SPEAKER_01: After you become aware of your sin, what do you do as a child of God?
SPEAKER_01: It's often a very pride-swately, humbly thing to confess your sins to a God who loves you and has sent his son to die for the sins you just confessed.
SPEAKER_00: This podcast is a ministry of Rand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know enjoying glorifying God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Rand Parkway, visit Red Artway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Not because we are good or great, not because our circumstances are the way we want them.
SPEAKER_01: It's because, Jesus, you are good.
SPEAKER_01: And so, Lord, we say thank you.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, uh I pray for those of us who might be heavy-hearted this morning.
SPEAKER_01: God, that you would minister to us, and that as we leave today, Lord, that it would be well with our soul, that our heart's cry would be one of worship and praise because you are worthy.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: My name is Travis Dunham, and I'm the Connections pastor here at Grant Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_01: And what that means is I get to help people assemble into the life of the church, and I also get to oversee our discipleship groups and our community groups.
SPEAKER_01: And I am really comfortable in those one-on-one or in those small group environments.
SPEAKER_01: So a few weeks ago in a staff meeting when Neil asked how many of y'all think Travis should preach this summer, and all my friends betrayed me.
SPEAKER_01: I had two competing thoughts going through my mind.
SPEAKER_01: And the first one is, man, what an honor.
SPEAKER_01: And that truly is the dominant thought.
SPEAKER_01: It is an honor to be with you.
SPEAKER_01: Robin and I have been here almost two years, and we have truly grown to love this church family.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things I love about this church is kind of not, it's not the staff and the congregation.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're together, we're a family of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I love that about this church.
SPEAKER_01: So today I get to speak to people I love about a God I love.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's going to be a great day for me.
SPEAKER_01: I may stumble through it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: I may get emotional.
SPEAKER_01: But the truth is, I'm excited to proclaim God's word to you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: On Monday mornings, around 6.30, I meet with a group of guys to study the Bible and to see how the Bible should be applying to our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And for about six weeks, we've been looking at the book of Galatians.
SPEAKER_01: And I love the book of Galatians because in some ways it's similar to the other epistles, but in some ways it's completely different.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Paul kind of starts off with the same greetings, but then real quick, I mean, he changes gears.
SPEAKER_01: He puts on his dad hat and he starts jabbing people.
SPEAKER_01: He starts rebuking people.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, as a dad, I kind of like that a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: But uh, to give you a little bit of the background, the book of Acts teaches us that Paul was a tent maker by trade.
SPEAKER_01: And in his spare time, he would proclaim the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He would gather a group of men and women around him, and he would begin to disciple them, to love them, to invest in them, and he would establish a church.
SPEAKER_01: And once that church was established, he would leave there and go to a new location and kind of do the same thing all over again.
SPEAKER_01: But the important thing was when he left the church, he entrusted them with the gospel message.
SPEAKER_01: He entrusted them to proclaim the same message that he taught them.
SPEAKER_01: So when Paul learned that the church in Galatia had kind of drifted away from the message that was taught, he was frustrated.
SPEAKER_01: And so he wrote them a letter called Galatians, and he's kind of writing from the standpoint of, hey, I am your spiritual father, I'm your spiritual dad.
SPEAKER_01: And so with that in mind, let's kind of look at Galatians, starting with verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: See, it's kind of like a normal greeting.
SPEAKER_01: But in verse 4, right here, he kind of begins to tip his hand, he begins to share what's most important to him.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Who himself, um, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of God the Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: See, real quick, Paul just kind of gives a gospel jab.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he is constantly through the book of Galatians sharing the gospel message.
SPEAKER_01: But then in verse 6, he says, I'm astonished.
SPEAKER_01: And if you were to keep reading the letter, Paul's like this frustrated dad.
SPEAKER_01: He just kind of gets after it again.
SPEAKER_01: So in Galatians chapter 3, he says, You foolish Galatians, and he just gets on this tyrant.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you dads have ever lost it with your kids?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I'm not alone in that.
SPEAKER_01: And that kind of you know brings a little comfort.
SPEAKER_01: Um but this earlier this summer, uh, it was hot outside, I was working, and I wanted to quit, actually.
SPEAKER_01: And so I came inside and I gathered my kids.
SPEAKER_01: I have four little girls.
SPEAKER_01: I said, hey, um, it's hot day, let's all go out for ice cream.
