A Song For Dads

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Now, enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, good morning, everybody, especially all of the dads in the house. Happy Father's Day. Yeah, let's go give all the fathers a big hand. All right, fellows, if you can, would you stand? We want to recognize all the dads or father figures in the house. Just remain standing for a minute. I want to pray over you wonderful dads. Just remain standing if you will. Fellas, I want to pray for you right quick. We just want to pray a blessing over each of you. Father, thank you for these men. Thank you for the role that they play in the lives of their family members and the life of our church, in the life of our community, and even in our country. Thank you, Father, for these guys. Thank you, Lord, for the businesses and the professions and the work that they do each and every day. Thank you, Lord, that they're honoring you being in your house this morning. Thank you for the men who can't be here, who are out of town, many watching online this morning. Their heart is with us and they're watching and they're a part of this service. We want to honor them as well. Father, I just pray you'll lift any burden these guys are carrying. Let them know how greatly they are appreciated, how much they are loved, and how much they are needed. And, Father, we pray this will be a wonderful day as we honor them. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Thank you, fellows. Thank you again for being here. When you leave, we got big old snow cone truck out there under the awning, so be sure and get you some snow cone as you leave here this morning. Also, this is a big week in the life of the church. As Amber mentioned, this is wow Week. This is vacation Bible school on steroids. I'm telling you, these kids are wired to be here. And those of you volunteering, if you've never done that before, could we just stop and have a short word of prayer over you? You'll be fine. It's going to be an experience. Let's call it that. We'll give you a chair and a whip when you get here, and you're going to have a great time. But these Kids have a blast. In fact, when you leave this morning, not only do we want you to have a snow cone, we also want you to pick up what is left of these little bands, wristbands. They're placing the name of a different child, their first name, on one of these wristbands as a reminder for us to pray specifically for that child, that they'll have a wonderful experience while they're at Wild Week. So if you'll go along with us and pick up one of those bands and just put it somewhere so that you'll remember it, to pray for that child, that God will do something great and wonderful in their life as they come to Wild Week. You know, I heard about a dad who was really trying to be a great father and be involved in the life of his children. And what he thought he would do, he thought it was a good idea. He said, and not only am I gonna pray for them and pray with them before they go to sleep, I'm gonna sing, I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna sing with them. And so this dad, every night just made it a habit to sing with his children while they were preparing to go to sleep. And one night he did this for months, until one night he overheard his four year old whisper to her little brother, you know, if you'll just pretend you're asleep, he'll stop singing. So I give the dad an A for effort, right? I mean, you're trying. And that's important because what we know from our society is that everyone who can father a child is not necessarily a great father to a child. The Bible says in Proverbs 18, verse 22, that if a man finds a wife, he has found a good thing. Now, notice he didn't say if a man finds a woman, because every woman won't make a good wife. And conversely, ladies, every man won't make a good husband. So if a wife, a woman, finds a husband, she's found a good thing. And so the challenge I want to put out before our men, particularly this morning, is to take the bar up to be a better man, to be a better husband, to be a better father. I hope that can be the challenge to all of us on this Father's Day weekend. Because I cannot underestimate or overestimate rather the significance that you play, particularly in the lives of your. The lives of your children. You imprint, you impact them. Have you ever noticed that young women tend to marry young men who are a lot like their fathers? That explains why some moms cry at weddings But I'm just saying that there is a tendency that you look for qualities that you've seen in your mother or in your father when you are are picking your spouse. And there is a psalm that I want to point out that's actually written. This psalm is written directly to men, and not just to men. It's written directly to husbands, and not just husbands. It's written directly to fathers. Now, we don't know who wrote it, but we know to whom it was written. And so it's the 128th Psalm. If you have a Bible, you might look there with me. It's called the Song. It's one of the Song of the Ascents. Song of the ascents, from Psalm 120 to about Psalm 134. That section in the songbook is called Song of the Ascents. Now, ascent is to go upward. And what the Jewish pilgrims would do is when they were making their journey to Jerusalem, either to worship in the temple or to celebrate one of the Jewish feasts, they would often sing these songs of ascent. And this particular Psalm 1 was a Psalm that was sung by the men. And the men would champion this. And it's a great challenge to the men in terms of being good fathers. And in verse one, he opens this way. Blessed are all you who fear the Lord. Now, I