Sermon

Isaac

Awakening Church

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  1. Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

  2. We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

  3. Thanks for tuning in.

  4. This morning, as we continue our series on the dysfunctional family of God, we have a special guest, a longtime friend personally and mentor and friend of awakening, actually been a friend of awakening before we launched as a church, all the way back in the young adult ministry's days.

  5. We have Dr.

  6. Charlie Salt joining us this morning.

  7. I'm really excited for you to get to hear from him because he kind of is like this rare kind of combination of both academic brilliance, pastoral presence, and just a generosity of spirit.

  8. I hope that you get to just interact with him after service a little bit to talk with them because you can't help it but be encouraged by him.

  9. A little bit of background on Dr.

  10. Stalf, if you're not familiar with him, he is a professor, a church leader, an author, and one of the great encouragers of church leaders across the country.

  11. He holds a masters in systematic and philosophical theology from Berkeley, a masters in history, church, and cultural change in Latin America from UT to Santa Cruz, and a PhD in history from UT to Santa Cruz.

  12. Yeah, he's smart.

  13. And yet at the same time deeply approachable.

  14. I look forward to the word he has.

  15. I've already got a tit through that I know you're going to be uh both encouraged, challenged, and blessed.

  16. And so would you give a warm awakening welcome to our friend, Dr.

  17. Charlie Delphine?

  18. Thank you so much.

  19. Good morning.

  20. Really grateful to be here.

  21. And um yes, I am a banana slug, but we want to honor the Spartans and the Cardinal and uh and Santa Clara, okay, so and the other schools that are part of here.

  22. So give yourselves a hand here.

  23. And uh but um all four of the degrees were earned while I was married and working full-time.

  24. And I just want to honor just all of you who have who are in the midst of your studies at whatever stage and place.

  25. Um I just want to honor your hard work and and God will open amazing doors for you as you continue to learn and grow.

  26. And I think it I think it'd be right for us to also be grateful for the teaching team that's here, for Pastor Ryan and teaching.

  27. Can we give them a hand and just thank God for them?

  28. Uh I have I have really enjoyed hearing the sermons in this series.

  29. And when when we were starting to arrange this visit and talk together, um when he gave me the title, I just burst out laughing.

  30. Uh, The Dysfunctional Family of God.

  31. Because I thought, yeah, that's kind of the whole Bible.

  32. But also so important to know the book of Genesis, so important that we're well rooted here.

  33. And uh then he uh gave me my assignment as part of the series that we'll jump into.

  34. Well, this morning I have to announce to you that today my wife had an orange for breakfast.

  35. Now that's profound.

  36. But actually, the fact that about 300 plus days a year that she can have an orange is the result of the hard work of someone most of us have never heard of named Liu Gim Gong.

  37. A Chinese immigrant, born in 1860, died a bachelor in 1925, and he came here as a young boy, came to San Francisco like so many, and um started just an early interest in plants and vegetables and fruit, but then he went back to China uh as he entered adolescence because his family had an arrangement for him for his marriage and his future, except he had become a Christian and didn't like the family arrangement, came back to the states, but by the time he tried to come back to the states, all kinds of barriers to immigration had been erected by the state and federal government at that point.

  38. But a woman named Lucy Burlingame, have you heard of a city called that?

  39. Made a way for him to get to the states.

  40. And he went to New England first and then for his health went down to a better climate down in Florida and spent decades cultivating fruits and vegetables.

  41. And he might have just been a faithful Christian doing that work, except he took an extra step and he figured out how to develop citrus fruit that could survive freezing temperatures.

  42. And we have fruit year-round, shipped from around the world now, but across the country as well, because this faithful Christian horticulturist decided, in his words, no one, he said, should live in this world for himself alone, but to do good for those who come after him.

  43. Few people heard about him or knew about him until just a few years ago, and now there's a few tributes to him.

  44. And as we look at the story of Isaac today, there's a similar kind of ethos here, as Isaac, sort of the one in between, the really well-known patriarch Abraham, and we'll do a little bit of review of some of the great teaching we've had on Abraham.

