Peace Of Mind: Week 4

They're a wonderful young couple, and he said one of the most true things

you'd ever here in ministry, where he said, you wake up early on

Sunday morning, you're like, oh, why did I sign up for this?

And then you get here and you're like, oh, this is good.

This is good. So hey, welcome, and we've got a couple

of good things to encourage you with. One to celebrate our new Spanish ministry

partners who are gonna be launching our Hispanic service. They actually moved here Friday

and they're back at their old church just doing some things celebrations this weekend,

but they are actually here and they should be here in the next week or

two for me and introduce you can we just give God a big praise for

that. Also, our neighborhood markets if I really opened up, and that's

the food pantry that we are getting ready to just introduce it to our community.

And I see a lot of bags out there. So many of you

been donating and been faithful. Please continue to do that. And we're so

excited about being able to serve our community that way. Another ministry I'm excited

about that we just signed contracts on it's called embrace grace. And embrace Grace

is where we are joining up with Basically, when a young woman you know,

doesn't have the support, doesn't know whether or not she can have the

baby or not, but she chooses life. And so what we do is

we gather around her and we walk with her for about twelve weeks and do

a Bible study mentor love on her. And then we make a call out

when it's time for her too close to her to give birth, and we

throw her a big baby shower and we just love on her and we encourage

her and we become her support system. And I think that's an awesome way

to be the hands and feet of Christ in this area. Don't you agree

with that? Amen? Amen? A couple of things I want you to

pray about. Number one, I want you to pray about the race.

The race starts here in a couple of weeks and this is where anywhere from

twenty thirty to forty new youth will come in as guests for about five or

six weeks on Sunday mornings, and they have these big events on Sunday morning

for the youth group. And we need to be praying that some of these

kids come to Christ. So I'm asking you, will you partner with us

to pray for these kids to come to Christ. I want to see some

baptisms this fall. And here's some testimonies about some of these teenagers who are

living in the most messed up world ever, and I want to see them

come to Christ. So can you guys make a commitment to pray for that?

Amen? Amen? Also, if you're doing nothing, if you're gonna

be out town this weekend. I know we got a lot of traveling to

Lext a couple of weeks before school starts. But Afagados on the patio,

it took me like three weeks to learn how to say that. So listen

up, Afa Gados on the patio. That is Thursday night, and basically

it's just it's ice cream with espresso. I would not encourage you to have

two of those if you playing on go in the bed later that night.

So well, hey, before we jump in, we are in our fourth

week, and I gotta tell you Thursday night. This hasn't happened too many

times in my life, but I told a joke that totally bombed. And

let me tell you something, there is no worse feeling on this earth than

telling a joke and it bombs and it's just crickets in the crowd. Okay.

So and by the way, Thursday night. People they'll laugh at anything,

they will laugh at anything. But let me let me just how about

I tell you the joke, and you guys want to tell me whether or

not it was funny or just a bad joke. I'll tell you the joke.

Okay, here's how it goes. I just walked up and I said,

hey, this is our fourth week in our peace of Mind series.

And by the way, if by the fourth week you don't have peace of

mind, I just don't think you're gonna get it. Yeah, it's that

bad, right, It's that bad of a joke. And the people like

looked at me, and I'm like, oh, it's a joke. I'm

not being like this mean pastor like, hey, if you don't get it

now, you're never gonna get it. No, it was a joke,

but it was that bad rador hand. If you agree that was a bad,

bad joke, it was. I'll try to be a nicer pastor starting

now. Okay, here we go, let's pray and jump into God's word.

God, we thank you so much. Today we're gonna be talking about

a subject that is it doesn't matter if we're young, middle age, pre

retirement, are retired. This is a subject to all of us struggle with.

And God, today we're asking for you to give us peace and reassurance

because God, we want to bring you honor and we want to bring you

gwlory. God, may we honor the word today by being truthful to your

word. In Jesus name, we all pray. Amen. What was the

last time you observed a college mail eat a mill? Have you seen this?

This is a sight to behold, all right? And let me tell

you. When we first got here, we invited a young college intern to

come live with us. And we were excited to do this because all throughout

our ministry I've had in turns and young pastors as they were going through schools,

say at my house, sometimes for three months, sometimes for three years,

sometimes for more than that while they get their education. And so we've

always been excited, always been excited to invite young men into our house.