SPEAKER_01: And everybody's excited, which they should have been.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Hey, but before we go, we gotta clean up a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: So I want you to do this task, I want you to do this job, and you're doing this, and and you're gonna do this.
SPEAKER_01: And everybody agrees, and I've been down this road before, so I had them repeat it back to me.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: And everybody kind of agreed upon the assignment, and um, we're happy, so we're gonna get ice cream.
SPEAKER_01: So I go take a shower, I get back, and I come out of the bedroom into the living room, and what do you think's happening?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, two of them are fighting, one's watching TV, and I have no idea where the other one is.
SPEAKER_01: And I am frustrated.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what in the world's going on?
SPEAKER_01: We agreed upon something five minutes ago, and now you're not doing it.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, This is just so foolish.
SPEAKER_01: And then my wife looks at me, you shouldn't call our kids fools.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I didn't.
SPEAKER_01: I said, This is foolish, I didn't call them fools, and I'm just frustrated.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what Paul felt like.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, hey, I entrusted you with something so great and so glorious.
SPEAKER_01: I was your pastor and I taught you well.
SPEAKER_01: You know the right thing to do, but you're turning away from it.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul was a little frustrated because instead of trusting God, they were doubting.
SPEAKER_01: And in short, if you study the book of Galatians, the reason they were doubting God is because they were fearing man.
SPEAKER_01: Yet Paul wasn't like that.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was a man who was willing to endure hardship, suffering, and even isolation for his faith.
SPEAKER_01: After all, Paul was the person who penned in Galatians 2.20, I had been crucified with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
SPEAKER_01: And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
SPEAKER_01: That last part.
SPEAKER_01: I live by faith by the power of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
SPEAKER_01: Paul truly believed that, the core of who he was.
SPEAKER_01: And the point of the message this morning that I hope to bring out is behavior always follows belief.
SPEAKER_01: Behavior always follows belief.
SPEAKER_01: Paul believed that he was deeply loved by God, and that impacted his behavior.
SPEAKER_01: See, the Galatians may have agreed with some of Paul's teaching, but it doesn't mean they had the same convictions or the same mindset as Paul did.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm naturally a curious person, so I begin to wonder, what did Paul believe that the Galatians didn't?
SPEAKER_01: What did Paul understand that made him stand out, that made his conviction so strong?
SPEAKER_01: To where when the Galatians kind of fumbled the ball.
SPEAKER_01: And in chapter four, Paul kind of gives us some insight to what he believed.
SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_01: So in chapter four, verse four, it says, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law.
SPEAKER_01: See, right there again, see how Paul just kind of gives a gospel jab?
SPEAKER_01: Over and over again in Galatians, he is presenting the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And then he finishes the verse, he says, So that you might re so that you might receive adoptions as sons.
SPEAKER_01: And that was the key point.
SPEAKER_01: Paul believed that he was an adopted son of God, and that changed everything.
SPEAKER_01: Primarily in two ways.
SPEAKER_01: One was kind of a more formal, legal manner, but the other was more of a relational, practical, everyday life.
SPEAKER_01: Tim Keller explains that under Roman rule, the moment adoption occurred, several things immediately were true of the new son.
SPEAKER_01: There were four facts in one assumption.
SPEAKER_01: The first fact: his old debts and legal obligations were paid.
SPEAKER_01: He got a new name and was an instant heir of all that the father had.
SPEAKER_01: They understood what that meant.
SPEAKER_01: The question was, did they truly believe it?
SPEAKER_01: Did they truly believe that God was that good?
SPEAKER_01: That God was good enough to forgive all their debts and sins and to take responsibility for their lives.
SPEAKER_01: Clearly, Paul believed this.
SPEAKER_01: God's adopt excuse me.
SPEAKER_01: Paul believed it.
SPEAKER_01: Paul believed that he was an adopted son of God, and that changed everything.
SPEAKER_01: The second thing it changed is the way he related to God.
SPEAKER_01: He no longer had to relate to God out of performance or under the wall, but he could relate to God out of Jesus' grace.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus was perfect, we don't have to be.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the good news for us, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus was perfect, we don't have to be.
SPEAKER_01: And if we place our faith and our devotion in Jesus and in his perfect performance, and in his finished work on the cross, then we are accepted on the basis of Jesus' performance.
SPEAKER_01: Through the years, this has been called the great exchange.
