Luke, chapter 11, verses 1 through 4. This is the short version of the Lord's Prayer. Now, the Lord's Prayer we usually, if we recite it from memory, is the version that is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. This one is what if you're familiar with Internet speak, like on some of these little forums and stuff, if somebody wants just the shortened version of something, it's called tldr. If you've seen those letters and didn't know what they mean, it stands for too long, didn't read.

In other words, somebody gives a long explanation, they're like, no, that's too long. I didn't read it. What is the brief version? This is the TLDR version of the Lord's Prayer. So let's read it together and then we'll talk about it a little bit here.

Now, Jesus was praying in a certain place when he stopped. Notice, stopped. It doesn't mean he was done talking. He just stopped for a little while. Like, prayer is continual, prayer is ongoing.

For prayer is not just, oh, I had a prayer time this morning. Great, you stopped praying at that moment, but you have a continual prayer with God. When he stopped, one of his disciples said to him, lord, teach us to pray just as John, John the baptizer, the cousin of Jesus, just as John taught his disciples. So he said to them, when you pray, say it like this. Father, may your name be honored.

May your kingdom come give us each our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we also forgive everyone who sins against us and do not lead us into temptation. So let's pray this morning. Our Father, we thank you that you have blessed us, that you have given us the needs that we have. And yet it always feels like there are some more needs that we do have.

And so we bring those to you, and we ask that you would give us our daily bread. Lord, we know how frail we are in our human condition. That sin seems so enticing and enjoyable in the moment. And yet, our Father in heaven, you are the one who leads us down good paths. And so we pray that we would be content to stay on the straight and narrow rather than following the sinful desires of the flesh.

Lord, help us. We pray. We're here for you. We want to see your kingdom come on this earth. Show us how we can serve you in Christ's name.

Amen. So John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus. John had been born a few months before Jesus, and he was born to parents that were specifically mentioned as old beyond the age of bearing children. Some of you May many of you in this room understand that very well. You're like, even if I could, I don't want to.

You're like, no way. You see some of these, like, old, like a list actor type guys and musicians, and they marry a girl that's like 20 to 40 years younger, and it's like, she's going to want a baby. Like, you're going to have to become a dad in your old age. That just seems, like, tiring, you know? And yet John's parents were old, and yet they had wanted a child.

And God said, I'm going to supernaturally give you the ability to bear a child. But this child is going to be special. He's going to be, from birth, filled with the Holy Spirit. Not just from birth, from in the womb. And this is one of the reasons that as Christians, we look through the whole word of God and we say that children are a gift from God, not just from when they're born, but they are a gift from God from the moment of conception.

That even before the moment that a woman knows that she's pregnant, that. That God has been knitting together what is called a clump of cells is more than that. It is a human life that God has been creating. And we see that in the womb that John was filled with the Holy Spirit. Now later on, a few months later, Mary, the mother of Jesus, visits Elizabeth, John's mother.

And John, because he's even in the womb, he's filled with the Holy Spirit. When Mary greets Elizabeth, Elizabeth said, whoo. The child within my womb leaped for joy at the sound of your greeting. How blessed am I that the mother of my Lord would come visit me. Wow.

God is doing something beautiful even in the womb. And God is putting it together. If you have a look at your life and you think, I don't know, I'm just nobody, you're wrong. God has put an infinite value on your life, even from before you were born. Thank you.

That wasn't very loud, but I'll take those Amens. That was worth it. So John. John is born. He's given a specific mission or specific role that's to announce the coming of the Messiah.

And he does that. And one of the things he does is he calls the people to repent of their sins and to turn from their sins and to follow God wholeheartedly. And he baptizes them, usually in the Jordan river, as a symbolic, like death and new birth and a way of shedding off your sins and committing to following God. But his main message Besides, repent for the kingdom of God is near. His main thing that he came to do was to point the way to the Messiah.

And when the Messiah Jesus came walking along the shore where he was baptizing, he says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Two of John's disciples left him and followed Jesus. From that moment, like, he's like, that's okay. And when somebody said, hey, man, like, what's going on with you? You know, like, this guy over here, he's baptizing.

Well, his disciples are doing the baptizing, but he's baptizing more disciples or more Christians than you are, more people than you are. He says, my role is to decrease so that he can increase. But anyway, John had disciples of his own. He had people that he was teaching. He had people that he was showing, modeling to them how to do the ministry he was doing.

