Conia [00:00:03]:
I am glad to be back with you today. I always enjoy this time together. It actually gives me time to sit down and reflect on what God has shared with me in the past weeks and see what he’s really kind of bubbled to the surface and what he wants me to share. And we do this in our coaching, but we do it really in our ministering. And when things kind of keep coming back to you over and over again, that’s usually a pretty good indicator that God’s in the center of it and really is trying to get your attention.
Conia [00:00:48]:
My daughter and I were talking today, and she said, you know, the other day I felt compelled that before I went to work, I had to go clear out. Well, she has a dog, so there’s a dog in the backyard, and dogs leave messes. And she said, I had to go clean out the mess, the dog mess in the backyard. And she goes, and it was just weird because, you know, somehow or another, I just thought that it could not wait, that it had to be done before I went to work that day. And she said, and just wouldn’t leave me alone, that it had to be done before I went to work that day. And she goes, it was just strange to me. And she gets home and the yard people have very unexpected showed up on that particular day. It’s part of, you know, the place where she lives.
Conia [00:01:31]:
They take care of all that. And she did not know that they were coming. But had they. Had she not cleaned up the dog mess, they would have had a bigger mess to deal with and might have fussed at her. And so, Holy Spirit, I said, thank you. Holy Spirit gave you that nudge that said, hey, go clean up the dog mess. So it’s about what bubbles up to the surface, what keeps coming back to us. We had a pastor one time that was talking about, he got this nudge.
Conia [00:01:59]:
He remembered it very vividly. He was driving down the road in his truck, and he felt very compelled that he needed to go sell an investment that he had, and he needed to do it right then. And he talked himself out of it. And then it came back, and he talked himself out of it, and then it came back, and he finally said, I’ll go do it tomorrow. Well, tomorrow was too late because the investment tanked and he lost. He’s like, if I had just listened. And so one of those things is, let’s just listen to what is it that God is trying to tell us? Because. And what has bubbled up for me today to share with you is that God is the perfect parent.
Conia [00:02:38]:
We’re kind of. We’re in the middle. We had Mother’s day and that’s the best day. And then we had Father’s day. And they get to grill for us. I don’t know how that works. But anyway, we get to sit as mothers at home and eat bonbons and how spa days and they get to grill for us on fire. Father’s day.
Conia [00:02:54]:
Sorry, guys, it’s just the way it works. But we’re really giving a focus to parents. And when we look at parents, what we want to do as parents is emulate God in what we do and how we conduct ourselves and how we raise our children. But we need to remember that even though we get up in years, human years, that we are still children, very much children in comparison to the maturity of God. And if you were to look at, you know, us compared to where God is in comparison to us and our children, it would be like us with newborns, with toddlers, right? Even if you’re 25 or 35 or 45 years old with a little one, it seems like there’s this big disparity. Well, there’s that big disparity between you and God. And what’s bubbled up all week long is that God wants to keep teaching us things just like we want to keep teaching toddlers things. God wants to love us just like we love those little cherubs, even when they’re being petulant.
Conia [00:04:17]:
And God really wants us to keep growing closer to him. So I wanted to take, taking some verses today, and I really want to highlight this for you. Parenthood is a hard thing to be. Parenthood sometimes is a hard thing to experience. Depending on your raising and your background, depending on your parents background, it may not have been the best parent, but what you do have is you have God as the best parent. So no matter what your experience with parenthood has been, God is the perfect parent. And we have to allow him to be that in our lives, to experience the fullness of what he has for us. And if we project onto God our preconceived notions, our earthly notions about what parenthood is or our experience with parenthood, then we can miss out on all the greatness that God has for us.
Conia [00:05:23]:
So I don’t want you to miss that. I really want you to understand that God put us here to have a relationship with us. And it is like that parent child relationship, and it’s not. It won’t always be that way. But that’s the only thing that we can kind of framework that we can really put it in so that we can understand it. Does that make sense? Okay, so what started this? The whole thing was Matthew 711. If you look at that, it says, if you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? So I want you to think about a little one. A two year old, a three year old.
