Overflow with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you in.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

Whether you are joining us here at our Holodis venue, our Petrenko venue, or online, we're so glad that you joined us.

And I want to take a second before we really get into service and just acknowledge and appreciate at both venues our venue pastors.

Will you guys show some love to our venue pastors?

Pastor Tony is doing such an incredible job in Helotus.

Andre's doing an incredible job here at Petrinko, and I'm so grateful for their leadership in this movement.

We are in a brand new series called Overflow.

This is a series on generosity, and we have an annual rhythm here at MetaCurch where we take seriously the movement that God has given us to steward.

I want to remind you maybe if you're newer to MetaCurch and you haven't heard a message on this, we believe that you are the church.

The church is not the building, it's not the Sunday service, it's not the pastors or the staff, it's not just an organization.

We are a part of the ancient movement of Jesus.

It has gone unbroken for over 2,000 years.

And scripture reveals that you are the church.

And so when you invest in the church, you're investing in your own movement.

Here at MetaCurch, God has given us a really clear mission.

We do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

Many of you are walking with Jesus today because of a movement that decided we would do whatever it took to reach you and create an environment where anybody at any part of their faith journey could come in and experience Jesus.

We also have a very clear vision.

We're going to talk about it some today because it is a big, wide-ranging vision that will take all of our efforts, probably for all of our lifetimes, to really see it come to pass.

And so listen, at the beginning of every year, what we do is those who already consider themselves a part of this movement, we make commitments for how we are going to be generous and push that movement forward.

We'll be specifically doing that over the next two weeks.

Now, if you're here and you're new to Meta, maybe you're new to church in general, maybe you've been coming to MetaCurch for a while, still wrestling with some of our beliefs and ideas, but you're not really ready to start investing in the movement of Jesus.

Not only am I so glad that you're here today, but we created MetaChurch for you for this reason.

And I think this series will matter to you as well, because there may be nothing more difficult to talk about in church today than money.

And the reason it's so difficult to talk about is because for a couple of centuries now, people have taken scriptures, twisted them, and used them for really harmful means.

Part of what we're gonna do today is set a foundation of explaining some of that and showing why the concept of generosity as understood in scripture is not something we have to be afraid of, is not something we have to shy away from, but is something we should wholeheartedly embrace in order to live lives on purpose and with purpose and see God fully bring blessing into our lives and into the world through our lives.

My message today is simply titled Overflow.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for your great love for us.

We're humbled to just be a part of your movement.

I thank you for MetaCurch, for anyone who might be here today, just wrestling with who you are and if there is a God and what it all means, they're in the exact right place.

Holy Spirit, I do believe you're here, that you're moving.

And I pray all of us would be humble enough to just open up our hearts and minds and allow you to speak.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready for the overflow, say amen.

Amen.

Uh in August of 2023, we were starting to look ahead to our five-year anniversary in January of 24.

And for the first time, we started talking about this new big vision that God was giving us.

And one of the things that becomes really abundantly clear if you read the New Testament and about the spread of the movement of Jesus is that the church was never intended to sit still.

The idea that church is you build one building and you put a giant steeple on top, and then you just sit in that building for the rest of your lives.

That's a foreign idea to scripture.

As a matter of fact, it was expected that the church always replicates and expands and moves and grows.

And so we took the inspiration for our unique vision out of Acts chapter 1, verse 8.

Acts 1:8

These are the words of Jesus.

Jesus said, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Now, this is a concentric strategy for growth and expansion.

Jerusalem is where the Jesus followers already lived.

And the movement kind of stayed in Jerusalem for about five to ten years, and then it expanded.

Judea was the other part of the kingdom.

Samaria was officially foreign territory, and then eventually to the ends of the earth.

And it should not be lost on us as we sit in North America in San Antonio, Texas, 2,000 years after Jesus said these words, that we are still a part of that movement.

The people that Jesus told that day to take the message to the ends of the earth had no idea that our continent existed on planet Earth.

And they took his instructions so serious that they dynamically expanded the movement to where we are now part of it today.

This is what happens when we take the instructions and the call of Jesus seriously.

