Jim Hennesy | Finding Deep Love in your Family

our theme has been family revival and i'm going to stay in that for a bit more today i just want to talk to you for a few moments about entering deep love for your family entering deep love for your family and our text of course is ephesians chapter 3. for those of you who are a guest all of these messages are really based on the prayer that paul prayed over his family out of ephesians 3. so follow along as i read for this reason says paul for this reason i bow my knees to the father of our lord jesus christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named every family has a name every family has a destiny i learned this week that the name hennessy means do you know what it means it means one that is strong it means strong one so i'm just gonna i'm gonna be strong how about that all right that's my destiny that's my name you've got a name i don't want to know what yours is right now but later on you can tell me all right that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit where in the inner man in the inner man that christ may dwell in your hearts through that you would be rooted and grounded in yeah that you would be able to comprehend take it in take it in with all the saints the width and the length and the depth and the height to know the love of christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of god i can't that phrase just now to him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us to him be glory where in the church by christ jesus to all generations forever and ever amen amen and then also just before this prayer we find these words in ephesians chapter 2. this is right before the prayer in ephesians chapter 2 verse 19. consequently you are no longer foreigners and strangers but you are fellow citizens with god's people and you are also members of his family members of his household you're built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with christ jesus himself as the chief cornerstone in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy dwelling place for god and in him you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which god lives by his spirit this dear friend is god's word you may be seated so again for those of you who are just joining us in the middle of the series we're really believing god for five things number one we're believing that our destinies will be discovered yeah number two we're believing that there'll be a culture of honor established in our church and in our city because honor defeats shame there's no room for shame when we understand what the blood of jesus christ has done for us so honor defeats shame the third thing that we're believing for is the restoration of things that are lost not talking about the replacement of things that are lost but a return above and beyond what we lost what what was taken from us that's coming back to us in a new way in a different way and then number four that prodigals would come home who has a loved one that you're praying for say i just need him to come home i need him to come home yeah let's just speak it into the atmosphere come home just say it with authority come home come home and then the fourth thing that we're believing is that our church our church we'd understand what it means to be a family that we would behave like brothers and sisters fathers and mothers sisters we would just we would understand family love for one another now the question is what gives us the right to expect this i mean why should we believe this could actually happen for us you might say well we fasted for 21 21 days we we handed out a lot of food during covet to the to the hungry and yeah those are those are awesome things but i i just need to tell you there's a whole more sure reasons there's a better reason to expect that these things are going to happen for us than than what you're probably thinking okay this week one year ago i had knee surgery um i don't know if anybody's ever had knee surgery and the day you wake up from knee surgery you have buyer's remorse but i had buyer's remorse with my knee surgery okay i thought it was going to be like a little two-week recovery some little simple thing they found so much stuff in my knee that literally for almost one solid year i had incredible pain going on in my knee until just a few weeks ago and a few weeks ago something something happened that i need to tell you about if you have knee pain my trainer you guys need to know demarcus he's amazing my trainer told me that i needed to start rolling out my it bands do you know you guys know those little rollers like little little foam rollers you just roll them out says roll your it bands and roll your glutes which is kind of a hard thing to do okay but that's he's like roll the inside roll the outside roll the back roll the lower part of your leg roll it and then he said the craziest thing he said not just your left knee do your right knee as well like no but you don't understand demarcus my surgery is on the left knee there's no sense paying attention to my right knee it's my left knee that's her and he's like no no no you need to roll out your i.t on your right you need to roll out everything on the right side as well as the left side i was like i don't understand why should i do that this is because they're joined they're connected what happens on the right side influences what happens on the left side what happens on the left side influences what happens on on the right side and and today i just want to talk to us a little bit about what it means to be joined to be to be able to give supply to one another you see i i don't know what's happening at our church my mom says it's a fresh wind i like that it's a fresh wind i i believe that but um we were just talking this week the last 18 months it has been not just the starting of new campuses but the starting of new relationships the starting of new levels this week this