The 90 Day Challenge

Well, good morning.

We're in the middle of a series on finances.

Remember, we started back in January with breakthrough.

Pastor Robert felt like the Lord spoke strongly to him that we wanted breakthrough in several areas of our lives.

One of those areas would be in the area of faith, and we spent four weeks on faith, and then we spent four weeks on family.

And then we went into freedom.

How can we become free and live before God without these bondages and chains that seem to hold us?

Three weeks ago, we started a series right now on Breakthrough and Finances, and Pastor Robert started with two sermons on the same title, The Ten Financial Commandments.

And so he's preached six of those financial commandments.

Next weekend he'll be back and he'll conclude the Ten Financial Commandments next weekend right here, and then we'll have a complete series.

But today I want to continue in that series and share with you really out of my own personal life.

I was talking to the Lord last night before I came up, and I said, Lord, you know, a couple months ago I got to share on family and what how how big a self-absorbed jerk I was, you know.

And now you're asking me to speak on finances and tell everybody how much a failure.

Am I ever going to get to preach on anything I do, right?

He said, I don't know, son.

Have you ever done anything right?

I said, I don't know.

Well, I did about 30 years ago.

I'm celebrating my 30th year this year of being saved.

I said, someday I'm going, I'm going to talk about salvation because I've done that right.

By the way, I was one year old when I got saved.

So if you have your Bibles on, I want to just take you to a couple of scriptures this morning and uh kind of show you how he showed me.

I want you to turn to uh to Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

We're going to look at three or four or five verses there in a minute.

And then I also want you to turn to Haggai chapter 2.

Haggai 2 · chapter mention

If you haven't found Haggai in a while, it is in the Old Testament.

If you'll find Matthew, just back up three books and you're there.

It's one of the minor prophets.

And Luke chapter 19 and Haggai chapter 2.

Luke 19 · chapter mention Haggai 2 · chapter mention

Now I want you to understand where I've been financially.

Just so you'll get a picture, because I want to paint a picture for you this morning.

Ginny and I have been married 22 years this May, and uh we have done everything wrong in the finance area that you can imagine.

If it's possible, if it's capable of being done, we've done it.

We had a foreclosure in 1988.

It's a painful experience, no fun.

We're on the backside of that.

It's a lot better than where we used to be.

We uh when I woke up to the fact that we might be doing something wrong, we were$50,000 in credit card debt.

Now listen, it takes a real smart person to get to this place.

It's almost brilliance.

And I woke up one day and I said, you know, if I keep doing what I'm doing, I may keep having what I've got.

Maybe we ought to change.

And the Lord said, Finally.

What he began to show me, and I want to lay a foundation for you this morning, what he began to show me, we said, son, you're looking at finances from the world's standpoint, from a perspective of the world.

Now, I have to tell you where we were when I woke up to this fact.

We had had a million dollars go through our hands in a short period of time.

And I had zero to show forth.

All I had was this insurmountable debt.

If we hick up it all, we went underwater.

I was the most angry man you had ever seen in your entire life.

I'm trying to give some of you hope today.

When I would pay bills, she would gather the children and leave.

My son can tell you, he was just young enough to say, Dad's paying bills, let's go.

He's not a happy camper.

I was just, I was, I was filled with rage because I couldn't come up with any solutions for this to work.

And I really thought I had God's mind.

I was so far from it.

He began to say to me, Jeff, I want to show you something.

When I came to earth, I came for a purpose.

And he began to show me piece by piece, and I'm going to show you that in scripture this morning, piece by piece.

And then I want to paint you a whole picture because let me just turn to this verse right here.

Don't turn there, I just want you to read it.

This is what Jesus, this is the purpose he came for.

In Matthew chapter 4, verse 17.

Matthew 4:17

This is what he said.

This is the very first sermon he ever preached.

Matter of fact, it's the very first sermon that he told the disciples when he sent them out by twos, preach this sermon.

And when he sent the 70 baby Christians out by twos, he said, preach this sermon.

When he left after his death, burial, and resurrection, when he came back, he kept talking about what I'm going to show you right here.

In Matthew chapter 4, verse 17, it says, From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 4:17

This is what the Lord showed me.

