Everlasting Father

Okay, let's get started. Isaiah 9. Isaiah 9. We're digging into Isaiah 9. And let me just say something about having a child and naming a child.

If you're expecting a child or one day to have a child, maybe you're a married couple thinking about having a kid, there's something in premarital counseling that they skip over. And that's choosing the name of the child. That can be a real relationship tester when you're trying to pick the name of the child. There's a few things you don't do. Number one, you don't pick a name of somebody that, especially if you're the man and if you're the husband, you don't pick a name of a woman that you dated in the past.

That's like a no-no. That's off limits, okay? All right? You also have to be careful not to pick a name of a person that maybe your wife didn't like in high school. That might be a bad idea because it reminds her every time that that person that was the mean girl in high school or whatever, you don't do that.

Also, you've got to be careful how you choose your first and last name. You've got to look at your last name and the first name and make sure that it doesn't sound weird or doesn't spell a sentence out or anything like that. There are real-life examples of this. I've got a few right here I just want to share with you. These are real names.

Anita Mann. Anita Mann, okay? I bet that's an interesting conversation every time she introduces me. I need a man. I need a man.

No, you need a what? What's your name? Right, right. How about Eileen Wright? Eileen Wright.

That is actually a real name. That could be a little awkward. I mean, you could start off certain conversations on the wrong foot. Eileen, Eileen. Okay, the first service didn't get that, so I'm praise God that y'all got it.

I think it was my delivery. It just wasn't good. Or Lois Price. I've met a person named Lois Price. I mean, every conversation, I'm Lois Price.

I mean, they would be making deals every time they talked to somebody. So we have to be careful how we pick our name. And if you do pick a name, make sure it's not the first name and the first name and the last name aren't the same. I've actually met people like that. In fact, one of my favorite sitcoms growing up was Home Improvement, Tim the Tool Man Taylor, and Wilson was next door.

And guess what? Wilson's first name was Wilson, and Wilson's second name was Wilson. It was Wilson Wilson. It was just kind of a big joke. So you don't want your kid to be a big joke all their lives if they're Wilson Wilson for the rest of their lives, right?

So names are important. They're significant. They mean a lot, and they can reveal a lot. Your name reveals a lot about you, about your legacy, about who you were named after, and things like that. For instance, my name is, and a lot of you may not know this, I found out at a Christmas party, some people here don't know my first name, okay?

My first name is not Leon. My first name is Dwight. Yeah, I hide it on purpose. Yes, I do. But I am Dwight Leon Dunning, Jr.

So I took on my dad's name. And what's significant about that name is Dwight and Leon mean something. It's not just a name that was picked out. Dwight was named after the famous evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who my grandfather gave his life under the ministry of one of the things he started, Dwight.

So he was so appreciative. He loved that name Dwight, and it reminded him of his faith journey, which is a really cool thing. Leon is also my granddad. My granddad got to pick all the names, I suppose. It was his brother who passed away when he was really young.

He was a child, and in memory of him, he named us Leon. So as you can see, there's legacy in names, and names are very important. So today, we're looking at Isaiah 9-6 once again, and let's look at our anchor verse. And his name shall be called, what? Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

See, names are important, right? And God intentionally gives us these names about who Jesus would be so that we could address what we are facing now. God's names are for us now, and we're walking through these names. Last week, we talked about a wonderful counselor, how he can be a counselor in your time of need. This week, I want to talk about, I think, a very touchy subject for many, and that's an everlasting father.

Everlasting father. And if you ever needed anything, any of us needed anything, we need an everlasting father. But for many, you didn't have a great relationship with your father. So the way you view your father may not be the same way another person views your father. And maybe you're looking at the father from that perspective.

Maybe your father was absent, was never there, or they abandoned you at some point. Or maybe it wasn't even his fault. Maybe he passed away too early, too young, and he hasn't been there for those moments, those pivotal moments in your life where you really needed a father. Or maybe all you can remember is how he was disappointed with everything. Your father was just always, you never could add up, or you never really connected with him.

