Genesis Week 29 | Building a Family Culture (Part 2)

Sunday, March 10th | Beau Bradberry

"I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed" — Genesis 26:4

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Beau Bradberry

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Well, good morning.

Hey.

That's better than I affected on a night where we lost an hour.

So if you got your bibles, and I hope you do, I want to invite you to join me in Genesis, chapter 25.

We'll be in 25.

And jump 26.

We went to a family wedding last night.

My cousin's son got married, and she and I extremely close growing up.

She's only about nine months older than me, and so we went in to be a part of this wedding.

It was a nighttime, it was an evening wedding.

And I'll be honest with you, kind of like Sundays are busy.

They're busy for you, they're busy for me.

They're busy for us as a family.

But when I saw that my cousin's son scheduled their wedding as a nighttime wedding on daylight savings time where I'm going to lose an hour, it's like, I really love my cousin.

So I'm going to this, right?

It was funny.

Last night, his dad served as his best man.

Just got up and gave a speech.

Wonderful, wonderful speech.

And he serves on staff at a church in the Evans, Georgia area.

And he started it off by saying, I first want to thank Brett and Chelsea for thinking of themselves and scheduling this wedding on a night where we're all going to lose an hour of sleep.

So I just want to say well done for all of you for being here this morning and worshiping with us today.

For those of you that were here at 09:00 hour, for those of you who have stayed around here, I know today's not an easy day where we've lost an hour's sleep.

But the Lord is good, and he calls us to be here, to worship him and to do so together.

And so I'm so glad that each and every one of you are here re emphasize what Dave said about our discipleship studies.

There's a lot of them on here, that God's going to be working and moving in there.

Aaron and I are excited we get to lead our first study together during this season of life together at our church.

So you might want to make sure if you're interested in that raising kingdom kids, we're going to be a part.

But there's a lot of them that are on there and would love for you to be a part so it's not too late.

Want to make sure that you get connected.

We are continuing on in our study in Genesis, and as you could be with us last week if you were here with us, we started with the birth of Esau and Jacob, and we're looking at the lives of Isaac and Rebecca.

So Abraham, that we've been with for a really long time, right?

We've been journeying through with this buddy of ours, and he's died.

And now we get this next generation.

And as we're reading through this account of Isaac and Rebecca and Esau and Jacob, there are new things that we're learning, like we always do, right?

There's new things that God draws out in their life for us.

But there's going to also kind of hit this pattern where it's like, I've seen this before, I've heard this before, and it causes.

I was working through, and we've been in Genesis for a while now, but as I was thinking through, I was like, well, this kind of fits a story or a series within a series with looking at some of these patterns of repetition, of overlap that we see, we've now seen one generation move to another generation.

We see good practices and bad practices that continue on.

And so I thought, let's look at this, and let's talk about this concept of what it looks like to build a culture, to look at that in the context of family, because that's the context that we see.

But I hope if you're here today and you're single, then you can realize this context within you as an individual, within your family, or that we can take God's principles and apply them to any culture, any setting, any circumstances where God has us.

So whether it be work, whether it be your neighborhood, whether it even be in church, we make sure that we're.

Building on a godly culture.

Want to ask you this something just to think about when you think of your home again, whether it's you as an individual, whether you're younger, whether you're more seasoned and experienced in years.

We're not going to use the word older.

Whether you're married with kids, married without kids, whether you're married with kids out of the house.

Whether you're married with kids out of the house with grandkids.

No grandkids, wherever you're at.

I want to ask you this question.

How would you describe the culture of your home?

When you look at what you're doing, what you're cultivating, what you're working toward, how would you describe the culture of your home?

Would you say that your culture is very laid back.

We take every day, day by day, every moment, moment by moment.

Or would you say it's very structured, very organized, very routined.

We have all this now, the Bradbury house.

We may have currently two spreadsheets on the refrigerator.

I would say that's kind of a laid back structure.

You may.

No, no.

That's a little extreme with what you're doing.

All right.

How would you describe your culture?

Would you say that generally you're people on the go, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and you love to be busy?

Or would you say that you're people who are relaxed?

