Hearing from the Father
Joshua 24
Introduction- Good morning church!
I need to hear from my heavenly Father! Amen!
I need to know that I am not alone in the things that I go through!
I have come today expecting that my Father has something to say to me!
Not only do we need our time of prayer, but we need to sense God’s presence in our lives.
Prayer-
Turn to Joshua chapter 24, Joshua’s words that he spoke to the people of Israel about making a decision of wither they will be serving God or acting like the world in rebellion and spinning out of control.
Father’s day and Mothers Day are hard days for me to preach because they hold so many different emotions and thoughts when Fathers and Mothers are mentioned.
If we were to select a group of people and divide them into two groups, there would be a group of people that would share life changing encouraging messages of how their Father had impacted their life in a positive way. How that at different moments in their life that He lead to them to make good solid decisions that shaped who they are today.
On the other side, we would hear people who would share stories of how they felt abandoned and left to fend for themselves and that their Father was by no way a role model that they had hoped for.
Society today struggles with fathers taking the role of leading their families.
Many today would rather be their kid’s friend than their father with the responsibility of raising and mentoring a child.
For some of us, the decision was made early in our life that we did not want to be like our earthly father and that when we had kids we would do things different.
I have five grown kids and five grandchildren.
I am not about to stand up here and tell you how to have the perfect family and perfect grandkids. Because… our family has dysfunction just like everyone else.
It use to be that only some families (stone age 60’s, 70’s) were dysfunctional by not having a Father in the home, experiencing divorce, raised in a not ideal situation, but I am convinced that it is in every family today to some degree.
No one escapes the hurts and problems because of the world we live in.
I was raised in a good home but I had no father there ever. Thank God my grandfather and my uncle were very good male role models in my life.
My mother and father divorced when I was two and my mother was pregnant with my brother. I had no Father figure to look at and place as any kind of role model.
So I raised my kids in the beginning with no blueprint to go by.
I only met my father one time in my life and walked away from that meeting with my dad with no feelings good or bad because the man that sat in my living room when I was 19 years was a man I didn’t know, we just had the same last name.
That is not a unique story, it is the story of a lot of people.
Here is my point as we look at God’s word-
If you have a father that has been a blessing to you – you are a blessed person.
You have been given a gift that has kept on giving.
You have been set on a path and you have a role model that will and has shaped who you are today.
If you have not had that kind of father and it has been a struggle-
I want you to know that that does not have to define you and be the end of your story-
You have the ability to write your own story and ending because the relationship that is with your Heavenly Father does not have to be the same as with your earthly father.
Joshua brought news to the Israelites, he called the elders and leaders together and they presented themselves before God.
This is what the Lord said through Joshua - just because your ancestors worshiped other gods and have walked away from God doesn’t mean you have to do the same. (Repeat)
He points them to remember what God has done in the past for them and that He still desires to make a difference and still wants to be involved in their lives.
He reminds them they were in bondage in Egypt and God brought them out.
When their backs were up against the Red Sea and there was no way out that God provided a way out supernaturally.
When they cried out to God that He did not forsake them but heard their cry and responded.
Your people saw with their own eyes what God was capable of doing if you would turn your hearts toward Him.
Joshua 24:14-15
“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshipped beyond the Euphrates River and Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness.
The word fear in the Hebrew is our word for reverence –reverence the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness.
Lukewarm Christians I have said before are a dime a dozen and the Lord is looking for His people to reverence him and serve him in all faithfulness.
Here are some things we can know about our heavenly Father
Our Heavenly Father is faithful.
Because He is faithful, He is looking for His people to be faithful.
Numbers 23:19
“God is not man that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”
Psalm 33:4
“For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.”
The word of God is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen. “
The reason some don’t have faith like that is because we put our faith in the wrong things.
The faithfulness of God should cause us to be faithful to Him.
We tell ourselves that we can’t find faith- “Faith comes by the hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
The word heard is the word obeyed.
We have to put ourselves in a position to hear God’s word so that it can accomplish what is supposed to.