He was just emotionally disconnected, and you never had a real relationship. And even now, when you make that phone call, it's kind of weird. It's like he's handing it off to your mother, and there's never really any connection there. Or maybe he was abusive, verbally abusive or physically abusive. And for whatever reason, it brings up a lot of pain when you think about father, an everlasting father.

And you have no idea what it means to even have a father, much less this God that is an everlasting father. Jonathan Edwards, not the Puritan preacher, because some of you are going to go there quickly. But Jonathan Edwards, who was a contemporary, wrote an article published in the Gospel Coalition about the difficulty he had learning to call God father. It was because of his relationship with his father. And he wrote this.

He said, How could I understand God's love and faithfulness when dad left town because he loved something or someone else better than me? How can a God be a mighty fortress of protection when dad hit instead of hugged? Unfortunately, this is an experience for a lot of people. That when they see a father, because fathers have a powerful influence on our lives and how we see God. In fact, sociologist Vern Bankston said this in a book called Families and Faith, he says, studies conclusively show that the quality of the child's relationship to the father is the single most important factor in whether the child adopts the faith of the father or the parent.

Eric Metaxas, who is a Christian author, said this, he pointed out that the most famous atheists in modern times like Freud, Nietzsche, Hume, Bertram, Russell, and different ones, had one thing in common. They had one thing in common, absence of a father. Absence or a traumatic father experience in their life. Many, many, many of them that had a disbelief in God. In fact, Sigmund Freud said this himself, he said, youthful persons lose their religious beliefs as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.

They dismiss the father. And beyond faith, our relationship with our dads can be the most shaping influence we have in our approach to life in general. National statistics showed that 71% of high school dropouts are from fatherless homes. 75% of teenagers in substance abuse centers are from fatherless homes. One of these studies claimed that almost every social ill faced by Americans' children are related to a lack of a father in the house.

And one California study noted that 98% of its discipline issues were caused by emotionally damaged young boys whose common characteristic was, you guessed it, father loss. Being in a fatherless home. So what I want to do today is I want to identify four types of father wounds and show you that Jesus came to heal those wounds that you have. An everlasting father. So I borrowed these different characteristics from a book called Father Factor.

How Your Father's Legacy Impacts Your Career. It's actually a business book, a psychological business book. And Stephen Poulter wrote it. And I'm going to use these four ideas and attach it to Jesus and how Jesus is different from these types of fathers and how he can bring healing and he can be your everlasting father. Jesus can be your everlasting father.

Now let me make one theological statement here to clear things up because some of you are thinking about the Trinity and Jesus and the Father and stuff. So how can Jesus be our everlasting father? Because this is what Isaiah is saying, right? That Jesus is our everlasting father. Isn't the Father a distinct person in the Trinity and Jesus the Son of God?

Yes, that's true. They are two distinct persons in the Trinity. But what Isaiah is getting at is the relationship we have with Jesus that would be like a father that we never had. He feels that longing for a father. That's who Jesus is.

It's in relation to Jesus. Not that he is the Father God, but he is the Son of God who can fill those places relationally in our hearts. So let's start. First of all, there is the never satisfied dad. The never satisfied dad.

I heard a story of a pastor's wife that had a dad that was this way, just never satisfied. No matter what, he never seemed proud. It's like you could never add up. You just never, ever, ever satisfied. And she graduated from college.

She was the first in her family to graduate from college. She had a 4.0 graduate with honors. And she said, my dream is to see my dad break through the crowd, push people out of the way to get to her just to say, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of what you've done.

And it was happening right before her. She saw her father coming through the crowd. He was breaking through the crowd to get to the stage only to say this. Well, it's getting late. It's a long drive and we better get out of here.

So, and she said it crushed her. It crushed her because the one thing she wanted him to do is just say, I'm proud. I'm proud. And she said, this has had an effect on my relationships with my husband, with his ministry and the things I do at work. It goes with us.

