Picture Perfect

Pat Steeves · Tidal Church Moncton · February 19, 2023 · Our Imperfect Family series

Pat Steeves teaches from Matthew 5:6, explaining that no family is picture perfect, but God blesses imperfect families. As we hunger and thirst for Jesus' righteousness instead of comfort or status, He changes our relationships, and parents can lead the way at home.

More from Pat Steeves · The Our Imperfect Family series

Topics: Relationships, Marriage & Family, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] Well, happy family weekend. How you guys doing? We doing? All right. We got a little excitement here. You guys are happy for the long weekend. Question for you guys: how many of you would say that you have an aunt, uncle, parent, family member, someone you consider themselves family, in-laws? How many of you have someone that would fit that criteria? I think we should have every hand up in this place. Now, a little harder question: how many of you have ever experienced tension in one of these relationships with parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, in-laws, someone you consider family? Well, here's the deal. I think that we can all relate to the family struggles.

[0:58] Now, I've got a little pet peeve that I just want to share with you guys. I don't know about you, but I see these pictures on social media of families that look like they have it all together. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Like the picture, everything is in perfect place. The family looks happy and they're smiling, right? That just kind of like, I honestly look at that and I'm like, really, guys? You know what? I think that sometimes Christians are some of the biggest proponents of those pictures. I didn't get an amen to that, but here is the deal. I have kind of an Instagram model. And that is, where Instagram is where we show our best and hide the rest, right? We show the best and hide the rest, and so here's the deal. I don't want to, I'm gonna kind of state the obvious, and hopefully you're not surprised by this statement. All right, but the reality is there is no such thing as picture perfect.

[2:09] There's no such thing as picture perfect. And even though Instagram would like to show us that families are doing well, and marriages and individuals. Here's the sobering reality is that marriages are not as good as they should be, and you know, what, families are struggling, parenting is really quite difficult, financially. I think that we can all relate that things are costing more, and maybe the reality is there's many of us living paycheck to paycheck, and it's really, really tough. And individually, you know, young adults are finishing school and not finding fulfilling careers, or even finding clarity for their future. And so it's tough. Life is really, really hard. It really is, and I just want to add to this that there's more temptations than ever before, right? But when it comes to, you know, families, we've got families that are combined, and we're raising our kids and her kids, and it's really complicated. We've got record number of single parents that are out there that are trying their best to manage everything off of one income and parent kids, and it's really, really hard. Would you guys, is that what you guys are hearing as well? Like, because those are the stories that I am hearing all the time. And so with that, I want us to talk about week three of Our Imperfect Family, and I'm entitling this talk "Picture Perfect." Look at the person beside you and say, "Picture

[4:10] Perfect." Online, type it in the chat. Type in "Picture Perfect" today. So how do we navigate these tensions and these challenges that we seemingly all to be facing in our culture? Well, for the record, I want to start by saying this: that our family is not perfect. Okay, sometimes we think that pastors are exempt from this, right? That like their marriages, there's never any arguments, never any disagreements. If you have kids, the kids don't fight, right? That's what some people think that us as pastors get blessed with. The reality is that not true. Like, I honestly think that some people think that when there's an argument or disagreement or the kids are fighting, that we just simply put on some worship music and just miraculously, everyone is happy, and then we join hands and we pray together and we move on with our day. Like, honestly, when I tell people some of the struggles we have, they almost get happy because they're like, "Oh, I'm glad that you have struggles." And so the truth is, we are in this together. And so I want us to look today at Scripture because I believe that God wants you to catch the statement.

[5:41] I believe that God wants to bless our families and relationships even in imperfect situations. I gotta say that again. Because this is good news. This gives me hope. I want to say this again: God wants to bless our families and relationships even in imperfect situations. I know nobody said amen to that, but can you just say amen to that? Now I want us to look at Scripture. We're gonna go to Matthew chapter 5, verse 6, and this collection of verses for some of you that have been in church a while, you've heard it called the Beatitudes. Okay, the Beatitudes. And so, you know, it goes on like, "Blessed are the meek, and they'll inherit the earth," and "Blessed are the peacemakers." Thank God for peacemakers, right? But I want to highlight this, first found in Matthew chapter 5, verse 6, which says this: "Blessed Okay, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." Can everybody say righteousness?

[7:02] "For they will be filled." Now, if you've never had the opportunity of hearing me speak here on a Sunday, you got to know this, that I like to be able to, if I'm gonna speak on something, I need to break down that verse so that I can understand exactly what it's saying. And so I want us to just break down this verse kind of word by word and see exactly what Jesus is teaching us here in Matthew 5:6. Are you guys ready? The first word is "blessed." Blessed are they. Do you know what the word blessed means? The word blessed actually means, it means to envy and to be fortunate. We've got it on here: to be happy, fortunate, and to be envied.

