How To: Give

Amen.

Well, good morning again.

Oh, good morning.

Someone responded.

That's awesome.

That doesn't happen that often.

I got a couple quick announcements before we jump into the message this morning.

Want to let you know about a few things coming up really soon.

Number one, Adventure Week is July 12th through the 16th.

It is for two-year-olds through fifth graders.

And uh we've had a lot of questions about it.

We're so excited about this.

First time we've ever done this.

It's gonna be from 6.30 to 8.30 each night.

And if you want to know what it is, it's really a two-hour-long party for kids two years old through fifth grade where they're gonna have fun, games, music, worship, teaching.

They're gonna learn who Jesus is and how much he loves him.

They're gonna learn the adventure that they can have in life if they live it with him.

And I know there are hundreds of kids in this community who do not know right now that Jesus is theirs.

And they're gonna know that in just a few months.

And so we are so excited about it.

I know many of us have kids in that age range, and we might want our kids to go.

You should want your kids to go.

We want your kids to go.

And all you've got to do to make that happen is sign up.

There's no cost involved whatsoever.

Uh, you can go to the Connect Desk today and register your kids there.

If you have friends or neighbors that have kids in this age range, let them know about it.

They can go to our website, hishandschurch.com.

You can find the event on our calendar, and there's an online registration as well, so that they can register their kids to be here for that as well.

And so we're we're looking forward to that.

Hopefully, they can be there for that.

Next Sunday is Comedy Night.

We're really excited about that.

Um, if you're new to His Hands, we love to laugh.

We like to enjoy ourselves, and Comedy Night's a great chance to do that.

If we don't laugh on Comedy Night, it will have failed miserably.

Uh and so I know that's not gonna happen.

Ken Kington, if you know Ken, he's part of our teaching team.

He and another a number of other really great comedians are gonna be here, and they're gonna be here just to give us a night to enjoy.

And so if you have friends, neighbors, anyone you work with, you name it, that you know could use a little bit of joy in their life right now, please invite them to this.

The tickets are cheap.

They're$10 if you buy them here,$8 if you buy two or more.

So buy a ticket for a friend and say, hey, I bought you a ticket, I want you to come to this because you have no idea how much it can mean to someone just for them to laugh and to enjoy life for a little while.

Walls start to go down, and God can do really big things when that happens.

He really can.

Uh, college students, I want to let you guys know about college night at Blue Light.

Uh we have a number of great there's seven of them right there.

We have a number of great college students here.

I've known many of them for years, and they really are amazing people, not just students, they're amazing people.

And if you are a college student, that's the phase of life you're in, or even if you have one, every Sunday night at six o'clock in the coffee shop, they get together and they've got worship and teaching, and it's custom tailored for where they're at in life, to ask tough questions, to explore things in a way they've maybe never been able to before, and it's it's going really well.

So I would invite someone, I would tell any college students you know about it or any kids you have in that age range, bring them, because it's it's a great night.

It's every every Sunday night, six o'clock, over in the coffee shop.

All right, with that said, let's pray and let's jump into our message this morning.

Jesus, thank you for everything you do for us.

And Lord, right now, we ask that you would just humble our hearts, make us open to what you want to teach us, help us receive whatever you have for us in your word, and receive it, Lord, in the right spirit.

We know that you want us to grow.

You want our lives to be blessed, you want our lives to be successful, and you want to give us what we need for that to happen, Lord Jesus.

And I pray that for all of us, including myself, this morning.

Amen.

Well, we are beginning a brand new series today.

I'm really excited about it.

But first, I want to start by asking a really strange question.

Just bear with me.

Does anyone in the room own a Chevrolet El Camino?

Just out of curiosity.

Any El Camino owners?

Are you serious?

You own an El Camino.

Uh, would you what year is your El Camino?

77.

77.

Okay, so some of us in the room, we might not know what an El Camino even is.

I am so excited.

We actually had someone in the first service too.

They owned an 81 El Camino.

They haven't made them since 1988.

So I was not anticipating anyone owning them, and yet we have two here at his hands, so that's really special.

Um, if you've never seen an El Camino before, here's a picture.

They're the first hybrid vehicle, and by hybrid I do not mean gas and electric.

It was the hybrid car and truck.

It is half car, half truck, all business, man.

These things are something else.

So I've never driven an El Camino, but in 1999 I was introduced to one when I pulled out in front of an El Camino and uh and watched as it hit my car and bent my car in half.

I was unharmed.

There was no one in the passenger seat of my car, thankfully, because that's where the the the the uh explosion is the word I'll use was.

Uh if you've ever wondered what wins between a 1995 Ford Mustang and a 1979 El Camino, because that's what this one was, it's the El Camino every single time.

My car was almost total, the El Camino was uh was dented in the bumper slightly.

That's all.

