June 16, 2025 • 37 mins
"Does anybody really love me?" It's a question that echoes in the depths of our hearts. For those who grew up without a father—or with complicated father relationships—this question carries extra weight, especially on Father's Day.
Growing up without my father after years of family turmoil, I discovered that love and approval became synonymous. I built what psychologists call a "false self"—a constructed identity designed to win acceptance and love. This false self isn't unique to those with father wounds; we all create personas to protect our vulnerabilities and ensure our survival. Whether it's through achievement, humor, intelligence, physical appearance, or spiritual performance, we present versions of ourselves we think are worthy of love.
The parable of the two sons in Luke 15 brilliantly illustrates this human tendency. The younger son rejected his father's love, believing he needed to create his own value through possessions and experiences. Meanwhile, the older son remained physically home but emotionally distant, viewing himself as a slave rather than a son. Despite their different paths, both were trying to earn what was already freely given—their father's unconditional love.
When my son was born and rushed to the NICU, I instinctively placed my hand on his tiny chest and whispered, "I love you, I'm so proud of you." In that moment, I heard God whisper back, "This is how I've always felt about you." This revelation transformed my understanding of God's fatherly love—a love that doesn't need to be earned or achieved.
The invitation this Father's Day is to recognize that your true self isn't something you create—it's who you already are in God's love, waiting to be received. You don't need to keep striving. God's embrace is ready for you, not because you've earned it, but simply because you are His beloved child. What would change if you truly believed you're already home?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This morning we pray that, as we gather, as we have
gathered and as we unpack theseancient stories, would you give
us just a deep sense of yourpresence?
And, yeah, may we feel theembrace of the Father this
morning, on this Father's Day,may we understand deeply the
Father heart of God, in a waythat would deeply transform our
(00:20):
lives and all the ways in whichwe act out of a false self, this
constructed projection ofourselves.
God, may we let those go andmay we feel your embrace in deep
ways this morning.
In Jesus' name, amen, amen, youcan be seated.
Good morning everyone.
How are we doing?
Happy Father's Day.
(00:42):
It's great to be with you guys.
My Father's Day sermon is justsimply titled Home a Father's
Day sermon.
I wanted to give you a Father'sDay sermon, so we wrapped up
our series on rhythms, and oneof the best ways to kind of
return home or actually wake upto the fact that many of you are
already at home is to justengage in these ancient
(01:05):
practices of silence andsolitude and fasting and prayer
and scripture reading.
They're just reminders of yourbelovedness already.
But I do want to give a sermonthis morning on Father's Day.
Can you do me a favor, sam, canyou go back to that scripture?
This is from the book ofEphesians, and so this is what
Paul writes.
I love this.
This is my prayer for you andmyself this morning Ephesians.
And so this is what Paul writes.
(01:25):
I love this.
This is my prayer for you andmyself this morning.
He writes for this reason, Ibow my knees before the Father.
Interestingly, they call God afather.
Of course God doesn't have agender, but a father in the
ancient world was like thisgenerous, giving, sustaining,
positive force for good in theworld.
That's what a father should be,and so they call God a father.
That's what God is like, fromwhom every family in heaven and
on earth takes its name.
(01:46):
Which families on earth?
Every family on heaven and onearth takes its name.
I pray that, according to theriches of his glory, he may
grant that you may bestrengthened in your inner being
with power through his spirit.
I tell my friends, my young Ihave this Bible study group with
these young guys I tell themthe spirit is like this
enlivening force, like there'selectricity in the world.
(02:09):
And so may you be strengthenedin your inner being with the
power through his spirit.
That Christ may dwell in yourhearts through faith, as you're
being rooted and grounded inlove.
Thank you, sam.
I pray that you may have thepower to comprehend, to grasp
with all the saints what is thebreadth and the length, and the
(02:29):
height and the depth, and toknow the love of Christ that
surpasses knowledge.
You may be filled with all ofthe fullness of God.
Amen.
We could end right there, but Iwant to tell you about my own
journey, and I want to start onthis Father's Day sermon.
Are we back to the slides here,sam?
There we go.
(02:49):
Oh, you're good, oh, hang on,oh, hold on.
I want to tell you about my owngrowing up, my childhood
without a father, and I want totell you this beautiful story of
the father in this story inLuke 15, which I love, this
story, it's probably my favoritestory in all of scripture.
Then I want to end by tellingyou a story of my own life and
(03:10):
my son and how becoming a fatherreally changed everything for
me.
So, again, I want to tell youabout my own childhood, growing
up without a father, and thenthe story of this beautiful
father in Luke 15.
And then, of course, I want toend with my own story of
becoming a father.
Are you with me so far?
So I have to begin, of course,with young Ryan, and here's a
(03:31):
picture of young Ryan.
Just breathe that in that imageyou might be cool, but are you
wearing winter gloves that arefour sizes too big inside the
house?
Cool, that's cool.
If you ask me, that giant hat,I don't know what I'm hiding
from, but there's my face.
It's sort of hard to see, buthere's a better image of me.
This is me.
It's blurry because back thenthat's how pictures were taken
sometimes.
This is my sister's CabbagePatch, not mine.
(03:53):
I was bringing it to her.
This is my Cabbage Patchfigurine, right Ben of the
figurines.
Yeah, don't play with dolls,it's a figurine.
I didn't even want it.
I didn't even like it.
Moving on, here is a picture ofabout seven-year-old Ryan.
We had some property we stilldo, actually up in Rand Colorado
(04:16):
.
My dad owns and my birth dadowns this land up in Rand
Colorado and we'd go there askids.
We'd go there and'd go campingand hike and fish and do all the
things that you did.
But this guy, this guy, thisseven-year-old Ryan, was awesome
, he was dope.
I mean, he loved Choose yourOwn Adventure books.
Remember those stories fromwhen you were a kid?
Yeah, they were unbelievablyprofound and mysterious.
(04:36):
I love these books.
He loved Jaws, the movie Jawsand like any red-butted American
, we fast-forwarded to and onlywatched the scenes where
somebody was getting eaten.
I didn't know there was anactual storyline or plot to the
movie until I was an adult.
Like Rocky, we'd watch Rocky.
We only fast-forwarded to thefight scenes, which is why Rocky
(04:57):
IV was so good, because it wasonly fight scenes and montages,
which is like that's all we need.
I don't need a storyline.
Who cares about that?
I love to play army men.
Most of them play army men inthe bathtub Very manly, that
scene, if you can imagine, justplaying army men in my bathtub
and I loved it.
But that was about the age,about seven years old, when my
parents got divorced and many ofyou maybe have heard my story,
(05:18):
but I haven't told it in a whileand I was reminded that a lot
of you don't know it, probablybecause someone asked me about
it a couple of weeks ago.
Oh yeah, I should probablyshare that again and it's not a
good day to do that, but I grewup and after many years I was
about seven or so.
Right around this time.
I was about seven or so when weleft my dad for the final time.
We had tried a few times beforethat.
It just didn't work out so well.
(05:39):
But after years of violence andabuse and anger and yelling and
a messy marriage and sort oftrying to blend families, and it
was just an absolute disaster.
And I was the youngest and soin many ways I suffered, maybe
the least, but maybe I just Idon't know what it was but yeah,
we left him for the final timeafter seven years of being in
(05:59):
that situation and my mom inmany ways saved our lives and
really she is an incrediblesaint of a woman and did the
best she could.
But growing up without a father,I of course suffered all the
things you would imagine a youngboy without a father would
suffer, and so it's like I grewup in this sense in every way
that I had like this giant holein my life, you know, this
(06:20):
absence of something that was inmy life, and as a kid I
couldn't really name it orunderstand.
I was 7, 12, even at 16, Icouldn't understand it.
But as an adult I began tounderstand what this hole was
all about and really the ache ofthis hole inside of me was this
question that lingered and itstill lingers sometimes.
But the question is this doothers really love me?
So in many ways I was wanderingaround as a young boy and as a
(06:46):
young man asking this questiondoes anybody really love me?
I think probably you canresonate a little bit, at least
in a way, because I think all ofus sort of ask this question.
It's an innately human question.
Does anybody really love me?
Now, mine has a bit extra spiceto it because of my wounds from
the father and my childhoodwithout a father, and I'm
looking longing for this kind oflove.
But I think we all ask this,and maybe varying degrees.
But does anybody really love me?
(07:07):
And who is it that loves me?
And how do I know they love me?
And I would even ask if you diga bit deeper, you could ask why
do they love me?
And beneath that is thequestion of why am I in fact
lovable?
What makes me lovable?
What about me is worthy ofbeing loved or worthy of being
(07:27):
accepted?
Now, for me as a young man, Ilearned quickly that how I
received love was through theapproval of others.
They were kind of synonymous.
For me it's like, oh, if I gotthe approval of others, it meant
they loved me, it felt like Ibelonged, that I kind of was a
part of the club or that I was,you know, worthy of love because
they accepted me or becausethey approved of me.
