Session 1: Biblical Foundation

Welcome and Why This Weekend

Good morning. It’s great to see you all. We were sitting in one of our first leadership team meetings after Alf and Pam had officially retired, and we were praying about what God wanted to do in the fall. God spoke to each one of us individually, at the same time, right in that moment, and said, “I want you to do a Father’s Heart Weekend.” We said, “Okay, that’s amazing. When?” And he said, “In September.” We said, “That’s really soon.” So we put it together, and I really feel that this is something God wants. He’s got something going on, and we’re being obedient. We’re doing it free of charge, because I wanted everybody who could come to come. This is all just for you.

Take notes or don’t. The message of the Father’s heart is something you truly receive with your heart. A lot of times our head gets in the way. There are words we need to hear in our head in order to understand and open up and be receptive to the Father’s heart, but you receive it in your heart. So I want you to be relaxed and comfortable. Don’t be religious. If you need to stand up and use the washroom or get a coffee in the middle of something, go ahead. This is your living room. Just relax and receive today, and come with a heart posture to hear what God has to say.

My wife Patty and I went to an A School in Calgary, and they tell you not to take notes. They don’t make it that explicit, but Patty writes as part of her way of processing the words that are coming in. She doesn’t write so she can go back and read it again. If you look at her notebooks and journals, it’s all written over different pages and none of it makes any sense. But the act of writing helps her process the words. So feel free to do whatever helps you process and receive and hear.

Saved at Two

I’m going to share a quick overview of my story. I acknowledge that some of you have had crazy encounters with God, crazy encounters with the Father. If I knew your story, I’d sit down and hand you the microphone, and I’d learn a thing or two. That’s ultimately a significant truth: there’s always another layer, and there’s always more that each one of us can take. Maybe you’ve grown up in Christendom and live thinking that God is angry with you right now. Well, we’re going to change that today. Maybe you’ve figured out that God is a Father and you’ve gone a long way down that road. There’s another layer. So just be open and see what God has to say.

I was saved at two. We were going to a church on the mission field, and my parents were going to serve communion. My mom felt that you really should have accepted Jesus before you take communion. Here was her thinking. A new Christian, an adult who has lived their entire life knowing nothing about God, walks in, somebody says, “You need to accept Jesus,” something in their heart says yes, and they accept him. What do they know about doctrine? Nothing. They grow from there. How is that different from a two-year-old? Can’t they believe what little they’ve received and then grow in it? So at two, I accepted Jesus into my heart. I’ve never done it again. I’m 52 years old now, so I’m 50 years old in Christ.

I’ve been in church for ages. My parents were great. I had a father who was as good as he could be. He grew up in a military household where his dad didn’t like kids, and my dad was way better than that. He didn’t necessarily know what to do with kids, but he liked them. He didn’t play sports, but he encouraged it. He also really liked CNN. CNN Headline News came out in the eighties and that was his jam. He was addicted to all that information coming at him. He had no idea what was coming when the internet arrived later.

He was a pastor, and he was the kind of person who would stand up and share what he’d read in the Word, and a week later he’d read something in the Bible that contradicted what he had just preached. So he’d go back up to the pulpit and say, “Guys, I made a mistake. I saw something in the Bible.” My parents made the Bible the ultimate authority and they bowed to it. I grew up under that. I saw miracles as a kid. My parents taught me that I could hear God. They taught me it was my job to find him for myself, and they showed me how to do that. As far as being raised in a good environment, I had the spiritual equivalent of a silver spoon in my mouth.

Fast forward. I’m 30 years old and living in Abbotsford, and I’d been involved in ministry. From a young age I wanted to be involved in ministry. Ministry is where you get blessing, where you’re used by God, where there’s abundance and anointing and presence, because you’re being used by him. I wanted that. I was a youth pastor for a little bit, and I got to see how amazing it was to touch people’s lives, and how awful it is to deal with a church board. I didn’t even care what they were going to pay us. We were below poverty wages, trying to start a young family, but it was ministry, and it was amazing. I could hear God. I would ask him questions and he would answer them.

