And so it from from humor to just loving God and loving people. Well, can we just give a Mission Grove? Welcome to dr tim Kimmel? Mm hmm. You know, I'm really excited about the theme because obviously this church is about jesus, it's about his heart, it's about it's guided by its word, but it wants to be tempered by his heart of grace. And and and I appreciate the fact that the guys leading, john and the team here understand the significant role the family plays in the success of a church, because these guys know that strong churches don't make strong families, Strong families make strong churches, they get that. And I appreciate that they're focusing in on it. But this although this focuses here, it forms the backdrop of the ongoing work of this church to be come alongside of us and help us because listen, family is work. I mean, it's it's good work. It's noble work, but it's it's work because at the core of it, if it's gonna work right, there's gotta be a love functioning in there. But love is work and it requires ongoing maintenance. You cannot think that you can put your your sense of commitment and love on cruise control and think that it's going to make it because there's just so much junk coming at us. We live in a culture that is antagonistic to our values and our belief system. But even without that it's just our lives are well, they're hurried. In fact, the very first book I ever wrote was called Little House on the Freeway. Sometimes it was help for the hurried home because I do sense that that's one of the, one of the bigger ongoing problems that we face as families is that were hurried. I don't mean we're in a hurry. Were hurried. What's the difference? Well, when I'm in a hurry, I'm setting the pace for that. You're setting the pace for that. But when were hurried, there are other forces and and and and influences out there that are kind of pulling us headlong into the future. Not necessarily with our best interest in mind. I saw a thing that I thought was a great illustration of this. Maybe you've seen it on a variety show or maybe at the circus. I saw at a circus. And have you ever seen the person that, that spins the plates on a stick? You ever seen that, that that gag where they take a stick and I don't have the stick and I don't have the right and I don't know how to do this. But I, you know, the idea they would take a plate and they put it on a stick and they spin it and then they add another plate and another thing you ever seen that? Well, I think that's what it's like trying to be family today. You know, we had all these, I only have four plates here, but let's just say you're starting off, You know, let's say, uh, you finish your degree program, You started your career, maybe you fall in love got married. You're you're connected with the church. Well you get these things spinning and and I only have four here, but you've got to have a whole lot more than that going. But the cool thing is there's an app for this and so we can, we can kind of figure out how to do this and we think we're really fine. And then some of these come along, We had four kids and you know, they require a lot more velocity to keep their plates there. There little saucers going on and they want us to help them keep it doing plus they have their own little plates, they throw out there so we got to keep them going and do it. But you know what? We're clever people were pretty good. And then one of these comes along, this is a teenager. It's not a saucer anymore. But it's not a plate yet either. It just thinks it is, it wants all the privileges of a plate that doesn't have any money. And it sure has a mind of its own when you try and put some spin on it, doesn't it? You know, I remember when there was a time when uh we have four of our kids were teenagers at the same time and I thought you got an extra break on your income tax, but they don't do that. The the point is is that doing family. It is a challenge. But it's also very strategic because you see right out of the blocks. God led with his plan. Do you understand chapter 1? Let's make man in our image and the image of God, he created a male and female. He created them. And then and then in Genesis two, he gives the creation account from kind of the other side of the street gives you another perspective on it. He closed up for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother cleave to his wife. The two shall become one flesh. And and they and so he had to configure them some way. Now he could have configured them into a country or a country club or a corporation or committee, but he configured them into a family. Somebody was watching that fallen angel that tried that coup d'etat in heaven and have been cast down to earth. He was watching and he said, I see your plan, I see your strategy for transferring your heart from one generation. It's his family. I'm coming after it. And we get genesis chapter three. And sure enough he came guns blazing. And and and and and put that little red dot right on eve and adam and boom, down they went. Now here's what's interesting. God didn't change his strategy even though sin entered the world. God didn't change his strategy. You say, well wait a minute. Yes, he did. Come on. I thought you were a theologian? Come on, Old testament it was Israel, Excuse me. And what was this real? Was it an extension of one family? Abraham and Sarah's family, remember? Yeah, but we're new testament