Set the Standard High

A while back I came across a statistic and it was painful.

You ready for it? 75% of the time we will spend

with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12.

What that means is that Jennifer and I are officially navigating

the remaining 25% that we have with our boys.

Just take a moment and feel the weight of this.

Raise your hand if you have a kid who's over the age of 1275%

of the time you have with them is gone.

So how should you and I live with this reality in mind?

I want to welcome those of you joining at all of our different

campuses, those of you watching online inside.

And a special shout out to those of you who are new here.

And please, please, please before you leave today at all of

our locations, swing by the New Here booth in our lobby because

we would love to connect with you today.

We are in week 3 of A5 week sermon series and I need you to

hear me so clearly the next two weeks, not this one.

This one's going to be depressing.

Turn your neighbor and say depressing.

The next two weeks are the most important sermons of the series.

One of my favorite preachers, Tyler McKenzie, will be back

with us and he's going to help you unpack and implement listen

to this phrase data proven principles to help you pass your

faith on to your kids. How many of your of you want

your kids to know Jesus when they get older?

If you didn't raise your hand, glad you're here.

Hang on if you want your kids to have what you have in Jesus.

Next week Tyler is going to unpack data, proven principles

to help you pass on your faith to your kids.

And then this series will be finished up by our very own

Chuck Hetzler. And his message could forever

change the spiritual temperature of your family.

And I would love to be here for these.

But I will be leading a team of people from our church on a

missionary journey of Paul through Turkey and Greece.

And I will try as much as possible to give updates and

teachings while we are there through Instagram.

And you guys know I'm kind of a boomer when it comes to social

media. I don't get it.

Forget my password, it's not my thing.

But there's an incredible team of people around me.

And if you are the kind of person who wants to see grease

from your phone and the teachings that happened there

because it's unreal, whatever that is.

Yeah, you guys know it. Now want to recap?

God designed the family to do 4 things to prepare the family for

godliness, to prepare them for future roles in the family, to

prepare them for future roles in the Kingdom, and to prepare them

for future roles in society. And God gives us two important

principles to accomplish this. The first is consistency.

Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 5 through 9.

Deuteronomy 6:5–9

You guys have heard me talk about this before.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,

with all your strength. These commandments that I give

to you today are to be on your hearts.

It's a weight that's in your heart.

Now look at the consistency. Impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the

road, when you lie down, and when you get up.

This is all the time, every time.

Tie them as symbols on your hands.

Bind them on your foreheads, write them on the door frames of

your houses and on your gates all the time, every time you and

I are to consistently be moving our family in the direction of

God. The second principle is to start

early. The first one's consistency.

The second one is we start early.

Proverbs 22 verse six start children off on the way they

should go and when they are old they will not turn from it.

That means that our consistent training and pressure should

start earlier than we think. If we are not training early,

the world will. And I've said many, many times

before, if you will not lead your family, Satan will.

There is a moment in your life it's only going to get more

depressing. So just kind of hang on for a

bit, OK? There is a moment in every

parent's life where you will tuck your kids in for the last

time. Some of you just now realized,

yeah, I think that happened like 15 years ago and I didn't know

it. There will be a time where you

will carry your kids upstairs for the last time.

There will be a moment where you will pick them up for the last

time, never to be picked up again.

Remember when you brought him home from the hospital and

you're just holding it all? My goodness, I don't ever.

I don't want to put him down. And then you're like this, this

fool needs to start walking this, please.

You got to. And then you put him down, and

then you pick them up, and you put them down, and you pick them

up and you put them down, and you pick them up and you put

them down. And then there's a day where you

put them down and you never pick them up again.

So this Christmas, after all of our Christmas Eve services,

after all of the presents, Jennifer and I, we picked our

boys up for the last time. We should have done it sooner.

OK, I was picking they're, they're they, they have my DNA.

There's a lot of genetic coding in there.

