Father's Day 2019

Hi, this is John Ozanting, lead pastor of Evolved Church, and this is the Evolve Church Podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Love it.

I want to share a story from the Bible about a dad, but I want to warn you this message is not just for fathers today, it's for all of us.

Any any guesses to which dad from the Bible that I might want to highlight on this Father's Day?

Any guesses?

Abraham, good guess.

The father of many nations, but you're wrong.

Any other guesses?

Yeah, I'm King Saul.

Not a dad that I personally look up to a whole lot.

He had his moments, but uh not talking about King Saul today.

That's okay.

Um, somebody said David, uh, David, Noah, also very good guess, but you're all wrong.

Yahweh, the father of all fathers, a very, very good guess, Don, but uh you're wrong.

I mean, we're gonna acknowledge God.

Don't get me wrong here, but uh we're gonna talk about Jairus.

Jairus.

Are you okay with that?

A lesser-known father, perhaps?

How many of you have heard of Jairus?

Hands up.

How many of you have no clue what I'm talking about?

Hands up, beautiful.

If you have a Bible with you, you can read about Jairus in three of the four letters written by Jesus' um disciples.

What we call the gospels in the Bible, the first four books in our New Testament in the Christian Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

You can read about Jairus in the book of Matthew, chapter 9, or in the book of Luke, chapter 8, or in our case, in the book of Mark, chapter 5.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention Luke 8 · chapter mention Mark 5 · chapter mention

Three different accounts from three different eyewitness perspectives.

But I'm gonna read from Mark 5, 21 to 43, and here's what it says there, starting at verse 21.

After Jesus returned from across the lake, a huge crowd of people quickly gathered around him on the shoreline.

Just then, a man saw that it was Jesus.

So he pushed through the crowd and threw himself down at Jesus' feet.

And his name was Jairus.

He was a Jewish official who was in charge of the synagogue.

He pleaded with Jesus, saying, over and over, please come with me.

My little one, my little daughter's at the point of death, and she's only 12 years old.

Come and lay your hands on her and heal her, and she'll live.

Except over and over he pleaded with Jesus.

So Jesus went with him, and the huge crowd followed, pressing in from all sides.

Now, in the crowd that day was a woman who had suffered horribly from continual bleeding for 12 years.

She had endured a great deal under the care of various doctors, yet, in spite of spending all she had on their treatment, she was not getting any better, but worse.

And when she heard about Jesus' healing power, she pushed through the crowd and came up from behind him, touched his prayer shawl, for she just kept saying to herself, If only I could touch his clothes, I know I'll be healed.

And as soon as this lady's hand touched Jesus, her bleeding immediately stopped, and she knew it, for she could feel that her body instantly had been healed of this disease.

Jesus knew at once that someone had touched him, for he felt the power that always surged around him had passed through him for someone to be healed.

He turned and spoke to the entire crowd, saying, Who touched my clothes?

And his disciples were like, Um, what do you mean, who touched you?

Look at this huge crowd.

They're all pressing up against you.

But Jesus' eyes swept the crowd, looking for the one who had touched him for healing.

When the woman who experienced this miracle realized what had happened to her, she came before Jesus, trembling with fear, threw herself down at Jesus' feet, saying, I was the one who touched you.

And she told him her story of what had just happened.

Then Jesus said, Daughter, because you dared to believe, your faith is healed, you go with peace in your heart, be free from your suffering.

I'm almost done.

Hang in there.

And before he had finished speaking, people arrived from Jairus' house.

This is who the story's about.

Remember Jairus, the guy at the beginning, 12-year-old daughter, deathbed?

Crowds arrived from Jairus' house, pushed through the crowd to give Jairus the news there's no need to trouble the master anymore.

Your daughter has died.

But Jesus refused to listen to what they were told and said to Jairus, the Jewish official, Don't yield to fear.

All you need to do is keep on believing.

So they left for his home.

But Jesus didn't allow anyone to go with them except for Peter and the two brothers, Jacob, also known as James and John.

