A Father's Guide to Lasting Legacy

Listen, this weekend is sort of a buffer weekend between what we had in the series of tipping point.

Did you enjoy that from Pastor Jimmy Evans?

I know it was some new teaching for many.

It was a great, great series.

And then we're heading into a series called Through Horizon, which you've seen us advertise.

We'll have four ladies come and bring incredible messages over the next five weeks.

So I really encourage you to come bring your friends and invite some people.

So this weekend we have kind of a buffer between those two things, and we're extremely excited about it.

But I we found out as we advertised this weekend that some people did not realize that we were father-son.

And uh which which kind of made this picture a little bit awkward.

If you didn't know we were father-son, you might be going, what kind of message is going on this weekend?

But uh, and I really don't understand what the problem is, why you wouldn't have known we're father-son.

I mean, I get it that we we part our hair in a different way, uh, our style's a little bit different, but anyway, no, that uh that picture really kind of epitomizes uh our relationship, uh what we as a family seek to do.

We love each other, we're not afraid to show that and be affectionate, and uh we know that God, our Heavenly Father, loves us in that same way.

And so we want to uh impart that a little bit to you today.

Uh so anyway, I know you already kind of gave him an applause, but would you do that again?

This is my father, Tom Lane.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

And I I do want to wish all of our fathers a happy Father's Day from my heart to yours as well.

What a great day.

But you know, as we celebrate Father's Day today, we really need to start by celebrating the ultimate Father.

That's God Himself, our Heavenly Father, and this is what Isaiah 64 says.

Uh, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, you are our potter, we are the work of your hands.

It was through our Heavenly Father and His gift of His Son Jesus Christ that you and I were made sons and daughters.

And so can we just pause a minute on this Father's Day and give an ultimate thanks to the ultimate Father, our Heavenly Father?

Let's just give him an applause.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Father, for your great love for us.

You're worthy.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, Lord.

Well, we we have four children, uh, two boys and two girls, and they're staggered, not by any choice of ours, but the way God delivered them to us, boy, girl, boy, girl.

So Todd is our oldest son, and uh we have a whole boatload of blessed grandchildren, and uh I just let me show you the uh the lane contingent here.

Fifteen grandchildren, uh four kids, and their spouses.

We we uh this is this is gonna be a great Father's Day for me and grandfather's day.

Uh the role of being, oh, by the way, if you turn if you brought your Bibles, turn to Psalm 139 and Exodus chapter number 20.

Uh the title of our message this weekend is A Father's Guide to Lasting Legacy.

The role of being a father is one of the greatest assignments that God can give any person.

Uh, yet often we are not prepared for the assignment that's been given.

We haven't been mentored, we haven't been trained or uh developed.

And so here's the question I want to ask us today.

Uh how or what were the influences that affected your perception as a father?

So I want to ask every campus that question.

North Fort Worth, if you're in Overflow, here's the question for you.

What were the influences that affected your view of fatherhood, and were they good influences?

The most important thing that any one of us can do is to be to take on the role or be given the assignment of a father.

Now, my dad was a great dad.

He was very present and active in my life.

He he observed the things that were taking place in my life.

He knew and could speak into them, so that he guided me by his values and enabled me to develop the character that he wanted by observing the things that were taking place in my life.

He did that because his dad had done that for him.

His dad was engaged in his life and imparted godly values that helped develop the character and the man that he became.

And so when I became a father, that's what I sought to do with my kids.

I wanted to develop them, to impart to them the involvement of my life with their life so that I could influence them.

In fact, I really wanted three things.

I wanted to be a young father so that I could be play an active role in my children's life.

I wanted to be an engaged father so that my the people that observed us and observed the way that we related would kind of envy or desire to have a family like we had, to have a relationship like I had with my children.

And then the third thing was I wanted to raise my children to love God the way that I love them.

Once I became a father, I realized that the greatest responsibility that any father has is to reflect God to his children.

The um, in fact, it's kind of an overwhelming thought if if you really grab a hold of the concept.

How can I uh represent God to my children?

The the reality is we do.

We create an and an image of God in them by the way that we relate to them, and that image carries with them all the way through their life.

You're you you may be here today, and if your dad was distracted or disinterested, or the way that your dad related to you probably has impacted the way that you see God uh relating to you.

The image we uh we create of God in our children has multi-generational impact.