There's some mass and I had a bad back and I picked them up

and they outweighed my wife and she picked them up.

But we gave our boys their last uppie.

And it was a feat. We had to, you know, we had to

breathe, you know, and it was the last one.

We gave him a really special gift and we cast a really big

vision over their life and then we told them this is it.

And when your feet hit the ground, your formal training for

manhood begins. Training requires standards and

responsibility. It means that they need to start

carrying and feeling the weight themselves.

There is an appropriate weight for every age.

There were things we were training before this moment, but

it became very formal after that.

And hear me, the weight your kid should carry is heavier than you

probably think. As they train for life with

Jesus, life outside the family, life inside their future family,

life in society, weight must be applied.

For instance, if your child is going to be a future spouse,

what kind of gift do you want to give them?

So if you think about your son's going to marry a girl, what kind

of gift do you want to give your future daughter-in-law?

If your daughter is eventually going to get married to a man,

what kind of gift do you want her to be to her future husband?

If your kids are eventually going to have kids, what kind of

gift do you want them to be to their grandchildren?

If they are going to serve their family, what skills are they

going to need to provide? For instance, can your kid cook?

Manage money, get up on their own in the morning, take care of

their laundry, you name it. Can you imagine marrying

somebody who can't cook, can't earn, can't handle money, can't

do laundry, can't get up, can't clean?

You know what that is? That's a rough marriage.

So what, you're like, oh, so they're like 26 and we should

start dialing stuff up? Yeah, we should start getting

after it. And hear me, chances are, let me

just let you feel the weight of this for a second.

Chances are one of the areas where you are experiencing pain

and frustration in your marriage is either a lack of training in

their home growing up or in your home growing up.

Training is tough and hard. Good it should be.

Can I just tell you something? One of the single greatest

predictors of success is resilience.

The ability to bounce back in the face of adversity.

The ability to overcome challenges in life.

You and I will never rise to the occasion.

We will sink to our level of training.

So as you are raising your kids, if you are always doing things

for them, if you are always the one who's navigating the pain,

you are robbing your kids of resilience, which is the number

one predictor of success. Do you want your kids to be

successful? Yes.

How do I make my kids successful, not just grow them

up in the Lord? I need to build in them

resilience. You cannot get resilience unless

you go through pain and adversity.

And so if you have not trained your kids, they will not be

equipped to overcome the challenges of life.

However, something special happens when you have this.

Wherever you start training your kid, the muscles work in other

environments. So if you can train them to

overcome adversity and challenges in this area, when

they find themselves in a new experience, the muscles

transfer. They go hold on a second.

I've been in a spot like this before and I can use these

muscles, and if you've trained them enough, those muscles have

been stronger. For instance, let me just do it

this way. Which was harder for you, your

first flat tire or your second flat tire?

Everybody goes on the learning curve on their first flat tire.

But when you get the second flat tire, you're like, I've been

here before right? Now, where do you want your kids

to have their first flat tire? On the highway down to Saint

Louis to watch a concert that they couldn't afford that you

paid for? Or do you want them to have

their first flat tire in your driveway?

I think you would all choose the driveway.

The problem is there's not a lot of flat tires in the driveway,

so you got to make one. So while your kids are eating

Fruity Pebbles, you go, hey, as soon as you finish the Fruity

Pebbles, we got to go change a flat tire.

Well, that the tires not flat, it's going to be.

And if you can't imagine it being flat, we'll put a knife

through it. We are, we are changing a flat

tire now. How bad and stressful is

changing a flat tire for the first time in your driveway

after Fruity Pebbles? But when you are on Hwy. 61 and

semis or and they're calling you, is that where you want them

to experience flat tire numero Uno?

The same applies to money. Cooking a meal, going on a date,

making a compelling pitch, learning how to close a sale,

how to vision cast, how to navigate challenges.

You get the opportunity to train them in the driveway and then

they can use those muscles in all of the other environments.

