Adopted Child of God: The Fulfillment of a Limitless Life

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. It's such an honor and privilege to be here and I'm not saying that just because that's what you're supposed to say as the guest preacher but I truly, truly mean that. Pastor JD and I have known each other for a number of years.

We used to do this summer camp together called Crossroads with a mutual friend named Clayton King and we would talk about theology and philosophy and all this stuff and over the years we've stayed in contact and back in 2005, he invited me to the summit church but it wasn't in this building, it was in a high school. And at that point in my life, I wasn't thinking about church planting, I wasn't thinking about pastoring, none of that stuff but after my experience with you guys, so I partially blame you for this, I heard God whisper, you can do this. And it's like a little seed got put in my heart and so you're responsible for Transformation Church.

On February 7, 2010, we launched in our opening weekend, we had 701 people, it was bananas and ever since then, we have been growing like crazy so you guys sprinkled some Holy Ghost pixie dust on us and we appreciate that tremendously and also as a pastor of a gospel-centered, multi-ethnic church, you have no idea how happy I am and how excited I am to see the summit church going towards a revelation five nine perspective, every nation, tribe and tongue and it is absolutely beautiful so it's an honor and a privilege to share this moment with you guys. You know what, let's pray, you all want to pray? Pray with me, let's pray with a brother, here we go. Papa, in the name of Jesus, that name that is above all names, the name in which we find life and forgiveness and grace that is boundless, mercy that is limitless and power that is all sufficient and through the power of the Holy Spirit, meet us at all of the summit locations, meet us and embrace us with grace, absolutely wreck us and rebuild us into the glorious image of Christ Jesus. May the hopeless find hope, may the broken find healing, would you do that, Lord Jesus? Would you be spectacular and glorious? Whether if we've walked with you for 40 years or whether if we are spiritual explorers, would you just meet us and look at us with your eyes of grace and mercy and may we be undone by the matchless magnitude of who you are?

Do that, Spirit of God. And God's people said, amen. All of us are impacted by labels. The clothes we buy. Some of us buy certain clothes because of the label and the label says to people, this is who I am because of the clothes that I bought. Case and point, smart phones. Some of you guys buy iPhones because if you have an iPhone, that label makes you the cool kid.

But then Samsung started doing these commercials, the next big things here, then they stole all of iPhone's coolness and then you switched and got a Samsung because if you get a Samsung, then that means you're really cool and you got a bigger screen too. Even the neighborhoods we pick. Well, if you move into this neighborhood, this label determines who you are. All of us are a collection of labels. But this morning I want to talk about a label that we don't see on the outside but that's tattoo stitched to our souls on the inside that impacts how we view God, how we view ourselves and how we relate to people. Many of us, Christian and non-Christian, are wearing a life destroying label called orphan. Called orphan. Now immediately when we think of orphan, we think of somebody traveling a great distance and adopting a child and bringing them back into their family which is a beautiful picture of what Jesus did for us.

He traveled a great distance from heaven, transcended time and space, came to a foreign country called earth and adopted us. But that's not what I'm talking about specifically. I'm talking about you and I being spiritual orphans. Let me give you an example. A couple years ago I wrote a blog and I put this in my book. And I got a response to my blog.

And it came this way. It said enough exclamation point. I've been quiet about this topic long enough.

I cannot nor will I hold it in anymore. So after reading this first paragraph, I gathered from the facts that they didn't like my blog. Then it went on to say when people like you, that's me, call God papa or daddy. That can be extremely hurtful for people who have experienced abuse at the hands of their father. So in the future, when you use the word papa or daddy for God, just know it can cause hurt. So I wrote back. And by the way, they signed their name anonymous. Which is very fitting because when you don't have a father that loves you unconditionally, you have to look for that love.

And as you're looking for that love, you're collecting all of these labels and you don't know who you are. So therefore you're anonymous. I responded back. I said, dear anonymous, I have some father wounds too. So I feel what you're saying.