You see that little phrase, the kingdom of heaven right there?

That phrase is in the New Testament 108 times.

Jesus spoke about it 87 of the 108.

He said later in another verse, he said, For this purpose, this is the purpose that I've come to reveal to you.

What I did not have in this area of finances, I did not have a kingdom perspective.

I had an earthly perspective.

And I was losing at that perspective really fast.

And what he said to me is, if you want a breakthrough, if you want to have a breakthrough in finances, you are going to have to understand that there's a kingdom perspective, that there's a kingdom look at what finances and what you're to do with your finances.

I talk about everything from a kingdom perspective.

If you want to know about salvation, it comes out of the kingdom.

If you have a physical sickness in your body today, you don't need to seek his hand, you need to seek the kingdom.

Do you remember when he says, seek the kingdom first, and all these other things will be added?

Listen, he talked about this all the time.

I think we're clueless today in the church about the kingdom.

He made many, many comparisons.

The kingdom of heaven is like.

Listen, Jesus left heaven with his eternal perspective.

Came to earth and said, Boys, girls, I want you to see.

You can have heaven on earth.

Remember he told his disciples to pray?

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Where?

Here, on earth.

That's why he says it's at hand.

Now let me tell you about that word repent.

Because that word repent messed me up.

I don't know about you.

I was raised in a denominational church, and when they used that word repent, repent for the kingdom of it, it made me jump every time.

Because I always thought that word meant you load down, dirty, scumbag, you ought to change your ways.

You know, I looked it up in the Greek, and it doesn't mean that.

I was shocked.

I clicked on that word, and I'm no Greek scholar, so I'm not trying to trick you at all.

I clicked on that one word and it says, you know what, you ought to reconsider.

You ought to change your mind.

Just think differently.

Have a paradigm shift.

And here, when I when I'm standing in this place of pain in my finances, and I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you today where I left the place of pain and went to a place of peace.

And I'm telling you, it was wonderful to be in this place of peace.

But when I was here, the Lord said, I'm going to show you some financial principles from a kingdom mindset.

How many of you know every kingdom has a king?

Every king sets up rules and laws of operation for the kingdom.

That's all Jesus came to show you.

He wants you to see the laws and the principles of the finances from a kingdom perspective.

And when he began to show this, I was right here in the place of pain.

He said, I want to move you out of this place.

And this is where you are today.

I want to give you hope.

You don't have to stay here.

And he moved us into a place of peace.

And we stayed in that place of peace for several years.

And it was wonderful.

My wife and I were like, oh, this is so much better over here.

But I'm telling you what he's doing today.

He's moving us out of the place of peace into a place of purpose.

Listen, this is more, this is more way more incredible than the place of peace because peace comes with it.

I didn't lose peace to get here.

I am now getting in the place of purpose.

And that's where I want you to see today.

So I want you to see, first of all, point number one is that you must see it from a kingdom perspective.

If you're trying to look from the natural eyes, you'll never catch it.

Tithing makes zero sense in the natural eyes.

Why don't I just give my money away?

That makes sense.

Don't I need it?

See, it makes no sense.

But once you begin to see it from a kingdom perspective and what the king of the kingdom said, then it's going to help you understand what God's saying.

So I want you to look at four financial principles from a kingdom perspective.

The first one I want you to see is Luke chapter 42.

Now, everything that I'm going to read to you this morning on these financial principles come from the king's lips.

Jesus.

Now, how many of you know that you can argue tithing is Old Testament?

You can say, I haven't thought about that.

Okay?

I want you to see it from a kingdom perspective from the king himself.

What's this?

Luke chapter 11, verse 42.

Luke 11:42

Principle number one.

Woe to you, Pharisees.

Now, he talked to the Pharisees quite often.

That word woe is not wow.

That word woe means woe.

Whoa, whoa, you're missing something here.

Whoa.

Back up.

Woe to you, Pharisees, for you tithe mint and roux and all manner of herbs and pass by justice and the love of God.

These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone.

Did you see right there Jesus said tithing is right?

Listen, I'm not trying, I'm not, I'm not trying to build a case on tithing.

