Willow Ridge Sermons | Genesis Week 28 | Building a Family Culture (Part 1)

Sunday, March 3rd | Beau Bradberry

"And the Lord said to her, 'Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you[a] shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.'" — Genesis 25:23

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Beau Bradberry

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Well, good morning again.

If you got your bibles, and I hope you do, I want to invite you to join me in Genesis.

Chapter 25 is where we're going to continue on in our study.

It is good to be back.

I want to thank Dave for filling in and for preaching last week.

Last weekend, Joel Van Ham did a wonderful job for our youth of planning a ski retreat weekend for them.

And Aaron and I have the wonderful opportunity, along with a lot of other adults, to get away and go get on a mountain for a weekend with a group of teenagers and ski with them and get to know them better and invest in them.

And I just want to share with you guys a story of an observation.

I like to observe people, all right?

And I noticed something.

Number one, this group of kids were phenomenal.

Phenomenal.

They were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there.

They were doing what they're supposed to do.

Their attitudes were positive.

But then there was us adults.

And I think when we all started serving in the youth ministry, we were in a certain age range.

We're not in that age range anymore.

And so Sunday morning, we had been out on the mountain.

Saturday, we've been skiing all day long.

Beautiful day.

It probably snowed 75% of the time that we were out on the mountain.

Big, giant snowflakes falling down.

And so we're all out there.

There were some of us adults that were learning how to ski for the first time.

And then there were those of us that have been skiing for years, and just all on that mountain, just moving around on that mountain.

And then Sunday morning happened, and we're eating breakfast, and Lisa Van Ham comes.

Down into the room where we're all eating breakfast.

And I see her going over to every adult and, like, handing them some.

Stuff, and I'm like, oh, Lisa got some special snacks.

What we got, and I went over there, noticed that every single one of us was getting a wonderful handful of ibuprofen because we were a little bit tight, a little bit sore, but it was good.

Jason Bush asked me.

He's like, how you feeling?

I was like, I'm going to be honest with you, man.

I can still feel it in the hamstrings a week later.

But just a wonderful, wonderful time to be away.

And so, Dave, thank you for speaking.

And church, just thank you for giving us an opportunity just to form some.

Relationships and invest in the life of these students.

Next week, during our 09:00 hour, we've got our new studies that are going to be starting on the 17th.

But next week we're doing something a little different.

So there's kind of a week that falls in between for us adults where we don't have studies that are going on, okay, but we still have children's ministry that are going on.

We still have adult ministry, I'm sorry, student ministry and kids ministry that are still happening at nine.

So what we've decided to do is to do something a little bit different during that 09:00 hour for us, for adults.

So what we're trying to avoid is for you to feel like, well, I just don't need to go that day, all right.

No, we want you here.

We want you at 09:00 we want you to be a part of a discipleship.

And what we're going to do during those in between weeks is what we'll gather in here way more informal than what we do during this worship hour.

And we're going to have different seminars where we talk about different topics.

Now, I'm going to lead the first one starting next week, and I think this is really interesting.

Sometimes we'll cover theological topics.

Sometimes we'll cover maybe something in missions, sometimes we'll cover something in outreach or maybe something specific to our church that we want to talk about with vision.

But for this one, over the last several months, it's kind of become more and more a conversation that I'm having with people who are visiting our church.

But sometimes I feel if people are visiting our church are asking these questions, then maybe there are some of you who are a part of our church that also have these questions.

So we're going to sit for maybe 30, 40 minutes and just talk about the fact that we're a Southern Baptist church.

All right.

If you're surprised by that, I'm sorry.

We talk about that a little, not a lot, but we are a Southern Baptist church.

And what does that mean?

What does it mean that we're Southern Baptist?

And so for about 30 minutes, what I want to break down and help us all understand is what Southern Baptist means is that we have an opportunity to cooperate with fellow churches that are aligned theologically and missionally for the global.