I really do. Then I wrote in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as well as in the apostle Paul's letters, Jesus and Paul both use the Aramaic word abba to describe God the father. And the word abba, that Aramaic word is equivalent to the English word papa or daddy. It gives a picture of a loving father reaching down to pick up their child. It gives a picture of a child reaching up to their father and the father extends his hands to pick up that child.

Let me do a time out. I'm 43 and my daughter, my baby is getting ready to graduate high school. She will be going to Clemson. She made the cheerleading team.

She's going to be cheering for Clemson. I'm freaking out. I thought I was ready. I read the books. I read the Bible. I prayed. I preached on how I was ready last summer. I feel like I've been like, oh my baby's going to be gone. At dinner, there's me, my wife, my son, and Presley.

Next year, there's going to be an empty seat. I've been like jello. You know why? Because I remember when she was little and she first learned how to walk and to talk, she would run towards me and she would go, Papi, and I'm not even Latino.

Now my wife is white so our kids do look Puerto Rican or Dominican. But anyway, she called me Papi and you know what I would do? I would pick her up and grab her and hold her. You know why? Because that's my baby. When my wife was six months pregnant, I wanted a boy like most knucklehead dudes do. But God gave me a dream and I seen her face and I seen her beautiful brown eyes and when she came into this world, there was that face, there was those beautiful brown eyes, and she had her Papi. Even to this day, she got her Papi.

You know why? Because that's my girl. Imagine if a broken, jacked up dude like me can love like that. Imagine what an infinitely glorious and beautiful Papi in heaven loves us like. I appreciate that, homie. I like that.

All right, so there's some characteristics that go along with being an orphan. And one of the greatest deceptions of the enemy, I do this at Transformation Church so I'm going to teach you how to do it, okay? The scene of the crime is your mind. So on the count of three, I'm going to say the scene of the crime and then you say is your mind.

You ready? The scene of the crime, wait, one, two, three, the scene of the crime is your mind. The enemy doesn't want you, child of God, to know that you're adopted. And for those of you who are yet to follow Jesus, you are a true orphan, but there's a true father who wants to father you, who wants to be your Papi. So from the pages of my own life and for the lives of people that I've counseled over the last decade, there are some characteristics that go along with being a spiritual orphan and maybe you can relate. Orphans feel anonymous. My dad left when I was six. Didn't have male figures in my life to bless me.

Every day I tell my son Jeremiah who he is in Christ. I searched for an identity my whole life. Felt anonymous.

Who am I? Many of us right now are looking for an identity in people, possessions, and places. People are unreliable. Possessions will not satisfy. In places, wherever you go, you take you with you.

Orphans feel abandoned. Like why my dad couldn't come to any of the games. Like can you imagine, I played in the NFL for six years. Can you imagine having a son that's one of the best in the world at what he does and you don't even go to middle school, high school, or college game? I go to every one of my son's practices.

I make my schedule the way it is so that I can be at his practices just so he knows I love him and I care. By the time I was 13, I recognized that people that were close to me would hurt me. So I decided at 13 no one's going to hurt Derwin Gray but Derwin Gray because I'm going to put an iron fence around my heart and I'm not going to let you close enough to hurt me. It's a sad way to live. I thought I was protecting myself but I was actually hurting myself more and more because I didn't want to get abandoned.

You know, even now, God has blessed Transformation Church like the Summit Church to grow like crazy and there's still weekends where I drive up going, yep, they're going to leave you too just like everybody else. And I have to fight through those voices. Orphans feel afraid. When you're lost, there's fear. When you feel like you're going to be abandoned, there is fear. Let me read to you a quote from a pastor and I didn't make this name up.

His name is Jack Frost. He wrote this in one of his books. It said, being a spiritual orphan causes us to live life as if we don't have a safe and secure place in the Father's heart. We feel we have no place of affirmation, protection, comfort, belonging or affection. Self-oriented, lonely and inwardly isolated, we have no one from whom to draw godly inheritance.

