The Nature of the Father

While we're on the topic of food, though, this is a perfect segue because I want to ask the question when I emailed to a lot of people this last week, got a lot of responses.

Think about this for yourself.

What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?

Weirdest thing you've ever eaten before.

I actually haven't eaten a lot of weird foods.

Like I'm not a super adventurous eater.

Sushi took me a long time to build up the courage to eat.

Anyone here still like a sushi holdout?

You're like, nah, can't get over it.

Can't get over the raw fish thing.

I get it.

I was you.

I was you for like decades.

I will say though, like good sushi, ooh, it's it's it's awesome.

It's awesome.

But you gotta go with someone who knows what they're doing, who can kind of like ease you into it.

That's about the most adventurous I've I've ever eaten.

I've had a lot of friends though that were way more adventurous than myself.

In fact, when I was in college, I have this really distinct memory of a guy named Brian, who is actually a pastor now.

He's a really great guy.

Brian was a little odd though, a little eccentric.

And the first memory I have of Brian, my friend from college, was him walking into my room and just saying one word.

And the word was cricket, but it was like a question.

So he just went, cricket, and I looked at him, and he had a bag.

And he pulled out what looked like a cricket with like dust on it, and then he ate it in front of me.

And I didn't even know this guy.

I think I met him once.

And my brain has no category for this, so I just kind of stood there trying to understand what was happening.

And then he handed the bag to me.

And I'm like, no, like, clearly, no.

Well, the thing is, Brian grew up all over the world, and his parents were missionaries, and he spent a lot of time living in all kinds of places, Thailand, a lot of places in East Asia.

And he said that one of the places that he he spent a lot of time as a kid, they they would take crickets or grasshoppers and roast them and then like flavor them, and they're he said they taste just like potato chips.

And he was eating barbecue-flavored crickets, and he asked me if I wanted one, and I said, Look, I don't care, I don't care if it tastes better than a potato chip.

Like, I'm not, I'm not gonna eat a cricket.

Thank you.

But no, I sent an email out asking you guys how many of you have eaten something really strange.

I got some very interesting responses.

Um, some of which I'm not going to mention in this gathering because you guys are closer to lunch than the first service was, and I love you.

And I'm just not gonna say some of the things because I said them the last time, I saw the reactions, just thank me for it.

Suffice it to say, you guys have eaten weird stuff.

All right?

My favorite story, though, and I this will probably gross you out, but not in a way that's gonna make you skip lunch today.

But there was this one dad that emailed me.

I know this guy, he's got awesome kids, they've been part of our church for a long time.

And he said, Hey, when my youngest was about two, my wife left me to watch him, and it was just me and him, and she was gone for several hours, and I happened to fall asleep.

He said, Now, my middle son at the time had a pet python, and he didn't eat the python.

I mean, he's two years old.

Hold on, like, two-year-olds eating pythons, probably more than like never mind, whatever.

So he's like, I'm gone.

And my my middle son loved this python, and when the python would shed its skin, my middle son would put it in a little plastic bag, like he thought it was cool, so he kept it.

So I fall asleep and I wake up to like a crunchy sound.

And there's my two-year-old in the floor with the bag of the snake skins, but there's like way less in there than there was.

And he said he waited three months to tell his wife that that happened.

And I'm like, I never would have told mine, ever.

That's a story I would have taken to my grave, you know?

So, snake skins, that's that's something that someone in our church has eaten, right?

That's definitely on the level of a cricket.

The reason we're talking about this is because today we're gonna look at a teaching of Jesus, in which Jesus uses the idea of eating some rather strange things to illustrate a really important point about God.

For some context, if you're just joining us, we're in a series that we've been in since July.

We're coming toward the end of it.

It's called A King in His Kingdom.

We've just spent several months looking at the teachings of Jesus.

I believe that one of the things that is a challenge often as Christians is it's easier for us to be familiar with the stories of what Jesus did, the things that he did, than we are with what he actually said.

And Jesus did awesome things.

And even if you're not a Jesus follower, even if you're here this morning, you're like, I'm just sort of checking it out, I'm here with a friend, whatever.