When they arrived at the home of the synagogue ruler, they encountered a noisy uproar among the people, for they were all weeping and wailing.

Why?

Because the twelve-year-old girl had died.

Upon entering the home, Jesus said to them, Why all this grief and weeping?

Don't you know the girl is not dead, but merely asleep?

Then everyone began to ridicule and make fun of Jesus, but he threw them all outside.

Then he took the child's father and mother and his three disciples and went into the room where the girl was lying.

He tenderly clasped the child's hand in his hand and said to her in Aramaic, Talitha Koom, which means little girl, wake up, wake up from this sleep of death.

Instantly the 12-year-old girl sat up, stood to her feet, and started walking around the room.

Everyone was overcome with astonishment and seeing this miracle.

Jesus had them bring her something to eat, and he repeatedly cautioned them that they were to tell no one about what had happened, which they clearly did because we're reading about it 2,000 years later.

I want to ask you four questions today.

Four life questions for every mother, for every father, for every son, for every daughter, for every person in the room.

Number one, what sacrifice are you willing to make to get close to Jesus?

I want to start with this question.

What sacrifices are you willing to make in your season right now to get close to Jesus?

In Mark 5.22, we read that Jairus saw that it was Jesus, and so he did what?

He pushed through the crowd and then he threw himself down at Jesus' feet.

What a beautiful picture of surrender and submission in knowing what Jesus could do for him.

But you have to remember that Jairus was an influential Jewish leader.

As a matter of fact, the Bible says he was an official in charge of the synagogue.

In one of the books I read to prepare for this, a writer wrote this, he said, Jairus is nonetheless a man of consequence in this Capernaum society.

His deferential approach to Jesus, who recently arrived in town, is meant to be noticed through his self-abasement of falling at Jesus' feet, indicating his dex desperation, but also his recognition of Jesus as a respected teacher in town and a teacher with a growing reputation.

I love here that Jairus had deep-seated and religious and positional and societal reasons to not push into Jesus, to not be desperate, to not fall at this teacher's feet.

As a Jewish leader, he had a lot of reasons.

Matter of fact, you could say his street credibility was even on the line as he pushed in.

With reckless desperation, such disregard for social graces, he pushed through this crowd of people to get at Jesus' feet.

What sacrifices are you willing to make in your season to get closer to Jesus?

Emotional sacrifices, physical sacrifices, prestige, time, relational sacrifices?

What sacrifices are you willing to make to get close to Jesus?

Or maybe I might ask you, what excuses are you making for your lack of intimacy and closeness with the King?

What things have you put in place as boundaries, rules, guidelines for why you can't push in to the feet of Jesus in this season of your life?

You're in the room here today, and maybe you grew up going to church, being a part of a religious commitment, and you've always desired to be close to Jesus.

Or maybe you're in the room today, and this is all brand new to you.

It could be your very first time here, and something drew you to this space today to connect with a God who you hear about, to connect with a Savior who rumor has it loves you and laid down his life for you.

And wherever you're at in the spectrum today, what excuses have you put out there to hold yourself back from closeness with Jesus?

A number of years ago, nine, eight and a half, nine years ago, Nicole and I were living in Winnipeg and we took a trip to Vancouver Island to be with my family.

And Nicole was expecting our third child, Caleb.

She was about seven weeks along.

And uh we have two older kids, Julia and Riley.

And before Julia was born, our very first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.

Um and so we were familiar with uh miscarriage, and so we were on a ferry um from Vancouver across to uh Victoria to celebrate my dad's retirement.

And uh what's fun is um not the story I'm about to tell you, but the fact that my dad's actually in the room today.

My parents are here visiting from Ontario, and uh um we were talking about this yesterday.

So we were expecting Caleb seven weeks along.

We're on a gigantic ferry in the middle of the water, and Nicole starts to bleed.

And not just a little, it was alarming.

And everything within us, we were we were with my older brother and my sisters on our way to celebrate together as a family, and and everything within us was like, oh my goodness, this this pregnancy is terminating just based on the symptoms that we saw.

