Too Good To Miss, Part 3 | “Family”

Today’s part three of a series, a four-part series. So you've come in in the middle of the movie, but I'm gonna catch up a little bit and all this stuff is available for free online if you wanna catch up. The series is entitled Too Good to Miss, and the subtitle is too small to read, so I will read it to you. It's three things you can't afford to miss and how to ensure that you won't.

So the premise of the series is just this. There are things in life that are too good to miss, and we're gonna talk about some specific ones I don't want you to miss. But the truth is all of us sometimes miss out on the things in life that are consequential and then we can't go back and unmiss them. So I just don't want for this point forward for you to miss out on the thing that are super, super important. And so I've chosen three that I think ultimately as we move toward the end of our lives, we will look back and think, oh, why in the world did I miss that?

So in part two, we jumped in to the three things you can't afford to miss. And no surprise here, the first thing I said you can afford to Miss is Jesus. And last week, I talked specifically about why people miss or dismiss Jesus, why Christians sometimes miss or dismissed Jesus. And so we talked about that and the point of the message wasn't that you should be more religious or you should attend church more. I just don't want you to miss Jesus.

So today we're gonna talk about the second of the three things that I think you can't afford to miss that I'm absolutely confident that if you miss this, you're gonna look back in life. With an unnecessary regret.

But before I tell you what it is, a quick acknowledgement. Obviously, I don't know your story. I don't know the details of your life. But that being the case, I'm not insensitive to the complexity of today's topic. And I'm insensitive to the complex of todays topic because of my own experience personally and because of what I do for a living and I've done this for over 40 years. And I have been involved and heard every kind of story you can imagine, been invited into the most complex situations you can image, anybody who does what I do, that's their story as well.

So, as you're listening today, if there's something in you that says, Andy, you don't know my story, I'm acknowledging up front, I don't. But there's someone who does. And that's why this is so important.

So the second thing that you can't afford to miss, Don't miss family. Now, this is not, like you didn't know this, this is an emotionally neutral topic, right? I mean, for some of us, the term father, the terms mother. The term son or daughter, the term husband, the terms wife, even those terms elicit not necessarily positive emotions.

And it's so interesting because family on one hand is the most rewarding part of life and family is also the most complicated part of live. It brings the most joy and oftentimes it brings the challenges and it has the potential to be the source of the deepest hurt.

So because it's so sensitive and emotional, I wanna just go ahead and get one thing out of the way or it's kind of the elephant in the room. So let me just state the obvious, okay? No one you are related to is as smart as you. Isn't that true? In the old days, people would say amen, but now we just laugh, but that's absolutely true. And you don't know how you got all the common sense in your family. You don't how it happened. Something just tilted in your direction and your bucket filled up and everybody else is empty. But somehow you are the only one, you got the most common sense.

And even though you are younger in some cases and don't have their experience, you've learned from other people's experience. The point is you're the one with all the common sense and part of the problem in your family if there's dysfunction is they just won't listen to you. Isn't that true? Yes, absolutely it's true. Moving on, okay.

Now, as it relates to family, some of you and many of you, you still, and this is the burden on my heart. Many of you still have the opportunity to aim for and to embrace and to get to what we're gonna call ideal. This is, there's so much life ahead of you. There's so experience ahead of.

You still have an opportunity to, you have an opportunities to have the ideal. A first marriage that lasts. Kids, kids that grow up and get married and stay married, you have till death to us part, you know, that's still a potential for you.

And that is worth aiming for, and that is worth fighting for, and that's what many of you have prayed for. But for many others of us today, ideal is kind of out of reach. You're faced with what we're just gonna call real, and it's not your fault. Or maybe it's partially your fault, or maybe it is all your fault or maybe, it's nobody's fault.

So if it's any consolation, and I don't know that what I'm about to say next is much of a consolation depending on the nature of your family, but maybe this helps a little bit or takes a little of the pain away. Did you know, check for yourself if you don't believe me, that there are virtually no good examples of family in the Bible? Like, the families we know anything about in the whole Bible were all disasters.

I mean, just real quick, okay? The first family brought sin into the world. That's a bad start, what did y'all do? Oh, we interduted, we polluted the whole thing. We brought sins to the world. They had some children, one of their sons murdered the other one. This is the very first family and we're off to the races.

And then God decides to redeem the world and he chooses a man named Abraham. Here's a story you don't know about Abraham. Abraham and Sarah, his beautiful wife that God gave him and the redemption of the world is gonna come to this family. They end up in Egypt. And Pharaoh hears about this foreigner's wife. She's so beautiful. And Abraham realizes, uh-oh, Pharaoh is gonna kill me and take my wife and add my wife to his harem. You know this story, you should read the Bible.

