Messy Men

but throughout the New Testament as they're addressing the church and addressing letters Paul constantly says to the saints to the saints to the saints he's writing to people in the church who these saints were to be set apart not to be perfect they were to be humble not be weak they were to be leading with love not controlling but that is not at large what we have in our world today [Music] today as we dive into Father's Day is we want to kind of declare death to cultural fatherhood and cultural manhood if you've been with us through this series we've been talking about this family and less of the mess and if we're honest we have a lot of mess inside our families and the mess comes when we are seeking the ways our world does things and letting them into our hearts and our lives and our families we started the series on Mother's Day and we talked about messy women and I was prepared for that to be my last message at Cross Church um but you guys graciously let me keep going but as we talked we talked about dating and finances and parenting and all this and I promised on that first Sunday that we would get to men and will be even harsher on men than we were on any others but here's the deal is the reality is there is a mess messy nature of how men are raised and kind of defined in our culture today so as we dive in we're going to be in our Bibles if you can turn to Proverbs chapter 5 we're going to see a lot of where this mess comes in and how God despite the mess that we've created in our culture of fatherhood and of manhood of that there is a path and that there is answers in God's word that he has for us but before we get into that I think we need to kind of set the stage for why is it so messy right now what are the issues that we face and what does this look like well if we start I just want to share some statistics with you starting for education purposes boys for example are 7% more likely to drop out of high school than girls are and when you look at academics largely this is an unadressed issue that is continually keeping up or continually to go larger is men are falling behind in education in every category this includes gaps in literacy school engagement and higher education attainment when you look at mental health is men have higher rates of unemployment have shorter life expecties and are four times more likely to commit suicide actually in our country men account for nearly 80% of suicides with middle-aged men being particularly vulnerable when you look at the workforce about 10.5% of men in their prime working years or roughly 6.8 8 million men nationwide are neither working nor looking for a job 50 years ago that number was at 2.5% rather than 10 in 2023 68% of the male civilian po population participated in the workforce that means almost 32% did not when you look at relationships nearly half of male teens have never dated that's almost double the rate of previous generations according to survey data 30 years ago a majority of young men had over six friends today it's half of that meanwhile 15% of young men report having no close friends at all and among young men only six in 10 actually less than that 57% report that one day they want to be fathers when you look at marriage Pew Research recently found that one in four uh 40-year-old American adults have never been married in 2024 only 47% of households were headed by married couples only 44% of millennials got married between the ages of 20 and kind of in their 20s and 30s you compare that to previous generations gen Xers was 53% baby boomers was 61% in the silent generation was 81% and then you just look at our cultural at large according to numerous reports the unashamedly and unabashedly misogynist toxic former kickboxer Andrew Tates content has been viewed mostly by boys and young men close to 12 billion times you see our men are boys our cultural definition of fatherhood and manhood is in crisis and when we talked about this whole series that when our families are a mess when what we've tried to do through the world's mean is a mess the one thing we need to do is we need to come to God and confess it to him and I think today as we kind of start this time here is our cultural confession that we need to make our cultural confession of saying that maybe we have failed or our culture at large has failed in this area is that in a world full of simps and want to be saviors our God calls men to be saints now there's a lot of words in there and some of those you're like uh can I have an urban dictionary right to kind of talk through some of that let me break this down for you this word simp um it is actually kind of a derogatory term that uh the young kids like to use and what this word means is it's short for sympathizer it describes men or boys who emotionally try to sympathize with other people to create relationships and instead of having a purpose and ideals they stand for they change in order to find common ground and really just throw away their values to get closer to people a shorter way of saying this is this is like men who have no backbone some of you are already a little angry right now okay you're like you feel like some tension burning on your and that's one extreme let's go to the other extreme cuz then there's this extreme of want to be saviors men who think that they are the hero of the story men that thinks everything has to run through them the men that think they are the backbone of everything that if they fell off a cliff everything would fall down with it and this is an equally toxic and equally bad way for men to be trained in our worlds in our world at large our culture has produced these type of men we see God calls us to be saints and when we talk about this word saints I wish we had a little more time to go through this but trust me I'll preach a long time i haven't preached in a couple weeks so or at least last week so just buckle up and get comfortable um but throughout the New Testament as they're addressing the church and addressing letters Paul constantly says to the saints to the saints to the saints he's writing to people in the church who these saints were to be set apart not to be perfect they were to be humble not be weak they were to be leading with love not controlling but that is not