It goes with us. And for kids who grew up with this kind of father, they always are trying to prove themselves. They're always trying to add up. They carry this view of themselves into their relationship with God. Like they got this nagging thing in the back of their head.

Am I good enough for God? Is God pleased with me? Am I a good enough Christian? Am I living good enough? Am I a good enough witness?

Or am I a good enough wife? Or am I a good enough husband? And when you look at other Christians, you ask God, do I need to be a Christian like that? I don't feel like I'm as good of a Christian as that person. Perhaps I should be like them or mimic them.

And you have this desperate need to please the Father by what you do. But your heavenly Father could not be more different than that. Isaiah says that you are precious. That you are precious. Think about that for a minute.

God thinks that you are precious. You're precious. I remember the kid's song, red and yellow, black and white. You are precious in His sight. You are precious no matter who you are, where you come from.

You are precious to Jesus. In fact, Isaiah even uses the analogy, which is very interesting, of a mother and her child. He says this in Isaiah 49, 15. Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

So it's interesting that he takes the analogy of motherhood rather than fatherhood because motherhood, when God sees us, He sees us like a mother sees her newborn baby that she's nursing. Very attentive, very attentive and loving, and He knows every hair that falls from your head, according to Matthew. In fact, it says this in Zephaniah, which is kind of weird if you think about it. The Lord will rejoice over you with gladness. So He's rejoicing.

In fact, some versions say He dances over you, right? He will quiet you by His love, and He will exult over you with loud singing. Now, I know a lot of good dads, but I never met a dad that walks around all day singing about their kids. In fact, that would be kind of weird. Could you imagine me all day, Max and Savannah, oh, they're just so wonderful.

They're the greatest. Max is so smart. Savannah is so pretty. Y'all would be like, stop it. Stop it.

This is disgusting. Stop it. Stop loving your kids so much. But this is what God does. That's right.

That's what God does for us. He thinks of us. Look at what King David says about us. This is very powerful, and most of you know this scripture in Psalm 139. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.

So he searches us and knows us, right? You formed me in my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works.

I'm a wonderful work. My soul knows it very well. Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and when I was just a so-called fetus, you thought of me? In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, and when, as yet, there was none of them. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

It is high. I cannot attain it. He's saying I can't even understand this kind of love that God has for each of us. He couldn't even express it. Where shall I go from your spirit?

Where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. And if I make my bed in Sheol, which is the Old Testament word for hell, you are there. And the truth is, we did make our beds in hell. But you know what God did?

He raced down to hell to save us. He bore the judgment on our behalf. He wore hell on our behalf. So pure and innocent. He died for our sins.

Amen. And He's racing to hell. He's raced to the cross so that He could forgive us. And the judgment that we deserved, He took upon Himself. In verse 9, if I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.

So do you ache for someone special? God thinks you're special. He sees you as someone special. Do you yearn to matter? You know, God says you matter.

You know how He thinks of you. He says, I knew every hair on your head. I formed you in your mother's womb. I had a plan for your life, and I plan to take care of you and father you. I had that plan from the very beginning.

And you're valuable. God sees you as a valuable. In fact, He even went to hell for you. That's how valuable you were to Him, that He bore your punishment. This love is deeper and greater than any kind of love we can ever experience in this life.

This is the love of an everlasting Father. No wonder David said, such knowledge is too high. I can't even understand it. It's too wonderful for me to understand. How can we understand this agape love that He expresses for us?

And if you want to be a good Christ-like dad for all those dads today, I'm going to tell you, give you one word of advice, just love the mess out of your kids. Just love them. Just show them your love. The second thing is, the second type of dad is the time bomb dad. The time bomb dad.

This is the kind of dad you just never know quite what to expect when they show up at home. If they had a bad day, are they going to express their anger in front of you? Are they going to do something? And it is a very scary thing. Alcohol and drugs could be involved in that.

