Team on a Mission with Pastor Tony Albano

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

If you guys are new here today, like Pastor Clayton said, my name is Tony, and I lead our youth program here.

And uh I want to thank you guys right off the bat.

Uh, it's been a great experience.

A lot of you guys who are parents in our ministry have given me a lot of encouragement.

I want to thank you guys for last week.

Linger Longer was a huge success.

Fill the box already.

We're seeing uh the fruit of that.

We brought in over$2,500 last week, which is awesome.

Yeah, give it up.

Give it up, yeah.

And uh, you know, the guy pulled up the truck this morning, was he had some roll cards in there, and he was like, hey, uh, you guys can just toss them in there.

It's like, dude, what do we do when we fill them up?

Because we knew you guys would come out and first service.

We already filled every single container, roll card they had in there, all money as well donated.

Yeah, yeah.

So exciting.

Every single dollar is going towards helping offset the cost of camp.

And uh, camp is a big deal, I believe, for our sixth through 12th graders, but also for our fourth through fifth graders who are going as well.

They have a chance to go out this year as well.

And um, want to make sure if you are a parent, to let them know hey, get them signed up.

We have Early Bird all the way through April 15th.

They're gonna save about$50 and uh helps us plan.

Honestly, takes a little weight off your boy.

I gotta, I hope we I know we're gonna hit our number, but hitting it closer than not is obviously a huge help.

Uh, like Pastor Clayton said, uh, and these are a lot of shameless plugs, I'm up here talking about youth.

So if you don't have a youth or someone through six through twelfth, uh, find someone and let them know this stuff.

We got next wave happening tonight.

I am so excited.

It's gonna be our first next wave night.

We've been focusing on this foundational ideas in our youth program, which are we believe that it's our mission to partner with students from sixth to twelfth grade to help find them belonging, purpose, and identity in Christ.

And we've been talking about these very things all month.

And the one thing that I'm so excited about in next wave is this is gonna be the night where kids invite because we go above and beyond, we do crazy games.

We have the youth worship team uh coming in and they're gonna be playing for one of the first times in a long time.

So that's exciting for our youth program.

But the biggest thing, or the reason we do all this crazy stuff, is so we can get them in the building and experience and worship God.

And today, one of the main things is they're gonna have a chance to respond to the gospel.

The next wave is all about the response part.

So if you guys would help me, I'm gonna be here preaching all day long, and I'm gonna be here tonight as well.

If you have a sixth through twelfth grader, make sure you guys get them here and plugs over, shameless plugs, all over.

We're gonna move on.

I am so excited to be here today.

Um, I've been a dad for a whole six months to this crazy kid named Sonny.

They got a pick of him.

Uh, I'm able to show off his crazy little face if y'all got that.

That is Sonny.

Yeah, he is six months old, and uh let me tell you, like, having a kid, and everyone says this, is like the most eye-opening thing in the world.

Like everyone says it, me and Tori, we had a dog, so you know, we were playing parent for a little bit, and it was exciting.

We had some responsibility.

If we had a trip, we had to, you know, put up our dog, make sure he was kept.

When you have a kid, and a lot of you know this, the unawareness that you have of yourself is amplified.

The selfishness in yourself is amplified.

Like I come home from work and I love working at Meta, but sometimes I just want to unwind, and Tori's had sunny all day, and you know, instead of being handed a baby, I just want to chill.

I just want like five minutes, you know what I mean?

And it's shown me this selfishness in me.

And I think that's part of what parenthood is.

But it's also shown me the love that I actually had no idea, the capacity I could love something, love someone.

And it's crazy because you know, your mother, your your wife's pregnant for nine months, and you have this idea, it's crazy, we're gonna have a kid, and then nine months later, they hand you this small, fragile baby.

And me as a brand new father, not knowing what do I do with it, what do I do with him?

Uh, he's smiling at me, oh, he's crying.

I feel I tell Tor sometimes like I feel like I'm just constantly trying to distract him from not crying, and then as soon as he sees his mom, he's like, Oh, give me her, like a fine.

And I'm the one who's constantly gotta distract him, trying to make him smile.

Sometimes I put my nose in his face and he sucks on my nose, and I find it hilarious.

Tor tells me to chill, or you know, and I've been loving this experience.

But really, the biggest thing that's been aware and that's brought to my attention is the weight of that.

The real weight of having a child and having to raise a child.

So I've been at the ripe age of a father for literally six months, and uh, Pastor Clayton comes up to me, and he thinks it's a the wise decision that Anthony, you know what?

You should be preaching on the biblical model of family.

Like, dude, what?

I've literally been a dad for like literally a minute.

You've been called a dad for years, you've been leading people at a high capacity, you've been called father longer than I.

Like, why don't you preach this message?

Made absolutely no sense to me.

