New Life

It's Luke chapter 11. So starting from verse 1. 1 day, Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, 1 of his disciples said to him, lord teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples. He said to them, when you pray, say, father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. Then, Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight and say, friend, then me 3 loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have no food to offer him.

And suppose the 1 inside answers Don't bother me that door is already locked and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock the door, knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives the 1 who seeks fines and to the 1 who knocks, the door will be opened.

Which of your fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? Okay. Keep that passage open, front of you, that would be that would be helpful because we will be working our way through that.

My name is Chris. I'm 1 of the members here at Cornerstone Church and we're going to be carrying on the series that Dean started for us last Sunday we're looking at new father, new life, new hope, new task, that sort of thing. There's studies that we're going to be looking at at contagious which is our youth camp over the summer. So it's really helpful for us preachers to get into the right mindset about this as we as we begin. As as we start, let me let me pray.

Father please help us now by your spirit to understand this passage help us to apply it to our our our lives, so that we might glorify your name, amen. Okay. So as I said, we're we're talking about new father tonight and how a new father helps us when it comes to the things that of this world that hook us in, that seek to, to get us addicted, that seek to get us dependent on them rather than on god. So that's the angle that we're coming into this this passage from tonight. And I think I've got a pretty unique claim when it comes to fatherhood.

I'm not sure that many other people, if anyone in this room will be able to to equal this and this is the claim. I have an abnormal number of fathers. In total, I have 4 4 fathers. Do you wanna hear how I got 4 fathers? The 4 steps to getting 4 fathers.

Now I'm sorry I'm gonna have to spare my mother's blushes because she's here tonight, but here we go. So first you've got to get born. You've got your earthly father. Then you've got to get dead and get born again. You've got your heavenly father.

Then your parents need to get divorced, your mother remarries, and you've got your stepfather. Sorry, mum. And then you need to get married yourself and you've got your father-in-law. And hey presto, I've got 4 fathers. Brilliant, isn't it?

I don't know what you do with 4 fathers, but there you go. I've got 4. Now as as as funny as, you know, that I made that just sound, and lighthearted as as we can approach this nowadays by god's grace, thankfully. It does show us something, doesn't it? That little snapshot that tiny little snapshot of my own life shows us that that there is a broken side to fatherhood on earth.

So let me just put a disclaimer on this sermon right from the start because I know that that many of us in this room don't have great relationships with our fathers. We have painful broken relationships, some of us. And if that's you, then what I want to say right from the outset is don't worry. You're in really good company tonight because according to this passage, there's only 1 type of father anyway earthly father that is, and that's an evil 1. So we're all in the same boat in that sense.

I mean, take a look as uncomfortable as that might be for some of us to here. It's right there in verse 13. Even though you are evil, fathers. Sorry to say it, but you're evil. If I'm ever a father 1 day, I'll be an evil father.

That's the state of us humans. I didn't say that Jesus did, so we've got to take it seriously. And that's the first point that I want to make. We have daddy issues. All of us have dad issues.

To 1 degree or another, we've got dad issues. The problem is we all want a father, don't we? Well, let me rephrase that. We all need a father. You wouldn't even be born in the first place without a father.

You actually need a father to be in existence. And what I want to argue for is that we have a father figure shaped hole. All of us have a father figure shaped whole. So everything that fatherhood is about, the security and protection, you go to dad for advice on just about everything because of the knowledge that he has and the experience and the wisdom that he can speak into those situations and the provision of everything that you need. I mean, you go to dad for hugs, don't you?

I mean, mom can give hugs, but dad hugs are always the best, aren't they? Sure. That's right. Well, for most of us they are anyway. All of those attributes that are connected to fatherhood are things that we deeply, deeply desire.

They're right at the core of our very being for all of us. I think we can all identify with that in some way shape or form. But you see the problem that we're coming across straight away On the 1 hand, we have a father figure shaped hole but the only thing we've got to fill it with is evil fathers. And they don't quite fill the gap properly. I mean, I'm not saying that we all do a terrible job.

We've got many dads here in Cornerstone who do a brilliant job. But at your core, don't fool yourself. You have a handicap. You are evil. You can't fully fulfill that role in your children's lives.

And we do see some of the fallout from that, don't we? It plays its self out around us in so many different ways. So let me just walk through some of them. Let's think about role models to begin with. So role models for boys and girls growing up and the role of a father as a role model for their children is so important, isn't it?

