Inland Empire: Riverside
The Grace of Giving - Audio
to seeing after we have just taken communion. Every week we do that. We stop and we take some time out of even our worship service to specifically focused on what being a Christian, what the crucifixion of Jesus means to us personally, and how we do that really means a lot to God. So the song that we're seeing that Your loving kindness is better than life. It's a time for us to acknowledge, to recognize God is intimately involved in our life, and He wants us to feel that, He wants what we do, not just here during the couple of hours that we gather together, but He wants what we do in our lives to be a reflection of our adoration for Him. I remember when I was about 13 years old, 12 or 13, my dad was the biggest figure in my life, and my parents were both pretty aggressive people. They were both class A personalities, and you knew when my dad was coming into a building, and he was relatively loud, he was precarious, he was not shy about anything. And I can remember being in high school, my dad was the superintendent of schools and the state superintendent of schools, I can remember literally when my dad would be coming down the hall, people would move to the side of the halls. It was almost like the waters were partying as the Intimidator was coming down the hall, and everybody else was a little intimidated unless they really knew him, because he wasn't one of those really warm cuddly people that you'd make a teddy bear of in some mall. He was more the guy that you thought, "Oh, when he came in the room, you want to check to make sure you were doing whatever was you were supposed to be doing." But to me, he was dad, and when I was turning at 13, I remember specifically I'd been working at a job for the last four years, and I had saved up a substantial amount of money, at least to me it was substantial, but it was either for his birthday or for Father's Day, I wanted to get something that would communicate to him how much I respected him, how much he meant to me. And there was a little ritual that we had together that we did every week. Every week on Sundays, my parents were spiritual people, so I didn't grow up. Unlike Darrell, I wasn't voted the most nerdy, I was voted the most likely to be incarcerated. I wasn't raised in a spiritual environment, but one thing you did, and I did do every Sunday, we'd rush football together, and while we were watching football, he would always polish his shoes. He was very meticulous about wearing suits all the time, he wore a suit every day of his life, I think, but on every Sunday, while we were watching football, he would polish his shoes, and so I started thinking about what I could get that would communicate not only how much I appreciate, but would also connect the two of us together, and this is what I bought him, it was a shoeshine kit. Now, it doesn't seem like a lot, but I bought this for him when I was 12 or 13 years old, and at that time, I think he'd probably open it up, and I don't know what he thought. But I know this 24 years ago, when he was on his deathbed, this month, Livy and I had gone out to visit him in Phoenix, and he was dying, and 16 years after I had given this to him, one of the things he did was, I was 29 years old, had never been held by him in my life, and he wanted to do two things, and number one, he asked me to get this shoeshine kit, and he was pretty frail at that point, he was sitting in a rocking chair, and he asked me to pull his shoes with him, and so I sat there with my dad, knowing he's going to die, and we shined our shoes, and at the end of that time, he pulled me into his lap, and I didn't even know how to respond to that, I was 29 years old, I had never experienced anything like that in my life, and when he was holding me, he wanted me to know that he was proud of me, that he believed that the decisions I'd made, the choices I'd made to become a Christian, although he never chose that for himself, they were right. A month and a half later he was dead, when we were going through his things, the only thing I wanted from his estate was this box, because it was a reminder to me of the relationship between my father and me, every week when I shined my shoes, I remember my dad, and I think about the impact he's had on my life, every week when we come together here, the reason we come together is to remember our father, I want you to think about the lyrics to this song, "God is so good," literally it says, "God is so good, he cares for me." He answers prayers, "God is so good, isn't he? Don't you believe that? Don't you believe? God cares for you, don't you believe that he hears you when you cry out to him? Don't you believe in the silence of the night when you're feeling alone, his presence can comfort you, consider all the blessings that you have, because you became a Christian, and one of the things the dad said to me was that he knew he didn't have to worry about me because he could see the people that God had put in my life, and he was referring to the people in the church, the Christians, and the truth is, when I first became a Christian, they were not really happy about the Christians, but as I began to see the influence, the