[7:56] Now I don't know about you, but isn't that the kind of relationships that you would want? Happy relationships fortunate people look at your relationships and be like, man, they just seem like they've got it going on, right? I'm telling you. This is how God wants our relationships to work. All right. God wants blessed relationships in our families, marriages, you know, people at work. All right. And so Jesus, the same blessed are those, okay? So now He's got something attached to it, right? Because how many know it just doesn't happen that way? I don't know, that's just my reality, but here Jesus is showing us how the key to blessed, a blessed life, is blessed. Are they that, what hunger and thirst, hunger and thirst. I got to be honest with you guys. Okay?

[8:57] When it comes to eating, I drive my wife like up the wall. Okay, because I'm either eating or I'm thinking about the next time I'm gonna eat. Is there anybody else with me? Like, you just enjoy food? Like, it's just, you know, but you know what, to be able to really understand the Scripture, we've got to understand the reality of hunger and thirst. I don't know when the last time was that you were extremely hungry or thirsty. Can you go there in your mind with me? Like, as I get older, the when I get hungry, I get angry. I don't know what's going on. But seriously, when we get hungry, we get kind of desperate, don't we?

[9:45] Wait, it gets kind of ugly quite fast. Like, when was the last time you were thirsty? Right? Like, maybe on a warm, hot summer day, you're out working and you're just so desperate for something to drink. And I want you to be able to capture this in this Scripture that Jesus is talking about. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. And how many know that our appetites, the things that we hunger and thirst for, we have to be careful what that is. Are you guys with me? Right? There's a lot of things that we can hunger and thirst for that aren't good.

[10:34] What are the things that you've been prioritizing? And let's just look over the last seven days. Let's just take the last seven days. What are the things that you're pursuing, hungering, thirsting, prioritizing over the last seven days? What would that be? Now, I'm not gonna get you to text in your answers to 406-4400, and we'll put those up on the screen, right? That would be kind of dangerous if we were like, you know what, let's just see what are the things that we're prioritizing. Some of our Christian answers, we've been programmed to say, "I'm hungering and thirsting after God," right? That's the church answer. That's the Christian answer.

[11:22] But the reality is, as we have to think about some of the things that we're hungering and thirsting for, and for some of us, they're not necessarily bad things, but culture has a way of getting its messaging and kind of conforming us to where the culture is. And some of the things that we're pursuing and hungering, thirsting, is to, it's just comfort. It's just to relax, to put in a good week's work, and then on the weekend, just be able to enjoy it. Right? That's sort of some of the things that we live for. How many have ever heard someone say, "I'm just living for the weekend"? Right? Like, that's just kind of what it's all about.

[12:10] For others, it's social status that you're pursuing and prioritizing, a certain social status, where it's a certain size of home and certain styles of cars that you drive. And this is my favorite. Okay, stereotypical. Okay. It's, they're the ones that, like, when they mow their lawn, they just don't mow their lawn, but they mow it like diagonally and in, like, squares. Do you guys ever see that? Where it's like perfect. So, anybody know what I'm talking about? Right? And everybody knows that, like, they've reached a certain level of status. Right. I know we don't like to necessarily admit that, but these are some of the things if we're not careful we pursue, we hunger and thirst.

[13:03] It's for some, it's our kids. Right, like we want our kid to make the triple A elite professional hockey team, right? Or it's our daughter that we want them to one day make Dancing with the Stars, or the soccer player to be the next Cristiano Ronaldo, right? These are some of the things that, if we were to be honest and look over our last seven days, what are some of the things that we're prioritizing? Because Jesus is giving us a caution here. He's saying, "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst." And I'm just going to pause there because I want us to really lean into what He's desiring for us. But before I do, I want us to look at Romans 12 verse 2. I just really want us to kind of like dig into this reality and really think about what are the things that we're pursuing.

[14:14] Romans 12:2 says this. It says, "Be not conformed to this age," right, to this culture. Okay. Let me just start this again. "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." And it even breaks it down a little bit farther here, where it says, "Be not conformed to this world any longer." It's superficial values and customs, and those are some of the things that I talked about where we just want to be comfortable and live for the weekend and mow our grass perfectly and have the nice car. Those are some of the superficial customs that, if we're not careful, that can be what we pursue. Is anybody with me this morning online? Are you guys still with me? I hope so.

