Oh, crossing family, it is so good to be with you and welcome
those of you joining from one of our different locations, those
of you who are part of the crossing inside.
And I also want to do a special shout out to those of you who
are watching online, specifically those of you who
are watching online from England.
We didn't work on Thursday because we won the war, and I
just wanted you guys to know that you could have the real
red, white and blue flying over you, but you don't.
Anyhow, don't ever try it again. We're love ya, but you're
watching the service from the people who beat you in a war.
All right. That being said, I also want to
welcome those of you who are gathered for the first time or
the first time in a long time. We are so glad that you are here
and we are in week three of a sermon series called Map Makers,
charting a path to better stewardship, less stress, and
greater impact. Because how we handle our money
impacts our mental health, the health of our marriages, the
length of our marriages, and whether or not kids grow up in a
home with a mom and a dad. And the stakes are that high.
And yet many of us, the sad truth is we are not good at
handling our money. Most of us, we're not taught how
to handle our money at home or in school.
And so today, when people are asked how to describe their
present financial situation, this is how people describe
themselves. 48.6% of Americans consider themselves to be broke.
66.2% of Americans feel like they are living paycheck to
paycheck. This series was born out of a
broken heart that I have for you.
I really do love you. I think about you.
I think about your situations, your families, your marriages.
I think about your friends. I cry over your pain.
I rejoice over your successes. And while I don't know each of
you, I know many of you. And I've heard stories from so
many of you as our staff or our campus pastors or when I read
your emails. I want you to know we pray for
you and we desperately, desperately want what God wants
for you. There are two guiding statements
here at The Crossing. The 1st is that we want everyone
to have an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
You need to know this. This is why this church exists
is because we want everyone, no matter who they are, to find
what we have found in Jesus. And the good news is that no
matter how messed up you've been, you can be saved, rescued,
redeemed, and made new through the love of God, the cross of
Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
And what you will come to experience over time as you
begin to walk in this intimate, personal relationship with Jesus
Christ, is that God's way is the best way in every area of your
life. You name it, you cut me, I bleed
it, that God's way is the best way to handle it.
Now let me be clear, it is not the easiest way.
It is not the funnest way, but it is the best way.
In fact, living God's best in your life is so stinking hard
that you actually have to have the power of God, the Holy
Spirit at work in you to accomplish it.
And this is not just my story that God's way is the best way.
This is the story of those who have followed Jesus for a very
long time. And one of the reasons why God's
way is the best way is because God blesses obedience.
God does not reward rebellion, but he blesses obedience.
And in this series, we've been looking at God's plan for our
finances. And you might be going, but
Clayton, you know, my life's kind of falling apart.
There's a whole bunch of this other stuff going on.
I need you to know, we want every single week for people to
hear. And that's why we proclaim the
good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But in addition to that, there are areas of our lives that we
need to bring under the Lordship of Christ so that way we can
experience the blessings of Christ.
Because many of you, if you don't get this area of your life
right, you are going to pass on financial problems and hurdles
and, and shame to your future generations.
Or we can go, you know what, I'm going to turn things around.
I'm going to start following God in this area of my life so I can
start experiencing the blessing of God in my life.
And as we're trying to figure out how to navigate our finances
in a spiritual way, the very first thing we're supposed to do
is recognize that all we have is God's.
Psalm 24. One, the earth is the Lord's,
and everything in it, the world and all who live in it,
everything belongs to God. The other day my kids got
frustrated because they said that I ate all of their Fruity
Pebbles. That is not true because they
have no Fruity Pebbles. I have Fruity Pebbles because I
have a job. They were eating my Fruity
Pebbles because I am a gracious and benevolent father.
Sometimes my kids will say to their brother, get out of my
room, which is interesting because they don't have a room,
because they don't have a house. I have a wife who has a house.
I just pay for it, OK? But even the Fruity pebbles in
my house and even the house do not belong to me.
They belong to the Lord. First thing is to recognize that
everything we have belongs to God.
The second thing we're supposed to do is we're supposed to bring
10%. We are to tithe.
