Entrusted 5 | Power Of The Precious

Thank you for listening to the Kelowna Christian Center Podcast.

Our desire is that today's message will be fresh and encouraging to you.

For more information on KCC and how to connect, visit us at KCC.net.

Awesome.

Welcome everyone.

My name is Brody Kalman.

I'm uh one of the lead, well, I am the lead pastor, one of them, here at Kelowna Christian Center.

And uh I'm so excited to be at church with you.

Before we begin, I heard last week uh Pastor Malachi brought the house down, preached a good message.

So thankful that he was uh preaching while I was on holidays.

I heard he introduced you to Kanye West, which is great for some of you who have never heard of Kanye West, but or as some people call him Kane West.

Kane West.

Um it's uh it's always great to uh be away and still be able to be connected.

I watched him online.

And so our online experience is uh it's a really great experience if you're uh at home or you're away, but there's nothing that beats actually being in church and actually experiencing the community that's here and the common worship and the ability to be able to just connect with each other.

Um we're completing our in our entrusted series this week, and uh before we move into the Christmas season, uh where our theme is really that there's all eyes are on Jesus.

Uh so much of the season is about uh putting our eyes on like Christmas, the the name of Christmas, and as much as it means something to me, Christmas means something to me, we don't want to lose the fact that Christmas never saved anyone.

It was Jesus who saves people, and Jesus is our only hope, and Jesus is our only our only salvation.

And uh 2,000 plus years ago, it was Jesus that came.

And because of Jesus, we have this tremendous holiday.

How many of you have put up your Christmas trees and have decorated your house a little bit?

Yeah, you guys, man, oh man, it's December 1st.

Now's the time to be doing it, okay?

Not earlier when the snow flies, that's when you do it.

Um my kids are telling me, Dad, we need to put up the Christmas lights.

And I just tell them to hold up, hold up just a little bit longer.

Uh, if you're new to KCC and to this whole experience here at KCC, uh, we'd like to welcome you.

We believe God wants to take every individual on a specific, uh, unique spiritual journey.

And if you don't know where that starts and you don't know where you are spiritually, we've got a list of next steps to actually help you along that journey.

The first being the fact that we believe we uh come to a place where we need to know God for ourselves, not have a faith that's based on my parents' faith or my grandparents' faith or some guy learned about on the internet or I listened to on a podcast, but not taking what other people have have studied, but rather taking your own relationship with God.

How many have a personal relationship with God?

That's what's really valuable.

The fact that you have your own individual relationship with God.

That's so important.

And after you get that all settled, you and God, the fact that Jesus has forgiven all your sins, then we actually help you move move on and find that freedom because when you know God, you're still got some stuff that you're bringing along in your past that you're trying to iron out and work out.

And we hope to actually connect you to a community here where you can actually discover freedom and find ways to drop those bad habits and hang ups, etc., and move on in your faith so that you can move on to your tomorrows.

Your yesterdays are all taken care of, your tomorrows are fresh ahead of you, and you start living out of your purpose.

And that's where we talk about the day that you were born and the day that you discover why you're here.

Two important days in our life.

Why am I here?

And when you start living out your purpose, that's when you start to live life making a difference, making a difference all around, whether it's at work or at home or at church or on holidays or on vacation or wherever you may be as a student at school, you're making a difference.

So this series today is really about making a difference.

This entrusted series is a series we go through maybe three times a year, not entrusted, but the make a difference series.

Because a lot of the year we can talk about ourselves and how to how we are benefited because of the gospel, but now we want to really focus on the fact that because God has given us so much, we can now be a blessing to others.

We don't want to just become all fat ourselves.

We want to be given out, right?

We've been given a lot to be a blessing.

We've been blessed to bless.

We've been blessed with more than enough so that we can go into the world and actually bring blessing to the world.

If that's in the church community, your city, nationally, the world, we're out to be a blessing.

So that's where we push during this series.

