Crossing family, it is so good to be with you.
I want to welcome those of you joining at all of our different
locations, those of you watching online and those of you who are
part of the crossing inside. I also want to welcome those of
you who are here for the first time or the first time in a long
time. And I want to talk specifically
to those of you who are here for the first time in a long time.
I've been in ministry a long time.
And so, you know, there are times where people kind of get
bumped off track and they go through a season of despair or
frustration or pain, and all of a sudden, for some reason, their
spiritual trajectory kind of got bumped and they found themselves
in a spot that they never thought that they would find
themselves in. And I know that sometimes it
takes a lot of courage and a lot of strength to be able to come
back. And I just want you to know that
as a church, we're just rooting for you every time you decide to
do it. I come in on Thursdays and I
kind of run through the sermon in the early afternoon and then
I takes time from 4:00 to 4:45 is just kind of an opportunity
for me to kind of get a meet with different people.
And I got a meet somebody this week who used to be a part of
our church a long time ago and kind of going through an awful
lot of hurt and heartache. And this weekend is going to be
their first weekend back. And so when I welcome those of
you joining for the first time or the first time in a long
time, I'm thinking about you. You know who you are.
You have one of the sickest wrist tattoos of anybody I've
ever seen at one of our campuses ever.
Is me looking at wrist thinking, I wonder if this is the person.
If I had a cooler wrist, I'd rock one too.
He was sick. I'm glad you're here.
And I want you to know our church is rooting you on.
I also want you to know I come to you today with kind of a, a
pretty, pretty messed up self esteem.
I found out on Thursday night that Joe Biden's a better golfer
than me. And that's just, that's just
hard to take the end. But when I said I was bad, I'm
28 strokes worse than him. So that's a real, that's a real
humdinger. OK, but we are in a two week
sermon series called Map Makers charting a path to better
stewardship, less stress and greater impact.
And the statistics are in. People are stressed out and in
large part due to financial pressure.
Marriages are ending in divorce in large part due to financial
pressure. I think at our core, we want to
chart a path to better stewardship so we can honor God
and love people and love God. We want to chart a path to less
stress because we are sick and tired of financial pressure.
We want to chart a path to greater impact so we can do so
with our lives and with our money.
The good news is that the God of the universe, the Savior of the
world, has a plan. God is big enough to make the
heavens and the earth strong enough to put them in orbit and
determine their rotation. Smart enough to create an
ecosystem to sustain us, a brain to guide us, a heart to inspire
us. And yes, he has a plan for our
finances. As I say to this series was kind
of born out of a broken heart because I came across these
statistics. 48 .6% of Americans consider themselves to be broke.
If they were to define themselves financially, the word
they would use is I'm broke. 66.2% of Americans feel like
they are living paycheck to paycheck.
If these statistics are true of America, if we were to put them
at those who call the crossing home, to the people who are
listening to the sound of my voice, if I were to run those
numbers against how many people participated with the crossing
last weekend, here's what that means. 5546 of you would
consider yourself broke. 7555 of you feel like you are living
paycheck to paycheck. I don't want anybody at the
crossing to be in that state of life or that state of mind.
I don't want anybody that you love to see themselves as
having, seeing themselves as being broke or having to deal
with the stress of living paycheck to paycheck.
You've heard me say this over and over and over again, and
you're going to hear it as long as you come here over and over
and over again, that I genuinely believe that God's way is the
best way in absolutely every area of your life.
And this includes how we handle our finances.
You've also heard me say that God blesses obedience.
We cannot expect God's blessings in an area where we are
rebelling. The challenge of following God's
plan for our money and God's plan for our finances is that
God's plan requires a great deal of faith.
But remember, without faith it is impossible to please God.
Psalm 24 verse one says this. The earth is the Lord's and
everything in it, the world and all who live in it.
The first plan for God that God has for you financially is to
realize that everything you have comes from Him.
Everything belongs to Him. He's the one who has given us
absolutely everything that we have.
The breath in our lungs, our family, our bodies, our money,
our ability to produce wealth, all come from Him.
You and I are simply stewards of what God has given us.