impact these people were having on my life, one of the things that gave him security in his dying was to know, "I had those kind of people in my life, I have those people, because God is so good to me, he cares about me, he hears me, and he answers my prayers. God has an amazing giving heart. In my entire life there is no one who has reached out to me and given so much to me the way the God has, he constantly is communicating in whatever way he can, just how much I mean to him, and like any father, God desires that you and me, that we, as his children, would imitate him. What does he want? Why does he gather together? Why does he want us to remember him? Because he wants us to become like him to feel, to see, and to think the way that he feels and sees and thinks, "God wants you to be little God, he wants me to be a little God, he wants us to be living reflections of him." Look at your Bibles 2 Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 1, "And talking to the church in Ephesus," and Ephesus was a very prominent church, Paul says this, he said, "Be imitators of God, literally live as if you were God, not be arrogant like God's of the mess, but to be imitators of God, to become little God, to think like God. Be imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children, and live a life of love." Why? God is love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Jesus' gift to us was given to communicate to us, and it's interesting because years ago gifts were meant to be a form of communication that a person would give a gift as an expression of their adoration. What's happened today is gifts have become an obligation. They've gone from communication to obligation, and so what we see happening now is even in the stores, we want to make the gift giving easy. You can go through the checkout, you don't even have to go into the body of the store. You can literally just go for a gift and get a gift certificate or a little prepaid gift card, and you don't even have to write out a card, you can buy one, just sign your name, put down your twenty-five dollars, hand it, and then you're communicating your adoration. But there was a time when the quality of the gift, the quantity of the gift, was meant to show how much an individual meant to us. And so what did God do? God gave his son! What a communication! The most precious thing he has! The Bible tells us that God is a jealous God! That's not an ugly and a mean thing, what that means is that God longs for that connection, that relationship with us so much, that the idea that we might give attention or affection to someone more than him causes a reaction. Why? Because God loves you and he loves me so much that he wants us to be like him, and what was he like? He gave everything to you and me. And so what we're doing here is really meant as a communication, not as an obligation. What we do every day is meant to be a communication, not an obligation, but Satan messes with our heads and he tries to turn that around. And you know, there's a lot of ways that we can give. You can give spiritually by coming in here and allowing your heart to let go of all the business in the world and just connecting. You can give emotionally, but just a look, just communicate. It's great to see you. You can give mentally by taking time to think, by taking time to study, to read out, to try to understand more. You can give physically in an embrace, or in helping, or in serving, or in simply making space for someone to sit down. I want you to think of some of the ways that you can give. And I want to say up front, I appreciate so much. We've got so many people that serve in so many ways in this church. This is one of the most giving groups of people I've ever had the privilege to be a part. We have people serving in small group leaders' capacity, the music ministry spends hours trying to help our atmosphere of worship, people in our children's classes, people on the board, people doing an administrative thing. I'm grateful to be a part of this church, I'm proud of the church, I'm proud of bringing friends here. I like it when I see someone come from even one of the other sectors, I feel good about what they're going to experience here. I like the fact that I'm a part of a church that is not so self-focused that we're just worried about building our own thing, but we're giving sacrificially, not just physically but even financially. I'm grateful to be a part of a church that sees the value in developing a teen ministry and a pre-teen ministry, the campus ministry and in the edge ministry for so many years. Those people have felt so devalued as if they were just kind of vestigial appendages. If you don't know what that means, it means organs that really don't have much function. It's like the nickname membrane on your eyelid, in case you were wondering. And now for them to start feeling no you're valuable, you matter to us. I want to focus today on the whole concept of giving to God, giving back to God, and I want to talk specifically about financial, giving back to God, because it's something God talks about, and quite frankly, we've done such a great job in so many ways for a significant period of time, but we're needing to re-examine