Good morning. My name is Daniel.
I'm one of the lead pastors here at Res Church.
Welcome. If you're new, welcome.
We're excited that you chose today to join us.
We are in week four of a series in the book of Proverbs called
The Way of Wisdom. And we have been looking at the
practical life application of the truths of Scripture,
particularly in this little tiny book called Proverbs.
And last week we covered what, you know, for a lot of people is
a pretty sensitive subject. We covered sex and this week
we're going to cover money and some of y'all are squirming and
like let's go back and talk about sex again because it meant
are they're not a sensitive subject.
I mean, this is a sensitive subject.
I was listening to Pastor Andrew Spradlin over at Valley.
He preached on money like a couple months ago.
And I was listening to this sermon and he started off with
like, man, I'm, I get so nervous preaching about money that I
only do it once a year. And I was like, oh gosh, right.
I was like, well, OK, let's just, let's just open it up and
talk about it. But I don't, I don't think it's
a coincidence at all because we planned this sermon series like
four months ago. I don't think it's a coincidence
at all that here in the midst of a lot of transition and struggle
around finance in our church, that oh, look at this, what do
you know? We just stumble right upon a
sermon that was already planned to talk about what God has to
say about finance. It's almost go with me here.
It's almost as if God is sovereign and in charge, despite
how messy and sometimes dumb we are, right.
OK, so maybe, maybe, just maybe some of us here, elders,
deacons, and maybe even you absolutely need to hear what God
has to say about money and finance today.
And I, I think God has something significant to say because I,
you know, look, there are a lot of opinions about money.
Amen. So, but there's only one opinion
that you should be worried about, and it's not your own.
It's what God has to say about it.
And so the good news is we don't have to guess, He tells us.
And so if you'll lean in today, engage in the word of God, I
think you're going to get some significant things out of what
God has to say about this today. Now, if you get nothing else out
of this whole sermon and you remember nothing else, I want
you to remember this key point that Scripture really will will
tell us throughout Scripture. And it's this, God doesn't want
my money, He wants my heart. God doesn't want my money, He
wants my heart. It's just that I often hide my
heart behind money and that's a problem.
So we're going to start in Proverbs chapter 3.
We'll we'll be covering verses 5 through 10 today.
Let's read together the Lord's word says this Proverbs 3 verse
five. Trust in the Lord with all your
heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways. Acknowledge Him and He will make
straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.
Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
Now we're going to read two more verses in just a minute, but but
I want to stop right here and just look at that first part.
And from from week one in this series, we've been talking about
that it is God who defines what knowledge is, God who defines
what wisdom is. And so again, right here in all
your ways, so in all the practical application of your
life, in all of your perspective about the the the things in
life, your perspective of money, your perspective of sex, your
your perspective of of parenting of life of your life goals of
work. Acknowledge that he sets the
standard, not me, not you lean not on my own understanding.
That's what it's telling you. Be not wise in my own eyes, fear
the Lord that's saying, God, you're right, I'm wrong.
At any time there's a gap between your perspective and my
perspective, I'm going to acknowledge that you're right,
meaning that I'm wrong. And the only way to close that
gap is by acknowledging that he's right.
He's perfect. He sets the definitions and he
sets the standard, and then it says he will make straight your
path. So how do you get that path
corrected? You acknowledge that he's right.
Do you see that? OK, now what does he have to say
about money? Verses 9 and 10 Here's what he
says. Honor the Lord with your wealth
and with the first fruits of all of your produce.
Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will
be bursting with wine. Just two really important terms.
They don't mean the same thing. We're going to look at them here
today because this Proverbs was originally written in Hebrew.
And so the word in Hebrew for wealth, this we use here is
mahoneka, and it means possessions.
It's my stuff. Everyone's got stuff.
You remember the, the scene from Thor where the guy goes, behold,
my stuff. We all have stuff.
Amen. OK, wealth, possession, stuff,
things of substance. So what that word means and then
the second word that we see here when it says first fruits,
there's a Hebrew word here that's being used.