Tithing is not your time. It's not your talents, it's not
your thoughts. I'm going to give 10% of my head
to God. It's not it.
Tithing is not two percent, 6%. It's 10% of your increase of
your income. So whether you make $100 a week,
$1000 of pay period, $10,000 a month, or $1,000,000 a year, we
are to bring 10% to the church for the advancement of the
Kingdom of God. Then the next thing we're
supposed to do. So first thing is we're supposed
to recognize that everything we have belongs to God.
Second thing is we're supposed to give 10% back to him.
The third thing we're supposed to do is we're supposed to live
below our means to spend less than we make.
Proverbs 2110 says or 2120 in the House of the you guys say
this word wise are stores of choice, food and oil.
But a man devours all he has. So wise person has choices all
over their house because they've lived below their means.
A foolish person consumes everything that they make.
Now here's what happens when we begin to live below our means.
We create this magical word called margin.
And the more margin you create, the better steward we become,
the less stressed we experience, and we are better positioned for
greater impact. How do we do this?
Well, we develop a financial plan, or the way you commonly
hear it is we create a budget. A budget positions you for
financial success. You see, money is active.
It is never stationary. It moves around, it gains value.
It loses value, it appears it disappears.
Therefore, you have to manage it.
You have to steward it. I'm going to take you through a
passage of Scripture and then I'm going to explain it because
at first it's going to sound a little weird, but just walk with
me for a second. Proverbs 27.
Be sure you know the condition of your flocks.
Give careful attention to your herds.
Why? Because the lambs will provide
you with clothing and the goats with the price of a field.
You will have plenty of goat's milk to feed your family.
How you care for your herds will determine how well your herds
take care of you. How you handle your money will
determine how your money will take care of you.
If you would for a second see the money that gets deposited in
your checking account after you work as these itty bitty cute
little sheep and these itty bitty little goats that you are
supposed to take care of and how you take care of those itty
bitty cute little sheeps. Sheeps, sheep and goats you
shouldn't have made. OK, why is sheep plural?
But OK, you guys get it. I didn't mean to say sheeps.
How you take care of your cute little sheep and your goats
determines how your sheep and goats will take care of you.
Because there's going to be a time where you're going to want
to have some milk. And if you took good care of
your little goats, you've got milk and there might be some
time when you want to buy some land and you'll go in there and
you'll be like, hey, come here little lambs, it's time for us
to go buy fields. And how you take care of them
will determine how later on they will take care of you.
So before I entered into 7th grade, I was, I've been in
private school from kindergarten through 6th grade.
And I was entering public school.
And before I went in, my dad sat me down at the kitchen table and
he said, Clayton, you're going to live on a budget and you need
to go and put together the list of all of your expenses for the
upcoming year, write them down on a legal pad and you go, you
need to include everything. You need to include food out.
You need to include school lunches, you need to include
shoes and basketball equipment, and you need to figure out
birthday parties. How many of those are you going
to go to and what kind of gift are you going to do and how are
you going to navigate school clothes and how are you going to
navigate Christmas? And so I went upstairs and I get
the legal pad out and I put all of it, and I came up with a
number and I came downstairs and I slid the legal pad 1300
dollars. And he gave it to me, opened up
a checking account, gave this guy when he was thirteen, $1300.
I rolled into 7th grade. Yeah, ladies, I got a checkbook.
I can buy things. The problem is I had
miscalculated. We are not sure what I had
miscalculated. Either I needed more money than
I realized or I was spending more than I was supposed to.
And next thing I know I am doing a really good job when I get in
a car of finding like the quarters and the spare change
starting to swing by the dryer to see if there's any coins in
there because I had misjudged what was needed.
The good news is I learned that in 7th grade with the safety net
of my home versus learning those things after you're married,
already have a bunch of kids, already have a house and cars
that you're. I learned it early.
When you start looking through your budget, you will find
things that you don't need any more.
You will find areas that are getting way out of hand.
You see, we don't just get hit by our big purchases like our
houses and our cars. We also get hit by our small
purchases that happen over and over and over again.