We're so glad to have you.

You probably know some of the stories of the things that Jesus did.

Because they're pretty famous.

But those of us who would say, no, I'm a follower of Jesus, we got to know more than just what he did.

We have to know what he said.

Because Jesus is a teacher.

And he spent so much of his time on this earth teaching us who God really is and what it really looks like to live connected to God.

If you study the teachings of Jesus, you see a theme that runs through them.

It's the theme of kingdom.

He's always talking about the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of heaven is like this, the kingdom of God is like this.

That's that's like Jesus' favorite idea.

And when he says those things, it's pretty bold because there's one thing you have to have to have a kingdom, and that's a king.

And so Jesus is actually declaring something.

He's saying that things have changed, that there is a king that's on the scene, and he's setting up a kingdom, a whole new way to live.

And that's the kingdom of God.

That's what life looks like when we give ourselves to Jesus, when we submit our lives to God, we become part of his kingdom.

But we've got to learn how to live in it.

You know, just like any nation in this world has its own values and culture, the kingdom of God is the same.

We have to learn the values and the culture of the kingdom, and that's what Jesus teaches.

Now, for the last several weeks, we've been going through this one specific teaching of Jesus.

It's a really long teaching.

It's often called the Sermon on the Mount.

It's the largest uninterrupted section of Jesus' teachings that we have.

And what this really is, is like an orientation class for the kingdom.

It's early in Jesus' ministry.

He gets all of his followers, he takes them aside, he gives them a crash course on what it looks like to live in the kingdom of God.

What does God value?

What does God really care about?

And a lot of it's him saying, Hey, forget everything you've ever thought about God, forget everything you've ever thought about, who God likes and who he favors and all this stuff, and just understand this is the way that it is.

So we are we are nearing the end of Jesus' orientation class.

And today we get to Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 through 11.

Matthew 7:7–11

Here's what Jesus says.

Keep on asking, and you'll receive what you ask for.

Keep on seeking and you will find, keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives.

Everyone who seeks finds, and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

You parents, if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?

Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake?

Of course not.

So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?

Now this is Jesus teaching us the nature of God the Father.

It is so important for us to know who God really is and what God is really all about.

There's a Bible commentator that I've read a lot over the years, and he once wrote this everyone who prays is bound to want to know to what kind of God they're praying.

What kind of God are we praying to?

Jesus is trying to teach us how to approach God the Father.

But but we all understand this.

The way you approach someone, it depends on the way you perceive them.

I don't know if you've ever known someone who was extremely approachable.

They just had they had something about them that just told you, like, come this way, come this way.

Kids, by the way, are the best at that.

Like kids, when someone's like that, they'll run to them, and when someone's not like that, kids will be like, I don't know who you are, and I'm gonna hide behind my parents' legs, right?

I don't know if you've ever had this experience where you thought someone was really unapproachable, and then you came to find out that they they were awesome and you just had them wrong.

That's what happened to me with my father-in-law.

My father-in-law is six foot five, and I was terrified of him for a long time.

Like I'm still a little scared of him, and that's good.

Like it's okay, by the way, to be a little afraid of God.

Like he's God, you know, just show him respect.

But for years, I was I was terrified of this guy.

And I was very interested in his daughter, and when I finally got the courage to ask her out, I'd heard stories, stories that involved shotguns and boys sitting in his living room, and I was like, it's gonna happen to me, and I'm I'm scared.

And so for months, months in the early stages of my relationship with Megan, I would go to her house, and I mean I'd never prayed as hard in my life, you know?

And then and then they invited me on a family vacation, and I went, and it was both the best and the worst vacation I've ever had.

Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong on this vacation.

Like everything.

It would mean it was like it was like you ever watched like the Chevy Chase movies, the vacation movies back in the day, where like everything that could go wrong goes wrong.

It was one of those vacations, and I'm just waiting for the moment when this guy, this six foot five, huge dude, just flips his lid and just loses it, and everyone's just awkward and kind of doing this whole thing, but it never happened.

I had never seen someone as patient, I'd never seen someone as gracious through difficult situations.