We talk about discipleship in the church, and sometimes I think we miss the point. It's not creating somebody in your own image or recreating yourself. Although there's a lot of times where I've thought, if I just had, like, one or two clones of me that would understand. Like, I don't even have to talk to him. I just have to, like, nod like that, you know, like, and we would just do it, you know, it'd just be so easy to get so much done if I had two or three of me, you know what I'm saying?

But nonetheless, that doesn't work. And that would be not a good plan. My wife is definitely shaking her head. She's like, no, we're not doing that, you know? So anyway, it's probably good that that doesn't happen.

But what a person would do that was making disciples, somebody like John or Jesus or any of these number of, like, rabbis and Pharisees, what they would do is they would take somebody and they would apprentice under them for a period of years, and they would literally learn to do everything the way their teacher, their rabbi did it. They would learn their teachings and their way of interpreting scripture, and they would then take that, and they would go live it out in the way that they taught others, and they would make disciples themselves, just like they had become a disciple. And so what John was doing, John was making disciples who were. Who would then go out, and they would preach repentance to people, and they would point the way to the Messiah. And so John was doing that.

And one of the things that he did was he taught his disciples how to pray. And so Jesus's disciples somehow caught wind of that and they said, hey, why haven't you taught us how to pray? They wanted a prayer lesson. I figure if they wanted a prayer lesson, maybe we could use a prayer lesson too. Like look at all the stuff that they had seen Jesus do.

For instance, they had seen him heal a leper and they had seen him heal a paralyzed man and a guy that came into the synagogue with a shriveled hand. I think we got a slide for this. Number four, maybe. Then they saw him restore to health a dying servant and also raise a widow's son to new life. He calmed a raging storm and drove out an army of demons that had attached himself to a person.

He healed a woman with a 12 year hemorrhage and raised a 12 year old girl back to life. And Then he sent 12 apostles to drive out demons, heal the sick, and cure illnesses. Now, those 12 disciples that he had sent to do that in his name were shocked by that. But then later, they would see the testimony of 72 believers that Jesus had sent out that weren't his apostles, but they were followers. He gave them the authority to do those things.

And those people came back and they said, lord, even the demons are fleeing from people in your name. When we speak your name over them, the demons are fleeing. Is it broken on the screen? Oh, that's fun. Too bad for that.

I had cute slides for this too.

Oh, really? Aw, that's it. That's what's showing up. Sad face.

Okay, well, anyway, the disciples participated in serving a meal, like from a sack of groceries that a boy had brought with him. They fed 5,000 people. They three. Three disciples got this special moment where they went up on a mountain and saw Jesus transfigured before them where he was even though he had a human body. His heavenly glory shone through him.

His face was shining just like when Moses had gone up into the mountain all those years ago in the book of Exodus. And he would come down and they would see his face shining and they're like, moses, put a bag over your head. We don't want to look at your face. And, and how many of you have seen somebody not because their face was shiny, but you're like, please put a bag over that head. You know, like, I really don't want to look at none of you guys.

None of you guys. I'm not, I'm talking about other people, of course, but it's like, oh my goodness, we need to bag that head up. We don't need to see that. You Know, and so. So I get myself in so much trouble, it's funny to me.

And you know what? I'm in a. I'm in a good spirit with it. So anyway, Jesus, his disciples, they got to see him like this. And then Moses and Elijah show up, and Peter's like, why don't we build some little huts for you guys to stay in?

In other words, he didn't want that moment to end. He saw Jesus in his heavenly glory, and he says, I'm content to stay right here on this mountain with, like, any. Moses and Elijah are here. I mean, sometimes we talk about, what do you want to do? You know, who are you going to talk to when you get to heaven?

Like, who are the. The old saints from Glory, from the scriptures, or people that have passed on? Like, who do you want to talk to? Who. Who do you have questions for?

Who do you just want to rub shoulders with and say, I just want to sit in your. Yeah, I know the Sunday school answer. Jesus. Yes, we all want to sit with Jesus. I get it.

But, like, let's be honest, there's other people. You're like, I got eternity for Jesus. I really want to get to this guy, this lady. I want to really talk with them. You got those people right, that you're like, first of all, I hope they're in heaven.