And so we're figuring out what that means for us.

And we're gonna start in our own Jerusalem where we live, work, and play.

And that is in the San Antonio area.

It's in Helotus, it's it's all in inside this area that's big.

We're one of the biggest cities, not just by population, but we're spread out over this giant chunk of land in the San Antonio area.

And so our vision is in the next five years, we will have a metachurch venue within 20 minutes of every person in San Antonio.

And we took our first huge step October of last year when we opened MetaCurch Helotus.

And I can't tell you if you're serving or attending here in Helotus, how proud I am of the work you guys are doing to take the first step in moving our vision closer to the ends of the earth.

That's something worth celebrating, right?

That's a good thing.

Now, if you've been here for any of the MetaVision series, when we've talked more in depth about this, you know that our vision goes beyond just our city.

That once we spread out in our city, we believe we're called to uh other states, that we believe that we are called ultimately in our lifetimes to see what we can do to bring the movement and message of Jesus to the ends of the earth.

Now, this is a big vision.

It is going to take an enormous amount of work, an enormous amount of faith, an enormous amount of resources.

Resources we don't currently have.

I want to share a little story, and some of you have heard this before, but it really indicates uh a huge part of how miraculous this movement has been over the last six years.

About four years ago, it became obvious that we needed some kind of central hub for the operations of Metachurch.

And so we started praying about either buying or building a building that could be ours, that we could own, and that we could work out of and expand the movement out of.

And so I happened to be good friends for many, many years with a guy who's like a top consultant in the church world.

And so he came in, we could have never afforded them, came in for basically free and did a ton of work.

They went through everything, all of our reports, all of our back-end databases.

They even did a kind of cross-section of our congregation and interviewed almost a hundred people.

And then they took all the data they had looked at and they put together a report and they sat me and some of our leaders down.

And he starts by saying, Look, we've got some big findings, I've got some really good news, and then I've got some pretty bad news, you know?

And so, of course, you always take the good news first, right?

If you take bad news first, you're a psychopath, right?

Like, then you can't enjoy the good news.

You're just such a huge bummer.

So it's like, okay, you know, give me the good news.

And this wasn't just good news, this was like the greatest news you could ever hear as the senior pastor of a church.

He said, we interviewed almost a hundred of your people, and we've been doing this for a long time, and we have worked with so many churches, and we can say with confidence, we have never seen a congregation as missionally focused and as missionally passionate as Metachurch.

That's powerful, that's everything.

And let me just point out when Jesus said, You will be my witnesses and take this movement to the ends of the earth, that's all they had.

Missional focus and missional passion.

He goes, Okay, I also kind of have some bad news.

He said, I've been doing this a long time, and I've worked with a lot of churches, and you guys are, without exception, the poorest church of your size we have ever seen.

Now I'm such an optimist that I heard that and was like, so you're saying we're the best at something.

Like if you think about it, we're kind of number one at being poor, you know?

We we did it.

Put it on the wall.

He went on to explain, and I knew this because I've I've been in ministry for a while.

He said, you know, a church your size on average has anywhere from four to twelve people in your congregation who can write six-figure checks.

Something breaks, a system goes out, the youth program needs something, building project.

Four to twelve people who can write at least six-figure checks.

I'm like, okay, so are we on the low end of that?

You know?

Do we have four?

He's like, no, dude, you have zero, you have none of those people.

He's like, we've looked really hard.

We don't know if anyone can write a five-figure check, okay?

Like, you don't have that.

So you take all of that into consideration, and you look at the six years of ministry that we have done as a meta church, and it's unbelievable, if not miraculous, what God has done through your movement.

We really didn't have enough money to start a church, but we did.

We didn't have enough money to navigate COVID lockdowns, but we did.

We were half a million dollars short of buying a building, but God gave it to us.

At this time last year, we came together to make commitments to how we were gonna be generous for 2024.

And when we made those commitments, we did not have enough money to start a second location.

Like nowhere close.

But it's open.

In six years, we've baptized over 500 people, we've now graduated over 100 people through the academy.

You see, God is working and it doesn't make sense.

