Uncommon – Uncommon Generosity

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, let's get to work today.

I'm starting a new series of messages called Uncommon.

And to get us going, there's a really interesting, beautiful verse in the in the book of Philippians, chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Paul is saying you need to learn to live and become like Jesus.

And when you do, here's what happens.

He says, Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.

What does this mean?

It means that as followers of Jesus, your life should shine so brightly that all around you, you stand out in an increasingly dark world.

You should stand out like a star in the sky.

Okay, can we be honest?

It doesn't take very much time to figure out that the world is increasingly dark.

You turn on the news for five minutes, you get on social media for 3.4 seconds, and you can see the world is increasingly dark.

And I think of that not as a problem, but as an opportunity.

It's an opportunity for the church to stand up and to shine brightly.

So I want to talk about how do we do that.

Today I want to kick off the series with a topic that I think is so important.

In fact, if you said to me, Jason, look, I just became a Christian, I've got 30 minutes.

Tell me the most important thing you can teach me to become more like Jesus, it would be what I teach you today.

This is a series of verses and a message that has so transformed my life that for the last 20 or so years in my relationship with God, I have been on the greatest adventure of my life.

And I want to invite you in on it.

Here's the question I want to wrestle with today.

If we're gonna shine like stars in the sky, how do I live with uncommon generosity?

In a world full of people who are stingy and holding on even tighter, in a world where it feels like everything's getting more expensive and there's inflation and all those things, how do I not hold on tightly, but how do I live open-handedly and be a blessing to the world around me?

Now let me give you a disclaimer.

Every time I say I'm talking about money, something happens.

People get really tight, they hold on to their wallets and they don't, they try not to listen, they pretend like if I don't hear this, it doesn't apply to me.

Can I say this to you?

If you love me and trust me, here's what I want you to understand.

I don't want something from you.

Here's what I want.

I want something for you, not from you.

Our church is doing wonderfully.

You sit around the most incredibly generous people imaginable.

We don't need something from you, but we do want something for you, and it's to learn how to live when it comes to your money, not based on your ways or conventional wisdom, but based on God's wisdom.

Well, let's get it going today like this.

Many years ago, in the early days of Access, I had a really sweet family write me a card, and in the card they wrote the sweetest note.

We love you so much, we love our church so much, and just as a token of our appreciation, we wanted to bless you.

And they hooked me up with the gift card to IHOP, everybody.

Come on.

Ain't nothing wrong with the gift card, and certainly ain't nothing wrong with some pancakes.

And I love it.

And so we get this gift card, and this is the first time and the only time I've ever received a gift card to IHOP.

And there was a night when my wife was gonna be out of town, and it was just me and the boys at home, and I took that IHOP gift card and I said, Boys, look me in the eye.

Tonight's the night you become men.

We are going to IHOP.

You can order anything you want.

You don't order off the kids' menu, you get two or three adult meals if you want.

I channeled my inner Ron Swanson in this moment to say, bring me all your bacon and eggs.

I'm like, bring it all to me.

And we go and we eat so much at this IHOP that I'm feeling my heart start to skip beats.

It's getting kind of concerning.

And after the meal is over, the waitress brings the check out and I'm like, I got this.

And I pulled out my gift card and I slapped it down and she walked off like normal.

And it took like three or four minutes, and I don't know why it took so long, but when she came back, her eyes were like really big and concerned, and she goes, I am so sorry.

She goes, I know this is weird, but like we went to scan the gift card and it said it was empty.

And I know you said you just got this, but we called the 1-800 number and they said the gift card was never even activated.

Okay, imagine how I felt in this moment.

I went from one extreme, I am so people love me.

They love, they brought me iHop to show me they love me, to the like, we might have stolen this at Walgreens and we just gave it to you.

We don't really care that much.

That's how I felt in this moment.

Generosity is a funny thing, isn't it?

Generosity can make a person feel like the most important person in the world, or conversely, the lack of generosity can make a person feel meaningless, like their life has no real value.

I want to live a life that when my life is dead, buried, and gone, people look back and they say there was just something special about that guy.

He was the most generous person I've ever met.

Here's my hope today.

I want to teach you the principles from God's word so that you and I can be the most open-handed, generous kinds of people.

If you have your message notes, pull those out.

I want to show you three things about generosity right off the top.

Number one is this God is generous.

You need to understand this, God is generous.

