Pastor Brian and Jacque Lother
Jacque: The name of that song, you probably recognize it, there is none unlike you and Lord, there is none like you. No one can love us like Jesus. No one can forgive us, but Jesus. No one can fill us. No one knows us like Jesus knows us and still loves us even though he knows us. We are so grateful. God, we are so grateful. I love thank you all for worshiping, coming to worship today. It's so meaningful to worship him together. It's powerful. The peace, I'm so grateful for the peace. His peace is so tangible when we worship.
Brian: I was just thinking of, you know, sometimes I've met people and I'll say I'm Brian Lother and they say, I know who you are. I think to myself, I wonder what they've heard bout me. You know, wonder how they know who I am. But when the Lord says, I know who you are it's like when he saw Nathaniel sitting underneath the tree. He said I saw you. I know you. It's not with criticism in his eyes. It's not with that fear that can come along with that kind of statement.
Jacque: I was thinking what Jeff said today too. Like when we just get so busy and we don't stop and think about God and we don't give him all that he deserves, and it can go days and sometimes it can go into weeks and he doesn't get angry. He just keeps working, finding ways to enter in and remind us how much he loves us.
Brian: Looking for an opening. We should write a song about that.
Jacque: You should write a song about that or Micah and BJ could.
Brian: Yes. I'd like to share today about the fact that there is room in God's heart for us. There is room in God's heart for us. One of my favorite portions of scripture is of course the story of the lost son. We call it the prodigal son. I did, I think, about a 25 message series on, on that parable number of years ago. Sometimes when I'm reading through the book of Luke, I come to Luke chapter 15 and, and it's a parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin. And then of course the lost son. I've done a lot of study on that, and sometimes I come to Luke 15 and I, and I'll say to myself, well, I know that. So I jumped to Luke 16. Any of you ever do that? You come to a portion of scripture and say oh, I know that, so I'm going to read something else.
The Lord has been saying— I want you to go back and read Luke 15 again. And so I've been doing that, kind of settling in on that portion of scripture again, and I feel like the Lord gave me some more things to share today about just our father in heaven and the bad rep that he has been given, the bad rap that God has. I'd like to begin; we are going to read it. We are not going to read the whole thing. We are just going to read a chapter 15 verses 11 through 24. Jacque, why don't you just read that and then we'll dive right in.
Jacque: This is from the Message Bible. Then he said there was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, father, I want right now, what's coming to me.
Brian: Oh, doesn't that sound like a child?
Jacque: A naughty child.
Brian: I want it right now. They don't want to wait. I want it right now. I want right now what's coming to me.
Jacque: The loving father, I added that. So the father divided the property between them. It wasn't long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated. He wasted everything he had after he had gone through all his money. There was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry, he would have eaten the corn cobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any
Many of you have heard me talk about Herb, one of the three most influential men in my life growing up. Herb was a farmer. I don't know that he must have passed six or seventh grade education. He also worked in the mines up in Crosby. I remember going out to his farm on many occasions and they would have— they had an old farm house and they had what they called the slot bucket. Anybody ever hear about that, the slop bucket? Jim, you are probably familiar with that, right? That wasn't something you kept outside. It was actually something that you kept in the house and all the potato peels and the coffee grounds and the egg shells and anything that would kind of go into the garbage you threw into the slop bucket.
It got really grungy and messy and you didn't want to carry it out to the barn because half the time, half the bucket just slopped all over you. That's why they called it a slot bucket. It just went all over the place. Obviously in this story, the tradition, the custom of the Jewish people was that you became defiled if you even were around a pig or pork. To make a real emphasis on kind of the consequences, the natural consequences of walking away from our father in heaven is what happens here. This picture that Jesus painted is this man who now lost everything, and the only job he could get was to carry the slop bucket up to the pig pen. That was the only job. He wished that there were a few corncobs that would be part of it so that he could take some of that corn.
By the way, most people, I think, realize there is a difference between feed corn and sweet corn. How many of you know there is a difference between that? If you could try and go and eat some feed corn— I mean, you can eat it, but it just didn't taste like the sweet corn. It's not at all like the sweet corn. Well, the corn that these pigs were going to be eating wasn't sweet corn. It would be the feed corn for chickens and cows and what have you. He was desperate. He was in a real place of desperateness, and yet nobody would even give him a corn cob that he could have that was intended to be just feed for animals. That's the destitute place he was at.
