La Familia Part 2

Introduction: From Family to ‘Family’

I watch too many stories geared towards kids and preteens. Most are tolerable. A few are enjoyable. We are trying to instill good taste for storytelling in our kids by not allowing them to watch nonsense.....so whenever they can’t decide together on a show to watch, we will pick it for them…and Elsie and Theo have started begging us to pick for them....because they know that we know shows they have never seen that they will love…even if they aren’t drawn to the advertising on Disney+.

There are a bunch of kids shows we didn’t see…because there is a season where you have no reason to watch kids shows. You’re not a kid and you don’t have kids or grandkids. And we had kids late, so we have 20 years between the time we became teenagers and we had our first kid watching shows....which meant we had alot to catch up on.

One of the shows we watched during that season that we happened to catch because a friend of ours was a Producer of the movie was The Bridge to Terebithia. If you haven’t watched it, I won’t spoil the end, but it follows a fairly typical coming of age story. Young Prepubescent boy and his neighbor girl crush try to manage the stresses of home and bullies at school with magical fantastical storytelling.....that leads to the courage to overcome the real things they run up against in their actual lives. We watched it yesterday with our kids…and I was reminded that the most common conflict in stories of young kids is feeling like an outsider, everywhere they go.

-At home they feel misunderstood and under-estimated by their parents. They get yelled at and punished for things that are not their fault. If they have siblings they feel that they are alien and don’t belong. They look around and wonder if they are the mail-man’s kids because they couldn’t possibly have come from that family.

-At School they look around and everyone else seems like they have it together. The shiny girls with new clothes and a group of adorers. The smart kids who know everything, the strong kids who gather strength by picking on the weak. Even the weird kids seem to take solace in being different together. And then there is the forgetable middle. hundred of kids just trying to avoid the gauntlet of attention whether good or bad that could make them a target....looking longingly at the ones that seem to belong and wonder what it feels like.

-Most stories tread in this space because it is a universal experience. Everyone will feel out of place in some part of their life.

I want you to take a moment, and no matter fear you have, I want you to let your mind wander back to those places where you have felt out of place. What were you feeling, what story were you telling yourself? What lies did you believe, did you receive and internalize from the circumstance?

In a bridge to terabithia:

-Jess Aarons the young protagonist has made a decision. He’ll keep his head down and try to stay out of the eyes of the 8th grade bully on his bus, and his angry father at home. At one point, His father is irate when his work keys are lost and Jess is an artist. He loves to draw and doodle on everything....His father yells at him that those keys will cost him hundreds of dollars out of his paycheck, and maybe Jess can just draw him some money since that is all he can do is draw.

-The next day as he frets about the keys, he’s repeating to himself the phrase from His Father: Maybe you can draw some money.

He has made an agreement, that his love of art will not pay the bills and so it is worthless in the eyes of his father.

What are the voices that you hear? What are they saying? What decisions have you made about your place in the world that you have been hearing since you were 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13?

I have a distinct memory that was real trauma that shaped more of my teenage years than I would like to imagine.

-6th grade, different classes, rejected at the lunch table

-It was an impossible year. My sister lost her eyesight, I was struggling in class, I was being beat up at the bus stop by some 8th graders, I was playing for the worst soccer team in the state.

-I had been one who belonged everywhere I went and all of a sudden I felt like one who would never belong again.

Even my family where I had felt safe, was started to disentegrate as my oldest brother was getting ready for college, my older sister was moving to a blind school and neither of my parents were home at all between the driving to Gooding, Dr’s appts and their work.

The dominant voice I was hearing was:

-You don’t belong.

-You are a burden.

-You are on your own.

-No one is going to save you.

Four lies that shaped my adolescentce and still haunt me 28 years later. Still things that come up in my counseling appointments as a 40 year old.

It didn’t matter whether they were true or not. There wasn’t anybody in my life to counter these narratives....and it didn’t seem like anyone even noticed my pain.

My mom did notice. She did advocate for me, but she didn’t know the agreements I had made with these lies. And she didn’t have in her the sort of identity forming voice that I needed.

