 Week number two of Red Hot. Are you guys ready? Come on, let's put our hands together and welcome those who are online and at Portage. Welcome to Red Hot Week number two. Happy Mother's Day. Today is all about answering questions related to family, marriage, and relationships. And last night we kicked off on our Saturday night service. We had some doozies. And I just want to let everybody know if you would like to, all the services are different. So all the questions are different and we are archiving them all on our YouTube channel. If you didn't know it, we have a YouTube channel that has all things radiant and you can go there and watch all the Q and A. And that, you can find that it's radiant channel. If you go to YouTube, Punching Radiant Channel, has all kinds of resources there. Subscribe to it, follow with us and you can track along with all the questions. So if you haven't texted in your question, you can go ahead and do that. We'll try to get through as many as we can today. Let's take a look at what our first question is. What does godly pursuit of a lady look like? Where are these Proverbs 31, verse 10 ladies, unicorns hiding? Well, first of all, you're not gonna help yourself by calling them unicorns. Four-legged animals with a horn coming out of their foreheads, probably not gonna win one of them over for you. So I know one of them is at home. Her name is Jane Cummings. She is a godly Proverbs 31 wife of almost 27 years for me. And I just say happy Mother's Day. She's watching at home, she doesn't feel good today. She's got a little bit of a cold. And so, love you babe, happy Mother's Day. If you are looking for one, what does pursuit look like of a godly woman? Well, here's the thing. I tell a lot of people, if instead of looking for a godly person, whether it's a husband or a wife, work on becoming the one that somebody else is looking for. That is the key. You work on becoming a godly man. And what will happen is, you will attract a godly woman. And if, you know, we don't have a lot of control over what other people do, but we do have control over who we are. And I do really believe that when we put our focus on following after Jesus, that whole Matthew 733, that when you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then everything else that you need is gonna be added to you. I believe that means that God is sovereignly going to bring the right person to you. Or you're going to cross their paths. You're gonna intersect. And you're gonna notice one another. Let me tell you the best environment to find a godly person. It's in church. It's shocking to me how many people are surprised when they don't meet godly people at the night clubs. You know, I keep going to the bars. I can't find any godly people. Hello. Have you done math? One plus one equals? Yeah, one person in here. Pass the test. Thank you. And so if you wanna find godly people, don't go to places where you're gonna find environments that draw a compromise. And so I would say, number one, church is a great place. Number two, have godly friends. When you're pursuing Jesus, that means you're going to be in godly environments and you're gonna surround yourself with godly wise people. Well, here's what I know. Godly people are drawn to godly environments and godly people surround themselves with godly friends who know other godly friends, who know other godly friends. And so trust those that are around you. Also, trust mom and dad. I know that you're like, oh, I don't want my mom and dad setting me up. Listen, mom and dads know what they're doing. Can I get an amen in here? All right. And in addition to that, I know that there are some people that have utilized online dating. I think that probably in our day and age, there's a lot of that. I've heard some really good stories. You know, you go to christianmingle.com. Make sure you don't go to christiantingle.com. It's probably not the best site. But I've heard some people that have met some really awesome people because of the filtering process. The key is you have to trust in the Lord with all your heart. You have to trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your steps. I believe that wholeheartedly and so many Christian young people and singles give up or they dumb down or they compromise their standards because they give up hope. They give up, well, there's nobody out there, there's no godly men, there's no godly women. So I've just got to lower my standards. Do not lower your standards, whatever you do. You focus on Jesus. I believe that in the right timing and the right place when you have the right people around you, you're going to intersect, you're gonna find them. But you have to look for those things. One of the things that we encouraged our kids to do was even when they were young, was to begin to start writing down qualities and characteristics that you're looking for in a person. That you're looking for in a person that you want to share the rest of your life with. And obviously, good looks and attraction, that's a big part of it. There has to be that piece, I get it. But if that's all, you're limiting it to or if you don't have a plan and you just kind of meet somebody and there's a physical