There’s Hope For Your Home

Good morning.

Welcome, welcome to Freedom Church.

We are starting a family series here today.

I want to welcome you.

This is a great weekend to be here.

This is uh we're gonna take the whole month of May, and we are talking all about family.

I know um a lot of us, many of you, you're you're wrapping up uh a group series that we just came out of on miracles, and I heard nothing but great stories.

And so, man, I just for those of you that were stayed involved and stayed stuck with that in your in your community groups, man.

Great job.

Honestly, I celebrate you, and and it's very encouraging to hear a lot of the the next steps that a lot of you are taking, and so well done with that.

I'm really excited for this month to talk about family.

I mean, this is we we take an intentional step every year to carve out a month where we we talk about this topic that just has a way of impacting every one of us.

I don't care if you're married or single, I don't care, I don't care you got kids or no kids.

The topic of family has a way of feeling very personal.

And so, in fact, that's one of the reasons that we that we do this series is that we want to serve you.

We want to serve you the best way that we can.

Uh when we when we look at prayer requests that come in, it's amazing how many prayer requests, I'll say the majority of the prayer requests that come in have to do with family.

And I find that most of us, when we are talking about family, we are we're going, listen, help me, help me, help me solve this problem, right?

Help me solve this problem.

Give me some like Bible application so I can make my way out of this, and so so this can be better, right?

Isn't it funny?

Have you ever noticed that when you're that when when you watch like a movie or something, that they make dating like there's all these differences between the couples.

They got all these differences and they're dating and they make it look like it's really romantic and fun.

But then when you're if you're married, you look at those movies and you go, that just looks expensive.

You're you're one of those ones?

Or like when you're first dating and then the dating comes up and they're very different.

They're like, oh my gosh, we are so different, and it's just like it's so wonderful.

He's like that.

I know, but she's like this, and it's just like it's wonderful and it's sweet.

And then you get married for a few years, and you're like, Why do you do literally everything like that?

You're just like, ah, you just got like some disdain to you.

It's easy, it's easy to like hone in on the problems.

It's it would be easy to do that, and and and make no mistake, over the next several weeks, we're going to address a lot of the tension that we feel in our families, whether you are married or whether you're single, there's gonna be something here for you.

But I I think before we dive into the issues, I think we need to, I we need to at least get get a picture, get it, get some insight into what it exactly God's intention is for your family.

I mean, he made it, he invented the thing.

He he actually has, he's not waiting for you to get a picture of what your family's supposed to be like.

He actually has one for you.

He actually has one for you.

It actually goes back to Genesis chapter 1, verse 27.

Genesis 1:27

What he says here, he says, So God created mankind in his own image.

In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

Who would have thought that would have been so controversial?

But there it is, right there.

He created the male and female.

Okay, God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.

Look at the next chapter, 224.

It says, This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

There's this picture of unity.

There's this picture of through unity that there's a there's a multiplication that happens because there's this cohesion that exists inside of the family.

And it's not just talking about just the fact that husbands and wives are intended to come together and produce children.

That's that's part of it, but it's it's more than that.

It's about it's about what's it look like when the people of God come together in a place like this, and they gather with one another to worship and to pray and to become, like we sang today, to become more like Jesus.

There's a natural multiplication effect that happens the closer you get to Jesus and you live in unity with him in his ways.

There's a there's a multiplication thing.

And then this is a picture.

This is a picture, in fact, that's what Ephesians says.

It talks about marriage, and it says, here's husbands do this and wives do that, and kids do this.

And he goes, Oh, by the way, you think I'm talking about your family.

I'm actually talking about church.

I'm actually talking about the church and Jesus and the relationship between the two of them.

We don't think like that.

But this is a better picture.

This is a picture of what God's intention is for your life.

Now, here's the tension: there's a disconnect, isn't there?

There's a disconnect between what I want.

Because who doesn't want that?

Who doesn't want peace and joy?

How about that?

Wouldn't that be amazing if those were the two I like the two things that your family got described as?

You know how to describe my family?

Peace and joy are like, dear you're like, yeah, that's a pipe dream right there.

Peace and joy.

We haven't had that since 1999.

You know, it's just like I don't know.

Can you imagine?

You want we all want that, but there's a disconnect between what we want and what we have.

And the and the the the tendency is to try to identify like the thing.

All right.

You know what it is?

It's this.

It's that person.

It's this one event.

But family dysfunction isn't just one person failing.

It's a whole system.

It's a bro, it's a broken system, broken by sin.