There is something fundamental to who we are that is formed and misshapen by our families of origin.

At the end of our time together 2 weeks ago, we looked at

Mark 3:31-35 “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him. They stood outside and sent word for him to come out and talk with them. There was a crowd sitting around Jesus, and someone said, “Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you.” Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Then he looked at those around him and said, “Look, these are my mother and brothers. Anyone who does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.””

This was a shot across the bow of everyone in Galillee. The systems of Judaism that was the backbone of their civic society required rigid adherence to extended family structures with obligations, especially as an eldest son, His highest loyalty would have been to family and tribe, and ultimately to Israel and God.

But here is the man who claims to be the coming messiah, reconfiguring the very order of family. The ultimate institution built into the fabric of creation.

Jesus is not just rethinking who his loyalties are to…he is challenging the ties that bind us together as family, clan, tribe and nation. (elaborate)

This is not just a flippant remark, not a reordering of priorities…it is itself a new creation that is a part of the work Jesus was doing in the world. He was re-inventing family into something much much better than blood and DNA.

Family is a nice thing.....the idea of family.... can be a nice thing....but the reality is something so, so different.

Even the best humans can build terrible families. Even incredible people can be bad fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. I love my kids dearly, I fret for them, pray for them and think about them constantly....and every week I find myself yelling at a 5 year old to try to get him to listen to me.

Human families are a set of obligations…expectations that we heap on one another. Demands for how we will be cared for and what we owe one another.

My Mother will coddle me and be affectionate.

My Father will be around and know what to say when it needs to be said.

My siblings will help take care of my aging parents.

My spouse will have the energy to listen to me when I really need it.

I will play with my kids like Bandit Heeler (Picture)

Our families are one big disappointment from what we think they ought to be....and we are one big disappointment to our families, from what they think we ought to be.

There are 2 reasons for that.

These families are filled with people who haven’t yet learned to be who they were meant to be. Unformed sinners, wallowing in our self-pity, demanding our selfish desires and pursuing our selfish gain.

These families are temporary structures meant to fulfill an important but short term outcome: Make sure you stay alive until you can fend for yourself.

Of course they were meant for more....but rarely do they do what they are meant to do. And that means something else is going on.

We’re all aching for our families to be something they are incapable of being. Loving, supportive, generous, self-less, safe, happy places where we are seen, known, belong and not forgotten. Where we have an important role to play.

We want those things because they were written in our soul....but we’re looking in the wrong place.

“The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”

So what is the desire that no family, no childhood experience delivers on, but we all crave more than we can imagine?

Absolute, unequivocal belonging. To be seen truly and loved unconditionally. To have a family that we belong to, and belongs to us.

This is such a deep longing that it taints all other experience of family, so that even the best families are disappointing in relationship to our ache within.

And that is by design. The God of the universe wants to make sure that we aren’t satisfied with blood relations and peaceful holiday dinners (although those are nice).

1 John 3:1-3 “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is. And all who have this eager expectation will keep themselves pure, just as he is pure.”

This passage and much of 1 John is deeply concerned with the work of understanding God’s family culture….and he basically says that it’s not going to make sense to us…because we have believed and grabbed a hold of the lies of our culture. We fundamentally have crafted our identities in response to the disappointments of our families of origin…so the ways of God don’t make sense to our brains.

-how we’re acting like abused foster kids adopted by a healthy family.

-this is how we are with God. His goodness just doesn’t make sense…but it is also something we are craving.

And that is what we are trying to do as a community. Understand and start to act like we belong in God’s family….by offering and creating that same kind of family culture to the people around us.

Story of Jessie and Melissa (benevolence, generosity, radical hospitality…..perplexed)

Romans 9:25–26 NLT

Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the prophecy of Hosea, “Those who were not my people, I will now call my people. And I will love those whom I did not love before.”* And, “Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ ”*

Here is where we need to stop and go deep today.

-This is good news for everyone in our world.

-deep longing we are hoping for….to belong, be seen, be loved, and have a purpose…..we are invited into God’s Family.

