Thanksgiving To God

I want to talk to you about the idea of trusting God with your finances. We're going to be in 2 Corinthians, chapter 9 today. 2 Corinthians, chapter 9. Do not tell me this thing died. Well, it died somehow.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention 2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

It was at 50%. IPads guys, they probably want me to update to the newest model, or something like that. We're going to be in 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians, chapter 9 today. I'm going to turn there, going, give me a second. It's going to be on your screens as well.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

During the first service, I was super excited because, my daughter was in here with me and, that song, More Than abble was on and that second verse. It says, what does it say about miracles? It says, I don't know the whole point of it is: why do I keep neglecting to see the Miracles that you have already performed in my life? That's not as poetic as the song, but I can't memorize it. Remember it right now.

And I would just remember thinking, while I was sitting there or standing there holding her and worshiping, that she was kind of a miracle that we had prayed for and I'd never really thought of her in that way. We actually had her the year after we had had two miscarriages and, it was just kind of a Revelation for me that when we trust God- because the year before we had trusted God with, what we call my first fruits- I was in real estate for about three months- three months, guys. I sold one house and, I didn't want to be in real estate. It was something I was just trying to do to make ends meet so that my family could be provided for. I wanted to get back into Ministry, but God had not provided that opportunity up to that point, and at year end- this was the second year we ever did it- we came, we brought a word.

That word was patience, and then we brought an offering and my wife and I had agreed that the offering would be first fruits, because how often do you get to do real first fruits, right like I? I just made a sale. It was the first sale we'd ever made. It was a substantial amount, but it was the first sale. I said I'm going to give the first fruit.

So we gave that commission, my first commission at year end. And then we had our second miscarriage and then into that next year she got pregnant and we had Micah, and so I was just standing there just reveling in the glory and blessing of God in my life. I need to communicate to you all, that when you trust God, he provides, and in 2 Corinthians, chapter 9, he proves it. We're going to begin in verse vers 6. Paul says this to the Corinthian Church: remember this: whoever SS sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever SWS generously will also reap generously.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful Giver. I want to pause there for a second. Over the years I've noticed that this is kind of the number one excuse, and this year has not changed anything. I've had plenty of people- and by by plenty I mean more than three people- come up to me and say I don't give because- oh, a different IP. Look at them, they got me covered.

Good job, Carz. I think that's car's iPad, I bet it is a screenshot. Look at y'all, y'all trying to help me out here. I got a memorize. Anyways, we're going to try.

And, they'll come up to me. They say I don't give and I'm like: okay, that all right, we're going to have a personal conversation about giving. It makes me lightly uncomfortable, but I believe God's going to bless you. So we're going to entertain this conversation. They, I say, why don't you give?

And? And they say, because God likes a cheerful giver and I don't want to do it. So I wouldn't be a cheerful Giver if I gave. Don't laugh. I mean, you can laugh if that's not you but it.

I've heard it plenty and I just want to clarify what Paul's saying here, just because we're covering it. What Paul's saying is not, if you're not happy, don't give. And I want to be very clear. He says not under compulsion. If anyone is ever forcing you to do it, don't do it.

Nobody here is forcing you to do anything. We're in inviting you to trust God, but what Paul is saying is not: if you're not happy about it, don't ever do it. What he's saying is: if you're not happy about it, you need to go through a process of trusting God so that you can be happy about it and still trust him by doing it. That's what he's saying In this passage. Paul's not going to the Corinthian Church, who he said a lot of other things to, and saying, hey, don't do it if you're not happy about it.

What he's saying is: you need to figure out how to trust God enough to be grateful enough to give back out of what he has so graciously given you. I dig, let's jump back in, and God is able to bless you abundantly- verse 8- so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound. In cars and trucks and houses, no, in every good work. As it's written, they have freely scattered their gifts to the poor. Their righteousness endures forever.

What do you see? You see that when you scatter something physical that God blessed you with, He blesses you with something spiritual. He said you scattered physical gifts. He gives you righteousness that endures forever. Verse 10.