attraction but you don't have other qualities and characteristics that are significant and important to you, then you'll find yourself enmeshed in a relationship by accident that then you begin to get soul ties attachment to, that you're not logically or objectively making decisions about the future of that relationship. So write down things like I want them to be godly. I want them to be a leader. I want them to be funny. I want them to enjoy these kinds of things. So that you know what you're praying for and pray with specificity. We prayed for our kids, still do, in specificity for each one of our kids' spouses. When we met Zach, only one of our kids was married, but when we met Zach, Jane and I had been praying for Zach for the entire life of our daughter, Ashley. We had been praying. We'd say, God, bring her a young man. Bring her a young man who enjoys the things she enjoys. That's a godly leader that has been at all these things. And you know, she went to a internship, kind of a discipleship internship on Colorado, and Zach and her caught eyes on the first day. Well, he was everything that she had been praying for. They had to wait one year before they could announce to each other their feelings for one another because of the internship program. And it's just awesome to see two godly people that have come together because they were very specific in what they were looking for. And because of that, God met that, God met that. If you'll take anything, if you'll take anyone, you'll get anyone. But write down a specific list of things that you're praying for and trust God, believe God, let him direct your steps. Okay, let's take another question. Why is it so important to wait for marriage to have sex? And this is from Richland. This is somebody in Richland to ask this question. Why is it so important to wait for marriage in order to have sex? Well, that's a great question. And it's a important question in the day that we live in because our culture is very sexualized and the way that we view sex in our secular humanistic Western mindset is we think that sex is recreational activity. We think of sex as pleasurable, which it is. We think of sex as recreational that you can kind of be with a whole bunch of people and it doesn't have implications. We kind of treat sex as like a game of twister. I mean, it's like, well, let's just, let's go out, let's go for a run or let's play a twister or let's have sex. And let's just, in our culture, we have friends with benefits. It's like, I don't want a relationship with you, I just want to have sex with you. Or we have a hookup culture where you're just going out and you're looking for somebody to have sex with. And it's all based on this assumption that nothing else except physical activity is happening when you have sex. But that is not what the Bible teaches. That's not what God says about sex. In fact, that wasn't even God's intention. How many know that when human beings discovered sex, God was not shocked? Do you know that? God wasn't like, what in the world are they doing? I had no idea they'd do that. Whoa, turn your eyes, Gabriel. I mean, you don't need to see this. God, sex, was actually part of God's intentions. And that's why a woman's body and a man's body compliment one another. That's why when they come together, there's pleasure for both. That's why when they come together, there are children that are born or the potential for children and offspring to be born. And beyond that, that's the physical arena. The other part of it is that sex is God's bonding agent between two people. Neuroscience tells us this, that there are chemicals that are released in the brain physiologically when you have sex that actually bonds two individuals together. It actually makes a man be attracted and emotionally bonded to a woman and a woman bonded to a man. Here's what's interesting. I just read an article. There is a different hormone that is released when a man or a woman views pornography. It's not the same. There's only a release of this bonding hormone that takes place when a man and a woman come together in sexual union. And why is that? It's because God said in the very beginning, the two shall become one flesh. And God has done that physically. He's done that emotionally and he does it spiritually. So first Corinthians, Paul says, do you not understand that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? And when you have sex, he says, flee sexual immorality because when you have sex, it's different than all other things. In fact, when we talk about sexual sin, Paul says this in first Corinthians six, the body is not meant for sexual immorality. When the Bible says and uses the term sexual immorality, it means any sexual activity outside of one man and one woman who are under the protective covering of a marriage covenant coming together in a bonding of one flesh called marriage. And then within the bonds of marriage, there's freedom, there's pleasure, there's liberty. But he says that the body is not for sexual immorality, but the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And then he goes on in the same chapter and he says this, he says in verse 18, flee from sexual immorality