Gospel Identity, Part 1 // Sons & Daughters

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is an old of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus, abiding in his presence, growing in its family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

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Welcome this morning.

It's a cloudy day, but we are here.

Ready to do it.

So before we get any further, I want to welcome Shannon Capel up to the stage.

Every help help me welcome Shannon this morning.

And she's gonna tell you a little bit about um the last several weeks.

There's been a really amazing experience that both Shannon and Amy Joyner and some others have designed for our young women.

You guys need to know about this just because this is super cool.

It's a great testimony.

Shannon, would you tell us a little bit about what happened?

Absolutely.

My name's Shannon Capel.

I am the mom of Chloe, Audrey, and Sammy Capel.

This is Audrey, my little child.

And my awesome husband, who's usually on the drums here, wait.

Um, but the Lord put it on my heart to offer a Bible study for girls ages nine through 13.

Um, we ended up doing a Bible study called Stand Secure.

And I had a heart for women and these girls to really see themselves the way that God sees them.

And I saw a need in the community, and I just asked the Lord, how can I use my gifts and talents to be a blessing?

Um, so we had 13 girls gather for six weeks and we taught them who they are.

We read about women of the Bible, um, and at the end, um, Amy and I, we uh had a professional makeup artist come in.

Amy did their hair, I captured their headshots, and we were able to reach out not just to this community, but I would say about three-fourths of the girls were not from this church.

And so it was just an awesome opportunity to speak into these women's lives, into these girls' lives.

And um, I just wanted Audrey to share uh what God did um during this time.

Come on, Audrey.

For me, this time was really special because it allowed me to dive deeper into who I am and showing people who that is, but also accepting it for myself.

So for me, that looked like just accepting my flaws, but also accepting that who I am is who God sees me as, as his daughter and as loved and as perfectly beautiful.

And a lot of girls in my generation need to know this, and it's really hard.

And I think it's just really amazing that I got to be there for that and see that transformation in myself and also some of the other girls.

And I just feel like there's God's putting dreams in your heart, and I feel like as a community, God wants us to step out of being comfortable Christians, and that we're just a step into what He's calling us to.

So maybe there's maybe you just showing up today was out of your comfort zone.

But I think there's some of us here in the room that God's put things in our hearts to do, and you're wondering, how will I find the time?

But God will give you grace, He will give you the time, and He will double your time, and He will bless your businesses, He will bless your schools, and He will bless your communities when you say yes to Him.

Come on, come on, let's go.

So good.

How many of you guys know there's a lot of young people who need to know who they are in the Lord?

This is so good.

Um, so this morning we're gonna jump into the word today.

And uh, if you have your Bibles, where we're gonna start, we're gonna jump around a few different places.

Um, I do want to invite you to join me starting in Matthew chapter three.

We're gonna start there.

And uh kind of, if you were here last week, Mary Eugene had a word of encouragement for us.

Um, she she really encouraged us to, when we come to church, there's something about a physical Bible that's important.

Um, I know all of us have phones, and you could quickly do a quick series search for whatever Bible passage it is, but there's something about knowing in your own in your own scripture, in your own Bible, how to find where we're at and how to locate where the word of God is, all right?

And not only that, but having a place to take notes, and maybe that is on your phone, but have it having a place to write down because if you're going to listen to the word, to write down anything that the Lord says to you, about 95% of you, if you don't write it down, you're going to leave this place, and within 20 minutes you will forget 95% of everything that you heard this morning.

That's just the way that the mind works.

But when we engage, when we listen to the word, and then we take it seriously by writing it down, there's something that happens that transforms us, not just on a Sunday, but as a lifestyle.

Amen?

Are you guys with me?

Come on.

So that's what we do.

We're students, we're students of Jesus, we're following Jesus as learners, as students.

So, Matthew chapter 3, let's start there this morning.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

Matthew 3, starting in verse 13.

It says, Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him.

John would have prevented him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

But Jesus answered him, Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.

Then he consented.

And when Jesus was baptized immediately, he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were open to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.

And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

Let's pray together.

Father, as we come to your word this morning, as we listen to your voice, I thank you to baptize us in your love.

I thank you to baptize us in your voice.