Conia [00:06:18]:
And when we get in the presence of that two year old or that three year old, we always want to be giving them something. Here, have this piece of apple. Oh, would you like some juice? Oh, here, I’ve got this great let toy for you. Let’s go blow some bubbles. Would you like this coin? I mean, if you’re like anything, like I was, you know, growing up, the, the stereotypical grandparent was the grandfather walking into the house and handing the grandchild money. And the grandchildren didn’t even know what to do with the money, but that was what they want. They wanted to give him, you know, here, let’s see what grandpa has in his pocket. Oh, here, I’ve got two quarters for you.
Conia [00:06:57]:
And so we are innately compelled to want to give something to that child. We want to share something with them. We want to impart something to them. We want to read them a story. We want to help them put on their socks and their shoes. We want to impart, to give into those children. And that’s just us as imperfect humans. How much more does a perfect God, an omnipotent, omnipresent God, want to give in to us who are his children? And he really does look on us with that joy, with that anticipation, with that expectation that we have of the toddlers in our lives.
Conia [00:07:54]:
David likes to tell the story about, you know, babies learning to walk. And he says, he always says, what do we do when, when the baby falls down? We say, good job. Get up. You can do it again. Let’s try again. Good job. And we’re encouraging, and that’s the part of David’s message, is how we encourage. And he always likes to say, he says, I’ve never heard anybody say, you dumb baby, you’re never going to get this.
Conia [00:08:19]:
Go sit in the corner. You haven’t. And God would never say that about anything, that he’s trying to help us learn how to do, and we don’t learn how to do things instantaneously. There are some things that come pretty easy some people have an easier time than others, depending on their background. I’ll never forget Joyce Meyer talking about her husband Dave, and he quit smoking. Boom, cold turkey. And she said, it took me three years to quit. So everyone’s different, and everyone’s pace is different, and God knows that.
Conia [00:08:57]:
And he’s going to go at your pace with whatever it is that he’s asking you to do. So when you’re young and you have this desire to learn to walk because you see others walking and you think, I want to do that, too, you’re not just going one day from laying in the crib to popping up and walking. There’s muscles that have to be developed, there’s skills that have to be developed, there’s rhythm that has to be developed and balance that has to be developed. And all that now then works together for you to be able to walk. And you walk today just fine. But anybody who’s had been paralyzed or had a hip surgery or a knee surgery can tell you that relearning how to walk can be daunting, even if you’ve done it before. So what we want to look at here is we want to think of whatever challenge is in front of us, just like we are learning to walk, because that’s how God views that challenge. He doesn’t expect you to get it right away, and he’s going to be there the whole time to cheer you on, encourage you to pick you up when you fall, to kiss the boo boo and say, I know you can do it, let’s do it again.
Conia [00:10:15]:
Because that’s what a perfect parent does. So think of the God as the perfect parent that way. Okay? The other thing about God is God is a triune being. So we have God the Father, we have the Holy Spirit, and we have Jesus the Son, right? And we don’t talk enough about the Holy Spirit. And there’s gifts of the Spirit, and it comes to live in you when you accept Christ as your savior and when you become indwelled with the Holy Spirit. And the gifts of the Spirit are outlined, and they are love, joy, peace, forbearance. The big word, it’s patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. When you think about those, love, joy, peace, forbearance, or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, all those are attributes that we would normally, if in a human stance, we would give those attributes to a motheringen nurturing kind of person.
Conia [00:11:24]:
Not to say that dads don’t have those, but they’re more typically associated with what a nurturer or a mother would do. So now let’s remember, God is the perfect parent. He encompasses all the attributes that we would think of as a father, but he also encompasses all the attributes that we would think of from a mother, that nurturer, that, that caregiver. So that we’re going to get a discipline, and we’re going to get care, and we’re going to get love, and we’re going to get encouragement. And then we’ve got big brother Jesus who’s going to say, I did it before you, and you can do it too. And that’s where that triune being really comes into our lives, to give us this example and to show us how he wants to be with us in everything that we do. And so he becomes all, all things. We talk about personality styles, and David and I really enjoy the disc.