And now here's what our deal has always been. Our deal has always been

this, we will take care of everything except for your food. Okay,

So you know, we'll take care of you. Know, it's free to

say at our house charge you nothing, but the food you gotta pay for

yourself. For some reason, maybe it's because I had a new job and

I was feeling generous. I said, we will take care of your food.

Now, here's we gotta understand you. Now, you know when you

buy a new house. What happens When you buy a new house. You

start buying new furniture for all these different rooms, right, and you start

saying, oh, well, let's go ahead and get this project done.

And so you start doing all these projects and then who in here has h

oa? Aren't they lovely people? And then h o A lets us know

that we need to have have a fence for our dogs that is compliant with

Fishers Indiana. And so for a fence it's about twelve foot long. It

was eight thousand dollars and we have to build this fences. So all of

a sudden we're broke and we bring this guy in and I'm starting to think

we might have made a mistake here. I mean again, have you ever

seen a young college man eat food? I'd wake up in the morning he's

standing in the kitchen eating I come home from work and he was standing in

the kitchen eating after dinner. Post dinner, he's standing in the kitchen eating.

And then before he went to bed, he's standing in the kitchen eating,

and I start getting worried, like there's a leak. He has an

intestinal problem, he has a heart, you know, maybe a tape worm.

I was praying for him. And then like a couple of weeks into

this, I was like, hey, listen, bro, if you will

sit down, your stomach will become smaller and you won't eat as much if

you just sit down while you eat. And so now I want to be

open handed. I want to be generous. So I went to Lord and

said, Lord, I want to be generous. I wanna be open handed,

but I cannot do three grocery runs a week. I just can't afford

that. And so I just said, Lord, I want to be open

handed. Helped me. So here's the next thing that happened. A few

days later, I get a card from Westpin you know, the Pennsylvania Power

Company, and it says open Immediately, I thought, oh, they're gonna

tell me I forgot to pay a bill, And sure enough, they said

over the few years because you had a reoccurring payment. You overpaid significantly over

the years, and we want to send you some money. And so they

sent us a visa card. And we called that card our grocery card because

every time it came for a second or third trip to the grocery, what

do we say, go get the grocery card. And do you know what

I watched For the umpteenth time of my life, God take care of a

need. He took every need on the other end. But on the front

end, we were generous and open handed. You know, today, Jesus,

we're gonna be looking at it passes where Jesus just really drills down on

that. And see, Jesus knows that we're humans, and he knows that

we're bent to worry about our future about not having enough. On the count

of three on one, everyone to say enough, one, two, three,

enough, that's what we're worried about. We're worried about not having enough.

And by the way, if you're not worried about having enough, yeah,

you're a human. That's what it means. And when we're not,

and when we're worried about not having enough, we tend to do two things.

Number one, we overworry. In other words, we conjure up what

ifs until become paralyzed. Anxiety overruns our thoughts, our chest's stomach feel the

pressure of this unknown financial disaster. We go and we meet with our financial

advisor, and when we say, hey, how are we doing? And

our financial advisor says, man, you're both you're really good too, or

you're like seven one. And then after that only one of you can eat.

And then if you, if you, if you, you know,

and then you got to really decide which one of you is gonna live past

eighty. You know what I mean? Like, we worry about our money.

And let me tell you something. This is something that was very shocking

to me. I thought worrying about money was a young people's game, and

others, those of us who are young, we think it's a young people's

game. We worry about like, hey, how are we going to afford

a house? How are we going to afford a car? How are we

gonna get a job, how are we going to pay off our college?

But then I became middle aged, and guess what, it's a middle aged

game because now you've got all kinds of other stuff. You got gotta worry

about retirement. You gotta worry about college, you gotta worry about all these

other things. And then here's my biggest surprise from all the older adults that

I talked to, Retirement is scary. Retirement is scary because there is a

limited amount of money and when that money's out, there's trouble. And so

it doesn't matter what age we are, we tend to worry about money.

So we overworry about money, and that causes us to do the second thing.

We hyper focus on getting instead of giving. We hyper focus on getting

instead of getting, we try to get why they getting is good. And

I want to tell you right now, if you're one of the people who

over worry about money and you're hyper focused on getting instead of getting giving,

let me tell you guess what that makes you. That makes you normal.