I'm just trying to tell you, if you want to have breakthrough and you're in finances in your life today, if you're in a place of pain and you want to get out of that place of pain, I want to show you right here from the lips of Jesus, he said tithing is right.

You want more detail about it?

I'm just I'm building just a small case and I don't have time to build on each one of these.

If you want more evidence about this, you want to study a deeper rich study, go back to last August or September.

Our pastor preached a message on why tithe.

It's found, uh, just go right there on our website, gatewaypeople.com.

Download that message, why tithe?

It's in August, September.

He preached on an entire series called Live to Give.

And in that message, he goes into great detail, all the way from Genesis to Revelations.

He'll show you not only what Jesus said, but he'll show you what the prophet said.

He'll show you what happened in the law, he'll show you all that.

It's wonderful.

If you're struggling in this area, just download.

It's free.

It won't cost you a thing.

And listen to what he says there.

Principle number one, tithing is right according to Jesus.

Now I'm going to skip principle number two because this is the one I didn't do very well.

So I'm going to skip over it.

I'm going to come back to you and I'm going to show you why in just a minute.

Principle number three.

Jesus recognizes offerings.

Now, one day he was standing in the temple and they were giving offerings.

They were bringing by gifts.

We pick it up in Luke chapter 21, verse 1.

Luke 21:1

It says this, and he looked up, saw the rich putting in their gifts into the treasury.

And he also saw a certain poor widow putting in two mites.

This is what he makes a comment concerning that, verse 3.

Truly I say to you, Jesus said, that this poor widow has put in more than all.

For all these out of their abundance have put in offerings.

I want you to stop right there.

Do you see that word offerings?

Principle number two, Jesus recognizes offerings.

And who are those offerings for?

They're for God.

Is this a tithe?

Or is this different?

I'm trying to give you a kingdom perspective this morning.

If you're going to have a breakthrough in your finances, you're going to have to understand what Jesus recognizes.

See, he's the king.

Jesus recognizes offerings.

They were for God.

But he says he finishes out verse 4, but she out of her poverty put in all of her livelihood.

That's why she gave more.

Can I tell you what an offering does?

It gets God's attention.

Let me prove it to you.

Solomon, when he became king, the required requirement to become king, you had to make a sacrifice.

I think it was one bull.

If I know it, I know it's at least one, it could be up to ten.

This is what I know Solomon did.

He didn't offer the one or ten, he offered a thousand.

Now is that a sacrifice?

Uh-huh.

And what what was the response of God?

Ask me whatever you want.

He never said this to anybody.

Ask me whatever you want, and I'll give it to you.

Do you think an offering may get God's attention?

It does.

Do you remember when Jesus was born?

The three wise men brought gifts.

Same identical word as this word offering.

They brought gifts, an offering to God.

Okay?

Principle number three, Jesus recognizes offerings.

Principle number four, Jesus also recognizes alms.

And alms are different from offerings.

Alms are the same thing as charitable deeds.

Watch this.

Look in Luke chapter 12, verse 32.

Luke 12:32

Do not fear, little flock, for it's your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Here he is talking about the kingdom again.

You ought to do a word search on this.

You ought to do a word study on the kingdom of.

Just look on the kingdom of.

The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God.

Do it.

And begin to let God speak to you about his kingdom.

I'm telling you, I'm in this right now and I can't get over it.

Alright, look at verse 33.

Sell what you have and give what?

Now, is this what's the difference between an almond and an offering?

Okay, we see the tithe.

I want you to see this.

I'm trying to paint you a whole picture.

He said, principle number one is you ought to tithe.

Jesus said, you ought to tithe.

I'm going to skip number two.

Number three, he said, I recognize offerings.

Offerings get my attention.

Principle number four, alms.

What's the difference between an alm and an offering?

An alm is a charitable deed.

An alm is a benevolent gift.

You remember the beggar who was sitting at the temple when Peter and John came and they were going to the house of prayer and they were going to pray, and he sat out there, and what was he begging?

Alms.

He could not make a livelihood for himself, so he needed somebody to help him.

Did you see right there where Jesus said, Sell what you have and give alms?

Jesus recognizes.

He sees it.

And Peter and John said, Silver and gold have I none.