When I was 30, God told me to leave the church I was at, in a very dramatic fashion. One day I’ll share that testimony. He told me to leave where I was and come to The River. I showed up, and that day we went out for lunch with Alf and Pam. We asked them, “Tell us about your church. God told me to come here, so I don’t actually know anything about it. It’s not like I went shopping for this.” Alf said, “Well, we really talk a lot about the Father’s heart.” I thought, “Okay, maybe that’s this quarter’s theme, and then they’ll do a theme on end times or whatever.” Most churches go through different themes. I figured the Father’s heart was just one facet of how they taught the Bible. We were there for six years, and every single Sunday we talked about the Father’s heart. We left for a number of years and came back three years ago, and every single Sunday we’re still talking about the Father’s heart. And there’s always more.

Catch the Ball

In that first stretch, I started hearing some of these things and it hit me in the head. After a while I was excited and a bit hungry to have a closer, more intimate relationship with God, but there was still a lot of stuff in my head. One day I was at a Jack Frost conference. Jack Frost was a man who went around speaking about the Father’s heart, and Alf and Pam encouraged a lot of people in our church to go. My parents, who were pastors of a church in East Vancouver, also came to that meeting. So there was my dad in the meeting, and me in the meeting, and God was showing me his Father’s heart through all kinds of things. It was kind of cool, because I had my heavenly Dad and my earthly dad, and they were both pretty cool.

Up until that point, God to me was exactly like my earthly father. God was watching CNN Headline News. He was watching the earth. He had a lot to do. He would come and help me with my problems, get me started on fixing the problem, and once I was set, he would go back, because he had a big world to watch. That made sense to me. God is great, he’s kind, he’s gracious, but he’s busy. That was fine. He was exactly like my father.

So I’m sitting in this conference, up in the balcony, and my dad is right there. I’m worshiping with my eyes closed, and I hear out loud, “John, catch the ball.” I thought, “What do you mean?” And I hear again, “John, catch the ball.” I open my eyes, because I don’t know if somebody is talking to me. I look up, and right in the stage lights shining out toward the crowd, I see a baseball flying toward me. It was real enough in my vision that I put my hand up. And all of a sudden I hear God say, “Awesome. Now throw it back.”

In that moment it broke me, because my dad couldn’t throw a ball. I wanted to play baseball as a kid, and I needed to learn how to throw. My coach encouraged me to practice with my dad, and my dad tried to catch the ball and couldn’t. He tried to throw it to me and couldn’t. He was embarrassed. We both went back inside and never talked about it again. That was something that wasn’t going to be part of our deal. In that moment, God highlighted for me that he is different from that guy. That guy is great. That guy is amazing. But God is his own person. I’m going to have my own relationship with him, and it’s going to be based on different things. To some degree it’s going to be based on me, on my heart, on my likes and wants and desires, and he’s going to relate to me on that.

That got the Father’s heart message started in my head. Years later, another big event happened, and God took it from my head and put it in my heart. A year or two after that, another big moment came when God revealed the way he wants to communicate with me, and I started hearing him clearly. My relationship with God really took off. He became my mentor Father, the one I talk to and walk with every single day. That’s what’s available. I don’t think you ever get to the bottom of it. I don’t think you get to a place where you say, “I am now an expert on the Father’s heart.” God has amazing, interesting facets, and he wants you. So wherever you’re coming from today, be hungry and open, approach it with your heart, and God is going to take you to another level.

My testimony basically says there are more layers. Later we’re going to go through different father types. My father type was a good father, and he represented God. The way we understand our earthly father helps us understand who God is. It’s sometimes even harder for somebody who has a good father to understand that God is different and unique, and that God has a personal relationship with you that is different from the one with your earthly father. That was my challenge. It took me 30 years of being a Christian, of following God all my life, of reading the Bible, of praying, of seeing signs and wonders and doing all kinds of things, to realize that it wasn’t about works. It wasn’t about being a good Christian. It was about a relationship, and I was supposed to approach him on that basis.

My desire for ministry is great, because ministry means God is flowing into me and out of me. But being the tool in God’s hand is not God’s best plan for you. We have it in worship songs: “Oh, to be used by you. That’s all I want.” But if you said to your friend, “I’m feeling used by this person,” that’s negative. That’s not how we want relationship. God wants to flow through relationship. Jesus came to reveal the Father. We get to see who that Father is, and the more we understand who the Father is, the more we can reveal the Father just by being his sons and daughters.

The Basket for Everything Else

I’ve already started, but I’m going to start the foundations piece now. This is the session aimed at your head. Everything I just said about your heart, absolutely listen with your heart, but our heads get in the way. So I want to make sure it’s really clear that there is a biblical foundation for this approach to facing God.