That's all it was.

They don't make cars like they used to.

The worst part though is that the accident was my fault.

And I got to call my parents.

I had two phone calls.

I called my mom.

The very first thing my mom said was, you know, are you okay?

Are you okay?

That's what moms do.

My dad, he figured that if I could dial a number, I was okay.

And so his first question was, was it your fault?

And uh, and and here's the thing, technically it was.

Okay, technically it was my fault.

I'm the one that pulled out in front of the El Camino, I had a green light, not a green arrow, those are different things.

And I got the two confused, I saw green, I said green mean go, and I just went, and there was the El Camino, and it all happened.

So, yes, technically it was my fault.

We paid for it, the insurance paid for it.

But have you ever had one of those situations in life where you are the one to blame for either doing something or not doing something, maybe, but there are also other parties that should take some responsibility, but they're just not willing to.

So you have to bear the entirety of the blame, even though you know there's other people that had a part to play in this, and in this situation, I don't do this very often, but even if they were in the room, I would say this my parents had some of the blame.

And here's why, here's why.

Hold on, hold on, here's why.

I got in that wreck three weeks after I had my license.

It was a great, great month.

And uh there is no reason I should have been driving a car because I did not know how to drive.

And I did not know how to drive because when I was 15, I got my permit and I asked my parents to let me go to driver's ed.

I wanted to go to driver's ed.

I was that kind of kid who I wanted to learn things, I wanted to do things.

My parents were like, ah, driver Z, waste of time.

We'll teach you how to drive.

And that was an experience.

It started off really easy.

We were in parking lots, that was nice, that was stress-free, that was good, it was helpful.

I learned how to park in a parking lot.

I've been pretty good at that ever since.

It was actually getting on the road that was challenging.

I went on the road with my dad one time.

Once.

And the entire time we're on the road, my dad did not tell me anything.

He asked me one question over and over again.

He said, What are you doing?

That was the entire experience.

It was me driving for an hour with my dad, and my dad going, What are you doing?

What are you doing, son?

What are you doing?

And I wanted to yell back, I don't know what I'm doing.

You know, I'm 15, that's why you're in the car.

You're supposed to tell me, you know, I'm gonna die, Dad.

Help me.

That's what I felt.

And so we got back home, and my dad said, That's it, from now on, your mom is gonna teach you how to drive.

And and I was all for that.

I was like, after that experience, yes, I'll I'll see how it works out with mom, until I actually went out with my mom.

My mom, she did not ask me one question over and over again.

She made one statement over and over again, and that statement was, oh my God.

That's all my mom said.

She literally hugged her door, held onto the dashboard, and just said, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my, oh my god.

And she was not taking the Lord's name in vain, not at all.

She was praying, she was legitimately praying.

In her mind, I think she was finishing it off with, like, oh my god, please save us, oh my god, please help us.

But all I heard was, oh my God.

And that was my driving instruction.

What are you doing?

Oh my God.

That's all I got.

That is all I got.

And in between those two statements, things like understanding the concept of a yield fully, they just didn't come into the conversation.

So I turned 16, I did not feel like I was ready to drive, but my parents took me and I passed the test, and then I got in a car and an El Camino happened.

That's that's the story.

You know, it was my fault.

It really was.

I mean, I was the one driving, I was the one that pulled out in front.

But how frustrating is it in life when we want to do something well, when we desire to do something with excellence, but we don't know how.

We just don't know how.

You ever had a job where you were expected to produce results, but no one ever sat you down and taught you how?

That's frustrating.

I've been in that situation.

I've actually put other people in that situation, not on purpose, but it's easy to do.

It's frustrating in life when we have a genuine desire to grow, a genuine desire to do well and to succeed, but we feel like we don't know how.

And I think we find ourselves in that place very often.

Whether it's as a husband, as a spouse, as an employee or an employer, as a parent.

We want to do well, we want to do it right, but we don't know how.

I'll be the first to admit that I find myself in that place when it comes to my relationship with God quite often.

I want to grow.

I know I'm not where I need to be.

I know I'm not who I need to be, I'm not where I was, and that's great.

But I know I'm not where I need to be.

And I want to move forward, I want to grow, I want to be the person that God created me to be, but I don't always know how.

I don't feel like I do anyway.

What steps do I take?

Where do I start?

I need God to sit me down and give me the how-to.

See, countless times in Scripture, we find God not only calling us to live a life that is greater than the life that we could live without him.

See, God has a great life for you.

And by great I don't mean easy, those are very different things, but God has a life for you that is full of meaning.

God has a life for you that's full of purpose and fulfillment.

He desires a great life for you.

And he calls you to that life.

But God never calls us somewhere that he does not equip us to go.

And so countless times in Scripture we find God giving us a how-to.

How-tos are really helpful, and we're gonna spend the next month or so looking at some how-tos in Scripture.

