Father's Day Service - My Father Cares

For those of you who know me, I'm I'm not really afraid of public speaking. But one of the things that I think is is um for lack of a better way to say it, overwhelming is when you come on stage and you're in the presence of God and you feel that overwhelming presence of gratitude. And you know that you cannot hold two thoughts in your mind at the same tomb. If one of those is gratitude, you cannot hold anything that is the exact opposite of gratitude.

So before we start, I think it would be appropriate just one more time to express gratitude that even at a minimum, we're here. We can breathe. We're here. We can walk. We're here. We have life in our in our mind. And we get the ability to gather here together. And there's some places where just quite bluntly, you can't do that. and we get the ability of our own free will to be here. So, let's just take a moment and thank the Lord one more time. Thank you, God, for this day.

Thank you, Lord, for the ability to be here and to worship you of our own free accord, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. So, um, you guys can sit down. I I always laugh when I do that because the very first time that I was ever asked to speak, it was on a Friday night and um, Patrick Dodson, if anybody remember Patrick Dodson, he was playing and I looked at him and I didn't know what to do, was the first time I ever spoke and I looked at him, I was like, "You can stop now." And then I was like, I was like, "Or continue.

You may be seated." So um so um Thomas Randolph I his uh father died uh when he was 10 years old and in 1313 when he was about 28 years old he set out to prove to his uncle uh we'll call him the the man in his life his uncle was Robert the Bruce. Anybody ever heard of Robert the Bruce before? So he set out to prove to his uncle his worth and he said, "I'm going to take back the castle that the English took from you." Now this is, if you guys do not know, this is the castle of Edinburgh.

And um, as you could see, it's quite intimidating. And his uncle says to him, "Have you ever seen the castle?" And he goes, "I've never even been to Edinburgh." And he goes, "You can't you can't take this castle." He's like, "Watch me." So he goes to the castle with 30 men and he gets there and he does what most of you would do. He looks up and he goes, "Let's go to the bar." So So he's in the bar and he's and he's uh he's he's drinking himself into oblivion knowing that he can't do this.

And one guy hears him and he says, "You know, if I was in charge, we we would absolutely have taken the castle already." And A a guy in the bar goes, "Hey, I overheard you. You said that you wanted to take the castle. You see, I live in that castle, and they lock me up every single night, but there's a I have a girlfriend. She's in town, and I want to go see her, and they won't open the door for me." So, I sneak out down these crags, if you will, and I can show you how to do it because I'm so resentful.

So he takes 30 men and they they scale the walls at night and nobody's guarding this backside of the walls because who's dumb enough to try to climb that? They do and in the middle of the night they killed everybody and they took back the castle. So um anyway, so the point is is that we we uh especially as men try to prove to those father figures in our life that we are worthy of their honor, worthy of their praise. Your early relationship with your parents, especially of father figure, will form what you think of your relationship, how you relate to God.

In addition to this, it seems to me that humans, we're always looking for the approval of those father figures in our life. We've all heard the statistics. I'm not going to go through the the myriad of statistics. We know the correlation between having a strong father and a and a and a parental unit that is in church and what happens as far as those children also being in church. There tends to be a correlation and a person's image of God, whether that person views him as loving or distant or harsh, I think was best summed up.

Does anybody remember about 10 years ago when Fred Bradley was the speaker on Father's Day? He did such a great job. And I know we're all praying for Fred that he's going to feel better. And I I wish he was here because I called him and let him know that I'd be speaking about this. And um he said that his father was a very very important person in the military and that his father literally they'd be on family vacations and a helicopter would drop in on the beach and he'd be like let's just say his name was Bob.

He's like get in Bob we got to go. And he said my from the outside everybody looked at my father and he was this big strong man but I had no relationship with him. And it always stuck with me that when Fred talked about that it was difficult for him when he was trying to relate to God because that was his that was his model that God was powerful yet distant. And I think if we're honest there's probably some of you in here today who feel that same way about God that he's powerful yet distant.

And um to to illustrate this, I'm going to ask Audrey and my son Maximus to come up here just for a moment. And I'm gonna give that to Audrey. It's on now. So, one analogy that I always like to use when I'm talking to people about how God relates to us and about how his love is unconditional is is this. So, imagine that in this analogy, my father represents God. And my dad is standing at the top of the stairs and he says to my brother, "If you want to be with me, you have to get up these stairs, but you can't.