He was just a joy to be around, and I realized on that vacation that I kind of had him wrong.

I thought he was unapproachable.

In fact, he was he was really easy to talk to.

He was great.

We've had a really great relationship ever since, and I'm still, you know, a little afraid.

That's good.

Well, God's like that.

He's much more approachable than we often think.

And it's so important for us, it's so important for us to know just how approachable he is.

This is super practical for all of us what Jesus is teaching.

Because here's here's the simple reality: not one of us in the room knows everything.

Not one of us in the room has all the answers.

There's not one person here who knows what tomorrow is going to bring, let alone 10 years from now.

But God the Father knows everything.

God the Father is never out of his depth.

All of us go through situations, many of us are probably in these right now where we just don't really know what to do.

We are in uncharted waters, we're just doing our best.

But God the Father knows exactly what to do.

He has all the answers, he is the answer, he has everything that we need.

He knows what's going to happen long before it happens because he he says so.

And so our ability to experience what God has for us very much hinges on our ability to approach him.

How do we approach God?

And it's shaped by the way that we think he is.

Jesus is trying to shift our thinking.

And if we can grab a hold of what he's saying here, we can approach God the way that we're meant to, and that changes everything.

So let's let's just dive in.

Let's just let's just break apart what Jesus is talking about here, because there's there's a lot here.

I'm gonna I'm gonna give us just three small takeaways.

They're small in the fact that they're simple, but but each of them is pretty big if we can grab a hold of it.

Number one, just keep on keeping on.

Keep on keeping on.

In other words, persist.

Persist.

Some of your translations, if you have a Bible with you, they may not say keep on, keep on asking.

It may just say ask.

It may not say keep on seeking, it may just say seek.

But in the the original language, what Jesus is saying is in a very specific verb tense that implies constant action.

So it's accurate to translate it, keep on, keep on.

We all know what it's like to give someone a command, and when we give that command, we mean right now, in this moment, but this moment only, I want you to do what I'm saying.

For example, I've got four kids, and yesterday we decided to have kind of an adventurous day as a family, and we drove about two hours away, we did some fun things, it was great.

That meant two hours back.

Um, and Megan swears that it wasn't her fault, but somehow she selected a route for us to drive home on our GPS that took us from Hiawasse all the way to Canton without hitting a highway.

And it was extremely stressful because we were in a minivan and we are on roads that pretty much only motorcycles are on, and they weren't happy with us, but it was fine.

It was all good.

And she's like, I swear this is the only way the GPS told me to go.

I'm like, that doesn't make any sense, but whatever, it's fine.

And so I've got to I've got to focus.

If you're on mountain roads and you're doing this and you're in a minivan, you have got to focus, right?

It is not designed for your vehicle.

And the kids, I got four of them, and they're loud, and there were there was just a moment in time when I just said enough.

Shh.

Shh.

And I and when I said that, I didn't mean never speak to me again.

I meant right now, shut up.

Stop talking.

I don't want to hear a noise.

Like Megan was helping me out, she says, the next person who talks goes to bed 30 minutes early, and they're like, whoa, you know, that's a big deal to them.

And we meant it.

But that just meant for a moment.

Then there's other times that you might say one word to someone, one command, but you mean do this all the time.

For example, if someone is freaking out, they're just losing it, they're having a panic attack, and you look at them and you say breathe, you don't mean take one breath.

You don't mean you're like, no, no, breathe, like over and over and over again.

I want you to breathe.

That's what Jesus is saying here.

When he says, ask, seek, knock, he's saying, continually go to God with your requests.

Go to him over and over again.

He actually illustrates this desire that God has for us to persist in our prayers in Luke chapter 18.

Luke 18 · chapter mention

It says, one day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up.

There was a judge in a certain city, he said, who neither feared God nor cared about people.

A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.

The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, I don't fear God or care about people.

Nice, by the way, to know the judge understands who he is.

But this woman is driving me crazy.

I'm gonna see that she gets justice because she is wearing me out with her constant requests.

Then the Lord said, Learn a lesson from this unjust judge.

Even he rendered a just decision in the end.

So don't you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night?