And if you and I are called to be like God, then we have to understand that we have to become more and more generous.

We have to live a little more open-handedly.

In fact, I could summarize it like this: generosity is the heart of God.

It is the heart of God.

If I were to say to you, what is the central theme in the Bible?

Like what is the thing in the Bible that you think is the most important central message?

You might say, oh, it's probably believing, like believing God.

That's important.

But this idea of believing in God is found less than 300 times in the Bible.

You might say, uh, prayer.

Like prayer is what the Bible's all about.

Prayer is a wonderful thing, but you find it less than 400 times in Scripture.

But giving?

Over 2100 times in the Bible.

What does it mean?

It means it is the heart of God.

In fact, let me show you to you just through three or four verses in Scripture, and let's try this together, okay?

Whether you're in the room or joining us online, I'm gonna read the white words, and you read the yellow words.

Does that sound good?

Okay, I want you to pay attention to the words and see if this all starts to make sense.

The most famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he Come on, you're better than this.

The book of Romans says this.

Romans chapter 8, since he did not spare even his own son, but gave him up for all of us, won't he also give us everything else?

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 8, this is Jesus talking.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

He said, If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

And then one of my favorite verses in the Bible, James chapter 1, verse 17, every good and perfect gift is from above.

James 1:17

You need to understand that the message of Scripture is so full of the idea that God is a giving and generous kind of God.

You can't read it and skip that.

Second thing you need to understand about generosity is generosity is a mindset.

Generosity is what about what you think?

In fact, I could say it like this: generosity is not about what I have, it is about how I think.

Some years ago, we were friends with this person who was one of the most generous, open-handed people I've ever met.

And my kids came to me one day, they said, Hey, is that friend of ours, is she rich?

I was like, oh no, she's a schoolteacher, she is not rich.

Like, she's not rich at all.

They said, but she's so, like, she's so generous, we thought she was rich.

And I was like, no, generosity isn't about what you have, it's about how you how you think.

You see, most of us live in this tension between two different mindsets when it comes to our money.

We live between the ideas of scarcity and abundance.

What is the difference?

Scarcity says, I don't know if I'll ever get any more, so I'm gonna hold on tightly to what I have.

Abundance says everything I have came from God.

Because it all came from God, it's He's gonna be the one to provide, anyways, so I'll learn to live open-handedly.

Quick funny lesson on this.

Scarcity is a limiting mentality.

Scarcity is connected to a word, it's an interesting word, it's the word miserly.

Miserly means someone who pinches every penny as tightly as they can.

Fun little note, miserly is connected to a word called miserable.

Those who hold on tightly don't experience joy.

You've heard what scripture says, it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

That's true.

Some people live with the abundance mentality.

The abundance mentality says God provided all of it anyway, so I'm just gonna give and trust that he's gonna be my source.

My job isn't my source, my knowledge isn't my source.

It's always God who has my back.

It's interesting when my wife and I had our firstborn son, Joey, he was the coolest kid ever, and he loved him some animal crackers.

Now I'm gonna be honest, I'm a 42-year-old man, and I still love me some animal crackers.

I do.

Three of us, okay, and uh and so it was so funny because Joey was little, we'd give him like five, and he would eat four without chewing them.

Just shove them in his mouth and swallow it hard.

But then he would take his last one, a giraffe, and he'd hold it in his hand, and he would walk around with it, he would lick it, he'll kind of suck on it a little bit, and then over time, this giraffe, like the head is falling over, its tail is melting away, and he'd hold it, and if I showed him one more, he would take that melted, gross giraffe, slam it in his mouth, and he would hold the new one and he would slowly eat on it.

Why would he do that?

Because he didn't know if there would ever be another one to follow.

What I wish I could have gotten to my son, and what I think I wish God could get a hold of you, is don't you understand that like I'm not rich, but I am animal cracker rich.

Like, if I want, I can give you more animal crackers than you could ever eat in your whole life.

Why would you hold on tightly?

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon, who's the wisest man to ever live, said the world of the generous gets larger and larger.

Conversely, the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.

Can I tell you what I want for you?

I want you to live the biggest, largest kind of life.

I want you to live the kind of life that is so big that people feel it for generations to come.

How do you do it?

According to Scripture in Solomon, it is not by holding on tightly, but it is by holding on loosely and trusting that God is ultimately your source.

Number three is this that God is after your heart.

