Give in Generosity // Let's Get Moving (Jeff Rudder)

Welcome to the Movement Church Podcast. We want you to know that God is

for you and so are we. You're about to hear a sermon from one

of our weekend services in Palmer Lake, Colorado. We pray that your faith

is provoked, your mind is renewed, and your heart is awakened as you

engage the Word of God. Stay tuned back from the message for ways to

get connected with us. God bless you. Thanks for tuning in. All

right, Hey, good morning, and welcome to the Movement Church. We're

really glad you're here today. I personally, I'm I'm moved that you're here

today. That's a last of cal jokes, what I had to throw one

in. So we're glad you're here. We're glad for those who are listening

in on the pod podcast as well. Grateful for that. For those who

don't know me, I'm Jeff Rudder. I'm part of the teaching team here

at the Movement Church. And this has to be a first, right,

I mean, we've already acknowledged it, but I don't know if there's ever

been another church service that's happened at a Chick fil A anywhere. So maybe

there has, but this is a first for us, so we're grateful to

be here. For those on the podcast, we're at Chick fil A on

Northgate and Colorad Springs. If you're ever in town, this is where you

get your Chick fil A, Okay, so come on in. Being here

might seem unusual to you, but to me this feels like a natural progression

of my everyday life. So I have what's called red status at Chick fil

A, and I'm on my way to signature status. So pretty soon after

I spent about another three or four thousand dollars here and then we'll be good

to go here. And we really do want to say thanks to Trace and

the Chick fil A team for letting us be here. So we're super grateful

for that while we work on figuring out a more permanent solution. If you've

been with us the last few weeks, you know that we've been in a

discussion around our missional values, the values that we want to guide us as

individuals and as a church body together. And we started the discussion a few

weeks ago with growing in groups, and we talked about the importance of being

a part of a community that could lift each other up and help us to

grow. And then we talked about serving insincerity, and Melissa Janish helped us

understand that it's the sincerity part of this that really is the key to this

thing. And last week we talked about living on mission and understanding how God

wants us to be intentional with the people that He puts in our path.

And so today we're going to talk about giving and generosity. Now, I

know some of you are already thinking that your worst fears about the church have

just been confirmed, even with the title of this sermon, giving in Generosity,

So you are sending yourself here it comes. This is where they're going

to ask me to give all I have to the church. Okay, And

some of you are just sitting there going I knew it. I knew it

well. To be honest, the Global Church hasn't done itself any favors with

this topic. If we want to be candid about it, the reputation of

global Church regarding money is sometimes not great. And let's just acknowledge before we

start that some pastors, not many, but some live the lifestyles of the

rich and famous. Now ours does not do that, I can assure you,

but some do. Some are walking around in extravagantly tailored suits. Can

you see fight drift in this suit right here? I would love to see

that. Actually, some are flying around on private jets and that kind of

thing. So if you have a little suspicion around the church and money,

you might have come by it, honestly. So we'll just pull acknowledge that.

And I don't think that many churches really do a great job of addressing

this particular topic either. Whether some teach sadly that God's blessing is dependent on

the size of your check to the church, that's called the prosperity theology,

prosperity gospel, it's really nothing short of manipulation in my opinion. We don't

want to do that. And then some churches are reticent to teach on this

topic at all for fear of being called a money grubbing church. And neither

one of those is really okay, So let me start by saying, we

are not going to be twisting your arm this morning, right, that is

not going to happen. And I promise you I am not here to give

the sermon on the amount. We will not be doing that either. All

right, that's not what we're going to talk about today, but we are

going to talk about money and wealth and generosity and try to understand what God

has for us in all of this, not what He wants from us,

okay, And we're gonna try and understand what God has to say about this

with respect it, putting it in the rightful place in our lives. And

God has a lot to say about this, okay, So we're going to

jump in. Did you know that when you look at the entirety of the

Bible that there are three hundred and eighty eight verses about sin. That seems

a little low to me, but okay, that's how God wanted it.

Three hundred and eight eight about sin, five hundred and fifty verses about heaven.

And that is what heaven looks like to me if you're on the podcast,

it's a beautiful mountain meadow with the sun setting and all that. It

looks like heaven to me. Eighty seven verses about hell in the Bible.