And a good steward does what God wants us to do with what He has
given us. And a bad steward does whatever
they want to do with what God has given them.
And God calls bad stewards robbers in Malachi chapter 3.
So after we recognize that it all belongs to God, the second
thing that we're supposed to do is we're supposed to bring God a
tithe. A tithe means a 10th or 10%.
Malachi chapter 3, verse 10, bring the whole tithe, all 10%
into the storehouse, the church, that there may be food in my
house. Test me in this, says the Lord
Almighty, and 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. God's blessing.
The pouring out happens after obedience, the bringing of the
tithe into the storehouse. Remember, blessings flow in the
direction of obedience. This is actually echoed in
Proverbs Vice us when Solomon is talking to his son.
Now Solomon, for those of you who aren't church people, is the
wisest man born of natural birth.
So you have Jesus and then you have Solomon.
As far as on the wise meter of people who have lived, look what
he says in Proverbs chapter 3, verse 9 and 10.
Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all
your crops. Then your barns will be filled
to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine.
The blessing comes after the obedience.
Now some of you are church people and you're going Proverbs
chapter 3. That sounds familiar.
I feel like I've heard something from Proverbs chapter 3.
You would be right. In fact, one of the most well
known verses in all of scripture is found in Proverbs chapter 3,
just a couple of verses before the one we just read.
You know what it is? As soon as I open it up and be
like Oh my goodness you're kidding me.
Watch. Trust in the Lord with all your
heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways.
Submit to Him and He will make your path straight.
And then a couple more verses he starts talking about bringing
stuff to the store or house. You see, we are to trust God
with absolutely everything and to lean not on our own
understanding. Now look at the blessing follows
obedience and all your ways. Submit to Him, that's obedience
and He will make your path straight.
That's the blessing. God's blessings flow in the
direction of obedience. Now, this is one of the reasons
why we tithe. Now there's lots of reasons why
we tithe. We tithe because God commands
it. We tithe because God deserves
it. We tithe because we love God.
And we've talked about this before, that you can give
without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
And we want to be in alignment with God and God will not make
straight an area of your life where you are not submitting.
Sir John Templeton, one of the world's most respected investors
and investment counselors, who was the creator of the Templeton
Growth Fund. Some of you may actually have
money in the Templeton Growth Fund was once asked what is the
best investment? And he said, I'm quoting him
that he never hesitated to offer this simple and surprising
answer. Here's what he said.
In all my 52 years before I retired as an investment
counselor, we were helping people, literally hundreds of
thousands of people with their wealth.
And in all of those years there was only one investment which
never proved faulty, and that was tithing, giving at least 10%
of your income to the church. He goes on to say in all my
history, I have never seen a family who tithes for as long as
10 years that didn't become both prosperous and happy.
That is the best investment anyone can select.
So whether you make $100 a $1000, a $100,000 or $1,000,000,
every time you experience an increase, God tells us to tithe.
If you're self-employed or you own your own business, or maybe
you're a farmer, you're going, hey, this is a little bit more
complicated. You're 100% right.
And the people that I've sat across the table from that have
asked for help in this area. Here's what I've just told them
to do and how to navigate it. Every time you pull out money
out of the business for you and for your family, you just pull
out an extra 10%. So that way you can give to God.
So if you're getting ready to pull $10,000 out of the
business, you pull out 11,000, you give $1000 to the Kingdom of
God, and you keep the 10,000 for you and your family.
Do whatever you were wanting to do.
And then at the end of the year, when you're trying to get right
with the government, you use that time to make sure that you
get right with God if there's any adjustments, because that's
usually when you're getting ready to buy a work vehicle or
you're trying to explore tax benefits.
So that's the perfect time for you to fine tune things and get
things right. So we're supposed to remember
that everything that we have belongs to God.
Second thing we're supposed to do is we're tithe.
So what do we? What's the next step?
What's the very next thing that we're supposed to do?
And this one, you guys are going to be like, what?
You got to be kidding me. But listen, I'm not kidding.
The next step in your financial plan is to spend less than you
make. I know this is like rocket
surgery. Ready.