Jacque: And that brought him to his senses.
Brian: Generally speaking, hitting that kind of bottom can kind of bring us to our senses a little bit. Can't it? But the reality of the situation is he really wasn't in a position to fix himself. He really wasn't in a place where he could actually fix himself. He needed some help, but he decided to do something.
Jacque: So he said all those farm hands working for my father, sit down to three meals a day and here I am starving to death. I'm going back to my father. I'll say to him, father, I've sinned against God. I've sinned before you. I don't deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand. He got right up and went home to his father.
Brian: Now this is really what on the surface can seem like a very sincere prayer. I believe it was sincere, but the problem with his perception is he really didn't understand who his father was. He didn't understand who his father was. He probably had the same mentality that his older brother had, which we'll see a little bit later, but his older brother got mad when he came home and they began the celebration because his older brother was living in an old covenant mentality. There is an old covenant mentality that if you did this, you could get this. It was purely an arrangement. And this is really kind of the mentality even this younger son had. I'll go home. I violated all of these things in my relationship with my father, but maybe he will allow me to become a hired hand as if that's what the father needed or that's what the father wanted: just another hired hand to help with the estate. Let's go on.
Jacque: When he was still a long way off.
Brian: Don't you love that? He was a long way off.
Jacque: His father saw him.
Brian: His father saw him. You know why his father saw him a long way off?
Jacque: He was looking.
Brian: He was looking for him.
Jacque: Waiting for him.
Brian: He was looking for him, waiting for him. This tells us something that we can still be a long ways away from God and God is still working for us and on our behalf. We can be a long ways away and God is at work. God is looking. God is watching. God is just waiting for the right moment to run to us.
Jacque: The father, his heart pounding—
Brian: Don't you like that, to his heart pounding? I like how Eugene Peterson translates that because God was excited at— it's like, remember the illustration I gave about how God found us at the backside of the junkyard. We were this old rusty, you know, bucket of bolts, but Jesus found us on the back of the junk yard, the junk heap, and he had this smile on his face because he saw what he could do with us when he was finished. He saw what was going to happen with us.
He was so excited that his son was coming back. The condition of the son didn't matter to the father. The only thing mattered was that the sun was coming back. So it's hard pounding—
Jacque: His heart pounding. He ran out, embraced him and kissed him. The son started his speech. Father, I've sinned against God. I've sinned before you. I don't deserve to be called your son ever again, but the father wasn't listening.
Brian: The father wasn't listening to any of that.
Jacque: Because he was calling his servants; quick, bring a clean set of clothes and dress him, put the family, ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We are going to feast. We are going to have a wonderful time. My son is here, given up for dead and now alive, given up for lost and now found. And they began to have a wonderful time.
Brian: Isn't it a great, wonderful time when we come back to God We've all been estranged. I'm not saying that we are not saved or those kinds of things. I'm just saying sometimes we who are Christians, we just kind of wander away. There is a reason we are called sheep. We are prone to wander. There is a reason we are called sheep. And unfortunately, some of us are called goats too, but we'll leave that for another time.
Jacque: There are none of those here.
Brian: There are no goats here, but we have a tendency at times to wander. And yet when we come back, we have such a wonderful time and we kick ourselves in the foot and we say to ourselves, why did I ever leave place? Why did I ever leave this place?
Jacque: Hey Brian, can I say this?
Brian: Yeah.
Jacque: Sometimes we are far away just because of what we believe. Like I spent so much of my life just trying to be good enough to be loved and trying to work hard enough to be loved. And like, I couldn't even receive God's love at times because I just didn't feel I deserved it. Cause I ha I hadn't worked hard enough that week.
Brian: And we are going to see in a bit, that was the essence of the first covenant, the first covenant. I'm surprised at how many people actually want to go back to that. We are going to see here in a little bit, how God prophesied through Jeremiah, that he was going to send a whole new covenant that wasn't going to be based on all the stuff that you had to do. It was going to be based on something entirely different. It wasn't just kind of a new and improved version. It was an altogether new covenant, a whole new approach to how God related to man. This story is I think a really important part of that aspect of the new covenant that Jesus was preparing the Jewish people at that time, and then eventually all of us who are Gentiles, to really understand that God was transitioning from how he dealt with mankind throughout the Old Testament. He was transitioning to a whole new way of dealing with man.
