Sunday Mornings | Love One Another

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Our desire is that today's message will be fresh and encouraging to you.

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Aren't you glad you're in church this morning?

Huh?

Come on.

I actually believe that the eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the whole earth, just looking for a place for his spirit to move and land.

Come on.

Right here.

Everybody say right here.

We're here, Lord, right here.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

I want to thank Pastor Brody for giving me an opportunity to share this morning.

I'm so blessed to see Brody take the church and run with it.

I'm proud of you, Brody.

You need to pray for him.

Yes, we do.

You need to pray for him.

If you're not satisfied with something, then you're not doing it.

Amen.

It's not his job.

His job is to get you to do it.

For some reason I know that.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

God is so good.

So good.

So good to see Sean in Val in church.

It's morning.

Yeah.

Sean Lalonde.

Praise the Lord.

We're so blessed, buddy.

We love you.

Yeah, come on.

We're uh it's a February is an amazing month.

There's a lot of things crammed into the shortest month of the year.

Right?

And uh Brody has chosen to put February as family month and to have us share on the family, which I think is so appropriate because God's heart is for family.

Amen.

How many of you are sons and daughters of the Most High God?

How many of you call him Father?

How many of you belong to his family this morning?

Amen.

Yeah.

Tomorrow we get a family holiday, right?

Hopefully we'll do something with family.

Everybody say family.

I love my family.

Amen.

Amen.

February is also heart month.

Heart awareness month.

Love the big heart that Val is wearing, right?

Celebrate and acknowledge that we need healthy hearts.

Amen.

I want to launch this morning out of a scripture, just as a springboard into our message.

It's uh Psalm 68, 4 to 6.

So, Father, we just thank you for your word.

We also thank you for your Holy Spirit that multiplies your word, that adds to it, that speaks to us and makes it real in our own hearts.

And we thank you, Holy Spirit, that you want to reveal the ways of the Father and the ways of Jesus.

And we're very grateful.

So we welcome you.

We thank you for your word today.

Sing to God, sing praises to his name.

Extol him who rides on the clouds.

I believe that that's what we were doing this morning.

Worshiping Him by His name, Yah.

Yah is short for Jehovah.

And they use the word Yah in the Hebrew because it's it's vehement, it's passionate.

Yah is his passionate, you know, not just majesty, but he's passionate in what he does.

By his name Yah and rejoice before him.

A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy habitation.

God sets the solitary in families.

He brings out those who are bound into prosperity.

Everybody say, into prosperity.

But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

I believe that God is incredibly passionate about family.

And when I look at the church here, we are the family of God.

We're privileged.

We're recipients, like I was praying earlier.

We're recipients of his presence, of his stuff.

And we're hesitant to give things away to people that aren't family.

Like you it you do, we do, and that's what we're called to do, but it's easier to give something to family when you know that uh you're entrusting them with something that's yours and they carry your heart.

Right?

And so I just believe that God is just waiting to pour out his stuff in the middle of families that carry his heart.

And we're you're a chosen church.

You're chosen, you're chosen by him, you're recipients of his goodness.

Family is key.

And even even in the UN, they're starting to recognize the importance of family on a global scale because the UN has millennial goals, the UN has sustainable development goals, 17 of them.

And uh they're starting to recognize that they've leaned on big business and other governments to do the to do the initiation of the sustainable goals, but they realize that it's imperative that the families actually grab a hold of this because they can actually do it out of love.

Corporation and government don't love you.

Love opens up the heart to be teachable, to receive the values.

And when you add God to that mix, the Christian values that we bring in actually is very biblical because we're going to change the world.

Come on.

So I know that United Nations is trying to do their thing, but God has United Nations in His family that are actually going to be elevated to carry out his mandate on the earth.

Come on.

However, United Nations recognizes that family is important.

There's a group called United Families International, which is a U.S.

ministry that takes up the cause of family at the UN level.

And United Families International has coined the phrase family capital.

In other words, family is an asset to the world.

The riches that are in family are incredibly valuable.

And one of the directors of Families International, United Families International, she talks about family capital as this: mothers, fathers, and their children engaging in the business of life supported by an extended and intergenerational family network, all working together to create a virtuous web that serves the economic, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of all family members, and ultimately serving communities and nations.

So they recognize that, and I'm aware that when we talk about families, that in Canada there's 28 different kinds of family models.

We have families with single moms, we have families of single dads, we have families that are in grandparents, we have same-sex families, we have all of these things that are recognized.

And I believe that the church is under pressure to talk about the ideal family because of the all of the other kinds of families that are there.

And there's this feeling that when we talk about God's imprint on the ideal family, that we're exclusive to the other families.

