At Home as it is in Heaven April 26, 2026

Well, good morning, fellowship. Man, what a privilege and a joy it is to be here with each and every one of you today as we gather together to sing praises and to worship the one who is truly holy, like we just sang, set apart, different from us in his glory, in his majesty, in his grace, in his mercy, Jesus Christ, our Lord. And for any of you who are relatively new with us this morning, man, I'm so glad you're here, whether you're joining us in the chapel, online, here at home, and all across the world or here in the worship center. My name is Ben Parkinson and I'm one of four, we call teaching pastors here at fellowship who have the joy and privilege of coming alongside Justin and Brandon and Mark, the other three teaching pastors to lead and teach the church in the team-oriented way that we do here. So if I haven't had a chance to meet you yet and you have some time after the service, man, please come find me and say hi. That'd be a huge blessing to me. I would really love that. And as you came in today, you did receive one of our monthly prayer cards. We've been putting these out every month as a reminder of what we said on Vision Sunday we wanna focus on this year as a church,

and that is praying the prayer that Jesus prayed with his disciples for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so we've been praying that each month in a different area of our lives, in our own personal hearts, in our city, in our families, in all the different places that we live, work, and play. And this month, we really wanna focus here in May on doing that in our serving and in our church family. And so, man, we would love for you to help us pray that prayer. If we're gonna be a glimpse of the kingdom that's on its way when Jesus returns, like God wants us to be, lights in the world, then we're gonna need his divine help to do that. It's something only he can do. So please pick one of those up and be praying that with us this month. And we are in the third week of a five-week sermon series talking about that part of our mission statement that speaks to where we wanna live on mission together. Where, right? If we wanna see God's kingdom come and his will be done, then we need to be making disciples who live by God's grace and for his glory here at home and in our homes. We also wanna do that all across the world. We'll talk about that the last couple weeks of May in a three-week series we'll do on across the world.

But first we're looking at what it means here in our homes. And so we kicked off this series talking about using our physical homes as a picture of what it means to make disciples at home in a healthy way. Whether we're married with kids, whether we're married without kids, whether we're single and have roommates, empty nesters, grandparents, or whatever home looks like for you, the same elements that we're talking about are important for creating an atmosphere that fosters healthy discipleship, a healthy relationship with Jesus. Now like Mark reminded us in week one, we don't have control over our disciples' spiritual growth or over the timing of how they follow Jesus, when they follow Jesus, what that looks like. That's in God's hands. But we can do things that either foster that in a healthy way, encourage that in a healthy way, or hinder it and make it hard for them to see the beauty of that. So that's what we wanna lay out for as a church family in this series. And so in week one, we talked about the importance of investing in regular relationship, if you remember. Regular relationship. Again, whether it's kids, whether it's your D group, grandkids, spouse,

the sum of kind of what we tried to share there is people don't really care how much you know unless they know how much you care, right? We need to be spending time with those God's put in our care to raise in the Lord. And so we related that to the living room in our homes, that room where we tend to gather together on the couch to sit and talk and share stories and watch shows and play games. It's just kind of the room that represents that idea of spending time relationally together, building our relationship with one another. Like the Apostle Paul told the church at Thessalonica, we wanna be the kind of disciple makers who, like he said in 1 Thessalonians 2,8, are ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but he says also our own selves because you become very dear to us, right? Paul says, I didn't just show up in Thessalonica and just preach the gospel and then leave. No, I shared life with you. I spent time with you. Earlier before that verse, he says, like a nurturing mother. like an exhorting father, he puts in familial terms the way that he loved on that church. Making disciples at home needs to be relational. But that doesn't mean that it's only relational, which is why last week we talked about the importance of spending time in the word of God with the people

he's asking us to disciple here at home as well. Discipleship is caught just as much as it is taught, but it is still taught. And even though we wanna have a good relationship with the people God's put in our lives, who's asking us to disciple here at home, we don't just wanna live out the gospel in front of them, try and be Christ-like around them in relationship, but never talk to them about why we do that, or about where that comes from, or about how they can do that too. No, we need to be spending time in the word with those God's asking us to disciple. We wanna value the people he's asking us to disciple beyond just students that we're teaching, but we do need to teach those truths. And so we related that to the study in our homes, right? Or whatever room you think about when you think about spending intentional time in the word of God, intellectually wrestling with it, talking about it, reading it, coming to it, letting him speak to you through it in the midst of that. Discipleship's relational, but we also need to be teaching the word to one another. Which brings us to the third element of creating a healthy atmosphere in your home and at home for making disciples that we wanna talk about today, and that is the importance of gracious forgiveness in our discipleship. Gracious forgiveness.

