The Foundation of a Family | Turn Your Heart Toward Home - Deuteronomy 6:1-7 | Clayton Heath

Good morning and welcome to Silverdale Baptist Church.

Again, I'd love to uh welcome you to our Bridges venue here at Silverdale.

If we haven't met, my name is Clayton Heath, and today I have the privilege of sharing with you God's word.

But uh here's what I want to do.

Before we start, uh, this is something that we do with our young adults in our via service, and so I want to I want to do it with you too.

Uh before we start, would you just look at somebody beside you, in front of you, and behind you, and just say, I'm glad to be at church with you today.

Glad to be here.

I'm glad to be with you.

Uh if you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter six.

Uh, Deuteronomy is in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is the part of the Bible that contains the things that happened before the life of Jesus.

And chapter six is where we're gonna be this morning.

Hopefully, on your way in, you got one of these worship guides from our guest services team, and we give those to you for lots of reasons.

But my favorite one is that it is no small thing that God is the creator of the universe and he speaks to us.

And so when he does, we want to be sure that we pay attention and we write down the things that he says.

Uh, this morning we continue in a series called Turn Your Heart Towards Home.

And uh what we've been looking at is what the Bible speaks to about our families and how we as Christ followers are to live our life in light of these relationships and our families and our homes.

And so that's what we're gonna be talking about today.

The title of my message is just called The Foundations of a Family.

Um, it was about eight months ago, almost nine months ago, that my wife, uh excuse me, it was about eight years ago that my wife at Sophie and I got married.

And uh this uh early fall will be our eight-year anniversary, shout out.

Uh but uh our family certainly started then, but it was eight months ago that my wife gave birth to our firstborn son named Charlie.

And um, of course I was gonna show a picture of this guy.

I mean, are you kidding?

Uh he it really does look like that.

He's a little even fatter in person.

You can see him down here if you want to talk to him after the service.

But um, and I can remember when you know Sophie gave birth, like many of you, if you experience this, you have this whole thing, the whole breadth of the pregnancy that you're you know, you're praying for the baby and you're you're feeling more and more connected.

And then when uh Sophie went to deliver, and you know, this you know, like all this excitement, all this anticipation, and all these things that everybody's always said, all the you know, all the tropes and stereotypes to you all the way through.

You don't know what it's like till you hold them, and it's you know, get ready, brother, and all these things.

And then sure enough, finally, when Charlie is born, you yes, you feel, I just remember the first time that I held him, I just felt this immense, yes, joy and like unbelievable, indescribable feeling that everyone tries to put into words about what it's like to hold them, and simultaneously at the same time, this immense weight at the reality that God Almighty has now entrusted to Sophie and I, this little boy, in order to raise.

And so if you're anything like me in that moment, and especially way more now than that, then I feel like if the Bible has anything to say about what it means to raise a family or to keep a family or to guard a family or to speak to a family, I want to know what God's word says in regards to that.

Amen?

So let's read together in Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

We're gonna read from verses 1 through 7 to start this morning.

It says, Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.

Hear, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Verse 4.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Thanks be to God for the power of his word.

Amen.

Now, let's just get this out of the way, okay?

I know what you're thinking.

This guy is eight months into raising a family.

What on earth does this Joker have to tell to me about what it looks like to raise a family?

And humbly, kindly, but humbly, I will remind you that this is why uh we don't do church so that you can listen to the opinions of whoever's talking, but you can hear what the word of the Lord says.

So I'm not here to tell you my advice on raising a family.

I plead that you would share that with me.

But I am here to tell you that God Almighty has said in his word some things that we can apply to our lives, regardless of the stage that we find ourselves in with our family.

If that sounds good, somebody say amen.

The first thing I want you to write down this morning, if you're taking notes, is this it's that a godly family is built on the fear of the Lord.

A godly family is built on the fear of the Lord.

Now, when we get to this passage, we gotta ask the question just for a minute, right?

We gotta ask what's happening.

And for all of you that are biblical scholars, and I know that that's most of you, because you're all biblical scholars, you know that when we get to Deuteronomy chapter 6, you have an understanding of what's happening.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

Moses is giving his last lecture for the Israelites before they enter into the promised land.

I mean, you know, many of you probably remember many years ago there was the famous kind of professor, Randy Posh, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

And he had two young boys at home and a wife, and he wrote this book called The Last Lecture, and it got famous, and people came to hear him, and you know, it was all this thing because death always, you know, this final moment with death always makes people listen a little bit differently.