Therefore, we have to strive, achieve, compete and earn everything we get in life which leads to anxiety, fear and frustration. Maybe you can relate. Well, I've got some really, really good news. It's time for us to get a new label. Adopt it. Would you say adopt it with me on the count of three? One, two, three. Adopt it.

It's time for us to get a new label. So I didn't grow up as a Christian. I grew up in San Antonio, Texas on the west side about a mile and a half from the Lincoln Court housing projects.

We were po, not poor because we couldn't afford the O and the R. But when you po and everybody else is po, you don't know that you're po. You think it's normal to have roaches that cover the walls. You think that's the way everybody lives because every house you go into looks that way. I'm the first male in my family over the age of 17 to graduate high school or go to college, to not have a child outside of wedlock, to not have an addiction issue and also to not spend time in incarceration. And so that's the environment I grew up in.

It was an absolute war zone. I am a trophy of God's grace. Seen and experienced things that no child should ever see and experience. But at age 13, something happened. I found a God to worship called football. Even though we didn't attend a church, the human heart is going to worship something. A God is anything or anybody that gives you identity, significance and purpose. For some of you, it's your little boyfriend right now.

Oh, by the way, ladies, if the guy you're, this is for free, if the guy you're dating, if the guy you're dating is not who you want your son to become, kick him to the curb. I know that wasn't very nice, but it's very true. You don't want that.

It's better to be lonely than to be miserable. Okay, so thank you for the smattering of applause. Yes, yes, thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it. So at age 13, football became my God because my middle school coach was like, Derwin, if you keep playing good, you can get a scholarship. I was like, what kind of ship is that? He was like, no, there's colleges that will pay for your education for free and you get to play football. I was like, word? So it gave me an identity, football player. It gave me significance. I'm going to be good. It gave me a mission.

I'm getting out of this hell that I'm in and I'm going to college. So I worked hard. No one outworked me. No one outlifted me.

I worshiped my God. Senior year in high school, I start for a school called Converse Jetson High School. It's one of the best in the country. We won a state championship out of nowhere. I'm first team all state and I get some scholarship offers. One was to Texas Christian University and the other one was to Brigham Young University.

And guess where the brother went? To Brigham Young University. Black people have gone to school there. My first semester I was like, I don't even know what happened. I came from a total multi-ethnic context and there it was multi-white.

But let me say something though. That was a great place for me to go to college because with my appetites I would have gotten in trouble somewhere else. At Brigham Young you have to try hard to get in trouble. You have to scheme to get in trouble.

It is an alcohol-free county. It is hard. Now I was successful in getting in trouble, but it wasn't easy. Freshman year, 1990, I see this girl in the weight room. She has a javelin throw on the track team.

January 15, 1990 was our first date and we've been married 22 years now. She has a javelin throw. So I don't mess with her.

I mean, if I make her mad and I try to run out of the house, she'll get a fork, like text and then wait until I get her by the mop. Y'all think I'm playing. The girl like benched 180 in college, so seriously. Anyway, so football career goes great. I lead the conference in the interceptions. My football career ends and I'm voted to the all-time Brigham Young football team. Eventually I get drafted. Man, I made it.

I got the girl. I get drafted by my third year in the NFL. I'm a team captain.

People want me to sign autographs. It's amazing. We almost make it to the Super Bowl. I got a Lexus with chrome rims chopping up the block. If you don't know what that means, Google it.

I've done things that I didn't even know I was allowed to dream about and I got to do something that I thought would fix my family. I start sending a bunch of money home to Texas that this is what you need. This money will fix everything. It did not. It made it worse. It made it absolutely worse.

It was a living hell. I would have cousins that I didn't even know were my cousins trying to hit me up. Yo, son, I'm starting a t-shirt business. Front me 5G's. Like you've never had a job.

Why would I give you 5G's? Are you crazy? What are you smoking?

