The Blessed Life

Well, awesome.

Good morning.

As you guys are normally here, I'm obviously not Russ.

My name is Nathan.

I'm one of the pastors here.

And I'm typically at our social circle location.

But they let me out of social circle for one Sunday, and I get to spend it with you.

And Russ is down in Social Circle this morning.

And I'm just thrilled to be up here with you guys and starting a new series this morning.

And as Reese mentioned earlier in the service, we just want to say welcome.

Welcome so much.

Thank you so much for being here this morning.

If you are a first-time guest or visitor with us, we just want to say a special welcome to you.

And if you're joining us online this morning and you're watching for the very first time online, we want to say welcome to you as well.

And here at Church of the Grove, we don't want people just to come and consume information.

We want people to really connect to the life of the church and what's going on here.

And if you are a guest with us, the best thing that you can possibly do to help us get you connected and help you take steps in your faith journey is to fill out what we call our connection card or encounter card.

And you can do that through our Church of the Grove app.

You can see the connections desk on the way out, and you can fill one out physically, or if you're online, you can uh do it through the online form there.

But it's a great way for you to get connected.

We're not going to show up at your house unannounced.

We just want to send you a gift this week in the mail and then uh give you some resources to help you grow in your faith.

And so that would be one of our greatest honors and privileges to be a part of that.

Um, this morning we're kicking off a brand new series called Thanks and Giving.

And it's a great morning and a great kind of season to start this new series as we kind of enter into the Thanksgiving holidays.

Um and it's crazy to think that Thanksgiving is just a little less than two weeks away.

Um, a week from Thursday, we'll be hitting um Thanksgiving, which is just crazy to think about.

We're 41 days from Christmas.

How insane is that?

Uh anybody have their house decorated for Christmas already?

Uh a few of you were like halfway there at our house.

Uh, what about gifts?

Anybody bought some gifts already?

So, wow, y'all are prepared.

Good job, guys.

Um, and so Christmas is there, 48 days until 2023.

Like this year has just flown by.

How crazy is that?

Um, but uh here we go.

What did I say?

2022.

I'm skipping a year, so sorry.

2022, it really did fly by, didn't it?

Um 2023 is not yet it's 2022.

There you go.

2022, and uh here we come into the Thanksgiving season.

And um, Thanksgiving is probably one of my favorite holidays.

Um I love Thanksgiving.

Uh, one, because there's food, right?

And food is always great.

That's the best time you're going to eat.

Uh, there's turkey and ham and all the different casseroles that you could imagine, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes.

Pretty much if it's a carb, you're gonna eat it on Thanksgiving, right?

And that's what makes Thanksgiving so great.

Uh, but it's also a great day to kind of stop, um, pull back for a minute, and to kind of be thankful.

And I feel like in the world and in the culture that we live in, a lot of times we want to kind of use Thanksgiving as almost like a little bit of a detour to get us to Christmas.

And Thanksgiving isn't really kind of something that we emphasize a lot of times in our lives.

And as a result, we move right into kind of the consumeristic mindset of Christmas, and we don't really stop and take time to be thankful for the things that we have been given.

And that's really what our world and our culture push us to.

Our world and our culture push us to this idea of thinking that if you could just have more, then your life would be better.

And so we don't do the Thanksgiving very well because we are just thinking about the next thing that we can get and the next thing that we can consume.

The gifts that we can purchase, the things that we can receive as gifts, those are the things that uh we think about when we get around this time of year.

But I don't want us to move past Thanksgiving because it's such an important piece of us being content with where God has us and what God has given us.

Um, just this past week, I was driving my kids to school.

I've got Sam, who's six, Ben, who's four, and then we've got a five-month-old named Elizabeth.

And uh, and so I'm driving the older boys to school, and uh we're talking about Operation Christmas Child, the shoeboxes that we're giving away in the lobby that, by the way, have to be back next week for the last Sunday.

Uh we're gonna accept those.

Um, but uh here we are talking about Operation Christmas Child, and we're talking about how we need to pack the boxes and stuff.

And Ben, my four-year-old, uh, goes, Hey Daddy, um, why don't we give them some of our toys?