It's to be tabuatuka and it means increase or, or anything
new that would come in. So, so income harvest is kind of
what it's alluding to here for us nowadays, probably just think
payday, right? And they're two different
things. It's all the things you own,
plus the things that come in and, and it's saying in both of
those areas, honour God with my stuff, honour God with my
income. And So what we're going to do is
going to look at it, what that means, What does it look like to
honour God? And, and, and we got to start a
little bit further back for us here.
And here's why. Like we here in America, I don't
know if you realize that this it's yeah, I know it's Oildale,
but still America technically, OK.
We have a really distorted view of ownership and individualism.
This is an incredibly individualistic society.
So, so, so we have like my property, my rights, my
liberties, my money. It's a very Western view, OK,
but it's an especially an American view.
And so we have to start fixing that distortion in Psalm 24.
One, this is what Psalm 24 one says.
It's going to establish a baseline for us.
It says the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof, the
world and those who dwell therein.
So the Bible says like full stop, everything that exists
belongs to God. That's not my car, it's not my
house, it's not my kids. This shirt that I'm wearing, God
owns everything. God, I am borrowing the air in
my lungs. I didn't create it and I don't
own it. God does.
So you don't own anything. In fact, there's nothing in your
life that God doesn't rightly and justly look at and go,
that's mine. We don't like that.
See, you don't have a bank account, God does.
You don't have a house, God does.
You don't have a marriage. God has a marriage.
The the things that you think you have, those are not actually
yours. It's not actually mine.
Say it with me. It's not actually mine.
So, so, so, so that thing in your life that you're kind of
stingy and greedy over, it's not even yours.
So if I don't own it, what is it exactly that I'm supposed to do
with it? You see, everything that you
have, God has given to you in order for you to steward or
manage for His glory, for His pleasure, for His purposes.
You're a money manager for God. Didn't know that, did you?
Didn't even go to school for it. You're a money manager for God.
In fact, you're more than that. You're a talent manager for God.
You're a time manager for God. You're a parent for God.
You're a spouse for God. You're an employee at your work
for God because everything is God's and and you and I are
simply the people he chose to manage those things.
Does this make sense? OK, so that lesson is most
clearly articulated in a story that Jesus tells.
Jesus tells a parable in Matthew 25 called the Parable of the
talents. A talent was a huge sum of
money. It's like 700 and some $1000 in
in the equivalent of what we would look at it today.
And so in this story, there's a master and he he gets 3 servants
and he gives 1 servant 5 talents, it's millions of
dollars. And then another servant, 2
talents, and then another servant, one talent.
And then he leaves it says for a long time.
And then he comes back at some point and here's what happens.
He says give me an account, give me a report on what you did with
my money. And he has an expectation in
that story not just that his money is still there.
No, no, no, no, that his money has been invested and there's
been a return on it. Now, the Bible tells us in the
book of Second Corinthians, chapter 5 that there is going to
be something called a second judgement.
Now, if you are a believer, if you call yourself a believer of
Christ, a Christian, a follower of Christ, we know that
salvation, it's not something that we can earn or did earn.
It's something that is a gift of God.
So, so as a believer, your name is written in the book of life
and there's a judgement coming between the living and the dead.
And if your name's in the book of life, you get to go to
heaven. But there's a second judgement
for those of us who are Christian.
According to Second Corinthians 5, at some point later, everyone
who is in heaven is going to stand in front of Jesus and give
an account for how they managed the resources that God gave you.
How did you invest my money? How did you invest my time that
I granted you? How did you invest my talents
that I gifted you? You're going to give a report.
I'm going to give a report. Think about how that moment
that's coming for us might change how you view a few things
in your life today. Before I buy that new car,
should I spend God's money on this car as God's money manager?
Is this a good investment before I take out that high interest
loan so I can do something that I really want to do and I'm
impatient about getting it done, Is that the best investment of
God's money? What would honor God?
