Kennystix's podcast
Treasuring Christ Together: The North Campus Expansion, Part 2
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God Ministries is available at www.desiringgod.org. Our text this morning is 2 Corinthians 9 verses 6-15. We found in the Pew Bible on page 968. The point is this, whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever so's bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency and all things at all times you may abound in every good work. As it is written, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for all your generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission, flowing from your confession of the Gospel of Christ and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others. While they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you, thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift. Father, I thank you for the way these people by your spirit have ministered to my heart this morning in song and when they open their mouths to praise you with your word. That was a gift to me and to all of us worth millions of dollars. Thank you for it. Now Lord, as I have a chance to open my mouth, I pray that I would be faithful to your word. I pray for humility and love to abound in my heart and I pray for truth to hold sway in my mouth and mind and I pray for a teachable spirit for all of us and for those who have come among us who are not born of God, who are not yet Christians in their heart like the children saying, "I want to be a Christian in my heart," who have never said that, never prayed for forgiveness or submitted themselves to Christ. I pray that this would be an occasion of life and faith and everlasting joy. So come and help me now in all of us and do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all that I can ask or think, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Christ together is a vision for multiplying campuses and planting churches in order to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. It was born out of a need to manage growth and out of a hope to dream new dreams. In other words, there's a pressure on us in the present to manage what's here and there is a possibility out there in the future to lay hold on new things that God might be pleased to do. So it's a dream to multiply campuses and to plant churches in order to fulfill the mission of this church. And on our way to understanding it, we saw last week these amazing Macedonians in chapter 8 of 2 Corinthians, where I should probably say the amazing grace of God poured out on the Macedonians. Remember who they were? You remember what they did? You can picture it almost. The grace came down, verse 1, it brought affliction with it. It did not take away poverty, joy, abounded, in affliction and poverty, and spilled over in lavish generosity, liberality, for the relief of the saints, not as we expected. But they gave, I say, according to and beyond their ability, first they gave themselves to God, then they gave themselves to the people of God. This is an absolutely phenomenal people, these Macedonians, that's what grace does when it comes down on a people. Affliction, hardship, not necessarily material prosperity, nevertheless joy, lots of generosity out of that meagerness, and a lot of giving themselves to each other and to God beyond their ability. That was last week. I love that text, I so much want to be that kind of person and that kind of church. Now today, focus is on verse 8 in chapter 9 of 2 Corinthians, and really it's just going to be on one phrase, though the whole verse is absolutely crucial. Notice the "alls" again. "God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, and then at in every for good measure, for every good work, that you may abound for every good work." So four "alls" and one "every," that's a lot, that's a staggering promise. It's like the promise of Jesus, "Seek the kingdom first, and all these things will be added to you." It's like the promise of Paul over in Philippians 4, 19, "My God will supply all your needs," according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. It's like Psalm 84, 11, "No good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly." I mean, these are staggering breathtaking promises. There it is in verse 8 of chapter 9. Notice the link with last week. Chapter 8, verse 1, "I want you to know the grace of God that was given in Macedonia." Grace, connect that with verse 8. Grace is there for every good work. So there's a link. Grace comes down, joy comes up, liberality overflows, relationships happen, and here grace comes down every time you need it, every situation you need it, all the places you need it for every work. And that's the phrase I want to focus on, every good work. What does that mean? Let's ask yourself now to feel the difficulty of this phrase. Have you done every good work? Or let's ask it as a church. Have we as a church done every good work? Now, when I say that, I know what happens in our brains. Our brains scream out, "What do you mean, every?" I don't even know how to answer that question, because I don't know what you're talking about. Every conceivable good work in the universe, you're all just sitting there listening to me right now. Why aren't you out doing good works? There are good works you could do in this neighborhood, right? So you're not doing every conceivable good work. You're doing this one, but not that one. So what is meant by grace will be there, enabling you for every good work. What's that mean? That's a really big question, because if this promise is going to be laid hold on, believed in, we've got to know what's promising to us. What's the every good work? I'm going