SPEAKER_01: We exchange our sinful performance for Jesus' righteousness, and we become children of God.
SPEAKER_01: Not everyone's a child of God, and that's a different message for our culture.
SPEAKER_01: But it's true.
SPEAKER_01: Only those who place their love and devotion in Jesus have the privilege to become a child of God.
SPEAKER_01: But for those who don't, their only choice relating to God is through their own performance by obtaining the law.
SPEAKER_01: And they just simply can't do it because God's standard has always been perfect performance.
SPEAKER_01: And we can assume from the rebuke or the tone of Paul's letter that instead of turning to God's grace, the Galatians turned their back on God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: And for Paul, for a child to turn away from the grace of God, this was just simply astounding.
SPEAKER_01: It was unfathomable.
SPEAKER_01: But what about us?
SPEAKER_01: What about you?
SPEAKER_01: After you have sinned, after you have blown it, what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: Do you immediately turn to God's grace asking forgiveness?
SPEAKER_01: Or do you kind of distance yourself from God, kind of getting on this performance trap mentality?
SPEAKER_01: After you've broken your promise again?
SPEAKER_01: After you binge-watched Netflix all day, neglecting your responsibilities.
SPEAKER_01: After you clicked on that website, you swore you'd never go back to.
SPEAKER_01: After you've gone on a shopping spree, racking up debt you know you can't afford.
SPEAKER_01: After you posted something on social media, knowing it was the wrong thing to do, but really not caring.
SPEAKER_01: After you've lied or intentionally gossiped, after you fantasize about something in your mind, knowing you shouldn't.
SPEAKER_01: After you become aware of your sin, what do you do as a child of God?
SPEAKER_01: Do you go to Him knowing that He's your Heavenly Father and asking for grace?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the reality is that just sounds so simple.
SPEAKER_01: Just go to God and ask for grace.
SPEAKER_01: And in some ways it is, because He's that good, but in other ways, it's really not simple at all.
SPEAKER_01: It's often a very pride-swallowing, humbling thing to confess your sins to a God who loves you and who sent his son to die for the sins you just confessed.
SPEAKER_01: But this process of going to God asking for grace is very transformative in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: As we continue to go to God and ask for grace, we find that God lavishes his grace upon us.
SPEAKER_01: And this process begins to transform us, it begins to renew our hearts and our minds, and we learn to depend upon God.
SPEAKER_01: The second option we have is if we're not going to turn to God for his grace, then we distance ourselves from him.
SPEAKER_01: We kind of distance ourselves from God.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know just why we do it, but we kind of do for like this mythical amount of time to where we feel like we cleaned up our act before we can go back into God's presence, right?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you're like, oh man, I've done this sin.
SPEAKER_01: I got to distance myself and I gotta clean up my performance.
SPEAKER_01: Or I gotta strengthen my commitments.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read the Bible more, I'm gonna pray more.
SPEAKER_01: And we make all these commitments that truthfully we just can't keep.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they just kind of add to our shame and our guilt.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why that mentality is wrong, but this morning I just kind of want to list three of them of why this performance trap is not good for us.
SPEAKER_01: First, it's a poor understanding of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: This person has a false mindset, believing that the goal of the Christian life is to sin less.
SPEAKER_01: But the sin less has never been the aim of the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: The goal of the Christian life is to depend more.
SPEAKER_01: Sinning less is a byproduct of depending upon God.
SPEAKER_01: Think back to a few weeks ago when we were going through John 15.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Apart from me, you can do nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Or if you think about the Lord's Prayer that Clyde read to us earlier, who talks about giving us today our daily bread.
SPEAKER_01: If you read through the Bible, you'll see that constantly Jesus is calling upon his people to depend upon him and not their own strengths.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't want us to white knuckle things with our own effort.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he wants us to come to him and learning to depend upon his love and grace.
SPEAKER_01: The second reason people kind of excuse me.
SPEAKER_01: Lost my spot here, guys.
SPEAKER_01: But the truth is, the person who kind of has this mindset, the reality is sometimes they don't want to change.
SPEAKER_01: It's just the truth.
SPEAKER_01: They just want freedom from the guilt they experience.
SPEAKER_01: They want release.
SPEAKER_01: They don't want true repentance.
SPEAKER_01: And the truth is, God will allow you to flirt with your sin.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the Bible teaches that he will hand you over your sin until the weight of your sin and the consequences of your sin breaks you down.
