's right to execute judgment.

It is God's right to lift up and tear down.

Once you realize that you don't have any say so in some of these things, it's a lot more peaceful.

It's very peaceful in political cycles to realize that God's gonna do whatever God wants to do.

I'll go do my part and then I'll trust God to do his part.

And if I don't get what I want, obviously God is smarter than I am.

I'm not gonna spend four years whining and crying because my political candidate didn't make it into office.

They're all basically the same people anyways.

So I encourage you, go do your part.

Do your part in your home.

But if God wants something different, trust him.

Submit to him, walk in humility.

Oh, we're gonna get up every morning at six o'clock.

Funny, I've said that a couple of times.

It's funny how God will wake me up at four o'clock.

You're gonna do what?

Early bird gets the worm, Lord.

You're about to get early.

God, I just really need a peaceful week this week.

I need shalom in my home.

I'm gonna rain down every bit of chaos in there to see if you can truly find my peace in the chaos.

God doesn't work by our metrics.

God doesn't work by our judgment lines.

God doesn't work, hey, just because we want it.

If you ask God for peace, sometimes he's gonna bring hell on earth in order for you to actually figure out what real peace is because whatever peace you're asking for isn't peace.

This is being a father.

But see, a lot of times we'll turn around and we'll use that as God, well, he's being a judge.

He's being an abusive daddy because he didn't give me what I want.

A father sometimes doesn't give his kids what they want because what they're gonna do with it is not going to be fruitful.

I had this problem with my son.

My son has money.

My son likes to spend money when he has money.

Now he works hard for it.

He's mowing grasses, doing all kinds of things.

He's a hard worker, so I gotta give kudos to my eldest son.

But he wants a $100 pair of batting gloves.

A $100 pair of batting gloves.

When I grew up, you didn't wear batting gloves.

You spit in your hands and that's what happened.

Exactly.

Now I'm not gonna say we were men.

Of course, I didn't have a man bun back there, so I really can't talk.

But I'm trying to model Jesus.

He didn't have a man bun either, but he had longer hair.

So I'm having a conversation with my son, and I'm like, hey man, you want a $400 bat?

You're in high school now.

These bats are not cheap.

Why don't you save the $50 you have and get it towards a nice bat?

You can buy batting gloves for 19 bucks.

There's a lot of batting gloves for 19 bucks.

But then I have to step back, and I have to afford my son the opportunity to process it and make whatever decision.

If my son wants to buy $100 batting gloves, it ain't my money.

So I'm not going to force him to do something.

I'm gonna allow him to make the decision he needs to make.

But I'm also not gonna let him jump off a clip.

I don't think you should do that.

If he chooses to jump off a clip, I can't be with him 24-7.

You have to empower people in your life just like you have to allow God to empower you in your spiritual walk.

If you have problems in your life, I'm a firm believer in this, and it's not explicit in the Bible.

So I'm gonna say that, caveat that.

I'm a firm believer that if you are experiencing problems in your physical life, whether it's emotional, physical, whatever, it is a reflection of some area that God is trying to wake you up.

I know that's not pleasant to hear.

It's not like I haven't experienced it myself.

My wife and I used to fight a lot when we were first married, and it wasn't until I started to look from the perspective of maybe God's trying to teach me something, not.

My wife is just in absolute pain in the rear.

And once I realized that God was trying to teach me something because the issues I had in my relationship with my wife was actually issues I had in my relationship with the Lord.

And he was using my wife, he was using loved ones, he was using people closest to me to try to bring me back to the will of the Father.

I was a son doing what I didn't see the Father do.

And this is crucial because last week we talked about Jesus came to model what he saw the Father does.

The Gospel of John is explicit about this over and over and over again.

So if you're experiencing rebellious children, I'm sorry, there's some sort of rebellion in your relationship with the Lord.

There is.

If there's chaos in your workplace, then I'm guessing there's probably chaos in your home, your personal life, your prayer life, something.

It's not a one and done.

Normally the Lord is using these areas to try to get you to open your eyes to something he's attempting to do with you that you've like, sorry God, I'm closed on Sunday.