don't know of a man in the room that doesn't want to be blessed with the idea of blessing. It means to be fulfilled. The idea of blessing means to be fulfilled. It means to be happy. It means to have your life that's enriched every man, regardless of who you are, regardless of what you're doing, you want that kind of life for yourself. And anyone who loves you wants to see you blessed. And he's saying, guys, here is the way to be blessed. You're blessed when you fear the Lord, and not only when you fear the Lord, but then you walk in obedience to him. Notice what he said. Here's the benefit. You'll eat the fruit of your labor. It's the idea that you really enjoy your career. You'll be able to see fulfillment in your family. You'll be able to see some of the results of the investment that you've made in the lives of people, in the life of your work. You'll begin to eat the fruit of your labor. Blessings and prosperity will be yours. Now, he's not saying you're going to be particularly wealthy, but you'll be wealthy in ways that can't be measured monetarily. You'll Prosper in everything you do. Physically, spiritually, emotionally. He talks about being able to prosper. He said, your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. And you know why that's important? Cause if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. And he's saying, this is going to impact your wife. Your wife is going to be as a fruitful vine. She's gonna be fulfilled in that relationship with you. She's gonna be fulfilled in the marriage. And notice it now, your children will be like olive shoots around your table. What does that mean? They're flourishing. They're healthy. You have emotionally healthy kids. They're doing what? They're very grounded. They're well rounded. And so he's saying, this is the man who's blessed, the man who fears the Lord walking in his ways. Here's the byproduct of that. And then he said in verse four, yes, this shall be the blessing for the man who fears the Lord. And then he says, may the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you live to see your children's children. Now, I've lived long enough now to see my children's children. I can tell you that's a blessing. And many of you have achieved that mark where now you're enjoying. Some of you sitting with your children's children this morning. Who are you saying that's the blessing? Sometimes we look at the wrong thing to try to evaluate how blessed we are. There's an old hymn that says, count your blessings. Name them one by one. Count your blessings. See what God has done. And I'm telling you, when you begin to count your blessings, you begin to realize how incredibly blessed you are with your spouse, with your family, with your career, with your life. I mean, we are so blessed as a people, and particularly blessed as we pursue and we press into God. And from those verses I've read, I wanna highlight some important verses from the song that I wanna underscore. If you take notes, number one, I want you to notice, he opens by talking about a dad's faithful walk. He's saying, if you wanna be blessed. And who among us does not wanna be blessed? He said, it begins with your faithful walk, how you walk each day. And notice how he describes it. You walk in obedience. You walk in obedience. Each and every day as you get up, you try to say, God, I know you brought me to life today because you have a purpose for me. There's something you have me to do. There's a life that I can make a difference in. I can make a difference with the people I work with. I want to be faithful in walking in obedience and being sensitive to. To why you've given me life today for your purpose and plan in my life. And one of the biggest guys, one of the biggest influences that you'll have in your daily walk will be the influence you have with your children. Your children. Someone has well said that children will. They will learn what they live. In other words, what we do oftentimes speak so loudly, kids won't hear what we say. So it's important that we not only are verbal teachers, we teach them verbally, but we also teach them visually through our example. And so when you read this in context, he's talking about the walk of this father and how it impacts his spouse, how it impacts his children. Because someone is caught up in the influence of a dad who walks in obedience with God. There's an occasion proverb. This is great. It says, a daddy crawdad isn't that deep. A daddy crawdad can't teach a baby crawdad to swim forward if he swims backwards. That's some Cajun theology for you right there. But the principle is true that children will learn what they live. And so they learn a lot through the example that we set before them. And he talks about a father not only walking in obedience, but walking with a sense of fear. Now, when I say fear of God, I don't mean cringing, dread. I don't mean you wake up guys every morning going, I'm afraid not to walk right or God's gonna kill me. The fear of God means reverence. It means to respect God. It means to look at God knowing my life is in his hands, in Him. The Bible says, in him we live and move and have our being. My health is in his hands. My relationship is in his hands. My career is in his hands. All that I am or ever hope to be is in God's hands. And so I wake up every day in awe that God has a plan and a purpose for me. And so I walk throughout my day recognizing and realizing that God is capable of bringing some amazing things into my life. And it gives me a reverence for him and a respect for him and an awe for Him. And I walk in obedience to him with that in mine. So you have this dad's faithful walk, and then you look at the next