Now, he who supplies seed to the Sewer- that's God, and bread for food also, God will also Supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the Harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way, so that everyone say so that he doesn't just enrich us, he enriches us for a reason, so that you can be- say that word with me- generous on every occasion and through us, your generosity will result in Thanksgiving to God. This doesn't have to do with the sermon, but I wanted to give you my sermon title because I thought it was poetic that Thursday was Thanksgiving and this is how the passage ends, so my sermon title is Thanksgiving to God. I could have said thanks-giving, because it's a giving series clever- but I didn't do it. I still talked about it.

So what's the point? Not anyways? I, I want to talk to you about what it looks like to have that posture, that abundance mindset, that that you don't have to stress as much to trust God in the future as you do right now, and there are a couple different things I want to give you today and I hope that they'll be helpful. In fact, the bulk of the message I think, if you lean in, can be a paradigm shift for you. For me back in 2017, I heard a message from Craig relle that has some of these similar things in here, and it was really helpful for me.

It was a paradigm shift for me, understanding the process that God has given all of us to live in abundance rather than scarcity. So y'all ready for that? Just shake your head. You good, you ready for it? It's going to be good.

No one shook their head, but I'm gonna do it anyways. This is how we're going to roll. I want to give you two quick things. First- and I need you to hear this- you are rich and you don't know it. You are rich and you don't know.

Won't you turn to your neighbor, the one that looks nicer? No, look, turn to both of them, I don't care. Turn to your neighbor and say: you're rich, all right. I heard a couple people turn to your other neighbor- just in case they didn't have anyone talking to them- and say it a little bit louder than you did the first time. You're rich, rich, we are rich, and we don't know it.

The second point I'm going to give you, and I'm going to break down both of these things, is that you think you're generous, but most of us aren't. I gave, I gave you a cool one and I give you a, a pretty hard-hitting one. You aren't generous, but you think it. Now I don't know you. You could be generous, you might be.

I've joked around about how I'm not that generous. I don't like to tip the Barista every single time they turn the iPad around. You know, that's that's me. I struggle with generosity. Often I think I'm more generous than somebody else and then the Lord reminds me: hey, bro, you ain't that special, you're not that generous.

In fact, generosity looks more like my son, Jesus, than you've been living right, many of us, we think we're generous but we aren't. -oh, let's break that down a little bit. So cool, I love lights. Is there a code to this? We struggling today.

Anyways, they'll put in the code. I had a couple statistics that I want to give you. Let's pray, y'all pray, for me real quick that I've got all of these things memorized. I want to tell you this: if you make $50,000 a year, you were in the top 2.4% of the world. I know it's crazy, right, if you make 50,000 a year, if you make 60,000 a year, you were in the top 1% of the world.

Yo, that's crazy. I want to communicate. You're rich. Oh, I'm gonna give this to you. See, I didn't see you over there.

That's my fault. Look at this little orbit thing that someone made. Look at, look at the shirt. Yeah, if you want one, let her know. If you want one, let her know.

I don't know where they got it from, but I like it. It's cool. You're rich, but most of y'all didn't know you were in the top 2.4% and- and here's the funny thing, I know. I know what you kind of have to live on out here to live these days, especially if you bought a house after 2021. Amen, somebody, goodness gracious, it's crazy.

So most of us are in the top, top 1%. God has blessed you. You're rich. I can prove it a little further. Can I prove it a little bit further?

All right, most of you live in a house with a roof and a and a house for your car that we call a garage. Some of y'all got houses, or two, two cars and houses fre each to those cars. Some of y'all got a three-car garage. You know what I'm saying. Some of you got, some of y'all got- a backyard you got.

You got grass, real grass, and some of you went crazy and you got Turf, the good turf, not just regular Turf, that stuff that gets dirty when you scuff on it or whatever stuff. You can just spray. You don't have to worry about your dog stuff. That's good Turf. You got streaming services: Hulu, Netflix, Disney Plus, Peacock, Paramount plus.

Shall I continue, Max? I keep. Did I miss one? I Pro. I just listed the ones that we kind of have once in a while, depending on what kind of deals we're getting.