I know you need money, but what I do have, I give to you.

Rise up and walk.

Now, if the beggar comes back the next day and sits at the temple gate after being hidden, begging alms, then he gets a conversation.

No longer is he going to get alms.

You've got to go to work now, bud.

You've been healed.

Go back to work.

So, but Jesus recognizes alms.

He recognizes tithing.

He recognizes offerings and he recognizes alms.

Now, this is where my story really picks up.

We were doing all this.

And we were not blessed.

How many of you read The Blessed Life?

The Blessed Life is about offerings and alms.

It's about giving.

It talks a little bit about tithing, but it talks mainly about offerings and alms.

And Pastor Robert, I mean, I've I've known Pastor Robert over 15, 18 years now, and I've been listening to his sermons, and I went to him and I said, Pastor Robert, I've got to be real honest with you.

Your message on tithing and your message on giving is second to none.

I mean, it's incredible.

It just doesn't work.

Now you have to be a friend to say that to him.

I said, listen, I don't know if it's one of those pulpit pew things.

You know, it works in the pulpit, but it don't work in the pew.

But I'm telling you from the pew standpoint, bro, this is not working.

I said, Jenny and I have done everything you said.

We tithe and we give offerings and we give above and we give and we double tithe and we I mean, all those things you talk about.

I mean, we I want some stories like you got.

You know, I'm becoming a preacher and I gotta have stories.

I don't got no stories.

It's bad to be a preacher when you don't have stories.

He said, Well, that kind of bothers me.

And I said, Well, I'm not trying to bother you.

I'm just trying to tell you the truth.

It's good stuff, good material, but it don't work.

He said, I'm gonna pray about that.

I said, Do whatever you want.

He comes back in a couple of days and he says, I prayed about what you said.

I said, You did?

He said, Yep.

And the Lord spoke to me.

I said, Great.

What did he say?

He correct you.

Are you off a little bit?

You missing something, bro?

He said, No, but you are.

He said, You're missing principle number two.

It's called stewarding.

He said, Jeff, you're not living below your means.

Here's your income and here's your outgo.

He said, the reason when you give offerings, yeah, you're 90% blessed.

But the reason when you give offerings above your tithe, the reason you don't see any return on that is because that's not your money.

Because you've already dedicated it to a house or to a car or to that$50,000 credit card or to other things that you're trying to accomplish, and because it's not yours, I can't bless it.

That's why you don't have any stories to tell.

He said, What I assume people understand when I talk about tithing, offerings, and alms, I assume, I made an assumption that they know to live below their means.

Well, I want you to know, Jesus makes no assumption, he speaks real clear to it.

Look to Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

I want to show you some of this second principle, and then I want to give you just a couple of points, and I'm gonna end with a promise.

Because I want you to know today, if you're not stewarding well, I'm gonna make you a promise today that's like no other promise you've ever heard before.

The Calvary can ride over the hill for you blowing the trumpet, and you can be rescued.

We were.

Look at Luke 19.

Pastor Robert spoke two weeks ago on the parable of the talents.

This is the sister story of that.

But I want you to see it from a different light.

This is a story from an eternal perspective, and I want to show it from eternity, and I want to show it from the here and now.

I want you to see it from an eternal reward, and I want you to see from a reward now.

Alright?

Look at Luke 19, verse 11.

Luke 19:11

Now, as they heard these things, he spoke another parable.

Jesus talked in stories a lot to try to help people and help us to understand.

Because he was near Jerusalem, and because the people of that day thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately.

You see this?

I'm telling you, the kingdom of God is everywhere you look.

Now watch this.

So he said to them in verse 12, a certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return.

Now stop.

Look at that right there.

A certain nobleman goes into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself.

Jesus left heaven, went into earth to receive what?

A kingdom.

He wanted to re-establish the kingdom here on earth.

This kingdom is God's.

Satan had taken it from Adam and Eve.

He wanted to re-establish it, and then he was going to leave and then do what?

Return.

Can you see it?

Not only in the natural, yes, there are kings that go and receive kingdoms.

But there are also, Jesus is a king who's coming back and he's going to return.

Alright?

See that.

So verse 13.