Work of Jesus Christ and the gospel.

That he's called us to.

And what that does, I know sometimes we can have a bad experience with a church or multiple churches that are.

Falling to a denomination.

But what that leverages us to do to work together is beautiful in the.

Story of what God is doing.

Okay?

And so if you feel like, man, you know what it's about to be Southern Baptist and you don't need to be a part of this, I would encourage you, maybe come and just be a part of it anyways and maybe you'll learn something.

All right.

As I'm continuing to do my research as a guy that's been employed at Southern Baptist churches for my entire ministry life, there are things that I'm learning of what it means and the beauty and the privilege of what we have of being a Southern Baptist church.

So come and be a part of that with us.

And then also really super excited about secret church that you heard on there.

We did this last year.

This is our second year going to be working through the book of Ruth with David Platt.

He won't be here in person, but it's a live stream event.

It starts at 07:00 p.m.

Last year we got done about 01:00 a.m.

All right, so this is not for the faint of heart.

We want to encourage you to be a part of this.

It is a free event, but we need you to register because our spaces are unlimited.

So make sure if you're interested in this, that you register so that you can be a part.

And then lastly, because there is not a group of volunteers that we want to do this to, there is no childcare because we don't want to be responsible for having your kid up at 01:00 in the morning.

All right, but if you need some help, we can see what we can do, but want to encourage you to.

Be a part of that.

All right, we're continuing on in our Genesis 25 or in our Genesis study.

And as we get into Genesis 25 that we started a couple of weeks ago, as I was studying this week, God kind of laid on my heart a series within a series.

And sometimes when you have a book of the Bible that you go through that's lengthy, like Genesis, you can do that, where you can kind of build some thematic connections throughout this.

And so over the next several weeks, we're going to be working through the same theme.

And here's what this theme is going to be.

All right.

Building a godly family culture.

And here's what I want to say to that right now.

If maybe you feel like you've passed those seasons on and, well, this series isn't for me, or maybe you're early on and you're single, I would say whatever your family looks like, whether that is 15 people or one person, building a godly family culture within the context of your family is essential to the health, the stability, and the consistency in your walk with the Lord.

And so what we're going to do over the next several weeks is we're going to look at this in Genesis 25 26 and on, and we're going to look at and draw from some things that are done correctly.

And we're going to look at and we're going to draw and we're going to learn from some things that are done incorrectly.

Because here's what I can tell you.

Here's what I know about me and my family.

Whether it's intentional or unintentional, you're building a culture right now in your family.

Whether it's positive or negative, you're building a culture within your family.

Whether it's godly or ungodly, you are building a culture in your family.

When I began to study about this and pray about this this week and examine my own life and the life of others, I think there are some common mistakes that we make when it comes to building a godly culture within our family when it comes to faith.

And that's what we're specifically going to be looking at when it comes to faith.

I think so a handful of these before we get into 25.

Number one, we want to go ahead and lay out and move past is, number one, we fall into the lie that we make our faith private, that our faith is private.

Somewhere in our mind, historically, in the life of a lot of christians, we begin to think and buy into this concept that your faith is private, and no one should ask you about your faith.

And you definitely shouldn't have to talk to anyone about your faith, because your faith is personal, which it is, but your faith is private, which it is not.

Every instance with Jesus and every time we see in the Bible, it's go and tell, go and make.

And it is astonishing to find the number of individuals, even within their own family unit.

Of parents who've never talked to their kids about the gospel, of spouses who's never prayed with or for their other spouse.

And so we want to look at what it means to have this godly culture of faith.

Number two, we want to understand that our faith, the lie that we've been bought into is that our faith becomes event based, not process driven.

The lie that we've bought into is our faith becomes event based and process driven.

So here's what that means.

I show up and things are done, and I'm a part of them, and then I leave, and that's all that I need.

And I can come back in, like, we go and put gas in our car and go to an event and get all the Jesus that I need, all the Holy Spirit that I need, all the God that I need, and then I can leave.