Will he keep putting them off?

I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly.

But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?

In other words, he's saying, How many will persist?

How many will he find who persist?

Now, Jesus is not comparing God to an unjust judge, it's a contrast.

He's saying that God is the opposite of this.

But he's saying that, look, even in our world, people who are selfish will give other people what they need just to get them to go away.

And God, he's so different than that.

But it's hard for us sometimes to approach him that way because our experiences in life with our own our own families, other authority figures, they shape the way that we see God.

So for example, let's say you're at work, those of you that are working, and and I know we've got students in the room that maybe haven't had jobs yet, but it's coming.

Just get ready, it's the best.

And let's say you're working and you want a day off, so you email your boss or whoever you're supposed to email in your company, HR, whatever, you email them, I'd like to request this day off.

And you hear nothing back for a day.

What do you do?

Do you email them the next day, and again the next day, and the next day after that, and two hours later, hey, haven't heard from you?

I'd like that day off.

Hey, check my email, haven't heard from you again, I'd like that day off.

Hey, remember that email I sent you three hours ago?

Well, here's another one.

I want the same day off.

Do you do that?

Like, no, right?

You don't.

You wouldn't do that.

Like, not unless it's a very unique situation where you're very close with your superiors.

Because what you would actually probably do in most situations, you send that email asking for something, a day off, or maybe it's something else entirely.

You don't hear anything back.

You're like, well, what do I do?

I guess I should wait.

And then maybe a week later you're like, hey, I don't know if you saw that email, no big deal, like totally no rush or anything at all.

I just didn't know if you saw it.

Maybe it's fine, just whatever, you know.

But in your heart, you're like, tell me that I'm gonna get what I asked for.

You just you just know you can't you can't do this over and over again.

You're gonna bug the person, you're going to annoy them.

Do you understand that you do not annoy God?

You do not get on his nerves.

If you pray over and over again and you ask your father, God the Father, for what you need, He's not, he's not annoyed with you.

He's not going, Oh my goodness, I heard you.

I heard you.

Stop.

Fine, have it.

Get out of my hair.

You know?

Like, even as a dad, I do that sometimes with my kids, and I love them.

I'm just not as good of a parent as God.

And there are lots of times where I'm like, what?

Sure.

Take whatever.

Just go.

You know?

But but hear this: you don't annoy God.

You don't have to, you don't have to like measure out your requests.

You don't, you don't have to go, oh, I don't want to ask him because you know, I've been asking him a lot lately, and I just he's got he's got bigger things to to do.

He I hear people say that all the time.

I know I know God's got bigger priorities.

Says who?

God never said that.

There's not one time in scripture where someone comes to Jesus and he says, Hey, look, I've got bigger things to do right now.

You know?

It doesn't happen.

But we do that on God's behalf all the time.

So keep on asking, persist.

God values persistence.

I heard a pastor give a message about the disciples years ago.

It was brilliant.

And he asked this question that's actually hard to answer.

He said, What did the disciples do right?

And if you know the stories of the disciples, if you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the main stories of Jesus and his disciples in the Bible, there's not a lot that the disciples do that's redeemable.

It's hard to find stories like that.

In fact, so much, so much of what we know about Jesus and some of his most epic moments and some of his coolest teachings are the direct result of the disciples messing up.

They mess up, they get it wrong, and then he corrects them, and in correcting them, we learn something cool about God.

So we have a lot to thank for their blunders.

But it's hard to think of what they do well.

And this pastor asked the question what did they do well?

And he said the one thing they did really well was they just stuck it out.

They stayed in the boat, they didn't abandon ship.

They persisted with Jesus, and as a result, they got to be at the forefront of the greatest movement that has ever affected the earth.

So keep on.

Persist.

Go to God every opportunity you have with what you need.

You're not getting on his nerves.

Number two, there's this really important small phrase that Jesus says toward the end of Matthew 7.

He says, good gifts.

Good gifts.

Let's read verses 9 through 11.

You parents, if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?

Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake?

Of course not.

Or snake skins, by the way, I think that counts.

So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?

He says, good gifts.

Now, the examples Jesus uses here, they're they're they're silly, right?