every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but sexual immorality sins against your own body. So actually sexual sin is actually different from all other kinds of sins because you're sinning against yourself and it actually is ramifications that affects you, body, soul, and spirit. And it goes on to say this, that when a man, this same chapter says that when you join yourself, in this case he says to a harlot or to a prostitute, which is the epitome of recreational sexual activity, it says don't you know that you become one with her? So here's what's happened, and here's what happens. When you have sex physically with a bunch of partners, you can contract what are called sexually transmitted diseases. When you have sex with a lot of partners, spiritually you contract spiritually transmitted diseases. That means every issue that they have going on in their spirit, because now you become one with them, you contract. There are spiritual transmissions that take place during sex, so the good is transmitted, the bad is transmitted, as well as physical, and then there are soul ties in our emotions where we become bonded to that individual. And so it actually, it's meant for marriage, but yet when we share it with a whole bunch of people, what happens is we become bonded to those people and it creates physical insecurity, emotional insecurity, and physical attachment and oneness with them, and spiritual transference. You see the world doesn't know that, because the world believes in a two dimensional box where body, this is all that there is, and so if that's all that there is, then the emotions are just kind of a projection of other things, and spirit is mythology. But as Christians, as people believe in a creator God who has intentions behind everything that he does, we're called to live sexually pure. That doesn't mean we're supposed to be prudes. Do you know that years ago, Red Book, which was a woman's magazine, did a survey among women in America, now this is probably 20 years old now, but here's what it found. The most sexually fulfilled women in the United States were born again Christian women who were married. And there's a reason for that. And I would venture to say that the same is true with men. When there's one flesh and there's unity in a marriage built on the foundation of God's word, there's a lot of fun, there's a lot of freedom, there's a lot of experimentation, there's a lot of all that kind of stuff that can go on because we have a trust of covenant in marriage. And so if you're having sex outside of marriage, stop it, repent, let God clean your heart and give you a new sense of purity so that when you enter into marriage, you can be renewed and you can experience God's gift of sex just like you would have if you had never made those mistakes, okay? There we go. And you should clap there because that's good information. Thank you. Biblically, what is the balance of having friendships with those who are homosexual and transgender, et cetera? Well, let me answer that question this way. Number one, we need to distinguish between, when we use terms homosexual and transgender, specifically in the arena of homosexuality, we need to distinguish between those who are proclaiming, professing Christians and those who are not. Because when people are not, and they're not a Christian and they're living in these kind of lifestyles or they're identifying in a very specific way, according to their sexual preference or those kinds of things, then they fall under the category of what we all were before we were saved by Jesus, which is sinners. And Jesus was called a friend of sinners. And so we can be friends with those people. We can be kind to them. And our goal as Christians should be to help those people as well as any other people, as well as your heterosexual, promiscuous friends or any of those type of people that we wanna bring them to Jesus. Why? Because we realize that before and without Jesus we're all broken people who are trying to find our way through life, have a desire to know God and at some point are going to need to hear the gospel of salvation. And maybe God put you in proximity to their life to share that with them, okay? And so I, in high school, my best friend or one of my best friends, I should just say one of my best friends was a guy who is like four years older than I was and he struggled with homosexuality. He was a, sometimes he was trying to serve Jesus, other times he wasn't, but he was, for the majority of the time that we were friends all the way through my mid-20s, he was openly gay. He didn't wanna be, he struggled with it, but he was practicing it. And you know what? I had people, because I was pursuing ministry, I had people that's like, ooh, are you gay, Lee? I'm like, look, I don't struggle with that, but I'm not homophobic because I love people. I'm not turned off by somebody who's attracted to other women who's married to one woman and they struggle with adultery, that's sexual sin, but I have people that are friends and people that go to the bar and hook up. I had friends like that, but they were my friends and my goal was always to be Jesus to them, be kind to them, love them where they're at, but