I was talking to somebody the other day about the Father’s heart and how significant it is. They said, “I don’t think you can get that focused on one aspect of God.” And I said, “Actually, this is the basket that all other aspects fit into. He is a Father. He is love. Everything else about him fits inside that basket.”

It’s a tough topic to some degree. After having been on this journey, and being at The River, where it’s kind of all we talk about, I’m surprised when I’m outside talking to other Christians, people who are serving God and doing their very best to know everything and do all the right things and grow in their faith, at how few of them have a revelation of God as a Father. There are all kinds of other ways to see him. Some people see him as at the very least slightly disappointed in our imperfections, judging us for not doing well, hoping we’d do a little bit more, trying to cobble together a plan C for our life because we’ve already failed at plan A and plan B. There are a lot of ways to view the Christian experience, and those are not accurate.

The accurate picture of God and our relationship with him is the prodigal son, where the father is standing there waiting, and as soon as he sees the son, he runs to him. It has nothing to do with what the son is going to contribute to the family, how he’s going to minister, or how he’s going to compensate for all the ills he’s done. It’s about the opportunity to embrace the Father, and for the Father to embrace the son or the daughter. That’s it. That’s the way.

Uncovering the Root

So how did Christianity get so off track? I’m going to start with uncovering the foundation. We’re not laying a foundation of something new. We’re uncovering the foundation. If you look at the early church through the right lens, you see that the early church really got it. They understood that God was a Father and that they were sons and daughters, and that he was covering them, protecting them, and walking them through their difficulties. And they had difficulties. They were under a lot of persecution from the people around them. They were being martyred and driven out of their homes. So they gathered together and pressed into living out their life as sons and daughters.

The foundations of this have since been lost, and it is every generation’s job to go back and refind the gospel. If you look at different revivals over time, it’s as if people dug and found some gold. They said, “This is amazing, we’re rich,” and they were truly rich. They ran around, stopped digging deeper, and spread what they had found. That’s exciting. Then a number of years go by and somebody digs a little deeper, finds another nugget, and runs around again. We keep uncovering a little bit more. But down at the bottom there is actually a foundation, and there are vines that have grown over it. Part of what we’re digging through is the things that have covered it, and at the bottom there’s a root.

We’re never going to get to the point where we have a perfect understanding of what the gospel was supposed to be. When Jesus said to Peter, “On this rock I will build my church,” he had a picture in his mind of what the church would look like. I believe he could see all the way up to today, and he knew what it would become. It is our job to keep going back and finding out what it is supposed to be. So I’m going to give a little bit of church history to expose a root, and then we’ll talk about what the Bible and Jesus himself said about God as a Father.

The early church got it. By the mid-second century they had put a price tag on sin and made it a transaction. Underneath all their pressure they had a real holiness understanding, and the saying goes that tough times make tough men. These people were solid and tough. Then times got easier, people started living looser lives, and things came in that were not pure. The early church didn’t know how to deal with that. They had started to lose something about connecting with God on a heart level, and they went back to trying to figure out how to redeem the people who were starting to fall off the wagon. They said, “You’re allowed one repentance. Every Christian is allowed one repentance. You get a little tag, so don’t use it up.” From there it degraded.

By the middle of the third century, Rome made Christianity the state church. Then basically all the citizens were suddenly Christians because of where they were born, not because of what was going on in their hearts. All kinds of things entered in through the church and the power structures. They needed to control and police this institution. They built on a foundation of works and accounting. They basically made your relationship with God an accounting ledger, and different systems through the years have been part of figuring out whether you’re good or not.

Various revivals have come along and uncovered new truths. It started with Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Those 95 theses started asking questions like, “Isn’t it through Christ alone that we’re saved?” They literally had books listing the prices of different sins. You could go through and order from a catalog. It’s crazy. They had lost the understanding that it was through faith and repentance and Christ alone, and the price he paid on the cross. That’s what those 95 comments covered. From that point forward there have been different moves of God that uncovered new truths about what the original church was supposed to be, going down layer by layer by layer. But there is still a root in the church that says it’s about how good you are.

Two Trees

I was reading a book, and I won’t get too deep into it because it’s a whole other topic. This is the foundation, and I’m not teaching everything in one session. It’s by James Jordan, and it’s called Ancient Roads. In it he talks about the two trees in the garden. There’s the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one you’re not supposed to eat from. And there’s the tree of life, which is God. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were cast out of the garden and separated from the tree of life, and now it became a struggle to get back to it.