But this last lecture, this professor wrote this kind of homage, this this hit all of his life's less life lessons that he wanted to give to his sons that he wouldn't be able to tell them because he was gonna be gone.

Well, that's what's happening in Deuteronomy chapter 6, all of Deuteronomy, in fact.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

Moses, excuse me, is looking at the Israelites and he's giving his last lecture for them to know what God Almighty wants for them as they enter into the promised land.

And so the Lord speaks through Moses.

And when it comes to families, and when it comes to how to live and how to talk to one another, and what kind of standards we're setting, how to raise them, the Lord says that the spiritual foundation for the family is a fear or a reverence for the Lord.

Check it out in chapter 6, verses 1 and 2.

It says, Now this is the commandment that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son.

Before Moses talks about parenting methods or household rhythms, he starts with worship.

Because what a family honors most shapes everything about what they do.

And we can see this, right?

We know this, we've experienced this.

We can tell when families honor, revere, or worship really anything.

We can look and see the family that worships work, we can look and see the family that honors achievement, we can look and see the family that honors athletics or accomplishment, or we can see all of these things.

And all we have to do, we know this.

We just have to look at their weekly schedule and their bank account, and it will show us what they most revere, right?

But what the Bible is telling us is that healthy families are not held together merely by shared hobbies or mutual personalities or financial stability.

They're anchored by a shared worship and reverence of Almighty God.

A submission to the Lord.

Because how many of you know a home can look very successful externally and still be spiritually unstable internally?

Everyone's moving the ball downfield, junior's going forward on the field, dad's getting the promotion, mom's doing this at work, all this stuff.

Everybody's doing great, but there's relational dysfunction.

There's chaos in the hearts of each person in the family.

And then we have to ask the question, why?

Well, we see it's because of what the fear of the Lord produces.

Why is the foundation based on a fear of the Lord?

Because the fear of the Lord creates humility and wisdom and repentance and obedience.

So when it comes to the foundation of your family, we all say that we want God in the center of our family.

We all say that we want to be a home that's built on Almighty God.

I work with young adults a lot in our church, and it's 18 or 25 year olds, and they all, the only thing that they can't stop thinking about is dating and marriage, and so that's the only thing that they want to talk about.

But every now and then, you know, a couple of lovebirds will meet at via our young adult service, and then they meet and they come to me and they're like, Clayton, we want to have a relationship that's centered on Christ, that's built on God, regardless of their past, whatever.

We just want to do, we want to, how do we have a relationship that's centered on God?

Well, it's the same with those couples is with these families.

Worship of the Lord as the anchor for the family is what produces the godly family that we so desire.

So if I asked you a question, is God truly central in your home?

That's one way to ask that question.

Is God the main thing in my heart?

Is God the main thing in my home?

And I think that that is a helpful question, especially when it's framed correctly.

But sometimes, I mean, we've been around church, right?

We know church, and we we say, like, well, is God central in my life?

And we're all like, amen, brother, yeah, God is central for sure.

But what if we asked it a little bit differently?

What if instead we said, instead of God being truly central, what if a better question is, what is worshipped most in your home?

What is talked about more than any other topic in your home?

What gets celebrated and applauded in your home?

Because the answer to those questions is a great starting place on what it is that your family actually worships.

So we see that a godly family first starts with the fear of the Lord.

What's next?

The second thing I want you to write down is this is that a godly family loves God wholeheartedly.

A godly family loves God wholeheartedly.

Look at what Moses says in verse 5.

He says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

The greatest need in a family is not perfection, but a genuine love for the Lord.

If the only thing present in your family regarding the Lord is the rules that we employ or the standards that we set or the attendance metrics for church, we're missing out on the wonder of following and knowing and loving Jesus.

Yes, of course, Jesus does all those things for us, and we can read in the Bible God's standard.

And the Apostle John in 1 John says what?

That the people will know that you are a disciple of Jesus based upon the thing in your kitchen that says a verse, based upon your church attendance, based upon the rules that you set for your kids.

No.

It says that they will know based on how you love other people.

Think of it like this, right?

Um, everyone everywhere is trying to sell uh authenticity, right?

We're all just looking for a genuine connection.

Every dating app, remember I'm with a young adult, so dating's pretty prevalent, but every dating app just promises genuine connection.