And I today I come to you, I don't have nothing to give you guys from my own self.

I have nothing to give you knowledge-wise.

I have very little experience.

But one of the things I love about our pastor is his idea of and his just like the way he leads, he's content in actually challenging people, knowing that they're going to deliver.

And I hope today I'll deliver to you.

I really do.

But I really feel like it was an opportunity for me to really search the scripture and see what God says about fatherhood, see what God says about this biblical idea of family.

And today I hope today that um I can show you guys that it was painted all throughout scripture, literally up until the point of Jesus and into the church.

I hope I can help paint this picture for all of us here today.

Because every single one of us here, regardless of who you are, is a son and a daughter.

And you have a purpose in this church, in this idea of this family of God.

And I really hope today that we will have some clarity moving on as well.

You know, beyond that, I do lead in this season our teenagers, and I have seen the actual need in a lot of their lives for strong, young, old, regardless of what age you are, just men.

Men who are mature in their faith as well as those who are new in their faith, who have different walks, different ideologies that they came in with, and they were wrecked by the gospel, wrecked by the Holy Spirit, and now they're walking in this calling, or have yet to walk.

There is a call for you as well.

And by the end of today's message, I I do have a challenge for you.

I do have a challenge for us in the room, and my plan is not to motivate you or to persuade you.

My job today is to lay out the word, lay out the truth.

Like I said, I have no knowledge of being a father compared to the majority of the men in this room.

I don't.

Six months.

But what I do know is anytime I've ever walked into a room or walked into a position to teach something, I've always had the idea that is not coming from me.

And that age didn't matter.

It comes from understanding and learning the word of God that goes beyond every single one of us.

So, with that, would you guys pray with me today?

Father, we welcome in your Holy Spirit.

I pray today that you would speak to us.

I pray today that you would allow us to see the biblical model of family for what it is, for what you laid out.

And I pray that it would challenge us, it would motivate us, it would bring us just peace when we're actually hearing about ways that we're living this out.

But I pray that you would also show us the gaps, show us in our families, show us in our friend groups, show us in our ideas of how we're living our life, Lord, how we are to be the called out, chosen family of God.

And if you're ready, would you say amen?

Amen.

I really am excited for this because this is something that lit me on fire.

Like it really did.

Uh, there was a little bit of hesitancy as I was studying the scriptures because I was like, dude, what is the what is the challenge right now?

I gotta like present this, and I got in the weeds.

I'll tell you right now, I got in the weeds, usually a sermon, like presentation, you know, maybe nine, ten pages.

Your boy had six documents up, over eight, nine thousand words.

Uh and then I got it down to like 4,500 when I presented it to Pastor Clayton, and he was like, bro, I I get it, but I'm not, and so like there was a lot of help in there and wisdom in there.

So I really do hope today that you do see clarity in this, but I really did dive in.

I really did try to flip over every rock that I could to present to you today because I do feel the weight of this next generation.

We have a next wave of kingdom leaders who are gonna be growing up into our world, and it is our job, it's the generation before them, who it's our responsibility to lead them.

You know, it's the scariest thing to me as a dad right now, and uh, it's just observing the tremendous struggles that we're seeing in the families in America today, specifically.

Like, really, if you look at the stats of our families, the healthiness of our families, it really is scary.

And it's not foreign to me.

I come a family from a family that is far from perfect.

I was number, I was uh, I was one of six siblings, and um, every single one of us growing up seemed like we had some idea of what life should look like.

We had our own values and beliefs.

Like my household was all over the place.

Growing up, it's like all the chaos, all the separation, everything that you can look back on to.

Like when I look at that, when I look at me, I compare it to my own family right now, or the fact that I'm raising up a family right now, I want things to be different.

I want to change things.

And I know some of you feel that way today.

You grew up in a crazy family, a dysfunctional family, just like I did.

And the moment they hand you this son or daughter, it's like everything changed.

And some of us are a couple years down the road and we're starting to see that the things that you and I are dealing with are much deeper than we thought.

The things that you and I wrestle with that we were raised in, they're harder than we thought to just change about ourselves.

You know, there's some stats that kind of freaked me out.

Um, the US leads in the amount of single parents in the whole entire world.

And you may not know, but there's an epidemic in our country right now of kids who are growing up without fathers.

Over 24 million children in the United States have absent biological fathers.

That's more than one-third of the population under 18.

That's a big deal.

And this leads into this cycle because now these men grow up.

These men, the world hits them, and if you look at these main problems we're seeing in society, it's those who are fatherless, who are being or growing up, who are uneducated.

The vast majority of them are high school dropouts.

The vast majority of the youth who are in our prisons today are those who grew up without a father in the household.

And if you look at the homeless problem in the United States right now, you could trace the problem back down to those who were runaway children, those who ran away, who had abusive fathers or lack of a father in their life.