Like, I'm hungry for a piece of bread.

Here's a rock.

That's a silly example.

But for Jesus, this is more than just a hypothetical.

This is actually Jesus speaking from experience.

See, in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus gets tempted by Satan three times.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

It's a cool story.

He he fasts for a long period of time, so he's extremely hungry.

The very first temptation that he deals with is Satan coming to him and saying to him, Hey, I see you're hungry.

If you really are the Son of God, then turn these stones into loaves of bread.

And then he tempts them two more times, and Jesus resists each time.

And a lot of times when people are recapping that story, if you say, What's the first thing Satan tempts Jesus with?

People say bread.

But Satan does not offer Jesus bread.

He offers him rocks.

He doesn't come to Jesus and say, Hey, you're really hungry, so I've baked you some fresh bread.

You want some.

He says, Hey, you're really hungry.

See those rocks?

Why don't you eat those?

Just turn them into bread.

Can you imagine how insulting it would be if you were if you were hungry?

And I mean like really hungry.

Not I haven't eaten since breakfast hungry, like I haven't eaten in days and days hungry.

And someone says, Oh, you look really hungry.

You want this?

And they hand you a rock.

How unloving, how uncaring that is.

But see, Satan's so clever that we read that story, and if we're not paying careful attention, we we convince ourselves that he's offering Jesus bread.

But he's not, it's a rock.

Jesus just saw through it.

That's why we should pray for wisdom.

Because when Satan tempts us, I'm telling you, he never tempts us with bread.

It's always a stone.

It's always a stone.

He's just really good at crafting things in such a way that convinces us that the stones are bread.

But Jesus saw through it.

So when Jesus is speaking here, it is hypothetical.

If your child asked for a loaf of bread, would you give him a stone instead?

This is something he actually experienced.

God only gives good gifts to his children, and that's why Jesus could recognize what Satan was doing.

He knew the Father so well, he knew that the Father would never offer him a rock if he was hungry.

Because that's not God the Father's heart.

James chapter 1, verse 17 says, Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens.

James 1:17

He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.

He is trustable.

He is trustworthy.

He is good, and he gives good gifts to his children.

Now, what we have to recognize about ourselves is that we we don't always ask for good things.

Sometimes we we think something would be good for us, and and maybe it wouldn't be.

Sometimes we're like children asking for stones.

We just don't know that we are.

And there's a submission that comes in understanding that God knows what is good.

That God knows exactly what is good and trusting Him to give that to us.

For example, we'll use this.

How many of us would like to win the lottery?

It's okay if you raise your hand right now, right?

I mean, like, yeah,$10 million instantly in my life.

I don't, you know, some of you are like, I don't need that.

Um like, would anyone be mad if you won the lottery?

If someone said, hey, you won the lottery! You're like, I don't even play, I know, don't worry about it.

You won a hundred million dollars.

You're like, great, just what I needed a day.

I mean, biggie smalls, more money, more problems.

That's what he said.

Um, but like here's the thing do you know the percentage of people who win the lottery who go bankrupt within five years?

It's astronomical.

It's it's it's not even I'm not even talking like 51%, it's like most of them.

And there's story after story after story of people who said, I won the lottery and it ruined my life.

Because I didn't know what to do with all the money.

I have all these people that I thought were my friends, and now they want a piece of that, and I have family members coming out of the woodwork, and and and I had to say no to some of them.

I ran out of money here, and now these people don't talk to me, and it literally destroyed our family.

Sometimes the things that we think would bless us would actually harm us.

We've got to trust that God knows what is good.

That's why Jesus gives us the perfect example to follow in in Luke, chapter 22, verse 42.

Luke 22:42

He's praying right before he goes to the cross and he says, Father, if you're willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me.

But then he adds, yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

This is huge for us because number one, this is Jesus talking, and this is Jesus telling us that he recognizes that even he might want something that would not be God's will.

Even Jesus, the perfect, blameless Son of God, is recognizing that what he desires might not line up with what God wants.

And so he submits to the will of God.

And he trusts, trusts God that what God has in store is what's best.

