What Happens When You Die? | Crossroads church

What's going on? My name is Miko, and I'm the prison director here at Crossroads Church. I'm glad you're with us because we're in the middle of a series called the Jesus Exhibit. Over the past several weeks we've been taking a closer look at some of the most bold and significant statements Jesus ever made about himself. And I want to be clear. These are not just inspirational sayings or nice ideas. These are identity statements. This is Jesus out of his own mouth telling us exactly who he is. Whether you've been following Jesus for years, or whether you're still figuring out what you believe, or maybe you're just curious and exploring faith all together. I believe you are exactly where you're supposed to be. As we jump into today's message, I want to invite you. I want to invite you to wrestle with something. Not just what did Jesus say, but what do his words reveal about who he is? And if these words are really true, what does that mean for me? Because Jesus didn't just come to give us information. He came to invite us into a relationship, a relationship with truth, and it's a completely different way of living. Let's jump in. Where are we in the Bible? We're in the New Testament, in the gospel according to John. This is a first-hand biography of Jesus by one of his closest friends. In it, John records seven iconic I am statements that Jesus made. Seven metaphors, seven self-portraits of the living God. This week, Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. Here's how it goes in the book of John chapter 11. Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in a tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to consult them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? Well, hey, everybody, good to be with you. My name is Kyle, I'm our lead pastor here at Crossroads, and it is Father's Day when I'm a dad, so I get to do whatever I want on Father's Day, my message.

So we're going to start with a dad joke. Why do melons get married? Because they cantaloupe. That's, that was like, that was a bullseye of a dad joke. You want equal laughs and groans. And that was, man, that was satisfying. You got another one. Why, why can't you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom? It's because the P is silent. That's, some of you are like, I don't know how to spell pterodactyl. Look it up. It'll be, I would say be funnier. I'm not sure it would actually be funnier. Anyway, happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. The message we have today, I think, is a perfect one for Father's Day because we're talking about being with the Father. In other words, talking about heaven. There's different versions of heaven out there. This is why Mother's Day looks different than Father's Day. It's because mom heaven is very different than dad heaven. I'm not an expert on mom heaven, but when I imagine mom heaven, it would be like, you know, flowers in the trees. Beautiful. It'd be quiet. No one's bothering you. No one's going, mom, mom, mom. I guess that's not happening. All your food shaped like origami looks beautiful. You don't even want to eat it. It looks so pretty. That is not dad heaven at all. We would have trees, but not with flowers. They would grow bush lights. It'd be amazing.

And it'd be loud because we all have a truck with a V8 in it. We'd be eating slabs of smoked meat. It'd be incredible. Very different than mom heaven. And when Jesus comes along and He does this thing where He says, I am the resurrection of life, He changes, presents a very different view of heaven than the people had ever considered before. This is a very significant story that we're looking at today. It comes from John 11. Very, very significant. One, because Jesus actually raises a dead guy out of the grave. This dude. Lazarus had been dead for four days. Jesus walks up, calls him out. He comes out in his grave clothes. Very significant miracle. And number two, this thing he does, raising Lazarus from the dead, this claim he makes, I am the resurrection and the life. This is the thing that gets him killed. Literally one chapter later, you can go and look at this story and the Pharisees are trying to kill him because of this miracle. And oh, by the way, also trying to kill Lazarus too. Bummer for Lazarus. Welcome back, we're gonna try to kill you. That's this story that we're looking at. Very significant. I've actually been to the place where many believe that this happened

and been able to study the story in its context in detail. This is right outside Lazarus's tomb. Now, when you go inside that door, there's these sets of stairs. You go down about two or three flights of stairs and there's this hole in the ground that most people have to duck through to get into. I just, I can kind of walk in straight, which is an advantage for me. And when you get in there, you can see this tomb. Now, is that the actual tomb? I don't know. I really don't know. It might be, but if it's not that tomb, it's one very, very nearby. And that's because the location where this story happened, Bethany has been studied and revered for centuries because of this story. It's because this story taps into one of the deepest, most universal human questions that all of us have. One that I'm willing to bet, whether you follow Jesus for a long time or whether you don't believe in God at all, you still have some degree of uncertainty and unanswered questions about. And that question is, what happens after I die? Every person who's ever lived has wondered this question. And that's not an accident. The Bible says that God actually put this question inside of us.