And if you do everything for your kids, you rob them of the

resilience and the developmental opportunities for their muscles

to grow, to become the person their future family is going to

need. That means if you don't do this,

all of their problems in life will experience on the side of

the road. In order to do this, you need

clear standards in your home, clear expectations in your home,

and most of our standards, most of them should be about

character more than competency. Here's what I mean.

You can try hard and still get a bad grade.

You can have a bad day, but you can't be disrespectful.

You can be frustrated, but you cannot be mean.

You can be upset, but you can't be violent.

When our kids were young that we, we got them good and upset

and they went to slam a door. And you know, like when a little

kid slams the door and it takes forever to actually close and

it's kind of cute. We were kind of laughing about

it in our home, but I hopped on it pretty quick and Jennifer was

giving me good coaching. She's like, listen, they're just

young and silly. And I'm like, I hear that 100%.

She's right. But I said the problem is I want

them to get out of that frame of reference on slamming doors now

because if we don't fix it and they become my size and they

slam doors, there's not a door frame left.

I want them to learn how to control their anger as young as

possible so that way when they get older, their family does not

live in fear. My job is to get that out of

them. You can be upset.

You can't be violent. And when the standard is not

met, we must discipline. And discipline should make a

memory not create trauma, but it should make a memory a memory

that says I don't ever want to do that again.

And if your discipline did not make that memory, you either

need to change your discipline or dial up your discipline,

because discipline is formative and listen to me and discipline

is a sign of love. Proverbs chapter 3, verses 11

Proverbs 3:11–12

through 12. My son, do not despise the

Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the

Lord disciplines those he loves as a father, the Son he delights

in. There is no more loving being

than God, and God disciplines. If you do not discipline your

kids, you do not love your kids, you do not delight in your kids,

you are not being the gift that God wanted you to be for your

kids. To be honest, when I was working

on the sermon, I got very nervous about whether or not I

was going to include this section in the sermon on on one

side, I was very nervous about how some of you would handle it

because some of you would take this as a license to go home to

your kids and give them a life that they simply just do not

deserve. That you would take the

discipline part, but because you are not a person who is governed

by the Spirit, you would do incredible harm to your kids.

So I was very nervous about that.

And there's this other part of me that was going There's an

awful lot of people who attend our church where I'm assuming

Satan has taken a ton of ground and you have walked away from

disciplining your kids and trusting God in this area.

When kids are not disciplined in such a way to change their

behavior, they don't end up behaving.

And right now, our nation is in a crisis.

Teachers don't want to teach anymore.

They want to get away from our kids because our kids do not

behave and our kids do not behave because they have not

been disciplined. Can I?

I'm going to sound like an 80 year old for a second, so I'm

putting on, OK, you can do whatever you need to do with

that. Our kids are out of control.

And can I just tell you, we did not have this problem when I was

growing up. I'm 43, I'm 43.

I went to a private Christian School from kindergarten through

6th grade. And guess what our school had

was full of well behaved kids. You want to know why?

Because our principal, his name was Billa Baglan.

He went by BA before they knew what that meant and he had a

wooden paddle on his wall with holes drilled through it to

minimize air resistance. And our school had very simple

rules. You get your name on the board.

When you act stupid you get a check mark by it.

You don't get to go to recess. If you get a second check mark,

you go to B as office where he will pull the paddle off the

wall and live out his initials. I don't know if they ever used

it. I have no clue.

We were just all terrified of it.

They may have only spanked one kid and he limped back to class

and then everybody else just took care of it.

Listen, man, Miss Recess. But after that, lock it down.

We can't. We can't be losing people out

here in these streets. We got to get to math class.

I've never won a math class so bad in my life.

I need a reset. I needed to go from Monday to

Tuesday. I got to get right with Jesus

right now. And the reason why that happened

is because there was a this trust that my parents had given

them to make sure that I was raised right.