And anyway, so when Pharaoh meets Abraham and Sarah, Abraham, you know, the man says, oh, she's not my wife, she is my sister. And Pharaoh is like, great. And he loads Abraham up with gifts and takes Sarah into his haren. And I'm gonna let you go home and find out how that story ends. I'm not even gonna tell you, okay?

Anyway, in fact, really most all the Old Testament heroes, all the old Testament people we know anything about, the men had favorite wives. Joseph, you may remember the story of Joseph, his brothers decided to kill him because they're jealous instead of killing him. They're like, hey, let's make a few bucks. So they sell their brother into slavery, lie to their father, break their father's heart. Their father who had a favorite wife, which was part of the reason the brothers didn't like Joseph and on and on, and on we go.

So all that to say, all that is to say. If your family is highly dysfunctional or you come from a highly dysfunction family, congratulations, you have a biblical family. So there's that. And then came Jesus of Nazareth. And he introduced a completely different paradigm for all of life. Relationships in particular. And he taught and he pointed to an ideal. He taught and He pointed to and ideal. An ideal that was so counter-cultural. It is amazing that it ever caught on.

That He elevated the dignity of women. He elevated the value of children. He taught that, you can't be right with God. You cannot be right God and mistreat anyone God loves, even those in your, or especially perhaps those that are part of your family.

This is so amazing, and this is why everybody should consider following Jesus, regardless of what you think about Jesus. He pointed, he pointed people toward an ideal, but he took into account, he never shied away from what was absolutely real. The reality of people's lived experiences. He never dodged that, he ever ducked that, he never avoided that because it's so complicated and messy, it's gonna wreck his ideal.

He took into consideration, again, people's lived experiences, they're limited options. Sometimes their limited options were self-imposed, sometimes their limited options were imposed on th em by others.

And he pointed everybody toward an ideal, but this was the brilliance. He pointed everybody toward an ideal, and yet, at the same time, he was not idealistic. In fact, Jesus reserved his harshest criticism. He reserved his harsher criticism for religious leaders who kept trying to impose their idealistic worldview and their idealist world way of living on people who were unable to keep that standard and unable to meet that goal.

So there was this tension, this powerful tension, this polarity within Jesus. He taught and he pointed to an ideal. At the same time, he embraced the reality of everybody's lives he ever came into contact with. And in fact, John, who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and then three letters to the church that we find in the New Testament. John said, the only way I know how to describe Jesus, I love this. Was that he was full of grace and truth.

We think we need to find a balance between grace and true. In fact, there are churches that are kind of more truth churches and there are church that are like, ah, whatever grace church is, you know? And Jesus, Jesus wasn't the balance of grace and truth, John says, I don't know how to describe it. I'm just telling you, after three and a half years, the only way I think way to say it is this, that Jesus of Nazareth was full of grace and full of truth. He was a hundred percent of both all the time. He never dumbed down the truth to make people feel better about themselves. And he never turned down the grace because he loved them. That is the way of Jesus.

And this is why his simple invitation. That he extended to the first century audience. His simple invitation, that is a standing invitation for you and a standing invite for me, regardless of what's going on in your life and regardless of where you are on life and regardless where you on the continuum of ideal and real as it relates to family. His standing invitation is so powerful. His standing invite is. Follow me. Just follow me. Start from wherever you are and follow me, because everybody, everybody has a step they can take.

After Jesus finishes his earthly ministry. The Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul, write letters to Christians. Paul especially writes letters to the Christians, live Gentiles who live outside of Judea. And what they do is they take the teaching of Jesus, especially the law of Christ to do unto others as God through Christ has done unto you. They take the law Christ and they tease it out and they apply it to family and to marriage and raising kids and every aspect of life. They essentially give the New Testament Church handles.

And there are two statements in particular I wanna read to you. And I wanna to read these to you because the question for you, if you're not gonna miss family, and the question if you if you gonna be a Jesus Father who decides not to miss family is you've got to find your step, whatever your step might be regardless of the circumstances in which you find yourself as it relates to family. Two statements in particularly are helpful. If we're willing, these statements are only helpful. If we are willing to ask this question, what's my next step? What's my step? What does don't miss family look like for me in light of the teaching of Jesus?

Paul, in particular, gives us these two. I chose two from the Apostle Paul. The first one is this. He writes to Christians living in Ephesus, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Submit to one another out of reference for Christ. This is one of the most powerful relational principles in the world, mutual submission. And the idea is that not that you place yourself under someone's authority so that you do whatever they say that's not what he's talking about. That's how this verse gets pitched and the verse that follows it, it gets twisted that way. That's not he's saying we know that because of the second part of the verse.