Because it is possible to spend relational time with the people God's asked you to disciple at home, and to spend time teaching them the truths about who God is and the kind of relationship he wants to have with us from his word, and yet do it in a way that moves people more toward a legalistic relationship with God than a grace-filled one. Or a fear-based relationship with God than a merciful, gracious one. Which is why we're talking about that today, and why it's extremely important for us to understand that when it comes to creating a healthy atmosphere for discipleship at home, we have to grow in practicing the grace that we preach. We've gotta grow in practicing the grace that we preach. It can be extremely confusing for our disciples to hear us talk about the grace of God in the Bible, teach about the grace of God in the Bible, and yet do it in a way that feels ungracious and harsh in our actual relationship with them. We've gotta practice the grace that we preach. So the room we're gonna use in our house is to capture that idea in this series is our closets, our closets. Because the closet is the place where we tend to kind of shove all the stuff that we don't want anyone to see, isn't it? We tend to stick all the things that are embarrassing if we just kind of had them out in the house.

It's the place where we hide the things that we either don't want people to know about, know that we have, or where there's things we need to deal with, but we just don't have time right now, so we're just gonna shove it in the closet, right? Or for some of you, it's under the bed. For some of you, it's in the attic. For some of us, it's all three, right? We're putting stuff anywhere we can just to make the house look somewhat picked up. And sometimes, for some of us, I mean, those closets are so packed, I mean, if someone accidentally opened it up, like it's spring-loaded, would just come out and dump on you, right? But because we have those closets, people can come to our house and at times, our house can look pretty clean. I mean, someone can come over to your house and think, man, look how together they have it. It's all clean, it's all nice, it's all perfect. Man, I bet they live like this every day. And you're like, yeah, just don't open that closet. Because that's where you'll see all the things last minute before you came over that I hid away before you got here to make it look better than it is, right? It's a great picture of the things that we hide in our hearts and in our lives that we don't want people to see.

I mean, we all can try to look pretty perfect on the outside, can't we? We all can try to look like we have it all together when we walk around out there in the highways and byways and streets of our lives, but the reality is, for any of us, if you open up the closet of our heart, there's some messiness there. There's some things we don't want people to know about. There's some things we don't want people to see. And what God is asking us to do is to have the kind of relationship with our disciples at home and in our homes where they feel safe opening up those closets, opening up the closets of their hearts with us together to let the gospel heal the hurt that's there, to invite us in to helping them clean out the sin that's hurting them and others around them together, to experience the blessing of the grace we're trying to teach them about that God is showing us. And so we see God throughout the scriptures encouraging us from his word, revealing to us in his word over and over again this kind of grace-filled relationship he wants us to have with our disciples. Turn to Colossians 3 with me if you have your Bibles this morning, and we're just gonna look at verses 12 through 14, just three short. verses, but there's plenty there to talk about to look at this reality.

It's not the only place God talks about grace in his relationship with us, but it's a pretty good one. Let's look at it together. Colossians 3, verses 12 through 14. He says, put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Man, what a beautiful passage, and yet a really convicting one for me when I come to it and think about the atmosphere in our homes and the disciple relationships that we have there. You see what God's trying to say to us here is that how we disciple our kids or our grandkids, our dear, the attitude that we bring to it as we treat our roommates in certain ways is just as important as what we teach them from the word, or even the amount of time you spend with them relationally to let them know you care about them. Those two things are important, but if your disciples don't feel these attitudes that God talks about here in Colossians from us as we do those things, the seeds of our words that we're trying to sprinkle into their hearts and plant into their hearts, it's gonna tend to fall on rocky soil, like Jesus talked about in the parable, more than the good soil where it can take root and grow and foster into something beautiful. The attitude, the atmosphere that we're planting those seeds in matters a great deal. And so I'm gonna walk through these phrases here in just a second, but notice the first thing God says in this passage before he even says what these attitudes are, he says, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. And then he lists all the things he's gonna list, right? He says, I need you to put on these things intentionally. God says, parents, I know you're gonna be around other parents who are not putting on the things I'm about to talk about in their relationship with their kids around you, or grandparents with their grandkids or roommates, but he says, I've set you apart as holy, right? Which we have talked about means different, set apart, chosen.

