Living Letters from Mom | Life in the Spirit Week 11

All right, I want to start by really honoring the moms, and at all of our campuses, I'm going to ask, I know you just got settled in, mom, but you can do some exercise at church today. You're going to do a squat. All right? So all the moms at all of our campuses, if you're a mom, I want you to stand to your feet. Come on. Show us the love that they're due. Just stay standing, moms, for just a second. Stay standing for just one minute. You're going to get prayed for so much today, it's going to be exhausting, because I'm going to pray over you four times today. All right? So it's coming. Before you're seated, I'm going to pray for you. And what I want you to do, if you're here, there's something special and unique that I want to do, and here's why. For years, for about almost three years, Michelle and I, I almost said Michelle and I wanted to be a mom. That's not true. Okay? You got to be careful these days, how you say things. Okay? Let me qualify that. We wanted to be parents, and we couldn't. We couldn't. We tried, we went to doctors, we paid lots of money, and we just couldn't get pregnant. And eventually, the doctor said, hey, there's a few more things we can try, but really, we've done just about everything we can do.

We don't know what else to do. And Michelle and I went home just destroyed by that. And I wrote God a letter. I wrote God a kind of, I don't have it anymore, because I was like, I was kind of mean to God. Because really, my heart was, Lord, we want to raise a godly kid. Like, there's people in the streets that have 12 kids that don't care about you. I want to raise godly kids. And Michelle, we prayed, we fasted, and just a few months later, she was pregnant with our first miracle. It was a miracle. It was truly a miracle. All pregnancies are miracles. But I know that Mother's Day sometimes isn't easy, right? Because there's some people here that want to be a mom really bad. And so while I'm praying for the moms that are standing, if you're here and you want to be a mom, you're trying to be a mom, and you haven't been able to become a mom, you haven't been able to become pregnant, or you've miscarried, and you've gone through some challenging times, I want to pray for you too. Okay? So at all of our campuses, if you're here and you need a miracle, and you want to be a mom, I want you to stand to your feet, okay? Stand to your feet. Yeah. Okay, let's pray for the moms. If you're near a mom, just kind of reach over and put your hand on them. Lord, we thank you for these moms. We thank you for their sacrifice. We thank you, God, that, ah, the miracle of life. Can you imagine a baby being formed and shaped, as Scripture says, before you formed us in

our mother's womb, you knew us. And the miracle that took place, the sacrifice that took place. These moms, they sacrificed mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, in every way, shape, or form, Lord, they have given their lives, sacrificed their life to form a new life. It is symbolic. It is a picture of what Jesus did for us, that he sacrificed everything so that we could have life, life to the full. And as a symbolism of that, moms represent Jesus well. So God, I thank you for them. I pray that you would bless them. I pray that today would be a day of encouragement to them. I pray for the moms, for the soon-to-be moms in the room that had the courage to stand. I pray that their standing would be an act of faith, that they trust you, Lord, that you are the one. All through Scripture, we see the God who opens wombs. My prayer is that you would open their womb in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. They will raise godly kids. They will dedicate them to the Lord. So any hindrance, Lord, anything that's standing in the way, we pray, we come alongside them as a church and we pray a miracle, a miracle to happen in their life, in Jesus' name. And God, I pray for those who this is a really difficult day. Their mother is gone. God forbid, I spoke to a couple of moms at the nine o'clock who their children are gone. It's gonna be a very difficult day, Lord. So in the midst of the celebration, God, we also mourn with those who mourn. And we weep with those who weep, and we pray that the comforter would come to those moms today. We thank you for it in Jesus' name. And everybody said? Amen.

Thank you, moms. You can be seated. One more round of applause for the moms. I'm really excited to preach today. Mother's Day is one of my favorite days to preach on. I don't fully know why. I think it's because moms listen better than men. And so I know you're actually listening to the words that I'm saying, but I'm really excited to preach a message today. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to 2 Corinthians 3. That's where I'm gonna go. How many of you remember when we used to write letters? Raise your hand. Remember that? Paper and pen. And you used to have to find a piece of paper and write a letter. For a stretch there, when I was at the university, I had to do a lot of fundraising. So I would write a lot of handwritten letters to donors that had made significant gifts to the university. And I remember my assistant would come in and give me like this list. There'd be like 30 or 40 or 50 names on there, and I got to write a handwritten letter. And by the end of that thing, my hand was cramping because I just was not used to this. It takes effort, but it means something, right? You get a letter that's typewritten or a text message or an email. You're just like, meh.