Some of y'all went crazy. You got the NFL ticket. You got the MLB All Access. Some of y'all went real, real hard and got FUBU or fubo. Fubo is it fubo guys?

Y'all know y' have fubo. It's expensive. I tried it one time. You've been buying apps on your phone on the regular because you're tired of ads and you're gonna pay the extra because you don't like ads. You got clothing, and you've got clothing that you wear and you've got clothing that just hangs there there.

You've got clothes for the summer. You got clothes for the winter, but since we don't really have a winter, you've got clothes that you keep, just in case you go somewhere where it's kind of cold and you want to wear it. And you got clothes that you want to wear as soon as it gets below 60 degrees outside. Because you got it in the closet, you might as well wear it. You got clothes that you're going to wear one day when you lose weight.

You've got shoes. How many of you got more one pair, more than one pair of shoes? I know some of y'all got inside shoes. I'm talking- I'm not just talking about the slippers, I'm talking about inside shoes, inside shoes that you can't if you get scuff on it. You make sure to take them off.

You take them back home and you wipe it, because you bought white shoes that cost $180 shoes. You guys, you- some of y'all- got enough shoes to have shoe games. Some of y'all buy used shoes and then you sell them on Stock Exchange. We're rich and most of us been walking around saying, man, I ain't got no money. You're rich, you're in the top 2.4%, you're in the top 1% of the world.

You've got water that comes out of the tap and our biggest complaint is that it's got minerals in it that we don't like. I'm not saying that we should like the minerals. I'm saying you got water. Now, while, while I don't want to just preach at you and make you feel bad for all the luxury that we have in the United States, I want to communicate very clearly to you that you're rich, and when you don't recognize the riches that God has blessed you with, it puts you in a very hard position when it comes to feeling grateful, which is why we, more than many other countries, struggle to feel Joy. That's why we struggle, because we don't realize how rich we are.

Subsequently, we are also of the opinion that we're generous, but rarely are we generous. I can prove that to you. I was looking at statistics and it shows that on average, people don't give too much. As of last year, people in the United States on average gave about 1.7% of their income to whatever resource- this isn't just local churches- and you might think, oh, that's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It's down from last year and it's at a three decade low for generosity in our country and I know there are many reasons that we could utilize to say why our generosity is down.

But when you start looking at the amount of money we have in comparison to the rest of the world, you might think, well, it's more expensive here. The stats I was looking at took in to account the purchasing power of our country, meaning if something is expensive for you, they still get less in their country for whatever they're making. We are rich and we don't know it, and we are also not as generous as we think we are. Is it working now? Are there still a code?

It's, we're done. I got a couple of the statistics. One chart that I had and I was looking at it really blew my mind. There were about five different subsets of the population based on income, and what I found was those who make 50,000 or less give about 8.4% of their income to whatever Source, including the local church, but it started to decrease in terms of percentage as income increased. The next stage was about 50 to 100,000.

They gave about 3.8% of their income. From 100,000 to 100 or to 400 or 500,000, it was about 2.8% of their income, and then it didn't start to increase again until you were making 2 million or more. So what's strange is there are many people who walk around in this life thinking, well, I will be more grateful to God and more generous with what he's given me as he provides for me, but that's actually not what happens statistically. What happens is the more God continues to bless us with- if we utilize that excuse- the less we give. What does that mean to me and a Craig relle back in 2017?

It means we're in a cycle. We are in a cycle that is unsustainable. We are in a cycle that leaves us frustrated and fearful at the end of the day. I'll call it the scarcity cycle. I'm going to show you this chart right up here.

Here's the scarcity cycle. What happens is God supplies. How many of you know God's supplies. Just give me an amen, raise your hand. You all know God's supplies.

You got breath in your lungs and you got a roof over your head, and if you don't, let me know, cuz you know the church is meant to help people when it comes to physical needs as well, but most of us have a roof over our head. So God has supplied us, and what happens when God supplies us is the tendency is to take what God gives us and consume it. This is what. This is what happens when, as soon as you get the paycheck, it goes out. The other hand, you spend it on something.