couple of verses. I messed it up on my sermon notes, so I fix it as I talk about it. It should Say on the lower third there, it'll probably say, a dad's faithful work. What I should have said is, a dad's fruitful work. My bad. So if you're taking notes, this would be a dad's fruitful work. This is the work that a dad does that bears fruit. Now, when he speaks of this, he talks about a blessing that you receive from your career. But I'm focused a little tighter on the blessing you receive from your children, from your family. A dad's fruitful work. Have you ever thought about it? The first image a child ever has of God, the first authority figure they ever have of God, is the image they see in their parents, in their mom and dad. You are the first authority figures in their life. And since it's Father's Day, and I'm kind of steering it more toward the dads, I would say dads. That's an awesome responsibility. It's an incredible opportunity to realize that you and I have the power to help kind of shape the way our kids will ultimately see God, the way they will view him. That's why he said in Ephesians 6, Four fathers, don't exasperate your kids. Instead, bring them up in the training and the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. If you go back a Psalm In Psalm 127, he describes our kids this way. He said, children are as arrows in the hand of a hunter. And then he says, happy is the one who has their quiver full of them. Now, I don't know how many your quiver holds. My quiver held two arrows. Some of you have a quiver that holds three, and some of you have five. We have families in our church, five and six kids, they got a big quiver full of arrows. But here's the point. He's using an archery illustration to describe our kids. Now, I don't know how many of you have ever done any shooting, any archery. I've done a little bit of that. And I can tell you that when you go out and you shoot with a bow and arrow, what you'll find is you can cut those arrows to the same length. Those arrows can come from the same manufacturer. You can put on one head a broadhead that weighs the very same as all of the other broadheads on the other end. Those other feathers are called fletching. And those fletchings can be exactly the same. All of the markings of the arrow look alike. You take those arrows and you spin it, and everything looks balanced and right. But here's what happens. The minute that arrow leaves the bow. No two arrows will fly the same. What's the point? Children are like arrows in the hand of a hunter. Meaning you can have two kids, you cut them the same way, you put the same fletching on those little boogers. They have the same broad head, they look alike, but man, they don't fly the same. You have that compliant little arrow that goes and hits the target every time you fire it. You have that strong willed arrow that you have to really push it and get it to go in the right direction. No two arrows will fly exactly the same. That doesn't mean you're not skillful as an archer. It just is what it is. God made your kids unique. And so I'm just suggesting you that when we put the investment into raising our kids, we need to understand that God made these kids a little different. They're gonna go a little different way, they're gonna fly through the air a little differently. Especially when they leave the bow, they're gonna go a little different. Some of them are gonna find their path a little differently than somebody else. That's okay. They're figuring it out. The goal is to get them at some point to own their faith, to stand on their own feet. And so he's just suggesting that these arrows in the hands of a skillful hunter means that these arrows will never fly exactly the same. You just want to shoot them toward the right target. And so these kids require a lot of attention. These kids require a lot of direction. And I found in a study that really underscores the impact of a father. Listen to this. A loving, accepting father will tend to have children with a higher self esteem. Now that alone is important, right? That when a dad is loving and accepting of his child, that child will develop a higher self esteem. Listen to this. The study goes on to say, a nurturing father child relationship furthers the development of children's achievement and adjustment. That one. And this is just a secular study, it's not a church study. This is just a secular study saying that the involvement of a father in the life of the child will develop that child's self esteem and help them be well adjusted. What am I saying, guys? I'm just saying don't minimize the significance of your influence in the life of your child. It is your greatest work. It is your most fruitful work. When I looked in the Bible, I found at least five descriptions of a good father. Now these work too for a good mom. Cause many of you are single moms and you're doing the Work of Mom and dad. And so God bless you for that, and we pray for you for that. But I'm talking directly to dads this morning and saying, number one, you are called upon to be a protector. A protector to protect your children. Now, there's Mama bears in the room, and God bless you, Mama Bears. But Daddy bear, you're to be a protector as well. I would say get in their business. Get in your child. Know what they're looking at on their phones, if they have them, know what social media that they're on and how much or how little you set those boundaries and restrictions for your kids. But you're a protector. Know who their friends are. I had a person one time and they just told me and said, well, if I get too much in my child's business, they'll just pitch a big fit. I said, well, just pitch a bigger fit. Just