So he called ten of his servants and delivered to them ten minors and said to them, This is the command the king gave to the servants when he left.

Do business until I return.

Do business until I come.

Okay?

You see that?

You see, he's got servants that he's leaving behind.

Do you feel like Jesus has already left?

Okay?

Do you know he's coming back?

Okay.

So you can see an eternal perspective here, right?

Alright?

What did he give us a command to do while we're here?

What did he give us to do while he was gone?

He gave money, and I'm going to show that in a second.

He gave money to the servants to do business until he returns.

So each week or each month or each bi-weekly, bi-monthly, whatever, when you get paid, who's paying you?

It's coming from the king.

Okay?

I want you to see that.

Look at verse 14.

But the citizens of that country hated him.

And they sent delegation after him saying, We will not have this man reign over us.

Does that sound like when Jesus was present on the earth that everybody loved him?

They loved him so much they killed him.

Right?

Can you see this?

Alright?

So they said, We don't want you ruling and reigning over us.

And they sent delegation, we will not have you take over this kingdom.

The sad part for them is they have no choice in this.

And my prayer for him is just to have their eyes open so they can get in on the good stuff.

Alright, verse 15.

And so it was when he returned.

Say, returned.

Jesus is coming back.

When he returned, having received the kingdom, when it's all set up, he then commanded his servants to whom he had given the what?

Uh-huh.

Do you see that?

To be called to him that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.

Now, several years ago, I'm in deep trouble.

Because I've not gained, I've lost.

Alright?

You see why he wanted to change my eternal perspective?

He said, I want you to wake up, Jeff.

Then the first came to him saying, Master, your minor, the money you've given me, has earned ten minas.

Every servant got one of the ten.

And he said to him, Well done, good servant, because you have been faithful and little, you will have authority over what?

Is that now or is that in eternity?

Do you see what you are doing right now has an eternal value to it?

What you're doing with what the king has given.

You has an implication of there's a reward on the other side with what you're already doing.

I want you to get a heavenly perspective today.

This is not about how much stuff you can get right now.

It's about how much you can steward.

Then the five came, he said, you'll be over five cities, and the one came and said, Hey, hey, hey, I buried it.

I thought you were.

And he said, All right, take the one from him and do what?

Give it to who?

This is what I want you to see.

There's a heavenly perspective and there's an earthly perspective.

This is where I had missed it.

He said, Take the one from the one who did nothing with it and give it to the one with ten.

He didn't say give him another city.

He said, give him the minor.

Why?

Because he who stewards well will get more.

Why?

Because he's a good steward.

Jesus is not going to keep giving out to those who don't steward.

Here we were.

We were in this place of pain.

He had given us a lot, and we hadn't stewarded anything.

My wife and I, the saddest part of where we were, we were not in unity.

I didn't know what was in her heart, she didn't know what was in my heart, and we were just, we were, we were, we were drifting further and further apart.

This is what I believe is probably the number one reason for a divorce today.

I was headed there fast.

And when we came to the table, I said to her, baby, I want you to understand something.

We're changing our ways.

I've lived in this place of pain way too long.

I'm through living here.

I came to the table and I called her to the table and I said, We've got to get a plan together.

Listen, I came out of sales.

I know what it is to plan your work and work your plan.

We didn't have a plan and we didn't know what we were doing.

I had a couple several years ago come to me and they said, Jeff, uh, we can't afford to tithe.

I said, Really?

I said, I understand.

I said, Where does your money go?

Yeah, I don't know.

I said, Well, look, let me tell you what we did.

We just sat down and began to track where our money went because we wanted to know one thing.

Does it represent who we are?

We needed to know.

We needed to have a system in place.

I don't care if you call it a budget, a cash flow analysis.

I know budget seems like an ugly word to most people.

To us, we thought it would be prison.

My wife said, I don't do that.

That's so confining, so constricting.

I said, Well, I'm not living this way anymore.

I mean, this is where we were.

Literally, this is where we were.

She would go shopping.

You know, ladies, you've been out shopping before.

And you, and she found one of those incredible deals.

I mean, she called me on the phone, oh, honey, I've been out shopping, and the Lord led me to this dress.

