Changing Lives - Make Room

Jesus, thank you so much that you have brought us together, that you have given us this incredible family, this incredible group of people that we can we can learn alongside and worship alongside.

We pray that you would speak to us, that you would speak to our hearts today.

Just give us what we need to grow closer to you.

We pray this all in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Well, we have spent the last four or five weeks talking about changing lives.

How do we change lives?

We have this amazing ability as people on this earth to have purpose, to have a life that is so much more than ourselves.

We have the ability through Jesus to change lives.

But how do we do that?

We've talked about some things all of us can do, sharing our stories.

Whether you think you have an amazing story or not, your life is a story that God wants to tell.

God has done things in your life.

He is doing things in your life that He wants to share.

He wants other people to know what He can do for them.

We have this goal right now of helping change 1,000 lives in this community.

We don't know how long it's gonna take, but we're gonna get there.

It's gonna be exciting, and we're gonna measure that goal with stories.

At the back four columns, there are these cards.

They are there for you to tell us your story, tell us what God has done in your life, tell us what he's doing in other people's lives through you.

I want to share a couple of these really quickly.

Had two that came in last week that had a similar theme.

This person shared, My son got a great job after five years being home from Afghanistan's front lines.

He's begun to dress better, look clean, and act like he cares about life again for the first time in years.

Thank you, Jesus.

Says it's from a grateful mother, and then she put a little PS that says, We love this church.

And I love this church too.

So I'm with you.

We have this one that says, uh, I've been coming to his hands since January 2013.

I've been let go from my job of 11 years, and my husband left me for another woman.

I felt empty.

I decided I wanted and craved for true love and I wanted to know God.

My girls and I have come every Sunday.

We've actually only missed one Sunday since then.

That's almost two years.

God's been teaching us and healing us.

I've been working substitute positions and cleaning houses to get by.

Last Thursday, I was offered and accepted a full-time position at a local elementary school.

I know this is just the beginning for my girls and I.

How incredible! That's awesome.

See, the reason it's so important for you to share your stories because I know there are some of us right now that need jobs.

And we need to be reminded that God is working, that we can we can persevere, we can we can stay true to him, and he will provide.

And I know some of us needed to hear that this morning.

Share your story.

We've talked about the power of an invitation.

Invitations are so powerful.

If you invite someone alongside you in life, and you let that person know that you are there for them, they have an open invitation into your life where if they need anything, if they need prayer, if they need support, if they need someone to talk to, if they need help, they can come to you.

We can invite people here to be part of this family, but it's so much more than inviting people to church or inviting people to an event.

It's about inviting people alongside us as we are walking toward Jesus.

All of us can do that.

Last week we talked about going small.

We might think that if we want to change lives, we've got to go big, right?

We've got to do big things to see big change, but in reality, it's the small things that really matter.

It's the small things that add up.

And so instead of trying to think of the biggest thing that you can do and then thinking, oh, I can't, I can't do something that big, so I'm not useful to God, instead we should say, hey, what is the smallest thing I could do that would make an impact in someone else's life?

What's the smallest thing I could do for my coworkers, for my friends?

Married couples, we challenged you to ask your spouse what's a small thing I could do that would bless you every single week.

My wife and I did that.

She asked that I would fix one thing around the house every single week.

I told you guys that last week.

And Monday was my day.

I fixed a toilet paper holder that was coming out of the wall for a year, yeah.

It took me 45 minutes, which is really sad if you're a handy person and you understand how simple of a task that is.

It is not level, but it is in the wall.

And it's gonna stay in that wall.

Tomorrow, air filters.

That's my day.

I'm really excited to learn all about that.

I asked my wife to let me sleep in one day each week.

Just one day, I want to sleep in till 9 o'clock, 9:30.

And yesterday was the second consecutive Saturday I have slept in.

I almost feel like a normal human being again.

It's amazing.

You know, the truth is that's that's not much, but it has already made a big impact in our marriage.

And so, if if you decided to do something like that this last week, I really encourage you to share your story.

Let us know what it is.