And so we landed and and um proceeded into Victoria, and we just Nicole and I just left my family and we stopped at the first clinic we could find, and uh so we we went through these hours of of going from a clinic to the hospital and and investigations and um ultrasounds, and uh and every everywhere we went, every every nurse, every doctor, every technician said the same thing.

We're so sorry.

It looks like this pregnancy is terminating.

And should this pregnancy not terminate and continue, we just want to prepare you that whatever child is inside this womb is gonna have major complications.

Um they could be blind, they could be deaf, they could have severe disease, they could have um you know malformation.

They went through this whole list of things that we we should expect if if this pregnancy continued.

And Nicole and I were desperate.

And I've I've never ever felt in my life like I ever wanted to be closer to Jesus than than in that moment.

I remember just feeling broken and and and upset.

And and uh the long story is uh we ended up at the hospital and I'll never forget the uh the ultrasound tech putting that wand on Nicole's belly, and we we'd been just praying and asking our community to pray and our family to pray, and and that that tech with that wand on that belly, and we heard that that that heartbeat sound, and the tech was like, oh, there's there's still a heartbeat.

Um Wow, I wasn't, you know, he was the tech was surprised.

And we were just like, oh man, God's God God's doing something.

Let's let's pray, let's let's believe for a miracle.

And you know, that was in um September of I think 2010.

And Caleb was born in in May of 2011.

And so we still had a journey of months ahead of us to wonder what was actually growing inside of Nicole's belly.

And I don't remember a week that went by where I didn't have these thoughts like we're we've got a battle ahead of us, this child is sick, this child is diseased, this child is broken, this child is filling the blank with everything that every tech, every doctor had said to us.

And I struggled all by myself with these fears and these thoughts, and I would go to God and pray, but I didn't talk to anybody about it because I'm like, I don't certainly don't want to talk to Nicole about this because she's carrying this baby, and I don't want to fill her imagination or her heart or her spirit with all these negative thoughts, and I don't want her to be afraid.

And uh it was horrible.

Do you know we're not designed for isolation, especially when we go through something hard?

We're designed for a relationship.

And when we're when we're married to somebody, we're really designed for a relationship and intimacy, and you know, the Bible says two people become one, and there should be closeness and intimacy and conversation.

And so finally it took me months to go, you know what?

I need to talk to Nicole because we need to pray about this together.

And we talked, I remember we talked kind of in the spring, a couple months before Caleb was born, and and she was like, I've been feeling that way, but I didn't want to talk to you about it.

I'm like, I've been feeling that way, but I didn't want to talk to you about it.

So we talked together and we addressed our fear and we we decided what we were gonna fix our heart and fix our thoughts on.

And we know these things were said as maybes about Caleb, but that's that's not the God that we serve.

And and even right up until the moment we were in the hospital, and Nicole was laboring and about to give birth, these voices in my hair were just waiting to see, he's gonna come out, and he's gonna be this, and he's gonna be that, and he's gonna be this.

And I remember having to shut down these thoughts in my head and these imaginations like, what does it look like to trust God in the middle of a storm when other people have said a whole bunch of really awful things, but I know who my God is.

I want to ask you, what will it take for you to sacrifice to get close to Jesus?

In this room today are people who are going through something, and it could be a victory, it could be amazing, it could you might feel like you're on top of a mountain, or you could be going through hell right now.

But I want to tell you to choose to make sacrifices, to lean into Jesus is gonna be the way forward.

And the second way is this number two, which other person's victory is lying to you, trying to convince you that Jesus has turned his back on you.

In the story of Jairus in verse 25, we read about this man, this religious leader who forced his way to the crowd, pushed his way through crowds of people, fell at the feet of Jesus, and pleaded his case.

My daughter, my only child, she's 12, she's on death's door.

Would you come?

I know if you come that she'll be made well.

Come, Jesus.

And he repeats his cry and he repeats his cry and he repeats his cry, and Jesus says, I'll be I'll come with you.

But hang with me, because in verse 25, the narrative shifts.

