Family Values

So, we are, let's just roll right into the last piece of this series. It's complicated, but it doesn't have to be, guys. Relationships don't have to be complicated if we do it God's way. God's way is better. We try to do it our own way, and we become messed up, right?

Our relationships are messed up. Our relationships are all over the place. We're not connecting. We don't know each other. We don't see each other the way that God sees us, and it really messes up our lives.

But God has a better way of doing it, and we've walked through this series with so many different directions. Friendships, marriages, singlehood, all those things that trip us up in our relationships. And I'm hoping that you're taking this stuff that you've learned from me and the other speakers that have shared with us during this series, and you're taking them to heart, and you're actually walking them out. Because I can promise you it does, in fact, work. Because God's way works better.

Today I want to talk about family. I want to talk about the family unit. Family values. Having good family values. Because family, in my opinion, and I believe in God's opinion, is the fabric to society.

Healthy families are the fabric of society. And it goes to family. If the family goes, then the church goes, then society goes. And the family is under attack. The family is incredibly under attack.

And I think it's very, very important that we take family seriously. That we build healthy, strong, core, Bible-believing, Christ-following, hardcore, after-passionate, after-Christ families. And we can do that. So see, the Bible mentions 123 times, and in 76 verses, family. So if God mentions family, I think it's important for us to take family seriously.

He calls us a family, the church. He calls the Godhead's a family, right? We've got the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We've got the Father, we've got the mother, if you want to say that, the intimate part. And then we have the Son.

We see family throughout everything. He calls the church, you know, the bride of Christ. There's this family unit there. Webster's Dictionary defines family as a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household or a group of people related to one another by blood and marriage. See, there are two types of families, okay?

So there's the blood family. That's your ancestry and your relatives and things like that. So those are people that we're connected with by blood. And then there's the spiritual family. There's a spiritual family.

That's two things. One of them is when a couple gets married, there's a spiritual unity there. So you create a spiritual that's even thicker than blood relationship, amen? In your marriages and you have children and you begin that family unit. Also, this is a family unit here at church.

As we gather together, we are a family, right? We are brothers and sisters in Christ. Spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers, people connecting, people growing together. We are family. And the blood, when the blood and the spirit come together, it's the best type of family.

And that's what I want to talk about today. And let me just say this, and I'm going to get into my family a little bit in a minute, but I'm the product of three to four generations. Three generations on one side and four generations on another of people who've held in the value of a God-fearing family, okay? So I'm up here on stage today because of that. And I'm going to be borrowing a lot of information here today from Jimmy Evans, who is a marriage and relationship teacher.

And he's just incredible. And I love his books and he's got a ministry, a marriage today. You can go and listen to his podcast. OK. He's going to help out a lot in this area, but he has a different story, so I'm going to kind of use his story a little bit since my story was kind of a good family story.

I'm going to show you a story that wasn't such a good story. But the value system that we instill in our children affects them for life. Everything we do affects our children. I think that's important. In fact, the common value system, this generational, some people call it generational curses, which is generational effectiveness that happens and goes through generations, the common value structure usually is this.

It starts with money. If I have enough money, that works everything else out, right? And then the second value is if I have money, I can gain social status. If I have social status, then I can provide for my family, and the spiritual stuff kind of works in. And that results in pain and dysfunction.

Pain and dysfunction because we've placed the God of money above the God of all gods, right? And we've made it about that. So money, if I can make enough money, if I can gain enough social status, then maybe I can provide everything for my kids, and my kids will be healthy and productive and yada yada, and things will work out. But it doesn't work that way because they have the wrong value system. People have the wrong value system.

The right value system is God first and then family. God first and then family. And let me just share. So I got my grandmother and my grandfather. On my grandfather's side, he has an amazing story.

He was miraculously healed of tuberculosis. He was a Chicago boy. Midwesterner. When he was very, very young, it was during the Great Depression and even before then. And they lived in places like Colorado and Oregon and Washington State.