The point he makes in this book is that it’s not just the tree of the knowledge of evil. We figured that part out: don’t judge, which means don’t walk around pointing out everybody else’s sins. I’ll tell you this about sin: there’s at least one for each of us. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Move on. Don’t judge other people’s sins. Good, we got that. But it’s also the tree of the knowledge of good. That is where a root still creeps up in Christendom.

Somebody gets saved, and what’s the first thing we do? A handful of people accept Jesus at a meeting, and we say, “We need to get these guys into discipleship training.” And what do we teach in discipleship training? You need to read your Bible. You need to pray. You need to connect with other believers. You need to tithe, or start giving an offering, trusting God with your finances. You need to do these things to progress in your Christian faith. That’s just a list of things that are good. It’s the tree of the knowledge of good, and it’s the wrong tree. We’re supposed to teach people how to have relationship with God, and we don’t.

I firmly believe that the next move of God is going to be this. Most people come into the Father’s heart message by a step-by-step process. We get saved, and we learn a whole new way of being guilty and judging ourselves for not doing what’s right and living under condemnation. We don’t understand God as a Father but as maybe an angry judge, with Jesus there holding God back from smiting us. Then we move over to understanding God as Father and carry on with that journey, hopefully. I believe God doesn’t want the church to continue that way. I believe he wants people to come into the gospel totally understanding who they are, reborn as sons and daughters into his glorious family, and to start with a pure relationship. I want to hear what that message sounds like when it invites those people in.

I use the words “discipleship training” because I don’t know what other word to use. But I don’t want discipleship training like the old way. I want son and daughter training: how do you grow in the family of God, and let Christ be formed in you, so that all the good things you’re supposed to be doing come out of you naturally, because you’re connecting with God in the right way? Instead of a step-by-step process, it’s going to be direct. I’m excited about that.

Everything has to be tested by Scripture. There is a lot of really crazy stuff that comes up when people use their feelings to determine what’s right and wrong, so everything has to come back to Scripture. I’m going to take the next 30 minutes at the most to go through what the Bible says very specifically about the Father’s heart message. As I just shared about these roots, we want to uncover them and go back to what the truth is and what the basics are. Whatever else the church has brought in, whatever other roots are there, if we clear all of that away, this is the truth. I’m not putting verses on the screen, so feel free to write down the references and look them up yourself later. We’re recording this, and we’ll make it available afterward.

Chosen and Adopted

John 1:12: “But to all who believe him and accept him, he gave the right to become children of God.” That’s a legal right. He gave you the right to do this.

Ephesians 1:4: “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” Verse 5: “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.”

He decided before you felt like a disappointment. He decided before you felt like you had some failure in your life. He decided before you felt exhausted, burnt out, and dry. He decided before you felt guilty. He decided because you’re his son and daughter, he loves you, and he wants to connect with you, and it gave him great pleasure. Bringing you into his family makes him happy. Is God’s joy infinite? His capacity for joy is infinite, but every time somebody comes into the kingdom, he celebrates with new joy. You have the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost sheep, and directly after that the parable of the prodigal son. All three are stories making the same point: God loves it when he gets to connect with you. He is filled with joy.

Now, I’m going to be careful here, because God is not disappointed with you if you’re not available to him. If you’re scared of him and standing back, he has tons of patience, because he knows what’s coming. You’re going to be available for a hug. You are not under any condemnation for taking a moment to get to a point where you can have the intimate connection with God. But he receives joy when we become his sons and daughters and when we grow in that relationship. It fills up his infinite joy tank a little more. Isn’t that crazy? It gives him pleasure.

Jesus Came to Reveal the Father

Now Jesus’ mission. We have a lot of red letter in the Bible, the places where Jesus actually talks. John 17 is a prayer over the church, over the disciples who were there and those who would believe in him later, as he’s about to go to the cross. Basically he says, “Father, I’ve done what you asked me to do. I’m handing these people off to you.” He prays, verse 4: “I brought glory to you here on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” Verse 6: “I have revealed you to the ones you gave me from this world. They were always yours, and you gave them to me. And they have kept your word.” Verse 7: “Now they know that everything I have is a gift from you.” Verse 8: “For I have passed on to them the message you gave me.”