So, you know, you begin tochase approval then, which is,
(07:49):
of course, why I indeed had thisdope haircut as a young man.
Look at that.
Oh man, All the great athleteswore two wristbands, not one,
two, just in case I had todouble fist that you know the
sweat was raining down as I wasraining down.
Threes, I was mostly adefensive specialist.
(08:09):
I couldn't shoot that well andI could only go left.
But there I am, yeah.
So for me, when I gained theapproval of others, I felt loved
and like I belonged, and I wasalways.
I think now, looking back, youcan clearly see it.
You don't have to be apsychologist to know, but I was
constantly looking for theapproval, the love of the father
that I missed out when I was ayoung boy, and so I would try to
(08:30):
find it in these pseudo ways,in these sort of substitute ways
, to get it.
And also, it isn't lost on methat here I am an adult who has
a job where I get up in front ofall of you every week and give
this sermon, maybe sort ofhoping that you'll approve of my
sermon in some ways large orsmall, and I try to be funny
enough or clever enough but alsobe subtle.
(08:50):
So it looks like I'm notworking too hard to kind of do
this.
So years ago I knew this aboutmyself and I'm like I got to
figure out a way to like becauseit was like racking my brain of
like whether or not you allwould like what I do and like
this is terrible because I can'tjust leave out of here every
time like so worried andstressed out about whether I
earned your approval or not.
So I came up with a ritual inmy life.
I'm like you know what I can'tdo this every week, where I'm
(09:11):
like if you like my sermon, oh,it's so great, I'm a righteous
man, if you don't like it, manlyand tribal, primal.
And so you might notice when Ileave.
(09:32):
After I'm done with my sermonsevery week, I walk back into the
sacristy.
You might think where is hegoing?
Is he back there blowing hisnose?
Yes, that and I do the blowingof his nose, sometimes get a sip
of water, but also for a longtime.
I and I do the boy nowsometimes get a sip of water,
but also for a long time.
I would go back to my officewhen they were over here and I
would get this drum and I wouldgo to my window in my office
while you all are in heresinging or doing whatever you're
(09:52):
doing, and I'd go to the windowand I would just offer my
sermon up to God and whateverthe results would be, they would
be whatever they were.
I had to let it go and I wouldjust go to, and then I would put
it down and I would come back.
And I did it because I just hadto let go of this idea of like
(10:14):
you know, whether or not thesermon was good, based on what
you thought of me, because allof us are longing for this deep,
you know, in this deep way, forthe approval, the acceptance
and the embrace of the other.
And again, for a variety ofreasons Mine, of course, was
certainly due to this deepfather wound Now, to get my
approval or to get approval.
(10:36):
I began as a young man and Ididn't know it then, but I began
to behave in certain ways orsay certain things, to try to be
a little bit extra funny orextra good at sports or extra
smart or intelligent, or todress a certain way or to hang
out with certain people, becausein doing so I thought, oh well,
then I'll earn that acceptanceand that love and that security
that I've longed for so deeplyin my whole life.
Now it wasn't like it wasmalicious.
(10:56):
I didn't mean any harm by it.
I didn't even know I was doingit.
It was sort of just a verynatural part of who I was in my
life, but it was.
I began to build and constructthis part of me that I would
present, to blend in, in orderto kind of survive the
tumultuous years that weremiddle school and all the things
(11:17):
that go along with that.
I began to construct this partof myself to sort of like earn
the approval and the favor andthe love of other people and to
be noticed and to feel loved.
Now, mine, this sort of thisthing, I built and would show
the world this sort of facade ormask, whatever it was.
It was rooted in the longing ofthe love of a father.
(11:39):
Maybe yours was something else.
Maybe you didn't have the loveof a mother.
Maybe you had a deep, anotherdeep wound that you experienced
when you were younger.
Maybe, when you were younger,you felt unsafe.
Maybe you felt unseen as a kid.
Maybe it was you were unlovedor you didn't feel loved,
whether you were or not.
Maybe you just didn't feel likeyou were.
Maybe for you, you were justvulnerable as a kid, as a child,
and you felt lost.
Maybe you felt ashamed.
In reality, many of us have thisthing we construct, that we
(12:02):
build in order to kind of likeprotect these wounds that we've
had, or many of us had a finechildhood, a decent childhood,
and instead of building thissort of this thing that we call
the false self out of a wound,you sort of build it just to
survive Because, let's face it,middle school is hard.
I won't ask you to go backthere in your mind, but maybe
for many of you you had to be acertain way in order to not get
(12:24):
picked on or get bullied, orjust to survive.
And I mean, adolescence is adifficult time anyway, and here
you are with a bunch of otherpeople, so maybe for you, this
was how you built your falseself.
By the way they call us thefalse self Theologians,
psychologists, thinkers, writers.
They've used us across fieldsand across industries.
They call it the false self.
And the false self really isthis it's this thing that you
(12:44):
and I construct or build topresent to the world in order to
survive or to be loved.
So it's like a mask we wear.
Maybe it's a clothes that youwear not literal, but maybe
literal, I don't know.
This thing you project to theworld to show the world what you
think is worthy of being lovedor accepted, or to survive.
Maybe you'd be a tough guy inorder to survive in the world.
That's what it is to build thefalse self.
(13:07):
Here's a definition of it.
The false self is who I think Ineed to be to survive and to be
loved.
It's this persona, this thing Iwear, that I try to be in order
to survive and be loved.
I think I have to do that inorder to receive that.
By the way, it's always, always, always based on a fear.
It's fear and scarcity and thelack of abundance that sort of
(13:30):
causes me to build this falseimage of myself, because I think
no one will love me or believeme or let me belong, unless
that's sort of the false selftalking there, and so it's
always rooted in fear.
It's never rooted in love orbelonging.
It's always the opposite.
This is why the Bible says thatlove real love casts out fear,
because these things aremutually exclusive.
(13:51):
So yeah, when you're afraid too, by the way, whenever you
experience fear, you do crazythings on a micro level, but
also the macro level, like lookwhat we're experiencing just in
this past week.
A lot of this, when you boil itdown, is rooted in fear or the
false self.
Maybe you've been at a party andyou were like telling a story
about yourself and you sort oflike make the parts that were
(14:14):
kind of good, you make them alittle bit better.
You don't really tell the whole.
Or maybe you leave out certainparts because you just want to
tell those things, because Idon't know what they would think
of those things.
You know what I'm saying.
Or maybe you're at a cocktailparty, or you're at your old
reunion with some old friendsand you can't wait to drop your
new job title or what you'redoing with yourself now.
(14:35):
Maybe you can drop in yoursalary too.
That might help things out alittle bit, depending on what
your salary is.
Maybe if you're like a you knowa faith, a person of faith, you
want to just let people knowthat you're a person of faith
and kind of how spiritual andhow holy you are, because that
makes you more lovable in someways.
And so you carry around yourBible or you put it next to your
I don't know your dishwasher athome so that your guests can
(14:55):
come over and see it.
Maybe you post Bible versesonline, I don't know.
Maybe just to sort of showothers how you know how
spiritual you are, which means,of course, you're maybe one step
above the rest of the fray.
Maybe that's not yours.
Maybe your thing is that youwant to just like, sort of and
maybe you don't mean to but youhave this underlying sort of
subterranean I don't knowtendency to compare yourself.
(15:17):
You're like, oh, they got that,oh, they got that, oh, I'm
better than that.
And you sort of have like thislow grade, like sort of drive to
compete, to sort of prove thatyou're better than they are,
because that makes you morelovable or more acceptable in
some sort of way.
And's your deal, by the way.
Maybe it's that you're easilyoffended.
We live in a culture.
(15:37):
It's just so easily offendedand part of our identity is
rooted in being esteemed that Iwant to be esteemed and
respected and liked.
And so whenever you sayanything that like sort of like
puts a ding in my armor, then itlike just destroys me because,
like it's messing with myidentity.
And so I get over the top angryor enraged because you're
attacking my identity, eventhough it was not that big of a
(16:00):
deal.
And so I pick up these tinyoffenses and I make a mountain
out of a molehill because you'reattacking my false self and I
can't let you do that becauseyou'll unmask the real me that's
just based and rooted in fear.
This is, by the way, why wehave a hard time admitting we're
wrong.
Maybe you're one of thosepersons where you just sort of
like you don't want to fullyadmit that you were wrong in any
(16:22):
moment.
You kind of like dance aroundit, whether it's in a
relationship or in your job orin school, and then you were
wrong.
You know you were wrong, butyou can't even admit it to
yourself.
Maybe you can't admit it to theperson you're with, and so you
never say you're sorry, younever admit that was my bad,
because it would destroy thisimage of yourself that you
projected to the world.
Your ego and this false selfwould be destroyed.
(16:44):
Well, here's the answer to thefalse self.