this because we're not fulfilling our responsibilities, not just to a budget. I don't care about the budget as much as I care about the communication that we're having with God. I believe that when I look at this, there's an emotional connection because the gift reminds me of who it was given to. That's how I want what we do here, to be with God. I want God to look at us and feel like my dad felt like he just wanted to pull me into his lap with his last breath and affirmed me well done, good and faithful servant. Why? Because he loved me so much. If you're visiting with us, I am so grateful for you coming out. I want you to know we are people that are devoted not to a doctrine but to a divine being. We love God, because he loved us first. Whenever you're trying to understand things, there are six questions that you typically look at. Who, what, when, where, and why, and how, and we're going to do that with this whole concept of giving. And I want the spirit to really move with us in here. Paul tells the church at Corinth that just as you excel in everything in faith and speech and knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us, see that you also excel in this grace of giving. Learn to give good gifts. Learn to communicate. Learn to not be obligated, but learn to take what you're doing and have it be some that leaves an impression and an expression that causes God to want to just pull us into his lap and hold us. Grace, the word means God's special favor. Do you feel God's special favor in your life? You say, "Well, it's going to be tough." That's not really the question, because life is tough, and then you die. But that doesn't mean that you aren't experiencing God's special favor, a special expression of his presence in your life. The word grace comes from chaos. It means an undeserved favor and blessing from God. Are we really that prideful that we think we deserve all of this? When my dad was talking about the people in our life, I didn't say, "Yeah, finally got what I deserved," then there wasn't even been a recognition. This is unbelievable that the quality of relationships God has placed in my life is so powerful and so impacting than even an unbeliever who's about to die, take security in that. Undeserved, unmitigated grace, well, what do the scriptures talk about giving? I want to just kind of go through and kind of so that you don't feel like we just focus on one area, and the books of Moses and Genesis chapter 4 is the first real significant discussion about giving, and it's interesting that it wasn't God calling someone to give. It was simply literally can't enable choosing to give for whatever reason, and we really don't know the reasons behind it because there is no indication that there had been an institution at this point of sacrifice, but for whatever reason, there was a desire to express something, but in verse 2, this is later talking about, "Later she gave birth to his brother Abel, and I able kept flocks, came and worked with the soil." In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord, which is a good thing. He wanted to get a gift whenever you recognize or get an alert that someone's birthday. It's good that you want to give a gift, but remember, gifts are not meant to be obligations, they're meant to be communications, and I believe that in my own life, I've kind of lost some of that specialness, and it's been more compelling or easier to just do the convenient giving, but it goes on and says, "But Abel brought fat portions from some of the first born of his flock." The Lord looked with favor on his Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor, God, it's like literally, someone handcrafted you something, gave the very best they had to offer, which is, by the way, what God did for you. He gave you Jesus, and when you give someone an awesome gift, don't you want them to really recognize that it's awesome? And so in his giving, Abel's gift communicated to God, what? But the gift meant something to him, Cain's communicated an obligation. It wasn't so much the gift, as it was what the gift said, that may God respond. God didn't look with favor, so Cain became angry. So many times when the quality of our gift, the quality of my gift gets questioned, my response is a boy, I need to really examine my gift. Instead, to offer my response is like Cain, why are we talking about this? And we get negative, and we get critical, and you know we're in that game, to killing Abel, who is totally innocent. That's what Satan wants us to do, he wants us to understand that the whole institutions of offering is an act of communication, and God set the stage in the standard. Deuteronomy 8, verse 10, and following to the Israelites, when they are getting ready to have the law given to them. And literally says just remember, remember everything you have, it's for me. Remember what it was like to come out of Egypt, remember, I have been with you, I've been in your presence. The book of history in 1st Chronicles 29, as David is preparing to build the temple as a communication of love and adoration to God. His expression is, who am I that I even have this opportunity? It's a recognition that even being able to do this is an honor