outfit them. If you're not careful, you'll wait 10 years and £100 too late to start this. I mean, the Bible gives this principle, and it's great. First Corinthians 15:33. Bad company corrupts good morals. So know who your kids are hanging with. And sometimes you have to tell your kids you're not gonna be friends with them. You can love them and you can pray for them. You can pray they find Jesus, but you ain't hanging with them. And so I'm just saying part of your role as a dad is to be a protector. Get in the life of your kids. Know what's going on with them. Not only protector, and this is most obvious, provider dads are to be a provider in their home. In fact, the Bible says in First Timothy 5, 8, that. That if a person doesn't take care of their family, the Bible says they're worse than an infidel. So I don't know what an infidel looks like, but to be worse than one sounds terrible. And all he's just saying is the bar is pretty low for a person that is unwilling to provide for his family. He goes on to say in Proverbs 13:22 that a wise dad and you're either wise or otherwise. He's saying a wise dad will take care of his children and his children's children. That means you leave something for the grandkids. You have something. It's generational blessing is what he's talking of. All right, let's put it together, dads. Our fruitful work means we're a protector. It means we're a provider. Because when we do this right we're gonna have kids with a higher self esteem. We're gonna have kids that achieve more and be better adjusted. The third one is you're a promoter. You are a promoter. What do I mean by that? Catch them doing something right. Sometimes as the dad, we feel like we're the enforcer. And I'm just saying you gotta catch the kids doing something right. James Dobson had an interesting study that he published years ago. And the study was that for every 40 words of I'm sorry, for every one word of criticism, that a child has to have 40 words of affirmation to offset the criticism. So for every one word of, for example, to say you're stupid, you'll never amount to anything. I wish you hadn't been born. You see, no one would say that. We have people in our church that have told me they've heard those words. I'm just saying the old saying, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. That's not true. What's true about sticks and stones breaking your bones, but what isn't true is words will never hurt you. There are people in this room right now, I promise you, if I took time, you could relive and you could recall and you could remember words that were spoken to you in your childhood that you still have a little trouble navigating through. I'm not beating you up on this point, fellas. I'm just saying, myself included. Sometimes we just need to get out and get away. Walk around a little bit, kick a tree, cuss a squirrel. Don't take it out on the kids. You gotta lower the temperature a little bit. Be careful. Because for every one word of criticism, as Dobson said, it's gonna take about 40 words to put that thing back together again. We're to be promoters. We're to try to promote the best in our children. A protector, a provider, a promoter. Here's a fourth one. We're to be a priest over our household. Have you ever thought about yourself as a priest? I don't mean with a collar and a robe, but I mean you have spiritual responsibility and spiritual authority in your home. In fact, read the book of Job. And in the book of Job, long before the church was established, Job was a priest over his household. And I believe that fathers have a responsibility to have spiritual. Give spiritual direction and mentoring to their families. God will one day hold those men accountable. He'll hold us accountable, fellows. So we're to be priests over our household. And the goal. Here's the goal. The goal is to get kids, our kids, at some point, to own their faith. And I'm gonna share a stat with you in a minute that'll really. That will really blow your hat in the creek. But we want them at some point. And some of these stats bear out the fact that the more kids are exposed to church and the more kids are in a home where Jesus has talked about, where the Bible is read, where prayer is offered, those children tend to make a commitment to trust Jesus, to take ownership of their faith at younger ages. The vast majority of people who know Jesus today met him before they were 15 years old because they were raised with a mom and dad who spoke about Jesus, who talked to him about Jesus, who brought him to a church that talked to him about Jesus. I'm just saying that's the goal, guys. If we want to be fruitful, it's great to be successful in business. But I'm saying you can't take that with you. I mean, in Matthew, he said, what is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Well, let me give you a variation of that in application. What. What has a father profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his kids? I'm just saying, man, the only thing you and I have here on earth that we can take to heaven with us when we die will be our children. That's it. We can take our kids with us one day. So I'm saying the greatest goal, guys, of a father is to be a priest to make sure your children know Jesus. Here's the fifth one. Protector provider, promoter, priest. You ready for this one? A prophet. What do I mean that speak life into your kids? Proverbs says, there's power of life in the tongue. Life and death is in the power of a tongue. When James warns us about the tongue, he said, it's like a poison in one place. He said, the tongue is like a beast in another place. You can poison your kids, and you can rip your kids up with your words. So