To their children, to their grandchildren, it's a significant role.

And the Bible tells us that God has his hand in the whole creation process.

In other words, birth is not a human decision, it's something that God has his hands in.

And so if you're in Psalm 139, look at verse 13.

And let's read there.

You formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

Clearly, with God involved in the creative process, we we establish a partnership with God.

We're not just parenting on our own, but God enables us to do that.

Parenting, as Pastor Dave said earlier when he was praying over us.

And the inheritance we give our children is way more than the material things that we accumulate in life and seek to pass on to them.

It's a spiritual inheritance that we leave and give to our children.

A father's role and work is to teach his children about God and to pass on to them the vibrant relationship that he has so that they can live for him and serve him as he has.

So, reflecting on uh how these experiences in his life shaped his life, you know, he said he desired to be a young dad, and he was that.

I was born when he was 21.

So, what that meant was when I was a teenager, he was in his mid-30s.

And so it kind of he desired to be this cool dad and have this kind of thing, be a young dad.

Well, I tell you, as a teenager, it wasn't very cool when your dad beat you in basketball.

Okay, with his left hand.

Uh so he accomplished that in his own life, kind of this cool, relevant dad, and so forth as a teenager.

But I will say this, and I want to encourage you, parents.

For him, no matter what his desire was or how cool he was, it never distracted from his number one priority, which was to encourage a vibrant relationship with the Lord in each of us.

And, you know, in a culture where from parenting, there's there's even parental peer pressure from other parents or families to kind of make the cushioning of life in this world easy for our kids.

And I want to encourage you as a parent, don't let the enemy distract you from your ultimate goal, which is to point your kids to Christ.

Let that be your ultimate goal and not something else to make this life easier, but point them to Christ.

So we know on a day like this, it can be a day that for some is disappointing.

It brings memories of failure.

Maybe even today you're going, well, I'm a single parent or I'm a grandparent.

How does this apply to me?

Or maybe you're a person who has some regret on the past of how parent have you how you've parented in the past.

I want to tell you today that the issue of establishing legacy can begin today.

It can begin right now.

And it's not something that you have to have any concern about related to the past.

You can wash that in the blood of Jesus in the past and you can move forward.

Starting today, let it be something where you can establish that going forward.

In Acts 26, Paul is recounting his conversion experience.

And in verse 18, he's saying what Jesus said to him that he was going to be doing.

And he said this: Jesus said, You're going to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

Our Christian faith is built on the idea of inheritance.

And so we have an opportunity, if we're looking to God, for Him to give us direction, to have an inheritance that's a positive one.

But if we don't see God in that light, and we don't allow Him to use us, there is still an inheritance that happens.

There are generational transfers that happen.

The Bible calls them iniquities.

Those are behavioral tendencies that might include things like abuse or addictions or things like that that might be negative as they go through generations.

So generational transfer does happen.

We want it to be one that is full of blessing from generation to generation.

Exodus 20, if you have your mark there, if you look at Exodus 20, verses 5 and 6, it says this for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:5

Proverbs 22, verse 1 says this a good name is to be treasured over riches.

Proverbs 22:1

Where do we put our focus and our desire when we're talking about generational transfer?

Do we want riches?

Do we want a good name?

A good name is to be treasured over riches.

And I want to encourage you with this: you are passing values on to your onto your next generation, whether you know it or not.

You can either be intentional about it or unintentional, but you are passing something on.

Maybe it's through the words you say or the values that govern your life.

My dad had a statement for us, and it was this you're either an influence or you're being influenced.

And that statement for us became a guiding value for us that we embraced as children, all my siblings did, and now we're trying to impart to the next generation.

So look for those things, those opportunities where you can see the generational transfer in a positive light.

So there's some things that we want to talk about as it relates to developing and leaving a legacy for your for your kids.

What one of us in here today, if we were presented with the opportunity to invest in something that would pay dividends to a thousand generations, well who wouldn't take that as an investment opportunity?

But this is what we're talking about today.

And so here's the first thing we want to say: a father leads the way.

A father leads the way.

You can only pass on to your kids what you have given, what you own or live for yourself.

This is the principle of transference.

It's the idea and the reason, it's the thing that motivated me, has motivated me all these years to contend for the disciplines of faith, to establish a relationship with God and work hard to develop a personal relationship with Him so that I had a foundation from which I could pass to my children.

