The Gospel Shaped Life: Part 1 - Gospel Shaped Generosity - Pastor Craig Lotze

Hey, this is Andrew D'Mazio, lead pastor of Rose Church here in Portland, Oregon.

Welcome to our podcast.

Our mission here at Rose is building big people, becoming like Jesus in community while growing in our faith.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, I pray today's message challenges you and encourages you on your walk with Jesus.

Thank you so much for listening.

Enjoy today's podcast.

I get to launch a series.

I because I haven't been the lead pastor for three years.

I haven't launched a series in three years.

But today I get to launch a series.

Come on.

It's called the Gospel Shaped Life.

What a profound statement, the Gospel Shaped Life.

And today is the Gospel of Generosity, and I'm gonna have a subtitle.

And my subtitle is this The Economy of Heaven.

Two words you probably have never heard together, the economy of heaven.

But by the end it'll make more sense to you.

So God wants to bless you.

Look at your neighbor and say, to the one that you were rough on.

Look to that, look to that person and say, God wants to bless you.

God wants to bless you.

So I could have picked from hundreds and hundreds of scriptures that tell us God wants to bless us, but I picked Psalm 115, verse 12.

Psalms 115:12

And it says this actually, a few verses here.

It says, The Lord has been mindful of us.

You know what that means?

God's been thinking about you.

God has been thinking about you.

And then in the next couple words, he's gonna tell you what he's been thinking about you.

It says, He will bless us.

God's been thinking about you and he wants to bless you.

He will bless the house of Israel.

He will bless the house of Aaron.

He will bless those who fear the Lord, both small and great.

May the Lord increase you more and more.

I'm okay with that.

Anyone else okay with that?

Increase you more and more.

More peace?

I'm in that line.

More joy?

I'm in that line.

More finances?

I'm in that line.

I'm okay with all that.

Pastor Sharon, good to see you.

Glad you're here today.

Can we give her a hand?

We love Pastor Sharon.

Woo! So God wants to bless us.

So what I want to talk about today is there is no question God wants to bless us.

The question is, how does he bless us?

How does he get his blessing to us?

That's what we're gonna talk about today.

So another scripture, Jeremiah 29, 11 says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

I laugh every time I read that scripture.

Have you ever gotten the place where you think, what is going on?

What is, does anybody have a plan?

Does anybody know what's happening?

And God says, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

So thank, aren't you glad somebody has a plan?

Somebody knows the plan.

And what is his plan?

He says, My plan is to, what's it say?

Prosper you.

See, the devil's been telling you something different.

But God today says, I'm going to prosper you.

That's what I want to do.

Give you a future and a hope.

I'm going to prosper you.

So Psalm 35, verse 27 says, He takes pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.

Psalms 35:27

So when you and I are prosper, it brings God pleasure.

And it's because he's a good dad.

He's a good dad.

And so good dads love seeing their kids prosper.

So let's dig into that word prosper.

It means to have continued success.

Sign me up.

Continued success to thrive, to grow, to be flourishing, to have wealth and good fortune.

It is used about 90 times in the Bible.

It means also to be successful or fortunate, especially in financial respects.

Now there's though that word prosper and prosperity has gotten beaten up in the church over the last number of decades, and sometimes for good reason.

And on one extreme end of the scale of prosperity in the church is I'll call overboard prosperity.

And kind of the underlying theme of that is the more you have, the more spiritual you are.

And that's not true.

That's a lie.

That's not true at all.

But on the other end of the extreme scale is something called poverty.

And poverty means you don't have enough.

Poverty means you don't have enough.

You don't have enough to even pay your own bills.

You certainly don't have enough to be a blessing to others.

And so I love that God in the Bible gives us names so we know who he is and what he wants to be in our lives.

And one of the names he gives himself is El Shaddai.

And that means the God who's more than enough.

And I'll tell you what, the God who's more than enough doesn't want you to have not enough.

He wants to bless you and he wants to bless me.

So we're going to talk about how he does that.

In Genesis 12, God looks at Abraham, our father in the faith, and he says to Abraham, He says, Abraham, I'm going to bless you.