Maybe you had a situation like that, and they hurt you verbally and emotionally and physically, and even in some ways, spiritually, you've been hurt. And it's hard to love someone that you're scared of. It's hard to love someone you're terrified to be around. Stephen Poulter says, So a lot of the anxiety disorders we have today, a lot of them come from that kind of fathering and that kind of household. And, for example, kids who grew up like this, they're control freaks.

They have to have everything in place because the world comes to an end if something's off. Because that's what they experienced when they were a kid. They wanted to make sure that everything was in place so they didn't make their father angry. So they put everything in place. In counseling, they call this hypervigilance, which is a sort of type of PTSD, not quite PTSD.

It's something different. But Poulter compares it to the U.S.'s response after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when a radar system was installed that could detect, it was so sophisticated, it could detect for 5,000 miles, 5,000 mile perimeter whether there was movement happening. And that's how people walk in life that have experienced this kind of father.

They're always detecting and wondering when is everything going to fall apart. Every little movement brings anxiety, brings some kind of sense of anxiety to them. And that's the way a lot of these kids grow up. Always the outlook of where the next blow up will happen. Just looking out for that.

And this, of course, affects how they see the Heavenly Father. Maybe this is you. It's hard to trust God. It's hard to leave things in his hands. That he really cares for you.

What if he gets in a bad mood? What if he's mad? And you're constantly thinking, when something goes wrong, is God still going to love me? If something goes bad, what did I do now? God must have done something because I'm where I am now.

But your Heavenly Father is not like that either. He's not like that. David says the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That's something you probably didn't experience in a father. You experience abounding in anger and slow to affection, perhaps.

But that's not your Heavenly Father. In fact, the Hebrew word literally means, and this is pretty cool, long of nostrils. Long of nostrils. God is long of nostrils. That's a great metaphor for what happens when you get angry.

Because what happens when we get angry? Our nostrils flare. We're like a raging bull. We're ready to attack and do anything at any point, right? That's what that looks like, right?

But your father, what he does is he... And what do you do when you are angry? And how do you stop yourself? What? You take a long breath, right?

You breathe. You stop. Let the nostrils be long. Let it breathe and it calms you. It calms you down.

And that's how our Heavenly Father is. He's not quick to anger and he is ready to forgive us at any moment we repent. He's there waiting for us. I think of the prodigal son, how the father was waiting. He wasn't angry.

He waited with love, just desiring for his son to come home. He was not happy unless his son was home. But the moment he sees him, he sprints. He sprints to catch him, to welcome him back home. Yes, there's times that God does discipline us.

There are times where we have to go through hard times where God has to show us the way, to allow us to go into places. That he would not desire us to be in, but that's a part of a father's disciplinary action. But he never does it with anger. He never does it with anger. It's always for your good.

Hebrews says that even the best dad's discipline is out of selfish anger. But God's discipline is always pure. It's always right. It's always perfect. And there's no anger in it at all.

He's not like that. He pours out all the wrath and judgment for our sins on his Son. That's how beautiful our Father is. And Jesus bore all those according to Romans 8.1.

And God promises us in Romans 8.28 that he controls all things for our good and for his glory. So everything he does, everything he allows in your life, every little piece that happens, is always, always, always for your good. It's always about our good. That's how good our Father is, our Everlasting Father.

How would that change the way you see things in life if you thought that way, that everything was good? It would change all the things you experienced in your past, how you deal with things in your present, and you could look to a bright future because you know you've got a God that's on your side. That's our Everlasting Father. And if your dad was this kind who was always angry and you never knew what to expect, just, I want you to know, your Heavenly Father is just the opposite. He's just the opposite.

And let me use this moment just to say this. You've got to stop viewing your Heavenly Father based on your experience with your Earthly Father. You've got to change that perspective because God wants to heal you. Jesus wants to heal you. So let's reverse the order and understand our Earthly Father through the lens of our Heavenly Father.