We could we could pull a how-to for every aspect of life you can imagine, because scripture really does speak to it all.

But we're gonna set our sights on three things, three steps, three actions that we can take to grow closer to God, to move in the direction that God would have us go so that we can become the people that He created us to be.

And we're not picking three things arbitrarily, we're not just grabbing three things that we'd like to talk about.

These three things all come from the same chapter in the book of Matthew.

Excuse me.

That was nice.

Um Matthew chapter six, Jesus in Matthew chapter six, this one chapter of the Bible, he actually gives us three how-to's.

Three things that he says that if we'll do them, we'll succeed.

He says, when you give, when you pray, and when you fast.

He lays out these three spiritual disciplines.

That's really what they are.

When you give, when you pray, when you fast.

He says that if you'll do these things, if you'll give, if you'll have generous hearts, you'll start to look like me.

He says, when you when you pray, when you stay in constant contact with God.

And he says, when you fast, when you're willing to go without something for a season, so that God can give you something even more important.

When you do these things, you will grow, you will do well, you will move forward.

So we're gonna look at these three spiritual disciplines in the order that Jesus gives us.

Because he wants us to be equipped.

And I know many of us in the room, we have lived some of these out, we have followed some of these.

And if that's you, you're probably the most excited for us to talk about this because you know it works.

I'll say this if you've done those things, please let us know if there have been results in your life.

Go to the back four columns, fill out a story card, and tell us about how prayer or giving or fasting or something like that has changed your life.

Tell us that because we want to know those stories to share them.

I'm so excited to talk about these because many of these are areas I need to grow in.

We can always become more generous, we can always have a better prayer life with God, feel more comfortable in prayer.

Fasting is the least American spiritual discipline there could ever be, right?

Fasting, that's like eating food really fast, right?

So you have more time to pray.

Well, no.

And none of this is gonna be like a bunch of rules.

It's not gonna be this heavy, like, hey, here's a bunch of stuff you need to do.

That's religion.

Religion says, do better, do more.

That is not Jesus.

But Jesus is all about us being empowered and having the tools we need to succeed.

So we're gonna start by looking at Matthew 6, verse 1.

Matthew 6:1

It's right where Jesus starts.

He says, Watch out.

It's a good way to start a conversation.

It gets attention.

Watch out.

Don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your father in heaven.

When you give to someone in need, don't do as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity.

I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get.

But when you give to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Give your gifts in private, and your father who sees everything, he will reward you.

Your father who sees everything, he will reward you.

So Jesus says, When you give, don't make a big show of it.

And that may seem really strange in our culture because we'd actually have to try really hard to do that most times.

Most of the giving we have is is pretty private, the opportunities we have to give, but in Jesus' culture it was very different.

Giving was a very public thing, and so all eyes were on you when you were in a place where you could give.

It usually happened at the temple or in the synagogue.

I heard it said once that our character is most revealed when everyone is watching and when no one is watching.

And in his culture, when you had an opportunity to give, it was usually at a place where everyone was watching.

And so this whole system just lent itself to people giving and even giving very generously, but giving in such a way that they received a lot of attention.

And Jesus says, look, when you give, if you give to impress other people, you might win, you might impress them, but you're not gonna impress God.

So give discreetly, give in secret.

And I love that our culture has shifted to be much more like that.

Most of our giving is private, right?

It's it's it's envelopes in the mail that you get, organizations you might want to give to.

You can give or not give, but no one's gonna know because it's in private.

The most public place we have an opportunity to give might be might be at the grocery store, we're we're checking out, and the person says, Hey, would you like to donate a dollar to this organization?

And no one's really watching, right?

I mean, yeah, there's people behind us, they're on their phones, they're paying attention to those awesome magazines right at the checkout counter, who's dating who, who lost how much weight, that kind of stuff, right?

They're absorbed in that.

So you could say yes or no, no one's gonna notice.

You can make a show of it if you wanted to.

You could say, yes, I will give five dollars.

But no one's gonna be impressed.

Everyone's gonna be like, what, what?

Stop it.

What are you doing?

That's just not our culture.

Even the way giving works here, I love this because it used to be a lot different in church culture where you know everything was about show and giving was something very public.

We don't pass a plate here because we don't ever want you to be in this all eyes or on me kind of kind of feeling when you give.

So our giving's in the back, it's discreet, the lights are really dark, uh, which is kind of a tripping hazard, we know, but we want you to be able to you know have a private moment when you do that.

And that's how it should be.

But see, here's the thing our our culture might be so opposite of Jesus's that we have kind of the opposite problem.

It's really easy for us just to not be generous because no one's watching.

We can we cannot give at all to help meet needs in this world and no one's gonna know.

Because no one's watching.

But remember, our character is most revealed when everyone is watching and when no one is watching.