to answer it from Ephesians 2.10, I'll just read it to you. Three Christians, where Christians are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, and then you get a defining phrase, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So I take the every good work in 2 Corinthians 9, 8, not to mean every conceivable good work that you might be doing at any given time, but rather the good works that God has ordained or prepared beforehand that we should walk in them, which just changes the question now. How in the world do you as an individual and we as a corporate body decide what those are? That's the challenge of the Christian life, isn't it? Lord, how I just want to do every good work appointed for me to do according to Ephesians 2.10, so that's what my whole life to be just that, which then creates a massive challenge for a person in a church, how do you find out? How do you know? In a little while we'll be starting into Romans 12, Romans 12 begins with that issue, right? Let me see you by the mercies of God to present your body living sacrifice, which is your spiritual service of worship. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. It's all about finding out what every good work is for me, and then this church, and so very practically my question this morning is TCT, one of those, is the vision of purchasing a North campus, and then another campus, and another campus, and another campus, and planting church after church after church and raising millions and millions and millions of dollars over the next 10 or 15 years, one of the every good works that we're supposed to do. Well, I will come back at the end of this sermon and explain how I think the Lord has appointed for us to know that answer, whether that's one of the every good works. But since part of God's way of leading a people is through understanding the issues that they have to decide about, therefore I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes or so unpacking more of what the vision is. So put this all in the context of as a body Wednesday night, probably we will have to make a decision on what the every good works include for us. And you need to have this input for understanding what we're talking about. So I'm going to take my cue now for the next four points from Eric Hyatt's prophetic word, at least I heard it that way, from right over there on Wednesday night, when he said it's a both and not an either or vision, when that landed on me, I just said, yes, if we could all agree that it's a both and and not an either or, what would be left to disagree about is proportion and not the either or. And I think that's right. I think it's a both and vision and will never wholly agree on the proportion, but we can get close enough together to live together and raise money together and we can do this. But if we don't have the both and, if we don't agree with the both and, then we can't even talk about proportion. So let me try to tell you what I mean by this vision being a both and vision. I got four both ends. Number one, treasure and Christ together is both management of growth and pursuit of dreams. The essence of the dreams is the great commission. Jesus said, go make disciples in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the outermost parts of the world. So that would include mountains view and northern suburbs and everywhere else we can reach and the nations go make disciples, which in my way of motivating you, I translate into that mission statement and this vision. Making disciples means spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. You don't call disciples to lukewarmness. You don't say, now what Christianity is out is, let's all come in here and be lukewarm. Nobody evangelizes like that. You say, come in here and get a passion for God. So that's the way we talk about the great commission here, spreading a passion and you don't say, when you do evangelism and fulfill the great commission, you don't say, now I want you to treasure your money or treasure this building or treasure people mainly. You say, evangelism is treasuring Christ, He's infinitely valuable, count everything is lost for the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus and so, treasuring Christ, spreading a passion, fulfilling the great commission, they all mean the same thing to me. Those are just different words of saying what we're about here. Now here's the catch and it's a very sobering thing to me, a person like me. You know what I like to do with my discretionary time and all of my time is discretionary. So is yours. You know what I like to do? I like to study the Bible and preach and teach and write and blow trumpets about God. I do not like to write papers about how to design churches to grow. This is part of the job that I do because I'm expected to do it and you've got to do it and I tried to raise my four sons and I'm trying to raise Talatha to know this. You'll never have a job, all of which you like, ever. Every job you ever get in this world, whether you're a mom or a business tycoon, is going to have pieces to it that you just don't like. So do I. So it's a sobering thing for me when I realize and I wake up five, ten, twenty years into my ministry that if God comes and blesses the dream part of the both end, you're suddenly stuck with the management part of the both end. It involves dollars, it involves buildings, it involves programs, it involves no endless management of this thing called Bethlehem. Now some people just eat that up, which is why we have diversity on the staff and I don't do all of it and believe me, you don't want me to do all of it, I'm not a CEO, I don't like to do that sort of thing. But I got to do some and you got