week i received our staff received a teaching from this amazing prophet he was just incredible he's a solution his name is drew and he built the whole strategy around three main ideas and he's prophesying over our church that we're gonna we're gonna steward revival and we're gonna steward reformation and we're gonna steward restoration and that means those were just labels but he broke it out and he helped us understand it i got home and received an email from patricia king and she prophesied over me and back personally that we were going to steward revival and restoration and reformation the very same thing i showed it to drew he said yeah if my three-hour teaching had been reduced to 15 minutes that's what i would have said i'm just trying to get you to understand that god is active in the corporate anointing here i mean god is sending us got to sing his people he the man of gods and reggie dabs is going to show up week after next he's going to be on usa today talking about his new book and he's going to represent trinity church and some of you have met sherman dumas who's coming about once a month now and prophesying and cindy jacobs is part of our church and these new worshipers that are just coming like every week and these new intercessors and reformers and people are just being gathered they're just coming they're just coming because god and you you're here you came and the idea is that every one of us are carrying spiritual substance spiritual authority come on somebody the same spirit that raised jesus from the dead is in you and and so what happens if ephesians 2 takes place we join all these things together because what's happening right now it may feel a little awkward to you we're we're growing our joints we're growing our joints not those joints like i've got too much of a background here but i'm talking about like the knee bone connected to the leg bone though those those kind of things and corporate anointing really does require the joining together of our lives i'm talking about covenant relationships and many of you would know if you've been to the membership class you know that covenant relationships are deeply embedded in our story because for the first what six years seven years of trinity church the hennessy era was about triage we were just trying to keep together we were there was so much trauma that after about six years or seven years we were like oh my goodness this church has potential this might turn into this might turn into something and then i was so insecure because i never really led a significant church i know i didn't know what to do i only led small churches and and i was praying i was like god maybe i should go somewhere else where you know i can just fit into a smaller smaller church and the lord gave me this incredible spiritual experience and he downloaded the four core values which you can read them there out there on the in legacy park and they're on the stones is like if you will just prioritize my presence we call it the substance of god my testimony the testimony of jesus if you'll prioritize that if you'll prioritize covenant relationships that's what we're talking about today number three if you'll prioritize legacy if you'll recognize that the generation after you has great potential both for good and for evil and your job as a church is to bring out the good and if you prioritize the marketplace so that you'll measure your success as a church not by what happens on the weekends but what happens monday through saturday then i will bless your church then i will show my favor to you so so the lord so we started trying to figure all that stuff out and i'm just saying covenant relationships have suddenly taken a new dynamic a strategy a strategy when i'm talking about covenant relationship i'm talking about the way god chooses to relate to us and the way he says we're to relate to one another one day this story is in genesis chapter 12 one day god interrupted abram's life abram was just living a happy life in ur of chaldees he's like yeah i just think i'll build a little farm you know just have a little little house out here with some some babies or whatever but god just disrupted him it's called a calling when god calls you he disrupts your plans and says i got an assignment for you and so he said that to abram he said abram it's time to get up and it's time to leave all this familiar stuff that you've been around i i've got you to build some altars for me you're going to be pitching some tents and you're going to be building some altars because i have chosen you i've chosen you and through you abram all the families of the whole earth are going to be blessed now that was huge and he said you can expect some things because i'm calling you and choosing you you can expect some things you can expect that your wife's going to get pregnant you can expect some land there's going to be a land for you so expect the land expect the baby and so there they go abraham and god are having a relationship built on the covenant built on the pro or built on the promise built built on this encounter that they have they're getting along fine except 25 years after god promised there's no baby and there's no land and so we come to genesis chapter 15 we genesis 12 is where where god said abraham just look up at the stars and that's this you're going to be blessed genesis 15. god's just talking to abram and he says abram you know this you know that you don't have to be afraid of anything because i'm your shield and i'm your great reward and abram's response obviously he'd been thinking about it because what he says is okay god i get it but i don't have any babies i'm childless and i don't have any land you promised me god that i was gonna have all these babies as many as the stars are in the sky but i don't have one 25 years after you after you said it and and god said god said okay well let's go look at the stars let's look at the stars this is how