You know, and I we see this, especially as younger generations come up, and it's not new to this generation, this is this is common.

People come up and the next generation comes up, and maybe they have a bad picture of what family life could be.

I mean, for some of you, you're you're really excited that we're talking about family.

Others of you, you're like, this is a painful topic.

This is not your favorite topic.

And it's not a mystery to me why people will grow up and they'll they'll they become an adult and they just go, you know what?

I just family life, married life, not for me.

Because that's been that's that's been a source of pain.

And and and and I hear this, you hear this in the culture.

It's a broken system.

It's broken.

Marriage isn't doesn't work, it's antiquated, it's broken.

You want to know what?

They're not all that wrong.

It is.

It's very old.

God created it at the beginning, and guess what?

It's broken.

It's broken.

But you know the difference.

See, see, this is what Jesus does.

This is what the Lord does with things that are broken.

He doesn't go, it's broken, throw it out.

No, no, no.

He actually has a pathway to heal it, to restore it.

He stays involved in it.

He doesn't disconnect from it, he stays in it.

He will actually let you move away from it, and yet He He moves toward you, He stays in it.

He has a pathway for it to be healed and restored, which is good news, which means you can still, there's still hope for you to get a hold of God's actual intention for your marriages, for your relationship with your kids, for your with your extended family.

There's still hope for your future.

So here's what I want to do.

I'm gonna this is a bit of an introductory message to talk about family, but I want to see if today we can, we can maybe hone in.

What is the issue?

And does God have an antidote to it?

And then how do I how do I move forward with that?

Maybe it's a little something practical at the end.

Does that sound good?

This is Exodus chapter 34, verse 6 and 7.

Exodus 34:6

Probably not your go-to family verse.

You probably haven't even thought you read this, you don't think this is about family.

Believe it or not, it really is.

This is this is the most repeated, like a couple scriptures throughout the entire Bible.

Right here.

There it is.

Exodus 34, verse 6 and 7.

Exodus 34:6

This is God speaking to Moses.

He says, The Lord passed before him, that's Moses, and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering.

He's describing himself right now.

But by the way, these people, they don't, they don't actually know much about God at this point.

They know a little bit about him, but they don't really know.

Like they don't have the whole Bible like we have the Bible.

So this is new to them.

God is describing to these people, hey, you're worshiping me.

You probably probably should know who you're worshiping.

So let me tell you about myself.

Merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands.

That's a that's an idiom.

It means not just like it's not just a thousand, it means forever.

That's what it means.

It's like for thousands, thousands of generations.

Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.

I mean, doesn't that sound good?

Come on, that sounds good.

What did you be like?

Would you like as a I'm a father?

I'm like, please, I would love for me, long-suffering and full of mercy.

Come on, that's it.

That's great.

We get excited about that.

I would love, forgives sin, the things I've done wrong, forgiven transgression, the things I've done to hurt other people, iniquity.

I mean, forgives, my goodness.

But then there's the second part of it, and it says, but who by no means is going to clear the guilty?

Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation.

Yeah.

That does not look as appealing.

This is that this is an idiom.

It's this is ancient Near Eastern literature.

This is hard to understand.

And when we read it in English, we don't really like it, it doesn't really hit the way it's supposed to hit.

Uh this is an idiom.

It's meant to, it's meant to give you this stark contrast, this forgiving, full of grace, long-suffering, slow to anger God, who forgives endlessly.

Oh, by the way, the iniquity of the fathers is passed down generation to generation.

The third and the fourth generation also means not forever.

You notice that third and fourth generation, not forever?

It's supposed to make you feel like this feels extreme.

And that's exactly what he's what he's saying here.

Iniquity.

What is that?

That's the that's a key word there.

Iniquity.

He didn't say the sin and the transgression.

He says passing the iniquity down.

What is that iniquity?

Iniquity.

Here's my working definition of the word.

It's it's the sin that we sort of perpetuate.

It's the sin that that shapes your family culture.

This is the application for your family here.

Um if you could if you could imagine like a branch, in fact, the word actually means bent.

That's actually what the word means bent.

If you can imagine a branch, if I were to bend a branch over and then boom, let it go, it would just go right back to where it was, right?

Just kind of bend it and let it go.

But if I take that branch and I bend it and I hold it, and I hold it for a while, and I bend it back, it doesn't go back to normal, does it?

It's gonna it's gonna stay bent a little bit.

See, iniquity, iniquity is these, these things, these these patterns, these, these, these patterns that mark our family culture and our family behavior.

Honestly, it's those it's those things in our life that we tolerate.