But if somebody gives you a handwritten letter, there's something about it that's just more meaningful, but it takes effort. You got to get a piece of paper. You got to fold it perfectly to get it in the envelope. You got to buy a stamp, y'all. Who buys stamps? I mean, every time we have something to mail, I'll look at Michelle. I'm like, do we have any stamps? She's like, I don't know. Why would we have stamps? And I didn't know how much, do you know how much stamps cost now? It's unbelievable. I had to Google it because I have no idea how much. I'll just let you know. Stamps cost 78 cents. That's insane. And all the Gen Zs are like, 78 cents? What are you talking about? You have no appreciation, okay, for what stamps used to cost, all right? And Gen Z, I have Gen Alpha in my house. And Gen Z, Gen Alpha, everything is quick. And we've adapted to this too, right? Everything's a quick text. It's an emoji. I'm not even gonna reply to your text. I'm just gonna like it.

Everything is just getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And my kids now text, they don't even use words anymore. We thought LOL was original. All they text is acronyms. That's all they do. I'll text my daughter and she'll just text back IDK. I'm like, do you know what IDK is? See, I didn't know that. Everything's an acronym. Half the time, I'll get a text on our family group chat, text, and I have to like, okay. I have to go to Google and enter in. And then I come back. I'm like, just say it up front so that I know. The other day, my daughter sent this worship song to our family group text saying we should listen to it. And my son, he's 15, he replied back and he said, good comms. Have you heard this one? Good comms. And so I text back. I'm like, what's good comms? And he said, that just means it's when somebody gives you good information. Just say that. I mean, I don't get it. There's this letter that is said that Abraham Lincoln wrote to his son's teacher. His son was gonna start school. And so imagine if you're a teacher and you get a letter from the president of the United States,

but he writes this letter and I don't wanna read all of it because it's pretty lengthy, but I wanna read part of it. Abraham Lincoln said, my son starts school today and it's going to be strange and new for him for a while. And I wish that you would treat him gently. To live this life will require faith, love, and courage. So dear teacher, will you please take him by the hand and teach him things that he will have to know. Teaching them to him gently as you can. Teach him that for every enemy, there's a friend. We will have to know that all men are not just, that all men are not true, but teach him also that for every scoundrel, there's a hero. Teach him if you can, that 10 cents earned is far better than a dollar found. Teach him that it is far more honorable to fail than it is to cheat. Teach him to learn how to gracefully lose. Teach him to be gentle with people, but tough with tough people. Teach him if you can, the wonders of books, but also give him time to ponder the extreme mysteries of birds in the sky and bees in the flower on a green hill. Teach him to have faith in his own ideas. Teach him to sell his talents and his brains to the highest bidder, but never put a price tag on his heart or his soul. Let him have the courage to be impatient, but let him have the patience to be brave. This is the order, teacher, but see to it

as you best see fit. He is such a nice boy and he is my son." And I love this rhythm of a letter, you know, and the beauty of words. And all the moms are like, yeah, but his mom, his wife is at home actually doing the work and you just get famous for writing a letter, you know? And it's this letter and, you know, hundreds of years later we're reading it. But I wanna say to the moms, and this is kind of the. the way that I wanna go with this message is, what I wanna show you in scripture is the story of how you too are writing a letter. Abraham may have drafted a letter with a pen and we may be reading it decades later, but the truth is, as a mom, you write letters every day. You write letters every day. And the letter that you're writing is your children. Your children are the letter that you are writing and crafting and scripting, that the world around them will read the letter that you're writing. And there's scripture in this, and I wanna show it to you. It's in 2 Corinthians 3. In 2 Corinthians, Paul is writing a letter to his spiritual sons and daughters, and he's writing it to the church of Corinth. And I want you to see the beauty of this