You're a normal human being if you overworry about money and you hyper focus on

getting. Now here's the problem. Jesus calls us to be unnormal. He

calls us to be counterculture. But he doesn't call us to be un normal

through some big rebuke. He calls us to be unnormal by reminding us,

hey, first of all, you belong to me, and secondly, my

eyes upon you. Now, typically when people tell that we're gonna talk about

money, people get scared. So can I have a little announcement before we

jump into this text. First of all, I'm not going to ask anybody

for money today, and there is This isn't some plan like three weeks from

now, I'm gonna be like, and now we have this plan. No,

there's no plan, This isn't a setup. I simply My goal is

simply this. My goal is simply for every single one of you to walk

out of here being reassured that you belong to your father. Your father knows

your needs, and your father will take care of you. And as a

result of your father taking care of you, guess what, you can be

generous because you know God will take care of you. All right, So

let's jump in this famous teaching. All of you who've been around the church

for a while, you probably know this teaching. Let's go ahead and jump

in and says then Jesus said to his disciples, therefore, I tell you

do not worry about your life, what you will eat, about your body,

or what you'll wear, in other words, the things that cost money.

He says, Hey, don't worry about it. I remember, he

says. Therefore, so he's connecting it to a previous teaching. So we

gotta go back a couple of chapters, and we gotta understand this previous teaching.

This previous teaching is his teaching about this man who was a farmer and

he had like the best year ever. He had this bumper crop. A

matter of fact, he has so much and he became so wealthy that he

had to build other barns. And when after he built all these other barns,

he looked at all of this wealth, and here's what he thought to

himself. He thought, this is awesome. I'm finally rich. And then

what does he do? Does he a say, you know what, I'm

going to invest in the kingdom and really bless some people. Does he look

around his town to his neighbors and say, man, there's some people who

are really in need. I'm gonna take care of them. And finally I

could take care of those people. No, what does a guy do after

he builds his extra barns and sees all this wealth. Here's what he does.

He goes, WHOA, I'm going to kick back and take it easy.

I'm going to retire and I'm going to enjoy life. In other words,

he gave no thought to anyone else. He did not give thought to

God nor people. He only thought about himself. When his ship came in,

he finally thought about himself. And then here's the crazy thing about this

passage. Jesus does something that he doesn't normally do. Jesus says, you

know what, that guy, now, that's a fool. It's kind of

surprising that Jesus calls this guy a fool. And why does Jesus call him

a fool. Jesus calls him a fool because this guy's he doesn't realize that

that there could have been a storm that could have wiped out his crop.

There could have been a hell storm that tore down all of his stocks.

There could have been a whirlwind or a flood. Everything he has has been

given to him by God. And instead of looking at how I can bless

the kingdom or how I can bless others, he looked at himself and says,

oh great, I am gonna bless myself. And Jesus says, that

is shortsighted. And that's what a fool does. Man, that's pretty hard

teaching from Jesus. Now Jesus turns his attention to his disciples. Okay,

and basically he's trying to get them to understand, like, hey, when

it comes to money, when it comes to financis, here's what I want

you to do. He calls his disciples to be rich towards God and others.

But here's a punchline. You're ready for this, there's one problem.

They're not rich. Jesus is looking at some poor people who are homeless,

who when they want dinner that night, they're probably gonna have to go fishing.