then point them in a better direction, okay? That's number one. Number two, if you have people in your life that name the name of Jesus and say I'm a Christian, but yet are practicing homosexuality, those kinds of things, then that's a different situation because there's a difference between having somebody who's a Christian, we have many of them at Radiant Church who struggle with same-sex attraction, but yet don't act on it because they know that the Bible teaches that the actions themselves are destructive, and you know what? I have the utmost respect for people that say, you know what, I have same-sex attraction or I'm gay, but yet I am a follower of Jesus and because of that, I know that God's word says that I can't act on that, and so I'm intentionally celibate for the sake of the kingdom of God. I love those people, I celebrate them, I honor them because they are exercising self-control for the sake of the kingdom of God. And we have many of those kinds of people in our church. The problem I have is that in our culture, we have taken our sexual activity and we've formed identities around them. You, listen to me, your identity is not based on what you do or don't do. Your identity is not based on your sexual temptations. That is not who you are, that is a lie from the pit of hell. Who you are is you were created to be a child of God, to know God, and what you struggle with are temptations and all of us have different temptations. Now there are people who say, God made me this way, I'm gay, but I wanna serve Jesus, and so all the things in the Bible, God just has to deal with it, you're gonna have to deal with it because I'm practicing in it, this is just who I am. And the Bible says in 1 Corinthians, it says if you have somebody who's a brother and they are living sexually immoral, and that could not just be homosexuality, that could be heterosexuality. It could be somebody who you know who's claiming to be a Christian and living with somebody that they're not married to and sexually active. Or it could be somebody who's committing adultery, even though they claim to be a brother. It says that in those cases, we're supposed to Matthew 18 them, which is to go to them and gently confront them on their sin and then be willing to walk with them in repentance and to pray with them and to weep with them and to grieve with them and to help them and to aid them in any way that we can. But if they continually resist the conviction of the Holy Spirit and they reject God's word and they reject your friendship and they basically say, well, you either accept me the way that I am or we're not friends. In that case, they've made a decision that they're going to choose their sexual activity and preferences over following Jesus. Because sexual immorality and following Jesus are incongruent. You can't do both at the same time. I can't go to the UP and to Chicago at the same time. I have to pick which direction I'm going to go in. And here's what Jesus said. Anyone who would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Sometimes denying self is denying our temptations, denying our desires and denying old identities that the world tries to impose on us so that we can follow Jesus. And that applies to everybody across the board. Okay, that's how I would answer that question today. What does the Bible say about generational sin? Is this something that we deal with today? So generational sins, or in the Old Testament, what we refer to as generational iniquities is spoken of several different times and sometimes very directly and sometimes indirectly. Where it's spoken of directly is when it makes reference in the Ten Commandments. It says, for I visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the third and the fourth generation, but I visit my blessing on the righteous to a thousand generations. So here's what we know. We know that God's blessing and his desire to bless us generationally is much greater and stronger than his willingness or his desire to let a family iniquity or a ongoing familial sin to be passed down. It only goes to the third and fourth generation ultimately, but his blessing can go to a thousand generations. Here's what a, number one, difference between a sin and an iniquity. A sin is an action that you take that misses God's mark. An iniquity is a repeated pattern that has become habitual in your life that has taken over your ability to change the direction you're walking in. And another word for iniquity is pathway. So you have paths out in the woods that you walk because they've been trampled over so many times and now grass refuses to grow on them. That's a picture of what the word iniquity means. And what the Bible talks about generational iniquities is this, when you do something as a mom or as a dad in willful disobedience to God, it first of all becomes an iniquity on the inside of you. Which means it's a well-worn pattern and pathway of disobedience and rebellion. Here's what happens. That eventually becomes a character trait that when you have children, those same iniquities which are spiritual in nature can also be passed down to your kids. Here's, let me give you an example. Think of a alcoholic who refuses to get