Some people who love to say yes.

Some people who love to say no.

Are you savers?

Right.

Like everything.

Like money.

We need to save.

We need to save.

We need to save.

We need to save.

Is that your culture, or is your culture your spenders?

Spend, spend.

Are you readers?

Are you tv watchers?

Like, what is the culture that you're building within your home?

And there's lots of cultures that we build.

There's lots of cultures that within this.

Some are building a culture of academic pursuits.

Some are building a culture of sports.

Some are building a culture of busyness and efficiency.

Some are building a culture of laid back and relaxation.

There's tons of cultures that we are building, and we are building them, oftentimes intentionally, but most times we're building them unintentionally.

And what I want us to look at and think about when we look at this series is what does it look like not to just build a culture, but what does it look like in our homes, in our lives?

To build and to establish a godly culture, a culture that centers us and squares us on Christ as our lord and savior, which then influences and impacts and directs and pushes us toward all of the things that he has for us.

And so, in every other area of our culture, of our home, of our life, of our work, of who we are, we see the hand and the work and the move of Christ in those, because ultimately, whether we're relaxed or busy, laid back or structured savers or spenders, the goal is to be christlike and Christ honoring.

We'll get to Genesis 25 in a minute, but I want to read you this parable that Jesus shares in Matthew seven, starting verse 24.

Jesus says, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

This is interesting when Jesus gives this parable.

This is the very last teaching of Jesus in his sermon on the mount.

Jesus had covered a wide variety of topics in this message.

It's the longest message recording of Jesus that we have in scripture.

He talks about what it means to be blessed, about anger, about lust, about prayer, about giving, about anxiety, judging others, and many, many more.

And he ends this by saying, everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them?

His point is this, when you do what I say, or more importantly, when you follow who I am, we can't separate those two.

You build your life, your home, your family, your job, every part on the gospel of Christ, that which is unshakable and eternal, not that which is weak and ending.

And one holds, one lasts and one.

Crumbles and one falls.

So last week, as we began this, looking at Isaac and Rebecca, we looked and we talked about being a family of intentional prayer, of what it looks like to say, you know what?

We're going to seek the face, the will of God.

We're going to bring our concerns to him.

We're going to present them before him.

We're going to open our hearts, we're going to plead, we're going to listen, we're going to wait, we're going to look and see where he's moving and what he's doing.

We're going to be people of intentional prayer.

We talked about we're going to be people of godly trust, even when God gives us the answer that we don't like or that we don't understand, that we know and that we trust, that God is working for our good, that he's working and moving to bring his name glory.

And that while we might not understand it, we can hold to the trust.

And the truth that God holds us in his hands.

He's the good, loving, righteous father.

We talked about what it mean to be unified love, not to be people.

Of divided love, what it means to take the gospel of Jesus Christ that lives within us and not just within our homes as what we saw in Genesis 25.

But even outside of that, the love for brothers and sisters in Christ, the love for those who do not know, to be people whose hearts are burdened for the gospel.

And so we continue on with this.

Morning with continuing on this with culture.

Building a family.

Culture.

And so, as we look in Genesis.

25, we look at this number one, be a family who finds their identity in Christ.

Be a family who finds their identity in Christ.

Let's read verses 29 through 34 of Genesis, chapter 25.

And once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted.

And Esau said to Jacob, let me eat some of that red stew, for I'm exhausted.

Therefore his name was called Edom.

Jacob said, sell me your birthright.

Now.

Esau said, I am about to die.

Of what use is a birthright to me?

Maybe an over exaggeration of his current condition.

Right.

Verse 33.

Jacob said, swear to me now.

So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went by his way.

Thus, Esau despised his birthright.

So let's understand what is happening here.

With this concept of birthright.

To have a birthright was to have a material implication.

There was value that came into your life to have a birthright, the birthright given to the oldest.

But here, what we see in the context of this scripture, of what we understand of what God's working and doing all the way back from God's promise and God's covenant with Abraham, is that this was also of spiritual implication.

So in this, what we see is that this birthright was a double inheritance.

This birthright was the head of the family.

This birthright would be the spiritual leader of the family.