He's like, good weed. You've got to be to ask me that. It was miserable but you know what was the worst though? I knew I couldn't love my wife the way she deserved to be loved.

It was like I reached into a drawer to find energy and resources and the material to do it and that drawer was empty. Having a daughter, I can't imagine her marrying a guy like I used to be who doesn't have the capacity to love her. That began to eat away at me that another man said, I'm entrusting my responsibilities for you to care for my daughter.

It is now yours. The money and the fame couldn't help me forgive my dad. I would find myself in the NFL at times looking in the stands going maybe he came.

Maybe. In high school and college I would literally use my bitterness and rage against him to lift weights harder and to run faster. But you know what bitterness is? Bitterness is drinking poison and hoping that the person you're bitter at dies and the person who's dying is me. Because you can tell a lot about a person about how they treat other people.

Because how they treat other people is a reflection of how they feel about themselves. So my bitterness drained me of life and that poison spilled out on other people. The fame and the money could not help me get rid of my fear. Now I wasn't afraid of football per se. As a football player I loved contact. I longed for contact. Now when I watch football games I'm like how in the world did I do that? But I remember my 20s I loved to like jack people up.

Particularly the big linemen. Man I, okay I'm going too far anyway let me move on. Okay so it couldn't remove the fear and you know what the fear was? That a little five foot seven guy from the front office with pleated pants would come and give me a pink slip and say you can't play anymore. We don't want you.

You know why that was so traumatic? Because my God was football and you were taking my God away. You were taking my identity. Who would I be? You're taking my significance.

Is anybody going to recognize me anymore? You're taking away my mission. See that's what idolatry does. That's the biblical word for worshiping false gods. That's what idolatry does is it sets you up. It promises you things that it will never fulfill.

It will send you places in which you cannot come back from and I was utterly afraid and broken. Let me take you back to 1993. So when I'm drafted by the Indianapolis Colts I notice immediately a particular teammate in the locker room. This brother's different.

6'2, 240 linebacker. That's not different. That's normal for the NFL. He would take a shower after practice.

That's fairly normal for the NFL. He would dry off and wrap a white towel around his waist. This is when it got weird. Dry off, white towel around his waist. He would grab his bible.

I don't make this up. He would walk through the locker room like this. This is the way he'd walk. And then he would say, and he'd go to my teammates in their locker saying, do you know Jesus?

I would look just like you son. Do you know Jesus? It was weird.

It was weird. So as he's going do you know Jesus? I'm like do you know you're half naked with a bible? So I asked the veterans on the team, I was like yo man what's up with the half naked black man walking around talking about do you know Jesus? They said don't pay no attention to him because that's the naked preacher. His real name was Steve Grant but his nickname was the naked preacher because he would preach half naked in the locker room with his bible. Now here's something you don't know, something I do but I want to share this with you about Steve Grant the naked preacher. In 1992 when he was drafted out of the University of West Virginia he made a covenant with Jesus and this is what the covenant was. His covenant was Jesus. I'm going to win as many of my teammates as possible to you.

He understood that the NFL was his mission field and I am so thankful because God in his providence, God in his all eternal eye of grace placed me in the locker room with a naked preacher who understood that he was a missionary walking around talking about do you know Jesus and that question changed my life. Hey, hey, time out. What would happen if you woke up every morning instead of complaining about your job, complaining about your e-contest, complaining about this you woke up and went, Lord, today I'm on mission. Today I am sent. Show me the broken hearted. Show me the wounded. Show me those who need your grace. If you, I double dog dare you to pray that prayer because if you do get ready, get ready, get ready. One day I'm sitting at my locker. I ain't bothering nobody and I hear and I turn around and six foot two, 240 pounds of dark chocolate near nakedness is coming towards me. My heart's beating.

I'm like, oh no. I turned my back to avoid him and I feel this and he was like Ricky D Gray, do you know Jesus? Do you know Jesus?

Now I didn't have a Christian background so I did what most people who don't know what Jesus do. I said these words. I'm a good person.

