Pastor Brian: I remember when I was young, the Miss Universe and Miss America pageants were always on television. I was always fascinated by the interviews that they would do with these young ladies who were hoping to become Miss America, or Miss Universe. They would ask them a question such as this: what do you want to do? What great aspirations do you have? And inevitably, the answers would begin something like this: Well, I want to solve world hunger, or I want to help the homeless.

Jacque: World peace.

Brian: I don't know if you are aware of this, but in the last decade, 40 million people in America have stopped attending church on a regular basis, 40 million people in the last decade. That's a lot of people. The average person, particularly the Gen Zs, and a lot of millennials are just saying no to the organized church, the structured church any longer.

Oftentimes, we make a big mistake thinking that how we think is how God thinks. But he says very clearly that oftentimes his ways are a lot higher than our ways. It's not that we never have the thought or mind of God. We do, but we are inundated with the fallenness of this world. That fallenness affects how we think virtually every day. It's a constant battle to take captive our thoughts and to think like Jesus.

Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who we reflect back on as heroes, they were not thought of as heroes at that time when they did what they did. Many of them were not the power brokers that we might envision them to have been in their day. They were, many of them ordinary people who no longer wanted to live under tyranny. There was an extreme amount of tyranny at that time. I don't need to go into the details of that. There was a tyranny of an oppressive government. What most of us sometimes failed to realize is that in virtually all the nations of the world, up until that time, most nations were governed by a monarchy, a king or queen, where they virtually were the supreme authority over everything. For our founding fathers to make a declaration that was so out of the realm of the understanding of most people, which was this: God has created all people equally.

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers. You are supposed to say thank you. You are welcome. I had a wonderful dad. My dad had a terrible dad. My father immigrated to Canada with his family when he was about five. By the time my dad was six, his father had already abandoned his family in a new country where they didn't know how to speak the language. It's amazing what God can do in somebody's life when you give your hearts to Christ. I still think that my dad had, I would call some issues because of the abandonment that he experienced, but he got so healed up in so many ways when he came to know Jesus that I couldn't have asked for a more wonderful Father. He broke the curse that was put on his family and that's what Jesus brings to all of us. That's what Jesus brings to this world. The older I get, the more frustrated I become with how God is perceived.

One of the challenges that we face in life is how to build relationships with people. How many have found that can be challenging at times to build relationships with people that last? Right. One of the things that sometimes we avoid in our relationships is we avoid being honest and frank with each other because we are fearful of rejection. We are fearful of what other people might think. And so oftentimes we are not honest or frank with people because it puts us in a position of being vulnerable because nobody likes being rejected. God made us so that we would thrive when we are loved and that we would thrive when we love people. That's how God made us. That's the optimum way for us to live, is to be loved and to love.

The topic that I'd like to really share on today is the good that you do today may very well be forgotten tomorrow, but do good anyways. Do good anyways. We never know whether the good we do will be noticed by others, and even if the good we do is noticed, it may not be remembered for very long.

I'm going to talk about trusting God. It's a process. It's a process, so know that as I speak. We all have different emotions on Mother's Day, don't we? Some people, our moms aren't on this earth anymore, and we miss them. And we have so many memories. I'm wearing mom's bracelets today and her ring, and I'm just remembering my mom today. Some of you, your moms were not loving like they should have been. Some of you may have been abandoned by your mother and I, all I can think of is how deeply wounded that mother must have been to do what was so unnatural for a mother. But that has left wounds inside you. And then there is some women who desperately wanted to be a mom and never were able to. And that's such a loss. We come to Mother's Day from so many directions.

People often are illogical and oftentimes they are unreasonable. Most of us have experienced people who are very self-centered. I have a word of the Lord for you today: Love them anyways. Love them anyways. I confessed that one of the biggest challenges for me is loving people when they are difficult to love. It's not easy, is it?

Have any of you ever been in a position where you've said this or you've thought this, I didn't sign up for this. I didn't sign up for this. Being a mother, you know, being a mother. If you do good, there will be people who will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. And here's the word of the Lord, do good anyways. Do good anyways, that's the title in my message today. Just do good anyways.

I had some very influential people in my life growing up. The most influential was of course, my father, who was a wonderful gift from God. He himself did not have earthly father. His father abandoned their family when he was about six or seven, somewhere in that age. My dad came into relationship with God and he knew what a father was to be like because of his Heavenly Father. He was a tremendous influence in my life.