And I'm thinking, man, this is great.

Like we've taught you well, like this is awesome, like you're excited about giving and sharing your own toys.

And then he kind of finishes the sentence and he says, So if we give them our toys, then we can get new toys for ourselves.

And I think, okay, like that's not the best parenting moment for me right here.

But when you think about it, that four-year-old mindset a lot of times translates into 28-year-olds, 33-year-olds, 48-year-olds.

It translates into our entire lives.

If we're not careful, we can take that same four-year-old mindset of thinking that if I just could get more, if I could just have more stuff in my life, then I would ultimately be happy.

But Jesus gives us a radically different way to live.

Jesus says it's not more stuff that's going to make you happy.

It's not more stuff that's going to make you content in life.

But what's going to truly make you happy is not when you actually receive, but rather when you give.

He says this in Acts 20, verse 35.

Acts 20:35

He says it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

Now, those are the words of Jesus, and those are important words for us to take in, but that's a hard mindset to have because there's a lot of things that we think are going to help bring us happiness, that if we receive them into our life, our lives would be better.

But ultimately, the real blessing, the real blessed life, doesn't come when we receive, but rather when we give.

And so that's what we're talking about this morning as we kind of kick off this new series is this idea that the blessed life begins with a heart of generosity.

That if we want to live the blessed life, which I think we all want to have a blessed life, I think we want to be blessed in our relationships, blessed in our workplaces, blessed in our homes, blessed in our finances.

We want to be blessed.

And if we want to experience that blessing, it's not about what we can get or what we can receive, but rather what we can give.

That's where true blessing really begins with a heart of generosity.

So as we jump into the scriptures this morning, I just want to say, kind of put this out there, a little PSA.

Like I know that anytime the church talks about money, sometimes people kind of get a little awkward in their seats and they don't really like the church talking about money.

And, you know, some people go, here I go.

I came to the church for the very first time and they're talking about money.

Like, please know that we don't talk about money often here, but also at the same time, we don't want anything from you.

Um, we're not asking you for anything.

We're not gonna get to the end of the service and ask you for a big donation and for you to dig deep into your pockets.

Like, that's not what we're about.

What we're ultimately wanting is something for you.

It's not about what we can get from you, but it's what we can have for you.

We want you to experience the blessed life.

And I believe this to the core of who I am, that when we live with a heart of generosity, we can experience the blessed life.

So it's not about what we can get from you, but rather what we can have for you this morning.

So we'll kind of jump around in scripture a little bit today, but we'll start in 2 Corinthians chapter 9, verse 6, where Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, and this is the words that he says.

2 Corinthians 9:6

He says, Remember this.

A farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop.

But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop.

So this makes sense, right?

You reap what you sow.

So if you plant a lot, you'll get a lot in return.

If you don't plant a lot, you won't get a lot in return.

You must each decide in your heart how much to give.

And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure, for God loves a person who gives cheerfully.

So this is the attitude that we should have when we're giving.

We shouldn't give under compulsion, we shouldn't give because we're just pressured to do so, but we should do so cheerfully.

The word there could actually be translated laughter.

It's this light-hearted, joy-filled kind of moment of giving.

But this is the promise that God gives us in verse 8.

And God will generously provide all you need.

Then you will always have everything you need.

This is an incredible promise, right?

Jesus has, or Paul has just told us that if we will be generous with the things that we have been given and we'll take so we'll sow uh sparingly, then we'll reap an incredible harvest when we sow generously in our lives.

That this is the promise that He's going to not just provide for us, but He's going to give us everything that we need.

And a lot of times we want to stop right there.

That sounds good.

We can take that in, right?

That if God's going to give us everything we need, that I'm not going to have any one or any need that is not met by the Lord, and we want to stop right there.

But then the verse continues.

It says, You will have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.

So there's not just a purpose of us being blessed where we are just being financially given the things that we need, but rather it's also about us blessing others, that we're blessed to be a blessing, that there's going to be leftovers for us to give other people to help bless them as a result.

Then he jumps down to verse 11.

He says, Yes, you will be enriched in every way, so that you can always be generous.

And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God.

Now, isn't that an incredible picture?