When Jennifer and I got married, we can bind our accounts.
Why? Because we're one flesh.
If you don't trust this person with your money, you should not
trust them with your heart, right?
So we're one flesh. We're in this together.
And so there are not her bills and my bills.
There's just my bills, OK? And there's not her money and my
money. There's just her money.
And so when things arrive at our house, if it arrives in the
mailbox, it belongs to me. And if it arrives in a cardboard
box with a big smile on it and it shows up on the step of the
house, it belongs to her. See, we're in this together.
I pay for it, she enjoys it, and we are in mutual stewardship and
mutual submission to one another because both of us are going to
stand before God and be answerable to how we've operated
with what He has given us. And for many of you, you'll
probably notice this inside of your marriage.
One of you is predisposed towards saving, and one of you
is predisposed towards, what's the right word, fun.
And if you let one rule, you'll have plenty of money, but you'll
live in constant stress and anxiety because it'll never be
enough and you won't have any fun.
And if you let this person win all the time, you'll have tons
of fun for like 3 days, and then you'll spend the rest of your
life paying for it. So you work together to make
sure that your family gets to experience both the good
principles of stewardship and get to enjoy the fruit of your
labor. And Jennifer and I, we would sit
down and we would come up with a plan and we could see a future
reality. Like we could look into the
distance where we're like, hey, we're going to finally be on the
other side of this financial hump.
And eventually we'll be in this place.
And eventually we're going to get a little bit further ahead.
And then sometimes you're going through your budget and you're
like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How did this happen?
Like all the sheep are getting out of the pen.
You've had that happen before, right?
You know what I mean? We're like, you've got your
little sheep in the pen and you've got your you've got your
food out sheep. And you're like, you know what,
let's not, let's just go out, let's grab a bite to eat.
Let's just go out, babe. Let's just take the kids.
And that's not a big deal. But for me and Jennifer and two
Sasquatches, like a McDonald's trip is like 40 bucks, right?
And that's not a big problem once.
But if all of a sudden you kind of get, you know, kind of crazy
and you food out like three times in one week and then four
times you do that four times over the course of a month.
Now all of a sudden your food out sheep took your car payment
sheep and they ran off together. Like, why get get back in here
And you you're over here. You've got your, you know, you
got your house payment sheep. And then, you know, your Amazon
sheep was supposed to be this itty bitty Amazon cheap.
But the little the little Amazon sheep ate all the oats got real
big. And when he ran out, he took the
house payment sheep with them. Yay, get back over here.
And if you don't watch where stuff's going, all of a sudden
when you go for the things you want, like the savings or the
generosity, and what God actually says is the very first
sheep in the pen belongs to him. The 1st 10% goes to him, and
then you're supposed to be a good steward of the rest.
And sometimes our savings sheep, our generosity sheep, our margin
sheep, makes friends with one of our other things and it goes out
the drive through window or it's in all the things that we've
subscribed to that we don't even pay attention to anymore.
You've probably seen this happen before.
When you put on a budget, you start taking careful or you
start paying attention and tending your financial flock.
Jennifer and I have used envelopes, we've used apps,
we've used Excel spreadsheets. And over time, what happens is
you build a rhythm of stewardship and you learn to say
no in the present for a better yes in the future.
There are things that future you wants to do, but the only way
future you will get to do the things that future you wants to
do is if present day you puts them in a position to do so.
So give a gift to yourself and start putting yourself on a
track record so future you can do what future you wants to do.
Proverbs 25 verse 28 says this like a city whose walls are
broken through is a person who lacks self-control.
Present you will rob future you unless present you learns
self-control, the ability to say no, the ability to say later,
the ability to say I don't need this.
So, for instance, I really want a pair of golf shoes.
I know exactly what I want. I can't wait to have them.
It's going to be fantastic. I can afford to buy the shoes,
OK, but I'm not allowing myself to buy the shoes until I break
100 golfing. I am intentionally forcing
myself to delay the gratification.
I'm making myself earn it in another way.