I thank you, God, that every person here this morning is here because you drew them here.

Even those who are here for the first time, or those who haven't been in church for a long time, I thank you, Father, that every person that is here is here because you've drawn them in because that's what you do.

I thank you, God, that you see us as we are and you love us as we are.

And so this morning, as we turn our eyes to you, help us to get a clear picture of your face so that we can be transformed into your likeness, God.

We love you today.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So there is an ache in every human heart to know who we really are.

And it's part of the reason why Shannon and Amy hosted this uh you know, this experience for young women.

That's just one snapshot of a much larger picture.

There's an ache in every human heart to know who we really are.

And this quest for identity actually drives us at such a core, unconscious level most of the time, that we barely are even aware that it exists.

And it affects all kinds of things.

It affects what clothes you picked this morning, it affects how you interact with people or don't interact with people, it affects what football team uh you are rooting for uh yesterday or today or never.

Um it affects your hobbies, your delights, your fears and anxieties.

There's a core, there's a craving for identity that we are born with.

And to be sure, it this is not a bad thing.

It is not a bad thing.

This is actually a God-designed craving to know that who we actually are is loved, secure, and that our lives actually matter for something.

And so, this core question that all of us are asking, whether you're aware of it or not, is who am I?

But there's also a follow-up question that that becomes this the throbbing part of this ache in our culture is how do I know who I am?

Not only who am I, but how is it that I can discover who I am?

How can we actually know that?

And I and I believe the answer to that question strikes to the heart of the entire human experience.

And and really there's all kinds of ways that we set out to answer this question.

Now, one of my favorite authors of all time, Henry Nouen, he's a Dutch Catholic priest, in his book Life of the Beloved, he answered this question in three different ways.

He said, you know, really the core of human existence, when we we try to answer that question, who am I, in three different ways.

He said, I am what I have, right?

So I am what I have accumulated in my life, I am my possessions, or what I've been able to purchase, or or uh, or what is in the sphere of my actual life.

I am what I have.

And many people find their identity there.

The second thing he uh identifies is I am what I do, right?

So I am what uh what what I work on, I am uh my hobbies, I am what I have given my life to.

And so a lot of us find our identity and and what we do with our lives.

The third thing he he identifies is this I am what others think of me.

This is a big one.

A lot of us, if we have not discovered who we actually are, we we when we spend time with it, we're always searching in the eyes of another for them to tell us who we are.

And the opinions of others, the opinions of your mother or your father or your siblings or your friends or your neighbors affect us tremendously if we haven't been settled in our actual identity.

I I would I would opine though, there's a there's a fourth one that's really important to point out, especially in our culture today.

So there's I am what I have, I am what I do, I am what others think of me.

And this fourth one is I am what I decide to be.

I am what I decide to be.

And so this the way of thinking goes like this: whoever I am, it's up to me to figure that out.

I've got to figure out who I am.

This is what's celebrated, this is what's talked about, and this is kind of the dominant uh idea of our age.

I want to dive into this just for a second, okay?

This is actually really important that we talk about.

Because in our culture, when we're trying to search for ourselves, and God is not a part of that equation, then we turn to our own selves, our own consciousness to find what feels most authentic.

All right, just follow me here for a second.

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, he writes about it like this.

He wrote about the secular age and one of the premier books that really uh very clearly articulates the contours and shape and color of this age we're living in, which we could call a secular age.

And he he talks about the culture of authenticity.

I just want to read a quote from him.

He says it like this The culture of authenticity is one where each of us has his, her own way of realizing our humanity.

And in and that is important to find out to find and live one's own, uh, live out one's own as against surrendering to conformity with a model imposed to us from the outside by society or the previous generation or religious or political authority.

Okay?

That's kind of a mouthful.

In other words, in an age of authenticity, uh we grant decisive authority over our identity to our inner feelings and are taught to be skeptical of any identity that may come from an outside influence, be it state, nation, family, religion, God, tradition, gender, anything that uh anything that would be an outside kind of identity imposed on us, we consider to be skeptical of, right?

And so why is that?

Much of this thinking, and again, I'm just laying a little foundation here, much of this thinking comes out of what we could call a post-Freudian world.

