Andrew Zimmerman preaches on the Father's affection, sonship, and the parable of the lost sheep at Rivers Apostolic Centre
A Sunday morning service at Rivers Apostolic Centre featuring communion, worship, and a sermon by guest speaker Andrew Zimmerman.
Summary
A Sunday morning service at Rivers Apostolic Centre opens with communion and a meditation on John 6, led by host pastor Royree, who argues that the core of Christ's identity is inherently offensive and that genuine discipleship means following Jesus even through that offence. Guest speaker Andrew Zimmerman then preaches from Luke 15 and Jeremiah 18, developing a central thesis that the Father's posture toward lost and broken people is one of exuberant affection — not shame or correction — and that this affection, when received, transforms attention and intention. He connects the parable of the lost sheep, the potter and clay imagery, and a personal story about his son Levi to argue that sons and daughters are defined not by their brokenness but by whose hands they are in.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening Worship and Communion Reflection
Host (Royree): Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. Holy is the Lord. Lord, we praise you with everything that is within us today. For you were slain and with your blood you have redeemed men. Amen. And we say thank you so much.
Then Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up. So the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that comes down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and they died. But he who feeds on this bread will live forever."
He went on to say, aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before? The Spirit gives life. The flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you — they are spirit and they are life."
From this time, many of the disciples turned back and no longer followed him. "You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe and we know and we are sure that you are the Holy One from God."
The Offence of Christ
Host (Royree): Jesus has just finished feeding the thousands. He's walked on the water and he begins to teach about himself. By now, because he fed the thousands, there are so many people following him. But when he speaks about the core, the essence of who he is, we'd actually rather have the miracles. Because we can see them. They are tangible. What is this stuff you talk about?
Jesus was the world's worst church growth specialist. He has the crowds and then he offends them all and away they go — as crowds do. It's hard work holding on to a big church because you've got to conform to everybody all the time or they'll leave. But here Jesus is saying something of the essence of who he is and the people are offended. Jesus doesn't want followers to just follow when everything's cool. He offended people from time to time and he actually said, do you suppose that you will live your life without the opportunity to be offended? Because much of the reality of the person of Christ is offensive to us. So we don't want to go there.
The offence of the cross to us was something historical. And we preach the cross, but we don't really know the cross. You know where it says on the cross, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews"? And the religious leaders come and say, oh, don't put that up there — don't just say that he said he was. Pilate says, what I've written, I've written. I just read recently, putting the numbers together — because in the Hebrew, all the words have numbers attached and can be interpreted back to a word — what was actually on the cross in Hebrew, if you condense it to the one word, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews," is actually one word. Yahweh. Yahweh. That we can't even pronounce. We can only breathe it.
So Jesus is sharing something of himself. I believe Jesus wants us to come to a superior place in our walk with him where we don't stay on the plateau of what we know, but we climb to a place that may be offensive to us. And some of us may even be offended on this particular plateau where we land now.
Jesus said to the woman who came — the Syrophoenician woman — she came to ask help from Jesus. She wanted her daughter healed. And Jesus says, "It's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs." There is a deeper understanding that we won't go into today, because I just felt there were people who are feeling offended at things to do with God. And I want you to know that the Christian walk is an offence. It's an offence. If you preach the blood in certain places, you are offending them. Well, I just want you to know it's the centre of all things. It's the centre of eternity and it's the centre of our earthly history. That's why it's divided into BC and AD. It was the cross.
So Jesus lost all his people that day. But Peter had the right answer. Lord, to whom can we go? Is there anybody else? Is there anybody else? No. There's nobody else. We're stuck with you, Lord. We are stuck with you.
Communion and the Spirit
Host (Royree): We come and we have bread and wine. We have it sometimes with great joy and rejoicing, and that's right. We have it sometimes with healing, and that's right. But Jesus said something really interesting that I've been looking into, and I've asked the leaders to look into it. I just want to drop a little something for you to think about.
We call these emblems, and I don't want to get into wrong doctrine here. But Jesus said in that passage, it's by the Spirit that we take and drink his blood and we eat his flesh. And if we do it without the empowering of the Spirit by faith, he says, you've got no life. There's no life in you. Are you offended at that? Or are you going to follow him anyway until you find the depths of some of the stuff that he speaks to us of?