And as I read this, I was blown away by the fact that through the whole reference of the woman with the issue of blood who forced her way to the crowd and fell at Jesus' seat and said, Just if I can just hold on to his garment.

Jairus isn't referenced, but he was there, he was in the crowd.

Matter of fact, he was probably right beside Jesus.

And I picture Jairus going, wait a sec, what about my kid?

Who's this woman?

What's her business interrupting my need?

And when we read in the Bible in Mark 20, Mike 5, 25, about this woman, as soon as her hand touched him, her bleeding stopped, and Jesus knew at once that someone had touched him.

And there's this story where Jesus is like, somebody touched me.

And his disciples are like, Lord, um there's lots of people.

Everybody's touching you.

And Jesus is like, No, no, someone touched me.

But I picture Jairus standing right there, and if I was him, I'd be like, Hey Jesus, um, my kid, what's this business about somebody touching you?

And the and the Bible says in Mark 5 that the woman came forward and shared what she had done and told Jesus this whole story, right?

So this is a long, this isn't a 30-second exchange, this is minutes.

And how many of you know when you're in the cap waiting for something to shift in your life, that minutes feels like hours, feels like days, feels like seasons.

And I picture Jairus going, okay, I guess Jesus isn't for me.

I guess Jesus is for this woman.

I guess I found my way to his feet.

I pushed through the crowds, I sacrificed my reputation to get at the feet of Jesus, and now I'm left disappointed.

Now I'm left hanging because he's meeting her need.

What about my need, Jesus?

The second question I have is what other person's victory is lying to you right now?

What other person's story of change and miraculous provision and God's power is whispering in your ears?

See?

It's not for not for you, it's for them.

What other person's miracle is lying to you, trying to convince you that Jesus has turned his back on you?

Where's Jairus in the middle of this?

He's anxiously looking at his watch, tapping his feet.

Hey, um, Peter, could you could you speed this along, please?

I've got a mission here.

I need the Savior.

That's it, I've had it, enough of this Jesus business.

I wonder, and the Bible's not clear what Jairus was thinking, but I don't picture him patiently waiting.

His 12-year-old girl is on death's door.

Don't misinterpret God's faithfulness in someone else's life as his unfaithfulness in your life.

Never misinterpret God's faithfulness in somebody else's story as his unfaithfulness in yours.

What you use as a reason to turn your back on God because you say he's unfaithful, God actually wants to use to remind you of just how good he is.

God wants to use someone else's story.

And I don't know if Jesus had a bigger plan in mind, but what we do know is that Jairus had heard about Jesus.

He had heard of his fame, he had heard of his miraculous power, but he hadn't seen it with his own eyes.

And so he's standing there watching the Messiah, the King of Kings, and just physically present, someone touching his garment, being healed from a 12-year ailment.

Maybe, just maybe, God wants to use somebody else's story of hope to infuse you with the faith that you need in this season to trust God again, to see it with your own eyes so that your faith will rise, to see it with your own eyes so that you won't doubt or second guess that Jesus is who he says he is, to see it with your own eyes so that you can be confident in your season of waiting.

I picture Jesus saying, Jairus, you've heard reports of how good I am, but I just wanted you to see it for yourself so that you'll believe.

I just wanted you to see it for yourself.

Don't misinterpret God's faithfulness in someone else's life as his unfaithfulness in yours.

For Nicole and I, from September till May, we had two close friends, two other couples that were expecting little ones, and their pregnancies were seamless.

And I remember feeling jealous.

I remember feeling like, okay, God, if if if this third child is gonna be unhealthy and unwell, and everything the doctor said about this child, if that's gonna be our story, give us the grace and the wisdom to figure that out.

But why couldn't we just be easy like those people and those people?

There's seeming stories of victory, there's seamless birth stories, labor and delivery.

Why can't that be our case?

Why do we have to have this looming over us like a sentence that we're gonna have to walk through for the rest of our lives?

And I remember feeling jealous and angry at God in that season.

Come on, God, you said you were faithful.