And they would travel around. And wherever the jobs were, they were there. So he came from very, very humble beginnings. He can even remember wagons back then. He wrote an article in a newspaper of the summer of 1910.

And he talked about that in local paper in my dad's hometown in North Carolina. But his father had tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was going around. My grandfather walked into a healing service through one of Dwight L. Moody's revival campaigns in Chicago, Illinois, and was miraculously healed and gave his life to Jesus.

And he decided that he was going to honor Jesus from that day forth. And he took a trip across the states to this little town called Falcon, North Carolina, a little children's home there, and decided to give his life and ministry to children. My grandmother was a mountain girl in Virginia, okay? So she's a fellow Virginian. And her father was a devout man of God.

She was a devout woman of God. And even during the Great Depression when they lost everything, they gained everything. And she told stories about how they always honored God. And her favorite scripture, which I'll be speaking from a little bit here is, I will dwell, surely his goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

That was her faith. I'd hear her quote that around the house. She'd walk around the house, the kitchen, quoting that all the time. And boy, did she experience some pain in her life. She lost a sister.

She lost her mom at a very young age. Then lost her stepmother, who she loved dearly. Her dad was a fairly successful man. And he lost everything overnight to the Great Depression, acres and acres of land. She experienced a lot of pain in her life, but she never gave up on God.

She knew God, she loved God, and she took a little trip across, down south to North Carolina to this little town called Falcon, and there they met. And my grandfather chased her down for about three years before she said, I do. She was not interested at first. She wasn't interested in a Yankee. But there they made a family, and had four kids, had two boys and two girls, and they served God, and they're all in ministry today.

Three of the four are in full-time pastoral ministry, and just amazing to see. And the others are in part-time ministry, and just amazing to see what God does generationally when you're raised on a strong foundation. And then my father and mother obviously followed that generation of healthy, grounded, biblical ground, and here I am. All three of my sisters serve faithfully in the local church, and just we all love the Lord. We all love the Lord.

We have our issues, you know, like anybody else, but we love the Lord. But we're raising our families the same way with these godly principles. Now, some of you didn't have that, and I understand that. And Jimmy Evans explains that he even had a father who disowned him, never said he loved him. In fact, when he was called to ministry, he was a part of one of his businesses he started up.

And you can go and listen to the whole story. He'll share that with you on Marriage Today. I'm sure you can find his testimony. And how his dad never loved him, never told him he loved him. And when he was leaving ministry, his dad said, get out.

And he disowned him, basically, because he wanted him to stay and do what they were doing. He didn't think he was called to be a minister. But years and years and years later, after he and his wife started practicing some of these principles I'm getting ready to share with you, his father lost everything later on in his life. And his father and his mother asked to meet with him. And he came in, and he apologized to his son of how he treated him for years.

And he led him to the Lord right there on the spot. And he says, they were not huggy people. And he says, they were the people in church at the front door that were hugging everybody and loving everybody. And he said his father told him for the very first time that he loved him. He loved him.

And he said he was, he preached like Billy Graham. You know, you're like a Billy Graham preacher. He said, it was just, my dad never done that, you know. And so I'm just telling you, if you come from a family background that was dysfunctional or disjointed or hurtful, it's not too late. God can fix that.

And also, you can make a choice today that you're not going to carry that to the next generation. So in Matthew 7, very popular verse of Scripture, Jesus is teaching to his disciples and to his followers. He says, therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, okay, you have to do them. You can't just hear them. You can hear me talk about it.

It's going to sound real pretty up here from the pulpit. But if you don't do them, then it means nothing, right? It says, these sayings of mine and does them, I will lacken him to a wise man who builds his house upon a rock, right? And the rains descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat the house and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of man and does not do them, so he prefaces...

With that, right? He says, it does not do them will be like a foolish man who builds his house on the sand, and the rains descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on the house, and it fell, and great was its fall. And let me give you three things from that scripture. First of all, Jesus promises trouble will come. He doesn't say that, oh, if it comes, he says it will come.