And he looks at them and says, you need to be rich towards

others. You need to be rich towards God. Jesus looks at poor people

and says, I'm calling you to be generous. Look at this next quote

here, Jesus still calls his poor disciples to a life of generosity. Okay,

now focus in on this for a second. He calls them to a

lifestyle, even if you're to live a lifestyle that is so dependent upon God,

that even though you're poor, that you have to have enough faith in

God to be generous with what you have. Now, can I just have

a moment of honesty, big time kind of vulnerability moment. I went back

and forth, rewrote, rewrote, rewrote, back and forth. I saw

what the teaching says, but I did not like the teaching. So therefore

I did not want to teach this today. You know why because I grew

up poor, and this teaching really rubs me wrong. Because when I see

poor people, I just want to help them or I want them to figure

out, like, hey, hey, you know what, you can say

your life up better? And so when I see this teaching, it rubs

me wrong. But then I have to think, for a second. Who's

he given this teaching too. He's given us teaching to some homeless guys who

are poor, and what is he saying to him? He's telling them to

be generous, so generous to the point that they have to depend on God

to take care of them. So this is a big and so you would

think that after Jesus teaches this, his disciples would say, all right,

Jesus, that's easy, we can become generous. Yeah, how easy it

is to become generous with zero dollars? Boom done, generous. It's easy

to be generous when you have nothing, So yeah, Okay, Jesus doesn't

stop the teaching man for the next twelve verses. He digs in of twelve

the hardest hitting verses on money. Now, first of all, I want

you to understand this, and this is something for every single one of you

in this room. Whether you have money or you don't, you need to

understand that none of you in this room are free from the distortive power of

money just because you got a bunch of it or you don't have a bunch

of it. Tim Keller says, this money has the ability to blind you,

control you, corrupt you. Whether you have it, whether you don't

have it, or whether you're something in the middle. It doesn't matter whether

you're at today financially, money can blind you, in control you, incorrupt

you. So Jesus goes on, Okay, let's look at his teaching.

He says, for life is more than food, and the body more than

clothes. So here's what Jesus want his disciples understand. He's saying that living

is more than having. Living is more than having a nice house, a

nice car, and a nice bank account. Living is more than having.

But see, here's the problem. We have the desire, the normal desire,

and it consumes the life we live, whether we're rich or poor.

And if we're overly concerned with having, we're gonna miss out on living.

All right, I just want you know right now, I'm not mad at

you. I didn't hear one amen. I didn't hear one amen. And

I know we're not an amen in church, but what I just said deserved

amen. Okay, I'm gonna give you another shot here. Okay, let's

rewind a little bit. I'm will say something and then I expect some amens.

You're ready, all right, Here we go. If we are overly

concerned with the having, we're gonna miss out on the living. It's okay.

I mean I've been saying some Baptist churches that can really do way better.

Let's try it again. Ready, here we go. Here we go.

If we're overly concerned with having, we miss out on the living.

Oh man, we're in revival here. Now. Let me tell you you

know, for about fifteen years, I lead mission trips, and I would

always talk to a couple of the families who I knew that their family,

as a result of going on that mission trip, actually had to take that

week off without pay okay, And so I would always go to them and

I'd say, hey, what's this mean for your family? And he give

me to say me as oh, we just love the kids. These kids

are amazing. We love her youth. They're awesome. I go, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no no, what does this mean? What does this mean for you not

to get a paycheck this week? Same answer every time they get serious and

say, we're just gonna have to trust. We're we're to cut back a

little bit and we're just gonna have to trust that God's gonna take care of

us. A lot of times it was couples, so they miss out on

two big paychecks that month in the middle summer. And let me tell you

something, after years and years of watching us, you always saw God take

care of their needs all right now, like clockwork. Like clockwork, they

would say, God takes care of our needs. And seeing when someone understanding

that living is more than having, they move into another dimension in life.

They become un normal and that's a good thing. So here's what Jesus does.

He continues to teach. Now, check out this teacher, because he

wants to reassure his disciples that God will take care of them. So let's

check this out, he says, considering first of all, the ravens,

they do not sew nor reap, They have no storeroom or barn. Yet

God feeds them. And then he goes on, consider how the wildflowers grow.

They do not labor our spin yet I tell you not even Solomon and

all of his splendor, was dressed like one of these. All right.

Now, what's Jesus doing here? If this teaching he's just not talking about

ravens in and lilies all right, here's what he's saying. He said,

all right, now think about this. Think about the birds up above you,

the ravens, all right, and think about the lilies and the flowers

below you. I need you to understand something that if God can take care

of everything that's above you, and if God can take care of everything that's

below you, surely your God is able to take care of you that's in

the middle. If God can take care of the birds, he can take

care of the soil you'll walk on, he can surely take care of you

in the middle. Now here's something's very interesting. He talks about ravens.

Now, why does he mention ravens. First of all, this area in

the Middle East, it was a migratory pathway for millions of birds. But

why does he specifically pick the ravens. That's because the Jews did not lie

the ravens. They hated the ravens. They felt like they were disgusting animals,

They felt like they were annoying. They hated the ravens. And here

was Jesus point. He picks out the bird that everybody hates, and he

says, Hey, if God will even feed the most disgusting bird that annoys

the living tar out of you, how much more will he take care of

his child that he loves. If God will feed that bird that disgusts you,

how much more is he gonna take care of his son or his daughter?