And second of all, like, I hope I'm in heaven. You can know that for sure, by the way. Like, if. If you can simply say, jesus is my Lord and Savior. The only thing I can offer to God when I get to heaven, when I get to that judgment day, is he says, why should you get in here?

You say, I have nothing that I have done to earn my way here. But I do believe that the blood of Jesus Christ matters for me. I've received him as my Savior. I've been born again. And that's why I should get in here.

And God will say, welcome in, my child. Amen. If you haven't ever done that, today is a day that you can recognize God is my Father and. And he wants to welcome me in, but I have to do that on the basis of receiving Jesus Christ as my Savior. So they're on this mount of transfiguration.

Peter doesn't want to leave, but unfortunately, Jesus says, no, no, we still have work to do, and we've got to leave that mountain and come back down to where the rest of the people are and the disciples are. And yet, after all of that, after all these things that they witnessed, the healings, the Miracles, driving out demons, curing illnesses. By the way, there's something different between somebody that's sick and is healed and somebody that has a long term illness and is healed. And they witnessed Jesus doing both those things. They participated in doing both those things.

They saw him raise people from the dead. I think there was about a dozen of them overall, something like that. They see all this stuff and yet they were still lacking in prayer. That tells me something about me. I can do so many things that I say I'm doing for God.

I can do so many things that I, that I offer up as a sacrifice to him. But I have a lot to learn about prayer. And, and so I want to read books. And I read these books, say, okay, well here's a book on prayer from, you know, like E.M. bounds on prayer.

He wrote like seven books on. And I've got this compilation of them. I read through it. I'm like, okay, who else? You know?

And did AW Tozer say something? One of the great men of faith of history, Billy Graham. How did Billy Graham pray? I want that kind of prayer life. And we can go through all these things and read these books and say, okay, now I have to do it.

Have you ever read a book on prayer and then done nothing with it? Don't lie to me. You didn't even read the book. You know, I know the stats. Like, I think, I think reading a couple books a month is, is like a bare minimum.

And then I find out that there's like these stats that say like some people only read 10 books a year and men is less, you know, like men just don't even read books. And I'm like, I don't know how to not read books, you know, And I'm not just talking novels and things like that. I read a ton of those actually. That's just like the filler material in between, like the little palate cleanser, you know, before I read another book. And so I read these books that are supposed to help me grow as a Christian, grow as a believer, grow in Christ, be more beneficial as a leader or a pastor, and just be a better Christian, a better person.

And I read these books. And the hard thing though is to do it. Jesus disciples wanted a lesson on prayer. And if everything that they were eyewitnesses and participants in, in the ministry of Jesus and they needed a lesson on prayer, boy do I. And Jesus didn't give them this big long thing.

It wasn't a seven volume works, you know, like E.M. bounds did. And I'm not knocking that. It's a great book, but it wasn't anything like that. It was just simple.

Even the short version in Luke, like I said, the TLDR version, too long. Didn't read, you know, just the short version. He didn't waste any words. Father, may your name be honored or praised or hallowed. May your kingdom come.

Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our sins. Forgive anyone else who sins against us. Don't lead us into temptation. The end Mic drop.

I can't do it. I'm wearing a clip on mike. It's not the same anyway if you don't know what the mic drop is. When you're like, boom. And then you just walk away.

You're like, I got nothing left to say. Jesus did a mic drop. He's like, that's good enough. And we think, no, we have to spend, like, time praying. Oh, absolutely.

There's intercessory prayer when you're praying for others, when you're praying for your nation, that is very important, and you should spend time on that. There's things like fasting and praying. I've been reading in the book of Daniel and some of the fasting that he did, especially around Daniel, chapter 10. It's amazing. He spent three weeks now, he didn't do a total fast.

He just didn't eat choice food, like, very fun and enjoyable food. He didn't have meat or wine brought to him. No delicacies. He just water and simple food, just enough to get by. But he was weeping and mourning over actually a vision that God had given him.

And so we see times like that where that is called for, where that is necessary for the people of God to live that way. So Jesus, what he does when he gives him this prayer is he, even though it's a few words, he starts shifting their focus. He starts shifting their focus. And he starts out with this. Our Father in heaven.

It's really important that we understand to whom we are praying. Our Father in heaven. Our Father in heaven. See, both the Old Testament and the New Testament see God as Father. Do we have these slides working?