and how we're gonna tie this to what it means to be a parent. I think there's some beauty in it. 2 Corinthians 3, verse two, it says these words. It says, listen to this. This is Paul talking to his spiritual sons and daughters. He says, you yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the results of our ministry. And I love this imagery. Listen to this. The Bible is so amazing. It's written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ before God, not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. So Paul looks at these spiritual sons and daughters and he says these four words to them. You are my letter. You are my letter. Everything that I've poured into you, everything that I've disciplined you with, everything that I've spoken into you,

everything that I've prophesied over you and spoke life into you and even had to bring correction at times, the life that you're now living is the very letter that I wrote in you. And mothers, I just wanna encourage you with this same imagery, and it opens up a wealth of beauty if we'll look at it, that you too are writing a letter every single day. I don't care if your kids are 60 or 70 years old. I'm 46 years old. My mother is still inscribing things on my heart to this day. And she is writing a letter in me. And the life that I live, the letter that all of you get to read is a result in many ways of the inscriptions of a mother. And then correspondently, the letter that Michelle and I are writing into our kids is written and crafted by the lives that we've lived. There's such beauty in this. And it's not with ink. It's not with paper. It's on hearts. It's on hearts. With consistency, with sacrifice, with the presence of God, with a lot of prayer. And I love verse three. Verse three says, you show that you are a letter from Christ,

the result of our ministry, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. So I want all the moms in the room, I've got a lot of things to say, and I'm gonna try my best to say them. But I want every mom to hear this today. All right, if you don't hear anything else, what you're doing in your kid's life and what you have done, but what you continue to do if you have adult kids, it matters more than you'll ever realize. It matters more than you'll ever realize. And what I wanna try to do in this message, I love preaching Mother's Day messages. They're one of my favorites. I love preaching Mother's Day and Father's Day. They're one of my favorite to preach. And it's not fair, right, fellas? On Father's Day, we kind of get beat up by the pastor. And then every Mother's Day, we're like, oh, best mom ever, you know? But I love speaking to mothers. But this sermon, like all Mother's Day sermons that I try to preach is, you need to know my primary candidate for this message are moms. But I will preach this in a way and I will try to show it in a way to where it's applicable to all of us.

It doesn't matter if you're a father or a grandfather or a grandmother or an uncle or an aunt or a friend or a mentor or a leader, a business leader, a manager, a teacher. It's applicable in all these ways, because what we're saying as a mom, which applies to a lot of other avenues, is you have influence. You have influence. And when you have influence, what you're doing is you're inscribing. You're inscribing. You are making a mark on someone's life. And that mark is creating a narrative, it's creating a story. Every conversation that you have with your kids is writing something on your kids. Every response, every correction that you make over your children is leaving a mark. You're inscribing every act of love, every act of grace, every act of patience, every correction, every act of consistency is all writing something on our kids' lives. And so I wanna just show you three things in this scriptures that we just read that is applicable to moms, obviously, and I'll kind of paint it that way. But it's applicable to all of us. In any area of your life that you have influence, you are inscribing, you are writing a letter,

and they are becoming the letter that you write. It's a huge responsibility, and it's a huge honor that God lets us do it. So three things, let's go back to verse two. We're just gonna let the Bible preach. The Bible's really good at preaching if we let it, okay? So verse two says, you yourselves are our letter written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. That's a little sobering, isn't it? Like you're writing a letter in your kids, and everybody gets to read it. So point number one, if you're taking notes, write this down. What I wanna talk to, I wanna talk to you about the handwriting of a home, the handwriting of a home. And this is something that's getting lost in our generation, the power of a home, what happens in a home, and the effects that it has on our children and on our marriages. And the Bible says that it's known and read by everyone. And there's connection all through the scriptures about your heart and your kids, the connection between the two. Even Paul says this, he says, you are our letter written on our hearts. So there's this connection, right? And he's talking about spiritual sons

