1 John // Children of God

Welcome to the Refinery Church Sermon Podcast.

We're so glad you've joined us today.

Our prayer is that this message will help you grow in your pursuit to love and follow Jesus in your life.

If you'd like to learn more about the Refinery, find ways to get connected, share a prayer request, or explore resources to help you grow deeper in your walk with Christ.

Visit us online at refineryohio.com.

Now let's dive into today's message.

Good morning.

I tell you what, Tuesday was crazy.

I didn't tell this story in the first service, but um Tuesday.

So I meet with our youth pastor Drew.

He's on vacation this week.

And uh I meet with him every week.

We're just kind of talking through things.

This is his first full-time ministry, uh, vocational ministry assignment.

And uh so we had a meeting set at 10.

I had to take a car to uh AutoSpot to get something checked out.

I said, Hey, how about do you mind just following me there?

Um, and then we'll just run, get some coffee and just meet at the coffee shop.

And he said, Yeah, that's no problem.

And I texted my wife like at 9 50, 45, I don't know.

I'm like, it looks like it's 9.50 at night.

This is crazy.

And then we proceeded to go get coffee.

Um, we were going and like a tree was hanging over a branch, which I think the normal person would have been like, hey, maybe we should turn around.

And Drew may have even had that thought, but he wasn't going to tell me that.

So we made it, right?

Uh, but it was crazy.

So hopefully you weren't too terribly impacted, but it was neat to see just neighbors kind of coming together, helping take care of things.

Uh, so many folks um just you know, grabbing a rake or grabbing a chainsaw or whatever.

Some some people were just like, I get to use the chainsaw.

Let's go.

And so to you, blessings as well.

Uh but yeah, if you did have significant damage, man, just praying for favor as you work those things out.

And if you do need a hand, make sure you invite people, say, hey, would you be willing to help me out?

Uh it matters that we take care of one another in those spaces.

Um, so over the last few weeks, uh, we've been in the book of 1 John.

It's near the very end of the Bible.

If you don't know the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, 39 books, 27 books.

And if you go to the very back of the Bible, you'll find the book of Revelation.

And it's a few books before that, first, second, third, John, Jude, and Revelation.

So, as we've been looking at this concept in 1 John, John's been inviting us to consider what a full relationship with God actually looks like.

What does it mean to really be in relationship with God?

To know God, to be known by God.

And so in the first week, John says, listen, he invites us, he says, Listen, I believe deeply in this.

I've looked at it, I've investigated it, I've considered it, I've seen it, I've experienced it.

And so I believe deeply, and when you believe deeply, you're able to confess freely, like, listen, I know I'm not perfect, I know I don't always get things right, and then you can walk faithfully with God in the midst of just our own imperfection, and we can love others well in the midst of that.

And then last week we considered this idea of what captures our heart, what captures our affections.

And John said, listen, be careful about the voices that you listen to.

Be careful of the voices that are shaping you.

Ultimately, we need to remain in Jesus.

And so we'll continue on and look a little bit more of what it looks like to live a life rooted in Jesus today.

And I'd like you to think with me for a second about your home.

Your home growing up, and uh, if you're old enough now that you've kind of got your own home and family situation, your home today.

Are you familiar with the term, the word ethos?

You familiar with the word ethos?

So when we talk about like organizational ethos or the ethos of a family, a business, a team, whatever it might look like, it's these kind of unwritten rules, expectations.

Uh, what gets allowed here, like what what goes, what doesn't go, how do we interact with each other, how do we speak to each other, um, what gets celebrated?

It's not typically something that's written on the wall.

Like if you work for a company, you know, they may have, hey, here's our values, here's what we do.

That may be the ethos, but it also may not be.

Because you're like, yeah, I know we say, hey, we can always ask questions, but they've told me not to ask questions, right?

And so the ethos is like if you're thinking about the ethos of a home, it might be summarized like this This is how we do life here.

Like this is this is how we do it.

So growing up in your home, like there's just certain things that you thought were normative, and then you'd have a friend over, and they're like, Why are you doing this?

You're like, but don't all homes do this?

And like, no, this is weird.

Then you go to somebody else's house, right, and same idea.

What were the rules and the practices that you committed to in your home?

And then what were those rules and practices that you were happy to not continue in your home, and others that you did?

So let me tell you a little bit about my house growing up.