Now, I'm not saying that that that means that you like you
don't ever take family vacations or you don't ever have nice
things. That's not what I'm saying at
all. I'm saying you're managing God's
money. And it means that every
financial decision for a Christian, we should look a
little bit different. We should be thinking about it
because we know whose money we're spending and we know who
we're going to ultimately answer to about it.
Does that make sense? Like do you know how many dumb
financial decisions I've made over the years?
If I could have learned and accepted this perspective
earlier in life how I would have lived so much differently.
Y'all ever been young and have money?
I bought like a motorcycle at 19.
It was a very bad financial investment.
Let's go tell you right now. Especially the speeding tickets,
Like I've spent money on some really stupid stuff in my life
and I've had a, I've had, I'd say for the majority of my life,
I've had a really difficult time even living on a budget.
It'd probably be more accurate to call it a smudge it.
Yeah, some of y'all, some of y'all, I mean, just think about
y'all. Remember how much money we
wasted on Beanie Babies? Some of you young people
laughing, but y'all got some la Boo boos and some of the broke
bank accounts. I went from in my life recently,
I went from making a lot of money to being a pastor, which
is another word for poor. So like my wife and I are
learning how to count like every single dollar.
And, and you know, when I think about how I used to view money,
maybe some of you can relate to this.
Like, like your paycheck comes in and this is the way I would
think my pay, my check paycheck would come in and I would go,
how can I maximize this money for me?
How can I, how can I invest this so that my, I feel secure?
How can I use this for my pleasure, my comfort, my
security? I guess it's just me and one
person in there. Thank you for crowd
participation. But that's not actually the
question that we're supposed to be asking as believers.
The the question we're supposed to be asking is how can I please
God? How can I honor God with what he
has given me to manage? And I'm telling you, you start
asking that question, then it changes everything.
You see, when when I'm the master of my own life, then I
make decisions that please me. But, but, but, but if I've
supposedly surrendered my life to a new master, then I'm
supposed to be making decisions that please him.
So, so then let me ask, let's, let's practically look at how do
we honour God with our wealth, with our possessions, with our
stuff. 2 two things. 22 real fundamental things.
Number one, we invest it in Kingdom purposes, we invest it
in Kingdom purposes. And secondly, we manage it well.
We manage it well. So I want God to look at my
finances and and he does. He's God, by the way, I want him
to look at my finances and I want him to say well done.
When we according to the verse, when we honor God, he blesses
us. That's what verse 10 tells us,
right? In fact, even in the Matthew 25
story, if you're familiar with it, he the, the, the, the
servant that invested the money and got a return, He says, well
done. You have been faithful over a
little. Now I'm going to put you over a
lot, which is a crazy statement considering he gave him millions
of dollars. You have been faithful over a
little Now, now I'm going to entrust you with more.
And I, and here's what I would ask you like right off the RIP.
It made me think about this like man, if I can't manage and spend
my own money well, why would God entrust me with more?
If if God giving me wealth doesn't lead me to honor him,
why would he give me more? In fact, the opposite.
If if God giving me wealth leads me to dishonor him, wouldn't it
be, wouldn't he be a bad dad if he gave me more?
And, and, and I've I've found myself in this position
personally before with my own finances.
Like I, I want God to bless me more.
Let me ask you, anyone in here want God to bless them
financially? Oh wow, look at that weird.
We all have the same one. OK, I want God to bless me more
financially, but I'm not honoring him with what I have
now. So why would he do that?
What's the ourselves in as a church right now?
We have invested so much money and Kingdom purposes recently,
but we haven't paid enough attention and managed it well.
So, so over the past 18 months, the church is giving decline by
36%. And I was thinking about this,
as you know, I think if, if we want God to put us in charge of
more, we need to manage it well. And we haven't managed it well.
If you came to the business meeting last week, we have a, a
Consulting Group that came in to do some audits and help us with
finances. And the CEO of that group's
name, Brad Hobbs, really, really cool guy, loves Jesus, great
guy. And so he led the audit, the
team that did the audit. And when we got on the phone
after the audit was done, he his first thing to me, he says,
Daniel, you guys have overspent doing some really phenomenal
ministry. And he started laughing.