I don't know about you, but I'm with Pete. To whom could we go? Is there anybody else out there? There's no one else. There's no one else.
Father, thank you that sometimes we just get offended. I get offended. We all get offended, and we find out that at the root of it was a principle that we had not had our hearts converted over. And Lord, as we come today, we come to the only one who can save. We come, we eat of your flesh and we drink of your blood. How offensive was that to those people who were told not to have anything with blood in them? Now they're going to have the blood of Jesus. Thank you, Lord. We thank you. And I pray that we shall have in this place people who have decided to follow Jesus regardless of our lack of understanding or our offences. In Jesus' name.
Tithes, Offerings, and the Well of Living Water
Host (Royree): If you want to turn in your Word today to John chapter 4 — Jesus is leaving Judea and returning to Galilee. Chapter 4, verse 4. It says, "It was necessary for him to go through Samaria," and in so doing, he arrived at a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the tract of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, tired as he was from his journey, sat down to rest by the well. It was then about the sixth hour of the day. Presently, when a woman of Samaria came along to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink? For the Jews have nothing to do with the Samaritans." Jesus answered her, "If you had only known and had recognized God's gift and who this is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him instead, and he would have given you living water." She said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. How then can you provide living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave this well and who used to drink from it himself, and his sons and his cattle also?" Jesus answered her, "All who drink of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever takes a drink of the water that I will give him shall never, no, never thirst again. But the water that I give him shall become a spring of water welling up within him for eternal life."
I was thinking about this today as I thought about us bringing in our worship, our tithes and our offerings and our missions giving. Isn't this interesting — this lady is there, she's doing something physical, she's going, like she does probably each day, to draw water from the well of her ancestors. And Jesus says to her, "Give me a drink." It's fascinating because we know that he probably didn't need a drink, although he was thirsty and had been walking. I thought it's similar to us bringing our funds and finances. Jesus himself doesn't need our coin. We know that. He is the all-sufficient one. He doesn't need any of our finances. However, he asked the lady in the physical, "Give me something." And in doing that, he gives her the invitation and the opportunity to open up a supernatural well in her life.
And that's what happens as we come to give of our increase and of our substance. When we do that, we open up a supernatural well in our finances. We might come just like the woman did — with very small amounts — and yet Jesus said of her that she had given more than any other person had given. So she came and brought just a small amount, and yet she was commended by the Lord because he knew the principle was that she was opening up the supernatural well of God over her finances.
So this morning, let's stand together as we consider — the Word of God says we need to consider what we are bringing forward. If you're visiting with us, we do come forward to give our tithes, our offerings, and there's a missions basket here as well. Please come forward and put your tithes and offerings into the buckets and receptacles, and know that as you do that, you are inviting the supernatural of God into your finances, into your businesses, into your families, to be able to work and give far and abundantly more, and receive far and abundantly more than we could ask or think or imagine. The Word of God says when we are generous, he is generous with us.
So we thank you, Jesus, for the way that you supply everything. We were singing earlier that you are our shepherd. We lack no good thing. And we declare no lack in this community. We thank you for abundance in this community, for every family, for every business, for every household. And we declare the blessing of generational blessings of inheritance on this household, that the children's children will be blessed from this household. We give you thanks for that, Lord, in Jesus' name. Hallelujah.
I'd rather have what God's got in his hand than what I've got in my hand. I was hearing a beautiful testimony this morning of somebody who's sowed into a person's life for many years and how God just turned that whole situation around — the person who they were sowing into turned around and has abundantly blessed them. It's amazing how the kingdom works. It works very differently to our economy. So let's learn about kingdom economy and let's operate in kingdom economy.
So this morning we have the Word and it's super exciting. Let's stand and welcome Andrew Zimmerman and the Word of God this morning.
The Parable of the Lost Lamb — Luke 15
Andrew Zimmerman: I think we could probably just go home already after an amazing worship and communion time. However, I feel that there's more. Turn to the person next to you and just say, there's always more with the Lord.