Number three, the emotionally distant dad. The emotionally distant dad. This is the kind of dad who may have been stable and consistent, who took care of you, didn't abandon you necessarily or abuse you, but he just wasn't there. You didn't feel special. You didn't have those conversations.

It just felt like he was distant all the time. This father's style is made up of approximately 50% of nuclear families between 1945 and 1980. Meaning that it was the leave it the beaver generation. And what you were taught in that generation is that you worked hard. It was weird to have this emotional connection with your kids.

You just worked and you went home and you went to bed. You ate and went to bed. You went back to work. And that was what they thought was loving their kids. They thought that's what it was about.

And maybe you grew up with this kind of dad. One book said that there are three things every child needs to hear from their father. And here they are. I love you. I'm proud of you.

You are really good at blank. I love you. I'm proud of you. And you are really good at that. That's what they want to hear.

But you never heard those words. You fall in this category where it's never been there. And you've had this insatiable desire to prove yourself to hear those words. You want to hear those words. You want to hear it from whoever you can.

How many of you remember Bo Jackson back in the 90s, man? He was like one of the premier athletes of the time. Some people even argue he was one of the greatest athletes in history. He played both sports, baseball. He accomplished baseball player and an accomplished football player.

I don't even know how you balance those things, honestly. The only other one I can think of is Deion Sanders that did that as well. But I just don't know how you do that, right? But interestingly, Bo had this type of father. And he said this in an article many years ago.

My father has never seen me play a football or baseball game. Can you imagine? Here I am, Bo Jackson, one of the so-called premier athletes in the country. And I'm sitting in my locker room and envying every one of my teammates whose dad would come and talk and have a drink with them after the game. I never experienced that.

I often think about, you know, on a lighter note, Ricky Bobby, you know, in Talladega Nights, always leaving the tickets at will call and hoping that his father shows up to see the race one day, right? Or every Tom Cruise movie in the 80s. That's pretty much the storyline. And Poulter said that these kind of kids who grew up in an environment like this, is they fail to develop healthy father relationships and with others. They don't learn to open up emotionally.

They're not very emotionally involved, not with their spouse, not with their kids, not with their relationships, not with anybody. They don't really have deep friendships. And when they go through painful seasons, they tend to do it alone. Because they don't reach out. And then the cycle happens with their kids and their kids have this same feeling about it.

And the cycle continues. And it goes through generations. And your heavenly father isn't like that. Your heavenly father is so emotionally connected to you. According to Jesus' parable of the father and son, he literally could not be happy without you.

The prodigal son story, you see the father, he's just so unhappy that his child isn't there. Emotionally disconnected from him. He wants to be with him. And as soon as the son comes, he doesn't just say, Hey, wait, you know, come on in and have some food. We won't talk, you know, whatever.

He ran out to him and embraced him and loved him. And he was wandering and hurting while the son was gone. John Piper says that with nearly every other parable Jesus taught, he ends by giving his hearers something to do. Go and do likewise. But this is one parable that there's no action step at all.

There's nothing. He tells the parable and there's no action step. Why is that? Because we're supposed to just stop and worship and be in all of the father's love. That behold what manner of love the father has bestowed upon us according to John, 1 John.

What manner of love is it that we, that maybe the most significant thing you can do for your kids is just emotionally connect with them. Just have conversations with them, connect with them, tell them you love them, tell them you appreciate them, you're proud of them, and they're good at this or good at that. Dads who are emotionally distanced have no idea they're doing it even. I mean, maybe you're one of those dads. You have no idea.

You just think you're doing a good job by providing for them. That's what you were taught. And most Christian men feel like, well, I'm a good dad. I provide food and shelter. But you've got really, what's the standard?

Really, that's your standard is providing food and shelter? Possums provides food and shelter for their young ones, right? I mean, that's your line? That's your standard that you're going by? We're supposed to.

We're supposed to love our kids. We're supposed to discipline them. We're supposed to encourage them. We're supposed to shepherd them. We're supposed to minister to them.