I'm asking you to intentionally put on things every morning when you wake up, the same way you would put on your clothes, right? To go out and kind of walk around town and look good and look nice and all that. He's like, I'm asking you to wake up every day and put on some attitudes. They're gonna be different than the world around you because I've chosen you for this purpose. I've saved you for this purpose. I've redeemed you for this purpose. I've set you apart for this purpose. And you're gonna have to intentionally put them on because you're not always gonna feel like it. It's not always gonna be natural to you to do this, right? And the people that I'm asking you to put it on and show it to are not always gonna deserve it from you. If you're waiting for them to deserve your compassion, to deserve your kindness, to deserve your patience, it may never come. I'm asking you to put these things on intentionally. It's one of the important ways that you're to be different than those around you who don't know Jesus. In the same way that God asked the people of Israel in the Old Testament to wear different kinds of clothes than the other clans and tribes and people groups around them, to dress in a certain way that set them apart, that made them different from those around them. He's asking us to clothe ourselves in something different than physical clothes, but in these heart attitudes and actions that'll be different than the people around us. And by the way, what I appreciate about God when he asks us to do this, he doesn't ask us to do anything he's not willing to do himself in his relationship with his disciples when he was here at home. All these phrases we're gonna see, I'll point out a couple of places where Jesus does this, but just know Jesus modeled the kind of grace we're gonna talk about to the people he discipled at his home as well.

God commands it to us and tells us to do it here in Colossians 3 and other places. Jesus modeled it in his relationship with his disciples and with others around him. It's really, really important. And the first thing that he says here is that he wants us to put on compassionate hearts. Compassionate hearts. This is the attitude Jesus shows in Matthew 9 when it says about him that he looked on the people with compassion, that they were like sheep without a shepherd, it says. It's that kind of heart. It's this attitude Jesus shows at his crucifixion when he says, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do as they're crucifying him. Who says that? Someone who has compassion. Compassion. It's looking at our disciples or our kids' intentional sins or accidental mistakes or performance failures through this lens. The reason why they're doing that is because because they're struggling to believe that God loves them. They're struggling to believe that his word is best for them. They're struggling to believe that he is who he says he is, that he cares as much as he says he cares, he's gonna be there for them if they trust him. They're struggling to believe in his love for them. I can have compassion for that. That's different than looking at it through the lens of, man, they're just way worse than other people around them. They're just way more broken than the people around them. There's just something wrong with them that's way different than the other people around them. They're just fundamentally worse.

No, our disciples need to feel that we have compassion on the things that are embarrassing in their lives, the things they tend to hide in their closets, the things they don't want the world to know about. There needs to feel a safety there in how we view that. And not only compassion, but he goes on to say, we're to put on kindness, right? That's the word right after that, kindness. Listen, there's a huge difference between looking at one of your disciples at home and in your home and just saying, God's so stupid. Why would you ever do that? And between saying, hey, I can appreciate the temptation to do what you did, but man, let me show you why it's not best for you. Let me show you why it's not best for the people around you. Let me show you why God begs you to do it differently instead. Both of those comments still call sin, sin. Both of those comments still confront the issue and discourage them from doing it again. But one creates an atmosphere of harshness and rudeness and meanness and fear in our relationship. And the other creates an atmosphere of safety and of kindness and of compassion that invites them to share those things with us. But that takes humility, doesn't it? Which is why it's the next thing he lists in the list. He says, compassion, kindness, and he says, but listen, it's gonna take humility on your part.