We're pushing and we believe that God is motivated to bless you.

If if you're motivated to take that blessing and bless others, so this is the challenge.

Generosity really is our privilege.

We're in Canada, we've been given so much that now we are have a privilege to be able to give.

And generosity really is an opportunity for us to be able to walk around and being able to experience the joy of giving.

Isn't that what the season is all about?

The joy of giving, the joy of giving.

I love, I love, I love to give.

We look for ways to give.

If it's not financial, it's our service, our time, our gestures.

How many of you know that a smile is free?

A hug is free, a handshake is free when you're giving of yourself.

You're giving yourself.

So today we want to talk about this making a difference portion of our life that God has called us to, not just to sit and soak up everything, but find ways to actually give it out.

Churches have been known too often to like become too enclosed inside the four walls, where really the role of the church is to break out of the walls and go out and share the gospel of the kingdom of God.

Amen?

So to go out.

So let's pray this morning before we begin.

Ask the Lord to open our hearts and open our heart, our our mind to his word.

Father, we thank you today for your word.

You said faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

And today we may have walked in with a little faith.

We want to leave today, Father, with great faith.

Lord, we may have walked in timid, we want to walk out bold.

Walk in shy, walk out confident, Lord, because of what you've done in us through your word in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So what we're gonna start is in chapter 126 of Psalms, starting in verse 5.

And I'm gonna read it for you.

You've got it on the big screen here.

You can mark it in your Bible, in your notes.

It says this they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He that goes forth with weeping, you see there's a trend here, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again back rejoicing, bringing his sheaves, his harvest with him.

Now I've been in church for a long time.

I grew up in the church, my my family was engaged in church, my grandparents were engaged in church.

Everywhere I went was like, we like we have the word of God, and we were taught it from a young age, and and everything I learned about sowing was that a cheerful giver, a guy goes out, he gives cheerfully, and he gives and with anticipation, and he's giving with like excitement and faith.

And that, but I've rarely heard about this fact that there are givers who go out there and they sow with tears, with weeping, and it's just as exciting.

I can hear it from you right now, this resounding excitement.

It's like tears, weeping, this this sense of sacrifice, it's uncommon, it's a sense of taking what's valuable, and the Bible, the scripture calls it here, precious seed.

Going out and giving that precious seed, giving it with purpose, with intentionality, going out and with tears sowing that seed.

There is a type of sowing that happens that is accompanied with sacrifice.

Would you say that word?

Sacrifice.

It's sacrifice.

And we all know that there's different types of seed.

There's normal seed, and then there's precious seed.

There's, hey, I forgive you, and then there's that kind of forgiveness, and you know what I'm talking about.

It's tough.

I forg, I for I love, Lord help me, I forgive you.

And it comes out and it's hard.

We all know the difference between the average, the common, and the precious.

Oh, I know I have kids in my house.

I I love having the kids there, obviously.

It's great.

Um, but I have a pantry and we put great things in our pantry.

And that sometimes I expect to go to the pantry and find the thing that was precious to me.

And I go in and I find a wrapper.

They didn't even put it in the garbage.

I look at that box and I think, thank you, Jesus, for this one last chocolate.

And I reach in and I pull out a wrapper.

They didn't even get rid of the box, they just teased you with it.

It was terrible.

We know the difference between the precious, and you know it too.

Those things that are attached to your heart.

The Bible talks about the difference between the will of God.

There's the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.

There's a variant.

He talks about the faith.

The Bible says that there's a precious faith.

He calls it great faith versus this little faith, this faith where the people were trying to get Jesus to do all these miracles.

Do, give a sign, and then we'll believe.

Do this, do this, this miracle, and then we'll believe.

And Jesus stopped them and he said, precious, like those people who don't see the miracle and still believe, that is great faith.

That is precious faith.

There are others who saw miracles and believed, and they, and that was faith to them, but the precious faith was the captain, Cornelius, who said, who said, you know, you just speak the word.