We're supposed to be their pastors. We're supposed to carry them. Men need to step up and be pastors over their children because your children desperately need that. Don't be distanced from them. Don't be absent from the home.

It's because you're so busy. Be with them. They need that. And number four, there's the absent father. There's the absent father.

This is the father who just wasn't there. The 40% of children in America live in fatherless homes. Fatherless homes. Kids often interpret the absence of their father as a personal rejection. My dad's not there.

It must be something I did. And they think they weren't important enough. They weren't good enough. And counselors say that this often manifests in this type of background sadness that they're going through life. They don't know why they're so sad.

They don't know why they think that life is just eventually going to go bad or go away. They don't know it's there. They don't understand. And they feel alone. It creates this type of thing with these type of kids.

And with boys, it starts to express itself as anger. With no one to show them how to truly be masculine, how to truly protect and bless. They result to rebellion and athletics and sexual prowess and sometimes violence and gang activity. In fact, one author said that they often gravitate to violent action heroes, gangster rap stars, and they learn to express their strengths and masculinity through the domination of others. Instead of learning from a father how to protect others and how to bless others.

And some of them become overachievers. They want to prove themselves. They want to get from others so that they can affirm themselves. If I could one up this person, I can affirm myself and then I can believe in myself. Something they never got from their father.

They never got any affirmation. Girls with absent fathers are very similar. Sometimes they struggle to develop respect for themselves and confidence in their careers. Sometimes they crave the attention and care of men. They want a man to love them and care for them and be a father to them.

The father that they never had. The attention they never got from their dad they're desiring from other men. And they often end up in situations that they don't want or didn't desire to be in. One study showed that 90% of female porn models were sexually abused or have been sex trafficked. And she had developed so low of a self-esteem of herself that she allowed a man, allowed a man to see her as just a sex object.

And that's all she knew because she didn't have that father in her life. As I hope you've seen by now, Jesus is none of that. Jesus is the opposite of that. He says in Hebrews 13, 5, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. Do you know what the Greek translation for never is?

It means never, never, never, never, ever will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. He wouldn't leave you if you walked away. He still is with you. He wouldn't leave you if you make your bed in hell.

He's still there. That's how much he loved you. You cannot get rid of him. He is always there ready to read. You can be five steps away.

He's one step behind you. And you can turn around and run back into his arms. Far from walking out on you. For a better option, you are the better option. You are the only option for him that satisfies him.

He loves you that much. He couldn't be happier until you return home. Far from using and abusing you for pleasure, he allows himself to be abused and be tortured so that you can have eternal life in him. As his hands were pounded and his wrists were pounded by nails, all Jesus could pray and say, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.

That's our God, our everlasting Father. Jesus is the heavenly Father that we've always craved. Even if you had a good dad, at some point that dad will fail you. You know, just let me make a statement about reality. One day your dad will die.

And you're going to have to walk this life without your father. And there's going to be a hole in your heart for those times, those precious times. Many of you are already experiencing that, the memories of your father. That's why I love the statement, God is an everlasting father. He never dies.

He never goes away. He's always there. He never disappoints. He never forsakes. He never leaves.

He never dies. He's a father that your heart has always been craving. That's the father we need, an everlasting father. So don't judge your heavenly father based on your earthly father. And don't evaluate your earthly father based on the heavenly father.

He's the father you've been searching for. And when you realize that, you can be healed. You can be healed of those wounds. Today, you can be healed. And you can be brought to wholeness because of a love of a father.

And guess what? You can learn to forgive and love your father that may have forsaken you in this earth. That's how good our everlasting father is. Jesus wants to heal you this weekend. Jesus wants to heal you today.

He wants to take care of those wounds. Let's look back at Sephaniah 317 once again. It says, the Lord will rejoice over you with gladness. And I love this next statement. He will quiet you by his love.