If you're familiar with the philosopher Sigmund Freud, um, in a post-Freudian world that believes that any authority or identity given to us that we did not decide for ourselves will only lead to either repression or oppression.

So repression meaning I'm going to shove myself into a box and and go with the flow, or oppression meaning another group of people is going to limit me or shove me into a box outside of my own thinking or outside of my own permission, right?

So Freud's solution is that we must shed off these false identities to find our quote true selves, and only then can we live happy and free lives.

And so this is kind of the way of thinking that Freud proposed of all authority is kind of opposed on us from the outside, and if it's a if it's imposed from the outside, it's bad for us because it's gonna actually oppress us or we're gonna live repressed lives.

And so, just a few examples of this.

This is why you know, if we believe we have to shed off all these identities, this is why there's an increase of people quitting their jobs in order to go find their true self, right?

I gotta go quit whatever this is to go find myself somewhere else.

Or this is why people, many people, not all people, but many people leave their marriages because they get to a point where it feels now too limiting, and it turns out marriages work, right?

It turns out marriage requires something of you, but sometimes it feels too limiting, so they leave it because they don't feel like them true selves.

And and third, we we're in this really interesting phenomenon now where even parents, um, in in many in many cases, in many cities and cultures, um, as they're parenting their children, they're changing the way they're parenting their children.

They're not assuming the genders of their children anymore in fear that it will oppress their children.

And so they want to wait until their child can decide for themselves who they are and what gender they are.

Okay?

And this is happening, it's happening all the time.

We're afraid of oppressing anybody by suggesting any kind of identity shift, and we're afraid of submitting to anything that we did not decide for ourselves because it feels like not the path of authenticity.

Is anybody you guys following me here?

Okay.

Now, caveat here.

It's true that all of us over our lifetimes have collected a lot of ideas about who we are and who we are not that we that need to be redefined in light of the gospel.

Okay?

All of us in this room.

And actually, it's an important part of coming to God.

He we actually take who we are and he tells us who we are.

We're gonna talk about that in a second.

So there is some when we come into Jesus, there is kind of a deconstruction, an unraveling, a dismantling of sorts, because all of these ideas of who we thought we are and who we thought we aren't have to be redefined.

But listen, here's the key: the difference in identity is always going to be what is the source of my identity.

Okay?

The difference is always going to be the source.

And here's the here's the difference here.

The world says, go and find yourself, and you will be set free.

The word says, know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Anybody else on that one?

The world says, go and find yourself.

Go on that, go on that search.

And when you do, that is the pathway for happiness.

You're gonna go find and discover something.

The word says, Jesus says, know the truth, and it's the truth that will set you free.

So in the kingdom of God, we don't go looking for our identity somewhere else.

We receive our identity as a gift from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Is that good news to anybody else in this room here?

And our identity, this is what we call our gospel identity.

This is what we're gonna be talking about just for a few weeks.

The building off of where we come from, we've we spent a few weeks of talking about the authority of the scriptures.

We actually submit to the to the word of God, right?

And part of the word of God is we allow God's word and God's voice to shape who we are from the inside out as a baseline of how we are to live in this world.

This is what we call our gospel identity.

It's the good news of who God is, what he has done, which shapes who we are, and now what we have been freed to do.

Okay.

Eugene Peterson says it like this My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself.

There is something previous to what I think about myself, and that is what God thinks of me.

And so, and this is really important for those of you who are Christians in the room, and maybe you've been baptized before.

If you have not been baptized, we invite you to be baptized because baptism is this beautiful picture of a renewed identity.

So when you we we read this passage just a little bit ago of Jesus going into the baptismal waters.

And he he he he like us, he went into the baptismal waters.

And uh, and when he resurfaced, he did not come out of the waters into a void of go and find yourself now that you've been baptized and cleaned.

That's not what he came.

He arose from the waters and he awoke to the voice of his father waiting for him outside of the waters.

And the thing is, when we're baptized, we're not baptized into a void of nothingness.

We're baptized into the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

You're actually baptized into a name.

You're not baptized into anonymity, you're not baptized into ambiguity, you're not baptized into a vague pursuit of spirituality.