help and has embraced alcoholism and embraced it to the expense of his integrity and his family. So a young man grows up in a family, watches dad get drunk and beat mom. How many times do people growing up in that environment swear to themselves, I'm not going to be like dad? I vowed to myself, I'm never gonna do that. And then you watch them grow up and they become an alcoholic just like their dad. Or maybe they don't take alcoholism as their sin, but they find some other sin that they equally create an iniquity to and it impacts our family in the same way. And you see those traits passed down. One of the examples that we see is sexual immorality. So think about this. Psalms says, David says that I was conceived in iniquity. I was conceived in sin. Many scholars believe that David was actually born out of a relationship that Jesse, his father had, was somebody other than his wife. So he was illegitimate. Here's what happens. David grows up, dad was an adulterer. What does David do when he sees Bathsheba on the roof? He commits adultery except now adultery escalates to becoming murder to cover it up. David then has several sons. One of them sees his half sister and lusts for her and he rapes her. Then the other brother gets mad about that and he murders that brother. Then David has another son named Solomon who becomes king. And instead of him just committing adultery once, he has 700 or he has 300 wives and 700 concubines, which are just sexual harems. So he has a thousand sexual partners and it leads to idolatry. He begins to worship foreign gods, which is the greatest sin in the Old Testament. So think about how it escalates from adultery to adultery murder to adultery and murder and incest to incest murder and adultery to polygamy and to promiscuity ultimately to idolatry. That's a picture of generational sins that escalate. How do we break them? Repentance, when we come to Jesus and we are saved and we recognize that we are carriers of seed forms, of family iniquities. We lay them at the foot of the cross and we repent on behalf of our family. We ask God to uproot those seeds out of our heart and to fill us with this Holy Spirit. And then we begin to renew our minds with the word of God, get God's thoughts into our heart. We begin to become conformed into the image of God as sons and daughters of God. And we allow the power of the bloodline in Jesus that we have to overpower the bloodline that we have in the natural. My dad divorced was a family iniquity in my family, not my grandparents, but my dad and several of my uncles and even beyond that. My dad was married and divorced three times. And so when I got married, I did not know how to be married. I was 21 years old when I got married. And I loved Jesus with all my heart. I loved Jane with all my heart, but I had massive insecurity about every time we would get in an argument, I thought Jane's gonna leave. And what was that? It was that family iniquity that was rising up. And I had to go to Jesus with that and go to my mentors about that. And I had to renew my mind about that in order for those seeds to get uprooted because here's what they would have grown into. They would have grown into full blown insecurity and decisions that would have ultimately become self fulfilling prophecies. And I'm grateful for the grace of God. So whatever you maybe are struggling with in your families, go to Jesus, let him uproot that and give you a brand new heart, okay? That's that, okay. Let's take another question. Rick at Portage. As the nuclear family has been attacked in the United States, where do you see culture going in the next 10 to 20 years? And how can we protect our families and best be salt and light to a confused world? Wow, I'm gonna take a drink for that one. Talk amongst yourselves. Let me just tackle the first part, nuclear family. Let me tell you why the nuclear family, and when we refer to a nuclear family, we're talking about mom and dad who have kids, family. That was God's original design for the family. And listen, before God created anything else, any other institution he didn't create, government he didn't create church, first thing he did was he created family, why? Because God created the human family on the earth in the garden to be his representative of his government and his image as it is in heaven. So family, husband and wife, in his image he created them male and female. Male and female come together and create a family. That family is the image bearer of God to the rest of God's creation. Because family is the image bearer of God and because the devil hates the image of God, that's why the family is under attack. You see in the Old Testament, the way that Satan attacked God's image was by causing God's people to worship other images. Those are called idols. And in the New Testament times, he's become more sophisticated. What he wants to do is he wants to mar and destroy and pervert the image of God in the earth. Why? Because he hates God. And every time he sees a family, he sees the earthly representation of God's image and God's government and God's rightful lordship over the earth. And so what does he do? He attacks it and he maligns it and he disfigures it. That's