And when God is working and it doesn't make sense, you are in the perfect position to understand what generosity means because true generosity positions you to live in a way where you see miracles that only God can get the glory for.

We're gonna talk about generosity throughout this series.

Uh, we're gonna root this in the words of Jesus in his most famous sermon.

It's called the Sermon on the Mount, or others call the Sermon on the Plain.

And really, what this was, most scholars believe this was Jesus' sermon.

Okay, Jesus wasn't a preacher like I'm a preacher where I come to the same people every week and I take one idea and then I kind of tear that idea apart.

Jesus was an itinerant preacher.

He went city to city to village to village to town to town, and most scholars believe this was the sermon he preached wherever he went.

And the sermon, if you think about it thematically, is how do you live as a part of God's kingdom?

How do you participate in God's everlasting kingdom?

That's the sermon, and there's all kinds of wisdom in there.

You should really go and read the whole thing.

But he gets to this section on generosity.

We're really gonna focus on verse 38, but we're gonna start in 37 for some context.

Jesus says this do not judge and you will not be judged.

Do not condemn and you will not be condemned.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap.

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

This is a lesson on generosity, but it's so much deeper than we think it is at first glance.

Uh, first of all, it's important to recognize the focus.

And the focus is not just on financial generosity.

Scripture is constantly calling us to live lives of holistic generosity, to be generous with the grace that we give to others, to be generous with the forgiveness to those who have harmed us, to be generous with our time and our love and our mercy.

And yes, over and over and over, Scripture implores us to be generous with our finances.

Now, verses like these have caused controversy for centuries, specifically if we look at the last sentence.

The last sentence in 38 says this for with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

Now, what this sounds like to us out of context is what we would call reciprocity.

Reciprocity is exchanging with others for mutual benefit.

Uh, the way we say this is you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

And so many people have taken this view of God that there is just simple reciprocity that is kind of a one-for-one transaction.

And if I do for God, he will do for me.

And if I give to God, then God will give to me.

And this kind of simple, shallow one-for-one transaction with God does not do justice to the character of God that is revealed throughout his word.

It misunderstands the clear teaching of scripture about how our lives actually operate and how our relationship with God actually functions.

So let me be really honest.

It's very hard to talk about generosity, it's very hard to talk about money in the church today because so many people have taken passages and used and abused them for their own benefit.

And so part of what I see my job as, especially leading a church where we are intentionally calling all people from all different parts of their faith journey to come in, to come and wrestle.

Part of my job is just to expose.

Here's where we've gotten it wrong, here's where the church has gotten off course, here's why it happened, and here's how it hurt us so badly.

And so the way we want to talk about this today is there's all kinds of ways to teach on money and generosity.

And I want to talk about both extremes on the spectrum.

And so we're gonna talk about the prosperity gospel, that's one extreme, versus the poverty gospel, that is the other extreme.

We're gonna start with the prosperity gospel because that's the one that is more well known.

It's kind of in your face.

We've probably all had this experience back when we had cable television, where you stayed up kind of a little bit too late, and all of a sudden a program came on, and there was like a preacher, but he had like a$70,000 watch on and like a Steve Harvey suit, and you're like, is this church or family feud?

I'm confused, like, what's happening right now?

And then they start making you some promises.

And it's interesting, it's mostly men.

There are some women, prosperity preachers, it's mostly men, and they use a lot of the same language.

And so they'll say things like this if you will just sow a seed into my ministry, I don't do impersonations very well, but that's my televist, right?

If you will sow a seed into my ministry, now I want to break that down before I even make my point so frustrating to me.

There's a reason that they call you to sow into my ministry.

Because part of the prosperity theology is that the prosperity preachers are closer to God than you are.

And the Bible rejects that.

That you have the same direct line with your heavenly father that they do.

But for their system to work, these charlatans, and look, y'all know, we practice kindness here.

I'm not gonna say names, Benny Hen.

I'm not gonna say names, right?

You have to sow a seed into my ministry.

Let me remind you, the ecclesia, that's the Greek word for church that Jesus used, that is the called out people of God.