It's those behaviors that we're they're a little bit kind of prickly, we're kind of like, I don't know, but we tolerate them, and then and then because we tolerated them, they became, they became like repeated, and then when we repeated it, they just kind of became a normal part of our family life, and because they became a normal part of our family life, it's been passing on from generation to generation, the third and the fourth generation, actually.

Sound familiar?

And it's called iniquity, and it's the sin that's often shaping our family culture.

We see this in all kinds of areas of our life.

You ever go um over to somebody's house for the holidays?

You know, you normally have your own family traditions when you, you know, at Thanksgiving, Christmas, you get your normal meals, food that you enjoy at your home that you've probably grown up with.

And but then you go to somebody else's house and and and you're like, oh, that's good.

Oh yeah, we have turkey, that's great.

Oh, we have that.

Oh, steaks.

Oh, thank goodness, no more turkey.

I love this.

That's a great tradition.

You know, so and then, but then they'll have like that one dish, and you're like, what the heck is that?

Like, I didn't grow up with that.

That's that's weird, right?

You're just like, but and they're just like, oh, you gotta try it.

It's really good.

It's really good.

There's a couple students in our church, Roman and Johnson, they come over to our house a bunch, and they were they were telling us about some of their their this meal that they have every of the holidays.

And and you send Roman sends me a picture of this, and I'm like, okay, what is this?

It's a it's a carrot and onion jello pie.

Woo! Put my picture up.

This is real.

This is real.

Now I know some of the in here is like, yeah, I make that every year.

Well, I'm sorry, we're gonna laugh at your expense for just a moment, okay?

Carrot and I mean, somebody's going, listen, it ain't Thanksgiving until I've had that carrot and onion jello pie.

That's amazing.

That's real, that's not a joke.

This is serious.

I don't know if you're laughing.

This is serious business.

You know, I this is one of those things.

I know a couple of you are like, I'd try it.

You're like, I come on, I know you're out there.

You're like, I'd give it a shot.

I mean, sweet and salty.

Let's give this a shot.

Okay.

Um, how does this become a family tradition?

I'll tell you how.

I'll tell you how.

Because some time ago, somebody put this together by accident or on purpose, we don't know.

But they put it together and they brought it out, and everybody tolerated it.

I was like, don't say anything, just eat your food.

There's starving kids in India.

Don't you know eat that, you know?

So it was tolerated.

And then because it was tolerated, they laughed and they were like, oh my goodness, it was a hit.

And so it got repeated.

It got repeated.

They showed up next year, the next holiday, and and it got that happened so many times, tolerated and repeated, that it just became normal.

It's now, it's now a normal.

In fact, again, it's just not Christmas until we've had that carrot and onion jello pie.

This is a picture of iniquity right here.

This is iniquity.

This is what it looks like.

Ah, just take that in.

Just take that in.

That's amazing.

That's in that's amazing.

It's funny when it's carrot and onion jello pie, you know, it's another thing when it's like, well, I just, it's normal to yell at your spouse every time you have an argument.

That's just normal.

That's just what we do.

It's normal to run out of the room, to leave the house every time you have a disagreement.

That's just normal.

It's normal to to drink yourself into numbness every time you have family conflict.

That's just what we do.

That's just normal.

It's normal.

It's just normal to berate your kids every time you want to correct them.

It's just normal.

These habits that are actually working against us, they're just normal.

Everybody's got everybody's got their carrot and onion jello pie that's just normal.

It's called iniquity.

And it's this, it's these cycles, it's these unhealthy habits and and cycles and patterns of behavior that are actually sabotaging the kind of family culture, not just that we desire for ourselves, but the kind of family culture that that Jesus desires for your home.

Like what gets re what gets tolerated gets repeated, and what gets repeated becomes normalized, and what gets normalized gets passed down from from generation to generation.

Let me give you some good news though.

Because that's kind of depressing.

My goodness, this is third and fourth generation business.

That's not exactly, doesn't feel like a lot of hope at first.

This is Jeremiah 32, verse 18.

Jeremiah 32:18

Look what he says.

He says, he's talking about the Lord.

You show steadfast love to thousands.

Sounds like a familiar verse, doesn't it?

You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them.

O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty indeed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of men, rewarding each one according, look at this, uh rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds.

Don't miss this.

That's a lot of Bible words.

Don't miss what I'm saying.

Don't let that go over your head.

Look what he's saying.

Rewards each one according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.

You know what that means?

It means there's hope.