The answer to the false self isnot to ignore it or to shun it
or to push it away.
The answer is, if it's rootedin fear, it's to bring that
false self home.
Bring it closer, to embrace itand to bring it home.
(17:07):
Sometimes that false self willshow up and you have to remind
it.
Hey, I appreciate you.
I know that you helped mesurvive as a young man and I
know that you're rooted in thiswound that you suffered.
But look, I don't need you anylonger.
I love you.
You can come on home and relaxand rest.
That's the invitation of theFather to these two sons in Luke
, chapter 15.
I love this story.
It's about two sons.
You probably have heard of itbefore, but it's one of my
(17:29):
favorite stories and it's aboutthese two sons and the Father.
And the father, just so youknow, is the God character in
this story.
So everything the fatherembodies is the God character
and is what God is like.
And these two knuckleheads.
This is us.
Here's the story.
In case you don't know, a manhas two sons.
The younger one demands hisshare of the father's
(17:49):
inheritance early, which, by theway, is akin to him saying I
wish you were dead.
He wanted his father to be dead.
He his inheritance early, which, by the way, is akin to him
saying I wish you were dead.
He wanted his father to be dead.
He wanted that money, the moneythat belonged to the whole
tribe, the whole village.
And so he really it's a middlefinger to the father and it's a
middle finger to the wholevillage.
He doesn't really care and thefather unexpectedly gives it to
him.
That was really not heard of inthe ancient world.
You would never have done that.
But this father does it.
He takes the money.
(18:10):
The son leaves home, spends itall and returns home later in
shame, hoping to be hired as aworker in his dad's business.
His father again unexpectedlywelcomes him home and embraces
him and throws him a homecomingparty, fattened calf and all.
Now the older brother refusesto join this party, the brother
(18:30):
who had been home the whole time.
He says it's unfair.
He tells his father becausehe's never even been given a
goat so that he and his friendscould have a party.
The father then says to him myfavorite line buddy, you're
always with me, everything Ihave is yours.
But we had to celebrate and beglad because this brother of
(18:54):
yours was dead and he's theyounger son.
He takes the inheritance.
He says to the father I don'treally care about my
relationship with you, I wantwhat's mine, I want the money.
I value possessions and money.
I want your stuff, I don'treally care about you.
He rejects his identity as ason.
He doesn't really care.
He wants the money to take itand go out into foreign places
(19:15):
and foreign lands and provehimself, like many young men or
young women want to do.
Because I think deep down insideof him there's a sense in him
he's sort of grasping to becomesome self-made person of value.
He's chasing value.
If only I can go out there andcreate my own empire, do my own
thing with this money, then I'llbe worthwhile and I'll be sort
of a force to be reckoned within the world.
(19:36):
And if I can sort of show theworld my self-worth and my power
and my empire that I build,then I'll prove myself and I'll
have sort of won the day.
See, he believes that this lie,that many of us believe that I
am what I own, or I am what Iown or I am what I achieve, or I
am what I do, I am what Icontrol.
(19:59):
I'll say it again this youngman believes what some of us
believe, which is, I am what Iown or I am what I can achieve,
what I do in life and what Icontrol.
Yeah, that's what I am.
He sort of thinks I must createvalue in and of myself.
Without that I have nothing tooffer the world.
Me alone, without all thesethings, is worth nothing.
(20:22):
Many of you know, but I go aboutonce a year for the last couple
of years it's been maybe a fewyears, but I go on these
wilderness experiences everysummer and it's a time for me to
get away from here and I go anddo like five days of like out
in the wilderness.
We camp and like the middle ofthree days are totally spent in
silence and solitude.
But you're with a group ofpeople like usually 20 or 30
people, and I've been inColorado, michigan, and this
(20:44):
summer I'm going up to Victoria,british Columbia, and the first
time I went there I was readyto like sit down and do like a
mixer on the first meeting andwe all sat in a circle under
these trees.
We're going to do a mixer, getto know each other.
And we didn't do that at all.
We never went around the circleand said, oh, I'm Ryan, I'm a
pastor in Elk River, and youknow.
And then Tommy's like I'm Tom,I own an ice cream parlor.
And well I was like, oh, we'reto just be here and not have all
(21:17):
these attachments to ourselves.
Last year it was funny I show upin Colorado and this one guy
goes are you Ryan?
Oh yeah, he goes.
Oh, I Googled you, I figuredout you're a pastor in Elk River
.
I was like, oh man.
And I was like immediatelybummed Like, oh, this guy, you
know, because it's so nice toshow up somewhere without all
the things that you think bringyou value or worth, and just to
(21:37):
be yourself.
I've had to learn.
It's very hard.
I've had to learn how to justshow up in a group and just be
present and just be yourself andnot have to be Pastor Ryan or
say some wise, sagacious thingto save the day.
It's kind of nice to just showup like, hey, I'm just going to
be here as myself.
And we're not used to that,because we're so used to like,
showing up and like, okay, whatdo I have to offer here?
(21:58):
What am I going to offer as avalue?
What will they accept andembrace of me so I can feel
loved and feel like I'm at homeagain?
And these trips you couldn'treally do it.
So this younger son tries this,he creates a brand new self,
really out there in thewilderness and out in these
foreign lands.
And he does it with this ideaof freedom and independence and
pleasure.
And he goes out and spends allthis money trying to build this
(22:19):
empire and chasing what I wouldsay is like wholeness or
acceptance.
He's chasing something and he'strying to fill this hole, but
all the while he's restless.
He's never.
He never seems settled.
He's spending all kinds ofmoney, he's searching for
something.
He's never at home.
He's never at home.
And finally he wakes up to this.
And he wakes up.
It says the text is.
He comes to his senses.
(22:39):
So he wakes up and he realizesgolly, this is not who I am Like
.
What am I doing out here?
This isn't me.
And he's humiliated becausehe's with pigs.
He's got no money, he's leftwith emptiness.
He's spent it all on wildliving.
Nothing's left.
He's an embarrassment, a shameto the whole family.
And he wakes up.
He's like, okay, this isn't whoI am, I need to go home.
(23:03):
So he comes to his senses totry to go home and the false
self you can see it begins tocrumble around him Like this
isn't who I am, there'ssomething else about me that's
not this stuff.
And I've chased it all and noneof it meant anything.
So he goes home.
Now here's the thing the falseself dies hard.
On the way home he still picksup this false self Like hey,
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look, I'm no longer worthy to becalled a son.
So he rehearses this speech tokind of win himself back into
the good graces of the Father,because in the world, love is
never unconditional.
It's not.
Love is always conditional inthe world that we live in.
Yeah, I will love you if.
So we're chasing this thing.
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That's always conditional.
I will only love you if.
And he thinks oh, I can't goback home and have free love
from the Father because I was anidiot.
So I deserve somethingdifferent than grace and love
and mercy.
I deserve punishment.
I deserve him to demand anapology.
I deserve something horrible.
Yeah, that's what we've beentaught.
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The world's love is alwaysconditional.
The great philosopher love isalways conditional.
The great philosopher, madonna,once said this in Vanity Fair in
1991, my drive in life comesfrom a fear of being mediocre.
Come on now, that might be someof you in here.
That's always pushing me.
(24:29):
I push past one spell of it anddiscover myself as a special
human being.
All right, good for her, but ohshoot.
But then I feel I'm stillmediocre and uninteresting.
It's like a moment of likeabsolute confession of Madonna.
Unless I do something else, Ihave to keep earning this thing
because it never lasts, thisconditional love and acceptance
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that I've got to keep producing,because even though I've become
somebody, I still have to provethat I am somebody.
Tom Brady, the second greatestquarterback of all time.
I couldn't find a John Elbequote, otherwise we would have
had a word from the greatestquarterback of all time.
(25:12):
Tom says this he's betterlooking, fair enough.
But Tom says why do I havethree Super Bowl rings and still
think there's something greaterout there for me?
What's he chasing?
He kind of recognizes it.
I think, god, it's got to bemore than this.
Yeah, the world's love is alwaysconditional.
(25:33):
I will love you if, by the way,the son what he wants to have
going back.
He already had it.
He was already at home, alreadyloved by the father.
He's chasing something healready had.
The great david benner saysthat the false self is trying to
steal something from god thatyou could never steal.
(25:55):
I'll say that again.
David Benner says that the falseself is this idea of trying to
steal something from God thatyou already had, that you didn't
have to steal.
Yeah, the son was already athome, already with the father.
So the father sees him, runs tohim, doesn't demand an apology,
doesn't demand anything,actually does.
(26:16):
He demands a robe to be putalong the son's back and
shoulders and he demands a ringto be put on his finger, demand
sandals for his feet.
But in the ancient world theseare symbols of being a son.
It's like the father, like ifthis was today's culture.