That because of the generosity of the church in Corinth, there were going to be other people that they had never met, that they had never known before, that were going to be thanking God for their sacrifice and their generosity.

And the same thing can prove true in our lives.

When we live generously, when we give to others as a result of being blessed ourselves, then there are people in this community and around the world that can thank God for you.

That in their prayers in the evenings, they're going, thank God for Billy, thank God for Bob.

Thank God for Susie.

Like that's what their prayers are like when they're thanking God for people who have been generous towards them.

And you might not realize it and you might not recognize it, but when you give to church at the grove, you're giving to make a difference in our community and around the world.

I mean, just think that we support our local Christian learning centers who serve Wong County and social circle schools, and literally thousands of kids will come through the doors of one of our CLC buildings this year, and hundreds of them will hear the gospel for the very first time and respond to the gospel to put Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and their lives will be changed for all of eternity.

And they might not know your name, and they might not know my name, and they might not even know our church's name, but we're playing a part in that.

And we're they're being able to say, thank God for the people that financially supported this ministry that has made a difference in my life.

We support another ministry called Four Winds that's out of the Loganville Ministry Village.

And Lee Wood, who's one of our elders that goes to Social Circle, he works with that team.

And they take these families that are just down and out, families that have been separated, court decisions that have been made, where they have had to pull kids from homes and de facts has been called in and just really messy situations.

And they kind of come in and they help rehabilitate families and they help invest and do parenting classes and life skill classes and counseling and trying to help them just with their whole entire being, their mind, body, spirit, everything.

And we get to play a part in that.

Again, they might not know your name or my name, they might not know our church's name, but we're being thanked to God based on our generosity.

There's people all around the world.

There's people in Romania that are thanking God for a church at the growth.

There's people in India and Portugal and in Haiti and the Dominican Republic that are thanking God for the generosity of this church.

And so it's an incredible thing here when we start to realize that when we are generous with the resources that we have been given and we are blessing others, that they could be thanking God for our sacrifice and our generosity.

And so that's the way we've got to move this morning.

We've got to understand that when we give in a sacrificial way, that God uses that to be a blessing to others.

And so I want us this morning to move towards that.

That's the goal.

That's the goal of the series, is that we want us to move as a people, as a church, to be as generous as we possibly can, because we know that the blessed life begins with a heart of generosity.

And so I want us to look at three mindsets that are common when it comes to our resources, when it comes to finances, when it comes to generosity and the things that we have been given, and the kind of common uh kind of expectations that we might have of those finances.

And so Craig Groschelle breaks this down into three different mindsets that we can oftentimes have.

The first mindset is a bag mindset, a bag mindset, and this is ultimately determined by just never having enough.

And so we we have stuff that comes in, right?

We've got our bag here.

Um we have stuff that comes in, we put it into the money bag, um, but then things quickly go out.

Listen to what Haggai 1.6 says.

It says, You have sown much and harvested little.

You eat, but you never have enough.

You drink, but you never have your fill.

You clothe yourself, but no one is warm.

And he who earns wages does so to put them into bags with holes.

And we can kind of get the picture here, right?

It's this idea that we're putting money into the bag, but there's like a hole in the bottom of the bag, and it just seems like we can never get ahead.

We can never make any savings, right?

We can never be generous, even though we maybe want to be generous, because we just assume, we just feel like we never have enough, right?

And so we keep putting stuff in the bag, but it just you know goes right back out.

It's paycheck to paycheck living.

It's this idea of we're just constantly just struggling to get by, and we never feel like we have enough.

And this is the predominant way I think that many people in our world and our culture today live.

It's the scarcity mindset where we just put all of our faith and all of our trust not in the one who gives us the good gifts, not the one who gives us the financial resources that we enjoy, but rather we put all of our trust in what is in the bag itself.

And when we put our faith and our trust in what's in the bag, we'll always come up empty and we'll never have enough.

There will always be this concern of will we be able to have enough?

We can't be generous because we don't know if we'll have enough to finish out the month, or we don't know if there's going to be a pandemic that swipes sweeps across the nation, right?

We don't know.

And so we've got to hold on to everything we have because we're never sure we're going to have enough.

This is the bag mindset.