And I don't need to go back into any of that until I feel that needle begin to drop on my spiritual fuel tank.

Instead of understanding that faith is process driven.

Jesus is alive on Monday morning just as he is alive on Sunday morning.

And he works and he moves in.

Those days just as much as he moves in the events that we go to.

So we love events.

We love the gatherings.

We love the pieces that we can have.

But they're sparks.

They're tools that are used to continue to fuel the process on, not just.

To fill up and go.

We begin to fall into the trap of our faith being stale.

Not our faith being fresh.

And so we view what we do.

In here as the piece that I need to give.

But then I go, and over the course, I begin to plateau in my walk or decline instead of using it to grow.

The last that we want to go ahead and discuss before we get into.

Genesis 25 is we make our faith grace heavy.

Listen to me on all this before you get mad at me.

And truth light or truth heavy.

And grace light, we find what we want, and we cling to that without understanding the grace and truth of Christ and that they're good and they're needed and they're equal and they're together.

Right?

So let's start reading and see what we can begin to draw from with this.

Genesis 25, starting in verse 19.

These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son.

Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebecca, the daughter of Bethul, the Aramaan, the patarim, the sister of Laban the emerim, to be his wife.

And Isaac prayed to the lord for his wife because she was barren.

And the lord granted his prayer.

And Rebekah, his wife, conceived the children, struggled together within her.

And she said, if it is thus, why is this happening to me?

So she went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within.

Your womb, from within you shall be divided.

The one shall be stronger than the other.

The older shall serve the younger.

Here's what I'm talking about when it becomes being, setting a godly culture of faith in your family.

Number one, be a family or be a person of intentional prayer.

Of intentional prayer.

Here's what I want to encourage you to do.

Set during your day, pray all the time.

God's word says pray without ceasing, be in continual conversation with the Lord, but.

Also set times of intentional prayer.

Evaluate what you're facing and going through in your world and bring it to God.

What are you wrestling with?

What are you dealing with?

So many times I find that in.

My prayer life and probably in yours, it can be the routine and the repetition of the things that we say all of the time, instead of wrestling with and being intentional about the prayers and the struggles that we're facing in our life.

I love this.

It says that Isaac prayed for his wife.

Now, the word here for prayer is not just a simple saying.

It's not the speaking of words.

But this word for prayer, used in.

The original language, is to cry to the Lord for deliverance.

Here's the setting they've been facing for 20 years of marriage, the battle of infertility.

And I don't know if you've ever.

Walked that journey, but as a family who has not for 20 years.

But it is hard.

It is grueling.

It is difficult.

And what I love in this is what I see from Isaac, is not bitterness or anger.

It's not resentment or separation.

It's not blame.

It's a desperate cry for the Lord to work and move.

It's a mark of a mature faith, a culture of prayer.

I know in my life and I know in the life of so many others, when we walk through these difficult seasons, when our faith is shallow, when the culture that we're driving toward is shallow, we don't run and fall before the Lord to our knees like we should.

Instead, we stand and shake our fist at him and say, how would you allow this to happen?

Take out infertility and put any battle that you've walked through in your life, the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, a spouse that is left, a child that has rebelled.

When there's a culture of prayer that is rooted in your home and more importantly, in your heart, the standing there and shaking your fist at God, why would this happen?

Isn't there.

Instead, it brings you to your knees.

And so God answers.

And God answers with twins.

Raise your hand if you're in the room, if you are a twin or are the parent of a twin or multiples.

Let's go with multiples.

Anybody?

Yeah, I got my wife.

Leave them up.

I want to see everybody that's over here.

All right.

There's a handful of us.

All right, let me talk about that struggle.

Aaron and I battled through infertility issues and miscarriage and a lot of things.

That a lot of you have battled through as well.

When we lived in Sumner, South Carolina.

And we had this secretary that was.