When you give to metachurch, you are investing in your ministry.

You are investing in your movement.

The televangelists will say, if you will just sow a seed into my ministry, God will bring it back to you tenfold, a hundredfold.

I prophesy today, a thousandfold, it's coming back your way.

That car you've always wanted to drive, it is driving its way towards you right now.

That house that your spouse desires, the key to unlocking it is just a little more money to my ministry.

That male pattern baldness, a thousand more dollars.

I see hair growing back.

If you watch a televangelist for comedic purposes, it's actually amazing.

But when you understand the reality behind it, it's so malicious, it's hard to laugh at.

Because, number one, these people prey on the vulnerable and the financially illiterate.

They are bankrupting already bankrupt people.

And the other problem is they make huge promises for health, wealth, and prosperity, but inevitably, when you don't make the money and you don't get the car, and you don't get the house, and you don't get the healing, the televangelist, the prosperity preacher, always has a way out.

They have unfalsifiable claims.

And there's usually kind of two flavors of this.

If you write the check and don't get the healing, and you want an explanation, the first thing they'll tell you is, well, you gave, but you didn't give enough.

They'll kind of try to peer into your mind, you know.

Like, I think a number came into your mind, and initially it was 5,000, and you only gave 4,000, you're withholding from God, so now God's withholding from you.

Evil, malicious, manipulative.

The other thing is if you like clearly gave a lot of money, they can't really use that tax.

So what they'll say is, you didn't receive your blessing because you gave enough money, but you didn't give it the right way.

I think there was some kind of secret withholding in your heart.

You didn't give it with enough joy, you didn't have enough faith.

The bottom line is prosperity makes a lot of promises, inevitably they don't come to pass.

And if you don't get your blessing, it's your fault.

That is the prosperity gospel that makes a mockery of God.

And if you read the New Testament for even five seconds, you must reject this teaching.

When you look at the people who were the most loyal to Jesus and his movement, over and over again we see them suffering, being persecuted, being put to death, impoverished.

Jesus himself lived in poverty and died because of his faith.

Jesus himself said in this world, you will have trouble.

You look in the Bible, and the most faithful men and women in scripture are walking refutations of the prosperity gospel.

That is one end of the spectrum.

It's an extreme teaching.

And the hard thing is, everyone knows the prosperity teachers.

Everyone sees them on TV, everyone sees them flying in their private jets, and not only is it wrong, but it has hurt the movement of Jesus because when so many people in the West think church, that's what they think it is.

They're doing a great disservice to God and to his movement.

Now, the other extreme is the poverty gospel.

And for almost obvious reasons, it's not nearly as popular and it's not as widely taught.

Because the prosperity gospel is like you can have everything you want and everything you've ever dreamed of.

And so that markets well, you know?

Like a get rich quick scheme.

The poverty gospel is literally the opposite.

It teaches that true faithfulness to God requires a life of material lack and deprivation.

It's the idea that wealth is inherently evil, that having possessions or enjoying possessions is incompatible with a life of faith.

This is also a distortion of scripture.

In fact, all throughout scripture, we see examples of men and women who were blessed with enormous wealth and they stewarded it well for God's purposes.

People like Abraham and Job and Lydia and Joseph of Arimathea and King David, these were people of incredible means who stewarded their resources and helped build God's kingdom.

The Bible doesn't say that.

Money is sinful, it says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Here's like the bottom line of what's wrong with these extremes is they both view God as simple reciprocity.

On the prosperity gospel, it is if I just sow a seed into the man of God's ministry, then God will reciprocate and give me health, wealth, and prosperity right here and now.

And that's important.

The prosperity gospel teaches all of these blessings will come right now during your time on earth.

The poverty gospel is also reciprocal, but just in a different way.

It says if you give God a life of poverty and deprivation, you're not getting any blessings here.

That'd be the opposite of the poverty gospel.

Instead, in eternity, God will bless you with salvation, and God will bless you with eternal blessings.

Now, the truth, like any time you examine the extremes, lies somewhere in the middle.