I uh faith was central for us.

Um, my mom is a strong person of faith, has always loved the Lord, um, and my stepdad as well.

And so I saw in them like what it means to love and follow Jesus for life.

And so, like, it was just what we did.

Church, like we were always in church.

Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night was youth group, and so we were just in church.

That was something we did.

Prayer was central to our home.

Um, like we're praying before every meal, and uh hey, let's pray about this.

Let's yeah, let's pray through that, let's consider what this looks like.

Scripture uh was important.

Uh, my mom in particular, I would note uh her Bible was out and it was marked up and stuffed full of papers, and I'd catch her in the morning reading the scriptures or catch her at night reading the scriptures.

Like scripture was important, it shaped her life.

Faith was important.

Work was important in my home.

Growing up, we always had chores.

Every Saturday, we had a set list of chores.

We could trade our chores, whatever, but we had chores, and so we had to do these things.

And they're like, hey, can I go do this?

It's like, are your chores done?

No.

No, you can't go.

What if my chores are done?

Maybe, you know.

If we were on a break, mom would always write these cute notes to us.

Hey, enjoy Christmas break.

Here's the things you need to do.

But it was usually something simple: make your bed, make sure your room's picked up, and then like one little thing, right?

Uh when I got a job, like they encouraged us to work.

Um, and so I got a job, and uh, my first real job, and uh my mom said, Hey, you tell them you can't work Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, or Wednesday nights, because that's when we gathered for church.

Faith took priority over work.

And uh I've I've told this story before.

Uh my first couple of months there, they scheduled me on a Sunday night one time, and I told my mom, she said, Yeah, that's fine.

Just let them know if it happens again, I'm going to force you to quit.

And I'm like, okay.

So I went and told my boss, I said, Hey, just a heads up.

And she's like, Are you serious?

I'm like, She sure is.

So depends if you want to retain me.

Worked there for like five years.

It was fantastic.

But work was important in our home, but faith took precedent to work.

There's many things like I could tell you, like some of them I love and I try and cultivate in my home to this day.

Some I didn't love.

Uh, like, how many of you guys grew up with a curfew?

Raise your hand if you okay, yeah, most people.

Uh, did anybody not have a curfew?

Yeah, okay, never understood.

Higgins, it makes sense.

Um, and listen, you know, no judgment, but you know, yeah.

So in my home, growing up in my curfew, like if I was in high school, you say, okay, well, what was your curfew for a high schooler?

Oh, yeah, it's 10 till 10.

Hang with me, it gets better.

What about on the weekends, 10 till 11?

Yeah, your question is obvious.

Landon, why 10 till?

Ask my mom that same question.

Mom, why not just 10?

She goes, why?

I'm like, 10 till is weird.

She goes, well, let's just do 9:30, it'll be easier for you.

I said, 10 till 10 works great.

10 till 10.

I love it, mom.

I don't consider continue that practice.

I don't know where it came from, but it was, it's just one of those things.

But knowing where we come from has an impact on us.

Like, this is just how I do it, or this is how I talk.

Uh in our marriage early on, and uh, my wife and I, um, in my home growing up, uh, if you wanted to say something, you didn't have to wait for the other person to stop.

You just talk louder.

It's really easy.

My wife doesn't love that about me.

It's something I continue to this day.

It was 18 years of training, right?

It's just, I'm doing a wedding here in October, and uh I do premarital counseling with a couple of other couples too.

And one of the things I talk about is, hey, what how were you raised in your home?

What was normal, this, that, and the other?

Because sometimes what happens is couples get together and it's like, it's so weird.

He does this.

Like, well, that's every home does that.

I'm like, they don't, bro.

That is weird.

Um, or she's like, isn't that weird?

I'm like, no, that's actually not.

It's just it's part of the ethos, it shapes us.

This is how we do things.

I want to look at the third chapter of 1 John.

You're invited to turn your Bible with me.

If you don't have a Bible, we're happy to give you one.

It's the exact same one I use.

Just stop by the connection hub if you'd be interested in it.

And it's one of my favorite verses throughout all of Scripture comes from this chapter.

And John is speaking to this idea of knowing where we come from and how it impacts all of our lives.

And this is what he writes in 1 John chapter 3, verses 1 through 9.

1 John 3:1–9

It says, See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.