This parable is a reflection of humanity story and God's story. A lot of times when we think about history, we only think about all this stuff that mankind has done. But if you look at the word history, it really spells his story. God has a story along with our story as humanity. It's a story of approaching death and everlasting life meeting, approaching death in everlasting life, touching each other. That's a story where sin and forgiveness embrace, or maybe a better way to say that it's a story where the forgiven and the forgiver embrace. That's what this story is about, where the forgiven and the forgiver embrace.
We see an incredible infinite compassion here. Don't we? We see an incredible infinite compassion. We see unconditional love. We see everlasting forgiveness and we also see in the father here, an inner that never dies no matter what the condition of the son, no matter how disrespectful the son was in saying, I want what is mine right now. No matter how disrespectful that was, no matter how wounded the father got. And I'm sure he cried an ocean of tears when his son was away and estranged from him. And yet there was an inner fire that never 50:00 died. And that fire is a fire of our father's love in heaven.
Jacque: It's so beautiful.
Brian: It is.
Jacque: An inner fire.
Brian: That's right.
Jacque: That never dies.
Brian: Verse 20 says while the younger son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved, moved with compassion, moved with company passion. This seeing when his father saw him, this seeing is a seeing that I believe truly understands the loss newness of mankind. See, a lot of times we— I'll just maybe talk about myself. I haven't always understood the lossless of mankind. I've had a lot of judgment for those who are lost during the course of my life and condemnation for those who are lost. They should have known better. Why did they do such a stupid thing? Why do they do that? All of this is fraught with judgment, but the seeing of the father was an understanding of the lossness of mankind. It's a seeing that reaches out to humanity. There is no place that this reaching won't reach to. There is no place that this seeing won't see into. There is no place that God won't go to reach us. There is no ends, limit to the ends of what God would do to reach us. It's a seeing that knows with immense compassion, the suffering of those who have chosen to leave home. We suffer when we choose to leave home, the world suffers when it chooses to leave home. But there is compassion in the seeing of the father that understands the suffering of those who have chosen to leave home.
Brian: There has been during the course of my life, I would call it, selective compassion. I think that I've always been compassionate. I went to my high school, my reunion just a week ago and this one kid came up to me. He said, "Brian, you were my salvation." I said "what do you mean?" He said, "Well, I moved here from the cities and I was this lost kid. And you came up to me and you said, I'll be your friend."
Jacque: You were in sixth grade.
Brian: I was in sixth grade and I said, "I'll be your friend." I knew he was a new kid in town. We became good friends. I forgot all about it, but he remembered it: what happened in sixth grade, that there was a guy that showed him in a sense, some compassion. So there have been many times in my life that I've looked at people and I've been compassionate, but there are many other times in my life where I've looked at other people and have no compassion whatsoever. Because in my mind I said this well, you made your bed now sleep in it.
There has been compassion in my heart for people who grew up in broken homes, who never really knew the Lord never really had the gospel spoken to them, the good news of Jesus and never really had a time to believe, and they found themselves just in a real mess in their lives. Maybe they were the victims of abuse or abandonment and so forth. I've had a lot of compassion for people like that. But people who grew up like me, who walked away from the faith who walked away from God like this guy, I didn't have very much compassion for those kinds of people. My attitude to most of them was you made this mess, now you fix it yourself. You should have known better. You should have known better. This is not the kind of compassion that God has. He has compassion on all of us who sin when we knew better.
That's the kind of compassion God has. The fact of the matter is most people can't fix themselves. The gospel is about who can fix us because we can't fix ourselves. The father in this story, our heavenly father has cried an ocean of tears for all of those people who send a new better and wants to have compassion on them because they got caught in this anguish and agony of the consequences of their life. The heart of this father burns with an immense desire to bring his children. I can guarantee you, there are people today, maybe here and especially those who are watching by livestream that have children that are estranged from you. Sometimes your wounds have been so deep that you haven't really had compassion in the law or to have your children come home because all they do is hurt you.
I would encourage you to let the compassion of the father of heaven, come into your heart and touch your heart and love as he loves and open up your heart to letting that compassion grow again and have your children come home. He is inviting us to come home. What a wonderful word. You were with some of the ladies yesterday and out shopping and having a good time with some of the gals and you came home and what was the first words out of your mouth?
Jacque: Oh, it feels so good to be home.