He goes, you spent too much money, but man, you did some
awesome stuff. You just spent it way too fast.
And here's here's my point. Because we didn't pay enough
attention. If we at the church want God to
increase the blessings here at Rez to put us in charge of more
than we need to honor God not only with what we invest in, but
how we manage God's money. Amen.
OK, So then you look at the second part of this verse.
It says if you'll do these things right.
So if you'll, if you'll invested in, in, in wise things and if
you'll, if you'll, you'll keep careful account of it, if you'll
do these things and honor God, it says with what you have it
says and with what your first fruits.
OK, probably not a lot of us living on the barger system
anymore where we're trading like apples and chickens, right?
No, maybe. So let me, let me, let me, let
me break first fruits down real quickly.
It means 1st and best. That's all it means 1st and
best. I'll make it simple.
So, so for thousands of years in the Bible, there's been this
concept of 1st and best in Genesis 4, right after Adam and
Eve get thrown out of the garden.
The very first story is about the first fruits bringing the
1st and best to God. And, and then you flip over to
Genesis 14 and there's this guy named Mikhilzadek and Abraham
gives him 110th of everything. And then just all throughout the
Old Testament and even into the New Testament, there is a
standard that God has established where we, he gives
us everything that we have and then we give the 1st and best
back to him. And in the Bible, that's called
the tithe. The tithe now that used to be
110th of like your flocks or your herd or your, your, your
harvest. And, and for us now that's like
paycheck, right? But the tithe, TITHE, it just
means 110th. That's the actual literal
definition of the word 110th. So what does that look like
practically for my wife and I, we get our paycheck.
We look at the gross total before the government takes its
significant check and chunk out of there.
We, you know, we look at our paycheck and we go, what is
1/10, which is easy math for all of us because we just moved the
decimal point. And then we write a check back
to the church for 110th of what we receive.
It's called our tithe, or our first fruits, or in this case,
our first and our best. Now in the New Testament, it
gets spicy. Because they take the tithe and
they get into some ridiculous stuff where they're like selling
all their belongings and they're selling off possessions and
they're selling off fields, and they're giving all their radical
sacrificial generosity that is supposed to show us Jesus Christ
because of the way Christ lavished us with gifts.
But the starting point in all of that was always the tie, the
baseline for every Christian throughout all of Scripture and
from the early church all the way up here, 2000 years of
church history has always been the tie.
Now then, that leads us into this idea that giving should be
more than just a tie, that should be Holy Spirit LED.
We are called to live lives of radical generosity in response
to the radical generosity that we've received from God when he
sent his son. And So what does that mean?
It means my, my wife and I, we tithe, but then we're
prayerfully considering when God would bring opportunities for us
to be generous, not to the necessarily to the church, but
to, to our neighbor or to a church member or to a brother or
to whomever. Like we believe that God is
going to bring those opportunities.
And our job is to respond with generosity.
And listen, if you've, if you've hung around this church at all,
then you, you've heard all the crazy stories of radical
generosity. Amen.
Like people gifting cars to people and putting roofs on
their houses. And I mean just wildly generous
acts. I've had the absolute immense
joy of being on both sides of that equation, getting to
surprise someone by blessing them extravagantly, and also
being blessed by people who, through the Holy Spirit's
prompting, come and bless my family when when the Bible says
that we should be joyful givers. Let me just tell you from
personal experience, it is super fun to get to bless someone.
Amen. Like the opportunity to just
bless someone who has a need and you get to meet it is actually
just really, really fun. And, and, and it's, and it's
particularly fun to get to show people Christ through generosity
when they don't deserve it. It's actually even better when
they don't deserve it because it shows them how Jesus treats us.
Now maybe we're talking through all this money stuff, right?
And generosity and you're sitting there like, pastor, I
can't even consider these things because I can't even pay my
bills. Like how would, how would I
even, how would I even think about generosity When, when,
when the ends don't meet? That's a great question.