This is the mindset that Judas had, the disciple of Jesus, one of the twelve who was chosen, who followed Jesus for three years of his life.

And uh towards the end of Jesus' time here on earth, uh, there's a woman, an immoral woman, that comes to Jesus, and she's got this expensive bottle of perfume.

And she comes to Jesus, and in an act of worship, she breaks that uh little container full of the perfume and she pours it over Jesus.

And Judas, it says in scripture, it says that he was indignant at this act of worship, that he was just so angry almost with this way the woman had worshiped Jesus here.

And he she had exp uh broken this expensive bottle that would have been at like a year's wages.

And Judas looks at Jesus and the woman, he's like, You could have given this money to the poor, but Judas really didn't care anything about the poor.

What he was ultimately caring about was the money.

He was the he was the one that carried the money bag around for Jesus and the disciples.

And later, just a few days later, actually, Jesus uh Judas would go to the religious leaders and he would sell Jesus out for a bag of money, 30 silver coins, because he put his trust in what was in the bag rather than in Jesus himself.

And we do the same thing all the time.

There are a lot of people that claim to be Christians, that claim to be followers of Jesus, but they're willing to betray Jesus over money.

I mean, you think of the rich young ruler, the story that's uh in scripture where this guy comes up to Jesus, he's got lots of wealth, and he comes to Jesus, and he's this noble kind of uh good guy, this upstanding guy.

He's committed to the law and keeping the law, and he tells Jesus that he's done all the laws and came, kept all the commands.

And Jesus says, Okay, I've got one more thing for you to follow.

He said, Um, go and sell all that you have and then come back and follow me.

And it says that the man went away sad because he had great wealth.

And then Jesus says, It's so hard for the rich man to enter into the kingdom because it's like the uh uh camel going through the eye of a needle.

And so this is the picture that Jesus is giving us, and it's the scarcity bag mindset where we put our faith and our trust in what is in the bag rather in the one that has given us what is in the bag.

And this is not where we want to stay.

We want to be a people, and if we're followers of Jesus, there's a better way to live, there's a better mindset for us to ultimately have.

And that's where we want to move.

We want to move to a basket mindset.

And a basket mindset is when we believe that there's more than enough, that we believe that there's more than enough to go around, that we have been given everything that we have been given from a faithful and a generous God, and as a result of that, we have more than enough.

Now, many of us, if we were to ask you, do you have more than enough?

The over predominant uh answer we would probably get is no, because we never feel like we have more than enough.

But the basket mindset is saying, I believe that I have more than enough, because I have a God that has a God of abundance, and there is nothing that is outside of his power and his authority, and he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and so as a result of who my father is, yes, I have more than enough.

I have more than enough to go around.

Listen to what Deuteronomy chapter 28 says, starting in verse 1.

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

It says, If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.

You will experience all the blessings if you obey the Lord your God.

So there's this picture here where God is talking to his people and saying, If you obey me, if you trust in me, if you're not putting your trust in the wealth of this world, but instead you're putting your trust in me, then I am going to bless you.

Verse three, it says, Your towns and your fields will be blessed, your children and your crops will be blessed, the offspring of your herd and flocks will be blessed, the fruit of your baskets and breadboards will be blessed.

Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed.

And so this is a promise in Scripture that if we're faithful to the Lord, if we are obedient to Him, to His commandments, then He is a God that's going to give us blessing.

Now listen to me, I'm not saying that that means that we're always going to have financial blessing.

It doesn't mean that we're going to start playing the lottery and we're going to magically win the lottery.

That's not what we're saying.

The blessings of God can come in a number of different ways.

Sometimes that can be financial, sometimes that can be, you know, through your relationships, through your health.

Sometimes that can be that your appliances in your house don't break down or your car runs longer than the average person's car would run.

God can bless you in a number of different ways, but when we're obedient to him, there's the promise that blessing will follow that.

Blessing is always on the other side of obedience.

And when we follow Jesus, when we put our faith and trust in him rather than the things that are in the bag, then there's blessing that follows that.

Luke 6, Jesus says these words in verse 38.

He's uh talking here in the kind of reaccount of the Sermon on the Mount in Luke, and he says, Give and it will be given to you.

Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, and it will be put into your lap.

For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

And so there's this picture here of uh Jesus, and he's talking about judgment judgment here and not judging uh your neighbor and and uh forgiving those that have wronged you, but there's this picture here of generosity in that.

And the the picture that would have been talked about, or the people would have thought about at this time were uh day laborers versus the poorer people of the day.

And so day laborers, they would come and they would work the fields and they would harvest the crops, and at the end of the day, they would fill up their baskets with crops, but they would never fill it to the to the to the rim, they would never fill it uh to the overflowing.

Instead, they would fill it halfway full or three first full because it was just so heavy that they didn't want to have to carry everything with them as they went home or as they went to go drop off crops in the barn.

And so you had these guys and they were only filling up the basket, you know, halfway.

But then the poor people would come around, and the poor people, if the landowner was generous, the landowner would allow the poor people to come in and kind of pick up all the leftovers, all the things that had been left that the day laborers had not picked up.

And you better believe that when they came around with their basket, they weren't filling it half full, they were filling it to the top.

They wanted it to be overflowing, they wanted to make sure that they had enough because they didn't know when their next meal was going to come.

And so they wanted to fill it up as high as they possibly could, and they would shake it together to.

To make sure that there was no space or air bubbles, right?

And they were pressed it down.

Like that was the attitude that they had.

It kind of reminds me of at our house.

I'm the designated trash taker outer.

Like that's just my job.

My wife's not listening, so I can probably do a little bit of venting here.

She's, you know, she's down in social circles.

So, you know, I'm I'm that designated person.

And uh, you know, without fail, um, there's going to be times when, you know, I'm out of town or you know, I might be gone for you know a night or two or something, and I'll come home.

And I mean, like, I'm the designated trash taker outer.

So if I come home, it's not odd sometimes that the trash will be full, and then there'll be like another trash bag sitting next to the trash can that has now been started that she's putting trash in because she's not taking the trash out.

I'm taking the trash out.

That is my responsibility.

And so there'll be times when she'll go, hey Nathan, the trash is getting full, and I'll walk over to the trash can and I'll open up the lid and I'll go, oh no.

There's still plenty of room in the trash can.

If I do this, and you take your hand and you push down the trash and it like goes halfway down.

It's one of the most rewarding and satisfying things, right?

And you push the trash down, that's kind of the picture that you get here.

That it's it's not just filling it up, but he's shaking it down and pressed down, right?

To make sure it's completely full and there's no room left to be filled.

And so this is the idea that Jesus is giving to us.

That when we're generous, when we give, when we live with a basket mindset that we have a God that is more than enough.

And he doesn't just fill our baskets a little bit, but he fills our baskets to where they're overflowing.

This is the picture of who God is and how he blesses us.

This is the story of the feeding of the 5,000, where you had Jesus and they're teaching out in this huge field, and the disciples are there with him in this crowd of 5,000 men.

We believe that there would have probably been upwards of 10,000 or more people when you included women and children.

And uh, here's Jesus, and he says, Hey, let's give them all something to eat.

Now the disciples are thinking, there's no way we're going to be able to feed all of these people.

And Jesus said, Well, go around, kind of survey the crowd, see if there's anybody that has any food.

And so they find this young little boy that's got a couple of uh fish and a few loaves of bread, and uh, and he's going to be willing to give that to Jesus.

Now, if he has a bag mindset, if his mindset is that he never has enough, then that little boy is going, No, this is my lunch, right?

There's no way you're taking this from me.

I don't know if I'm gonna have anything else.

And so I'm hungry, like I'm a growing kid, and so I'm gonna hold on to what I have, and I'm not gonna give it away because I never think that I'm gonna have enough.

But he doesn't have that, thank the Lord.

Instead, he has a basket mindset of thinking that he has more than enough.

He has more than enough.

So he willingly gives it to the disciples who bring it to Jesus.

Jesus blesses the food and he begins to break it and they distribute the food to 5,000 or more people at that moment.

And everybody has as much as they want to eat, and then they go around and they take up the leftovers, and there's 12 baskets full after everyone has eaten.