God looks at you, God looks at me, He looks at your neighbors, your colleagues, the people you love, the people you look up to, the people that you struggle with, and says, Oh man, those are my kids.

Now, maybe not you've come home yet, but those are my kids.

Um my son was drumming for us in first service, well, second service too, I guess.

Um, drumsville services today.

And um, I just I love to hear him play.

Uh my other son, he has a football game this week.

I love to watch him play.

My my my third son, he loves to, I love to watch him draw or do math or whatever.

There's just something about God looks at you and like, oh man, I love to see these gifts and these capacities that I've afforded you.

Just come out, come to life.

What great love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Dear friends, now that we are children of God, what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him.

Of course, we're gonna grow up to be like our parents.

Like that's, man, we got a dad who loves us like crazy.

Of course I want to grow up and be like him.

For we shall see him as he is.

Verse 3.

All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Everyone who sins breaks the law.

In fact, sin is lawlessness, and sin, right, old archery term in the Greek, and it's the idea of the miss the mark.

So literally taking, you're trying to hit the bullseye, how far you've missed is the degree to which you've sinned.

Like, how how far have I missed the mark of what I intended, what I aimed for, what I was created for?

But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins, take away that brokenness, take away that deficit.

And in him is no sin.

No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.

No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

If that's tricky, just hang with me, okay?

Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray.

The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

So, right behavior, or right belief, right action, right behavior, righteousness before God is to live rightly with God and with one another.

The one who does what is sinful is of the devil.

Because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.

No one who is born of God will continue to sin.

Because God's seed remains in them.

They literally cannot go on sinning because they have been born of God.

I need you to stay with me throughout the whole sermon.

Uh obviously, I hope that's always the case, you know.

Um I mean, there's a couple weeks where I'm like, I really hope they check out about 20 minutes in this time.

Um, but I really need you to hang with me, okay?

And here's why.

Sometimes you can check out because the Spirit of God will be nudging your heart, or there's a particular passage, and the Lord just invites you to camp out in it, and I think that's fantastic.

I do the same myself.

Sometimes God just invites me into something, and I'm like, hey, glad you prepped.

I need to live here.

But I need you to stay with me today, in particular, because there's a high probability that if you do that today, you'll get off course.

That you will think you'll read in an implication that isn't there in the text.

And so I want to make sure we get this together, okay?

Because if we pull a few of these statements out by themselves, we might easily conclude that John is calling all Christians, all people who profess Jesus, to literal sinless perfection.

But that can't be what John means.

Because in 1 John chapter 1, verse 8, on through chapter 2, verse 2, he says, listen, so when you believe deeply, you're able to confess freely.

1 John 1:8

Well, wait, I believe deeply, so I'm a child of the king, and yet I'm confessing.

What am I confessing?

Brokenness and sin and the garbage in my life.

John isn't describing people here who never sin, he's describing people whose relationship to sin has fundamentally changed.

Because they've been born of God.

We can have a fundamentally different relationship with sin because we're God's kids.

We're invited to root ourselves in our identity as children of God.

Listen, this is significant, don't miss it.

So the ethos of your home growing up, even if you'd never considered it in that way, like there's certain things that you thought were normative or that you thought were healthier, that's just how we do it, or that's just how I am, because that's what you were raised in.

The ethos of your home had an impact on your life.

And in the same way of thinking, we're to think of ourselves first and foremost from the vantage point of being sons and daughters of God.

Dearly loved sons and daughters whom God longs to lavish his love upon us.

So in my home growing up, there's certain things we did and there's certain things we didn't do.

There's certain ways we spoke, there's certain ways we didn't speak, there's certain ways we invested our time, there's certain ways we just wouldn't give our time to.

It's the same thing in the kingdom of God.

For those who say, man, the kingdom of God, like that, the family of God, that's the ethos from which I live, and so there's things I say and there's things I don't say, there's things I do and there's things I don't do, there's ways I'd invest myself, and there's ways I wouldn't invest myself.

It's all because we're growing up in the family of God.

Focus with me on verses three and six for a moment, okay?

These ideas.

All who have this hope in him purify themselves just as he is pure.

There's an action to be taken here.

No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.

So purifying ourselves is more than just confession.

It's not just a can a verbal confession to right beliefs or right ideas.

It's literally a choice in how we live.

There's action that has to be taken.