I'm not even a Jew.

Um you just speak the word, and I know that my servant will be healed.

And Jesus said, Wow, such great faith, a precious faith.

There's something about the faith that we have that's precious, it's most valuable to us.

Those things in our life that are valuable to us.

The scripture talks about this precious seed, this precious uh, this precious thing that we hold on to.

Um I like to say about this precious point here is that God desires your precious.

He desires it.

He wants your precious.

He doesn't want something that's just calm and he wants the precious thing.

And there's something that's incredibly powerful when you place your precious thing in God's hand.

You place what's precious in God's hand.

There's you like we see this in life, we see it in marriage, we see the precious when you give.

My daughter's on the front row one day.

Yeah, Evangeli, go ahead, sink down into your chair.

One day I'll give my precious away.

It's not gonna be easy.

I go to the gym, I try to sometimes.

I try to spend some time on the treadmill every week because it's the best part of my week.

Said no one.

And it's uh I do my best to enjoy it.

Uh I do it to keep the double chin away.

And uh I go to on at to the gym, and there's someone at the gym who's better than me all the time.

This guy's there before I get there, and after I'm done, he's there still grinding it out.

And I'm like, oh.

And I looked, I was beside me the other day, like I I need the most motivation at the gym.

I put earbuds in, I'm listening to Netflix, watching Netflix, anything to distract me just to keep going, to get through, to grind through.

He doesn't use any earbuds, it's a straight up discipline.

I don't like him very much.

And I said he's straight up discipline.

He's he's pushing his way out, and he's got this binder in front of him.

And this binder is always on the first on this one page.

And I the other day he was right beside me at the gym, and I kind of snuck a peek over at what he had on his book, and I recognized these two quotes.

The first being a scripture verse.

I'm like, and he's a Christian too.

Like he's he's doing it, and he's just looking at me.

Silently he's judging me.

I know it.

He's like, I know you, and I'm doing this better.

1 Timothy 4.8, he writes this.

He says, it says this, the Apostle Paul says, Physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, both here and for the life to come.

And I'm like, wow, that's a good verse.

Apostle Paul, and underneath that is a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'm like, Apostle Paul and Schwarzenegger, right, right on, back to back.

And Schwarzenegger says this he says, you can have comfort or you can have gains, but you can't have both.

And I looked at that this week.

I thought about this precious seed.

And the comfort is that seed is wonderful when you're holding on to it.

It's wonderful when you're you're you're it's safe, it's protected, it's something you can look at and take pride in.

It's the seed.

But it's it's it's not something that you have to work for, it's not something you have to risk when you sow it, it's not something that you have to tend or garden or or guard or water or nurture.

The seed is good when it's in your hand, but when it gets out of your hand, that's when it becomes precious.

Seed is no good in the hand, but when you release it into the field, when you plant it and you've gone that step to say, it's not mine anymore, it's yours.

And when you put your seed into the hand of God, it becomes something precious.

It goes into work, it becomes what it was supposed to become.

I look at the illustration of Moses in Scripture.

Moses is is at the uh burning bush.

God's speaking to him out of this bush, and he had been, he's standing there and he's getting instructions from God, and God's launching him into his mission and his ministry.

And he stops and God speaks to him and says, Listen, where you are is holy ground.

This place where you're at, but I'm gonna send you on a mission.

And Moses says, What do I have?

And God says to him, What's in your hand?

And what's in his hand is this rod.

It was the only thing that attached him back to Egypt when he was a prince, a person of influence, a person of power.

Now all he has is sheep.

He's nothing, he's not wearing the princely garments, he's just in his sandals in front of a bush.

And God says, give me that one last thing that you hold on to that's so precious.

And the scripture says he threw his rod down, and his rod got turned into a snake, and God says, pick it up again.

He picked it up by the tail and it turned back into a rod.

And he's holding this rod, and God says, Now, because you gave me this something precious, I've given you something of value.