You know, we're not meant to see God's faithfulness in somebody else's world and interpret that as his unfaithfulness in ours because we were created for community, not isolation.

We were created to share in our stories together in our journey of faith and to allow what we're seeing God do in other people's lives to encourage us and to remind us of his faithfulness and his provision, to remind us of how to lean in and trust God even when things are hard.

Do you currently find yourself in a season of waiting, waiting for an answer to come, waiting for a miracle, waiting for something to happen?

Are you looking around at others who seem to be raking in the favor of God while you restlessly wait?

And maybe your story has you saying things like, That's it, I've had it, that's enough, enough of this Jesus business.

Clearly it doesn't work.

Let's deepen our faith together in a different kind of response.

One that has us seeing what God's doing in other people's lives as a reason to trust Him in the middle of our life.

Hope has a name, his name is Jesus.

So which other person's victory is lying to you, trying to convince you that Jesus has turned his back on you?

Number three, the third question is whose report are you gonna listen to?

It's in the moment of Gyrus's perceived frustration and doubting that the bad report comes.

In verse 34, Jesus says to her, Daughter, because you dared to believe, your faith has healed you.

Go with peace in your heart, be free from your suffering.

And Mark says that just before Jesus even finished those words, people arrived from Jairus' house and pushed through the crowd to give Jairus the news there's no need to trouble the master any longer.

Your daughter has died.

Never mind, don't bother with it.

She's dead.

That's it.

Story.

Over.

Go home.

I told you so.

You shouldn't have gotten your hopes up.

Religion is a crutch.

You don't need this.

The doctor's reports that came to us were so dire and so negative throughout that pregnancy, and they were filled with no answers, but just a lot of questions.

Maybe, just maybe, this child will be filling the blank.

We don't know for certain, but you could be looking at this.

And so these maybes, these reports that were coming at us, when we finally got our act together and in faith and in agreement decided which report we were going to listen to?

A God who we know to be true, or people who we know to be uncertain in that season?

We have to counter with the words of Jesus, because you dared to believe, faith has healed you.

Go with peace in your heart.

Be free from your suffering.

Whose report are you going to listen to?

Whatever you're walking through, whose report are you going to listen to?

And lastly, number four, who do you pull in close when you're allowing your faith to arise?

When you finally decide to allow your faith to rise up and take God at His Word and trust Him for who He is?

Mark 5, 36 and on, Jesus refused to listen to what this crowd was now telling Jairus.

And he said to Gyrus, don't yield to what?

Fear.

All you need to do is keep on believing.

I'm pretty sure this is where Journey got the inspiration.

Jairus, don't stop believing.

So they left for his home, but Jesus didn't allow anybody to go with them except for Peter, James, and John.

You know, Peter, James, and John in the Bible, they always represent intimacy with Jesus.

They represent proximity to the Savior.

They represent closeness to the heart of God.

They represent an intimacy with how Jesus responds to need.

Peter, James, and John were handpicked.

Number one, I believe, because Jesus wanted them to come along and see.

But number two, I believe, because Jesus trusted that Peter, James, and John wouldn't allow fear to cripple them, but they would choose to rise up in faith.

They're a picture of a beautiful track record in seeing Jesus come through in our waiting and trusting God regardless.

You know, when Nicole and I finally got together with some real conversation and some prayer together, we came out of this season of isolation.

And I believe that isolation is one of the biggest spiritual killers that I know.

It wrecks us because it moves us out of meaningful relationship, it moves us out of community, and moves us out of conversation, and moves us out of dialogue about the things of God.

And when we're leaning in and trusting and believing God for something, the enemy of our soul wants to isolate us to be on our own.

And I believe that Gyrus had a response.

A crowd of people that he'd done life with came to him and said, Gyrus, don't bother.

This isn't gonna work.

She's already gone.

Don't bother him anymore.

People that he knew and did life with versus a savior who he just met saying, Don't fear.

Watch what I did here.

I can still do that for you.

Don't listen to their voices.

Do you know we're faced with the same choice all the time?

Who do we lean into?

Who do we listen to?

