Giving - Week 1

Amen. You know.

This week always, the week leading up to Easter and

the week after Easter are pretty pretty crazy times around here.

So it's been it has been refreshing just to be

in the presence of the Lord during worship. I don't

know if you guys realize how blessed we are to

have the team we have.

That leads us in worship.

But we are incredibly blessed to have this team.

There's not a lot of people that have the talent.

That we have, and I am so grateful and appreciative

and all the hard work they do. You know, they

get here early, they practice, they they.

Put in a lot of work.

So if you hadn't had an opportunity just to tell

them thank you, take an opportunity just to say thank

you to the worship team. Not y'all are so good,

how about just thank you? I'm not you know, I

wish I was just telln't thank you because it's uh,

it's the work that goes in that we need to

be appreciative of.

Amen. Aman.

We're starting a brand new series today and you know

we're uh, we're really talented as far as coming up

with catchy creative titles for things. So we're we're gonna

start a series on giving today, and we're gonna call

it giving and UH just to to flex our creative muscles.

And so that's that's the way we roll around here.

But I just want you to know that as we

move into UH, as we move into this series, a

lot of us like to shut things off when we

think we've already heard it or it's something that we

don't really want to hear. But I would encourage you

just to UH to open your hearts during this series.

I UH, I struggle somewhat, even though this is probably

one of my strongest areas of teaching.

I struggle because I don't want.

To ever feel like people think that that we're being

manipulative when it comes to giving or money. So we

have always done things in such a way to make

sure to go above and beyond.

It doesn't feel like that or look like that.

But the Lord spoke to me this week, and just

like every week when we preach and then we give

you an opportunity to respond at the end of the message,

we're gonna do that with giving today too.

Amen.

We've always positioned it at a different place, so it

didn't feel like that, but I really believe that God

wants to carry us to a whole new level. The

whole theme of this year is built for more.

Amen.

If we don't position ourselves for more, we'll never receive more.

So this is all about carrying ourselves to the next level,

positioning our hearts to receive it a whole nother level,

and just understanding the things of God at a much

deeper level. Because most of us come to the place,

especially with giving, where we find ourselves in catastrophic situations.

So we try to do something sacrificial in order to

move the heart of God and bail ourselves out. Have

you ever done that? You just feel like, oh no,

I've got to have something. So let me find something

I can do to make God happy so he'll bail

me out. The Bible is very clear that obedience is

better than sacrifice, that if we live in the cyclical process,

then things don't go awry the way they do sometimes.

Everything in the Kingdom of God works on the principle

of sowing and reaping. We say that again, everything in

the Kingdom of God works on the principle of sowing

and reaping. Some of those things God requires us to

do some of those things God does, and we're going

to get into all of that during this next three weeks.

But everything is about sowing and reaping, even the original creation.

When God created the earth, God created the earth at

reproductive age.

Everything was fully mature.

When God created it and put it on the earth,

it was already at the place where it provided seed.

Amen.

He created oak trees and they dropped acrens. He created

chickens and they laid it. So if anybody ever asks

you which came first, the chicken or the egg, we

know the answer. It was the chicken. I don't know

why he went to the other side of the road,

but I know he came first.

Amen.

Because God created everything at seed bearing stage.

He created the.

Earth old because he promises in his word that he

supplies the seed to the sower. And he started everything

at seed, there would have not been a way for

reproduction to occur. So he started everything old. In Genesis eight,

chapter twenty two, I mean Genesis chapter eight, verse twenty two,

it says while the earth remains see time and harvest,

cold and heat, winter and summer.

And day and night shall not cease.

Every single thing that God did in finished state.

Look at me. Everything that God did.

In finished state, he did in those first six days.

After that, everything is sowing and reaping. Other than maybe

you could make the case of Mana from heaven.

You could make the case that God.

Delivered a finished product when he delivered Mana from heaven

to the children of Israel as they wandered in the

wilderness for forty years. But that is the exception to

the rule that God established. But most of us, as believers,

we we want to live our lives as if the

exception is the norm. We want God to deliver things

to us as a finished product. We want God to

deliver an oak tree rather than an acre. And we

want God to deliver something that takes no work, no obedience,

or no faith on our part. And we can't operate

as if we can always live in the exception.