Every restaurant, eat our food because it's it's farm grown and it's real beef, and you know, we can show you the ingredients.

Buy our clothes from this company because you know it's um 100% cotton, and we can show you where the yarn came from and what our wages are for our workers, or um vote for this politician because I'll really tell you, I'm the real deal, I'll really tell you how it is.

All these different things.

Because when something is fake, what do we know?

It never stands the test.

And he might be able to fake it for a built, a bit, but a house that is built on sand always looks fine until the storm comes.

Foundations are revealed under pressure.

And so children and spouses and the people around us, they can tell the difference between an authentic faith and performative religion.

So a godly family that's built on loving God wholeheartedly is one that has an authentic faith that's in on the person of Jesus Christ our Savior.

The problem for many of us is that our faith is just like a little compartment.

It's just a little box in our life.

It's like a it's like a shopping center, right?

You know how we drive down Gumbarrel Road or go downtown, we see this big shopping center, we can see the title of the shopping center, we see Hobby Lobby or Walmart or Five Guys or Jersey Mics or whatever it is.

We see all this thing.

And for many of us, what we treat Jesus as is we have the shopping center of our life, and you know what?

I'll even give Jesus his own storefront.

We'll give him, it's not the big one, it's the little one on the corner, but he's in there, you know what I mean?

His name would be on the sign, at least underneath the the title.

But dad is not what Jesus is looking for.

God Almighty doesn't want a piece of the storefront, he wants to own the whole complex.

And so for us, when it comes to how it looks like when it comes to our family, how can we expect to raise a family that loves and follows and obeys the Lord when we ourselves do not love him genuinely in our own life?

Because it changes.

That love of God changes our life.

Yes, if you've been saved, right, it changes your standing with Almighty God, you get Christ's righteousness, it changes how you worship.

But the love for God should always change how we talk to our spouse, how we talk to our kids, how we deal with money, how we orchestrate our calendar, how we rest, how we handle conflict, how we look at troubles and stuff in the news.

And here's the good news, friends.

You ready?

The hope here is immense for us.

Do you see it?

That the godly family is built on people who love God wholeheartedly, not people who hit the mark every time.

The goal here is not to be a flawless Christian, it's to love Jesus genuinely in my own heart.

And we've experienced this in marriage, right?

We can know this one a little bit.

I'm married to my wife Sophie.

I love her more than anyone else in the world.

I love her more than anyone else in the world.

And she has been exposed to my flaws and my sins and my outburst more than anyone else in the world.

But my mark for her is not perfection, but it is a love that pursues her and pushes us both closer to Christ.

It works the same way with our family.

I heard one preacher say it this way: fire spreads when something is genuinely burning.

If you want the fire of Almighty God to spread through your her home, is the love for God burning in your heart yet?

Genuine love for God becomes contagious in the home.

A godly family fears the Lord.

A godly family loves God wholeheartedly.

The third thing I want you to see this morning is this: a godly family is made up of spiritually healthy individuals.

A godly family is made up of spiritually healthy individuals.

Now, this one may seem like a given or it may seem like a little nitpicky, but it is actually critical for us to experience the life and the family that God has died in order for us to give.

Look at what it says in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 6.

Deuteronomy 6:6

And these words that I command you today shall be on your, say it out loud with me, heart.

These words I command you, the word of the Lord.

These words I command you, God Almighty, speaking through Moses.

These words I command you, God Almighty, we're on the plains of Midian, we're about to cross the Jordan River, they've been delivered out of slavery of Egypt, all these things, these words I've commanded you, shall be on your heart, not on the frame over the mantle, not attached to your granddaddy's last name, not on some decoration or status on social media, but on your heart.

Here's what I want you to know: spiritual leadership begins with personal obedience.

Spiritual leadership begins with personal obedience.

You've heard the leadership trope before, you can't lead someone that you haven't been yourself.

In other words, you cannot impart what you do not possess.

I am a horrible singer.

I am.

It's good for everyone that, you know, the mic only works when I'm on here outside the music.

So that means what?

I could never ever teach someone how to be a good vocalist.

Some of us, we want our families to be something that we ourselves are not.

We cannot lead someone where we haven't been.

Before instructing the Israelites to teach their children and the next generations, the Lord, through Moses, commands the adults to internalize the word themselves.

And this, friends, is really the message.