be careful. The tongue has great power, so speak into them. I see the potential you possess. Figure out are your kids artistic? Then figure out what they're. Don't try to bend them into what you want them to be. Begin to study kind of what their proclivity is and how God has wired them and bend them into what God has designed them to be. Remember the arrow. If they're artistic, encourage that art. If they're musical, encourage them in music. If they're athletic, let them pursue athletics. I'm just saying watch these kids kind of figure out what they're interested in and just kind of promote that and kind of speak into that and kind of encourage them along that way. And the result of it is, he said, they're gonna be like olive shoots around your table. They're gonna be like this life and growth all around you, and it's going to be blessed, and you're gonna be blessed rather, and you're gonna see the fruit of all of that labor. So you have a dad's first of all, faithful walk. Second of all, you have a dad's fruitful work. Let me give you the third one. If you're taking notes, this is a different word for you, too. Had to change up my F word game here a little bit. You'll see. Number three, A dad's family worship. A dad's family worship. I said a moment ago, I talk about the value of having kids in church and the value of dad leading the way. That's why I compliment you guys in the room this morning and those of you watching online, because your worship, your worship will imprint on your kid's life. What you'll find is if it isn't important to you today, it won't be important to your kids tomorrow. It's just a generational reality. That's not to say that some of you who were never raised in church and you're now in church, you can't do anything. Look, you can't do anything about your ancestors, but you can do everything about your descendants. And so what you just have to do is draw a line in the sand, as Joshua said, and say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I'm gonna start some new traditions. We're gonna begin a new thing in our church or in our family, and we're gonna make church of value. We want it to be important. Here's the stats I wanted to give you. These are. Man, these blew me away when I read them. A dad's involvement in church is the single most important factor in whether kids will continue to practice their faith as adults. Now, again, that's not minimizing moms and God bless you moms that didn't have that kind of a father or that kind of a dad in your home. And you've played that role, so it would apply to you as well. But it is simply saying for a father, that is such a significant part of whether or not your kids will own their faith and they'll see church as a value when they're grown. Here's the second one. When a dad attends church regularly, 75% of their kids will attend church regularly when they become adults. That's astonishing. I read that. I thought, wow. When dads say, kids, we're going to church this weekend, let's go. We're gonna be there. It's gonna be great. We're doing the church thing. That when you make that commitment, dads, 75% of the time, those kids, when they're grown and they're on their own, they may not go to the same church, but the idea is that they're gonna be in church somewhere. And 75, that's pretty good odds. Here's the third part of that stat I wanted to share with you. Cause this kind of blew me away too. When a dad accepts Jesus Christ as his savior, wow. Get this. 93% of the families will follow his example and trust Jesus as well. When they see dad accept Jesus as that, again, that's not minimizing Mama. But there's something about seeing their father accept Jesus as savior. It imprints and impacts them in a way that changes everything about their faith. So, guys, when I challenge you, this idea of having a family worship, I cannot again overemphasize the impact it will make on your kids. And you're gonna get, you know, you're gonna get a little funky from time to time with church. I get a little worn out with church. And this is what I do. I told you a lot of times I've quit. I didn't tell anybody, but I've just gotten tired. You ever get tired, just get tired? We all get tired. But what we tried to do when I got tired when the kids were little is I didn't tell them I was tired. We went to church tired. We went to church hurt. We went to church sometimes broken, and we went to church sometimes discouraged because we realized the impression that it would make on the lives of our kids. And so, guys, don't minimize the fact that you're going to go through seasons where you won't be as energized and you won't be as motivated. So don't do it for you, do it for them. Cause I've given you, statistically, some things to hang onto that will make a difference in the life of your children if you'll commit to that discipline. I read an interesting story of a Jewish family who were living in Germany. And the father was an attorney, very successful. He was in a household that had rabbis. And so they had grown up with that Jewish faith. And he had small children. And on one occasion, the father got a little. I don't know, just a little disenfranchised with the synagogue. And he decided they were going to move across town to a new house in a new area, and they were going to leave the synagogue and join the Lutheran Church. And so they did. And the children were really invested in that church, in that synagogue. They were having a great time. They were learning a lot. So they were a little hurt at having their whole lives kind of disheveled and moved. And so they were upset with their father because he had moved that. But one day their father explained to them. He said, look, I'm