  45. And then Isaac's son, Jacob and Esau, but the chosen son Jacob is going to be the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

  46. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when when you hear all through the Bible the God of our father Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Isaac's the in-between.

  47. And he's the story of all of us who sometimes struggles for significance, but we feel submerged by difficulties and even obscurity sometimes.

  48. And so we're going to have fun kind of looking at his story and making some applications.

  49. And just a reminder: I always like to do this because we need to be reminded that the stories in Genesis and all through Scripture are part of a grand or big story or a grand narrative in four chapters.

  50. And I'd love you to write these words down just to remind ourselves that God's big story every day touches our life.

  51. The first chapters you've been well taught, but they're the story of God's design, creation.

  52. God designed humankind to know him in his image, to take care of the world that God created, and then he designed the male and female to do this wonderful work of dwelling with God and doing the work of God in the world.

  53. And God made the world that needed our touch, needed our cultivation.

  54. Well, then the second chapter affects us.

  55. How many of you know that beautiful world has changed just a little bit?

  56. And we have the disaster of sin, the brokenness of our walk with God and our relationships with each other, and even our relationship to creation.

  57. But God didn't leave us there.

  58. From the very beginning, he starts the promise of divine deliverance and redemption.

  59. And we're in the middle of the story of God's heroic redemptive mission through very imperfect people.

  60. And then finally, the fourth chapter, I hope you're looking forward to it.

  61. One day there's a destiny of the new heavens and a new earth.

  62. As one British scholar says, where everything will be put right, everything will be as it should be.

  63. So these chapters are part of our story, and they're part of the story of God's dysfunctional family here in Genesis.

  64. So in Eden, as Adam and Eve fail, their test, we see God taking initiative, covering them, promising that the seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head.

  65. The story of Cain and Abel that we've studied together.

  66. What a beautiful and difficult story.

  67. A beautiful story of a sacrifice pleasing to God, and a story of someone who wanted to go his own way.

  68. And then the story as Eli Weisell, the great humanitarian, said, Cain and Abel proved that even brothers can hate each other.

  69. What a challenging story.

  70. And yet God is still merciful to Cain.

  71. The story of Noah.

  72. Aren't you glad God redeemed the world through the family of Noah?

  73. And yet that great promise God makes, as Noah faithfully carries it out, is continued through people with very imperfect futures.

  74. And then we come to Abraham.

  75. And I and by the way, if you if you've been busy and summertime, we tend to scatter a little bit.

  76. Boy, take a look at the two messages on Abraham that the team has preached.

  77. You will really get a lot out of them.

  78. But Abraham is chosen by God to be the one through he and his chosen lineage to inaugurate a global mission.

  79. Read Genesis 12 again.

  80. I love this.

  81. Help me out, those of you who know the story.

  82. Through you, Abraham, how many nations will be blessed?

  83. Say it again, all.

  84. God does choose people to carry out his plan, but their chosenness is not for their superiority, but that through them God can carry out a plan to bless all the nations.

  85. And the story of Abraham's amazing.

  86. Oh, he makes some mistakes.

  87. He lies twice about his wife Sarah.

  88. You'd think he'd learn the first time.

  89. But he also gets a victory in battle and brings offerings to the high priest and King Melchizedek, who prefigures the beautiful ministry of our Jesus.

  90. God gives him the covenant of the covenant, renews the covenant again and again and gives him the sign of circumcision.

  91. God reminds Abraham that his righteousness isn't rooted in his perfection but in God's grace.

  92. And God takes Abraham through so many trials, so many difficulties.

  93. But starting in Genesis 18, Isaac's gonna join Abraham in this story.

  94. And I'm excited about sharing with you some of the goodness of the story.

  95. By the way, have you have you discovered as we read read the Bible that God's the only perfect hero?

  96. And he decides to use us and decides to use people.

  97. So Isaac is the child of promise, but he's going to be coming into a problematic family situation.

  98. And in Isaac, I just I was so aware as I studied and reflected and spoke with Pastor Ryan that Isaac's the in-between, and how often do we feel in-between?