Because at the very least, you're gonna give some people ideas about how they can have a better marriage.

But that's for all of us.

We do the small things, we value the small tasks.

As a church, we're gonna see a big impact in this community through what God does here, but it's gonna be because we do the small things.

We value every single life.

Everything big used to be small.

Today I want to talk about one more thing, one more thing to wrap up our Changing Lives series.

And really, it's something that's that's personal for all of us.

Because if we want to change lives, we've got to make sure that our lives are changing, right?

There's a well-worn saying that says you cannot lead where you have not been.

And if we want to see lives really change around us, we've got to make sure that our lives are open to change, that we are constantly open to God changing us.

That He has an open invitation in our hearts to change our minds, our perspectives, our viewpoints.

And the more we change, the more we become like Jesus, the more we can help other people change as well.

Most of the time, that change is a process.

It's slow, it's steady.

We may look at ourselves now and say, hey, not much is happening, but over time, that change is real.

There are moments, though, there are opportunities where we can have a lot of change happen because of one choice, because of one decision.

One moment can be a catalyst for change.

Many of us have experienced that.

If you're someone that's dealt with addiction, the moment you decided to get help, that moment was a catalyst for change.

When those opportunities come, we have to take them because there's another well-worn saying that says, opportunity knocks, but anyone know?

Doesn't answer.

Opportunity knocks, but it doesn't answer.

When an opportunity comes along, you've got to take it.

I don't know if you've ever had an opportunity in your life that was so good you could not pass it up.

You had to take that opportunity no matter what.

I've had that happen a few times.

One, I I know I've shared this story before, you're just gonna have to forgive me for sharing it again, but it's one of the top five experiences of my life.

I will say the right thing the day I married Megan, the day my children were born, ranks above this, but like just barely, okay?

So if you know me, I'm joking, obviously, don't tell my wife I said that.

If uh if you know me, you know that I'm really passionate about a few things, and when I'm passionate about something, I talk about it a lot.

So if you're a close friend of mine, I've probably talked about Duke basketball to you more than you would care to know.

I love Duke basketball.

It's okay if you don't, I do, I I've I've made my choice, I'm a lifer.

And uh and a few years ago, before I had children, and I had this strange thing, this foreign thing now to my life called free time, I would spend that free time, and I would spend it writing articles online about Duke basketball and other basketball teams, especially in the conference Duke plays in the ACC.

That's how nerdy I get about my hobbies.

Like I have a day off.

What am I gonna do?

Write an article online, not get paid to do it, I'm just gonna do it.

Isn't this fun?

Well, one day in 2009, I got a phone call from this guy that ran the website that I wrote for.

And he said, Hey, Justin, CBS got a hold of us, and they want one of our riders to go cover the ACC tournament.

And we want you to do it.

Now, you need to understand what a what an amazing, perfect experience this was for me.

It's like custom tailored for me because it meant press passes.

Okay, it meant getting to interview the coaches, and so that meant talking to Coach Kay.

That meant interviewing the players, having unparalleled access to something I loved more than ever.

And it was so hard for me on the phone to not show how unbelievably excited I was.

I had to keep it all together.

I'm not being sexist, but there's this thing I've seen women do, and I've seen it happen so often that I think most of you will agree with me.

It's a phenomenon.

When a woman gets engaged and shows her engagement ring to another group of women that she's close with, there is this noise that erupts out of them that is unlike anything else on earth.

Okay?

And it's always followed by a few actions.

There's there's this like waving of the hands that comes into this really small clap, like that.

And so it's like this noise and this slow clap, it kind of goes like that in one second, and you'll have 30 women do it at once.

It's crazy, but I've seen it happen 20 times.

I mean, just be honest, ladies, have you ever done that?

Anyone in the room?

Okay, that's right.

This is waah, like that.

So I'm on the phone with this guy, and I'm trying not to do that because that's what I felt like doing.

You know, he says, Justin, how would you like to cover the ACC basketball tournament and meet Duke and all those players and all that?

And I'm just going, yeah, that that could be fun.