And when you start developing a rhythm of restraint, you put
yourself on a track record to greater freedom and flexibility.
I remember, like, here are some of my financial targets.
Some of you guys might be able to relate.
I remember when I didn't have to worry about how much money I had
in the account when I was filling up my car with gas.
Like, I remember when I could fill it all the way up.
Yeah. You're dating girls.
Yeah, I'm just going to fill the whole thing up.
Sometimes I'll put premium in it.
Boo. I'm not even worried.
Oh, yeah. It's 23 gallons.
I can handle it. Oh, yeah, I've got margin.
Then I remember getting to a spot where I had enough money
set aside where I could go anywhere in the country if
somebody needed me. If any of my friends were
anywhere in the country, I knew I finally had enough margin that
I could be there because my heart would want to go.
But my, they don't scan hearts at the airport.
I'm. I'm here.
Yeah. I have a good heart.
Can you? Yeah.
We don't take good hearts here. We take credit cards.
So you have to put yourself in a position to be able to go and be
where you want to be able to be. I remember when I finally got to
a spot where I didn't have to worry about my house payment,
where I didn't have to worry about where we were at in the
month and what things were coming out when that I finally
had built up enough margin. Now the crazy thing is you're
going, yeah, this is going to be great.
I must start doing it. But I want you to know, when you
start living on a budget or living with a plan in mind,
nothing changes radically overnight.
It is something that is built up over time.
July bodies are built in January, February and March.
And we get in financial shape the same way we get into
physical shape. We watch our intake and our
output. Recently I met a guy who started
coming to our church. He moved in from out of town.
We kind of became friends and he's a chef and he is a Dang it.
I did this the previous service. He is a meal prepper.
I always want to say a food prepper, but then I start
thinking the people who build the dungeons in their in their
backyard in case there's an apocalypse.
And if you are one of those people, God bless you, but you
think that's going to work. He's a he's a meal prepper and
so on. I asked him.
I said, hey, would you be willing to help me?
I'm trying to get a little bit more dialed in and how he goes.
Yeah. And I said, so he brings over on
Sundays 10 crates, not crates. That's your problem, stupid.
Yeah. You're eating crates of food,
fatty. He brings over.
It's not a container. That's what it is.
He brings over a container and it's purpose built with the
Saint with the right amount of calories and protein grams that
I'm supposed to have if I want to hit my track record.
Like if you want to try and lose a a pound a week, this is the
food you eat. And he comes all over all ten of
them and we just shove them in the fridge.
You know what I'm putting in my fridge?
I'm putting in a budget and if I stick to the budget, I'll lose
weight. Now that works as long as I
don't eat the Fruity Pebbles or late at night.
Go do we want to go to TCBY and thank God for cows and chickens
and just dairy in general? Yeah, let's do that.
But if I, if I stay out of there and I stay on budget, I start to
experience success. Proverbs 1311 says this
dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little
by little makes it grow. Some of you are gone, man.
When I make, when I win the lottery and I have like $100
million, I'm going to do all kinds of the right stuff.
And I just want you to know, statistics show that if you have
not been faithful with little, you will not be faithful with
much. You'll be broke again.
In fact, I'm just on this out there.
If you want to feel like you win the lottery, take the money that
you would be spending on the lottery, open up an account and
start buying like stock with it. And then I'm just throwing this
out there, in like 30 years, go back to that account and you'll
feel like you actually won the lottery and you'll be able to
manage the money that's in there.
But when you gather money little bit at a time, over time it
makes it grow. While the changes are not
massive at first, over time you will build margin.
Margin is savings, and when it's gathered, little by little it
grows. The sad truth is today very few
Americans have margin. Very few Americans have savings.
Bank rate says that one in four people have no emergency
savings. More than one in three Americans
have more credit card debt than emergency savings.
Go Banking did a study and they found out that 57% of Americans
don't have enough money to cover a $500 unexpected expense.