And that's that we just gotta be honest, that's hard for us.

It was hard for Jesus there too.

But that's really hard for us.

And we might look at that situation and be like, well, how did that work out for Jesus?

And you might say, Well, he died on the cross.

So that didn't work out at all.

Well, yeah, but then he rose from the dead, and then he's been glorified, and now he's the name above all names, and he's been given all authority in heaven and on earth forever and every age to come.

So it worked out really well for Jesus.

Okay, and it and it worked out really well for us because had had God the Father granted Jesus' request, you and I would be in the same situation we were in before, completely dependent on our own righteousness, on our own goodness to have access to God.

God the Father knows best, and He He has good gifts for us.

He will not give us something to our detriment.

But we have to we have to have the recognition and the wisdom to understand when we pray that maybe what we're asking for is a stone and not bread.

And so the ability to pray that prayer that Jesus prayed, your will, not mine, is powerful.

It's powerful.

One final takeaway, worship team, you guys can make your way up.

Jesus lets us know that the kind of God that we're praying to is a how much more God.

And not like a how much more do I have to put up with you guys, God.

Like a how much more could I show my love to you, God?

Verse 11.

If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?

You see the nature of God the Father that Jesus is teaching us here, that he just desires to bless us.

This is a phrase that Jesus uses elsewhere in Luke chapter 12, verses 24 through 28.

Luke 12:24–28

Consider the ravens, they don't sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them.

And how much more valuable you must be than the birds?

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?

Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

Consider how the wildflowers grow.

They do not labor or spin, yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these.

If this is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you?

You have little faith.

How much more?

Like, have you ever loved someone so much that you you had to try to think of a way to show your love for them?

You wanted to demonstrate the intensity of your love, you wanted to go all out.

I remember when I first fell in love with my wife.

We were in high school, and it was close to Valentine's Day, and I was like, I gotta do something, you know, I gotta do something big.

And and looking back, what I did was silly and dumb.

But I was I was silly and dumb, you know.

I was like 18 years old.

And so I was like, here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna buy a bunch of flowers.

I bought a bunch of flowers, and I was like, I'm gonna get her sister to give me the keys to her car.

And so I got the keys and I put the flowers in the car, and I spent the whole night before, and I blew up balloons with a little hand pump.

I just blew up like it was like 120 balloons, and I go to the school and I have all these balloons and trash bags, and I fill her car completely full of balloons with the roses in there, and looking back at it now, that's I basically pranked her.

That's what that is.

It's like, haha, you can't get in your car, and now you gotta clean all these up.

I really like you, you know.

Um, but at the time I just felt like it was a gesture.

It was like a gesture of, I really like you.

I wanted to show it.

So I want us, like those of you that that follow Jesus, I have a question for you.

How much more could God do to show you that he loves you than send his son to die on the cross for you?

Like, what more could he do?

What what greater demonstration of love is there than that?

How much more does he have to do to convince us that he's for us, that he loves us, that he cares about us?

I can't think of anything.

How could I look at Jesus on the cross?

How could I see that and say, God, you're gonna have to do something else?

You're gonna this is a good start, Lord.

This is a good start to show your love for me, but I'm gonna need you to do something else to prove to me that you really love me.

That's audacious, that's offensive.

How much more could he do?

I'm gonna go back to that quote that I started with earlier.

A quote by the Bible commentator.

There's more to it.

He said, Everyone who prays is bound to want to know to what kind of God they're praying.

So we want to know in what kind of atmosphere our prayers will be heard.

Are we praying to a grudging God out of whom every gift has to be squeezed or coerced?

Now, before you're quick to say, of course not, I don't think that about God, let me ask you a question.

You ever made a deal with God?

You ever prayed?

God, if you will do this, I will do this.

God, if you'll give me what I need, I promise you, I promise you, I'll do this, I'll be a better husband, I'll be a better father, I'll be a better wife, I'm gonna go to church like three out of four weeks.

Three out of four.

I promise.

Maybe even four out of four, depending on the weather.

But I'm gonna be there a lot.

I'm gonna be super involved.