that he doesn't deserve. In the books of poetry and Proverbs chapter 3, verse 9, literally he says to honor God with your wealth. Does what you do with your wealth show honor to God? You say, well I'm not burning made off, that's not really the issue. The issue is all the blessings that God's given, how he's allowed us to make our living. Does it in turn turn around, and by its very nature what we do is show that we believe God gave us the gifts and the talents. Major prophets, Isaiah 19, verse 21, God says that he will bring the people up to his mountain to make himself known to them that they might worship him. He literally wants them to come into his presence to understand who he is, that our God is so good that our God is so awesome that what it will produce in them is a desire to communicate adoration to us because he's showing his adoration for us. The minor prophets of Malachi, the single period of time in the Bible when there is an absence of the voice of God is because God recognized that what people were bringing to him was a mockery. It didn't honor him and God is a jealous God and I'm not sure that I can understand his whole mind but I do know this for five centuries, God was silent, that the people bringing blemish offerings left over stuff to him, caused God to feel some things. Then in Matthew, or in Mark chapter 12 in the New Testament in the Gospels, verse 41, said Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money in the temperature. Jesus who now came as the communication from God after five centuries of sight sits down and he's watching the communication from man. He's watching as they're giving in to the temple treasury, many rich people throw in large amounts and we've got people who give very significantly and very sacrificial but Jesus is watching for the communication. But a poor widow came in and put in two very small copper coins worth only a fraction of Pentecolle and his disciples do. Jesus said, I tell you the truth, this poor widow's put more in the treasury than all of his. They gave that of her wealth but she had of her poverty put in everything she had delivered. The communication is God is so great. God is so great. In the book of Acts and Acts chapter 4 verse 32, there's a great example because it says the people together and had all things in common, sharing with anyone as they had me. In chapter 5 verses 1 through 11, there's a terrible example where Ananiasim Zephyr had plenty to give and committed to give but then they held back. In the letter of the churches in 1 Corinthians 16, God literally through Paul tells the church to set aside each week something as an expression of communication to God how we recognize that God's blessed in our lives. In the 2 Corinthians chapters 8 through 9, the whole chapters he's talking the same church about the fact God wants us to be generous. He wants us to lavish on God our communication of appreciation and affection. In the letter and the epistles in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 17 and 19, he says literally that we should not put our hope and our wealth. I watched a subtle shift in this in the church several years ago. Instead of our confidence being in our relationship with God, we started believing that having the security of a home, that would produce security in our confidence voice. Everybody wanted to buy houses, how's that worked out for us? He's always trying to get us to take off of our security from God and place it on somewhere else. Where do the scriptures talk about giving throughout the entire Bible? Why? Because it's an important thing for us to understand. God wants us to be like him and God's a giving God. Amen. Number 2, who should give? Let's look at who's called to give in the Bible in Deuteronomy 16, 16. He says three times a year, all your men must appear before the Lord. Your God at the place he will choose. All men. God literally says, I want everybody. Now, who does it include? Everybody. People that are really doing well financially, yeah, what about people that are struggling? Yeah. God wants everybody. It's not because he's worried about making the mortgage. It's because there's something about giving that helps us. Something about giving that gets us off of ourselves and focusing on others. He literally in that same passage says no man should appear before the Lord empty handed. God would shock you how many of us in here week in and week out give absolutely nothing. You say, well, I don't have much to give. Give something. You're communicating. Say, well, I'm older, I don't have any to give something. Why God is so good and he wants all men to give. In Mark chapter 12 verse 41 through 44 makes it clear that he wants not just the rich, but the rich and the poor to give. Some of us have through the economic downturn and the difficulties that we've found ourselves in, we've stopped giving because we feel the hardship of choices that we've made. Our mindset is, well, when we fix it and we're flush, we'll give and it's been year after year after year and we're not flush out. Do you wonder why? First Corinthians 16 verse one, now about the question for God's people, do what I told the Galatian churches to do. And by the way, those