[15:09] If we're not careful, that's what we can pursue. And it goes on to say, "but to transform our mind by the Word of God," okay. And that's kind of partly of what we're doing here, is we're looking at the Word of God because it's going to change our thinking. And when we can change our thinking, it's going to change our desires. And when we change our desires, it changes our direction. Transform your mind by what? The Word of God. Why? So that you may know the hope, the purpose to which you have been called.

[15:56] And I know that this verse may sound familiar to a lot of us, but this is Paul's warning, and I really felt led to really just pause here for a moment to check ourselves, because if we're not careful, we can easily conform to our culture. You guys still with me this morning? I want us to move on here. In this verse back in Matthew, which was "Blessed are they that what?" Hunger and thirst after what? Can you guys say "righteousness"? Now, I've been having fun with this word this week because I've been asking people what this word means. I've asked my kids. I've asked some different people that work here, because if you've been around church at all, you know that the word righteousness is not a new word. But what I've found is that we don't necessarily know what exactly it means. Would you be honest enough to say that? You know what? I'm not quite sure. I know what righteousness is. But Jesus is saying we need to hunger and thirst, we need to get after it, after righteousness. And so I want us to look at what righteousness actually means.

[17:24] And so when you look up the word righteousness, it literally just means one who is right. One who is right. Look at the person beside you and say, "I think he's talking to you." But here's the reality: we probably all think that we're right quite a lot of the time. Look at the person beside you and say, "I think he's talking to you." Here's what we got to understand when it comes to righteousness: there is one who is right. There is one. Holy God who is perfect.

[18:12] God is righteous. He is the only one who is righteous. And I don't know about you, but I've learned pretty quick that I've got some sin in my life. I've made some wrong decisions. Okay, and we can't approach a holy God because we have sin in our life. And so righteousness is one of those words that I can't really explain, okay, exactly what it is, but I want us to use a little illustration here. I kind of think of righteousness as Wi-Fi. You're like, "What is this?" I can't really explain how Wi-Fi works. I just know it's there.

[19:00] All right, and so I want us to test this out. I want everybody just to take out your phone right now. Okay, because there's a lot of things about righteousness. There's things about Wi-Fi that we just don't get. So I want you to literally take out your phone right now, and I need you to just follow me step by step. Okay? I want you to go to Settings right now. All right, and I want you to turn off your Wi-Fi. Turn off Wi-Fi. Okay, and I also want you, those of you that have cellular data on, just turn that off. This is not a trick, by the way, so that you're not distracted in church. Those of you that are online, if you're watching on your phone, please don't do this, you will lose connection. But seriously, take out your phone, turn off cellular data, and turn off Wi-Fi.

[19:52] Now, when it comes to righteousness, okay, when it comes to righteousness, as I mentioned, God is perfect. God is holy. When we were born, as cute as your mom said you were, you were born with a sin nature. Some of our first words were like "no" and "mine." Like, no one taught us that. But here's what I want to understand: we are born with a sin nature, and over here we have a perfect, holy God, and God wants relationship with each and every one of us.

[20:40] But He knew that there would be a broken connection. There would be a broken relationship where we could not access Him, and so He had a plan. All right. He had a plan, and His name was Jesus. And He says, "I'm going to give My Son. He will live on this earth perfect, a perfect man, no sin, and He will become righteousness for us so that we can access God." Here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your phone. Okay. Take your phone, and I want you to go back to your Wi-Fi setting.

[21:31] Go to your Wi-Fi setting, and what's going to come up is you are going to see the word Jesus, and I want you to connect to Jesus. See, Jesus is the one that allows us access to everything God has. Our phones that we hold in our hand right now with no Wi-Fi, with no connection, we can't access anything, right? You still with me?

[22:17] But because of Jesus, I don't necessarily, we can't see righteousness, but we know by the Word of God, by the what the Bible tells us, that Jesus came, our righteousness, to connect us to our Father God. Can somebody give it up for Jesus in this place? Jesus became our righteousness. And here's the thing: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness." What is righteousness? It is becoming like Jesus. We have a Bible that we can read, and how He lived His life, how He treated people.

[23:04] And when we begin to take on His righteousness and hunger and thirst to be like Him, then that's when we're going to be able to see changes happen in the relationships around us. And what's fascinating is in Matthew 5 is where we found Jesus telling us about righteousness. But it was almost like He knew what was going to happen, because in Matthew chapter 6 He begins to talk about for us not to worry about what we're going to eat and what all we're going to wear. And He begins to give these illustrations of how He has provided for the birds of the air. He's provided food for them.