They don't have any margin. I once met with a guy who was
making over $300,000 a year and his whole family had super sweet
vehicles. They went on incredibly epic
vacations. They had it all and he was
confiding in me that he was stressed out because his
basement had flooded and he didn't have the $5000 in the
bank to take care of his his his deductible on his insurance when
his basement flooded. There's a guy who was making
over 10 times what I made and had less in savings than I did
because he had no margin. And when you don't have margin,
you don't have freedom and you don't have flexibility.
Almost all financial experts agree that you should have at
least $1000 in an emergency fund when you're starting out.
Then you should get your on your budget and stay diligent in it
and get out of all consumer debt as fast as you can.
Then focus on like your car loans and your student loans.
And then you should start building a larger cushion in
your savings. You may have heard the story of
Joseph who was sold into slavery by his his brothers, the coat of
many colors, all that stuff. There's an interesting story
about Joseph. He's in a prison in Egypt and he
was been told that he interprets dreams.
And so Pharaoh has him come in and interpret a dream.
And as Joseph stands before Pharaoh, he begins to interpret
the dream. Here's the dream.
There were seven beautiful fat cows, followed by 7 ugly skinny
cows. This is my favorite part of the
Bible because the fat and happy ones are the good years, and the
skinny cows are just so ugly and hideous.
And then there was 7 fat heads of grain and then seven skinny.
And the seven fat cows and the seven fat were years of
abundance and prosperity. That's what I am.
I'm a picture of abundance and prosperity.
And then there were seven skinny cows, 7 skinny heads of grain,
and they represented 7 years of famine and destruction.
And so here's what Joseph told him to do.
And now let Pharaoh look for a discerning and wise man and put
him in charge of the land of Egypt.
Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to
take a fifth of the harvest, 20% of Egypt during the seven years
of abundance. They should collect all the food
of these good years that are coming and store up the grain
under the authority of Pharaoh to be kept in the cities for
food. This food should be held in
reserve for the country to be used during the seven years of
famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may
not be ruined by the famine. Joseph rose to power because he
had this solution in the years of abundance.
Live on less than you make, put 20% into savings.
So that way when the years of famine come, you have a nest
egg, you have margin to navigate it.
Very few of us are going to have to navigate a national crisis at
on the financial or food side of things, but we are going to have
to navigate financial storms. You're going to have a
refrigerator go out, a car breakdown, an HVAC unit quit
working, a roof that needs fixed.
And having a plan to build margin helps us navigate the
storms because if you don't have margin when the storm hits,
you're going to get wet. But if you plan in advance for
the storm when it comes, it doesn't affect you.
I was invited one time not too long ago up way up north to go
on a fishing trip. And I'm not a big fishing guy,
but I was like, OK, I'll go. And they go, hey, make sure you
bring some rain gear and stuff like that.
And I was like, I'm a man. I don't need rain gear.
I can get wet. You know what I mean?
I like, I always write it out. I was like, how bad can it be?
Well, it was incredibly bad. I'll be honest with you.
We, we, we got out there and it started raining and I had
nothing that would make me not wet.
And we're the first half hour in and I am like, I don't want to
be alive anymore. Like my teeth were chattering so
bad I was cussing in Morse code. It was just.
And the good news is we only had 8 1/2 more hours before we got
back. It was horrible.
As soon as we hit dry land I immediately drove to the nearest
place that sold rain gear and I bought it all.
I bought the pants, I bought the shoes, I bought the the the
jacket that goes over the top of it.
I bought the big hat that basically says I don't ever want
a woman to look at me and lust ever again.
You know, like I, I haven't even showed Jennifer the hat because
I, I want her to keep loving me. But I put it all on the next day
to go fishing and it rained and I didn't care because I wasn't
getting wet because I was pre prepared for the storm.
And when storms hit, it is too late to prepare.
So you have to prepare in advance, which gives you the
margin, which helps you navigate the storms that will come.
Rick Warren says this. Most people fail to realize that
money is both a test and a trust from God.
God uses finances to teach us to trust him.
And for many people, money is the greatest test of all.
God watches how we use our money to test how trustworthy we are.
He goes on to say if you are trustworthy about worldly
wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?