Let me do a time out. How did I know I was a good person unless I looked at other people and said I'm better than you. I'm better than you.

I'm better than you. That's called judging hypocritically and in Matthew 7, Jesus says don't judge hypocritically or Pharisaically. So by me saying I'm a good person, I was actually demonstrating that I was a bad person because I was pushing other people down to lift myself up.

Check this out. If you're a follower of Jesus, the most humble people on planet earth should be his people because we understand at the foot of the cross, all of us are sinners. All of us are in need of grace and check this out.

The only time, the only time, the only time we should ever look down upon another human being is when we are extending a hand of grace to lift them up. So that question led to a five year conversation and I watched him for five years and he chased me around the locker room half naked. I watched the way he loved his wife. I watched the way he played the game. I watched the way he served the city and on August 2, 1997, fifth year in the NFL with the Colts, we're in training camp.

The Colts have training camp in Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana and after lunch time, there was just some stuff just happening. I didn't know how to put words to it. There was just some stuff happening and I went back to my dorm room and I grabbed the phone.

Now if you're under 20, this is going to freak you out. The phone was connected to the wall and it had a long cord. So I pick up the phone and I call my wife and I said, sweetheart, I want to be more committed to you. I was ready to grow up and love her. But then I said these words and I want to be committed to Jesus. I can only do the best that I can do to try to explain what happened in that room but Jesus met me in that dorm room all by myself.

No sinner's prayer, none of that. I was met by the living God and you know what hit me? That God loved me.

Now if you've grown up in a church and you've heard that, maybe that sounds old to you, but oh my goodness, when I hear that God loves me, that on the cross, all of my sin, past, present, future, the stuff that I don't even want anybody to ever know about was nailed to Christ. It hit me that God loved me. He loved me and it wasn't because I could run a fast 40 yard dash. He loved me.

It wasn't because I could bench press 400 pounds or had a 38 and a half inch vertical leap. It wasn't because I could help him win the celestial football game. It wasn't as though God looked at my scouting report and went, oh, Derwin, let's recruit him.

He is really awesome. No, God looked at my scouting report and it said one word, sinner, and then it said another word, in need of grace. I realized that Jesus loved me, that when God the Father laid his son on the cross for our sins, it was as though God the Father was opening up his arms and saying, run home, son. Run to me.

Run to me. At that moment, I was infected with this virus called grace and the symptoms have gotten better ever since. You see, God gives us his adopting love. God gives us his adopting love.

Ephesians chapter 1, verse 5, New Living Translation. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. What does that mean God decided in advance? Think about this. In the timeless eternity where there's no yesterday or no tomorrow, just the eternal now, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in utter adoration and beauty and joy loved you.

Let me put it to you like this. Before your daddy saw your mama at the club and was like, dang, God loved you. Before Christopher Columbus sailed all the way across the sea and discovered that people already lived in America, God loved you. Before you brought your first A home and your report card, the living God of the universe loved you. Willie Nelson is a liar. You know why? Because he sang a song to my, you're always on my mind.

That's a lie. There's only one person who can say, you've always been on my mind. Boy, wake up every morning and think about that. Not only does he adopt us and bring us into his family, it says that's what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. If you're not yet a follower of Jesus, just marinate followers of Christ.

I want you to engage this. I think for many of you, you go, I know God loves me, but does he like me? Does God really like me? And one of the reasons why we think that is because we think that God loves us in the first place based on what we do or don't do. So we need to stop that faulty theology because God's love for you is based on what Christ and Christ alone has done. If you can do something to make God love you or like you more than he does now, then you eclipse what Jesus has done and don't get it twisted.

No one can eclipse what beautiful Jesus has done. God's affection for you is rooted in his affection for Jesus. And when you and I get that, you know what it does? It makes us passionate worshipers. It makes us adore him. It makes us lose our everlasting mind. The brain circuits are blown away with the epicness of his grace.

