Sunday Mornings | February Is For Family

Thank you for listening to the Kelowna Christian Center Podcast.

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

For more information on KCC and how to connect, visit us at KCC.net.

We are the uh physical community.

On days like this, we we see traction on our online uh participation, and so we want to welcome all those who are visiting us from the from the coziness of their own home, whether they're trapped in their driveways or whatever it may be.

But uh we're glad to have you guys in the house.

This is awesome.

It's good to have everyone here.

My name is uh Brody Callman.

If you're new with us today, I'm one of the pastors here at Kelowna Christian Center.

And uh we're just glad to have everyone in the house worshiping God.

I'll tell you, this is a good time.

It's a good time of your week.

It's a good time to just reflect on what God has done for us.

This isn't about what God has done for someone else, this is what God has done for me.

Has God done something for you?

Amen.

He's set us free.

There's a new start, and each of us can experience this freedom because of what Jesus has done.

And uh it's great.

And you know what?

The best churches are are those that just assume that uh every Sunday is someone's first Sunday, and so we just want to let you know that we welcome you here today.

Um we're so grateful that you're here.

If this is your first time at this church, uh we hope you feel comfortable.

We hope you sense the presence of God and the community that of love that is in this place.

Um we know that it's more than just about showing up to church on Sunday.

Uh people who just show up don't come through the snow like we do today.

They don't get up early, look out the window, get look surprised.

I actually wasn't expecting snow.

And I have to stop that because someone asked me today if I could have a talk with a big guy upstairs and just ask him to do something.

I said, I don't know.

I it doesn't work like that around here.

I've tried.

But uh I know that there is uh there is something about showing up.

There's something about show we do more than just show up just to occupy a seat.

We show up because God is here.

And we're in the presence of two or more, their God is present among us.

And God, the spirit, scripture says that God actually inhabits the praise of his people.

So I'll have you know that God is present in KCC this morning.

Amen.

So I give you permission to like, you know, if if you hear something that I'm saying that you agree with, go ahead and and uh, you know, just agree.

Tell me that that's good, Brody.

So good.

That's good.

What you're saying is truth.

Um but this is we believe that this is a place when we get in the presence of God, lives are changed.

And this is the place where your your business can take a turn, your lives can take a turn, your families can take a turn, personally, your your perspectives can turn, uh, habits can be broken, improper lifestyle and living that's dangerous or or damaging can be stopped and turned around, and and you're given that propelling uh force from the Holy Spirit to help you do what's right.

Grace is here for all of us today.

This is a good place to be.

We don't just show up and occupy a seat, we we draw from God, we draw from Him.

All of you are out there like sponges.

You're just soaking it in, soaking, soaking in what God has for me because He has something for me today.

Turn to your neighbor, tell them God has something for me today.

God wants to bless me today.

God wants to do something for us today.

Um, to this is the start of February, and we just want to say here at KCC that February is for family.

We're gonna be focusing on family this month.

It's a family-focused month, and uh we're just shining a spotlight on our church.

We've been listening to our body.

Um, it's really important just to listen to the body and listen to your own body, but listen to what God is doing in the church.

And in listening to the body as a team, we've we've uh decided to actually launch two uh specific initiatives in the month of February that we're encouraging everyone to be a part of.

And they're called our grow days.

These are days where we're just intensive days to help you as a team grow.

And we've got two a slide here that'll just show these two days, one of them being a day for parents, and this will be on uh February 13th.

It's being led by uh Darlene Unra.

And she's got a ministry in the Okanagan called True To You.

And True To You, her mission is just to empower students to make healthy relational and sexual choices.

Uh, and I'm gonna tell you here that uh for years I worked with uh students in student ministry, and I'll say that between the ages of 10 and 24 are the most at risk when making sexual choices, and parents today need to be prepared how to answer the questions that their kids are having.

And I'm even saying like the agenda for government, the agenda for different curriculums is actually like to lower that level from 10 years of age to even lower, lower, lower, kindergarten, preschool, like they're trying to push it even lower.

We need to be having the discussion with our children, with uh we need to be on the same page, and we need to be talking the same language when it comes to actually identifying relationship goals and and talking about sexuality.

And so we're gonna be uh hosting this course with her.