Ecclesiastes 3.11 says he, God, has also set eternity in the human heart. So we wonder, you know what happens? What's heaven like? Is there a resurrection? Is there stuff after this life? And whether you're a believer or not, that the popular view of heaven that circulates right now kind of has three points to it. Popular view of heaven. One, heaven is a place. And that place is there, not here. Wherever there is, however far away it is, it's there. It's definitely not here. And it's then, it's in the future. It's not now. It's not now. And as such, many Christians hold this basic view. They seem to believe that the goal of life is to someday get to the place called heaven. And in this story, in this moment that we're gonna sink our teeth into, Jesus blows up all of that, completely reframes what heaven means, completely. He makes this claim that heaven is not a place, he's a person. That heaven is not a someday reality you're gonna get to, but a presence that you can enjoy right now and right here. And I'm telling you, if you can get to Jesus's view of resurrection,

Jesus's view of heaven, it will change everything in your life. Because when you believe that heaven is a place, you'll do everything to try to get there someday. But when you believe that heaven is a person, you'll spend your life trying to get to know him and spend time with him right now. My hope and my prayer is that for all of us, we make this shift today, that wherever we're starting from, we make progress towards Jesus's view of resurrection and heaven, towards the offer that he makes to all of us to be with us today, in this moment. Before we go any further, let's pray together. God, I'm asking that you would show up, that you would do exactly that, that you'd be with us powerfully, personally, God, that we would feel your presence even now. Amen. Now we're in this art museum metaphor for this series, this seven self-portraits of the son of God, art museum metaphor. And so the best way to think about this, I think, is that Jesus completely reframes resurrection and heaven, completely reframes it. I was talking to a guy this week, I just met, and he told me that his hobby is collecting antique folk art and then reframing it, because when you reframe it, it increases in value. And I had two thoughts.

One, I was like, bro, you need a new hobby. That is, I mean, motorcycles, hunting, like underwater basket weaving, anything sounds better than what you just said your hobby is. You know, that was number one. And then number two was like, oh, that's actually a perfect example of what Jesus does here. He does mess up, He does disassemble what you might think heaven and resurrection is, but when He reassembles it, when He reframes it, it doesn't lower the value, it actually increases dramatically. in value, dramatically in value. Now, quick background on the story before we dig into it. We're gonna go through this entire story. Quick background. Now, there's characters there in the story. There's Jesus and there's the disciples. Then there's these crowds of people and it's diverse crowds of people because Bethany, where this takes place, is two miles from Jerusalem. Jerusalem's this cosmopolitan city. There's people from all different backgrounds and belief systems there. So you've got the Jews, yes, they're in Jerusalem, but then you also have a lot of Hellenists. These are the Greek thinkers, influenced by Greek philosophy, Greek religion,

across the Greco-Roman world at the time. Lots of those people are there. And then you have this family. There's Lazarus, the dead guy, and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. And this isn't like three random people or some random family. This is some of Jesus's closest friends on the entire earth. We don't know exactly when and where Jesus met them, but we can tell from the Gospels that when Jesus goes to Jerusalem, he's typically staying at their house. Holy week, he stays at their house. In fact, the last place that Jesus's head hit the pillow before he went to the cross, at their house. Significant place, significant people to Jesus. Here's how the story begins, John 11, verse one. Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. That happens in John 12, one chapter later. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick. When he heard this, Jesus said, this sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory

so that God's son may be glorified through it. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. It's kind of a head scratcher. You're like, wait, okay, so because you love them so much, you decided to make them wait. I wish that my wife would read this part of the Bible. She tends to get upset at me when I make her wait. I'm just being like Jesus, you know? I'm just showing her how much I love her. I've heard this story talked about and people say, you know, this is Jesus. He was okay with Lazarus dying. He waited so that Lazarus would die so that then he could raise him from the dead and have this like big, beautiful lesson. Actually, no, that's not what happened. See, where Jesus was when the messenger gets to him with this news was a day's journey away from Bethany. And we know as we're about to read in just a minute that when Jesus gets to Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days. And so we can do a little bit of math. We can go, it took a day for the messenger to get there. Jesus waits two days. He travels a day and Lazarus has been dead for four days, which means the day Lazarus died is the same day the messenger left. Before Jesus ever got word about Lazarus,

he was already dead. And so there is a lesson in here. See, seemingly the family that was closer to Jesus than arguably any other family on the face of the planet at the time, for them, even them, going to Jesus for help, seeking his presence was not their first impulse. It was their last resort. And by the time they go to him, it's already too late. Lazarus is already dead. Here's how the story continues in verse 17. On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now, Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem and many Jews had come to Mary and Martha to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. Lord, Martha said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now, God will give you whatever you ask. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Martha answered, I know I'll rise again at the resurrection at the last day. And then Jesus leans in. I think it gets really close to Martha in this moment. I think he might even grab her chin or hold her cheeks in his hand. And he looks into her eyes and he says,