Like, starting with number five. Is it going to work? Okay, there we go. So God is our father. In Isaiah 63, 16, it says, Surely you are still our Father.

Even if Abraham and Jacob, these are the patriarchs, the guys that they considered to be the children of the Israelites, Jacob becomes His name, gets changed by God to Israel. And so when they call themselves the children of Israel, they're saying that we're the children of Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, the ancestors, the forefathers. But they said, even if Abraham and Jacob would disown us, Lord, you would still be our Father. You are our redeemer from ages past. And so the people of God have looked to him as their Father, not due to any ancestral lineage, but because of who God is.

What's the next one? We've got Malachi 2 10. They said, are we all not children of the same father? Are we all not created by the same God? There's other countless places in the psalms and proverbs that refer to God as Father as well.

What's next? What do we have? New Testament Romans 8, 15, 16. The spirit that we received is not a spirit that makes us slaves again to fear. The spirit that we have makes us children of God.

And with that spirit, we say, abba, Father. And the spirit himself joins with our spirits to say that we are God's children. I think we got one more maybe. First John 3:1. The Father has loved us so much.

He loved us so much that we are called the children of God, and we really are his children. But the people in the world do not understand that we are God's children because they have not known Him.

You see, it seems weird to call God Father to some people. In fact, one of the lines of mockery that that non believers will use is they'll say, oh, look at you guys praying to your sky, Daddy. They think it's a mocking insult. Well, first of all, I don't believe that God is just somewhere in the sky. He's here with us.

He's around us. He's omnipresent. He's everywhere. And second of all, I don't call God Daddy. Like, have you ever met somebody that says daddy, God?

Please don't, like, lighten up a little bit. It's a joke. Don't call him Daddy God. Okay, I feel like we got too serious for a few minutes here. Daddy God, have you ever heard somebody say that?

Please, please, just don't go there? Oh, it's usually maybe some of those worship leaders that wear the really, really tight pants, you know, and they pray and they're like, oh, Daddy God, No, I know what you're trying to do, but don't. It just feels really weird. So maybe we can think of God as Father without saying it that way. In fact, what they said is abba, Father.

It's a loving term of endearment that they had in their language, abba. And so Jesus refers us to God as our Father, and he kind of is shifting us to put our focus on that, to understand that when we pray, know who we're praying to, if we're praying to God, we are praying to him as Father. And so because of that, God is Father to all the believers. John 1:12. Do we have that one on number 10?

I think there it is. But nope, you were there.

Oh, did I? Okay. I don't know where that one was supposed to be. Well, let's read it. No, I'll read it.

It's good. I put it in there. When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman and born under the law, to redeem those that were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. We are adopted into the family of God. So that's good stuff.

What's the next one? There we go. That's the one I wanted to be at. It's really hard for the people on the computer to follow me when I don't follow my own notes very well. So that's on me.

John 1, verses 12 through 13. I love the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John, and this is one beautiful verse. But to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children who were born not of blood or the will of flesh or the will of man, but born of God. So since He's Father to all believers, it affects how we pray.

It affects the way we pray and what we look at when we're saying these words. Because God isn't distant. He's not somewhere far off. He's near to all of us. And so we speak to him, to a loving Father who wishes to give good gifts to us.

Matthew 7:11 says that even though people on this earth are wicked and evil, that God desires to give us good gifts. Like even bad fathers give good things to their children. How much more so will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him? So if we want to see God more clearly, Jesus taught us to look to him as Father. In fact, one of his disciples, Thomas, we always know him as Doubting Thomas.

But look at this part. Thomas was like. He's like, can you just show us more of the Father? And Jesus said, well, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. And he says, if you had known me, you would have known my Father also.

And now, from now on, you do know him, and you have seen him. So the thing that Thomas wanted Was he, says, jesus, all this is great, but I really just want to know God more. Can I. Can. Can you show me more about God?

Can you teach me about God? Because you've been teaching us that he's our Father. Can. Can you help me understand that? Can you?

Can you help me? A human being on this earth who had a mother and a father and loved them. Presumably, we don't know Thomas's backstory, but let's just assume he had great parents and he loved his mother and father. And now Jesus is saying, well, you have to look to your Heavenly Father and you have to talk to him on that basis. See, many of us have talked to God with a little bit of fear.