You're baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and his name is his essence, his name is his being, his name is reality.

So when we come into his name, we receive all of the gifts and all of the treasures and all of the inheritance that comes in the name of the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.

So now we are no longer by ourselves.

We're part of this what the ancients would call a Trinitarian dance, the paracaresis, they would call it, the dance, the divine dance of the Father, the fellowship of the Father and the Son and the Spirit dancing all around us and getting caught up into the fellowship of the oneness of God.

And when you're caught up into the oneness of God, it changes everything about who you are from the inside out.

Come on.

So when we look to God, the first thing that we see in the scriptures, we see that he's a father.

He's not ambiguous.

The scriptures do not reveal an ambiguous force.

I had a neighbor one time that said, I'm I'm waiting for the I feel like the universe is against me.

And uh I don't, I don't, I don't know what to do about it.

Um I don't know what the universe thinks about me.

And I had to tell her, I was like, listen, I don't think the universe cares about who you are.

I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say it like that.

Like, I don't really think the universe gives a flip about who you are.

I think God really, really, really loves you.

And the father loves you because he's a person with desires and emotion.

And we know that.

So God is Father.

And so the the way that we enter into identity, our gospel identity is we at we ask we have to answer four questions, okay?

We're gonna do that today and over the next couple weeks.

Gospel identity requires we answer four questions.

Number one, who is God?

In the kingdom of God, we don't start with who am I?

We start with who is God.

If that's the only thing you hear today, that's that's worth the price of admission, alright?

Who is God?

What has he done?

Okay, and then we then we we answer the question, who are we and what then do we do?

Okay, who is God?

What has he done?

Who are we, and that what then do we do?

So who is God?

He is a father.

Ephesians 3:14, Paul is writing to the church.

Ephesians 3:14

He says, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the rich of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being, so that you may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And so, according to Paul, all of us are named, our our our the basis of our identity comes from being named in the Father.

He's the Father over all of us.

And it's it's it we orient ourselves not around a CEO, right?

Not over a dictator, he's a father, and he's a good father.

We sang about it this morning.

And so, what has he done?

The father, if if it's true that he's a father, how do we know what he's like because of what he's done?

He's a father, and we know this because he sent his son in order to get his family back.

It wasn't just to free us from sin, though he did that, it wasn't just to set some things right, though he's doing that.

But as a father, his motivation is to bring his family back.

When he started the creation project, it was about living in union and communion with his sons and daughters, and sin primarily broke.

Us apart relationally, which fractured us in all kinds of ways.

But in Galatians 4, 4, 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 were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba Father.

So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Somebody shout me down this morning.

That is worth an amen.

You are no longer a slave, you are a son.

And because you are a son, and because God has done something so miraculous that you did not decide for yourself, he decided it for you.

He said, You are mine.

I'm calling you back into my family.

And the way that you're gonna know is because I'm gonna deposit something so deep inside of you.

There's gonna be a craving so deep, it's gonna be like this cry that says, Abba, Father.

And we know it because our hearts long for it.

We long to know that we've been given to a father, that we've been adopted by him.

And as a good father, he knows us, he sees us, he reveals to us our belovedness.

He leads us, he doesn't control us, he doesn't tell us everything to do, but he leads us and he pulls the very best out of us.

He's not an absent father, he's not a distant father, he's a father who's involved, he's a father that looks us into our eyes and reminds us of who we are in him.

And this is key.

This is key.

So this week I celebrated my son's 14th birthday, and uh and uh it was it's always awesome in our house when we're doing gifts, because if you know my wife, you know that she loves giving and receiving gifts.

One of her favorite things to do, though, is the old Russian doll gift wrap trick.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

Where you wrap a gift in a series of bigger boxes, um and uh and so we're talking three, four, five boxes deep uh of gifts, and uh, and she loves the suspense of opening a gift and then kind of being slightly disappointed, and then your hopes get up again, you open the other gift, and then trying to figure out what the what size this gift actually is.

And uh and she loves this, and we were joking actually this week about doing all the boxes and at the very end having nothing.

And we kind of laughed at the thought of how funny it would be to be cruel for for just one day of the year.