I'm I'm I know I'm being facetious, but I would love to know who has the courage to raise their hand and say, I have prayed something like that.

God, if you will do this for me, I will do this.

I don't want you to feel guilty because my hand is raised too, but please understand that when we do that, we are we are showing that something inside of us believes that we've got to convince God to bless us, that we've got to sweeten the pot because he probably doesn't want to do it on his own without us offering something.

There's something inside of our hearts that that struggles with that approach.

We believe somewhere deep inside of us that God is holding out.

That, by the way, was the very first temptation.

When the serpent shows up in the Garden of Eden, before He gives Adam and Eve this opportunity to take the forbidden fruit, he convinces them that God is holding out on them.

And the Father was not holding out on his children at all.

You don't have to coerce God, you don't have to convince God, because his default is not to say no to you, his default is to bless you.

That's his default, it really is.

The author goes on.

Are we praying to a mocking God whose gifts may well be double-edged?

Now, again, before you say nope, not at all, let me ask the question.

Is there any part of you that that has a little bit of fear in praying your will, not mine?

Just a smidge.

You know, it's interesting when the gospel first took hold, it was in a world that had a very different view of the divine.

And so, if you're familiar with Greek mythology, those are made up stories, but they illustrate for us the way that the ancient world viewed God or their idea of gods.

And in those stories, humanity is not valued, not prized.

The gods don't care much for people.

So, for example, there's this ancient story of a goddess named Aurora, and she falls in love with a mortal man named Tithinus.

But the problem is she's immortal, he's mortal, he's gonna die, and she loves him.

And so Zeus comes to her and says, Can I give you anything?

Can I grant you anything?

She says, Yes.

Can you make Tithanus live forever?

And Zeus says, Absolutely.

But there was a catch.

She wasn't specific enough.

She didn't think to ask Zeus to make him stay young forever and healthy forever.

So Tithinus just ages and ages and ages, but he won't die.

And he becomes incredibly decrepit, can't do anything for himself, and Aurora has to completely and totally take care of him because he's just this withering, walking corpse.

And Zeus took pleasure in that.

The gods, they're always doing stuff like that in those old myths because people believed that that God or the gods, whatever, don't really care for us.

They look forward to causing us pain.

And so there's this idea of being afraid of asking God just to do what he thinks is best.

Because what if there's a catch?

What if there's what if there's strings attached?

What if there's fine print?

Can I really pray?

Like, Lord, your will, not mine, and trust that his will is better than mine.

There's a pastor that I used to listen to, still do, and I'm gonna butcher this quote.

I butchered it in the first service, I'm gonna butcher it again.

I just didn't think to look it up in between services, which would have been smart.

But uh, but he said something like like this is years ago, but it hit me so hard that if you knew about yourself what God knows about you, you would ask God for the very same things that He's gonna give you.

So often we're asking God for something different than maybe what He would give because we just don't know what God knows.

But you can trust His will, you can you can say your will, not mine, and you don't have to be afraid of that.

Because His will for you is good.

You have to believe that and have faith in that.

But He ends He ends with this quote, and this is so powerful.

He's already asked the questions Are we praying to a grudging God out of whom every gift has to be squeezed and coerced?

Are we praying to a mocking God whose gifts may well be double-edged, or are we praying to a God whose heart is so kind that he is more ready to give than we are to ask?

Jesus teaches us that that's our God.

That's our Father.

He is more ready to give than we are to ask.

Like, church, we gotta we gotta we gotta understand some things.

God the Father loves you more than you can possibly imagine.

Like it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense.

Think about yourself and all that you know about yourself.

Like be honest with yourself for just a second.

I'm not saying self-deprecation, self-hate, but I'm saying like just for a second, look in the mirror and see yourself and know who you really are, and then understand the fact that God the Father looks at you and he says, You are worth the life of Jesus.

His love for you doesn't make sense.

It's so good, it doesn't make sense.

No one's ever loved you like him, no one's ever thought about you the way that God the Father thinks about you, no one has cared about you, no one's ever been as obsessive about you as God is.

Scripture says that he knows the number of hairs on your head.