That's a great question because listen, and maybe this is a good
time for the the caveat, this is not a sales pitch for you to
give money to the church. Like this is an investigation on
how God views what he's given you.
And so like, if you're sitting in here like freaking out that
somehow this sermon is going to end in like a call to give a
bunch of money you can't afford, you can exhale now chill out.
That's not happening. My wife and I, when we got
married, we didn't tithe at all. In fact, I'm not even sure we
started giving until after we were married for a little while.
And but we didn't tithe. And that's, that should be that,
that if you knew my, my, my childhood, that that would be a
real surprise to you. Because I grew up in like, I
probably have the greatest testimony in terms of my family
and my parents of God's faithfulness and what it looks
like to be obediently generous than anyone I know.
I grew up in a family of 6 on a single income of $18,000 a year.
And so on, on, on the off day, on the days off, my dad and I
mowed lawns to get enough money to pay bills when I was like 9.
I didn't mow them very straight, but they got cut all right.
And, and, and we were the, you know, we were the family that
like, like other families dropped off bags of food so we'd
have enough to eat on the porch. And I remember, in fact, I
remember more than one of these stories, but one in particularly
my parents had some medical bills and they were going to be
$1000 short that month. Now gross, they made $1500 a
month. So $1000 is like a lot of money.
And they were still tithing. They refused to stop tithing.
And in the mail that month comes a handwritten letter from
someone from another church long ago.
And in it says, I've been praying for you.
And while I was praying, I felt the Lord impressed upon me that
you needed this and it was a check for $1000.
Come on, that's some craziness. This is pretty Internet days.
How'd they know? I remember as a kid, my parents
are crying and I'm crying because that's what you do when
your parents are crying, right? And, and, and, but I knew.
I understood what it meant. And so I grew up under that
testimony, got married, and still didn't tithe.
You know why? Because I am a selfish little
creature. I am a selfish, greedy little.
I didn't want to go through the difficulty of having to figure
out how to live on less. I'm greedy with my money.
I'm greedy with my time, I'm greedy with my energy.
I don't want to do all the hard work to figure out what it would
mean. And listen, it took real hard
work from God on my heart to start trusting him more in this
area. And guess what?
I'm still greedy. I'm just a little less greedy.
Why would I was thinking about the just the the weird
relationship of tithe and doesn't it seem odd that God
gives you all this and says now give 10% of it back?
Like why'd you give it to me in the first?
Like it just seems weird, right? Like I was thinking about it,
why, Why this relationship of wanting 10% back right at the
beginning or this this first fruits idea that this first and
best back? Why does he do that?
And here's here's here's why I want to explain this because I
know it seems weird and you need to understand it.
The Bible says that nothing in this world will grab hold of
your heart like the love of money.
But the love of money is the root of all evil.
It doesn't say money is evil. It says the love of money is the
root of all evil. Why?
Why is that? Here's why.
Understand this because it makes
me think I'm in control. It makes me think I can be God
with enough money. And if we go back to the very,
very beginning of what started this whole broken, fallen,
distorted world, it was a man and a woman who decided that
instead of trusting God, they wanted to be God.
And the love of money does that to you and to me because it's
powerful. And we talked about this last
week. Anything powerful can be
amazingly productive or dangerously destructive.
Listen to me, some of you there that are, you know, here
listening or online watching and you're you're cynical that that
God or the church or whoever, they just want your money.
And actually, no, God doesn't want your money.
He wants your heart. But there's nothing in this
world like money that will steal my affections from God and in no
time at all have me worshiping at the foot of the idol of
wealth. So tithing this, this first and
best, it's not just to help me honor God.
It is God's protection on my heart against a common and
insidious idol. Got to establish this idea of
tithe to protect my heart from the love of money.
This call, this command to honor God is followed with a promise
in verse 10. This is what the promise says.
Then if you'll honor God, then your barns will be filled with
plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine.