And so when we become convinced of something, as John has, remember, he said, listen, I've looked into this, I've investigated it, like I lived this, and I'm telling you, like it checks out.

I've given my life to it.

And he's not just demanding you do the same.

He's like, just check it out yourself.

If you think it's legit, like it's an all-in kind of idea.

It shapes how we live.

I'm a part of the household of God, so of course I'm going to live like it.

In our family, there's things we do and there's things we don't do.

There's ways we live and there's ways we don't live.

In our family, like that's just how we do it.

That's the idea that John's presenting here.

I need to add an important note, though, because when John talks about this idea of keeps on sinning or continues to sin, what he's talking about is an ongoing, never non-stop process.

So the fundamental relationship to sin has changed.

It's not that I never fail, it's not that I don't have faults.

It's not like, man, well, land in I've struggled with this for years.

Like, does that mean I've just not believed enough?

No, don't take that away.

Because if you go sidebar, you might land there.

And I could understand how you would, but it wouldn't be the right place.

The idea that John's talking about here is instead, not do I ever struggle with sin.

The question is, have I made peace with sin in my life?

It's one thing to struggle, it's another thing to give up.

Well, I listen, home I was raised in, life idea.

Sometimes I got rage issues.

I know, you know, like nobody's perfect.

No, that's not okay.

You say, man, I got some rage stuff I'm working through, and God is dealing with me on it.

And the the breakouts are coming more infrequent, and man, the conviction and the confession in my life is coming more quickly, and I'm making peace.

Like I'm trying to set my life right.

Well, listen, I grew up in a home where honestly greed was kind of a thing, and we got what we could and everything.

So greed kind of has a, but I'm not making peace with greed in my life.

Instead, I'm saying, God, release me from this.

Like, how do you need to do your work?

Look at me at verses 11 through 12, 16 through 18.

There's this clear onus on the importance of aligning our actions with our words, okay?

So if we say I belong to the family of God, then I'm gonna live like that's the case.

Uh you you're not gonna go home, home, apartment, wherever it is you live today, and knock on the door.

You're just gonna go in.

You live like you belong there.

You don't you don't go ask your spouse, hey, you mind if I get a sandwich out of the fridge?

I don't know why you keep a sandwich in the fridge, but you know what I mean.

You just go, right?

Because you it's how you where you live, it's how you belong.

Listen.

Verse 11.

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning.

We should love one another.

We really should.

I've I've not met anybody that's like, yeah, you shouldn't love people.

Do not be like Cain who, listen to this phrase, belonged to the evil one.

Not, don't be like Cain who had a bad day.

Don't don't be like Cain who just misread it.

Don't be like Cain who messed up.

Don't be like Cain who made a mistake.

No, no, no.

Don't be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.

And you say, well, I don't have a murder issue.

Glad for that.

Bless your heart.

Jesus says, if you have hatred in your heart, you have anger in your heart, it's like murdering.

And why did he murder him?

Because his own actions were evil and his brothers were righteous.

You ever get mad at somebody because they did the right thing and you did the wrong thing and it highlighted the difference?

Just me?

Fair enough.

Verse 16.

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Now, most of us will never actually face that decision.

Most of us will never, you know, need to push the other person out of the way.

But John contextualizes this in a very applicable way for all of us.

If anyone has material possessions, anybody in the room with material possessions, just raise your hand, quick show of hands.

Okay, most of us.

There's a few of you don't.

All right, we'll talk, right?

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, listen to John's question.

How can the love of God be in that person?

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth.

Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one.

Cain, why are you doing this stuff?

That's how that's how I see myself.

Broken, dysfunctional, chasing after everything I can get for myself, and so it causes me to live at war with the world.

John is saying that we Cain lived out of an ethos of who or what he belonged to, and we do the same.

How we see ourselves, like where we root our story, where we root our identity, it shapes what we do.

It shapes what we'll say.

Um you ever had a child in the band on a sports team, something like that?

There's a culture that they're invited into, right?

It's an ethos.

So for instance, if uh it's late summer, getting towards school, and you're like, hey, what's your family up to?

It's like, well, my kids got practice every day from like 8 a.m.

to 5 p.m., five days a week, and then they go to these competitions in the evening.

You're like, what on?

I mean, that that is the worst thing.

And you're like, what do what?

And they're like, well, they're in the band.

You're like, oh, okay, makes sense.

Makes sense.

Right?