But you know how many there are about money and wealth? Two thousand,

three hundred and fifty, right, And we're going to cover every one of

those today. No, I'm just kidding, that's a joke. We're not,

but we are going to cover a lot of territory, So try and

stick with me as we as we work through this. I wonder why so

much about this one particular topic. Jesus himself when he taught, he used

to use what's called parables or word stories. There're thirty eight parables in the

New Testament, and out of thirty eight parables, sixteen of those have to

do with money and wealth and generosity. That's forty percent. That's a lot.

Again, the question is why why does the Bible have so much to

say on this topic. Well, let me suggest it's because most of us

get it wrong a lot on this and it's a trap that's easy to fall

into that Satan uses to twist us up and get us out of rhythm with

God. So let's look at a couple of places in scripture this morning where

they got it wrong and see what we can learn from those examples. You

don't have to look very far in scripture to get to the first example Genesis

chapter four, and I'm going to read this. When they grew up,

Abel became a shepherd while Cain cultivated the ground. When it was time for

harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord.

And Abel also brought a gift the best portions of the first born lambs from

his flock. So here canaan able presenting the first recorded offering to the Lord,

and most of us know the story. God accepted Abel's gift, but

with Cain's gift, he really wasn't that happy. Have you ever wondered why

that's okay? So I think the text gives us a little bit of a

clue. Here, Cain gave some of his crops to the Lord, and

that's an interesting juxtaposition with the phrase that used to describe Abel's gift, right,

he gave the best portions of the first born lambs from his flock.

Scripture makes a point of saying that Abel gave the first and the best,

And this really introduces the idea of first fruits that we want to understand.

It was codified into the Jewish law by Moses in the Book of Leviticus.

But we've come to understand the ideas that that phrase first fruits entails through the

word tithing. It's a simply an old English word that means tenth, and

that was the proportion that God suggested was the right amount to give when they

were first learning how to give way back in the Old Testament. But the

concept of first fruits is really super important for us to understand today. In

those days when people were dependent on agriculture to survive, you just didn't know

if those first lambs or first calves were going to live or what was coming

after, if anything was going to survive. You didn't know if there was

going to be a hailstorm to come and knock out your crops. So when

you gave the first of what had been provided to you back to the Lord,

it was a sign that you trusted him to take care of your needs.

When Cain gave some of his crops, and arguably not the best,

it demonstrated that he wanted to take care of himself first and then give God

the leftovers. Okay, not exactly faith in action. So God's problem with

Cain was really about his mindset, and it was this mindset that led him

to say, I got to take care of me first. So let's look

at another quick story. In Mark ten, Jesus encounters the rich young Ruler.

Now we've all heard this story, i'm sure many times for most of

Us. As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him

and fell on his knees before him. Good Teacher, he asked, what

must I do to inherit eternal life? Why do you call me good?

Jesus answered, no one is good except God. Along. Now this has

nothing to do with the idea of generosity and giving. But I want to

pause here. Jesus was asking him when he said, why do you call

me good? There's nobody good but God. I think he was saying,

do you know who I am? Do you know who you're talking to?

And then Jesus moves on. You know the commandments. You'll not murder,

should not commit adultery, don't steal, don't give false testimony, don't defraud,

Honor your father and mother. He kind of runs through a litany of

the tenth commandment. Teacher. He said, all these I've kept since I

was a little boy. And Jesus looked at him, and he loved him,

and so he told him the truth. Right here. He loved him

and told him the truth. He said, one thing you lack, go

sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you'll have treasure in

heaven. Then come and follow me. At this the man's face fell.

He went away sad because he had great wealth. So just a couple of

observations about the rich young ruler. I do love that this guy's driving a

ferrari as he encounters Jesus in this picture. First, it seems like this

guy was kind of a sincere guy. I don't think he was trying to

trick Jesus, but I don't think he was expecting the answer that he got

from Jesus when he said what do I have to do to have eternal life?

I think he thought Jesus might say, hey, you're on the right

track, way to go. You're doing a good job. Or maybe he

thought, at best Jesus might say, well, you should just bump up

your giving to the synagogue by fiber ten percent. You're doing great. I

think he expected a big double thumbs up from Jesus in that conversation. Instead,

Jesus identifies the thing that the man has put his trust in, and

it's his wealth. He's not trusting Jesus, he's trusting his wealth. Jesus

is making the point that if the Kingdom of Heaven is really what you want,

that's really what you're after then you have to separate yourself from the things

that bind you to this earthly kingdom. And in this man's case, it

was his wealth. So the point of sharing these two stories can enable and

the rich and ruler is not to shame anybody into writing a bigger check.