And I can can you see Abraham doing a happy dance?

Yeah, he's going to bless me.

He's going to bless me.

He's going to bless me.

But God added something to that.

He said, I'm going to bless you so that you will be a blessing to others.

See, it's never just about us.

God says, I want to bless you, but I want you to be a conduit.

I want you to be a blessing to others.

That's part of why I'm going to bless you.

I'm going to bless you because I love you, but that's not the end of it.

I want to bless you so that you will be a blessing to others.

So when we talk about being blessed, there's many things.

Health can be a blessing.

Relationships can be a blessing.

But today I'm going to talk about finances.

Money, money, money.

Money.

I faded on that one.

Jesus was the greatest teacher that has ever walked planet Earth.

I don't think I'll get any argument from anybody on that.

Jesus was the greatest teacher that has ever walked planet Earth.

And he taught more on finances than almost any other subject he talked about.

So the obvious question is why?

Well, he needed money.

That's not the answer.

He did not need money because the Bible says things like this the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

In Haggai, he says, the gold, it's mine.

The silver, it's mine too.

And I love it.

I think it's Psalm 50, Psalm in the 50th Psalm, he says, I would if I was hungry, I wouldn't tell you.

Because he says, Because the world and the fullness thereof, it's mine.

So I wouldn't even tell you if I was hungry.

So why did the greatest teacher that's ever walked the planet, why did this become his most used subject?

Why did he talk about it?

And I'll tell you what, I'm glad you asked that question.

Thank you for asking that question.

Because money has the unique ability to reveal the true condition of our hearts.

Money is the way a lot of people keep score.

It is the primary resource that humans look to outside of God for what we crave most.

We feel vulnerable.

Money promises to make us secure.

We feel insignificant.

Money promises to make us feel important.

We feel dissatisfied.

Money promises gratification.

There was a magazine years ago, a financial magazine, and it had a page in it that was a car for sale of cars, car ad in it, and it said this.

It says that you can't buy happiness, but now you can lease it.

Think of the names of cars through the years promising more and more to dissatisfied people.

Now it's like infinity.

I love it.

Lexus, it just rolls off your tongue.

Lexus.

Jaguar.

I love all three of those cars.

When I was growing up, there was ramblers, pacers, pintos, beetles, and gremlins.

Did anybody here ever own a gremlin?

I have yet to meet somebody that owned a gremlin.

They won't admit it.

Maybe that's what it is.

They won't admit it.

Listen, Jesus and the Bible talk a lot about money and the stewardship of it.

Let me give you some statistics that I got from John Ortberg.

It says this the New Testament contains nearly 10 times as many verses regarding money and finances as it does salvation and faith.

Wow.

New Testament.

This is just talking about the New Testament.

The New Testament actually contains about 215 verses pertaining to faith.

That's a lot of verses.

And approximately 218 verses pertaining to salvation.

And approximately 2,084 verses dealing with the stewardship of and the accountability for money and finances.

Blow our minds.

Come on.

Wow.

You know, you look at Jesus uh shared 38 parables, 38 stories that he brought incredible truths.

Do you know that about half of those were about money and finances?

About half of those.

So we you you start hearing this and you go, why did he do that?

And a great example to me is the children of Israel.

God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt.

They had been slaves for over 400 years.

Do you think they had some slavish mentality?

You think they had a lot by them?

I mean, 400 years as slaves, but in one day, God loaded them down with silver and gold and brought them out of Egypt.

Who could do that?

Your God, my God.

In one day, maybe somebody's sitting here saying, Well, Craig, my finances are a mess.

They're never gonna turn around, they're never gonna.

In one day, God turned the children of Israel's finances around.

Listen, he doesn't need grapes to make wine.

If he doesn't need grape to make wine, then he can do a lot with your finances and with mine.

He just wants us to operate in the economy of heaven.

So, so those all of those, so what did the children of Israel do?

He blessed them, loaded them down, but not too far down the road, they turned the blessing into an idol, a golden calf.

And you and I have the same propensity that we can take the blessing of God and turn it into an idol.