How many disciples are there?

There's 12 disciples.

This is the God that we have.

It's a God of abundance, it's a God that blesses those that live with hearts of generosity.

And this is where we want to move.

We want to be a church that is generous, and we already are so generous, and many of you guys are so generous weekend and week out.

We are so blessed.

I had a finance team meeting with our finance team yesterday, and I'm just telling them just the faithfulness of you and your generosity week after week after week that has made our church being able, in light of everything that has happened the last two years, still continue to support missionaries and ministries and still do community ministry.

That's because of your generosity.

But we want people to move in that direction.

We want to be people that don't give under compulsion or pressure, but we give cheerfully because we know that the blessed life is at the end and at the beginning of a heart of generosity.

But even more than just having a basket mindset, we really want us to be people that are even more generous than that, where we have a barn mindset.

A barn mindset is that we ultimately believe that there is infinitely more than enough.

So it's not that there's just more than enough to fill the basket, but it's an infinitely more than enough.

Deuteronomy 28, 8, just a few verses after what we just read, the Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns, in all of all that you undertake, and he will bless you in the Lord that the Lord bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

This is the person that has a barn mindset that they believe that they have a big God, and when they are generous in a big way, that their God blesses them in a big way.

This is the picture that we should ultimately want and try to move towards in life.

That we should be people that are generous because we believe that we've got a big God, a big God that's not just wanting to bless us a little bit, but we've got a good heavenly father that wants to bless us immensely, that wants to bless us more than we can even begin to imagine or think about.

That's the God that we have, and so we can be radically generous as a result.

About 15 years ago, um I heard a message uh from uh Rick Warren, a pastor in uh uh Southern California who planted Saddleback Church back in the 80s, and he was sharing about uh his generosity journey.

And he said that when him and his wife got married, they made the decision that each year that they were married that they wanted to be more and more generous.

And so they started out at 10% of giving 10% of their finances to the Lord.

And each year they just had this decision that they had made before they had even gotten married.

They said, Hey, we're gonna we're gonna be more generous than we were the year before.

And so the next year would come and they would go to 11%.

And then the next year would come and they would go to 12%.

And then the next year would come, they would have some difficulties, or maybe kids were added into the equation.

They said, Well, we can't quite maybe do 12%, but we're gonna do 12.5%.

And so some years it was a full percentage point, some years it was a half a percentage point, but they always wanted to be intentionally more generous than they were the year before.

And so year after year they did this.

Well, if you know Rick Warren, Rick Warren was the author of the Purpose-driven life that came out, uh I guess uh late 90s or early 2000s, and it ultimately became one of the best-selling books of all time.

Um, seriously, more than I think the Bible's there, but then right after the Bible, I think the purpose-driven life is probably one of the most sold books in all of human history.

And Rick Warren said, Hey, when I wrote that book and the proceeds started coming in, he said, I seriously had enough money where me and my family could quit our jobs, we could buy a private island, have servants work for us to wait on us hand and foot, and we would never even have to think or consider money because that's how much was coming in.

But Rick Warren doesn't do that.

Rick Warren instead says, We're not going to change our lifestyle one bit.

He was still driving around in his 10-year-old Ford pickup truck.

They were living in the same house that they had always lived in.

He became a reverse tither, so he started giving uh 90% of his income and living on 10.

And uh he was someone that took, looked back at everything that the church had paid him over the decades that he had been there, and he paid back all the money that the church had ever given to him.

And then they started all of these humanitarian relief organizations where they were dealing and helping people in in some of the remote parts of the world with AIDS and different things that were they were facing.

This is a guy that lived generously, and this is what he says.

He says, the reason that God chose me to write the purpose-driven life was not because I was wise, not because I was smarter than somebody else.

He said, I believe the reason that God trusted me with writing this book was because he knew he could trust me with what would happen when the income started coming in.

He knew that as I was faithful with the little, that I could be faithful also with the big.

That I could be faithful with the little and I could be faithful with the big.

And so this message is just went to my soul and to my core.

And so me and my wife, we about 15 years ago started making the same decision.

Hey, every year we're gonna be more generous than the year before.

And so every year we we increase that percentage point.