It means that the generation that chooses to follow Jesus can break the cycle of iniquity in your home.

That's hope.

It means that the third and fourth generation isn't a sentence, it's what happens.

It's an idiom.

It means that if you don't deal with it, that's exactly what will happen until somebody deals with it.

That's good news.

It means that you, it means that the things that have happened to you don't have to pass through you.

It means that it means that what has become normalized doesn't have to stay normalized.

Like the cycle of iniquity can stop with you.

Isn't that good?

That should be encouraging.

I mean, we wonder, we wonder why, why is it?

It's like my grandfather, he struggled with this, and my dad, and now here I am.

We can go down the list of topics.

It doesn't have to stay that way.

This is Psalm 133.

There's an antidote to this.

Because that's one thing.

I, you know, we all I think everybody goes, yeah, I want that.

I want that.

That sounds good.

How do I how do I do that?

God, there's an antidote to this, to the iniquity.

Like there's there's pathways here.

There's a there's a pathway forward.

God, like iniquity is the enemy's plan for your life.

God's got a different plan.

Look at 133.

This is Psalm 133.

He says, How good and pleasant it is when God's people live in unity.

Now that should sound familiar because that's what we just read about in Genesis.

That's God's intention for the family.

It's God's intention for spouses.

It's like there's a sense of unity, a picture of unity, not just in your family, but how about your spiritual family as well?

A spirit of unity.

And he says a bunch of things like the oil going down, the beard of Aaron.

It's a bunch of Bible language that we're kind of like whoop over our head.

And then he gets to the point at the very end, and he says this.

He says, For there the Lord, where?

Unity.

Dwelling in unity.

He says it's there that the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

Do you know what God's God's answer to the iniquity in your life is unity?

Unity.

Unity is where God's blessing lives.

Now that that might not, let me try to help you make the connection here because that maybe you don't see it right away.

You know, God's intention for your family is not chaos.

God's intention for your life is not chaos.

Your family life is not intended to be lived on like survival mode.

That's a norm.

Let's be honest.

That's a norm in Williston.

That's a Williston norm, survival mode.

That's not God's that's not God's intention.

No, no, no.

There's something that happens.

Unity.

What's a picture of unity look like?

It's this picture of like shared values.

It's a picture of like a focused direction.

Like we have we have a unified sense of direction, a common direction that we're we're moving in.

It looks like honoring and loving and and serving one another.

And like that kind of environment, that's a very unified environment, unified around the ways of Jesus.

You unified.

And it's like in that kind of unity.

You know, I several years ago I sat down and there was a family kind of discussion I was a part of, and there was a lady in there, and she was kind of the mom of the group, and she just, and it was very sincere, but she just said, We need to make a commitment that we're gonna stay unified.

We're gonna, our family, we just have to commit that we're gonna have unity in our family.

And that sounds good.

That does, it sounds sounds good.

I believe that's a very sincere and honest desire.

Can I just tell you right now?

You don't unify around unity.

Unity is a byproduct.

You know, everybody prays around, let's pray for unity in our nation.

It's like, yeah, okay, to unify, you have to have something that you unify around.

There has to be something that you're unified around that is strong enough to hold you all together when it's not going the way you thought it was gonna go.

Like you can't just, we don't just unify for the sake of unity.

And I'm gonna and I'm making the case that what we unify around is we unify around God's intention for.

God's intention for our life.

We unify around Jesus' ways.

We get in sync with his ways, his truth, so that we can get a hold of his life.

This unifying, this unifying force right there that holds us together.

Because here's what unity is not.

There's a lot of misconceptions.

Unity, first of all, is not uniformity.

And this is often what we think of it as.

It's just like we're unified as long as we're all on the same page.

As long as we're all thinking and believing, and like we're all we're all on the same, we're on the same page.

It's not uniformity.

In fact, you find out real quick it's not uniformity because conflict arises.

By the way, it's also not the absence of conflict.

Like you unity doesn't mean that you never have conflict.

In fact, you're going to.

I don't care who you are.

I mean, even the best marriages, you're going to have conflict.

That doesn't mean you're not unified.

In fact, I'll even I'll even go this far.

If you want unity, it's not going to be easy.

It's not easy.

And I think that's a big misconception that we have around family life, married life.

It's why some of us have just sort of just so passively and so nonchalantly just wandered into marriage and family life.

We're just assuming that it's just all going to come to us.

And it's like, I got news for you.

This ain't easy.

It's not easy.

I think sometimes our idea of having peace in our homes, in our families, is we're just like, can everybody just take a chill pill?