He says when it comes, because the floods of life and things will happen, and wise builders build for worst-case scenarios. Wise builders build the strongest foundations because they know that the winds are going to come, they know that the waves are going to come, they know that life is going to happen, so they build on a pronged foundation. And if you are building a house only on the good times, then that house will crumble. We need to build on a very strong foundation. Any engineer will tell you, when you build something, you don't build it for just something that will occasionally happen.

You build it for the worst-case scenario. When the city digs waterways and things like that, when they dig ditches for water, they don't dig it for rain. Engineers dig it for floods because they expect it to work through everything. And that's what we do with a foundation, with a family foundation. We want to build it for the worst-case scenario.

Jesus promises trouble will come. Secondly, Jesus promises complete stability to those who build upon the word. That's why he says building it upon a rock. And if you hear these words of mine, it will work. And he wants you to build it on a strong rock.

And then when the waves and winds and things and storms of life come, right, it stands and it stood. So he promises that. And thirdly, Jesus promises failure to every person and family that does not obey his word. Because he said great is their fall. Great is their fall when they do not build on a firm foundation.

And some of you know that. Some of you have experienced that. So why would anybody build on the stand? What causes the stands more comfortable? Number one, when you go to the beach, you don't go sit on the jetty.

You don't go up on the jetty and put your towel up and lay back and not, oh, yeah, this is nice, right? You don't do that. You go and find a nice spot on the sand. And we live in an anti-biblical world, guys. We live in a dark world.

And if you want to be comfortable, live that way. You can live that way. This isn't about being comfortable, though, guys. This isn't about being comfortable. It's about being truthful.

It's about being built on the truth of God's word. Because we're serving the one who forfeited all comfort, okay? Who hung on the cross, who hung naked in front of his mother for your sins. So it's not about being comfortable. Being true to the person who gave us life is what we're about.

And the second thing is it's popular. People go to the beach. You know, they like going to the beach because it's fun and popular. Everybody does it, right? And it's enjoyable, right?

And then the third thing, it's conformable. Think about it this way. When you lay in the sand, what does it do? It shapes you. But when you lay on a rock, that rock, that rock doesn't do anything, right?

It marks you, right? When people build their value system on sand, it's dysfunctional and it fails. Wherever you are today, let me just say this. Whether you had a bad family, whether you have a good family life, you can make decisions that you can build it on the rock because we want the rock to shape us. We don't want to shape it because we do not manipulate God.

God cannot be manipulated. God is the strength of our family. Our stronghold, our fortress, our deliverer, he is the one we stand on. He said, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. So if you build your family values on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, I promise you it will not fail because Jesus promises you that, right?

So we're going to build a healthy family. So wherever you are in your family journey today, if you're single, you can prepare. You can prepare now. Don't think this message isn't for you. If you've been divorced, don't think this message isn't for you.

You can make things right now. And those of you that are in relationship issues, even in your marriages, let's take a look at this. Think about the people you're raising. Think about the generations that will come. So how do we build our family on a rock that lasts?

First of all, we need to surrender our lives, surrender your life and your family to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and his word. And this is for Christians because if you're not a Christian today, that's fine. We open our church to people in different backgrounds and things like that. But this message is specifically for Christians, but it can help you too if you're not a Christian, if you haven't yet made a decision for Jesus. And we want to give you the invitation to know Jesus today, and we'll do that at the end of the service.

You can make that decision for yourself. But the Bible is always the final authority for family. And in our family, in Miranda and I's family, our family, our kids, we always go to the word of God for decisions. We never make a decision without going to basing it on God's word. Because God doesn't bless good decisions, he blesses his decisions.

Because we can have some good ideas, but they're not God ideas in most cases, right? We want our ideas to align with the word of God because God blesses good decisions. God blesses his decisions, not just good decisions. But our decisions have to be made this way in prayer. In prayer.