That if we will do this, if you'll honor God with your
possessions and you'll honor God with your income, that that,
that their barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will
be bursting with wine. What does that mean?
Let me tell you what it doesn't mean.
It does not mean you're going to become super rich.
You're not going to become like the next Elon Musk.
Now, anyone teaching you that if you give to God, you're going to
be wealthy is teaching you a false doctrine.
And we've actually named that false doctrine because it's been
taught so many times in history. We call it the prosperity
gospel. It's not true.
It's not in the Bible. This isn't about becoming the
next Elon Musk because you honored God with your money.
The point of the promise is God is saying if you honor God with
what you have, you will always have more than enough.
That that's exactly what he's trying to say.
You'll always have more than enough.
That's what Barnes of plenty and vats bursting with wine is
supposed to mean. Do you know the the call to
honor God with your wealth is the only command in all of the
Bible that God says. Test me on this, because
actually on everything else it says we shouldn't test God.
You know why? He's king and kings don't give
suggestions. So all the other commands are
just do this, Do this except for this one, except for honoring
God with your wealth. This is the one he says try me,
try me. Taste and see if I'm good.
Try me. Now let me, let me let me
address. Maybe there's a couple of you
guys here today you're visiting or you just, you know, maybe
you're watching online or what have you.
And and you're not, you wouldn't call yourself a Christian.
You know, maybe you're not into this whole Jesus thing and
you're just kind of checking this out and on everything we're
talking about right now sounds really weird and foreign, right?
I mean, this sounds pretty odd. Let me just give, let me let me
ask you to consider two things. If if you fall into that
category of I wouldn't call myself a Christian.
Let me just ask you to consider two things.
Here's the first the very God who who who created everything
and who is commanding his people to give their first and their
best back to honor him. He, he actually demonstrated
that very idea to us because the Bible says that when humanity
broke relationship with God, we were incapable of fixing the
problem. So God sent his first and best
to us in the form of his Son Jesus to walk among us, to
willingly go to the cross, to die for us so we could be
restored to God. So before God asks you for your
first and best, he sent his first and best to make a way.
Secondly, the God of the Bible is not some some distant God
who's like aloof, some some some mythological Greek God sitting
up in the clouds staring at you and judging you.
He is personal, He is intimate and loving and he cares so much
for us. He cares so much for us that
every part of his rules and his guidelines and his commands are
actually intended to win our hearts and our affection.
This is the God of the Bible. Even his commands are for our
heart. Because God doesn't want my
money, He wants my heart. And if you don't have a
relationship with him, I want you to know that He loves you
and he's calling to you. He is wooing you to him.
How is he wooing you? Well, you're here, aren't you?
Or you're watching this. You're listening to this sermon.
Why are you listening? The very God who teaches about
generosity demonstrated that generosity first.
And while we were yet enemies of God, His Son came and died for
us. When God saved me, I wasn't
looking for God. I didn't even like God.
I was running from God. But man, he got long legs, and
he chased me down in my sin, and he's calling you, He's chasing
you. Will you respond to him?
The Bible says you can in Romans 10/9 and 10 Because if you
confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you can be saved.
For with the heart 1 believes and is justified.
With the mouth 1 confesses and is saved.
You can stop running from God today.
You can surrender to him today. And I want to give you that
chance in in these closing moments of our service.
Will you bow your head and close your eyes if you're willing to
ask God for forgiveness and salvation with every eye closed
and every head bowed, just quietly or or or silently repeat
this prayer after me. Jesus, I know I'm a Sinner and I
can't save myself. I want you to save me and adopt
me into your family. I surrender everything to you
and I receive your promise of eternal life.
Be my Lord, please Jesus, if you prayed that prayer for the very
first time right now, would you be brave and raise your hand for
me to see? Thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you, thank you. You can put your hands down.
Thank you in Jesus name, Amen. OK, real quick, look up here.
If you just committed your life to Christ for the first time,
welcome to the family. Just a moment as we respond to
this sermon. They're going to be tables in
the back. They say I raised my hand.