We go up a little bit higher, we give a little bit more.

And I'm telling you that the Lord has blessed us.

I mean, I can't even begin to go into all the details and how the Lord has blessed us, but he has given us job opportunities where we could pick up a little side gig and we can make an extra hundred bucks here or there to help cover some of the costs that we need.

He we've been given cars.

Um, we've been given money to go into our kids' college foot count.

We've had people that have passed away that we didn't even know that were in our family, that we got an inheritance from.

And I don't think that that's only because of we're in a good family or our families have made wise and smart decisions, or because I'm a pastor, I really believe it's because God said, Listen, if you're gonna be faithful in a little, I can bless you with more.

Um, even this past week, as simple as this is, I had somebody call me and they said, uh, hey Nathan, we we just really want to bless you guys.

Is there anything that you guys need?

Last year, you know, we we helped you out with a Christmas tree.

We had a Christmas tree that we had gone out, and they said, Is there anything we helped this year with?

And I said, actually, we were just talking last night, the boys wanted a little Christmas tree in their room.

They had one of like those Charlie Brown Christmas trees that looks pretty rough.

And I said, it'd be great if we could get a little Christmas tree for their room.

And they said, Great, you go buy it and we'll send you a check.

That's the blessing of God.

That's the blessing of God.

And that's the God that we have, not just in the big, but in the small things.

God is a blesser.

He blesses us and he blesses those who are a blessing to others.

And so when we live with generous lives, when we live with a heart of generosity, then we walk into the blessings that this life ultimately brings.

Luke 16, 10 says this, if you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones.

But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities.

See, the problem with the bag mindset is we never believe that we have enough to give.

And this is the idea, this is the mindset that this bag mindset ultimately carries around with it.

It's this is that I'll be generous one day.

I'll be generous when we get the promotion or when we get more money or when there's not as much need that we have.

That's never true.

In fact, you know the people that give the most percentage-wise are the people that actually have the least.

When you get up into the billionaires and the people that are making just incredible, insane amounts of wealth, those people tend to give just a small, small percentage of what they're earning.

Why is that?

Because if we're not faithful in the little, God can't bless us with more.

Proverbs 3, 9, honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce, then he will fill your barns with grain and your vats will overflow with good wine.

That's the God that we have, a God of blessing.

And he blesses those so that we can be a blessing to others, that we can be generous with the things that he has given to us.

I want to end this morning with just telling you a story from Jesus, actually.

Um, in Luke chapter 12, Jesus is confronted by this uh man who is asking for Jesus to kind of settle this dispute between him and uh his brother in this inheritance matter.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

And uh Jesus replies to him in verse 14 of Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Jesus replied and said, Friend, who made me the judge over you to decide such things as uh things as that?

Then he said, Beware, guard against every kind of greed.

Life is not measured by how much you own.

Again, our world would tell us something differently.

Our world would tell you it's about more, it's about getting more and more.

But Jesus says it's not that's not what life is measured by.

Then he told him this story a rich man had a fertile farm that produced fine crops.

He said to himself, What should I do?

I don't have enough room for all of my crops.

Then he said, I know, I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.

Then I'll have room enough to store all of my wheat and other goods, and I'll sit back and say to myself, My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come.

Now take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry.

But God said to him, You fool, you will die this very night.

Then who will get everything you've worked for?

Yes, a person is a fool who store up earthly wealth, but not have a rich relationship with God.

Man, this guy had an abundance of crops, and the Lord had blessed him with the abundance of crops so that he could be a blessing to others, but instead, he held on to it.

I'll build bigger barns and I'll just enjoy my life, I'll sit back, eat, drink, and be merry, everything will be great.

But what he didn't know was that that very night his life was coming to an end.

And that's the truth and the reality for so many of us as well.

You've been blessed.

Listen, even the ones that you don't feel like you're blessed, you're blessed.

We live in the richest nation that there ever has been.

And you look at the people around the world and the poverty that they live in, you are indeed blessed.

But you're blessed to be a blessing.

You're blessed not so that you can hold on to it all yourself, but so that you can be a blessing to others.

And so, what are you doing with that?

How are you being generous with the resources that God has given you?