Now, I'm not, I'm not trying to demonize anybody. I want to be so clear. That was me for a huge portion of my life and some ways it still is, depending on what it is. It's so natural for me after payday to pass by the little speed, stop over there by Sienna Hills, right on verado way, and see that and say, man, I'm going to get myself a little Coke Zero and I'm going to get some candy for the weekend. Or I'm going to stop by Wing Stop, it's super expensive Wings, it's super unhealthy for my body, but it looks good.

There's also Starbucks. There pumpkin spice lattes are only lasting until like January and then they're going to be gone. I got to get while while I can get it, and but then there's, that cold beer and cheese burgers across the street, and then, if I'm trying to be healthy, there's also Cafe zupa where I can get a soup and a salad, but it's expensive and it's my tendency to take what God supplied me with in his grace and love for me and consume it immediately. It's not inherently bad to utilize what God gives you, but he has a bigger purpose for your life than to take and utilize for yourself. There's bigger, there's, there's bigger.

So God supplies, we consume, and when we consume what God gives us, we lack. This is where many of us find ourselves right at the end of the month is: all the bills come due and we're scared. We don't know how to pay our bills, and chances are it's because earlier in the month maybe we made a couple decisions to consume what God gave us rather than rightly allocate what God gave us. I'm not saying that's you, that's just definitely been me on a lot of cases. So God supplies, we consume, and then we feel like we don't have enough, we lack, and when we lack, we fear.

And that's where many of us live. We live in fear and I can tell you that that's true among people in this church and outside this church. By nature of talking about giving, these conversations crop up and I have felt the fear from people because as soon as we bring up talking about giving, which we believe, the tithe is 10% of the gross income to the local Storehouse or the local church presently, and that's a lot of money and so as soon as that conversation comes up, someone's like: well, I've got this and I got this. I couldn't live if I did that, and I know exactly what that feels like, that fear that I'm not going to be taken care of if I make a decision to trust God. But even if you're not trusting God, you're still living in fear.

This is what Corey so eloquently said: , was it last week when we did that video? He was saying I was stressed every time something happened in the business. That's where we live: God supplies, we consume, we lack and we fear. Now the Bible tells us in: , actually, Paul tells y this: he says: God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love and of self-control. So, by Nature, when you fear, that should tell you're in the wrong cycle.

You're in the scarcity cycle because we serve a God who is abundant. We serve a God who is powerful. We serve a God who can make things out of nothing. We serve a God who loves us and we serve a God who can provide for us even when it doesn't make sense. So when we fear, that means we're in the wrong cycle, we're feeling scarce.

But there's another cycle called the abundance cycle. In this cycle, this is what this is where you want to live. You want to live in abundance. We all want to live in this place. It took me years to get to the place where I was willing to pay for somebody else's meal, and now I look at them, rather than my grandparents doing it.

I look at them and I say: you're young, I'm gonna cover your meal today. I get to do that now, but for years I was like I want to get there. I want to get there. I want to get to this place where I'm generous. I want to get to this place where money doesn't stress me out and I think it, the more that I make, the more generous I'm going to be.

But, like I said, if you're in the scarcity cycle, God can provide you 10 bucks. He can provide you 10 million bucks, but if you consume it you're still going to feel lack. And when you feel lack you're going to feel fear, and fear will guide your decision-making process. But you can get out of it and move into the abundance cycle where God supplies- he always supplies- and instead of consuming, you give back to God out of what he is so graciously given to you. You say: this isn't my money to keep, this is my money to Steward for God.

And so we give. And when we give- and I can't really prove it to you by just telling you, I can tell you through the videos, I can tell you through my own experiences. I've seen it in my life- whenever you give back to God out of what he has given you, God multiplies. It's almost like the fish and the loaves, the Five Loaves and two fish. The, the disciples hustled, hustled, hustled.

The best that they could get was Five Loaves and two fish. Maybe they could have been more efficient disciples, maybe they could have been quicker. Maybe they could have found something better if they had more clout in the community maybe they could have figured this stuff out. But they got Five Loaves and two fish. It came by the hand of a boy.