at large what we have in our world today so the question becomes where did we get it wrong and why within the church within our culture why are we failing in producing saints well Proverbs chapter 5 gives us that answer and in Proverbs chapter 5 this is written by Solomon who was the wisest man in the world in his time and one of the wisest men in history god asked "I'll give you everything." And he asked for wisdom and then went on to write the wisdom literature in scripture this being one of them in the book of Proverbs but in Proverbs chapter 5 starting in verse one he's writing to his son and he says this "My son pay attention to my wisdom listen closely to my understanding so that you may maintain discretion and your lips safeguard knowledge you see here is the first way that we have failed to produce saints in our world is Solomon has shown the path that they veered from here and that we have continued to veer from today is we have gained knowledge without wisdom you see Solomon starts by calling his son to pay attention to wisdom and insight but notice this isn't about just gaining information it's about developing discernment you see there's a big difference between knowledge and wisdom uh knowledge I would say easy definition of that is knowledge is knowing stuff now knowing stuff used to be a great currency it's becoming less of a currency you remember those old days when you get to debate about stuff and you're like you debate about a year you're like "So and so happened on this year like this is when this war ended." And you would tirelessly yell at each other cuz none of you had like an encyclopedia like ready with that date in it and then you would debate debate debate debate now you just Google it and you're like "You're wrong." Right conversation over it makes conversations way shorter and less fun if we're being honest right but knowledge isn't quite the same currency it used to be cuz we have knowledge at our fingertips but knowledge is knowing stuff but this is where wisdom is different is wisdom is knowing what to do with the stuff you know and you see as Solomon dives into this it speaks directly to us today cuz we live in an age where we all and especially men have access to more information than any generation in history we can Google anything we can watch a YouTube video and become an amateur electrician as I've tried and failed many times uh we can go and think we're an expert on things that took years to develop as a trade skill and all of it is at our fingertips but having knowledge isn't the same as having wisdom i think young guys today they can look at the knowledge of our world and they can think they know everything about relationships from TV shows and dating apps and social media and even pornography and those things will tell you something but usually it's the opposite of what you want to actually apply and the problem is we've created a generation of men who think that having access to information makes them wise but wisdom isn't about what you know it's about how you apply it apply what you know in real life with real consequences with real people you love around you one of my favorite shows that my wife and I have watched and we've been watching this for about 15 years ever since we started dating but we watched The Amazing Race and we also watched Survivor 2 and both of those just wrapped up for a season and they're going to start season 500 um in a couple weeks again just never ends but in Amazing Race here's what I love is they're traveling around the world to win money and win these challenges but it's always funny they get to one challenge where instead of taking taxis it's a self-drive challenge so they have to drive the car in a foreign country with no Google Maps divorce waiting to happen right i don't know how that works um but in that here's what always happens too is it's always a manual it's like a stick shift and when I was 14 or 15 years old my brother showed me how to drive manual and stick shift and I learned on that and I've never ridden it again since so I understand conceptually how a clutch works um I I know what it does is I kind of know the movements but if you put me in a car right now with a clutch and said "Drive this for a million dollars," I am not winning that money i'll be honest i I know in my head but the practice of making it work it's not going to happen and all of those you are judging me 90% of this room is in the same boat as me all right let's be honest some kids are looking up what does a manual stick shift mean right now on Google okay you're getting a lesson as you go but Solomon is showing us that it's not just about this knowledge but it's about the wisdom of applying it but he keeps going in verse three he says "Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her words are smoother than oil in the end she's as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword." Solomon Katib's building not only have we failed in producing uh saints because we have valued uh knowledge over wisdom but we also have fallen for flattery oh without character here here's where Solomon starts to get real is he warns about the seductive woman and and here he's using a metaphor but he's very talking about actual temptation in a big way sexually here but he's also talking about just the temptation of sin overall but he's saying her words this temptation are smooth but the end is bitter and you see as you go through this uh this is about being men attracted to anything that flatters our ego without challenging our character think about this in our world today in social media that's exactly what it does it is all about flattering our character with or flattering our ego without challenging our character is you only post the best stuff i post pictures of my kids or my wife posts pictures of my kids and tags me in it but it's only the pictures of our kids where they're all looking and smiling or we like have to Photoshop one of their heads to turn it from a different picture in there right we don't show you the pictures where they're hitting each other where they're crying where they can't open their eyes like we keep those preserved to laugh at and cry about later all right and don't put those online is we put out an image of oursel on