You need to connect with God and get his thoughts on it. You got, whenever you make a decision, the first thing you need to do and what we do is we go to the word of God and we go to prayer. And the reason we go to prayer is because, honestly, the Bible doesn't give us absolutely every detail, every thought that we have or every decision that we make, right? I mean, the Bible doesn't tell you how to buy a car, right? Like, get that car, get that car.

You know, there's not a verse in the Bible that says that or whether you should take that job or this job or whether to send your kids to school. I mean, you've got to go to God in prayer. You've got to connect the word of God with your prayers. You've got to seek God. Look, Isaiah says it like this, all we like, all we like sheep have gone astray and we have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of all of us.

So, we are sheep, right? And it isn't necessarily a compliment to be a sheep, guys. Sheep are pitiful, pathetic animals. They really are. They're hopeless.

You know, there's no, there's no homing sheeps out there that lead the way, right? I mean, you don't have those type of sheeps. You don't have attack sheeps, you know, that stand up and protect you, right? I mean, sheeps are not, are not, it's not a compliment. They need a shepherd.

And God sees us and he knows that we need a shepherd and he cares and he wants to provide for us. He wants to give us direction and he wants to give us protection. Protection, direction, and provision. And here's the deal. I love being a father.

I really love my kids. I mean, I just, I just love them so much. And even when I'm, when I'm away, I'm thinking about them and how I would, you know, I wish they could see this. I wish they could see that. And, but it would break my heart if my kids didn't need me or didn't want me to protect them or help them.

You know, because I want to help them, because I love them. I want to provide perfection, provision for them, and direction for them. It would break them, because I love them probably more than anybody. Miranda probably loves them a little more than I do, because she's a mother. But what I'm saying is that I love them outside of my wife, God and my wife.

I love them more than anything in this world, and I want to see the best for them, and I wouldn't want to do anything for them. And God loves being a father as well. He loves being a father, and when you don't trust him with your life, you're denying him of doing what he loves most. He loves protecting you. He loves providing for you.

He loves giving direction for you. And you can never dream how much he loves you. Your God loves you. Your father loves you. In fact, the psalmist says it like this, and many of you know this scripture.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.

That's key right there. He can restore your soul. No matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, he restores your soul. Thank you. Amen.

He leads me in the path of righteousness. For his name's sake, yea, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. That's what the shepherd does.

He comforts you, right? He comforts you. You prepare a table before the presence of my enemies. Wow. See, I don't even have to preach.

I just read scripture, and it's just preaching itself. It's just what it does. You anoint my head with oil, and my cup runneth over. My run's over. I'm doing some King James here because I'm old school.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and there it is. I will dwell in his house forever. We can trust God and surrender your life and your family, your kids, your grandkids to the Lordship of Jesus. Secondly, trust your heavenly Father to meet you and your family's needs and care for you. This is where the money situation comes in a little bit.

I decided to shift my message a little bit today. I was going to talk about finances and things like that, but let me just get that in for a minute, okay? This is really important because, yeah, what do we do? We decide, oh, we're going to make a lot of money, and then we can take care of our kids, and our kids will be okay. But that isn't how it works.

It always starts with God because if you have nothing but you focus on God and what he provides and what he does, right, and how he provides when he says give and tithe and do these things and help and serve, and you take that worship off the money and you put it into God because, God, that's what God says do. And what does he do? He honors us by blessing us, and he blesses our families. And we have to teach our families and our children that it's important to be selfless, and it's important to honor God. In fact, Matthew says it like this, 6, 24, 32, no one can serve two masters.

They will either hate one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot serve two masters. And the problem is we have two masters. We probably deal with mammon more than anything in this world, the spirit of mammon, the spirit of money being our God and deciding what is good and what is not instead of placing it on God.

And I can promise you this. If you have the spirit of mammon over your life, that financial stronghold that's on your life because you think that money is the most important thing, you will not be successful. You will fail every time. It promises security, identity, and purpose, everything that God promises. And what you've done, you've taken that God, the God of all gods, that's the God of all gods.

On Yahweh, and you've placed it on that. Security. Purpose. Identity. And that's what you've put on.