They brought it to Jesus, gave it to him and he multiplied. Maggie made a really good illustration at our leadership meeting the other day and she said it was crazy, because it seems to me like that was all the boy had and he gave it. And what did God do with it? He multiplied it. So when we give, God multiplies.

And when God multiplies things in your life, come on somebody- your faith grows. When God does something that you did not expect, your faith grows when miracles happen after you trusted him. Your faith grows when God does something in your kids, when God does something in your marriage, when God does something after you were obedient, your faith will grow. Now I would be a terrible, horrible liar if I was trying to tell you to trust God with your finances without the expectation that he would do something when you gave. But I have the full expectation that when you trust him he will bless you.

Now again, I can't say this enough: spiritual first, everybody. He wants to bless you with righteousness. He wants to bless you, with more ability to do what he's called you to. But he also blesses you materially, so God multiplies it and your faith grows. And when your faith grows are you more or less likely to trust him again.

Come on somebody. You're more likely to trust him if your faith grows, if it increases- and some people are getting to the point. One thing I had to cut, cut out of that video cuz I'm trying to keep it at three and a half minutes- that one was four, goodness gracious. One thing I cut out of the video was Lawrence saying: and now I get excited when I get the opportunity to give, and I love that because when God multiplies, your faith grows. And when your faith grows you're like: I got to keep, I'm going to keep trusting God with this.

That's why I give people an opportunity, say, hey, don't, don't stop at 10%. If, if God G blesses you with more scatter, more seed, and he'll keep filling the storehouses, scatter what he gives you, he'll fill the storehouse. God wants to bless you as you do what he's called you to, he will provide for you. In fact, wouldn't God be a terrible businessman, which he is not. He's an amazing businessman.

I think. He's a wise bus businessman. I think he's so much better than any of us could even fathom. And since God's a good businessman, wouldn't he invest into the people who rightly respond to what he's given them? I'm not saying he done.

Bless you. The rainfalls on the righteous and the unrighteous. There are people in this world who are blessed beyond measure and they don't even care about God. I get it, I've seen it, you've seen it. The Bible communicates it.

There are good and bad people. There are righteous and unrighteous, people who were blessed, but God tells us the way to go. He says: trust me with what I've given you and I will bless you more so that you can continue to abound in what I've called you to. So when we trust God, we move into this place of abundance. Now.

Now here's where my mind was blown in 2017. I'd never thought of it this way. People had told me to tithe. My personal finance guy was a Christian and he was like: you got to give the first 10% of your gross income to the local church. I'm just quoting him every time I'm talking.

So if you get mad, get mad at my personal finance Professor way back in college, and he would always say that. So I was like I guess I got to give. I guess I got to give. He would always say God before government, all this other stuff that I remembered, and so that's when I started giving and it blessed me. But it wasn't until 2017 that I really understood the value of the tithe and I got I.

I took it from Craig relle. Here's what he says and it's going to be on the screen. He says: tithing, giving 10% of your gross income. It breaks the scarcity cycle and puts you into the abundance cycle. Because you might be asking: well, I'm in the scarcity cycle, how do I get to the abundance cycle?

How do I get to this place? Well, God gives us a pattern. That didn't start with the Mosaic law, mind you. It started when Abraham, and we see this in early, early in Genesis, when Abraham tithes to melkisedek. Tithing is from the beginning, all the way to the end of the Bible.

It is assumed in the New Testament. Why? Because it is a system that God provided for his people to move from scarcity into a mindset of abundance. If you want to jump from scarcity to abundance, God provided tithing as a system for you to consistently do so. And- and you, you might need to write that down or think about that for a second, because it took me maybe a year after that to really click.

Wow, what an amazing message I've been preaching. Just be abundant, keep being generous, keep giving, all the while tithing but not understanding why I'm doing it. I tithe because it's a system that God gave us to break the cycle of scarcity in my life and move me into a posture of abundance in my life. That's what tithing does, and there are three things that I want to break down about tithing first. The tithe teaches you to put God first.