Like we can, if you know, if you send this to someone, you can tell them to cut it here and just listen for a couple of minutes.

Everybody wants a good home.

Everyone wants peace in their home.

Everyone wants love to pour out in their relationships with their spouse and their kids and their parents and their cousins and all the things.

A love-filled marriage, obedient and respectful children.

Everyone in the world wants that.

And families are shaped by the spiritual condition of their leaders, the parents.

And the problem for so many of us is that there's a gap between what we say and what we do.

And we don't actually cultivate our own spiritual health to lead our family to be in a spiritually healthy place.

We kind of do the whole don't do as I say, don't do as I do, do as I say routine with everyone around us.

So when it comes to our family, let me ask you, what does your spiritual investment look like?

How is your time with the Lord shaping your family?

How has your personal walk with Christ influenced or imparted or brought others along with those around you in your house?

Why?

Because you cannot lead others spiritually where you refuse to go personally.

You cannot lead others spiritually where you refuse to lead others spiritually.

So if there's a bar that time should be spent with the Lord, and you're not modeling what it looks like to spend time with the Lord, how can we be upset, friends, when we run into the roadblocks that will arise from that problem?

Again, we're not striving for perfection here, friends.

This is the great news.

But our families, my family, needs someone and someone's with enough humility to repent and to pray and to read God's word and to pursue growth itself and to admit wrong and ask for forgiveness and to walk in obedience, which is what?

To say, I'm not God, and there is a God, and I want to live how He's told me to live.

How many of you know an empty cup has nothing to pour into others?

And now I think about this point.

I I think this is like, I think about this one in my own life, and I think that this is the greatest compliment that I can give my mom.

And uh many of you knew my mom, her name was Bikita, and she was so great, and she loved the Lord and um deeply.

She was super involved in our church, and she led women's Bible studies and counseled women and did the whole thing, right?

But the most, arguably the most impactful thing in my life and in our my siblings' life, in our family's life, was that her actions in church, her leading studies, her counseling other women, the way that she was, it was nothing but an outpouring of her personal desire to spend time with the Lord.

Her desire to know the Lord more and to love the Lord and to obey the Lord and to read his word and to have it hidden in her heart.

And so the first thing she did was prayer and read the word in the morning.

I'm telling you, like on her face, praying.

I can see it every morning, getting ready for school.

When she learned something, you learned something, right?

When God gave her a word, you got a word, because that was how it was.

She loved growing, she loved knowing the Lord and walking with the Lord and obeying the Lord.

She was excited about what she studied in Scripture or a sermon that she listened to, or a conversation she had with a friend.

And there was, sure, lots of mess-ups and flaws and problems.

She's like anybody, but if there was one thing that we could count on, it was that she wanted to know the Lord better tomorrow than she did today.

And why did that matter?

Because you cannot lead others spiritually where you refuse to go personally.

So we see a couple of things of what Moses has given us here, and this foundations of what it looks like to have a godly family.

We we're gonna worship, we're gonna revere, we're gonna fear.

The Lord.

We're gonna love God wholeheartedly.

We see that this is a team effort.

We can't put our spiritual responsibility on our parents or our sibling or our spouse.

We each have to play our own role when it comes to being the family that God has created us to be.

But the last thing I want you to write down this morning is this a godly family sees discipleship as life, not an event.

A godly family sees discipleship as life, not an event.

What do I mean by that?

Well, here's what I mean: I mean that spiritual formation happens through intentional daily rhythms, not sporadic, isolated events.

Look at what Moses says in Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 7.

Deuteronomy 6:7

He says, You shall teach them diligently.

What is he teaching them?

The commandments of the Lord.

And you teach them to your children diligently, and shall talk of them when?

When you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

In Moses' last lecture, he describes ordinary life.

Sitting, walking, lying down, waking up.

And we know this.

This is what's so crazy.

We know this.

We say, we talk about all the time.

Church isn't just this building.

Church is meant to go out of these four walls.

Faith is, you know, supposed to impact all parts of our life.

And for many of us, we think that to be a spiritual leader means that we have to have all the answers to all the questions.

To be the spiritual leader that we need to be, we've got to obviously teach a mini three-point sermon that all has letters with the same letter that starts with every point to our family when we do it.

That in order to be this picture this spiritual leader, we need the picturesque moment with like the snow white, the birds are on the limb, and the kids are quiet and everyone's listening, and the sun's at the perfect angle, and somebody take the photo, because that's what this is when discipleship happens, right, Clayton?