  99. Sometimes Isaac's overlooked.

  100. Am I the only one that's been in a room and you feel like you're kind of like cellophane?

  101. Everybody's looking through you, but not at you.

  102. And sometimes Isaac falls into that a little bit, though important in the plan of God, he's kind of submerged, stifled by the noise around us.

  103. He's burdened by a family legacy at times.

  104. Sometimes feels the consequence.

  105. So what I'd like to do is I'd like to share four insights from Isaac's story and share a little more of Isaac's story with us that we can apply to our lives as we walk through this story and continue to see the goodness of God.

  106. The first insight is that we have to embrace the paradox of divine promise and broken family systems.

  107. Now, I'm really grateful for my natural parents.

  108. My first years up to about 15 or 16, I want to give them honor.

  109. Though we weren't a gospel-centered family at that time, I want to give them honor for loving me and instilling integrity and doing their very best.

  110. But it broke apart when I was 16.

  111. Mental illness, an addiction, divorce, a quick blended family that came into our lives.

  112. And can I just thank you, Awakening?

  113. Because it was a church like us here this morning.

  114. I was a brand new Christian and you took me in.

  115. You prayed for me, you cared about me.

  116. I had great pastors and youth leaders, and they were important, but it was just everyday folks that said, Hey Charlie, you are more than your family system.

  117. Love your family, serve them.

  118. I had to be the adult sometimes.

  119. Love them and serve them.

  120. But God has more for you.

  121. And so Isaac is the child of laughter.

  122. I love Genesis 18.

  123. And take a little time and look at it.

  124. You know, God visits him with these three visitors, and God promises Sarah's gonna have a son.

  125. And Sarah's sitting here, she's old, Abraham's old.

  126. You gotta be kidding.

  127. And she laughs.

  128. And then she pretends she did.

  129. I mean, it's so silly, but it's so strange.

  130. And a year later, God blesses them with Isaac, the child of laughter.

  131. But what other child and family system is also present?

  132. Hagar and Ishmael are present, aren't they?

  133. How many of you are glad God cared about Hagar and Ishmael too?

  134. Even with Sarah's mistakes and even with Abraham's mistakes.

  135. And Isaac's this child of laughter and promise, but born into a huge clan and a family system with rivals and people hostile to him.

  136. And he's a source of joy for his parents, but he's born into this family.

  137. And we can relate to Isaac great expectations, great promises, but challenged by the system that we're in.

  138. And from this first point, I just want us to glean something, and that is that God's at work in all of the difficulties around us.

  139. And not the and these aren't the difficulties we caused, but God's at work.

  140. And Isaac is growing up, and I hope you do know when you read the Bible, it's like the ESPN top 10 plays at the end of the day.

  141. We're getting some highlights.

  142. But folks, the in-between was years and even decades of everyday work, everyday supervision, everyday labor.

  143. And so we are born into a world with divine promise, even if we're in brokenness.

  144. And by the way, when we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, there's a reason St.

  145. John tells us in his gospel that we're born again from above, because God's not in the self-improvement business, he's in the new creation business.

  146. And we have a new identity, a new start, a new hope, a new future.

  147. We're not disconnected from our history, but we're not bound by it anymore.

  148. And I praise God for that.

  149. A second principle I find with Isaac is that we're tested by traumatic moments.

  150. In Genesis 22, the writer lets us know that Abraham's faith is being tested.

  151. And we've had two really powerful messages on Abraham, especially last week.

  152. Please take a look.

  153. But his faith is being tested as the very child of promise he's told to offer to God.

  154. Contrary to everything he thinks about God, everything that he knows about God, he's asked to bring the very blessing of God as a sacrifice.