people and it's the church now. Mm hmm. Yeah. Have you ever been a greeter here at the church? People come in clumps, you know that And you look at it boy, I can see the gene code in that group. They come in families. All we are is a collection of families. And my favorite definition of the family is from the late Pope john paul. He wrote, he referred to the family as a domestic church. He said it's the smallest church out there. And and and and so we represent his family. His strategy is the same. But for in order for it to work, we needed to redeem it to come and clean up the mess that happened in Genesis three and transferred down to the generations. And that's where God's son came to our rescue. And yet it's still easy with this incredible strategy of family to get off course. Even though we're well intended. And let's assume that most of you know what I mean by people who are have put your faith and confidence in jesus, you want you want him to play a role in it. But it's very easy though to um, be well intended, but still be misguided and how we do it. And I know all about that because I, you know, I had, we had a family and we saw how easy it is to get off course when Darcy and I found out we were going to be parents. We did with a lot of young christian couples do. We went to the christian bookstore and we got the, the key books on parenting back then and there weren't nearly as many as there are now, but there were some and and we start to read them and and by the way, we got some good helpful stuff from it. But but as we read them, we could sense this author is there's a there's a starting point that's framing everything I'm reading and we found that there were too overwhelming strategies that were kind of guiding most of these books that we read. One of them was fear. We sense this author was was was trying to address all this competition we're up against. And they were basically uh, telling us how to accommodate the fears we have and we feel outgunned and we feel overwhelmed and we feel unqualified and so forth. And by the way, I'm not questioning, there's junk out there. But but I knew a fear based plan for parenting was dead on arrival. I knew that was not a good idea, even though there was some good advice in it. The concept, the starting point was wrong because you see if we're followers of jesus, we should be the last people afraid of just about anything and I'm not kidding. I mean we don't think we're supposed to be afraid of, it thinks God meant for us to be afraid of. I'm afraid of running across the 101 on foot. That's a good fear. Don't do that. You'll get killed. Yeah, that's okay. But, but to be afraid of a lost world or cohabitating neighbors or the internet or Hollywood or, or hip hop, music or public schools or whatever. I mean, are you kidding me to be afraid of them? You see, it's hard to teach your kids to have confidence in a mighty God who had the first word and he's going to have the last one when we're scared. And yet field based parenting is a, is a, is a, there's a prevailing theme of a lot of christian families and the other one was performance based parenting where you know, you kind of outline what does a nice christian family look like, What, how do their kids act, how do they dress, what kind of movies they see, who hangs out with them. It's kind of like evangelical behavioral modification, A lot of sin management. And once again, I thought I saw some good points in the book, but I thought the the starting point is flawed, You're not going to get the results you want if you're basically trying to put your kids on a christian performance basis. You end up following your kids around with a spiritual report card that doesn't. But but I went to seminary, I went to a good one. I studied theology is on everything, but I never had anyone unpack a clear theology on family. I got some good courses, but never a theology. My wife Darcy is the brains of the operation. She made an observation followed by the right question. I said, wait a minute. Can God's apparent he's a parent and but we're his kids. Here's a question. I wonder if we could study him in his role as a parent dealing with his kids and see if there's any pattern to what he's doing, if there's any common things that he's doing and maybe kind of form them as handles for ourselves now. But we didn't limit ourselves to those handful of passages in the bible about parent child. No, no, no. We picked it up, page one and went to the last page. In other words, he's engaged with his people all the time, isn't he? Now, some of the people don't believe in him and they, they, they end up not his Children in the end or some do, but they go away of course, but he's always engaged and we thought, okay, is there anything to it? And sure enough, we saw a pattern and we got to where we could distill that pattern down to a paper napkin and there was one overriding theme to kind of describe the whole thing and that's his heart of Grace. In fact, out there on the resources table, there's a little card, you can put a put that thing of the, the napkin up there. We have this little thing that breaks down the four basic ways that his grace comes at us. You know, he at the bottom there, he's always dialing in on our inner needs and and he sets our hearts free the second level. He builds our character muscles and he ages at something bigger than here now and ourselves. And then we fill in the blanks on