SPEAKER_01: And then when you are broken as a broken child of God, you will turn to God, to your Heavenly Father, longing for His grace.
SPEAKER_01: And because He's good and gracious, He will give it to us.
SPEAKER_01: When He gives us His that grace, we learned that relying upon God is not a crutch.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's a pathway to peace.
SPEAKER_01: The third problem with this performance trap mindset is it's just simply not the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel teaches us the only way we can ever relate to God is through the grace of Jesus, not on our performance.
SPEAKER_01: In Galatians, Paul is reminding these people over and over again of the gospel that he taught them.
SPEAKER_01: To rely upon Jesus and to trust his grace and not your performance.
SPEAKER_01: As a dad, I understand this, and I get to see this kind of lived out on a daily basis, kind of this gospel performance track.
SPEAKER_01: I have one little girl, and almost every day I hear these phrases out of her mouth.
SPEAKER_01: Daddy, did I do good?
SPEAKER_01: Have I been good today, Daddy?
SPEAKER_01: Did I do this right?
SPEAKER_01: The heartbeat behind these questions is have I performed good enough today?
SPEAKER_01: And to be honest with you, as a dad who loves that little girl, I hate those questions.
SPEAKER_01: I really do.
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't like watching her live with that uncertainty.
SPEAKER_01: I want her to fully understand and know that she is loved by her dad, regardless of a good performance or a bad performance.
SPEAKER_01: And if I want that for my girl, as messed up as I am, imagine how much our Heavenly Father wants that for us.
SPEAKER_01: I have another little girl who currently she understands this.
SPEAKER_01: This past week she got in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: So I brought her into our bedroom and I set her on the bed and we began to talk about the consequences of her actions.
SPEAKER_01: And um, she didn't like that.
SPEAKER_01: She started to tear up, her bottom lip was quivering, and um all of a sudden she got this little smirk on her face, and she goes, Um, it'll be okay, daddy, because I know you still love me.
SPEAKER_01: See the difference?
SPEAKER_01: One is trying to fight to search for approval that's already hers, and another one's living in the fact that she knows she's accepted.
SPEAKER_01: As a dad, I love both girls equally.
SPEAKER_01: But their understanding of my love for them or what they believe about me defines how they relate to me.
SPEAKER_01: Behavior always follows belief, and what you truly believe about God defines how you relate to Him.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a child of God, God relates to you out of grace.
SPEAKER_01: On a side note, as children of God, we should model that grace-based relationship with other people, right?
SPEAKER_01: Our relationship with other people shouldn't be one of performance, but sometimes it is.
SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, a performance-based relationship always demands something, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: If you're brave enough on your way home today from church, kind of ask the people in your car, do I relate to you out of grace or out of performance?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes that can be a frightening question.
SPEAKER_01: I have a little OCD tendencies.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, I like things to be a certain way.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone else like that?
SPEAKER_01: Good, I'm not alone.
SPEAKER_01: So um last Thursday night, we invited some people over for dinner.
SPEAKER_01: This has been planned for a while.
SPEAKER_01: We were looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_01: And uh there was this assumption that when I got home, everything would be ready.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know where this is going.
SPEAKER_01: So when I got home, uh I immediately noticed um things were not as I expected.
SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily wrong, just not what I expected.
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of went into dad mode.
SPEAKER_01: I started barking orders at our kids.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, this needs to be done, this needs to be done, and why didn't you do this?
SPEAKER_01: I told you three times, and I'm getting frustrated.
SPEAKER_01: And as I'm barking orders to kids that I love, um, my wife's my wife tells me, You're sighing a lot.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, well, you're right.
SPEAKER_01: But inside the back of my head, I start hearing this voice.
SPEAKER_01: This is not grace.
SPEAKER_01: And so, frustrated, I had to go back to my daughters one by one, and apologize for my attitude and my actions.
SPEAKER_01: Our friends came over and um things were still undone.
SPEAKER_01: I was still frustrated, but nobody else seemed to care or mine.
SPEAKER_01: And the truth was, after I got over my frustration, everybody had a great time.
SPEAKER_01: We had a great meal, we laughed, we joked, and then around 10:30, I kicked them out.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem.
SPEAKER_01: Most of us struggle with grace-based relationships because it hasn't really been modeled for us.