to do some and we got to be a both end people. We have to dream our dream stretch and push and go for the nations and for the suburbs and for the city. We got to go there and win people to Christ and as soon as we do, those kind of elders have to spend a whole evening on structures and programs and budgets and designing. And the elders have spent a lot of time, a lot of time on that. Well both end, we've got to do this. So we are pushing the limits of the Great Commission as far and as hard as we can push them and we are dealing with God's blessing. By the way, this room is just comfortably full right now, it's not squeezy full. But you would help a lot if you could come on Saturday nights to come on Saturday night because this is where the crunch is felt right now. There's plenty of room up north at Northwestern. There's about 200 more seats on Saturday night and these rooms, this service and the next service down here tend to be the fullest and so one way to minister is to do a Saturday night thing. Second both end. Listen carefully to this one, it's the most complicated and maybe the most important. Treasure and Christ together is both incarnated in Western culture and aiming to inspire, equip and send our people to incarnate the gospel in non-Western cultures. Say it again, TCT is both incarnated in Western culture here and aiming to inspire and equip and send people that grew up in this situation to incarnate the gospel in other cultures near or far. Let me try to explain what I mean. I'm trying with this both end to be honest and radical. Here's what I mean by honest. There's no hiding for honest people that Bethlehem is, what adverbs shall I choose, totally, pervasively Western in everything about this church. We are shaped by Western culture, language, what's coming out of my mouth right now? Not just because it's English, but because of the way it's coming out of my mouth. My gestures, my demeanor, clothes. This is Western. Here's their Western transportation, church buildings, they're all Western storefront or cathedral. They're Western homes where you live, apartment building or home you rent or home you buy. Western to the core, food. You can chop around in the twin cities and get a little bit of a taste beyond Western, but pretty much church music, that's a controversial one. Every instrument up here, drums, piano, bass, guitar, keyboard, if it were there, they're all Western. They make Western sounds which sound like noise to a lot of people in the world. I read one time about a man who was brought from Sub-Saharan African country to Zurich and taken to a performance of the Messiah and sat the whole time like this. It's just noise, it's just noise. It's a time, punctuality, service length, leadership styles, childcare, marriage expectations. We are thoroughly Western in this church. The gospel has become incarnate in Western culture and compared to the two-thirds world or the last developed world, this culture is unbelievably wealthy and expensive and rich so that no matter how simple we build it, storefront or cathedral, it is wildly expensive compared to the two-thirds world, for which we should give never-ending thanks. That the dream we have for every culture on planet Earth, that the gospel would be indigenously completely at home there has happened here. What a gift, what a gift and what a danger. So here I'm moving now from the one half of the both end to the other half. The one half is we're Western, no getting around it, you'll never escape it. The second half is we know the dangers as well as the benefits of being able to relax and be Christian in this culture, huge dangers. And we therefore push, we try anyway. Some people would not think we push nearly hard enough, but we push, let me mention two ways against the dangers, one, I call you repeatedly to a wartime mindset and a wartime lifestyle. The reason for that is manifold. One reason is obvious. If you keep your life simpler, you'll have more money to give to things that really matter and you won't buy more toys and spend a lot of money on how to keep them safe and insured. But that's not the main reason. The main reason is we've got to put a governor, somehow we've got to create governors because the pressure, the unique pitfalls of Western culture are consumerism and materialism that are pushing us and pushing us and pushing us to count more and more wants as needs. And pretty soon we're justifying all kinds of things because it's Western and because it's, and we've just gone way, way too far. And so I call us to wartime and I didn't get that out of the blue. I got that from Ralph Winter who got it from living through World War II and some of you might be old enough even to remember the austerity and stringencies of World War I. What did we do? There was rubber that was needed, there was copper that was needed, there was steel that was needed for the war effort and we didn't buy the same and spend the same and do the same during World War II and World War I as when things are in peacetime. And believe me, for a Christian it is always wartime. The consequences are way worse than a bomb exploding. It's hell, it's at stake and Satan our enemy is marauding and doing tremendous damage and we should not live as though it were peacetime spending money as though nothing were at stake here for the kingdom and for the lost and for the poor. So we push, I read that there was a girls basketball game during World War II when they stopped the game to scour the court for a bobby pin because metal like that was precious. Don't know if it's true, I read it but it did put things in perspective for me. The other piece of the and pushing on the dangers of American culture is this. We