And there was a trust that they gave to my parents that my

parents were making sure that I understood that there were

consequences attached to my behavior.

And you might be going, Clayton, did you just advocate spanking?

I did. And the only reason I'm doing

that is because we're big believers in the Bible.

Proverbs chapter 13, verse 24. Watch this.

Proverbs 13:24

Whoever spares the rod hates their children, But the one who

loves their children is careful to discipline them.

I am not saying that everything that your kid does deserves A

spanking. What I'm saying is there should

be discipline in your home. It should make a memory so that

the behavior changes. And if the behavior does not

change, you either need to change the discipline or

increase the intensity. It says careful, careful.

Listen to me. Do not make a bad day for your

kids. Not in anger, not in rage, not

abusive, not mean spirited corrective.

One of the most unloving things that you can do as a parent is

to not discipline your kids. Train your kids have standards

for your kids because you are bound to love them, but their

future employer is not. And as you are training your

kids. Watch your words.

Proverbs 1821 The tongue has the power of life and death, and

those who love it will eat its fruit.

You can give life to your kids, life to your spouse with your

words, and you can also give death to your wife and death to

your kids with the words that you use.

It would not be right for me to preach the sermon and not tell

you that there have been times in my home where the words that

have come out of my mouth have created death.

I have said things that will not be erased from their memory

until heaven. I know people who are in

ministry who are still carrying the weight of words that were

spoken over them by somebody that they don't even respect

anymore, but they still carry the weight of their words.

Your words have power, power of life and death.

And Satan is so crafty here. For instance, when you say you

are proud of your kid for the result instead of the effort,

you rewire their brain. When you say I'm so proud of you

for winning instead of I'm proud of you for the effort in the

game, you're rewiring them. Be happy for them that they won.

Rejoice with those who rejoice. I'm happy that you won, but I'm

proud of who you were in the game.

If your pride is attached to the results, your pride has been

surrendered to external factors. If your pride is tied to

character, it will shape and guide your children.

This works in your marriage as well.

There are times when things are going to get out of hand and

things are not going right in are going in the right direction

in your home and our approach typically when things are not

right at home to try and solve it usually only makes matters

worse. Your family steps on up a

landmine or they find themselves covered in land mines.

And the way we try to navigate it only sets them all off.

So what I'm going to do for just a second is I'm going to give

Clayton's pro tips to navigating communication in your marriage.

So fellas, look right here, OK? I'm going to teach you how to

talk to women. Ready.

OK, this is solid gold. Take this home, men.

When you are frustrated in your home, pro tip cast vision, defer

time, use your feelings. Let me give you an example.

Hey Boo, Jennifer's here. Hey Boo, I want to find a better

way to handle this in the future.

I'd love to talk about it. Is there a time later where we

can discuss this? Because you were kind of

stepping on my air hose. When you fill in the blank with

whatever she did or whatever happened, and it hurts and it

creates a distance between us that I don't want.

And I'd really like your help. Now, as you heard that you can

use any combination of those things to get into a

conversation that needs to happen in your home without

assigning a whole bunch of blame, without getting super

upset. You're saying, listen, I want to

be close to you. I need your help.

I don't want to feel this anymore.

I don't want this to keep happening.

There's times in Jennifer Knight's house I'm like, hey,

this is getting a little out of whack.

Let's sit down and let's have a look a little.

How are we going to get through? And we'll talk it out.

But if you do all of your redirection in the anger, in the

moment, in the frustration, how well is that gone for you?

But if you can go, all right, we're going to endure the pain

of right now. And then I'm going to circle

back and go, hey, I want to figure out a better way to do

this in the future. Fellas.

If you were to talk to the people at work the way you talk

to your wife and your kids, you would get fired.

Why on earth are you giving the people you love the most your

very worst? Satan is so good at setting

landmines, so stop stepping on them men.

Maybe one of the things we need to start doing is praying.

The prayer that David prayed in Psalm 141, verse three.