Because that's just how it is.

And they love it.

Like, it's just part of their story.

You talk to some other families, like, hey, you guys want to get together some weekend, have a cookout?

Like, ah, kind of busy.

Well, we doesn't have to be this weekend.

Okay, well, we're out of town, like two weekends out of the next like three months.

Like, where to?

Like, Indy, Cincy, Louisville, Orlando.

I'm like, what are you doing?

My kid plays soccer.

Oh, okay.

It's just what we do.

You're part of what school?

So you hate which school?

Oh, okay.

You go to Davidson.

I get it.

Yeah, Darby.

Just kidding.

If you're Darby, I can't say that actually, Davidson family.

John's saying that, listen, we're to be shaped by the kingdom of God.

You do this in your company.

At your work, there's certain things you do and don't do.

Some of you have worked for bad companies before, and you had to unlearn negative behaviors.

Because the ethos of where we are, it's culture, it literally has a tangible effect on our lives.

John is saying, listen, Cain belonged to the evil one.

Who do you belong to?

And John would make it so blunt to say this: we either belong to Jesus Christ or we belong to the evil one.

And where am I rooting my identity?

John says that choosing to believe God belong to God has a tangible impact on our lives.

Look with me.

Verse 16 17.

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

We ought to.

If anyone has material possessions, which is all of us today.

And sees a brother or sister in need, but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?

We're called to literally look out for one another.

Now I need to let me frame it this way.

First, just because somebody says they need something doesn't mean they need it.

We do have a struggle at times with what we need and what we want.

And that's a real challenge.

If somebody's misusing things, abusing things, like you don't just keep pouring into it.

It's not healthy, it's not life-giving, it does not help them.

And so that's important.

It'd be irresponsible and actually honestly harmful to continue to resource patterns that are broken.

But at the same time, we don't want to go too far the other way because John's not going to give us like a loophole.

John says, if I see my brother or sister in need, then the love of Jesus should work in me.

So we have five commitments that we talk about here at the church often.

If you want to know them about them more deeply, uh take growth track or buy me coffee, and I'll explain them all to you.

They're fantastic.

I love them.

But commitments three and four, I want to focus on them for just a moment.

Commitment three is to live in community.

They're ordered on purpose.

Commitment three is to live in community.

Commitment four is to intentionally serve others.

We want to live in community.

When we live in community, we know about each other's lives.

We know when there's challenges, we know when there's difficulties, we know there's obstacles.

And when we have friends that are like family, and we're meeting with a friend who's like a family or we're getting dinner or whatever, and like, hey, how's things going?

It's like, ah, what do you say?

What's happening?

I've got this situation, this, that, and the other.

And how do you respond?

How can I help?

Right?

If if your neighbor, like you care about your neighbor, you're living life together, everything else, you're sharing, shuttling the kids, this, that, and the other.

You walked out this past Tuesday and you looked, you're like, oh man, nothing.

A few leaves.

Thank you.

That's good.

And then you look across the street and your like neighbor's yard is just trashed and wrecked, and you're sitting there sipping your coffee.

Like, what do you do?

Help them, Lord.

You know what they need.

No.

You go help them.

John's just expanding this idea of family.

When you live in relationship with other people, you allow them to see your stuff so they can help you too.

For those who testify that Jesus is Lord, it's just this we serve each other.

It's what we do.

Because, man, God has lavished his love upon us.

How can we not lavish love upon other people?

John says, listen, recognize who you are, your dearly loved son or daughter, the king.

Live like it.

Enjoy all the benefits that come with it, and then also live into the responsibilities that are a part of just being in the family.

Yeah, you ever have that when uh your kids like you know, like, hey, I need you to do the dishes and take out the trash.

Well, what do I get out of it?

You get to live here, you know.

Um that's what it is to be in the family.

It's like, well, how much are you gonna pay me?

Nothing.

You cost me so much already.

You live in the family, right?

That's everybody helps out.

You do you ever have that uh freeloader roommate, like college or post-college?

Anybody living with a freeloader roommate right now?

You just want to raise, yeah.

I see that hand, Kathy.

Dan, come on.

I would if I had, if you had said, Landon, this isn't in the notes, you just you're gonna make this joke.

You gotta pick.

Who's gonna raise their hand?

It wouldn't have been Kathy.

I would have never said thank you.

Thank you.

I love that.