I'm like Chick-fil-A, I'm not interested in listening to this.

God as a Father provides perspective, reality, order, and guidance.

Some of us see God as just somebody who, he brings reality.

He's the reality.

He provides perspective, reality, order, and guidance.

This is crucial because the world right, more than ever right now, stuff you see going on in Israel, all the fake photos and telegram and rumble, they were right.

They're all worried about Donald Trump getting on there and saying whatever he wants.

It's not just Donald Trump.

Hamas is using fake stuff and all this kind of fake stuff's going out there.

What you see in the culture isn't reality.

It isn't reality because we don't get to create reality.

We don't get to create anything that God didn't give us the right to create.

He creates.

Obviously we cannot create order.

Our own country can't create order.

And we're one of the superpowers.

Sometimes we can't create order in our own home.

God creates order.

When we struggle with reality, order, guidance, and perspective, that means we're actually struggling in something with the Lord.

The Father is trying to teach you as a son or a daughter how to walk in that from him.

Take it from me.

Learn this quicker rather than later because unlike the one millionth time, I'm not exactly how, I mean, it's on my note to my iPhone to ask him when I get to see him face to face what chance this was.

But when you get to like the one millionth chance, he starts turning up the heat because that's what a father does.

A father loves you so much that he doesn't abandon you when you say, I don't wanna listen.

Father doesn't hand you a knife and says, you're not gonna listen, so I'm just gonna walk away and let you cut yourself.

No, he's constantly, he's like hiding behind the bush and he's like making sure you're not gonna cut yourself.

He's like walking behind you when you're like going to your first date.

Nobody dates here, courts, sorry.

Y'all ain't ever dating.

He's always there.

He's always protecting you.

But when it comes to a point where you're constantly like just making silly decisions or you're not hearing him, he's gotta up the ante because sooner or later, you're gonna hurt yourself and a father doesn't want you to hurt yourself.

God's not sitting up there with the angel saying, he's gonna touch the stove, he's gonna touch the stove.

Oh, watch, he touched the stove.

Five bucks, Michael.

Gabriel, you want in on this?

Chris is on like the 17th time of touching the stove.

We're going double or nothing on this one.

Put all of your manna in, let's do it.

No, he's up there like please don't touch the stove.

I need to protect him.

I need to love him.

I also need to teach him.

And he's wrestling.

Parents, I see you.

I see you wrestling with your children.

How do I discipline them?

How do I teach you?

God wrestles with us because we wrestle with him.

What we see in the physical has a very spiritual implication.

But we can't allow the world and the culture to establish perspective, reality, order, or guidance.

Otherwise, we have the mess we have today.

Literally nobody knows what's up and what's down.

This is why more than ever, it is important that you understand God as a father because sooner or later, you're gonna have to be able to get in a prayer closet, hear the voice of God, and adjust.

I might not be here, Brenton might not be here, somebody else might not be here.

Part of the issue is we've gone for so long where we're looking for somebody from a pulpit or we're looking for somebody in a house church or we're looking for somebody on YouTube to teach us what to do.

And there's nothing wrong with a pastor.

There's nothing wrong with a teacher.

There's nothing wrong with an apostle.

The Bible says those are gifts and offices given by the Lord.

And if the Lord did it, then it's right.

But sooner or later, you have to understand that you will die if this is the only Bible food you get.

You were never intended to be fed all week by me.

It's impossible.

Just like I cannot expect our limited interactions throughout the week, and I probably get to see y'all more than y'all see anybody else because it's been my week, hop, skipping, and jumping around this city trying to meet with people and love on you and all those different things.

But I need to tell you something.

You don't feed me.

The Lord does.

Some of the greatest moments of my life are when I can get in quiet with the Lord.

And I need you to understand something.

This church is only gonna go as far as I'm willing to go with the Lord as long as I'm the senior pastor.

And if I'm not willing to go further in and become more intimate, more submitted, more empowered by the Holy Spirit, you're all in trouble.

Because if I'm gonna stunt what the Holy Spirit wants to do here, if I'm gonna stunt what the word of God should do to impact you by the power of God, if I'm gonna be that stunt, I'm a bad father.