Proverbs 21, verse 20 In the House of the wise are stores of
choice, food and oil. But a foolish man devours all.
He has two kinds of people. You know how you can tell if
they're a wise person? There are stores of decent stuff
all around the house. A foolish person devours
everything they have. In other words, a wise person
spends less than they make. A foolish person devours,
consumes everything that they make.
And in most cases in America, we are consuming more than we make.
We are living on 105% of our income.
Now I'm going to show you three areas where we kind of get
tripped up and then I'm going to tell you a little bit about me
and then hope at the end I'll tie it all together.
But we're going to kind of go on like a weird rabbit trail
together. And what I want to do is I want
to show you like 3 areas where we can sometimes get ourselves
put in a spot that add an A crazy amount of financial
pressure on us, which puts strain on our parenting and
strain on our marriages. OK, here's the first one.
Cars. The average car new is $40,000
and the interest rate 7% financed for 72 months.
For those of you who aren't math people, that's six years.
It's a long time. The total amount of interest
that you're going to spend over that six years is $9101.14.
The good news is in six years you will have spent $50,000 and
that car will be worth 24. You know what?
That's called a bad financial investment.
Oh yeah, we're going to spend 50 grand and it'll be worth 24.
But we do it all the time. If you were to take the amount
of money and set, if you were to just buy a cheaper car and pay
cash for it and you were to have the bank give you the $126.
And you're saying instead of spending $126.00 a month on
average on my interest on paying for a car that I couldn't
afford. And you were to put that into a
savings account. At the end of those six years,
you'd have $12,500 in the bank and you would have earned $3500
in interest. In other words, if I was a used
car sales, and this is what I would say pay cash and buy this
car and it comes included with a free all inclusive vacation for
your family. I'd be, I'd be inking deals all
day. Like just give me the 126 bucks
a month and in six years you get to go on vacation.
We end up spending more than we need to know.
Listen, there's nothing wrong with having a new car.
There's nothing wrong with having a nice car.
There's nothing wrong with having an expensive car if you
can afford it. But most of us are not asking
ourselves the question, can we afford the car?
We're asking ourselves, can we afford the payment?
And then we're wondering where all of our money went.
I can't wait to drive a new vehicle.
Oh, I'm always spending money trying to give my car the new
car smell. I can't wait till at least one
day in my life. It just comes with it.
I want to know how long the driver's seat lasts when my
booty is the only booty that broke in that leather.
You know what I'm talking about. Like, you get in there.
Like, what was this person doing?
Like, why is it always right next right when you open the
door that all that part always rips out.
Like, does somebody have a saw in their pants when they're
getting in the car? Yeah.
I just can't wait. Can't wait, But I'm not there
yet. Here's another area where we're
getting bit pretty hard consumer debt.
Here's the average credit card balance by generation.
And this is what you guys do. I know you.
You. I've already heard you.
You are going to look at this and you're like, hey, we're
doing better. And then some of you are doing
worse. And those of you who are doing
better, like you're like pinky high five and like we're going
to make out later. OK.
Gen. Z Gen.
Z has $3200 in a credit card balance.
Millennials 6500 Gen. X $9000 on credit card debt,
Baby Boomers $6600 Silent Generation 3400 dollars.
You're like, where are they putting it?
Well, they're putting it on a bunch of different credit cards.
Look how many credit cards they have.
Silent Gen. has 3.5 credit cards, Baby Boomers have 4.3,
Gen. X has 4.3, Millennials have 3.5,
and Generation Z has two credit cards.
The average consumer in America today has $6200 in credit card
debt, which means that the average household in America,
husband and wife, are sitting on $12,000 in credit card debt with
an average interest rate of 22.6%.
Which means that it is requiring the typical family in America to
spend $430 a month on interest on the stuff they've already
purchased. Here's the 3rd place we get bit.
We get bit in the houses that we buy.
I have purchased two homes in my life.
I still own both of them. The 1st house I bought when I
lived in Macomb and then things changed in Macomb and so my
house was no longer worth what I purchased it for.
And so I could not sell it. And so I rented out.