It's really to show you that they have something in common. Ultimately, neither

of them believed that God could and would provide for them, so in their

own way, they resolved to do it themselves, to put their needs first

and offer God the leftovers. This is a mindset. It's a mindset that

believes God can't or won't take care of us. And there's a name for

this. We call it the scarcity mentality. So the first question I would

ask us to think about today is this, do you believe that God can

and will take care of you and your family? Do you believe that or

like these guys, are you pretty sure that maybe you're on your own you

have to do it yourself. This is important but important question because it really

informs precisely how you view money and wealth and possessessians in generosity and the purpose

of all that. It informs all that we just talked about a couple of

examples, and in those cases it really didn't work out so great for those

guys. And to be clear, the scarcity mentality is something that none of

us is immune too. So I want to tell you a quick story of

someone that I know pretty well who bought into the scarcity mentality, and sadly,

that person is me. About a year ago, right after Christmas,

Candy and I had been talking about budgets and we had kind of said we

got to get back on track. We sit too much on the kids.

So we had a number that we had outlined, so we're going to live

on this each week for the next year. Three hundred and fifty dollars.

That was our number, so you know, for gas and food, that's

what we're going to live on. And I go to Walmart. I'm shopping

and as I turn a corner on the far end of the aisle, there's

a young woman in a cart. She turns the corner at the same time.

And I don't know how I knew this, but I knew she was

going to talk to me. And we got right up to where we intersected,

and she stopped. She kind of blocked me in and she just looked

at me, and then she looked at her cart and she just said help,

that's all she said. And I said excuse me, and she said

you help me? And I could tell immediately she couldn't speak English very well,

very broken. I didn't know what to do. I thought, am

I being scammed here? What's going on? What am I supposed to do?

And she just said you help me? And so I said, look,

I got to get a couple more things. Meet me at the front

and I'll be up there in just a minute. So I walked through the

aisles. I didn't put another thing in my cart because I was so confused,

and I just prayed. I said, Lord, am I supposed to

help this woman? What am I supposed to do here? Am I being

scammed? Is this? Or what is this? God? And then I

think he just said it's okay. So I said, all right, if

I get to the front and she's still there, then I'll help her.

So got to the front. She was still there, and I went up

to her and I said, I'm sorry, what's your name? And she

told me I couldn't really understand her. I don't remember what her name was,

and said, where are you from? And she said Italy, and

then she just said two weeks, which I think she meant I've been here

two weeks. And I looked in her cart and she had nothing in the

cart except baby items, all for her baby. She had a baby with

her. It was all for her baby. And I thought, okay,

I'm going to help her. So we go through the checkout and there's not

very many items in the cart, maybe twenty or so, and the lady

wrings us up and she looks at me and says, that'll be three hundred

and fifty dollars. My first thought was, whoa baby. Items are super

expensive these days. I did not know that. And then and then here's

my moment of scarcity. I just looked at her and said, I don't

know if I can do that. And she started taking items back and knock

off about a hundred bucks and I was like, okay, that's fine it

So we got it and walked out, and I just said, I hope

you're okay. I hope you have people that can take care of you.

And I'm doing this really in the name of Jesus, and I hope you

understand what I'm trying to tell you. She thanked me, she hugged me,

she walked away. I got in the car, and honestly, I

kind of felt like Oscar Schindler. At the end of the movie, he

took his watch off. He said, I could have done more. I

could have bought another person with this, And I thought, Jeff, You're

an idiot. Did she think that God has achieved God because you made her

put some items back? Did that one hundred dollars really make a difference to

you? Not? Really, it didn't. It was a moment of scarcity.

I regret it. When I think about it, I still regret it.

I hope that God puts somebody else in her life to show her,

to show her the character of God, because I'm not sure that I did

a good job with That. Is a moment of scarcity for me. And

there are four reasons why I think we buy into the scarcity mentality, including

me. The first reason is that we started to think God didn't have enough

to go around that you know, he needs what I have, so he

wants me to give him my money because he didn't have enough. But Psalm

fifty, verses nine through twelve says this, I do not need the bulls

from your barns, or the goats from your pens. For all the animals

of the forest are mine. And I owned a cattle on a thousand hills.