And guess what?

Maybe that's what people need to do.

Maybe we do need to just kind of relax from time to time.

But we have this idea that if we would just kind of like minimize things and step back and just sort of like, you know what, just brush things off and kind of let things go.

There's a kernel of truth in that.

But I'm going to tell you, passivity is not the pathway to having peace in your home.

It doesn't work that way.

In fact, I'll even go this far.

Some of you don't have joy and peace in your home because you're passive.

Because the conversations are just too hard to have.

The conflict is just uncomfortable.

I got this picture right here.

Unity and division.

I think this is this is a better picture of what it looks like.

Unity is up the hill, division is down here, which means this.

The default of being passive, it rolls downhill.

If you're going to have unity in your family, you're going to have to walk up the hill.

You're going to have to take real steps.

And I promise you, it isn't comfortable.

And it's going to take a little bit of work.

And I'm just telling you, the only way to break the cycle of iniquity is to do the hard work.

It is.

It just takes it takes steps.

You can take that picture down.

It takes steps.

You know, some of us we slide down that hill.

And that's what happens.

See, when we're when we get passive, we just sort of like slide down the hill and and division starts.

By the way, God has a real clear strategy for your life.

He wants your marriage unified.

He wants your family units marriage unified.

He wants your extent, He wants unity in your spiritual family here in your church.

He's got a real strategy so that you and I can win in the areas that are most important.

He's got a real strategy.

Guess what?

He's not the only one.

The enemy's got a strategy for your life too.

To separate and to divide.

Separate and divide.

This is to drive a wedge in there.

To cause you to question.

To sow some seeds of suspicion.

Second start second guessing.

Not not people's not not not what people are saying, but the motives.

Why are they really doing that?

It's just a subtle wedge of separation.

Look at Matthew 19.

It says, so Jesus is answering questions about marriage.

He says, so there they're no longer two, but one flesh, unity.

Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.

This is again God's vision is unity.

James 3.16.

For where envying and strife is, there's confusion in every evil work.

Some of you, I just like blew up your family.

You're like, wait a second, I thought envy and strife was normal.

Like I thought that was that that is normal for some of you.

Oh, where that exists, there's confusion in every evil work.

I think a lot of us, we we have this idea that the thing that's gonna compromise and blow up our families is like somehow is like some singular moment, some singular event.

So normally we'll measure our effectiveness and our health.

Well, listen, no one's having an affair.

I was like, well, I assure you, he doesn't need you to have an affair to blow up your family.

He don't, he doesn't need the extreme moments.

You know what he'll do?

He'll separate and divide you over the long haul.

It's like a wedge, and he'll just he'll just tap it every day.

Just one little tap, just a little tap.

Tap, tap.

He doesn't need a moment.

He'll slowly divide you over time.

And then this is often where a lot of us find ourselves.

Because we're here and we're like, I'm here to talk about family, and because because we're we're in a situation, or there's a climate to our home, there's a there's a culture that exists, there's a there's a normalized set of behaviors that have been that are that are in our in our homes, in our lives, and and we're asking this question, how did we get here?

How did we how did how did this happen?

Nobody starts out in life going, my vision in 20 years, separation and division.

Nobody says that.

But then we get there and we go, I don't get it.

I don't I don't understand how we how we got here.

I'm I got a few reasons for you.

I got a few reasons.

These are just sort of off the cuff, a little bit of the kind of some I some some reasons.

I mean, think about this.

Let's take let's take two people.

One loves Mexican food, the other loves Indian food.

One loves going to the movie theater, the other one loves Netflix, the other one loves vacations, the other one thinks they're stupid, the other one likes to go to bed earlier, the other one likes to stay up late.

Let's put them together in holy matrimony for the rest of their lives.

Opposites attract.

And we wonder why this is hard.

It was cute at the beginning.

No, it's not.

You know, I most of the time when I talk to people about conflict in the family, most people are willing to admit, no, conflict is healthy.

We know that here, don't we?

We know that up here.

But in here, it's like, no, no, no, conflict is healthy.

Here's what I find with with most people we're just not that good at it.

We're just not good at it.

We're gonna talk about that in this in this series.

Here's another reality of how we got to the places that we're in with our families right now.

The truth is that somebody has hurt us.

Somebody has hurt you, and that's real.

That's not something to that's not something to minimize.

It doesn't necessarily mean that that's that that's the sum of it all, but it's definitely a large part of why we are where we where we are with our families.

Here's another one.

We live in a culture that prioritizes individual happiness.