The tithe is a system given to us by God that teaches us to put God first, and you might say, well, I put God first. It's like God gave people a system because he knows that their words don't mean as much as their activities. And God knows that there's a difference between saying God, God, first, guys, it's all God- and I'm not saying that's bad, you should totally say that stuff- but there's a difference between saying it after you get a good play during a football game and actually living your life in such a way that I trust God enough I put him first, enough to where I'm going to take 10%, % of my whole income and give it back to him. Would y'all agree? There's a different level of Faith there.

It's different, and God put that in place on purpose, because he knows it is that that enables us to break the cycle, and I believe this with all of my heart. And some people in this room they're going to take that and say: well, I'm GNA, put God first in my time. That is the thing I hear often. Well, we don't tithe financially yet, but I tithe with my time. And I'm like you know what, if I could get a room full of people to tithe with their time, even if they're not tithing with their finances, I'd be like, moderately grateful.

Why? Because that's 2.4 hours a day. Y'all doing that. That'd be 2.4 hours a day. Multiply that times seven, that's 15 plus hours a week.

Y' y'all come hang right. But, people, I need you to know that when God tells us to do something, when he tells us to test him in the area of trusting him, he says it for a reason and we can choose whether to do it or not. But God doesn't tell you to do it, because his Storehouse needed more grain. He tells you to do it because you need more God. He tells you to do it because you need more of his Blessing.

He tells you to do it because he knows you're living in fear and scarcity and his Spirit breaks the power of scarcity in your life and it is appropriated better in your life when you trust him in the tithe. I'm going hardcore. The tithe teaches us to put God first. That's why I love talking about it, but I also kind of hate talking about it. I have a LoveHate relationship with talking about the tithe.

Can y'all kind of empathize with me for a second? Like y'all know, know what people think about preachers, right? It's like, oh, there's a guy. If you're a first- Time guest today, you might have left a church because they talk too much about giving. And then you showed up today and you're like, oh gosh, another one like I.

I kind of hate that part of it. But here's what I love. I love that when someone hears the message, receives it implanted into their soul and starts acting in line with it, they get to tell a story like Lawrence. They get to tell a story like Corey and DHA, like Carz and Maggie- next week you'll see Kaye. Like God does so much when we trust him and put him first.

Your tithe-, what's the second one? That's the third Point. There's one right before that. Yeah, the tithe builds our faith. Like I said in the, the abundance cycle, when God multiplies, your faith grows.

So every time you tithe, God's going to respond to it. It's going to be different. I want to be so clear. It's going to be different, but even this week. Isin't it crazy?

Is it crazy? I, I know I hate hearing stories like this because it doesn't happen for me all the time, but then it does happen and I'm like I guess I should share stories like this in the mail. Guys, like there was something that we had spent money on that we weren't anticipating having to spend money on, and it was stressing us out, because my wife comes from a different family than mine. My family, we don't really buy gifts, but her family buys way too many gifts. I love you though, like you.

You that's great, our kids are going to love it, and I just look like a bad husband once in a while, but like they buy a lot of gifts and so there was a stressor there. And then in the mail comes a check that I wasn't expecting. And we always do this. We start adding it up, don't we? We look at the value of the check and then we say, hey, what were we stressed about how much?

And we calculated how much. I mean, I'm not going to tell them, but, like, we calculated the certain amount and it was the same amount as the check. God always provides. Every single time it looks different and I would say, if you got the check but you didn't have more righteousness in your life, that's not really the win. But at the same time, he provides spiritually, he also provides materially.

It will increase your faith. Don't you want your faith to be better now, or better in the future, than it is currently? Here's a way. Here's a way. And the third thing it does- and I don't harp on this too much because I recognize where you are.

I recognize many people in this room might be fearful of what it looks like to trust God in this area. How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? How am I going to get enough gifts for my kids?

How am I going to do this? Well, you're rich. I know you want to be generous and your tithe. It makes a way for somebody else to know Jesus again. Like I said, I don't harp on this too much because I'm not trying to teach philanthropy, I'm trying to teach faithfulness.