Um her and her husband uh have been pastors here in Kelowna, and now they're influencing a lot of different organizations, both in the private and the public sector.

And so her organization, True To You, is uh working with uh sports teams, churches, non-for-profits, uh all over, and we're just so grateful to have her.

I have a quick slide there of her uh her uh organization.

Uh check her, check up on it if you want to be a part of this.

We're encouraging parents.

Uh it's on the same night of the as a youth night, so you can bring your youth or your kid, your youth to to the church, drop them off, and uh at the same time we're gonna be hosting this event in our center.

And uh it's gonna be for parents, aunts, uncles, any grandparents, anyone who's got a voice within this generation to come and just be a part of that.

The other event we've got coming up is gonna be focused on couples, and this is interested in investing into their marriages.

How many of you are married in this room?

That's good, good.

How many of you love being married?

No, don't yeah.

If there was any hesitation, you need to come to this event.

This is for our this is to help our couples, help our marriages grow.

Do you know that if we grow in our marriages and we grow better, we all become better.

That's right.

When your marriage is thriving, it's better for me.

Because we're part of a linked network.

And when you're strong, I become stronger.

And we become better when we're strong when we're stronger together.

And so at this event, we it's gonna be an intensive.

Uh we've got um Natalie and I actually will be sharing at it because we have an awesome marriage, don't we, Natalie?

Isn't it great?

We're gonna be sharing, uh, we're gonna have a number of different speakers.

Shaigun and Shahi are gonna be there.

Uh we're gonna have table talk times, there's gonna be food, there's a registration on either the app or the website.

It's on a Saturday morning from 9 till noon.

So it's it's an it's a morning intensive.

And that allows you to have the afternoon to go for a walk and actually talk about the things we discussed.

Because we don't need to be around for that.

Um, or to go out with others, go for lunch with other couples, and just have a great afternoon.

So those are two of the events.

Another uh small group that we have starting up here in the next little wall is Carl.

And Carl, can you come on up?

I'm sorry to put you on the spot like this.

Do you have a microphone for me?

Carl and I met the other day.

I'll just take it from you, Brian.

Come on.

Okay, Brian, Brian just comes just a little ways.

He just about came to the top.

Come on up, Brian.

Uh I'm not gonna use two microphones here.

I already got one.

But Carl, I'm gonna just have him share.

He's got a real passion for uh the one of these small groups that okay, Sharon.

I'm I'm really interested in getting men, especially, but women to involved in marketplace ministry, involved in being able to minister all week long.

And uh we're gonna start it tomorrow morning at 6.45, Monday morning at 6.45.

Can you do that?

Um but we're gonna start uh a thing called Monday Church, and for nine weeks we're gonna watch a short video each week, and we'll talk about how you can change your workplace and how you can change the people that come into your workplace by bringing the kingdom of God to work.

So come and see me.

Let's give Carl a hand.

Carl is uh, yes.

Oh, Carl's me will be here at Kelona Christian Center.

So 645.

You can just in the fellowship room downstairs.

So come in the side doors, down the stairs, and uh Carl meet you there.

I think you got some breakfast for you down there, is that right?

Yeah, we can do something for them.

Earn it at 645.

Um, this morning we've got Pastor Ed at uh Lake Country at our campus in Lake Country.

He's speaking uh this week, but he'll be actually sharing next week here at KCC.

And uh I'm really excited to hear what Ed has to say on this uh topic on family.

Um the reason I'm thinking about Ed is uh he always starts his messages in the book of Genesis.

Every message you can go back in Genesis, it said this in Genesis.

He goes back to the beginning.

I'm stealing it from him already this week, so if he goes here next week, it's already taken.

I'm going back to Genesis.

I'm going back to the beginning, and this is uh usually Ed's Ed's uh wheelhouse here, but I'm really um I really want to talk to you this month and drive home this point that family is important.

Family is important.

The very first commandment that God gave to Adam was to be fruitful and multiply.

This was more than just a commandment.

People think that this is a command, but this is actually a blessing.

The first commandment was to be a blessing.

The scripture actually says, God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, govern it, rule it, take care of the earth, that this is a blessing, that family, the fruit of family should be a blessing.

Would you say blessing?

Blessing.

This was more than a commandment.