It'd be like if that son camehome and the father said hey,
son, tonight you can use thetrigger grill, go ahead, it's
(26:38):
yours, I won't even help you,you can use it on your own.
Or you know, son, this weekendyou can finally use my riding
lawnmower the good one, the goodone, the one that works.
You can use it.
Or this, maybe this one likeson, you can have full control
of the thermostat this weekend.
Oh yeah, all right.
Some of you dads are like, oh mygosh, he had a cage over the
(27:00):
thermostat with lock coded.
Yeah, these are symbols ofbeing a son, like you're a son.
Again, he reminds him what healready had and then he's his
son.
Yeah, I love it.
Now the elder brother who'sthere?
He sees this.
Now the elder brother'sdifferent.
He stayed home the whole time.
He was obedient, he followedthe rules, did all the things
right, but he's still far fromhome.
(27:22):
And he stayed home, but he'sstill far from home.
See, his false self is rootedin his obedience and doing the
right things, duty and followingthe rules, but ultimately leads
also to resentment andcomparison and bitterness.
And he tells the father hey,all these years I've slaved for
(27:45):
you.
What he thinks?
He's a slave.
You can see his own identity.
He thinks he's a slave in hisown father's house.
We just saw that father isnothing like a slave driver.
He embraced the younger son andthis older brother thinks of
himself as a slave, not a son.
All my life I've slaved for youand thinks of himself as a
slave, not a son.
All my life I've slaved for youand you never threw me a party
(28:06):
with even a goat.
By the way, goats in theancient world and actually today
they're not very fatty, they'rekind of thin a small meal.
You never gave me a goat.
He thinks his father's cheap.
You never gave me what I was todo.
I was obedient.
And now you're throwing a partyfor the younger brother, who's
an idiot.
Sometimes the older brothersthink of the younger brother as
an idiot.
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Sometimes you don't even throwme a party with a goat.
Man.
Yeah, I want what's mine.
I deserve this.
I behave in a certain way.
You need to give me what's my,just dues, and I'm angry because
you're holding out on me.
You're shafting me.
What's the deal?
See his self.
(28:47):
His sort of false self is thathe thinks he's sort of always
comparing himself and he thinkshe's better than other people,
so he deserves certain thingsbecause of it.
That's his false self.
Well, I'm better than them, soI deserve mine.
Meanwhile, the whole timethere's a party going on in the
background.
Can you see it that he'sinvited to, but he won't go in,
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because joy and resentment can'tcoexist.
Joy and resentment, they cannotcoexist, which is why you have
folks who are in the middle ofsome crazy cool party and they
feel resentful and they can'tengage.
They can't receive it, thisfree gift, because joy and
resentment can't coexist.
(29:33):
Yeah, yeah, he thinks it's notfair.
This older brother.
This isn't fair.
And the false self?
It can obey all the rules.
This is how deceitful the falseself is.
It can obey all the rules butstill lack intimacy with the
father.
Both of these sons are lost.
They're both far from home, onebecause of his rebellion, one
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because of his ownself-righteousness.
They're both sort of far fromhome.
They both have a false self.
They need healing andforgiveness.
They need to come home.
And the father tells the son Ilove this line, like, you're
always with me, everything Ihave is yours.
We could have tons of parties,it's all yours anyway.
The false self tries to stealfrom God that which there's no
(30:17):
need to steal because theyalready had it.
Yeah, this confronts the falseself and it reminds him that
he's not a slave.
You're not a slave, you're ason.
You're my son, I love you,everything I have is yours.
But the tragedy is the olderbrother couldn't receive it.
He couldn't accept it.
And here's why Because we're soused to being taught, or we're
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so used to this idea thatwhatever I get as a gift, I must
have earned it.
I can't get something for free.
Nothing's for free in thisworld.
Love and grace and parties,they're all things to be earned.
So I need to behave in acertain way and then I'll get it
.
But grace and mercy is anabsolute free, unconditional
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gift.
I can't get my head around that.
I have no idea what free graceor free mercy or free love, what
it looks like, because I'm soused to things being conditional
I've never had that before.
We have a hard time wrappingour heads around it because I'm
so used to thinking I must begood to be loved.
What does free grace look likereally?
What does free love,unconditional love for no reason
(31:27):
what does that look like?
Here's the definition of thefalse self again, and the true
self.
The false self is who I think Ineed to be to survive and to be
loved.
The true self is who I alreadyam in God's love, waiting to be
received.
See, as you get older, thatfalse self, you don't need it
any longer.
(31:47):
You've got to let God heal itand you've got to do that by
sometimes when it raises itshead, you say, hey, come here.
Come here, buddy.
You don't have to do thatanymore, because the impulse is
still there.
You don't have to do that itBecause the impulse is still
there.
You don't have to do that.
It's okay, we're going to beall right.
You're already loved.
You don't have to earn anything, you're fine.
So you don't reject the false,you just bring it in closer.
(32:09):
You love on that little guy.
My little seven-year-old selfwants to show up on occasion and
wreak havoc Because he's seven.
He doesn't have a license.
You're okay, buddy.
He's always afraid.
It's okay, you'll be fine, it'sokay.
So you've got to heal that partof yourself that wants to earn
(32:30):
things.
Now, look, I get it.
We often will wander off or wehave a hard time receiving these
free gifts from God and all.
That's very real and this thingwe call sin.
I think that most of our sin isrooted in this idea of the
false self that's already loved.
Paul writes it this way whilewe were yet sinners, christ died
for us.
Yeah, but you and I oftentimesjust need to be reminded of the
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depth and the breadth and thelength of God's love.
I'm gonna close with a story.
My son, logan, was born 21years ago.
He's here today and remember mychildhood Like I grew up
without a father.
So I prayed for a lot of yearsthat I'd be a good father and
that my firstborn would be a son.
And once Katie told me she waspregnant, I'm like, well, it is,
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whatever it is, it's either aboy or a girl now.
So I stopped praying.
But earlier I was pregnant.
I'd have a firstborn son as away to kind of heal sort of the
wounds in my own life.
That'd be.
I thought it'd be like a, youknow, a chance to be the father
I couldn't be.
That I couldn't have in my ownlife.
So we did have a son, but wedidn't know it.
It was a surprise because wedidn't find out ahead of time.
And so the I was there.
I was there, fully there.
It was very hard on me this 18hours, but I was okay.
(33:47):
And around the middle of itsometime they put a heart
monitor on her belly and weremonitoring his heart and they
found that his heart rate was indistress.
We think what happened was heinhaled this merconium,
merconium.
He had a bowel movement insidethe uterus and then he inhaled
it into his lungs, which istoxic and it can kill you.
In fact it's killed many, many,many babies.
Today's technology makes itslim when that happens, but
(34:09):
they're like it's very dangerous.
And so when he was born, doctorsflooded the room and I'm not,
something's happening here.
And they come in and theydeliver.
What we're going to do is we'regoing to deliver him like kind
of halfway and suck themerconium out of his lungs and
then we'll get him to the NICUright away, because this could
be tragic.
We won't know for a few dayswhat's going to happen.
So the head comes out, theysuck out the merconium I'm
(34:32):
watching, there's doctorseverywhere and they deliver him
fully.
So I was like I have toannounce it.
So I yelled it's a boy.
Because I was so excited andall the memories of my own
childhood were coming back inways big and small.
And then they kind of get himover to this machine.
I cut the cord, they startdoing all the stuff to him to
make sure he's stable, and thenthey wrap him up and they throw
(34:54):
him onto Katie's chest for likemaybe 20 seconds and they gave
him to me for like about 20 moreseconds and they rushed him out
of there to the NICU and Ididn't know what to do because
my wife, katie, also had like abit of a tumultuous birth and it
was like she had some problemskind of that they were
addressing and Logan goes thisway.
We hadn't named him yet either.
So I was like I don't knowwhere to go.
And Katie says go be with him,it's okay, fine.
(35:16):
So I and my mom came with me,thankfully, and we run down the
hallway to the NICU and they gethim in there and there's
doctors everywhere and it's veryquiet in the NICU and the
lights are kind of low and it'svery ominous sometimes in there
and they're hooking him up toall these machines and I'm
standing back there watching andas soon as they all had rushed
into there, they all left and hewas hooked up.
He's stable for now, but we'llsee how he progresses,
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progresses the next few days andthen everyone left.
It was me and my mom, it wasquiet and I didn't know what to
do.
I'd never been a dad before.
So she goes, hey, go talk tohim.
I was like all right, and in myhead I'm like what do I say?
And in one of the moments Iinstinctually just got it right,
I think, by the grace of God, Iwalk over to him and I put my
hand on his chest.
Over to him, and I put my handon his chest, I said hey, buddy,
(36:07):
I love you, I love you.
Your dad's here, we're going tobe okay.
I love you, I'm so proud of you.
By the way, I didn't even methim really yet, I didn't even
said you know like, I love youso much, I'm proud of you, I
love you, we're going to be okay.