and spiritual daughters, but it's applicable. So you go back to the Old Testament, there's a familiar verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. It says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments I give you today are to be on your hearts, on your hearts. And then verse seven says, impress them on your children. So it's on your heart, and what's on your heart will become impressed on your children. Okay, well, what's impressed mean? Aren't you impressed? That's how we use the word, but that's not what's being used here. The word impress in the Hebrew is the Hebrew word shanan. And it means sharpening. Let's listen to this imagery. Sharpening, engraving, inscribing, and pressing something in repeatedly. It's not enough to just do it once. In fact, this word many times when it's used in scripture, it is used in the context of the sharpening of a blade. And you sharpen the blade after repeatedly, over and over and over and over again, putting it to the grindstone. And so it's giving this picture of, if I as a parent live the commandments and the instructions and the values of this book,

they become a part of my heart. They're in my heart. And now my job is to inscribe them or to direct them or to impress them on the hearts of my children, developing a letter. That same verse goes on to say in verse seven, it says, impress them on your children. And then it says this. It says, talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your forehead. Write them on the doorframes at your houses and your gates. He's saying, impress them on your children. And then he goes into describing what that looks like. And really what he's saying is in everything you do, when you're sitting at home, do it. When you're walking with them on the road, do it. When you're driving them to soccer practice, do it. When you lie down, do it. When you get up, do it, like on the forehead, like hit them on the forehead with it, like impress them on the forehead. And what do you do with your hands and everything that we do, put them on the doorframes of your house. You can't even walk into your house without getting impressed, without getting inscribed with something.

He's giving. this beautiful picture of what it looks like. And if there's one part of my message that you'll need to pull your toes back just real quick, I won't step on them that much. But one of the most sobering things to me as a parent is that it's hypocritical of me to try to inscribe something on my kids' hearts that I don't live in my own. And so think about this imagery, right? So this imagery that Paul gives us is my kids are a living letter that I'm writing. But what I would present to you is that a very large part of the letter that you're writing in your kids' lives, you will write them without, not with your mouth, but with your actions. And a very sobering thought to know and to see and to witness and for your kids to call you out at times is when your kids do things and you're like, where did you learn that? I drove with my daughter the other day in a car and she was driving. And I was terrified, terrified. She's almost 19, so I'm not like digging into her. She's becoming an adult, but I'm just over there like whitening up linen and stuff. And then later on, I'm driving and my wife starts saying things to me about my driving. And all of a sudden it hits me.

Oh, my daughter watched me drive for 16 years. So there's parts, listen, a large part of the man, the pastor, the dad, the husband that I am is because I watched my dad be a dad and be a husband. So I'm just saying how we handle stress might be given over to our kids, how I speak to people, how I respond to inconveniences, how I apologize or don't apologize. I had this thought even last night as I was thinking about this message before I preached it, and I was over in worship and both my kids were with me and I sat there and I had this thought, my kids will worship like I worship. You, mom and dad, are the worship leaders of your home. We wanna come to church and let worship leaders up here teach our kids how to worship. Our kids will learn how to worship by watching you worship. So if the letters of our own life is filled with anxiety and panic, there's a lot of that, guys, that's going to be copy, paste, copy, paste. If the letter of your life says that church is optional and God is occasional, then we shouldn't be surprised when the faith of our kids is only written in the margins of their story. If my life is filled with bitterness and offense, I shouldn't be surprised when those same stories in my life appear in the stories of my kids' lives. So that's the only part, it's okay, it's all good from here, all right,

it's all good from here. I just wanna encourage you that we are writing a living letter in our kids' lives. Their lives will be a letter that everyone reads, but a large part of the letter won't be inscribed with your mouth, it'll be inscribed by the way you live your life. Okay, I wanna pause here, I wanna pray with, I'm gonna do this three times, I'm gonna do it right now, I'm gonna pray for the moms, okay? So Lord, I just pray right now for every mother, may they understand the influence of a home, home, the handwriting of a home. May we never lose sight of the importance on a Monday afternoon when everyone else is out living their lives and you're stuck at home doing something that no one notices, no one cares, no one's got your name in lights, no one's posting about your life, but you are engraving and inscribing and impressing values and love and patience and care into the lives of your children, and it will become a living letter because of your sacrifice. I bless them with that, Lord, in Jesus' name. And everybody said, all right, let's keep going. Verse three says this, verse three says, you show that you are a letter from Christ, a result of our ministry,