Conia [00:12:20]:
A lot of people love the enneagram. We’ve talked about that a little bit before. But God encompasses all the best things of all those personality traits. So when you think of God, don’t limit him, okay? We don’t want to limit him. And God is not like the world. Remember, God’s economy and the world’s economy are completely backwards from one another. The world says, I’ve done this for you and I’ve done this thing for you, and now I’m kind of, I’m finished giving you, and that’s all I’m going to give you. God says, I’ve done this thing for you, and that’s just the beginning.
Conia [00:12:57]:
God, I really do enjoy Shel Silverstein’s the giving tree. I enjoyed that story as a child. God’s even better than the giving tree because with the giving tree, the giving tree just gave everything that it had from the love of the boy, and then it diminished the tree in that time. But God’s the ultimate giving tree. He will give you everything that he has. But God never runs out. And just like the giving tree, he’ll always be there with you and for you every time you come back to him. So we go on, and some of the other verses that I’ve pulled from this, and we’ve got, first John three one.
Conia [00:13:40]:
And this is a letter that John has written, and he’s written it in his older age. And he says, see what great love the father has lavished on us. Lavished, that’s a big word. It’s not that he just handed to you. He said, here, have this love. He’s lavishing it on you. It’s without limit. It’s unending.
Conia [00:14:02]:
So what great love. It’s a big love to begin with, and he’s lavished it upon us. It’s impossible to get the scope of this. And this is why God says, meditate on the word. You could take this verse, just that first sentence of this verse, and say, look, see what great love the father has lavished on us. You could meditate on that sentence all day long. You could meditate on that sentence for the next year and you could never plumb the depths of what it would mean to you. So as you go out today, make sure that you’re thinking about the great love, not the mediocre love, not the halfway love, not the conditional love, the great love that the father has lavished on you.
Conia [00:14:56]:
But there’s more. That we should be called the children of God. It’s huge. It’s not little. This is not a document. This is not a, like a birth certificate that says, oh, you know, you’re the child of these two people that came together. That’s not what it is. It’s, we are children of the most high God.
Conia [00:15:26]:
He has conferred that upon us. He has adopted us into sonship, which in biblical times, you look up adoption, it means more than blood. Look that up. Someday we’ll do a whole sermon on what it means to be adopted into the family. That it’s not just, it’s not an add on. It’s not a, oh, you know, you look sad and lonely. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna bring you in. In ancient times, if a man did not have a son that he regarded well enough to leave him his inheritance, he would adopt one and make him over all of his natural children.
Conia [00:16:06]:
Adoption is a big deal. Don’t pass off that word adoption here again in our earthly United States framework and make it kind of this extra. This, oh, it’s for the people that have been cast off. That is, that is not the case. That the adoption is a critical thing that says, I value you so much that I’m going to make it legal that you are mine. Okay? So that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. That’s what we are.
Conia [00:16:45]:
When you accept Christ as your savior, you become an adopted part of the family. That cannot be revoked. It can’t. Think about that this week. Think about that. That. That is a great love that he’s lavished on us. Romans 815.
Conia [00:17:07]:
This is an interesting one we don’t talk about very often. The spirit you received does not make you slaves. That spirit that you receive when you accept Christ, that is not making you a slave. That is not putting on you anything negative, that is not binding you in any way. It does not make you a slave so that you live in fear again, rather, the spirit you received brought about. Here’s that word again. Adoption to sunship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father.
Conia [00:17:47]:
Consider the word Abba. It’s not formal. It’s not sur, it’s not Lord. It’s not a formal greeting. Think about a baby. When they’re first learning to articulate sounds, one of the first sounds, those. And so that turns into Abba. And that’s what we’re allowed to call him.
Conia [00:18:20]:
It is that young, innocent child relationship looking up to this father that says, I will take care of you. When we look back at that toddler and we think about how helpless they really are, they think they know everything. They say, no, I do it. I do myself. But they really don’t. And we’re there to protect them. We’re there to love them. We’re there to nurture them and nourish them and keep them warm and keep them safe and show them and teach them things.
