SPEAKER_00: All right, I just have one slide for you this morning, so let's go ahead and show this one.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it is Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a period, not an ex uh uh not uh exclamation point.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's a reason for that.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not so arrogant to think that I should tell you what to do today, nor am I so presumptuous to think that you would even listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so I'm not here to tell you happy Mother's Day, because for some of you it's not a happy day at all.
SPEAKER_00: As we come together, I want us to recognize that we come from different places.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we uh are in different stages of our lives, we have different backgrounds and experiences.
SPEAKER_00: And there are some of you here this morning that you are celebrating as you are holding your child or sitting next to your adult child, or you have your children beside you.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is a happy day, and you don't need me to tell you that.
SPEAKER_00: But I also want to acknowledge that there are some here today that when you think of Mother's Day, um, it brings sadness.
SPEAKER_00: It is a remembrance of loss or something that you never had.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you are here this morning and on Mother's Day you see uh people laughing and smiling and holding children, and all you can think about is the child that you lost, or the one that you never had, or the mother that you miss that passed away, we want to acknowledge that even in your grief, that is a form of worship.
SPEAKER_00: And God allows us to come together and lift holy hands and praise or to fall on our knees weeping.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we come together for Mother's Day, we do want to honor those women who have played such an important role in our lives, but we also want to reflect and remember that there are those who this is a difficult day for them.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to begin this morning uh with a prayer, if you would bow with me.
SPEAKER_00: Father God, we just thank you for being an amazing father, the one who who loves uh your your children recklessly, uh, who would give up everything so that we might have a relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we thank you for that.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the way that your love and your sacrifice is seen and manifests uh through mothers, uh through through those women uh who may biologically may be our mother or someone who treated us um as such as we grew up, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're just thankful for them.
SPEAKER_00: We're especially thankful because they have given us a clearer vision of who you are and how you love, how you forgive, how you encourage, and how you are faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, we thank you for those women.
SPEAKER_00: God, whether we come here today joyful or broken, we just pray that that our sacrifice, that our worship to you uh will lift up uh to heaven and that you will be pleased by by our sacrifice and our worship this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for all you do for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the name of Jesus that I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're gonna shift gears and do something a little different.
SPEAKER_00: I have a volunteer who I've already asked to help me.
SPEAKER_00: Beckett, are you around here?
SPEAKER_00: Will you come up front?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm super excited about this.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a little bit of history.
SPEAKER_00: You probably don't want to know this, but when I was younger, um, I actually um had a job that paid no money.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I was 12 or 13 and I became, you're gonna, you're gonna laugh at this, and they are too, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was actually a certified professional clown.
SPEAKER_00: Um I was I was what they call a hobo clown, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so my nickname, my clown name was crumbum, and I would dress up like a hobo.
SPEAKER_00: I knew how to make all the little uh animals uh out of balloons.
SPEAKER_00: I've forgotten most of them, but I still know how to make a stick.
SPEAKER_00: Um I know how to make a sword, I know how to make a snake.
SPEAKER_00: They're all the same thing, just just just so you know.
SPEAKER_00: But I do also want to let you know, um I know a little magic here.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't want to brag or anything, but I am I'm actually really actually I'm terrible at magic.
SPEAKER_00: I know one trick, and but I want to do I want to do a trick for you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I think I can figure out what card that that you're gonna take out of this deck.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't I'm gonna try to shuffle them up.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not good at shuffling.
SPEAKER_00: I get nervous.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to like, but but they're shuffled up, you see, like they're all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you you saw those.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Super nervous.
SPEAKER_00: It's been a while.
SPEAKER_00: Hope I can get that that crumb going on in me.
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I here I'm gonna so here's what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna pick a card, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then don't tell me the card, don't say it out loud, but I want you to show it ever to everybody, then we'll put it in the deck, and we'll that's when the magic happens.
SPEAKER_00: Or or or we hope.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, pick a card, any card.
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't want to know.
SPEAKER_00: They're not marked.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I would not be smart enough to figure that out.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you go ahead and show everybody that card.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, are you showing that card?
SPEAKER_00: Has everybody seen that card?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's what I need you to do.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to put this back.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now I saw the card.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to do this again.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can't let me see that card.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here, put that back in there.
SPEAKER_00: That, folks, that was not a part of the trick.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is one okay, so here one more time.
SPEAKER_00: Now y'all are gonna have to remember a second card unless he has the 2% chance of grabbing the same card again.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so everybody look at the card.
SPEAKER_00: Oops, everybody look at the card.