I've changed my message because I just felt a shift from the Lord and it really moved me deeply. So I'm just going to be obedient. Please just be patient with me while I reorganize my notes. But I know that you're going to be blessed. Just where you are, close your eyes. Holy Spirit, come. Holy Spirit, come and reveal what we haven't seen before in Jesus Christ. Holy Spirit, come and show me what I can't earn through striving. And we just thank you right now that all striving, all struggle, all effort of human strength — we just put a pause to that. We even say, just lay down, striving, lay down. And we say, Holy Spirit, we give you permission to move. Amen.
The Bible says that His kingdom is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Just say with me: one-third of the kingdom is joy.
I want to read to you from Luke 15. It's the story of the Good Shepherd. And I loved what you were sharing today, Royree. Jesus knows how to offend. In his heart to offend, he's really revealing truth. He's revealing truth that we're not ready for. And the thing about truth is that God always brings his truth to us in love as a good Father, because he disciplines us. Everyone say, he disciplines me. But not as an angry Father out of control. He disciplines me with truth in order for me to conform into the likeness of his Son. And so there's always an outcome in mind, and that is that I become more like him. And so all the trials and the tests and the challenges — we could see them that, yes, we live in this world, and so the Lord says we will have trials and tribulations. But if we can see his heart in the middle of the trial and the tribulation, we would see that he's working deeply in us. Ephesians 2 says we are his workmanship. You've got the Father's fingerprints all over you.
All right, we're in Luke 15, and we're going to read about the parable of the lost lamb. I'm going to read it in the Passion Translation, so it might sound a little bit different than your Bible, but just have a listen along.
Luke 15, verse 1. "Many dishonest tax collectors and other notorious sinners often gathered around to listen as Jesus taught the people. This raised many concerns with the religious leaders and the experts of the law. Indignant, they grumbled and complained together, saying, 'Look at how this man associates with all these notorious sinners. And he welcomes them all to come to him.'"
Underline this little part of your Bible, because in this season we really need to capture the heart of the Lord. And that is that Jesus welcomes every single person. Even the notorious ones. Jesus gets in trouble for being so welcoming to sinners into his presence. Amazing.
Then he goes on to say — this is his response. Jesus gave them an illustration. Verse 4 and 5. "There once was a shepherd with a hundred lambs, but one of his lambs wandered away and got lost. So the shepherd left the 99 lambs out in the open field and he searched in the wilderness for the one lost lamb. He didn't stop. He didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He didn't stop until he finally found them."
This little lamb hadn't decided to follow Jesus. This little lamb decided to follow the little trinkety, sparkly things. Away. But Jesus — or the Good Shepherd in the story — left the open field and the safety and pursued the little lamb that was lost. He didn't stop until he finally found it.
"With exuberant joy, the shepherd raised up the lost lamb and placed the lamb on his shoulders. Carrying the lamb back with cheerful delight, returning home, he called all his friends and neighbors together and said, 'Let's have a party. Come and celebrate with me the return of my lost lamb. It wandered away, but I found him and I brought him home.'"
Nothing gives Jesus more joy than to find lost lambs.
A Story from New Zealand — The Lost Lamb in Whangārei
Andrew Zimmerman: I remember when I was with my friend Andy in New Zealand last year, and we were out in the gold mine of Otangarei — a suburb out of Whangārei in the north of New Zealand. It's the place where all the gangs of New Zealand recruit their young gang members. It's a broken part of the town and it's predominantly Māori. Andy had been in there with prayer warriors praying. I remember being in there on a particular Wednesday morning and we broke off into twos and we were just prayer walking through the suburb. Our goal was to follow up on a couple who had given their heart to the Lord a couple of weeks before at a street situation. So we were just popping in.
I went with a guy, and we knocked on the door. He knew them by name, and I was the Australian friend coming along. Anyway, they welcomed us in. It was a young couple, a Māori couple, beautiful, only just come to the Lord, and they were working through some real struggles in their life. You could see they were really struggling, but they loved the Lord. As we came in, immediately they ran and got their Bibles, and we sat in the living room. And the guy who I was with turned to me and said, "Your turn to preach" — like, over to you. And I'm like, right, okay. Nothing like drawing on something in the middle of the moment.