And by understanding what it actually means to be called to a life of generosity, not only will it set the course for the rest of this series, but it could dramatically change the quality and impact of your life.

So let's look back at our key verse and see what it actually means.

In Luke 6, 38, Jesus says, give and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaking together, and running over will be poured into your lap.

Now, we've already seen this definitely applies to our money, but it's also a call to a holistic life of generosity, being generous towards God and generous towards others.

Now, Jesus is using a metaphor, a word picture in the middle of this verse, and we don't get it.

And that's okay, we don't get it because it's 2,000 years later on the other side of the world while the world has developed.

This is a metaphor that takes place in the marketplace.

And we don't have a marketplace.

We have an HEB.

Can I get a hallelujah?

We love H here, everything's better, right?

We've got an H E B, and it's so easy now that remember curbside?

And I was like, oh snap, I just drive up and open my trunk, and they will give me all, and now they deliver, and I'm like these peasants at curbside.

Like, why would you leave your house?

I don't.

It's a very different experience than the ancient world where you had to go into the marketplace and you would go into the marketplace, and at first everything was bartering, but eventually currency was created.

And once currency was created, they had to figure out some way to have standard units of measurement.

That way you knew if I give this much money, I will receive in return this much produce.

And so they came up by just using a simple standard unit of measurement.

And then whether you were getting grain or flour or corn or a whole host of other produce, it would just get measured via the container, and you knew for this much money I can get this much in return.

Now, if you're like me and you're naturally kind of cynical, you see this and go, Oh, that would be so easy to make fraudulent.

Like you throw a couple rocks in the bottom of this, and all of a sudden you're giving less and receiving the same amount of money.

And surely there was quite a bit of fraud that would happen, but even an honest seller in the market, their goal is at odds with the buyer's goal.

The buyer's goal is to get as much as they can for as little money as possible.

The seller's goal is the inverse: to give as little as possible for the maximum amount of money.

And so they would use the standard unit of measurement, but they would fill it and they would only fill it right kind of right up to where they couldn't complain, and then they would get their money and they would give them their produce.

Now, what Jesus paints is a completely different picture.

He says, if you give, it will be given back to you, and it will be a good measure.

We'll talk about that in a second.

And he says, What it's gonna look like is the seller is gonna start pouring, but as they're going, it's very easy to get some air pockets in there.

And so they're gonna start pressing it down, and then to make sure it is totally filled, it will be shaken together, and they'll pour some more, and just to make sure, then they'll press that down and they'll shake it together, and then they'll keep pouring, and this is the craziest of all.

They're not just gonna go to the fill line.

He doesn't say give and it will be returned to you a full measure.

It doesn't say a fair measure, it says a good measure.

And this is a picture of something like super abundance.

He says, as a matter of fact, the the seller will keep pouring until it starts to overflow.

Now we don't know how to react to this, as indicated by how we're all reacting to this.

But in Jesus' time, when he painted the picture of a seller in the marketplace who would do this, the audience would have burst into laughter.

No one would do this.

This is so generous, it's stupid.

He goes on to say, it will be given to you, this superabundance, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap.

What does that mean?

This probably isn't the best example, it's what I could think of.

Okay, I grew up and uh I grew up eating lots of candy.

Okay, I liked candy.

I still like candy, I can't eat as much, but I don't see these as often.

When I was a kid, there were a lot of machines, and for one quarter you would twist, and it was really interesting because sometimes you would get one Skittle for that quarter, and then the next time you'd get the whole rainbow.

Like it was too, it was too much, and when you're little and you have little hands, kind of your only option to even contain it all is just to kind of make a bowl.

And this is the picture.

Jesus is going, what you will receive back from God is so super abundant, you're gonna have trouble figuring out what to do with it.

And so we kind of pause right there, and it's like, okay, that kind of sounds like the prosperity gospel.

So let's sow some seeds and get our cars and get our houses.

But you have to remember the context.

Jesus isn't teaching about how to get rich today, Jesus is teaching about how to participate in God's kingdom.

And so I want to look at our verse again, but I want to pay very careful attention to the verbs.

It says, give and it will be given to you.