Fear of judgment, fear of not being able to measure up to what he expects out of us, fear of distance that he's distant from us, that he's cold and indifferent to who we are. Many of us have looked to God that way, but God is speaking to us as a nearby, loving heavenly Father. And so Thomas wanted to know more about the Father. And Jesus said, listen, I am the full expression of. Of the Father here in human flesh, and if you've seen me, you've seen who the Father is.

Now, he wasn't saying, I am the Father. He wasn't saying that they were the identical same thing. He's saying, I have revealed the Father completely. God is made up of three parts. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit is the presence of God here with us that ministers the presence of Christ in our lives, convicts us of sin, and reveals to us how to live for Him. But the Father is Heavenly Father. He's in Heaven. He is the King of Heaven, the King of everything, and yet he is never far from us. And so Jesus was saying, if you want to know more about the Father, see me.

See how I live. We have the Scriptures. We have the Holy Spirit interpreting the Scriptures in our lives. And through that we get a picture of who our Heavenly Father is. So as we begin to pray, as the disciples did, there's more things that we need to learn about prayer.

The first thing we already talked about is that God is approachable as Father. Not just like we have to treat him as some king, where if he didn't summon us there, like in the Book of Esther, when she was supposed to go talk to the king, but if the king hadn't summoned her and didn't extend the scepter to her, then she might die. We don't approach God that way, although we should have a holy reverence and fear of God. We also have access to Him. We talked a couple weeks ago when we talked about Jesus ascending into heaven, that one of the things that he does is he is interceding on our behalf because of his position and authority that he has.

And because of Jesus Christ. We have a fearless, yet fear like, like, fear like the sun. Like, I was in the sun too much yesterday without sunscreen, and I could feel it on my neck. I'm like, oh, my neck and my ears, they got a little red. Like, I could feel the warmth of it.

I didn't fear the sun enough. I've got a wide brimmed hat with one of those like, like built in towel things, like a flap that goes down. I should have worn that and I didn't. I should have feared the sun a little bit more. Doesn't mean I'm scared of it.

It means I understand the nature of the sun. The nature of our Heavenly Father is that we should have a fear of him based on who he is, and yet not be fearful of him, not be scared of Him. And so Jesus teaches us that he's approachable as a father. The next thing is he's in heaven and yet he's preparing an earthly kingdom. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, but your kingdom come.

May your kingdom come and your will be done. Now that will be done, I think is the Matthew language, but may your kingdom come. God is preparing an earthly kingdom. Even though he's already in charge and already has all the power, he's preparing a place for us that we can one day go and be there with Jesus. And so God is preparing that.

And one of the things is when we are properly living out the Christian life, we are ushering in his kingdom. We have a part in working with him on that. So then Jesus shifts our focus to saying it's not just about God's kingdom, though. He's working on our earthly needs. We're humans and we need things.

We were talking in the lobby earlier about jobs and income and, you know, I said one of my passions that I've had my whole life, I don't see this ever ending. Even though I do like camping in a tent or something. I love living indoors, you know, like having a home. That's such a thing that I've really enjoyed my whole life. And I hope that that's always the case.

That's. That's really a passion of mine. I also enjoy at least three meals every. Pretty much every day, every now and then I'll get down to two and sometimes as much as four and a good half or three quarters, you know, like, depends on what's going on. I enjoy those meals.

You guys appreciate that. I have clothing. It'd be really weird if I didn't, you know, just get pretty awkward up in here and so. Or I just stay home. I don't know if I had that.

You see what I'm saying? We need things. There's things that we need. We also probably all need to understand a little bit of the difference between wants and needs. And so many of the things we say I need really just I want some of the things that I say I need.

Maybe I need it, but just a couple steps lower. God, I need steak and lobster tonight. He's like, well, how about, you know, Spam and Cheetos? You know, I don't know, I just. Spam's gotten expensive now, I've heard.

So I don't even know, but it's like, you know, like, no, what you need is sustenance. You need healthy food, which healthy food costs more than, you know, junk food. Oh, my goodness. I just figure it's cheaper to buy healthy food now than it is to pay for a million doctor's visits when I'm older, right? So anyway, that.

Oh, it's expensive, though. Lord, I. I need certain things and for the things that I think that I need, but it's really just that I want, Lord, help me to recognize the difference and help me to recognize how much of my life and energy I'm spending on trying to acquire the wants because I put them in the category of a need. And what I'm really doing is building my kingdom rather than building your kingdom. That one hits hard.