And I join the list of the over 70% of Israel's kings who use their position for evil, not for good.

So when I block out days where it's just me and the Lord, yes, why?

Because I want you to do the same thing.

Because I can only take you so far.

God can take you all the way.

Because it's all his, including you, including me.

I'm like a stepdaddy for one day a week.

I'm not daddy, God is the father.

I didn't use daddy God, where's Alyssa?

I didn't use daddy God.

I did earlier, I know.

It's just this series.

No, it might not be this series, it's also true.

It's also true.

Isaiah 46, eight through 11.

Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old for I am God and there is no other.

I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, from ancient times, things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose, calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of counsel from far countries.

I have spoken and I will bring it to pass.

I have purposed and I will do it.

We don't allow God's word and spirit to restore, to develop relationships and to provide order in our lives.

We don't have a problem with others, we have a problem with God.

If we're not allowing God to restore those things in our life, your issue isn't with the conflict you see with each other, it's with your conflict with God.

We must know the word of God to be reminded of the nature of God so that God can build us and not the culture or the men and be enslaved by those kingdoms.

We have to change our perspective to align with the scripture when it talks about God's fatherhood.

God as a father is good.

A lot of times we think of God as a father as a judge.

And we're worried about the judgment, we're worried about coming clean.

Teenagers in this room, none of you have ever done anything wrong ever so you've never worried about having to tell your parents what happened or having to deal with that.

The irony of this is God already knows what you did.

Just like most of the time your parents know what you did.

It's like, oh, I shouldn't have done that.

It's like, I know you shouldn't have done it.

By the way, y'all in trouble.

There's cameras everywhere nowadays.

There's cameras everywhere.

You can't get away with nothing.

It's like, oh, I didn't do it.

I'm pretty sure Ring says, Survey says no.

We must learn to believe that God is good.

The scripture is constantly outlined that we're to taste and see the Lord is good.

But a lot of times we apply that only when God gives us the lottery or God gives us some huge blessing.

Literally God is good all the time.

God is good because today he could have ended your life and he chose not to.

God is good.

God is good because today you could have lost everything.

Oh, well, I only have a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, you could have lost it all, but you still have it.

God is good.

God is good because even though you might be down ill, what you really needed was you needed a good long nap so that you could restore yourself, but you weren't gonna do that on your own.

So God brought you a time to have a mandated Sabbath in your bed.

How you look at things is tainted by your relationships with people in this life.

But the Bible says taste and see the Lord is good.

So why is it that we think it's only good when good things are happening?

What if we changed our perspective and allowed God to be the perfect father rather than projecting onto the perfect father all the things we've experienced with the negative fathers?

Man, I am going to miss Norman telling me when I should conclude my sermon.

Exodus 4, 22 through 23.

The firstborn of God is the inheritor of God's double portion.

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and you shall say, let my son go that he may serve me.

If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.

You're a treasured possession of God.

You're his firstborn.

Because it says you're adopted into the promise when you come in through Jesus.

When you're adopted in the family, you're adopted into the promise.

And so if there's a firstborn double blessing that's there that you're adopted into the promise of God, he says let him go so that they will serve me so that they can receive their inheritance.

Why does everybody think the inheritance we're gonna get is some greater Exodus tribulation where God's gonna rain down fire and judgment upon you?

Why don't we think of more of like what it says, God is coming back to save you?

Same thing in the story of Noah.

We just came through the Torah portion of Noah.

Oh, God was so rude and so mean that he wiped out this earth, he did all these.

God saved him from the depravity of the human heart to restore some order because we couldn't get it right.

Maybe it was God being merciful.

Why do we always have to project onto God some sort of massive judgment?

You're a treasured possession of God's in your body, your hair, anything on your body shows loyalty of your physical being to the spiritual being you serve.

Deuteronomy 14 one.

You are the sons of the Lord your God.

You shall not cut yourself or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead for you are a people holy to the Lord your God.

And the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession.

Out of all peoples who are on the face of the earth, he chose you.