That should be eye-opening to each and every single one of us that there is a problem with the family dynamic.

You know, there's plenty of single moms, amazing single moms, who are doing the best they can and they're doing a great job, and they're raising up great children, but that does not change the facts.

It doesn't.

It doesn't change the facts of what is actually the result of those living without a father.

And that doesn't give us this painted, this perfect picture of those who were raised with the father.

Just because you have a mom and a dad in the household does not mean that you will have a healthy, happy life.

That was about half my childhood growing up, or at least this picture that I thought, that I thought my parents were together.

I thought my parents were in this together.

At least half my life, that was the picture.

And then I got to experience the other side of that in my in my late teenage years.

And it really did affect me.

It really did affect a lot of us in this room.

You know, the typical American family is running from extracurricular activities from, you know, dance, soccer practice, football, and parents don't we're working overtime, we're working long hours.

We're doing we're working these crazy schedules in between the pickup and drop off line at school.

And then we come home and we're not even cooking meals, or we're eating out, or we're not sitting around the the actually the table and talking and experiencing our family.

And then what happens at the end of the night?

It was it was shown to me, my selfishness.

We grab our phone, we grab our screen in need of some numbness that's disguised as peace.

We think this very thing in our pocket is the very thing that we need, and it's ripping us away from our families.

The same way everything in the American society is structuring the family in a negative way, and you and I, we have to be careful.

We have to have our eyes out, we have to be completely intentional with how we are actually raising up our families.

Because before you know it, Sonny's got my keys, he's driving my truck, he's off to college.

Before you know it, your kids are grown up out into the work field, out in the workforce, off to college.

And you look back at that time that you had with them, and you realize that you barely know them.

You barely know them, or they're living out in ways that you never thought they would.

Being under your roof for almost 18, 19 years, you thought there was no way they would have this life view.

And that is happening for so many of our families here today.

So, what is happening with our families?

What is the problem?

You know, let me be really clear when I say this that we organize family in the Western society, the way we organize it is drastically different than the way family has been organized for primarily all of history.

This American dream, this idea of a family is a new idea, is an experiment.

And if you and I, we look at our families right now, if we look at the health and condition of our families, I know somewhere deep down inside you feel the weight of that.

See, the model for America is to raise up your kids and to launch them out into the world.

And that's primarily to launch them out for individual success.

This is called the nest model.

This is how we are raising families in the United States, the nest model.

And some of you guys know this, some of you guys have heard this, some of you guys are a little older, and maybe your kids have recently moved out or they're just about to.

And what do we say to parents when all their kids have moved out?

We call them empty nesters.

For some of us, that's the saddest day of our lives.

And for some of y'all, if you're honest, you are counting down the moments.

You're ready, just get them out into the world.

And we look at family as this springboard, this launch pad out into the world.

And now, this is the identifying metric in which we identify success in a family.

This nest model, all around this hyper-individualistic society that you and I have created, that we have been part of practically our whole entire lives.

And that all sounds great, like when it's packaged up for we're gonna raise them up, we're gonna get them the training they need, we're gonna get them the tutoring they need, we're gonna put them in all these extensive classes so they can, you know, write the academic essay that they need to get the scholarship, to go out into the world, to get the job they need, to move across country, to move across the state, and go out and be a success.

And throughout all of this, we miss it.

We miss the blessing, we miss the opportunities, we miss the deepest relationships that you and I were supposed to hone in on and focus on and allow God to bless you through blessing your children.

We're missing it.

It's hard for you and I to envision what a family would look like a hundred, five hundred, a thousand years ago.

But what we do know is that the way the family was structured was this idea that we're gonna have as many kids as possible.

We're gonna have as many kids as possible to produce workers, to probe to produce people who are gonna protect the family.

Because this idea, when you had land, when you were in a in a foreign place and you had land, generational land, you wanted to protect this blessing that God had given you.

And you, as a family, you were raising up as many soldiers, as many warriors for this team, as many people as you could to work the fields, to plow the grain, to do the things that they needed to do.

And those who came after them would be caught up in this multi-generational family, caught up in this idea of sitting across from a table with some of someone who is far outside of their age group.

The way we structured schools, peer-to-peer learning, we're all in the same grade, we're all the same age, growing up, and it's messing with our society.

I'm not telling us today to embrace like our inner Amish and to pull out all your kids right now, and let's all start get around and go out, move out into the sticks, start making wicker furniture, start eating holistically off the grain.

Like, I'm not telling us to do that.

But I do want us to be aware that a family, the idea of what it was was to pass the baton down to the next generation.

Allow the generation that went before you to be taking care of those who are now growing up in this generation, sitting around a table learning from each other.

This is called the team model.

See, the Nest model says that you can go out and change the world.