what those are like and those resources out there go deeper. But I I got to say something before I unpack that second level I want to talk to about those four wonderful freedoms. I got to say something about Grace because here's the other thing that we realized as we started talking about this is that there are some urban legends within the christian community, some theological urban legends about grace that are, that are widely embraced that keep us from ever letting it have its proper place in our family. Uh, let let me explain one of them see one of the struggles that a lot of christians have when it comes to grace as they, they tend to limit it to salvation to the work of salvation. You know, I once was lost. Now I'm found was blind. Now I see we recognize that there is no way we, as human beings could possibly make our way to God on our own because of our sin, he's a holy righteous God, there's no way we could get to him. You can no matter how hard you work at it, you can't get there because we fall short. That's why he had to send a redeemer, He sent his son, jesus, who was perfect in in human form and then he took your sins in mind on himself and he died on the cross for our sins, He rose from the dead to set us free. That's the gospel. Okay, so we get we get grace there. But then when we come to the ongoing life, this this is called salvation. That's called sanctification. We we have a bad habit of leaving grace there and not seeing it as an active ingredient over here. Here's another urban legend that that causes some people confusion when it comes to grace being the prevailing theme of their life. And that is some people, they get worried and said, whoa, wait a minute, you start talking about grace and family. What about the boundaries? What about consequences? What about discipline? See the assumption is that if Grace, if Grace is there, then we don't have boundaries. We don't have discipline. We don't have consequences. And see this is a this is a very flawed understanding of Biblical Grace and I can make this easy for you If I were to ask you right now, if you're a follower of jesus is jesus dealing with you and Grace right now? And the answer is did he erase all the boundaries? Did he throw the rulebook overboard? Are there now no consequences if we no the boundaries are right? Where they always were the rule books right there? The bible is there? Yeah, there he said the bible said them whom he loves, he disciplines but he does it in grace. Now, one more thing and then I'm gonna start unpacking these four freedoms. See it's real easy in our family to have a family that's guided by God's truth. And yet we don't invite Grace to center stage where it belongs? And let's say let's use our example here right here, since you came here to, to mission growth? I mean this is these guys, they work hard to create a setting here for us in this school, to really be able to focus in and dial in on God. People came here earlier this morning, set all this up, isn't it? Something they do for us Now, would you say since they started singing praises to God and even with john's interaction with you and and and and so far would you say so far from the truth point of view, have we got the story right so far? Are we being accurate to God's biblical truth so far? Come on. Yeah, okay, Alright, but what if it was 25° in this room the whole time and you're dressed just like you are right now. It wouldn't matter how right we're getting the truth, would it? It wouldn't matter. We could be as absolutely accurate biblically, but you wouldn't be able to respond it because you're so cold. And see that's what it's like in a christian family when we don't invite Grace to take its rightful role and we can be guided by God's truth. But if Grace is not there, then the temperatures office temp graces creates a temperature climate for people's hearts to respond better. You're with me on that and with that in mind, I'd like to unpack those four wonderful freedoms that we we found that God gives to us in the power of his grace. Okay. And and and and these things are game changers by the way, because when you start to understand this is what his grace looks like with a gun held dear head and under stress, then sure enough, then the only way you'll see that you can do this is you can't do it on your own power, jesus has to do it through you. And I love when he was talking about giving to the church, you don't give to the church. You give through this church in the same way God's Grace is not something that you give to others. He he wants to give it through you through your relationship with him. Let's learn together. Let's let's look at this first wonderful thing. Great space. Families give the people they love ready the freedom to be different. The freedom to be different. Now let me give you some synonyms for different. So you know where I'm coming from on this ready like weird free to be weird, bizarre, strange, goofy, quirky Grace space home not only have room for those kind of kids, they celebrate them. They do, but fear based homes do not have room for those kind of kids and spiritual performance based homes. Certainly don't have room for those kind of kids. Now, I'm not talking about your kids doing something that is clearly biblically wrong. I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about them doing something weird goofy that causes you to, to go go. You wonder what's wrong with