I went to this passage because the Holy Spirit highlighted it. And isn't it a great promise? The Lord says, don't worry when you stand up in front of people and you don't know what to say, because the Holy Spirit will be inside of you reminding you what to say at the right time. And straight away I get this — I read this scripture out — and the young lady that was there, who hadn't given her heart to the Lord, was also in the meeting. And the question was, who do you think the lost sheep is? And it was a question to the group. And the young lady had tears running down her eyes and she said, "Hey, that's me. That's me."
And then I said to her, do you think that Jesus — who left the safety of the 99 and wandered out into the wilderness, crawling through thorns, getting ripped up, it's cold, he's gone through all these kinds of obstacles to get to the lost lamb — do you think that he's coming with his jandal to give this lamb a clip over the ears? Because when we read it, it says that he came with great joy and affection. And it even says here that he puts the lamb on his shoulders. Where would the head of the lamb be in association with the face of Jesus? Cheek to cheek. How much affection is that?
Jesus has zero anger. He's not cranky. He is filled with passion to find the lost one. And when he finds the lost one, it says with exuberant joy, with cheerful delight, he carries back that little lamb. To what? To shame that little lamb in front of all of God's people? Hey, 99, we're going to do a public shaming and we're going to highlight all of the sin of this little one, and we're going to make this little one feel so bad because that will fear him into the kingdom? He'll really learn his lesson? No. He says he invites everybody to throw on a party.
A Father's Affection — The Story of Levi
Andrew Zimmerman: Hey, Levi, come here, mate. I pulled Levi out not to ask him to do anything, but just to say I'm really proud of you. I'm super proud of you. And I just wanted to say in front of everybody, I love you. All you have to do is receive that. Do you receive that? Good. Okay, bless you. Off you go.
Levi and I, two weeks ago, started to read a book together. It was a Christmas present, and we want to read it together. And in this book is a story of a father whose youngest child wasn't measuring up. In the story, the youngest child was starting to do really poorly in his grades. He was struggling in his sporting — he's not being picked by any of the teams. He's got effort failure happening all over him. And in the story, it says that the father was coming with all kinds of strategies to help this son be more acceptable to his peers and get his game on — come on, get more competitive, you can do this. And every effort of the father to try and change the son was bombing. This guy is just getting teased on the field. All his peers are just like, you're a loser — pretty intense.
Anyway, it's said that the father in the story is a management consultant teaching national organizations how to be more and more effective. So he's doing this amazing work all around the country, but he is failing as a dad. He cannot move his son one millimeter towards being more effective. In fact, everything he's trying is making it worse.
So the story goes that he has a revelation. And the revelation is that he's expecting his son to perform at a level that he as a dad feels comfortable with, so that his peers would still see that he was a good dad — because at the moment this was reflecting on him as being a bad parent. And so what he realized was that his intent wasn't actually for his son. His intent was that his son would look good so that dad could look good. It's a bit ouchy, right? As a parent, you're like, oh, I've done this. I've felt this.
Levi and I were reading this together at the coffee shop. It was just such a powerful moment when it said that the father realized that his strategy was not working. And him and the mother got together and they had a moment of clarity. And the clarity was they would do nothing except enjoy and love their son. Just enjoy their son for who he is, not for what he does. And it was a profound shift of thinking, because they realized — and embarrassingly so — all the things that they were doing out of the wrong intention. They were unaware of it, but it was pretty obvious because of how the situation was unfolding.
So they changed their approach. They said, we're only going to do things that confirm and affirm our love for the son. We're going to strip away everything else and we're just going to love. They said that what unfolded was at first a little bit awkward and hard, because there had been a process of being dependent on the parents propping up and assistance and help. But they said, as we took a new stance of love, enjoyment, and affirming identity, the son began to change. And the son began to find the rhythm of who they were without the expectation. Within three months, this guy finds his pathway and begins to move into the areas of effectiveness — without the effort of his parents, other than that they loved him, enjoyed him, and spent time with him for who he was.
Anyway, I'm reading this story with Levi. And I have a profound revelation while he's reading this to me. And that is, I'm really enjoying spending time with Levi. As we're having a coffee and reading this book together, he says, "Dad, this is so good." And I'm just sitting there looking at him going, you're so good. You make me so happy. And I just wanted to pull him out today because I really genuinely feel so much love for you, son. And I just want to affirm you for who you are. You are amazing.