Brian: Yeah. How many of you ever said that before? It feels so good to be home. Has anybody ever said that before? Nobody? Raise your hands if you've said that before. It is so good to be home. What a wonderful word, this word home. What we see from this story is that God who the creator of heaven and earth has chosen first and foremost to be a father. That's what he has chosen to be to us: a father. For some of you watching by livestream, and maybe even some of you here today, that thought doesn't really produce much of a positive feeling because your fathers were not there. They were absent. Maybe they were abusive. Many fathers have failed their children, and as a result of that, people's, today, perception of God, our father is distorted. It's a bad image.
There is an interesting story I read some years back about, I think it was the hallmark card company. They had an idea where they were going to give free cards to people who were in prison to send cards to their mothers for Mother’s Day. There was like a hundred percent participation, like virtually every prisoner in prison wanted a card, a free card to send to their mother for Mother’s Day. It went over so well a month later that father's days was on the horizon, and they thought, well, we'll do the same thing for Father’s Day. They offered free cards to all these prisoners for Father’s Day. You don't want to know something? I don't think there were more than two or three guys that sent Father’s Day cards back to their fathers. And why is that? Because of the abandonment they felt from their father. No prisoner wanted to give a Father’s Day card to their father. Today millions of people's perspective of God has been distorted by the failures and the abuses of their earthly fathers. That's just what has happened. But in the heart of every child in the heart of every person that's ever been born is a need to trust in their dad. In the heart of every child, there is a need to dad where you catch me if I jump into the deep end of the pool?
There is a need to be nurtured by their father. There is a need to be unconditionally loved whether you strike out or whether you hit a home run, you are going to be loved unconditionally. Whether you fall off the balance beam or you do a 10 whatever perfect score to be loved unconditionally by your father. That is a need that we all have had from our dads. Unfortunately, fathers have failed miserably in our world and in our culture. Our heavenly father is not like so many earthly fathers. Our heavenly father is a father who from the very, very beginning has stretched out his arms in merciful blessing to us. That's what our father in heaven has been like. I still remember your dad. Your dad had an absent father and, in many respects, an absent mother. Your dad was largely raised by his grandmother.
I was always really touched when we would come to family meals and stuff and your dad would pray. I remember almost every prayer he started; he would start to cry. And then he would say, "I'm so thankful I can call you my father. I'm so thankful I can call you my father." He came to know God in a way that he had never known an earthly father to be able to treat him. We all kind of joke about your dad. We say he wore his imperfections on the outside, not the inside. Everybody who knew Ted knew that there was a rough side to him and there were certainly a lot of shortcomings.
Jacque: He was wonderful and rough.
Brian: He was wonderful and rough. There was a tender side to Ted because he had experienced the love of the father. God is always hoping that his children would return so that he could celebrate and speak his incredible, gentle words of life into us. There is a scripture I'd like to read. It's an Old Testament scripture, but I think it paints the really accurate picture of the heart of God here. We find it in Ezekiel chapter 33, verse 11. Why don't you read that?
Jacque: From the message. You made me cry, Bri. I can hardly see.
Brian: Do need a Kleenex?
Jacque: That's okay. Tell them as sure as I am the living God, I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked.
Brian: So, listen to that.
Jacque: I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked.
Brian: This is a message that he is saying to us, tell them, tell them. I remember the Andre krauts song, "Tell them even if they don't believe you." There are a lot of people that won't believe us today,
Jacque: Tell them for me.
Brian: And here is what he wants us to say. I take no pleasure in the death of those who are wicked.
Jacque: I want the wicked to change their ways and live.
Brian: I want them to change their ways. And that's what my heart is for them.
Jacque: Turn your life around. Reverse your evil ways. Why die Israel?
Brian: So here is God's heart. He has got no desire to punish us. He is not staying awake at night, coming up with ways to make us more miserable because we have sin. We have already been punished excessively enough by our own inner and outward waywardness. We really have. A teacher of mine once said there are natural consequences to sin for every choice we make. There is a consequence that's inseparably connected to that choice. So if you choose something good, there is going to be a good consequence with that. If you choose something bad, there is going to be bad consequences with that. But that is in a large degree, the extent of God's, in a sense, punishment. The punishment is already connected to the action.