And so this is what Mark chapter 12 and verse 30 says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Mark 12 · chapter mention

I'm contending in the daily things of my life to love God with all those things.

All my heart, my mind, my soul, and my strength.

And so it works out like this.

The reason that I work to have a personal quiet time amidst a busy schedule and demands that happened upon my life as an adult is so that when my kids say, uh, Dad, I don't have time to pursue God and spend time with him, I got to uh study for a final, or I've got uh early morning basketball or volleyball practice.

I can't do that.

Then I can say to them, I understand those kind of demands.

And let me tell you what you have to do if you're gonna prioritize God in your life.

Uh what about church involvement and attendance?

You know, we we didn't we didn't want religiousness, we wanted a relationship with God, and the reflection of our relationship with God was to meet with the body of Christ in worship services on a regular basis and find a place of living our faith out in service to other people.

And we wanted to model that for our kids and we wanted to develop that uh in them.

What about prayer?

We wanted to model for our kids an unashamed conversation with God.

That meant we had to push by some embarrassment at times when you're when you're out in a public place and maybe at a restaurant, you're gonna bow your head to uh pray for your meal.

And uh we again didn't want it to be religious, but we wanted it to be a reflection of our faith so that our kids knew it's you don't have to be embarrassed to pray.

You you can establish a relationship with God and live it out in everyday life.

Or character qualities like honesty or faithfulness or uh respect for authority.

I had to watch the things that I said and the attitudes I had when I got pulled over for speeding because there were eyes on me to watch how I related and talked after I got the ticket and I drove off to the authority that had just stopped me and uh loved on me a little bit.

So these are the things a father leads the way.

Um so raise your hand in here if you don't think, or at all the campuses, if you if you think your life is not busy.

Yeah, no, there's not a single hand that's gonna go up.

Everyone's life is busy.

So what can happen is we can allow that to become an excuse to maybe not be intentional in how we parent.

And and I want to put this thought in your mind, the idea of seizing the moment.

You know, it's very rare that you're gonna get forecasted for you a teaching moment with your child.

You've got to look for the opportunity to seize the moment.

It's not gonna be forecasted for you, it's just gonna happen in a moment, and you've got to be ready to do it.

It might be on the drive to the store or on the way to school.

It might be sitting at dinner at Chick-fil-A, if you can put your electronics down and see if a conversation can happen.

Or, parents with young kids, see if you relate to this scenario.

It's been a long day.

You put the kids down to bed, you said your goodnight prayers and everything, you're closing the door, goodnight, good night, good night, good night.

And then just as the door's right here, they say, Dad, why do bad things happen to good people?

You know that that gotcha question that they're gonna get right at the end of the day, and you're like, What?

Where is this coming from?

Well, think about this.

Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 6 and 7 says this, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

Deuteronomy 6:6

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

I love how it says, when you lie down.

I think it's given a picture that at any point in time these things can happen.

And sometimes those moments of laying down in bed, you know how it is, your mind's racing.

Well, that happens when you're a kid too.

And all of a sudden, the the issues of life, however small they might be to a five-year-old or a ten-year-old, they come up when you lie down.

And so look for those opportunities to seize that moment.

And three three quick things to talk about in being an intentional parent.

Okay, the first thing you have to do is you have to make the child embrace the behavior.

You have to make the child embrace the behavior.

Now, child could be the actual age, it could be youth, it might be maturity.

So it might be an older child, but it might be an issue of maturity.

But you have to make him embrace it.

It may be things like, hey, you're going to read your Bible, I want you to go read your Bible, or we are going to church as a family.

That's what we do.

For me, that's what our family did.

We were made to go to church.

And as a teenager, I'll tell you had a great impact on me.

Uh, Jimmy Evans was my pastor growing up.

And so as a teenager, what we just heard during the tipping point series, I remember he was talking about end times messages when I was a teenager.

And you know, I know we came out of it in a lot of, wow, there's a lot of revel uh revelatory stuff that came out of that message, and you might have found yourself going, what do I take away from this?

Let me tell you something that I took away as a teenager, listening to end times teaching.

First thing was I wanted to get into the word.

It engaged my interest in what does the Bible have to say?

This is amazing.

And the second thing it did is it made me want to raise the standard of how I live my life.

As a teenager, I thought about this.