written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Number two, if you're taking notes, I want you to write these words down. Write down the inkless letters, the inkless letters. This is such a fascinating image. that Paul gives us. He's saying, you're our letter, but we didn't use one drop of ink to do it. Not one drop of ink was used. And if you want a challenge, write a letter in your kid's life with no ink, but everybody can read it. Everybody can read it. I've written a couple books. I'm working on another one I love to write. I write sermons, obviously, almost every week. And sometimes when you're writing a book or a whatever, or a sermon or whatever you may be writing, like it's sometimes it's sobering to me to think that literally as my fingers are typing out words on a screen, in my mind, I am typing out different words. In my mind, I'm like, I don't know if anybody will even like this sermon, period. This might be terrible. No one might come back next week. You know, it's like, the good thing about ink is that when there's ink on paper, it's available for instant feedback. Whether it's a sermon, whether it's a book, whatever it is,

you know, I can usually tell pretty quick if it's a decent sermon by your face, you know. But ink on paper invites feedback, whether it's clapping, it's an amen, it's whatever, it's, you know, YouTube clicks, there's feedback. The challenging thing about parenting is that the letters that you write on your kid's hearts have no ink, there is no feedback. You don't know if this is gonna be good. You don't know how this is gonna turn out because there's no instant feedback. There's no applause, there's no metrics, there's no immediate return, your prayers, you bring correction, you bring encouragement, you drive them to church, you drive them to school, you drive them to soccer practice, you model forgiveness, you keep showing up over and over and over again, all the while going, I don't know if this is working. Especially when they get to the teenage years, you're really like, oh my gosh, I'm not sure I've done anything right. And for a long season, your letter feels blank. And this is where being a mom, I can think would be pretty discouraging. You know, men, we're just kind of aloof. We're like, ah, he'll be fine, he'll figure it out, you know? But what I've seen being married to one is moms have a little more challenging time with this thought, because you can't see patience forming in your kids.

You can't see values taking root at young ages. But something is happening, something's happening. And what I would encourage you with is the most important lines that you can write in your kids' lives aren't visible when you're writing them. They're not visible as you write them. If you've ever used a $100 bill to pay, we don't use cash a lot anymore, but when you use a $100 bill, sometimes you'll hand it to the clerk and the clerk will take the dollar bill and they'll pull out this pen and they'll make a mark on it. They'll inscribe, they'll make a mark and press something on the bill. But when you hold up the bill, you can't see it. It's invisible ink. The only way to see the mark that was made on the dollar bill is they expose it to a certain light. And as they put it under this light, now I can see the mark that is on them. And to me, that's kind of what parenting feels like. All of my kids' lives, we've tried our best to make marks on them, to impress something upon them, to inscribe something on their heart. But there's so many of those years that you're just like, oh. I mean, I remember last night when I was preaching this at Gravevine,

my daughter was sitting over here. And man, I know it's no surprise to you because you've seen me cry a lot, but I lost it. I lost it. My daughter was very, what you would call strong-willed. And if you said, don't do that, that's what she's gonna do. If you said do that, that's what she wasn't gonna do. And she never did anything crazy. She was an amazing girl. I don't wanna paint a bad picture. She's never done anything just crazy bad, but it's just really, really challenging to raise her. And man, I'll tell you, 15, 16 rolls around. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, we may have missed it. I always tell people when raising kids, when they're young, they're like a sponge and they'll just soak up anything you say. And then somewhere around 13, 14, 15, every kid's a little different. They just become hard as a rock and they won't listen to anything you say anymore. In fact, whatever you say is wrong. And it's like a rollercoaster ride at that point. Have you ever ridden a rollercoaster and the first big drop, you're going up, it's like click, click, click, click, click. And once you get to the top, it's like,

there's no turning back now. It's not like you say, hold on, I want off this ride. That's a teenager. And once you go over the edge of raising teenagers, you do what you do on a roller coaster. You just hold on, you know? And so we have tried our best to raise her. And last night I looked over at her and she's almost 19 now. And man, I'm so proud of her. She, she loves the Lord. She loves Jesus. And it just, it wrecks me. And I want to encourage you with that. You're like, well, John, my son's 55. I don't still, what? Listen, your job is to inscribe. Your job is to inscribe. And you don't know when life is going to expose that to the right light. Those inscriptions that you've put in on your children, they're there. They're there. You just can't see them because they were written with invisible ink. Invisible ink. And at some point your prayer should not be full of shame and regret and I shoulda, coulda, woulda. There is no now, there's now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.