You're wearing that like a coat. So Jesus was very, very, just, I don't want you to miss the sincerity of what Jesus is saying here. That you cannot serve. You cannot. It doesn't say you can kind of not.

He says you cannot serve. You cannot straddle the fence. Therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life or what you will eat or drink, nor about your body and what you will put on. Is life not more than food and the body not more than clothing? Look at the birds in the air.

For they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Okay. Will he not feed you? Right? For you, are you not of more value than they?

Which of you, by worrying, can add a single cubit to his stature? Meaning, how can you honor one more day? All this worry that you do about your money that you've placed your thoughts and your identity on, how is it going to even help you? It actually takes days away from your life. In a previous sermon, I even gave statistics of what worry does.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Right? The richest man that ever lived, all the garments he could ever have. Now, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which is today and gone tomorrow, is thrown in the oven, meaning it's burnt away, you know, burning the fields away.

Will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Because you place, now all of this is in the context of money. And what you're doing to your kids and what you're doing to your families, you're placing that God on them and you're putting expectations on them that they don't need. You're putting generational curses on them.

So, he says, therefore, do not worry, saying, what shall I eat or what shall I drink or what shall I wear? For after all of these, the Gentiles seek, meaning those who are not believers at the time. For your heavenly Father knows what you need. Here's what 1 John says, do not love the world of the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the lust of flesh, the lust of eyes, the pride of life, there's those things again that I was talking about, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away. Okay? And the lust of it. And he who does the will of God abides forever, lives forever.

You live forever. And for many, there's a false understanding of our Father because perhaps we've had a bad Father. And we don't trust him because you can't trust, you can't even trust your own Father. Because your own Father did things or said things or didn't really take care of you. But we can trust a Father that we have a really good Father available to us that wants to take care of us and wants to provide for us.

And he wants to prove to you that he can do it. And that's why he's asking you to do this. I can tell you, when you give and when you tithe, tithing, I don't understand it. I don't get it because it doesn't make sense in an earthly sense. But somehow you find that you have more.

In fact, Jimmy was sharing in one of his teaching notes in this particular book that when he first became a Christian, they were going to church and the pastor told them they needed to tithe. And he said, that was a horrible sermon. I didn't want to tithe. And my wife came up to me and said, that was a wonderful sermon. You need to tithe, you know, let's get, you know, I feel like I give 40 bucks and at time they had no money at all.

He says they were barely struggling to make it. So she gave 40 bucks and, and the next week they looked at her finances and he was like, I don't know how, honey, but we have more money in our account. She says, I know it's because we tithe. So I feel like God wants us to tithe again. He's like, no, no, that's not, not, that's not what I was trying to say.

And they did it again and they did it again and they did it again and then God just continued to open the doors and he says, now today I just love to give. Just love to give. It's just wonderful to give. And anytime Miranda gets a raise or I get a raise, the board meets here at church, decides to give me a raise or what have you, and I look at the first thing I think is, man, I can give more. I can do more.

I can serve people more. I'm not thinking about the next car I'm gonna get or next house I'm gonna get. Now I'm not saying those are bad things. I'm just saying that, that, because I do want a car and I do want a house, right, Miranda? You know, I mean, those aren't bad things, but I'm not, that's not the first thing I'm thinking about.

I'm not thinking about those things. I'm thinking about, man, what can I do with this money? I can give to the church. I can give to people. I can give to missions.

I can do, I can, I can feed people. I can take people out to lunch. I can do more with what I have because my faith is not in the economy of man. It's in the economy of God. God's economy works, okay?

And we need to teach our kids. We need to break that spirit off our kids. Thirdly, think about the generational effects of your behaviors and plan accordingly. Your behavior affects your kids, as I've been talking about, and your kids become who you are, okay? So you need to be intentional, just not even about money and about serving God and all that.

They all build on this, but really everything you do, the way you speak, the language you use, the, the, the way you love them, the way you talk to God, the way you spend time with God. Miranda made a point the other day. I'm going to put her on the spot here. She says, she says, you know what, Miranda, Savannah was yelling at Max the other day, and she was just yelling real loud and stuff like that. I'm like, why are you yelling?