making this move because it will help me build my business. I can make more meaningful business contacts if I'm in this church as opposed to being in this synagogue. And he didn't realize that when he made that statement like that, that it spoke to his values and it would imprint upon one of his children who looked at his father and said, faith has just been a phony exercise to my dad. It doesn't mean anything to him. His relationship with church is just a matter of making sales and advancing his business. It's never about worshiping God. And so he became so disillusioned in his youth because of his father's view of church that when he later went to college in England, he forsook his faith altogether. And he wrote this famous line that many of you are familiar with. Religion is the opiate of the people. His name was Karl Marx, father of Communism. I don't want to put all that on his dad. I know he's responsible for his own decisions that he made. But I often wonder what a difference that made in the life of a young man when he saw his father, who was a hypocrite when it came to his own faith, and his kids figured him out and saw that it didn't mean anything to him. And so it made walking away from God and recanting their faith so much easier because they had not seen it as an example in the life of their dad. Dads don't minimize the imprint and the import of your worship in front of your children. And here's the payoff. I'll close with this. You see, fourthly, a dad's. Here's a different little F word here. Future wealth. A dad's future wealth. He talks about verse five, being prosperous in all that you do. He talks again in verse six about having longevity in all that you do. He talks about the eternality of what you do. Meaning that you're gonna make a difference not just in your lives of your children, but in the lives of your children's children. You're gonna have a generational effect. Have you noticed that as a home goes, so will go a community. As a home goes, so will go a church. And I contend, as a home goes, so will go a country. The greatest assault on an institution in our world today is the assault of the enemy on the family. As the family goes, ultimately, so will go a nation. I heard about a father who was on the computer late at night working, and his son, he tried to get him to bed. He's kind of a daddy's boy. And he came in there and was interrupting his dad. And his dad was a little. Kind of perturbed, had a lot to get done. The boy was bothering him a little bit. Hey, you should be in bed right now. And he go, oh, well, I need you to read to me or talk to me or play with me before I go to bed. And all this kind of. So the dad had a magazine by the side of the computer, and he noticed on the back cover of the magazine, there was that shot, was it Armstrong took from the moon of the Earth? It was blown up, and it was a beautiful picture of the Earth. So the dad had one of these genius thoughts that we dads have from time to time. It's called Slycology. And so he took that back cover off of that magazine with a picture of the world, and he just began to tear it in all these pieces, and he gave a tape to his son and those pieces, and he said, look, you put all this back together, you come see me and we'll play. Thinking that, okay, this will buy me time. I can finish what I'm doing. This kid will never be able to put that back together. And so the little boy goes, and a few months later, he comes back, grinning ear from ear, and shockingly, he had put that back together. And the father looked at him and said, how? How did you do that? That's amazing. And the little boy turned the page over and he said, well, on this side, there was a picture of a few. And I felt like if I could just take and get that family put back together, the world would come together, too. And I read that illustration, and I thought, that's it. If we could just get the family back together again, if we could get dad seeing the value and loving his family, if we could get to see dad realizing the importance of being a spiritual leader in his home. How much of our world would come back together. So, guys, that's my challenge to you. I hope you'll take that challenge, and I hope you'll look at it and say, man, I want my life blessed. I want my family blessed. I want my business blessed. I want everything that touches my hands blessed. And I'll follow God's path to receive that blessing. I hope that's your challenge today. I hope you'll take it. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your word. You promised in Isaiah that your word never returns void, meaning that when your word goes out, it doesn't come back empty like the arrow. It finds the mark. And I pray, Lord, that your holy spirit has been able to take your word to find lodging within our hearts. Not everything that was said will be meaningful, but there may be some things that were said today that definitely hit our heart. And so now I pray, as James prayed, that we would not just be hearers of the word, but now we would be doers of the Word. Help us now as we break out of this holy huddle and we go back out into the real world to put this into practice, to apply the principles of your word into our life and into our family and into our business. Father, I pray you'll bless the families here especially. Lord, I again lift up the men, the dads. We pray for them on this special day set aside to honor them. Bless the time of fellowship that will follow the service. Watch over the dads as they celebrate as families today, I pray you'll bring us home safely. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. [00:34:47] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.