Parents or grandparents, roommates, or whatever, discipler, whoever you're discipling here at home, takes being honest with yourself about your own shortcomings as a follower of Jesus. Takes being honest with yourself as your own shortcomings as an adult, which is why God says humility is one of the things we have to intentionally clothe ourselves in and put on here in Colossians 3 to create a healthy atmosphere in the relationships we have with our disciples at home and in our homes. If your kids feel an attitude from you that says, how could you do that? I would never do something like that. Man, they're gonna shrivel up and hide real fast, right? You're telling me you've never had the thoughts I've had, you've never had the struggles I've had, you've never done the things I've done, you would never do them in the future ever? Like, that creates an atmosphere in your relationship that's gonna make them shrivel up and hide. It's gonna be hard for them to feel safe being honest with you about the things they're truly struggling with. But if they feel this humility that God's talking about from you, that says, you know, maybe I haven't done the same thing that you've done, maybe I haven't sinned the exact same way that you've sinned, but I've sinned in ways that are just as hurtful,

just as hurtful to God, just as hurtful to others, just as hurtful to myself, and man, let me share with you what I've learned about why that's so bad, why that's so hard for my own struggles, why it's not wise for you to do that, because I've struggled with it too. Let me share with you from wisdom why that's not the best thing. That's an entirely different atmosphere in a relationship, isn't it? That's a safe place to struggle. That's a safe place to be honest. That's a safe place to be imperfect, even though you're not making excuses for sin in an unhealthy way. And sometimes the ironic thing is is that we can struggle to be honest and humble in sharing our own struggles with our disciples about our own sin, because we're scared if we let them see our imperfections, it'll somehow give them a license to sin their own lives even more. This is one of the areas I struggled in as a parent. I wasn't great at this. I really struggled to let my kids in on my own struggles and my own kind of fears and the ways that I failed in my relationship with Jesus growing up because there was something in me that just was worried, man, if they know that I've messed up in those ways,

they're gonna be tempted to go out and say, well, I mean, my dad's a pretty good guy and look at how bad he messed up. So I guess it's no big deal if I do this thing over here too. I thought they're gonna use it as an excuse, give them a license to think somehow it was okay. And what I came to realize over time is that actually that's one of Satan's biggest lies to try and trap us in an unhealthy relationship with our disciples at home. No, because he knows that when we're humble and honest with our disciples about our own struggles, they actually tend to listen more to us, not less. They tend to trust us more that, oh, you've actually done the kind of things that I've done and you've seen the consequences, you've lived through it and you're on the other side of it now and you don't think it was great now that you're on the other side of it. That actually. that gives them more reason to listen to you, not less. More of a reason to believe the things you're saying, not less. But when we act like we're shocked at our kids or our disciples' sins, that we would never do such a thing, it actually tempts them to then put themselves in the category, man, I must be so broken,

I must be so messed up, I may as well go on living in sin because I guess there's just something fundamentally more wrong with me than everybody else. It puts them in a place of discouraging them to wanna walk with Jesus and to figure those things out instead of encouraging them. Listen, a heavy sense of shame and guilt, it can change someone's behavior in the short term. It does work in the short term, that's the hard thing about it. But in the long term, it creates such a noise in their heart they eventually reject it and walk away from it. Like if that's what following Jesus is about, just being scared to death and feeling guilty and shameful all the time, man, I don't know if I want that anymore. It works for a little while, but it creates damage on the other side of the coin, it hinders their spiritual growth. That's why James says in James chapter one, verse two, he says, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. He says, listen, your anger will not produce the righteousness you want it to produce, it won't. Grace and hope are what actually motivate us to grow and change in positive ways. It's way more motivating to know that even though we've messed up, man, some of the people that I respect and love,

some of the people that have loved me well and cared for me well, they've also messed up the way I've messed up. And if God can use them in my life for the kind of good he's used them in my life for, even though they're not perfect, and maybe he can forgive me and use me in someone else's life in the same way. Grace actually gives people hope that brings about the change that we long for. Grace changes people. But we've got to put on humility in order to display that, to create that kind of atmosphere at home and in our homes with our disciples. And then he uses a word that's really powerful to me. He says, you got to put on meekness, meekness. And a lot of times, because it's kind of a weird old ancient word that we don't use all the time in English, we tend to associate it with weakness. So we think that's what he means is you got to somehow be weak. But meekness is actually the exact opposite of weakness. If someone's weak, it means they're powerless compared to someone stronger than them, something stronger than them. They can't overcome it, even if they wanted to. Meekness is actually the term that God uses to say, no, this person has the power to do whatever they want, but they're intentionally restraining it