And then she said, I stepped back and thought about it, and I said, I yell at Savannah that way. And she started acting like her, you know? And, and, and, and the same thing with me. There's little things that I do that I notice that my children pick up on because, and, and I don't want them, I don't want to put on them the, that responsibility. I don't want them to have to wear that.

I don't want them to carry that, carry that into the next generation. Here's what the proverb says, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous. Now, this is often talked about in the terms of money, but I'm talking about in generational, just very being, you know, taking that to your next generation, just being, being there. Do you really want your children to have to recover from you? Do you want to place those burdens that you have on your children?

No. That's why we make decisions today. You know, the inheritance of, of, of a godly person is, is blessing, right? But the wealth, I love how it says the wealth of a sinner is stored up for the righteous, so we end up getting that anyway, man. That, that somebody's out there making all kinds of money, and making all this wealth, and it's all going to come back to the kingdom of God, and it's going to bless us.

Us. It's stored up for us. Boy, y'all like that when you heard that, right? Are your children going to receive blessing and be obedient to God, or are they going to be disobedient to God and receive no blessing? I want my children to be blessed.

Deuteronomy says it like this, for I, the Lord, your God, I am a jealous God. Boy, people don't like to hear that, but that's because it's a godly kind of jealousy that, that understands what you need. That's why he's jealous. He wants the best for you. He says he's a, he's a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

Keeping the commandments. Of the Lord. Pray with your kids. Teach them to read the Word of God. Teach them to make decisions based on the Word of God.

See, I pray with my kids every night. Every night, we walk in the room. In fact, Miranda and I both have to pray for them. You know, Savannah's got a system. Max doesn't care so much, but Savannah has a system.

I go in and pray, and then Mom goes in and prays. And even while I was away this past couple of weeks, I had to FaceTime her and pray with her, because I'm instilling godly values in her. She understands the importance of prayer, even as a seven-year-old. You need to be putting those core things in place. The way you do, the way you act, the way you treat others, the way you treat your neighbors, the way you spend your money, the things you put in your life above God, or if you put God above those things, they see those things.

The way you spend time together, the way you love others, you love your wife and your husband, the way you do those things, they see those things, and they carry those things with them. And then finally, and really important, by the way, especially during a period of COVID where we've gotten away from this, keep your family in a healthy, Bible-believing church. Get to church, because the best friends you will ever make is in church. And my kids' best friends are in church and around the church. And my best friends were in church and around the church when I was growing up.

You can never have better friends. You need to keep your family in a Bible-preaching, Bible-believing church. It doesn't even have to be this church. I'll just say that. It doesn't have to be here.

Although we are a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church, and we're going to stand on the Word of God no matter what the world says or compromises with or on. We're going to stand on the Word of God, but keep them in a Bible-believing church, grounded spiritually, building a strong relationship. Hebrews says it like this, let us not consider, let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is a matter of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching, right? That the day is approaching when God will restore all things. Your friends are your future, and I'm not going to get into Josh's message from last week, but your friends are your future.

And let me just say this. Man, some of you are preacher's kids out here as well. You got Christy, you got Lisa Marie, you got different ones here that are preacher's kids, different dynamics. I don't know if you can relate, but we were in church every day. That door was open.

Every time. Wednesday, some a little more than others. Wednesday night, Sunday morning, Sunday night. Back then we had Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday nights. How many of you remember Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night?

That was just a common thing. Sunday school. We do salt groups here. That's kind of our Sunday school now, but it was there, and I did not like it, you know? I did not like it.

But you are, I didn't want to go to church. I had to hear my dad all the time, you know? Back then, when I was really young, we didn't even have youth group, you know? We were really young. Youth group is kind of a new thing.

I remember I went to the first church, and it was actually a youth group on Wednesday night. Whoa! This is amazing. They got cookies, and DC talk, and newsboys playing in the background. And I was like, whoa, that's cool.