I thought, you know, if Jesus is coming back tomorrow, I can't be messing around.

I gotta be, I gotta raise the standard of how I live my life.

And so I want to encourage you, no matter what you came away with, uh, all sorts of different revelation, let that be something that you can take away.

And for me, that happened because we were made to go to church.

So sometimes you have to make the child embrace the behavior.

The second thing is you have to model the behavior in your own life.

So you've got to make the child, then you gotta model the behavior in your own life.

You know, if you've been around here any period of time, you've probably seen something we've talked about, put it in articles, that my dad has this quiet time at McDonald's.

At McDonald's.

And so here's what I learned growing up.

It was like God was at McDonald's.

I mean, this is apparently the connection I made, okay?

But you you what I realized, and he would talk about it, he'd say, you know, and parents, you can understand this.

All right, and I found myself in that situation as a parent.

You get up to have your quiet time, what happens?

It's that one time the kid wakes up early, and you get distracted, you can't do it, or you go and it's been a long day, you want to have your quiet time, but before you know it, and you're asleep.

And these are the same things he had happen.

So, what he did for him, he said, I've got to find a way where I can get away.

And that's the answer for him.

He had to get away, and he found that happening at McDonald's.

So, for you, listen, if that's McDonald's can be the place, I bet you can find some place where you can model the behavior in your own life.

The other thing for me is that my grandfather passed away a couple years ago, but even to the end of his last days, he was talking to me about what God was teaching him.

What God was showing him and revealing to him.

And here's what that taught me.

He was modeling for me that discipleship, you don't ever arrive.

You're constantly developing, God is constantly teaching you something.

And what I loved is that he expressed that to me.

How many times as a parent, you feel like, well, I can't show my kids that I'm being taught something because I'm supposed to know everything.

No, if you can model the behavior of learning, I'm always learning, then that's something you can model for your kids.

And then the third thing is mentor your child so the behavior sticks.

So you gotta make them do it, then you gotta model it for them, then you gotta mentor them so the behavior sticks.

We ask our kids to read the Bible.

We want to talk about that.

We engage in questions.

This last series probably gave lots of opportunity for conversation where you as a family could get together and talk about what the word says.

My son recently, we had he because we make him read the Bible, he came back, he had read Matthew 25 talking about the parable of the talents and what the kingdom of God is like.

And he had some very interesting questions talking about really this kingdom of God is like this, but boy, that God cast out the wicked person who didn't allow his talents to grow.

And so that made a great conversation for us to happen, but engage them with that curiosity and listen, parents, don't be afraid to say, that's a great question, I don't know.

Let's find that out together.

Sometimes in a generation that's coming up that's full of skepticism and and just kind of really not sure about things, when you're authentic and transparent, I think that's the opportunity where really you you embrace and bring your child in to the process of learning, and that's the way you can do when it comes to mentoring.

This lifestyle of seizing the moment isn't to make them replicate what we did.

So, you know, I I wanted Todd to have a quiet time, but he didn't have to have it at McDonald's, that's just what worked for me.

So he's raised it to a whole new level, and now he has his quiet time at Starbucks.

And believe it or not, God shows up at Starbucks.

So the the principles get the concepts get imparted, and then you celebrate the way that it is lived out.

Uh, here's the second thing that we want to say: a father trains for success.

Training is a process, it incorporates discipline in a constructive manner to help understand that if you if you don't behavior has consequences.

And what we always told our kids is you don't ever outgrow discipline.

You even as an adult, we know today that if we don't do the right things, discipline comes our way.

It may not be in the form that we got it when we were younger, but God being a loving, well, here, this is this is what it says, Proverbs 3 and verse 11.

My son, do not Despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof.

For the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights.

We see discipline as a means of training, not because we're frustrated, not because we're angry, but because you haven't obeyed.

Disobedience brings discipline.

And training has to involve a consistent response to the disobedience.

Training monitors controlling influences in our children's lives.

So if they go and play with a friend, no matter what age they were, if they went to hang out with buddies or girlfriends, and they came home sporting an attitude, critical, defiant, we started looking at what the influences were in their life and restricting those influences.

Because Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, bad company corrupts good morals.

Don't be deceived by this.

You cannot think, well, I'm gonna instruct them, they're gonna take my instruction, and no influence will undo what I've done.