We must live according to.

The rule, because the rule is what happens most of

the time. Does God make exceptions, Yes, God does make exceptions.

God will make exceptions in your life. He will show

up just in the nick of time. He will show

up and he'll bail you out. He'll rescue you, he'll

save you, he'll deliver you he'll set you free, he'll

do all those things. He will show up for you

like that. I'm not saying you want, but that's not

the rule. Those are the exceptions to the rule, because

when we look through Scripture, so many times people didn't

need to have those things happen because they were already

living in the cyclical abundance and protection of God. I

didn't expect a whole lot of shouting today, but I

did expect a couple of amen's, at least for the

people that work here.

Amen. Amen.

So if you're on staff, you got to give me

at least some amen so we could get going. I

need to remind y'all just quickly that I'm an audience

participation pastor. And the more you participate, the faster I go.

Amen.

The quieter you stay, the longer it takes. So let's

at least make it to dinner tonight.

Amen.

Now, y'all are hurt my feelings. Sega Corinthians, chapter nine.

Go to Sega Corinthians chapter nine. It says, therefore, I

thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to go to

you ahead of time and prepare your generous gift beforehand,

which you had previously promised that it may be ready

as a matter of generosity, and not as a grudging obligation.

But this I say, he who sows sparingly will also

reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

So let each one.

Give us he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or

of necessity. For God loves a cheerful giver. Let me

just pause right there. God loves a cheerful everything.

Amen.

Cheerful is not what we should. You should be cheerful

in anything we do.

To God count it all. Joy is the way.

The apostle Paul says. For God loves a cheerful giver.

He loves a cheerful greet. He loves a cheerful band member.

He loves a cheerful husband. He loves a cheerful wife.

He loves a cheerful parent and grandparent. He loves cheerful employees,

no matter how bad their boss is. God loves a

cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace

abound towards you, that you, always having all sufficiency in

all things, may have an abundance for every good work,

as it is written he is dispersed abroad. He has

given to the poor. His righteousness endures forever. Now, may

he who supplies seed to the soul and bread for food,

supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increased

the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in

everything for all liberality, which causes.

Thanksgiving through us to God.

Let's pray, Father, I pray now that you open our

hearts to receive your word. It's the only change agent

on the face of the planet. And I pray that

today you change us at the very fabric of our being.

You carry us to a whole nother dimension of faith. Today, Lord,

we love you when we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen, Amen,

and amen. You know, the whole concept of giving is

misconstrued in so many ways because we think God is

asking us to give something that belongs to us. But

the reality is Scripture says that God supplies seed to

the sower, that God gives us the seed. And you

know where there if there's no seed, there's no harvest.

And depending on what you want to grow depends on

what kind of seed you plant. You know, I love

growing stuff, and you know there's all kinds of seed there.

I got peppers and parsley and peas. This is just

you know, the stuff I have laying around the house

in seed form. But most of us don't really enjoy seeds.

Most of us enjoy fruit. Most of us enjoy the

harvest that comes from the seed. Everybody would much rather

have an apple than an apple seed.

Amen.

But to get to the apple seed or to get

to the apple, it's got to be a.

Seed at some point.

At some point, it has to start as a seed.

And when we look at sowing and reaping, the process

of giving, it's a cyclical process and it just happens

over and over and over again. It's the same process

that happens over and over and over again. Everything starts

with a seed, and that seed leads to harvest.

But there's some steps in between. Amen.

You know, there's a there's some things that the soul

is a factor in our harvest. The sun is a

factor in our harvest. Water H two O is a

factor in our harvest. There's lots of factors between the

seed and the harvest. There's lots of things that will

happen between here and here. And God is faithful to

supply seed to the sower. He's faithful to do that that.

It doesn't even matter if he knows our intention is

to give back or not listen to me.

It doesn't matter. Even if he knows your intention is

not to give.

Back to him, I just want to I just want

to reinforce this by saying, at one more time, even

if he knows your intention is not to give back

to him, he still supplies seed to the sower. He

still supplies seed to you. It's why we all have

the basic needs that we meet in our lives. Now,

a lot of us get ourselves in a bind because,

especially here in America, most of us pay cash for

our wants and we finance our needs.

