Hi, this is Joel and Victoria. Thanks for downloading our podcast. We enjoy spending this time with you

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We appreciate your support. It helps keep the ministry going enjoy our son Jonathan today

Hey, it's so great to be here. Thank you for coming out or watching online and spending your weekend with us. I am so humbled and excited to get to share with you

Let me start off by wishing all the dads a happy father's day. Thank you for everything that you do. We love and appreciate you and we are so glad to celebrate you this weekend. I've been blessed with an amazing father. So this year I'm giving him the best gift I could think of by getting up here and giving him the week off.

I've spent the last few days watching him enjoy a mini vacation while I do his job. I'm not complaining but he always made it look easy. It turns out this is a lot more work than I expected.

So I thought what better way to prepare for my first time speaking on a weekend than to go back and listen to his first message. He's come a long way but how did he get started?

My dad called me Monday night and he said, Joel, are you sitting down? I thought, I know this is going to be bad news. I thought maybe it's about his health or something. But I want to ask you something. Don't pass out when I ask you. I thought, okay, what is it?

Well, you preach for me Sunday morning and I thought boy, that was bad news. I thought about the advantages of being my first time on. If I'm really bad and you don't enjoy it, when you walk out of here you can say, you know, that boy has nowhere to go but up.

After seeing that, I realized I don't have a country accent and I don't have a mullet. So in some ways I think I'm already off to a better start.

I guess there's nowhere to go but up.

Today I want to talk about the love of the Father. There are many different ways we can know God. We can know Him as an all-powerful creator who made the universe and sits on a throne surrounded by angels.

We can know Him as this omnipotent being who parts seas and brings the dead to life. We can know Him as a man with a big white beard who sits on a cloud and sounds like Morgan Freeman.

Different people have different ideas of who God is. Some people see Him as this distant cosmic being that couldn't possibly be concerned with their lives.

Some see Him as a holy, unapproachable figure to be feared and reverenced. Others think He's just waiting for them to make a mistake. They know God as someone with long list of everything they've done wrong.

But with Jesus came a new way to know God. Through Him we didn't just receive a Savior. We were given a Father.

When the disciples asked Jesus how they should pray, the very first words He used were our Father in heaven. Of all the ways He could have told us to relate to God.

Jesus said He's our Father first. That's the best understanding we could have of God. One of a loving Father, someone that's proud of us, someone that cares, someone that cheers us on and lifts us when we fall.

When we know this, we begin to realize God's not distant. He's not unapproachable. He's not mad at us. He is madly in love with us.

Jesus, the Son of God, could have only referred to Him as His Father. But when He spoke to people, Jesus would say, Your Father, it was important to Him that we see God this way.

Each time He said this, Jesus was reminding us of the way God feels about us. That He's not just the Creator of the universe, but He's your Heavenly Father.

He's your biggest fan. He loves to spend time with you. He gets excited to talk to you. He always has your best interest at heart.

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