SPEAKER_01: If we're honest, most of our relationships to other people are on performance.
SPEAKER_01: We have to perform a certain way to be expected.
SPEAKER_01: Or we treat people that way.
SPEAKER_01: In order for you to be accepted by me, you have to perform to this level.
SPEAKER_01: So sometimes it's hard for us to understand that we can go to God and see if an abundance of grace because it's simply not modeled for us in our day to day life.
SPEAKER_01: Another reason is because we're kind of taught this, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, growing up, right off the bat, whether it's academics or athletics or anything else, you're taught, hey, be the best, be the fastest, be the strongest, outperform someone else.
SPEAKER_01: So this performance mindset is all around us.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is, it's just simply not the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: In the gospel, the only performance that matters is Jesus' perfect performance and our faith and devotion to Him.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of getting back to the text here in chapter 4, verse 6, Paul goes on to say, so because we are sons, God has sent his spirit of his son into our hearts crying out, Ah, the Father.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever noticed that names really matter?
SPEAKER_01: Is anybody other than myself called somebody by the wrong name?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's embarrassing.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little awkward, especially if that person's introduced themselves to you several times.
SPEAKER_01: But um, it happens.
SPEAKER_01: But um, my wife, her name's Robin, and you usually call her um Sweetie, and there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_01: Um, in fact, it kind of helps define our relationship.
SPEAKER_01: But let's pretend that I started going around the office and calling Marcy and Kim and Amy, the ladies working in the office, I started calling them Sweetie.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it would be a little awkward.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it might cause a few problems.
SPEAKER_01: And I would probably get called into the next elders' meeting.
SPEAKER_01: Because that term doesn't match the relationship.
SPEAKER_01: There would be a disconnect.
SPEAKER_01: It wouldn't be appropriate.
SPEAKER_01: But here in the text, God says that we can call him Abba Father or we can call him daddy.
SPEAKER_01: It's a term of affection.
SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to describe one of the most intimate relationships you can have.
SPEAKER_01: And our Heavenly Father says, I want that kind of relationship with you.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever um you ever been um around a kid that doesn't trust his dad?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a sad thing.
SPEAKER_01: The kid's kind of shy, he's withdrawn, he doesn't look up, he kind of hides behind somebody or something.
SPEAKER_01: And when his dad calls him, he rarely ever says daddy.
SPEAKER_01: He can't.
SPEAKER_01: Because even a kid knows that the word daddy is too intimate of a word for someone you don't trust.
SPEAKER_01: But have you ever been into a home that's filled with love?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, all you seem to hear is daddy this, daddy this.
SPEAKER_01: And when dad comes home, what you hear is daddy's home, daddy's home.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a completely different environment when a child knows that he's loved by dad.
SPEAKER_01: And just like the environment of a house is different when a child knows that he's loved by dad, the environment of your life would also be different when we understand and grasp that we are truly loved by God.
SPEAKER_01: Um, several years ago when we lived in Alabama.
SPEAKER_01: Reese, my second child, she had a nightmare.
SPEAKER_01: And as far as I can recall, it was her first nightmare.
SPEAKER_01: And she screamed, bloody murder.
SPEAKER_01: Has that ever happened to y'all?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's frightening, right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it scared me.
SPEAKER_01: I woke up, and um, being the dad that I am, I just yelled back at her.
SPEAKER_01: Go back to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: Not really.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was frightened.
SPEAKER_01: I got up, I started running, stepping on toys, and I turned the corner and stubbed my toe.
SPEAKER_01: And the truth is, when I got to her, none of that mattered.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that mattered was she called for her dad, and I wanted to comfort her.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the point.
SPEAKER_01: As a loving parent, not a perfect parent, but a loving parent, when my kids call out for daddy, I respond.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine how much more our perfect Heavenly Father responds when we cry out to him.
SPEAKER_01: So here's my question for you.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like the first question.
SPEAKER_01: When your life is spinning out of control, when the concerns of your heart seem to be getting heavier and heavier instead of lighter, what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: As a loved child of God, do you go to your Abba father, say, Dad, I need help?
SPEAKER_01: Or do you kind of distance yourself from God again?
SPEAKER_01: And just kind of say, hey, I'm wise enough to figure this out on my own.
SPEAKER_01: I have enough resources, I'll be okay given enough time.