Um I'm just saying that we we have a kind of like this weird kind of twisted side of uh it was just for a moment.

Of course, we didn't do that.

Um uh we gave we gave our son a great gift um after he opened about four or five boxes to get down to the gift, right?

But within that same working metaphor, there's this author, David Brooks.

He writes for the New York Times, he's an op-ed writer for the New York Times.

He wrote this unbelievable book a couple years ago called The Second Mountain.

And really, it's his take on uh this quest, this human quest for a meaningful life and the absurd ideologies that we promote to actually that actually keep our kids trapped in meaninglessness.

And and uh and he's not a Christian writer, um, or he's not writing from a Christian perspective, so to speak, but he's writing more of a critique of what we're doing, of these identities that we promise our children that actually do not lead to life and flourishing.

And so he said it's almost like we give we have four boxes that we try to give our young people in this age of authenticity.

Uh we have four boxes that we we try to give them, but but at the end of the day, they're actually hollow boxes.

He says the first box is this box called freedom.

And uh and in in the in the box of freedom, we we raise our young people up, we don't actually tell them a whole lot, but we give them all kinds of freedom.

We say things like this the purpose of life is to be free.

Freedom leads to happiness.

Um we're not gonna impose anything on you or tell you what to do.

We give you your liberated self to explore, enjoy your freedom.

Now, that definition definition of freedom, as you know, is not a classical definition of freedom, a freedom to serve.

It's more of a kind of our modern version of freedom, which is a freedom to just to kind of be about my own business.

Um but we we say this oftentimes, go be free, explore.

But what happens is if the child isn't uh uh um settled in some sense of identity, they they open the gift only to explore it's it's a beautifully wrapped gift in an empty with an empty box.

Um what they're hoping to find in the box is actually direction and wisdom and a path on which to direct the freedom.

But we just told them, be free.

And they're like, okay, well, I'll try to explore freedom.

I'm not sure what that means.

And so the second box we give them, though, after we give them the box of freedom, is we give them a box of possibility.

And in this box, if freedom wasn't enough, we say things like this, your future is limitless.

You can do anything you set your mind to.

The journey is the destination.

Take risks, be audacious, dream big.

And again, nothing wrong with any of those things.

But when you open that box, again, you find it's a it's another empty box because if you don't know what your life is for, how does it help to know that your future is limitless?

This just ups the pressure.

And so you have kids who are we're told to be free to any possibility and they don't know what their life is actually for.

And what they're hoping to actually find in the box is wisdom.

Where can I find answers to life's big questions?

And so they open the box and say, Thank you for possibility.

Um I don't know what to do with that.

The third box though we give them, we've already talked about this, is if freedom and possibility didn't unleash them into life, we give them a box called authenticity.

And so in this box we say things like, look inside yourself, find your true inner passion.

You're amazing.

Awaken the giant within, live within your own true way, you do you.

And so the you that we tell them to consult with, though, for life's big answers, is the very thing that hasn't even had time to form yet.

So we're telling them to consult themselves about life when they don't even know who they are.

And so they put down the empty box.

And the the real question they're asking is what can I devote my life to?

What causal inspired me to give me meaning and direction?

So we give them freedom and possibility and authenticity.

And uh, and if that didn't do the trick in this kind of nest of Russian dolls, we give them autonomy.

And this is a great gift because it's wrapped in leopard print.

And uh, it's the gift that everybody really wants at the white elephant gift, right?

And so, autonomy, and so we we say other things like this you're on your own.

It's up to you to define your own values.

No one else can tell you what to do, right or wrong for you.

Your truth is to be found in your own way through your own story that you tell about yourself.

Do what you love.

And so we we we have all of these things, and you can kind of cue every commencement speech that you've heard in in history of all of you know, people giving wise words of wisdom and everything I just shared with you, all these little bits and pieces.

It's not that there's necessarily anything wrong.

But for an 18-year-old leaving the house, none of these gifts on their own actually have substance to them.

It leaves them actually more uncertain, confused, and set up for disappointment.

This is what is happening to the next generation.

We're not actually giving them a sense of identity, we're giving them vague ideas of pursuing limitlessness and possibility and freedom, and they don't even know who they are in the eyes of the father yet.