At the same time, when you are faithful, it blesses other people. Let me give you a couple ways. Yeah, there's the obvious one, right, we've had 50 plus baptisms this year and anyone who's donated to that enabled us to not only purchase physical things like pipe and drape and stuff, but it paved the way for other people to have access to the Gospel here in the West Valley. That's pretty obvious, right, baptisms are a sure sign that people who have trusted God with their giving are seeing a spiritual result. But when you give, it increases your faith, because God multiplies.

And when your faith is increased, do you think it makes your marriage better or worse? Well, yeah, amen. Thank you for answering. I appreciate it when people talk back. I love it.

When? When you increase your faith, does it make your parenting better or worse? When you increase your faith, does it make your employment and the frustrations at your job, or the concerns about whether you're going to embrace your calling in the future or paying off debts or all these other things. When your faith is higher, your life feels better and people around you are blessed by that new positive nature or posture that you're living in. It changes.

It's personal, but also it's corporate. People get baptized. People come in here. I can hear story after story after story of people finding Community for the first time, hearing about Jesus for the first time, people who are testing God with their finances for the first time. Such to the point.

Last week I got a little note on one of those envelopes. It was on the back of it and it and it started out and it was talking about. It. It was saying hey, I was in this spot financially where they were struggling to buy food and get enough to put a roof over their heads and they were just in the most desperate position they were in. And I started to read it and I was like, oh my gosh, and I talked about giving last week and then I kept reading.

I thought it was going to be: how dare you talk about giving when I can't even get food? But at the end of the message, here's what they wrote. They said thanks so much for talking about this, because when I was in that situation I trusted God and he provided. That was crazy to me, . My mom brought it up to me.

I was like, oh, a note. But then I read it and I was so blessed by it because we've got someone who trusted God when it didn't make sense, yet God made it work. I think I've U communicated that point enough, but I want you to know that the way to move into abundance is to trust God more in every area, but your finances too. And when you do, I don't know what the blessing is going to look like for you, but I do know it will come. I know it will come, and next year it might be your video that we're watching.

It's crazy because it's not like we've had in the first year. 500 people start trusting God financially, like genuinely. It's been a couple, like from scratch to, to tithing. It's been a couple. And- and the two that I could think of, God showed up.

He'll do it for you. He'll do it for you, and so what I want to do in this moment is I do want to provide an opportunity for anyone who has never trusted in Jesus. I want, to provide an opportunity for you. So, right at the end of this service, I'm going to be standing up here. If you've never trusted in Jesus, I want to talk with you.

I want to pray with you-, if that might be something that you're ready for- but what I want to do for the whole room right now is the band's going to come up. They're going to play a little bit in the background and we're going to pray. We're going to pray. I'm going to give you a couple of prompts, but I want you to have this conversation with God, because next week, we're going to be bringing a word that we believe we. We're going to bring a word that we're believing God for in 2025, and we're going to bring an offering.

For some, it's going to be a first-time gift. For some, they're trusting God to increase to the tithe. Others you've been tithing and God's going to call you to give above and beyond. That's where my wife and I are. We're all going to take a step of faith and even if, even if- you don't give anything, I want you to come next week so you can bring the envelope and write the word that you're believing God for over the next year, because God blesses those who trust him, and he also blesses those who are trying to figure it out.

So let's pray right now, talk to God. Here's how you might do it. You might say to God right now, heads bowed, eyes closed: I want this between you and God. God, what do you want for me now and in the next year? God, give me Clarity on what this year can look like and, God, help me trust you in every area of my life.

And since this is kind of a financial series, God, help me trust you even in that, help me put you first, help me contemplate what it looks like to recognize that I'm rich, to recognize that you've blessed me and to increase my generosity and my trust in you. Father, God, we thank you for Jesus, who shows us what generosity truly is by robbing himself in flesh, dwelling among men, living a perfect life, dying on the cross so that we might have forgiveness of sins and raising to walk so that we can have that abundant life. God, since this cycle of abundance is available, I pray everyone in this room reaches for it. And God, as we do this right now, we do all of this in Jesus's name, and God's people said amen. Y'all stand as we worship one more time.