So that's part of why he does that.

I was thinking this too.

So if half of Jesus' parables and stories were about money and finances, and you're a per if you were a person that didn't like it when somebody in the church talked about money, would you walk out of half his sermons?

Well, there goes Billy Bob.

He hates it when somebody in the church talks about money.

About half the sermons he's walked out on.

Jesus knows our hearts better than we do.

And he was so aware that the human heart is captured by money, that people's ears perked up when the subject turned to money.

Matter of fact, he used it for some of the greatest kingdom principles he would teach while he was here on planet Earth.

Listen to this.

If somebody said, Jesus, what is the kingdom of God like?

This is what he said.

It is like a man that found a great treasure that is worth a lot of money, and he goes and he sells everything that he has to get it, and he's thrilled to get it.

Oh, okay.

That's what the kingdom of God is like.

Lord, what is forgiveness like?

Well, it's like when somebody owes you a lot of money and then you swallow the debt.

Oh, wow, okay, I get it.

Jesus, what is faithfulness like?

Well, it's like when an employer leaves you a lot of money and you handle it really well and make more money with it.

Well, Jesus, what is Satan like?

Oh, come on.

He wouldn't use money to describe Satan, what Satan's like, would he?

Well, he's like a thief who breaks into a house and steals a lot of your money.

Ooh, bad man.

Okay, we got that.

Lord, what is conversion like?

Well, it's like when a woman loses a lot of money and valuable coins, and then she looks for them and looks for them and looks for them, and when she finds them, she's so thrilled, she throws a party.

He brought some of the greatest kingdom principles through talking about finances because he knew we would listen and we would grab a hold of it.

Jesus spoke more about money and the stewardship of money because he knew it was the number one rival for our hearts.

The number one rival for our hearts.

He knew that we would want to put our trust in it instead of in him.

He knew that we would try and get our identity in it instead of him.

He knew that we would try and put our hope in it instead of him.

He knew that we would put our affection in it instead of him.

He knew that we would love it instead of loving him.

He knew that we would worship it instead of loving and worshiping him.

Listen, friends, he's not after our money.

He's after our hearts.

There's a powerful story, one of my favorites that Jesus tells in Matthew 6.

And he shows us two alternate masters, two alternate lords.

And he's giving us a choice.

And he says, you can't serve two masters, two lords.

He says, you will love one and hate the other.

He says, you can't serve God and mammon.

Now some people say, mammon, well, that's just money.

I don't believe that.

I believe it's a false idol.

And I if it's not a spirit, then there's spirits that love trafficking in that mammon, that mammon false idol.

He says, you can't serve these two masters.

You're gonna have to pick one or the other.

And he says, because both will require your service.

And what is your service?

Both are gonna want your worship, both are gonna want your loyalty, both are gonna want to shape your priorities, and both are gonna demand our service, and there's only one God, the true and living God, that deserves all of those things.

So I put it this way: how does the world look at money?

This is my definition, it's deep, it's Greek, it's theological.

That's not.

This is how I see the world sees money.

Get all you can, can all you get, and guard the can.

That's how the world looks at money.

Get all you can, can all you get, and guard the can.

That's the world's philosophy according to money.

That is not how the kingdom of God operates.

That's not how the economy of heaven operates.

The economy of heaven operates on generosity and seed time and harvest.

So let me dig into this a little bit.

I was also thinking that if if somebody doesn't like it when church somebody in church talks about money, could it be that mammon thing pulling on them?

Trying to pull them over to the dark side?

Speaking of the dark side, Seahawks.

Dark side defense.

Come on now, Father.

I I repent to anybody else, but Father, the Seahawks need your help today.

Father, in Jesus' name, pray for your anointing on them today in Jesus' name.

And I heard a hooa, hoo wah, amen.

Come on.

All right, I got distracted there for a minute.

Isaiah 55, listen to this.

Isaiah 55 says this for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways your ways, says the Lord.

So God's telling us, I don't think like you think.

I don't do things the way you do things.

So you and I hear that, we go, hallelujah, brother Craig.

That's right.

Praise God.

I I know that gospel truth.