At the end it says, the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

Now, there are times where we jump into the original languages of scripture or we jump into some of the grammar of scripture, and uh, we don't do that to be fancy.

We do it when it really helps drive a point home.

And I promise you, like if one of my college English professors is watching this right now, they are dying that I'm about to talk about verbs, right?

I got C minuses so that they could like see you later, you know, just to get me out of the class.

This does actually matter though.

People would have understood this in the way that Jesus said it.

These verbs are future indicative passive verbs.

Future indicative passive.

I'm gonna explain it really quickly.

I'm gonna make it really simple.

Uh, future verbs are referring, this is rocket science.

They're referring to things that happen in the future, right?

That's that's the future part of it.

Now it's important that future could be in one minute or it could be in one millennia, right?

But it's somewhere in the future.

Indicative really matters.

Indicative means that it is guaranteed.

It will be given to you.

This indicates a promise.

This isn't, you know, uh, it might happen, there's a 50-50 shot, head to your bets, God might show up.

If you're generous, God might be generous back.

This is a guarantee, it's a promise.

And then it is also in the passive voice, future indicative, passive.

And the passive voice means that the listener isn't going to create the action.

You're not going to create your own return on your giving.

And typically, when it is both future and passive in scripture, it's almost always referring to the work of God.

Here's what makes this so interesting.

These verbs don't lock these promises into any point on the timeline or even to a single point on the timeline.

To make it simpler than future indicative passive verbs, this is a concept all over scripture called now and not yet.

There's all kinds of things that operate on this principle.

Like at the moment that you put your faith in Jesus, you are fully saved from the penalty of your sin right now.

Your sins are forgiven, you are given eternal life, you come into relationship with God right now, and you have to live for 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 more years in the middle of a world of sin and brokenness.

And when Jesus comes to get you, you will be saved fully.

It's now and it's not yet.

Scripture talks about our adoption into God's family.

The moment you put your faith in Jesus, you are adopted as a son or daughter of God.

And yet, when Jesus returns for his people, you will meet your Heavenly Father.

It is now and it is not yet.

It is an indication that the blessings of God come to us in this life, but those blessings are a foretaste of the fullness of the superabundance of blessings that are still to come.

And so when you live a life of generosity, you will experience blessings right here and right now during your time on earth.

Not all of those blessings will be monetary in value.

Generous lives experience joy, peace, purpose, security, self-esteem, healthy relationships.

It's also true that many people, when they choose to be financially generous to God, also see blessings in their finances.

And I don't have time to tell the whole story, uh, but Katie and I have seen this to such an incredible degree.

And it's not because we have a net worth that would make anyone blush, it's because we spent the first half of our marriage living as a household income almost below the city's poverty line.

We had almost six figures of debt that we didn't ask for or were responsible for.

And largely because of the faithfulness of my wife, we never stopped being sacrificially generous to God through our movement, and God always showed up.

And you know how we talk about it today?

On the other side of it, we can't explain it.

We just have no idea how it all worked out, and so there's blessing that is coming, and yet the superabundance of blessing that God promises you, pressed down, shaken together, pouring out, it will be in eternity.

And it's why we talk constantly about living with a pilgrim's perspective, that the daily realization that this world is not your home, that you are living for eternity, that you are living for what is next.

Jesus is the best example of this because he lived in eternity and then broke into our world.

Jesus said this in Matthew 6 do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don't break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus is like, guys, I've been there.

I'm from there, and pretty soon I'm going back there.

The more we learn to live with eternity as our realist reality, the more we will begin to beg God to store up as much of our blessing as possible for later.

And yet God loves us, and he loves us so much that he went so desperately to bless us, truly to live a blessed life, to give you an overflow, to give you what you need.

So, how do we think about this verse?

Let's read it one more time.

Give and it will be given to you.

A good, super abundant measure pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured out into your lap.

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

An incorrect reading of this will lead you to just simple reciprocity.

If I if I scratch God's back, he'll show up and scratch mine.

This leads, as we have seen, to false and harmful teachings.

What this actually demonstrates is what we're gonna call spiritual reciprocity.