That's what happens. And it says he takes great pleasure in us. So when my kids were little, my son Jeremiah's name is Big Bull. He's in seventh grade. Dude is like five, eight and a half, size 14 shoe.

Dude just been big since birth. My daughter, she's a cheerleader. She's like five, four. But anyway, when they were little, I would sing to them at nighttime. Now, God has not gifted me to sing, but my kids could not escape either. So I'd be in a rocking chair, holding a little Presley like, Jesus loves me, this I know.

And this avalanche of tears would just fall on this poor child. Because my heart was delighting in her. And my delight in her was not based on, you know, one day, honey, you're going to go to Clemson.

You're going to be in a National Honor Society. That's why I love you. No, I love you intrinsically for who you are, not for what you do, for who you are.

I took great pleasure in loving her. In the Old Testament, there's a passage, Zephaniah 3.17. It's directed towards the nation of Israel.

Jesus completes the task of the nation of Israel, so it's directed toward Him. And because we're in Him, it's directed toward us. Zephaniah 3.17 says that God sings and dances over you. It's freaking you out right now, isn't it? Because you're like, Pastor, I was at the club last night.

No, no. God sings and dances over you because He sings and dances over His son, Jesus. And because you are in His son, Jesus, He sings and dances over you.

And what's going to change your behavior is not looking at how jacked up you are, but looking at how great He is. Can I preach just for a minute? Would you behold Jesus?

Would you just behold Him? Don't be a spiritual narcissist. Am I doing something right?

Am I doing something wrong? Behold Jesus and His glorious love through the Spirit's power will take care of all that. Behold Him. God is delighting and singing and dancing over you. God gives us daughtership and sonship.

Let's look at Romans 8.15. So if you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Let me pause here. What are you afraid of this weekend? What are you afraid of? Maybe you're afraid you're not pretty enough. Maybe you're afraid you're not smart enough. Maybe you're afraid that you can't overcome that particular sin habit. For those of you with wisdom hairs, that's gray hair, that's wisdom.

Young people give them much respect. Maybe you're afraid of dying. Maybe you're afraid that wayward son or daughter may never come home to Christ.

We don't have to be afraid. Listen to this. That you receive God's Spirit when He adopted you as His own children. Now we call Him Abba Father. When I was a little boy, I couldn't play the game. My daddy can beat up your daddy because he wasn't around.

I can do that now though. Our daddy can beat up anybody other daddy because our daddy is the king of the universe. Our daddy has never gotten tired. Our daddy is eternal. Our daddy is glorious. Our daddy does not lack power or strength or beauty. Our daddy is all sufficient so you and I don't have to be afraid. You know what I'm afraid of?

Check this out. People will say to me all the time, you know, Pastor Derwin, the church is really growing and we don't want you to get prideful. I'm like I played in the NFL people. I've been signing autographs since I was 17.

I've been on TV since I was 17. I said what you need to pray for me is not pride. Pray for me that I'm the one to lead us to where I believe God is leading us because I struggle with inadequacy.

That's my fear. I'm a compulsive stutterer by the way. Did I tell you all that? I grew up as a compulsive stutterer and so when I preach and when I teach, I go, Daddy, I'm scared. He's like, I got this.

He's like, yo, if I can raise my son from the dead, moonwalk on water, I can make you talk. You just trust me. You and I don't have to be afraid. You know why? Because our daddy is big.

Our papa is strong and he wants us to behold his son. Everything that you and I have can be taken away from us. One day my children could get goofy and go, we don't like you, Dad. We ain't coming home for Christmas.

We ain't coming home. I don't like you. I love my wife, my best friend, the greatest human being that I know. I adore that woman. Man, when she walk in the room, my heart skips a beat. I love her. She's awesome.

But she could get goofy too and be like, peace, I'm out. I've got arthritis all over my body, bulging discs, broken wrists, concussion doubt. I had a lot of, where am I?