Citing Luke chapter 1611 and 12, God says that there is a direct
relationship between how I use my money and the quality of my
spiritual life. How I manage money, which is
worldly wealth, determines how much God can trust me with
spiritual blessings, true riches.
Life is a test and a trust, and the more God gives you, the more
responsible He expects you to be.
End Quote. Now I want to be clear, we are
talking about money as a church because it is a place where
Satan is taking ground in many of our lives.
We're talking about money because how we handle it or
mishandle it impacts our mental health, our marital health, and
our spiritual health. But I don't want you to think
for a second that as you put these principles in practice and
your financial position begins to strengthen, that you should
ever put your trust in riches. Because how we use our money,
spend our money, and save our money is just simply part of how
we love God and join Him in His mission.
And I just want you to be in a position to say yes to whatever
He calls you to do. We don't want to have financial
anchors that are keeping us from being able to lean into the
areas that God is calling us to lean into.
Our trust is never supposed to be in our bank account.
Our trust is always supposed to be solely placed on Jesus.
He's our hope. He's our firm foundation.
He's our guiding light. He's our true North star.
He's our refuge. He's our strength.
He can be trusted in absolutely every single area of our lives
and every area where we trust him, we can readily and easily
see the fruit, but we want to be the kind of people that can use
our money to bless him and bless others.
So the way I kind of set up my finances is I have a bunch of
different accounts and one of my accounts is my car account.
It's actually called my car savings account.
And I pre limit what I'm allowed to spend on vehicles.
So my cars, gas, maintenance, tires, everything that goes
that's a car thing happens there.
Because when you need a car, when your car breaks down is not
the time to start saving to get your car fixed, right.
It's a little late for that. So you pre save.
So that way when problems come, they're not a problem.
And well, one, one of our vehicles needed new tires.
And so I called up a guy and I said, Hey, I need to get new
tires on the vehicle because my tires are balding like they're
turning 40. And we got to, we got to, we got
to fix it. And he's like, not a problem.
He goes, here's the tires I would get and like, that sounds
perfect. You know, So he gets the tires,
puts them on my vehicle and it's great.
So I call him up to go, all right, how much do I owe you?
And he said, it's already taken care of.
And I said, that was not the deal.
And he said it was the deal. And I said, I didn't agree to
the deal. And he said, well, that's the
deal. And I said, well, if I'd have
known that there's the deal, I wouldn't have done the deal.
And he says, well, the deal's already done.
And so now I have a pile of money in my car savings account
that was supposed to go to tires that didn't get to go to tires.
It's sitting there. And that same week, I get a text
message from a guy who is in contact with pastors in India.
And there's a pastor in India who had his church burned down
by extremists. And so he lost his church.
And So what he was going to start doing is he was going to
start walking four days into the jungle to tell people about
Jesus in distant villages. And I was like, I've never
walked four days. That seems like a long way.
And I would think if he had to walk less, he could talk about
Jesus more. And so I just asked this
question, how much for this guy to have a really nice motorcycle
to be able to go travel through the jungle?
And he came back with a number and I looked at the number that
I had leftover that I had pre budgeted for my tires.
And then I looked in another account, which I'm going to talk
about next week, which is my generosity account.
So you've have you ever been there where like you wanted to
do something for somebody and you're like, and yet you've been
doing that for a really long time.
The way you get around the oh man, I wish I could is you pre
plan to be generous. And so I put money in a
generosity account. So here's what I was able to do.
I was going to take money that a guy blessed me with out of my
car savings account by not having to pay for tires and
money from my generosity account.
And I was able to buy the guy a motorcycle in India.
And then I told the guy that gave me the tires.
I said, you own the front of the the first tire of the motorcycle
and I own the back part. You're the direction, I'm the
power. So here's why this mattered to
me is because when he's sleeping, I'm awake and I'm
telling people about Jesus. And when I'm sleeping, he's
awake and he's telling people about Jesus.