churches were not in a good economic situation. They were severely struggling. On the first day of the week, each one of you should set aside a settlement in keeping with his credit debt. No. In keeping with his income, saving it up so that when I come, no collections will have to be made. Second Corinthians eight to that of the most severe tough, they're overflowing joy and they're extremely well up and mysterious for life because they were communicating to God. It may only be two small copper coins, very worth of penny, but that woman was communicating to God. No, I don't have a lot, but what I have, I have because of you. Who should give everyone? Every person in this room should be giving every week to God. Every one of us. Why God is so good. Number three, what are we called to give? Why I want to start off with this, to begin with, we're called to give something literally when I see the printout in so many of our small groups, there's a reflection from what the leader does to what everybody else does. We influence each other, we affect each other. The number of people that give nothing would shock you. If we could just put it up on the screen, block out the names, you would be shocked. It's almost more people not giving than there are people giving. Three times a year, do it around me, 16, 16, it says, all your men need to appear before the Lord, three times a year. First Corinthians 16, one says, on the first day of every week, but let's look at some other passages in the Old Testament, Proverbs chapter 3 verse 9, honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruit of your crops, in the language in Hebrews, it literally refers to giving the first amount, the first place, the first time, the first nor. Now before you give to anything else, before you pay off Citibank, before you pay off credit cards or Verizon, as a first thought, show God how much you love God. And in verse 10, it says, in your barns will be filled to the overflowing, it's a conditional clause, so many of us are still in the same financial straights we remember for, why? Because we haven't done what God said to do, express him, communicate to him that you love him, because he's a jealous God, he's a loving God, and you want him to say well done good and faithful servant. And I look at chapter 3, he says, bring in the whole tithe, that there may be food in my house, test me in this as the Lord, and see if I don't throw up in the floodgates of heaven, I've had job after job that doesn't pay and it doesn't pay and it doesn't pay, I just can't give, and I don't understand why I can't do the better job, who do we trust, do we lead on our own understanding, or do we listen to the Father? The example of giving a tithe or 10% comes from the Old Testament, but we really misunderstand what that means, it's not a financial offering. If it were the verse in Malachi chapter 3 verse 10, it would say bring your tithe, not bring the whole tithe. The Hebrew word masser means literally to set aside a tenth of your possessions, it's to set aside something in the reflection of all that you have. It is honoring God with our wealth, although it's not required in the New Testament, there's an even greater guideline in the New Testament. When I was growing up as a Christian, I was taught, and I've always taught people that you give the God, you ought to start it at the baseline, which was what the Old Covenant was, and that's a tie, but that's not the standard to shoot for, it's the basement to start from, that in reality, we ought to give more and more. You say that we are living in the Duke counties and the country, there are some of the most repressed counties in the country, who was Malachi written to? The book of Malachi was written to a bunch of Jews who were returning from exile, they had nothing, God had wanted us to remember Him, He wanted us to put our faith in Him, in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, Paul and talking about how some of the people that he had been around to give, and he said first in verse 5, they gave themselves first to the Lord, and then God wants us to do what we do, because we're doing it for Him, whatever you do in order indeed, Colossians says do it all in the name of the Lord. You might say that the small man I give won't make a difference, it's not the amount, it's the gift, this was not the most expensive gift that my dad got, but it was a communication, it was a communication that with what I had, this is what I could do, and I wanted him to know, it had meaning beyond just the box, Satan is a father of lies, and he tries to tell us that we don't have anything to give, he tries to tell us that you look at the people around you, they've got more than we do, well maybe we should start comparing ourselves with the rest of the world instead of the rest of the wealthy, maybe we ought to compare ourselves to the first century brothers and sisters who it was written to, we've been so blessed, we're careful about bringing brothers and sisters from the Middle East over here, because it tends to mess them up, they come over here and they see the opulence that we live in, they walk into the stores and they're just blown away from my hometown, I've got