why we're seeing family under attack. It's a spiritual attack. I know we've got all kinds of anecdotal arguments and relationships and people that we know in schools and different things like this, but at the essence of it, let me tell you this. The battle against family is spiritual warfare as we approach the last days that we're living in. And I wanna tell you where it's gonna go over the next 10, 20 years. It's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. It is going to, I don't know exactly where it's gonna go, but here's what I want you to know. It is impossible to raise kids as Christians in this culture on cruise control. You can't just do what you could maybe do 50 years ago and just raise your kids, take them to church, live your lives, listen to your country music and invest them in everything else. Put them in this and put them in that and attend church once a month and not really live your Christian life. As parents, your job is to number one model Jesus as Christ followers to your kids because they will follow who you are much further than they will follow what you say. So mom and dads, you can't get mad at your kids for listening to their music when they walk into the living room and you're listening to country music about losing your dog, your shotgun and your girl and turning up another bottle of whiskey. And if you're listening to your hip hop that's talking about hose and all kinds of other stuff and don't be surprised when you drop them off at youth group and you're just like, well, mom and dad aren't into this and they're just like the world. Mom and dads, our number one responsibility is reflect the image of God to our kids. Number two, it's to prioritize what's important to our kids. And you can't do that on cruise control. You are going to have to get the word in you so that it affects the decisions that come out of you so that it shapes the kids that are around you. And in the next 10, 20 years, here's what I wanna promise you. Listen to me. If you will not disciple your families and I'm talking to men and if you're not married and you're a single mother today then I'm talking to you but I'm talking to nuclear families this morning. Parents, moms, dads and specifically dads, if you will not disciple your kids, the world will. And when they are 18 years old, they will be fully devoted followers to hedonism and to the world and don't be shocked. Well, I took them to church. Yeah, well, I took my kids to Dunkin' Donuts but they're not glazed donuts. Because whoever has the most influential voice in their lives will determine what they become a disciple of. Let me just say parents. If the loudest voice in your life is your music, it's pop culture, it's 24 hour news cycle, it's Netflix, Hulu in prime time, if it's ESPN, if those are the loudest, most influential voices in your life, if they get the most screen time in your life, you will become a disciple of those things instead of a disciple of Jesus. The greatest thing parents can do is be a person that is in the Word that prioritizes, as for me and my house, we are gonna serve the Lord. Come Saturday night or Sunday morning, we are in church. Youth group is a priority. If you want your kids to grow up to be disciples of baseball, then go ahead, take six months off and go and do all the travel sports that you want to. And then when your kids grow up, they'll be really good memorizers of the days when they played literally. But if you want your kids to grow up and love Jesus, put them in the environments where they're gonna see Jesus as a priority. When I was a youth pastor, I had so many parents that would show up in March and say, we'll see you in November because we got travel sports. Guess what? Probably your kids is not gonna grow up to be a professional athlete. But even if he does, do you want them to be a hedonistic professional athlete? Or do you want your kids growing up to know the priority for us in our household is God's word, it's God's house, it's God's people, and we put God first in our life. You do that, you got a good chance of raising godly kids. You don't do that, they'll be discipled by the world. So there you go. I know that you might just think, wow, gosh, she's just being so mad at me. No, I love you. I just want us to raise godly families. And by the way, we're working, Radiant Church is working on for the next couple of years. We're working on developing Radiant preschool because we want to create environments for young kids to be in a Christian environment more. And stay tuned, we have School of Ministry and some other things that are coming down the pike that we want to help partner with parents to help you pass on your faith to your kids. Okay, this is from online. How do you forgive and show honor to your parents when they abused, neglected, and then abandoned you? Wow, what a massive question. Number one, to whoever sent this question in and to whoever this question applies to, I just want to say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what you went through. And I know that it's not always the exception. Here's what I know, is parents are imperfect, but I also know this, imperfection is not an excuse for abuse and neglect. And