God simply wants us to know that the love we have searched for, for so long, and I know this is for somebody here today. God wants us to know that the love we have searched for in such distorted ways has been and always will be right there for us in his house. The love that we have searched for in so many distorted ways, so many ways that ultimately end up becoming destructive to ourselves and so temporary and fleeting. That love that we want so terribly can always be found by coming home to our father in heaven.
The story of the woman at the well is another wonderful example where her life is a mess. She is in and out of relationships. The man she is now living with isn't her husband, and she has been married five, six times before, and she has been searching. She has been searching for something of meaning in her life. She didn't find it until she met Jesus. Jesus gave her value. She might've been rejected. She could have been the victim of abuse. Who knows? If she was much like people today who have been in and out of relationships, oftentimes that goes back to abandonment and some kind of abuse in their lives. Often, not always but often. She could have been the victim of that.
The same with the demoniac of the Gadarenes. He could have been the victim of terrible abuse, maybe as a child, and as an effect of that, all of this demonic oppression came into his life. Jesus came to those two people and brought them home, brought them home. That's what Jesus did. God wants us to know that he is right there for us in his house. There is a wonderful scripture. In 1st Peter three, I liked the new living translation and what it says here in 1st Peter 3:18.
Jacque: Christ suffered for our sins. Once for all time, he never sinned, but he died for sinners to bring you safely home to God.
Brian: Isn't that good? He died for sinners to bring us safely home to God. What a wonderful concept. Oftentimes our problem so often is that we forget that we have been sinners or maybe that we are sinners, and that when we forget that we are sinners, we then become judgmental of those other people who are sinners. We become like the older brother in this story. We didn't read it, but if you go on to say, the older brother got really angry because of all the party and the celebration that the younger son came back and his attitude was, he doesn't deserve it. Well, of course he didn't deserve it. That's the point. That's the point. Isn't it? That God's love is poured out upon all sorts of undeserving people. God has made room in his heart for us. That's one of the great truths of this story, that the relationship is no longer a relationship of law, but it's a relationship of love. It's not a relationship of, shall we say covenantal agreement, but rather relational agreement.
The older brother, the older brother functioned out of an Old Testament, old covenant mentality. He did. He said, I've done this, I've done that. I've done this, and you never did this. He was pitting his, what he had accomplished or done. He said, therefore, I should get this. But frankly, you know what that is? That's an agreement. That's not a relationship. And frankly, I don't want our marriage to be, listen, I did this, I did this, I did this. So you better do this, this and this. I don't want that kind of marriage relationship. That sounds really appealing to any of you? No, no.
Jacque: It's exhausting.
Brian: Yeah. It's a tit for tat or whatever. God has a whole new perspective on this. And we see this in Jeremiah 31 verses 31 to 34. So let's read that. This is a prophetic declaration about what Jesus was ultimately going to do when he came.
Jacque: The NIV, the days are coming declares, the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.
So let me just stop here for saying that the covenant that was going to be coming. And then we know now it came with Jesus. The covenant that was going to be coming was not going to be at all like the covenant that God had made with the nation of Israel when he was going to bring them out of Egypt. That's what he is saying right here. So let's go on.
Jacque: This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel. After that time declares the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people no longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the Lord because they will all know me.
Brian: They will all know God, because God will be speaking to their hearts and they can respond. Now, the Pharisees didn't like this because this was going to kind of do the Pharisees out of a job, in a sense.
Jacque: From the least of them to the greatest declares, the Lord, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.
Brian: When you look at the Old Testament way of dealing with forgiveness, especially for the nation of Israel, and then as individuals, the word atonement in essence kind of meant covering, kaphar, covering. The fact of the matter is they would kill a goat, send it out, and then they would let it go out into the wilderness so that it represented their sins being gone. But the fact of the matter is the Old Testament concept of dealing with sins was to cover them up, to cover them. It wasn't to do away with them. It's kind of akin to your kids. You are telling your kids to clean their room and they kick all the toys under the bed and put all the dirt under the rug. The fact of the matter is it's kind of out of sight, but it's still really there.
God's goal was not to just kind of get it out of sight a little bit, but his goal was to completely get rid of it. And so this new covenant was on the scene with Jesus and it was not going to be anything like the old one. The new covenant was going to put to rest all of the guilt and shame that went along with breaking the law or sinning. Here is one of the critical components of it. You see enforcing the law upon a law breaker, never removed the guilt from that guilty person. You could send a person to prison for breaking the law. You could enforce the law to the letter, put that person in prison, but that person in prison still wasn't guilt-free. Enforcing the law, never removed the guilt from the law breaker. This new covenant that Jesus was going to bring was going to be marked by forgiveness and a clean slate, a fresh start. The icing on the cake was that God wasn't even going to remember any of our past failures. That was the icing on the cake. Let's read it in Hebrews chapter 8, verse 12.