Set a guard over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my

lips. I don't want to speak death into

my wife and my family anymore. You are obligated to fix the

problem in your home, but there's a way to go about fixing

the problem that is godly instead of satanic.

Ladies, look right here, I'm going to teach you how to talk

to men. Fellas, you're going to

appreciate this. Women, when you get ready to

address this with your husband. Use your feelings, but not in

the way you think, OK? Your men and your boys in your

home crave respect. They love to win.

They love it. And they love it when you make

things really clear and really obvious.

When you say I've told you 10 times, no, you haven't.

All ten of those times, none of them was clear and obvious.

Women feel the weight of this. You will never criticize or

complain your husband into being the man that you want him to be.

Your criticism and your complaining does not work.

The good news is you can encourage and compliment him

into being that man. In other words, in your home,

your husband will run from criticism and he will run into

encouragement. So if your husband is running

from you, it's because you're too critical.

If he is running to you, it's because you're being

encouraging. I've said this before, men are

dogs. They just want to wag their tail

and get a good pet on the head. Watch.

Got a little. Got your husband, your little

golden dummy. He's yours.

He just. Oh, my goodness.

And if you go stop pooping in the yard, stop pooping in the

driveway. He's like, I I don't know what

you want me to do. I love it when you poop by the

tree. I love it.

Your dog's like, OK, this is so good.

I get a big pet when I poop by the tree.

Yeah. Your man's a dog.

Don't tell him what you don't want him to do nearly as much as

you appreciate the things that you want him to do over and over

and over again. So ladies, before the day is

over, try this in your home. Trust me.

Walk up to your husband big eyed, give him a big hug, turn

your head sideways and put your ear right in his chest.

And while you're there, this is what you're going to say.

I love it when you fill in the blank about whatever The thing

is that you want him to do over and over and over again in your

home. I love it when you then smack

him on the butt. OK?

And then I'm what? I'm done.

I love it when you then walk away.

He will turn he you've got all of his attention.

And as you're walking away, just over your shoulder, I'm so glad

I married you. His whole world just went right

now men are going to preach. Clayton, preach.

Someone's getting saved today. I just got a text message.

We need some in nine months. We're going to need more people

in our early childhood ministries.

Be thinking now about how to start serving.

Listen to me. I'm telling you ladies, ladies,

this is the way he craves it. You just made him feel 10 feet

tall. He hasn't done anything yet, but

he wants to do that thing over and over and over again.

Let me just recap ladies, give him a big hug.

Ear right on the chest. I love it when you.

I'm so glad I married you. Your man goes.

I want to feel that over and over and over and over again.

You've made it very clear and very simple.

Now listen to me. I don't want you to think for a

second that your men are simple men.

Nor are they afraid of hardship. Not at all.

Your husband will go golf on his day off and he's horrible at

golf. He will shoot a 125.

He'll be all over that course. But there is one shot that he

had that felt pure and he wants to feel that over and over and

over again. So he will buy launch monitors,

he will go and get lessons, he will get new clubs.

He will do whatever it takes just to feel that your husband,

who's a hunter, listen to me. They will go hunting.

They will work on a food plot. They will figure out which way

the wind's going. They will wait for the perfect

shot. They'll buy tons of decoys and

put them everywhere. They will track it for hundreds

of yards with almost no blood trail.

And the reason they don't do that for you is because they

have no idea what works for you. 0 They have no clue.

They know that when they hit a good golf shot, they know that

there is a way to get to that. But when it comes to you, you

have not made it clear and simple this works.

So listen to me ladies. If your husband in six months is

not the man you are hoping him to be, I am blaming you ladies

because I just gave you the key to unlock them.

They don't fight for you because they have no idea what works.

But you start celebrating the things you want in your marriage

and you will get it over and over and over again.

Jennifer went on, I've shared this before.

She went away for something, I don't remember what.

And I was like, what's something I could do for her?