I don't care if it's teachers, I don't care if it's uh other adults or it's friends.

We monitored uh their controlling influences.

And then training recognizes that attitude is the precursor for behavior.

So no rolling of eyes, no grunting when we ask you to do something.

We're gonna do things with a happy heart, and we're gonna learn how to do them with a happy heart because we know that your attitude is gonna impact your behavior.

Yeah, so I may have a few examples about that.

Um but but one of the main ones is this.

Okay, so parents, imagine this.

I'm eight years old, and I say to my parents, I only have eight more years until I can drive.

I'm halfway there.

I turn nine, mom and dad only have seven more years until I can drive.

I turn ten, mom and dad only six more years.

You see this pattern.

I could not wait till I could drive.

Okay.

The week of my 16th birthday.

About to go stay with a friend, and we're leaving my house, and uh my mom says, Hey, I want you guys to be home at 11.

I said, Well, we're going to his house.

You know, it's like that's his turf, you know, his parents will decide when we'll be home.

She said, No, I want you guys to be home at 11.

I said, Okay, mom.

You know, off I went, intending to do whatever I wanted to do.

So we go, and my friend could drive, so we went out and went to some friends' house.

We got back to his house at midnight.

We walk in the house, and his dad says, uh, hey, I thought you guys were supposed to be home at 11.

We said, Well, you never told us when to be home.

And uh he said, Well, Todd's mom said to be home at 11.

They teamed up on us.

So he said, You need to call your mom and she wants to talk to us.

I called and I said, Mom, is this a big deal?

She said, When you wake up in the morning, you come back home, we've got to talk about this.

So got up the next morning and went home.

Dad was waiting there in the driveway.

Kind of like that father with a prodigal son coming home.

Like if he did not throw a party for me, though.

And so he said, I understand you didn't get home in time last night.

I said, Well, Dad, come on, is it really that big a deal?

He said, Well, let's go inside and talk about it.

So we went and he said, It is a big deal.

It's a big deal because you're about to turn 16 and we need to trust you.

How can we trust you if we tell you to do something when you're out of our sight and you don't do it?

This issue of trust is huge.

And so, this week, when you turn 16, you can go and get your license, but you can't drive for two weeks.

Eight years I have been waiting for this day.

You understand what I'm saying?

But the point was made, parents, it needed to happen.

I needed to have that issue of trust drilled into me.

So training is essential, and it can sometimes be hard.

I'm sorry.

We'll have the party today.

My father wounds are healed.

Okay.

You know, it when it has to be consistent for it for it to have its impact of training.

And as parents, it's so tempting to let something go and excuse it because they haven't had their nap or because there's they were over at a friend's house or something like that.

And this consistent application is what brings the training.

The end of the story for Todd is he never missed a curfew ever again.

He he it it settled into his life.

He embraced what took place, even though it was difficult.

And maybe you your dad said to you, like my dad said to me, uh, this is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.

And you go, right?

No way.

But it's true.

As parents, we we see our kids' hearts and we it it tempts us to be inconsistent.

But we have to be consistent if we're gonna train for success.

Here's the third thing: a father guides toward purpose and success.

Jeremiah 29, 11 says this.

I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Plans for welfare, not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

My dad modeled this for me.

My dad, uh, the most consistent thing that my dad said to me is, Tom, you're gonna be a success at whatever you do.

And it wasn't just when I was, uh I'd done something that really was kind of over the top and he was proud.

He would say these things to me even when I seemingly come into a failed situation, and he would he would orient my perspective in that situation to say, you've learned something out of this that you will apply and needed to learn for the future benefit of you, and you're gonna be a success at whatever you do.

And then he would say to me, You don't have to do what I do.

God has a purpose and a plan for your life, and we're gonna figure that out.

Uh, a father introduces God's purpose into his children's life.

That's so it's so critically important.

God, we're partnering with him, and God has a plan for their life, and so we're gonna introduce his purpose.

Then we're gonna help them discover what it is.

That's that's a process of experimentation because children they have many interests and and maybe sometimes even varied abilities, and so we let them experiment, we encourage them, and then we help guide them to say, you know, this, you're better at this, and we don't make them to do what we want them to do.

We discover with God what their unique qualities and characteristics are that help determine his plan for their life.

We provide the protective rails of support as they're figuring out what God wants.

And this is what Proverbs 19, 21 says.