Like when all of these things line up together, and that, unfortunately, friends, is what we think discipleship is.

Discipleship is this moment.

It's obviously our small group.

Discipleship obviously is just Bible study.

That's what discipleship is.

If somebody wants to get discipled, what they really mean is they want to study the word more.

Obviously, that's an integral part of it.

Or small group discipleship is just it's showing up to small group or it's showing up to church attendance.

And are all of those things part of discipleship?

A hundred percent.

Yes, being in the word, being a part of church, showing up to small group, all of that is part of the discipleship wheel.

They're all spokes on the wheel, but none of them are entirely discipleship itself.

Why?

Because it's all of it.

It's these consistent conversations.

It's praying with someone through hard seasons.

It's the investment of scripture in our own life on the mornings when nobody else sees it.

It's choosing worship music that pours into our will what we want to get out of it when we need it.

It's modeling repentance and showing grace.

But if we're not careful, friends, this is what happens.

If we're not careful, we'll outsource discipleship to these singular events, maybe just the church event, right?

We do a bunch of events around here, they're great.

We should all come to them for sure.

It's just a small group, or it's vibe for students, or it's that summer camp, or it's that marriage retreat, or it's whatever.

And then, if we can just be honest for just a minute, we get five and ten and fifteen and twenty five years down the road, and we look at the family and we go, I don't understand why everybody's not following the Lord.

I don't understand why there's chaos in everybody's heart around me.

I don't understand why this isn't working.

It's because following Jesus is not just some one-time thing, I got the t-shirt, let's go to the next one.

What does Jesus say in Luke chapter 9?

Luke 9 · chapter mention

If anyone should come after me, what?

Let him deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me.

It's consistent, not perfect, but consistent movement towards Jesus.

Consistency beats intensity every time.

So for so many of us, right, we do this whole thing, and if you've grown up in church, maybe you know this better than anyone, right?

There's these moments, and we have this, whether it's a revival meeting or it's a camp or it's some event at a church, and we we feel spiritually on fire, and it's like, yeah, I'm doing it, I'm a disciple of Jesus, and this is what it is.

And then weeks or months, or maybe a year later, we feel cold and spiritually stale and far from the Lord, and we go, I wonder why, I don't understand why this is going on.

It's like, well, well, where's been the consistent daily scripture reading?

Well, I, you know, I haven't really been doing as much as I should.

What is it like?

What is the conversation in your home like?

Well, well, you know, we've been busy, we talk about sports a lot, or we talk about the news, or we talk about politics, or whatever.

And then you start investigating just a little, and it's like, friend, discipleship is not just this intense little short burst of energy, but this lifelong pursuit of Jesus Himself.

Simple rhythms.

Praying in the morning, taking your kids to school, praying with them, talking about sermons after church, reading scripture as a family, worshiping together throughout every season of life, no matter easy or hard, talking openly about what it means to be a Christian in the crazy world that we live in that has to deal with so many things that people before maybe haven't had to deal with.

Small deposits over time create deep roots.

How many of you know?

Not a single rainstorm has ever made a tree grow overnight.

But it's consistent when the rain comes.

Now, let me see if I can illustrate it like this.

In his book, Um The Psychology of Money, uh, author Morgan Hausel writes about Warren Buffett.

And Warren Buffett's kind of this, you know, he's the gold standard, right, for investments and wealth and, you know, the American dream and all these things.

And at the time that his book came out, uh, Warren Buffett was net worth was$84.5 billion.

84.5.

Uh, of that 84.5, listen to this, 84.2 billion of it was acquired after his 50th birthday.

Morgan Houser writes this about Warren Buffett's investment strategy.

He says, you miss a key point if you attach all his success to investing acumen.

The real key to his success is that he's been a phenomenal investor for three quarters of a century.

Effectively, all of Buffett's financial success can be tied to the financial base he built in his early years and the longevity he maintained throughout.

His skill is investing, but his secret is time.

Friends, we are not looking for that one stock to skyrocket overnight for us to get the thing that we want: a godly family of peace that loves one another.

We're looking for small deposits into our family that compound over time into spiritual formation of people who love God and worship Him and carry their own spiritual weight together.

And so people hear this and they go, Clayton, this isn't helpful for me.

Uh my kids are older, my kids are out of the house, I'm older, I'm past that stage, I feel like I've already failed.