And if you're watching, keep it nice.
OK, 15 more years and I'll just give it to you.
But I got to get out of it all right?
Now, both times I've gone in and I've sat across from the bank,
they've told me what they would loan me for a house.
And both times, the number that they gave me made me sick to my
stomach. Because what a bank will give
you is a lot more than they probably should give you if you
want to live a life that is low on stress and high on impact.
So here is kind of how I've always navigated house buying.
Jennifer and I both work, but I I don't count on her income in
case she changes her mind on what she wants to do.
I don't want that burden on her. Like she has to work for us to
be able to make things work. Does that make sense?
So I take her out of the equation.
OK. And if she's listening right
now, I love you. I'm so thankful for you.
OK. Now then on the other side, I
just take my income, just what I make and I times it by three and
that is the maximum that I allow myself to purchase in a house.
Now here's why I do that. That means that I am buying a
house that is less than what I make, which means that making my
house payment is never a stress point in my life.
That means I don't have to worry about am I going to get behind.
It means that my payment is incredibly reasonable when I do
this. A typical bank, if you were to
go to a bank tomorrow and say how much money will you give me,
they're going to probably say in really cool terms 45% of your
debt to income ratio. So they're going to say add up
all the payments that you have towards debt and we're going to
give you 45% Max on what you make.
So if you made $10,000 a month they would say we will give you
enough money that you can finance up to $4500 a month.
Which means that just that just leaves you with 55% left for
everything else. And if you do that you will put
yourself in a spot where you have no wiggle room.
Here's what now I want to be clear, I am not a you have to
live your entire life debt free guy.
Although there are strong biblical principles about being
debt free and I plan on getting there, just not there yet.
But I have a car payment on my truck, I have a house payment on
my Macomb house and that's it. And what I try to do, and this
is for a long time, I try to keep my debt to income ratio
below 20%. Now I could go way higher, I
could drive way nicer vehicles and live in way nicer houses,
but I intentionally live on less because Can you imagine me
stressed? Can you imagine being married to
this guy if he was stressed? Can you imagine what kind of dad
I'd be if I was stressed? By keeping my debt to income
ratio very low, I increase the margin in my home.
When I increase the margin, I decrease the stress.
See what happens? You know what else I do before I
make big purchases? This is going to sound crazy.
I ask people to speak into it. I want people on the branch.
I want counsel about what I purchase.
Now I don't want to brag, but I buy some stuff without asking.
Like I bought some tea tree shampoo this week, didn't ask a
person about it. You do like eucalyptus.
You know how you kind of get like that brain freeze when you
use that? You guys will be buying tea tree
stuff, Amazon will be delivering.
And I bought the beard wash that matches it.
So I got 3 little pump things. I didn't ask Jennifer.
I just went out and did it. Yeah.
I'm the man of my house. I can buy $9 things anytime I
want without her approval. But when I got, I also bought BB
guns that are automatic this week for the boys.
Didn't ask for opinion on that. And she was not happy.
She wasn't. She was not happy at all.
But you couldn't pull the corners of my boys's mouth out
of their ears because when they started, like, yeah, Dad's rule,
Mom's drool. And but in every other purchase,
Mom's, I'm joking. Gee whiz, we met her too.
I was just. Did you buy your kids ABB gun?
No, you didn't. That's why dads win.
Now when I get ready to buy a house, I invite people in and I
go, hey, do you think this is a wise financial move?
When I get ready to buy a vehicle?
I actually pulled some leaders in our church together and I
said, hey, guys, I'm thinking about doing this.
Do you think this is a wise move?
I want to be careful that I don't put myself in a position
where I'm strapped, where I'm struggling, where I'm stressed.
And when you invite people in, it changes how you behave
financially. I want to make sure that I'm
being a good steward. I want to make sure that my
present desires don't rob me of my future impact.
First Timothy Chapter 6 says this.
For the love of money is a root. So money's not bad.
The love of money is a root, not the root.
It's a root of all kinds of evil.
Some people, eager for money and stuff, have wandered from the
faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
We buy and we buy and we buy with money we don't have.