many there's going to be a legacy and this is what the bible says about abram it says he believed believed but he asked this question he believed but he said how can i be sure he believed but he said how can i be sure i don't know if anybody here has ever asked that question before how can i be sure i ask it all the time god how can i be sure how can i be sure i'm supposed to be the pastor of this church how can i be sure that you really love me how can i be sure that my family's gonna be how can i be sure that you're gonna come again and take your bride to be with you for how can i be sure and god answered the question god did not get ticked off at abram for asking how he can be sure somebody ought to thank god right now because he doesn't get kicked off when we ask questions that need to be asked all right so he said he said how can i be sure and god said well here's the answer and he took abram on a ceremony a ritual and i don't know if you know this part of the bible or not but it's so amazing god took animals and he cut them in half and he arranged them like a little aisle like a little wedding aisle and he just walked god walked in between he turned himself into a flaming torch and he walked in between the bloody animals and abram immediately though we don't know what was going on abram immediately knew what was going on because in those days that's the way you made a covenant relationship you arrange the animals you cut them in half and you walked through the cut animals because what you were saying this was an oath that you were making and basically what you were saying is if i don't keep my promise to you let me be cut apart like these animals are if i if i don't keep my word then let happen to me what happens to to these animals and here's the crazy part of that ceremony only god walked through the animals usually if you're going to have a covenant relationship the two people who are entering the relationship walk together but in this case abraham didn't walk through the animals only god walked through the animals and the reason is because god knew that he even though abraham intended to keep the covenant he wanted to keep the covenant with god he knew that abraham was going to fail he knew that abraham was not going to be able to uphold his end of the bargain so on the front end god said abraham i'm going to be faithful to you and i'm going to keep my promise but you're not going to be able to keep your promise to me and instead of you being cut apart i'm going to walk through i'm willing to be cut apart i will be bloody when you fail the covenant and that's exactly what happened on the cross when jesus said even though you have failed to keep your end of the bargain i'm willing to suffer the consequence of our covenant [Applause] you did you did it naturally but i have it right here in my notes and since it's in my notes i have to say it here's what my note says myself i wish somebody would give five seconds of praise to god because we can be sure that he's on our side nothing can separate us from the love of god that is in fact we can live in confidence because god has made a covenant with us in the blood of his own son jesus [Applause] and so i just want to say three things about about covenant relationships and then i want to ask you to make a very important decision first thing i want to say about covenant relationships is that they're very unique there's really no place in modern culture where we can say oh that's what a covenant i think the uniqueness of a covenant relationship is is um in deuteronomy chapter 29 let me just read this part of the bible to you deuteronomy 29 it says these are the terms of the covenant the lord commanded in addition to the covenant the lord commanded moses to make it hard so god is always making covenants with his people verse 9 carefully follow the terms of this covenant so that you may prosper in everything you do all of you are standing today in the presence of the lord your leaders your chief men your elders your officials and all the other men of israel together with your children and your wives so it's a family ordeal here and the foreigners that are living in your camp you are standing here in the presence of the lord to enter into a covenant with the lord your god now let me just point out coming into the presence of god is not the main objective coming into the presence of god is not the goal we are in the presence of the lord in order to be invited into a covenant with god the presence is the is the prepare the way for the covenant that we're invited to enter into see so so this is a covenant the lord is making with you this day and sealing with an oath to confirm you as his people that he may be your god as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers abraham isaac and jacob i'm making this covenant with its oath not only to you who are sharing here with us today in the presence of the lord but those who are not here with us today so this covenant he was thinking about us while he was making this covenant with them back in deuteronomy are you guys staying with me well this is just loaded this is loaded with information about covenant this this little paragraph tells us that a covenant has terms to it stipulations it tells us that it must be entered into you can't just look at it you have to be deliberate about it it tells us that covenants accomplish something this is so you will be confirmed as my people this is so you will prosper this is so i will be your god as i promised this tells us that a covenant can be generational this is not just for those of you who are here those are for those who are coming covenant has to have an oath we have to say something we have to make a promise with our mouth we have to make a decree a covenant has to have responsibility he says i want you to carefully follow the terms of this i mean there's a there's a lot more there are consequences to the covenant he says if