because there's a greater purpose in them not unleashing it when they could. That's meekness. This is Jesus in the garden when they came to arrest him. And one of his disciples pulls out a sword and cuts off the soldier's ear who comes to get him. And Jesus, instead of saying, yeah, that's it, get him, he picks up the ear and he puts it back on his head and he heals him. And he turns to his disciple and says, hey, that's not what we're doing right now. In fact, he goes on to say in that moment, do you not think that I can appeal to my father and heal at once in more than 12 legions of angels? He says, listen, it's not about power. It's not about the ability to deal with things. It's not about do I have the right to and do I have the power to. Jesus says, I have all the right to unleash this in this moment and I have the power to do it. But he says, because I have a greater purpose for holding it back, for restraining it in meekness, I'm gonna let them lead me away to the cross so I can die for the sins of the world. That's meekness. It's different than we think about it a lot of times. God says, if you wanna create an atmosphere of grace in your discipleship relationships at home and in your homes, you're gonna have to choose to put on meekness, to clothe yourself in that.

I mean, parents, how many times have we been tempted to threaten our kids with the power we have to make their lives miserable? It's a natural thing, right? To just think, man, I don't like what's going on. I don't like how it feels. I got some power in my relationship with you. I put a roof over your head. I pay for your car. Whatever it is you got to kind of threaten or hold over their head, I feed you. Like, whatever it is, man, we're like, I got some power here that I can use. I can unleash on you to make you behave, to make you obey. And again, it's not that discipline's wrong. We'll talk about that here in a minute. It's not that you can't take away some privileges they have in order to lovingly discipline them. We'll talk about that in a minute. But what I'm talking about is sometimes in our anger, sometimes in our embarrassment, sometimes in whatever the negative emotion we're feeling is with our disciples or with our kids, we can just unleash our power on them and our power over them in ways that are not healthy. And we need to show some meekness in those moments. We need to be willing to restrain that at times for a greater good, to build a relationship with them, to create an atmosphere that's safe to open up the closets of their hearts and their lives.

and share the things they're struggling with with us. If it's just about who's in control here, man, we can get in trouble when it comes to meekness. Now again, like I said, meekness doesn't mean you can never discipline your kids, if that's what we're talking about when it comes to making disciples at home, for disobeying us or for committing certain sins that we've told them not to for their own good and the good of others around them. The scriptures themselves say God is a loving Heavenly Father. Such whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. So God our Father disciplines those He loves in loving ways, right? But what we're talking about is the difference, the scripture does make a distinction between discipline and punishment. For a lot of us, those are the same thing. What do you mean? Like I punish my kid, I discipline my kid? No, those are actually two different words in the scripture, two different ideas. Discipline is God's loving desire to take an action that's hurting us and hurting others and do something, bring something to bear on it in our lives that helps us learn to correct that behavior and actually begin to want to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. That's His loving discipline in our lives

because He cares for us. Punishment is the word that the scriptures associate with Him just pouring out His wrath and anger, right? It says, whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. We'll see here a minute in 1 John 4. It says, the perfect love of God casts out any fear of punishment. In the midst of our relationship with Him. That's the difference, right? The difference, the distinction we're making here is the difference between pouring out wrath in your anger because you're offended and you just want some retribution and lovingly disciplining someone for their good. Those are two different things. Fortunately, the scriptures does help explain the nuances of what it looks like to walk in grace with our disciples and our relationship with them at home. And the healthy tension that's there and the kind of things that we're talking about. They create an atmosphere of grace in the midst of our loving discipline for those around us. We see this tension in a couple of different passages. You see it all over the scriptures and I just point it out too, right? So in 1 John 4, for instance, that's where we hear about the perfect love of God that casts out all fear. Look at 1 John 4, 18 and 19 with me. It says, there is no fear in love,

but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with, and there's our word, punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. God says there's no fear in love. Perfect love, he says, casts out fear. He says, I'm trying to create a relationship with you where you don't feel an unhealthy fear with me because you know I love you and I'm loving you perfectly all the time. Everything that I'm walking through with you in your life is my perfect love for you to draw you closer to me. I am perfectly loving you. You should have no fear with the things that you're gonna face moving forward in your life. I love you. Yet at the same time, we see in the scriptures verses like Psalm 111, 10 that tell us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever. Right, so here we see that phrase over and over again in the scriptures. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord, we see it over and over and over again in our relationship with God. So which is it? Does perfect love cast out fear in our relationship with God or does the fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom

in our relationship with God? Anyone who's walked with Jesus for any amount of time at all knows that they're actually both true at the same time. They're both God's grace to us. It's not like one is more gracious and one is less gracious. God's grace to us casts out all fear in our relationship with him and God's grace to us encourages us to have a healthy fear of certain things in our relationship with him. On the one hand, man, I don't need to be afraid that God's up there waiting to zap me for my sins or get me for my sins, right? Jesus Christ paid for those on the cross. He endured all the suffering that I would ever need to endure to pay God for those sins. God's not looking for retribution. He's not looking for payback. He's not looking for justice when it comes to the sins he sees me committing on the earth. Perfect love casts out fear. I don't have to be afraid that he's gonna zap me, condemn me, do something negative, evil to me because I've offended him in some way, shape or form. He's not to get me for that, right? Now there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Jesus, Romans 8, one. At the same time, I also know that God loves me so much that he won't let me get away with too much sin

for too long. That's a healthy fear of the Lord. That's the kind of healthy fear I had with my parents growing up. I knew they weren't. They weren't out to get me, they weren't out to zap me, they love me, they're incredibly gracious and patient with me, but I knew at the end of the day they did love me too much to let me get away with too much. Because they cared about me. They wanted me to grow up and flourish. They wanted me to have an abundant life. They wanted me to enjoy so much that God had for me to offer, they didn't want to see me ruin it out of making foolish decisions that were wrecking my life and the lives of those around me. And so they would step in at times and lovingly discipline me because they cared about me and I had a healthy fear of that. Not that they were gonna reject me, not that they were gonna kick me out of the family, not that they were gonna disown me, not that they were gonna do any of those kinds of things because they just couldn't handle me not being what they wanted me to be, but they did love me enough to not let me get away with too much for too long. God will at times expose the things he needs to expose in our lives. He'll let the natural consequences fall on us

the way he needs to let them fall. He loves us too much and the people around us too much to let us hurt each other for too long in too many different ways. And so it's wise for us to have a healthy appreciation for that in my life. And so in the same way I would say for you discipling people here at home, it's okay, it's healthy for them to have a healthy fear that you love them so much you're not gonna let them get away with too much. As long as the atmosphere you have in your discipleship relationship with them is not a fear that you're looking to jump on them every time they do something wrong. You're looking to unleash your anger any chance you get. You're just waiting, just waiting for it to pour it out on them because if they make you mad, you have the right to just pour it out on them. That's different, that's wrath, that's punishment. That's the fear that God says has no place in his relationship with us. Fear that you may never be able to forgive them for what they've done in your relationship with them. They need to feel safe opening up the closet of their heart, the closet of their life knowing you're gonna treat them with the same love and grace and forgiveness that Jesus treats you with. That's why he says what he says in the very next verse. Right after he lists all these things,

man, that feel really hard to put on in our relationship with our disciples, right? Really tough to put those things on. He says, hey, I'm gonna beg you, put on compassionate hearts, kindness, patience, meekness, all these kind of different things. You're sitting there saying, man, that's asking a lot, God. How do I do that? He immediately goes to verse 13, look at it with me. Bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive. He says, listen, we won't create an atmosphere of grace for our disciples or for our kids or for our grandkids the way God's telling us to unless we constantly have our eyes fixed on the forgiveness he's shown to us, on the grace he's poured out on us. And for some of us, this is where we struggle. For some of us, this is why we struggle with doing this, because if we're being honest, we were raised in homes or in church settings, or we were discipled in an unhealthy view of our relationship with the Lord that he is out to zap me, that he is out to get me, that he is just waiting to pour his wrath on me. I have to be scared to death of him, because if I move one little inch off of the line of obeying him, he's gonna, or he may kick me out of his family, or he may not invite me in. I gotta earn it, I gotta work for it, I gotta make sure my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds.

A lot of us have been discipled, unfortunately, in the scriptures in an unhealthy way to make us think that's what this relationship is about, and so it's natural for us to pour it out here. So for some of us, the only way we're gonna be able to put on this kind of attitude towards our disciples at home and in our homes is by us first really doing the work of the gospel here to make sure we're preaching it to ourselves, we're looking at it ourselves, we're understanding the grace of God to us ourselves and what Jesus has done for us. Because here's what he's saying in verse 13. If you don't believe it here, if you're not filled up with it here, you're not gonna be able to pour it out here. When he says, put these things on, and you're saying, man, that's really hard, he's agreeing with you, right. The only way that you're gonna be able to do that, the only way that I'm gonna be able to do that is if I'm constantly fixed on the glory and the grace that God has poured out on me, and I believe it's more grace than he's asking me to give to them. That's the only way I'll do it. Is if I say in my heart, God, I know you've forgiven me for way more than you're asking me to forgive them. You've shown more patience with me than the patience you're asking me to show them.