At that point Jesus is saying that everything he has done before now has been a perfect representation of the Father. I have revealed to them exactly who you are by every single thing I have done. His job was to reveal. Jesus did not make any mistakes on this. He revealed the Father perfectly. You can go back over every story, every interaction, every word that Jesus said, and say, “This is a perfect representation of the Father.” And John 17:25: “O righteous Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do, and these disciples know you sent me. I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so.” So he has revealed who the Father is, and he continues to reveal him. Jesus used words, stories, teachings, parables, and actions to reveal God. Every facet of everything recorded about Jesus reveals the Father.

John 14:9: “Jesus replied, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?'” He emphasizes that he has shown the Father just by who he is. It’s as if Jesus isn’t even there, and it’s just the Father. I heard somebody make this comment: Jesus never did any miracles. Jesus was just there while God was doing miracles. He was revealing the Father in every single thing he did.

I play that out in my own head. Think of the pool of Bethesda, where Jesus heals the one person. There were probably dozens if not hundreds of people around that pool. It was a massive superstition that when the waters stirred, the first person in got healed, and they believed it. This man had been there for years, and Jesus walked past dozens, maybe hundreds, of other people he didn’t heal. I wonder if he was representing the Father perfectly by healing just the one. Maybe he himself wanted to heal everybody, but that wasn’t what the Father told him to do, and he had to represent the Father perfectly.

I used to think that Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit were just different ways of explaining the same thing. Maybe the early church couldn’t understand a God who operates outside of time. Operating outside of time means you can be in a lot of places and pay attention to a lot of things at once, because time constrains us in weird ways. I thought maybe they used these three personas to explain that God is always available and always listening to my prayers and your prayers. I actually worked out this theory pretty well. Then one day I read about the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is praying, “Father, take this from me, but not my will, yours.” And it hit me: they had two distinctly different wills. They’re not the same person explained in different ways. So the mystery continues. The Trinity is a mystery.

How Jesus Spoke of God

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to God every single time as “your Father,” or once as “our Father.” That is his entire way of presenting who God is and how we’re supposed to relate to him: your Father, or our Father. That got me curious, and because we have Google and AI and can do some interesting text searches, I went through the language in the Bible for every way Jesus referred to God. Any way he refers to God as Father, whether “the Father,” “your Father,” “our Father,” or “the Father of Abraham,” comes to over 175 times. He uses just the word “God,” when he’s not quoting source material, about 70 times. Sometimes he quotes a passage from the Old Testament, and he uses the word God in that, but when he’s talking about God himself, it comes to around 70 times. “The one who sent me” he uses 40 times. “Lord” is 15 times. “Power” is two, and “Most High” is one.

And then there’s Abba. There are five times when Jesus is praying and it isn’t a demonstration or a teaching moment, and his words are actually recorded. Four of those times he uses the word Father, and he’s praying about something big. But in the garden of Gethsemane, in Mark, where he gets down and says, “Not my will but yours,” he cries out to God with “Abba.” It’s the only time he uses that word. His connected, close relationship with God comes out as, “Dad, you can do anything. If you would just take this cup from me, but not my will, yours.” That’s crazy. If you add up all the other ways Jesus refers to God, they don’t come to even half the number of times he says Father.

The Law Reveals God’s Heart

One of the things I really like about the way Jesus represented the Father, and I only learned this recently, is this. All of the law, all of the things in the Old Testament about who God is and the things we’re supposed to do to be perfect, are things God does. He’s revealing his own character in them. When he says don’t murder, he’s saying, “Don’t murder because I am love, and love doesn’t murder.” Don’t steal, because I am love and love doesn’t take what’s not mine. If you look at every single law, and there ended up being hundreds of them, and you understand the point and the fruit of that law, you can see God’s actual character, his love.

Jesus comes onto the scene trying to show the reality of God’s heart when we’re walking in connection with him. Jesus wants to reconnect us to that tree of life, where we’re not focused on the rights and wrongs of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but on the life that is God, his love. He’s trying to reconnect us with that.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus starts going into what the law says and then how to build on it. Matthew 5:38: “You have heard the law of Moses says, ‘The punishment must match the injury: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person.” That’s the heart of the Father. That’s the heart of Jesus, who is revealing the Father. Do not resist an evil person, because I am love, and I don’t resist evil people. Isn’t that amazing? “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.” I am love, and if I am injured by you, I don’t turn around and retaliate. I just stand there, ready to take more, because I am love. “If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too.” That’s my heart. If I am treated unjustly, I’ll take more.