if you were neglected, you did not receive the love from a mother and a father that you were supposed to have. I want you to know that the Lord weeps with you because that was never his intention or his desire for you. And I also want you to know that I can relate to a certain degree. My dad took off when I was nine months old. I can't tell you how many times I waited on the front porch steps of my mom's house for my dad to come and pick me up, take me fishing or go to baseball games and he never showed up. And also in that environment, my mom was a 20 year old mother, single living in the inner city of Pontiac, Michigan. I was sexually abused by neighbor kids. And I understand neglect, I understand abuse, I understand dysfunction. So to whoever asked that question, I want you to know you're not alone. I want you to know that not only do I and a lot of other people understand what you've gone through, but there is healing. God is bigger than the effects of sin. I've experienced healing, I've experienced forgiveness and you can too. Here's the key, is you've got to be willing to forgive those who harmed you. And forgiveness is not the equivalent of saying that what they did was okay. Actually, forgiveness doesn't just release who you're forgiving, it actually releases you from the pain and the memory and the emotional ramifications of those events. And so you have to forgive. And Jesus commands us, forgive those who spitefully use you, forgive your enemies. And in this case, sometimes it's our family who becomes our enemies, why? Because they harm us. How do you honor, though, parents in those situations? Well, that's a big question. I would say that in many cases, there will be an open door for you to go and have a conversation with your parents about what happened to you and how it affected you. And you have the right to do that. As long as it's safe, you have the right to do that. But you don't have to do that in order to forgive. You can go to the foot of the cross and say, Jesus, this happened to me. And you know what Jesus is gonna say to you? He's gonna say, I know, I was there. I was there when it happened and it broke my heart. And I want you to know that Jesus knows what it is like to be forsaken. Jesus knows what it is like to be neglected. Jesus knows what it is like to be abused. And when Jesus was on the cross, all of our sin was put on him. So he carried the shame and the weight that comes with sin. So Jesus is well acquainted as our high priest with our pain. Here's how you honor. You create boundaries where there are unhealthy relationships. And from the other side of those boundaries, you offer forgiveness and you offer grace. And to the degree that there is repentance and acknowledgement and to the degree that there is the admission and a desire for there to be repentance, that boundary can actually move closer in proximity to that relationship. To the degree that there is denial and there is danger and there is vulnerability, that means that boundary line has to move further back. But it doesn't mean that you allow your heart to get bitter because here's what happens. When we don't forgive somebody, it actually affects us far more than it affects them. Because what happens to our heart is it gets bitter and we make inner vows and we say, I will never ever be hurt again. And so what that means is I'm hardening my heart so that I can't feel. And it actually becomes a prison. Jesus said this, if you won't forgive, those that harm you here on earth and your father can't forgive you in heaven. Why is that? Why won't God forgive you if you don't forgive? It's because the same mechanism that you use to forgive others is the same mechanism that you use to receive forgiveness. So think of it like the back door on your house. If you lock the back door, nobody can get in but you can't get out. And so if you don't forgive, you can't receive forgiveness and it hardens your heart. In many cases, people who've been through this are gonna need either a pastor to help you walk through that or you're gonna need a counselor to help you walk through the grief of that. And I would highly recommend to you that if you need to go back and you need to process some of the things that have happened to you, the Bible says there is safety in the multitude of counselors. Find a Christian biblical counselor, go to them. And if you need a recommendation, call a church. We have several. Several members in our church, they're professional counselors who can help walk you through that and help you receive healing from your heart. And again, we want you to know you're not alone. Jesus sees, Jesus knows, Jesus forgives, and Jesus heals. Would everybody stand up with me? Those are some great questions. Thank you so much for asking those questions this morning. Deep heartfelt questions. And I know that there are a lot more. We'll get through some more in the next service. I want everyone in this room to just bow their heads with me. And I want our prayer team though to move into place if they would, all of our care ministers and alter team if they would move into place. I know that that last question may have struck a chord with a lot of us because whether it