Bible Text: Mark 14:32-36 | Preacher: Pastor Steve
A person’s moral foundations are generally in place by the time they reach age NINE.
A person’s response to the meaning and personal value of Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection is usually determined before a person reaches EIGHTEEN.
A majority of Americans make a determination about the personal significance of Christ’s death, resurrection by age TWELVE.
Pals Forever
Fatherhood and fatherlessness are issues in our community that need of our attention.
Studies show that fatherlessness impacts education, poverty levels, social behaviors, health care, emotion development, etc.
There is a struggle not only trying to be a present father, but being a good father.
It is our relationship with our Father that will allow for healthy development of our self-image or do injury to it.
Fatherhood is NOT about creating life
Fatherhood is a continuing lifetime relationship where that man is there for his children with consistency, dependability, strength, kindness and love.
Connect a child to the right man and that child will seldom go wrong.
Mark 14:32-36 …My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me. He went on a little farther and fell face down on the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. Abba, Father, he said, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine.
Olive Press – Gethsemane
Our Heavenly Father SHAPES us
Isaiah 64:8Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Jeremiah 18:6 …I went down to the potter’s house…But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. Then the word of the LORD came to me: O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does…Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
Our Heavenly Father REDEEMS us
Isaiah 43:12…this is what the LORD says he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
Redemption of the First Born
A son who knows that he has a father who wanted him and chose him has great positive spiritual, emotional, and psychological implications in any child’s life
Our Heavenly Father is PRESENT with us ALWAYS
Matthew 3:1-17
The Father disclosing to the world unashamedly how deeply he loves his son.
Matthew 3:16As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him
In the United States ~45 million children under the age of 18 go to bed at night with no father present.
The facts from Father Facts statethat in America, 24.7 million children (33 percent) lived in a biologically father-absent home in 2010.
20.3 million lived with no father (biological, adoptive, or step) in the home.
Our Heavenly Father LOVES us!
Matthew 3:17This is my dearly loved Son…
1 John 3:1 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!
Our Heavenly Father AFFIRMS us
Matthew 3:17 …in whom I am well pleased.
Affirmation is powerful and we all need and desire it
Orange Crush and Corn Nuts