At our church, and her name was Joyce.

And I'll never forget when we found out that Aaron was pregnant.

We were so excited to have a baby.

We had been through so many battles, so many things, so many journeys, so many tears, so many moments of crying out to the Lord and just being honest and open with you guys, and so many moments of sinfully shaking our fist at him.

And the day that we found out that we were having.

And notice my words, a baby was so exciting.

Well, Erin's second doctor's appointment that she went to, I had to go somewhere for work.

I had to come up to.

So she went, and she came back.

I think your dad went with you.

No.

By yourself.

So Aaron went to the doctor by herself, and she called me, and I was on that beautiful stretch of 378 where there is absolutely nothing in between Columbia and Sumter.

I'll never forget this conversation.

She said, what are you doing?

I said, I'm driving.

What are you doing?

I just got home from the doctor.

Okay.

She said, you need to pull over.

And I said, something wrong?

She said, you need to pull over.

And I said, okay.

And she said, well, God didn't just bless us with a baby.

God blessed us with two.

Amen.

And God and I talked the rest of the way.

You know what I mean?

But God knew.

God had a plan.

Back to Joyce.

I love Joyce.

Joyce was the prayer warrior of our staff.

We would sit in there and have prayer time together, and that woman could pray.

And not only could she pray when she was in the room, but she would pray all of the time.

And if you had something you wanted somebody to pray for, you'd go to Joyce, and she'd pray for it.

And then she'd ask you about it later.

Like, she'd come up to you months later and say, remember when you asked me to pray for this?

I've been praying.

What's God doing?

It wasn't just that.

Sure.

Being polite.

Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

If you told Joyce to pray about something, Joyce prayed about it.

I love Joyce.

Next staff meeting, I'm there.

I said, guys, I want to tell you what God's done and how God's blessed.

And I told the story.

There's not a baby.

There's two.

And I see a smile come across Joyce's face.

And I said, joy, thank you for being Joyce.

Thank you for being happy for us.

And she said, bo, I think it was like, 18 months earlier when we went through our miscarriage.

She said, I began praying then that God would bless you with twins.

And I just said, joyce, in the future, could you just run these by me?

So as I'm reading this, I feel the moment in here of the answer of God.

The crying out was like, we never thought that all of the difficulty that it was to have twins, we didn't understand all of the beauty of the blessing that God would give us in that as well, we didn't understand.

But God answered, and God answered them with twins.

But we see in this.

This pregnancy was difficult.

Now, if you raised your hand as being the mother or father of twins dads, we think we know what our wives went through.

But, ladies, you know, we have no clue.

No clue.

And I love the verse that it said, the children struggled together within her.

And then she said this, if this is because of God, why is this happening to me?

Is what she's saying, right?

Like, this is the battle.

So she went to inquire to the Lord.

She went to inquire to the Lord.

And this is why we talk about the culture of what we see, of faith, of intentional prayer.

There are struggles that they face, and their solution is to turn to God.

There are struggles they face God, why are we battling?

Infertility.

I'm going to come to you.

There are struggles that she faced in her pregnancy, of what's going on in her posturing, her culture.

Her heart is to come to the Lord, to inquire of him and to see.

And God answers.

I want to ask you this, with.

What you're battling and what you're facing, right?

Are you listening to the Lord?

Now, sometimes we want to hear God, right?

Like I speak and you hear me, someone calls out your name and you audibly can hear them.

And we want this to be.

But I think, more times than not, we pray to God, and God answers our prayers, but we don't hear from God.

And so the question is, why aren't we hearing from God?

I think number one is we're not listening.

We're not listening.

We're so busy to give our request time and time and over and over again and in repetition.

But yet we're not taking the moment to sit back and to wait and to listen.

When we come to God, we come to him like a five year old bringing their list to Santa.

Here's what I want.

Now I gotta go and do my life instead of listening.

Number two, we aren't looking.

We aren't looking.