He'd given it up, and now that rod is what he held up, and the Red Sea split.

The rod he threw on the ground and it became a snake and ate the other Pharaoh's snakes.

It's the rod he tapped the rock and it poured out water.

It's the rod he held up, and whenever the rod was held up, it's it's when the armies were winning.

It was of value to him, but he had to give it up first.

And when we go through our life, oftentimes we hold on to things in our hand, and God calls us to release the precious, release those things that are valuable to you, release those things that are close to your heart.

Secondly, that same scripture says when the sower goes out to sow, he goes out weeping.

But the scripture says he doubtless returns rejoicing, knowing that there's a return on his sowing.

How many of you would love to have doubtless faith?

It's like a doubtless faith.

Says, you know what?

I'm I'm going out, I'm doing what I need to do.

I'm I'm I'm walking in obedience.

And the Bible calls this a boldness.

Where you, though, scripture says, when you walk righteous, you're as bold as a lion.

Because you've done what is right, that you know that you know that you know, that God has got your back.

That's what we need to do, that's where we move.

And the reality is this God actually gives us his precious.

Peter said it this way: he says, it was the precious blood of Jesus that saved us.

It wasn't just ordinary, it was God's only begotten precious son.

It was his precious blood that redeemed us.

God knew the value of that precious son, that risk of sending him down to humanity, stripping him of deity, humbling him in a manger, in a barn, giving him to an unwed couple.

There you go.

He gives it to them, Mary and Joseph.

And Mary and Joseph are entrusted now with Jesus, and God's hands are off.

He entrusted them, he gave his precious son so that his son now could go and actually save the whole world from their sin.

Isn't that incredible?

How many of you are beneficiaries of the saving power of Jesus Christ?

That's what it is.

The reality.

Is that God gives us his pressure?

There's a power in your pressure.

He wants you to experience it.

And oftentimes we hold on to it.

And I've been known to hold on to it.

I've held on to things.

I've made, I've I've realized that Brody, you hold on.

And the Lord wants those precious things.

He wants you to go all in.

I looked at one another example in scriptures.

Someone who everyone would love to be like.

They read about him, Solomon.

Wow, Solomon.

He was rich, he was favored, he was wise, he was intellectually, physically, financially, like he was the trendsetter.

He had the wonders of the world.

And he was amazing.

But this is what it took for Solomon.

The Bible says that when the temple was being announced that they were building the temple, Solomon took a thousand of his choice sheep.

These are sheep that a thousand of them, sheep that would create other herds.

They were choice sheep.

They would create, and from a business perspective, all the other businessmen are going, he's gonna submarine his company, he's gonna go underwater.

What is he doing?

He's giving a thousand of his best breeders.

What's happening here?

This is financial business suicide.

What are you doing to Solomon?

And Solomon gives them freely the precious commodity he had.

And the scripture says that night the Lord showed up to him.

He gave his precious, and that night the Lord came to him and said this.

The Lord said, What can I do for you?

How many of you said, Lord, what can I do for you?

But when God says to you, What can I do for you?

That's a whole different reversal.

It's like, Lord, and the Psalm says, Give me wisdom that I might rule.

And the Bible says, Because you asked for wisdom, I'm going to give you riches, fame, prestige, all these things.

Because you offered up your precious.

The woman of the Alabama box, she goes to Jesus and she pours on Jesus' feet.

Something to her was precious.

To us, it would have been the value of a year's worth of wage.

Wages.

Years worth of wages poured on Jesus' feet, empty, gone.

She begins to wipe his feet with her hair and wash them with her tears.

And she begins to get that same residue back on herself, ministering to the body of Christ.

And Judah says to him, says, Jesus, stop her.

She could have used this money for something else.

And Jesus says, No, this isn't waste.

This is worship.

It's precious in my sight.

Too often people will say, Well, no, you're wasting your life.

Young people, you're wasting your life.