I know every bird on the mountains, and all the animals of the

field are mine. If I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you, for

all the world is mine and everything in it. God has enough. He

has enough for himself, He has enough for us. The second reason I

think we fall prey to the scarcity mentality is some of us start to think,

well, God, just he is a generous He's not a generous God.

And this is the same lie that Satan told Adam and Eve in the

garden. Hey, there's this great thing that God has and he's holding back

from He just doesn't want you to have it. You should have it.

He's trying to make out that God is not a generous God. But didn't

God give us his only son. Did he give us his most precious thing

when he sent Jesus. It seems like a pretty generous move to me.

And remember the story of the prodigal son, how he demanded his share of

the family wealth, and he went off and he blew it. He finally

came to his senses and he headed home. And when he came home,

the father said, we're going to celebrate, and so he killed the best

calf and they had a party. Well, the older brother wasn't very happy

about that, and he said, hey, uh, I've been faithful,

I've done my duty with you, and you never even gave me a goat

to celebrate with my friends. He's mad about it. And then the father,

and one of the most incredible lines, incredible thoughts that can be communicated

to us through scripture, says this, my son, you were always with

me. Everything I have is yours, everything I have is yours. Does

that sound like a God who is in generous? Let's think about it.

And then the third reason that I think we fall prey to the scarcy mentalities.

We start to think that God doesn't really care that much about me.

Yeah, he's generous at times, and he has unlimited resources, but somehow

we get the idea that he didn't care about us individually. But look at

what Luke twelve says about that. I'm just going to read this as I

put this picture on the screen, and for those of you on the podcast,

it's a picture of a beautiful meadow with incredible wildflowers. And he says

this, consider how the wildflowers grow. They don't labor or spend. It

means they don't work, They don't do anything to get the way they are.

Yet I tell you not even Solomon and all of his splendor, was

dressed like one of these. If that's how God closed the grass of the

field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how

much more will he clothe you, you of little faith? Just look at

the photo when you add these three thoughts up. That God didn't have enough,

God in generous, God doesn't care about me. It's no wonder that

people begin to live with this mentality of scarceness, the scarcity mentality. The

story that I think sums up this mentality the most in all of scriptures.

Also in Luke twelve, there was a farmer that had a huge crop on

your bumper, crop more than he'd ever had before, and he didn't know

what to do with it. And then he thought to him, oh,

I know how do. I'll tear down my barns and then I'll build bigger

barns, and I'll store up all this excess that I have, and then

I'll be set, I'll be good, i won't have to worry about a

thing, And maybe an hour, day and time, we might say,

my portfolio is going to take care of me. I'm all good here,

it'll see me through. And then Jesus went on to say that the man

who thought he hadn't made died that very night, and then all he had

stored up for himself other people got the benefit of right. It perfectly illustrates

the idea of living with a scarcity mentality. They were always trying to store

up for ourselves what we have. We begin to rely on ourselves, and

trusting in Jesus becomes optional. Hear me. We start to rely on ourselves

and trusting in Jesus becomes an option for us. So here's my second question

for us today. Are you building bigger barnes? Are you working with every

ounce of energy you have to store up so much for yourself that you just

don't have to trust God to take care of you. If the answer is

yes, then maybe part of the problem is that most of us think like

owners. We're thinking like owners. But Luke sixteen helps to really define our

role in this whole discussion. And it's really not that of the owner.

Jesus told his disciples there was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting

his possession. So he called him in and he said, hey, what

do I hear about you? What are you doing with my money? Give

an account of your management. You can no longer be my manager. You're

fired, basically what you're saying. I highlight the words rich men and manager

in this passage because in this story there are really only two roles, and

we've established that God is the owner. He's the rich man. He owns

everything. So the role that's delegated to us in this life is the role

of manager. The point I'm trying to make here is this, when we

think of all the stuff we have as ours, our money, our house,

our investments, then we're assuming the role of God. We're taking on

his responsibility, not ours. He's the owner, we're simply the manager.

So here's question number three for us today, are you willing to play the

role of manager and give up the role of owner. God's cleared that as

long as he's the owner, everything he has is at our disposal. He's

gonna take care of us. If he'll take care for the flowers in the

field and the birds in the air. When do you take care of us?