That's not true.

Come on.

What's true is that we live in a fallen and broken world and we're less than ideal.

But it's imperative that we still hold up an ideal in the middle of our culture that actually is beneficial, healthy, and constructive to our world.

Come on.

So if you're sitting here today and I'm talking about family and you say, My family is broken, welcome to the real world.

But that doesn't mean that we ought not to talk about what God can do to heal a family and bring it back into the construct of his original design.

Renowned Russian development psychologist Yuri Braun Fenbrenner, which is a mouthful, summarized his research stating the family is the most powerful and most humane and by far the most economical system known for building competence and character.

We have discovered in the history of our nation that government has failed in building character in family through a number of initiatives that have transpired in our history, i.e., residential homes.

You can't impose character and love like you can that comes from a mother and a father.

Just saying.

Jennifer Roback Morris is the founder of the Ruth Institute, she's a doctor, and she said the family provides a crucial and irreplaceable social function.

Inside a family, helpless babies are transformed from self-centered bundles of impulses, desires, and emotions to fully socialized adults.

The family teaches trust, cooperation, and self-restraint.

The family is uniquely situated to teach these skills because people instill these qualities in their children as a side effect of loving them.

Without loving families, no society can govern itself.

Incredible.

So we know that the family is an integral part of the success of a nation, okay, and of a of a community.

God talks about family.

God loves family.

We've said that this morning.

You know, I was gonna launch out of Genesis my favorite book, which is my wheelhouse, but somebody took all of my scriptures, and uh, I don't know who that person is, but they they uh were roaming around in my wheelhouse, so I had to figure something out.

No, just kidding.

Bless you, broad.

That just goes to show that I listened to the messages, right?

God talks about family.

In Abraham, you know, he says in Genesis 12, in you all the families, it doesn't say individuals, it says families of the earth shall be blessed.

Because family, and Pastor Davis talked about this in our history in the past, family is actually a reflection of the heart of the Godhead.

There's nothing that God does independently of himself and of the Godhead.

Jesus doesn't act independently of the Father, the Holy Spirit doesn't act independently of Jesus.

They collaborate and they work together so that they look and act and talk and feel as one.

Right?

And so when we say our vows in family, it's about coming together and becoming one.

One voice, one sound, one name, one representation.

So family is a representation of the Godhead.

And in you, in Abraham, all of the families of the earth will be blessed.

Psalm 22, verse 27 says, All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.

Psalms 22:27

When we go to the end of the book in Revelation, we see that there's people standing a sea before the Lord.

Every tongue, every tribe, every family of the earth is standing there together, worshiping the Lord.

There's nothing like coming to church and seeing a family in church.

Come on.

I love it.

There's families in this church that sit together and occupy seats and are such a blessing.

Jesus alludes to family even in Matthew 1, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

You know, in family, we're always looking for.

Maybe somewhere in my background there was this awesome preacher, and so I want to kind of connect myself to him and you know get some inspiration and say, you know, I'm an awesome preacher because my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, way back in Spain or Holland or something like that, preached with wooden shoes on and, you know, whatever, right?

We we're looking for some connection in our past.

Right?

Jesus had a connection when, you know, we don't know him just as the son of Mary and Joseph.

He's introduced in Scripture as the son of Abraham, the son of David.

Right?

Because there's promise in Abraham, there's promise in David, and Jesus was the fulfillment of that.

And he found himself in the scripture.

He believed in his DNA, he believed where he came from, and those things were inspirations in his life as he walked out his journey with God.

Family is important.

Family is God's highest order.

You know, I might not be able to go see the queen, but the queen's son can go in and see the queen anytime.

Business people need to set up appointments.

Other kings and queens need to set up appointments, but the family has access.

Come on.

You don't need an appointment with the creator of the universe.

You have right of access with boldness.

Approach him, walk into his throne room, and say, hey, dad.

Come on.

And he's there, he's willing, he wants to shape us and shift us.

Family is God's highest order.

We're sons and daughters.

We're taught by him and his word.

We have inheritance of being in his family.

Our identity comes through being in Christ and being in his family.

What an awesome privilege.

Both Scripture and culture recognize the strength that comes through the role of a mother and a father in family.

I recognize the strengths that I have from my parents, but I also recognize the strength that I get from my heavenly father.

Come on.

It's my heavenly father that's made me bold and courageous.

It's his Holy Spirit that's put his word in my heart.

Pew Research, Pew is a research company down in the States.

Pew is not an acronym, it's a family name, actually.

And Pew Research, they did a survey in the U.S., I couldn't find one in Canada.