Not only is it listening to God, but it's looking at God.

Where is God working in your life?

Where is God moving in your life?

What is God doing around you?

What is God doing in the lives of the people who are with you?

What is God already doing?

And he's saying to you that what you are praying for, I'm already working.

I'm already moving, I'm already doing something.

You're just not looking.

You're just not noticing.

But I'm here, so just look, wait and see.

Number three, we stop asking, we stop asking, we stop being people who make it a priority to come in obedience, in repetition and bring them to the Lord.

Keep praying, keep waiting, keep listening, keep looking.

And then lastly, we don't hear from God because we start blaming.

We start blaming God.

I prayed about this and you didn't do anything.

God, how dare you?

How dare you?

God's working.

God's moving.

Sometimes we don't always know how or when, but we can trust that he is.

And instead of blaming God, maybe our heart should be that we try to align with God.

Because I don't want you to miss this about prayer.

God's not a genie in a bottle that we can rub the bottle and he's going to come out and grant us any of the wishes that we then give for him.

We're not the sovereign ones and we're not in control of him.

But God's going to work and move.

And a beautiful thing of what prayer.

Does within us is as we go before him and pray before him, the spirit of God that dwells within side of us, as we seek his face, as we seek his will, as we seek his glory, he does something that's pretty awesome and pretty cool within sight of us as he begins to change our heart.

And when he begins to change our heart, you know what he can do?

He can even change our desires and our wants.

And so our prayers change and they more in line with him with what he's saying and with what he's doing.

But it begins in prayer begins in prayer.

So.

So be a person.

Be a family.

Build an intentional culture of prayer.

Number two.

Number two, be a family of trust.

Be a family of trust.

So Rebecca prays, and in verse 23, the Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided.

The one shall be stronger than the other.

The older shall serve the younger.

Well, I'm going to be honest with you.

I don't really know that this is.

The answer to prayer, that Rebecca was looking all right.

I think she was.

Maybe it's some indigestion, but that's not the answer she gets.

Look at the words that are used.

Two nations are in your womb.

Two peoples.

From within you shall be divided.

The one shall be stronger than the other.

The older shall serve the younger.

So a couple of things out of.

This real quick that we see from right here is he says, there'll be two nations.

So these two boys that are going to be born, they will achieve a level of leadership and greatness, but one will be greater than the other.

But then what God says, he says, the older shall serve the younger.

Here, God makes the choice to break the accepted pattern of the day.

If you have multiples.

One of the things that's common within multiples, and we see this in the life of our twins, is they've got the same birthday, right?

They're the same age.

Their birth, in our case, was separated by a minute.

But there's great pride for that 1 minute I saw on there, there was two girls that had their high school senior pictures taken, and one said, I'll always be the younger by a minute.

And then the older's picture said was the best minute of my know, there's this competition of what's there between, and.

Grayson is the older one.

And if, you know, if you remember all the way back from when they were little, it was like, there's Grayson and there's know.

And about 6th grade, he caught up with her.

7th grade, he passed her best day of his life when he realized he was taller than his sister.

We would go places, and people would say to Emma, is that your little brother?

And we felt bad for him.

And Grayson said, I'm older than her.

So there's that piece.

Then there's Emma's piece.

If there's any part where Grayson's trying to impose onto her, he will say to her, well, you know, I'm the older one.

And she wants to argue, but it's only by a minute.

But in here, I told her this.

The other day, Emma, it's biblical.

You are younger.

This is what we see.

So God gives this information.

Here's the battle I'm going to take.

God says, what is the norm?

The norm would be for the younger to serve the older.

But God says, in your case, if there's not enough conflict already of two.

Nations, the older will serve the younger.

The question is, when we get news, we get information in the plan of what God has, do we question, wrestle, plead and seek?

I think so.

God, why is this happening?

We question God, let me wrestle with what you're telling me because I don't understand it.

God, let me plead with you that.