social media that gives us validation of the life we wish we were having when you look at maybe you're like "Well I'm not on social media." That that doesn't mean you look at the workforce and and how we kind of do our job now in our workplace politics often it's not about doing your job right and with character it's about doing what your boss wants so you get ahead in life and you'll cut other people at their knees if it makes you feel better it makes you go in the right direction we look at consumer culture that tells us we just need more and more and more and more and it says "We deserve everything and anything we want because we deserve it." You see we live in a culture that constantly flatters men while destroying their character and whether they give this intentionally and spoken or they give this unintentionally we get these messages these messages like you deserve a beautiful woman and a great wife not asking the question if have you done anything to prepare yourself to be the man that deserves that woman we we tell our world and our world tells uh us and men that you deserve success without asking the question if you're actually willing to work hard enough to have success we our world tells us that you deserve respect not asking if we actually live any sort of respectable life and things like dating apps and Instagram models and video games and only fans and all this stuff that is really real stuff that young men and old men are going through and our culture is ripping our heart for all the problem with these is they make us the hero of the story when in fact we are not and Solomon here it is very clear with his son that you have fallen for flattery instead of building up your character and your ego can go the wrong way but here's he keeps on going and he's saying this that this flattery it it feels sweet going down but he ultimately says it's poison and what it produces and what Solomon was warning of and what we see today is it makes our culture weak entitled and ultimately bitter when our reality doesn't match our expectations but he's not done you're like "This is a really encouraging sermon." I know it gets better all right verse five her feet go down to death her steps head straight for shol that is death she doesn't consider the path of life she doesn't know that her ways are unstable the last thing we see from Solomon of how have we failed in producing saints is we have we have valued knowledge over wisdom we have fallen for flattery without our character being built and lastly we have chosen the temporary fix over the long-term cure you see Solomon here describes a path that leads to death and it's characterized by instability that he says in verses 5 and six that she doesn't even consider the path temptation she doesn't know that her ways are shaky they're unstable and this is the third failure of modern men that we become addicted to quick fixes instead of long-term solutions think about this in the things that are consumed and the things that are destructive today is pornography is consumed instead of working on a real relationship that is so much harder and so much more work it is video games are are kind of captivate our mind and you know I'm excited i actually my seven-year-old son I just taught him how to play Pokemon on the Nintendo Switch it was a proud doubt moment for me i'm like I'm passing down the baton of my childhood right and those are great things but when we consume us we we go to video games instead of developing real skills we talk about debt and instant gratification instead of saving and planning and do things the really hard way that take a lot longer we talk about I'm going to convict myself i had a Red Bull this morning as I do every Sunday morning which is why I get to talk as fast as I do right but we go to energy drinks and fast food instead of proper nutrition and sleep and all these things our world is trying to give us the quick and easy fix instead of the long-term discipline that's so so much harder we're always looking for the shortcut the hack the easy way but saints are built through discipline through consistency and through long-term thinking i know personally this has become a different level for me that that I was like "Okay I kind of get that on the personal level." And and sometimes I still fail on those but I'm like I feel like I can lead myself okay but now I figured out that this also applies in my parenting is that I want my kids eventually in their 8 seven three and one i want them to be like functioning citizens one day but it has to start as I need to be functioning kids inside our family so I want them to do chores i want them to clean up after themselves i want them to listen when we say it the first time but here's what I found out as a dad is you have to say it like 30 times and be patient for them to actually do it before it actually gets done right cuz I'll like clean this up clean this up clean this up in the back of my mind I'm like it is so much easier if I just do it myself because it's taking them forever and I'm losing my mind waiting for them to do this instead i'll just do it but it takes patience to suffer through that process and this is a leadership principle that that it can be so much easier just do the quick thing get it done yourself instead of building and struggling through the hardship of guiding them through and here in all of this Solomon is showing us that the temporary fix always promises immediate satisfaction but ultimately it delivers long-term destruction the path wanders aimlessly cuz there is no real destination it's just the next hit the next high the next temporary escape from reality that our world offers us and our world craves but that ultimately doesn't fulfill us like God does so here's a question after we get a really grim picture after I hope I've depressed you a little bit and if you're not depressed you're lying to yourself cuz something in here should convict you in some way through the Holy Spirit but how do we fix this how do we produce saints inside our families inside our churches inside our cities and our culture and our country and ultimately our world that change things and expand the kingdom of God well luckily Solomon doesn't stop writing here but he continues on in verse 7 he says ' So now sons this small little verse there's just so much in here he says listen to me and don't turn away from the words from my mouth as Solomon is writing this he's not just saying this as this is his authority this is him speaking but is the Holy Spirit speaking through him and in the first way when we talk about how do we produce saints how do we produce people who are moving in the right direction the first thing we need to do is we need to listen absorb and follow God's word i love how simple this is he says "Hey listen to me." And he's not saying listen to me he's saying "Listen to God who is writing these words through me." And he says "Don't turn away from these words don't just uh kind of throw them off but hear the words that are coming from his mouth that are inspired by God and here's the thing is the first step to becoming a saint is developing the discipline to actually listen to God's word and follow it i was thinking about this week and um I don't know if you guys know this but sometimes men have a hard time of listening and following directions did you guys know that anyway all right you raise your hand dude uh man it's a bold statement just made yourself a target man we We usually shamefully shove our hands in our pockets a little bit further in that but I applaud you but yes we're bad at listening to directions i I I And here's how I do it's like my wife will tell me something and and and I hear it but I don't listen to it and then I just you know put more blinders on and and and then plug my ears and be like I'm going to fix this myself right um I don't think I could have lived 40 years ago or whatever it was before like with actual maps and before GPS um without Google maps like that's a divorce waiting to happen i'm just going to say right like it's it would be brutal uh but it's like we are not always great at hearing things and listening and there's there's this thing I think it's like our sin nature that it's like I don't want to hear what the world is telling me i don't want to hear even what good sources are saying i can do this myself i can fix it myself the problem is you don't send in a puppy to clean up a puppy's mess right uh you send up someone who can actually clean that mess up but for men often times we struggle in hearing these things we hate asking for directions we hate asking for guidance but Solomon stops his son knowing his nature here he says "Son you need guidance." He says "Son you need to listen to words and wisdom that is smarter than you that is more informed of you that is from God the creator of the universe who I guarantee is smarter than everyone else every one of us in this room." And as he tells them he gives them some practical things of we need to listen when when we talk about listening what does that mean when it comes to God's word is we need to actually read our Bibles not just when we're in crisis sometimes when life goes bad we're like I'm going to go read my Bible now and let me open up my Bible and it will go to the magical verse and it will save everything and sometimes that can happen but when we go to our Bible consistently we're constantly listening and hearing the voice of God but we don't just listen we also absorb that when we absorb God's word and his teaching we don't just read it but we think about it we we discuss it we let it shape the way we're thinking we let it shape the desires of our heart and our soul and it transforms us and allows us to do that last thing of following we we get to apply what we learn and and here's the thing is it's really hard to apply God's word when it's inconvenient when it's tells us that that's not the way we want to live our life that it challenges us our thinking that it gets us out of our comfort zone into something different you see not only do we listen to the word of God but he keeps going here in verse 8 and he picks up and he says "Keep your way far from her don't go near the door of her house." He's talking about the tempress here verse 9 "Otherwise you will give up your vitality to others and your years to someone cruel strangers will drain your resources and your hard-earned pay will end up in a foreigner's house." Verse 11 at the end of your life you will lament when your physical body has been consumed you see Solomon continues "And how do we produce saints we listen we absorb we follow God's word but we also need to establish protect and enforce God's boundaries." You see Solomon gives some very practical advice here in verse 8 he's saying when temptation is coming and when temptation is knocking on your door and he is talking about all temptation of our sin but also especially there's a kind of a connection here of sexual temptation but he says when it is knocking he doesn't say go answer the door he says run away from the door and and here it's not about being afraid of our sin it's not being afraid of women here trust me that's not what Solomon is saying right although some healthy fear is probably appropriate and that that's a different sermon Um but it's about being wise enough to avoid situations that could compromise your integrity here's the deal is real men do not prove their strength by getting as close to the line of sin as possible and not stepping over real men prove their strength by when they see the line they run away from the line and they can't even see the line barely anymore it's like a dot that's a friend's reference okay but they're on the good side of the line and they're so far from it that they don't want to be close to that temptation and you see Solomon gives us some really practical things on what does this look like to have these boundaries in our life is first I think we need to establish boundaries you need to know your weakness and know the weaknesses of where when Satan is going to take a run at your life where's he going to hit you at he won't hit you at your strength he's going to hit you in your weakness and you need to know what that is so when you kind of know and establish that boundaries then you can protect that boundaries how do we protect our boundaries is we don't negotiate with temptation or make exceptions we don't say just this once instead we protect and say "No I'm never falling into this." And then lastly we enforce our boundaries