But it finds that Americans expect dads to be more of a moral teacher and an emotional comforter than a breadwinner or a disciplinarian.

About six in ten, 58%, say it's extremely important for a father to provide values and morals to his children.

Roughly half, 52%, say that it's important, extremely important for a dad to provide emotional support.

Only 47% say it's extremely important for a dad to provide discipline.

And about 41% say it's extremely important for dad to be the breadwinner or to be the income earner in a family.

Yet in families we struggle so much because our priority often is in making the bread, bringing in the dough.

But we're in a generation that needs to hear the sound of their father's voice in the family.

They need to be taught the morals and values that come down from mom and dad as mom and dad have been touched by God and are in his word.

It's through this connection in the spirit that God is downloading into our heart.

He puts vision in you, mom and dad, for your family and for your kids.

You're the greatest instruction, but you're the instructor, but you're also the greatest inspiration.

And just as Adam was commanded to name animals, I believe that we call children into significance by what we call them.

Wonderful.

By the way, the the research that Pugh did found the same results for mums.

So if you're if you're a single mom and you're wondering, it's very similar.

That children do not care as much about how much you make as they care about your values and how much you speak to them and instruct them and help them and care about their emotional needs.

So family month is February, but also February is heart month.

And we have Valentine's Day coming up, and all the girls are like, yay, do you remember when, I don't know, when I was in school, I used to get Valentine cards from about 30 kids.

I was hoping most of them were girls, but some of them were even guys.

Maybe that's something that spawned a negative reaction in the world.

I don't know.

But I'd always throw the guy ones away and look at these girls and go, you really believe this?

How many of you remember those days when you get the Valentine cards and you know get a whole pile?

Man, if we if I handed out 30 Valentine cards today, my wife would spank me.

The power of the heart.

We have variety show of hearts this month.

We have Scotty's Tournament of Hearts.

We have Valentine's Day.

You know, the heart is an incredibly important muscle and organ that brings life to our body.

Right?

It's about the size of your fist.

So if you've got a little fist, you got a little heart.

The heart beats on average 80 beats a minute, 4,800 times per hour and over 115,000 times per day.

You can imagine how many heartbeats there are if you're 80 years old.

It's an incredible little machine that's operating inside of our chest.

Right?

One part of the heart, the right side of the heart, pumps blood to the lungs.

And in the lungs, the blood is filled with oxygen and nutrients, and the other side of the body pumps that blood to the rest of your body.

So your body is healthy because of the heart.

Right?

If the heart was not pumping or if the heart was restricted, your body wouldn't receive the oxygen and nutrients into the cells of your body.

Right?

So the body does not function at the level or at the rate it ought to in its design because the heart is impeded or something is going on.

If your heart's not working, the toxins and wastes is not cleansed from your body.

In order to maintain a good heart, you have to feed it right.

You have to feed your body well.

Come on, no more cheeseburgers and exercise.

Activity is healthy for the heart.

It gets your heart rate going, and your heart rate, when it goes, it actually stimulates and feeds the rest of the body, which makes it feel invigorated.

So in other words, the rest of your body is dependent on the proper function of our heart.

Heart disease affects a proper function.

Approximately 2.4 million Canadian adults and is the second leading cause of death in Canada.

Fascinating.

The heart is found in Scripture all over the place.

The Bible talks about our heart, but it's not talking about the same heart as the heart that the medical community talks about.

But the Bible talks about the heart because it's our core.

It feels, it senses, it has convictions.

It's inside of us.

It's deep within us.

Psalms 119, verse 11 says, Your heart I have, your word I have hidden in my heart that I may not sin against you.

Psalms 119:11

We take the word of God and we put it deep into our core and we we allow it to be the food that our heart feeds on so that it puts energy and oxygen into the rest of our body.

Proverbs 3.5 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

So somewhere in the heart, we have to bypass sometimes the thinking of the brain.

And how many of you said, I had to go with my heart?

Right?

Because deep down inside you know that in spite of what your head is telling you, your heart is telling you something different.

And you you follow through with that.

Proverbs 4, 23 says, Keep your heart, keep your heart, put a guard around your heart, keep it with all diligence, for out of it springs the issues of life.

I believe that every family has a heart.

And I believe that in our heart, as people and as families, we make decisions from the heart.

Most of your life-changing decisions are what you believe in your heart will shift you.

Come on.

What you truly believe inside of here will propel you one way or restrain you another.

Not just what's going on up here, because this often doubts.

But just as Canadians, approximately 2.4 million Canadians are struggling with heart disease, I believe that we as members of the family have heartache and heartbreak.

I believe that when we talk about family and moms and dads and the ideal intention for God's family, there's many of us that are hurting inside the heart.