And I swear to you.
In that moment I heard God sayto me Ryan, this is how I felt
about you.
I was like, oh, man, and likeinstantly, all this stuff came
(36:30):
washing over me.
Like this is how God felt aboutme and I would tell you today,
if God could and I pray that hewill he would lean over you
right now and put his hand onyour chest and say, hey, your
dad is here, it's okay, I loveyou.
I love you so much, I love you.
(36:51):
I love you as you are, not asyou should be.
I love you for no reasonUnconditionally.
I've already embraced you.
You are already my son.
You are already my daughter.
Central Lutheran Church.
May you know the love of theFather this morning.
May it wash over you in thedeepest sense of the word, and
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may it change your life.
And may you receive it.
This free gift that's likeradical in a world that doesn't
ever offer anything for free.
May you receive it.
May it change you from theinside out.
May you know that you arealready at home.
You've already been embraced bythe Father.
The Father would tell you youare always mine, you've always
been mine, everything I have isyours.
(37:37):
And may you know in the deepestparts of your souls that you
are God's beloved sons and God's
This morning we pray that, as we gather, as we have
gathered and as we unpack theseancient stories, would you give
us just a deep sense of yourpresence?
And, yeah, may we feel theembrace of the Father this
morning, on this Father's Day,may we understand deeply the
Father heart of God, in a waythat would deeply transform our
(00:20):
lives and all the ways in whichwe act out of a false self, this
constructed projection ofourselves.
God, may we let those go andmay we feel your embrace in deep
ways this morning.
In Jesus' name, amen, amen, youcan be seated.
Good morning everyone.
How are we doing?
Happy Father's Day.
(00:42):
It's great to be with you guys.
My Father's Day sermon is justsimply titled Home a Father's
Day sermon.
I wanted to give you a Father'sDay sermon, so we wrapped up
our series on rhythms, and oneof the best ways to kind of
return home or actually wake upto the fact that many of you are
already at home is to justengage in these ancient
(01:05):
practices of silence andsolitude and fasting and prayer
and scripture reading.
They're just reminders of yourbelovedness already.
But I do want to give a sermonthis morning on Father's Day.
Can you do me a favor, sam, canyou go back to that scripture?
This is from the book ofEphesians, and so this is what
Paul writes.
I love this.
This is my prayer for you andmyself this morning Ephesians.
And so this is what Paul writes.
(01:25):
I love this.
This is my prayer for you andmyself this morning.
He writes for this reason, Ibow my knees before the Father.
Interestingly, they call God afather.
Of course God doesn't have agender, but a father in the
ancient world was like thisgenerous, giving, sustaining,
positive force for good in theworld.
That's what a father should be,and so they call God a father.
That's what God is like, fromwhom every family in heaven and
on earth takes its name.
(01:46):
Which families on earth?
Every family on heaven and onearth takes its name.
I pray that, according to theriches of his glory, he may
grant that you may bestrengthened in your inner being
with power through his spirit.
I tell my friends, my young Ihave this Bible study group with
these young guys I tell themthe spirit is like this
enlivening force, like there'selectricity in the world.
(02:09):
And so may you be strengthenedin your inner being with the
power through his spirit.
That Christ may dwell in yourhearts through faith, as you're
being rooted and grounded inlove.
Thank you, sam.
I pray that you may have thepower to comprehend, to grasp
with all the saints what is thebreadth and the length, and the
(02:29):
height and the depth, and toknow the love of Christ that
surpasses knowledge.
You may be filled with all ofthe fullness of God.
Amen.
We could end right there, but Iwant to tell you about my own
journey, and I want to start onthis Father's Day sermon.
Are we back to the slides here,sam?
There we go.
(02:49):
Oh, you're good, oh, hang on,oh, hold on.
I want to tell you about my owngrowing up, my childhood
without a father, and I want totell you this beautiful story of
the father in this story inLuke 15, which I love, this
story, it's probably my favoritestory in all of scripture.
Then I want to end by tellingyou a story of my own life and
(03:10):
my son and how becoming a fatherreally changed everything for
me.
So, again, I want to tell youabout my own childhood, growing
up without a father, and thenthe story of this beautiful
father in Luke 15.
And then, of course, I want toend with my own story of
becoming a father.
Are you with me so far?
So I have to begin, of course,with young Ryan, and here's a
(03:31):
picture of young Ryan.
Just breathe that in that imageyou might be cool, but are you
wearing winter gloves that arefour sizes too big inside the
house?
Cool, that's cool.
If you ask me, that giant hat,I don't know what I'm hiding
from, but there's my face.
It's sort of hard to see, buthere's a better image of me.
This is me.
It's blurry because back thenthat's how pictures were taken
sometimes.
This is my sister's CabbagePatch, not mine.
(03:53):
I was bringing it to her.
This is my Cabbage Patchfigurine, right Ben of the
figurines.
Yeah, don't play with dolls,it's a figurine.
I didn't even want it.
I didn't even like it.
Moving on, here is a picture ofabout seven-year-old Ryan.
We had some property we stilldo, actually up in Rand Colorado
(04:16):
.
My dad owns and my birth dadowns this land up in Rand
Colorado and we'd go there askids.
We'd go there and'd go campingand hike and fish and do all the
things that you did.
But this guy, this guy, thisseven-year-old Ryan, was awesome
, he was dope.
I mean, he loved Choose yourOwn Adventure books.
Remember those stories fromwhen you were a kid?
Yeah, they were unbelievablyprofound and mysterious.
(04:36):
I love these books.
He loved Jaws, the movie Jawsand like any red-butted American
, we fast-forwarded to and onlywatched the scenes where
somebody was getting eaten.
I didn't know there was anactual storyline or plot to the
movie until I was an adult.
Like Rocky, we'd watch Rocky.
We only fast-forwarded to thefight scenes, which is why Rocky
(04:57):
IV was so good, because it wasonly fight scenes and montages,
which is like that's all we need.
I don't need a storyline.
Who cares about that?
I love to play army men.
Most of them play army men inthe bathtub Very manly, that
scene, if you can imagine, justplaying army men in my bathtub
and I loved it.
But that was about the age,about seven years old, when my
parents got divorced and many ofyou maybe have heard my story,
(05:18):
but I haven't told it in a whileand I was reminded that a lot
of you don't know it, probablybecause someone asked me about
it a couple of weeks ago.
Oh yeah, I should probablyshare that again and it's not a
good day to do that, but I grewup and after many years I was
about seven or so.
Right around this time.
I was about seven or so when weleft my dad for the final time.
We had tried a few times beforethat.
It just didn't work out so well.
(05:39):
But after years of violence andabuse and anger and yelling and
a messy marriage and sort oftrying to blend families, and it
was just an absolute disaster.
And I was the youngest and soin many ways I suffered, maybe
the least, but maybe I just Idon't know what it was but yeah,
we left him for the final timeafter seven years of being in
(05:59):
that situation and my mom inmany ways saved our lives and
really she is an incrediblesaint of a woman and did the
best she could.
But growing up without a father,I of course suffered all the
things you would imagine a youngboy without a father would
suffer, and so it's like I grewup in this sense in every way
that I had like this giant holein my life, you know, this
(06:20):
absence of something that was inmy life, and as a kid I
couldn't really name it orunderstand.
I was 7, 12, even at 16, Icouldn't understand it.
But as an adult I began tounderstand what this hole was
all about and really the ache ofthis hole inside of me was this
question that lingered and itstill lingers sometimes.
But the question is this doothers really love me?
So in many ways I was wanderingaround as a young boy and as a
(06:46):
young man asking this questiondoes anybody really love me?
I think probably you canresonate a little bit, at least
in a way, because I think all ofus sort of ask this question.
It's an innately human question.
Does anybody really love me?
Now, mine has a bit extra spiceto it because of my wounds from
the father and my childhoodwithout a father, and I'm
looking longing for this kind oflove.
But I think we all ask this,and maybe varying degrees.
But does anybody really love me?
(07:07):
And who is it that loves me?
And how do I know they love me?
And I would even ask if you diga bit deeper, you could ask why
do they love me?
And beneath that is thequestion of why am I in fact
lovable?
What makes me lovable?
What about me is worthy ofbeing loved or worthy of being
(07:27):
accepted?
Now, for me as a young man, Ilearned quickly that how I
received love was through theapproval of others.
They were kind of synonymous.
For me it's like, oh, if I gotthe approval of others, it meant
they loved me, it felt like Ibelonged, that I kind of was a
part of the club or that I was,you know, worthy of love because
they accepted me or becausethey approved of me.
So, you know, you begin tochase approval then, which is,
(07:49):
of course, why I indeed had thisdope haircut as a young man.
Look at that.
Oh man, All the great athleteswore two wristbands, not one,
two, just in case I had todouble fist that you know the
sweat was raining down as I wasraining down.
Threes, I was mostly adefensive specialist.