I I can't do this anymore.

Um, my family's already broken.

I didn't grow up like that.

This wasn't familiar to me.

And let me just remind you, friend, that my Bible says that Jesus raised from the dead, so he can do pretty much anything he wants to.

Somebody say amen.

The hope of the gospel is that Jesus Christ can redeem broken people and broken homes.

Jesus perfectly loved the Father with all his soul and strength and might.

And so that means that through him, cycles can change, families can flourish, marriages can heal, parents can grow, and new legacies can start today.

And so you're like, well, I don't understand, Clayton.

What do I do?

Well, what did Moses just say to do, right?

To love the God, love the Lord, to worship God, to carry your own weight, not outsource your own faith.

But what do we do?

Well, aren't you thankful for a church like Silverdale?

Somebody say amen.

We've talked on and on and on, right?

There are soaps guides you can pick up on your way out that put you in God's word every day with what Pastor Tony is preaching through.

Maybe if you're got a family kids or grandkids at home, our kids' ministry, they put together these booklets this week.

It's just this super simple, great devotional called The Gospel Plan for Me.

It's a family Bible study.

They're out there in the lobby as well.

You can take those, work through it with your family over breakfast or at dinner.

You can have somebody read it while you're driving and a kid's in the car or whatever it is.

Jump into a gospel in the Bible.

I think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they work pretty good if you're looking for where to jump in.

But but listen, a godly family is not built by perfect people.

It's built by people who continually surrender themselves to a perfect Savior.

And if you're sitting here and you're like, man, Clayton, I don't know, my kids are old or whatever.

I'm gonna just close with this story.

One of my best friends.

Um I went to high school with him, and uh, we've always kept in touch through college.

We worked together, now we're uh in a small group together, and um, his faith was always just like super nominal, just like, you know, you know where it is, you know what I'm talking about, right?

And about a year ago, um, his life changed upside down, his faith completely revolutionized.

He started reading scripture every day, he started praying with his wife every day.

He's his his life changed because his faith changed.

And because he started new habits and surrendering to the Lord, his faith, I'm telling you, it was a di it was like a different person.

And so I'm talking to him, I'm like, man, what happened to you?

Like, this man is 28 years old.

He's married, he's out of the house, he grew up in a family, there's free divorces between his parents, all these kinds of things.

He said, What I was like, man, what what happened?

Like, what what what did you listen to something?

Did you go to something?

Did you get that short verse?

I mean, I want one of those.

What is it?

And he said, My dad got saved.

He said, I watched my dad my whole life be somebody who was kind of a drunk and um kind of abusive.

And he said, My dad gave his life to the Lord, and I didn't believe him at first.

And he said, But then after I saw what it was like when he had spent time with God in his word, when I heard how he prayed for our family, and when I saw what he was doing week after week, modeling what it looked like, he starts crying.

He says, I can't I even describe it to you, but something changed in me.

And that his seeing what happened to his faith revolutionized my own faith.

Friend, a godly family is not built by perfect people, but it's built by people who surrender to a perfect Savior.

Amen.

Would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, we love you.

God, we're thankful for who you are and for what you've done for us.

God, we're thankful that you are God and that we are not.

God, we're thankful that you have given us your word and you've told us how to live.

God, that you've not left us to ourselves to try to figure out what it looks like to raise a family or be in a healthy marriage or to walk in obedience to you.

But that God, that you've given us your word and your spirit to empower us to do what you've asked us to do.

So, Holy Spirit, I'm asking this morning for courage, for conviction, for um for hope and for joy, God.

That you are not giving us this message to cast us down on what we've already screwed up in, but God, that you're giving us your spirit to call us in to a new way of living.

God, I'm praying for new legacies and for new chapters of families to start even today.

God, that that men and women that would surrender to you, would shape their families, to be families that are anchored on a reverence and a worship for you.

God, we love you, we trust you, it's in your holy and precious name.

We pray, and everybody said, Amen.

So, what we're gonna do is to sing a song of response, and we know this.

And today, what we've just heard from the Lord is to remember what God has told us to do.

And the first thing starts with people who worship God, who have a fear and a reverence for the Lord.

So this morning, your response might look like conviction uh to repent of some sin that you feel convicted of, to surrender something to God, but I think for all of us it looks like to sing to Almighty God, to give us, to give him our worship for who he is and for what he's done for us.