God is not an angry judge waiting to smite us when we make a mistake. He’s not even slightly disappointed in us. You can go on and on through the Sermon on the Mount. Every one of the things Jesus encourages us to do, to challenge our thoughts and beliefs and motivations, are things he himself perfectly does because of love, because he’s representing the Father. Those are exactly who the Father is.

The Woman Caught in Adultery

One of my favorite stories in the Bible for understanding the Father, and this one really hit me when I was learning about God as a Father, is the woman caught in adultery. A woman is caught and thrown in front of Jesus and a crowd. They say, “The law of Moses says we should stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap Jesus. He turns the tables and says, “Whoever is without sin, cast the first stone.” Their hearts are all convicted and everybody leaves, and it’s just him and this woman, and she’s guilty. He asks, “Where are your accusers?” She says, “Lord, there are none.” And he says, “Neither do I accuse you.”

If Jesus says, “I don’t accuse you,” that means the Father, standing right there, says, “I don’t accuse you.” They perfectly represent who the Father is. The Father is not ready and waiting to accuse you when you make a mistake.

I grew up my entire life believing that if I had an impure thought, or had done something wrong, or had cheated in some way, I had let God down. I love worship. Worship is my favorite thing about church. I’d be happy to have no preaching at all and just do worship the whole time, because worship is a way you connect with God. I would come in and sit farther back and beg God for his mercy, because I couldn’t just approach him. If I approached God like that, he would think it was disrespectful to bring dirt into his house. I needed to clean my shoes off first and then come in and be okay with him. That was my understanding of getting my heart right so that I could connect with God in worship. Then I started to realize that God will bring the dirt on in. He’s good with the dirt. He desperately wants to connect with you. “Neither do I condemn you.”

Part of the Family

We are children in a family. John 20:17. Jesus has just risen from the dead. Mary recognizes him in the garden and goes to hug him, and Jesus says, “Don’t cling to me, for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” In that moment, the separation between God and man was dealt with. We had access to the Father, and not as something added after being reborn. We were brought in as full children.

Hebrews 2:11: “So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.” I have a shirt with Jesus wearing sunglasses, and it says, “I’m telling Dad.” I like it because it’s true. We talk about everything in our family. Jesus is my brother and God is my Father, and he’s Dad. Some people think I’m making light of Christianity, but I love the shirt.

Now the benefits and perks of being part of the family of God. John 16:23-24: “At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything. I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name. You haven’t done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy.” We’re supposed to pray directly to the Father, not through a saint, not through Mary, not through anything else. We can talk to Jesus and we can talk to the Father. The Bible doesn’t show anybody talking directly to the Holy Spirit. I don’t know what the difference is on all that, but follow the patterns in the Bible and you’ll do well. You can talk to Jesus, you can talk to the Father, and you don’t need to talk through anyone else. He wants a personal relationship with you.

John 16:27: “For the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from God.” The Father himself loves you dearly. He is not accepting you because he has to. He is not taking you because Jesus went and paid for all this stuff and now he’s thinking, “What am I going to do with all this junk?” Nope. You are God’s dream house. He said, “I’m going to come and live in you.” Jesus lives in our heart. You’re his house. Is it a rundown shack? A double-wide out somewhere? A fixer-upper? Is he going to throw some paint on you and flip you for a better one? No. You are his dream house. You’re perfect. You don’t need paint. He might bring in his presence. He might bring in some furniture. But when you’re redeemed, saved, and reborn, you’re not a project that needs to get fixed. You’re immediately held righteous and perfect before God. You’re his dream house.

Friends, Adopted, and Heirs

Romans 5:11: “So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” He likes to hang out with you. The God of the universe is your friend.

Romans 8:15: “So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him ‘Abba, Father.’ For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.” There’s that Abba, Father again, that Dad, that intimate, close connection.

Adoption was pretty common in the Roman and Greek cultures, but it wasn’t viewed the way it is today. Today, people who were adopted may want, at some point in their adult life, to know who their biological parents are. That wasn’t what adoption meant then. They didn’t have DNA tests back then, so there was no genetic idea. In their mind, you were the child of that parent, brand new. Put that together with Jesus saying we’re born again, and with baptism, where you die to yourself and are raised to a new life, and with being part of the family of God. You’re being born brand new, perfect, into God’s family. You are his biological children. You’re not an afterthought. You’re not something he had to bring in. You are his biological spirit children. Your spirit is his DNA.

Galatians 4:5: “God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, ‘Abba, Father.’ Now you are no longer a slave, but God’s own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.”