That's where Jesus' words become really important here.

He says, when you give.

Not if you give, but when you give.

There's an assumption here.

There's an assumption that we will be generous people.

Now, I'm just gonna say this right now.

When the word give is used in church, uh, usually you're like, all right, when's it coming?

There's gonna be like a thermometer on the stage any minute, right?

Okay?

And no.

In fact, today, today I'm not gonna talk at all about you giving to his hands church at all.

Next week, I just want to say this to be honest.

Next week, we are gonna talk about what giving looks like here at His Hands.

We do this once a year.

We did it last June where we take a Sunday and we just talk about what giving looks like at this church.

I love that Sunday.

It's actually one of my favorite days because I'm proud of how this church views and uses money.

I'm proud of it.

And so I love the ability to share with you what giving looks like here.

Because if you've grown up in church culture, I promise it looks a lot different.

And so, if you've been here for a while, you owe it to yourself to be here next week because you will learn a lot about us as a family, as a church.

You'll learn a lot about what we value when you hear how we we view money and how we use it.

And those of you who do give, those of you who are givers, you need to be here next week because I get to share some amazing wins that have happened as a result of your generosity, and you need to hear those.

It's gonna be a really good Sunday.

But today we're just talking about the concept of meeting people's needs, of generosity, and how God can use us to do that.

See, I won't I won't pretend any differently.

Jesus calls us to live with a radically different mindset about money and about our resources than this world teaches us.

It is radically different.

It's the complete opposite of the way that this world lives.

But I have a question for for all of us to consider.

Does the way this world uses money work?

Does it work?

Does everyone in the world have enough?

What about the people that have more than they need?

Are they happier?

Are their lives more fulfilled?

What about the people that have so much more than they need?

That small percentage of people that have such an abundance of money that they could buy anything they would ever even think of buying.

They probably never deal with depression or have marriages that fall apart or anything like that, right?

Because they have so much money.

And the answer is no.

In fact, oftentimes it's those situations where things fall the hardest.

See, the way our world views money, it just doesn't work.

And so maybe radically different is exactly what this world needs.

And Jesus offers us a radically different mindset.

You see it in Luke chapter 6, verse 38.

Luke 6:38

Jesus says, give and you will receive.

Your gift will return to you in full, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over and poured into your lap.

Very descriptive.

The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.

Jesus says, give first and then you'll receive.

And he wraps it up by saying, give and you will get back.

Give more and get more.

And that just doesn't make sense, right?

I mean, I understand.

I'm an American, so I understand getting stuff.

I get that.

I understand spend more, get more.

If I spend more money, I expect to get more.

I either want more quantity or more quality.

So I get spend more, get more.

I get invest more, get more.

That makes sense to me.

If I invest more, I'm expecting to get a bigger return later on.

So invest more, get more, that makes sense.

I saw those e-trade baby commercials years ago.

I get that, right?

We all we all know how that works.

But give more, get more, that's that's different.

Give more, Jesus is saying, you want me to give more, give it away?

Just give and meet people's needs, and then I'll just trust that you'll give me more and you'll take care of me.

And God's like, yeah, exactly.

You got it.

You nailed it.

That's hard.

Let's just be honest, that's that's hard.

I get it.

That's hard for me.

I know a lot of people who are very comfortable with the idea of Jesus controlling their eternal destination, their souls, than people who are comfortable with the idea of Jesus controlling their money.

And that may seem backwards because one of those is way more important than the other.

But I get it.

And it's all it's all a result of this world that we live in.

See, our world teaches us to live a very specific way when it comes to our resources, to our finances.

It teaches us to live like this.

You better hold on tight.

You better hold on tight, right?

Because something or someone is gonna try to take from you.

I mean, think about all the things in this world trying to take our resources.

There's taxes, there's fees.

If you own a car, right, you know what I'm talking about.

El Caminos are not the only thing we need to be worried about on the roads.

A few months ago I was driving and I heard this strange noise in my car.

I've driven for a long time.

I've never heard this noise before.

I tried to turn left, and all of a sudden, my car made this really weird noise, and it sort of sputtered and stopped and started, and I was like, oh no.

Because when those things happen, what do we do?

Do we go, oh.

Oh, I bet this is super simple and cheap to fix.

Right?

No way.

We do this, we hold on tight.

We're like, no.

No, this car's gonna take all my money.

I just know it.

I'm gonna go there.

I'm gonna go to the mechanic.

I'm gonna say, here, here's all my money, just take it and kill me.

Whatever.

That's that's how we feel, because that's the world we live in.

And so I told Megan, I said, honey, something's wrong with the car, and in my completely uneducated, untrained mind, I know it's it's a big deal.

Because I've never driven a car and heard this sound before.