some friends that are lifelong friends of ours and they're very wealthy, but they came out here and go and grocery shopping with us, they're just amazed at how many different kinds of peppers we have. We've got a delusional perspective on just how much God's blessed us, fourth winner we asked to give, first strength in 16 ones says very simply on the first day of the week, and I want to challenge you to make a decision you're going to give every week, here's one of the other things that comes up pretty consistently is that people will be out on vacation, I appreciate people being gone on vacation, but when they're gone they don't either forget to give or they don't make it up, and so every time someone's out you watch and there's a blank spot, we would never think of saying to AT&T, sorry that was the month we went on vacation, get over it, that's just laughable to us. Yet we do that to God and don't even think about it, 2 Corinthians 9 verse 1 says there's no need for me to write to you about the service of the saints, for I know your eagerness to help and I've been boasting about it from Macedonians telling her since last year, you and okay we're ready to give, and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action, we need to make a decision that we're going to support the special offerings that come up because it literally helps produce opportunities for people to become Christian, all over the world, but more than that it inspires other people to give, to get out of themselves and to give, and LA has been one of the best examples of that overall, over 80% of hope worldwide's budget comes from five churches, of those five LA is the biggest giver, but we've got to see that what we do and how we do it, people watch that, and then there is just those times when someone comes up and they're in need, when it's not on the skull, so we say well I'm getting so and so who's in need, so I don't have to give the God, or we try to say no, giving to one negates the other, that's not how God looks at it, when should we give weekly annually, and as there are needs, I want to stop for a moment and talk about when should we start giving, because parents, can you imagine raising your child not to get up and give people a hug or say hi to them until they were in college, can you imagine putting their food down and not wanting them to say thank you until they're an adult, we start teaching them in every other area from the time they're babies, we want them to know mommy loves you, daddy loves you, but we also want to know do you love mommy and do you love daddy, when our children were growing up, they were always expected to give, when Jake was two or three years old, we sat down as a family and had a family devotional and decided that for Christmas we weren't going to be buying each other presents, instead we were going to take the money we were to spend on each other and we were going to buy gifts for other people, and so my children grew up thinking that's what Christmas was, now they still get maybe one gift, I want them to have a heart that gives, why because that's how God is, but I do want to talk about some things I've seen that I think are foolish, taking out money from credit card debt to give or putting it on a loan, I think you got to be really careful about stuff like that, my opinion is do not give money from a loan to college loan, what about from a grant, my advice is if you're willing to cut out something else that you would have done, like maybe you're not going to go to Starbucks and buy lattes, then you could maybe give the money you would have spent on a latte, but don't be irresponsible with it, what about money that your parents give you, I would say the same thing, if it's money that someone's giving you and it's going to meet your needs, if you're willing to sacrifice something that you're sacrificing what they were offering to cover, that's different in my opinion, but these are opinion things, what you give from what you earn, absolutely, everybody in here should give from what you earn, well I'm retired, then give from your retirement, that's a gift too, questions when should we start, I'm going to give you a very simple recommendation today, right now, why should we give, God doesn't need our money, Psalms 50 verse 9 says, I have no need of a bull from your stall or goats from your pins, for every animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills, I know every bird in the mountains and the creatures of filerman, if I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you for the world is mine and all that is in it, God doesn't need for us to give to Him, then why does He answer to for our benefit, Deuteronomy 8, He set the stage for this when He said you have eaten and her satisfied praise the Lord for what He's given to you, it's to remind us about God and how good God is, verse 17 of that passage says you may say to yourself my power and the strength of my hands have produced this well for me and quite frankly that's how some of us live, this is mine and we are so stingy, it scares me sometimes to think of what collectively we could be communicating to God, I think God has blessed us so richly, we need to give back to Him for