And this is the problem a lot of Christians don't understand.

A lot of Christians think, well, the church is just all about my money and God just wants my money.

Can I tell you something?

God is perfectly fine.

He doesn't need your money.

He's not worried about the stock market, he's not worried about the economy, he's not worried about inflation.

Scripture teaches that, like in the book of Revelation, read about heaven.

The gates of heaven, according to scripture, are built of this massive scent of Corinthian copper.

It is so incredibly rare and expensive.

It said it is adorned in beautiful gemstones.

Revelation says the streets of heaven are paved in gold, so pure that you can see through it.

Okay.

God is fine.

God doesn't need your money.

If God runs out of money, he'll go chip up some of his road.

He's fine.

Okay.

You need to determine for you what God care about.

It's not your money.

God's after your heart.

Okay, I can show it to you like this.

Jesus said in Luke 12, 34, he said, For where your treasure, your money is, there your heart will be also.

Now I think we get this backwards.

I think we tend to think that what has my heart will get my money.

You ever seen a really sad sales pitch like those old Sarah McLaughlin commercials, where she's walking around a pound with all these sad-looking dogs?

She's like, this is my dog Kevin.

Kevin's got three legs, two paws, half a tail, one eyeball.

For just$39 a month, you can sponsor Kevin.

I'm like, send Kevin out into the woods.

Like, what are you doing with Kevin?

Should delete that from the live stream.

Um, but here's the idea.

What they think is if they can tug on your heartstrings in the background, I will remember you.

It's playing.

Like, if they can tug on your heartstrings, then they'll give your money.

But that's not how it works.

Here's how it works, really.

Have you ever invested in something?

Stock market, cryptocurrency?

A few years ago, my buddy was like, bro, you gotta invest in Bitcoin.

I was like, bit what?

And he goes, but just trust me.

So I invested some of my money.

Before I put my money into Bitcoin, I didn't care about Bitcoin at all.

I was never worried about Bitcoin, never thought about Bitcoin.

It never even occurred to me that Bitcoin was a thing.

But you know what happened as soon as I invested in it?

I started checking on it.

Started thinking about it.

Every day now I check the price of Bitcoin and how it's doing several times a day.

Why?

Because it has my money, and when it gets my money, it gets my attention.

Okay, here's what you need to understand.

The reason God is concerned about your money is money is inextricably tied to your heart.

What is God after?

Not your money, it's after your heart.

And God knows where you put your money, your heart's gonna follow after.

This is why God's concerned about it.

So we live in this world that thinks that if I could just be generous, if I can just do random acts of kindness, then I'll be known as a generous person.

So every once in a while when we feel that we leave a like a 25 or 30% tip, or we pay for the car behind us getting coffee or at McDonald's or whatever.

And I want to teach you that there's a very different way to be generous.

This is the biblical way to be generous.

It's not to do random acts of kindness, but it's instead to do intentional acts of kindness.

I can say it like this: the difference between acting generous and actually being generous is intentionality.

You need a plan when it comes to your money, and here's all I want to do.

I want to teach you God's plan for your money, and here's the promise that I'll make, and I can back it up with scripture.

If you will trust God in this way, he will take you on the greatest adventure of your life financially.

What if for the rest of your life you never had to worry about money?

What if for the rest of your life you weren't worried about making ends meet?

What if for the rest of your life you didn't have to fear about your finances because you knew God had it?

That's the promise of God.

So here's the principle that some 20 years ago changed my life.

And if you will trust God in this way, I promise you He will take you on this adventure.

Point number one is this when it comes to our money, God must be first.

Now, this is important for you to understand.

The key word, the operative word here is must.

It means God cannot be anything other than first.

God cannot be second, God cannot be third.

Now, this principle is true in every part of our life.

God must be first.

In theology, we call this the preeminence of God.

He literally cannot be anything other than first place.

And a lot of us, we're good with saying, God, you're first in my heart, first in my thoughts, first in my energy.

God, I'm gonna serve others and give you the first of my time.

But when it comes to our money, we're like, hold up, this is mine.

Like, like I earned this.

I was the one who works for this.

The book of Deuteronomy, Moses straight up calls it out of people, and he's like, Who do you think gave you the energy and the wisdom to even do that?

It's always God.

So God must be first.

Here it says in the book of Proverbs, Solomon said this in Proverbs chapter three.