They're longing for direction and wisdom and meaning and something to give themselves to.

And that's the thing, that's the difference between the father of the kingdom and our idea of what's going to unleash people.

The father brings substance into our lives, he establishes us in our belovedness, he invites us to know his voice as an anchor point and as a launching point.

Are you guys with me?

Matthew 7, 9 says it like this.

And Jesus is sharing, and he says, of which one of you, if he asks his son for a brick, if his son asks him for a bread, we'll give him a stone.

Or which or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

Do you guys know that the father gives good gifts?

He does not give us empty boxes with false promises.

He speaks words of life into our eyes.

He reminds us of who we are, he calls us into identity in a way that no other voice can.

He's a good father.

And so he's a father who sent his son to get his family back so that he could.

So who are we now?

We are now sons and daughters, we are now beloved, we are secure, we are significant, we are now co-heirs, ruling and reigning with Christ.

Then here's the key: we didn't earn this identity, we didn't choose this identity, he chose us and gave us a new identity and a new name.

And that is the gospel that he chose us.

And if that's true, and if we receive that as good news, how does it change us from the inside out?

The thing is, everything changes when you see yourself as a son and daughter of a king.

Everything in your life changes.

You cannot go back.

When once you once you realize and capture the vision that you are a son and daughter of the king, it changes everything.

One, it changes our mission and our assignment.

No longer are we living our lives to go find ourselves.

When you're settled in who you are, you don't have to exhaust your energy trying to find yourselves.

In fact, you get to turn it and you can help others find God.

So one of the things that sons and daughters do is we bring others home.

I think that was part of the testimony that Shannon and Amy and these girls are finding.

We when as sons and others, we actually create environments for people to hear the voice of God for themselves, to hear the voice of the father.

We don't exhaust ourselves on our own self, but we we live to help somebody else get a glimpse of who the father is.

You see, an orphan walks into a room announcing, here I am.

That's what an orphan does.

An orphan walks into the room looking for who is going to notice me.

Who is going to see me?

Do I matter to these people?

But the beloved walks into the room and they say, Oh, there you are.

There you are.

There you are.

See, when you are established in your belovedness, when you come into the room and you see somebody else in their eyes, you can speak truth and life and destiny into them.

You're not searching for them to do something for you.

You were there to overflow into them.

I am a son, and it changes everything because as a son, I can give myself to meaningful work because it means I'm doing my father's business.

I don't always have to quit my job to go find myself.

I can live as a son and be faithful in my work.

As a son, I can overflow into a faithful marriage.

I don't need my spouse to have to meet something for me.

I can be filled up in the Father and then overflow that into the context of my marriage.

As a son, I can cultivate deep community of friendship and family and not always be on the hunt for somebody else.

As a son, whatever comes, nothing separates me from the father's love.

Being a son and daughter changes us fundamentally in the way we show up in every environment.

We live to bring others home.

But the other thing this changes for us, this is very important, is it means that we live in a family.

When you're a son or a daughter, it's you're no longer living by yourself in the world.

You see your life in the context of a family.

If it's true that the Father sent his son to bring together a family, then that means that as we're sitting here together, we're not a crowd of spectators.

We are a family, and we're living as sons and daughters together.

There's no competition, there's no backpiting or gossip.

We're believing the best, we're covering each other's weaknesses, we're speaking truth and honesty.

Because the truth is this we're found in the Father, but we're formed in the family, and it's the family that changes lives.

God's plan to change the world is to adopt the whole world into his family.

The most powerful thing that we live as an identity on the face of face of this earth is to live as a family of loved sons and daughters.

That's what changes everything.

In fact, we get these testimonies now.

One thing that we're trying to work on, I believe that we are, as a community, um, this is something that you guys know.

We are, we believe that God has called us to be an environment of awe-inspiring love, to create a culture where love is seen and felt.

We had a testimony come in just a few weeks ago of a girl that was here.

She's only here for a few weeks because she moved to Texas, but she was trying out the church and she came and she sent Amy a text after the service, and uh, and she texted Amy and she said, Thank you for such incredible hospitality.