And the team model says that we as a family can come together and change the world.

It's a flip.

It's a complete flip in the way I've been thinking, and a lot of us have been thinking.

I don't even have a category for it.

I really didn't.

I just thought that was something that people did back in the day.

That's the way life was like.

Poor them.

They couldn't, you know, go out and get a degree, make a good living, get out of their family's uh household, and leave.

You know, my older sister, one of my older sisters, Jackie, um, she was really successful growing up, um, like quickly.

And when I talked to her today, we've been through through, I've been through our uh MMA program story.

A lot of you guys know what that is, or have been through that.

And um, you know, part of that's that whole thing was amending the relationships I had with my siblings.

And uh when I talked to Jackie, and I asked her like why she moved all the way across the country.

We were in South Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale area, and she moved all the way to California at the ripe age of like 21.

And, you know, she got scholarships when she was in like 10th grade, she was doing dual enrollment, she was doing all these things to set herself up.

But when I got down to why she did it, she couldn't stand the household she was in.

She wanted to run away from the very thing that God was supposed to use in our lives to build us up and to bless the world.

A lot of us, we have a similar story to that.

There's a biblical model for family.

You gotta look for it.

And when you look for it, it's very apparent all throughout scripture.

And the beginning of scripture, God's answer to the chaos, the darkness, bringing order into the world was to bring together a man and a woman.

His answer to chaos was to bless the world through a family.

See, in Genesis 1, verse 28, it says that God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish and the sea and the birds and the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

Genesis 1:28

These were the instructions given to the first family to live out their purpose, to go out, be fruitful, multiply, become this huge family, take on ground, cultivate culture, go out into the world.

And then we see shortly after, majority of us here have heard about the man Abraham in the Bible.

Abraham literally means the father of nations in Hebrew.

That's the literal translation of his name that God gave him.

It was Abram, but God renamed him Abraham, the father of nations.

And God promised to make him a great nation.

He promised to give him land and descendants.

He was an old man at the time who had no family lineage other than his wife, no one to pass on the name, no one to pass on, no one to take care of him.

And God promised him he would make him a great nation, and he promised he would bless him with land and descendants.

And we see this very thing unfold right before us in Scripture.

But you see, one of the main promises that was given to Abraham was that one day the whole earth would be blessed through his.

Family.

You and I can trace back all the way back this person that we know of Jesus, literally, thousand years later, 40 generations down the road, God fulfilling this promise, this blessing, through Abraham's family.

We can trace it back.

That's why we have these genealogies, that's why scripture is so specific, showing us that these ideas come all the way back to the first promise, back to the first family that would be blessed, that would go out and bless the world.

And you and I were so far removed from this idea.

And that's part of why our families are so screwed up.

I don't have the categories for it.

I don't know my great-grandparents' name.

I have no idea where my family really came from.

I know where I got some itali, I'm kind of a mutt.

I got Italian uh in me, I got Portuguese in me.

My mom's family was in Cuba, and then they came uh to the States.

Uh I know they're specifically from Spain, but past that, I have no idea.

My last name's Albano.

I've heard some states that uh some people say that we were originally from Albania.

So, like there's all these ideas, but if you really think about it, I don't know who I am.

I don't know where my family comes from.

I don't have this idea, I don't even have a category for it.

Whereas families before, you can trace their lineage, they knew where they were from.

There were things that they passed on from generation to generation.

You know, I'm a I'm a pretty young dad, and uh growing up, my dad wasn't like this, but I had friends' dads who had like the wise sayings.

So I'm trying to think, dude, what are those sayings that like Sonny or my future kids are gonna hear me say?

Uh like I really am thinking, I know some of y'all got like maybe even like that family joke that you know, I got some funny like uh friends' dads who like give me the corniest jokes, but like it really did affect me.

Like, and like that's how I think about it.

Like when I think about like the thing that came up before me, I really don't have anything I can really think about.

There's some tradition I can tie back to things we do on the holidays, but really I never got the opportunity to sit around a table.

I never got the opportunity to sit around and raise up and actually take care of those who came before me.

That's this biblical idea of family.

There's so much that God wants to do through your family.

And imagine if that was the lens that you and I put on.

Do you know how many families would be saved?

Do you know how many marriages would be saved?

If you and I, our starting point was to think through what is the mission for our family?

What is the goal of our family?

Because affair becomes obsolete.

How do I have time for an affair when I am a multi-generational family?

Right now, team on mission.

I have this idea of what I need to do.

There's no time for affair, there's no time to stay angry.

No, we're raising up a family, we're raising up an army of individuals who are not gonna just go out into the world, but no, they're gonna be blessed through the family.

They're gonna bless each other, they're gonna bless each other, and they're gonna show the world this idea of what a family looks like.

That is what the idea of what a family looks like.