He's saying this. Not that you're to obey other people, you're not placing yourself under someone else's authority. You're just deciding, You're just deciding to place yourself in a position where you put the other person first.

And I'm telling you, the second part of this when he says, wife, submit to your husband, nobody raised an eyebrow in the first century when he wrote that, that was like, well, duh, right? It was the next part that sent them off. When he said, no, husbands, you are to love your wife like Jesus loved the church, to which they're like, wait a minute, he died for the church. Paul's like, exactly, that's what I mean by submit to one another. That's why Christian marriage, not Bible, biblical marriage, but New Testament marriage is a submission competition that you compete with each other to submit to another.

This was the extraordinary new paradigm that Jesus introduced to the world, as it applied to marriage. And I'm telling you, in the first century culture, where men held all the cards, where men had 100% of all the legal authority, Bye. The idea of submitting and doing what was best for a wife was absurd and considered dangerous because it would ultimately disrupt society.

And wherever the Christians gathered and embraced this ethic, it disrupted society in all the best ways. This was the hallmark of the first century church. So when you consider your family situation, when you considered your circumstances, what does that look like? What does that behave like?

And no, no, let me just say it for you because you're thinking it, but they don't deserve it. That's right. Look up here, you're not doing this out of reverence for them. This is the platinum rule to do unto others as God through Christ has done unto you. You're doing this out of reference for your king. Christ, you're doing unto undeserving others as your King did to undeserving you and undeserving me.

The other helpful statement, the apostle Paul again, and the way he starts this, he obviously knows that there's ideal and there's real and he's talking to people who have more real than ideal. Listen to how he starts his next statement. If it is possible, because it may not be. If it is possible, depending on your circumstances, then he doubles down. If it possible, as far as it depends on you, because you can't control the other person, you can control anybody in relationship with you, you're not holding all the cards. To whatever degree you can, leveraging whatever influence you have. If it as possible, as far it depends you, be at peace with everyone.

In other words, do everything in your power. Do everything in your power to remove obstacles to peace. There's no guarantee. But again, this isn't about an outcome. This is about obedience. This is doing for others what God through Christ has done for you.

There was no, if you're a Christian, there was no guarantee that you would respond to the grace of God by accepting it. And yet Jesus paid for your sins anyway. This isn't about outcomes. This is about replicating the life of Jesus in your family and in your world, to do everything in your power, to remove every obstacle to peace. What would that look like?

And the truth is, because again, I don't know your situation, but let me just say what you're thinking. In most cases, in many cases, reconciliation, like I'm gonna fix this relationship because of something I do, reconciliation is impossible. In fact, reconciliation may be unhealthy. Reconciliation may be unadvisable. But what can you do to remove any unnecessary obstacle to peace between you and that other person?

What if your goal wasn't reconciliation? What if you're goal was simply no more regret? That when I lay my head in bed at night, my conscience is clear. I've done everything I could possibly do. I put the welcome mat out if that's appropriate. I have built my side of the bridge. I've cleaned up all the messes that I created. I've done everything I can do. Heavenly Father, I've been all I can. The outcome is in your hands. What would that require? Look up here. Don't miss that opportunity. Don't miss that opportunity because it's gonna clean out your heart. And don't miss opportunity because doing all you can do may unlock something in them that they don't know how to unlock on their own.

Make the first move like your savior made the first move. There's usually something we can do. Let me just push a little harder. Somebody here today, somebody watching, somebody listening, you need to do it today because you've been holding back. And I know what you would say to me, I get it. You would say, Andy, Andy, Andy, it's complicated. It is and it isn't. It is because it is, but it's not because it just means picking up the phone. It means driving over there.

And for your sake, please don't miss the opportunity to do everything you can do. That's what it looks like. To follow Jesus and to make sure you don't unnecessarily miss family. So. Back to where we started, I'm gonna do a lightning round, okay? It's called a lightning around, okay. Number two is don't miss family.

So here we go, real quick. For those of you who still have an opportunity to hit ideal, in other words, you got all that out in front of you or you're in the middle of making ideal a reality, to those of have a pretty ideal family situation, this is for you, several things, real quickly.

Number one, don't Miss Now. And by don't miss now, what I mean is don't be so future oriented that you're in the present and you are not in the now. Second, number two, don't your marriage. Don't miss your marriage, men! Okay, again, point to me. Don't camouflage, don't camouflage your ego with I'm doing this for my family. Maybe you are and maybe you aren't. You should be aware of that. And ladies, this is harsh, I know, ladies, please, for your marriage’s sake, don't confuse your husband with your dad. Your cannot heal father wounds and you shouldn't expect him to. And I know that's harsh and you'll hate me and I say get in line, you're not the first person, okay?