What do you think will he? Will he take care of us?

Amen? That's right. So what should our response be to understanding this?

I believe that the first response are to be gratitude, that when we assess

all He's done for us, we would first be thankful, we'd show gratitude,

and out of that response flows the next response, which I believe should

be generosity. That, unlike my experience at Walmart, we begin to show

the world that God isn't a cheaper, stingy god, but a generous God.

So where does all this lead us? Where do we go as we

move from scarcity into gratitude and generosity. Well, I think the answer to

that question was in John ten ten the thief comes to steal and kill and

destroy, but I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.

The keyword here is abundance, not the kind of abundance the gods in the

two thousand dollars suits are talking about. Here, not that kind of abundance,

because Jesus almost never talks about his prauma to us in earthly terms.

Okay, we said that forty percent of the parables were about wealth and mine.

You know what was the only subject he talked about more than that.

It's the Kingdom of God. That's what he talked about more than anything else,

was building the Kingdom of God. And so this means that abundance isn't

just about our comfort, but it's the kind of abundance that allows us to

reach out to the lost and the hurting people in our community and love them

with the resources we have, with all that were able to extend to them

like that girl at Walmart, because we know that God is going to take

care of us. That's what abundance is about. So maybe instead of living

with a scarcity mentality, we're called to live with an abundance mentality. Okay,

not for us, but for the sake of bringing others into the Kingdom

of God. Okay, enough on scarcity. I'm gonna pause here. We've

talked about moving on from scarcity to abundance. We understand that building the kingdom

is our why, that's our purpose, it's our Raisin tetra. But there

are some very practical reasons to do this as well. Let's quickly look at

Matthew six, where Jesus says, hey, don't store up for yourselves treasures

on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and

stell. Instead, store up for yourselves treasure in heaven we're neither moth nor

rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steel. Dale Bruner

not if you've ever heard of him or not, but Dale is a modern

day theologian, very plain spoken. He's a brilliant guy. He says that

the moth in the story represents the corrosions of nature, and that the rust

represents the corrosions of time, and that the thief represents the corrosions of humanity.

And that there's nothing that we can get our hands on in this world

that can ultimately withstand those three corrosions. We can't beat the system, is

what he's saying. Jesus is pointing out that the things we're so proud of

today are going to be gone tomorrow. The house we've spent so much time

on, well, I got bad news. One day, somebody is going

to come in and redecorate that thing, and all they're going to talk about

is what bad taste we had. Okay, that's going to be terrible for

some of us I know, and the investments that we're building up so that

we can have a comfortable retirement. I'm not against that what I'm saying,

but the truth is, statistically that most of those investments that we save up

either get spent by the government. Our kids are grandkids, Okay, they're

going to have a great time for all the hard work we did. And

my precious guitars that I love so much, one day somebody's going to play

them, and I'm absolutely positive that they're not going to appreciate Jimmy Hendrix the

way I do. So Jesus is offering us a better investment deal. This

is a practical thing. It's a better deal to invest the way Jesus talks

about. So question number four, are you willing to invest for the long

term? Jim Elliott. I don't know if you know that name or not.

He was a missionary in the nineteen fifties to natives in Ecuador who eventually

killed him. Jim Elliott says this, he is no fool to lose what

he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. And read that again,

he is no fool to lose what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot

lose. Look, God knows this is hard, okay, to actively trade

what you have in your hand for something that you can't see that and by

the way, this you know, this concept was actually the premise of the

game show Let's make a deal. Remember that, some of you remember that

when you were kids, that people would win a prize and then they had

the opportunity to trade it for whatever was behind curtain number one, curtain number

two, or curtain number three. Sometimes that worked in their favor, and

sometimes it didn't work in their favor. But God is not many hall,

okay, and he is not playing games with us. This is not a

game to him. And you can bet on the promises that he makes to

us on how he's going to take care of us. Let's just look at

a couple real quick. Malachi three to ten. Bring all the tithes into

the storehouse, so there will be enough food in my temple. If you

do, says the Lord of Heaven's armies, I will open the windows of

heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you want to

have enough room to take it in. Try it. Put me to the

test. Now, I think not hundred percent sure, but I think this

is the only place in scripture where God says, test me on this one,

test me on this one. So maybe we should take him up on

that. It sounds like a pretty good deal. Let's look at one more,

Luke six thirty eight, Give and you will receive your gift, will

return to you in full, press down, shaken together to make room for

more, running over, and poured into your laut Okay, that too seems

like a pretty good deal. But just remember Jesus oftentimes is talking about his

heavenly kingdom. He will absolutely meet our needs for today, absolutely, but

he's not promising us all the creature comforts that this world has to offer.