When we're actually thinking four or five generations down the line, when we're thinking about assets, when we're thinking about building wealth, it's not just about the day-to-day or so I can flex on my neighbors, you know, so I can pull up in the new car.

No, when it becomes multi-generational family team on mission, when it's about that, it's about blessing four or five generations down the line, preparing them and giving them the assets that they need, not for the family specifically for themselves, but to go out and be a blessing to the world.

That was the first promise that God gave for Abraham to go out and bless not only his family, because that's a direct result of you living out this idea of a multi-generational family.

God will, if you're stewarding it well, God will bless your family.

He'll take care of you because he knows that your family is gonna be the one to go out and model out what it looks like.

You know, there's this idea in society that's becoming more prevalent that, um, and we're seeing it, and it's it's a huge effect.

It really is, that um people are getting married later, people are having less kids, or women are deciding not to have kids.

And I really wonder if it's because we were raised in a culture or in a family dynamic that did not prioritize family, that didn't that did not actually show the benefit of what a family brings.

Because right now, our our the youngest people we have in our generation right now, the ones who typically would be married, those between 20 and 25, we're seeing this nomad culture coming up, this two pi two people together, one income, no kids, I mean two incomes, no kids.

We're seeing this idea raise up, and they're seeking pleasure, they're seeking all these things that are actually fleeting when really we should be taking these young years of our life, pouring out and being fruitful and multiplying, going out into the culture, subduing and actually stewarding what God has given us.

But we've bought into this lie.

We've bought into this American lie.

So right now we have the nest model versus the team model.

And let's recap because the nest model is it's individual, it's focused on each family member as an individual, it's isolated, it's giving us this very narrow view of the family, and it's highly independent.

The main focus is for us to raise up a child for individual success, independent from the actual family.

Like when we actually think about it, when we actually sit and actually like draw this out, and we say that out loud, that the six like what success is for our kids is to become independent outside of this family.

We miss out on the whole reason that God gave you a family.

And some of us we're living, you know, pictures of this, but we're missing the whole idea.

Then we have the team model, which we saw was inclusive, involved, and it's interdependent.

This view gives a broad scope as individuals for their skills as well as the value they bring or lack of value, right?

So we start looking at their skills, we start seeing the things that they have, or we're trying to train them up into having specific skills, and we're raising them up to leave us.

Not to use those skills in order to build up the family or to build up a sibling or to be a helping hand to a father as your father gets older, or to be a helping hand as your grandfather gets older.

Like there's this idea that, like, you know, we get older and maybe we gotta take our parents in, where it seems like a burden, like a huge burden.

And I'm not gonna like say that it's not, but I think it's come to the point where that has become really amplified, and we're not willing to sacrifice at the willingness that a family would have sacrificed a thousand years ago.

And some of us, I mean, my mom's getting older, she'll be 60, um, she's not in the best health, and uh, you know, we're thinking through ideas of really like, you know, what's that look like?

Do you need to live closer to me in Texas?

Uh are my sisters gonna rise up where they're at?

Uh my brother and sister, I have another brother and sister in LA, and we're really starting to think through these ideas, and uh, you know, I'm not the righteous kid, the Christian, but like it really is sad and scary to hear that, like, you know, they don't they don't want to have the conversation.

They don't, they don't want to deal with it.

I think that's a result of our culture.

You know, I feel the weight of it, uh, teaching God's word, trying to live out the best I can as a follower of Christ.

And um, parts of me deep down inside, and I was honest with her, like, it does feel like a burden.

But I really do wonder if it's the culture that we were raised in, this idea of family that we've been sold to, that really does affect the way that you and I look at how our parents raised us, the sacrifice that went through.

Like, are we all taking that for granted?

See, there are very two different ways of viewing our lives.

The Nest model is hyper focused on the individual to the point of isolating each person.

The team model says that the family is a unit, a body of sorts.

And if you know your Bible a little bit, we're gonna get into it, but you you're you're hearing some similar language of what the church is, this idea of a family, a body.

And the Nest model says that my generation will make a difference, while the team model says it takes all generations together to make a difference.

The Nest model says that I can change the world, while the team model says we can change the world together.

All of us collectively, bringing in our own specific skills, things that we know, our experiences, bringing these things together for God's mission.

See, the Nest model is fueled by individual ambition, while the team model is fueled on God's purpose for our lives.

The Nest model sadly is just a lone rager going out, the wild, wild west, all by themselves to take on the world by themselves.

While the team model is a multi-generational force focused on bringing blessing to the whole entire world.

You see, in the beginning, God called humanity as a team and chose the family as this organizing mechanism in society.

This is where we should have stemmed, this is where we should have put all of our resources, all of our time.

This was what God gave us as a society.

And with the call of Abraham, God chose one nation, his children, to be this model out.