I am the resurrection in the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die. Whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? I don't know how long it takes Martha to answer, but eventually she does. And she says, yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Messiah. the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world. And then Jesus, he never says something without doing something. And so he goes to the tomb, he calls out in a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And a dead man walks out in his gray clothes, says, unwrap him, unwrap him. Incredible. But the center cut moment of the story is actually what we just read. It's not Lazarus walking out of the tomb. It's what Jesus says to Martha. I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this? And I think the question that Jesus has for us on this Father's Day, not accidentally, is do you believe this? And what do you believe about it? And what does it mean to you? Not like on a theoretical basis, but on a practical daily basis, day in, day out. Does your view of Jesus as the resurrection and the life change anything? What is your view about heaven and resurrection? Now, there are basically three views present in the audience who watched this story happen then. And I would argue they're more or less the same that are present with us right here, right now. Group number one, if you ask them what's their view on heaven and resurrection, they would say nothing. There is none.

They would say everything that you see is all that there is. And there is no such thing as afterlife. There is no such thing as resurrection or heaven or any of that stuff. Back then, that group was called the Sadducees. And it might surprise you like, man, even back then, I thought everybody was religious back then. No, there were groups of people who rejected this idea. The Sadducees were culturally Jewish, but did not believe in any resurrection. Today, these people are called the secularists, the kind of bullseye of this group, the inner core, the atheist. This viewpoint has been pushed upon us for a long time. About 12 years ago, in fact, there was a book that kind of took the world by storm. It swept popular culture. Everybody was reading it. Bill Gates read it, recommended it. Mark Zuckerberg read it. He was recommending it. It's called Sapiens. It's by an Israeli military historian about the history of humankind. But it wasn't just factual history this guy was presenting. He was presenting the underlying philosophical, emotional ends of believing that all that we see is all that there is. In the book, he said this. In itself, the universe is only a meaningless hodgepodge of atoms. Nothing is beautiful, sacred or sexy. But human beings make it so. Any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion. And I don't hear that and get upset about it. I hear that and I'm grateful. I'm like, thank you for articulating clearly the logical conclusion of believing that there is nothing but this world and this life. Thank you, because you're right. If we came from nothing, pure accident, cosmic mistake, and we go to nothing afterwards, then in the middle is also nothing. Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter. Now what I find fascinating is this viewpoint has been around and kind of pressed and popularized for the last, I don't know, 100 years or so. But what's interesting is right now we're in this cultural moment where the younger generations, especially Gen Z, Gen Alpha, are rejecting this worldview. Not because there's some enlightened religious whatever. It's because they just go, this doesn't match my experience. Because my experience is that things are meaningful. My experience is that some things are beautiful and some things are genuinely awful on the other end of the spectrum. And so you cannot convince me that this is all that there is and it's all meaningless. And I just want to say, if you're in those generations or you're in that spot, maybe you don't know what you believe about heaven. But there is something in you that rejects this. You're like, that doesn't match. Lean into that feeling. Lean into that experience that you have. God says He put eternity in your heart. Follow, follow it. That's audience number one present, nothing people. The audience number two are the people who believe in some kind of bodily resurrection and judgment, like at the end of the world. This was the Pharisees back then, the dominant religious leaders at the time. They believed that someday everybody who had ever died would all be bodily resurrected all together, all at once, at the end of world history. Each of us would then be judged individually based on whether we'd done good stuff or bad stuff. And the people who had done the good stuff, them, would go to the good place, heaven. And the people who did the bad stuff, everybody else, would go to the bad place, hell. This was their viewpoint. You might hear that and go like, man, that kind of overlaps with a little bit of my perception of the afterlife, heaven, resurrection, all that stuff. And then there was this third group present too. These are the people who didn't believe in this physical thing. They believed in something. more spiritual. They would say something like, you know, my body is a meat suit and my soul is trapped inside of it and one day the meat suit will die and my body will be free to go to the good place, the spiritual realm, because the spiritual realm is good and the physical realm