friends? Do you have a little little little boy? You take a little boy, you send him out in the backyard to play. He would go and do a headbutt right into the garage door. Just boom hit into it. What is wrong with you? Well, he's a little kid, he's a little boy. They do that kind of dumb stuff and they'll do it again. Same spot on their head. You have a little girl, let's say you have a little girl and she's playing alone. Here's what's interesting, she might be, you might look and she's playing by herself, but she is not alone and she is never alone. She has friends and she talked with him, they're not things they're people, they have names, you give her a pile of rocks, she will make a family this big dude, this is Earl, he said dad and there's you know, give her a bunch of little barbie dolls, she put a little semicircle, play the view, you know, and I'll argue with each other and you know, her little brother comes in and sees one of the things, he'll bite the head off, throw it like a grenade, make explosives and their Children, they're weird. Then they become teenagers, Let's say you have a teenage boy 14, 15 years, he goes over to a friend's house and I'm thinking about doing something different with my hair cool, I'll help lie down in the grass, cover your ears and your eyes. He gets out the weed, wacker, you touch him and then he takes him in the house and gets in his mother's uh medicine cabinet, gets out the clara or the Loreal and he mixes it all a bunch of squeeze a bunch and then mix it together, sticks, leaves it on way too long, rinses it out, it comes out a little blue, a little pink little green, a little yellow now get something to spike it out and he goes home and shows his christian mother, his new do and she looked at him and says something like, I don't think jesus would be very pleased with your hair, you know, isn't it interesting when we're desperate, we dropped the biggest name we know, okay, I don't think jesus would be very pleased with your, by the way, right now kids hair is, it's, it's tape, it's fine, but I've lived through several, several eras, I was a teenager in the middle of one of them when the hair went nuts and I'm just using this as an example because it's an easy one for you to see there's all kinds of way nuances, we could apply this, but you know, there was a time when the kids, hair was just really weird and and parents were coming down and making it a spiritual issue, making it a biblical issue. And I got to thinking well is it one of things I do for my bible reading every year is I just read through the bible, let's read through and then start over again each january. And the cool thing about that is if you wonder what the bible has to say about something, just put it on the bookmark in front of the bible and that one year, keep your eye out for what God has to say about hair. Okay. You're with me now I've read the entire bible on this one and I know what God has to say about hair basically, there's, I don't care, it's your hair, express yourself. I mean you could use it like a lab experiment for all I care, it's your hair and some of you might want to grab the chance while you can Yeah, because it's gonna bail on you. Yeah. Now now am I can parents create arbitrary rules about their kids hair? And the answer is yes. You're the parent just don't make it a moral issue when it's not, don't make it a biblical issue when it's not because once you do that, when we make a biblical issue or moral issue, have something that's not that that's, that's called legalism and that shoves a wedge between that kid's heart and ourselves and that kid's heart and God and I'm just using this as an example. But I mean you can see all the different ways where it's innocuous and yet we make it a moral issue or a biblical issue when it's not our, we have four kids. Our youngest one was a boy named colt and going into junior high. He, he shot up, I mean he was pretty tall over six ft tall. When he went into junior high, he was going in the eighth grade, he asked me to be the beginning of the year, he said dead, can I grow my hair long this year? I said, man, give it, Give it your best shot. I mean you're gonna have to grow in a long time until it's as long as mine was when I was in junior high because I was a 60's kid. We have had real long hair and so he, and he's talking and it was beautiful, he had long beautiful hair in the springtime, I was speaking at a church down in Miami, I had finished and I was actually in a taxi going to the airport when my phone went off and it was cold, he said, dad, it's spring break, I know we're gonna have a lot of fun, dad, I was wondering, can I have a mohawk? And I thought about that and I said, you know what, that would be kind of fun, tell you what, I'm gonna be home tonight around 7 30 I'll cut you a great mohawk, you can have it all week, but on saturday we're gonna have to buzz it off because your school doesn't allow mohawks where you have to go back to school. Okay, great, so we both hung up now, you need to know something, I was factoring in something was factoring in church, we go to Scottsdale bible church and at that time Scottsdale bible church had to evening services that match the morning services, so, and all the youth and Children's ministries were only available in the evening and they did that to bring the parents in the evening, so we have room in the morning and we had parking problems. Okay, so