We know them because we read about them in scripture, this chosen nation of Israel.

They were supposed to be the picture of what a nation, a healthy nation, a healthy family looked like into the world.

And as long as they were operating under this mission, under this protection of God, they would go out anywhere in the world and God would bless them.

He would curse those that curse them, and he would bless those who blessed them.

It's this image, this idea that we're seeing all throughout the scripture line of all the way from Abraham to Solomon to David, all the way up to Jesus, was this multi-generational family team on mission.

And Jesus comes onto the scene, and they're actually upset at Jesus.

They've gotten so far away from this idea, thousands of years later, it's become all about them.

They put their pride in the fact that we were God's chosen nation, we were his people, we were the thing that he loved, we were the ones set apart, and they put all their idea in that.

They build a religion around that.

And Jesus comes onto the earth and he's preaching things that they disagree with.

He's preaching this idea of what success is, what the kingdom is, and they don't have a category for it.

The same way that you and I don't have a category for what this biblical model of family really is, the fact that we're not living it out, the fact that the stats show that our families are struggling.

You see, one of the interesting things that Jesus did when he came to earth, which was shattering for their minds, was that he plainly described God as his father.

The Hebrews they heard of this idea as God as the father, and this nation of Israel as the children.

But never before did they have this idea that was wrapped around, you know, there's there's snippets of it, and then you can see it, you can read it in the book of uh Isaiah, these ideas where it's painting this picture, but that was not how they structured their philosophy about God.

And plainly, over 160 times in the gospel, God refers to, Jesus refers to God as his heavenly father.

And right there, we see that Jesus' view is that they are a team on mission, father and son.

And this made them angry.

You know, this made them really angry.

Jesus was someone who came and turned the tables over.

And we're gonna read about a scripture in Matthew 12, but what's happening in this moment is Jesus is coming and he's preaching things that they're not necessarily agreeing with.

He's casting out demons, and they're saying that it must be in the power of Satan that he's casting this out.

They don't even believe that there is a way that God, that Jesus could be within this team, a model of with God.

There's no way.

No, he's on the opposing team.

And we read about this, and in Matthew 12, in verse 46, it says, While he was speaking to the crowds, his mother and brother were standing outside, wanting to speak to him.

Someone told them, Look, your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.

In verse 48, he says, He replied to one of them who was speaking to him, Who is my mother and who are my brothers?

And in verse 49, it says, Stretching out his hand towards them, his disciples, he said to them, Here are my mothers, here are my brothers, for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sisters and mother.

And right here, something that Jesus said over 2,000 years ago flipped on its head our idea of what the family of God looks like.

See, this idea, this then there's importance to a biological family, there was importance and there was respect in the day.

But what Jesus was getting at was the real mission, the real people who are part of this family that I am now creating, that you and I now have a chance to be part of, are those who do the will of my Father in heaven.

This invitation, this free gift, those who believe in the Father, those who believe in what Jesus did for them on the cross, you are now invited into this family, this team model of a family.

And he was speaking into an existence through this reality of a new family, not formed on race, on your background, not formed on whether you were a Republican or a Democrat, a biker, or maybe you like to knit, or maybe you're someone who's educated from a PhD all the way down to GEDs.

God was creating a brand new family.

Nothing to do about your social class, nothing to do about rich or poor.

This messy, jacked-up family of individuals coming together.

Jesus said, You are my brothers, you're my sisters.

You are part of this new family.

He gave us this team model, this idea of us coming together as one body of believers.

And you see, our mission that Jesus gave us, he gave the disciples before he left earth for us as the church, was to come together and bless the whole world.

Isn't that interesting?

Isn't it like God was painting a picture all throughout scripture since the beginning of time, painting this picture that he wanted to use all of us as individuals coming together?

Nothing to do with this idea of hyper-individualism, nothing to do with your individual success, and your success will help the bigger picture.

It will, but when that is your framework, when that is the idea, when that is the stance that we are operating out of, we're missing it.

You and I are all part of this body of believers, jacked up individuals from all over different backgrounds, all different kinds of families, and Jesus says that you're part of this family.

We enter into the faith through simple faith in Jesus.

Apostle Paul described it in Galatians 4 as he said, When the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And that word you can substitute children.

So you can think through that through sons and daughters.

You see, Paul summarized the whole purpose of Jesus coming into the world at the perfect right time was in order so that Jesus could save us so that we could be adopted into this family.

Some of you guys have no idea what it means to have a family.

But here, right in Scripture, Paul is telling us what it meant when Jesus was talking about you and I operating as a family.

He was telling us what it looked like for why Jesus came to earth, why he went and sacrificed his life, why he came and was put on a cross, was that so you and I, belief in him, could be adopted into sonship.

And then continuing in verse 6, it says, And because you are my sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

So you're no longer a slave, but a son.