In fact, we're just sort of groomed to look at our whole life and especially our our relationships and our marriages and our kids and and just in and by the way, not even just being married, our friendships, our spiritual family, our church.

We show up to church even and we ask ourselves this question it's is this meeting my needs?

And it's not to say that that doesn't matter.

You you do matter.

There is a level of needs that are that are intended to be met in the context of relationships with other people, and especially those you're closest with.

But that's not it, God didn't intend for that to be the lens through which you judged everything and are my needs being met.

It'll tear you apart.

And the enemy loves this.

He loves the distance, he loves the resentment, he loves the silent treatment, he loves the self-protection where we just go find, I just got to take care of myself.

He loves that stuff, he loves that stuff.

There's iniquity.

There's iniquity, there's patterns of sin and behavior normalized that are wreaking havoc in our life.

It doesn't have to stay that way.

And that's the hope.

We can begin to move in a different direction.

We can begin to rally around the ways of Jesus in that right there.

The ways of Jesus is us going, I may, I may not think like you, we may have different ideas, but we can rally, and there can be a unifying effect there.

Unifying, first of all, you with Jesus, and you can break the cycles of iniquity in your family.

That's a that's what can happen.

And I believe that can happen.

I believe that can begin to happen through this series.

When I walk people through family stuff, uh, it's inevitably I find most of us just have bad ideas.

We really do.

Just bottom, just bottom line.

Oftentimes the things that are tolerated and repeated and normalized and all that, like it's just bad ideas.

Just things that seem good to us.

We look at them, it's like that seems right to me, and it worked for him, at least sort of, and that's good enough for me.

And we just sort of have these like we just have bad ideas.

So I want to do this.

I I get this a lot.

It's like, help me think differently.

So I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna run through some like practical stuff.

How do we think differently through this?

How do we begin to think, think, have different thoughts, a different starting point?

I heard that this week actually had had uh somebody said to me, it's like the part of the problem for for a lot of us is that we have the wrong starting point.

Whether when we address a problem, when we address an issue, we have the wrong starting point.

God is not surprised that we are we are where we're where we're at.

He's not surprised that your family is in the state that is it is in right now.

We just we have the wrong, we have the wrong assumption.

We need to start, we need to start assuming God actually has a pathway forward.

We just don't know it yet.

That's that needs to be the new starting point.

So I want to give you some different ideas so that you can start thinking differently about your family in this topic.

Here's the first one.

You you need to start with what God wants to do in you first.

Like you need you need to start there, because I know we all got we all got names.

Don't act like you're better than me.

You got names rolling through your mind right now.

You're wishing that that person was here, you're wishing that that that or she, he, that cop, all my, oh my goodness, what do I gotta do to get that person here over these next four weeks?

Like that's what you're thinking right now.

Hold on.

Let's start with what God wants to do in you.

Look at Ephesians 5.25.

Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

The part I want you to see in that is that is that Jesus is committed to his mission, his way, giving up his life.

It doesn't say, it doesn't say anything about what all the people are going to do.

He gave up his life.

And he's calling us to do the same thing, to give up our life.

Even 1 Peter 3, verse 1.

1 Peter 3:1

If any of them, talking about those who are married to a spouse who's not following Jesus, if any of them don't believe the word, they may be won over without words.

Ooh, there's a novel thought.

By the behavior of their wives when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.

Start with you.

That's he said, start with you.

You can't control everybody in your family, but you can surrender your life to Jesus and start leading differently.

You can do that.

Here's the next one.

Realize that no person can fulfill all your needs.

I know that's not that's not a popular, that doesn't make for a great movie all the time.

But no person can fulfill all your needs.

I'm uh let's be honest, we put way too much pressure on people.

And for those who are married in the room, we put way too much pressure on our spouses.

We have all these expectations.

It's like we forgot somewhere along the way that we were married to a human being.

I'm being serious.

We forget that.

And we put a lot of pressure on our spouse.

It's like I'm allowed to be fickled, I'm allowed to be up and down, I'm allowed, but I need you to be stable.

I need you to pull me up.

I need you.

That's a lot of pressure.

Especially if you're gonna be in it for the long haul.

That's that's a lot of that's a lot of pressure.

I mean, the truth is that you around anybody, I don't care who it is, they're gonna let you down.

People are gonna let you down.

In the first service, I said, I said, because I was talking about church, and I said, that even includes at the church, like you come to church, we're gonna let you down.

That's just part of being human.

In the first service, I said, we're gonna hurt you.

I said, that's what I said.