I've never felt what I'm feeling in this car before, so we need to park it in the garage and go to a one-car household for the next few months to save up money to pay for it because we we cannot afford some multi-thousand dollar car repair.

So I'm I'm holding on tight, right?

She's like, well, can we just take it in and see what's wrong with it?

I'm like, no, it's gonna be serious.

I know it will.

Trust me.

We're gonna wait until we can afford to fix something major, then we'll take it in.

And so that moment came this last week.

We took it into the shop and I got a phone call.

They're like, Mr.

McTear, we have found out what is wrong with your car.

I'm like, awesome, and I'm just waiting for it, right?

How many zeros?

He says, Hey, your oil was really low.

And uh you're way past due on an oil change.

So get the oil changed and you'll be good.

And so I got to go tell Megan, hey, um, so you know how you've had to ride with me everywhere I've gone for the last two months, and we've had to like radically alter our schedule to be able to do all the things we normally do, but with one car?

Good news.

Good news.

It's just an oil change.

That thing I was supposed to do.

That's all it was, right?

Not gonna win husband of the year this year.

It's not gonna happen.

But see, that that mindset that I had, that thing that even kept me from finding out what was wrong, it's it's all a result of this.

I'm holding on so tight to what I have, I live in fear sometimes that what I have is gonna be ripped away, and so I get defensive.

That's my natural reaction.

We live like this.

Sometimes we're the ones that we have to protect our money from, right?

There are cool things to buy.

Have you seen the Apple Watch?

Have you seen those commercials?

I don't have a clue what that thing does, but it's surely worth$500.

It has to be.

So cool.

So we live like this.

We hold on tight.

See, if you live like this, some some interesting things begin to happen.

Things start to fall apart because if you live like this for long enough, you will begin to put your hope and your trust in what you're holding on to.

You will begin to believe that it's it's this, it's this that you have in your hand that is what's keeping you safe.

It's this that you can rely on when life gets really hard.

And that's a lie, isn't it?

It's a lie, it's a false sense of security.

My daughter is just past one year old, and she's beautiful, she's wonderful, she has my heart.

I say that all the time.

I love her so much.

She loves blankets.

My son didn't do the whole blanket thing where he was really attached to a blanket.

Lily loves blankets.

She calls them night nights.

So when she says night night, you might think she means I'd like to go to bed, and that would be awesome, but that's not what she means.

She means I want a blanket.

And if you give her a blanket, you give her a night night, she will grab a hold of it, she will clench it so tight in her fist, she'll pull it up to her face and just sort of calm down and relax.

It gives her security.

She feels safe.

Now, from my perspective, that blanket is providing very little actual protection.

She's not much safer holding on to a blanket, right?

How much safer are you holding on to a blanket than you are without a blanket in your hand?

The answer is none.

That blanket's doing nothing.

And I wonder sometimes how I must look like, you know, how I must look to God when I'm holding on to my money in the same exact way that my daughter is holding on to her blanket, and I'm like, no, no, no, this is keeping me safe.

And he's like, no, it's not.

It's not, right?

Because when problems in life present themselves, it's not like they go, oh, that person has more money than the average person.

Let's take our problems elsewhere.

Right?

That's not how life works.

There's never been a time where you've known someone that suffered a major tragedy in their life, but they had a lot of money, and you went up to them and said, hey, no big deal.

You got a lot of money, so you're good.

We don't do that because that's a lie.

We know in those moments that it's a lie, but it's when life is going relatively okay that we believe that this is our security.

And so we hold on to it tighter and tighter and tighter.

See, here's the thing, it doesn't really belong to us in the first place.

We're not the people that started with this money.

Someone else will have it one day.

We don't really own anything, and that's not something that's supposed to make us sad.

Like I live in a house, I sort of own the house, the bank really owns it, but one day I hope to own my house.

But I don't think I'm gonna outlive my house.

Someone else will probably live in that house one day.

We can live lives convincing ourselves that we really own this and we don't.

That's a lie, and we hold on tighter and tighter and tighter.

We put our hope and our trust in something that is not loyal to us, and something that does not care for us, and something that cannot meet all of our needs.

Here's the other thing that happens when we hold on tight.

When we live like this with our money, we might pray to God, we might feel like we need more, so we're like, God, please, I need more.

Give me more, God, please give me more.

And God's looking at us going, where would I put it?

Seriously, where am I gonna put it?

You're asking me for more, but the state of your heart, there's there's no room to give you more.

The only way to have room to give you more is if you would go from this, Justin, to this.

And so God calls us to live life with an open hand when it comes to our finances, our resources, our time, our attention, our talent.

He wants us to live with an open hand, and that's what he says in Luke 6.38.

We looked at it a moment ago.

Give and you will receive.

You give first, then you receive, because you make room for it.

Your gift will return to you in full, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, poured into your lap.