There can be people standing there.
They want to celebrate with you. They want to pray with you that
the the the road of discipleship.
That's the road of following Christ from this moment on is a
long road takes a lot of Bible and a lot of black coffee and we
want to walk it with you. So when we respond in just a
minute, I want you to get up. I want you to go back to that
table. I want you to talk to them so we
can start walking this walk with you.
Now, how do you and I put a sermon about God's perspective
of money into practice in our lives?
What if this week you asked a couple questions of yourself
about your finances, about whether or not they honor God?
So here's the first simple question from here.
Am I tithing? Am I tithing?
Am I giving my first and best back to God?
In the United States? This study was done just this
spring. In the United States of America,
there are 247,000,000 professing believers. 247 million people
say they're Christian in the United States.
Of that 0.6% tithe. I'm, I'm pointing that out
because we live in one of the wealthiest moments in history
and you live in one of the wealthiest countries in history.
And so this idea that if you just had more money, then you'd
start being obedient to God as baloney because God, we have
plenty of wealthy Christians in this country and they ain't
tithing. It's going to take a lot more
than that. You know what it's going to
take? It's going to take a very
intentional faith and it's probably going to take moving
your smudget to a budget. You're going to have to plan for
it. Second question, do I have the
margin to be generous? Do I have the margin in my
prayer life when God begins to move and the Holy Spirit begins
to prompt me to an act of generosity towards someone?
Do I even have margin baked into my budget so that I can do that?
Well, that would be nice, wouldn't it?
You have to plan for that. You have to be intentional about
that. Third question, You don't have
to write all these down. I wrote them down for you. 3rd
question, am IA good steward of my wealth?
Am IA good steward of my wealth? Is God honored by my money
management? I, I was talking to a guy, this
is years ago and, and he was like, yeah, I'm going to buy, he
was going to buy a $35,000 Harley, right?
And so I'm talking, I'm like, OK, you know, like that's a,
that's a big, you know, and he's like, yeah, he's going to help
me reach people for God. Now, here's the thing.
Look, maybe I don't know, he doesn't have to answer to me,
but he's going to have to answer am IA good steward of my wealth?
Does it honor God? Now, if the answer to any of
those three questions for you this week is no, or I'm not
sure, maybe I don't. Maybe I don't have a good
financial margin. Maybe I don't feel like I'm a
good manager. It doesn't honor the Lord.
Maybe 3 suggestions to consider how you might address that, to
take steps. Here's the first start small,
but be disciplined. Again, test God.
He wants you to test him. Start small in generosity, but
be disciplined. Second, even more practical,
sign up for a financial management class that we're
going to offer in the fall. You can Sign up today.
I'm going to definitely take one of these because I need help
moving my smudget into a budget. And maybe you do too.
So you can sign up for a financial management class.
We're going to be offering these in the fall.
Third, open yourself up to accountability.
You know, we talk about accountability in every other
area of our life. If I'm, if I'm struggling with
sexual temptation, I, I, I get accountability in my life.
I, I put an app on my phone and I, and I, and I put limits on,
on the Internet or I do whatever is necessary.
Radical accountability if necessary to ensure that I have
people helping me in this process.
Why not with finances? Why not with finances?
So go to your small group, go to that accountability partner, go
to that mentorship group and say, hey, I need help with this.
I need accountability. Don't do it alone.
Those are things for you to prayerfully consider this week.
All right, will you stand with me?
We're going to close this service with with a song.
And as we sing, our prayer team is going to come up here.
Now, we love praying for you. And I've told you before, it's
not weird to get prayed for. It's weird to believe that
prayer works, but then not want to get prayed for.
That's weird. So don't miss an opportunity as
we close the service to be prayed for.
If you need to be prayer for healing, if you need prayer for
some situation in your life, you need prayer for relationships,
you need prayer cause prayer is just generally a good idea.
It's a prayer checkup. Let's go.
We want to pray for you. You move as the Lord leads.
I love you.