And what we find ourselves is, is we're weighed down and we're
pierced with many griefs. I want to keep myself in a
position where I'm not pierced with many griefs.
I was talking to a staff member who used to be in the banking
industry and the car industry and he said so many people have
so little margin, so little wiggle room that they can't do
the things that they want to do for God.
They can't go on a mission trip, they can't go into ministry,
they can't do big things for God because their past and present
self have robbed them of the margin, the flexibility and the
freedom that their future self desires.
Right now many of you are navigating decisions that old
you made and if you could go back in time, you would kick old
you's butt. What were you thinking right
now? Here's the tougher question.
What are the decisions that present you is making so that
future you will high five you? Hebrews chapter 13 says this.
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content
with what you have because God has said never will I leave you,
never will I forsake you. Keep your lives free from the
love of money. A 2006 study found that somebody
making $20,000 a year will be happier than somebody who's at
the poverty level because they're not worried about where
their next meal is coming from and whether or not they're going
to have shelter. But more money does not
determine a person's level of happiness.
Someone who makes $100,000 more or $100,000 annually is not all
that much happier than somebody making $20,000 a year.
There is a huge difference in salary and a minimal difference
in happiness. The study go went on to conclude
that as a matter of fact, the wealthier people become, the
less happy they become because they spend less time pursuing
enjoyable activities. They went on to say the belief
that a high income is associated with happiness is mostly false.
Today, Americans, American Christians, are in a constant
state of buying things we don't need, to impress people we don't
like with money we don't have, because in so many ways we have
been broken to see our worth through the lens of our net
worth. I think I've told you the story,
but a long time ago I worked at a place out in Oklahoma, and I
worked there many years, But for the first two years, I was a
Wrangler. So every morning I got up.
I know. Picture this.
And I saddled 30 horses, and I trained kids on how to ride
horses. And then I took them on trail
rides. I had boots and everything,
guys. Yeah.
And my feet were dragging the horse when I was riding the
horses. My feet were just dragging
trails in the dirt. And but during the during the
afternoons, we got an opportunity to go play with
everybody else and we were getting ready to go on to the
rec field. And I went to go grab my shirt
and put my shirt on because there's a girl I liked.
And I'd, you know, and I, I wasn't as dialed in as I wanted
to be. And I went to put my shirt on
one of the guys who was a couple years older than me.
So what are you doing? I said, oh, well, I'm putting a
shirt on because, you know, I'm not as dialed in as I want to be
for so and so who's out there. And he goes, Clayton, the kind
of woman you want to marry won't care what you look like with
your shirt off. And that was like one of those
light bulb moments for me. Like what are the things that
are actually going to matter in my life?
It made me think back to when I was in high school.
I'm going to share a little bit more about this next week.
But all the all the fun, cool people in high school were
wearing Abercrombie and Fitch. I don't even know if that's
still a thing, but it was a thing.
And if you know, you know, and I wanted Abercrombie and Fitch
clothes. And if you know Abercrombie and
Fitch, you know that I'm not their demographic.
Their demographic is like 5-2 and malnourished.
And so like I walk into the store and they've got their hip
little guys and I walk in there like me and we were looking all
over the store for something that would fit a guy like me.
And to give you context, their their 2X is like a Carhartt
small if you guys trying to make sure this makes sense to you
guys. And so I bought a sweater.
It was, I think it was about 7580 bucks in 2001.
And I put it on and it was basically a crop top.
And the shirts, the sleeves on this long sleeve sweater stopped
like right here and now just wear it to school in May.
Just sweating trying to get this thing to fit.
I remember wanting Jinko jeans. Glad I didn't buy any of those.
I'd I'd hate myself if I wore Jinko's.
But if you did, don't tell anybody, OK?
You can still come here. Just don't tell anybody because
deep down inside I was willing to spend an ungodly amount of
money to fit in with certain people.
And that is what the world has conditioned us to believe.
It conditions us to think that if we have the stuff, we will
finally have everything else that we're chasing.