This birthright identified, though, the one who would inherit the covenant that God made with Abraham.

But what we talked about last week was this, in the trusting in the working and the moving of not really fully understand was this.

God had already determined that this birthright would go to Jacob.

God had already broken the pattern of the cultural norm, that this birthright would be Jacob's, not Esau.

But here's what you find Esau trying to sell something that's not his.

Esau saying, this is mine.

I'll give this to you.

And what we find here is two men fighting for their perception of identity, Esau longing for the physical pleasures of the world, and Jacob longing for the material pleasures of the world.

We see this attack of.

We see this concept of, no, I'm.

Going to decide who I am.

I'm going to determine my identity.

I get to determine my birthright.

IdenTity is a big discussion in this current culture and climate that we live in.

But I got thinking about this this week, as was journaling through and studying through.

And here's I've come to realization is that at least in my lifetime, when I look back at my years that God's given me so far on this earth, what I find and what I see is that identity has always been the topic of discussion.

It's just continued to evolve and change a little bit.

I mean, think about this.

Like, I remember my whole life.

Early on, people say, you know what?

I want to find my identity.

And they ask this question, who am I?

Who am I, really?

I see my mom, I see my dad, I see my family, I see the circumstances, but no one's going to tell me who I am.

Who am I?

Then later on, we see people begin to more explore my identity, right?

Why am I who I am?

Last night, I was talking with a cousin of mine, and we were laughing about something, and I said something and she laughed.

And Aaron sitting beside me, said, you.

Know, he is Randy's son, right?

I am who I am largely in a lot of ways, because I understand the environments around me.

And so we try to find our identity.

We try to explore our identity.

And then when we mature this, when we come to this age, we say that I found my identity.

I've explored my identity.

Now I want to define my identity.

I want to bring clarity and certainty to who I am.

This is where I'm going to go.

This is what I'm going to do.

This is what I'm going to be.

This is what I'm going to become.

People will no longer know me as this.

Instead, they will know me as something.

Else as I define my identity.

I think recently where we've hit more.

In our culture is it's gone beyond that.

It's gone beyond defining my identity and exploring my identity of who I am and why I am who I am.

And defining my identity is to bring clarity to who I am, to now.

The ultimate form of idolatry.

Then I get to change my identity that I get to decide who I am.

And I don't just mean that with gender, which is the case as well, but in so many things that we feel as the creation that we have the right to determine in and of ourselves and to change who God says I am.

When we seek to be those who define, ultimately for ourselves, our own identity of who we are, we see it fueled.

I don't think we realize we're doing this, but we're fueling this mindset, especially in family, when.

When we see parents take the commandments of the Lord and the pursuit of the Lord.

And while they hold that they're true, they take the commandments of the Lord and the pursuit of the Lord, and they make them secondary, secondary to the desires and the pursuit of the world, which become primary.

And then they're shocked when their kids grow up, move out of their home, get to decide for themselves, and then they decide other things than what God has for them.

Why?

For a whole generation, here's what we've modeled.

Nah, God will always be there.

But let's pursue this.

We love the Lord, but let's chase after this as we look, whether it be your home, whether it be your job, do not cultivate an environment where you, where you primarily or your kids find their identity in anyone or anything other than Christ.

Jacob and Esau said, I will decide, but God says, but I've already decided.

Do you make decisions about your.

Sure.

Sure.

Do you ask yourself, have you asked yourself, what did I want to be when I grow up?

Right.

We all asked ourself that question.

In fact, this.

I hope you never stop asking yourself that question.

I love it when I see people go into different stages of life, and then they ask this question, now, what does God have for me?

As they understand their identity as seasons change.

But it's when we know whose we.

Are that defines us, who we are, not anything else.

And that's why the apostle Paul writes.

In Galatians 220, I've been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh.

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and who gave himself up for me.

So everything funnels from that.

Secondly, be a family of godly action.

Jump over to Genesis 26.

Read verses one through eleven.

Be a family of godly action, verse one.

Now, there was a famine in the land besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham and Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelek, king of the Philistines.

And the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt and dwell in the land of which I shall tell you, sojourn in this land.