Think about boys just to begin with. Who is who is a father to his boys? He's like Superman, isn't he? To young boys, dad is superman. He's a superhero.

Boys look up to their dad. They wanna be their dad. They wanna be like their dad. And dad's there to teach them a model manhood for them. That's dad's role to be to to teach his sons to be noble to uphold justice, to use their strength to protect and serve those who are weaker than them.

They need a father to train them, discipline them and rebuke them when they're out of line and bring them back in line And without this, here's a good word, they become impetuous. It's it's just a brilliant word. It completely describes what happens to a lot of young men without a father figure, a good father figure role model in their lives. They become overly hasty they become quick to rush into situations. With a lack of thoughts, violent, aggressive, wanting to stamp their authority on situations, unable to handle things properly, and they find themselves in all sorts of messes.

They make up their own minds and ways of doing things, and they use their strength to enforce that whether that's physically or intellectually, and I know some of that in my own life. I felt some of that, that desire to be that way. And we see this more and more in young men, I think. Young men do need good role models. They need a good father figure role model, older men who model what it is to be that.

Increasingly we don't have it. So they go looking for other role models and increasingly they find other young men who don't have role models either. And they're just making it up as they go along. And you see how that just self perpetuates and they egg each other on, and it spirals and it goes on and on. It's like the blind leading the blind in many situations.

And take girls. Now this one's a bit harder for me to identify with because I'm not a girl, but I take it on good authority from my wife. That girls need a father to show them and tell them how much they are loved. Did you know that dad's you're supposed to tell your girls how beautiful and wonderful you think they are to you. She's the most beautiful girl in the world.

That's the role of dads. Girls need to hear that. They need that affirmation. They need to be affirmed by their father and their father needs to model what manhood is for them. Because this is what my girl you should be looking for in a man when you wanna find a husband.

You're supposed to model that for them. And without this love from a father, the girls go looking elsewhere, boys go looking elsewhere. And what the girls find, they find young men who have my role models, and together they go off and create all kinds of chaos in their lives. And you can trace so many of these things back to this lack of a father figure. So many problems in our lives come from poor father figure role models.

Now all of that's just on the personal level. In and all of us can identify in some way or 1 degree or another with that, as we as we grow up. But our culture and our society as well it seems that we're living in a time now where the role of men is just constantly getting undermined, constantly being degraded, constantly being pushed to 1 side, and fatherhood is getting sucked in with that. There's there's a girl in my office, girl called Malena. She had a baby back in December, lovely little boy called Leo.

She's, she's got a partner called, called Danny's great bloke. They're not married, but they're in a stable relationship. Now when it came to time to do the birth certificate, the registrar wouldn't speak to Danny even though he's there holding Leo. Obviously the father. Everyone knows he's the birth father.

There's no dispute over that whatsoever. The registrar only speaks to Melina because they're not married and says, would you like the father's name on the birth certificate? And Melina's are you talking about? Of course, I want them standing right here. You can ask him.

And the registrar said, no. Are you sure that you want the father's name on the birth certificate? Now, I was pretty angry about that. I'm still pretty angry about that, that a father doesn't automatically have the to have his name on the birth certificate, but the reason for it is because fathers have a bad rap in society And actually, it's kind of deserved because we've got a reputation for just walking out and leaving wives and kids behind. And so the reason they say that is from a legal perspective, if Danny decides to walk out, he has no claim.

And it's easier for Malena legally to keep the child. You just it gives us a small glimpse, doesn't it? That Our society thinks of fatherhood as something unreliable, something you can't depend on. Actually, something that's quite highly likely to go horribly wrong at some point. And we see the effects that that has on lives when fathers walk away when relationships are ruined and children are left with no father figure in their lives.

Because it's the children that take the brunt of that and it's the children that unless there's some intervention, some saving grace in their life will more than likely pass that on to the next generation. You see that, don't you, the mental, the psychological financial turmoil of fatherless lives But why is that the case in the first place? Why is that the case in the first place that it would be so easy for me to sit here and blame this on on the feminist movement and say, oh, well, yeah, because that happened, men are getting eroded in society and that gave rise to abortion and all those kinds of things, but that would be overly simplistic and actually wrong. Because the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the men who weren't treating the wives and the kids and women in society in general with the respect and dignity that they deserve. And so that gave rise to that.