is bad. This was the Hellenists back then, the Greek people walking around thinking these thoughts. This is also, by the way, what many Christians seem to believe, that this is basically heaven. My meat suit, my body bad, and one day it'll die and then I'll escape the earth and I'll go live in this like disembodied spiritual state. I'll live in a cloud or something. This is what I thought heaven was like as a kid growing up. You know, I'd hear someone talking about that and be like, one day we're gonna get to heaven and it'd be pearly gates and live on clouds and we'll just sing songs to Jesus all day long. And they would say this as I had just sung a song to Jesus played by some lady ironically named Martha on a pipe organ and it bored me to death. And I was like, if that's heaven, no thank you. You know, like I'll take my odds with the other place because I know I'm not going to like that. I'm bad at sitting still. I don't like these songs. And if you've ever had a moment like that too, you're like, man, I've struggled to connect with what church seems to tell me heaven is like. I have good news for you. That view of heaven, this disembodied spiritual weird thing, that's not Jesus. That's Plato. Literally Greek philosophy. Plato's the one who started picking up this idea about the physical is super bad, the spiritual is getting there, you escape this prison. That's Hellenistic thinking. That's Greek thinking. It actually developed in the first heresy that the church ever had to deal with and fight called Gnosticism. Even in the New Testament, proto-Gnosticism, the beginning of it was taking root in people. You can look in the writings of John and Paul and they would emphasize, for instance, that Jesus came in a physical body. It's because this kind of Gnostic thinking was saying, well the physical is bad and so Jesus as God, he can't be good and inhabit a bad physical thing. And so he actually wasn't physical, he was like a hologram. He was like a ghost who looked real. You know, he wasn't really crucified, he didn't really die, it just kind of appeared that way. And the gospel writers go, no, no, no, no, that does not match at all, at all what God says, at all what Jesus said about heaven and resurrection. At all. Now to all three audiences, wherever you find yourself across that spectrum today, maybe a little bit in all the camps, I don't know. To all three of the audiences, Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this? And in that statement, reframes all three viewpoints about heaven. Us Ransons, we've been watching a lot of World Cup, like probably too much World Cup, like binging, gorging on the World Cup. I don't care who's playing. Uzbekistan? Great. Curaçao? Amazing. Their goalie was a beast last night, 15-6. Amazing. I love it. I love watching all the games. But my favorite part of the World Cup actually isn't the matches on the field,

it's the, it's the fans in the stands. Have you seen this? These people from other countries are coming to America and they are like just living their best life. I read this article on ESPN, it blew my mind. Scotland fans drink Boston dry as local bars run out of beer. Wow. They drank triple the amount of beer sold on St. Patrick's Day. When you out-drink the Irish by a factor of three, like you deserve a gold medal and a new liver. Like that's, that's amazing to me. It's not just the Scottish, people from all over the world are coming to America and absolutely loving it. And you've seen clips kind of like these. Amazing. First bite, man. Bob came all the way from Japan. It's his first time trying Texas barbecue. I'm excited. Let's do it. Oh my god. How big is that? Okay, first bite. First bite, man. That's your first ever bite of Texas barbecue. What do you think? Amazing. It's like not hard. Tender. Tender. Umami. Delicious. Try macaroni. His mind is blown. He's like, what? It's not just the food, they're also loving the size of our cars. Check this out. I bloody love driving in America. This is, it's such a pleasure. It's such an absolute pleasure. We've had to change our car purely because we needed to, um, the old car had a service, but we've got this Jeep Wagoneer. It's brilliant. It's massive. It is huge. The air conditioning is amazing. The screen's amazing. I'm even getting cold air blowing up my bottom. I love being in America. I love American cars. I love American roads. And we are having the best time of our lives. In my house, we call the vented seats BC. It's like AC and then there's BC. Butt conditioning comes out of your seat. You can take that if you want to. Not just the cars, by the way. This might be my favorite one. The size of our drinks. Watch this. What?