But on the inside, I was screaming, I was jumping up and down, and he said, Well, here's the only catch.

The tournament's in like three days, and you've got to ask off work and you've got to get all that taken care of.

And it's a four-day tournament.

So I had to call my boss and ask off four days of work on really, really short notice.

That's actually really hard for me to do.

I'm I'm not wired to skip work or anything like that.

I'm kind of a workaholic.

So I had to call my boss, I had to call Steve, and say, hey, Steve, I have this opportunity.

I just need like the whole week off work, basically.

And I was so nervous about what Steve would say.

But he stopped me.

He said, Justin, when an opportunity like this comes along, you have to take it.

You have to.

We'll get it covered, go and do this.

And again, that noise wanted to come come outside of me.

I just wanted to erupt, but I had to keep it together and say, uh, yes, sir, well, thank you so much.

And I hung up the phone and then just went nuts.

And it was an awesome experience.

Duke won the whole tournament.

I got to be in their locker room as they celebrated the victory.

It was incredible.

Top five experience in my life.

But I got a lot of life left, so God can top it.

Every time an opportunity comes along, something that we recognize as being big, we still have to make a choice.

We still have to do something to seize that opportunity.

For me, it was asking off work.

That's not that big of a deal, but there are many people who have said no to huge opportunities for small reasons.

There are people that said no to investing in Facebook because they didn't think it would be successful.

There were people that said no to Henry Ford when he offered them a chance to be an investor in his company.

They didn't see a future where automobiles would be everywhere.

One of my favorite places to look at this idea of turning a big opportunity down is in movies and film.

I read a really interesting article not that long ago about famous actors and actresses who have turned down big roles.

And we don't have to feel that bad for these people because they're all very successful.

They all have have great lives, I'm sure.

But but it's really interesting, Forrest Gump.

Who has seen that movie?

Forrest Gump?

That's an iconic film, right?

Can you imagine anyone but Tom Hanks running in those metal braces and seeing those braces come off as he ran?

Can you imagine anyone but Tom Hanks in that role?

Well, the truth is he was the fourth choice for that role.

It was originally offered to John Travolta.

Like Forrest Gump disco dancing his way down.

It's hard to imagine.

And John Travolta said, No, I'm not interested.

Then it was offered to Bill Murray, and then to Chevy Chase.

They all said no, and then Tom Hanks, and he owned it, and it became this iconic movie.

Many of us are probably Star Wars fans.

You may know this if you're a big Star Wars fan.

The role of Han Solo was originally offered to Al Pacino.

And Al Pacino said no, and I think that would have made Han Solo a very different character, you know, just the just the intensity of Al Pacino, like the Millennium Falcon, come on! Like, I'm not very good at impressions, but I mean that's Al Pacino.

He's so intense and wide-eyed, and I'm sure Harrison Ford is very grateful that he said no because otherwise we wouldn't know who Harrison Ford is.

Alright, just full disclosure, be honest.

Who knows who Hugh Jackman is?

Okay, if you're raising your hand, you're either a woman.

Or you like superhero movies because Hugh Jackman is famous for playing who?

Wolverine.

Wolverine.

He's been in like 35 movies where he's Wolverine.

It seems like every year there's another movie.

It's like Hugh Jackman's like, do you need is Wolverine in this movie?

I can be Wolverine, I can do it.

I can take my shirt off, I can do it.

Well, that movie made his career.

That's that's the movie.

That role, Wolverine made him a household name, but it was actually offered to another actor first, an actor that turned it down, a man named Doug Ray Scott.

Now raise your hand if you know who Doug Ray Scott is.

It's like one person there.

Oh, yeah.

I feel so bad for Doug Ray.

I'm sure he's a great guy.

He's still successful, he does movies, he does TV, but you know, you know that he's kicking himself for that one.

See, opportunity knocks, but it doesn't answer.

Scripture is actually filled with people who had unbelievable opportunities.

Unbelievable opportunities with God, but they said no.

They they turned the opportunity down.