The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.

Now, I'll be the first to admit, verses like this have been twisted in church culture to get people to give to specific causes and to get people to give to some giving campaign and all that.

And I hate that that's true.

I hate that people have taken God's truth and twisted it for their own gain.

At the same time, that doesn't change the fact that those are Jesus' words, that is his promise, that if we live open-handed, willing to give, when a need arises, he will take care of us.

I know many people who will tell you the turning point in their financial life was when they began to become generous, and they'll put their life on that.

And I've heard it from so many people that have to start to believe that maybe what Jesus says is true.

Now there's a few things we have to we have to understand to really be able to live like this because this is normal, this is natural, the world teaches us this.

And maybe in the past you've even tried to open your hand and then something happened, you're like, nope, going back.

I get that, I've been there.

Matthew 6, Jesus continues.

This is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life, whether you have enough food or drink or enough clothes to wear.

Isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing?

Look at the birds.

They don't plant or harvest or store in barns, for your heavenly father feeds them.

And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are?

So you've got to understand it.

You are valuable to God.

You are valued by God.

See, those people that want our money, those organizations out there in the world, they don't really value us, they value this, right?

They value what we have.

I had this great moment where I got my water shut off a while ago, um, about a month ago.

And I'm sure many of us have been there.

Those are fun phone calls.

And the thing is, we just miss the bill.

We are not the most organized people sometimes.

We're going like crazy.

We kind of live here, and and so we're at home and the bills come in and we just we just missed it.

We probably missed two of them, honestly.

And so we we called because our water got shut off.

We showed up one day and there's a note on the door that says your water's off.

I'm like, oh no, what happened?

I was like, surely we didn't miss the payment, we've never done that.

So we called and yep, we just flat out missed a payment.

And I told the person, I said, Hey, I'll gladly pay for this, obviously, because I like water.

Um but man, it would have been nice if you guys could have like made a phone call.

Because had you made a phone call, we we would have taken care of it right away.

We just didn't realize.

And they said, Well, sir, we don't have the resources to make those phone calls.

And I said, Well, I bet the guy who drove to my house to shut the water off had a phone, and you have my phone number.

So I kind of think you did.

And uh, yeah, this is me sticking it to the man.

Yeah.

And that's when the conversation started going nowhere fast.

Because, like, who else is gonna give me water?

There's no competition, right?

And so they just said, well, you have to pay for it.

And I said, Okay, and they had the resources to take my payment over the phone.

That was nice.

So I did that.

And here's here's the thing.

Within 10 minutes of me paying for the bill over the phone, someone showed up at my door to turn our water back on.

So it seems like their resources are fine.

Ten minutes.

Ten minutes.

They're like, we don't have the resources to make a phone call, but if you pay us, we will be there in a second.

We will drive to your house.

Right?

And when things like that happen in our life, they happen pretty often.

Do we feel valued?

No, because we know that all you really value is what I have, because it's not until you have what I had that you care about me.

And my children who are going without water and baths, and man, does it smell?

That's how we feel most times that this world values what we have, not us.

But see, God, he's not after what you have, he's doing fine.

He is God, he doesn't need anything.

These things that God gives us, they're for our benefit, not for his.

Even fasting, God is not happier when we're hungry.

God takes no pleasure in us being discomforted.

These things do not exist to please God to make him happy.

They exist for us.

They're for our benefit.

Because God doesn't value what we have, he values us.

He's after our hearts.

He wants us, he wants you, not what you've got.

Jesus continues.

Matthew 6, verse 31.

Matthew 6:31

He says, Don't worry about these things, saying, What will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear?

These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows your needs.

When we know that we're valued by God, our hand starts to open, but when we know that God actually knows our needs, we can open it a little bit more.

Because we think we know our needs.

I think I know what I'll need, but I really don't.

Because I might need a new car in two years, or I might not.

The car I might have, it might last another, if I if I change the oil, it'll probably last a lot longer.

Right?

I learned that lesson.

I think my kids might go to college.

What if they want to go to an Ivy League school?

What if they're that smart?

You know?

Oh, I might need that.

I might need we think we know what we need.

God actually does know what we need.

He knows our needs, he knows how much you'll need, when you're gonna need it, he knows your needs.

And when you know that you're valued by God and He knows your needs, you can open that hand a little bit more.

But here's the kicker: Matthew 6, 32.

Seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

God will meet your needs.

God will meet your needs.

See, money, it'll meet some of your needs.

It will.

There are definitely needs you have that money will meet, but it will not meet all your needs.

There are deeper needs that money doesn't help at all.

But God will meet every need you have.

And when we know that we're valued by God, that He knows our needs and He will meet our needs, we can live life like this.

And I'm telling you, life like this, it works.

Many of you know this, because many of you live this.

It works.

So, how do we go from this to this?