want not only to call for a wartime lifestyle and a wartime mentality but we want to be radically intentional and this is where Eric Hyatt and his whole team and the whole nurture program but I hope it's true for all of us, radically intentional about thinking through what is skin and what is wine. You with me? Wine skins and wine. What is skin and what is wine so that we cultivate a people who can lay down this skin without losing the wine as they go to Uzbekistan or China or Indonesia or Philips neighborhood with a people group so that the wine of the gospel can be transported and the skin can be laid down. We want to cultivate a people who know this coat is skin. This is really skin. I'm not impressed with the way I dress nor the way you dress nor this architecture. This skin, the piano is skin, roses are skin, drum is skin, pews our skin, green plastic flowers is skin. It's all skin and it can go and the gospel won't go with it which is why we can do missionary work so that when we talk about can we cultivate missionaries here seeing how utterly and thoroughly Western we are. The answer is we have no choice. All missionaries grow up in a culture and they're called to be like Jesus who did not county quality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself and took the form of a serpent. How foreign was the world to Jesus Christ when he came? We didn't say heaven had to stop being heaven in order to get him ready to come to earth. Nevertheless, put a governor on our Western ways and we've got to cultivate a mindset of how much here is skin so that we understand what the wine is when we take it. That's both and number two. Here's both and number three. Treasure in Christ together is both the multiplication of campuses and the planting of churches. Both campuses and churches. Here's the difference between the two. These are groups of people in a place under one eldership no matter how many campuses. One preaching pastor in our way of doing it right now, it's a video, doesn't have to be that way. There may be other ways to do it and there may be ways to share the preaching. It's all open-ended but shared the same preaching team or person, it's me right now, whether it'll always be me of course it won't and the third is one budget. The one budget, constitution, legal entity, one leadership, a church that we plant and God willing there will be many. We have $100,000 in our night, our 2004 budget for church planting. Kenny is talking to 10 church planters right now, North Carolina, Kentucky here and you'll be hearing in the coming weeks more on the local possibilities for you to go out in a church plant from both campuses. What's the difference? Different preacher, I don't go there. Different budget, totally self-contained, they take their money with them. And different eldership, it's an independent reality. So we're saying that Bethlehem right now, it seems, and this you have to judge, this is one of the good works that we're called to do, Bethlehem right now, we're saying as a leadership, we believe is to pursue the dreams and manage the growth with multiple campuses and multiplying churches, both in, not either or. And if you were to ask why the both, why not just do church planting as a way of managing and dreaming and why not do just campuses, I can't answer all of that in this sermon. You can come back tonight and ask that question if you want, but I will give you part of the answer. I'm going to quote his name slips my mind right now. Tim Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York who do church planting and have four campuses. Here's what he wrote about church planting. The vigorous continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy, one for overall growth of the body of Christ in a city, two, the renewal of the existing churches in the city, three, the spread of God's shalom, especially in under-resourced neighborhoods of the city. Nothing else. Now this is an amazing statement. Listen to this. Nothing else. Not crusades, evangelistic programs, social programs, government policies, church renewal programs, nothing else will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. Every leader I have ever talked to across America agrees with that statement. I've never found anybody to say, I think church planting is not a very effective means of doing those things. Doing these things. Here are the five things that you would sell up as to why church planting is so essential if you care about the Great Commission. One, new churches tend to have more of an outward focus than old churches. The bigger and older you get, the more the infrastructure needs attention. We all know this and therefore it's a wise thing for an old church, 133 years old, to be saying, we've got to start new churches, we've got to start new churches because there are hidden ways that we become ingrown and they won't be. Second, new churches tend to pursue unbelievers more than older churches because frankly we can coast and grow. That's not a good thing. Third, new churches demand and raise up lay leaders more than we would hear. You get this size, people have the impression, I can get along without me, and unbelievably gifted people sit there in the pew doing very little by way of ministry whereas you start a new church with 100, 200, 300 people, they've got to raise up. We've got to have teachers, we've got to have leaders, we've got to have all kinds of things. Come on, you can't sit there anymore. Fourth, new churches tend to be more flexible than older churches. Used to be that they would say the Queen Mary, you know, to turn around the Queen Mary, take half an hour, well, Queen Mary too, I just read, can do it with these little, just