And if a son, then God has made you his heir.

You now have access to your heavenly father.

You have access to everything that he has.

Everything in this world is his.

And he gives it to us abundantly.

He blesses us, he blesses those who are actually going out, he blesses all of us.

But think through how he more he would bless you with this not idea of you gaining more or success, but this idea of you now living as a son and daughter, you living in the right relationship that he created you to live in, operating in this sonship, operating as a daughter of Christ and blessing the world through it.

And he gives us this phrase, Paul gives us this phrase, Jesus had this phrase as well when he was talking to the Father in the Garden of Ghessedime, when he cried out on the cross, this idea of Abba Father.

It was a Hebrew translation of a word that a child would use to talk about their earthly father.

And with this idea of God as our father, and this word used to describe our relationship with him or how we approach him, it's this idea of authority, intimacy with the father, of a knowledge that he knows you, that you are his son.

When we operate in this, no longer a slave, but a son and a daughter.

So, what's the job for us though, as members of this?

What is our job in the church?

See, through Jesus, we've all been brought into this family.

You and I, we're one body of believers, united by Christ.

We are all part of a multi-generational family team on mission.

It's all of us.

At the smaller scope of what you are to steward and to raise up in your part is to raise up families to go out and bless the world.

The church, Jesus claims, has now made you part of a larger family.

Since the very beginning, this idea that Abraham's family would bring up into a lineage a savior, a messiah, a king who would one day bless all of the world.

And you and I know that as Jesus.

Through what he did on the cross for you and I has brought us all to the same playing field.

Every single one of us.

Son and daughter of the King and Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Alpha, the Omega, the perfecter of our faith.

And you and all, we all have a part to play in this multi-generational team.

There's a psalm in uh Psalm 68.

It's uh it's written by King David, and really it shows the love of Christ.

In verse 5, it says, Father to the fatherless, defender of widows, this is God whose dwelling is holy.

God places the lonely in families, and he sets the prisoners free, and he gives them joy.

See, before you and I were adopted into this family, we were slaves.

We were separated by God at our birth because of the curse on the world, because of Adam and Eve, what they did at the forbidden tree.

We were separated from him.

But just like that from the beginning, there was always a plan to get you back to your father.

And Jesus dying on the cross had made a way for you and I to come boldly before your Father in heaven, to the point where you can cry out in your spirit, Abba, Father.

To the point where all of us as individuals have now come together under one family.

This idea of the church as one body, this multi-generational family team on mission.

We all have a part to play in it.

And some of us we remember when we were slaves to the world.

Some of us are slaves to the world right now.

Some of us are not living in the identity that Jesus told you you have with the Father.

But Jesus came to break those ideologies, to break those chains.

He came to free you.

And allow you to live into this idea of son and daughter.

Some of us don't know what that feels like.

And that's okay because as you start walking with Christ, as you start crying out, Abba Father, as you start crying out to Him, you start to see the love, compassion that God really does have for you.

This love that is beyond any idea we could even stretch our minds around of.

The amount of love.

I've been a dad for a whole six months.

I don't know how to put in words how much I love Sonny.

Right now he's been cool.

He's been sleeping.

But if you look throughout scripture, one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 106, is this idea of God's children continuously turning their back on him.

Continuously.

Yet God still came to us.

He still put on flesh and came to us.

You and I are sons and daughters.

And when we operate in that, we become better fathers and better mothers.

You know, when I was 17 years old, um I met a man named by Rich Gurden.

And um I was a high school dropout at the time, ambitious, ready to take on the world.

And by the grace of God, I met this man named Rich.

And um he was uh someone in the real estate field.

He uh was a broker, he was an agent at times, he had turned more to like actually investing and flipping property.

And when I met him at the time, he was operating a landscape company, one of his side ventures under one of the property management companies that he had.

And um he was the first person in my life to show me what the love of Christ really was.

The first person.

Someone that I knew because I grew up as a Catholic, someone that I actually knew, who identified as a Christian, who was living out this life that I wanted.

It wasn't about his success, no, it was about the way that he lived his life.

He was the most transparent man I've ever known.

Is I said that like he passed, he didn't pass.

I love Rich.

He's the most generous person I've ever met in my life.

He was constantly telling me what kind of value I brought to the team.

And this dude, in the beginning, he would pay me like 100, 120 bucks a day.

I forgot where I started, and uh, I would just drive around in his truck.

Like he told me I was working and we'd drive around different work sites, different jobs, or he'd have to pass up a contract or whatever.

And you know, he said I was doing something of value, but really, I mean, growing up, I know I wasn't doing nothing.

But he believed in me.

And at times throughout our day, he would share with me about Jesus.

He would ask me if I knew about the parables of Jesus.

I remember there was this one time where he wanted to give me like these old cassette tapes of like the parables of Jesus, of like, you know, different poems and stuff.