Gal 4:5 “God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.*”

we act like slaves…who were bought and freed. We are so thankful but we’re still acting like slaves….like property. Like not kids. But we weren’t just saved from sin and the law….but we were adopted as God’s own children.

We are trying to imagine what it means to be an extended Spiritual Family who is on mission together.

-Extended (whole COmmunity)

-Made up of MC’s

-Family (obligations, connection, belonging, covenant)

-On Mission (participating in God’s plan to bring all creation under the rule and reign of Christ)

But first we have to wrap our heads around this idea….that God is really our TRUE father.the one that we have ached for…that our own fathers could never be. We have to grab hold of our identity as beloved CHildren. Who have a new name (our father’s name) and a new identity (our distinct place in the family).

Romans 8:15 NLT

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.* Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”*

First sound out of our lips is a cry to our true place

every mother bemoans the ease of the way it rolls off our lips

PIE,

Timothy Keller Tweet

This is the way God sees you. Not as some stranger or some far-off refugee he doesn’t know but rather as a long lost child. Not adopted into a new home…but rather like a king who’s child was kidnapped at birth (Rapunzel in Tangled) who finds their true home in God. We are adopted back into the family we were meant to have.

We have to learn to say Abba again.

Ephesians 1:5 NLT

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Stop for a second.

Some of you are already feeling this but we need to go back.

Remember all of those lies that we believed about ourselves, the identities we constructed to deal with not belonging? The protective layers we built to protect our hearts…..we have to bring our true father into those places.

Mine were:

-You don’t belong. You not only belong, but everything I have is yours. I have yearned for you from the beginning of time.

-You are a burden. You could never be a burden because you are my child. Even in the hardest moments I delight in providing for you.

-You are on your own. Dear Child, even when you were as far away from me in your heart as you can imagine….I was always with you. My rod and my staff were comforting you.

-No one is going to save you. I’ve been saving you from your sin from the very beginning. You don’t have to save yourself. I already did it.

This is the voice of the Father:

Ephesians 1:5 NLT

God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

We have to do the work of replacing our voice and the voice of the enemy, the great deceiver with the true loving, kind, compassionate voice of the Father…which is the voice of Jesus. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. If anyone would come to me, I will give them the right to become children of God.

We need people to hear our lies in our heads and be God’s voice to us. My mentors and pastors and counselors have done this for me. What if we took a moment right now….right down those lies, those vows that we have agreed with in our hearts….and we spoke them aloud and we invited the Holy Spirit to speak His truth over us.

This is what it looks like to be the family of God….a family on mission. When we gather together, we sit and hear one another’s stories….and we speak encouragement and truth over those stories. We give perspective and we challenge the lies that have taken hold of us. (Share stories from our Huddle)

Remember 2 weeks ago we talked about leaving behind our family of this world so that we can join the family of God.

This is the repentance that it takes. We leave behind the lies we have believed and speak God’s voice over one another. When you gather as Micro Churches or in your discipleship huddles, this is the sort of thing we do. We ask questions, tell stories and speak what we hear the father saying…we become His mouth, His arms, His embrace for one another….and in doing that we start to experience that family that we have never even dared dream was imaginable.

The family of God is different. It’s not something anyone is forced to join. It is something we choose…and He chooses….but it means that we submit to becoming the kind of people who belong in His family. Learn His family culture. Talk the family language. Follow the family rules….like we don’t tell lies about His kids…including ourselves.

The family of God starts with recognizing who our Father truly is. But that is just the start. We’re going to talk the next few weeks about what it looks like to be His family. What it means to have spiritual parents, Predictable Patterns and Missional Purpose. We’re going to get really specific about the commitment and the power of Micro-church families on Mission to change our lives…and we’re going to talk about how covenant is at the center of what it means to be God’s Family.

We’re going to have elders and prayer team available after the service…but I want to challenge you to grab someone from your micro church, bring them forward and share with them the lies you have believed and invite them to speak GOd’s truth over you.

Communion.

Let’s pray