It was on sale.

I mean, it was$300, and now it's only$50.

And I mean, they slashed it, and it's God.

Can I buy it?

And I said, honey, we don't have the money.

Then her voice would change.

Did you play golf yesterday?

I said, I did.

She said, How much did that cost?

I said, fifty dollars.

She said, Well, just count this as my golf.

You feel the tension?

It wasn't working.

Do you know that's no longer in our lives?

Because we began to make a plan.

This couple that came to me and I said, I want you to do me one favor.

Not me a favor, I want you to do yourself a favor.

I want you to write down everything you spend for the next 30 days.

Just write it down.

You don't have to categorize it, you don't have to do anything, just write it down and bring it back in, and I'll help you find out where your tithe's going.

I said, okay.

So 30 days later, they came back in and said, We don't need your help.

We found our tithe.

I said, Really?

Where's your tithe going?

They said, Well, um, Taco Bell McDonald's.

She said, We we we both work and we have two small kids and we were just going through all these drive-throughs and we didn't, we didn't know.

I said, How much did it add up?

She said, I'm embarrassed to tell you.

Six hundred dollars.

They didn't have a clue.

Are you eating your tithe?

It's not a healthy thing.

It will not pay long-term dividends.

So my wife and I, we we created our first month's budget.

And we're going to track it.

And we changed it for the next two months.

We kept changing it until we got to something that really worked.

Let me tell you what happened when we did this.

When we started catching the perspective that God wanted from heaven that if you'll steward what I give you, I'll give you more.

But until you steward what I give you, I can't give you more.

Matter of fact, that'd start taking away.

That's his principle.

And when we did this, the first thing that we left was pain, and we ushered right into the place of peace.

My wife said to me later, she said, I did not know this could be so peaceful.

I said, I didn't either.

And I'm the angry one.

This was so peaceful.

And we started having fun.

And we moved out of this place of peace, and now we're strategizing every dollar that he gives us.

We want to make sure it represents the kingdom.

Last September, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story.

I told you, I told Pastor Robert that it didn't work, so I had to come back and repent.

When we started stewarding, I came back last September.

The Lord led us to, and again, we don't do anything without unity.

Now she has a clothing allowance.

She never even has to call me.

She goes grocery shopping, she never calls me.

I don't get one phone call from the woman anymore about money.

It's wonderful.

Last September, the Lord uh spoke to us about giving to the miracle offering.

And she, and I said, You pray and I'll pray.

So we we got separate numbers.

We came together and I said, What'd you get?

She said, You go first.

I said, No, I'm not.

You go first.

And we had the fun little game.

And finally we just kind of laid down on the table and I said, It's amazing we had the same thing.

We had a down payment that we wanted to give as an offering to the Lord right then.

And then we have this 12-month thing that we and it's just identical.

And we were so excited.

You know why?

For the first time, it was our money.

It wasn't dedicated to anything else.

If we don't give it to the church, we can sit on it.

If we don't want to sit on it, we can blow it.

It's ours.

We can do whatever we want to it.

It's not committed to anything.

So we came and we gave it.

It was so liberating to give something that was ours.

We left two weeks later to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

We flew to Puerto Rico and we spent a week at Puerto Rico and paid cash for the whole thing.

That was a whole lot better than this place of paint.

And we flew back, and when we got back to our house, in our house was a check for the total amount of the down payment plus the 12 months that we'd already committed to give.

And it was in one check.

I called up Pastor Robert and said, I just want you to know officially your teaching works.

It'll work for you too.

I'm going to close with showing you one scripture out of Haggai.

I want you to flip over there.

Haggai chapter 2.

Haggai 2 · chapter mention

I want to give you some hope this morning.

Haggai is a book about two chapters long.

It's about people that weren't obeying the Lord, just like we weren't obeying in Stewarding.

We're obeying in three of the four principles, but we weren't obeying in one area.

So it tied God's hands.

They have been told to build the temple, and they weren't doing it because of the fear of the enemy.

Every time they started, the enemy came and attacked them, and they like, we don't like fighting.

We're peaceful people, so we're just not building temple if that's going to cause this much ruckus.