The blessing would be that Brody would have little Brody's, that Natalie would have little Natalie's, that Brody would have little Natalie's.

Like, I don't know how that works, but it's kind of the way it works, right?

I was kind of putting this in notes, going, that's strange, but it works.

That our lives together reproducing would reproduce into a next generation, and that this next generation was to be a blessing, not a burden.

As society would have us consistently uh be pressured with this idea that family is a burden.

Family is gonna be a heavy, family will be a nuisance, but the scripture says that family is a blessing to us.

Our children, that five-year-old that keeps talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, is a blessing.

My 11-year-old daughter who's up and wanting to stay up late and get involved in our conversations, she is a blessing to me.

My son who wakes up and asks, What's for breakfast, Dad?

I want pancakes and eggs and bacon, and I'm like, ugh, and I'm just thinking, can you just eat cereal for once?

Just like, I'll pour you some cheerios.

No, I want like pancakes, bacon, eggs.

I'm like, he is a blessing.

He is a blessing to me.

When they ask questions and and you pull, you pull your family around you at the table, there to be a blessing.

We're to value them, cherish them, provide a home for them, raise them.

And the process was to be in the context of family.

We could talk about all the blessings, but ultimately, family was intended to add to your life, not subtract from you.

Your family, your attachment to your family is a blessing.

The first thing that the enemy would want to do is to propagate this lie that family is a negative force to a person's lifestyle.

That family will be an anchor to your heart, an anchor to your own personal progress.

Because everyone today wants to progress.

Well, everyone that today wants to move forward, and they think that family will somehow pull them backwards.

Where the scripture intends family to push you forward.

There's so many things I've learned since becoming a dad, since becoming a husband, so that we're gonna talk about at that couple's day, but there's so many things that I've learned.

But the the idea by culture is to actually propagate this lie that family is not this blessing.

And I believe it comes straight from the one who wants to like pull back, rob, kill, steal, destroy from your life.

He's known as the father of lies, and he's trying to keep you from enjoying the benefits of this family.

Here's the statistics in Canada.

According to Stats Canada, there are, and I've got a slide there of it, there are more seniors now living in Canada than children.

It's the first time that that graph is has actually crossed.

And the proportion of young people in the country isn't changing anytime soon.

By 2031, close to one in four Canadians will be 65 years of age or older.

While the proportion of children under 15 could remain similar to the 2016 rate.

So we're getting older, but the families are slowing down.

The families are stopping.

Because this lie in this media presentation that family is going to be somehow keep you from enjoying life.

Is our nation buying into the lie?

Are we buying into a lie?

Are we looking at our children?

Are we looking at the family that we have and cherishing them and valuing them the way God intended us to cherish and value them?

Are we looking at our teenagers and thanking God each day he gave us a teenager?

Are we looking at them as gifts from God?

The Bible says that blessed is the man whose quiver is full of kids.

We stopped at three.

But I can make those three shots work, right?

It's also a reason why we should be building and supporting healthy families.

To ensure that we're building on God's structure and ultimately enabling blessing.

So fruitful, this is our uh our city's motto.

It's a part of our city's agenda, is that we become fruitful.

And families, families' result is the result, the result of being fruitful is family.

Fruitfulness and family go hand in hand.

And I'm not sure if uh, like right now, especially you look outside and it's white out there.

You look outside and the trees are are empty of fruit.

And uh, but some of my favorite times of the year are during this uh late summer fall.

When you drive through the orchards and you smell and you see the fruit in the trees.

How many of you are like that?

Like you just love looking at what this valley is able to produce.

The vineyards, the the orchards, all the gardens and the plots of land that are producing at this time.

There's a value to it.

And as a parent and part of a family unit, we have a job to believe, job to do before we enjoy the fruit.

And that's that's to make sure that we're looking at the seed.

Because we need to be fruitful before uh we uh you can only be fruitful if you are seedful.

And you're thinking and you're valuing the seed.

Your children will produce, will produce what you cultivate in them.

Your family will produce what you cultivate in the family atmosphere, in the family culture.

The culture that you cultivate will produce fruit.

We're talking about the difference between identifying the difference between fruit and the difference between seed.

In order to be fruitful, you first need to identify your seed.

The first uh and this seed should first be recognized by a parent of their child.