This in many cases, is about eternity and what's going to happen there.

So the last thing that I want to cover today in this is practical.

We've talked about moving from scarcity to abundance. We've talked about God's promises,

but the question is, well, if I want to live generously, how

do I live generous? How do I do that? So let's talk about

that for just a minute. Okay, you all remember the story of Jesus

feeding the five thousand men plus women and children. So a bunch of people

set a bunch of people, and in the story he was teaching and healing,

and it got to be dinner time, and the disciple said, hey,

the people are kind of getting hungry. What should we do. And

Jesus said, well, give him some deed. And so they said,

well, the only thing we have is this kid with a bag lunch.

He's got a couple of fish and a couple of five loaves of bread.

That's all we have for what's arguably ten or fifteen thousand people. And then

Jesus said, okay, great, So he took it, he blessed it,

he distributed it, and there were four baskets left over. So four

really quick observations on this story. First, as a little boy gave what

he had, right when you're trying to figure out how to move from scarcity

to abundance and generosity, God's not asking you to give what you don't have.

You need to be able to do that. A second, Corinthians nine

to seven says this, each one of us has to decide in our own

hearts how much to give and don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure.

For God loves a person who gives cheerfully, decide what you have and work

to start giving. It doesn't matter what it is. The point is to

think about investing in God's kingdom. Okay. The second observation is God is

patient when we have doubts. When you're reading the story, I get the

idea that the disciples had no idea what was about to happen. They were

as confused as they could possibly be, and they could only see in human

terms. All we have was is a kid but a back lunch. So

at the end, when there's twelve baskets left over, Scripture didn't say this,

but I wonder if those twelve baskets were so that Jesus could send each

of his disciples home with a basket of food. Can't you just imagine Philip

or Matthew walking in the door and somebody goes, where did you get to

the food? And they kind of stumbled through their words, going, well,

see there was this kid with a bad lunch. And then Jesus,

God's patient with us. He's always teaching us. The third observation is that

true generosity happens when we trust like a little kid can't you just see again

the Disciples going, anybody got any food? And this kid walks up and

says, you can have my lunch. Little kids are generous, sometimes more

than we can imagine it. And so he says, you can have mine.

And it reminds me of this kid in the Andy Griffith show. His

name was Leon, and the only purpose of Leon and the whole show was

to walk around dressed up like a cowboy with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

and offer it to everybody who walked by. And I think that that's what

was going on that Leon in the first century said you can have mine,

just like Leon and Andy Grissy's show. And our fourth observation is this is

not about the amount as gifts go. This was not a big gift.

Okay, it's not going to land his kid on any major donors list,

it's not going to qualify him for the Judean President Circle Club. Right he

as gifts go, he just gave what he had. But but you have

to know this, when you offer what you have to Jesus, he starts

doing what some of us would dread, and that's he starts doing math.

Okay, but Jesus doesn't subtract, and Jesus doesn't divide, and he rarely

adds. Mostly what Jesus does is multiplication. Right, he takes that's what

we give, He blesses it, and it goes many, many, many

times further than we could have accomplished with the same amount. Okay, that's

what he does. He does multiplication. So the point of all this today

is really to help us to begin to understand that our natural bent is to

live in scarcity. That's where many of us starts, where many of us

stay. But God invites us to live with gratitude and abundance of generosity and

to know that He's going to take care of us and all this. But

I think so many of us look at giving as transactional. Okay, whatever

I give out of my account disappears from my account and it goes into that

account, and so they look at it as transactional. I lose and they

win. That's not how this works. Okay. God promises that it isn't

transaction. It isn't transactional, it's transformational. That's what he does. He

promises that you won't lose when you give, you'll only gain when you give.