He says, Honor the Lord with your possessions, and this is a key word, and with the first fruits of all of your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine.

Now, this word firstfruits is kind of an interesting word.

We don't use this very often because we're not farmers necessarily, but firstfruits are if you were growing a crop of something, say you owned an orchard of apples, the firstfruits are the first apples that are produced.

They're the first ones that you pick.

And here's what he's saying: he's saying, bring to God the first of what you get.

Why does first fruits matter?

Because when you give God the first, you don't know if there will be anything after it.

The giving of the first fruits is the declaration that God, I trust you, even if I don't know where the rest is going to come from.

It's saying, God, you are first in every part of my life, and that includes my bank account.

So number one, God must be first.

But here's number two.

Number two is the tithe must be first.

People get all freaked out over this word.

The word tithe is not a Bible word.

Tithe is just an old English word that literally means tenth.

It means 10%.

And here's what I want you to get.

According to Scripture, everything belongs to God.

Everything you have, all of your possessions, that house, that car, that job of yours, everything, all that you have belongs to God.

And God says, the way I'll have your heart is to put me first by bringing the first 10% back to me.

Let me show it to you in Scripture, the book of Exodus.

This is at the very beginning of the Bible.

God says, the first of your first fruits of your land shall you bring into the house of the Lord your God.

Pause here for just a moment.

Here's what he's saying.

He's saying the first of your first fruits.

What he's saying is, anytime there's increase in your life, you get paid, you get some sort of inheritance, you win some sort of money.

Anytime there's increase in your life, the first of that belongs to God.

Now, why does first matter so much?

It's because first is a declaration of trust.

When I give God first, every time I get paid, I bring my tithe back to God.

Why do I do that?

A lot of Christians wait till the end of the month.

They see if there were no surprise bills, they see if there was no surprise medical bill or car insurance or something pops out out of the blue that we weren't expecting to have to pay.

And then if there's anything left over, then we give to God.

But I want you to see this.

When I give God first, it's the declaration of my trust in Him.

So some people get all twisted, like, what does it mean to give God first?

I'll tell you what it means for me, and then I want you to pray about this for you.

For me, it means every time I get paid, the first thing that I do is I bring my tithe back to God.

It is the very first thing that I do.

I'm so strict about this personally that I've literally reoriented my personal finances in a way that like I move my mortgage payment, which is due on the first to the second of the month, so that on the first of the month I can honor God by bringing him the tithe first.

I want you to see something else.

It says, the first of your first fruit shall you bring.

If everything belongs to God, you can't give to God your tithe.

All you can do is bring it back to him.

No different than if I lent you my car for the weekend and you brought it back to me afterwards and you're like, Jason, I love you so much.

I'm gonna give you this car.

I'll be like, it was my car the whole time.

You can't give me something that belonged to me the whole time.

All you can do is bring it back.

Now, this is in Exodus.

If we go back even farther to the book of Genesis, Genesis 1 and 2, God creates the world.

Genesis 3, there's the first family, Adam and Eve, and they have two sons.

In Genesis chapter 4, there's this moment where the two sons bring an offering to God.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

It says, and in the process of time, we'll come back to this phrase, it came to pass that Cain, who was kind of the farmer, brought an offering of fruit of the ground to the Lord.

So you got the first son, Cain, and after he made sure he had everything he needed in the process of time, he brings some fruit to the God as an offering.

Then the next verse says this.

It says, Abel was more like a rancher.

He says he also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat.

Like he gives of the firstborn of his cattle to God.

Why does this matter?

It says, and the Lord respected Abel in his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering.

Essentially, all that was different in the stories is both brought an offering, but Abel made this decision to bring it first.

God must be first, and in the area of our finances, the way we put God first is with the tithe.

Now I want to explain this to you because this is where people get all weird and twisted up, all right?

According to Scripture, there's literally only four types of giving.

There's the first level of generosity in giving is what I would just call giving.

This is anything we do.

There's a lot of good-hearted, wonderful Christians who they give every week.

They might give five, ten, twenty, fifty bucks, whatever.

And they'll call it their tithe, but tithe is again, it's not a Bible word.

It just literally means 10%.

So any sort of giving, up to 10%, is giving.

I think you should do this.

I think you should be a giver.

Some pastors will like beat Christians over the head saying, if you're not tithing, just like everybody starts somewhere.

Are you with me on this?

We all have to start somewhere.