So God provides for our needs, but we need to differentiate between needs and wants. But then also the times where we get things wrong, not just on needs and wants and all that stuff, but the times where we actually transgress a boundary that we shouldn't have gone across. That might have been one of God's laws where we. We step over it and we sin against him. It might be a time where we sin against another person.

It might be a bitterness that we've had for a long time. I was listening to a message just this morning and it was so powerful, what this man said. His name is R.T. kendall. He's almost 90 years old.

He's written like 70 something books. Just a couple weeks ago, he was traveling over to the Far east and like Thailand and places. I forget where all he said. And then back over in the United States, and he's just still preaching. He had to sit down because, you know, he's almost 90.

But, like, this man was still preaching, and he's still writing books because he's still learning and growing closer to Christ as savior. And he told the story about one time where he was preaching. I think he was in London, he said, and there was this woman that had done great harm to his family. He didn't elaborate. He didn't call her out by name.

It wasn't about her. It was about him at this point. And he said, he's there and he's up on the platform and he's about to pray, and he's about to preach. And he wants to preach about revival coming to this land. And here he sees this woman come in that has done great harm to his family.

And he has a problem in his heart over it. And God said, do you want to see revival in this land? He says, well, yes. He says, then you need to pray for that woman. He says, mmm.

He says, if you. You want revival or do you want to hold on to the grudge? He's like, well, he's like, okay, I do want revival. He's like, then pray it. He's like, okay, Lord, help her.

He's like, like, you mean it?

And so he starts having to do that. And he says, if you mean it, you'll pray that I would bless her life.

And then he said, in order for me to start meaning it, I had to put her on my daily prayer list and pray that she would receive these blessings and pray that God would richly bless her life. You see, we can choose to hold on to those trespasses we call it sometimes in the Lord's Prayer, those boundaries that other people have crossed that have caused harm to us. But then when we recognize that we are just human beings who have all done this to God, why should we expect that other people wouldn't harm us? There have been plenty of people that have done each and every one of us some type of harm that have trespassed or transgressed a boundary. Jesus teaches us to forgive them because our Father forgives us.

Boy, we need more help with that than just about anything else. We need so much help there. But how can we expect to see a revival of the spirit of God moving in people's lives if we're still holding grudges and bitterness against our fellow human beings when we're all in the same boat and we have all done these Things against our heavenly Father, and yet he loves us and forgives us. Then the last thing Jesus says, lead us away from temptation. You know, sometimes.

Sometimes our feet are so eager to walk down those paths, we walk ourselves right up to the front door of temptation. And then we wonder why it's so easy to open that door. We. We walk so close to it, and we're like, well, if this is a line, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna walk right next to that line.

Whoops. I sinned. I don't know how it happened. Are you kidding me? You.

You were courting that. You were. You were, like, seeking that out. You were getting so close to the edge of that and yet still saying, okay, God, I don't know why I sinned. I'm so sorry I sinned again.

He's like, are you serious? Are you just lying to me or to yourself? Like, who are you lying to here? You were chasing after that sin. Flee from temptation.

Learn your scriptures. When Satan tempted Jesus, Jesus quoted scripture to Satan. He overcame temptation by knowing the word of God. So many times. I can quote song lyrics or movie lines or talk about the latest thing in the news or whatever TV show it might be that is popular that I watch.

Wanted to see. I can know those things so much more quickly than I can quote the word of God. And I'll tell you which one will help you more in life against temptation and in relationship with others. And it's not pop culture, it's not social media, it's none of those things. But the word of God will help you every day in your struggle against sin.

So spend time in the word of God, because if you're not spending time in the word of God, you're not serious about a life of holiness. If you're not spending time in the word of God, I promise you, your prayer life is very shallow and very thin, if it's existent at all. Your prayer list will be simply a laundry list of things that you want for your life rather than things that you want to do for the kingdom of God. So as we approach God as our heavenly Father, and we are honest about these things and earnest about them, we find ourselves being led away from temptation and led into. Into the loving arms of our heavenly Father.