Jacque: Forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.
Brian: I will forgive their wickedness and I will remember their sins no more. That's the new covenant. I don't know about you, but I would much rather live under the new covenant than the old covenant. I would much rather embrace the Jesus who says, I will forget all your trespasses when you come home. It truly is like being born again all over again. It truly is like being born all over again, being born again— I grew up in a church that pounded, you must be born again. I heard that so much, it became the requirement to get into heaven, but being born again isn't the qualification to enter into heaven as much as it is a free gift to start again with a clean slate. That's what being born again is all about: having a clean slate, having, all your sins removed. It's a do over only like it was the very first time it's God's idea of Groundhog Day (those of you who might be familiar with the movies) only it's all good. It's all good.
God's grace when we come home is he treats us as though we have just been born again. When we come home and as we believe in him, he gives us life everlasting. This is why Jesus said you must be born again. You must be. That's the only way to get a clean slate. You can't be born again. You can't get a clean slate by living under an old covenant, Old Testament covenant. That's why Jesus was saying, because you got to understand the new covenant was kind of just starting to move into place, but it wasn't complete yet. Everybody in that culture kept thinking Old Testament, covering my sins up and all of this sort of stuff.
Jesus refers to this portion of scripture about the new covenant and a new way of doing things, a new order, a new divine order. The struggle that people had was they were so accustomed to, I've got do this and I've got do that and I've got to do this, and then my sins will be dealt with, but Jesus wanted to do more than just deal with sin. He wanted to give us a fresh start, a whole complete beginning new beginning, where there was no more guilt, no memory in a sense, no shame. I know that we will have memories of our failures. I know that, but no shame connected with it. This is what Jesus offers us. It truly, truly, truly is like being born all over again, where when you see an infant child, the thing that comes to our mind is the innocence of this child, this innocence of this baby, that like the purity and essence of this newborn. This is a concept that Jesus and our father in heaven wanted us to understand is that I am sending my son Jesus, so that you can have a clean slate, a fresh start when you come back home to your father in heaven. So let's pray.
Jacque: Oh, Brian, I think of that verse you say so often that Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the father." Yes. We see the father's heart as we see Jesus.
Brian: Yes, we do. So father, I thank you that Lord, what you have offered to us is a free gift to start again with a clean slate. It's a do-over, but only like it was for the very first time. Lord, it's not that you didn't want your laws to be upheld and complied with, but you also knew that as someone who was guilty from breaking your laws and from sinning, Lord that there was going to be a consequence of that, that just enforcing the law upon the law breaker could not ever do. There was going to be a consequence that could not be lifted from that. That consequence was the guilt and the shame and the essence of really what sin brings into our lives. Yet you, Lord wanted your new covenant to be marked by forgiveness and a clean slate and a fresh start. Father, the icing on the cake is that you don't even remember our past failures, for this is what your word says, that you will forgive our wickedness and you will remember our sins, no more.
Pastor Jeff, why don't you come? Let's just pray that people will receive this word and let God touch their hearts.
Jeff: Amen. Just lift your up the Lord. If you are at home, do the same right where you are. We just want to give the holy spirit an opportunity to come and dig a little deeper into those things that are still under the rug, the hidden wounds and misconceptions, hurts that have followed us, perhaps since we were children; feelings of abandonment rejection, constant struggle to be good enough or accepted or heard. And just in the middle of where we are right now as who we are, we just invite you Holy Spirit to come. You can just say that. Just say, Holy Spirit, come. Open my heart, heavenly father, to your love. Just give a moment now. Just let the love that the father has for you come and do something new. He is real. His love is real. We receive it, father. We receive it.
Brian: I believe that sometimes the struggle we have is with our belief. I really do have a sense that the wonderful story of the man who had the son that was afflicted with the demon and he came to Jesus and Jesus asked him, do you believe? And he said, "Well, I do believe, but help me with my unbelief." I do believe there is a part of our hearts that wants to believe in how good God is, but there is another part of our hearts that struggle with that. Because we live in a fallen world, our natures are fallen. We see through fallen eyes, we hear through fallen ears, and yet there is a part of us, I think, that would please God if we would just say father, I believe, but help me with my unbelief today. So just say that with me. Father, I believe father, but help me with my unbelief. Father, I believe in you, but help me with my unbelief.