And I will be with you and will bless you.

For to you and your offspring I will give all of these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father.

I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring all these lands, and in your offspring, all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws.

So let's just pause here for a second.

We're seeing a repeat of what we've seen before.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

And God says, here's what you're going to do.

Here's what I've promised.

Here's who I am, and here's what I'm going to continue with.

So look at verse six.

So Isaac settled in Gerar, and when the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, she is my sister, for he feared to say, my wife, thinking lest the men of the place should kill me because of Rebekah, because she was attractive in appearance.

And when he had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah, his wife.

So Abimelech called Isaac and said, behold, she is your wife.

How then could you say, she is my sister?

And Isaac said to him, because I thought, lest I die because of her.

And Abimelech said, what is this you have done to us?

One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.

So Abimelech warned all of the people, saying, whoever touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

All right, let's stop here for today.

Do you feel like we've read this before?

Now, there's some differences in the story, but we read almost very similar, this exact same encounter in Genesis twelve.

Wait for it.

And Genesis 22 different times that we see a very similar situation play out in the life of Abraham.

And now what do we find it playing out in the life of Isaac?

Two different times.

Abraham denies that Sarah is his wife out of the fear that he will die.

Look back at verse seven.

When the men of the place asked him about his wife.

She said, she is my sister, for, he feared to say, my wife, thinking lest the men of this place should kill me because of Rebecca, because she.

Was attractive in appearance.

Here's what I believe about culture.

Here's what I believe about good culture and bad culture.

Here's what I believe about godly culture and ungodly culture.

Most things are caught, not taught.

Most things are taught, not taught.

I'm a teacher.

I love to teach.

We'll look at this.

I think you and I in life are very fine and good with giving instruction.

I think where we struggle is actually living out those instructions in our own life.

And the reality is, so much of.

What we see in building culture is not just what is heard.

It's what's observed, it's what's taught, not necessarily what is just taught.

Oftentimes, we become people of pattern and routine, and largely enough, pattern and routine is how you build culture.

What you teach matters, but what you do matters greatly.

In deuteronomy, chapter six, Moses is teaching in deuteronomy six on the greatest commandment.

The greatest commandment.

And he's teaching specifically who God is.

And what it means to love God.

Which I would argue is the greatest truth that we can share.

And then he says, here's how we're going to pass this truth on.

Here's how we're going to continue from generation after generation after generation, in the desert and in the promised land, to teach the truth of God.

In deuteronomy six, verse seven through nine, he says this, you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

Here's what he says without taking a long time, to teach through deuteronomy six, he says, the truth of God in your life, the truth of God generationally needs to be spoken.

We need to teach it.

We need to say it.

We need to say it to our adults.

We need to say it to our students.

We need to say it to our kids.

We need to say it.

It needs to be written.

We need to read it.

We need to read it.

Parents, if you've got a baby, I don't care how many books and nursery rhymes you read to them, you open up and read God's word.

There's power in the work of God's word.

Read it.

I don't care how many times you've read through it.

Read it again.

I don't care if you've got your bible with you.

If you don't, you've got it here.

Read it on the screen.

If you didn't, I'm not one of those people.

Pull out your phone and read it on your phone.

It don't matter to me.

Read God's word.

Read it.

When you don't understand it, keep reading.

When you do understand it and you've heard it before, keep reading.

Keep reading.

Keep reading.

But Moses also says in his illustrations, culturally, he says, but it's got to be lived.

It's got to be lived.

And unfortunately, I think that's where it's neglected.

Not yesterday, but Saturday before that, Grayson had a track meet in Spartanburg, and Erin and I went to the track meet, and Erin had some schoolwork to do.

So in between Grayson's events, she got out her books, and she was reading, and I started to listen to the South Carolina basketball game where we beat the University of great, great track know.

But I noticed there was a conversation.

That was happening behind me.

I'll confess to you, I got a little nosy.

The conversation got a little crazy.

All right.

And it was three people complaining about the current society in which we live.

And the topic of conversations began to.

Center around this beautiful thing.