Who do we receive counsel from?

Who do you pull in close when you're allowing your faith to arise?

Whatever it is you need, these four questions to consider.

And maybe it's a shift in a relationship, maybe it's something in your home life, maybe it's something with your dad.

As I was praying this morning, I just felt like, you know, there's people in the room here today that hate Father's Day because you don't know or love a father.

And so even being here and praying over men and honoring dads feels uncomfortable to you.

Maybe you're in a season of believing God to restore a relationship with your biological father, your earthly dad.

But these four questions, here's what I want to share as we close out.

They also work in reverse.

If you're struggling in your walk with Jesus, if you're struggling to get close, if you don't want to make sacrifices to get close to Jesus because you're uncertain, then just flip these questions around.

Who are you pulling in close so that you know which reports to listen to, to remember that Jesus hasn't turned his back on you, to be willing to make the sacrifices to get close to him.

Maybe a part of your pulling in the right people is just being here today.

You've done life on your own.

Maybe you were burned or hurt by religion at some point, and just the courage to step into a community of faith and to attend a service on a Sunday, maybe that's the start of you pulling in the right people close to your life and opening yourself up to the right voices.

And if the people that you've known and worked with and done life with are the people that are saying to you, it's not worth it, don't go there, don't try it, don't bother with that.

Maybe it's the right people around you in proximity.

Maybe it's pulling into the right people by getting involved, serving with Evolved Kids or part of one of our worship teams, or just plugging in and helping out.

Maybe it's um getting into a small group here at Evolved Church, even as we start up our summer sessions of people just getting together to do life together, the right people in relationship.

Maybe that's your step of pulling the right people in close.

Because when you've got the right people around you, it's easier to know which voices to listen to.

It's easier to recognize truth and life and hope.

Because hope has a name and his name is Jesus.

And when we do life with people who are learning to trust and follow Jesus, that all begins to settle and clear up for us.

And when we know which reports to listen to, we remember that Jesus hasn't turned his back on us.

We don't interpret other people's provision as God's unfaithfulness in our life.

We see it as stories to infuse us with hope and infuse us with faith to trust God even still.

And when we trust God and we've got the right people around us and we're interpreting truth in a way that's life-giving, then we're willing to make the sacrifices in other relationships, in our time, in our ego, in our status, in our workplace, the sacrifices needed to get close to Jesus.

But it starts with relationship, it starts with community.

It's why you were created.

On this Father's Day, at these four questions, what sacrifices are you willing to make to get close to Jesus?

Which other person's victory is lying to you, trying to convince you that Jesus has turned his back on you?

Whose report are you going to listen to?

And who do you pull in close when you're allowing your faith to arise?

Whatever you're walking through today, whatever you might walk through tomorrow, I want to encourage you to look to the heart of this man, Jairus, who did what it took to get to the feet of Jesus, to share his need, to trust the Savior, the reports that he had heard, to wait through disappointment of waiting and watching Jesus respond to somebody else while his own daughter died.

And learning to trust Jesus in the middle of that hurt and in the middle of that loss, and to refuse to listen to the reports of people that he knew, to lean into the heart and the voice of a Savior who he hardly knew, but he was willing to get close to.

And then allowing Jesus to shape the right relationship as they entered his home.

The people that were wailing and mourning, they sent them out.

And Jesus went in with mom and dad and Peter, James, and John, and we see this girl rise from rise from death to life.

And I just I just trust that the presence of God and the heart of Jesus and the story of Jairus wants to do something in your life and in your home to bring something that's dead back to life.

As we learn to push in close, filter what reports we're believing, pull in the right people, make the necessary sacrifices to get close to our Savior.

Some of you for the first time, and some of you anew, refreshed, restored.

And wherever you're at, I pray that God will give you the grace and the wisdom and the understanding to respond as you lean into your King.

In Jesus' name.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you for gyrus, for this account of you through Jesus Christ at work in one of your kids' lives.

And today we learned from Jairus what it what it requires of us to make sacrifices to get close to our King.