And I think giving is a wonderful way to start.

In fact, I think you should give through your church, but I also think that you should look for ways to be a blessing.

Be an intentional listener, bless people around you, be a giver.

But the second level of giving is the hardest, but it's the most powerful.

It's when you jump from any sort of giving to tithing.

And here's what I want you to understand.

Remember, tithing means bringing God not 10%, but the first 10%.

And when you understand this principle, here's what you get after this.

When you tithe and put God first, here is the promise of God that I love so much.

Tithing, according to Scripture, unlocks the blessing of God in your life.

Say, what does it mean?

It means when you put God first and give Him the first 10%, He blesses you in ways you can't even begin to imagine.

The third level of giving is what comes after tithing, which is offerings.

Offerings are over and above the 10%.

It's as God lays something on your heart to do.

This might be giving to a missions organization.

This might be sponsoring a child from Compassion International.

This might be giving through your church in the legacy offering where all of it goes out to make a difference.

But offerings are over and above your tithe.

And then there's a fourth level, and the fourth level is extravagance.

It's extravagant generosity.

And here's the thing statistically, only 9 to 11% of church going Christians tithe.

Sometimes I think to myself, how powerful could the church be?

How much more could the church do?

Like I read verses like Acts 2 and Acts chapter 4 where it says that all the people, all these new Christians gave, and it says, and there were no needs among them.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

Like, how amazing would it be if our church, if every single Christ's follower said, I'm all in on the area of my money.

And I'm gonna tithe.

I think we can meet every single need, not just in our church, but we could start to meet needs in our city that would blow your mind.

Here's what I know.

If you never get to the level of tithing, you will never experience extravagant giving.

But I want you to understand this.

This is really at the heart of God.

I could go verse by verse through the Bible and show you.

I'll just give you a few examples off the top of my head.

The life of David.

David is this little boy who becomes king.

David killed Goliath as a boy, and later he's a king.

And at the end of his life, he gets this vision of God.

He says, God, I want to build a temple, a church for you that is so magnificent that it screams of your glory.

And he tries to raise the money, but none comes in, and then he realizes, wait, wait, I've got to be the first one to give.

And he gives an incredible, extravagantly generous kind of gift.

If we were to take that money and we were to somehow translate it from then to what it would be now, experts believe that it would have been over 21 billion dollars.

That's a lot of money, even for a king.

And that's what he gives.

Later in life, his son Solomon is the one who ultimately builds the temple.

And there's this moment before Solomon becomes king where he's on the verge of his coronation as king.

And it was customary in those days for a king to sacrifice an animal before he becomes king.

Well, if you go to 2 Kings chapter 3, there's a moment when God shows up to Solomon and he says, Solomon, I trust you.

2 Kings 3 · chapter mention

I want to bless you.

I want to give you anything you want.

What do you want?

Solomon could have asked for wealth beyond his wildest dreams.

He could have asked for influence.

He could have asked for houses and whatever.

He could have asked for anything, but he asked God for wisdom.

And as a result of that, he gets everything else anybody would ever want.

But why would God do that?

Why would God show up to Solomon and say, you can have anything you want, just ask it of me.

I told you it was customary for the king on the night before their coronation to sacrifice an animal.

Solomon didn't sacrifice one animal, he sacrificed one thousand people.

When we're extravagant in giving, God is extravagant in his response.

Now some of you might hear this and think, well, I'll never be able to do that.

There's another story, the book of Luke, chapter 21.

Luke 21 · chapter mention

Jesus is kind of sitting outside of a temple.

And in those days, the way the offering happened at a church service was there were these big metal cylinders, and people would come and they would take their money that they were giving, and it was mostly coins, and they'd put it in the offering.

Well, because it was a big metal container, often what would happen is those who were the ballers, those who had a lot to give, they'd come in and they'd throw it in and it would make this loud clanging noise, and everybody would know, oh that guy, that guy makes some money.

And in the middle of all that comes this little widow lady.

And she comes in with two coins.

They were called mites.

They feel like two pennies.

She comes in and she puts it in the offering and she quietly, humbly leaves.

And Jesus grabs his disciples and he's like, Boys, did you see that?

That was it.

That was extravagant.

They were like, What do you mean?

It was like nothing.

It was two pennies.

And he said it was extravagant because it was extravagant to her.

It was everything she had.

Quick side note, this is the reason I think tithing is such a great idea from God.