  155. Now, can we be can we be joyful here?

  156. The narrative's redeemed when Abraham says to his servants, we'll be back.

  157. The writer of the Hebrews says Abraham believed God could even raise him from the dead.

  158. But in the middle of it, it's a it's a trauma.

  159. But folks, I think sometimes we forget it's Isaac's trauma too.

  160. Abraham's being tested.

  161. But Isaac has to exercise trust in God and his father.

  162. He lets himself be bound.

  163. And of course, God intervenes with another offering and blesses Abraham again.

  164. But Isaac's experienced this moment of difficulty.

  165. Now we will all be tested by events that weren't our fault.

  166. Now, just to give you a humorous example to try to make a serious point, um, back when I was in the youth group, I was a fairly new Christian, and we went up boating near Mantica on a lake, and I had never been water skiing.

  167. And of course, how many of you know just getting up on the skis is its own skill?

  168. Okay?

  169. But I was so excited.

  170. I'm gonna get up on the skis, I'm gonna be cool.

  171. And um, we get there, get the boat off the trailer in the water, we're all excited, and about ten of us on this boat is a good-sized boat, and just all good friends, because just a great moment.

  172. And the engine won't start.

  173. So my friend goes down and he gets his hands greasy, comes back up wiping his hands, and and meanwhile, while he's down doing all this, one of our friends starts praying against the demons in the engine.

  174. Now, I do believe there's real spiritual warfare.

  175. I do believe that we are in a world that's affected by serious spiritual powers.

  176. But folks, my friend came up from the engine bay and said, I have a revelation for you.

  177. It's broken.

  178. Plan B.

  179. And we we went to the water slide in Mantica and had a good time.

  180. I'm using a little humor to make a point that sometimes things happen that are not our fault, not the consequences of what we've done.

  181. And some are simple things, some are very profound, some are very difficult things that are hard to put into words.

  182. God is still with us.

  183. The same way our Lord Jesus experienced this Genesis 22 moment when he went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.

  184. Jesus told his followers and tells us in the Gospels time and time again, I am going to die for your sins.

  185. I'm going to rise again.

  186. The kingdom of God is going to come in power in some wonderful ways.

  187. But when the moment comes, it's still hard.

  188. How many of you know when you're close to graduation, you know you're going to graduate and you still have to go through finals?

  189. Um I'm saying that to try to make a profound point here.

  190. We can know that God's working, but it doesn't make the process easy sometimes.

  191. And so part of what we need to embrace is a mature theology that God is a God of glory who answers prayers and does amazing things.

  192. I am so grateful for every healing, every moment of liberation, every person coming to Christ, every answered prayer.

  193. Right now we have several testimonies of friends who have gone through cancer treatment and they're clean and they're doing well, and we have testimony of others that are still being challenged.

  194. We need a theology of glory to believe God can do amazing things, and we need a theology of suffering that until our Lord returns, there's going to be paradox, there's going to be mystery, there's going to be challenge.

  195. And so we see this.

  196. Um, we see life tested by trauma.

  197. And Isaac grows in his faith through this trauma.

  198. I want to give you a couple of Psalms to jot down, just before we get to point three here, that I hope will help you deal with the inexplicable and the difficult.

  199. These have really helped me, and I probably go to them weekly.

  200. Psalm 73, I go to the first 14 verses so I know how to complain to God.

  201. Come on, am I the only one that's complained?

  202. And the writer starts off so beautifully, so poetically.

  203. Surely God is good to Israel, good to the pure in heart.

  204. And they said, But I almost lost my faith.

  205. I almost betrayed a generation because I looked at how well the wicked are doing and how difficult my life is, and I couldn't put it together.

  206. And let me put it in modern language.

  207. What are all those pagans doing living to a hundred years old with buffed bodies and big bank accounts?

  208. And why are all the righteous being taken too soon and going through suffering?

  209. That's what that's what the writer felt like.

  210. And so the writer pours out the heart.

  211. And then the shift happens until I entered the sanctuary of God, till I took a moment in God's presence and understood there's an eternal perspective I hadn't been seeing.