But you know what?

Most of the time we all think he thinks like we think and he does things the way we do things.

And nowhere does he do things more differently than we do than in finances and in money.

And we're gonna talk about that.

So years ago I looked up that word economy.

It was it was bothering me, and I wanted to know more about it.

And economy means to manage a household.

It's about the production, use, and management of resources.

So, Pastor Moni and I have an economy.

It's not a huge economy, but we have an economy in our house.

And we decide what the production of finances is, the use of finances, and how we're gonna manage those finances.

The biggest economy in the world right now is the United States economy.

And the United States economy currently operates as debt, using debt.

Um, and not just that our government's borrowing money right now to operate on, but the economy, how businesses work, how we do things, how money flows is through debt, that trying to get us to borrow for everything.

Now, the U.S.

economy wasn't always that way, but today that's where we find ourselves.

And I'll say no more about that.

That's that's I'm done with that.

So that is not though how the economy of heaven operates.

The economy of heaven operates differently.

So again, I come back to how does God bless us?

I think every one of us here probably realizes whether we've seen it or not in our lives, God wants to bless us.

But I got I have not seen a lot of that blessing coming in the area of finances.

Well, today we're gonna talk about that.

How does he get that prosperity to us?

How does he get that blessing to us?

So we're gonna talk about that.

So at the foundation of the economy of heaven, what it rests on is something called the tithe.

The tithe.

Say tithe.

Now don't growl when you say it, just say tithe.

T-I-T-H-E, tithe.

God says, of all the increase that he brings to us, one tenth of it belongs to him.

It's his portion.

I love calling it the divine portion.

And it's one way that we walk in covenant with God, with our finances.

And it is a principle that's always been with us.

When we have the Garden of Eden, God's talking to Adam and Eve, and he's saying, okay, look out over all this.

You can have this, this is yours, go get that, go get that, it's all yours.

But over there, that's mine.

That's the divine portion, don't touch it.

Well, they don't only don't they touch it, they eat it.

And how did it go for them?

Not well.

Not well.

We're still seeing the ramifications of that today.

How about the children of Israel have been promised by God for decades and decades that they're gonna come into a promised land?

And so they get to the edge of the promised land, God's about ready to bring them in, and he says, Okay, I'm gonna bring you in.

This is gonna be amazing, it's gonna be awesome for you, but wait, the first city you come into, Jericho, it's mine.

It's Kerim, he called it, which means it's devoted, dedicated, set apart to him.

He goes, That's mine, it's the divine portion, don't touch it.

Well, a man by the name of Achan takes some stuff out of it, and it doesn't go well for everybody.

So that principle of the divine portion's been around.

Now, about this time, I I always know in a group this size, there's some people that would say this, Craig, tithing is under the law.

Are you trying to take us under the law?

And to those people, I would say, Au contraire, mon frère.

The tithe first shows up with Abraham, our father in the faith, when he commits out of relationship to give God one tenth of all the increase in Genesis 14.

It is totally based out of relationship, and it is 400 years before the law ever shows up.

So don't tell me it's under the law.

Au contraire, mon frère.

So in Leviticus 27, verse 30, it says this, and all the tithe of the land, whether the seed of the land or the fruit of the tree, is whose?

Leviticus 27:30

It's the Lord's.

The tithe belongs to the Lord.

It is holy.

Why is it holy?

Because it's set apart for him, it's dedicated to him, it's given to him.

That's why it's holy.

There's another place in the scriptures in Romans 11, 16, that he says, if you take the first fruit and give it to God, it's holy.

But then whatever you had that you brought it out of, that's holy too.

So a question I have is if I don't bring the first, the best, the tenth, then is the reverse of that true?

Just a question.

Don't you love those kind of questions?

Yes.

Get you thinking.

So about now I would have people in the congregation thinking about, well, Craig, I live by the red letters in my Bible, and Jesus never said I was supposed to tithe.

And to those people, can you guess what I would say?

Au contraire, mon frère.

Go with me to Matthew 23, verse 23.

Matthew 23:23

Listen to what it says.