For example, in Mark chapter 10, there's this man who's who's very wealthy, he's young, he's lived his whole life, he's he's done things the right way, but he still recognizes something is missing in his relationship with God.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

So he goes to Jesus and he says, Hey, Jesus, what do I need to do?

What do I need to do to follow God truly?

In Mark 10, 21, it says, looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him.

There's still one thing you haven't done, he told him.

Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, then you will have treasure in heaven, and then come follow me.

Now, Jesus was not saying that in order to follow him, we have to sell everything we have and give it to the poor.

That's a wonderful thing to do.

But Jesus recognized that this man had so much wealth, but he did not own his wealth, his wealth owned him.

It was one thing that he could not let go of.

Therefore, it was one thing that was above God in his life.

And Jesus says, Hey, take this earthly thing that you value so much, put it aside, leave it for something of eternal value, and come follow me.

But this man could not do it.

The Bible says that he walked away full of sadness in his heart.

What an amazing opportunity that he had.

See, the opportunity he had was actually to become a full-time disciple of Jesus, to become one of Jesus' closest friends, because this call that Jesus gives him is the exact same as the call he gives to the other disciples.

We look at Matthew chapter 4, verse 18.

Matthew 4:18

It says, One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, also called Peter and Andrew, throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living.

Jesus called out to them, Come follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people.

And they left their nets at once and followed him.

It's the same exact thing.

Jesus says, Hey, this earthly thing that you value, this earthly thing that you do, put it aside for something of eternal value.

And then he says the exact same words Come follow me.

It's the same opportunity.

This rich young man could have been close friends with Jesus.

He could have spent every day of his life walking with Jesus, learning directly from Jesus, being an eyewitness to every miracle that Jesus performed, but he said no to that opportunity.

Because of that, we don't even know his name.

There's another opportunity.

It might be the mother of all missed opportunities.

It's actually part of the Christmas story.

We see it in Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

It says, In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

This is a census.

This was the first registration when Corinius was governor of Syria.

And all went to be registered, each to his own town, and Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child, and while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.

And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

So Jesus, still in the womb, arrives at this inn, this little inconsequential inn in Bethlehem.

But he is turned away because there was no room.

And so Mary and Joseph went elsewhere.

They had Jesus in a place that was fit for animals, but it was a place that had room.

Many believe that the place Jesus was born would have been a little cave in Bethlehem.

This is a picture of Bethlehem.

You can see the city is built upon limestone, it's surrounded by limestone.

And in that time period, what people would do would be that they would hollow out small caves in the limestone, and that's where they would keep their animals.

So many believe that it was a cave in which Jesus was born.

There's actually this one cave in Bethlehem that for centuries people have believed is the birthplace of Jesus.

Now, whether it is or not, we don't know.

But for over 1700 years, that place has been said to be the birthplace of Jesus.

They built a church on the top of that cave.

It's called the Church of the Nativity.

You can see it here.

It's very old.

It was built in the year 327.

It's one of the oldest churches in the world.

The inside of it's absolutely beautiful.

I mean, if walls could talk, who knows what they would say?

Who knows what they've seen.

That church has stood for 1700 years.

It's a sacred place on this earth.

It's a sacred place just because the idea that Jesus could have come into this world, that this great miracle of a big God becoming small could have happened at this place, has turned that little inconsequential cave into a treasured place on this earth.

And every year, thousands upon thousands of people travel there just to be in the presence of where Jesus might have been born.

The door that actually leads into the church is very small.

And it's that way on purpose.

The idea is that if you're going to enter the place where Jesus came into this world, you should bow.

And I love in that picture that we can tell we're not the only church that lets people smoke out front.

This is good, right?

Even in Bethlehem.

Now, whether or not you're someone that appreciates the sentimentality of that or the idea that a place like that could exist and has been maintained and kept for century after century after century, or whether you're someone that doesn't really put much stock in that kind of thing, or maybe you're even skeptical that that's where Jesus was born, it doesn't really matter.

Because I think all of us can agree that that innkeeper made a big mistake.