Like I I look at each of my children, and each of my children are different.

I've got I've got uh an 11-year-old girl, um, help me out, Natalie.

What have I got now?

I'm teasing.

A nine-year-old boy, five-year-old boy, each one of them are distinctly different.

If you say, if you say, hey guys, let's go and uh let's go and play, what do you want to do?

Each of them will have different ideas on what to do to play.

Um if you ask them what you want to eat, each of them will have different ideas on what they want to eat.

If you want to say, hey, just recreation time, do your own thing, each of them will find difference in what they want to do with their recreation time.

My daughter's favorite thing right now is building slime.

If anyone wants slime, come to our house.

I will give you buckets.

I think every one of our Tupperware containers is full of slime right now.

And her big investment this month was buying$40 worth of glue to make slime.

And I said, You're gonna make money on this, Evangeline?

Like, something's gotta happen because I'm not keeping$40 of glue in the house.

She's like, I've got plans.

I'm like, Yeah, what are these plans?

Asking me for borax and shaving cream, and I'm like, what are you building in this back room?

She's got some ideas.

And uh, but we look, I look at my daughter when she builds slime, it covers our whole table, this glute.

Like, I don't know how she does it, but she just works the slime into puts sparkles in it, pulls it apart, lifts it up, it stretches, and she just finds like she spends all her time just working this slime, and it doesn't stick to anything, and yet it's it actually feels kind of cool like to squish it around and stuff.

I can see why people like it.

But there's a something in her that I begin to see, and when I begin to see it, I just realize, man, God, you've put this seed in her for ingenuity, like design and creativity.

And what do you want to do with it?

So I'm watching her go forward in her life with slime.

And that's my job as a parent right now.

To watch slime.

Watch the way she reacts, watch what she does with it, watch how she's thinking and why she's thinking what she's thinking, so that I can help steer her so that she can produce.

Um, the scripture says this about Elisha.

That what happened with Elisha, Elisha was just a uh a farmer.

He was fulfilling his parents' vision.

He was doing what his parents told him to do.

He was plowing in the field.

The scripture says that he was there with a team of oxen in front of him and he was holding a plow.

And he was just going down one row and back up another row and going down another row and back up another row and going around in circles.

He was working this field and he was a farmer, but Elisha was not a farmer.

He wasn't intended to be around behind a plow.

He had a different calling.

And sometimes we get stuck in what people expect and we don't discover who we really are because we're living someone else's dream.

That's good.

I had to be really careful.

My grandpa was a pastor, my dad was a pastor, my uncle was a pastor, my my other grandpa on my other side was a pastor, and I was like, it was like, oh no, I already know what I'm gonna be.

But my parents and my family just decided to try and strip away everything that would uh funnel me into a position so that I could make a decision on my own and what I intended to become.

And it just so happens I became a pastor.

But I'll have you say that I made that choice.

I made that decision to move forward in that direction.

Not because of any manipulation or any coercion or pressure to actually become something that they wanted for me to become.

It was open to what God wanted to do in my life.

And so here's Elisha, he's plowing the field, he's doing what his dad wanted him to do, going around in circles, like many people in life today.

They go to work, they go to church, they go home, they go to work, they go to church, they go home, but they're not doing anything that actually significantly brings them life.

What they're intending to do, they're plowing in circles until Elisha was on this plow, and Elijah walks by him, and Elijah exposes in him something greater.

And when he was exposed to something greater, he dropped what was lesser.

And the scripture says he let go of the plow, like where he was at, he let go of the plow, he dropped the plow, and then he burnt the plow where he was.

He said, I'm not coming back to this life of holding a plow.

I've been created, I've been destined to do something greater.

And this is a hard thing to say, guys.

Because you might be looking at your life and going, I've been doing this.

What I've been doing, I've been doing because uh it was like just in my wheelhouse, but it wasn't the thing that actually was intended to bring me life.

And what you'll do is you'll put yourself in a position where you're frustrating not just yourself, but the other people around you.

When you've been called to be and to do something else.

And some of you may be thinking, well, I don't even know what that seed in me looks like.

I'm an adult, I don't even know what that seed looks like.

I'm a parent, I still don't even know what that seed looks like.

God, what are you wanting me to become?