And I don't care if you hate me, but later on after you get to finish with the conversation with me and your mind that you're having right now and you're gonna miss the rest of the sermon because if you knew my circumstances, I get it. Whatever your circumstances, whatever how awful your dad was, I've seen all of that. I'm just telling you for your sake and for your marriage sake, If you want your future to be better, if you want you marriage to be different, you just can't load your husband up with that. He wasn't created for that. And don't worry, I'm coming back to him in a minute.

Next one. Don't miss your children. Goodness, when I say don't miss family, don't your children, look, don't trade what only you can do. For something someone else will eventually do. Don't trade what only you can do as a father and mother for something, someone else, will eventually to do. Anything that you do that impedes upon your time with or your investment with your children, anything else you're doing, someone else is going to do that someday. But your only unique role and my only unique role is father, your only unique role in the world. Is mother, so don't trade that for something somebody else will eventually do.

Next one, no comment on this. Just don't miss dinner, okay? Dinner is not about eating food. Dinner is about conversation. Next one. Don't miss forgiveness. Don't hang on to stuff any longer than you need to. You're just gonna, it just eats you up on the inside and it just gets telegraphed to the people around you, especially within the context of family. And then this one. Don't substitute things for shared experiences. Things rarely, rarely, barely enhance a relationship. Shared experiences enhance the relationship. So don't get in the habit of substituting experiences with things. Experiences is what's gonna build your family. I don't want you to miss family.

Next, don't compare. Don't fall into the comparison trap as it relates to other people, what they have, what they do, their kids, everything else. Next one, don't keep score. The scorekeeper always loses, relationally. The score keeper always loses relationally, quit opening that file and reminding her and opening that filed and reminding him, they know. Okay, so just quit doing that. You are undermining your own happiness. No one who's been reminded over and over and over their past failure says, thank you so much. I almost forgot that, but you remind, it just doesn't go anywhere.

And listen, the reason you do that... Is that's what you saw done. Do something different. Start a different sense of what family is all about, especially as it relates to your marriage.

Then, don't resist help. Okay, if you don't want to miss family, then don't miss help. Then, this is us. Okay, let me just say it to you. Okay, I know. I've been looking at these notes for weeks, okay? You are not Superman. You are Batman. Look, you need Robin, you'll need Robin. You need Alfred. You might need Commissioner Gordon and there may be other things that you need. The point is you are not designed to do this alone and you're not designed to carry the responsibility that we carry as men alone. You need other men and you don't just need other who share your interest. You need other men. And the better that community in terms of male friendship, the stronger, ultimately, potentially, your marriage is going to be. And your wives will be so happy that I said this, even though I offended them while I go about their dads.

Anyway, for those of you who would say, you know what, Andy, okay, that's great. I wish I could go back and apply some of that, but it's too late for me. For those of you with more real than ideal, here's what I would say to you. And I've already said it once, but it's so important for your heart. Don't miss your shot at reconciliation, okay? That window is closing. And again, reconciliation may never happen, but whatever role you have in potentially making that a reality, don't miss you're shot.

Don't missed also saying, don't miss what's next. Okay, you may not have everything you hope for, dream for and pray for as it relates to family, but look here, don't let your grief cause you to miss what you do have. And don't let your grief and your sorrow, your legitimate grief and sorrow cause you miss what could be, what you could do next, what there is that's next for you, whatever your current situation. Whatever your current situation, this is the power of the teaching of Jesus.

You know what Jesus will say to you? He would say, I get it, I've seen the whole mess. Here's what I want you to do. Follow me There's always a step, there's always the next. There's all ways, and as far as it depends on you. Don't miss that, obedience in this area is its own reward.

And then last thing, for all of us, but maybe in particular, those of you who would say, Andy, ideal evaporated years ago, it's not even in the cards for me, it's just not even possible for me. But for all of us, this next one, okay? Don't miss who's next. Here's what I mean by that. There's the kids somewhere that you have something in common with. That his or her family missed ideal by a mile. And they need someone who understands. And they needs someone who can help them navigate real. And you get it.

This is how you turn your ashes to beauty. This is you ensure that your sorrow is invested and not wasted. And there is joy in that. And it'll never be worth the pain that you have felt. And it won't be worth perhaps the price you pay, but there is a joy there and there is redemption there. And you'll find Jesus there. The way of Jesus is the way forward. The way Jesus is way forward, regardless of where you're starting from. There's always a next step. So, please, however this lands with you, and regardless of how upset I've made you, please, please please don't miss. Thank you. Family.