And our heart has been broken, our heart is not functioning at its peak level.

Perhaps it's because of things that have been said from your mom or from your dad, or perhaps there's words that have hurt us.

And you've allowed them to go from the ears down into the heart, and the heart has shifted and changed, and where you had a trusting, believing heart, all of a sudden there's walls and there's barriers and there's things that are going on that are clouding our ability to reach into family heart to heart.

Maybe we haven't felt cared for or valuable, or the actions of something in your family, or someone in your family has demonstrated that you're not worth fighting for or contending for.

You know, you have to you have to divide up the paycheck, you have to, you got twice as many rents to pay, twice as many bills to pay, twice as many, and everything is harder.

God's there to heal, God's there to help, God's there to help us.

But we know that strength comes in a healthy family.

We live in a broken world, and out of innocence or culture or whatever it may be, that in our brokenness, and maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally, we've caused pain.

It's interesting when you look at the life of Jabez in 1 Chronicles chapter 4, verse 9 to 10.

1 Chronicles 4:9–10

We we a lot of us are familiar with the prayer of Jabez.

Now, Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, everybody say, because.

So this is why he called his name Jabez, because I bore him in pain.

And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.

And I love this peace.

It says, So God granted him what he requested.

Jabez was born and he caused his mother pain.

So Jabez lived under this stigma.

Every time somebody said Jabez, that he was a pain giver, his name actually means to grieve or sorrow.

So he lived under this stigma that he once caused pain and that he was a person that brought pain into the world.

And he appealed to God.

He got a revelation of God's healing ability.

He saw the majesty and the greatness of God and he appealed to him and said, enlarge my territory, make me a blessing, change my name, change who I am to make me an influencer in this world and cause me not to cause pain anymore.

And I believe as a church, moms and dads, that we have walked through our life causing pain and hurt people in our past.

And there's that the enemy wants to use that to hold you down.

When God wants to invade that space and change your name, change your story, change your history, that you're no longer pain-bearers, you're no longer shame-bearers, but you're people that bring the healing and the anointing, the prophetic word to your family, that you become the people that God has called you to be.

He can change a nation in a day, he can change the course of a river, he can change your history so that it no longer affects you as a victim, but you become victorious, and you see the glory and the power of God flow through your family to call us into who we're supposed to be.

The prayer of Jabez.

What a beautiful, beautiful piece of scripture.

So I want to leave you with a few tools in your toolbox today.

I know that there's a thousand things we could say to help and equip the family.

But because I'm talking about broken hearts and brokenness, I believe that there's some powerful things that we need to take a look at.

Number one, it says in John 1.17 that Jesus came, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

The law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

One of the first things that I believe we need to put in our toolbox is adorn ourselves with grace and truth.

Be willing to be vulnerable, be willing, but speak the truth.

Talk to somebody about how you really feel.

Be open and talk about how you're really hurt.

But if you talk about it with grace in your heart, you're talking about it with the idea that you want restoration and healing.

If we talk about the truth with judgment and our right in our heart, there's no opportunity for healing because we hold the person captive to what they did or what we think they did.

So God wants to adorn us with grace and with truth.

Right?

Grace is the incredible power of God that wants to bring healing and restoration to a home and to a family.

And so he walked in it.

The law, we know that the law, that the minute we talk about the law, it separates, it judges, it holds people back unless there's solution.

And in order there to be solution, there has to be healing, there has to be forgiveness, there has to be other things that come into play called love, mercy, grace, these wonderful words that God opens up the heavens and he pours them into us.

They're invisible, and it scares you when you have to go do it.

It scares you when the truth wants to come out of you.

But if you don't let it come out of you, you're walking around with unresolved conflict.

Unresolved conflict adds stress, it adds pain, it adds frustration, it adds anxiety, you no longer sleep, your heart is no longer alive, you're not working properly.

Come on.

It's kind of like you go to the dryer and you didn't clean out the filter, and all that fuzzy stuff is in there, and so you're putting stress on the motor.

Right?

We've got to clean out the fuzzy stuff, and we've got to clean out the filter on the dryer to allow it to work properly so the engine isn't burning out.

Come on.

Grace and truth.

Second thing that I think we should have in our toolbox is that God gives grace to the humble.

It's amazing because we say that the mercy and grace of God is unconditional, but I believe that there's things that impede or hold back is grace.

Grace is the power of God to be all that you're called to be and to do all that you're called to do.

Grace is a fantastic, it's an empowering word.

It's a powerful presence that comes down from God and it and it's our right, it's our inheritance, but it only comes through humility.