(08:09):
I couldn't shoot that well andI could only go left.
But there I am, yeah.
So for me, when I gained theapproval of others, I felt loved
and like I belonged, and I wasalways.
I think now, looking back, youcan clearly see it.
You don't have to be apsychologist to know, but I was
constantly looking for theapproval, the love of the father
that I missed out when I was ayoung boy, and so I would try to
(08:30):
find it in these pseudo ways,in these sort of substitute ways
, to get it.
And also, it isn't lost on methat here I am an adult who has
a job where I get up in front ofall of you every week and give
this sermon, maybe sort ofhoping that you'll approve of my
sermon in some ways large orsmall, and I try to be funny
enough or clever enough but alsobe subtle.
(08:50):
So it looks like I'm notworking too hard to kind of do
this.
So years ago I knew this aboutmyself and I'm like I got to
figure out a way to like becauseit was like racking my brain of
like whether or not you allwould like what I do and like
this is terrible because I can'tjust leave out of here every
time like so worried andstressed out about whether I
earned your approval or not.
So I came up with a ritual inmy life.
I'm like you know what I can'tdo this every week, where I'm
(09:11):
like if you like my sermon, oh,it's so great, I'm a righteous
man, if you don't like it, manlyand tribal, primal.
And so you might notice when Ileave.
(09:32):
After I'm done with my sermonsevery week, I walk back into the
sacristy.
You might think where is hegoing?
Is he back there blowing hisnose?
Yes, that and I do the blowingof his nose, sometimes get a sip
of water, but also for a longtime.
I and I do the boy nowsometimes get a sip of water,
but also for a long time.
I would go back to my officewhen they were over here and I
would get this drum and I wouldgo to my window in my office
while you all are in heresinging or doing whatever you're
(09:52):
doing, and I'd go to the windowand I would just offer my
sermon up to God and whateverthe results would be, they would
be whatever they were.
I had to let it go and I wouldjust go to, and then I would put
it down and I would come back.
And I did it because I just hadto let go of this idea of like
(10:14):
you know, whether or not thesermon was good, based on what
you thought of me, because allof us are longing for this deep,
you know, in this deep way, forthe approval, the acceptance
and the embrace of the other.
And again, for a variety ofreasons Mine, of course, was
certainly due to this deepfather wound Now, to get my
approval or to get approval.
(10:36):
I began as a young man and Ididn't know it then, but I began
to behave in certain ways orsay certain things, to try to be
a little bit extra funny orextra good at sports or extra
smart or intelligent, or todress a certain way or to hang
out with certain people, becausein doing so I thought, oh well,
then I'll earn that acceptanceand that love and that security
that I've longed for so deeplyin my whole life.
Now it wasn't like it wasmalicious.
(10:56):
I didn't mean any harm by it.
I didn't even know I was doingit.
It was sort of just a verynatural part of who I was in my
life, but it was.
I began to build and constructthis part of me that I would
present, to blend in, in orderto kind of survive the
tumultuous years that weremiddle school and all the things
(11:17):
that go along with that.
I began to construct this partof myself to sort of like earn
the approval and the favor andthe love of other people and to
be noticed and to feel loved.
Now, mine, this sort of thisthing, I built and would show
the world this sort of facade ormask, whatever it was.
It was rooted in the longing ofthe love of a father.
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Maybe yours was something else.
Maybe you didn't have the loveof a mother.
Maybe you had a deep, anotherdeep wound that you experienced
when you were younger.
Maybe, when you were younger,you felt unsafe.
Maybe you felt unseen as a kid.
Maybe it was you were unlovedor you didn't feel loved,
whether you were or not.
Maybe you just didn't feel likeyou were.
Maybe for you, you were justvulnerable as a kid, as a child,
and you felt lost.
Maybe you felt ashamed.
In reality, many of us have thisthing we construct, that we
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build in order to kind of likeprotect these wounds that we've
had, or many of us had a finechildhood, a decent childhood,
and instead of building thissort of this thing that we call
the false self out of a wound,you sort of build it just to
survive Because, let's face it,middle school is hard.
I won't ask you to go backthere in your mind, but maybe
for many of you you had to be acertain way in order to not get
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picked on or get bullied, orjust to survive.
And I mean, adolescence is adifficult time anyway, and here
you are with a bunch of otherpeople, so maybe for you, this
was how you built your falseself.
By the way they call us thefalse self Theologians,
psychologists, thinkers, writers.
They've used us across fieldsand across industries.
They call it the false self.
And the false self really isthis it's this thing that you
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and I construct or build topresent to the world in order to
survive or to be loved.
So it's like a mask we wear.
Maybe it's a clothes that youwear not literal, but maybe
literal, I don't know.
This thing you project to theworld to show the world what you
think is worthy of being lovedor accepted, or to survive.
Maybe you'd be a tough guy inorder to survive in the world.
That's what it is to build thefalse self.
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Here's a definition of it.
The false self is who I think Ineed to be to survive and to be
loved.
It's this persona, this thing Iwear, that I try to be in order
to survive and be loved.
I think I have to do that inorder to receive that.
By the way, it's always, always, always based on a fear.
It's fear and scarcity and thelack of abundance that sort of
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causes me to build this falseimage of myself, because I think
no one will love me or believeme or let me belong, unless
that's sort of the false selftalking there, and so it's
always rooted in fear.
It's never rooted in love orbelonging.
It's always the opposite.
This is why the Bible says thatlove real love casts out fear,
because these things aremutually exclusive.
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So yeah, when you're afraid too, by the way, whenever you
experience fear, you do crazythings on a micro level, but
also the macro level, like lookwhat we're experiencing just in
this past week.
A lot of this, when you boil itdown, is rooted in fear or the
false self.
Maybe you've been at a party andyou were like telling a story
about yourself and you sort oflike make the parts that were
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kind of good, you make them alittle bit better.
You don't really tell the whole.
Or maybe you leave out certainparts because you just want to
tell those things, because Idon't know what they would think
of those things.
You know what I'm saying.
Or maybe you're at a cocktailparty, or you're at your old
reunion with some old friendsand you can't wait to drop your
new job title or what you'redoing with yourself now.
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Maybe you can drop in yoursalary too.
That might help things out alittle bit, depending on what
your salary is.
Maybe if you're like a you knowa faith, a person of faith, you
want to just let people knowthat you're a person of faith
and kind of how spiritual andhow holy you are, because that
makes you more lovable in someways.
And so you carry around yourBible or you put it next to your
I don't know your dishwasher athome so that your guests can
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come over and see it.
Maybe you post Bible versesonline, I don't know.
Maybe just to sort of showothers how you know how
spiritual you are, which means,of course, you're maybe one step
above the rest of the fray.
Maybe that's not yours.
Maybe your thing is that youwant to just like, sort of and
maybe you don't mean to but youhave this underlying sort of
subterranean I don't knowtendency to compare yourself.
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You're like, oh, they got that,oh, they got that, oh, I'm
better than that.
And you sort of have like thislow grade, like sort of drive to
compete, to sort of prove thatyou're better than they are,
because that makes you morelovable or more acceptable in
some sort of way.
And's your deal, by the way.
Maybe it's that you're easilyoffended.
We live in a culture.
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It's just so easily offendedand part of our identity is
rooted in being esteemed that Iwant to be esteemed and
respected and liked.
And so whenever you sayanything that like sort of like
puts a ding in my armor, then itlike just destroys me because,
like it's messing with myidentity.
And so I get over the top angryor enraged because you're
attacking my identity, eventhough it was not that big of a
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deal.
And so I pick up these tinyoffenses and I make a mountain
out of a molehill because you'reattacking my false self and I
can't let you do that becauseyou'll unmask the real me that's
just based and rooted in fear.
This is, by the way, why wehave a hard time admitting we're
wrong.
Maybe you're one of thosepersons where you just sort of
like you don't want to fullyadmit that you were wrong in any
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moment.
You kind of like dance aroundit, whether it's in a
relationship or in your job orin school, and then you were
wrong.
You know you were wrong, butyou can't even admit it to
yourself.
Maybe you can't admit it to theperson you're with, and so you
never say you're sorry, younever admit that was my bad,
because it would destroy thisimage of yourself that you
projected to the world.
Your ego and this false selfwould be destroyed.
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Well, here's the answer to thefalse self.
The answer to the false self isnot to ignore it or to shun it
or to push it away.
The answer is, if it's rootedin fear, it's to bring that
false self home.
Bring it closer, to embrace itand to bring it home.
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Sometimes that false self willshow up and you have to remind
it.
Hey, I appreciate you.
I know that you helped mesurvive as a young man and I
know that you're rooted in thiswound that you suffered.
But look, I don't need you anylonger.
I love you.
You can come on home and relaxand rest.
That's the invitation of theFather to these two sons in Luke
, chapter 15.
I love this story.
It's about two sons.