Genuinely, this is one of the best experiences I've ever had visiting a church.

You guys have an exceptionally friendly and intentional body of people.

Going into a worship community can often feel daunting, and I felt very comfortable out of the gate with you guys.

What you are all, whatever you all are doing is working, and I absolutely believe in a season of rebuilding, you have a strong foundation and structure to support the growth that is coming.

This is from one girl that came in and she felt seen.

She felt loved.

She didn't feel like she had to find a place or find a niche or find a place to do it.

But this is what we believe we're called to do as as people come in, we say, There you are.

We've been waiting for you.

We've been waiting for you because God has been waiting for you, and we belong here.

We belong in a family because family is what changes the world.

That's the kind of place we want to be.

A place where anyone can come in and sense the love of the Father, be seen, to let the false identities be stripped away, because oftentimes they do need to be stripped away, but and turn ourselves to see the Father as He is because we're formed in the Father.

Amen?

Amen.

Amen.

So that's who we are, and that's what we do.

And this morning, um, I believe for some of us here, we just need to be baptized in the voice of the Father afresh.

Some of you know uh one of the things that we're doing as a community that actually is launching today is we're launching a 21-day fast.

And we're inviting you to be a part.

It's totally optional, but I strongly encourage you to be a part because this fast is what we're calling an attention fast.

It's a 21-day to actually renew our mind in our gospel identity, to renew our mind in the voice of the Father, and to actually silence or turn down some of the other voices and inputs in our life, and then be able to turn up our attention towards God and His Word.

And if you're not, if you haven't signed up to be a part, I just invite you to do that.

Okay, you don't have to sign up per se, you can just do it.

But um, if you want to sign up, you'll get 21 days of devotionals from different people around the lookout community, and it's gonna be really cool.

And you can just go to the lookout.church slash fast and listen.

Today, I'm just saying to you, if you've been thinking about it but haven't actually committed to it, today I want you to commit, be a part, get one footed, and set aside 21 days as consecrated to God to let Him renew your identity.

Men, I want to speak to the men in the room for a second because I was looking at a list of everybody who's registered for this thing.

Do not let your wives sign up without you signing up.

It's not enough for your wife to do the fast.

You need to sign up.

Men, this is important.

Take your identity seriously.

Come and be a part.

Go to the link, sign up for this fast, rise up into your calling and take seriously this opportunity in front of us, all right?

The lookout.church slash fast, all right?

And I believe that anytime the church sets aside time to say, God, we're gonna seek you intentionally, he honors that.

But today, as we're kind of coming into land, there's a couple things I just want to pray into.

And across the room, if you would just close your eyes across the room, and we just want to be kind of become aware of the Father together.

And he's good.

He gives good gifts.

Your eyes are closed.

Welcome to the Lord.

And coming to him, and I see the Father just uh we're coming to him, we're wearing lots of different kind of articles of clothes and layers of clothes and even makeup on our faces.

And I saw this picture of the Father just starting to peel away these layers that don't belong.

Maybe things that you've been wearing in your life, and I think they could be even identities or masks or things that you felt that you've needed to be in order to be loved by God.

And he's peeling, he wants to peel those away so he can bless you for who you are.

Because that's the thing about the Father, he can see right through you, he sees right through you, and he loves you.

We don't dress ourselves up to come to him.

We're welcomed as we are, and he says, Let me love you, let me love you.

And maybe you felt that in your life.

You just felt the need to be more than what you are.

You feel like in your work you need to be more than what you are.

What you are is what you've been able to give is not good enough.

And you're always feeling the sense of not being good enough.

You need more, you need more.

Believe me, I'm I'm speaking for myself here too.

I felt that before, I felt that voice saying, You you're you're not quite there yet.

Maybe you don't feel enough in your relationships, or maybe your search for companionship.

You feel like you need to be more than what you are.

So you're you're wearing you're wearing clothes, you're wearing makeup that's not who you are.

God says, I want to show you who you are.

Maybe in your marriage you just feel this sense of not being enough, not being enough.

And God says, Listen, come to me and I'll show you.

I will show you everything you are that you can live from, you can overflow from.

And so, Father, we ask that you would speak to each one this morning.