Your prayer should be Lord, expose their life to the right light to reveal all of the inscriptions that I've put in their life. So I want to encourage you with that. I think that's why Proverbs 22, six says, train up a child in the way they should go. And then when they grow old, they will not depart from it. It's like, do what you know to do, train them up in the way you know to train them up. And then pray that the life that they're living would expose them to the right light to reveal all of the inscriptions that you put on their life. All right, second prayer. Lord, may I encourage these moms to keep inscribing, keep inscribing with invisible ink, inscribing, impressing things on their kid's heart, refusing to be discouraged, refusing to be discouraged. Whether their kids are eight or 80, refusing to be discouraged and asking Lord that you would bring to the light all of the things that has been inscribed in their heart. Expose that light to them, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, verse three, I'm sorry, verse four, last one. Verse four says, such confidence we have through Christ before God, pause. How many of you at all of our campuses, raise your hands. You have raised kids or you're currently raising kids.

You have children, raise your hands. Hands all over the place, all right, hands down. Second question, how many of you would say by a show of hands that I am 100% confident that I have done everything right? If there was one, I'd be like, get your tail up here because I'm sitting down, you know. I love this, I love this, I love, I love, I love this part of the text the best. Paul says, such confidence we have through Christ. Now watch verse five, not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves. Now watch this, but our competence comes from God. I remember when we had our first child, Corey, our daughter, they would bring her in and she would just cry and that should have been a warning. Like this kid's gonna be hard, she just cried nonstop. And then the nurse would be like, would you like me to take the baby to the nursery? Yes, yes, get this kid out of here and bring me one that doesn't cry as much. And I hear someone was, no, I don't want him to go to the nursery, I want him to be here with me. You're crazy, like, do you know how much you're paying for this babysitter? Like send them in there right now, just, no, I'm kidding. I'm not kidding, let them go, like, and then we're done, you know, it's time to go and I don't wanna leave, I'm like, can we just live here? You know, I just wanna stay here.

You bring us meals, you take our kid when it cries, this is the greatest ever. And then they're like, okay, you can go and they hand me this kid and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know what to do with this. You expect me, you trust me, I'm 21, I can barely take care of myself and you want me to take care of this thing. Didn't come with a manual or nothing, like I didn't know what I was doing. And the truth is, I still don't. I tell my kids all the time, I told Jace this just not long ago, I'm like, buddy, listen, you're 15, you're a boy, this is the first time I've ever raised a 15-year-old boy. I know how to raise a 12-year-old boy, I've never raised a 15-year-old boy. Listen, I love that Paul says, hey, you are our letter, but it's not because of my competence. I am clueless. Like Paul is like, I don't know how to raise spiritual sons and daughters, I'm incompetent to do so. But my competence comes from God. And this is what it's like to be a parent. So number three, if you're taking notes, I got good news. Number three is your letter, your kids, has a co-author. Has a co-author. Now verse two, if you go back to verse two, Paul almost contradicts himself.

He says, you yourself are our letters, or our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You're like, okay, got it. Makes sense. The kid is my letter. And then the very next sentence, Paul says, you show that you are a letter from Christ. Well, which is it? Is it my letter or is it Jesus's letter? One sentence says it's my letter, then the next letter says that it's a letter from Christ. I think it's both. And I think this is something that parents need to hear because parenting is hard. It's overwhelming. It's exhausting. And I think the pressures of parenting is overwhelming. To think that I could mess this thing up. Am I doing the right thing? And then I get on Instagram and I see some dad that's crushing it. I'm like, I'm such a loser, you know? And then I see some mom that's like some superstar mom that's doing all the cooking gourmet meals for their kids. And I'm like, I suck at this, you know? And I'm just like the worst ever. No, we have a co-author. We have a co-author. Paul says, you are my letter, but I didn't write you all by myself.