  212. I was looking at the immediate circumstances and not seeing the fullness of the divine plan.

  213. And then he said.

  214. Says, whom have I in heaven but you?

  215. And having you I need nothing on earth.

  216. God, you will take me into glory.

  217. You're my strength, you're my song.

  218. Folks, he's the God who sees us in our most difficult moments, and he's the God who's with us through it all.

  219. Can you say amen?

  220. By the way, Psalm 37, flip the digits, is how we need to live while we wait for the answers to prayer.

  221. Trust in the Lord and do good.

  222. Wait patiently for the Lord.

  223. The meek will inherit the earth.

  224. It's a beautiful psalm.

  225. Every couplet beginning with a new Hebrew letter.

  226. It's just a beautiful psalm.

  227. So I always like to say when I when I'm really going through it, I start with 73 and I end on 37.

  228. I need that perspective.

  229. And God is with us and working in us.

  230. And again, the world doesn't always make sense.

  231. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great pastor and martyr in Nazi Germany, and Martin Luther King, our most profound civil rights leader, both died at age 39.

  232. Pagans live to a hundred, and we've had family friends have sudden difficulties.

  233. But we can trust in the Lord and watch him do something beyond our expectations.

  234. I want to share one more story of about Sister Clara Brown.

  235. And you probably didn't wake up today saying, I wonder if he's going to share about Sister Clara Brown.

  236. But in the 1850s, she got liberated from her slavery, having lost her family to other masters 20 years earlier, and in her 50s, she's a free woman.

  237. She makes her way out to the Colorado Gold Rush, which is about 10 years after the California Gold Rush.

  238. She's the first black resident in Denver, and then she made her way to Central City in the mining territory.

  239. And she started a kitchen and a laundry business, like so many of her peers, just trying to find work, enjoying their new freedom, finding their way.

  240. And she would be just one of the many anonymous saints that God honors and has a reward with the Lord.

  241. But Clara Brown took another step in her faith.

  242. As she was doing her work, she would take the overalls and jeans and shake all the dust out and got enough gold dust to buy her first piece of property.

  243. And over the next 25 years, she owned 30 pieces of real estate, four mines, planted the first Protestant church in the Rockies, and created the first old age home that was integrated.

  244. And in her 80s, the Colorado governor called her a treasure to the state.

  245. And God brought a couple members of her family to her just before she passed away.

  246. There's even been an opera written about her, and she was just Sister Clara.

  247. But folks, we never know what God can do if we can look up beyond our immediate circumstances and see the possibilities that God brings before us.

  248. Well, number three, we can break free from generational dysfunctions.

  249. We can break free from generational dysfunctions.

  250. Just to remind you, number one, number one is so important, and that's just a reminder, we need to embrace paradox of divine promise and broken family systems.

  251. Number two, we're tested by traumatic moments.

  252. And number three, we can break free from generational dysfunctions and patterns.

  253. Now, Isaac made the same mistake as his dad one time, lying about his wife, but in general, he didn't repeat all of the same difficulties of his father.

  254. And in Genesis 24, God blesses the desire of Abraham to find a bride for his son, but blesses Isaac's longing for a great wife.

  255. And I hope you can read Genesis 24 a little bit more deeply.

  256. It's a love story, it's an arranged marriage that turns into a love story.

  257. I tried to arrange my kids' marriages, didn't work.

  258. Not that culture.

  259. And by the way, they they married really well.

  260. So I'm forever grateful to God.

  261. But what was a providential activity for Abraham to continue the lineage was a personal blessing.

  262. And Isaac and Rebecca's love story is a beautiful one that I hope you'll take some time.

  263. And we can break free from those dysfunctions.

  264. And you know, Rebecca struggles with having children and gives birth to Jacob and Esau, and that's going to be its own narrative, as we'll see, of their struggle.

  265. But they have a beautiful marriage, a beautiful relationship.

  266. Now, Rebecca is going to make the mistake of trying to help God out.

  267. By the way, as we break free from some of the dysfunctions and create our own future, um, am I the only one that's tried to help the Holy Spirit a little extra sometimes?