Jesus speaking to religious leaders.

Yes, woe upon you, Pharisees, you other religious leaders, hypocrites.

Come on, Jesus, tell us what you really think.

Hypocrites.

For you tithe down to the last mint leaf in your garden, but ignore the more important things, justice, mercy, and faith.

About now I think he's gonna say, Stop tithing.

Don't tithe.

But that's not what he says.

He says, Yes, you should tithe, but you shouldn't leave the more important things undone.

So one tenth of what God brings to me is his.

It belongs to him that makes it holy.

He calls it the tithe.

I'm so grateful it's it means a tenth.

I'm so glad he didn't say 12.3%.

I'm so glad he didn't say 8.9%.

I mean, I would need a calculator to figure everything out.

But he made it 10%.

I can figure it out just like that, no matter what comes my way.

Whether it's a dime or five million dollars, I know it right away.

We're set, we know what it is.

I'm grateful for that.

The tithe is holy, that means it belongs to the Lord.

And if the first is holy, so if I had 10 cantaloupes on this table, then I would take one, the first, the best.

Now, Craig, why is it important that it's the first?

You know, Cain and Abel, do you know what the difference?

One of the differences in their offering.

God honored one of them, God didn't honor the other.

It says that Abel brought the first, the best.

It says Cain brought something when he got around to it.

It wasn't the first, it wasn't the best.

You got very quiet on me on that one.

Okay.

But he says, if you will bring the first, the best, that he says, I will bless the rest of this, and it will be holy also.

I laugh because through the years, I love this subject.

I love this subject.

Um, that I've had people tell me, Craig, you can't you can't talk to new people that are just newly saved about this.

And to them I would say, Oh, contrairement frère.

Because you know why?

Nobody was greedier than me when I got saved at 20.

I loved Mammon.

Mammon and me hung out together, I had his picture.

In my wallet.

We traded bracelets, friendship bracelets.

We went to parties together.

I loved Mammond.

He was my best friend.

But when I got saved, I realized I knew how bad I'd been.

And when he said he forgave me, he washed me, he cleansed me, he took all of that.

But that even wasn't the most important thing.

Somebody had to pay for my sin.

And then I read about how he was beaten, he was destroyed, he hung on the cross, he went through all that stuff.

And I'm thinking, my goodness.

And then I bump into a scripture about tithing and I go, and that's all?

10%?

I think I got the good end of this thing.

I love in Malachi, he says, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.

So, Rose Church, if this is your church, this is your storehouse.

So there would be food in my house, meat in my house.

So this is where you bring the first, the best, the tenth.

This is your storehouse.

Mine is victory faith in Spokane.

So we bring the first, the best, the tenth.

Do you know I have never had trouble paying tithe?

Sounds braggadocious, but it's not.

It's a simple formula.

I always give him the first.

Now we've had challenges paying other things through the years sometimes, but I've never had trouble paying the tithe.

The first, it's his, the best, it's his.

See, in the Bible, people would try and try and bring the last, the least, the crippled, the whatever, and he did not like it.

He got upset.

He says, Don't, don't, don't, am I not even as worthy as your king in your land?

You disrespect me, you dishonor me by bringing the least and the last.

But I love that he says, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.

Why would he say bring the whole tithe?

Because he knows us.

Because if if I'm honest, there's if I okay, okay, I'll bring the I'll give the tenth, but I want to spread it out.

Because I look generous when I spread it out.

Aunt Midge needs a fridge.

Aunt Midge, you need a fridge.

Well, I'm gonna take some of this and I'm gonna go over and I'm gonna give it to Aunt Midge.

She's gonna go, Craig, you're so generous.

And I'll go, yeah, I know.

I know.

That's me, generous Craig.

But I just I just took something that belonged to someone else, and they told me what to do with it.

Take it over here, but I took what belonged to someone else, and I took it and I used it so that I would feel good about it.

Or a missionary comes through, and I I love the missionary and I want to help him, so I take that part of that tithe and I go, here you go.

And he says, You are so generous.

I know everybody says that.

Everybody says that about me.

No, no, that could be called stealing some places.