And I didn't take it.

I was like, no, dude, what?

But I still remember that till today, how it's impacted me.

I think about our next generation coming up in youth.

Sometimes when I'm preaching to our youth, I see their faces.

I can't rely on their actual, you know, expression of what they're giving me or giving the feedback.

I just have to remember back to 17, 16-year-old Tony yearning for a father, yearning for a relationship with my heavenly father.

And it wasn't until someone stepped out, someone showed me I was of value, someone told me about the love of Christ that seeds started to be planted in my life.

I never thought I'd be sharing God's word.

I never thought I'd be someone who was passionate about the next generation.

But it started when someone poured into me and I wasn't at all thinking about that.

It was someone like Rich trusting in God, trusting in his heavenly father, and just remembering hearing him or even seeing him cry about how he's messed up in his own family's life, being transparent about where he feels like he has been wrong or where he has been wronging others, and really seeing out what it means to operate knowing under this idea of your father in heaven.

There's a lot of students in our next gen ministries, from sixth grade, I mean from six weeks old in our nursery all the way to 12th grade, 18-year-olds, who are ready to go out into the world because of this idea of individual success, the pressure of that that's been put on them versus this team idea.

And today, God really did challenge me, and it's really something that I have a challenge today for the men in the room.

Those of you who are fathers, husbands, sons, it's every single one of you.

It wasn't until someone stepped out into my life, it wasn't until someone modeled out to me what the love of Christ looked like that I was able to actually grab hold of what the gospel was.

Because Jesus plainly describing to us that God, our Father in heaven, how is that something that's attractive when someone grew up and doesn't have an earthly father?

Or when someone's earthly father walked out on them or abused them, how is this an idea that I want to be part of this or I want to get to know God?

To some of us, that's the biggest stumbling block that we have.

And there's a lot of kids growing up without fathers or in unhealthy homes today who need someone like you in the room today.

They really do.

And before you disqualify yourself, God has already qualified you.

You are his son.

This might be the very thing that you need in order to get your own family on track.

Some people say in seasons of roughness that they want to step out and stop serving.

I always think that's a bad idea.

I think when that's happening, sure, get your family in line straight, but continue to serve God.

Because what if it's the very thing that God wants to use in your life to get you closer to the Father so that ultimately you can get closer to those in your family, so ultimately you can start impacting those who are on this team.

This multi-generational team on mission.

It takes every single one of us.

And we have tons of women serving, and we need more women serving, and it's a great partner, great role that you're filling.

But right now, we need people, men in the room who constantly come in every single week who check their watch or check their phone and they're ready to get out.

No, we don't need that.

We need men operating in their God-given role.

And today I want to give you an opportunity to do that.

And like I said from the beginning, I don't want to motivate you.

I want the Holy Spirit to work in you.

So right after service, I'm about to close up.

There's a tent, there's not a tent.

There's a table right out front.

Paula, our kids director, is gonna be there, and I'm gonna be there right after service.

There's a QR code uh that's it's you can scan it, and you can join uh you can join one of our teams, the next gen team, which is our kids team or our youth team.

You know, there's kids right there right now.

Future mothers, future sons, future fathers, future evangelists, pastors, business owners, who who knows where their life is gonna be if you don't step up and you don't show them the love of a father.

There's sixth graders to 12th graders who are coming tonight, back tonight.

Just make sure to get your kids there.

Who don't have an idea of what a healthy family looks like, who just need someone who's willing to step up to them, hear the drama that's going on in their life, to affirm them, to hear their dream that they have, to show them that they're of value, to give them some self of significance.

It starts there.

On your way out, it's just a conversation.

If you're not ready for the conversation, scan it, let me know.

You can text me, I'll text you.

I have your information if you scan it.

I want to start a conversation.

This is the beginning of something.

We can go get coffee, go get lunch, something like that.

But there are people who need you.

The next generation of kingdom leaders, they need you.

And you can make a difference.

One interaction at a time, one person at a time.

We're all of value.

Jesus died for you.

He died for all of us.

This whole entire generation, multi-generational team on mission.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we are so thankful for your word.

We are so thankful for you modeling out to us this idea of a biblical family.

I pray that you would convict some of us here today, Lord, to step out and to take charge.

To take charge of this blessing that you gave us, this church, and I pray that we would be stewards of it, that we would use it in order to bless the world.

And I pray that we would end the cycle of fatherlesslessness or those who grow up and don't know what it means to be a son or a daughter.

Father, I know that the men that you have called today here are here for a reason.

And I pray that your Holy Spirit would convict them, and I pray that you give them courage on the way out to serve.

I wouldn't be where I am today without someone stepping up for me.

Father, we thank you for your son.

We thank you for all that you're doing behind the scenes.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.