The reason men weren't doing that is because That's what's been passed down to them through the generations. You can trace it all the way back. Just look through the old testament, take a quick snapshot from Genesis You've got Jacob when his little girl, Dina is raped. He does nothing about it. So his sons murder a whole town full of men.

In response. You've got Abraham, who god says you're gonna be the father of many nations, Abraham. I'm gonna make you the father of many nations. But Abraham won't listen to his father in heaven. So he takes matters into his own hands and has a child through his wife's maid servant, Hagar.

And we see that there's fallout from that and it goes all the way back to Adam, doesn't it? Not taking responsibility. Not standing up for his wife, not crushing the serpent's head when it was tempting her. And so his son murders his other son, the first murder. And that seed is just sown at the core of fatherhood and our beings down through the ages.

And we see the rotten fruit of that all around us today. Except for 1 relationship that is. There's 1 relationship where that's not the case. 1 relationship that remains pure and perfect between father and sun. And so when we come to this passage today, that's the leading that I wanted to show you guys and the angle that I wanted to take because Jesus and his father are modeling the exact opposite of the image we get in a broken world And in fact, if you notice Jesus' disciples were so impressed at the quality of that relationship, at the quality of Jesus' prayer to his father.

They wanted a piece of it too. They wanted to know how do we speak to our father like that? Teach us Jesus teaches to pray in verse 1. As that brings us on to the second point, Jesus teaches them a prayer He teaches them a prayer of dependency. That's the second point, a prayer of dependency.

First things first, let's remind ourselves who we're talking to Jesus says, call him father. In the old testament, Yairway, I am who I am, the alpha and the omega who knows the beginning from the end. And in the new testament, his father, literally abba father Abba is the real intimate Jewish word, Hebrew word for dad, daddy. It's an intimate father child relationship that Jesus is talking about here. And how does Jesus say that we come to our father?

How does he say that we speak to him? Well, he lays it out very clearly in 3 ways in in the prayer that he teaches to his disciples. So first, in verse 2, He says, hallowed, be your name, your kingdom come. In other words, our prayer should be a little bit like this. Father, make your name the most important, all consuming thing in my life.

Made the nations bow down and worship you. Humble this world at your feet. Bring your kingdom father. Send the lord Jesus soon. And in the meantime, establish your church, grow your kingdom through us, help us to hallow your name.

To glorify you, to the people around us in everything we do. Father, we pray that our relationship with you would be so unashamedly intimate and attractive that like the disciples seeing Jesus in relationship with you, people would look at us and say, we want that. We wanna know some of that. I wanna know that guy's father. That should be our prayer all the time every day.

If we're looking for god's name to be hallowed in our lives, and it's gonna transform how we interact with everything and everyone, isn't it? It should do anyway. Our entire approach to each new day should be farther. How can I show your people your glory in this situation? How can I tell these people about how wonderful you are?

If that's our first thought going into every single thing, how can I hallow your name? How can your name be the most important thing here? It's transformational in how you live. But then father forgive me when I fail at this, when I don't halo your name. When I take it and drag it through the mud, father turned my failures into your victories keep leading me back to the lord Jesus.

My goodness hallowed be your name because of him. My entire existence literally depends on your name being hallowed. Literally depends on the success of Christ Jesus on the cross. Second thing, Our father teaches us, Jesus teaches us about praying to our father. Verse 3, father, give us each day our daily bread.

Now is Jesus literally talking about food and water on the table here? Well in 1 sense, yes, but in another sense, no. So for Jews, Bread has really massively powerful imagery. For 40 years, as many of us know, god provided bread from heaven as they were lost in the wilderness. He provided bread for the following day just enough for what they needed.

So bread in the in the Jewish mindset equals provision of sustenance. God provides sustenance. And it's not really so different today, is it if you think about it? I mean, what do we say? Who's the main breadwinner Who's the main breadwinner in this relationship?

Who's bringing in the money? Who's enabling us to put food on the table every single night? So even now, quite powerfully, we we still link bread to money and money to provision of our needs. Who's the breadwinner? And Jesus says, well, your father's the breadwinner.

Go to your father for your daily bread. Depend on him to provide. Your father knows what you need. Ask him for it. He knows better than you do.

What you need. You think you know what you need. You just want stuff half the time and the other half need it. Lean on him to provide what you actually need. I think at this point, we can we can argue as well that this extends to all of our physical needs.