  268. I've said, God, I really want you to bless this activity.

  269. And I want to be careful, those of you in clinical psychology, I don't hear voices.

  270. Um, but I do, we do have the privilege of the Holy Spirit speaking deep within us, don't we?

  271. Whispering to us those affirmations of God's word and truth and bearing witness to us.

  272. So I remember asking God to bless this situation and the Lord speaking to me in that place of prayer.

  273. Charlie, why don't you ask what I'm blessing and do it instead of asking me to bless what you've decided to do.

  274. Now, have I always followed that?

  275. I wish, Pastor.

  276. I still fall into that sometimes.

  277. God, can I kind of help you out a little bit?

  278. The joke at the seminary is that God and Charlie have a wonderful plan for your life.

  279. And I'm joking a little because I really do want the will of God.

  280. So even as we break free from some of these dysfunctions, Isaac and Rebecca had some of their own struggles as they tried to figure out the future.

  281. And later Rebecca's gonna think she needs to help her aging husband out with who he blesses to carry on the legacy.

  282. And uh, so there's still that humanness in the narrative, but I just want to really declare to us that we really can be free, we really can have a new future.

  283. And number four, where I want us to go into the scripture in detail, would you turn to Genesis 26?

  284. I I love this passage.

  285. Number four, we must encounter the Lord for ourselves and pass on a legacy of faith.

  286. So, Genesis 2, 26, 2 to 5, and 23 to 25.

  287. Let me just read God's word.

  288. Best part of the message is the actual reading of Scripture.

  289. The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, Do not go down to Egypt.

  290. Don't go back to the past.

  291. Live in the land where I tell you to live.

  292. Stay in this land for a while.

  293. I will be with you and I will bless you.

  294. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.

  295. Let me pause there.

  296. Hey, Isaac, you're part of a bigger story than yourself.

  297. I promised Abraham this, but I'm here to bless you.

  298. Could you make note of that?

  299. We're part of a bigger story.

  300. Others might get more billing, but we're equally important to God in his story for our lives.

  301. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

  302. I'll give them all these lands, and through your offspring, how many nations will be blessed?

  303. Say it loud.

  304. All nations on earth will be blessed because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees, my instructions.

  305. And then from there he went up to Beersheba.

  306. That night the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the God of your father Abraham.

  307. Do not be afraid.

  308. I am with you.

  309. I will bless you, I will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.

  310. Isaac built an altar there, called on the name of the Lord.

  311. He pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.

  312. Wow.

  313. We may not pitch tents and dig wells, although that's fun to do, but we need personally, continually, to call on the name of the Lord and have fresh encounters with him.

  314. And not rest on a previous history for others or even for ourselves, but know that God has fresh encounters, fresh assurance, sometimes fresh conviction, but in all cases, fresh experiences of his marvelous grace.

  315. You see, I'm now a grandfather.

  316. I know I look 39, but I'm 66.

  317. And I'm a grandfather five times.

  318. And it's a it's a deep pleasure, it's a deep joy and delight.

  319. But my children had to meet Jesus personally.

  320. They're introducing their young children, and they've said yes to Jesus as young children.

  321. So thrilled about that.

  322. Each person, each generation has to say yes and have a fresh encounter with the Lord, and he's ready and willing to give that to us.

  323. You know, as you continue to read through the Bible, you're going to discover that the dysfunctions in Genesis don't end after Exodus.

  324. I wish they did.

  325. You would think after they were liberated from Egypt, everything would be wonderful.

  326. And a few weeks later they're complaining about the menu.

  327. That's just that's the human nature.

  328. I love, don't you?

  329. And by the way, if you're newer to the Bible, King David's a major figure who's going to establish the capital in Jerusalem for the nation of Israel about 1000 BC, 1,000 years before Christ.

  330. And he's going to make all kinds of mistakes.

  331. God's going to bless him.

  332. But his family story after him could be an HBO miniseries.

  333. I mean, it's just full of drama.

  334. It's punctuated with divine grace and judgment.

  335. And so the story continues.

  336. But we have to meet God.

  337. But can I give you the good news?

  338. We are more than our history.

  339. Later on in the New Testament, after our Lord and Savior has died for our sins and rose again and commissioned his people, that one of the biggest enemies of the early church named Saul of Tarsus is going to become the Apostle Paul when he encounters Jesus.