Sonship — All Are Sons and Daughters
Andrew Zimmerman: What's the point? There's something deeper here, and I want to unfold it today. And that is that all of us are sons and daughters. All of us. And all of us through our life — whether we're sitting here today as a four-year-old or a five-year-old, from the youngest of us to the oldest of us — we are all on a journey of life. And all of us, as the Bible says, are sons.
In the story of the lost sheep, it wasn't 99 lambs and one goat. Was it? The one that was lost was actually a lamb. The one that was lost was actually a son, was actually a daughter. Or else Jesus wouldn't have pursued that one with the love that he had in his heart for the one.
The Father celebrates his Son without measure. The Father is throwing the biggest party for Jesus. It's so cosmic and so amazing. And here is the heart of the Father and the heart of the Son — the Son saying, I just don't want this to be a party about my sonship. I want this party to be about all of the family's sonship. I want them all in on this party. There's a beautiful scripture that says he purchased many sons to glory. He purchased us. He paid for us to be sons and daughters.
I must clarify for those who are unfamiliar with this idea of sonship — it includes all femininity. Sonship includes women as much as it includes the males, just as much as it makes me the bride of Christ. All the men in the house, let's say together: I am the bride of Christ. Okay, it doesn't mean that we cross-dress. We know it's metaphor. It is imagery. It helps us to understand. And when we use the word sonship, it includes daughters as well.
It's the idea that Jesus presented to the world — that he, knowing who he was and where he had come from, was able to take his clothes off, kneel down, and begin to wash the feet. It's only when we know our identity that we can start to step into ministry. And what does ministry look like? The overflow of the heart of sonship always smells like serving others. It always looks like serving others. This is who Christ is. This is the heart of Jesus. And he says, do this. Serve others forever. Do good deeds before people so that they may see your Father in heaven.
Put your hand on your heart. Every act of kindness that you do is displaying the Father. Isn't that awesome? The little things that you do, inspired by your own heart or by the Holy Spirit — because he's teaching us all the time, isn't he? The Holy Spirit is constantly teaching us how to live and what to do. And when we follow the Holy Spirit, and eventually our heart will get in on this, we will get in on the idea that it's actually love that changes the world. It's kindness that brings repentance.
The Clay and the Potter — Isaiah 64 and Jeremiah 18
Andrew Zimmerman: I want you to come with me as I change tack. Let's go to Isaiah 64 verse 8, because I want to talk about clay and the potter. And I brought a little thing today just to help illustrate. This is a clay pot that has been molded and made and then fired up in the kiln.
Isaiah 64 verse 8. "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father." I want you to say this: you, O Lord, are my Father. Verse 8 flowing on: "We are the clay and you are the potter. We are all the work of your hand."
I could talk quite a while about how his fingerprints are all over you. You are an expression of the Father that will never be other than you. You are such a unique expression of the Father. It's so amazing. You are amazing. But in order for this clay pot to exist, it had to get into the hands of a potter. In order for the pot to take on its form, it must remain in the hands of the potter. It must come under the spinning work of God.
I was researching on a thought, which was, how do you make clay soft? How does a potter get clay ready in order to mold it? And it says that a potter can't work with hard clay. So what the potter has to do is submerge it in water for a period of time until the clay is so full of water that it becomes pliable and it becomes moldable.
All right, let's jump over to Jeremiah 18. Just say, I am the clay. I am his beautiful workmanship. Jeremiah 18, 1 to 6.
"This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message."
Sideline: if you haven't been hearing the voice of the Lord lately, just go back tracking. Were you supposed to go somewhere to hear the voice? Because often God's waiting for you to be positioned before he speaks.
"So I went down to the potter's house and I saw the potter working at the wheel."
I just want to declare this: the Father is working at his wheel in this season. He's working at the wheel. Your Father is not idle. He's not passive. He's not aggressive. But he's working.
"So I went down and I saw him working at the wheel. But the part that he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands."
I looked up what this word marred means. The word marred is to be spoiled or corrupted or ruined. So in the hands of the potter, the clay was marred. It was ruined. It was corrupted. But it didn't stop the Father holding the clay or working with the clay in order to bring about his purpose. Just say this with me: I'm in process. And he hasn't stopped working on me.