How do we make that step?

The answer is really simple.

We gotta give.

We have to look for needs and meet those needs.

I want to talk for a few seconds as we as we wrap up about an organization that we've started to partner with here at His Hands called One Need.

Now, if you've been part of His Hands for a while, one of the things we value is that we do not need to have our name on everything.

We don't need to have our own ministry for every type of need that is out there in the world.

We don't need to have the His Hands food pantry, the His Hands Addiction Recovery Center, the His Hands.

We don't need our name to be on things.

Instead, what we want to do is find other organizations led by amazingly passionate people who are doing things so well that if we just came alongside of them and helped them do what they're doing better, they'll be able to change lives at a pace that we could never even imagine.

It would take us 20 years to learn the lessons they know.

Every dollar we would spend ourselves will not go nearly as far as every dollar that we give to them.

So we partner with organizations like Papa's Pantry.

You've heard us talk about them, the Cherokee Family Violence Center, the Hope Center.

Those are three organizations we've partnered with for the last couple years.

Well, one need is a new organization that we are really excited about partnering with.

Here's what they do.

This is amazing.

I'm so passionate about this.

It may not make sense how passionate I am about this, but I believe this is something that needs to catch on across America with every church that exists.

One need exists to take people who have legitimate needs and connect them to people who want to meet needs.

It sounds really simple, right?

But those of us who want to meet needs, and I think that's pretty much all of us, I think all of us say, yeah, I would love to be able to meet people's needs, but I have a few roadblocks to that.

Number one is trust.

Number two is resources.

How do I trust?

How do I trust the needs that I hear about?

If someone walks up to me and says, hey, I need help, can you give me this?

How do I trust that that is legitimate?

I had a friend one time that gave someone 20 bucks, this person just approached him, asked him for 20 bucks, and he said, sure.

And my friend's a little crazy.

Uh I would never do this for obvious reasons, but my friend followed the person and followed them into a quick trip and watched them buy beer with that$20.

And he walked up to them and he said, Can I have my$20 back or at least some of the beer?

Right?

Like I said, my friend's a little nuts.

I wouldn't, I would never do that.

I don't know how that situation uh was resolved.

He's just lucky the guy went into quick trip.

Like he's he's fine.

My friend's okay, I don't think he got it back.

But we have those those holdups, right?

Because someone approaches us with a need and we just don't know.

How do we trust that that need's legitimate, or is it a lie, or is the money gonna hurt?

Because sometimes money actually hurts in certain situations.

Well, see, what one need does is they know all the right questions to ask.

And they make phone calls, they talk to the people, they interview them, they go through this vetting process.

It doesn't take a long time, but it's very thorough, and they determine whether or not that need is actually legitimate.

Even if that need isn't legitimate or if money would hurt, they pray with that person.

They partner with local churches, churches like us, and they pray with that person, and they they share the gospel with that person, they tell that person about Jesus, they give them encouragement, they give them coaching, they they send them to other places where they might really get what they need, because maybe they need money, but they really need a job, and and they give them resources that help them find what they really need.

So no matter what, whether the person gets a dollar or not, they get love, they get support, they get help.

And that's where the resources part comes in.

Because what one need has done is they built a national network of people who want to help meet needs.

They call those people the deaters.

There's a verse in the Bible that says, be rich in good deeds, so they have needers and deaters.

Get it?

It's cute.

Needers and deaters.

And so what happens is when they determine that that a need is legitimate, that need goes out to the national network.

People who sign up for it, they don't get bombarded with emails every single day, and those people individually probably feel like they can't do much.

They can't meet many needs.

If someone walks up to me and says, hey, I need$600, my answer is me too.

What a coincidence.

We should hang out.

Let's go find the$600 that's lying around somewhere.

I'm excited.

See, I can't give$600 just on a whim, not most days, but I can give five.

And so someone might be driving on their way to Starbucks and they get an alert on their phone that says, hey, there's a need that's come in, this person needs this, and they have the option to donate.

A dollar?

Five dollars, ten, you name it, it's up to the person.

Even if they don't have the money, they can say, you know what, I'm gonna pray about that right now.

I'm gonna pray that other people have the opportunity today to do that.

And maybe that person decides, you know what, I'm gonna skip Starbucks today.

I'm gonna take that five dollars, I'm gonna give it.

And collectively, that network of people can meet more needs than you can imagine.

Let me tell you a story that happened this last week.

We had a person that came to his hands that had a need.

And churches and other organizations, we try our best to meet every need that we can.

We have to be wise.

A lot of times, churches that are really large, like very large, wealthy churches, will still have policies like we can only give to one person once because we just can't say yes to everyone all the time.

And no church really has a policy they're super proud of because it's hard.

It's difficult.

I'll just be honest, it's difficult to figure that out.