our own sake, it reminds us of our blessings, it reminds us that we're tempted to turn and trust things in the world that don't last, it reminds us that God has given us the skills and the ability to be voted the top nerd, every week we gather to remind us of how good God has been to us personally but we also need to give other people the chance to become Christians, how many of you became Christians here in the LA church in the last 10 years, go ahead hold them out, look around, do you know that the LA church was a planning that came from San Diego, that all of the money, all of the people came from San Diego, Phoenix, Denver and multiple churches, the amount that we've been given to through the years, there is no church maybe in the history of the world that has had more churches and more people invest in giving to us, we have the most mature staff at our leadership conference recently, someone said that they were figuring the combined years of experience on our senior staff and it was over a thousand years of experience in ministry, all of that came from other churches and other brothers and sisters taking up special contributions to sacrifice us so that we could have what we have here and it has produced an influence and an impact on churches all around the world, God has multiplied that giving over and over and over and over again, we need to give so that we can meet the needs of the poor and I appreciate what we have done at Center Hospital, if you have never had a chance to even look at, you have to go on the website and think about, in Panampan, those people receive whatever treatment they need for free, there's an AIDS clinic in Africa, the you and I are part of supporting the people there with a continent that is so populated with people dying of AIDS they get help for free, what about Abjan or Haiti, the disaster relief, it's good for us to pitch in and help, why God wants us to be like God and God is giving and God hears our prayers, how much should we give, you're going to have to go back and look at some of the Old Testament examples and Deuteronomy 16 verse 7 says, "Bring a gift and proportion to your wealth," and Proverbs 39 says, "Honor the Lord with your wealth, Malachi says, "Bring the whole tithe, but you sit down and you figure out with a clear conscience before God recognizing what he's done for you, what you ought to give." Zacchaeus in the New Testament, in Luke 19 verse 8 gave 50% of his net worth and four times anything that he had taken from anybody, the poor widow we looked at and marked you after 12 she gave 100% of her disposable income, the rich young ruler who came before Jesus and said, "What must I do to get into heaven?" Jesus' response to him was to give 100% of your assets, liquidate everything, give it to God, why? Because that's what you're trusting in. And he turned and walked away sad. You know the 10% of the Old Testament doesn't look so bad after all when you start looking at what was expected by Jesus. Saint Corinthians 9 says, "Each man should give cheerfully, do it cheerfully, not be grudgingly, this isn't an obligation, it's an opportunity for communication." I want to read to you, Saint Corinthians 9, 7 from the Amplified Version, "Let each one give, as he's made up in his own mind and purposed in his heart, not reluctantly or sharply or under compulsion, for God loves. He takes pleasure and he prizes above all other things and is unwilling to abandon her to do without a cheerful joyous prompt-do-it-giver whose heart is in his giving." Acts 20 verse 35 says very simply it's more blessed to give than it is to receive. I want to encourage you to go back over these scriptures, reflect on them, think about it, and I would encourage you to give today, but as you're meditating and contemplating the communication with God, I want you to think of these four questions. Number one, do I believe that God calls me to give? Does God expect you to give? Number two, what portion of my financial resource do I believe God expects me to give? Number three, considering my income, how much should I give each week? How much should I be giving annually? And number four, do I believe God's promise that he will bring even more blessing into my life if I will stop trusting in the people and things of this world and start trusting in the things of God. I want to close out by reading Matthew chapter 6 verse 33 from the new living translation, and he will give you all you need from day to day if you live for him and make the kingdom of God your primary concern. The grace of giving isn't about what God needs, it's about what you and I need to become like God. Let's say a prayer and then we're going to take up our offering. Father, we just want to come to you first of all, grateful for your love, for your grace, and Father, I am ashamed of the times that I don't give to you in a way that's appropriate to express the love, the adoration that I feel for you. And I pray that God that you would move in my heart, that you would work in me to help me become more like you. And Father, I pray that what we do and how we do it, what we give and how we give it today can be done in a way that is pleasing to you. Amen. You You
Sunday lesson by Mike Rock