[23:54] And this key familiar verse just stood out to me as I was thinking on this, and many of you are going to know this. So He begins casting the vision for the things that we don't have to worry about. But then He says in Matthew 6, He says, "Seek first." he says seek first. What? God's kingdom and what His righteousness? And all these things will be added on to you. You see, culture over here wants us to just be focused on comfort and focused on status and get focused on your kids, which are all good things. But here's what happens in the end. They still leave us feeling unfulfilled.

[24:46] They don't fill us up. They kind of deplete us. Can I hear any parents say amen to that? Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness. You see, God wants us filled so that we can live our lives, live our Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays with joy, with peace, with patience. Come on, somebody, with some self-control. But we only get that when we hunger and thirst after Him. It's a relational thing that we're talking about today. It's a relational thing that I want to then lean into: how does this affect our lives and our families and our relationships?

[25:46] I want us to just continue on here. Here's the thing: our relationship with God is not always a straight line upwards. Some of you who are new to church, sometimes we think that life is just going to continue going in this direction. Okay? If you have any investments, you know that the line goes up and it goes down. And that's kind of like our relationship with God, and that's what I felt like today in this conversation, in this message, to just check where are we at in terms of our relationship with God.

[26:38] We got to understand that when it comes to righteousness, okay, we need to know that. We need it. Number two, we need to know that it's free. Okay, and number three, we need to know that we can't earn it. And I just want to state this, that sometimes in our faith, if we're not careful, we feel like we can do the right things to earn our righteousness. And depending on how long we've been in church and some of the different places we've been, it can be very focused on the things that we do to earn our righteousness to please God.

[27:32] And actually the reverse happens. We gain what's called self-righteousness. But here's the deal: we got to understand that rules without relationship equals rebellion. And I don't know if you've ever spoken to somebody who spent a lot of time in, you know, kind of religious groups where we try to earn our salvation. And some people have turned away from that because there is no relationship, and Jesus always prioritizes the relationship. As we begin to kind of land the message here, I want us to think about parents in relationships and young adults and some of the things that don't work.

[28:30] Okay, when it comes to some relationships and our connections here, but here's two things that don't work. One is legalism. Legalism, where, you know, where we love God, okay, we reduce where we reduce Christianity. There's two things: legalism and lukewarm. Here we go. When we reduce Christianity to a bunch of do's and don'ts, shoulds and shouldn'ts, legalism does not last. Legalism does not work. But here's what we have to do as parents: we have to continue to fight for connection and relationship with our kids.

[29:27] Sometimes we want to look too heavy on the rules and we cut off relationship, and it's some of the most difficult times as parents, that we have to be able to fight for connection and fight for relationship. And that's what I love when I read Scripture, where Jesus always fought for the relationship first. Some of you guys may recall a story in the New Testament where some of the religious leaders caught a woman in the act of adultery, and they drug her out and they put her before Jesus, and they're saying, and they're like, "She's guilty. What do you have to say about this?"

[30:21] Do you guys remember that story? And Jesus didn't go immediately to the rules. What did He do? He went to the relationship. And He looked at them and He said, "Those of you who have no sin in your life, cast the first stone." Jesus always looked to protect the relationship. And it was amazing, her response, and how He had a conversation with her after and said, "Go and sin no more." As Christians, as parents, as we're raising kids, we have to be so careful when it comes to this. The last thing is lukewarmness.

[31:07] Lukewarmness is just something, again, in our relationships with God, things happen and our relationships can go up and go down, and we have to be careful to guard ourselves against becoming lukewarm. Lukewarm is when we believe in God but we live like He doesn't exist. I want to say that again: lukewarmness is when we believe in God, but we live like He does not exist. It's cultural Christianity. And so for some, here are some indicators that I just want to share, just practical indicators for each and every one of us, that when we see these, I hope that they kind of remind us that maybe we are becoming a little too lukewarm.

[32:04] You can't think of the last time that maybe you got together with your family and prayed for something significant. Maybe you needed a miracle. Maybe you needed something to change in your family. Maybe it was where you're going to move to or a change in career. But as Christians, these are things and moments that we need to bring our family around. When was the last time that you shared with your family someone that you talk to about your faith in God? And simply what I mean by that is, when was the last time you talked about the blessing, the goodness of God on your life and how God has protected you or protected your family?

[32:54] When was the last time you did that? These are some of the indicators that we have to be aware of. When was the last time you shared with your kids an answered prayer? You know, sometimes we share a lot about the struggles we go through as parents, but we gotta, we got to make sure that we share the victories, the wins. And so, you know, "I didn't know what we were gonna do. I didn't know how that was going to turn out, but God, kids, God provided this." When was the last time we did that? Here's another one. When was the last time we led, as a parent, away from some things that aren't necessarily healthy or good for our kids?