What you do with your body matters.

When you live a life of sexual immorality, gluttony, shame, self-harm to your own temple, you forget that God has chose you to be a treasured possession.

Those outward signs or inward sign of the reflection of your struggling for your identity and your sonship.

Guys, when you pull up your screens of your phone and you turn on the computer, you're struggling with your inheritance and your sonship through the guilt and the shame of the devil who's trying to be your daddy.

Is there a scriptural precedent for this?

Yes, our father is Abraham.

When the Jews are confronting Jesus, and he said, your father's the devil.

Our father is Abraham.

Abraham in the Greek must mean Lucifer because your daddy's the devil.

Jesus says, your daddy isn't Abraham, he's the devil.

Those are the two fathers that are trying to enslave you.

One is the world, one is a kingdom that is not of this world that's trying to bring the kingdom to this world to provide healing for you.

When you fall in a line with the devil, daddy, you're not operating in the fatherhood of the sonship and the adoption that Paul talks about in Romans.

You can also see this on both sides.

Your gluttony can lead to overweight, it can lead to these other things, but you can also make your body an idol.

You got all those people who spend all day long, they're not worried about what's going on inside of them, but sure as heck, they're like, man, I'm ripped.

I'm like dancing out here and all these things, doing those men's pageants and those women's pageants where they're bodybuilding.

They're making the temple of God into a temple of them.

It's both sides.

Lots of times people are like, oh, well, you're destroying your temple, and they'll say, oh, it's because you eat bad or you're eating McDonald's or whatever this is.

It's both sides, and we have to be equal weights and measured when we're looking at what the father says.

You can destroy your temple one way, and you can also destroy it by making it an idol.

Jeremiah 3, 19, God continues to reveal the desire for his father-son relationship with Israel.

I said how I would set you among my sons and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations, and I thought you would call me my father and would not turn from following me.

But they did.

Over and over and over again in the prophets.

God's like, I'm gonna give you another opportunity to call me dad.

They don't.

I'm gonna give you another opportunity to repent, walk in your sonship, your adoption, and they don't.

God as a father desires to teach you, walk with you, heal you, and lead you with kindness and love.

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more they called, the more they went away.

They kept sacrificing to Baals and turning offerings into idols, yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk.

I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I had healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and became to them as one who eases the yoke of their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them, Hosea 1, 11, 1 through 4.

God is always working for your good.

We're all being led by someone or something.

Why do we continue to fight God in his urge to lead us as father, and then project upon him the shortcomings of our earthly father?

Let's not overcomplicate this, folks.

The number one first thing God said to do was to follow him.

Number one first thing.

Cast down your nets and follow me.

Master, I wanna follow you.

Okay, come with me.

Oh, hold on, wait.

My dad's got a funeral.

I gotta bury my dad.

Foxes and dens.

I have no place.

Go see to it.

Hey, I wanna be your dad.

I want you to follow me.

I'm sorry, I got an appointment at three.

Can we do this at five?

Why do we treat God like he's somebody else?

Why do we treat God like he's gotta fit into our mold?

All he asks you to do is be obedient.

Now, this is important for you to understand in this room because a lot of you come from a place where it's like with Torah portions, all these things.

These were fishermen.

I'm sure they culturally understood what was happening there.

But they weren't the students of the law.

They weren't the professors of the law.

They were simple folks like me who dropped out of college to be in a band.

He says, cast down your nets and follow me.

He doesn't say, here's my first book.

I gave it to Moses.

Read this, bring back your questions, and then we'll go to number two on the discipleship training.

He says, no, just obey.

Put your stuff down and come.

And then we can talk.

Then I can answer your questions.

Then I can model for you.

Then I can do all of this.

A lot of times we feel like we have to be so perfect in our walk in order to have God move or speak to us.

And what we've done is we've built this entire like front yard wall, maybe a border wall, I'm just saying, between God and us.

And he's still standing exactly where he was standing before, and he's like, you can't see my face now.

You built a concrete wall in front of me.

I'm still exactly where I was, and I'm still asking you, are you willing to follow me?