Some of us can write big checks, and there are people in this

room who've been exceedingly generous. I want to pause and say thank you for

big and small generosity. A lot of you have been generous to this church

and elsewhere. We're super grateful for that. Some of us can only offer

a bag lunch. That's all we have. It doesn't matter. What matters

is that you begin to walk away from the mindset of scarcity that was created

by Satan to deceive us into thinking that God can't want or couldn't or won't

or shouldn't or Satan wants us to think that God is unable to take care

of us. That's what he's trying to do so for the sake of building

His kingdom, right, that's what we want to be about. We want

to build His kingdom. And you know what you find when you begin to

live with the understanding that God is able to take care of us, meet

all of our needs, and we're able to give and bless other people as

well. You know what you find when you start to work on that and

think about that. You find freedom, freedom from worry and fear, freedom

from thinking that you have to do this all on your own. You're on

your own. You've got to figure it out. But you find his freedom.

You beble to understand that he wants this for us, not from us.

So to wrap up, I just want to ask, where are you

on your journey towards generosity. Maybe you feel convicted that you haven't been as

generous as you would like. I certainly have felt convicted, especially with my

girl Walmarts. I felt terrible about that. But I want us to remember

there's a difference between conviction and condemnation. Okay. Conviction tells us that maybe

there's a change we automate. Condemnation says you're guilty, you're never going to

change, you're a terrible person. But Romans eight starts that reminding us.

It starts out by reminding us that there is no condemnation for those of us

who are in Christ Jesus. Okay, So if you do feel convicted,

if this is convicted, you just find a place to start, Just take

a step. If you're not sure how to get started, then maybe you

start by buying a cup of coffee for the person in line behind you at

Starbucks, or maybe you pray that God would lead you to a direct need

that you can invest in. Maybe you decide that you're just gonna take a

certain amount each month and say, I'm just gonna give it and trust God

and see what happens with that. Take him up on his challenge, see

what he does. But the point is to find somewhere that God's moving and

get involved in it. It might be here at the Movement Church, and

like I said, so many of you already have jumped in on what's going

on here. We're grateful, Or might be the neighbor across the street that

just needs a little help. Whatever it is, you won't regret taking some

of God's money and investing it in his purposes to build His kingdom. You

will not regret that if you want God to actively move in your life,

if you want to see God move in your life, then start looking for

opportunities to be generous. I promise you you will see God do something in

your own life, and we love to help you with that. As church.

We're working on some ideas that will help us reach out to our community

more actively. You'll hear more about that in the coming months. But if

you look for as you look for small ways in which you can spread the

God gospel of being generous. We want to help you communicate why you're doing

it, so you don't want people to think, oh, well, that

was a really nice guy. He bought me a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Thanks Mike, that's really generous. Now, we want to help people

understand that we're doing this because God's been generous to us. So we created

these little cards, and there's some over here on the connection table you can

grab some. The front of it says God is for you and so are

we, and the back says you got this card because someone saw you,

prayed for you and decided to bless you. Come find out why. And

it's simply an invitation to find out what we're doing here at the Movement Church.

How we want to have active impact in the communities and with the people

that God put to us with Living in scarcity is a terrible way to live.

It's no good. And so God offers us this abundance, but not

so we can live care free lives where we never have to worry about any

thing. It's really so we can invest generously into His kingdom help more people

enter that abundance, both today and through eternity. And the greatest example of

God's generosity to us came on the Cross. God gave his only son to

rescue us from our sin and from the evil that lurks around us every day.

And so if you're here today or listening to in Them on podcast and

you never knew that God's generosity through the Cross could extend to you, then

grab me afterward, or grab fight or grab one of our leaders, or

if you're on the podcast, talk to somebody you know who is a follower

of Jesus. We'll walk you through that. Okay. And for those of

you who've already experienced and received God's generosity through the Cross, well, we

want to take time to remember his sacrifice, his generosity. Okay. I

hope you can think about this as as you leave today. That scarcity holds

us back from accomplishing so much that God has for us, from experiencing so

much that God has for us. We want to live in His abundance and

generosity. So what's God leading you to do next? And how can we

help? Would you send us an email to info at Movementchurch dot co and

tell us how we can pray for you and help you take the next step

in your spiritual journey. If you'd like to contribute financially to our ministry,

text the amount you like to give to the number eight four three two one,

or look us up online at Movement Church dot C. You can find

the Movement Church on all social media platforms, and we hope that you'll give

us a follow God bless you, and remember God is for you, and

so are we