I ask a medium size. That's medium. What medium? Madonna! My entire family can drink from here for one month. So this is a medium size? Yeah. Madonna, Santa. We're in Texas. Everything is bigger. But also, why you have to pay more for a bigger size if I have the free refill? Because then you can take it out and just have it for the entire day. But there is no sense. You have the free refill. You know how many colors is this? How many? I don't know. At least two plates of pasta. Is it good, though? The sugar is good. For sure it's good. Take it. No! No. Take it out. It's beautiful. They found heaven on earth. They didn't know. Their version of heaven is America. Everything is awesome and huge. It's great. I want you to think right now about your version of heaven. What would it look like? Maybe there'd be Texas barbecue.

I don't know. Maybe driving a Jeep Wagoneer. Think about what it would look like. Would there be mountains in your heaven? Big, tall, beautiful mountains. Maybe water. Maybe a lake. Maybe you're a beach person. Crystal clear Caribbean water. Imagine your heaven. Construct it in your imagination right now. What would your heaven be like? Mine would definitely have the Swiss Alps. Then it would have the Maui beaches and a little bit of Ohio woods in there. Because I'm a country boy. I love the woods. That's my heaven. For sure we'd be drinking bush light and eating smoked meat. It'd be awesome. That's my heaven. Think about what yours would look like. Think about what yours would look like. Now make it ten times better than you just imagined in your head. I don't know. Like how do you do that? I don't know. Make it ten times better. Make the mountains bigger. Make the beaches bigger. Make your house a mansion.

You got a mansion in heaven. Make that even bigger, okay? Imagine the whole thing. Now whatever you're picturing, if you're imagining a place, you're not imagining Jesus' version of heaven. Because the thing that Jesus does that reframes everything, when he says, I am the resurrection in the life, is he says eternity, heaven, is not about a place. It's about a person. It's not about a someday there. It's about a me right here with you right now in this moment. See, this is Jesus' massive reframing of resurrection from a place to a person. And it changes our questions. It's not, how do I get there someday? How do I enjoy his presence today? Entirely different question. John 17, 3, Jesus says, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. He's not saying, I am like heaven. I'm like resurrection. I'm like eternal life. He says, knowing me, being with me, being in my presence is, is, is heaven. I used to read this story and I would think, man, there's one clear loser in this story. Lazarus. You know, sucks to be Lazarus. You're in heaven. Everything is awesome.

You die, you go to heaven. You got your mansion. You got your bush light tree in the backyard. It's great. You're loving it. And then Jesus comes and drags you out of heaven back to earth. You got to walk out in your grave clothes in front of everybody. Embarrassing, right? You're like, stinks for Lazarus. And then I realized, no, actually, I've got my mindset completely flipped. I'm not thinking about this Jesus's way. If you think about it Jesus's way, Lazarus wasn't taken from heaven back to earth. Lazarus was raised out of the grave and brought back into the presence of heaven himself. So you and I have to get this right. We have to see this how Jesus sees it. Heaven is being in the presence of God. And I'll say on Father's Day, heaven is being in the presence of your father. Of your father. That's when you're resurrected. That's when you experience new life. No place else. At Crossroads we've seen thousands and thousands of people, me included, my wife included, who have met Jesus, walked in his presence and had our lives forever changed. Who have been, in a word, resurrected. erected now. People like Jesse. Growing up, I was raised in a Baptist church. I understood God, I understood what he meant, but I never felt it. I've spoken out about not believing in God.

I had a speech impediment. Most people couldn't understand me until I was about seven or eight years old. I always felt behind, always felt different. That little boy just wanted to fit in, wanted to be a part of something that I never felt I was a part of. You know, I was a big frat-type partier, drinker, and fell into the wrong crowd. Cocaine was introduced to my life. Started as fun, started as a scene, and then as time went on, it consumed me and took everything away from me. I've had five roommates, two of them are dead, one's in jail. You do unimaginable things that you'd never thought you were possible doing in an addiction. I was morally defeated, I was broken. I failed as a son, failed as a father, failed as a husband, lost my job. I couldn't decide if my kids were better off with an addict as a father or no father at all. I had called my dealer, I'm sure I lied to my wife to get out of the house as I was coming up to Crossroads Oakley to meet my dealer, and the sign read, Thursday night baptisms, you have a seat there. I walked into Crossroads, had never been there. You know, I watched people get baptized,