SPEAKER_00: We got it, we got it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you got it now.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna let me see this card, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let me make sure I got them shuffled up so you know that I don't have this in here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what I need you to do now is, okay, just slide it in there.
SPEAKER_00: Just well, don't put it on bottom because then I know for sure it's it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna figure out what your card is.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I think I know it.
SPEAKER_00: It is this one right here.
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, wait, hang on.
SPEAKER_00: This is really not going my way.
SPEAKER_00: You're sure this is not your card.
SPEAKER_00: Is this his card?
SPEAKER_00: Is he just messing with me?
SPEAKER_00: It's not your card.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I completely forgot.
SPEAKER_00: You were supposed to hit the deck, not like on the ground, like you got you gotta hit it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, three.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now I think I can find your card.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just one more time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a little nervous there.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you got three.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here we go.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see if we can find your card.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me if you see it.
SPEAKER_00: If you can see through, maybe you can find the card.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, maybe this doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should have just stuck with making stick balloons.
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Is that it?
SPEAKER_00: Is that your card?
SPEAKER_00: Is this his card?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: That was so incredibly impressive.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to prove that I'm not a magician, I'm gonna show you how I did it.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know how I did it?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's so simple.
SPEAKER_00: You can show everybody at school as long as none of them go to church here, because then they'll already know.
SPEAKER_00: So, so here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna show you what happens.
SPEAKER_00: You pick a card, any card that you want.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking at your card.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if I was better at this, see, I'm trying to shuffle, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to just like everybody's looking at you and your card that you're showing them.
SPEAKER_00: And while they're doing that, you ready for this?
SPEAKER_00: Here's it's very simple.
SPEAKER_00: I take the top card and then I flip all of these over.
SPEAKER_00: Every card is facing up except for this one.
SPEAKER_00: See, they're all facing up, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so when you go to put yours in, it's facing down, and so to throw you off, I'm like, oh, then I flip it over, and and you know this is not it, and then guess what's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_00: You know what's gonna happen right there.
SPEAKER_00: So now you know magic.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm even gonna let you keep this deck, just don't play with it during church.
SPEAKER_00: Some people will get really upset.
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so thank everybody give Beckett a hand.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: My lovely assistant Beckett, you did fantastic.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh for those of you who are magicians or are familiar with magic or like me know almost nothing about magic, there's one thing that a magician wants to do to get his magic trick to work.
SPEAKER_00: It's really simple.
SPEAKER_00: He just wants to distract you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the whole focus.
SPEAKER_00: Why this one works is because while y'all are trying to memorize the card that he's holding up, I'm doing something nefarious, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm trying to trick you, but you don't see it.
SPEAKER_00: You can't see it because you're too busy looking somewhere else, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's it's how it works in magic.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's the sleight of hand that allows a magician to do something that seems magic, but he's palming something, he's holding something, he's tricking you, he gets you to look away, and that's when he pulls the rug out from under you.
SPEAKER_00: There is a person in the Bible who loves to do that a lot, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh the devil is also known as Satan.
SPEAKER_00: And and just for clarification, not that it really matters, but Satan is not his name.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is not a proper name.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is a title, it's a description.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's actually, and Isaac could tell me us all a whole lot more about this, but it it is it's Hasatan.
SPEAKER_00: It actually just means what?
SPEAKER_00: The deceiver.
SPEAKER_00: That's all it really means.
SPEAKER_00: And what Satan loves to do, like any good magician, is that he can't change the facts, but what he can do is he can lure your attention away from something that is important and instead to get you to focus on something else.
SPEAKER_00: I've been bragging more and more every week about the group of guys that I meet with on Tuesday morning.
SPEAKER_00: We have a Tuesday morning kind of, we have a kind of a mini Bible study devotional.
SPEAKER_00: We have breakfast together.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not doing anything at 8 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: and you want to come join us at Section Hand, we would love to have you, even if you can't come every week.
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you're in high school uh looking back at some of these boys back there who crashed our party, it was awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're always welcome to come and join us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and if you're a high school student and you show up, I can guarantee you that somebody will pick up your ticket.
SPEAKER_00: So um we would love to have you at any time.
SPEAKER_00: So I've been bragging on these guys.
SPEAKER_00: I love them every week.
SPEAKER_00: It it turns into sermon prep for me.
SPEAKER_00: I ask a lot of questions or a couple questions and then let them take over.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question that I asked this last Tuesday was what was something that was important in your life when you were younger, but is no longer as important?
SPEAKER_00: And then what has replaced that?
SPEAKER_00: What has become important?