And I straightened up like a small nook in our house.

She came home probably buying more stuff than we'd agreed on.

And she set it all down. And she goes, I oh, I love it

when you do stuff like that. You know what happened to me?

This is my life now. This is so now anytime Jennifer

leaves the house, Oh, do we stop at nooks?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Last time she left, kid you not,

we did all the laundry, all the dishes, all the countertops, all

the bathrooms, all the floors. And we change sheets and

whatever goes on top of a bed, pillows, pillowcases.

We did all of those, too. And my boys don't want my wife

to leave anymore because when she leaves, we work.

We did the shower. We got the scrubber.

I was calling her. Oh, yeah, I was calling her.

I was calling her. Hey, baby, when you clean the

shower, what's the stuff you like us to use?

She's like, are you cleaning the shower?

Oh, yeah, I'm cleaning the shower.

You want to know why she said I love it when you and I went.

That's a target on the wall I can hit now.

She could pit out the house if she wanted, go shopping, spend

money, come home to a clean house because you know what she

did to me? That's what she did and just

pull me into the boat. I'm telling you, ladies, it

works. Make it simple.

But it's not through criticism. When Jennifer says please pick

up your stuff, please pick up your stuff, please pick up your

stuff. None of that works.

None of it. It doesn't even register in my

brain. When she goes, oh, I love it

when the countertops cleared off.

Oh, OK, figure that out in my boys.

Not too long ago, one of my boys messed up in the neighborhood

and he said something he shouldn't have said.

So we found out about it. So we hopped in the car as a

family, we went and we went to one of the houses.

He went in the house, the parents were there, the kids

were there, and my son had to stand there and look at all of

them in the eye and apologize. He had to say I'm sorry for what

I said, I'm sorry for the witness that I was, I'm sorry

for the friend that I was. Then we got back in the car and

we drove to the other house in the neighborhood and he got out

in front of all of his friends that were over at that house and

he said, I'm sorry for what I said, I'm sorry for my witness,

and I'm sorry for the kind of friend that I was.

Can I tell you what was happening inside of me?

Tears were running down my face and we got out of the car and

I'm crying and I look at him and I go.

I am so proud of you. He went from having his worst

day to having his best day because I showed him that

matters to me. I spoke his language.

I love it when you are a man of God.

When you are a man of God, you will fall, but you will get back

up. You will own it, not run from

it. You will apologize for it, not

excuse it. I sent a clear message into his

brain. I love it.

I love it when you repent. I love it when you ask for

forgiveness. He owned his failure like a man.

Now watch at the four things that God designed the family to

be. Prepare the family for

godliness. Prepare them for future roles in

the family, prepare them for future roles in the Kingdom of

God, and prepare them for future roles in society.

How did we do that day? Part of being a godly man is

owning your sin. I want him to be a husband, a

father, and a friend who apologizes for his shortcomings.

I want him to be a man who recognizes that his behavior

reflects on the Kingdom of God. I want him to be a man who knows

and understands what it means to fail and what it means to get up

and chart a path forward. Crossing family.

If you don't set standards in your home, the world will.

If you don't set the standard, Satan will.

If you don't train your family, the Devil will.

If you don't figure out how to communicate and control your

tongue, you will give your family death when you could have

given them life. If you don't try, you can't

train. If you don't have standards, you

can't train. If you don't have discipline,

you can't train. If you don't do it consistently,

you can't train. If you can't communicate to

them. And look at our Heavenly Father

as an example. His standards are high, So high

He disciplines and He convicts because He loves us.

He is consistently showing us a better way and providing us with

the power of the Holy Spirit to help us be who we never could

have been on our own. He is consistently communicating

to us through His Word and through His Spirit life.

And the good news is that God gives us the power to turn

things around in an instant. Hear me.

Crossing family. You can begin to redirect your

family towards God today. You can begin to change the

spiritual temperature in your marriage today.