And for about ten minutes, they talked about how we're raising a generation of mindless teenagers who do nothing but sit on their phone, engage with social media, and don't know how to have a conversation.

Then they got Quiet, and I turned around.

It's easy to blame the teenagers until you realize, I get it.

They're on Instagram.

But, buddy, you're on Facebook.

You know what I mean?

They might be on TikTok, but you're on some fruit game.

I don't know.

Right.

It's easy to complain about what we don't like.

It's easy to set the standard of what we believe to be true.

But the issue is, when it comes to living it out and say, this is who God is, and this is my expectation for you and our family and our culture, which means this is the expectation that I'm going to live this in myself, and I'm going to have my strengths and I'm going to have my weaknesses, and we're going to look at that in a second, and I'm going to have my battles.

But it's not just enough to hear it spoken.

It's not just enough to see it written, but that when the truth of God, to become a family of godly.

Reaction is what we have to be, parents, stop dropping your kids off for discipleship, and then you not be discipled.

Stop asking them what they learned this morning and start sharing with them what you learned this morning.

Stop setting an expectation for them, and then you yourself are unwilling to walk along beside it.

What you're building in those moments is culture of hypocrisy, not cultures of godliness.

May they see in you the desperate pursuit of Christ.

And when they don't, when they don't know that God is sufficient in his grace and his mercy.

Which is why number three, be a family of godly confession and repentance.

Be a family of godly confession and repentance.

Repetitive sin can become a cyclical culture.

There's not a lot of dialogue of what happened in the conversations from Abraham to Isaac.

We don't have the opportunity to see.

And to know and fully understand.

We've tried to look at Abraham in.

A realistic way of understanding that he.

Was a man called and chosen by God.

It's a man of great faith.

It's a man of weakness and struggles within himself.

And we've seen in Genesis twelve and.

Genesis 20 some of that.

She's not my wife.

In a disregard to what could happen to his wife, Sarah.

And I think we've got to draw some lines to understanding why.

Years later, Isaac looks and says, no, she's not my wife.

She's not my wife.

I don't believe in generational curses, but I do believe that unintentionally, we can continue on in cycles of sin, we which are watched, which are drawn to and which are lived out.

In my family, I'd say this when.

My dad's sitting in the room.

I've said it with my dad sitting in the room.

Bradbury men are known for a lot of things.

One of the things that we're known for that's not great is a temper.

It's a temper.

It's a temper that's not godly, is a temper that can set off in a moment's notice, and is a temper that can be followed with words and actions that are destructive.

And I'll never forget.

I'll never forget Grayson when he was young, small, real skinny, and he got mad, and I heard a growl, and.

It was kind of cute, like, we laughed.

And it hit me where he learned that noise from.

He learned that from dad.

And I went to Aaron, I said, this stops.

This stops with me.

This stops here, because we're not going to have this situation in our family.

Be a family of godly confession and repentance.

Commit this morning, one of the best cultures you can lay down in your life is the culture to commit your confession of sins to others and repenting of other sins before God.

This isn't a suggestion that I'm given.

It's a command of scripture.

Jesus, in teaching us to pray, in Matthew 612.

Give an instruction.

Jesus, with no need for any forgiveness, Jesus says, pray like this.

Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors.

God knows.

God knows.

But there's this beauty of what happens when, as his children, we come before him.

Repenting of yesterday, repenting of today, repenting of the words, repenting of the actions, repenting of the mindset, repenting of the moment that got away, of what's there to repent, to come to him, to acknowledge that we are sinners who desperately, continually need the forgiveness of a God.

Who pours out forgiveness upon forgiveness, his grace an overflowing current that we cannot escape.

And then turning, turning from that which we would pursue, to pursue after God.

And I think we're okay with that.

We're okay with that.

That's personal.

It's between us and the Lord.

But scripture also calls us to confess.

James 516.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another.

Look at this.

That you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

We take that which is in the dark and we expose it.

We expose it.

We confess it.

We bring it before friends, and often we bring it before family.

James says that when we confess to one another, confession brings with it.

It brings with it prayers of others.

That confession brings with it accountability for one another.

That confession brings healing in your life.

I want to ask you this question this morning.