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

I know if I can help my children find what God's plan and purpose is for their life, it's the best thing that could happen.

Fathering is an empowering process that helps our children discover God's plan for their life and then celebrates as they implement it.

You know, guiding isn't easy because oftentimes it requires you to take the active part of trying to hear from the Lord for your child.

And uh for me, this happened when I was 14.

My parents, uh, I was in school and in public education, and my parents decided, you know, we want him to get a Christian worldview.

And and so at 14 they decided to put put me in a missions trip.

It wasn't with our church, it was with a nonprofit.

I didn't know anybody who was going, and it was two months.

And so they at 14 they drove me to Florida, dropped me off at a boot camp that prepared us, and then uh the process took us to Ireland.

I was in Ireland for two months, stayed in tents, and uh we built a youth facility there.

That's the purpose of why we were there.

But two months, and now this was in the days there were, of course, no cell phones, uh, but with this missions organization, you weren't allowed to call home.

And uh so I was 14 years old, and uh imagine what a 14-year-old does in terms of writing.

I think I wrote five letters.

So I'm gone for two months.

My parents really hadn't had no idea what was going on.

Uh, and but it was a fantastic experience for me.

And their objective was to give them a worldview outside of Amarillo.

That's what was wanting to happen.

So I went, I came back upon my return.

I don't know what they expected really.

I sort of think they thought I'd come back and be like Jesus teaching in the temple, you know, at 12.

I'd be imparting incredible wisdom at the age of 14.

But you know what?

I came back and I was still a 14-year-old boy and did some stupid stuff, and I'm sure uh left them questioning, wait a second, we felt sure that God had this for him.

How was this the result?

I mean, it wasn't like I was doing bad stuff, but you know, I was a kid.

Here's what happened.

About 10 years later, uh, at the age of 24, my wife and I got an opportunity to go work overseas for two years, a two-year contract.

I don't know if my perspective, if it had never been broadened outside of the world I knew, if I would have ever been open to that.

And we made a move.

We moved overseas for two years.

It was an incredible experience, what shaped my life even to this day.

We had our first child over there.

And now, 17 years later, what I learned during that time was what I'm still even doing today.

My encouragement to you, parents, you might be planting seeds today, and if you're looking for that immediate return, it might not be there.

But trust fully in the law of sowing and reaping.

God said he's not going to be mocked.

What a man sows, he will reap.

God's not going to be mocked in your child's life or in your life.

You keep sowing those seeds, and though you might not see it months later, maybe even a year later, for me it was almost 10 years later.

But it's played an effect through my entire life.

So be encouraged, parents.

Keep planning.

Don't grow weary.

Don't grow weary in doing good.

Because if you don't lose heart, you will see the result of all that sowing in your child's life.

I want to invite you at all campuses to bow your heads and close your eyes.

And just take a moment, like we do every weekend, and we ask the Holy Spirit, God, what are you saying to me today?

And I want to ask you to take inventory right now.

What is God saying to you today?

You know, this might be a message that stirred up some things because of maybe your own experiences with a dad, or maybe your own experiences.

Maybe God's radically transformed your life and you have regret in the past.

I don't know what the situation is that you are in.

But here's what I know today is God's a loving father, and He wants to shape each of our lives, and He can use you even now, no matter where you are, whatever situation.

Maybe I'm talking to a single mom today.

All of this applies to you today.

Maybe I'm talking to a grandparent.

Maybe I'm talking to a person who hasn't even begun to think about legacy yet.

You can start today.

This is for everyone.

So, what is the Holy Spirit saying to you?

We're gonna take a moment here in just a second.

We're gonna all stand at every campus.

We're gonna invite the altar team to come and you have an opportunity to come for prayer.

I want to encourage you, come.

Whatever your need is, maybe it doesn't even have anything to do with this message.

If you're new to Gateway Church, you don't have to be a member here to come down for prayer.

Let us minister to you if that's a need that you have today.

So you come, we're gonna sing a worship song, and you have an opportunity to come for prayer.

God, I thank you for your word.

I thank you, Jesus, of what you brought to save our lives, the grace that you cover our lives.

Thank you, God, that you are a loving Heavenly Father.

You are gracious and compassionate, you're slow to anger, you're rich in love.

We honor you today.

Thank you for being our Heavenly Father in Jesus' name.

Amen.