Well, it is a joy to be with you tonight.

I said at the conference, everybody has Scottish roots somehow or some way back.

And it is a real joy to be with you.

Many, many generations back, my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was a convict from Scotland, then ended up in Australia.

So always good to be here with a strong pedigree and heritage.

Saved by the grace of Jesus and had a wonderful time this weekend.

[laughs]

Tim Keller says this, just to get it, "Rearranging the raw materials of a particular domain to draw out its potential for the flourishing of everyone." And you know why I love New York? 'Cause you see more of that than the suburbs of Dallas.

Not, not hating, but, but in, in reality.

You just see more of it.

And you walk around New York, and you see what people who are made in the image of God are capable of creating.

And you know what it does to me? It leads me to worship.

It leads me to worship and wonder and awe that people made in the image of God can do this.

[laughs]

Oh, yeah

... towards us.

Now, this is really important because it... we are so conditioned for conditional love that we don't know how to receive.

Most of you, your receiver in the spirit is broken, which means you don't know how to just let God love you.

You don't know how to remain in his love.

You don't know how to stay connected to that, and that is the heart of what abiding is about.

It's about deliberately receiving rather than earning, resisting the achievement society and its instincts that tell us you are only as good as you're doing in your job right now, and it relocates our identity outside of the feedback loop of, of performance, which we're all absolutely addicted to, whether it's the approval of coworkers, likes on social media, or affirmation from your peers.

[laughs]

What is that? Where does that come from? What is inferred by that?

I think it comes from God.

There is some Edenic reality in our spirits.

He blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply.

The blessing came before the labor in the book of Genesis.

There's that sense that we are made in the image of God and that we have that intrinsic sense of worth.

So it does seem to be some kind of divine haunting that no matter how secular we society gets or how severed from our sacred roots there's that longing and desire for that blessing jesus gets the blessing before he does his ministry he's been a carpenter for 30 years then before he does anything he hears the father's blessing my beloved son and who i love and i'm well pleased pleased in what what's he done he's done nothing I think there's something interesting.

I think part of the reason why there isn't a sense of blessing or there isn't even a practice of blessing in the world that we inhabit now is because it is this disenchanted, secularized environment for the most part.

Okay.

At night I'm carrying a day with me, and that's when I'm asking for God and wrestling with God and quite often sort of Lord's, Lord's Prayer framed.

I'm asking for forgiveness.

I'm, uh, bringing my desire for the kingdom.

It's in my spirit now.

Like, "Lord, I saw today that Jesus was mocked in New York.

And Lord, my heart is like, Lord, honor, honor the name of Jesus." I've, I've got sort of those movements.

Yes

[laughing]

And when you get a nickname, it's often, like, kind of cheeky or dis- you know, it's a, it's a little bit...

Sometimes it can even be a little bit of a put-down.

The apostles founding the church gave Barnabas a name, and his name is the Son of Encouragement, okay? So I wanna show you five things that Barnabas did that accelerate the mission of the church through encouragement.

Number one, encouragement in the life of Barnabas is leveraging your resources for the sake of others.

Leveraging your resources.

Again, Acts 4:36, "Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means Son of Encouragement, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet." Okay, this is Acts chapter 4.

[laughs]

What are they hearing?

So the answer is distorted, overreactive messages.

That's the answer.

What messaging are they getting? Just massive swings between left and right extremism, none of which is serving them particularly well.

Again, society shifted in such a way that for the most part, masculinity itself has become toxic, where most people think what's wrong with the world is men.

And the answer is what's wrong with the world is sin and some very rare, elite, powerful men.

It's certainly not a representative sample.

How can she teach them about what it means to be a man without feeling like there's a solid role model in the picture?

I think part of the reason why there isn't a sense of blessing, or there isn't even a, a practice of blessing in the world that we inhabit now is because it is this disenchanted, secularized environment for the most part.

If you're a parent, weekly blessing your kids may be one of the most important things that you can do.

So, number one, how do you bless? So, what is blessing? Blessing is the idea of, I think Dallas Willard put it as projecting good into the life of another, to speak the intentions of G- you know, God's heart for you.

It can be connected to kneeling down.

It's one of the words we get in the New Testament.

Eulogy or eulogie is to speak well of someone or to speak over somebody.

So, if there's blessing, blessing the Lord, blessing one another, that sort of stuff seems to be thoroughly biblical.

I do wanna give you an opportunity to share about the book that you wrote about your efforts to bless your sons and, and um...