And then he reminds him that, Hey, whenever you're struggling to know

whether or not God's going to provide, won't you go look at the mountain.

Because of God can make a mountain, he could surely give you a

job. Won't you go look at the river. If God can form a

river, he can surely take care of your pension. Hey, won't you

go look at those grand fields over there that feed all the beasts. If

God can take care of that, then surely he could take care of retirement.

He says, Hey, whenever you worry, just look around, look

above you, look everywhere, look at every direction, and you are reminded

that God not only created the swirled, but he sustains a swirld And you

are the most important thing on this earth to him. You are his children.

He loves you, so if he's gonna take care of everything else,

he's gonna take care of you. But sometimes we're reminded all the time about

how good and faithful God is. But I don't know about you, but

I have a short memory because I can worry. Does anyone else like that?

You see how God takes care of you, and then God's by the

way, God's paid for your bills for the last eighty five months, But

then you're worried about next month? Anyone else like that? Why? Why

is? Why are we like that? Because we're normal? But God calls

us to be unnormal. Y'all know about my mamma. You know how much

I love my mamma. My mamma passed away last year. And my mamma

she grew up during the Great depression, and she had five brothers and sisters,

so there was six of them, and then her father and when she

was young, he was murdered, we think in some bootlegging thing or whatever.

Still to the age of ninety, when I talked to her about it,

she still wouldn't talk about it. But we do know her father was

murdered and it was something bad, and it left six kids in a depression,

in a very bad situation. She had actually had a lie about her

age so she could move up from Kentucky to Dayton area, and she worked

for I think inland Plant at that time, which was a part of the

GM And so she left at an early age just so she would be one

less mouth defeat and man, she saved her penny. She worked hard,

she started a business. But let me tell you she was a generous ladies.

Now, I grew up in the eighties. I'm the son of a

still factory worker. If you grew up in the eighties and your dad was

in the still factory business, that meant that you've experienced some layoffs. And

there was multiple times my dad was laid off. There was multiple times they

were on strikes, and sometimes it's lasted for months. And if it was

not from my grandmother and my grand father's generosity, let me tell you something,

we wouldn't survived. They fed our family, they clothed our family,

They paid for our house, vehicle repairs. Let me tell you something nasty

they do when you go and strike. My dad couldn't go get other jobs,

so you just got nothing, you know. And so we'd live and

depended on our grandma and grandpa. And then whenever something unexpected came up that

costs a big talk of money. She said the same thing every single time.

And I heard this over and over and over and over and over again.

She said the same things, said, thank the good Lord, we

have enough to take care of this. Thank the good Lord, we have

enough to take care of us. But did you all catch the keyword there?

What's the keyword in this sentence? Thank the good Lord that we have

enough to take care of us. What's the keyword? We? We?

She didn't see the money as hers. That's kingdom living. The money wasn't

hers. When she was older, I was helping her with her books one

time, and she has several rental properties, and I said, Grandma,

there's a couple of people you didn't need. One family didn't charge for many

years, and one family charge barely enough to pay the taxes. I said,

Grandma, you could have had about a half million more dollars in the

bank right now. Then she goes, well, they didn't have the money,

but I had the property. And when she died at ninety four,

she didn't have a lot of money, but there wasn't one need that she

had. God took care of her. And you know what, I've watched

this and washed this and washed this, and I've washed a hand of God

take care of my family from generation and generation. And yet still who worries

this guy? I've seen the bird get the worm, I've seen the lily

clothes, but I had the short memory. And isn't it funny how we,

as children of God, we could watch God provide it, yet we

can forget. And so God says, hey, why worry, Just open

your eyes and look around. I will take care of you. Now,

he goes on, and he starts talking about this, this anti faith.

Look at verse twenty nine. He says, and do not set your heart

on what you will eat or drink. Do not worry about it. For

the pagan runs after such things, and your father knows that you need them.

Now, here's where all the fun begins. Today for all of you

guys who are Greek nerds, we're gonna nerd out. You're ready here it

goes all right, this is very cool. The first three times that Jesus

says do not worry, he uses the same Greek word. Then this fourth

time he says do not worry, he uses a different Greek word. Actually,

this Greek word is the only time it's ever used in the whole New

Testament. This Greek word has a dual meaning. Okay, the first meaning

of this Greek word is simply this, that you become so worried about your

finances that it actually causes you to be greedy. So this is what that

first word worry. I'm so worried that I won't have enough that I'm actually

gonna become greedy. The second meaning, the dual meaning of this word,

refers to a cell bow and the mast at the top of the cell,

and how it swings back and forth in a storm. In other words,

when we worry, we become like the cell mast that goes back and forth.