And this is where John closes out the chapter with this image of a heart at rest.

When we root our identity in Christ and how we live in community has a direct impact then on how or not, whether or not our hearts will be at rest.

This is what it says, 1 John 3, 19 through 22.

This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence.

If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything.

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.

And here's the movement, what we see in these verses.

My heart can condemn me.

You ever just like, well, I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I've messed up, I've messed up too many times.

God knows us better than our hearts.

Did you ever do this with a kid?

Kids getting frustrated themselves, well, I just can't figure this out.

And what do you do?

You don't say, Yeah, you can't figure it out.

No, you come on, listen, we got this.

Listen, I know you better than you know yourself.

God does that with you and me.

And therefore, I can rest confidently in his presence.

I don't have to clean myself up, I don't have to put it all together, I don't have to figure it all out, man.

I can just go to God.

And from that secure relationship, I can freely bring my needs to him.

I love that.

We're literally invited to live with our hearts at rest in the presence of God.

Can you buy use a heart a little bit more at rest?

There's a direct correlation between where I root my identity, my ethos, like who I am, and how I live in relationship with other people, to how much my heart is at peace with God.

Challenges, obstacles, difficult seasons, they're gonna come like it's inevitable in life.

And we can feel their weight even deeply.

But we don't have to just be overwhelmed as a normal way of life.

It doesn't mean we'll never have a troubled heart, but when we have a troubled heart, we have a place to take it.

John gives us the solid footing for all of life.

Remember where we stand before God.

A dearly loved son.

A dearly loved daughter.

It's such a life-giving truth.

Last couple of verses for today.

1 John 3, 23 and 24.

And this is his command to believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

The one who keeps God's commands lives in him.

And he in them.

And this is how we know that he lives in us.

We know it by the Spirit He gave us.

Listen, the reason, again, I said at the outset, you gotta stay with me.

Because you could read something like that, well, I'm just not doing enough.

My heart's gonna condemn me.

God knows your heart.

Listen, God knows you better than your own heart.

Well, I've got to be perfect.

Like, so I mean, it's impossible.

It's not, it's not what it means.

We're just not gonna make peace with sin in our lives.

Like, well, that's just you just gotta live with that.

I mean, I gotta live with those things.

Those are always gonna be a part of my life.

That's not true.

Stay in the struggle, stay in the fight.

Let God keep doing his redemptive healing work in your life.

If we'll live into the commands of God, then we live in God.

And here's the really big thing: God lives in us, and it's all confirmed by the Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead lives in you and lives in me if we testify to Jesus as Lord.

As imperfect of vessels as we are.

My hope is that we'll all leave with the invitation that God makes to everyone.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.

And that is what we are.

You don't have to do things to earn a place in the family.

You're just a part of the family.

And in the kingdom of God, it's no different.

God makes the first move towards us to extend love and grace and kindness and peace, and says, What would you like to do?

So two things, and then we're gonna close, and Bailey's gonna lead us in a song that we're gonna, I'm actually gonna have you remain seated and just to reflect on the words.

First, do you have you rooted yourself in that reality, the truth, that you're a dearly loved son of the king, you're a dearly loved daughter of God?

You belong to him in all the best ways possible.

If you've not, today, great day.

Say that's yeah, that's what I want.

And then the second piece is this how are you doing living in the family?

How are you doing reflecting the love that God has lavished upon you to lavish on others?

Any sin or junk that's just holding you up that you're like, well, I gotta figure it out.

You can confess it freely.

Let God work it out in your life.

We're all invited to live in the family, and we're all invited to live like we're in the family.

Let me pray.

Father, we thank you for this day.

Your love, your grace, your kindness.

Help us to live in you, to recognize that you long to live in us, to find our hearts at rest.

Because we remember, like in all the good and the bad and all the crazy in between, when the winds of the storms of life literally blow, more than anything else, we're dearly loved sons and daughters of the King.

And you lavish love upon us, and then might we live like it?

Like that's just how we do things in our family.

There's ways we speak and there's ways we don't speak.

There's things we do, there's things we don't do.

Because that's the ethos of our home.

Our home in you.

In the name of Jesus, we always pray.

Amen.

Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast.

If you're ready to take a next step in your faith, please reach out to us through our website, refineryohio.com, or you can email us at office at refineryohio.com.

We hope you have a blessed day.