And there's going to be people in heaven that I'm going to meet
that are going to know Jesus. Because I had margin in my life
to be able to say yes to buying a motorbike for a passer that
I've never met in a part of the country I could never pick out
on a map. And all that happens because I
just had margin. You know this to be true deep
down inside. We want to use our money for
more than just lowering our stress levels, more than just to
be greater stewards. We want to do it because we want
to have greater impact because we know that deep down inside,
every person needs to know about Jesus and we want to put
ourselves in a position to do something about it.
We're moving to a time, a decision.
If you're listening to me right now, I want to level with you.
If you don't have a relationship with Jesus, just if you tune to
everything out in that sermon, I just want you to hear this.
There is a biblical principle that you know.
Here it is. You reap what you sow.
If you want to have a bunch of corn grow in your field, you
don't plant strawberry seeds. That would make you stupid.
If you want to grow a bunch of soybeans, you have to put in
beans. When you plant the field, you
reap what you sow universal principle.
If you don't have friends, it's 'cause you're not a nice person,
you reap what you sow universal principle.
It's in the Bible, and we know this instinctively to be true.
And there are some of you who are desperate for a spiritual
harvest, but you cannot experience a spiritual harvest
unless you have sown spiritual seed.
Some of you, you want hope, you want forgiveness, you want
redemption, you want peace. But you cannot experience a
spiritual harvest unless you have spiritual seed.
But the good news is you can have spiritual seed.
How do you get it? When you start an intimate,
personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you can't try harder to
have peace. You can't work harder to get
forgiveness. This is a spiritual harvest that
only comes through a spiritual act.
And the spiritual seed that you sow is you turn your life over
to Jesus. And then the Holy Spirit comes
in and he doesn't improve you. He doesn't change you.
He comes in to make you new. Some of you are going.
I would love to have Jesus come into my life and repaint the
walls. He doesn't repaint walls.
I'd like him to come in and rearrange furniture.
He doesn't rearrange furniture. He comes in and he makes you
new. Jesus comes in and he kicks down
some walls and said we're expanding this.
He comes into other areas of the house and he tears down walls
and he goes, we're shrinking this.
He starts building and moving and placing and making new
because this new house is not for you.
The new house is for him to dwell inside of you.
He's the one who makes you new, and He's the one who gives you
the spiritual seed to have the spiritual harvest.
You want peace, you get it from Him.
You want to have the ability to forgive, you get it from Him.
You want mercy and grace in your life, you get it from Him.
There is no way to have those on your own.
You get it in Him. And if you are here today and
you've never started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
Christ, hear me, you need a spiritual harvest and you can
have it in him and you might be gone.
But Clayton, I couldn't get it because I'm too messed up.
You're right, you are too messed up.
But God, who is rich in mercy, sent his Son Jesus to die on the
cross to purchase and advance the thing that you simply take
hold of by faith. And if you're here today and
you're going, I want it. The good news of the gospel is
you can have it and in just a few moments there are going to
be people who are going to stand around you and sing and worship
and some are going to come to the steps and pray.
And I want to encourage you to take a faith filled walk from
wherever you are sitting right over there underneath that
screen next to the baptistry and say I have questions about how
to start this intimate personal relationship your church loves.
And we would love to tell you to the rest of you in the room, to
those of you who don't have or who already have a relationship
with Jesus, I just want to level with you.
What is this step that you know God wants you to take?
More than likely it's the exact same step that Satan has been
trying to keep you from taking. It's the same step that fear has
been preventing you from taking. Tough question, are you using
what God has given you to build your Kingdom or His Kingdom?
When it comes to your finances? Is this an area where you are
trusting God? When you hear me talk about
people starting and finding an intimate personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, are you a person who cheers about it or
you're a person who wants to support it happening?
Would you stand with me? God, I'm relying on you because
you know this exact situation of every single person within the
sound of my voice. And God, I'm asking that you
would help each and every single one of us have the courage to
take the step that we desperately need to take to
experience exactly what we need to experience to live the life
that we were destined and called to live.
And God, I know there's fear and there's challenges and there's
worry and there's stress. But God, we want to trust you.
So give us the strength we need to do so.
And you name our pray. Amen.