Amen.

And when you operate under that structure, you get yourself

in a bind, and you begin to eliminate your ability

to use seed for the things you need to use

seed for. When we step into the cycle of giving,

there's something that happens. And I'm not sure why God

does it this way other than the fact that he

just wanted us to have the ability to make decisions.

But you know, the thing that makes giving worship is

the fact that there is a decision in it. It's

impossible to express love if you don't have decision making ability.

You can't truly express love or worship if you're forced

to do it. It's not real love and it's not

really worship if you don't have a choice, it's just

rote ceremony that has no meaning whatsoever. But God gives

us a choice even in giving, because when He supplies

seed to the sower, he always wraps the seed and fruit.

When we receive what God wants us to have, it

comes in this form. It doesn't come in a packet

from host tools. They should probably send me some commercial

money for just shouting that out right there.

But does it come.

It comes wrapped in fruit, And listen, the fruit is

for you to enjoy.

The fruit is to meet your need and to sustain you.

Most of the time. It even tastes good. Not this one,

but some of them do a kind of bitter. But

I said, LEXI after the apple, so that's what I get.

I'm just kidding. She did a good job. But inside

this apple their seed. You know, when we talk about

sowing and reaping, even though these things are on our

side and we're responsible for them, and we're gonna talk

about all these things. We're going to talk about what

makes soil good to sow inim God's favor, the sun

that shines on the seed that we sow, and the

water where that comes from, because that's also from us too.

We're responsible for providing the water for the seed to grow.

We're going to establish some things that a lot of

people don't think exist in scripture, but they do, like

the whole connection of tithing to the New Testaments there,

and we're gonna talk about that, and we're gonna show

it to you next week as a matter of fact.

So if you don't believe tithing is in the New Testament,

make sure you're here next week so that we could

talk about those things together. Amen, because it's an exciting time.

But really, God's responsibility is the increase. God is responsible

for the increase. He gives the increase. You control the seed.

God controls the increase. You control the seed. God controls

the increase. So all of these things happen between seed

and harvest. But there's only one thing. There's only one

thing that happens between harvest and seed.

Only one thing.

You The only thing between harvest and seed is you.

God provides it wrapped in fruit, and then you have

to make the decision whether you return the seed to

the ground or not.

Most of us don't. Most of us consume the seed.

You know.

When I was growing up, we pretty much grew what

we ate, and we ate what we grew, and that's

just the way it was.

We didn't go to the grocery store.

I was old enough to remember the first time I

went into a grocery store.

It was mind blowing.

I walked into this air conditioned place, and the stuff

that we grew and sweated to grow, you just went

and picked it up off a shelf and took it

home and ate it. It was amazing. I remember thinking,

if this is here, why do we do that. It

was a captivating thing that happened in my heart to

the point where I said, you know what, I'm never

growing anything, and then there's just something inside you that

makes you want to do it. We grew those things,

and we captured and we saved all of our own seed.

We didn't order things through the mail like I do.

The plant We kept a little bit from the harvest

for next year's seed. One afternoon, my cousins and I

we were bored like we normally were, and we were

running around and we went into the smoke house. We

had this house where we had big salt boxes and

we smoked meat, and we did all those things, and

on the floor of that smokehouse we kept all of

the seed potatoes for next year.

Well, we went in and we thought, you.

Know what, potatoes don't hurt as bad as rocks when

you get hit with them.

So we took potatoes.

We shoved them all down in our pockets, as many

as we could carry, and we went out into the

edge of the woods and we launched.

A war, a potato war.

We were throwing potatoes as hard as we could throw them.

We were screaming and yelling and getting bruises, and it

smelled like potatoes, if you know what a raw potato

smells like. They were hit trees. The whole place smell

like potatoes. And my uncle Glenn, kind of the patriarch

of the family, he came out of his house and

it took him about thirty seconds to realize what we

were doing.

He just created this.

Tapestry of vicinity that was woven into the most incredible

group of words I'd ever heard. In my entire life,

and it stopped us in our tracks. And he came

over and he explained to us as calmly as he

could in that moment what we were doing. And he said,

every potato you throw takes food off of our plate

next year. Every potato you waste is seed we can't plant,

so we're not gonna make it through the winter because

you guys threw the potatoes at each other. And even

as a pretty young kid eight or nine years old,

it made such an impact on my life of the

value of the seed that I have brought it into

my adult experience. One of the most valuable things we

have as believers is the seed that God provides for us.