come out of that water, and have grace and forgiveness that I just didn't have for myself anymore. I started a recovery program. My sponsor had told me, said, when you get in the car, you turn the car on, and you start talking to God, and you don't stop talking to God until you get to wherever you need to be, because you'll never turn to call your dealer when you're in the middle of a conversation with God, and it was what I needed at that time. After I got clean, I hadn't been myself in so long, I didn't even know who I was. You start filling voids in your heart with other things external from you, relationships, and working out, becoming a workaholic, anything to prove that you're better than what you were. It took time for that relationship to grow with God. I didn't even get baptized for a few years. I had gone on a mission trip to New Orleans, and I remember at the end of it, everybody was getting baptized. Didn't think I was good enough for it yet. It wasn't until a couple of years later, Chuck was speaking, and by the end of it, he had said, if this doesn't give you a reason, there is no other reason than I got baptized that day without a plan. When I stepped out of the water, I felt like I had hope for the first time, like I wasn't necessarily the person that I had left behind.

God's given me everything. Gave my life back, gave my children their father back. I have respect for myself. I have custody of my two kids and my stepson. I'm a business partner with my father, and my son gets to work with me now, he's 20. I have everything I need. What does God call you? God says, I'm worthy. God says, stand up. He calls me son. What he said there at the end is the key. How do you hear what God might say to you? Well, you get in his presence, that's how. You get up close to him. And when you get close to him, even here, even now in your life, he will resurrect you. This is the answer to the question you might have. Like, okay, so the presence of God is better than a place called heaven. I don't know, I imagined a pretty great heaven, Kyle. It was pretty awesome. Maybe it was better than yours. Maybe I'm better at this than you are. I don't know, pretty awesome. Why in the world would I rather have the presence of Jesus than go to this incredible place? And the answer is what we just heard in that story is because the thing you want the most, the thing you've spent your entire life searching for,

and you will continue to search for until you find it, is the love and approval of the Father. That's it. And if you have a place as incredible as you can possibly imagine, but there's not the presence of the Father loving you and telling you who you are, you still won't have what you really want. You won't, it's not heaven. Jesus said in John 14, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. He is the Father. Come to be with you and to encourage you, to love you and affirm you and tell you who you are. That's a job only a dad can do. That's a job of a father. Like father's in here right now. Dad's in here right now. This is the thing that God has called you to. As a father, the job of a father is not earn enough money to buy a big enough house to take care of needs. Those needs, finding the place, establishing the place, making it as awesome as possible, that doesn't matter if they don't have your presence. They don't have your affirmation. You know, what your kids need from you is they need to hear that they belong. Because when they hear that they belong, they won't go chasing after affirmation, chasing after belonging, compromising their character,

looking for things in the wrong places. They won't do that because they'll know they belong to you and they'll know who they are. And I get it, dads, I get it. As a dad, I spend so much time feeling like I'm probably screwing this up, you know? I come home from work and I have this imagination of what it's gonna be like and I'm gonna sit down, it's gonna be awesome. We had the other night, we played phase 10 as a family. Don't ever do this, it's a terrible idea. But I was like, this is gonna be great. We're gonna have game night, I'm gonna be the present dad, focused with my family. And what happened, I got stuck on phase six and I got really mad, grumpy. And they're all like, what's wrong with dad? I'm like, I'm enjoying being with you, I'm doing this wrong, right? I get it, dads, I get it. You show up from work, you wanna have these great moments, but your temper is short, your patience run out and you just feel like I'm probably doing this wrong. I get it. If you feel that way, I just wanna remind you of something. Maybe you don't know this, maybe it's new news. You know that God doesn't do accidents? You know that God wasn't surprised that you were the father of your kids?

He wasn't like, oh, oops, that happened. He's not surprised. Psalm 139 says, he knows every day of your life before one of them came to be. He knows every word on your tongue, angry, impatient, otherwise. He knows it before it leaves your mouth. He knows all of human history, everybody who had ever lived before one of us ever came to be. That's what Psalm 139 says. That's what the Bible says. And so God, in his infinite, perfect wisdom, he looked across all of the billions upon billions of men who he would ever create, who would ever live. And he said, you were the perfect dad for your kids. Not an accident, not a mistake. Not a mistake. I'm telling you on this Father's Day, you can give them a gift. You can just affirm them as they give you whatever it is, hope it's great, hope you like it. I don't know, it's kind of hit and miss sometimes. You know what I mean? But you can give them a gift. You can sit them down and just say, I want you to know how much I love you. I want you to know how proud I am. I want you to know I'm always in your corner. You can just tell them that.