That's not good, and I didn't mean that.

And Bethany was like, he's like, she's like, you can't say that.

We're not gonna hurt people.

I was like, I know that's not what I meant to say.

I was like, ah, that didn't come out right.

I don't mean that.

So if you were in the first service, I didn't mean that.

Like, we're not gonna, you don't have to be wounded here.

I'm not let you down.

Okay, I just got that out of the way.

Okay.

Hey, you get around people long enough, they're gonna let you down.

And the ones that are closest to you, guess what?

You have the opportunity to experience the most love from those people because you have the opportunity to experience the most disappointment from those people.

How about this one?

Don't try to change your spouse.

I mean, the first the first one, the previous one, it's like you they can't fulfill all your needs.

It's like cut cut them some slack here.

Like, you need to give some people some like space to be a human being.

The other one's like, give yourself some space.

It's not your job to change everybody in your family.

You can't do it.

In fact, you're not that you're not even the one that does it.

Like, that doesn't work that way.

I got some great advice when I first started pastoring a long a while back, and and and uh, you know, it's a lot of effort.

I put a lot of effort in to try to formulate a message for you and something that it's a coherent that you can hopefully remember, and then hopefully I have enough decent jokes that lighten the moment so that you actually remember something that I said and then not walk out of here depressed.

Like these are all real things.

So it's a lot of effort to try to do that.

And you know, I love it.

I love it when people come to me and they're just like, Man, when you said that, that that's what impacted me.

That changed, that right there, like man, I'm gonna chew on that.

It's like, man, that's encouraging.

I love that.

And see, but see, it's it's tough because sometimes as a pastor, you think, you think, you know what?

I see the spiritual climate of our church, and I've no God's moving us in this direction, so I'm gonna preach this, and then we're all gonna change.

It don't work like that.

That's a lot of pressure.

Now remember, Pastor Tell me, he just says, just don't forget, you don't change anybody.

You're just gonna do your you're gonna do your role, you're gonna lead, and you're gonna pastor, and then and then it guess what it's the Holy Spirit that changes us.

And so you can take the pressure off.

For those, listen, there's some of you in the right now, your spouse isn't even in the room, they're not here.

It's not a secret.

Listen, take the pressure off.

You don't have to change your spouse.

It's not your job to change your spouse.

You got some kids that just won't they won't show up, they're not here, they won't, they won't engage, they won't join the family of God with you.

They won't, it's not your job to change them.

Take the pressure off.

Here's the next one.

Forgive quickly and rebuild trust.

Forgive quickly and rebuild trust.

I put these together on purpose.

Okay, forgive quickly.

You know what?

Let me get help you out with we're gonna because we're gonna talk more about this through the series.

Forgiving is you going, God, I trust that you can take care of this better than I can.

So you release the other person from resentment.

I'm just gonna stop holding it against them.

That's forgiving.

It's for you, it's not even for the other person.

You forgive.

Okay?

That's so you can be like, it's so that you can let go.

Because that's a bear, that's a burden none of us are made to carry.

It's so that you can have some clear, some clarity of thought, and you can live with some freedom and not with all these like inner vows that you make so that you don't get hurt again.

No, no, no, I'm talking about like forgive quickly.

But here's the second part of it because that's hard to do when it's when you're the one that's supposed to forgive, right?

That's hard sometimes.

It's like I need to forgive.

The people who've done the wrong, they're like, yeah, forgive quickly.

What's taking you so long?

We're talking about this again.

What don't you remember what Pastor said?

Forgive quickly.

We're still talking about this.

Maybe they have forgiven you, they just don't trust you.

You realize that when you do something, especially the bigger it is, the more severe it is, you're you're destroying the trust that exists in that relationship.

Forgive quickly.

But for all of us who have been on the end of hurting somebody and doing something wrong, go through the process of rebuilding the trust.

They might not trust you.

And I've got, I got this.

It's good news because now you know, but it's not exciting news.

It's gonna take a lot longer than you think.

A lot longer.

Forgive quickly, rebuild trust.

How about this?

Evaluate your level of disunity that's in your family right now and be willing to get help.

Some of you, you need to call a pastor this week, you need to call the church, you need to find get some steps so that we can either either we talk to you or you or we we put you in the right direction.

Maybe it's somebody in the church, maybe it's a group, maybe it's another couple, maybe it's a licensed professional Christian counselor that we get you connect, whatever, it could be any number of those things, but you need to you need to evaluate it and you need to get help.

Now, here's what happens when we start evaluating.

You ready?