I knew he'd be at church, getting there about 4 30 so he'd be coming home just around seven, I'll cut him in a nice mohawk. He hung up and our daughter shiloh was listening, what did dad say? He said, I can have one. He's going to cut it for me when he gets home. She said, I know how to cut one of those. They got out the clippers and stuff and listen, remember his hair was really long. They trimmed the sides. But they took that, they took Elmer's glue and they glued that sucker up and he went to church okay. And I'm sure he sucked the oxygen out of a lot of people and the older people, you know, the ladies were taking every medication they could find in their person and wonder what happened to security and all that stuff. But in between the two services, you know, everybody kind of gathers out in the middle to switch, switch around our pastor at that time. It was Darryl, uh dale had said and he was outside talking to some people when he saw colt going across and he yelled in front of her call Kimmel, is that you get over here and he came over and he had to look up to him because he was so tall. That's the finest mohawk I've ever seen. That's incredible. How do you get to stay up like that glue? You know, and I wish I had a camera take a picture of me and cole kim will put into myself because that is the finest mohawk I've ever seen now, the reason I'm telling you this story from our this little chapter former and by the way, I'm sure some people thought that the son of the guy that talks on parenting, I'm sure. But but the reason I'm telling you this story is because it was very important to us that we took our kids to a church where the people running it know what matters and what doesn't matter. See, the bible says, man looks on the outside. God looks on the heart. Cole had a great heart. He loved the Lord, I loved his parents, his siblings. He worked hard in school. He's a good friend. He just want to have a mohawk. Okay, now you said women, women, tim. Don't you think sometimes when you look at the way a kid is dressed out and all that stuff that looks like they're in some kind of a moral freefall, The answer is, yes. Sometimes you look at somebody, they it looks like there's some problems going on here. My question would be, does it make any sense to attack the outside? The outside is a symptom the the hearts to fix the heart and the outside takes care of itself. If the heart's fine, don't worry about the outside. Don't worry about it. See that's what Grace looks like. It gives people the freedom to be unique. one of a kind different from ourselves and and all the different personalities that God wires people with, you know, you have several kids in your family. You're gonna have all kinds of different personalities, but that doesn't make our superior. That's what Grace looks like. It gives people the freedom to be different. Let me give you some scripture for this. It says May the God of endurance And encouragement. This is from Romans 15. Grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ, Jesus. That together you may with one voice, glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ therefore accept one another as Christ has accepted you for the glory of God. It shows glory to God when we have such an all encompassing sense of of of reception to all kinds of people. Every color, every size, every socioeconomic, every education level. And I love in Psalm 139 where David was talking about, he says, I praise you lord because I am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful are your works and my soul knows it very well. Grace based families allow the Children freedom to be different. Let me give you a second freedom is a great space. Families give their Children the freedom to be vulnerable to be vulnerable. What do I mean by this? I mean, they put them in, they create an environment in a home where kids don't feel like they have to wear masks around the people running the show that that they can verbalize their doubts and their fears that the fragile features of their heart can come to the surface without fear of them being attacked for that. I was going into the 9th grade big high school back in Maryland Annapolis High School and I was excited because um, the rock and roll was louder. The girls are prettier, there was more of both and I was going to play football for their famous coach, But that's summer. In between our 8th and 9th grade several 100 of us, incoming freshmen got letters in the mail from the Board of Education because of overcrowded conditions. We were being annexed to an elementary school in downtown Annapolis. So instead of going to the big high school were back in elementary school and there were several trade offs, probably the biggest was in the area of physics because normally in phys ed you put on that outfit and you go out and play and it's a very humid area. You might sweat, no problem. You take a shower and put your school clothes back on. We didn't have the option to do that. We would do everything in our school clothes. There was a gymnasium on the second floor of a building a block or so from the school and that's where we went and inclement weather or winter and I went up the stairs and and on the second floor I went in there one winter morning for phys Ed and as soon as I walked in I got excited because there was a trampoline opened in in that gym and I had never jumped on one before. They weren't pieces