The story continues. So the pot was being shaped in his hands, it was marred. So the potter formed it into another pot. He took one pot that was marred and he turned it into another pot. He makes us into something else. So the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as he seemed best to him.
When I asked you to stand up and you chose to stand up, know that in this season, if you're standing on anything of your marred-ness, you need to change the way that you see your life. It's not your marred-ness, your ruined-ness, your corruption that defines who you are. What defines you is that you're in the Father's hands.
And here is Jesus on the cross, completely marred, and he says something so beautiful when you think of this in the light of the clay and the potter: "Into your hands." I've been in your hands since I can remember, and it's the safest place in the world, and I will keep coming back.
Also, to John: "Baptize me. Submerge me in water so that I will be even more moldable." If you're feeling hard in this season, be comforted that the Lord is softening you in order to make you more like his Son.
Orphans and Sons — Intent, Affection, and Attention
Andrew Zimmerman: The word I want to bring to you today is that there are many lost sons around about us, but we can't reach them if we're still struggling as orphans. So I must be pursued by the Lord and remain on the wheel as a surrendered son in order to be what he sees me to be. Not, Lord, bless me for what I want to be — make me what you want me to be, because you have a vision of my life. You see me. You see me in Jesus.
I wrote this down: orphans are stuck in a place called hard and mud, but sons are journeying into softness, softness, softness, and surrenderedness.
The Father always celebrates sonship. Because he loves his Son, Jesus, he celebrates his Son, Jesus. And remember what he declared over him: "This is my Son in whom I'm well pleased."
There were three words that the Lord helped me join together. The first was the word intent. In Genesis, before the flood, he says the intent of man's heart is evil — every inclination. So the intent is the part of us that is our intention. It's what's going on behind the scene. It's the why. The intent is the why. Sometimes we don't even know why we do stuff, but it's so deep — you're doing it, it's an intent.
The second word was the word affection. And the third word was attention.
And the Lord said it to me like this: "Andrew, people with attention problems don't necessarily have an attention problem — they have an affection problem." And he put it to me like this: when you don't know who to love and when you haven't been loved, you struggle to know where to focus. But Jesus, knowing who he was and where he'd come from, was living in the affection of his Father. So he began to say to me, "Andrew, as I begin to change your affection, I will win your attention and I will superpower your intention, and your action will look like me."
I can't unpack that all to you in psychology. I'm sure there's a degree out there or something that can help put this into framework, but I believe there's something of truth in there. The more we get in the affection of our Heavenly Father, your focus will change. You're trying to change your focus, and I feel the Lord saying, change your affection.
Look in your life right now and say, what do I love? What am I giving affection to? And that could look like some false things that you're giving affection to. It might look square and shiny, and you hold it in your hand, or you watch it in front of your living room. Your affection might be a false affection. But you know what? I think there's some of us who haven't even known what affection is. And in this season, I want to declare with hope and love over you today that your Father has so much affection toward you.
And like I was able to just do with my son Levi today — for no other reason, son, you are loved. He's got a key in his pocket to the front door. He can walk into the fridge. Even if it's marked "Abby's, do not touch," and he eats it, there's still grace. There's still grace, though there might be some wrath from a sister.
Closing — The Potter's Wheel Is Spinning
Andrew Zimmerman: Orphans do hard and mud. Sons do soft and surrendered. And I just want to encourage you in your journey — continue to let the Spirit of the Lord soften you. It'll start on your face. It'll start around your cheeks, because you'll begin to feel that Jesus actually does love me.
I want to speak it over someone today. The Lord is not ashamed of you. He's not ashamed to call you his little son, his little daughter, his little brother. Jesus is the big capital-S Son, and we're all the little baby-s sons. So just be encouraged today that you are not unloved or uncelebrated. He sees you. He sees you.
And that's just really what's fueling the work that we're doing on Wednesday mornings. If you are interested to be involved more with the ministry out on the street — the testimony of the one that gets carried back for the party.
Today, if you want to respond, the potter's wheel is spinning. Just position yourself on the potter's wheel for a minute. If you're struggling with attention, you don't have an attention problem — you most likely have an affection issue. So just submit yourself and say, you know what? I think I have that. I think I have an affection issue, and I want to learn how to receive affection so that I can be even more affectionate to those around me. In Jesus' name, bless you.