come out the sign goes, just like this. So that analogy is out the window. We are still the old Queen Mary, we are. And number five, new churches tend to stir up life and vision in older churches, comes back to you, comes back to you, which is why this is kind of an answer to the second question. Why don't you just do growth with church planting? Very, very few. Last night I said nobody and somebody came up and gave me a contradictory example. So very, very few churches around the country have proven that you can manage growth by church planting. God seems to grow a church faster than they can plant churches. And one of the reasons for that is that leadership development takes more time. It's not just sending away pockets of people. It's raising up more and more elders and more and more leaders. So we will try to do both and not either or. We want to be like the way the parishioners talked about Charles Spurgeon, remember the old British pastor from 150 years ago or so in England, in London, he sent away repeatedly, a couple hundred of his people to start new churches. And one of his parishioners said, I read this in a biography Saturday, Friday, the pastor was always pleased when such a battalion left the main army to carry on operations elsewhere. And I would be too. And I pray that God will now begin to breed in us a yearning to do that. Of course, when David prayed that, we wouldn't measure our hopes on the basis of giving units and how well situated our people are to earn money and so on. That's a very important prayer because you know what happens when you plant a church while you're trying to pay for an eight million dollar building up north? They take all their money with them and that's good. That's really good. That's Gideon, right? There's too many people here to pay for this building. Let's get it down to three hundred, not ten thousand. That's Gideon. Well, God can do whatever he wants. I just think we ought to do both and not either or. Here's the last one. Treasure and Christ together is a call both for upfront gifts and ongoing stream of income. Let me see if I can explain to you what's happening financially right now. It's a little different than I thought when we wrote this card up. So you're going to be a little confused, but if you have any brains at all, you don't have to be real confused. Just a little confused. And I'll try to help that go away. We gave this out last week, we're giving them out again this morning. It's pretty simple. There are two kinds of commitments that we feel like would be helpful to have from those of you who feel like this is your church. And I know I'm talking to the downtown people now and I need to make really plain. Don't mainly think we're buying a North campus. Mainly think we're giving to the treasuring Christ together vision the next step of which is that campus and after that it might be another and then another and another and the one that you choose to go to West, East, South and you will be very happy someday that the stream of income doesn't stop. I do not think, oh, downtown people are helping North people buy a church because North people help this church pay for that building we just finished. That's right. That's true. So small to think that way it's structurally a mistake to think that way. Here's what we've done. These envelopes that come in this kind of box if you are a regular attender here and you count this church that you want to support the ministry and mission here you should have a box like this with envelopes in it and then when you put it in you got a little number and you get a mailing from Paul Johnson and use it for your tax returns and things like that. It just simplifies everything in this box or envelopes like this and notice this little white thing here that is these, their peel off sticky pasty things and instead of the old middle line there that said building fun it now says treasure in Christ together. That's all. In order that from now on there's an opportunity on the envelope to say I'm creating with the church a stream of income that lasts till Jesus comes unless God gives us a different vision as a church. This is the difference between what I probably would have said if I had been talking like this three or four weeks ago namely we're buying a campus we need to make a down payment so make your first pledge, line one there and we'll take out a loan and we need to pay that off as quick as we can so make a stream of interest, a stream of income. The difference now is this, we have received gotten a $10 million line of credit from a lending institution at 4.6% locked in for five years. That's remarkable. We can use as much of that money tomorrow as we need or as little of it as we need. So here's the deal as far as your giving goes. If you believe in the vision of buying that campus as the next step in treasure in Christ together, you need to come tonight to ask all the detailed questions about costs and see the drawings and everything six o'clock tonight. If you believe in that, what I hope you'll do and I hope a lot of couples are praying about this and single people are praying is, okay, when does the purchase agreement come to answer May 15? May 15, if we vote on Wednesday night to do this, we will fork out $5.6 million immediately. Now how much of that has to come from the line of credit, you will decide between now and May 15. That's line one here. How much can I give between now and May 15 to bring down the amount we borrow to a smaller number as possible? The other line is unless God causes us to give 5.6 million dollars in the next two weeks, I do not have enough faith to believe he will and so you can pray for me about that. Just be honest, we will