But as we've been learning about our Heavenly Father, I know that there are always people in the room, people in any. In any circle, or any group of people that are going to say, I have a hard time with that. Have a hard time with a loving heavenly father, because of who my father was. But I also want to say on Father's Day, there's probably some fathers in the room that you were that guy, or are that guy that you are the one that, you know, looking back, that you say, I messed up my kids. I don't have a relationship with my grandkids because of how I parented.

There's some of us that are currently raising our children, that our prayer is, lord, don't let me mess this up. I have such a beautiful opportunity here to raise these children in a godly way and to love them unconditionally, to leave a legacy for my children and grandchildren. And I don't want to mess this up. This is, in fact, the most noble thing you can do, is to leave that godly legacy. I even think we have a slide that says that.

I can see it. I'm hoping. There we go. See? Yeah.

Isn't that great? The most noble thing you can do is leave a godly legacy for your children and grandchildren. So men that are raising children right now, I want to encourage you to do that. As you seek your heavenly father, know that you are growing more and more in the knowledge of his will and that you're able to faithfully raise up your children and one day grandchildren. For men who maybe have failed at that at some point along the way, men that you look at your life and you say, I wasn't there as I should have been.

I wasn't the godly man that I should have been. I haven't loved and cherished my grown children. Maybe even you have grandchildren, maybe great grandchildren. And you say, I haven't been able to give the love to them that the Father has shown to me, the Heavenly Father has shown to me. And so I have regrets.

You know, one of the things that I never want to meet Jesus after I leave this earthly plane of existence, we call it death. I just call it going to be with Christ. When I go to be with Christ, I don't want to go with regrets. I don't want to go saying, I wish I would have, I should have, I could have, because there's plenty of those things. But today is the day that God gives us the forgiveness and the grace to say, I know what could have been.

But from this day forward, I know what is going to be, that I'm going to allow God to do a new work in me and that I can make amends, perhaps with the children that I maybe had done some wrong towards. And men, let me let you off the hook a Little bit. We all mess up. We all make mistakes. We all did things maybe in the moment that we thought was the right way to do it.

I don't think if any of us woke up in the morning and said, you know what? This is really going to mess up for generations to come. But doggone it, I'm going to do it anyway. None of us are doing that. I think for every alcoholic father that came home and the kids hid in a dark room away from him because of the fear of retribution.

Or maybe they covered their head with a pillow so they couldn't hear the fight that would happen between their mother and their father. I think for every father that was just cold and distant and the kids wondered why Daddy never played with them. For the fathers that spent too much time building their financial empire because they were providing for their family and providing security, and yet their kids said, it didn't seem like dad actually loved me and he thought, I did everything for you. None of those men set out on that course of action to fail. No one opened that first drink and said, oh, I hope that I get addicted to this, spend all my time in the bars and then come home and beat my family.

Sometimes those things creep up in their lives. It's not right. It's not good. Sometimes the search for providing for your family, for caring for your family, can overtake everything that should happen. In the way that you love your family, in the way that you care for them and spend time with them, none of you set out to do that.

We can all end up at a place where we have regrets in our lives about what we wish we would have done differently. For sure, all of us, if we could go back, we would change something about the way we've lived.

God offers men and women forgiveness today, and part of his forgiveness is a resetting of the things that have gone wrong. Now, sometimes those resets might take years, and it might take the humility to confront what you've maybe done wrong, poorly, the times where you've transgressed or sinned against your own family and say, I'm sorry for what I've done. I'm sorry that I came up short on this one. I'm sorry that I took some of my frustrations out on you or that I stayed away from you because I didn't know how to relate to you. Whatever it might be, God offers us today as an opportunity to fix it, and he'll help with that.

For men. Well, I don't think there's any in here that fit this Bill, but a couple young men, at least or two in the room. Someday, maybe you guys will be fathers. And now is the time that you can take to find the good and godly men and learn from them and learn how to be a good dad for men that are at an age where you can set an example. These young men need you.

I still need you. I'm raising my child. I'm making my way. But I need to see the example of men who have fought the good fight, run the race, and they've been faithful to their God and their families. We need those examples in the church and in the world.

So, men, let that light shine strong to the good and godly fathers, stay the course, set an example and strengthen the younger men and continue loving your children. There's no more noble thing you can do than to leave a godly legacy for your children. Amen. Happy Father's Day. Pastor Kendall's gonna come up and offer us some words.

He's also my dad. Happy Father's Day, dad. Sam.