Conia [00:18:55]:
That’s what God is for us. That’s why we get to say Abba father, not just dear Lord, Father, Father God. It’s much more personal. We can greet him that way, and there’s times when we should greet him that way, when we are taking on a very important responsibility. But you put it in that framework. When God says, hey, this is where we are. We’re in this framework, but we also get to go home and call him Abba Father. Three in one.
Conia [00:19:37]:
God is compassionate, loving, and nurturing as the perfect parent. He’s the perfect parent. He is everything. If you were to sit down and ask, the question that I always like to ask is, what does ideal look like? If you were to sit down and write out everything that your ideal parent would do and say, God is all those things. There’s not one thing that you could list about your ideal parent that God isn’t. He is all of those things. He encompasses all of those things unconditionally. We look at the Ephesians 314.
Conia [00:20:21]:
For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. We belong to him. We belong to him. We come from him, and by Jesus, we are returned to him. We were separated in the garden through fall the fallen sin. And Jesus reconciled us back to him in that child relationship. Okay, so every perfect gift is from above it says James in James 117, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. Not only is he perfect now, not only was he perfect in the past, he will always be perfect.
Conia [00:21:14]:
The one who was, the one who is, and the one who is to come is the perfect father. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Matthew is asking us this question. It’s like, why are you worried? Do you know the little kid, when, when the, the father says, hey, get in the car, we’re going to grandma’s house? They don’t ask if there’s gas in the car. They just assume there is. They don’t say, hey, dad, do you know how to get there? They just assume that he does. They don’t say, hey, dad, is this car going to get us where we want to go? Is it, is it in good working order? They just assume that he’s going to take care of it.
Conia [00:22:08]:
They get in the car because their dad said, get in the car. And they get to go to grandma’s, where grandpa’s going to get out his money and say, here, I got quarters for you, because the father said so. And that’s all you need to know. It’s truly all you need to know is that dad said so. I trust dad, and I know that dad wants what’s good for me. So I’m going to get in the car. Remember, God’s the perfect father. Don’t get it confused.
Conia [00:22:43]:
And we talk about the prodigal son in Luke. It talks about, you know, the prodigal son said, hey, I want my inheritance now while you’re still alive, dad. Which would have been just the worst snub. It would be like saying, you know what? I wish you were dead, and I really don’t care for you, and I just want whatever money you have to give me. That’s basically what it would have been like. It would have been the most horrible, disrespectful rebuke that you could imagine from a father, from a son to a father. And so, as we all know, he goes off and he blows all the money and eventually he ends up feeding the pigs because he can’t afford to live. And he figures out that the servants at his father’s house live better than he’s living there.
Conia [00:23:34]:
So he’s like, maybe, maybe my father will let me come back and just be a servant. I’ve messed up so badly. I’ve offended him so badly, maybe he’ll let me come and be a servante. And I think we, we do that often with God. I’ve met God. I’ve messed up so badly, there’s no way God’s going to forgive me. But maybe, maybe if I just draw a little bit closer to him, maybe I’ll get a little bit of that goodness. But the prodigal son comes back, and while he’s still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him.
Conia [00:24:18]:
Now, remember, we’re in Luke, but this is Jesus talking. He’s giving us a story and a parable. And all of these parables are about God the father and his relationship with us here on earth and how we should operate here on earth and how God operates in heaven. So think when you think of these parables, you want to put yourself in them, because Jesus is showing us how to operate. He’s showing us what’s right and what’s wrong, and he’s revealing ahead of time what’s to come. Okay, so son’s a long way off. His father sees him, and he’s filled with compassion for him. He runs to his son, throws his arm around him and kisses him.
Conia [00:25:11]:
There’s one that says he lifts up his skirts, basically, and runs. There would be no dignity in running. I mean, this man’s got a household. He’s got servants. The servants are actually the ones that kind of said, hey, he’s coming back, and he sees him from a long way off, and he picks up his skirts and runs to his son. Would have been unheard of. My daughters used to watch, there was a Cinderella two dreams come true video that they used to watch from Disney. It’s a cute little video, if you should get it, if you have littles.