No, I'm just kidding. My body is going to fail. You know, one day my afro is going to be a big hole right here in this Ronald McDonald afro. I'm keeping it too. I'll be like, what's up?

They'll be like, sir, you have a crater on your head. It's all right. Keeping my fro. Had it since 89, baby, since 89. But on a serious note, everything that you and I have can be taken away, except for this. You are a beloved daughter of the king. You are a beloved son of the king.

And when that is our primary identity, a gospel identity of grace, you know what it allows us to do? Go into the world with open hands. Some of us are holding on to things and we are squeezing the life out of it. But when we have our hands open, because our daddy is generous and our identity can never be stripped away, we become gracious people just like him. I don't know who this is for, but a lot of your anger towards people in your life is actually rooted in the anger towards yourself because you feel inadequate.

It's time for you to live from your primary identity as an adopted son, as an adopted daughter of the king. God gives us friendship. God gives us friendship. Let me read Romans 5.8. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, let me stop. Did y'all just read that? Since we have been, oh gosh, since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ. Wow!

Are you kidding me right now? That in God's sight, you follower of Christ are righteous. Hey ladies, wouldn't it be great if you woke up and looked in the mirror instead of going, I'm so fat, and went, hey, I'm righteous.

Seriously. Hey fellas, instead of looking at all of your inadequacies, why don't you go, you know what, in Christ, I'm righteous. Friends, that's what got me over stuttering. What got me over stuttering was, God, if I'm righteous and I get up and preach and teach and I stutter, it's all good because you still see me as righteous. So what I do now is not focus on how I talk, the way I talk, I focus on the righteousness of Christ and the way I talk takes care of itself because it's empowered by the Holy Spirit.

But the more I think about trying not to stutter, the more I stutter. The more you think about trying not to sin, the more you're going to sin. But the more you behold Christ and see yourself as righteous, you begin to live a righteous life.

Can I get an A to the man? A lot of people can't handle grace because it's offensive to their ego, which stands for edging God out. You're made right by the blood of Christ. I was on a radio show recently and I got called Satan because I told the person I was interacting with that the blood of Jesus makes us righteous. He goes, that is a false gospel.

I was like, okay, bye. Good luck with that. He will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son, while we were still sinners, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because of our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

For you theologian types, that's called reconciliation. So in this verse, we see the love of God. We see the justification of God. We see the reconciliation of God. Now watch this.

How does that impact how we live? 2002, I'm in my office and I'm typing letters, brand new Christian, and I'm like, Jesus is great. He's loving. He's so forgiving. And I hear a voice and I don't know if it's God's voice or my voice.

I can just tell you my experience. The voice said this, find your father. And I stood up and said, no. And then a bunch of curse words flew out of my mouth, which I will not repeat today.

I was angry. Why should I find him? He abandoned me. When I needed to know how to treat a woman, where was he? Where was he? When I was molested as a seven-year-old, where was he?

Why wasn't he in my practices? I'm a grown man. I've made it. I'm successful.

I don't need him. Like God, do you remember in eighth grade when he showed up to that basketball game high and he put his hands on the wall and there were heroin tracks all up and down his arm? God, do you remember that? So I'm absolutely throwing a temper tantrum, talking to myself. And it was kind of like God, the papa just picked me up, put me on his lap and said, son, I know, I understand. Then it was like God hit me with this.

Not audibly, but filling it. Well, Derwin, you do know that you didn't deserve my forgiveness either, right? You do know that your sin was like the heroin tracks on your father's arms, right? The same way I loved you with grace is now the power I give you to love your daddy with grace. Now go find your daddy. I was like, dang. Found out he was locked up in prison in Texas and I wrote the hardest letter of my life and said, dad, I want you to know I forgive you and I love you and you have some amazing grandchildren that I think you need to know.

We want you to be a part of their life. Sent the letter off, couple weeks went by, couple weeks went by and then I got a letter. I'm flipping through the junk mail, right? And then boom, there's this letter. Immediately I am just weeping. I run up to my office, don't want to see my wife and kids see me crying and I opened this letter up, but I didn't know what it was going to say. Like who are you to forgive me?