I mean, that inn could have been the place where Jesus was born.

It could have been the place where some beautiful church was built and maintained for century after century.

It could have become a sacred place on earth.

But they didn't have room.

That inn could have gone from being some forgotten place in history to a place that people value to this day, but they did not have room.

And I feel kind of bad for the innkeeper.

Because he made a mistake that I think all of us can make very easily.

It's a mistake that I make often in my life.

I just run out of room.

How easy is it for all of us to run out of room in our lives?

We think about all the things we would love to do, the experiences we would love to have.

If we just had more time, if we just had more money, if we just had more energy, but we don't have room for those things.

My son was just in his very first ever school production.

He's four years old.

He was in his preschool's Christmas production.

He played a sheep.

There's actually a little video right here of him being the sheep.

You're gonna see him.

He's in the top left corner.

He's the one smacking himself in the face because he's bored and uh he just wants to envision some big battle going on in his mind.

That's my son.

I love him so much.

I was so, so glad to be there.

It was uh it was at 11 o'clock on Thursday, and he was the least sheepish sheep that there has ever been in this world.

He sang so loud, so proud, and I'm sitting there so excited that I got to be there.

You know, you have to wave at me, he saw me, it was awesome.

But I have to be honest, there was a moment in my week where I looked at my schedule and I looked at all that I had going on, and I thought to myself, I don't know if there's room in my schedule to be there this week.

Now, I know that many of us couldn't be at things like that with our kids because we travel or we work a long way away.

It's just not possible.

But my schedule is very full, but I can make room from time to time.

I can be flexible, but there's still so much to get done.

And this last week was crazy.

This last week was so hard.

But I didn't make room.

I realized, no, I'm not gonna find room to do something like that.

That room is not just gonna magically appear.

I'm not gonna look at my schedule, and on the day that my child has something going on, my schedule just says, all right, cool, it's clear as it's clear as day, right?

That doesn't happen.

I'm not gonna find room for those kinds of things.

I've got to make room for those things.

And that's true for all of us.

I mean, how often do we just find all kinds of extra space in our lives to do very meaningful and important things?

The truth is we'll never find it.

We have to make it.

The unfortunate truth about this innkeeper is that he didn't find room for Jesus, but he failed to make room for Jesus.

And notice that Jesus, that God did not demand room.

He said, I'm sorry, I have no room here.

There weren't angels that appeared out of nowhere and said, No, you will make room for Jesus.

Lightning didn't flash, fires didn't erupt, there was no earthquake and some booming voice that said, Check again.

And he looks and says, Oh, I I found I found a room.

Oh, how wonderful.

That didn't happen.

The God of this universe simply said, Okay, then I'll go somewhere else.

He went where there was room.

There's a verse in Revelation.

We share it often because it just so perfectly encapsulates the character of Jesus.

It's Revelation 3.20.

Jesus says, Look, I stand at the door and knock.

If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and we will share a meal together as friends.

If you make some room in your life for me, I'll come into it.

We'll be friends.

And we will share something together.

He doesn't say, I'm gonna kick the door down, I'm gonna barge in.

That's not his nature.

Jesus does not take what he hasn't been given.

That's just who he is.

But again, opportunity knocks.

Jesus knocks.

But we have to answer.

If we look at our lives today, if we just take an inventory of where we are, of where our life is and where we would like it to be.

I mean, we're we're God's kids.

You are the son or the daughter of the living God.

If you know Jesus, he's adopted you into his family.

If you don't know Jesus, you can be adopted into his family.

And it's okay for us to look at our lives and say, this is what my life is, God, but but this is what I think it should be.

This is what I desire it to be.

It's not what it should be, it's not what it ought to be.

It's okay for us to do that.

And if we we look at our lives and we we see what it could be, and we wonder how we get there, we realize that it's not so much about what we need to do to get there, it's about what room we need to make for God to take us there.

If you want to see your life transformed, it's not so much so much about what you you do, it's about the room you create in your heart for God to operate.

You want to see time with God happen.

Let's just be honest, it's hard to spend time with God sometimes.