And you might be asking some of us in the room here today to begin to make some time sacrifices, some relationship sacrifices, some emotional or prestige or physical sacrifices to get close to Jesus.

Help us as we wade through.

That God is not faithful.

Maybe he's faithful for somebody else, but but the lie comes that he's not faithful for me.

The lie comes that he's not faithful for you.

And so help us to remember, God, to never misinterpret your faithfulness in someone else's life as your unfaithfulness in ours.

Maybe, just maybe you want us to see with our own eyes how good you are to help faith rise up.

And as we decide who to allow to speak into our heart and to speak words that are going to influence and shape us, give us wisdom to know which reports to listen to.

Give us wisdom to always lean in and say, God, I know what these people are saying, but what do you say?

Who do you say I am?

What do you say you've made a way for?

Our God of hope, our God of restoration, our God of healing.

To know which reports to listen to, but also to know who to pull in close when our faith is stirring, when we've seen something in somebody else's life, and it causes us to trust you anew, to dare to believe, to take you at your word.

Help us to know who to pull in close, to help shape our faith, to shape our response.

We ask this in the name of Jesus.

In Jesus' name.

With every eye closed, every head bowed, and I just want to pray a prayer today.

With nobody looking around, um one of the steps I think that God wants to bring healing to this morning as we've gathered together and taken out this time.

Even if it's just one person in the room, but somebody in the room here today, I have the sense that just to even think about getting close to Jesus, to even think about wanting to make the sacrifice, to get close to Father God through Jesus.

It terrifies you.

Because you can't understand the heart of a father that loves you because of something that took place in your own story with your your biological dad.

Maybe there was disappointment, maybe there was loss, maybe there was abuse.

But to picture God as father feels gross to you because you don't know what a dad really is.

As we close out our service today, I just I wanted to pray.

Again, if you just close your eyes for me, just out of honor and respect for the other people in the room.

And if you're here today and and you want to invite the presence of God in this space, through Jairus' story, through what we've shared together, to just begin to bring hope and healing to your understanding of father, to your picture of dad, because of what you've walked through.

You might well mean and desire to know and love God as Father, but you just can't wrap your brain around it because of what you've experienced.

I just believe that God wants to do something today.

So if you're in the room and you want to invite the presence of God to just bring healing to your past, bring healing to your understanding of Father.

I don't need you to stand up or stretch out a hand.

God knows who you are, but I want to pray for you.

And God, I ask in this in this time, in this community, we've set aside this morning to honor dads, to celebrate fathers, to open up our hearts and our lives and our spirit to a heavenly father.

It's for relationship with God that we were all created.

To share in the gift of togetherness and community in this in this family we call the church.

But in this room today are our men and women.

In this room today are humans whose hearts have been broken and who have a hard time connecting the dots to a God that loves them because of something they experienced growing up.

And so, Jesus, we've not only heard of your fame, but so many of us have seen it with our own eyes.

We've heard about it today.

And we know that you're a God who loves to bring dead things to life.

And so we just ask right now to those that need it, by your Holy Spirit, you'd bring healing and hope.

You'd bring new pictures of a father's heart.

You'd bring new dreams of who God is, loving them as a spiritual father, as an eternal dad, as a more than enough, unconditional, no strings attached.

He loves you because he loves you, because he made you, because he loves you, because he loves you.

Holy Spirit, would you just bring healing and comfort?

Would you bring hope, new pictures, new dreams to those in the room that need it today?

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, after service today, um we're gonna party together, we're gonna have some fun.

But if you're a dad in the room, or if you're a mom, or if you're a kid, and you need a couple minutes to just process something, I just want you to know there's a whole team of people here who would love to take a few minutes and chat with you and pray.

And and um maybe maybe today was the start of God bringing about a miracle in your life through healing a relationship with your with your biological, with your earthly dad.

And I just I just know some people in the room needed that today as we took a look at Mark V and Jairus' story.

And I hope I hope it gives you something to think about and something to trust God in in the days and weeks ahead.

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

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, pop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit Evolvechurch.com.

We hope to see you soon!