You probably have heard of itbefore, but it's one of my
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favorite stories and it's aboutthese two sons and the Father.
And the father, just so youknow, is the God character in
this story.
So everything the fatherembodies is the God character
and is what God is like.
And these two knuckleheads.
This is us.
Here's the story.
In case you don't know, a manhas two sons.
The younger one demands hisshare of the father's
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inheritance early, which, by theway, is akin to him saying I
wish you were dead.
He wanted his father to be dead.
He his inheritance early, which, by the way, is akin to him
saying I wish you were dead.
He wanted his father to be dead.
He wanted that money, the moneythat belonged to the whole
tribe, the whole village.
And so he really it's a middlefinger to the father and it's a
middle finger to the wholevillage.
He doesn't really care and thefather unexpectedly gives it to
him.
That was really not heard of inthe ancient world.
You would never have done that.
But this father does it.
He takes the money.
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The son leaves home, spends itall and returns home later in
shame, hoping to be hired as aworker in his dad's business.
His father again unexpectedlywelcomes him home and embraces
him and throws him a homecomingparty, fattened calf and all.
Now the older brother refusesto join this party, the brother
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who had been home the whole time.
He says it's unfair.
He tells his father becausehe's never even been given a
goat so that he and his friendscould have a party.
The father then says to him myfavorite line buddy, you're
always with me, everything Ihave is yours.
But we had to celebrate and beglad because this brother of
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yours was dead and he's theyounger son.
He takes the inheritance.
He says to the father I don'treally care about my
relationship with you, I wantwhat's mine, I want the money.
I value possessions and money.
I want your stuff, I don'treally care about you.
He rejects his identity as ason.
He doesn't really care.
He wants the money to take itand go out into foreign places
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and foreign lands and provehimself, like many young men or
young women want to do.
Because I think deep down insideof him there's a sense in him
he's sort of grasping to becomesome self-made person of value.
He's chasing value.
If only I can go out there andcreate my own empire, do my own
thing with this money, then I'llbe worthwhile and I'll be sort
of a force to be reckoned within the world.
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And if I can sort of show theworld my self-worth and my power
and my empire that I build,then I'll prove myself and I'll
have sort of won the day.
See, he believes that this lie,that many of us believe that I
am what I own, or I am what Iown or I am what I achieve, or I
am what I do, I am what Icontrol.
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I'll say it again this youngman believes what some of us
believe, which is, I am what Iown or I am what I can achieve,
what I do in life and what Icontrol.
Yeah, that's what I am.
He sort of thinks I must createvalue in and of myself.
Without that I have nothing tooffer the world.
Me alone, without all thesethings, is worth nothing.
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Many of you know, but I go aboutonce a year for the last couple
of years it's been maybe a fewyears, but I go on these
wilderness experiences everysummer and it's a time for me to
get away from here and I go anddo like five days of like out
in the wilderness.
We camp and like the middle ofthree days are totally spent in
silence and solitude.
But you're with a group ofpeople like usually 20 or 30
people, and I've been inColorado, michigan, and this
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summer I'm going up to Victoria,british Columbia, and the first
time I went there I was readyto like sit down and do like a
mixer on the first meeting andwe all sat in a circle under
these trees.
We're going to do a mixer, getto know each other.
And we didn't do that at all.
We never went around the circleand said, oh, I'm Ryan, I'm a
pastor in Elk River, and youknow.
And then Tommy's like I'm Tom,I own an ice cream parlor.
And well I was like, oh, we'reto just be here and not have all
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these attachments to ourselves.
Last year it was funny I show upin Colorado and this one guy
goes are you Ryan?
Oh yeah, he goes.
Oh, I Googled you, I figuredout you're a pastor in Elk River
.
I was like, oh man.
And I was like immediatelybummed Like, oh, this guy, you
know, because it's so nice toshow up somewhere without all
the things that you think bringyou value or worth, and just to
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be yourself.
I've had to learn.
It's very hard.
I've had to learn how to justshow up in a group and just be
present and just be yourself andnot have to be Pastor Ryan or
say some wise, sagacious thingto save the day.
It's kind of nice to just showup like, hey, I'm just going to
be here as myself.
And we're not used to that,because we're so used to like,
showing up and like, okay, whatdo I have to offer here?
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What am I going to offer as avalue?
What will they accept andembrace of me so I can feel
loved and feel like I'm at homeagain?
And these trips you couldn'treally do it.
So this younger son tries this,he creates a brand new self,
really out there in thewilderness and out in these
foreign lands.
And he does it with this ideaof freedom and independence and
pleasure.
And he goes out and spends allthis money trying to build this
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empire and chasing what I wouldsay is like wholeness or
acceptance.
He's chasing something and he'strying to fill this hole, but
all the while he's restless.
He's never.
He never seems settled.
He's spending all kinds ofmoney, he's searching for
something.
He's never at home.
He's never at home.
And finally he wakes up to this.
And he wakes up.
It says the text is.
He comes to his senses.
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So he wakes up and he realizesgolly, this is not who I am Like
.
What am I doing out here?
This isn't me.
And he's humiliated becausehe's with pigs.
He's got no money, he's leftwith emptiness.
He's spent it all on wildliving.
Nothing's left.
He's an embarrassment, a shameto the whole family.
And he wakes up.
He's like, okay, this isn't whoI am, I need to go home.
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So he comes to his senses totry to go home and the false
self you can see it begins tocrumble around him Like this
isn't who I am, there'ssomething else about me that's
not this stuff.
And I've chased it all and noneof it meant anything.
So he goes home.
Now here's the thing the falseself dies hard.
On the way home he still picksup this false self Like hey,
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look, I'm no longer worthy to becalled a son.
So he rehearses this speech tokind of win himself back into
the good graces of the Father,because in the world, love is
never unconditional.
It's not.
Love is always conditional inthe world that we live in.
Yeah, I will love you if.
So we're chasing this thing.
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That's always conditional.
I will only love you if.
And he thinks oh, I can't goback home and have free love
from the Father because I was anidiot.
So I deserve somethingdifferent than grace and love
and mercy.
I deserve punishment.
I deserve him to demand anapology.
I deserve something horrible.
Yeah, that's what we've beentaught.
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The world's love is alwaysconditional.
The great philosopher love isalways conditional.
The great philosopher, madonna,once said this in Vanity Fair in
1991, my drive in life comesfrom a fear of being mediocre.
Come on now, that might be someof you in here.
That's always pushing me.
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I push past one spell of it anddiscover myself as a special
human being.
All right, good for her, but ohshoot.
But then I feel I'm stillmediocre and uninteresting.
It's like a moment of likeabsolute confession of Madonna.
Unless I do something else, Ihave to keep earning this thing
because it never lasts, thisconditional love and acceptance
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that I've got to keep producing,because even though I've become
somebody, I still have to provethat I am somebody.
Tom Brady, the second greatestquarterback of all time.
I couldn't find a John Elbequote, otherwise we would have
had a word from the greatestquarterback of all time.
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Tom says this he's betterlooking, fair enough.
But Tom says why do I havethree Super Bowl rings and still
think there's something greaterout there for me?
What's he chasing?
He kind of recognizes it.
I think, god, it's got to bemore than this.
Yeah, the world's love is alwaysconditional.
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I will love you if, by the way,the son what he wants to have
going back.
He already had it.
He was already at home, alreadyloved by the father.
He's chasing something healready had.
The great david benner saysthat the false self is trying to
steal something from god thatyou could never steal.
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I'll say that again.
David Benner says that the falseself is this idea of trying to
steal something from God thatyou already had, that you didn't
have to steal.
Yeah, the son was already athome, already with the father.
So the father sees him, runs tohim, doesn't demand an apology,
doesn't demand anything,actually does.
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He demands a robe to be putalong the son's back and
shoulders and he demands a ringto be put on his finger, demand
sandals for his feet.
But in the ancient world theseare symbols of being a son.
It's like the father, like ifthis was today's culture.
It'd be like if that son camehome and the father said hey,
son, tonight you can use thetrigger grill, go ahead, it's
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yours, I won't even help you,you can use it on your own.
Or you know, son, this weekendyou can finally use my riding
lawnmower the good one, the goodone, the one that works.
You can use it.
Or this, maybe this one likeson, you can have full control
of the thermostat this weekend.
Oh yeah, all right.
Some of you dads are like, oh mygosh, he had a cage over the
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thermostat with lock coded.
Yeah, these are symbols ofbeing a son, like you're a son.
Again, he reminds him what healready had and then he's his
son.
Yeah, I love it.
Now the elder brother who'sthere?
He sees this.
Now the elder brother'sdifferent.
He stayed home the whole time.
He was obedient, he followedthe rules, did all the things
right, but he's still far fromhome.
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And he stayed home, but he'sstill far from home.
See, his false self is rootedin his obedience and doing the
right things, duty and followingthe rules, but ultimately leads
also to resentment andcomparison and bitterness.