And like, ladies, if if you're ever dating a guy and he says to you, hey, while you were sleeping, I counted the hairs on your head because that's how in love with you I am.

You should leave him.

He's creepy, right?

Or he's the best man ever.

Because he's very detail-oriented and he loves you a lot so much.

Like, like I'm being facetious, but I'm trying to understand.

If God knows the number of hairs on your head, you know what that means?

That means he cares about you so much that he cares to know the number of hairs on your head.

You don't even care to know the number of hairs on your head.

Like that's how much God loves you.

No one's ever thought about you the way that God thinks about you.

No one's ever believed in you the way that God believes in you.

That's the beauty of Jesus, by the way.

I I know this is politically incorrect, but if you were to make a lineup of every every author of faith that's ever existed, you're gonna put Jesus here and Muhammad here and all the other people, you're gonna put them all on a line.

If you ask them their opinions of humanity, if you ask them to explain what they think about people, I would promise you that what would come out of Jesus' mouth will be completely unlike anything else you would hear.

There is no one, there is no one that has ever authored a faith that has the kind of view of people that Jesus has.

There's no one that's ever lifted people up as high.

There's no one that's ever looked at people in their in their struggles and had compassion and found the good in them when they couldn't find it themselves.

I'm telling you, no one has ever believed in you the way that Jesus believes in you.

He's completely and totally different.

He's he's just it's just more.

And so we have this father that we can approach constantly.

You will never get on his nerves, you'll never wear him out, he's never gonna be tired of listening to your prayers.

And you can trust that what he wants to give you is good, even if that means you've got to change your own evaluation of good.

You can trust that what he wants to give you is good.

He is a how much more God.

And I believe that if his people, if we would start approaching him like that, really believing that, the transformations that we would see in our lives and in the lives around us would be it would be immeasurable.

So as we leave this place today, go to God this week constantly, more than you ever have before.

Bring every request you have before the Lord, every single one.

Ask Him.

And then you know, ask Him again.

And if you have to feel weird that you're asking Him for the fifth time, say, Lord, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that I keep getting stuck on this, but but but again, and He's not gonna look at you and say, Driving me crazy because He's crazy about you, He is a how much more God, so how much more of yourself do you want to entrust to Him?

That's the question for you this morning.

He's already given everything to you.

How much more can you give of yourself to Him?

How much more trust?

How much more obedience?

How much more love, how much more submission?

Give everything to Him because He's already given everything to you.

You can trust Him.

Approach Him.

And by the way, if you're here and you've never given your life to Jesus, you've never made that decision, you do that now.

He's the best.

Like He's just He's the best.

There's nothing like Him, there's no one like Him.

There's no one.

So give your life to Him and watch what He does with it.

And by the way, when you do that, the first step is to get baptized.

So go sign up to get baptized today.

We're gonna pray, we're gonna wrap up.

We had two awesome young people get baptized in the first service today.

Um, and it's actually kind of cool because for the last few weeks, that was awesome.

You can clap for that?

They're really cool.

But for the last few weeks, everyone who wanted to get baptized wanted to sleep in.

So you guys have had a lot of baptisms in the last few weeks.

First service, they were just like, is anyone gonna get up early to get baptized?

And this morning, two people did.

But we love you, I love you guys.

Thanks for being here this morning.

I love this church.

This is such a special place.

I can't wait to see you all next week.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for the opportunity to worship you, thank you for the opportunity to learn about who you really are, to grow closer to you.

We love you.

Hosh, we love you.

Lord, teach us to trust you.

Jesus, we have such a way of making what what you make so simple, complicated.

And you you talk about prayer in the most simple of terms, that we just get to go to God and ask for what we need and trust that He's gonna bless us with good gifts because He's a how much more Father.

But Lord, we we have a tendency to get all out of whack.

We have a tendency to complicate things and create clauses in there that you didn't create.

So I pray, Lord, that we wash all that away today, that we strip everything away that we've added to what you've said, and we just see God the Father the way you do.

Lord, help us see, help us see our Father the way you do, Jesus.

Help us approach Him the way you approached Him.

We love you.

It's in your name we pray, Jesus.

Amen.