of equipment in backyards. Back then I got very excited or R. P. E. Coach came out and visited, teacher came out and we're all gathered around and he kind of looked around at everybody, came back to me and said, Kimmel, take off your shoes, leave on your socks, climb up here, follow my instructions. So I pulled my shoes off and climbed up. But as I did, I realized I had holes in both of my socks, not one both and one of my friends thought everybody should notice this, oh look at tim's toast. Isn't this sad? We need to take up a collection by tim some real socks. There's a way to put me in my place about are the economics of my family, which by the way, I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth. We, we were, we were not poor, we were just that first notch above middle class. You know, we paid our bills in time. We didn't miss meals. But other than that we tried to get as much mileage out of our clothing as we could and up to that point. I thought that was a good idea until I was up there and I was jumping and all I could think about was my toes. I was doing exactly what the coach told me to do. But all I could think about was this toast when I stood down. The other guys are jumping. I'm my thoughts, I'm gonna go home, get out my sock drawer. I'm gonna darn every parasite. I will never let this happen to me again. Ever. Because this is a real embarrassing moment for me. Well, when the class was over the bell rang, the bell rang. The coach takes off. So I got my shoes on, I went and got my books and my coat on and I went out the side door and got to the bottom of the stairs and I hear my name, Kimmel, wait up. It was a coach. He came downstairs. He told me this. I said, tim, I want to tell you why I called on you to do that demonstration, Tim! You're the most agile student in my class. And then you know what he did. He reached down, he pulled off his tennis shoes, he said he had a big old hole in his sock, he standard wiggling his toes that, you know, agile guys are tough on socks man. Now go to class. So I'm heading over to class and the whole way I'm thinking what's agile because I had no clue. I had never heard the word before. We show you what a pathetic student I was, but I was going to an english class. They had these big dictionaries on their own. They loved it when you actually looked up a word without a gun held your head and I looked up agile and I read for the first time in my life that I can move with speed, ease, elegance, and liveliness. And I read the second meeting of that. I was mentally alert and quick witted. No one had ever told me that before. I wrote it down and I memorized it And I did 180° turn in two major areas of my life, Athletics and academics. In fact, a couple a month or so later they had this contest who can do the most sit ups in the 9th grade Now they want to crunch things we do now you just think that have long since been banned from the public school system where you had some of you older people remember we had somebody held your feet down, which by the way hurt like mad and then you had to come all the way up and cross over and touch the other knee and then go all the way down, touch your head on the ground for it to count and I was determined I was gonna set the record that year. And the only reason I did so maybe because the guy next to me want to do that too and he wouldn't quit. So I just did one more than him and when they can't let us keep going. So we set up through his head class through English class and through most of lunch and they were sending out runners are up to 561, whatever my stomach muscles hurt for several days after that, but I didn't care because I was agile. Mhm. Now it took me a while to put the pieces together to figure out why that coach disappeared so quickly after class. He saw what happened and he had to get to his little office just off the gym, get his shoe off, get the scissors and cut the hole in his sock, put it back on and race and catch me. He doesn't go around with holes in it. And he's a pe teacher. They have new shoes and socks given to him and it's part of the deal. They have the best equipment on their feet out there. But see he saw a vulnerable kid that needed help and he touched his life with grace. Now mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, I want to tell you something. Our Children and teenagers have these kind of moments all the time. Someone has said described defined child has a 24 hour day, seven day a week, 365 days a year. Battle to keep from being embarrassed. They need to have sensitive adults that don't trivialize or marginalize these moments that are so tough for them. I realize some kids can become drama kings or queens and go, I understand how you got a right to that back. But for the most part, vulnerability is a very difficult fragile thing because you don't you can't do it with just anybody, especially if somebody retaliates. And that's why I think especially for us, men as adults, we learn you just don't be vulnerable. Not with anybody, not even your own spouse. It's and I think so much of that is is drilled into us when we're young. You know, paul, the apostle paul had a thorn in the flesh. No one's sure what it was. Um something it might have been a mental thing or whatever. Something that might have been an eye problem. But in second Corinthians, chapter 12, he went to God several times and please take this away from me. I can see