was abuse or neglect or abandonment, I know that the greatest pain in life happens in the context of relationships. Just like the greatest joys of life happen in the context of relationships. The reality is that a lot of us in this place, a lot of us in this room at Portage as well, or online even, are carrying some baggage, carrying some wounds, carrying some unresolved stuff. And we've got a couple of choices of what we can do with that stuff. Number one, we can keep stuffing it, but eventually you're gonna run out of space and it's gonna overflow. It's gonna overflow in dysfunction, divorce, neglect, unhappiness, depression, anxiety, abuse, substance abuse. It's gonna overflow in lots of different. You keep stuffing it. Your bags, your suitcases only have so much space. Or we surrender it. We surrender it and we ask for help. Here's what the Bible says. I cried out to the Lord in my trouble and he heard me from his holy mountain. See when we cry out to God, the promises that he hears us. The Bible says that God heard me in the day of salvation and he helped me. God wants to help. See we don't believe that life is just what happens to us. We believe that we serve a God who's transcendent and supernatural. Which means even though he doesn't cause everything that happens in our life, he's able to redeem everything that happens in our life. He's able to redeem it. He's able to restore us. He's able to heal our hearts. He's stronger than sin. He's stronger than dysfunction. He's stronger than what other people have done to us. What does it require? Humility on our part. Just say, God, I need you. Hear me. I'm broken, I'm hurt. My marriage is a mess. I'm struggling in my sexuality. I've got some things I need to let go of. I've got some things I need to repent of. Here's what I know that whenever we call out, God hears us and he helps us. And this morning, I'm gonna pray. I'm gonna pray over families. I'm gonna pray over individuals. And I believe that when we pray in the name of Jesus, things happen. Angels move. The tectonic plates of our lives shift. Deliverance occurs. But after I pray, I'm gonna invite, if you're here and you find yourself in a position where maybe there's something, you need help in your marriage. Or maybe you're just lonely. Or maybe you're carrying emotional baggage. Or maybe that last question was you. Or perhaps you're here and you're struggling with your sexual identity. You know, the enemy will use shame to shut you up. Condemnation to isolate you. And he will deceive you into thinking that even God can't change you. Can't heal you. Can't reverse what's happened in your life. All of those things are demonic under all lies. Meant to keep you in chains as a prisoner. But today, Jesus steps into the room. Church, I want you to hear me. Jesus is in this room. It's not just answers from Jesus. Jesus is in this room. And wherever Jesus goes, he breaks chains of the enemy. Whatever room Jesus steps into, hope arrives. Salvation comes. Deliverance is possible. And he's here today. He's here in the midst of us. Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I will be there. And I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna dismiss. And if you are in that situation, I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna invite you to come and receive prayer. Because there's something that happens when we come together in unity, when we confess what we're struggling with, when we ask for help, when we humble ourselves, and brothers and sisters pray for us and over us, God meets us in that moment. That's where change begins to occur. It's supernatural, but it's God and he's here. I'm gonna tell you, don't take your bags home with you and wait for it to fill up. Today is the day of salvation. Come and receive prayer on this Mother's Day. Lord, today I pray right now in the name of Jesus. Eyes would be opened right now to see what's really going on in our life. Scales would fall off. I pray for hard hearts to become soft right now in the name of Jesus. I pray for those that are living under the veil of shame because of what they've done or what has happened to them that right now it be exposed with the goodness and the mercy of God. That there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And Lord, I pray that today would be a day of healing. It'd be a day of deliverance. It'd be a day of finding our brand new identity in Christ. It would be a day where the chains of sin and iniquities would be broken off of people's lives. And today we would walk in the freedom and the liberty that we have in Jesus, that Jesus you paid for on the cross. I pray that now I pray that today I pray that that would go with us and that we would be constantly reminded of the good God that we serve. Lord, I pray that as we pray prayers of faith at this altar today, that healing of marriages would take place, that dreams would come alive again, that prodigals would come home, that sexual sin would break off, that addictions would be broken off, that hearts would be shifted and changed, that forgiveness would be granted and that Jesus you would be glorified. We pray this in the matchless name of Jesus and everybody says amen and amen.