It is the currency of the kingdom.

It is our ability to choose God's provision rather than

trying to muscle our way through life. And it opens

us up to a whole another level of trust and

understanding and faith that the average person never experiences when

we really invest in the cyclical process of sowing and reaping.

And the Bible, in this passage of scripture that we

read it say that he supp that he supplies see

to the soure. But he also says that how you

sow affects how you receive.

He says.

Listen, if you sew bountifully, you will reap bountifully. If

you sow sparingly, you will reap. Let me give it

to you in my language. If you give with a spoon,

you get with a spoon. But if you give with

a shovel, you get with a shovel. Now, it's not

a get rich quick scheme. That's not what I'm saying.

You're not buying the blessing of God. You're not doing

any of those things. What you're doing is creating a

deeper level of obedience and heart alignment in your life.

So you are open to the things that God does and.

You see his movings, and you can receive the simple

things that God does is blessing, and then you can

pay those things forward as more seed, and you begin

to get into this cycle where the things that you

bog you down and bother you don't because your heart

has been connected at such a deeper level to God.

Because where your treasure is there your heart is also.

And where your heart is there, your treasure is. Here's

a take home study for you. Go and pull up

your online banking I know you don't get those paper

statements anymore. So go pull up your online banking and

look where most of your money goes, and where most

of your money goes.

That's what's got your heart, That's what has your heart.

Now some of you are gonna say, it's my mortgage,

and you need to figure out what that means.

Your heart is there for a reason.

It is an expression of your value system, of the

things that matter to you, of those hidden beliefs. It's

an expression of those things. So we need to look

at those things and really begin to know why that's

where the bulk of our finances go.

What does that mean?

And if that's what that means, how do I align

the vision of my life with what I really value

rather than talking about it, how do I lean into

it and maximize those things. When we really take an

evaluation of who we are, it always comes back to

what our heart is connected to, and what our heart

is connected to, our finances will also be connected to.

But ultimately, every single one of us, none of us

were built to just receive. We were built to reproduce.

We were built to do something with who God built

us to be. The lowest form somebody write this down.

The lowest form of the Christian experience is to receive

a blessing. The lowest form of the Christian experience is

to receive a blessing.

Yet that's what we're all after. We're all after a blessing.

We all want to be blessed, we all want to

receive a blessing. We all want that miraculous thing to

show up. But that's entry level Christianity. Even the world

wants that, even the even the.

The worst of the worst.

Want good things to happen to them. That's the entry

level Christianity. The highest expression of the Christian.

Faith is to be a blessing.

Is to understand what God has done for me and

then turn around and use that to be a blessing

to others so that people see Jesus working through us.

That's the highest expression of the Christian faith.

So where do you fall in that cycle?

When you're looking right here, and by the time we

get done, you're gonna understand all of these things. You're

gonna understand those so that you know where you are

in this cycle. But let's just get over here on

this side where there's only one thing. Where are you

right here. Where are you between harvest and seed? Now

we know there's other things between seed and harvest, but

where are you between harvest and seed?

Are you giving?

Are you taking the seed that comes? And are you

releasing it back to the ground? Are you sowing it

for harvest to happen? Because there's something miraculous that happens

the moment you do it that's also contained in this

passage of scripture. He says, when you sow, he multiplies

the seed you sow, So you sow seed, and he

multiplies it at the seed level. That carries it from

multiplication to exponential increase. If I multiply an apple by ten,

I have ten apples. But if I multiply ten apple

seeds or an apple seed by ten and I plant

ten seeds, I have an unfathomable maybe even uncountable amount

of apples that come from multiplied seed. Because God wants

to work in the invisible so that he can produce

in the visible. God wants to work with you and

in you, in the secret place so he can reward

you openly, because that's where your testimony comes from. That's

where he's glorified, and he just needs your obedience in

order to do it. You're the only thing that stands

between harvest and seed. So where are you in that

whole scheme of things? Pastrick Clay, You guys can come

and get ready. You know I said everything everything in

the Kingdom revolves around sowing and reaping. Salvation is the

same way. Now some of you are thinking, well, he's

about to be a heretic. But the difference is that

God didn't require us to sow anything for salvation. He

sowed it. The Bible says that Jesus was the first

fruit of many brethren. The first fruit is that unexpected

initial harvest, and the Old Testament first fruits were the

harvest that came in ahead of schedule, and it would

be gathered up and it would be carried and it

would be given to the priest, and that's what the

priests would live on for the entire year. Would be

the first fruits of the harvest. And it says that

Jesus is the first fruit of many brethren.