Because you said you wanted to follow me, but then you built a wall?

Like I'm a little conflicted what's happening here.

Cast down your net and follow me.

If it's PS5, cast it down.

If it's shame, cast it down.

If it's pornography, cast it down.

If it's arrogance, cast it down.

If it's gluttony of money, cast it down.

If it's gluttony of food, cast it down.

If it's gluttony of self, cast it down.

If it's self-reliance, cast it down.

Whatever it is that you have that you think you need to deal with before you can follow your father, it doesn't say that in the Bible.

It says just cast it down and follow me.

So now you think that something you can do can teach you how to do it better, and then God will be more open to you and more accepting of you, and he's saying you haven't been able to do it on your own.

You won't be able to do it on your own.

You need to just cast it down and follow me.

If we get the right Hebrew, we're gonna convert the Jews into Jesus.

If we get the right Greek, we're gonna convert the Christians.

He's trying to convert your heart.

He's not worried about you converting somebody else into something.

He's trying to convert you into sons and daughters.

But we wanna carry a deer cart of our sin and our shame and our guilt and our pride with us.

He took them through the exodus and into the wilderness so that he could cleanse them, he could teach them, he could grow them, and then he could give them their inheritance.

If you're in a wilderness, what's he trying to teach you?

First thing you gotta do is lay down.

If you're still carrying all the stuff that you brought out of Egypt, sooner or later, if God continues to call you, there's a pattern in Scripture where when God was calling and there was rebellion in the heart of the individuals, God decides to harden the heart.

We're gonna talk about the exodus.

Let's talk about the heart of the exodus.

Let my people go from slavery.

We read this about adoption.

You weren't adopted so you could have a spirit of slavery.

You were adopted so that you could be set free in the sonship of God.

So let my people go from slavery.

The first example with Pharaoh that's in this situation.

Pharaoh didn't wanna listen to God.

So after a while, God hardens Pharaoh's heart.

And then he still won't listen and he kills his firstborn so he can get his firstborn.

If you think, man, God the judge didn't show up until God the Father showed up.

Thank you, Lord.

I didn't even put two and two together.

There's five times that God comes to Pharaoh as a father and says, I'm just asking you.

He didn't come.

He could have, man, he says Yahweh Almighty.

He could have literally gone like that in any shape or form and that whole entire kingdom fall.

But he came and he was patient and he was kind with Pharaoh.

When Pharaoh didn't listen, then he said enough is enough.

I asked you to let my firstborn go.

You chose not to do it.

I'm gonna take your firstborn and I'm taking mine.

Thank you, Lord.

How many times are you on?

I already told you.

I realize I was on many, many.

Like, cashback rewards, big time, airline miles.

That's how many chances I was on with the Lord until he finally woke me up and realized I didn't get him.

I didn't hear him.

Romans 8, 28 through 29.

We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

Worship to him you can come.

For those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he foreknew, he also prayed destined to be conformed in the image of his son in order that he might be with the firstborn among many brothers.

God is trying to work for our good and to keep you from getting in the way.

I'm gonna ask you to do something with me.

Close your eyes for a second.

Everybody, please close your eyes.

That includes kids.

I don't want you to raise your hand.

This is not about you and me.

This is about you and your father.

When we're adopted into the family of God, he erases our debts.

We become his namesake, his legacy, his sons and daughters that comes with an inheritance of a kingdom.

But I need to ask you today, don't raise your hands.

This is not about you showing me anything.

This is about you and God.

This is about you and your father.

How many of you struggle with self-worth and think that maybe God, maybe God doesn't see you the way he sees you that he sees you the way you see yourself every single day?

How many of you are still holding on to some sort of shame or some sort of guilt or some sort of condemnation or some sort of fear?

Again, don't raise your hand.

This is not about me.

This is about you and the Lord.

If there is any of those things still inside of you, I am asking by the power of the Holy Spirit under the authority and the name of Jesus that it will be gone, that you will fall out of agreement with it, that it will be replaced inside of you by the spirit of the Ruach HaKodesh because you are adopted sons and daughters of the most high, Yahweh Elohim.