  340. And God decided to use the most Jewish of Jews to reach non-Jews.

  341. It's like a friend I met 40 years ago named Tom Terrence, who was a KKK leader in Mississippi and in prison for attempted murder.

  342. He met Jesus in prison.

  343. And he joined with civil rights leader John Perkins for decades in racial reconciliation.

  344. God takes former enemies and makes them friends.

  345. God takes people with one kind of background and puts them on a brand new trajectory.

  346. We need to encounter the Lord for ourselves.

  347. Amen?

  348. And he has something new and fresh for each of us.

  349. And by the way, we've been talking about all the brokenness.

  350. If if I hope that my kids will say they come from a great family, because Charlie and Kathy are pretty great.

  351. But no, we've had as a as a family, we've been intact and we've been whole.

  352. God's helped us be healthy, but we've gone through very difficult situations in ministry and job situations.

  353. We've packed boxes 17 times.

  354. And half of those weren't our choice.

  355. My daughter occasionally says, I'm going to therapy for being in the military with you, Dad.

  356. And the point is, so no matter how well we may do and how different Kathy and are from our families, each family will have its challenges.

  357. And each one will have to encounter Jesus for themselves.

  358. I'm pretty confident my kids will tell you that I love them, that we've invested in them, that we cared for them deeply.

  359. But they'll also tell you the ups and downs that we experienced.

  360. And we've experienced some of their ups and downs.

  361. And God has something fresh for us.

  362. As the worship team comes and we prepare for prayer today, I just want to pray in some applications with us.

  363. I want you to pray these in with me and um take a moment and allow the Holy Spirit to deepen our faith, mature our understanding, and grant us a fresh touch of his grace today.

  364. Would you bow your heads with me for a moment and let's pray together?

  365. And then we're going to respond in song, and our pastor will come and grant a special blessing.

  366. Gracious and loving God, we thank you that you are the God who sees and cares.

  367. You're the God who is near the brokenhearted and with the Christian spirit.

  368. You're the God who dwells in the highest of heavens and with the humble of heart.

  369. And as our brother shared earlier, Lord, with everything, with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, we come and we say, Lord, give us a fresh experience of your grace today.

  370. Give us a fresh infusion of hope that we are more than our history.

  371. And so, Lord, we choose today to agree with your word.

  372. We choose to embrace the paradox of your glory and suffering, the paradox of your power in our life, and the paradox of walking through challenges, Lord.

  373. And we say, Lord, we want to learn to trust you ever more deeply.

  374. Lord, we choose today to receive healing from our traumatic events.

  375. And Lord, we believe you can heal us, that we don't have to be determined by that abuse or rejection, but rather with your help and a process of the Holy Spirit in the embrace of the body of Christ, Lord, that we can receive healing and hope.

  376. Lord, today we thank you that we can break free of the dysfunctions and strongholds and habits of family systems or social systems that are contrary to the gospel.

  377. While honoring our families and cultures, Lord, for those things that are from your providence, we also want to break free from anything that keeps us from your best plan and your good work in our life.

  378. So, Lord, we just declare that who you set free is free indeed.

  379. And then, Lord, today, would you grant us right now in your presence, as we open our hearts and hands to worship you, would you grant us a fresh experience of just how much you love us, how much you care.

  380. You are the fear of Isaac, you're the God of Isaac, as well as the God of Abraham and Jacob and Moses and David and Paul and all the saints.

  381. And you are our God if we surrender to you.

  382. Praise your holy name.

  383. If you're newer to faith, this may be your day to take a step towards surrender to the love of Jesus Christ, who takes us as we are and then transforms us into all that God intends us to be in holiness and in love.

  384. So, Lord, we say thank you.

  385. Thank you for your grace.

  386. Thank you for your embrace, and thank you for the hope that your Holy Spirit brings us.

  387. In Jesus' name we pray.

  388. Would you say amen?

  389. Stand with me and let's join with the worship team and respond to his grace and song together.

  390. We hope you are blessed by this message.

  391. Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

  392. And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

  393. Take the next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.com slash card.