In fact, I think I could change this point if I was gonna re-preach it. Because instead of saying we have a co-author, the right thing to probably would say would be we are the co-author. We all know this text, Hebrews 12, two. It says, run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the perfecter of faith. So we've never looked at this verse. You can put that up. Put that Hebrews text up on the screen if you got it. We've never looked at this verse in the context of parenting, have we? Run with endurance, parenting. Be a parent, run that race with endurance. Looking not to yourself, looking to Jesus. Because Jesus is the author and the finisher of your kid's faith. So I like to look at it is, if my kids are the letter written by me, I'm just the pen in the hands of God. And God used me in a way and craft my kid's life, but I'm incompetent. A pen is incompetent without your hand in it. A pen can't write a letter, it's incompetent. I'm an incompetent parent without the hand of God. So we have to be reminded of this idea that we have a co-author. And parenting was never meant to rest on your perfection. Okay, you're not a perfect parent.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent. You don't have to be a perfect parent to raise a powerful child, okay? Ephesians 2.10, this is a verse most of us know that talks about that how we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. What that verse doesn't say is Jason Corey, my kids, it doesn't say Jason Corey are John and Michelle's workmanship. No, I'm too, I'm incompetent. I cannot create workmanship in my kids. This word workmanship in the Greek is the Greek word poiema. It means masterpiece, poem, a crafted work. The most formative, amazing things that your kids will ever do is because Jesus authored it. And he used you to impress and to inscribe some things on your kids' lives. So do not live in shame, do not live in regret. One of Michelle and I's favorite verses in parenting was Zechariah 4.6, it says, this is what the Lord says. It is not by force nor by strength, but by my spirit. All right, mom's one last prayer. Lord, I pray for every mom in this room one last time, Lord. I pray that if they're overwhelmed, if they're exhausted, if they're weary, if they're wanting to quit knowing they can't, exhausted knowing that they've still got a long way in the world they've still got a long way in this race left to go. God, I pray that you would show them

how to turn to you the author and perfecter of parenting. You are the author of parenting and you are the perfecter of it. So God, fill the gaps that we leave as parents. fill the voids, fill the cracks. One last thing I want to encourage you with and then we'll go. This has either been like a encouraging message or really depressing. Because some of you are parents now. Some of you were parents 30, 40 years ago. Some of you, your kids are 50, your kids are 40, your kids are 55, whatever it is. And if we're not careful, an attempt to bring encouragement will actually slip us into discouragement and regret and shame. And thinking, I should have heard this sermon 30 years ago, John. It's too late for me. My kid's letter is already written. And I didn't inscribe everything onto my kid's letter that I wanted to write or that I should have wrote. What I want to just kind of shift your thinking just a little bit is to think about the letter of your children, not as one letter written, done, complete, it's over, but a continual letter that's being written to this day. Every single day, you get the opportunity to write a new piece of that letter.

Chapters one through 12 may have not been the greatest of chapters in your life, but there's chapter 13, there's chapter 14, there's chapter 15. And every day, the Bible says that God's mercies are new every single morning. So if you have regrets, start writing a new story. Start writing a new letter. It's not too late. It's not too late to apologize. It's never too late to apologize. It's never too late to say, I should have, I'm so sorry. I think one of the greatest attributes of a good godly parent is the ability to apologize to your kids. I've been apologizing to my kids since they were old enough to understand the words that were coming out of my mouth. Apologize to your kids. Whether they receive it, I can't promise you that, but apologizing to your kids, begin writing a new story today. Zechariah 4, that same chapter says, it says, do not despise small beginnings. It says, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. Don't despise trying to start something new and letting the magnitude of what you did wrong take over. No, I'm gonna rejoice in small beginnings. Small beginnings. I've been an angry dad, but I'm gonna start being

a happy, loving, caring father. New beginnings. And when we start new beginnings, the Bible says the Lord's rejoicing. He's not rejoicing because you got something right. He's rejoicing because you came to the awareness that you were doing something wrong and you chose to make a small change and he's rejoicing in that new beginning. We're so grateful that you joined us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God and we expect big results. If you would like to receive prayer, you can submit a prayer request by visiting victory.church slash pray. If this message or any of our messages have impacted your life and you would like to partner with us through giving, you can do so at victory.church slash give. Thank you again for joining us. At Victory Church, we live life to the full.