And one need comes in and we partner with them, and they help us with that in an amazing way.

So this one person came to us needing help, and it's someone we've actually helped before.

Sometimes people need help more than once.

They might need help three times in a two-month period of time, but then they're good, they're okay, they're back on their feet.

And so we partnered with OneNeed, and we worked with them, and OneNeed talked to them, and man, we found out the situation, we understood it, we really knew a lot of details, we felt comfortable with where this person was at, and we said, yes, okay, uh, we want to help meet this need.

And and the need was for$400.

So OneNeed sent out that need alert to all of the people who have signed up to be to be deeders, and that$400 happened in four minutes.

Four minutes.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

And so OneNeed is this organization we want to partner with in a few different ways.

Number one, I want you to know when when you give to OneNeed, not one penny of that dollar goes to that organization.

We support OneNeed.

Other churches support OneNeed financially.

Every dollar that's given by donors, that that 100% goes to the people that it goes to.

That's their that's the way that they're they're set up, and I love it.

And Rodney, the the guy that actually started One Need, he's here today.

He's at a desk out in the in the lobby if you want to talk to him and find out more.

You know, here's the here's the thing I'll say before I give you an action step to get involved.

You know, he's gone to hundreds of churches.

And like I said, I believe this is something that needs to catch on and go all over the country.

Because I really I really believe that passionately in this, but but he's gone to hundreds of churches, and almost every church says no.

And here's why.

And I know exactly why, I could tell you what the answer would be before he even told me.

We had this conversation.

I finished his sentence, I was like, yep, I get it, because I'm part of the the church world, for better or worse.

And and the the answer was, well, we're we're afraid that if we if we try to get our people to give to this, they'll give to this instead of the church.

And so we're we're nervous about that.

We don't want to do that.

And I want you to know something, and this is this is really kind of an aside, but something that's really passionate about me, and it's something that will guide this church for years to come.

I do not believe at all that it's my job to get you to give to his hands, church.

I don't.

I I take, I have zero responsibility to try to get you to give to his hands.

I don't want to do that.

See, I believe that church leaders in America need to stop trying to get people to give to their church and start trying to make sure that their church is worth giving to.

Because if you have a church, yeah.

Because if you have a church worth giving to, generous people will give to it because they see the value there.

And so one of the reasons I love OneNeed is because I I think just like Papa's Pantry and the Cherokee Family Violence Center and the Hope Center, I think this is another partner that we have that makes this a place that's worth being part of.

Whether that's serving, volunteering, being here, or financially, you name it, I'm excited about this partnership.

So here's here's how you can be involved.

You want to start living life with an open hand.

This is a great way to start.

You can actually join their network of deeders.

You're not committing to give.

You don't have to like give financial information or anything like that.

It's all completely secure.

You can do that via a text message if you want to, right now.

We're gonna leave this up for the rest of the service.

Uh, obviously, not during the last song.

We'll put it right back up after the last song.

You just have to text the word deed to 97,000, and you'll go to a web link that will let you sign up electronically and you'll start receiving those emails.

You're not gonna get bombarded, they don't come out every day or anything like that at all.

The other way is that you could go to Rodney, the guy that started this, he's over at the source in that big desk over by the source on your way out, and you can ask him whatever questions you want, he'll he'll answer for you.

It's a great organization, and you can actually sign up on a piece of paper if you'd like as well, and then they'll make sure that you get added to that.

I would love it if our whole church was part of that network.

Because it might be a dollar here, a dollar there, or whatever.

It might be two dollars every three months that you give, but it's gonna make an impact.

Because you're gonna start living like this, and God's gonna bless it.

As the worship team comes back out, see, here's the thing I want to leave us with.

When we live like this, we look a lot like Jesus.

Because this is how Jesus lived.

Can you imagine if Jesus had lived with a closed fist?

He didn't do that at all.

See, he lived with an open hand.

He he opened his hand to touch people that were blind or had leprosy to heal them.

Jesus opened his hand to reach down into the water to pull Peter out when Peter was drowning.

Jesus opened his hands to receive the nails that put him on the cross.

And he did that for every single one of us.

Jesus lived his life like this.

The Bible begins by telling us that we were made in the image of God, and so we realize that we're actually made to look like God.

We're supposed to reflect him.

We're his image.

And when you live like this, I'm just saying, you look a lot more like Jesus.

You begin to fulfill that purpose of being the image of God in a powerful way, and God will honor it.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for your love.

Thank you so much, Jesus, for everything you do for us, for everything you are to us.

We love you.

And Lord, just fill our hearts with the courage, God, the courage to be generous.

The courage to live with an open hand.

Take away the fear that we have, take away the trust that we have in something as small as money.

And God, let our trust be in you.

Let us cling to you tightly.

You are our hope, you are everything.

And we just want to reflect you.