I would never say that.

I would never say that, but it could be called stealing in some circles.

That didn't go over like I hoped it would.

Anyway, prosperity is something that happens.

Oh, by the way, of course, help Aunt Midge, but you got nine cantaloupes that are holy and blessed.

Get something out of the nine cantaloupes to help her.

Of course, help the missionary.

Just don't do with what belongs to someone else where they told you to put it.

Take it out of the ninety.

So prosperity is something that happens when we walk in the principles of God's word.

It says those who are generous will prosper.

Those who are teachable will prosper.

Those who fear the Lord will prosper.

Those who love God's word and obey it will prosper.

Now let me finish with that part and talk about how, remember, God says, I don't think like you think, I don't do things the way you do things.

So normal, even Christians, when they hear the tithe come up, they go, Martha, guard the cans.

Guard the cans.

They're talking about money, they're talking about tithe.

Guard the cans.

But you know what God who doesn't think like we do, who doesn't do things the way we do, the tithe is how he wants to get blessing to us.

Because if we keep reading, he says, If you will do this, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, see if I won't open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing on you.

This is how I want, this is God saying, This is how I want to bless you.

The tithe does two things I can see.

It guards our heart.

Do we believe the word and do we believe him, or do we want to swing with mammon?

Remember bracelets?

And the other thing that he's doing, he's Craig, I want to pour out blessing in your life, but this is how I do it.

This is how I do it.

So that's one way that God does it.

A second way that he does is called seed time and harvest.

It's another way that he blesses us.

You and I decide on the harvest in the area of finances, especially.

We decide on the harvest when we sow our seeds.

If we're not sowing any seeds, it's gonna be a meager harvest.

So if we were with a farmer and he was heading out into his field, it's say a hundred acres, and he was walking out and he had one, uh, he's gonna plant corn and he's got one cup of corn seed, and that's what he's gonna plant in the whole place.

And he walks out there and he starts throwing onesies and twos out there, and he says, I'm gonna have an amazing crop.

And you and I look at each other and go, it's gonna be ugly, dude.

It's not, it's not gonna be good.

But if he went out there and he had a hundred, one hundred-pound bags of corn and he headed out, we go, that man's gonna have a great harvest.

You and I, it's so easy.

We hear that and we go, of course.

But it's spiritual also.

We decide to harvest when we sow the seeds.

So are we sowing seeds?

Is a great question.

Moni and I have a lake cabin up by the Canadian border, and it's been in our family for six generations.

And we feed corn to deer, elk come in, bear come in, but the deer will eat the corn and then they'll go around behind our cabin and they'll eat grass and other things, and some of that corn will fall out of their mouth.

And every summer we get corn plants growing up where they walk and drop the seed.

Two summers ago, we had a plant about this big with two ears of corn on it that the deer planted.

Now, if deer can plant seeds, just saying.

I think we can.

I think we can.

So let me give you scripture for what I just said.

Second Corinthians nine.

How are we doing here?

So good.

I I I marvel myself how good I'm doing timing-wise.

Pastor Andrew gave me an hour and a half.

He said, I'm special, I could have an hour and a half, and I'm gonna be done early.

Love you, Pastor Andrew.

So, 2 Corinthians 9, verse 6.

2 Corinthians 9:6

The point is this, Craig, what is the point?

Please get to the point.

The point is this whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

So I love the kingdom of God because he doesn't look at what you're doing or what you're doing, he looks at me and what I'm doing.

And if out of what I have I do sparingly, he says, Well, you're gonna get a sparing harvest.

But if you out of whatever it is that you have sow bountifully, I will bountifully, and his bountifully outdoes my bountifully every day, I will bountifully bring a harvest to you.

So go on with this.

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Now listen to this he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food.

So you and I, God will bring increase to us, and some of that is bread for food.

What that means is some of that is to be consumed upon myself.

Some of it is for me to buy things, to eat, to do those things, but some of it is for sowing.

Now listen what he says about this.

I love this.

He says, He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply the seed you're eating.

Is that what it says?

That was a trick.

No, what seed is he going to multiply?

