Hey everybody, it's Andy, welcome back to the North Point Community Church podcast.

Hey, at the end of this episode, please take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube channel

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But most importantly, I hope the following presentation inspires you to take your next step

in your faith journey. Enjoy.

So if you grew up in any kind of religious environment,

regardless of what kind of religious environment it was, you probably heard something that

went something like this. God loves you just the way you are. And regardless of where you are

on the religious spectrum, if there is a God, we all certainly hope this is the case, right?

The God loves you just the way you are. And Christians have always believed this and the reason

Christians have always believed this is because in the New Testament Jesus modeled this and essentially

said this and of course, the most famous perhaps verse in the Bible is John 316, which says,

for God so loved the world and the implication is that for God so loved the world just the way

the world was and that God loved the people in the world, the way the people in the world were

before they made any change or knew anything about God. So this is true and again, Christians

have always believed that. But this is only half the equation because God who invites us to refer

to him as Heavenly Father or the perfect parent like any good parent, God does love you as his

child just the way you are. But God loves you too much to leave you the way that you are.

And as we're going to discover today, if necessary, God, like a good parent, is willing to hurt

your feelings to get you to move on from the way you are so that you can become everything you

...