That whole thing I had before, that the greatest thing God could do was call me into ministry, is the slave mindset: I’ve got to come in and be good because of the things I do. I’m constantly on the lookout for what God needs and wants, and I’m going to serve him, and then I’ll be okay. That is not the relationship God wants for us. I have five kids, and two of my youngest sons still live at home. I want them to contribute around the house, but they are not slaves. They are family members. The things I teach them, the way I teach them, the things I ask them to do, and how I compensate them are all based on the idea in my head that one day they are going to be amazing men leading their own families. I’m leading them, steering them, guiding them, and pouring into their lives in some small way to steer them in that direction. But they’re not slaves, and in the end everything I have is theirs. God has made you his heir. You’re in the will.

Ephesians 3:6: “And this is God’s plan: Both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children.” Do all of God’s children share equally? You’re God’s child. Jesus is also God’s child. Do you share equally? Yes. All of God’s children. All means all. All of God’s children share equally in the riches from God.

Coming Boldly

Ephesians 3:12: “Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence.” That connects to what I said earlier about not worrying about knocking the dirt off your feet. God made it very clear to me at some point (it’s another long testimony and we don’t have time) that he gets incredible joy from his children who are alive to him. It breaks his heart that there are people he created, that he breathed life into, who are dead to him. He did all the same things to create them as he did to create you and me. He lives in that dichotomy: sorrow over those, and great joy to embrace you. I don’t mean that these people are bad and those people are good. It brings him great joy when he gets to embrace you and connect with you on a familial, relational level.

We had a great picture of it a few weeks ago in church. There’s a little girl here, and her dad was up front giving a testimony. She is oblivious to how you’re supposed to act in church, and she is adorable. She came running up the front, running around, so at home in this place, with so much life and joy in her. Her dad was in the middle of what he was sharing, and she was feeling the love, so she ran up and grabbed his leg. I thought, what an amazing picture of coming boldly. That’s what coming boldly into the throne room of grace means. It means, “I’m not perfect. There’s mud on my shoes. But Dad’s inside waiting, and the food’s hot. Let’s go.” You are invited in today.

Receive First, Then Pour Out

I’m going to close here with prayer, and then we’ll take a 15-minute break. There’s going to be a lot more, including more testimony and some opportunities to come up for prayer based on what we’re teaching on today. But I want you, number one, to dig as far down as you can. Take out the roots of the things that make you believe what you believe about God, if it isn’t what I just described. Ask God to show you where you’re believing the wrong things about what a relationship with him should look and feel like, and allow him to fill you up with the new things. Approach this with an open heart, because ultimately God wants to pour in love.

There are a number of pictures in the Bible that describe who we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to work in the church. In Ezekiel there’s a river that pours directly into the temple, and then the river goes out from the temple. In this setting we’re talking about connecting directly with the Father and then living out of that love and connecting with the people in front of us. Ministry is not about going out and earning something. It’s about what I do with this love that keeps pouring into me. It has to spill out at some point, and it ultimately represents the Father who is there. This is the picture of what God wants to do. You can’t pour out what you’re not receiving, and receiving comes from an intimate, connected, relational, heart relationship with God. So open your heart and let God pour into it, and don’t worry about the outflow. Worry about this connection. Amen.

Father, we thank you for this day. We’re going to do our best as leaders to do what you’ve told us to do. We pray that you do the work, that you open up hearts, speak truth, and share your heart. Throughout today, as we hear different testimonies, we pray that different people’s hearts will connect and open up, and that they will see themselves in the story and see themselves in you. Father, cover those people, that they would feel so much confidence and love and peace that lives would be changed. We pray that all of us, including me and all of the leaders who are sharing their stories today, would take further steps in understanding you as a Father. Amen.

I’m going to say one last thing. If you come up for prayer, or if you’re involved in this in any way, sometimes people are scared that they’re going to be uncovered, that their inner hearts and imperfections and the issues in their lives are going to be exposed. I’m going to tell you something: that’s not the heart of a loving Father, and you’re not going to experience anything that’s not the heart of a loving Father. Nobody here today is going to be exposed. You’re not going to come up and have somebody pray for you and say, “God just told me you’ve got some hidden sin in your life.” That’s not going to happen. You are going to receive God’s love. It is through connecting with God that Christ is formed in you and those issues in your life get dealt with. He is interested in that connection first. Don’t be scared to press in. All right, go have some coffee.