you keep the covenant you'll prosper later on i didn't read this part but if you don't keep the covenant there's a consequence to that you'll be you'll be cursed see all this is based on abraham's covenant this is abraham same way i made it to abraham isaac and jacob i try to come up with a definition of of covenant and i don't like it very much but it's the best i could come up with so here it is here's what a covenant is it is a voluntary mutual mutually binding promise built on love let me say it again what's a covenant it's a voluntary mutually binding promise built on love it's when two people say i want i want to unite with you i want to i want to join with you i i want to be faithful to you i want to love you i want to be a friend that sticks closer than a brother i i want to i want your enemies to be my enemies i want your friends to be my friends i want what happens to you to affect me i want your life to have an impact on me and i want my life to have an impact on you and and covenants are so odd for us because we grew up sticking up for ourselves we grew up looking out for number one we arranged our life come on somebody we arranged our life and our values around the things that are going to make us happy about the around the things that are going to promote promote us we arrange life around the things that we want and so today's love language is yeah yeah i'll be for you what i should be as long as you will be for me what what you should should be and so we're not really making covenant we're making contracts even though sometimes still in wedding ceremonies we still say it we say for better or for worse sometimes i'll leave i'll lead them in that part of the wedding ceremony and you can almost feel the fear of the thing like can i just say for better do i have to say for worse you know it's because if you make a covenant that's a scary thing covenants are scary because the covenant is only designed to work when both people agree to it right i mean if you if you make a covenant to someone and and they'll make a covenant to you you're going to feel taken advantage of you're going to feel abused you know if you're sacrificing for them but they're not sacrificing you just the covenant doesn't work but when two people agree when two people both decide because of love i i'm making this i'm mutually bind we bind our lives together in this mutual agreement that i'm for you and you're for me the bible says that the result of that is astonishing that the result of that is dimensions of love that we have not even discovered yet height width length and depth [Applause] i i know i'm teaching a little bit more than i normally do but i think this is important to where we need to go in ancient times there's a very technical term it's called fictive kinship fictive kinship and in ancient times it was just the idea that your unquestionable loyalty was always to your family no matter what you were loyal to your family but what if you loved someone so much that you wanted them to be in your life but they weren't in your family what would you do then well you could find a couple of ways for people who are outside the family to come inside the family and one would be adoption right let's just adopt them let's just take someone that we love let's make a covenant with them and let's do whatever it takes to get them though they're not relatives let's get them inside the family and so you hire a lawyer you pay the money you make it legal you obey the stipulations of the of the lot and then you make a new family and i'm just trying to get you to see that it's not enough just to love somebody that's out there adoption is like i love you so much i want to join with you i want to bring you into my family and i'm willing to pay whatever it costs how many of you know love always costs something come on parents come on everybody that's married love is costly it's going to cost you it's going to cost you something and and and and they're all covenants are odd for us because we don't understand what it's like to say i i'm willing to pay whatever it takes to bring you into my family see another way to bring somebody who's not a relative to become a relative is just marriage i mean i met beck i wanted her to be in my family but she wasn't in my family i mean you don't you don't you don't marry ken folk unless you're from arkansas that's the only reason that you you don't marry ken folk but but i loved beck and i wanted her to be in my family so on january the 7th 1978 i made the terms we swore the oaths to one another we had a marriage license to make it legal we entered into a covenant and we began this journey of joining this journey of joining two separate lives becoming one and can i just remind you first of all that there is a spirit of adoption that has announced over you i love you so much that even though you're outside the family i'm going to pay the cost i'm going to do everything i can to bring you inside the family and can i say to you that the goal of heaven is to get jesus a bride that is not a metaphor that is the journey that we're on right now to bring those of us who are outside the family into the family a glorious bride for jesus but all of that all of that requires covenant all of that requires covenant i know you're tired of hearing me talk about adam and eve but the truth is everything was a covenant before sin adam looked at he eve it wasn't her name then it was the man looked at the woman and and he said pounding my bone flashing my flesh that's covenant language it's like i see you in me and me in you and god in us but then sin came and adam gave the woman a name he says now i'm going to call you eve you're the mother of every living thing and now our relationship is going to be based on what you do it's going to be released on condition it's going to be based on it's going to be based on your performance and sin shifted the foundation by which we relate to one another