here's the deal and here's what's hard about temptations is you will fail cuz we all do we're broken we're sinners we do dumb things we make dumb decisions that result in dumb mistakes that give us really bad consequences but when that happens is we don't let one mistake become a pattern instead we get back on track we reinforce those boundaries right away and it applies to everything our marriage our finances our time our integrity i think about this in my own life is I've set boundaries in my marriage me and my wife have of making sure that I'm not going to end up in a dumb situation one of those things is I don't meet alone with women if I ever have to meet in a counseling or a setting like it's in the office or it's like in you know an office of Starbucks with like 20 of our closest friends right and strangers like this is out in the open i will never be in a place the old Billy Graham rule where I could be compromised and that could look bad even if nothing is happening but that this even comes bigger when we talk about technology my wife and I uh we know each other's passwords um to get into our phones uh she has me tracked on Find My iPhone i try to argue that one i'm like I just want to be free like no one needs to know where I am right um and she she argued with that one and then I found out about Life 360 and how you're all tracking your kids all right um I feel like that's an invasion of privacy but my kids aren't teenagers yet so I'm totally going to change my stance once they get a little closer to that but even little things like she also she's logged in to all of our bank accounts and then she somehow logs off so I got to log her back in to all of our bank accounts over and over again but at any time my wife can take my phone and go through it and look at whatever she wants and vice versa and here's the goal of that is we have a boundary of transparency that there is nothing for me to hide so there's nothing for her to hide so we make sure that we're not stashing away things that can grow and become something worse instead of just like Solomon here when we see the door of temptation we run the other way which leads us to our final way we produce saints in our life solomon is going to wrap this up in verse 15 of what we're going to read in Proverbs today and he says this "Drink water in verse 15 from your own sistern water flowing from your own well should your springs flow in the streets streams in the public squares?" He's asking this rhetorically and he's saying "No in verse 17 they should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers let your fountain be blessed and take pleasure in the wife of your youth a loving deer a graceful dough let her breasts always satisfy you be lost in her love forever i don't have time to break this down in this sermon so have fun with your kids later on today after church all right verse 20 why my son would you lose yourself with a forbidden woman or embrace a wayward woman verse 21 for a man's ways are before the Lord's eyes and he considers all his paths here's the last way we produce saints when we talk about this through the lens of proverbs is we need to find enjoy and be satisfied in God's gifts you see Solomon gets very positive in the end of this chapter he talks about finding satisfaction in your own wife being captivated by her love being blessed by the gift that God has given you but this is not just about marriage that is the overarching but this has spiritual components that's spring out of this as well jesus picks up on this idea in Matthew chapter 7 that spiritually this applies for us as well of we need to make sure we're protecting our relationships or finding satisfaction in the right things and not being drawn away like our culture is trying to get us to do but in Matthew 7:13 I love this as Jesus is talking about this is spiritually finding satisfaction in him it says this "Enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction and there are many ways to go through it." What did Solomon say before he's saying "Make sure you're going in the right path." He said "The temptress was confusion the temptress was unstable." That the temptation of our sin it leads us down the wrong path and Jesus told us what that path is he said it's wide and it's easy to go through our world is inviting us to to go into our sin inviting us to go down these paths inviting us to say "Find this pleasure find this look after this find your purpose in this." And Jesus saying "All of that leads to destruction." But verse 14 he said "But how narrow is the gate and how difficult the road that leads to life that leads to satisfaction that leads to fulfillment that leads to purpose that leads to this life that God gives us at large." And he says "And few find it." You see Jesus talks about the narrow path here that leads to life he said "It's not easy but it's worth it." It's not what our culture will say we need to follow through but it's exactly where God points us to and you see overall when we talk about this and how do we produce these saints that the Bible calls us to do is saints aren't men who never struggle but instead they're men who choose the harder path because they know it leads to somewhere good somewhere where God is and when we talk how do we how do we go how do we find these gifts of God how do we go down this path a couple practical things I think flow out of this passage in Matthew and in Proverbs 5 is first you need to find God's gifts one of the things I think that we struggle with is we don't recognize what God has already given us and and maybe as you're sitting in the chair I want you to take a log in your head your wife your family your work your opportunities what are the gifts that God has given you couple weeks ago we had VBS and it was crazy we took out these two rows of chairs we had uh over 280 kids and our last night we had our family sit here and I did a prayer walkthrough with our families with babies and everyone screaming it was awesome and chaos all at the same time i loved every minute of it okay but in in it we gave these kids prayer prompts and I walked through here and we asked the kids were like to pray out loud one at a time and we just said "Jesus thank you for out of the mouth of babes." These kids