You could do something different.

God, help me seek to understand what you're doing.

I think we do those things, but after that is, I think, where we begin to fall off.

And the question comes in our questioning and our wrestling and our pleading and our seeking.

Does what come out of us?

A heart of doubt or a heart of trust?

Why would God do this?

Do you remember what I told you?

Whether it was infertility or anything else that you were going through?

I bet you've asked God, why would you do this?

And I wish this morning that there.

Was something more to answer away.

All of that and give us something clear and something cute and something easy.

But as we've just said, we're not the sovereign ones.

He is and he's in control.

And just like we teach the little kids to sing, he's got the whole world in his hand.

He does.

He holds it and he's sovereign and he's in control and he is good and he is loving.

Apostle Paul talks about this situation in Romans, Romans nine, starting in verse ten.

He says, not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls.

She was told, the older will serve the younger.

As it is written, Jacob I love, but Esau I hated.

And what we see is the sovereign choice of God in this moment.

And the question is, when all you know is what God is doing, do you choose to trust that God knows what God is doing?

Sometimes in scripture, God gives us glimpses into his reasoning with Noah and the flood.

We saw this in Genesis 69, says.

These are the generations of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

Noah not walked with God.

We know why God chose Noah.

No one else was Noah was.

God chose Noah.

We know why God chooses Isaac over Ishmael.

We understand the reason.

Isaac, the son of the promise.

Ishmael is the son of the compromise.

We know, but not oftentimes do we know, and do we understand why God does what God does?

If that's why did God choose Abraham?

Abraham was pagan, from a foreign land, but God chose him.

We don't see the reason, but we trust.

So we see in these, and we're allowed into these.

But sometimes we have to hold to the simple truth of what we teach our kids to sing.

That he is good, that he is right, that he is loving, that he is working, and he's got it all in his hand, and you and I are trying to hold on to it like water coming out of the lake.

But he's in control.

And sometimes God lays out the events and circumstances of your life in mine, and they fit together.

Oh, that's so good.

But sometimes he lays out the events and they just don't.

It's a circle bumping into a square.

And we've got to say, do I trust God when God does what I want or do I trust God, period.

Romans nine teaches us that God.

That God works all things for his purposes, for his glory, and for our good.

And that's what we have to cling to.

Romans 828.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

That's trust.

So when you get the answer that you don't want, the question is, in that moment, who are you trying to make God, you or him?

Lastly, we'll close with this.

Be a family of unified love.

Verse 24.

When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb.

The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak.

So they called his name Esau.

Afterwards, his brother came out with his hand holding Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob.

Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them, like I was 29.

You know.

Verse 27.

When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man dwelling in tents.

Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game.

But Rebecca loved Jacob.

Be a family of unified love.

Let's look at Esau.

Firstborn, the older.

Red headed and hairy.

That's where his name comes from.

Outdoorsman, hunter, man of the open country.

Is what the Bible tells us.

And there's Jacob, the Secondborn.

The younger grabbing at the heel of his brother, which was a phrase that would have been used during that day, that meant deception.

If you're a deceiver, you're a heel grabber.

That's where his name comes from.

Thanks, mom.

And dad.

Says he's a quiet man, dwelling intense.

I want to talk about this for a second, because sometimes this passage of scripture is taught like, here's the manly guy and here's the not manly guy.

And I don't think that's the case.

This word quiet has been translated oftentimes to make us think that.

But when you look at the meaning of quiet here, what it brings with.

It is a meaning of being complete, of wholeness.

So within him there was great levels, probably, of artistic capabilities, of academic capabilities.

Of even outdoor capabilities.

And so I think the picture is one was this and the other was.

More of what we see.

But what we do see is we see two brothers, two different personalities, two different giftings.

And what happens?

Daddy chooses his and mama chooses hers.

And we're going to see this conflict play out.

When we talk about this.

What we see is this concept of unified love.

Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his gain.

It's what it says.