Who do you confess to?

Who do you confess to?

Do you confess to peers?

Great.

But a bigger piece is we look at this in Genesis.

Do we confess our sin to the ones who have been impacted the most by our sin?

Here's what I want to say.

The people who live closest to you.

More than likely already know the sin that you struggle with.

I sat down with my kids not long after that encounter with Grayson happened, and I said, I need to share this with y'all.

I need to confess this to you.

It's not right when dad does this.

And do you know, they weren't surprised.

They weren't caught off guard.

They know it.

But now there's the accountability within there.

And that my prayer is, as I experience victory in what God has set me free from, is that the next generation upon the next generation upon the next generation can experience the same.

But it's because it's a culture of not just doing the right thing, but it's a culture of godly action which brings glory to him in a godly response when we fall short, right?

That's what it means to not be a hypocrite, that I pursue the Lord.

And when I don't, I don't try to act like I always do, but instead, I'm raw I'm real.

I'm honest.

Because they already know.

What is the culture of your life?

What is it?

What's the ultimate culture that you're fighting for, that that you're pursuing in the power of God's spirit that lives in you?

I want you to answer that question.

And is it culture that's marked by the gospel?

Bible tells us, and we believe this?

Right?

Jesus came to save us.

Yes.

And amen.

My eternity is set and sealed by the blood of the lamb.

But God loves you too much to save you and then leave you right where you are.

He wants to change you.

He wants to transform you.

He wants to make you more into Christ, because it's no longer I who live but he who lives in me.

He came so the old would die and so that the new would come.

So before we begin to parse out our culture and compartmentalize what we need to do next, we need to answer the question before all the actions take place.

Have I surrendered to Jesus as Lord and savior of my life?

Have I admitted that I'm a sinner, and I'm a sinner that needs saving?

Do I believe in Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, of God's word, the son of God sinless, who died on a cross for my sins and who rose from the grave?

Who can forgive me of all in him and him alone?

Can this change take place?

And can eternal life with God be possible?

And in that, do I confess him as Lord and savior of my life?

Would you pray with me?

God, I come to you this morning.

God, we love you.

And, God, we thank you that you love us.

God, I thank you for the stories.

We just sang, the lyrics thanking you.

Of your goodness and your grace and your love and your kindness.

God, I pray that as we look and as we examine our life, Lord, that we would look at the culture.

In which we are building.

Lord, with our mouth, do we say that our relationship with Christ is the most important thing, but then with our actions, do we pursue everything else under the sun as ultimate God, with our mouth, do we talk about the need of forgiveness and grace, but yet we're unwilling to display that desperation for grace and for healing in our own life.

God, do we look at and do we see the sins of others?

And yet, Lord, we're unwilling to look in the mirror and examine the sins of our own life.

God, are we chasing something to become that was never designed for us to be, instead of living in the beauty and the peace and the love that before all things and in all things that when I am saved, I am.

A child of God.

And that's where my identity lies.

And that's not an identity that I earned.

That's not an identity that I deserved.

It's an identity that was given to me.

It was an identity that took me back out of brokenness and an identity that brought me into the perfection of Christ.

That it's an identity that lives in the love of the Lord and his kindness and his grace and the beauty of his discipline in my life continually, over and over again.

That that's who I am and then in Christ fuels all that's about me.

My relationship as a husband, my relationship as a father, my relationship as a pastor, my relationship as a friend.

Because it's who I am in him.

God, may we break the cycles of sin that we've come to accept is normal.

God, I thank you.

I thank you.

I thank you for the example, Lord, that my granddad taught me of what.

It looks like to love and pursue the Lord.

God, I thank you for what my dad has taught me and what my dad is teaching me of what it.

Looks like to live in God's grace.

And to love and pursue the Lord God.

I ask that in a way that is beyond me, that I could live.

That life and that example in front.

Of those who you've entrusted me with in relationship to my church, to my wife, to my kids, to others.

And could we be a people pursuing the things of the Lord, living for your name and your glory.

It's in Jesus name.

Pray.

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

In the meantime, you can visit [e-mail] or by searching for Willow Ridge Church on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.