[33:43] You know, maybe it's a movie that you paid a lot of money to go see or to watch and you know, it's got, they took the Lord's name in vain 18 times in the first eight minutes. As parents we need to be able to lead them and say, you know what? I know we paid a lot of money for this. We're going to go do something else. This is not it's not who we are, right? Or some unhealthy relationships that maybe you're in, your family, and some friendships that you're seeing. You know what, kids, we're just gonna kind of go in a different direction for a little while. We as parents need to make sure that we are taking the lead when it comes to some of the things that we can allow to become lukewarm.

[34:28] So here's the question. Here's the question. What do we do when we realize that we're hungering and thirsting for the wrong things? Joshua 24:15 says this, it says, "Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers who served on either side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live." You see, we have all kinds of gods that we can so easily serve. But we got to choose who we're gonna serve, and here's what Joshua says: "But as for me and my house," what did he say?

[35:18] "We're gonna serve the Lord." If you're not sure where to start when it comes to your family, I just want to end with just three things that, as we go from here, some things that we can think about and take to our families. Involve God in your daily conversations. As you're driving your kids potentially to take care, hockey, dance, whatever it is, look for ways that you can incorporate God into the conversation. Look at that beautiful sunrise. Look for ways that you can engage your kids into conversations with God. I loved when, you know, my kids were a bit younger, but I just would open up the Bible to Genesis 1.

[36:12] My kids were like, I don't even know how old they were, they were so young that I was like, this isn't even gonna make sense to them. But I began to just read, starting in Genesis 1, and I would sometimes read two verses, and they understood sun and moon and stars. And guess what? They would ask questions. And sometimes we would get through two verses. Sometimes we get, you know. But it began to ask some questions. We got into Exodus, man. We made it all the way into Exodus. We started talking about things like circumcision. Those are fun conversations, right? If you don't know where to start, just start by just opening up the Bible and just reading it and allowing them to ask questions. Have daily conversations.

[37:08] Include Him in your decisions in our marriages. When was the last time where we had to make a decision and we're like, "Let's ask God about that," right? Let's just get in that habit of including God in our daily decisions when it comes to our marriages. And here's a fun one. Make church a priority. Make church a priority, and I know some of you are, you know, you have told me stories: "I can't get my kids to go to church." Okay. You know what? Get creative. Get creative. There's things that they want. And I call this the art of negotiating.

[37:55] Maybe they won't come into this room, but they might serve out in the parking lot with you. Maybe they'll serve in the cafe with you. Look for any opportunity that you can to bring your kids and make church show them it is a priority. We're talking about "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness." Are we hungering and thirsting? Are we hungering and thirsting for what is right? Because I believe that when we do, we will realize that our lives will never be picture perfect, but we will understand that we serve a God who is picture perfect, and when we put Him first, our imperfectness begins to change. Are you guys with me this morning? Would you guys stand all over this place?

[39:07] And I just want to invite you. I don't know if any of you have been watching on social media this revival that people are saying is happening in Asbury, where people are just coming and filling a church with His presence and just worshiping God. The differences are disappearing. Who's there, who's not there doesn't matter, but it's very, they're just in the presence of God, and something powerful is happening. And it's just reminding me of this hungering, thirsting for God, and so I'm gonna invite our prayer team to come up. I'm going to invite them to come up. And if maybe the Holy Spirit is speaking directly to you this morning, and there's just some things that maybe you've been letting slip, some legalism, lukewarmness, and you're saying, you know what, I just got to check myself, we can do better as a family.

[40:03] I can do better as an individual. Maybe you just want to come up and get into God's presence down here. Maybe you want to have someone pray for you, but I just want to encourage you not to miss this moment. As we sing this next song together, let me just pray, and then let's allow the Holy Spirit to minister to us before we leave today. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, God, You are holy. God, You are perfect. God, I pray that somehow these words through Scripture would come alive to us, and Your Holy Spirit would speak to our hearts today, that, God, some of the things that we're hungering and thirsting for they may not be bad, but God, they're not what's best.

[41:00] And God, they're not going to lead us to that truly blessed life that You have for us, where we are filled with things that are life-giving. Truly life-giving. God, speak to our hearts this morning. Put a compassion in our hearts for our family. Allow us to lead our families courageously, teaching them the ways of You, because, God, You are so worthy of our praise. We thank You for this. In Jesus' name. Amen. I invite you just to spend some time in God's presence again. I would invite you, if you want, to come down. Don't miss this opportunity to allow God, allow the Holy Spirit, to minister to you this morning.