If we put ourselves more in a position to hear from God, we would not have a hard time being faithful to God.
My FaceBook post-“ In order for a pastor to fulfill the Lord’s command to feed God’s flock, the sheep must show up during feeding times.”
God is faithful! Put yourself in a position to hear His word!
Isaiah 25:1
“O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.”
2 Timothy 2:11-13
“The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.”
1 Peter 4:16-19
“Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?” Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.”
Find faith in the journey
Faithfulness is not creating a god that does whatever you want him to do.
Faithfulness is when things seem to fail that you hold unto the promises that God has already given you so you are in a position to receive what He has already promised.
There is terrible theology in some pulpits today that is a prosperity teaching that whatever you give God he will give back tenfold. That is unbiblical-
For those of us that see this as bad teaching, we need to be careful to not forget that God does reward those who serve Him and are faithful.
Do not let bad prosperity teachings let you forget his faithfulness to us. We cannot disregard his teachings and expect blessing, but we also cannot forget that God is a loving and faithful God that likes to give His children good gifts.
Our Heavenly Father’s truth does not lie
Grab this- God’s truth cannot lie. Just because we don’t feel it, or don’t see it does not make it untrue.
A principal of God is set by God himself.
By no authority higher than God Himself He proclaims that he cannot lie. So we can put our trust in Him.
Maybe there has been others who have let us down. (Come on)
Others who have not kept their promises, but God will keep every single promise He has ever made.
John 8:32-
“You will know the truth (Jesus) and the truth (Jesus) will set you free.”
The choice is ours!
We can change our beliefs to line up with God’s Word, or we can keep cultivating our false-belief systems. God cannot lie.
Changing what we believe is challenging because it involves actively replacing a thought pattern that has been repeated for years (or possibly decades).
But with some time, focus, reinforcement, practice, and the help of the Holy Spirit, we can reform our beliefs to reflect and align with God’s truths.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can reform our beliefs to reflect and align with God's truth.
Our Heavenly Father is love
God is love! It is not just a quality of God it is His character. It is His nature. It is who He chooses to be. It is what draws us to Himself!
There is nothing like the love of our heavenly Father.
He never breaks promises and He never falls short of loving us with an unconditional love and His arms are always open and ready to receive us.
1 John 4:7-18 read
A TRUE DEFINITION OF LOVE
Too many people believe and sometimes teach that love is a feeling or emotion. Yes, feelings and emotions are involved in love but the greatest part of love is action oriented.
I have counseled many couples who say that they don’t feel the love that they once did for their mate. They fell “out of love” but there is really no falling out of or falling into love. We can fall out of bed or fall in the bathtub.
We grow to love someone over time. This love for another grows from what we see them do for us and for others.
Now, imagine Jesus, He fought against feelings and loved like our heavenly Father loved.
The good news, of course, is that Jesus resisted and fought back His feelings.
He was more interested in doing the will of the Father than what He felt like doing…thankfully.
Jesus displayed His love by willingly going to the cross and dying for sinners and those of us who were still His enemies and desperately wicked (Rom 5:8, 10).
Instead, He showed us that love is a choice more than a feeling because feelings are subjective while love is objectively displayed in actions.
The bottom line is that love is what a person chooses to do, not what a person chooses to feel. God so loved the world because He felt like it? Yes, He does love us but that love required action and that included the supreme sacrifice of His only Son’s life. That was the ultimate love in action.
Jeremiah 31:3
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.”
God, “love” is a loyal, steadfast, covenant kind of love. His love isn’t the fickle, floundering one we find in the world. No!
1 John 3:1 puts it this way, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
1 John 4:10 says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Close,
I am glad my heavenly Father loves me! I am grateful that it is not based on what I do or don’t do but because unconditionally He loved me and desires for me to reach out to His love He has for us-
There is not one person who will spend eternity in hell that my heavenly Father will be pleased to be there. There is only one reason they will miss heaven- They said no thanks to His love!
Maybe your like me this morning- you need to hear the words that our Heavenly Father loves you! Personal and intimate- He loves you, and He loves me!
Let’s pray!