It will constantly over promise and under deliver because no
amount of money and no amount of stuff can fill the hole that is
in your heart. Ecclesiastes chapter 5 verse 10.
Whoever loves money and stuff never has enough.
Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.
Said another way, if you love money, you will never be
satisfied. If you long to be rich, you will
never get all you want. When we went through the sermon
series, Weeds in My Garden, you guys, some of you may remember
that we did it a couple years ago.
And when we were going through that series, I had a weed in my
garden. And on Hope Weekend, we had
everybody come up and kind of write their thing down.
And I had a thing to write down too.
And I'm going to go more in depth about this in a future
series, but the thing that I wrote down was that I cared too
much what of what people think about me and not nearly enough
about what people think about God.
I care more about approval from men than I do the approval of
God. And a lot of us have found
ourselves in a similar trap. And so we buy things so we fit
in. We do things that way.
We look like we got it all going right.
But if your friends are only your friends with you because of
how you look, what you wear, what you drive, where you live,
those people are not your friends.
They're blood sucking leeches who are going to pull the joy
and happiness out of your life. And we know this to be true
because we see it in our kids and we go, well, that person is
not your friend and our kids can't see it.
But when it comes to us, we find ourselves trying to keep up with
the Joneses, whoever they are. And if you are a Jones, come
back. It's just, you know the saying,
and I can't help that. That's the name you got.
That's not I didn't, I didn't name you.
So it's your family, actually. But so much of our worth has
been tied up in our net worth. And the God of money wants us to
believe that our significance comes from what we have made of
ourselves. But for Christians, our true
identity is what Christ has made in US.
Our value is found on the cross when Jesus died for us.
But when you worship the God of money, a person's worth is no
longer determined by the cross. Their worth is determined by the
symbol of a dollar sign crossing family.
The God of consumerism will kill you, but the God of heaven was
killed for you. If you try to worship the God of
consumerism, he will kill you because he will take all you
have. He will steal your future, He
will steal your kids future, He will steal your marriage.
He will steal all the margin that you have.
He will consume all that you offer him.
But conversely, the God of heaven came on your behalf.
That means that my value, my purpose are found in a God who
was rich in mercy, So rich in mercy that he was willing to
send his Son on my behalf to die on the cross.
People have walked out on me because of what I've done, but
Jesus ran towards me. People have abused me, ridiculed
me, mocked me. But Jesus was abused for me,
ridiculed for me, and mocked for me.
People told me that I have to change in order to be with them,
but God changed for me. You see, He left his palace in
heaven, took on the very nature of a servant being found in
human likeness, and humbled himself and became obedient to
death, yes, even death on a cross.
John first John chapter 3 says this.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we
should be called children of God, and that is what we are
lavished is. How do I explain lavished?
Hopefully you've all been to Texas Roadhouse and you've had
the rules. People who hate God don't eat
the bread. People who pretend like they
love Jesus put just a little bit of butter on their bread on
their roll. But people who've been saved,
people who've been sanctified, people who have the Holy Spirit
in their life, they know what it is to lavish.
You start piling that that butter on that bread until you
can't see the bread, am I right? And then you let a little bit
fall off into your hand, a little bit of butter.
So that way when you eat it, you get like a butter chaser
lavished. Now, can I contrast two things
for you? Look at how awesome I am.
My house has three floors. God knows the number of hairs on
my head. He knows what how much hair I
had before the shower, ladies. And after the shower, That's I'm
awesome because my vehicle's super cool.
Is it when a Sparrow falls out of a tree, our heavenly Father
takes notice of it. How much more will he take
notice of you? I go on super cool, epic
vacations. Totally fine.
But if your identity is found in your ability to go on awesome,
super epic vacations, what happens to your identity when
there's a downturn in the market?
What happens to your identity when there's a change in the
interest rate? What happens to your identity
then? My identity is found in a blood
stained cross. The Bible says at one point in
time I was an enemy of God, an enemy, and in my state of being
an enemy, He sent his Son on my behalf.
That's how much value I have, that not only did He cleanse me
of my sin through his son Jesus, but He also made me an heir to
the Kingdom and he made me his child.