We don't want our way, Lord.

We want Yahweh's way here, Lord.

I'm asking by your power, by your might, by your spirit that if there's shame, guilt, fear, condemnation, any type of self-reliance or arrogance or pride, anything that is in even the smallest areas of our hearts or our minds, Lord, that we will fall out of agreement today and it will be replaced by the power of your spirit.

You are our Father.

It is your inheritance.

It is your authority, and we are your sons and daughters, Lord.

Amen.

Thank you, Jesus.

You can open your eyes.

Romans 8 tells us that Jesus is the firstborn son from the dead, but that he's not the only one.

Romans 8 tells us we are to conform to Jesus and inherit what he has already received.

Romans 8 tells us that God will ensure that all things are happening for our good, that the pruning, the blessings, the joy, and even the sorrow are for our own good.

It's to mold us into the image of Jesus so that we can receive our inheritance so that we will do what the Father does and we won't squander the inheritance by making it our own inheritance when it ever was ours.

It was God's to give and God's to bless us with.

And we see this in Psalm 107.

God is a place of feeding and refreshing us.

God allows us to be free from death, darkness, and bondage.

God allows us healing and deliverance.

God is our stillness and our peace.

He's either our choice in death or in life, but it's a choice he still gives us.

Just like many good fathers, they give their children a choice, they teach them.

He gives us a choice.

God is our power and nothing else.

God is the power and nothing else has the power of God.

If we are wise, then we allow God to tend to those things in our life.

And we just consider and rejoice in the mercies of the steadfast love of a God and a Father who doesn't make the same mistakes that we know we will wrestle with our entire life.

The choice is yours.

The choice is to continue to feel distant from your heavenly Father, even though you've been adopted in and given the blessings of a Father that I'm not sure any of us dads could ever really uphold.

Try to the best of our ability, but we're imperfect and God is not.

Choice to receive and taste the goodness of God, the fullness of who He is.

And in the third week of a four-week series, I need to ask you guys a question.

When are you gonna finally lay down whatever that hurt is, whatever that bitterness is, whatever that thing that separates you from God that doesn't allow God to operate as a Father in your life, how long are you gonna continue to carry that around?

That hurt, that shame, that bitterness towards your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, teachers, whoever it is, how long are you gonna carry that around?

Because sooner or later, if you truly wanna be healed, if you truly wanna be set free and walk in the inheritance and the power of God, you've gotta lay it on the throne of Jesus and you've gotta allow Jesus to actually guide you, to teach you, to remove the orphan spirit inside of you that doesn't wanna teach you, that feels you gotta do it on your own.

So today as they sing this brand new song by Brandon Lake called The Adoption Song, when Elissa sent it to me, I was like, lyrics are fantastic.

I was gonna put fantastic and phenomenal together.

It's part of that human element of myself.

I make up words, like I just do.

Some people think it's a superpower.

I think it's a moment for the Lord to humble me.

But the lyrics of the song talk about how we're not aligned with our shortcomings, how we're not aligned with who our earthly father or mother might or might not have done, that the motif and the narrative of the kingdom of God and the Bible and the word of the God is that the father sent his perfect son so that the son would do the will of the father.

And by seeing the example, it would open the doors for all the other sons and daughters to be drawn into the house.

You can say you're two house, one house, three house, four house, whatever.

At the end of the day, there's only one father of the house.

It doesn't matter how many houses there are.

That father is God.

And it's time for us to allow him to be our dad.

It's time for us to walk as sons and daughters.

And it's time to stop projecting onto him the issues of our earthly parents.

Because sooner or later, God wants to heal you.

Sooner or later, God wants to reveal to you that while you might be a Hartman, while you might be a Foster, while you might be an Avery, while you might be a Hellermann with two Ns, while you might be a Drews, while you might be a Franke or a Judah or a Johnson or all the other people who are in here, at the end, all of those names make up the reservation for El Shaddai, for El Gabor, for Yahweh, for Yahveh, however you pronounce it, Adonai.

You're all invited to that table at that family gathering, and there's only one father.

And that's Yahweh.

Let's respond.