You're wasting your Sunday morning.

You're wasting your weekend.

You're wasting your time.

You're wasting your value.

You're wasting your resources, your financial resources.

You're just giving.

Why are you wasting?

And I want to tell you today, it's never waste when it's in your precious is given into the hands of God.

It becomes worship.

It's this worship that converts into this worship.

It's the difference between clapping when you come into church on a Sunday morning saying, I'm going to raise a hallelujah.

I'm going to lift up worship.

I'm going to raise praise to God.

I'm going to give Him all I have.

I'm going to make everything I do worship.

This is worship.

It's never waste to give to God.

To give your precious to God.

This isn't just me.

I'm saying it.

Everyone in this room have an opportunity when God will come and you'll say, give me your pressure.

Give me your pressure.

You can have comfort.

Or you can have gain.

You have to make a choice when you can have.

And so we offer, we look at our lives and we go, what are we going to take?

What are we going to give?

And and what are we going to offer him?

Is it going to be our precious gift?

Is it going to be our precious praise?

What is it we're going to give him?

And so today, and we've been preparing you for the last few weeks about this offering that we're going to take that's going to be included with a regular offering today.

About this offering that is going to be what we've referred to as our entrusted offering.

And this is where we respond to this message.

I believe every message needs a response.

We want to make a difference with our offering.

And we want to realize, not just realize the blessing that God has given us, but we want to activate it and say, Lord, you've blessed us so that we can be a blessing.

So that the whole world through us would be blessed.

Our community.

And right now, just say, Lord, what have you, what do you want me to give?

How what do you want me to do during this time?

What's close to my heart?

What's precious?

What's something precious I can offer you?

What's something sacred I can give to you that represents my heart?

I don't want to give that which costs me nothing.

I want to give something that has an attachment to it.

And some of you, the needle might be way over here and you've never done this before.

I'm just asking you, everyone, to just participate.

Do something.

Move the needle.

Just generate some form of generosity and just ask the Lord, say, Lord, you can do this on our behalf.

You can do something with this that is precious.

We don't do this often.

We're not doing this on a regular basis.

If anything, I've held back in doing it more often.

But I believe it's important.

How many of you would agree this is important to allow God to touch those soft parts of our hearts and say, yes to you, God.

You have my heart.

You've got my financial support.

You've got my gifts.

You've got my talent.

And so while you're preparing, there are three ways to give.

You can just start preparing, and and uh there's a uh an envelope on the seat in front of you, and we're gonna ask you, just take that in your hand and just look at it and just say, Lord, what is it that you want me to give?

And under the memo section, if it's above your tithe and offering today, you just write down under that memo section what entrusted.

This is the amount I'm giving to the entrusted offering.

And if you're online, you can do the same thing on the on the app.

You just write in the memo that this amount is going towards this entrusted offering.

And uh we are believing together.

This isn't a guilt, this isn't a pressure, this is a point of opportunity, and it's a point of sacrifice for you to be able to go ahead and do this with us.

So while you're preparing, let me just tell you a little bit about what I've learned about Jesus.

I learned about Jesus that he was a giver, he gave his life.

No question, Jesus was a giver.

But he was also a borrower.

Do you know that?

He borrowed someone's food, he borrowed someone's boat, he borrowed a little boy's lunch, he borrowed a grave for three days.

It was like the quick Airbnb.

It was like, oh, I'm in and I'm out.

It was he was a borrower, but Jesus also was a receiver.

Jesus had all power.

He could have just snapped his fingers and done whatever he needed to do.

The mission, the ministry would have gone ahead.

He could have done whatever he needed, he could have had resources at his beck and call.

But Jesus allows us to actually join in the opportunity of partnering with him in the ministry.

And so my parents from a young age, I got an allowance for a little short time when I was young.

And my parents would give me a few bucks, like five bucks or something like that a week.

And I thought I was the richest kid ever.

Like I, you know what, remember what that's like?