have to be able to pay on the monthly amount and of course the goal there is to pay way ahead. No, there's no say, okay, what do we need, $40,000, $30,000, a month on this line item. I mean line of credit. I said, no, don't think that way, let's pay, wait, wait, wait, let's push on this thing until it disappears or until we have to move on to campus number two. So that's my effort to explain the financial situation, it's pretty simple. I think we will buy a campus if you vote yes on Wednesday night, we'll buy a campus for $5.6 million and then we'll pour another couple million into that campus to make it ready for being a church by next February. That's what the present timeline says. And once the loan is taken out or the line of credit is used, then we got to start paying. So what I'm planning to do is talk with Noel and come up with an amount to give the next two weeks that will help keep it smaller and then I'm going to think through, okay, now monthly, monthly, hmm, is there any more that we can do monthly? We skip Pizza Hut once a month or Olive Garden then we've got $15 a month plus that we can put in there. That'd be one way to think for me, you think your way. Now I promised you that I would tell you how God has put in place a means by which we know whether TCT is in the every good deed and now I'm going to close by doing that. Is God calling us to do this? If he is, verse 8 of chapter 9 says, "The resources will be there, it's plain as day. God will give grace for every good work." Now the question is, is this one of those? I believe God will show us the answer to that question by five means. Number one, we as a church have been saturating our minds with the word of God for many years from Romans and other ways and hopefully that word has been transforming our minds to think God's thoughts after him. Second, we have called for extraordinary prayer. There's been a Wednesday morning, Northside prayer about this going on for several months and they've been pouring out their hearts saying, "Oh God guide, oh God guide, oh God provide, oh God open doors." So prayer has been a part of the seeking of this church and hundreds of you without going there have done it on small groups and in families as you've prayed for guidance. Third, you have appointed elders in this church. There's 25 of them and they have studied and wrestled with all kinds of alternative ways of managing growth and doing dreams and they will meet Wednesday night to come up with a final form of what this recommendation will be and God you should pray would be on them as your God appointed leaders that they would lead us a right and third, fourth. The providence of God rules in Mount Zoo tomorrow night at seven o'clock. They could shut us down with one vote. That would be God's doing or they could say go for it and that would be God's doing. All of us submit to the providence of God in our lives and we discern much of the will of God by how he orchestrates our lives in things we cannot control. And finally, you will meet some of you tonight at six to discuss and then on Wednesday night to discuss and vote and you can stop it. So really those are five ways of saying they're five ways to veto this, word, prayer, eldership, providence and people, or more positively if God brings those five together, my confidence will be high. This is included in the every good work of 2 Corinthians 9, 8. And therefore when I take hold of the throne on my face, I will say you promised all grace will be there for this good work, let it come Lord, let it come and I will get up confident that it will come. Let's pray. Lord, a process of bringing a people by your spirit to one mind to say yes to a vision is a beautiful thing to watch and I am eager to see it happen tonight again. Monday night in Moundsview Tuesday night with the elders and Wednesday night with your people gathered and I ask you to come, come and bring to pass your will, works prepared beforehand that we should walk in them and as we close now, don't you look at me? I'm really aware that some of you came in here with burdens and with stresses and frustrations and discouragements and joys in your life that seem to have very little to do with those four both ends and I just want to make sure that you know as you go, verse 8 of 2 Corinthians 9 relates to that, it does, you just bracket all those both ends as you leave and we know God is able to make all grace abound to you so that you in your situation having all sufficiency at all times and in every way will abound for the good works God has for you this afternoon at home and all through this week and if it feels too heavy to make it, I'm going to stand here for the next 20 minutes and pray and prayer team members will join me here so with any one of us, you can come and say would you pray some of that grace down on me because I'm facing something this week that I can't do on my own. Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Feel free to make copies of this message to give to others but please do not charge for those copies or alter the content in any way without permission. We invite you to visit Desiring God Online at www.desiringgod.org, there you'll find hundreds of sermons, articles, radio broadcasts and much more all available to you at no charge. Our online store carries all of Pastor John's books, audio and video resources, you can also stay up to date on what's new at Desiring God. Again, our website is www.desiringgod.org or call us toll free at 1-888-346-4700. Our mailing address is Desiring God 20601 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406. Desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
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