It's not that we begin our day and say, hey, God, I don't have room for you today, sorry.

Or that we start our week or our year and say, not going to spend any time with you today, God, or this isn't a good month for me.

Many times we begin our days and our weeks intending fully to spend time with God, but there's not room.

The room does not appear.

I mean, I'm a pastor, I work at a church, that happens to me all the time.

There are actually times when I'm praying and I'm like, God, I don't have a lot of time to spend with you because I need to go do something for you, and then I go, wait a minute, that sounds wrong.

But it happens all the time.

I mean, think about a vacation.

Seven days off, seven days with someone you love, how much does that seven-day time period affect the rest of your year?

Refreshes you, it helps you so much.

If you had seven days, seven full days to spend with God, what would that do?

Those of us that know Jesus would enjoy those seven days.

Those of us that are seeking that aren't really sure who God is or how this all works, that seven days would probably help you answer a lot of questions.

But that seems like a pipe dream.

Where am I going to find seven days to spend with God?

This last week, my wife and I started doing something different, something we've never done before.

We have two children, and so there's this moment, and many of you can relate, the rest of you will understand one day, there's this moment that happens every night at about nine o'clock.

We put both of our kids to bed finally, and it's like we can breathe.

And I'm very selfish with that time.

I want to hold on to it.

In fact, there are many days where I stay up way too late, not because I enjoy being up late, but because I know that when I close my eyes and the next day begins, it's craziness all over again.

So I just want to hold on to every hour I can have of that sanity.

Right?

Every hour with no screaming, no crying, no bodily fluids that need to be dealt with.

I just want to be an adult.

So Megan and I cherish that time.

We love our kids, but we cherish that time.

And this last week we made a decision.

We said, you know what we're gonna start doing?

And we're gonna hold each other accountable to this.

When the kids are in bed, when that first few minutes of sanity occurs, we're gonna spend 30 minutes alone with God before we do anything else.

Before we watch TV, before we we talk together, before we unwind, we're just gonna go our separate ways in the house and spend 30 minutes with God.

And if I don't feel like it, Megan will look at me and say, You need this.

If she doesn't feel like it, I'll do the same.

And so this last week we did that.

And it was amazing.

And I'll be honest, there were a few days I didn't feel like it.

But it helps so much.

And here's what's crazy: 30 minutes a day does not seem like much.

But if you factor that in for a year, okay, you're gonna be dealing with 180 hours with God.

And that, by the way, is more than a full week.

There's your your seven-day vacation with God right there.

See, it doesn't take much room for God to operate.

You don't have to give him a lot of room to see what he wants to do and all the good he can do in your life.

Make a little room in your schedule, God will show up and he'll change it, and he'll change you, and he'll do it for the better.

Think about our finances.

And we don't talk about money a lot here at his hands because it gets talked about the wrong way in church so often.

And please know if you're here for the first time, more than anything, we want you to receive something this morning.

But Jesus talked about money a lot because money affects us.

It's like this rich young man.

How easy is it for our possessions to own us?

How easy is it for us to get tricked into thinking the amount we have in the bank is our security?

And just for a moment, whether you have$100 or$100,000, if the amount of money that we have in our bank accounts is our security, God help us.

Because my money is not loyal to me, it leaves me all the time for all kinds of things.

It doesn't seem to want to stick around.

There's this thought that God wants us to give up what we have, to give up a portion.

There's a spiritual principle that's that's been in existence for forever, really.

We bring a percentage of what we have to God and we give it away.

Call it tithing, call it giving, call it generosity.

You can call it whatever you want, but it's it's a principle that has existed from the beginning of our relationship with God.

You see it in the first chapters of the Bible, of giving something to God.

And there's this mentality where God just wants us to learn to live on less so we trust Him more.

And there's merit in that for sure.

But you will never find God saying, Hey, I want you to have less in your life.

Search scripture, you will not find God say, Hey, you need less.

So I'm about taking from you, I'm about leaving you with less than you had.

It's actually the opposite.