That is how much He has lavished his love on me.
So my identity is not found in my stuff.
My identity is found in my Savior who has purchased me,
ransomed me, and rescued me. Do you see the difference?
When my identity is found in Him, you can't give me anything,
because all I could ever need is in Him.
If your identity is in your stuff, your identity is found in
things that can be lost, taken away, rust, destroyed, But this
is found in the identity of an unchanging God who holds the
world together, who holds me together.
He is offering us to find our identity in him and when your
identity is found in him, you don't need as much of the other
stuff. I want you to think about that
as we're moving to this time of decision.
There are some of you here watching online and, and you're,
you haven't started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
yet. I just want to level with you.
Instead of spending all of your time and all of your energy to
buy stuff that you can wear around so that way you feel
cool, look cool and all that stuff.
What if you were to do what Galatians says, and I know this
is going to sound weird, but I'll make it make sense in a
second. Galatians chapter 3 says for all
of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ. What if you were to find your
identity not in your stuff, but in a Savior?
What if you were to clothe yourself as Galatians says in
Christ? Being clothed in Christ is like
the letter jacket of the saved. You guys remember letter
jackets, ladies, You remember that guy?
He had a letter jacket. You're like, Oh my goodness.
He's like, you know, he's was a letter winner in all four sports
all four years. Well, he's fat now, isn't he?
Right. He was me.
You should have seen him, but now he's got gout, right?
You have a choice. We can clothe ourselves in
things that will fade away. We can clothe ourselves in
things that will change over time, or we can be clothed in
Christ in a couple months. We're going to get we're going
to unpack this at like a way deeper level, but this is
functionally what's happening. God is allowing you when you get
baptized to be clothed in his son.
You put on his son. Jesus is holy, righteous, pure,
good, kind, faithful, self controlled.
You're putting on him. So when God looks at you, the
Sinner that you are, the Sinner that I am, he doesn't see the
sin, he sees his son. And so when God looks at you,
when your family looks at you, when your wife looks at you,
when your husband looks at you, you have been clothed in Christ.
So you are equipped to be holy and righteous and good and
caring and kind and self controlled.
You have been clothed in him. And some of you are going, yeah,
that sounds great, but I got to get some stuff figured out
first. If you could fix you, God
wouldn't have sent his son to die on your behalf.
This is not about you stitching together a new outfit.
This is about you going, I'm done dressing myself.
I'm ready to be clothed in him. And if you're here today and
you've never started an intimate, personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, you can begin that journey today.
You might have questions that you want asked.
Ask them today. And in just a few moments, when
the people around you start to stand and sing and some of them
come to the steps and pray, I would encourage you to walk
right over there underneath that screen next to the baptistry.
And there'll be somebody there who would love to talk to you
and answer some of the questions that you have to those of you
who already have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
The God of money will keep you from all that God has for you.
And all that God has for you to do, the God of consumerism will
kill you. But we can rejoice in the fact
that the God of heaven was killed for us.
And as Christians, we need to live our lives in such a way
that we don't just honor God, but we reach people for God.
And for a lot of us, the statistics are in most people
who call themselves Christians are not functioning the way God
wants them to function financially.
That has spiritual implications on their relationship with God,
and it has spiritual implications about whether or
not other people will ever find God.
And I think that should change. And so if you're here today and
you're a Christian and you've already been on this journey,
you're already being obedient to God's plan financially, I want
you to pray for people. Maybe you want to come up to the
steps and pray for them because you know the challenge that
they're facing the the step of faith that they're getting ready
to make others of you. You've got serious pain and and
sorrow and struggles and strife going on in your life.
You've got worries and fears. I'm going to tell you, spend
some time on your knees praying that God would give you wisdom
and direction about whatever it is that you're facing, that God
would clearly show you what it is that you're supposed to do,
and then give you the courage to walk it out.
Would you guys stand with me? God, right now I'm just trusting
you, begging you to do what only you can do in ways that only you
can do it. You know exactly what every
person needs right now. So, God, I'm asking you to take
the ground that only you can take to do a work in US and do a
work through us. You know my pray.
Amen.