so that now when we look at one another we don't look at one another ah i see the image of god in you i see me and you i see you and me i see us join together what we what we look at is i wonder how you can help me i wonder how you can make me happy i wonder what you can do on my behalf and we're and we're living in these contracts and these conditions and i'm just saying that is a small way to live it's a small way to love i love that john chapter 14 verse 21 jesus says if whoever keeps my commandments who does them is the one who loves me and he loves me is loved by my father and i will love him and make my home with him i'm just saying that the goal of god is to make us at home with him him and we should never lose our all of this guys this is a god who wants he wants to have a covenant with us so it's unique but not only is it unique it's very mysterious it's a very mysterious thing in exodus chapter 19 verse 3 exodus 19 we see the mystery of the covenant um you guys doing okay so the children of israel are they've been slaves they've just come out of slavery they're about to come into the promised land and and god this is exodus 19 moses went up to god and the lord called to him saying tell the children of israel you've seen what i did to the egyptians how i bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself you talk about a way to begin a conversation guys oh my goodness what is he saying he's saying hey you guys were screaming in your slavery just a few minutes ago but i wanted you and i saw you and i decided to do something about your condition and i brought you out you didn't have anything to do with it it was grace i came to you and i brought you out of your bondage i heard the chains drop and i brought you unto myself so that you would be mine that's the way he began the conversation then he says in verse five now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant then you will be a special treasure to me that's bedroom language you will be special treasure to me above all the people for the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation these guys are still slaves they still smell like egypt and god is speaking over them and he's saying oh no no no if you i'm i brought you to myself and if you'll keep the covenant i will make you a holy people and i will make you a king and i will make you a priest and i will make you a nation of kings and priests they have nothing they don't have a temple they don't have an army they don't have a resume but god loves them so much that he says let's do something that will get you changed let's do something that will transform you and that's the point this is this covenant is a mysterious transforming power that turns slaves into kings and priests if if you keep it if you keep it because god's going to keep his part or are we going to keep our partner you know we're going to make choices because love requires a choice that's why that's why there is a tree in the garden of eden you can have everything you can do anything but there's a tree i need you to choose to love me i can't just love you like this you have to choose me back and this is how we grow our destiny this is how we steward revival and reformation and restoration read this story this week in the bible about david's wife her name was michael and i don't know of anyone in the bible who had such opportunity as her she's the daughter of a king and she's married to a king and she's positioned to be the mother of a king she's got a lot going for her but she gets disappointed with the way life is going her husband commits suicide her brothers are all killed in war david is a fugitive so while he's away she marries another man when david comes back and knows that she's married to another man he messes that up real bad he takes his wife back says you're going to live with me woman i don't know if you said it like that or not so i'm just saying she's a troubled gal she's had a lot of disappointment in in her life but one day there's revival one day the ark of the covenant comes back to their homeland it comes back to jerusalem do you know about the ark of the covenant it's the presence of god it's the glory of god it's the thing that hungry hearts long for and david is so excited that the presence of god is going to dwell in his hometown he is exuberant he is dancing he is making a spectacle of himself his wife michael do you know what she's doing she's watching from a window can can i just say to you directly please that you may think there is safety in isolation but there's not there is nothing safe about isolating yourself and can i also say that if you're a window watcher while everybody else is exuberant you by nature are a critic you are if you're window watching you have you are always criticizing what somebody else is doing i get that she's disappointed i'm just trying to get you to see that there's a danger in isolation because she was more concerned about what was going to get posted on instagram the next morning then she was david's heart and instead of joining in and letting david nourish her and join to her she stays isolated and focused on herself and critical of david and the consequence of staying in the window when there was an opportunity to worship when she lost her future she was barren she was barren and she forfeited her future i'm just trying to show you practical applications of keeping covenants because if there's unforgiveness or if there's jealousy and it breaks the joints apart what somebody else has that you need is not going to become available to you and what you have that somebody else need is not going to be exchanged when god's people are joined to god are joined to one another when we forfeit that our future is at risk i know you're tired of hearing me talk about my dogs but they just give me such great illustrations so i have two dogs gypsy and cash cash is younger gypsy is older gypsy used to really be good at spotting