I trust the Lord, I don't trust the Lord. I trust the

Lord. I don't trust the Lord. I trust the Lord. And this

goes on and on and so when you put these two words together, where

one, I worry so much that I become greedy, number two, I

worry so much that my faith goes in between trusting God and not trusting God.

We see a clear warning from Jesus to not allow our faith in God's

provisions to sway back and forth between trust and fear to the point that it

causes us to be greedy because we just can't trust God to take care of

us. I'm gonna repeat that again. We see a clear warning from Jesus

not to allow our faith in god provisions in our life to sway back and

forth between trust and fear to the point that it causes us to become greedy.

Here, let me throughout this next quote to you see, anti faith

in God's provisions leads the poor, the rich, and the in between to

become greedy with our money. And so Jesus points back, He says,

hey, yeah, this is normal, but again, we don't live the

normal life. Now, it's very fascinating how Jesus wants to describe how the

normal live let's look at this next verse. It says, for the pagan

world runs after all such things, and your father knows that you need them,

so he says, hey, Pagans run after these things. Pagans run

after wealth, security, finances, They run after all these things of the

world. And by the way, that's normal. That's the normal way for

a pagan e live. Now, some of you are saying, James,

you can't say pagan anymore. We're in a politically correct world. You can't

say pagan. Yes I can. Jesus said it, so I can said.

But let me tell you why Jesus meant by pagan. A pagan wants

some one who lived out in a country. If you lived out in a

country, that meant that, you know, you obviously did not live in

a city. If you did not live in a city, you were not

hear the temple. If you weren't hear the temple, you did not get

to worship God. If you did not get to worship God, you did

not have a close enough relationship with God to trust him for your provisions.

So since you were not close enough to God to trust in his provisions,

then you would do what the rest of the world does, and you're going

to chase after and try to figure out how to take care of yourself.

And when you're trying to take care of yourself, guess what you're gonna do.

You're gonna worry. So Jesus is simply saying, hey, we're not

like pagans. Okay, we don't live out in the country where we're far

away from the city, where we're far away from the temple. We're far

away from God. And so therefore we don't have a relationship with gospel.

Where he said, nah, no, we have direct access to our God.

Our God takes care of us. Our God loves us, Our God's

eye is upon us. So therefore we don't need to act like the rest

of the world. We could trust fully in our Jesus to take care of

us. He will take care of your debts, he will take care of

your future, he will take care of your reach, he will take care

of the unexpected things. Why because your God sees you, So don't run

around like the rest of the world worrying. Your God sees you, and

he will take care of you. And because he will take care of you,

guess what you could do? This isn't some message where it's like,

hey, guess what, here's the five things that I want to encourage you

with about how God will just take care of you and bless you and bless

you and bless you and bless you. No, he says, no,

God will take care of you. God will bless you so that you could

be open handed. You can invest in the keenom and you can invest in

others. That's the point. And he says, we don't live like the

rest of the world does. And then he assures us. He goes,

he says, you know what, your Father knows all of your needs.

He's gonna take care of you. So you don't have to sway back and

fourth between faith and fear today. So what's the antidote, the antidote to

worry? Number one, Well, look to God and he'll look after you.

Let's look at this scripture here. It says, but seek first his

kingdom and all these things to be given to you as well. Do not

be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you

the kingdom. Did you see this little phrase here? It's awesome, this

little phrase right in the middle. You might have missed it before, but

what did I say here? It says, little flock, Little flock,

little flock. He says, my children, just like a shepherd, I'll

take care of you. Number two Hoarding the right barn, Hoarding the right

barn. This first continues on to say, sell your possessions to give to

the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out. A treasure

in heaven that will never fail, where no thief come near and no moth

destroys. In other words, investing God's kingdom, Investing the people that God

calls you to invest in, and God will richly reward you. You know,

there's a famous quote, I'm a famous missionary, Jim Elliot, who

says he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he

can't lose. No other words, it's all gonna go someday. So who

you're gonna trust it with yourself? Are you gonna trust it with God?