Like, what if God set the rules of being a follower of Jesus up where he said, every Christian has to give$10,000 a year?

To some people,$10,000 would be nothing, and to others it would be more than they could ever dream of giving.

So he leveled the playing field and he said, if you make$1 a year or$1 billion a year, just tithe.

10%.

It's an equal sacrifice for every single person.

Think about another moment, John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

Jesus is at this dinner party, and a lady named Mary comes in and she's so overwhelmed with love for Jesus that she takes her most valuable possession, a jar of perfume that would have been valued at one year of her salary.

Okay, think about what you make in a year.

10,000, 100,000, whatever your amount is.

And she takes a jar of perfume that was worth that much, and she comes to Jesus, she breaks it, she pours it over his head, and she begins to wash his feet in front of all these people.

Well, then off to the side, there's a guy named Judas.

And if you know anything about Judas, he's the one that would later betray Jesus.

And Judas says, Why would you do that?

Why would you give such a valuable gift when that could have been sold and the proceeds could have been given to meet needs?

Why would you do that?

Quick side note.

It's always the people who are not generous that have a problem when you talk about giving and generosity.

Always the people who are like, Why would you talk about this?

This is my personal life.

No, it's not.

It's what God wants from us.

Why would you do this?

Well, why would you do that?

Well, that's John chapter 12.

John 12 · chapter mention

In John chapter 11, literally one chapter earlier, what happens with Mary?

John 11 · chapter mention

She's at the tomb of her brother Lazarus, and Jesus comes and says the words Lazarus come forth, and Lazarus, her brother, is raised from the dead.

If God did something like that for you, is there anything you could give to ever repay him?

Nothing.

That would be too extravagant.

You ready for me to step up on your toes?

If you're a follower of Jesus, he did it for you.

He brought you from death to life.

He saved your soul.

He gave you eternity with him in heaven.

There is nothing you can do.

There's no amount you could ever begin to give to even begin to quantify how you could repay his extravagant love for us.

God calls us to be extravagant.

So here's the third point.

If we're going to be extravagant, then what we have isn't enough.

So here's the point.

Number three is it must be blessed to multiply.

God is the God of multiplication.

God is the God who multiplies things.

There's this interesting moment in the book of Malachi.

It's the end of the Old Testament where God gives this very clear instruction.

I'm going to only read you a little part of it, but I want you to go back and read the whole chapter.

Malachi 3, verse 10.

Malachi 3:10

Here's what God says, and this is for you and for me.

He says, Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse.

Let me pause here for just a moment.

The storehouse will be the place you're fed.

For us, this is church.

And he says, Bring the whole tithe.

What does it mean?

It means anything up to 10% is not the whole tithe.

He says, Bring all that is to me.

And he says, bring it.

And I teased this out earlier.

But when it comes to your tithe, according to Scripture, here I'm going to step up on your toes again for just a moment.

You only have two options.

It's not giving your tithe.

You can either bring it to God or you can steal it.

People are like, how do I steal it?

Stealing it is leaving something that belongs to someone else in your possession.

He says, bring to me the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house.

And then he says, test me in this.

Says the Lord Almighty.

Quick note: this is the only place in Scripture where God invites you to test him.

This is so interesting to me.

A lot of people are like, I'm just going to test God in this job, test God in this relationship.

And I'm like, you do you, boo-boo, but that's not in the Bible.

It's like not in the Bible at all.

The place God invites us to test him is in the area of our money.

And then he says this.

He says, and see if you, as a result of your obedience, see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

In the early days of our church, there was this awesome church that I so admired.

And they did something that they called the 90-day tithe challenge.

And what they said is to every person in our church who's not currently trusting God in tithing, we challenge you to go all in for 90 days.

And at the end of 90 days, if you say, God hasn't blessed me and taken care of me and provided for me, they said, We'll give you every penny that you gave back.

For years we offered this as a church, and I'm still willing to do it, but I just want to say this to you.

I stopped doing it because I don't like manipulating people.

I don't like people feeling like we tricked them or we did something to coerce them into giving.

But I do want to challenge you.

Make this decision to say, God, I'm all in, and here's what happens.

When you give, according to Scripture, God can't help Himself.

He's just a God who blesses us.

Here's the principle I want you to understand, though.

We do not give in order to get.

We don't give in order to get God to give us more.