Speak to our hearts.

Your voice is the voice of life, your voice is the voice that we were made for.

And in a world that is on a crazy hunt to discover who we are and let's discover what it means to feel significant and to belong and to make an impact in the world.

Uh a world that is caught up in the anxious cycle of trying to find our identity.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, that search ends this morning, God, for us.

We say, You are our source, you are our identity.

We are loved by you, God.

And I thank you for the voice of Father, the voice of the heaven that says, You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased.

Feel the pleasure and the delight of God over you, and let it liberate you from the inside out.

We say yes, God.

We say yes, Jesus.

We love you today, God.

Invite Jesus, invite the Father to speak this way.

Great is thy faith border.

Sing that first verse again.

Great is thy faith.

Oh God my father, there is no shadow of turning with me.

Thou changest not thy compassions, they fail as thou hast begged, thou forever will great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning thy morning new mercies I seek all thy have needed thy hand has proved it.

Great is thy faithfulness, border, pardon for saving thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide strength for today and bright hope for blessings on mine with ten thousand be song great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness morning by morning new mercy I see all I have needed thy hand hath provided.

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto Let's stand together.

Every morning everything I've needed provide is thy faith.

Great is thy faith, fullness, Lord.

Thank you, God.

Yes, God, you are great, you are faithful, you're a faithful father, you're a good friend, you're a good shepherd.

And this morning, we thank you.

We thank you for your love that is outrageous, God.

Nothing can separate us from your love and your faithfulness and your mercy here today, Lord God.

We thank you, Lord Jesus, to melt away every obstacle, every hindrance that's kept us from you.

And we receive the voice of the Father this morning.

We receive your faithfulness and we thank you, Lord Jesus.

We thank you, God, for doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

We thank you, God, that we can now be called sons and daughters of the most high God in Jesus' name.

In Jesus' name.

Come on, everybody said amen.

Let's give it to God.

Let's give it to our Father.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, God.

Listen, across the room this morning, I want to pray for us today, just for a fresh baptism of the Father's love.

It's something all of us need.

We need it every day of our lives is to be baptized in the Father's love.

And so if you are here this morning and you want that, you might just put your hands out like this, as if you're receiving a gift.

As if you're receiving a gift.

Because the Father gives good gifts.

And this morning I pray, Lord Jesus, for my church family here.

And those who are even here this morning for the first time, we just say that you're a part of the family.

And this morning, Lord God, I thank you for the gift of adoption, the gift of chosenness.

You didn't just allow us to come into your family, but you wanted us in your family.

And I thank you for the gift of chosenness to flood this place, Lord God, that we were picked, we were set apart by your divine mercy.

And this morning, Lord Jesus, we thank you to wash our minds in the voice of the Father.

And as we leave this place, that we don't leave as orphans and we don't leave as slaves, we leave as sons and daughters of the Most High God, freed for your purposes, Lord Jesus.

And it's in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

And God, we pray for this fast over the next 21 days for those who are taking this seriously and entering into this 21-day fast.

We pray for unbelievable revelation from God.

I thank you for a settledness in our heart, in our minds.

We thank you for a stirring from the inside out that you have not designed us for a complacent life, but you are training us for your purposes in this season, Lord God.

And I thank you for a new, fresh release of your spirit over the next 21 days that goes beyond everything we could ask or think.

Let faith rise in this place because we know that we are entrusted to you, God.

We love you.

And it's in Jesus' name.

Come on.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

All right, friends.

Hey, before we head out, a couple things.

Number one, if you want prayer this morning, we're gonna have a ministry team, our prayer team up front.

They're gonna have purple badges around their neck.

If you want prayer this morning, do not rush out.

If you need prayer for healing in your body, come forward or come to the sides of the room, get prayer.

If you have kids, go run and grab them and then bring them back up into the auditorium.

And lastly, if you're new with us, if you're a family and you want to hear a little bit more about us, connect with the pastor today, in the back of the room, you're gonna see a sign that says connect with us.

And we just want to invite you to go to our connect hub on the north entrance, and uh, we'll give you a little more information about us.

We love you guys.

Bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Spirit.

Go broncos.