We start trying to diagnose it.

You know what the problem is?

Because we want to walk in the room and tell the guy or the gal what the problem is.

Like, here's what the problem is.

I already figured it out.

It's this right here.

You know, it's her, it's him, right?

It's them.

A lot of you, you you work, you got very blue-collar jobs, you you you work maybe in the oil field or something, you know, you you have a valve or a hose fitting or something, and they're and they're usually like they're they're pressure rated, right?

They're designed to withstand a certain amount of pressure and stress.

And see, this is what we do with our families.

We go, oh, that's the source of that's the pressure, that's the stress.

But see, just like when you're in the field and you got you got a you got a valve, you got a hose, and you hook it up, and then you you crank the pressure up, and boom, it's leaking.

There's the leak.

And you go, listen, it's actually designed to withstand the stress and the pressure.

You just now have identified the fractures that need healed in that valve, in that pipe.

And the same thing with your family.

Your family is designed to be able to withstand the stress and the pressures that life, like that life throws at you.

It's when you begin to see the dysfunction and the iniquity, you go, oh, there's where we need healing, right there.

It's actually designed to do it.

It works, it works Jesus' way.

Here's the next one.

Take steps toward unity.

Take steps toward unity.

I know for many of us, we're going, I want my family, it needs to change.

Do you know how he changes families?

He changes individuals.

Take a step toward unity.

You know, this is my prayer for all of us through this series.

Is that as we go through this series over these next four more weeks, is that we would be open to the Holy Spirit identifying not five things, just one thing.

Just one one thing.

What what a a pattern of behavior, a wrong thought process, just bad habits that we've adopted, norms that things that we've normalized that should have never been normalized.

One thing that we identify that one thing, and that we would begin to go.

How do I get this aligned with Jesus' way?

How do I get unified with Jesus' way?

Take a step toward unity, not five things, just one thing.

I believe it, I believe it'll change your family.

I believe it can change your whole family trajectory.

I don't think it has to be five things.

I think it can just be the one thing.

But are we gonna are we gonna go there?

That's gonna be the question.

Are we gonna go there?

Are we willing to go there?

And this is the hope.

The generation that chooses this, the generation that chooses Jesus' way.

By the way, he said, you gotta be more loyal and more faithful to my ways than your family norms.

That's what he says.

He says, You you better be, if you're gonna follow my ways, you're it's gonna force you to be more committed to my way of doing life than what you've grown up and believe is normal.

The ones who do that cannot just break the cycle of iniquity, but can begin to build something that lasts, that's full of joy and full of peace, something that you are actually intended and created to live with.

We can do that.

You want to believe with that with me?

Want to believe for that with me?

Yes, I do too.

Let's pray.

Jesus, that's what we want.

That's what we all want.

We want homes that are full of joy and full of peace, full of unity.

And I know that's not this, that's not the reality for many of us here.

And so we're asking, would you, by your spirit, would you make known to us through this series?

Maybe it's already happening right now.

I'm sure some of you, it's happening in this very moment.

There is a there is iniquity that's being revealed to you right now.

And you've been continually tolerating it and normalizing it and justifying it.

Would you reveal those things to us?

And then would you, by your spirit, help us to move toward you so that we can realign our thinking and our behavior after you, Jesus, so that what's been what got bent can get straightened out in our lives.

So that the cycle of iniquity can end with us.

So it no longer passes on to our kids and our grandkids.

It stops here.

Help us to do that.

We could talk about unity in your family.

We could talk about, we could talk about having a great marriage and how to raise great kids.

Here's the thing you can get all that.

And listen, there's people who aren't even following Jesus, and they and they and they find a way to have great families.

That's real, that happens.

It's possible to gain the whole world and get everything you want and then lose your soul.

And and we and we can talk about unity in your home so that everybody says, you feel like you have peace, but but if you you got peace at home with each other, but you don't got peace with God, that's a problem.

That's a problem.

And if you've never made a commitment, the way you do that is you make a commitment to follow Jesus.

You go, I'm gonna follow Jesus, I'm gonna follow his way.

And if you've never done that, I'm just gonna give you an opportunity to just pray this prayer right now, just in your own way.

Tell him, Jesus, I give you my whole life.

I believe you died for my sins.

That you that you forgive my transgressions, my sin, my iniquity.

That you forgive that?

That you came back from the dead and I choose to follow you from this day forward.

Thank you for saving me.

Thank you.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Everybody said, Amen.

Amen.

Come on, let's put our hands together.

Let's tell Jesus thank you this morning.