And God comes to them, and what I want to point out to you, and I'm not going to read you the first three, there are four dates in Haggai.

And I think it is important because I want you to see the kind of the trans, let's see, how do I say this?

The progression that it takes in the four dates.

Date number one is when God comes and says, I want you to stop acting this way.

I want you to build my house.

And I put blight and mildew on you.

You earn money, you put it in your pocket, and it falls out, and there that nothing's growing like it should be.

There's blight mildew.

I've called a curse on the land, and nothing's happening well, and you're without and you're in the light.

And he said, I'm trying to get your attention.

Kind of like where I was.

I want your attention here.

And he said, This was in the sixth-month first day.

Okay?

The next word that you see about the date is the sixth month, 24th day.

From the first day to the 24th date, they didn't start working until the 24th day on the temple.

It took them 23 days to start working.

Okay, you see that?

Then the next date in there in chapter 2 is the seventh month about the 21st day.

God comes back to them and says, Hey, you're doing so good, keep it up.

But the date that I want to show you is the last date.

I want you to see it in Haggai chapter 2.

Haggai 2 · chapter mention

Because this one comes with a promise.

Haggai 2, verse 18.

Haggai 2:18

Now consider from this day forward.

From what day?

From the 24th day of the ninth month.

Now count back.

Day one was six days month, first day.

Second date was sixth month, 24th day.

Last date is ninth month, 24th day.

Exactly 90 days.

See that?

Exactly 90 days.

From the 24th day of the ninth month, from the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid, consider it.

And then he asked them a question.

This is God talking to them.

Is the seed still in the barn?

As yet, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have not yielded fruit.

Watch this.

But from this day forward, what?

Because they had committed to being faithful to what he said.

I'll make you a promise here this morning.

If you'll commit to be faithful to these principles, and I want you to understand something about stewarding, it touches both ends.

If you don't steward, you're going to have a hard time tithing.

If you don't steward, you're going to have nothing to give.

Stewarding really is the key.

Tithing gets your money blessed.

Stewarding gets it in a place that you can keep it blessed and be able to get it to multiply.

This is where the supernatural happens.

I can tell you story after story after story about this 90-day challenge.

I titled the message of the 90-day challenge for this reason.

I want to give you hope.

If you will commit to help to stewarding your money, I can I'll tell you one story.

Good friends of mine had got a really good job, paying a lot of money, bought a house according to that income, and the income dropped.

Because they were tithers, they were givers, but they were just like me, they didn't steward.

And then they become strangled.

They put the house on the market.

It'd been on the market over a year.

And I kept gingerly, nicely speaking to them.

You need to change your ways.

It worked for us, it'll work for you.

Finally, they they embraced it.

They were willing to lose all of the investment they had in the house.

They started what uh what we call a financial class.

It's right here in your bulletin.

I just bring your attention to it.

If you want help in financial training, we're offering you a class.

We're not going to embarrass you anyway, we're not going to make you show us your budget, we're not going to make you show us your debt.

None of that.

We're just going to give you good tools to put in your hands so that you can do principle number two.

It's the whole purpose of why we're talking about this.

We want to see you have breakthrough.

He started doing it.

They started the class.

The class lasts for 10 weeks, plus a couple fellowships, so it's right at 90 days.

When they started embracing this, at the end of the 9th day, I kept saying, on the 90th day, you watch God's going to do something.

On the 90th day, exactly, they had had several lookers, never ever one offer in 19 months on their house.

On the 90th day, they get a contract for full price.

On the 91st day, they get two cash offers.

They said, sorry, you should have called on the 90th day.

Don't you have you read Haggai?

Let me tell you what he told me, and I'll close.

He said, Jeff, it's not about the money.

He said, I can't tell you what it's done in my marriage.

I can't tell you what unity it's brought between me and my wife.

I can't believe we ever lived this way when we could have been living this way.

It's changed everything we've done.

The way we treat our kids, everything.

Oh, people.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for your kingdom principles.

I thank you for your kingdom perspective.

And Lord, today I especially ask that you help us move from places of pain and peace to that final place of purpose.

That we can reach the full destiny of what you called us, not only in our marriages and our relationships with our children, but for all eternity.

And I ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.