You can't climb the railing. you can't climb up the stairs. You can't scale the wall, but you have to get to me. And my brother says, "That's impossible. I can't do it." And so my dad says, "Well, I never said that I couldn't take you up the stairs." And my brother says, "Well, can you take me up the stairs?" He says, "Yes, I'd love to take you up the stairs." So he picks him up and he takes him up the stairs. And this is how God is with us.

He extends his invitation to heaven and salvation and eternal life with him. All we have to do is say, "God, take me there." And then he will also on the on the back of that, I'm going to give you another illustration. Now, to be clear, I stole this um illustration and I'm going to just use it as my own. Um I stole this illustration from John Lennox, who's a mathematics professor at Oxford University and one of my favorite uh people in the field of apologetics. Again, I'm going to steal this and make it my own.

So, I met my wife 25 years ago and I decided that I'd like to marry her. And so as a present, I gave her something wrapped up and it was a cookbook. And I said, "I'd like to marry you." And there will be some conditions. Um, let's look at page 120. This is for carrot cake. Anybody ever had Toby's carrot cake? It's the best. So I said, "This is for carrot cake. You shall take so much salt, so much sugar, so much flour. Thou shalt, thou shalt so on and so forth.

And I say it, if you do this for approximately 40 years, I'll think about accepting you. Otherwise, you go back to your mother. Now, you're laughing, but for many of you sitting here today, that's how you think of God. you you would never insult another human being with basing your relationship with that other human being based on merit. Well, we'll do that with God. So, my marriage is good. My marriage has been good because my wife is not cooking to gain my acceptance. She's cooking because she has my acceptance.

And so on the heels of that, the pool of Bethesda, does everybody remember the pool of Bethesda? There was a man who was sitting there and he had been sitting there for a very long time. And if we picture this man, his legs, they don't work. And every single time he tries to get into the pool, he thinks there's this condition. I have to get to the pool. And if I get to the pool, then I'll be healed. And Jesus comes to that man and he says, "Do you want to be healed?" And the man says, "I have nobody to put me in the pool." Do you want to be healed?

I didn't ask you if you wanted me to pick you up and move you to a body of water. I asked you, do you want to be healed? And if we're honest, that's a very scary question because I already know how to do this. But do I know how to accept God's healing? Because see, I've lived with this pain of not having that father figure or I've lived with this pain of trying to carry this burden by myself. You see, the thing that I'm just going to be completely blunt, this isn't in my notes, but it really annoys me, especially men who view themselves as I'm strong and I'm silent and I carry this burden by myself.

I am a man. You're an idiot. Why would you do that? Why would you continue? Imagine if I was carrying a 100 pounds and somebody said, "Here, here's another another 100 pounds." And it's breaking my back. Literally breaking me. And I'm too proud. Too proud to say, "Help me. Help me. Help me." And when you ask God and you say, "Help me." He will. Your heavenly father cares. It's not just a nice It's not just a nice thought. It's a theme. It's a central theme of scripture.

1 Peter 5:7 says, "Cast all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you." Just like me being in this example, God and my son is right here. He's my son. He's my son. If he asks me for help, am I going to say, "Do it yourself, bro." No. I'm going to go down there and I'm going to help him. In the same way that your heavenly father cares for you. Your relationship with your own parents, with your own father, often is the first lens for understanding God.

But it is not your final one. It's not where you have to stay. If you don't know what to do, ask in humility. We're gonna I'm gonna close my portion in prayer, then I'm going to hand it off to my partner over here. Thank you, Lord, for this day. I thank you, God, for the many blessings that you've given to us. And Lord, please forgive us for our own pride. Our own pride that says, "No, I can do it. I can carry this. I can carry this all by my own.

I don't I don't need anybody's help. I'm strong. Lord, let us boast in our weakness so that you can show your strength in our life that we can hand that weight that we've been carrying around for many years, for some of us for a lifetime. And I ask Lord that you would begin that process today of lifting that weight off of my fellow brothers and sisters here. Amen.