You've shown more grace to me and mercy to me than you're asking me to show them. Okay, now I can, now it's natural. Now I can pour it out, now I can put it on. That's why we say grace changes people. That's why we say you've gotta keep preaching the gospel yourself every day around here. That's why we say you don't graduate from the gospel, you go deeper and deeper and deeper into it in order to change and to be changing, conforming to the image of Christ. Because that is what motivates us to do that. God's grace towards us is what's meant to give us the ultimate appreciation, motivation. and understanding of showing grace to those we disciple at home. It's his grace to us that motivates us to do that. It's his grace to us that fills us up with his spirit in a way that we can naturally do that. If we're struggling to do that, if we're struggling to give that to others, to create an atmosphere like that in our homes with the people that God's given us, if you're struggling to do that, and instead of just trying harder, you need to stop and ask yourself, do I really think he's done what he's saying he's done for me? Do I really believe it? Is there a pride in my heart that's keeping me

from thinking he's forgiven me for as much as he has? Maybe I think he's forgiven me for some stuff, but not for as much stuff as he's asking me to forgive them for. Man, if that's the place of your heart, that pride right there, it'll keep you from doing it. It'll hinder you. You'll never be able to do it. The only way to create this kind of atmosphere, he says, is as you've been forgiven, you also must forgive. And notice it's not a request. He says you must forgive, right? He says, if you're gonna receive this from me, then what I'm telling you is you have to give it here. If you're not giving it here, then you need to ask yourself, do I really, have I really received it here? That's why Jesus tells the parable he tells to his disciples, right? He's telling that parable about the wicked steward, about the guy that comes to the master, and he has all these debts that he can't repay, and he has all these ways he's messed up his relationship with him, and he begs him for mercy, and the master graciously forgives him, and wipes away his debt, and makes him clean, and sends him on his way. And then what does he do? He turns around all the people that owe him money,

he exacts it on them, he throws them in prison, he treats them terribly. And the master comes to him and he says, why would you do that to them when I just forgave you everything you asked me to forgive you? Jesus makes this exact point. If we don't receive the grace of God in a healthy way, we can't give it to those around us. But if we're gonna receive it, we must forgive those he's put in our lives. God says you can't accept my grace and forgiveness for your sins and turn around and treat the people I put in your life in an unforgiving, harsh way. The atmosphere we need to create in our relationship with our disciples at home needs to be relational, like we talked about in week one. It should focus on the word of God like we talked about in week two. And it should be full of grace and forgiveness. A safe place to be imperfect. A safe place to grow in our relationship with the Lord as we stumble and fall, as we learn to walk. Because the person discipling us knows how much they've been forgiven, how much grace God's shown to them. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we come before you and we praise you for your grace to us.

We thank you, Jesus, for the endless bucket of mercy that you pour out on us every day. Lamentation says your mercies are new every morning for us. Great is your faithfulness. God, I'm begging you today that we would be the kind of church family that so believes that you have poured out as much grace as you pour out on us, that it just overflows to the people around us. Overflows to the disciples you're asking us to make at home. Overflows to our roommates if we're single. Overflows to our spouse if we're married. Overflows to our kids if we have kids. Overflows to our grandkids. Overflows to our D groups and the people you're asking us to lead spiritually here in our church. God, I beg you. It would overflow to our coworkers. It would overflow to our bosses. It would overflow to our employees and to our neighbors. It would overflow to the stranger on the street, God, that we would so be enamored with your grace, your mercy, your forgiveness of us as a perfect Heavenly Father. God, that it would be easy to put those clothes on. They would fit naturally because of how much we see you've given and forgiven us. God, help us to believe that in your name. Amen.

Thanks again for listening to the Word of God. We are blessed to reach you throughout the week through whatever platform you're listening on. If you're needing prayer or you want to talk to someone about your walk with Jesus, reach out to us at fellowshipar.com slash contact. Have a great week.