And he tells the father hey,all these years I've slaved for
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you.
What he thinks?
He's a slave.
You can see his own identity.
He thinks he's a slave in hisown father's house.
We just saw that father isnothing like a slave driver.
He embraced the younger son andthis older brother thinks of
himself as a slave, not a son.
All my life I've slaved for youand thinks of himself as a
slave, not a son.
All my life I've slaved for youand you never threw me a party
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with even a goat.
By the way, goats in theancient world and actually today
they're not very fatty, they'rekind of thin a small meal.
You never gave me a goat.
He thinks his father's cheap.
You never gave me what I was todo.
I was obedient.
And now you're throwing a partyfor the younger brother, who's
an idiot.
Sometimes the older brothersthink of the younger brother as
an idiot.
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Sometimes you don't even throwme a party with a goat.
Man.
Yeah, I want what's mine.
I deserve this.
I behave in a certain way.
You need to give me what's my,just dues, and I'm angry because
you're holding out on me.
You're shafting me.
What's the deal?
See his self.
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His sort of false self is thathe thinks he's sort of always
comparing himself and he thinkshe's better than other people,
so he deserves certain thingsbecause of it.
That's his false self.
Well, I'm better than them, soI deserve mine.
Meanwhile, the whole timethere's a party going on in the
background.
Can you see it that he'sinvited to, but he won't go in,
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because joy and resentment can'tcoexist.
Joy and resentment, they cannotcoexist, which is why you have
folks who are in the middle ofsome crazy cool party and they
feel resentful and they can'tengage.
They can't receive it, thisfree gift, because joy and
resentment can't coexist.
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Yeah, yeah, he thinks it's notfair.
This older brother.
This isn't fair.
And the false self?
It can obey all the rules.
This is how deceitful the falseself is.
It can obey all the rules butstill lack intimacy with the
father.
Both of these sons are lost.
They're both far from home, onebecause of his rebellion, one
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because of his ownself-righteousness.
They're both sort of far fromhome.
They both have a false self.
They need healing andforgiveness.
They need to come home.
And the father tells the son Ilove this line, like, you're
always with me, everything Ihave is yours.
We could have tons of parties,it's all yours anyway.
The false self tries to stealfrom God that which there's no
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need to steal because theyalready had it.
Yeah, this confronts the falseself and it reminds him that
he's not a slave.
You're not a slave, you're ason.
You're my son, I love you,everything I have is yours.
But the tragedy is the olderbrother couldn't receive it.
He couldn't accept it.
And here's why Because we're soused to being taught, or we're
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so used to this idea thatwhatever I get as a gift, I must
have earned it.
I can't get something for free.
Nothing's for free in thisworld.
Love and grace and parties,they're all things to be earned.
So I need to behave in acertain way and then I'll get it
.
But grace and mercy is anabsolute free, unconditional
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gift.
I can't get my head around that.
I have no idea what free graceor free mercy or free love, what
it looks like, because I'm soused to things being conditional
I've never had that before.
We have a hard time wrappingour heads around it because I'm
so used to thinking I must begood to be loved.
What does free grace look likereally?
What does free love,unconditional love for no reason
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what does that look like?
Here's the definition of thefalse self again, and the true
self.
The false self is who I think Ineed to be to survive and to be
loved.
The true self is who I alreadyam in God's love, waiting to be
received.
See, as you get older, thatfalse self, you don't need it
any longer.
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You've got to let God heal itand you've got to do that by
sometimes when it raises itshead, you say, hey, come here.
Come here, buddy.
You don't have to do thatanymore, because the impulse is
still there.
You don't have to do that itBecause the impulse is still
there.
You don't have to do that.
It's okay, we're going to beall right.
You're already loved.
You don't have to earn anything, you're fine.
So you don't reject the false,you just bring it in closer.
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You love on that little guy.
My little seven-year-old selfwants to show up on occasion and
wreak havoc Because he's seven.
He doesn't have a license.
You're okay, buddy.
He's always afraid.
It's okay, you'll be fine, it'sokay.
So you've got to heal that partof yourself that wants to earn
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things.
Now, look, I get it.
We often will wander off or wehave a hard time receiving these
free gifts from God and all.
That's very real and this thingwe call sin.
I think that most of our sin isrooted in this idea of the
false self that's already loved.
Paul writes it this way whilewe were yet sinners, christ died
for us.
Yeah, but you and I oftentimesjust need to be reminded of the
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depth and the breadth and thelength of God's love.
I'm gonna close with a story.
My son, logan, was born 21years ago.
He's here today and remember mychildhood Like I grew up
without a father.
So I prayed for a lot of yearsthat I'd be a good father and
that my firstborn would be a son.
And once Katie told me she waspregnant, I'm like, well, it is,
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whatever it is, it's either aboy or a girl now.
So I stopped praying.
But earlier I was pregnant.
I'd have a firstborn son as away to kind of heal sort of the
wounds in my own life.
That'd be.
I thought it'd be like a, youknow, a chance to be the father
I couldn't be.
That I couldn't have in my ownlife.
So we did have a son, but wedidn't know it.
It was a surprise because wedidn't find out ahead of time.
And so the I was there.
I was there, fully there.
It was very hard on me this 18hours, but I was okay.
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And around the middle of itsometime they put a heart
monitor on her belly and weremonitoring his heart and they
found that his heart rate was indistress.
We think what happened was heinhaled this merconium,
merconium.
He had a bowel movement insidethe uterus and then he inhaled
it into his lungs, which istoxic and it can kill you.
In fact it's killed many, many,many babies.
Today's technology makes itslim when that happens, but
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they're like it's very dangerous.
And so when he was born, doctorsflooded the room and I'm not,
something's happening here.
And they come in and theydeliver.
What we're going to do is we'regoing to deliver him like kind
of halfway and suck themerconium out of his lungs and
then we'll get him to the NICUright away, because this could
be tragic.
We won't know for a few dayswhat's going to happen.
So the head comes out, theysuck out the merconium I'm
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watching, there's doctorseverywhere and they deliver him
fully.
So I was like I have toannounce it.
So I yelled it's a boy.
Because I was so excited andall the memories of my own
childhood were coming back inways big and small.
And then they kind of get himover to this machine.
I cut the cord, they startdoing all the stuff to him to
make sure he's stable, and thenthey wrap him up and they throw
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him onto Katie's chest for likemaybe 20 seconds and they gave
him to me for like about 20 moreseconds and they rushed him out
of there to the NICU and Ididn't know what to do because
my wife, katie, also had like abit of a tumultuous birth and it
was like she had some problemskind of that they were
addressing and Logan goes thisway.
We hadn't named him yet either.
So I was like I don't knowwhere to go.
And Katie says go be with him,it's okay, fine.
(35:16):
So I and my mom came with me,thankfully, and we run down the
hallway to the NICU and they gethim in there and there's
doctors everywhere and it's veryquiet in the NICU and the
lights are kind of low and it'svery ominous sometimes in there
and they're hooking him up toall these machines and I'm
standing back there watching andas soon as they all had rushed
into there, they all left and hewas hooked up.
He's stable for now, but we'llsee how he progresses,
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progresses the next few days andthen everyone left.
It was me and my mom, it wasquiet and I didn't know what to
do.
I'd never been a dad before.
So she goes, hey, go talk tohim.
I was like all right, and in myhead I'm like what do I say?
And in one of the moments Iinstinctually just got it right,
I think, by the grace of God, Iwalk over to him and I put my
hand on his chest.
Over to him, and I put my handon his chest, I said hey, buddy,
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I love you, I love you.
Your dad's here, we're going tobe okay.
I love you, I'm so proud of you.
By the way, I didn't even methim really yet, I didn't even
said you know like, I love youso much, I'm proud of you, I
love you, we're going to be okay.
And I swear to you.
In that moment I heard God sayto me Ryan, this is how I felt
about you.
I was like, oh, man, and likeinstantly, all this stuff came
(36:30):
washing over me.
Like this is how God felt aboutme and I would tell you today,
if God could and I pray that hewill he would lean over you
right now and put his hand onyour chest and say, hey, your
dad is here, it's okay, I loveyou.
I love you so much, I love you.
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I love you as you are, not asyou should be.
I love you for no reasonUnconditionally.
I've already embraced you.
You are already my son.
You are already my daughter.
Central Lutheran Church.
May you know the love of theFather this morning.
May it wash over you in thedeepest sense of the word, and
(37:17):
may it change your life.
And may you receive it.
This free gift that's likeradical in a world that doesn't
ever offer anything for free.
May you receive it.
May it change you from theinside out.
May you know that you arealready at home.
You've already been embraced bythe Father.
The Father would tell you youare always mine, you've always
been mine, everything I have isyours.
(37:37):
And may you know in the deepestparts of your souls that you
are God's beloved sons and God's
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