He will quiet you by his love. Just last month, Savannah had a skin infection where boils were breaking out over her body. And I had to take her to the doctor. Had to take her to the emergency clinic or whatever, you know, to the quick clinics. Patient first, urgent care, things like that.

Couldn't think of the name. And while we were in there, she's scared. She's so nervous. She hates the doctor. I mean, the anxiety, it's unbelievable.

I mean, you couldn't make this stuff up. She gets so, so nervous. And she's sitting on the table in the room. And she says, are they going to give me a shot? Are they going to do this?

Are they going to do that? I said, I don't know what they're going to do. They're going to look at it. And we're going to get some medicine and we're going to figure this out. The doctor comes in.

The assistant comes in and they start looking at it. I know. Mm-mm. Yeah. And they determined that they're going to have to break that boil, they're going to have to drain that boil, and it's going to be very, very, very painful.

And she knows it's going to be painful, and she starts crying, and she starts, I mean, Daddy, Daddy, don't let them do that. I'm okay. Let's just go home. It's going to be okay. They don't need to do that.

And all I could do, all I could do is say, it's going to be okay. And I grabbed her. As they grabbed her leg and began to poke at that sore that was so painful, that boil that was so painful, I grabbed her, and I held her close. And I held her as tight as I possibly could, and I whispered in her ear, it's okay. It's okay.

It's okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. I got you. It's okay.

Some of you experience some heavy, tragic, painful boils in your life. You know, you've got a Heavenly Father that's open, arms open, ready to embrace you and pull you in and whisper love in your ear. Daddy, Daddy, I got you. I love you. I got you.

Maybe that's you today. You need an everlasting Father. Father, and there's people in this room, there may be somebody sitting right beside you, and we're just, that's dealing with this, that doesn't know what it's like to have a Father who truly loves Him. Today, you can experience the love of a Father. Let Him come in, an everlasting Father that whispers in your ear, and He will give you peace, and He will never, ever, ever let you go.

Never, ever, ever let you go. As high as the heavens are, as far as the east is to the west, nothing can separate you from the love of a Father. He knows how many hairs are on your head. He knows how many you lost this today. Lord, I know that, right?

He will never leave you or forsake you, and He dances over you. We have a crazy God who likes to dance over us and sing about us. So I invite you to know, if you don't know truly who God is, or maybe you've walked this Christian life and never truly seen the perspective of what a true Heavenly Father is like, would you just allow Him to show you? Would you allow Him to walk with you? Would you allow Him to guide you into who He truly is today?

Let's pray. Father, I thank You, God. I thank You that You are a Heavenly Father. That it was intentional that You were an everlasting Father. That You sought fit, Father, that through Your Son, Jesus, who would come to this world, that He would be called an everlasting Father, a Father that would never leave us, that would never forsake us, that would always be with us until the end, through eternity, and who would come to this earth as a child, as a babe, which Christmas is all about, Lord.

We remember that You came here, and You lived, and You died, and You rose again, and You live forever, and You've conquered death, and You've conquered hell. Although we've laid our bodies in hell, You are there, and You have come in, and You bore the judgment on our behalf. And we thank You, Lord, for that. Receive that today, church. Just receive that today.

Receive the grace, and the mercy, and the peace of Jesus today. Whatever you're going through in your life, receive that from the Father today. And for those of you who do not know Jesus as your Savior, would you confess your sin to Him, and let Him know that you want a relationship with Him. God, I just want to know You. I've been far from You.

I've walked away from You. I've distanced myself from You. I've been absent from You for a long time, Lord. But today, I surrender my life. I surrender my heart to You.

I give it to You today. I give You everything today, Lord Jesus. Today is the day. I turn from my sin, and I walk with You. No turning back.

As the old hymn says, I have decided to walk with Jesus. No turning back. No turning back. Thank You, Jesus, for Your mercy. Thank You, Jesus, for Your grace.

Thank You, Jesus, for the good news of the gospel that is available to all of us. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.