SPEAKER_00: And and last Tuesday we had just a little over 20 guys there uh in that room, and unfortunately, we didn't have time for everyone to answer, but I kept a tally, and there were eight men who answered.
SPEAKER_00: And and in answering the first question, it was pretty varied.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm not not to throw out names, but I don't mind doing it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's anything confidential.
SPEAKER_00: But uh Jerry Jones mentioned that when he was younger, one of the things that was really important for him was uh was sports.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and he did rattle off some statistics about how Stephenville was terrible, awful, and never scored a point or did anything.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we had some people uh who talked about uh cars were really important to them, or or girls were important, or going to a certain college was really important.
SPEAKER_00: Most of them talked about how money or careers that was important for them when they were younger.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was probably a half a dozen or so different answers as to what was important to them when they were younger, but all of them, surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, said the same thing was important to them now.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what it was that caught their eye, that drew their attention, whatever it was that was uh was was gleaming and sparkly, and and what was so important to them all changed.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of the eight that answered, every single one said the same word.
SPEAKER_00: What's important to you now, every single one of them said, family.
SPEAKER_00: Family is what is important to me now.
SPEAKER_00: Even some of them confessed that they said, yeah, when I was younger, you know, I'd I was so busy with my job and and supporting my family, you know, making money for my family that it I didn't spend as much time with them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, but now they said I cherish those moments of being with my kids or being with my grandkids.
SPEAKER_00: Like those are the things that are important to me now.
SPEAKER_00: Family.
SPEAKER_00: Family is what matters.
SPEAKER_00: To God, this has always been the case.
SPEAKER_00: Family has always been top priority.
SPEAKER_00: As he was with his son and with his spirit in the very beginning, he understood the importance of family.
SPEAKER_00: And he understood that family meant more than just those around him and those who had been with him from the beginning and before.
SPEAKER_00: He also understood that loving all of his children would be of utmost importance.
SPEAKER_00: The world is just a place.
SPEAKER_00: His children mean everything.
SPEAKER_00: He has a cattle on a thousand hills, but that's not what occupies his time.
SPEAKER_00: He oversees every sunrise and sunset, but that doesn't divert his focus.
SPEAKER_00: He created the world and everything in it, but he doesn't sit around and think about investing dollars, counting yen, or mining bitcoin.
SPEAKER_00: Money means nothing to God.
SPEAKER_00: He has everything, but the one thing he wants most is family.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Satan says that more money will make you happy, that a bigger house will give you peace, that a new car will bring you joy, that that big, beautiful, perfect wedding ceremony will fill your heart's desire, that a new job will give you purpose, that more likes on social media will fulfill you, that a better retirement plan will give you security.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to tell you that being the starting quarterback, the head cheerleader or the class president will boost your aura and solve all of your problems.
SPEAKER_00: But this morning I want you to hear this.
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to know that he doesn't want you to get distracted.
SPEAKER_00: Don't become tempted and don't look for accomplishments or events to fill your life.
SPEAKER_00: God calls you to love him and to love others.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm about to say over the next few minutes can be perceived several ways.
SPEAKER_00: First off, um, it could be construed as offensive.
SPEAKER_00: And I honestly don't want to uh offend anyone, but sometimes when we speak, especially to large groups, somebody walks away offended.
SPEAKER_00: Um of you uh might see what I'm about to say as countercultural, and honestly, I'm hoping it is.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you might perceive my statements as sexist, and I certainly don't mean that at all.
SPEAKER_00: But I do believe this.
SPEAKER_00: I believe that many women are better equipped and understand more importantly what we should be focusing on.
SPEAKER_00: Just uh several weeks ago, I was scrolling through some videos and came across one by Jordan Peterson, uh, and he was talking about one of the differences between men and women.
SPEAKER_00: Men tend to focus on things, and women tend to focus on people.
SPEAKER_00: He said, and that plays itself out in the career world.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that's why you have so many men who are accountants and engineers, they like to focus on things, and so many women are nurses and teachers because they like to focus on people.
SPEAKER_00: It's what they do, it's what they love.
SPEAKER_00: But for some reason, we've gotten convinced that people and family is the lesser of those professions.
SPEAKER_00: That choosing to stay at home or being involved with our kids is somehow makes you lesser of a person.
SPEAKER_00: Family is what matters.
SPEAKER_00: The world is going to tell you that not just a job, because mothering and fathering, parenting is a job.
SPEAKER_00: But the world is going to tell you, unless that job comes with a paycheck, then it's not really a job at all.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to tell you that a paycheck gives you power and that a degree or a title or profession gives you meaning.