Jesus, there is a work of your spirit here that you, you would do want to drill a little deeper, want to get past the surface and get us to a place of truly understanding the joy, the true joy that is in your heart when the lost coin is found, when the lost sheep is found and when the lost son comes home. Help us, Jesus, to know that joy that you have with that, because this is such a beautiful story to tell the world even though they don't believe right now; they're just pre believers. If they hear the good news of Jesus, you will draw men to you, Lord. Your word says you will draw them all to you. Your spirit is working. You've already written your words, Lord, and law on their hearts. God, you are working in their minds. You promise that this is part of the whole new covenant and they just need a gentle nudge from us to come home to their father in heaven who cares about them. Thank you, Lord. Thank you.
Jeff: It's good. He will meet us for the first time, and he'll meet us for the thousandth time. He will just always come to meet us and we open our hearts and he wants to. That's the thing: he wants to. He wants us to realize the love that he has for us. It's always there. Sometimes we just really struggle. We just aren't able to realize it, but in these moments and we open up our hearts, that opportunity might actually realize something new for the first time of his love. Thank you, Jesus.
Brian: So just touch our hearts, Lord, in this moment that we sit here in your presence. Help us breathe more easily and hard because you are lifting the weights off of our spirits and off of our souls. Just thank you for your presence. I thank you for this free gift that we can embrace and have with us simply by receiving and believing. You are the light of the world, Lord. You are the light of the world. We want all men to come to see you, Jesus.
Jeff: Before we end, we want to take a moment to pray for any miracles that people need today, physical healings or other needs you really need Jesus to come and intervene. It's great to have Nikki with us this morning. She underwent a pretty serious surgery and is in the process of healing, but it has been a long road for her and we want to especially pray for her. I was just asking the Lord, Nikki, how we should pray for you. I hate to put you on the spot, Carrie, but I really had a sense that I wanted to ask you to go over and stand with her and pray for her. Anybody else that wants to go pray for Nikki as well is welcome to go join her. I just felt like Carrie had something to give her this morning.
If you are at home and you need a miracle as much as he loves us, he is eager to help us in any way we need. So we are going to believe God for a miracle for whatever it is that you need. Healing, it can be little or it can be big. So just if you've got a need, hold it before the Lord. We are going to agree with a speeded up healing for Nikki. He made our bodies to heal, but it says in the Bible that the Holy Spirit quickens our mortal bodies. That means he brings life to them. So he actually improves the product that he already made.
Father, we just opened our hearts to you, and you see every single person who is part of this gathering on livestream or present here. You see our needs. We trust you for the miracle that we need right now. We've prayed to you for many miracles. We've seen you answer in so many ways, but today is a new day. We come to you with a new need or an old need asking again. We are never ashamed to ask again, and we just thank you for your love for us. We thank you for how powerful that love is. We thank you for the release of power in your love for Nikki and for each of us, that touches us right where we need it most. We just release your healing, your provision, your transformation.
Brian: Pastor, Jeff, I just had kind of a picture, especially people at home, but if you are here, this applies to you too. If you need a physical touch from God, just put your hand on that area that needs a touch from the Lord. Maybe it's your back. Maybe it's a shoulder. Maybe it's a knee or something like that, whatever it might be. Maybe you've fallen and injured your head. Just put your hand on your head and just see that the Lord is coming from your spirit into your body and bringing his healing to you today. So father, we just thank you that Lord, your spirit will flow through us to the places that need restoration. Bring your restoration, Jesus. In Jesus name Thank you, Lord.
Jeff: Thank you, Jesus. Just receive that. Thank you, Jesus.
Brian: Let's raise our hands together. Shall we? Now may the Lord bless you. And may the Lord keep you may the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you, give you his peace. May you sense the beauty and the wonderfulness of being home with your father. This we pray in the name of the father, son and holy spirit. Amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day. Enjoy the beautiful weather and keep praying and keep believing for those who need Jesus. We have a good story to tell.
Transcript taken from the Sunday morning service 8-15-21. If you would like to watch the full service, click the link below.