It's not just food and water on the table. It's It's all of our needs. I mean, a child runs to mom dad over almost anything, don't they? They need mom and dad to care for all of their needs. So if you have physical needs, come to your father about them.

He knows. If your back's just packed up, bring it to your father. He understands you back. Better than anyone does. If you have serious illnesses, bring them to your father.

If you have mental anxieties or depression, bring them to your father. Because he wants you to come to him. He wants to be involved deeply and intimately and care for every aspect of you, every aspect of your life. There's nothing he's not interested in. Again, like a child growing up, you depend on mom and dad for all of this stuff, don't you?

I mean, look, put it quite crudely. There's a time when you can't even wipe your own bum. And in those moments, dad gets his hands dirty. Asked Chris McConkey about some of Cleo's projectile moments recently. We were getting a a good description about those the other day.

But does that sound familiar in another sense? How often has god cleaned up your mess? He even sent his son to do the ultimate clean up job, didn't he? Sort out the biggest mess of all your your sinful rebellious heart. Your father gets his hands dirty when you mess up.

So it becomes a little bit clearer even to answer that question, what's our daily bread? Well, yeah, it meets our physical everyday needs, but also our spiritual needs the rescue of our souls and the ongoing spiritual maintenance required on a daily basis to get us over the finishing line So our prayer should be something like father, keep me in church, keep me coming to the prayer meeting, keep me in home group, keep me serving other people, Keep me surrounded by your people. Keep nagging at me to do daily devotions. I'm so bad at those. Keep me reading your word and put it into practice.

In other words, father, please send me your Holy Spirit to help me with these things every day. I can't do them without you. I need your help. Is that sound familiar to any of us? Does that sound like a lot of daily maintenance?

Well, it's what you need. It's what you need to be depending on. Third thing, verse 4 says, forgive us our sins and lead us not into temptation. Third thing Jesus shows us from this prayer. Now let's not get this part wrong.

God doesn't tempt people. James 1 13 tells us that quite explicitly god doesn't tempt people and cannot be tempted himself. That's not what Jesus is telling us here. He isn't saying don't lead me into temptation. He's saying father deliver me from temptation when it grabs me.

When temptation comes, I need your help. Help me to combat this. Whatever it might look like in my life. I need to be praying this all the time by turning to him, by trusting in him and his word. By asking for the strength and intervening power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

But going back actually to the 2 previous points, Jesus has just made, asking that our father's name would be hallowed in all situations in our lives and by giving us our daily physical and spiritual bread to help us in this task of Halloween god's name. That's how we combat these temptations That's how we combat these things that seek to drag us away from our father by being god centered and father dependent. Not me centered and worldly dependent. That's not going to help. Not family dependent, not friends dependent, not spouse dependent, not work dependent, not even church dependent.

Church dependent without father dependent makes no sense. God centered and father dependent is the only way to tackle this. But what about when we fail again? When we give in, when we struggle to pray this prayer, when my rebellious heart exposes me again, When I'm saying I don't I don't want this struggle anymore. I don't want to keep doing this.

I don't want to keep stuffing up. I don't want to keep failing you Have you ever felt that battle? Well, Jesus says, ask forgiveness then. Ask for forgiveness and the response that we get is simply and wonderfully, my child, my grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient for you.

I gave my son to buy you to pay the price for your failures so that you can be adopted into my family. And now when you fail, you fail as a child in my family. You're still a child in my family. So even when you fail, you're still in the family. That's the difference now you've been adopted in.

Don't try and sort your mess out without dad. You'll just make it worse. It's like we were hearing so helpfully from Tom this morning. Don't hide it. We saw what it did to David when he tried to hide it.

His bones apes, he felt a weight on his shoulders. He was dragged down. Adam and Eve tried to hide it. They made fig leaves. It was laughable.

It was pathetic. God made them cloves to cover their shame. Bring your mess to your father, especially bring your mess to your father. He's ready and willing to forgive you. So at this point, let me ask you, how are you doing with god's centered dependency?

How's your relationship with that? How are your prayers? Are they are they sounding like this in line with what Jesus says here? Are they just a little bit worldly sometimes? I think we all fall short there a bit, don't we?