everybody. And each time God said no. And then finally, in chapter 12 verse nine, God said, he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in your weakness. He says, therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my week. So that christ's power may rest in me. See, God uses these fragile things many times as a way for us to to show his grace to the people we love. And I love this colossians 46. Let your conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone. Grace based families give the people, they love the freedom to be different vulnerable. Thirdly, they give the freedom they give the people, they love the freedom to be candid to be candid. Now notice I didn't say the freedom to be honest because see bare naked honesty can be cruel. Have you ever seen a show like the jerry springer show? It requires those people to be very honest, telling the other person things that they know are gonna just crush this person, but they don't care. See candor is honesty with a concern on how it affects the person receiving it. That's the difference with candor. We want to give our kids the freedom to be candid, you know, for instance, they need to be able to tell us what's on their heart, even if stuff we're not excited about hearing, for instance, what if you have a teenager and they suddenly say, look, I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time believing that jesus is the only way to heaven, that the bible is the, the, the, the, the final authority on that. And you know, you know, this is not a time to panic and hire some professor from phoenix seminary and duct tape them to your kid's face or something smarter kids than yours and mine have gone through spiritual doubts. This is the time to remain calm while their faith is on trial and show them what a steady faith and God looks like. But another problem might be that they have a problem with us as parents because unless you're a perfect parent, you're gonna make mistakes. Now when our kids make mistakes, we usually don't have a problem confronting them on it. Is that a two way street? Because unless you're perfect, none of us are, we're going to get it wrong and we knew we would get it wrong sometimes. So we initiated the thing in our kids when our kids were little, uh we called it what's your beef night? And we do this like once a quarter where they could order whatever they wanted on the Kimmel menu and then they could go around saying anything that Darcy and I have done that ticked them off, frustrated and embarrassed him, whatever. And all we were allowed to do is ask for forgiveness. We won't be able to put it in context or whatever. No, just ask for forgiveness. Now, they couldn't say things like you made me go to school or do my homework and we're not talking about those kind of things. They knew what because we wanted to know, we know we get it wrong, you could come to us and now where do I get to something in in in Hebrews chapter four, giving you the background and it says, we don't have a high priest that doesn't understand what it's like to be in our skin, But he wasn't always tempted like we are yet without sin and says so there in verse 16 says, let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Have you ever been frustrated with God? Have you ever been angry at God? I have. My mother died a lot younger than I thought she should have. Mm hmm. I was frustrated. He's a perfect father. He never makes a mistake. But he also knew what it's like to be us. It has come to me. I have a big chest pour it out. You're gonna find mercy finding, waiting for you. Mhm. We wanted our kids to know that they have access. So our it was springtime. Our son Cody, he was second born. He had finished his homework. He's in high school. I was getting ready to go, Oh damn! I forgot to mention, I need you to sign me out of school tomorrow by noon. Why? What's up? It was opening day of the Diamondbacks and my friend Stephen got tickets right behind the dugout. He invited me to go now the year before The Diamondbacks have beaten the Yankees in the World Series. And this is a big opening game. But for some stupid reason, I thought I should teach my son about personal responsibility. I said son, you're a student, you go to school at eight, you get off at three. You can't just take off because there's something funny said dad, but they're gonna have F 16 flyover. Well that that that's nice, but but but but son, but it's like you have a job, we have all have jobs. There's always big, big distraction. We have to stay until quitting time. But dad, I think randy johnson is going to be in the mountain. That's good. And then, but but I came back and kept my lecture and he says, I think, I think Alice Cooper is going to sing the national anthem. You just didn't forget getting so exasperated and finally he's straight dead. Listen, I bring you home straight A's. All I've ever brought you home are straight A's. I can't bring home any better grades than I'm bringing you Now. You need to decide whether I can go to that game. It was like this divine hand came right down out of the clouds and did one of these right in my head. What is your problem? Sign that boy out, What are you doing? And here's what's really ironic. I would have never asked my dad to sign me out. I'd have played hooky. I reached in my pocket. I took out two large bills and I gave to Cody. I said Cody, make sure you buy the big drinks and the big hot dogs