He was the very first.

And when it comes to our salvation and our standing

with God, Jesus was the seed.

That made the harvest possible.

That Jesus, the son of righteousness, perfect in all of

his ways.

The only seed that could make the whole harvest holy.

Was put on a tree, because seeds start by growing somewhere.

And as he was plucked from the tree, he was buried.

And as that seed went into the ground, germinated for

three days.

Begin to make a way for life, the resurrection that

very first.

Easter morning, that resurrection that goes through eternity, because as

the seed came out of the ground, it made a

way for the rest of us to have eternal life

and experience resurrection. If we want to understand God, if

we want to maximize.

Every thing in the Kingdom.

Of God, and we'll understand so and you reaping, and

we won't think about giving as money.

We'll think about giving.

As an investment in the Kingdom that multiplies its reach

so that multitudes can be saved. And then God returns

it back to us as fruit so that we can

do it all again. You know, maybe you're here. You've

never asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins, you've

never asked him to be the lord of your life.

But today something has grabbed your heart. You came and

when I said I was preaching on giving. You rolled

your eyes and you thought, I wonder if I could

sneak out because I don't want to hear this. But

in the process realizing that Jesus was the seed that

was planted for my harvest, that Jesus was the seed

that was planted so that I could be set free

from my addiction and my worry and my pain. My

destination can be changed, and now my path is set

towards heaven because of the seed that was planted in

the person of Jesus. Let's grab your heart.

Don't know if you would. Every eye close right now,

all over the building. If you're here.

Today, you want to turn your life over to Jesus.

You wanted to forgive you of your sins, wash you clean,

make you a new creation. If that's you today, just

slip up your head say that's what you pastor pray

for me. I want to I want to give my

life to the Lord today. I want to ask Jesus

to save me and set me free.

I appreciate the sacrifice he made for me.

Just put your hand up, put it right back down

as that is, wait just just another few seconds.

Stick it up in the air, put it right back down. Amen.

Amen, Amen, every eye opened, every head looking right, everybody

staying with me all over the room.

If our ushers would get ready right there online you

can do the things you do.

Navigate to seestore dot church slash give, use the Church Center,

appetitakets to give, Mailior gift to five zero zero four

Mcvern Road, Oakwood, Georgia, three oh five sixty six. You

can go ahead and do that now at home. As

the band sings this next song, our Ussiers are gonna come.

Now listen, I wanna point out another thing that this

scripture says, says, let each give us he purposes in

his heart. A lot of us think that because God's

never asked us for anything, we don't have to give anything.

But if God asks you for it, it means you've

already put it off so long that it's disobedience. So

I want you to determine right now what you should give.

Our Russians are gonna come. I'm gonna pray, the band's

gonna worship, the Holy Spirit's gonna move and work in

this place in.

A powerful way. But don't give.

Because I preached a message about giving. Give because you

want to be part of God's.

System, in God's plan.

You want to position yourself for everything God has for you.

That's why you give, not because I've preached a message

about giving. Now you can have faith for things that

you couldn't have before, because maybe now you know something

that you didn't before, and you can't.

Have faith for something you don't know.

I believe God is calling somebody to step into a

whole new dimension, into a whole other level. He will

open wide doors of opportunity for you when you get

invested in His system. Father, I pray right now for

every person that sows, for every person that gives today,

I pray Lord, that you bless them, Lord, that you

set them free, that you bring a harvest into their lives,

the likes of which they've never seen. The Lord, we

give you glory and honor and praise in Jesus' name. Amen, Amen,

and Amen. Pastor Clay, Let's worship ushers, if you'll come