If we create room in our finances for God, He will work.

He will bless it.

When we give, when we give, what we're doing is making room in our bank account for God to work.

And he is so good at that.

I have a friend that is amazing at packing things to move.

And he's actually asked me not to give you his name because if you have to move, you want this guy to help you.

I mean, he literally said, Justin, I have a gift and I've got to keep it secret.

And so we moved about a year ago, and I had moved all of our stuff into this storage facility because we had this limbo period where our house that we were living in sold and we hadn't bought another house yet, so we had to get all that stuff out.

It took me three huge truckloads to get everything there.

And he made it all fit in one on the way back.

I mean, he opened that door and I stood like, wow.

He just looked at me and said, I know.

It's a gift.

I mean, it was like it was like Tetris, it was crazy.

Everything together.

You see, the truth is, I just gave him some space.

And he packed it in.

He was able to put more in to the space that I gave him than I was able to fit, having complete control of all the space myself.

And Jesus talks about this related to our finances in Luke 6.38.

He says, Give and you will receive.

And I know I've said this before, but but I know it's hard for us to trust God with our finances.

I know that's that's tough.

But I believe this, this is for myself.

This is something I'm saying to me.

And if it if it helps you, great.

How can I say that I trust God with my eternal salvation?

But then say I don't trust Him with my finances.

How does that work?

That's something that He reminds me of often.

But he says, Jesus, he's so clear: 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.

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

What's crazy is I'd already decided what we're gonna talk about today.

I felt like this is what God was leading me to talk about.

Got all the verses together, even named the title of the message, Make Room, before I saw the words, make room, in this verse.

Just how the Holy Spirit works sometimes.

I mean, is God saying, hey, do with less?

Give to me so you can learn to live on less.

No.

He's saying, make room for more.

If you need more and you want more, give more, and he'll make room for more.

And please know, I'm not saying that you have to give it here.

We just have to be generous people.

God is doing amazing things here.

I believe this church deserves to be well funded.

That's why that's why I give.

My wife and I give here all the time, but it's hard sometimes.

We give every single month.

Last year we had a crazy financial year.

We had a baby, which is expensive.

We moved into a new house, which is expensive, and we had Christmas, which is expensive, and all of it happened within two months.

It was like a bomb went off in our bank account.

It's like boom, it's all gone.

And it was really tempting for me to say in those two months, hey, we're not gonna give these next two months.

We give once a month.

That's how we do it.

But we decided to make room to give.

And I just want to say personally, that I know this last year would not have been what it has been for us if that weren't the case.

Things have happened outside of our control.

Things we we could never have done ourselves, where God has provided for us in absolutely incredible ways.

We had a car that broke down.

And if you think I'm not handy at home, just wait till I pop open the hood of a car.

There's just no option for me to fix it.

I always do that.

A car will have problems, I'll pop the hood and go, why did I pop the hood?

I don't know what any of this is.

But I just look at it and I say, Well, there's things in here, so that's good.

That's a start.

Our car broke down, we we didn't have money to buy a new car.

Didn't know if we had enough money to fix the one we had.

It was it was getting old, and we weren't sure if that would even be wise.

So we just said, you know what, we're gonna we're gonna go to one car, which is something a lot of us do.

It's not that big of a deal, but we're like, we'll just go to one car and make that work for a while, and we'll save up and we'll get something.

But like the week before that happened, my dad got a promotion at his job that came with a company car.

My parents already had two cars, and they're the only ones that live there, and so they just happen to have an extra car.

I mean, how many people are like, oh, our backup car, right?

Just in case.

My parents had just come into the situation where they had an extra car, and my mom said, Look, we'll just we'll give it to you.

You can just have this car.

They didn't have to go buy one, they just gave us a car, and it's more than we could have ever afforded on our own.

That happened.

Other things happened this last year out of our control.

And I give God all the credit and all the glory, but I'm telling you, we have decided as a couple to make room in our finances for God to move to operate.

That's how we see giving.

If it's 5%, I'm just giving God 5% of the room in my finances for Him to work.