The blessed life ultimately flows from a heart of generosity.

I want to be blessed.

I want to be generous with everything I've given I've been given.

And so, for some of you this morning, you're recognizing that maybe you put your faith and your trust in what's in the bag.

Maybe it's wealth, maybe it's something else, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's you know some person, I don't know what it is, but you're recognizing that maybe you put your faith in what's in the bag rather than the one that gives the good gifts to us.

And maybe this morning, for some of you, the step that you need to take is just that first step of faith.

It's just saying, God, I'm broken.

I've chased after the wrong things, I've I've tried to fill my bag with more and more stuff, and I've trusted in the fleeting nature of wealth.

And Lord, today, Lord, I need you to I need you to save me from that attitude and that mindset.

Maybe you need to take a step of faith this morning and put your faith in Jesus for the very first time.

And it's not a special prayer that you pray, it's not an alt, uh aisle that you walk, it's not a card that you check, it's ultimately an attitude of the heart where we say, God, I messed up, I'm a sinner, and I need you.

Then we believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he died on a cross for our sins, rose again on the third day, and if we put our faith and our trust in him, that we can have an abundant life that he ultimately brings, that we can be with him for all of eternity.

And then we confess that he is the Lord and the Savior of our lives, that he not only forgives us, but he is also someone that is now calling the shots for our lives.

And so maybe that's the step that you need to take.

And if it is, we'd love to have a conversation with you.

You can stop by the connections desk on the way out.

If you're watching online, you can uh text the word start to follow to 9700, and we'll follow up with you this week.

But for the rest of us in the room who maybe have put our faith and our trust in Jesus, but somewhere along the line, we began to trust what's in the bag rather than the one that's the blesser and the one that gives generously to his children.

And so maybe there's an attitude that we need to have this morning of repentance where we say, God, I've gone astray here.

I I want to live the blessed life.

I want to experience the blessings that you provide.

I want to walk in a rich relationship with you rather than putting up uh my trust in the earthly wealth that you provided.

And so for some of you, maybe it's a repentant heart that you need to have this morning.

For some of you, the best step that you can ultimately have in order to overcome the greed that so oftentimes takes captive our souls is to intentionally be generous.

And that's not by just tipping God every once in a while or being generous when you just see a need, but it's intentionally being generous.

It's the best way to combat greed in our lives.

But here's the incredible truth: it's not a sacrifice, it's an opportunity.

Because God tells us that it's better to give than it is to receive.

It's better, you're blessed when you give rather than you receive.

And so it's not about necessarily sacrificing and making our lives miserable, but it's saying, hey, I'm walking in and I'm willing to give up and be generous with the resources that you have provided for me so that I can walk in the blessed life that only you can bring in my life.

And there's no better way to walk through this life than having the rich relationship with Jesus that only He can satisfy our souls for.

So let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you.

Lord, I thank you for who you are and for uh just being a generous God.

Lord, as we look into your word and your scriptures, we see over and over and over again, we see uh that you are a generous God, not only how you pour out blessings upon us, but Lord, you were generous with your Son.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.

And so, Lord, we thank you for setting the perfect example of what generosity looks like.

And Lord, I hate how the world has corrupted this message of generosity and it's taken it and transformed it into something that it was never meant to be.

But Lord, we know that when we walk in the ways that you have called us to walk, then we walk into the blessed life.

And so, Lord, let us be people that have been blessed as we live lives with hearts full of generosity.

Lord, help us to take steps of faith this morning that we need to take.

If that's a step towards salvation, Lord, I pray that we would have the courage to talk to somebody and reach out.

If it's the step we need to take of repenting of some of the things that we put our trust in, Lord, let that be the case this morning.

Let us have the courage to do that.

But Lord, more importantly, Lord, give us this attitude of believing that you are a God of more than enough, a God of blessing.

And that you don't want to just bless us, Lord, but you want to bless our children and our children's children.

And you want to create a uh just a blessing culture where we're blessed, not for our own sake and our own nature, but we're blessed so that we can be a blessing to other people around us.

And so, Lord, help us in that.

Help us to walk in that truth this morning.

That's in your name we pray.

Amen.