But Rebecca loved Jacob.

What we do with love, whether it's in our family or the people that we encounter, is we choose.

I'm going to show one person more love than I'm going to show others.

And what I want us to build in with not only this family, but within our own individual families, is a.

Unified love where it's not those that we're more naturally drawn to, that we love, but it's all of those that God puts in our path that we love, just not the ones that we deem to be cleaner and easier and more receptive of our love, but it's those that we choose to give everyone love to over and over and over again.

Because that's what Jesus did for us.

That when he brought us into the family, that what he did was not set a hierarchy of what's there.

It's not, well, here's the pastor, here's the missionary, here's the others.

It's not, here's the people that struggled with these sins versus the people that struggled with these sins.

It's not this race versus this race, this socioeconomic class versus this one, this level of intellect versus this level of intellect that Christ brings us in.

I said to the girls who were getting baptized today, I said, you're going to hear me refer to you as something.

Today you're going to hear me refer to you as our sisters, because that's who you are.

And there's no divide in the family of God.

There's no gift for one that's going to be better than the gift for the other.

There's no blessing for one that's going to be better or less than for the other.

And so what we see here, Paul writes about this in Ephesians, chapter one.

We're going to close with this passage of scripture, is what this unified love looks like for us in Christ.

And then for us to take this love, whether it's in your family, whether it's with your friends, whether it's at work, no matter where God has you, and making sure that there's unity and love.

Paul writes, and he says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purposes, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and on earth, and in him.

We have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we, who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory in him.

You also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit.

So all of those girls and you and me and the people down the road and on the other side of the world and everyone in between, we are different.

We are unique.

We have different passions.

We look differently, we have different capabilities.

But in Christ, in Christ, the beauty of that.

Paul says, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

We've been chosen and adopted.

We've been completely accepted.

We've been redeemed from our sins.

We've been given total forgiveness.

We've been given the riches of grace.

We've been given revelation and the knowledge of the will of God.

We've been given an eternal inheritance.

We've been given the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

And so I pray that we wouldn't go from here and look at others and choose some to love and some not, that we would go and be a people of unified love, sharing the gospel, bringing into the family, seeing the kingdom grow.

In just a moment.

The band's going to come upstage.

We're going to sing one last song, and then we're going to take the Lord's supper.

And it's the beautiful representation of Christ, of what he came to do.

Because whether you think that your sin was many or whether you think that your sin was few, here's what I can tell you.

Your sin and my sin was costly.

It was costly.

And it costs the life of Christ to give of his body, to shed of his blood, so that we could be brought into this wonderful family that we just read about.

Would you bow your heads as we go to the Lord in prayer?

God, I thank you for the wonderful privilege of what it means to be a son and daughter of God.

God, as I pray that as we prepare our hearts.

To take this, to.

Participate in communion, Lord, I pray under the leading and guiding of your holy spirit that we would examine our hearts.

Lord, first we would recognize that this isn't just simply a religious duty, but it's an honor to be able to partake in for those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ.

Lord, may we think about the price that was paid on the cross of Calvary as perfection took on the depravity and the sins of the world and died and paid our price, paid our debt, so that we might have forgiveness in reception into the family of God.

God, may we examine our hearts for any sin that we have that is unrepentant.

Your word tells us to examine ourselves.

And to confess them, to repent to you.

And so, Lord, I pray that we do not partake in guilt, but that.

We partake in righteous confession before you.

Seeking your forgiveness for what we've done.

God, I pray that if there's anyone whom we need to forgive, Lord, that we would seek to do that right now, whether they've asked for forgiveness or not.

Lord, your word tells us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

We would not keep a record of wrong, but God, that we would forgive.

God.

I pray that if we need to.

Seek the forgiveness of others, Lord, that we would seek that as well.

God, work and move in our lives.

By the power of your holy spirit.

Listen, Jesus, and we pray.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.

In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willowridge church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.