SPEAKER_00: But as we read throughout scriptures, the one thing we see over and over again is that family is what matters.
SPEAKER_00: We can look all throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We can read stories of Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarah, in their longing, their desire to have a child.
SPEAKER_00: Family is what they wanted most.
SPEAKER_00: Abram was very successful.
SPEAKER_00: He had lots of money, he had lots of land, he had lots of cattle.
SPEAKER_00: The one thing that he prayed for over and over again is that God would give him a child.
SPEAKER_00: Sarah wanted that so much that at one point she told her husband, take my handmaiden and allow the lineage.
SPEAKER_00: Let us have a child through her.
SPEAKER_00: That's how important family was to them.
SPEAKER_00: Hannah prayed over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: She prayed so fervently at one time that the priest there saw her and thought she was intoxicated.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, get out of the temple being drunk like this.
SPEAKER_00: And she says, I'm not, I'm just praying to God.
SPEAKER_00: Because family meant so much.
SPEAKER_00: And oddly enough, it seems that God intended to place the most important thing for the family into the hands of the mothers.
SPEAKER_00: It was the women.
SPEAKER_00: The men, they went off to gain territory or farm land or to tend sheep, but it was the women who stayed at home.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because they were weak or dumb or unimportant, it's because the most important thing in a society and in our faith is.
SPEAKER_00: Our family.
SPEAKER_00: The women stayed at home because children are more important than flocks, more valuable than crops, and more treasured than plots.
SPEAKER_00: Most of our mothers discovered in an instant what it took decades for us guys to figure out.
SPEAKER_00: How long would we confess as men that we thought getting that career, getting that advancement, getting that job or that house or that retirement, all of that, that was what was important, but it seemed very early on women understood the importance of family.
SPEAKER_00: Like those who were sitting around the table this past Tuesday, I've begun to realize more and more how important family is.
SPEAKER_00: That maybe once a month I would make a phone call.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe once a semester I would go back home.
SPEAKER_00: To me, it was about living my life and having fun and maybe studying.
SPEAKER_00: But there also was this girl, too, that I really liked.
SPEAKER_00: That kept me in Abilene more weekends.
SPEAKER_00: But as I've gotten older, I've become to love and respect and admire my parents more and more every day.
SPEAKER_00: I long for opportunities to see my brothers.
SPEAKER_00: Every day somehow I wake up and it seems impossible, but I feel like I love my wife even more than I did the day before.
SPEAKER_00: My in-laws are really important to me now.
SPEAKER_00: My children are always in my thoughts, and every day I pray for them.
SPEAKER_00: My nieces and my nephews and and and hopefully and hopefully someday grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: I would love to have some grandchildren.
SPEAKER_00: I've got a really great card trick I want to show them.
SPEAKER_00: Family is what's important.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to know, and I mean this, and I know we don't know each other that well, and I've only been here for just a little while, but I want you to know that you are really, really important to me.
SPEAKER_00: Because you're my family.
SPEAKER_00: At one time, Jesus was teaching, and some people came outside, came up to him from outside and said, Hey Jesus, your your mother and your brothers are outside.
SPEAKER_00: And he asked the question and then he answers it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Who is my mother and who are my brothers?
SPEAKER_00: And then he points to his disciples and he said to them, Here are my mother and my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother.
SPEAKER_00: And so, by that definition, as we gather here to worship God, even if it looks differently, even if we look differently, even if we live in different places and came from different families, as we meet together, we are all one family.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we happen to be celebrating or mourning Mother's Day, I want you to know this.
SPEAKER_00: I want to thank God for my family.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to thank God for all of you.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know the impact that you have had and are having in the life of my family and for those who sit in here and those elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: I want to thank God for all the mothers who treated me like family, who disciplined me like a stepchild, who encouraged me like a fan, and who forgave me like our Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: I want to thank all of those women, including some in this room and many who find themselves in the quilting room on Tuesday, I want to thank you for knowing what is important and showing Jesus to me and to everyone else.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, whether this day brings you joy or sadness, pride or grief, know that just like every day, God sees you as his family, and he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning we want to offer to you what he offers to us.
SPEAKER_00: That's love, forgiveness, hope, and eternity.
SPEAKER_00: And that we can celebrate as a family.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for choosing to worship God this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for choosing to do it with this family.
SPEAKER_00: We are so grateful that you've chosen to be here.
SPEAKER_00: If there's any way that we can help you, support you, pray for you, encourage you, or if you'd like to be a part of this family, we would love for you to come and join us.
SPEAKER_00: And you can do that as we stand and sing.