The seed that we sow.

God says, I will multiply the seeds that you sow.

And so this principle is so powerful.

It's one of the ways God gets that blessing to us, is as we sow seeds, he gives us a harvest back.

So I'm standing up here, you don't know my finances, but am I somebody that talks this talk but then lives differently?

Well, let me let me let me just share this with you.

I feel like the Lord told me to tell you this is Pastor Moni and I discovered the principle of sowing financially many years ago, changed our life.

And today we endeavor every year, whatever God brings to us, we give out 20 to 25 percent of what God brings to us.

And it never fails.

You always got a buddy that's outdoing you.

It's like a competition.

I've got a guy, a business owner in Spokane, and some years he has given 80%.

So one day I I was just talking with him, and he says, Crager, when are you gonna get to 80%?

And I well, um, working on it, working on it.

It was very humbling.

So Moni and I do that.

So the first, the best, the tenth, that goes to victory faith.

But then we make sure we have 10 to 15% seed going out into the ground.

And I gotta tell you the miracles that we've seen, the financial miracles, because God's word is true and because God wants to bless us.

So I just want us to remember this God's ways are not our ways.

When he's talking to us about the tithe, he's guarding our heart.

That we won't worship mammon, we won't love mammon, we won't trust mammon more than we trust him.

So it's to guard our heart.

But the other is he says, Craig, if you will do this, I will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing on you.

And it's the same with seed time and harvest.

So let me finish by telling you a story.

I really am finishing it, it won't take an hour and a half.

Worship team, come back.

We love you, you're amazing.

Such powerful worship.

Moni and I um bought a house in 1986.

You're so young, nobody's even there when in 1986.

We bought a house and we still live there 40 years later in Spokane, Washington, beautiful area of Spokane.

I just love it there.

The house was in really rough shape, but it was 3,500 square feet, five-bedroom, four-bath.

We paid$112,000 for it.

You can get a house in Portland today for that.

I know you can.

Come on.

Come on, they're all over out there.

So we borrowed$100,000 and we put$12,000 down, and we had our house.

Okay, put that on the shelf.

I'm gonna come back to that.

In your mind, put that on the shelf.

So in 2008, our church, Victory Faith in Spokane, had the opportunity to get the most amazing building in our city.

I wouldn't trade it for any any building in our city for a church.

Interstate 90, huge, huge parking lot, all this stuff.

Um, and so into this was in 2008.

It was so far beyond what we could afford as a church, it's ridiculous.

Anybody know what was going on in 2008?

God has a sense of humor.

It was impossible without it being 2008.

Economic worldwide global meltdown.

And so we're trying to figure out how to get this building.

Our leaders, we all decide, okay, we're gonna do a capital campaign, and we're gonna raise some finances like you guys have done.

And so we want to pray, and we'll have a first fruits offering.

You bring in whatever you have now, and then it's a three-year campaign.

You can give money over three years so that we can get together more money to get this building.

So sounds good.

So Moni and I go home, we're gonna fast, we're gonna pray.

God, what are you saying to us?

So I'm praying, and I feel like the Lord says, I want you to give 40,000.

I said, Lord, we don't got$40,000.

He goes, I know, but I want you to bring$10,000 up front and$30,000 over the three years.

I says, Well, just so happens we don't exactly have the$10,000 sitting around either.

And today, if he told that to me, it would be it's equal to$62,000 today.

I figured that out.

It's like he told me today, it's$62,000.

So then I had this great thought.

Moni's praying and fasting.

She's like the Holy Spirit in our house, and she's gonna hear$5,000.

And I'm gonna say, yes and amen, sister, and we're gonna scratch together$5,000, and we're gonna be there.

So we meet.

I said, Come on, what are you feeling?

She goes, I feel like the Lord said$40,000.

Okay, we don't.

I tell her, we don't have, you know, we don't have.

She goes, Yeah, I know the Lord told me bring$10,000 up front and 30,000 over three years.

Well, this is a major league uh coincidence happening here.

So we figure out, okay, God, this is you.