for you and steven and Cody, please forgive me for being such an idiot. I'm so sorry. You know, as you grow older, especially when you move into the fourth quarter of the twilight years of your life. It's not uncommon for a lot of your members of youth to just fade where you can't even remember him and this event may well be one of the ones that fades from his memory. But I held my ground and refused to sign him out. He'd have never forgot to his last breath. What a bonehead he had for a father. It says we get it wrong. Sometimes they've got to have an outlet now. He's gotta they've got to speak respectfully to us when they talk to us here is the best way to make sure to raise the odds that they'll speak respectfully to you. And they're frustrated. You speak respectfully to them when you're frustrated with him. That's what Grace looks like. One more verse on this and then I'm going to have to land the plane, sit down, He was tractor 12 verse 15 says see to it, that no one misses the grace of God, that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. It's God's Grace lived out in real time. He gets when when it's there, we give people that we love. The freedom be different, vulnerable. Canada. And the last one, The last freedom is we give the people, we love the freedom to make mistakes. Another way you can put it the freedom to be imperfect. Now in saying that I don't mean there aren't consequences for that because I said what the bible says them whom God loves, he disciplines our daughter, Caris wrote a book out there that really unlocks the whole a series of, of eye opening insights of what Grace looks like and discipline is called grace based discipline. It's amazing, but we can still discipline stand in their air hose and still do that graciously just like God does with us and see all grace based parenting is I can, I can define it 11 sentence. It's just treat your kids away. God treats you, he gives you the freedom to be different and vulnerable and candid and freedom being perfect. His love is not connected to any of our behaviors. Thank the word for that. It's all based on the work of his son and his grace and and we can have I close with this and that is the window of opportunity to touch our kids with Grace is not open as long as we think it is. I was reminded of this one on saturday morning ah when our daughter shiloh she was at this time about five and she came into our room and she came around my side and shook me awake dead dead. It's time to go out on our date. I promised her the night before I take her on a breakfast date and she got it and got ready and I looked at closet honey, it's still dark out he said, but daddy, I picked out this outfit for you, you know and and and and she looks so cute and I also knew where she wanted to go was open because it's open all the time. It's circle K. That's where she said she wanted me to take her a circle K. And so I said, oh no problem, this will be fun. So I gotta go, we gotta write about dawn. And we went in, she picked out some donuts and some juice and I got a cup of coffee, I paid for everything and we went out, we sat down on a curb on the side of the circle K. To have our our little date. I'm warning you in the sun was just starting to pick up and there was a dumpster over here, but we're fine, we're over here, fine, we're just and she's yapping away. And she wanted, she got she got the talking about the Sleeping Beauty video we've gotten for her. And she had been watching it several times. She was yapping away about Sleeping Beauty and I said, what's your favorite part of that? Oh daddy, I love the part when the handsome prince and Sleeping Beauty dance together in a castle. Well that's my favorite part because I'd watched it with her and I don't know what provoked me that I decided to reenact it. So I put everything back in Baghdad and I picked her up right there and we're over on this side and I'm just saying this, I know you were just dancing around and I came around, there was some new homes right here and there was a guy I could see him right there because they had not these are new homes and they had not built well, I mean it was just occupied and I'm looking over there and there's a guy staring out of his from his breakfast table at me. Oh no, he's thinking he's over there during his coffee calling his wife right about now there's an idiot over to circle K dancing with little girl next to a dumpster. But then another thought crossed my mind in a very brief period of time. Some young man was going to come along and tapped me on the shoulder. Mr Kimmel may I cut in and walter out of my life for good. He he showed up so soon. It just went, I mean his name is Ian a wonderful young man, but he just, it just seemed like went so fast. Listen, when it comes to parenting, the days are long, but I'm telling you the years are short and that's why we need to use every chance we can to live out those years in a relationship with those kids in grace. God help us, we love you. You're such a wonderful God. We so appreciate in the in the state of our unworthiness how much you reach down to set us free, through your, through your blood on the cross. And now as we're going to focus in on that, we and and just thank you so much for that, I pray, father, We'll we'll we'll move your grace from an abstract to the defining feature of our life, not in our power, but through you, working through us in jesus name. Amen.