Perhaps we can take this opportunity to refocus a bit. But not only does Jesus teach us to make our prayers god dependent dependent on our father. He teaches us a prayer of persistence as well and that's what these next 2 little sections are about and that's the third point here. So we've had we've got daddy issues. We've got a prayer of dependence on our father, and now we've got a prayer of persistence with our father.

So have a look at this story that he launches into in verse 5. It's quite funny in a way, isn't it? So there's a friend who goes and visits a friend turns up at an abnormal hour probably puts the friend out a little bit because he's got no food to give this guy and he's been on a long journey he needs feeding. So he goes, I know what I'll do. I'll grab the torch.

I'll run around to to my friend's house next door and I'll bang on his door and I'll ask him if he's got any bread at midnight at midnight. Now, understandably, the guy is a tad grumpy about this, and he's saying, well, come on, mate, you know, get on your bike. I've just locked the door. The kids are in bed. You're waking everyone up.

The dog's barking. Like, I'm sorry. I, you know, it's too late. I can't help you out. I can't help you out, but because of this guy's persistence, so maybe he goes round the side of the house.

Knocks on the kitchen window and says, hello. Hi. Hi. Oh, so I thought you said the kids were in bed. Well, they weren't even running around.

There's a few loaves of bread. Come on, mate. You just swap me out with a few loaves? Because of his persistence, it says, he gets the bread. He goes back.

Not necessarily because of the friendship, because of his persistence. Now, on face value, I don't know about you, but to me, that's not a very appealing picture of prayer. Is that really what god's like? Is that really what prayers like? Is it like, oh, no.

Oh, no. Here's Chris again. He's always asking for the same stuff. He never goes away. I've really had it up to here with Chris.

Just give him what he wants and get him to go away, this fob him off. Is that what Jesus is saying here? Is God like that with us? Is that the type of father he is? Well, no, look at the application that Jesus immediately follows up with in verse 9 from for this story.

It says ask and it will be given to you seeking your find, knock on the door will be opened. So through his persistent asking, the bread was given. That's what Jesus is saying. Through his persistent seeking, he found what he was looking for and through his persistent knocking on the door, it was opened. So that's our part in this story kind of taken care of, isn't it?

That's our application from that that Jesus is saying persistent asking seeking and knocking delivers. In other words, persistent prayer will deliver. But what about god's part in the story? Is he like the grumpy neighbor? Well, we get some clarification in what he says next as he gives us 1 of these how much more scenarios.

So look at verse 11. Which of your fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead. Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, How much more will your father in heaven give the holy spirit to those who ask him? Now at this point in the story, I think it kind of gets a little bit Australian and that's really helpful because my Australian step does here tonight.

So sorry in advance, Jake. But it's just brilliant for the illustration. So when I go to Taz, Tazmania, we do a lot of fishing. We love fishing out there. It's brilliant.

Really good fishing. Now imagine I was to say 1 day to Jake, oh, mate, if you're going out fishing, can you grab me a fish? That'd be really good if you could bring me back a fish. Nice big 1. Nice big flat head.

If you can get it maybe over a meter, if they even exist, I don't know to do somewhere, that'd be great. And he comes back and he lobs a tiger snake at me and goes, there you go, Chris deal with that. She just wouldn't do it, would you? That's mental. The other thing that they used to have when I first went over there, they don't have it anymore.

They used to have chickens. They call them chucks. You know, aussies have this habit of shortening things. I'm surprised they call them chukos or something because they like adding that on. But what we what you used to be able to do is go out in the garden and you could walk over to the shed and you could open up the little hatch and it was always exciting because you never knew if they were be eggs in there or not.

And when they were, you'd reach in and you're, oh, brilliant. So you take the eggs in and trundle off back to the house, you know, I'm gonna eat your kids for breakfast chickens Brilliant. Now imagine Jake said Chris has some eggs out there, can you go and grab them for me? And what he's done in the meantime is he's just taken the eggs out stuck a scorpion in there. So I open it full of excitement, stick my hand in and, you wouldn't do it, would you?

It's mental, and it's just some sort of sadist. Some sort of absolute psychopath. Obviously, we don't do that. Do we? Jesus is making a ridiculous comparison here.

He's saying good fathers, even the ones handicapped with sin, know how to give good gifts to their children. So how much more is your father gonna give you because he's perfect? How much more is he gonna give you? How much more readily will he give to you than the grumpy neighbor? How much more readily will he give to you than a sinful father?