You want to do some miracles, and so we're gonna say yes and amen, and we're gonna pray, and we're gonna fast, and we're gonna believe that you're gonna do this miracle.

So we're within a week of bringing the first fruits that we don't have, and we get a letter in the mail, and it's from a gentleman that had come to something we did we've done through the years called healing school, and the doctors had sent him home with terminal cancer, they couldn't do any more for him, and he was dying.

Well, he came to healing school and he got healed.

God healed him.

So I opened this letter and out from this letter falls a check.

Anybody guess how much the check was for?

$10,000.

Well, my first thought when I saw it was horrified.

I was horrified.

God, we didn't pray for him to get money out of this.

God says, Dummy, that's your that's your first fruit offering.

Oh, yes.

So a week later, we prance into the first fruits offering.

We have our first miracle, and we're on our way.

So over the next three years, we made our monthly payment, and some months did, and now this is not tithe, this is pure seed going into the ground.

So the next uh over the next months, a couple months were pretty tight.

We were gonna get a new car, we decided no, we better not do that right now, it's not gonna work.

So we make those payments in two, three years later, two months early, we made our last payment on the 30,000.

We had completed the 40,000.

Now take our house off the shelf.

It's 24 years we've been in our house, we still owe$100,000 on it.

I want to tell you, we had to put a roof on, we had to put a new furnace in, we had to have a whole bunch of stuff.

But 24 years later, we still owed the same amount on it that we had at the beginning when we bought it.

But something happened when we made that last payment over the next 12 months.

God paid our house off.

God paid our house off.

Yeah.

And I'll it was I I've had people say, Well, Craig, you you you got an inheritance.

No, au contraire, mon frère.

We we had to pay relatives money that year to help relatives.

It came from the craziest places: 5,000 here, 7,000 there, 10,000 here.

And God would say, put it against the mortgage, put it against the mortgage.

And it within 12 months our house was paid off.

And I'll never forget in a service like this at church, after he'd paid our house off.

I was just weeping and worshiping him, saying, God, you're so good.

And he he told me this.

He said, Craig, you took care of my house.

So I'm taking care of your house.

Listen, Rose Church, you are in a prophetic moment as a church.

You are in a defining moment with the new facility, with all city joining you, all these, you are gonna look back decades from now and talk about these days.

You are in a prophetic moment.

And listen, for Victory Faith, in Spokane, getting that building was a prophetic moment.

And because we participated in it, it became a prophetic moment for us.

I just want to, you know, you were given a building that's incredible, but there are millions and millions and millions of dollars that need to be put into it to have it be what God wants it to be.

And so here's a just a loving challenge I want to lay before you.

If you are not sowing seeds in that, I ask you to go ask God if you should be.

Because I want you to be a part of that prophetic moment so that it can not only be a prophetic moment for Rose, but it can be a prophetic moment in your life also.

And I want to encourage and challenge you, be a faithful tither.

Don't believe, I mean, if it stretch you, sound impossible.

I'll tell you what, God is well able, if he could take people that have been slaves for 400 years and load them down in a day, if he can make wine with no grapes, what can he do in your my life and my life?

And the last thing I want to say, and then I'll pray over us.

There's a lot of singles at Rose Church.

I've heard that multiple times.

And I want to tell you, it is a season to light your hair on fire and run for God.

I did that.

Somebody in first service thought I literally lit my hair on fire.

I had to tell them, no, dude, no, no, no, I didn't.

I didn't literally light my hair on fire.

We got to take care of this stuff.

It's it's trying to go away.

Listen, I can look back on my single years and I don't regret one day.

I gave everything I had to God.

I chased after him with everything I had, with my money, with my life, with my time.

I I don't regret one.

And I want to challenge the singles here.

Don't think well when I get this or when this happens or when that happens.

He doesn't look at what you don't have, he looks at what you do have.

And I want to encourage you and I want to challenge you.

Come on, God.

I want to see miracles in my life.

I want to see miracles around me, God.

I want to operate in the economy of heaven.

Father, right now I pray for every person that's hearing me.

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Thank you so much for partnering with us and helping us continue to do what God has put in our hearts here.