What do you think? You know, I didn't abandon you. I didn't, I didn't know what it was going to say, but this is what I resolved in my mind, that Jesus was enough.

I resolved that if I get rejected by Jesus, Jesus' acceptance and reconciliation and love is enough. I opened the letter up and I can hardly see and I'm wiping the tears away and the letter said, son, that made me feel good. I ain't going to lie. That made me feel good.

Then there was a comma. Thank you for forgiving me. I do want to be a part of your life and my grandchildren's life. And then he wrote these words and I love you. Man, I just wept and I wept and I wept. And you know, we have a better relationship now.

Is it perfect? No, but it's certainly not toxic and bitter the way it was. Can I talk to the teenagers in the 20-somethings right now?

Because we live in a culture of epic divorce and just a lot of brokenness. Your parents did not wake up one day and say, you know, I'm just going to screw up my kids' lives today. You know, I'm just going to get hooked on heroin. I'm just going to have an affair. That's what I'm going to do and just make them miserable. You see, your parents have labels too that Jesus needs to restitch.

If one thing that grace does is it gives you patience with other people because you remember God's patience with you. When my daddy, when I was about two years old, I got this freakish memory. When I was two years old at the Lincoln Court housing projects, I spent the night with my dad. And late at night I hear this terrible noise and it was his father who came home drunk. I still remember the cuss words he said. He was threatening to shoot everybody.

You blankety-blank, I'll kill all of y'all. This is my house. And I remember my dad gently grabbing him like this and taking him to his room and putting him in his bed. It wasn't the first time my dad had done that to his dad.

And as I was writing my book, I interviewed my dad. And I said, I remember that moment. He was like, how do you remember that? I said, I don't know. And I said, dad, why didn't you just punch him?

Why didn't you just knock him out? And he said these words. He said, that was my father and I loved him. That's what God the father does for us.

He goes, I see your labels. I see your hurt, but I'm going to send my son to do in you what you could never do in yourself. Here's our soul tattoo. This is kind of the big idea is I want you to write God a letter thanking him for adopting you into his family.

Would you do that? I've given you a sermon outline. I believe you got it. You can even use this as an outline to help you with the letter. You might want to post it on Facebook.

If you do, just tag me. I would love to read it. I might even want to write a blog about it, but it is very, very cathartic from Saddleback Church, Pastor Rick Warren to all over this country. I've preached this message and it's been encouraging to see people interact with this and deeply healing. That's what the gospel does.

The gospel hurls us forward into messiness and God loves to turn messes into masterpieces. Would you pray with me? Let's pray.

Papa God, I thank you so much for these beautiful people called the Summit Church. I pray that Jesus has been exalted and glorified, that we adore him more and more because he first adored and loved us, that we would live from the label adopted, not the label orphan. I pray right now if there's those among you saying, hey, Pastor Derwin, my heart is racing out of my chest and I want to know Jesus the way you described him. I want to know his love. I want to know his forgiveness. I want to know his mercy.

I want to know his father. I want to call his papa my papa. Well, the Bible is very clear. It says if you believe in him, believe in what? That Jesus died on the cross for your sins, that he took your place, that his precious blood makes you right. His precious blood forgives you. Believe that on the third day he rose from the dead to now give you his very life, that you become a temple, a dwelling place of the living God of the universe and you are part of his family called his church. If you're ready to believe this message of hope, this message of good news in the silence of your heart, say this to Jesus right where you are.

Say this to him. Today, Lord Jesus, I receive your father as my papa. I believe that on the cross you took my place. You were disgraced to give me eternal grace. Forgiveness and mercy and love are now mine because I'm in you. When you rose from the dead, I now have got new life. I've been adopted into your family. By faith, I receive this gift. In Jesus' name, in God's people said, amen. Thank you.