You don't have to write a poem to them or whatever. Just be a normal person, tell them what they mean to you. It will mean the world to them. It'll mean the world to them. It's nothing, nothing, nothing can replace the presence of a father. And you have a father who loves you. And the thing that he wants the most is to get closer and closer and closer to you. He wants you to live every day in his presence. You go to the end of the Bible, Revelation 21, there's this incredible picture of heaven coming out of the sky, coming to earth. And it says that what's gonna happen is a father is going to wipe every tear from every eye. As a dad, when my kids were younger, they would skin their knee and they'd run up to me crying. Oh, they hurt my knee. And you're like a little bit Tylenol Band-Aid, you'll be fine. But they're crying, right? What happens? They climb into your lap and I would take my thumb and I would wipe the tear from their eyes. When you do that, wipe a tear from an eye, it is an intimate, close, nose to nose moment. This is what the father says he wants to do for you. He wants to be this close to you. I think the gift that he would want on Father's Day is the same as any good father would want,

time with their kids. And so before we run out, we go to our Father's Day thing, we're gonna do a little bit of a prayer experience right now, all of us, just stay where you are. I'm gonna help you experience the presence of God right now. I think that's what he wants. You can go ahead and close your eyes. James 4, eight says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. I want you to imagine the father sitting down next to you, putting his arm around you, drawing close to you. I want you to take your hand and just put it over your heart right on your chest. Now, press hard against your heart, press hard. 1 Corinthians 3, 16 says, do you not know that you're God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? As close as your hand is to your heart, as close as your hand is to your body. God is closer. He's more present with you. He's more personal with you. He says He makes His home inside of you if you believe in Him. Take a minute and just ask Him to feel His presence in your life right now. Tell Him you want to draw close to Him. Now take your hand and put it on your shoulder. Kind of the same spot where if you're wearing a heavy backpack, the strap would be cutting into your shoulder. Just put your hand there and press down. Just press down. It can feel like you're doing life on your own. Like there's no one else to carry the burdens. But that's not true.

The Resurrection Himself says He came to give you life. He came to help you. Hebrews 4.16 says let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Tell God what you've been carrying that's heavy. Tell Him the burden that you have in your life right now. And ask Him to help, to be present with you carrying it. You know, a good father, what they do is they take the load on themselves, and that's what he does. Last one, you should take your hands and just hold them out in front of you like you're receiving a gift. Psalm 16.11 says in your presence there is fullness of joy at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Do you know it's okay to ask your dad for joy? Why don't you just ask him? Whatever would be joyful, just ask him for joy in your day, even today. Maybe you're going out of here and you're not expecting joy. Ask him to change that. Experience the joy of his presence with you today and throughout your week. Let me pray for you. God, thank you so much for being the father who doesn't live far away. The father who doesn't say someday you'll get to be in my presence. Someday you'll get to move into my neighborhood, but you're the God who moved into ours. Would you be the resurrection present today, heaven present today with each of us that we may experience the unparalleled joy of the life that you offer? Amen. I hope this message blessed you today. Over the past several weeks, we've looked at some of the most important statements Jesus ever made about himself. Not what other people said about him, not what culture says about him, not even what religion says about him. We've looked at what Jesus said about himself. And throughout this series, one thing has become very clear. Jesus did not leave us much room to make him into whoever we want him to be. He made bold claims, personal claims, claims that demand a response. The question isn't simply, who does Jesus say he is? The question is, will I let him be that for me? The way when you feel lost, the light when it's dark, the shepherd when you feel alone. My prayer is that this series hasn't just given you more information about Jesus, but that it's helped you to know him, to know him more deeply, to trust him more fully, and to follow him more closely.

We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear about what's standing out to you during this series. What questions are you still wrestling with? What has God been showing you? Maybe you even have a testimony to share, or a prayer request, or an idea for a future episode with Mornings with Miko. Whatever the case is, we'd love to hear from you. So shoot us an email. You can reach us at prison at crossroads.net. We genuinely love to hear from you. Y'all have a blessed one.