squirrels and chasing them but she's not as good anymore she can't see like she used to see so she doesn't sit in the patio looking out of the woods anymore she sits looking at cash because cash can still see and so when cash sees a squirrel and she sees the hair on the back of his neck stand up she takes off chasing a squirrel that she cannot see because she knows that he sees something that she cannot see but but she can see him and i don't know if you can see the ark of the covenant in our midst or not i don't know if you can see what god is doing but if you could just get your eyes on somebody who is seeing what god is doing then you could have what that if you were to join with somebody they could give to you what you need they could give to you the hope that you don't have right now it's not enough to love god it's not enough to even love people there are stipulations for loving be careful to keep the terms of this covenant there are ways to join our lives together i i said this in the first service so i guess it's too late beck's not here so i can tell you this story if she were here i probably wouldn't tell this story um she forgot me at the airport this week for real like hours i'm like beck you said you were gonna come and you're not here what's the deal and i she wouldn't answer her phone and i'm just like oh my gosh um so you know us pretty well we've been living together for a while how big of a problem was it that she forgot me at the airport was it a big problem or a little problem i'll just ask you that it was a little problem honestly it was a little problem do you know why it was a little problem because our covenant carries terms our covenant has stipulations there are laws in our family that keep us together and one of the laws is we forgive one another when we offend one another and i could have pouted and i could have spent a night at the airport i suppose and been critical standing in the widow at a woman who had forgotten all about me i could have done that but our future our future is too important our family destiny is too important for me to carry some offense because she did something that she didn't mean to do i'd rather be inconvenienced than lose the destiny over my family i'm asking you today to keep the covenant musicians join us please this is the secret of the early church it really is you i know you're tired of hearing me talk about homophobidin i know you're like what is that and it's the greek word that's just means same fire it's what happens when they score the winning touchdown and everybody stands up and cheers at the at the same time that's why the early church was so powerful i know you missed it in the in the reading the king james version because it's just translated that word is translated into such boring language like one accord or or together but this is the way it reads in acts chapter two they were all in one accord the homophobic they all had the same passion therefore in the one place suddenly there came a sound a rushing sound from heaven as of a mighty wind they were in one accord acts chapter 2 verse 44 says all the believers were together you just run by that unless you know that it means they were in the same passions and the bible says the wonders and the signs that came through the apostles no one had need of anything and the lord was adding daily to the church those that were being saved chapter 4 verse 24 of acts says that they raised their voice with homophobidin one accord and one accord and the place where they were where they were a symbol was shaken and they were all filled with the holy ghost they enjoined their lives together acts chapter 5 verse 12 says they were in one accord in solomon's porch and through the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders they had the same heart that the same heart no wonder paul writes in ephesians 4 3 that if you want to walk worthy if you want to live a life that honors god here's what you need to do you need to bear with one another in love and then you need to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and so i've come today just simply to ask you would you please put up with me please bear with me i'm gonna i'm gonna try to walk in a covenant with you but i'm gonna make mistakes and i'm gonna screw up because i i'm telling you i'm gonna try to bear with you it's gonna be much harder than you bearing with me and you have to we're going to have to endeavor we endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit why why is it worth it because our future is at risk our future is at risk and the third thing that i would say about a covenant is simply this a covenant equips us it equips us why did god cut those animals for abraham when he said how can i be sure well he was disoriented he didn't know what was happening and god said this is how you can be sure this it's 25 years i know it's 25 years but i you you can cut me you can this is my oath to you and that covenant equipped abraham to go forward and fulfill his calling and live by faith and and you know build all those altars it wasn't because abraham was such a great christian he didn't even honestly he lied a lot even after the covenant and he slept with his maid he did a lot of bad things but he had a new attitude in his heart and his attitude was i can be sure because god has made a covenant with me the bible says he believed god and god counted in his righteousness this attitude is you know what god is never going to quit on me if he's not going to quit on me then i'm not going to quit on him and that's what i'm trying to join to our hearts today and attitude this is i'm equipped to do what god has asked me to do because there's a new covenant in the blood of jesus christ would you stand together please

Channel: Trinity Church Cedar Hill

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Length: 42min 17sec (2537 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 28 2021