are like "Jesus thank you for being alive." When was the last time we thanked God for being alive they're like "Jesus thanks for the trees we have few trees in Phoenix but we're thankful for the ones we have." Right they're like "Jesus thank you for my cat i had to correct that kid." We're like "We don't pray for that." All right that's different but what are the gifts that we are thankful for how do we find them how do we recognize what God's put in our life and then we enjoy those gifts we don't just endure them we don't just get through another day but we celebrate them we are grateful for what God has so lavishly and amazingly given us and then we be satisfied in God's gift stop looking over the fence to your neighbor to see what they have to see what's better out there cuz often when we look over the fence when we look over the horizon and try to reach for someone else when we check someone else's social media and like they got a bigger this they got a better that they got a bigger TV whatever often we don't know the backstory and the destruction that accompanies it and here what Jesus is telling us what Solomon is telling us the scripture at large is telling us that contentment is a choice it is not a feeling that we choose to be satisfied in God we choose to find the greatness in him yesterday it was a great day we were invited out in the morning to go to the lake with someone from church and I don't have a boat you're like I'm not boat people okay you see this skin it goes red and back to white all right um I somehow did not get burned because I had a lot of sunscreen on and a lot of layers and a lot of like protection of everywhere else but uh we took our kids uh my wife and everyone else got burned but me um I felt bad our kids have raccoon eyes a little bit it's uh hard to get sunscreen everywhere but we went on the lake and it was fantastic we we went boating um and then we got on some rafts we pulled the rafts um I woke up and my back hurt i'm like what in the world happened and it was cuz I was on a raft like this for 15 minutes I think on the water um we swam and it was cool weather then we came home and after we had this great morning and kind of afternoon we're on a boat for 5 hours and didn't even feel like that then we came home and uh had some friends over put up a bit of inflatable slide kids running down it made some fajitas it was a great day and as I'm looking at this day that I got to spend with my kids and my family and all these fun little moments and activities and I watched the Diamondback score five runs in the bottom of the ninth inning and come back and win a game they had no business winning all right amen on that but in all this I was thinking how me and my family at night we would do it with our kids we're like what was the best part of your day and the worst part of your day i was thinking the best part of my day i was like man we went on a boat it was an awesome boat a boat that I didn't have to pay anything for and like they literally put us on the boat put us in the water drove us back to our car it was great service it was awesome i was like we did that we got rafting we got to hang out with friends we got to do all these great things i made some really killer fajitas that were so good but I was like what what was the best part of the day what were the gifts that God gave me and the gifts were the friendships the fellowship just the being with one another the joy that overflowed not that we deserve not that we worked for but just the blessings that God put in that time and as I was reflecting on this and seeing just the great day that we have and the great life we have it is nothing because of what we've earned because we've worked for what I am entitled to as our world said but it's just because of the greatness and the goodness of God to lavish gifts inside our lives but all this points to and all this flows to is none of that matters without the greatest gift in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that even though I am a broken man even though I am a messy man who has failed so many times that at times I've been like the man with no backbone at times I've been the man that thinks I'm the backbone of everything but when I recognize the savior in Jesus Christ who lived a perfect life who died on a cross for my sins who raised again and who forgave our sins I see the real hero of the story the real backbone of the entire universe is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and him alone and when we reflect on our lives when we see the gifts that he has given us we look at our culture and see that they have it so wrong but our God and his word and our church has what is so right and as we wrap up this whole series through family I I just love this because we said at the beginning that there will be mess we called it less of the mess not no mess because there will still be mess but that when we are in these messy situations as the mess of our families come we have a God we can look to we have a God we can come to and we have a God who can enter into that mess and show us something greater and we talked at the beginning of this series that our challenge for us is that when our family is a mess it's not to fix it on our own it's not to do what we know but it's a time to come to God and confess we actually read about this and we kind of launched out of this through God's word in in the book of James in the book of James when we talk about this is what does it mean to confess our sins what does it mean to bring them in front of him it doesn't mean that all of the sudden that we we can fix our issues but when we confess it to God we're not enlightening him for the first time instead we are telling ourselves that this is a problem and I need the creator of the universe the God almighty to come in and fix it and in James chapter 15 starting in verse 16 this is what he says he says "Therefore confess your sins." And I love this he doesn't stop there he says "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed so that the mess of our life doesn't have to define us anymore so the mess of our life doesn't yet have to be at the forefront but that he can heal it he says the prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effects [Music]