Spiritual reciprocity begins with the correct perspective.

You see, things like the prosperity gospel, they assume that you and God are starting at zero.

And so if I give to God, God has to kind of match me, at least, or maybe even out give me.

And then I'll give and then that's just not real.

What's real is based on who God is and what he has done for us and the life that he's given us and that he created us and that he came down and gave his life for us and saved us miraculously, is we start in such a significant debt of gratitude to God that we could live our entire lives and never make it back to zero.

And yet God loves his children so much that even though we are in such a significant debt of gratitude, he says, just live a generous life and watch as I pour out blessing.

And as I pour out blessing, if you're really living a generous life, your generosity will increase.

That's why we do this how we do it at Metachurch.

We don't come in and go, here's what we're gonna do on this one week, one time a year.

I want everyone to write the biggest check they can write.

And everyone's like, I can give, you know,$72, I guess.

Like we don't need that.

We don't really have that, and we don't need it.

What we need is the people of God to take inventory of their life and find out what generosity looks like, and then commit it to the Lord.

Spiritual reciprocity is offering what we have to God and trusting his eternal blessing that overflows in this life and more importantly, in the life to come.

Here's the concept.

This is so critical to understand.

Your generosity increases your capacity to receive God's blessings.

Your generosity increases your capacity to receive God's blessings into your life.

And whether you know it or not, we're already seeing this as a movement.

Last January, we came together, we had a bunch of bricks on stage, we were very honest.

We have this call to this vision, but we have a barrier to entry, and it's a financial blessing.

We were called to start new locations, to reach new people within 20 minutes of everyone in San Antonio, but we did not have the money to do it.

And so we just ask if you could either start your journey of generosity, or if you could do like my family is doing again this year, and just evaluating if there is room for greater sacrifice and committing that to the Lord and following through with it.

We were so far away from what we needed, and yet here we are, one movement with one mission now, with two venues.

God is moving, your generosity expanded his capacity to bless this movement.

And what is true for us as a movement is true in your life as well.

Listen, the experts have spoken, we might be the poorest church of our size in America.

We're number one.

Where now, right?

We're we're the best at something, baby.

So how does it keep happening?

And how do we get to the ends of the earth?

Well, it's the other thing they found.

We are the most missionally focused, missionally passionate faith community that they have ever seen.

And if we will truly embrace our mission and if we will do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus, there is nothing standing in the way of our movement and our impact.

Let's pray.

As we close out across our venues, if you just bow your head and close your eyes, there's nothing magic about that.

Just create some space for yourself, for the people around you.

I want to talk about the ultimate act of generosity.

The ultimate act of generosity is found in the person of Jesus.

And it isn't just that he died for us, an insane act of generosity.

It's also that he came to us, that he left perfection.

Scripture paints the picture of heaven as all of the angels day and night singing the praises of God.

Jesus stepped out of that and into our pain and brokenness, to a world that rejected him and despised him and shamed him and nailed him to a Roman cross.

The ultimate act of generosity is that it was our decisions, our sin that separated us from God, and yet God in his love came down to us.

When Jesus walked out of the grave, he did not come out offering us religion.

He came out offering you a relationship.

And if you want to live a truly generous life, you have to be focused on what comes after your life on earth.

You need a relationship with God, and that comes through very simply putting your faith in Jesus, believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be and has done what he claims to have done.

He doesn't ask us to jump through any hoops, to clean ourselves up, to go to any classes.

He asks for a moment of faith.

And so if you're here at one of our venues or watching online and you've never had a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you the opportunity to do that today.

So with everyone's eyes closed, this is a personal decision, I want to ask you if you're ready for the first time to believe in Jesus, to just simply raise your hand up in the air.

By lifting your hand, this is a symbolic gesture saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees and accepts your faith.

Scripture says, all of your sins are forgiven, and you have been given eternal life with God, something that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

So here's what I want to do.

For those who raised a hand, I want to very simply help you acknowledge this moment through a prayer.

I'm gonna ask you to repeat this prayer with me, and I'm gonna ask all the believers at our venues to pray this as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.