But I'll tell you, man, when you instill that whole church gathering principle, get them in healthy Bible-believing environments where they're affected by those around them, the relationships that they have with the people around them. I mean, even when they stray, they come back. Because that stuff is in them. Because it's been placed in them. It's a generational thing that we've decided that we're going to do.

So let me just close with this. I know many of you may be where I am. You know, you had good Bible-believing parents that had you in church and instilled these principles and you have a few generations in your family. But some of you might be what we call Josephs. And you might be a Joseph family.

You're the first-year family that gave your life to Jesus. And you have this, and Jimmy Evans, the guy who kind of borrowed some of this material from. He was a Joseph and he was the first in his family. And his family rejected him when he gave his life to Jesus. They didn't want to have anything to do with him.

He didn't know him for years. And maybe that's where you are. You're a Joseph. But if you choose today to make the decisions, the choices, to break that generational influence, that generational curse that has been laid on your life and your family's life, and maybe went back two or three generations before you can make the decision today, you can indeed be that Joseph. One day you can be that person that your family sees and they come to and they give their lives to Christ.

You can be the saving grace for those people through Jesus Christ as you live out your lives. Maybe you have a terrible family background. Maybe you have a terrible father. There is hope for reconciliation. There is hope for that.

And you need to make that today. And you need to decide that my children and my children's children, in the name of Jesus, will not go that direction. That we're breaking it now. That we're fixing it now. And then there are some of you, this could be your first time even making a decision for Jesus.

Jesus, maybe, maybe, maybe this is, this is your day to make a decision for Jesus. And with all heads bowed and all eyes closed in this moment, I want to, I want to pray for both of those different areas. Because they're both equally important. God, I pray over this congregation. I pray for all the families that are represented here in this moment as the Spirit pours Himself over us.

And speaks to our hearts. Lord, speak to our hearts now. Today we completely surrender to the Lordship of you, God, in our families. And we build that foundation on the platform of the solid rock that stands firm through the storms and through the rains of life. And we choose not to make money, not to make things, not to make materialism the focus of our lives, Lord.

But we make you the focus of our lives because we know that by that Spirit of mammon that is over us, Lord, it could devastate us. It could break us apart. But today we don't want to be broken families. We want to be strengthened families. We want to be families that are blessed from generation to generation to generation until your return.

So today, God, I pray over these people, Lord. We're going to be people who live on the Word of God, who build on Bible-believing church and Bible-believing friends. And we gather our Bible-believing friends around us, and we're going to think about the effects of the behaviors that we are modifying for our generations that are going before us, Lord, that we're going to be intentional, God. Help us see, and we ask you to come and you to guide us and you to be our shepherd. Lord Jesus, our Shepherd, and our King, God.

So we completely surrender to your Lordship today. And for those with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, this is the moment. This is the decision of decisions to make that first step. Some of you here today, you just need to know Jesus as your friend. You need to know the Father as the one who could love you more than you could ever imagine.

You need to know the Holy Spirit intimately who wants to come and live with you and guide you and teach you and give you gifts and show you the way to live. If that's you today, I'm not going to embarrass you. I'm just asking you to be bold and lift your hand and say, I'm ready to surrender my life to Jesus. I've never made that decision before today. I want to make that decision without you today.

Just raise your hand. You can raise it and put it back down. I pray for those who are making decisions right now, whether they raise their hands or whether it's in their hearts. Lord, if you made that decision, I want you to pray this with me. There's nothing magical in the prayer.

It's just a surrender to Jesus. Just saying, I'm giving you my life. Say this, Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin. Today, I submit to your Lordship. I'm 100%.

I'm not straddling the fence anymore. Lord, I've been straddling it for a long time. Some of you here right now are straddling it for a long time. You want to live this part of the world, that part of the world. But today, Jesus is saying, come on to my side because blessings are there for you.

So, Jesus, we ask you to come into our hearts, come into our lives. Make us. I'm yours from this day forward.