You can change the spiritual direction of your family, and

you can change it by God's help today.

There's a story in the Bible of a man named Lazarus.

He was one of Jesus's friends and he died.

Jesus was long and coming to the family, and by the time he got

there, he had been dead for four days.

And Jesus said roll the stone away.

And his family was like, no, he stinks, He's been dead, he's

dead. Well, there's no point.

Jesus says roll the stone away. And they did.

And Jesus said Lazarus come forth.

And guess what Lazarus did? He got up from death and walked

out of the grave. Hear me, Your parenting is not

as dead as Lazarus was. Your marriage is not as dead as

Lazarus was. Roll the stone away.

You might be going to Clayton. I don't have a lot to give.

I haven't been following Jesus for a very long time, and I was

raised by wolves. I didn't wasn't raised by people

who love the Lord. And when it comes time for the

marriage and parenting, there's just not a lot of tools in my

tool belt. I don't have a lot to give to

this marriage. I don't have a lot to give to

this parenting. Well just so you know, the

little boy who gave Jesus 5 loaves and two fish didn't have

a lot to give, but he gave what he had to Jesus and by the time

Jesus was done he had more leftovers after feeding 5000

than when he started with. You might be going Clayton.

My situation is dark and demonic.

Yeah, but it is not as dark and demonic as the man who had a

legion of demons living in him. But hear me, when he saw Jesus,

he ran to the feet of Jesus, and when Jesus was done with him, he

was dressed and in his right mind.

So crossing family, the issue is not whether or not Jesus can

change your family, but will you do the work that he has called

you to do? Will you roll away the stone?

Will you give him the fish? And will you run and fall at the

feet of Jesus? We're moving to a time of

decision. To those of you in here, I wrote

this series in love, and I know that there are some of you who

you've never started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus

Christ. And I just want to be winsome

for a second. Galatians chapter 5 talks about

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

the fruit of the spirit. Lovejoy, peace, patience,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and

self-control. And real quick, what kind of

score would you give yourself on those?

And before you get too prideful, what score would your family

give you? And the truth is, you can't have

the fullest expression of the fruit of the Spirit until you

have the Spirit. And you cannot have the Spirit

until you are in Christ. And so today you might be going,

I want a godly direction from my family, but you can't lead your

family in a godly direction until God is in you.

And so if you were here today and you've never started an

intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ, one of the

greatest gifts you can give your family, it's for you to become

the person that God created you to become in him.

And so just a few moments will the people around you stand and

sing, and some of them come to the steps and pray.

I want to encourage you to take a step not just on behalf of

you, but on behalf of those who are coming after you for you to

get right with God. And in just a second, I want you

to walk right over there underneath that screen next to

the baptistry, and talk to somebody about how you need to

start the relationship that's long overdue.

Don't waste this moment to the rest of you, to those of you who

have been following Jesus for a while, where is your family

struggling? Name it and chart a path to

redeem it. And what I encourage you to do

is the demoniac. He ran to the feet of Jesus.

If you want a picture for what it means to be at the feet of

Jesus, it's on your knees in prayer.

It's what I want to encourage you to do is to get down on your

knees and pray over your family, pray over your marriage.

I don't know if this is right or not, but on Thursday what

frustrated me the most is that these steps were dominated by

women, not the men. And I don't know if there's

enough there for me to say much more than that.

But I just got to be honest with you.

In my house, I don't ever want my wife to beat me to the feet

of Jesus. And if I'm going to change the

spiritual temperature in my home, if I'm going to be the

person that God wants me to be from my home, I got to go first.

Don't miss this opportunity. Would you stand with me?

So we can pray, God, There's a work that needs to be done, but

it's impossible for us to do it on our own.

So, God, show us where we need to repent.

Show us where we need to get right.

Show us where we need to surrender.

Show us where we need to take ground.

Use this moment, Lord, to rewrite things for our family.

Your name I pray. Amen.