You're having a wallet as a kid, and you're putting your money in there, and you feel like you're just loaded, like the world.

You're you're an emp it's your empire.

Like I'm a I'm a baron here.

And uh instead, my parents gave it to me and they taught me in that opera in that experience to tithe.

So I come to church on a Sunday morning and I take my tithe.

And they did that so that I would learn the value of participating in the blessing.

And so I took my tithe and I got a tithe number.

How many of you remember tithe numbers?

Yeah, I was number 13, lucky 13, tithe number 13, and I would put my tithe number on an envelope, put my name, and put my 50 cents into that envelope.

And I learned by practice what it meant to give regularly and to give in order to be a blessing.

And so for us today, this isn't about this isn't about comparison, it's just about opportunity, it's about you and obedience, it's about us doing what the Lord has called us to do and to actually go forward in doing this together.

For us, a reminder for for you as a congregation, when we look at the resources that come into the church, we we believe that the main thing needs to be the main thing.

And that's that the gospel needs to go out, and the message needs to go out.

And so our resources go towards furthering the gospel message.

We believe Jesus is the only hope for people.

Do you believe that?

There's no other hope, but Jesus is our only hope.

We also believe that there's more than just the inside of this building.

There are others outside the walls that need that need to be reached.

And we do that through different mediums.

We do it through online, we do it through our social, we do it through door knockers, we do it through reaching out, doing lights on the street and helping serve our community.

And so we believe that God can use those resources to actually make a difference.

And that God has given you opportunity to reach into different places than I have opportunity to reach into.

And so that's where we come behind each other and we just pray and we support one another to actually complete and fulfill the gospel.

Amen.

Amen.

How many of you have felt the precious presence of God this morning?

I when Malachi was preaching, speaking, sharing, transitioning, he was talking about the sheep that was missing.

And my mind I knew what I was going to speak on.

And I knew right away the reason why Jesus went after that sheep is because it was precious.

It was precious.

And the message today is that not only does God want your precious, but God is calling you his precious.

And he did everything for you.

And today we just learn to be like Dad and give back.

Amen.

Would you bow your heads with me?

Father, we thank you today for your word.

We thank you for how much you love us and care for us.

We thank you that we're not alone.

And it's our habit here at KCC with every head bowed and eye closed.

At the end of this message, if you maybe found your way in here with a friend invited you, or you just have been watching online, or you're here because you just saw an open door.

And you've been walking your life and you've been realizing, man, I'm alone, I'm maybe spiritually disconnected, I'm far from God.

Today I want to share with you this message that you can have the precious Jesus.

You can know Jesus.

You can know the precious nature of his name, you can know that sense of being precious.

Many in this room have come to know.

And today it's a simple prayer.

If you want to experience it for yourself, to be able to pray, it's a simple prayer.

It doesn't mean you need to become a member of this church here.

It just means you need to open up your heart and you need to experience it for the first time.

You need to invite them in, and that requires words.

And this is the prayer we pray.

It's a simple prayer, but it'll cost you everything.

It's costly.

If you want to pray that prayer today, I'm gonna pray this prayer along with you.

Before we do that, if you would be so kind if this is your first time, you're gonna pray this prayer.

Would you just raise your hand between you and me?

Just let identify.

Hey, I'm gonna pray this prayer for the first time.

I won't call you up, I won't point you out.

I'm just gonna acknowledge you.

Just raise your hand real tall so we can I can just see your hand.

Is there anyone here this morning?

Amen.

Let's pray this prayer together as a church.

Pray along with us.

Jesus, I need you.

Forgive me of my sins for living my life without you.

Today, I surrender my life to you.

Be my Lord, be my Savior, forgive me of my sin.

I choose today to follow you.

Thank you for setting me free and giving me a fresh start.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you so much for being generous and uh sharing along with me.

Amen.

Thank you for listening.

For more information on KCC and how to connect, visit us at KCC.net