We don't put our tithe in a cosmic slot machine and pull the lever saying, oh come on, God, pay me back over and over and over again.

But I want you to get this.

God can't help himself.

When you trust him, when you tithe, according to scripture, tithing is what unlocks the blessing of God.

And when you do that, he blesses you in ways you can't even begin to get your mind around.

So for years, one of the things I struggle with as a pastor is I didn't want to tell the wild stories that have happened in my life because I was concerned that someone might hear it and think, well, there it is.

There's the pastor manipulating me.

There's the pastor trying to force me to give.

Let me say one thing up front.

We don't need your money.

If you don't give, our church is completely fine.

We're literally paying for the second location of our church.

We haven't even opened it yet.

We've hired staff.

We've been able to do everything we need to do because you're sitting around the most generous people imaginable.

We don't need anything from you, but we want something for you.

And for years I had these amazing stories of what God had done in my life, and I didn't tell them because I didn't want people to feel manipulated.

And then a couple years ago, God gut checked me.

He said, Why would you not tell the stories?

Just tell the people the truth and let them deal with it.

So here's the stories.

Early on in my journey of tithing, God began to bless me in little ways that were just hard to get your mind around.

I'll never forget one time we were at dinner with some friends that we knew were struggling like really, really bad financially.

Like really bad.

And so we were in line at like the cheapest restaurant we could go to at Disney Springs, and everything at Disney Springs is expensive, and it's the cheapest place we could go to.

And I had already decided, and then I need you to know, like, I was not making a lot of money, but I had already decided that we were gonna buy their meal.

So we're in line, and I'm in the front of the line, and as we're walking through, I hear them whispering, let's just let's just split a kid's meal.

I know we can't afford this, let's just do this.

And so we got a little closer.

I said, guys, by the way, dinner is on us.

Like, get whatever you want.

I said to the husband, I'm like, you're a growing boy, get you two meals, right?

So we go through and they're super grateful.

Well, I saved the receipt, and as we were eating our meal, I opened my email and I refreshed it.

Now, I don't talk about this a lot, but I own another business that I've owned for years.

We have an amazing team of people who run it.

And in the early days of the company, I did everything for the company, and we get like one order every two or three days.

Well, this was a Saturday, and we never got orders on Saturday.

We sit down for dinner, and just because I had a moment, I refreshed my email and I was like, well, that's weird.

And that night I went home because I couldn't shake this idea, and I put down the receipt, and I I deleted, you got a calculator out, and I, you know, removed the food that my family ate, just leaving the food they ate plus the tax.

Then I went and I took care of this order and I figured out the profit in that order.

The profit in the order from the exact time that we ordered and paid for our meal was to the penny ten times what we had paid for these people.

It's like God's in heaven, like, okay, listen, put me first, be generous, see how I won't bless you.

I've got a million stories like this a couple years ago, six five, six years ago, went to buy a new car for myself.

And I figured I would buy the car and I would just make payments on it, and it was the last day of the year.

And I got a crazy good deal on my car.

I mean, I got it for like$20,000 under the MSRP because they needed to sell it to me, whatever their quota was for the year.

I already felt like I got a blessing, and as a result of it, I called Liz and I was like, dude, let's let's give my current car, which was still worth$15 or so thousand dollars, let's give it to bless someone else.

She said yes, because we always say yes, and we did that.

And on the way home, I'm driving in my new car, and I'm like so grateful for this new blessing that I'm walking in.

And I thought to myself, how cool is it that I got to be a blessing to someone else?

And I felt God said, check your bank accounts.

So check my bank account.

And I had two.

I had our personal bank account, then I had a savings account that for years, when I did little projects here and there, I'd put the money in that account.

Well, out of that account, my family had taken one vacation, and I didn't know how much was left.

And so I come up to a red light, I check the bank account, and I look at the number, I'm like, wait a minute.

And I reach over and I pulled the sales sheet up, and it is to the penny.

This is all extra money, money that was just kind of a gift that I didn't really even think about for years.

It was to the penny the amount that I paid for the car, plus the the insurance, plus the tax title, all that stuff.

It was to the penny.

It's like God's like, I got you.

Like, I got I got you.

And I've got story after story after story like this.

Last year, my wife and I felt like God told us do something extravagant outside of the church to bless someone in the church.

So we gave a wildly extravagant gift to a person in our church that was so kind and so deserving.

I thought that was it.

We did it.