And He is faithful, He is so faithful.

We can look at any area of our lives and say, What do I want this to be?

We can look at the areas in our lives that need the most change.

And instead of instead of thinking about it in terms of what you need to do in that area of your life, whether it's finances, family, marriage, anything.

And the first question should be, okay, what can I do to make room for God?

God, how can I, how can I make room for you in this part of my life?

If you give God room, he will use it.

And he is so good.

Guys, he is so good.

You go you go back to Revelation 3.20.

I stand at the door and knock.

If you open, I'll come in.

Some of us today, that's where we need to start.

We need to open the door to our hearts for the first time.

We need to make some room for Jesus.

But I know something I've done in my life, just to use that analogy of a house, because that's what that's what Jesus is using.

I have opened the door to Jesus and brought him into my life and said, okay, stay here.

When I invite people into my home, there are doors I do not want them to open.

I'm sure many of us are like me.

There's a room when you hear people are coming over, you just throw everything in that room.

And you pretend like, yes, this is what my house always looks like.

This is this is how we live.

We're organized, we're on top of things, but do not open that door.

You can't unsee that.

And sometimes we do the same thing with God.

We say, Hey, God, yeah, come into my life, but hey, this part of my life, I just uh I don't want to open this door.

I don't want to let you in here because I'm afraid you're not gonna like it, you're gonna be ashamed.

It's it's got so much work that's needed.

And Jesus will not kick that door in.

He won't do it.

If it's your marriage, if it's your relationship with family, your job, your career, your finances, it doesn't matter what room in your heart we're talking about, but he will not kick the door in, he will not break in.

But if you open that door and you make a little bit of space, you just push it back a little bit for him to step in, he will change it and he will make it better.

It's what he promises to do.

So the question is, do we trust him?

And do we trust him enough to give him a little bit of room?

There's a famous Christmas song that says, Let every heart prepare him room.

And the truth is, if your heart is preparing room for Jesus, your heart is prepared to see Jesus work.

And you don't have to read much of Scripture to see that when Jesus works, it is good.

God loves you so much.

And he loves you.

You are his child.

And he's a father that wants to help you.

If there's a part of your life that needs help, you have a father in heaven that is wanting to help you.

Are we willing to give him some room?

That's all he's asking for.

Are we willing to be people that say, I refuse to be like the innkeeper?

I will not be someone that looks at God and says, I'm sorry, I just don't have room.

But if we give him what little bit he's asking for, he will do so much.

And he'll do it today.

He'll start it today.

That's the opportunity that we have, that's the chance we have today is to be people who say, before this day is done, I'm gonna make some room for God.

I'm gonna make some room in my marriage, I'm gonna make some room in my heart for Jesus.

And if you do that today, the stories that you will have to share over the course of this next year will be unbelievable, even to yourself, because God is real and he is faithful.

We're gonna worship just a little bit more.

Make a little bit more room in our hearts for God before we walk out of here today, before we go deliver some amazing Christmas gifts to some amazing children.

But as we pray and as we worship, I just ask, just a favor, really, that you would you would look at the area of your life that you want to see change.

And you would be honest with yourself and honest with God and ask yourself, how can I make more room?

What can I do to create more space for you to operate in?

Whatever comes to your mind, do it.

Trust him, even if it's unbelievable, trust him because he is real and he's faithful.

Let's pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for uh for creating room in your heart for us.

I mean, Christmas is such an amazing time for us as your followers.

There's really no greater time to celebrate.

But remind us that you came into a world that did not make much room for you.

You spent your whole life, Jesus, trying to find a place in people's hearts.

And many of those people were not willing to give you room, but those that did experienced God.

Those that did experienced you.

And we want to be those people, Jesus.

We want to be the people that make room in our hearts for you.

We want to be the people that see you work.

We want to be the people that have stories that don't begin with what we've done, but they're stories about what you've done, Jesus.

So show us today how we can make room in our hearts for you, how we can make room in our lives for more.

Because that's what we need, Jesus.

We pray all this in your name.

Amen.