And this is why conversations like this are so important.

That's why we need to get in small groups, that's why we need to join up with Carl's small group and actually say, Hey, help me see, help me identify the seed, because it may be that you didn't have a family or a parent or someone in your life who actually helped you identify it clearly, or maybe they had their own objective view on what you were supposed to become or what you were supposed to do, but by being in a place of community, you can actually reassess your life and say, okay, Lord, what are you what have you wanted me to become?

What do you want me to become?

And that then becomes my job isn't to help you find your seed.

My job is actually to throw fertilizer on that seed and help you grow.

Like I do with my kids.

Okay, I'm gonna steer you this way, I'm gonna position you this way, I'm gonna help you become the person that God's created you to become.

Amen?

So in this room today, we have people who can birth companies.

We have people here who are missionaries, writers, artists, draw uh those who are who love the draw uh dramatics, uh people who have given themselves, who haven't quite given themselves the permission to burn their own plow.

I'm saying you gotta take that into account.

Look at your life, assess where you're going.

For the sake of your family, look at it.

Am I doing, am I going, doing what God has created me to do?

Am I going where God has created me to go?

This is why we have family.

Inside of our family are seeds, our children, inside our children, who do we know who's in our family?

The next prime minister, teachers, doctors, laborers, creative, thinkers, world changers, all of them.

So where do we start with the family?

The first place I believe we start with family is in the area of having just a raw, determined, determined commitment.

It's the place of commitment.

Young couples, old couples, better settle two things in their day and time.

You better be committed to God, and you better be committed to your marriage and to your family.

If you want to grow forward, you're building on the building blocks of commitment, faithfulness, being faithful in the little, becoming faithful in much.

You're committed to your commitment to God is there, and your commitment to your family and to your marriage.

And if you have any looseness in your commitment to God and to your family, the enemy will move in and try and divide and conquer your family.

Uh Nehemiah, this great example in scripture, is of uh one of the characters in the scripture, Nehemiah, who was given permission by a king to come and to go back to his homeland and to rebuild Jerusalem.

And he said this.

He said, he came back to Jerusalem and there were huge gaps in the walls.

The walls were were broken down around the city, the homes were torn down.

And he says this he says, I stationed armed guards at the most vulnerable places of the walls, and I assigned people by families with their swords, lances, and bows.

And after looking things over, I stood up and I spoke to the nobles, the officials, and everyone else.

I said, Don't be afraid of the enemy, because the enemy was looking on at them and saying, Man, this is great, the city's unprotected, we can come in and we can take over, we can come in.

And they were just salivating at the thought of just running over this group of young families that were just holding on to the city.

And he said, and this is what Nehemiah told them, he says, Don't be afraid of them.

Put your minds on the master, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, fight for your sons, fight for your daughters, fight for your wife, fight for your homes.

And when you hear the trumpet call, join us there.

Our God will fight for us.

And what I'd like to tell you today is this if you fight for your family, God will fight for you.

If you fight for your family, God will fight for you.

But the point is, in those gaps in the walls and those places where you have to have to protect your homes and protect your inheritance, you need to stand with the sword and say, okay, I'm ready.

I'm ready, I'm open, I'm willing to take this fight on.

Like I'm I've got my guard up on not playing around here, and you actually just oppose the enemy that way.

The attack in the 21st century is on the home.

I don't think we need to talk about it really.

In church, I think everyone knows it.

If it's anything from abortion and the redefinition of marriage and the whole scheme of the family system is trying to be unwound.

The battle in the 21st century is on the home.

We have to understand that the values and the ideas we hold dear are worth fighting for.

The family, as we know it, every man, every woman, every child is worth fighting for.

Our homes are worth fighting for.

Our marriages, our values are worth fighting for.

Our kids are worth fighting for.

And Nehemiah said this to the enemy.

Now they're building the walls, they're trying to support this new community that they were going to live in again.

Their inheritance was there.

And as they're trying to support it, they've got the enemy on the outside looking at ways to come in.

And Nehemiah looks out at them and he says, This you will have no portion here.

You will not have get an inch, you will not gain an ounce, you will not take any occupation of this place.

There was no negotiation.

You are not going to take one of our children, you are not going to take one of our homes, you're not going to take an inch of our territory, you're not going to take away a morsel of our values and our culture.