Conia [00:25:48]:
And one of the, it’s about after Cinderella marries the prince, right? And so she goes, and she’s in the prince’s castle, and you’ve got the head housekeeper, and she’s trying to show Cinderella how things are done. And Cinderella is just doing her own thing, and she’s out there, you know, feeding the chickens and whatever, and the housekeeper is clutching her pearls. She’s aghast. It simply isn’t done. What this father did simply wasn’t done. It was undignified. It wasn’t becoming a man of his station in life. He did not care.
Conia [00:26:28]:
He didn’t care what anybody else thought. All he cared was that his son was coming home, and his son already had the speech prepared, right? Dad, I messed up. Could you just let me sleep in the barn? It’s better than where I’ve been. I’ll do whatever you need me to do. And he says, kill the fatted calf. Tell everyone we are celebrating. We are celebrating the return of my son. God celebrates your return.
Conia [00:26:58]:
Every time you come back, the angels sing. It’s joyful. You bring joy to the heavens. When you come back close to God, and he wants you close to him, that’s where he wants you all the time. Because when you’re close to someone, you become like them. It said that you become like the five people that you spend the most time with. I have become very David like. It’s very unusual.
Conia [00:27:27]:
So, you know, there’s. There’s some personality traits that I just. I didn’t think that I would pick up the kind of patience that I have. But David Wright has more patience than any person I’ve ever encountered in my whole life. And I have become more patient because I’ve been around David. There’s attributes that I’ve picked up as I come closer to God that are more goddesse like. The more you spend time with that perfect parent who wants to impart to you, who wants to share with you, who wants to grow you. The more you trust him, the more God like you become.
Conia [00:28:09]:
This is important because it’s the more God like you become in your spirit, it’s not in your mind, it’s not in your body, it’s in your spirit that you become godlike. These qualities, the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, those are spiritual qualities. And the closer you come to God, the more like God you become. And the more you take on these qualities, he wants you to be like him. Doesn’t every parent love it when somebody says, oh, my gosh, that child looks like you? Well, when God says, oh, my gosh, that child looks more like me. It’s not a physical look. It’s a spiritual look. We resemble God spiritually.
Conia [00:29:19]:
How cool is that? And I talk about Enoch and man. I wish we had more on Enoch, but I’m sure that God does that on purpose. But the scripture says Enoch walked with God, and he was not. I just marvel at that all the time. Because what happened was enoch. It wasn’t just that he walked with God one day and said, hey, let’s go for a walk. And then he disappeared. My take on that is that enoch, and he had a lot of years to do.
Conia [00:29:49]:
It became so close to God spent so much time walking with God and I think that this is. I’m going to look this up one day. I think that this walk with God is that is a daily walk, is that he didn’t take a step without God, kind of a walk with God until he became so much like God that he was not. We emulate our parents in many cases, and we want to be like them, you know, little boys. I want to be just like my dad. But the perfect parent is really the one you want to be like. And what he’s preparing you for here on earth is just the beginning. So when you become spiritually more like God, your preparation for the next phase of your spiritual life, which does not occur here on earth, but occurs in heaven, because you’re an eternal being through Jesus Christ, you get more and more prepared the closer you come to God.
Conia [00:31:01]:
Here I compare it to going into the military as an officer rather than a private first class. Think about this today. Think about God being the perfect parent in your life. Allow him to be the perfect parent in your life. Don’t let the world’s version of parents and our flawed parents, and some of us who are flawed parents, don’t let that hold you back from knowing and believing that God is that perfect parent that you’re looking for. He wants to take care of you. He wants to give you great gifts. Get close to him, walk with him, talk with him.
Conia [00:31:55]:
He wants to talk to you. And he’s not there to tell you how you did it wrong. He’s there to say, good job. You’re getting there. Come on, let’s try it again. Pastor David’s going to come and close us out. I hope you have great things to think about this week. The notes will be up on our website.
Conia [00:32:19]:
Let me pray us out of here. Father, thank you for this time together. Thank you, Lord, that you are the perfect parent that you do embody in spirit everything that a perfect parent should be. We love you, Lord. Bring us closer to you. Hold us to tight. In Jesus name. Amen.
Conia [00:32:45]:
Hang on for Pastor David.