Humility is the ability to listen to somebody else without getting defensive.

Humility is the ability to hear what somebody's saying, to not consider yourself higher than them, or to think that you're right.

It doesn't matter if you're right.

Come on.

It matters that you care for somebody first and have a conversation, and if you can get to that point, most of the right will leave the room because everybody wants to make it right.

Hello.

Humility is Christ adorned himself with humility.

He humbled himself and came in the form of a man.

I just can't, it blows my mind that God would be interested in a weak, vulnerable sinner like us.

It blows my mind that he would actually be vehement in love.

Extravagant in love.

And that's what he poured out so that we could come to him broken with our garbage.

And he says, I'm big enough.

I'm big enough.

Amen.

The last tool I want to leave in your toolbox this morning is bring your family to God.

Where is God in your family?

Where is God in your home?

Where is God in your kids?

Bring your family to God.

Deuteronomy 6 says, and 5-9 says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and these words which I command you today shall be in your head.

No.

Shall be in your heart.

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

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Come on.

God has got so much goodness that He doesn't want you to selfishly keep it for yourself.

He wants you to share it with your children.

Amen.

I was talking to a friend of mine, James and Marika and Josie and the girls over there.

Sarah.

I was talking to James and he said, Ed, James, why don't you come up here?

He said to me, Ed, he says, I'm just so excited about what God is doing in my family.

He says, I actually think that God is bringing revival to my family.

I want you to just hear a short testimony.

So good morning, everybody.

Uh I'm James.

Um this is the story of revival in my family.

Uh in 2013, uh I heard the uh message of the gospel of grace, the unmerited, undeserved favor of God, and it touched my heart changed me.

And uh shortly thereafter I I experienced the presence of God and uh it changed me again.

And uh I started seeking God and and the word started renewing my mind.

Um I was so touched by it, I wanted to share this, of course, with my family, and I wanted them to be partakers of what I was experiencing.

So I uh I can't do this out of the power of my own strength.

So I started seeking the Lord and I read out Feed My Lamb.

Feed my lamb.

So I started in the evenings when the kids uh had their bedtime, I would uh lie down with them, I would start uh hearing what they're saying to me, I started praying with them.

Uh with our youngest, I uh we got rid of all the uh fairy tales and we took out or we bought a children's Bible.

We started reading the Bible every day, started praying, and the uh presence of God came in and started answering our prayers.

Um I had received uh the baptism of the Spirit, the gift of tongues, so our prayers become very effective, very powerful.

Uh when our kids had anything, if they had fears or dreams, we'd come against them.

Uh we would experience uh from healing uh like instantaneous a lot of times.

It was an incredible move.

And uh one day my daughter went to visit grandpa, and they like to go on walks and go for a happy meal or an ice cream.

And uh he said to her, Listen, I'm really sorry, um I've got a really bad headache, I gotta lie down.

I can't, I'm not going anywhere.

So she walked over and laid hands on him and started praying, and instantly he's healed.

So they get up and go on their their thing.

So my message uh for you today is encouragement.

Um I've heard Pastor Brody say, This is real, uh, the gospel is real.

Uh God will change your heart, he will change the hearts of your children, of your family, uh, he will bring revival into your house.

My kids today come to me with with uh scriptures and with gospel songs to share with me.

And uh we have He'll change your families, everyone.

Hallelujah.

Thank you, James.

Hallelujah.

We're here to tell you that God loves families.

We also know that a lot of families are broken.

So we're here to tell you that God wants to heal your family.

He wants to bring life to your family, he wants to give you a new story, another story that actually brings honor and glory to his name.

He doesn't leave you alone, he doesn't say you've got to figure this out on your own.

He puts you in a community, we're here to help.

He's given us his word and he's here to help.

He's given us his Holy Spirit and He's here to help.

It's incredibly powerful if you trust.

If you make yourself vulnerable and trust, He will help you.

If you're sitting here this morning, you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

His family is not full yet.

There's a lot of room at the table, there's a lot of room in his family.

He made you.

And he's got the goods.

He will fill up your life with so much goodness, you will never be the same and you will not regret it.

So if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, please, would you just bow your heads with me?

Would you just repeat this after me?

Father, we thank you for your goodness.

We thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ.

In my ignorance, I deserve to die in my sin.

And that's why we have death in the world.

In your great love, you chose to die for me.

So that I don't have to die spiritually, and I can be alive forevermore.

Let your goodness flow into my home and into my life and change me.

And I thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you're here this morning and you're experienced a broken family, or if you just want prayer, there'll be people here to pray for you after the service.

We want to see you walk out of this place with new faith, new hope, and we want to see a new story.

Amen.