We are holding this fort.

And there's only one way to go fight.

And that's, it's like, you gotta you gotta be crazier than they're crazy.

You gotta have more of a will than they have a will.

And I I love seeing this.

I love I love watching.

How many of you love like nature channels and you you watch like the the scariest thing in the wild in North America right now?

You if you want to talk about like mountain lions and grizzly bears and all these things, the scariest thing in the wild right now is uh a mother moose.

A mother moose will run you over.

If you get in between the mother and the calf, you just they will bowl over trees.

It will sound like a locomotive coming through the bush.

It is one of the scariest things I know because I've been in between that.

And I remember I was watching the trees, I couldn't really see what was in there.

Um, but I was just looking with my binoculars, and we were hunting at the time, and uh, all I saw were like legs.

I was like, oh, those are I thought they were trees because the the brush came up quite high and I couldn't tell.

And I couldn't see, I was looking in my binoculars, all of a sudden my whole field of scope changed, and all I saw was this moose come crashing out of the bush, and it made so much noise.

I just I made my way back to the truck so quick.

I think I left my dad just standing there.

Brody, look at that! Would you look at that?

And I was gone.

By the time he put his glasses down and looked over, I was gone.

Because it it was scary.

Uh, a like a cow moose will take on a train, an actual train like on the track, and stand on the track and look like it will it will take it on because they know the value of their family.

That's the intensity, that's the tenacity that we need to have for our families.

The city does not belong to you, our homes do not belong to you.

And it says the God of heaven, he will help us and prosper us, and we're committed to our family.

So God says if you fight for your family, fight for your brothers, fight for your sisters, fight for your daughter, fight for your wife, fight for your homes, then God will fight for you.

So I'm not afraid to raise children in this culture.

I have absolutely no fear.

Raising children in this culture does not intimidate me at all.

Because I know my role as a parent, and I know that if I fight for my kids, then no weapon formed against me will prosper because God is on my side.

And when God is on your side, you can have the confidence and the assurance and carry the authority that whatever tries to divide and conquer your family, they don't have to just go through you, they have to go through him first.

Nehemiah ended up building the walls.

No matter what happened to the walls of your family, you may be looking at it right now, and you might be saying, Brody, there are gaps in our walls.

There's like like we've been bleeding.

Our family has been bleeding.

I want to, I just want to encourage you today, you can rebuild your wall.

Your walls can be rebuilt.

Your marriage can be rebuilt.

Your relationship with your children can be rebuilt.

Your finance, your financial uh undergirding in your home can be rebuilt.

You don't have to just look at your situation and just like and just throw your hands in the air.

God will give you the grace and the ability and the wisdom to be able to build your family.

Don't be concerned, don't throw in the towel, don't quit.

Move forward, move into that new beginning.

I I pray that your on your heart today, this year, you've got a desire for your family.

You've got a desire that your kids would serve the Lord.

You've got a desire that they would come to understand and know the calling of God on their life and have a revelation of what God has intended for them to do.

That's my prayer for my family.

That's my prayer for your family.

There's always a cause worth fighting for.

And in my view, there's no greater cause than the cause of our families.

Sometimes it's it's a challenge to just take care of your family your own family.

But that's why God's uh brought us together.

It's not just me, but I'm networked to you.

And that's why when you're strong, I'm stronger.

That's why we're going to support and help you grow in your marriages.

We're going to help you grow as families, as parents, as grandparents.

We want this church to be strong so that together we can grow because it really does take a village to raise a family.

It takes a community to raise this family.

And so we look out for each other, we watch each other's back, we're supporting and praying for each other, we're calling each other out.

We're meeting for coffee.

We're talking about the things that are difficult to talk about.

So that our families grow together.

So we fight for each other.

The enemy, our enemy, would love to see the church just fall apart.

You understand that?

That the enemy would just love to see the church, every church in Kelowna, just fall apart.

And the church itself is only as strong as the families inside of it.

To undermine society, to undermine the family, it's on it's on the crosshairs of the enemy every day.

How can I separate Brian and Natalie?

How can I separate Jill and Ryan?

How can I separate Lalani and Kyle?

That's what he's thinking every day.

How can I bring division in their family?