Number three? Choose your treasure carefully. Choose your treasure carefully, says for

where your treasure is, that's where your heart walls will be. No words.

Guard your Guard your heart from greed, Guard your heart from the pursuit

of possessions. In other words, it's calling you to treasure God above everything

else. You do these three things and you will live an open handed life.

I'm gonna conclude here today, and by the way, I'm ending five

minutes early. You're welcome. And Edward Jones representative came to my house one

day and these were some good guys. They're just trying to help people with

retirement and all that. And had this good conversation and afterwards, I was

sitting on the back patio my house, and it really stirred up a lot

of things because I have a lot of issues and a lot of worries when

it comes to retirement. I'm always worrying that there's not going to be enough.

I have this fear of me, and I think it stems from a

poor childhood. But also in two thousand and eight, I went when the

financial crash hit, I went to plant at church and they canceled my church

plant because of finances. And then my brother lost his high paying job and

he just got a new job, which at this point since two thousand and

eight, this is the first job he's had to pay him as much as

that job. My dad had to retire early, so therefore he didn't get

the pension that he should have. And so my dad is still working to

this day. And then my uncle, who lived here in Carmen, was

a vice president of a nice company and he lost his job. All the

men in my life they lost their job in two thousand and eight, and

it rocked our world. And so I've always seen that as a sign of

like, Okay, when is it going to happen again, when's it going

to fall out again? When's everything I'm gonna get messed up again? And

while I'm sitting out there on the back porch and I'm worried about my future

and I'm thinking about my retirement, all of a sudden, I felt like

the Lord speak to me. And I'm pretty sure it was from the Lord,

but it was almost like, look at this a different way. You've

been looking at all these things from your childhood, and you've been looking at

all these job losses as wow, look how everything can fall apart, but

you've never looked at it this way. Look how God provided and took care

of every single one of you. Afterwards, there's not a robbers man who

missed a meal. I promise you that we all kept having babies, houses

jobs. Sometimes we could look back at these moments in our life and they

can make us have a lack of faith of being generous in the future.

But instead, today I would say, look over your life, look at

all of God's visions, and look at all of the reasons why God has

called you to be generous, because He has proved to you over and over

and over again that He is faithful. Two things I want to say before

we close. Number one, I do not know what anyone in this church

gives. I do not look at anyone's record. You know what that means.

There's no one more special than any other person when you're when we're out

in a lobby, you know, there's not a number in the back of

my head when it comes to you. No one has more access because they

give more money. I keep it that way the way my ministry stays clean.

But since I don't look, I could also just say this that if

you've been following Christ for a season and this is the area you struggle with

and you're stuck in your discipleship, this is probably the area that you need

to break through, and maybe it's time for you to start trusting and investing

the kingdom a bit more. For those of you who are struggling because manage

seems like you just don't have enough to even this sermon made you sad to

even think about. I wish I was poor, but I'm I'm so bad

off. I'm not even poor. Today, I want to remind you that

you're loving God will take care of you. He promises that, He gives

his word and he is faithful. Here's what we're gonna do. The band's

gonna come out and we're not going to have an altar call like hey,

come up here and ask for money, and we're not doing that. What

we're gonna do is we're actually gonna do an anointing time. And the anointing

time today is simply this. Today we talked about worry, So I'm just

gonna open it up to anything you're worrying about. Maybe it's health, could

be finances, it could be a marriage issue, it could be a family

issue, it could be it could be many things. But whatever is on

your heart today, whatever you came in carrying today, I'm going to ask

you today to hand it over to trust your heavenly Father. So here's what

we're going to do the prayer teams want to come down front. Can all

of you guys stand up, Let's stay in and here's what I'm gonna ask

you to do that wants to after I pray, I'm going to ask you

to come make a line down the middle aisle here, and we're just gonna

take some time for you to be anointed, for you to be blessed,

for you to be prayed. And like I said, it could be any

concern anything you have going on in your life. Maybe today you want to

prayer on behalf of someone else. But let's go before the Lord because we

know we can trust them. God, we call on you today and we

thank you for your faithfulness and your goodness and your love. And now God,

we come to you as your children, and we say to you,

you feed the ravens, in your clothe the flowers. And now I'm asking

you to take care of this need I have. And so God, we're

just trusting you today in Jesus name, Amen,