SPEAKER_01: Man, I can just bury my head and work harder and hope it all works out.
SPEAKER_01: Or, maybe some of you just intentionally distance yourself from God.
SPEAKER_01: Like, hey man, I've been disappointed in circumstances, I've been disappointed in people.
SPEAKER_01: And if I bring what really matters to me to God, God may disappoint me too.
SPEAKER_01: And I just don't know if I can handle that.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of you are in that camp.
SPEAKER_01: I know that I was for a long time.
SPEAKER_01: As a young man, I wanted a wife, I wanted a family, I wanted to be married.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I wasn't.
SPEAKER_01: So I prayed, nothing ever really happened.
SPEAKER_01: Prayed a little bit more, and nothing really happened.
SPEAKER_01: So one day I just decided I'm gonna stop praying about it.
SPEAKER_01: And I watched my friends get married, and I watched them have kids and families of their own, and truly I was happy for them.
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I was bitter at God.
SPEAKER_01: My thoughts were, God, you are sovereign.
SPEAKER_01: And if you wanted to, you could change my circumstance.
SPEAKER_01: But for one reason or another, he didn't.
SPEAKER_01: And so, out of my hurt, out of my frustration, I just simply never engaged God about what really mattered to me.
SPEAKER_01: And then one day I just finally broke down.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what caused it, but I just broke down and I became gut-level honest with God about my desires, about my frustrations, and even my false belief of somehow thinking it was his fault.
SPEAKER_01: And if you would have been in the room watching me pray that day, you would have thought I was being so disrespectful.
SPEAKER_01: Because it was ugly.
SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't being disrespectful, I was just finally being honest.
SPEAKER_01: Well, not too long after that prayer, nothing happened.
SPEAKER_01: I was still single, but my perspective had changed.
SPEAKER_01: And what I began to notice over time was God was working in me, changing me into a man that was able to handle the responsibility of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And when God deemed it to be the right time, he brought Robin into my life.
SPEAKER_01: Again, the point is behavior always follows belief.
SPEAKER_01: When you do not believe that God is worthy of your deepest concerns, you won't go to him.
SPEAKER_01: You'll avoid them.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the way the relationship was intended to be.
SPEAKER_01: We are children, as a Christian, we are children of God.
SPEAKER_01: We have the privilege to call out Abba Father, and his father heart wants us to come to him.
SPEAKER_01: But if we choose not to, what we're really doing is exposing our pride.
SPEAKER_01: Because we have the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the great I am.
SPEAKER_01: And throughout the scripture, he says, Come to me.
SPEAKER_01: Cast all your cares upon me, for I care for you.
SPEAKER_01: And for you to turn your face from him and say, I have this, that's just prideful.
SPEAKER_01: Years ago, I was listening to a podcast on this preacher who had just got off his sabbatical.
SPEAKER_01: I know it was a podcast, so I didn't really get to see the video, but you can kind of hear the excitement in the crowd a little bit, kind of build the anticipation of what is the preacher going to say after coming off sabbatical?
SPEAKER_01: And he gets up there and he goes, Man, um, on my sabbatical, I learned a lot about myself.
SPEAKER_01: I learned a lot about God.
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, um, what I learned was I really love Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And you can kind of hear everybody like, uh, we know that, you're a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: Tell us what you really learned.
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, I learned that I really love Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I just don't enjoy talking to him.
SPEAKER_01: Man, you can kind of feel the crowd just kind of get quiet.
SPEAKER_01: Man, what an honest moment from a pastor.
SPEAKER_01: I really love Jesus, but I just don't like talking to him.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder how many of us are in that same category.
SPEAKER_01: I love God.
SPEAKER_01: I love going to church, I love worshiping, I love the fellowship of believers.
SPEAKER_01: I love studying my Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I love learning new things.
SPEAKER_01: I love discussing the things of God.
SPEAKER_01: A bit practically on day-to-day.
SPEAKER_01: I really don't talk to them.
SPEAKER_01: Man, uh, how do y'all uh, if you were to go home and your wife were to ask you about your day, and you just kind of said, hmm, just fine.
SPEAKER_01: You just went about your business.
SPEAKER_01: And every time she tried to engage you with something, you'd be like, hmm, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Uh you still enjoyed all the benefits of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: Uh you enjoyed the partnership of having a clean home and dinner and all this, everything was good.
SPEAKER_01: You just enjoyed life, being married.