How can I separate the Crowther family?

How can I separate the greens?

He's looking at it.

He's got his target on you.

And that's where you've got to be.

You've got to actually raise up not a defense, but an offense against the enemy.

And we say, we're not going to shrink back, we're going to move forward in the abilities that God has given us and placed inside of us.

So we're committed.

I'm so grateful for my family.

I love my wife, my daughter, my sons.

I love my mother, my dad, my sister, my brother, their family.

I love, I'm so grateful for all that has happened in our homes, and and I just want it to continue to grow, to get better and better and better and better and better.

Because that's the plan that God has for us.

It's not that we become more miserable and miserable and miserable and miserable.

When I call, she picks up the phone.

My father-in-law, when I call, he picks up the phone.

It's a joy to hear from them.

It's a joy to hear from family.

And yet, for some reason, we have this idea in culture that's like, oh, you know, your mother-in-law, this nasty person, or you know, this.

I don't know why that is like that.

You know why it is?

It's supposed to divide and conquer families.

If you have a challenge with your family, sit down and address it.

My guarantee is that you will find that you're believing on truths.

There is certain uh there is a degree of a lie.

There's an undermining lie that's meant to undermine the family structure.

And if you continue to dig deep and you continue continue to stay committed to it, the Lord will help you achieve reconciliation.

Amen.

The scripture says this.

That Noah was the eighth person into the Ark.

And he had the scripture specifically says he was the eighth person to enter the Ark.

And it's because he had a wife and six kids.

And he made sure his wife was on board, his kids were on board, and then he got on board.

He made sure that the ark was, his family was on the ark, his family was safe.

We protect our families.

We pray for our families.

I didn't realize this until I was studying the other day that Obed Edom, who actually was a father, who owned a piece of property, and when the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of God's presence was coming by his home, he ended up having to hold on to that Ark of the Covenant for a temporary time.

But in that time, his children learned the value of the presence of God.

And in that time they saw the blessing of God.

And the scripture says that when they moved the presence of God into the temple, Obedidim moved his whole family, 70 people, to be with the Ark of God's presence so that they could be blessed.

And the scripture says that all 70 of his children serve the Lord.

It's not worth it.

If 69 out of 70 serve the Lord, it's not enough.

We need 70 out of 70.

If two out of my three kids aren't serving Jesus are serving Jesus, that's not good enough for me.

If two out of three are saying I'll serve the Lord, and the third one says, No, that's not good enough for me.

I want everyone in my family serving Jesus.

I want every one of them making a decision to actually serve God.

So it's true there are times when kids might go wild, might go crazy, but if you and we as parents were not always perfect, but if you've done your best and you trust in God, I believe that God will give you your family and that it will, the presence of God will keep them.

So do we have God in our house?

Do we have God in our home?

Is God present with our family?

When we honor God and we fight for our kids, then we go to our prayer place.

We open up the script scripture and we knock, we don't give up.

And so if you fight for your family, God will fight for you.

Joshua said it this way.

He said, This is my commitment.

I will, based on whether or not I choose how I live, he says, he was saying this to the people.

He says, choose who you're gonna serve.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

And when we do that and we commit ourselves to that, then we trust that God will make a difference for us.

Amen?

Amen.

Let's just bow our heads for a moment.

Father, we thank you for your presence with us today.

We thank you, Lord, that you are our good Father and you've welcomed us into your family.

And we thank you, Lord, that we're not alone when it comes to raising our children.

Not only are you with us, but you've given us this great community to support us and to strengthen us.

And we ask today, Father, that as we submit our lives to you, you would just pour out your blessing into us.

Give us grace, give us ability, give us wisdom to be able to see the seeds in the children that you've given us.

Lord, that we might be able to enjoy the fruit in the later years.

We thank you, Father, that you haven't caused anyone, you don't want anyone to perish, but that all would know you and all would trust in you.

And today, Lord, we lift up our children, we lift up our spouses, and we ask, Lord, that you would bless them today.

You would give them the ability to do what they can't do in and of themselves.

Lord, you would support them.

Lord, you would come uh behind them and and and teach them and counsel them, Lord, to be the person and to be the parent that you intended them to be.

In Jesus' name.

We thank you, Lord, for this great blessing we call family.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Lord.