Now we do hit a bit of a problem here in the text and don't worry because we're bringing it into land now and this helps us to further clarify what's going on and I don't know if you spotted the slight tension and the bit of a bit of an issue that we've just hit here and I've kind of been deliberately avoiding it a little bit. But here it is. Here's the question. Why is god who is ready willing and able to give at the drop of a hat, telling us to be persistent in asking. What's the point in persisting if when as Jesus says when we ask we receive when we seek, we find when we knock and the doors opened.

Why not just ask once? Why not just look quickly? Why not just knock on the door once? Because Jesus says that is what you need to do. So why persist?

Because why get on god's case about it? Surely, he hears us the first time around, right? It kind of sounds a little bit contradictory. So you could say things like why when I've been praying for this person's salvation for years? There's nothing happening.

Why when I've been praying for this illness in fiction to be taken away from me? Do I still suffer with it? Sometimes worse than before. Why when I'm struggling with sin and I take it to the lord do I find myself still struggling with the same sin the next week? Why?

Why is that the case? Why do I have to keep on persisting with these things, father? Well, it has everything to do with the answer that our father gives to our prayers. Did you notice that the first time around? Have a look at verse 13.

He says how much more will your father in heaven give the holy spirit to those who ask him. There we go. It's not how much more will your father in heaven financially or physically bless those who ask him, although he might may well add those things to you too, but there's no guarantee of that on earth. There is in heaven, everything will be taken care of. All those woes and anxieties will melt away.

Will be with the breadwinner. But for now, we get something infinitely better than anything else down here on this earth. It gives us his holy spirit to help us and aid us make sense of our troubles, our trials and afflictions. He doesn't necessarily take them away, but he does send his spirit to help us through them. What does he want us to persist?

Why doesn't he just solve every problem instantly? Well, actually, I'm gonna argue that we need problems. We do need problems because problems drive us to god. They drive us to be dependent on god. Unresolved problems drive us to be persistent in our dependency on god.

And the thing about persistency is that you grow through it. Your relationship with your father grows as you come to him daily to lay these things at his feet asking for your daily bread to cope with everything as you persistently seek his name to be hallowed in your life, in your family's life, in your church, and throughout the world, you grow in the relationship. As you persistently battle with sin and ask him to protect and guide you through it. You grow. You mature.

In the relationship. And after all, whoever through persisting with god walked away from him You can't do the 2 things at the same time. You can't persist in God and walk away at the same time. Persistently keep going back to your father. With everything, everything and anything that comes up.

He wants to know. He wants to be interested and he will send his holy spirit to anyone who asks, that is the guarantee. And as Tom was helpfully reminding us this morning again, Any work that the Holy Spirit begins, he will complete. He will complete. So don't worry.

Yeah, things things can be tough. They can be hard, but your father is caring for you. He's got your back. He can't us through the Holy Spirit guiding us in his word. We're challenged and changed by the applications of his word.

He speaks on every aspect of our life. No wears out of bounds. No wears off limits for the Holy Spirit There's no part of our lives where we can turn around and say, no, you can't touch that. There's more wisdom and knowledge for dealing with all aspects of life contained here within these pages of scripture, then there is amongst all the institutions of the earth and the spirits the gift helping us to apply these things, to work through these things, to make sense of these things. So don't go looking elsewhere.

Don't become dependent on things other than your father. If we do, then we will depend on anything that the world offers up. As a means to get by. But really, it's only gonna get us by to an eternity without our father ultimately. Anything else is just seeking to drag you away from him.

So if you wanna sort out your father issues, if you wanna fill the father figure shaped whole to overflowing, then turn to your father in heaven, through the lord Jesus Christ and he will send his holy spirit to help you. So pray, dependently persistently to your father to bring you home. Let's pray. Father we, we thank you for this word. We know what a deeply personal and emotional subject fatherhood can be for so many of us for all of us, really.

We thank you that you are our perfect father. We thank you that you gave your only son to save imperfect children like us. So that we could be part of the family so that we can be assured. We can be certain, in the hope of salvation. In the hope of being with you, 1 day.

Father, please help us not to depend on anything else that the world offers up. Please help us just to turn away from those things and keep on turning to you with everything that we come across. We do pray all of these things. We pray that through all of this, your name would be hallowed through all of our lives here. So we do thank and praise you again for this text father, amen.