We're obedient.

The day after we purchased this incredible gift, go to my mail, and there's a check in the mail from one of the vendors that I do work with.

And I had fully expected to get some sort of a like a commission check.

This check was way more than I expected, and it was to the penny double to the penny what we had just given away.

And this has happened over and over and over and over again in my life to the point where I'm just like, I just give, and every time I do, God returns it in such an incredibly specific fashion.

One last story, then we'll be done.

If you were here a few weeks ago, my wife Liz spoke and she told this really fun story about how last year she was uh selected to be a guest on a game show called Don't Forget the Lyrics.

And she probably told the story, she won this huge amount of money.

And I could get up and be like, Isn't God good?

We won she not we, she won all this money.

And you might say, Well, that's the blessing of God, and nothing wrong with that.

I'm so grateful for it.

I'd say what was better.

The week she got home, nobody knew how much she had won.

She told me, I didn't tell anybody, and then this crazy thing happened.

I was so excited, like, hey, who wins that much money?

What a gift.

It's a Saturday night, and I'm sitting in my living room, and I'm putting the final touches on what was probably a masterpiece of a servant.

And my son Joey walks in, and he's got his phone in one hand and he's got his debit card in the other.

He said, Dad, I just started my new job and I just got my first paycheck.

He goes, and I want to tithe.

How do I do it?

And I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me.

That was the greatest gift to me.

Why?

Because of what I said earlier.

If God has your money, he has your heart, and here's what I know for Joey.

If it's been true for me that God's had me on this wild adventure and trusting him in my finances, I know it'll be true for Joey.

If it's been true that God has had my heart for the last 20 plus years in the area of my money, I know it'll be true for the rest of Joey's life.

That's the greatest gift.

It's more important to me than any sort of money or resources or gift that I can receive or give.

God is first, and that is my heart.

So here's how I want to end today.

Our church is all about helping people take their next step.

Let me give you a next step on a topic like this.

What do you do with it?

I think the first step is this.

I think it's that we pray, that we pray.

2 Corinthians chapter 9, there's this verse where it says that each person should give what they've decided in their heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

The word cheerful means joyful, but it also means that they've decided.

That they've decided.

Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to pray.

I want you to turn the dial.

I want you to make the decision to say, God, this is what I've done my whole life, but I'm gonna trust you in the area of my money.

If you're married, I want you to have a conversation with your spouse and talk to them about it.

Here's the second next step that you can do.

When it comes to your giving, automate the important.

What does that mean?

I want God to be first in my life.

I never want my busyness or my schedule to get in the way of it.

So I've literally made the decision that in the same way I've automated my mortgage payment and my electric bill because those are important.

God's more important.

So I'm gonna put him first.

I've automated my giving so that every month on the first of the month, my giving is given automatically for me.

I challenge you to do the same thing, automate what matters to you, and then here's the best one.

You ready?

Then rest.

But what do you mean?

I mean rest.

2020 happened.

2020, I told you like we have our church, but then I also have this company that I own.

We went from having like the greatest month in the history of our company to having a month where where I personally, the company personally lost$85,000.

Next month was like negative$70,000.

The next month was like negative 50, like it's getting better.

It was getting worse, you know, just kept going.

Can I tell you something?

Was I worried?

Sure.

But you know what's a really good feeling?

Is trusting that God who has been your source will stay your source, and He always comes through.

Here's what I want to tell you.

If you're struggling in the area of money, if you struggle with worry or fear, if you struggle with control, if you struggle feeling like every single day the bottom could fall out, the best thing you could do for your heart is to say, God, I'm taking control out of my hands and I'm trusting you.

Can I get a good amen from anybody who gets it up in here?

So would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this place?

Let's pray.

So, God, I pray today that you'll give us courage.

This is the kind of message that requires so much courage and it takes courage to trust you.

And God, a lot of us would say, We trust you, we trust you, we trust you, but then our bank accounts call us liars.

Give us the courage to push back against that and to say, God, we're all in.

God, I thank you that when we trust you in this way, you break the curse off of our finances.

You unlock and open the windows of heaven and pour out so much blessing on us.

God, may our church be known as the most generous, life giving people imaginable because we've trusted you in this way.

God, I thank you for all the ways that you've moved in my life in this area.

And God, my prayer is that in the same way you've moved in my life, we'll see it happen over and over and over again.

Thank you for it, God.