SPEAKER_01: But every time she tried to engage you with something, you just kind of went, hmm, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Never didn't treat her wrong, just kind of never really engage her in conversation.
SPEAKER_01: If I were to do that, day one, Robin might give me a little space, like, okay, there's something going on, he'll figure it, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Day two, she might show a little concern.
SPEAKER_01: But by Friday, we'd be in couples counseling.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Because there would be something wrong with the marriage.
SPEAKER_01: It would be dysfunctional.
SPEAKER_01: And the truth is, for us, as children of God, who have complete access to God, for us not to engage him about matters that are important to us, for us not to engage him in just the day-to-day life, that is a dysfunctional relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And the truth is, as children of God, we can have so much more.
SPEAKER_01: The next verse.
SPEAKER_01: So you are no longer slaves, but a son.
SPEAKER_01: And if a son, then an heir through God.
SPEAKER_01: Paul no longer identified with his past.
SPEAKER_01: Man, what freedom in that! How many of y'all had things in your past before Christ you wish you didn't identify with anymore?
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to raise your hand.
SPEAKER_01: But I talked to a lot of you, I know it's true.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, you wish that wasn't a part of your life.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul just says, hey, I have a new identity.
SPEAKER_01: As a child of God, all things are new.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul embraced that new identity.
SPEAKER_01: Just in the three things we talked about this morning.
SPEAKER_01: As a child of God, you are no longer a slave.
SPEAKER_01: You are a child of God with all the benefits of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: You no longer relate to God out of your performance.
SPEAKER_01: You relate to God based on Jesus' perfect performance.
SPEAKER_01: And now you find an abundance of grace.
SPEAKER_01: You no longer have to carry the weight of your consequences.
SPEAKER_01: You no longer have to carry the weight of your concerns by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You can give them to your Abba Father in heaven who loves you.
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, these are just three benefits of being a child of God.
SPEAKER_01: But the secret to attaining these benefits, it's not in trying harder.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of us have tried that and failed, right?
SPEAKER_01: The secret to obtaining these benefits is just to believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: It's just simply to believe that what the Bible says about Jesus is true.
SPEAKER_01: To remember that behavior always follows belief.
SPEAKER_01: And our behavior is an indicator of what we believe.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of as we wrap things up this morning, Clyde's going to come and play in a minute.
SPEAKER_01: And I just have some questions for you to think about.
SPEAKER_01: As a child of God, do you truly believe what the Bible says?
SPEAKER_01: And does your lifestyle support that?
SPEAKER_01: Think about your sin.
SPEAKER_01: As a child of God, after you sinned, what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: Do you run to Jesus and humbly ask for grace?
SPEAKER_01: Because you trust his heart?
SPEAKER_01: Or do you get stuck on this performance trap thinking, hey, I gotta clean my act up before I turn to God?
SPEAKER_01: With the concerns that you have about your daily life, do you white knuckle effort trying to do it on your own?
SPEAKER_01: Or you take advantage of the fact that God loves you and you're his child and he wants to help you.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe a good prayer is one that's found in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, I believe.
SPEAKER_01: Just help my unbelief.
SPEAKER_01: So this morning, as a church family, let's just spend a little time praying about some of these things.
SPEAKER_01: Father God, we love you.
SPEAKER_01: And we just want to say thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the grace that you give us.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we we don't understand it.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we take it for granted.
SPEAKER_01: But Lord, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you that your grace is sufficient, that it's enough, that you lavish grace upon us.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, help us to be grateful for the kindness you give us, for the grace that you show us.
SPEAKER_01: And help us live as loved children of God.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: If you're visiting with us this morning, we're so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_01: In the seats in front of you, there's a connections card.
SPEAKER_01: And if you fill this out and kind of drop it in one of the boxes by the door, that will help us to know that you are here and how we can minister to you.
SPEAKER_01: And also, if this is your Sunday to worship God through tithes and offerings, the boxes are at the door.
SPEAKER_01: Here in a minute, we'll close out, and if you'd like, some of the elders and staff will be at the front.
SPEAKER_01: But let's stand to your feet and let me speak a blessing over us.
SPEAKER_01: Let's raise our hands high.
SPEAKER_01: As children of God, I hope you go out today knowing that you are loved by God and that you don't have to walk through this life alone.
SPEAKER_01: He is with us as we go.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.