APR 23 2017 | Things Adam Wants to Talk About S1E1

Sea Change Church · Things Adam Wants to Talk About S1E1 · Adam Stadtmiller · April 23, 2017
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Well, good morning, everybody. Great scripture here. I remember, maybe you remember your first credit card. I don't know if anybody remembers their first credit card. What a great, glorious event that was. The credit card companies make it look like you won the lottery if you get a credit card. It's a celebration of your worth. You're an amazing person. We value you based on your credit score. The whole thing is set up, I believe, for a reason, to create consumer debt.

And that system of our worth is a monetary system that we see that oftentimes enslaves people. We, as a nation, I don't know if you heard the news this week, exciting news, exciting. We must be amazing people to have this much ability to be in debt. A trillion dollars in consumer debt. Now, I'm talking about unsecured debt. I'm not talking about your home.

I'm talking about unsecured credit card debt. A trillion dollars. Now, we're not doing that well because the nation currently is 11 trillion dollars in debt. So, we must just have this amazing, I mean, you watch the credit card companies. You know, what's in your wallet, you know? Something that probably, you know, puts you behind the eight ball a few thousand dollars.

I remember my first credit card. I don't remember if you remember your first credit card. I was at Point Loma Nazarene College. And they set up a booth in the middle where all the students walked. Does anybody remember those credit card booths that come to the college campuses? What a great idea, right? Get 20-somethings, early 18, 19-year-olds, just figuring it out, and offer them these credit cards.

We're going to start you at a thousand bucks. But if you're a good boy and girl, we're going to eventually get you to 10,000. And, you know, just in case there's a problem. Just in case, you know, something happens, like the IKEA catalog comes out or something like that. We immediately need to go out and make a purchase to make ourselves feel good.

Because debt is what we are being told gives you freedom, right? You have the freedom to do anything that you want. And the promise of this. We were watching last night as a famous celebrity was on TV. And my daughter and I were watching the commercial. And I love using commercials to talk to my daughter about the underlying message. And we talked about this.

It was this woman, and she was a movie star, and she brought her dad. And, you know, at the end, he gets to say, what's in your wallet? And a whole bunch of debt is what is in my wallet, if you have that. So, I don't know about you, but Jesus, in this passage, is talking about debt. And not just about debt. He's speaking about a debtor's prison.

And maybe you know the term of debtor's prison. These days, instead of taking you to debtor's prison, we just try to offer you more ability to get deeper in debt, to consolidate to one card. And you see this over and over. As a spiritual leader, Jesus, on a regular basis, actually spoke about money more than any other topic of his teaching, besides the kingdom of God.

This has always bothered me. I don't know if this has bothered anybody else, but I've always wondered. And it wasn't until this week where I think I figured it out. And this is key, because we're going to be looking at this scripture as a pivot point to look at a larger issue. We're going to be doing some topical messages over the next few weeks as we get ready and prepare.

We push the giant series back to Mother's Day. It's going to start on Mother's Day when our small groups start that week. It's not that your mother is the giant in your life that you have to take out. That's not what we're saying. But we are starting it then. And before then, I'm going to do a few series. I'm going to do one on secular religion and understanding secular religion and how it parallels so much with faith-based religion, but some of the things have been changed.

So we'll talk about that then. But as opposed to exegeting, which means picking this scripture apart, I want you to give me the permission to look at it from a 30,000-foot view, because the Lord showed me something about why he speaks about debt so much and about money so much and why it's in the scripture. I think about my first credit card, and maybe you think about yours.

Mine was from, I think, San Diego Trust and Savings Bank. Remember that bank? Went out of business, I think. It got bought out by Wells Fargo and transferred over and over again. And I began to think back about the original debt. The first debt that was ever, the first credit card that went in deficit belonged to Adam and Eve. That you will see so often in scripture that when Jesus speaks about money, he ties it to an idea of salvation.

Now, unfortunately, the church has gotten really good at taking what Jesus was saying about how we have a debt of sin, and we've been able to use those verses and to turn them, because they're really easy to pivot on, to show why people should give. I grew up Catholic, and the Catholics were really good back, you know, hundreds of years ago, at selling the forgiveness of sins.

Do you know what it was called? Indulgences. That's right. And these indulgences, you could pay, and that would build the cathedrals. Hey, the Protestants, we have our own list of dirty laundry as well, so I'm not just pointing fingers. But the church has gotten really good at talking about what Jesus said about debt, and using it for our own purposes.

We want to be very careful as a church in our relationship with money. We want to be as transparent as possible. Money is important. In Ecclesiastes, I read this week, it said that money can fix all your problems. It basically is a translation there, a paraphrase, but it says money solves all your problems. And in a lot of ways, it's somewhat true.

It can do a lot of things. But when Jesus speaks about money, I believe the thing that was revolutionary, excuse me, revolutionary to my thinking this week is this. When Jesus is talking about money, he uses it because it's the best metaphor to talk about the spiritual debt that we found ourselves in after the fall of man. You see, there was a debt that we could not pay.

Jesus says that the wages, right? That's a word, right? Wages of sin that talks about money. The wages of sin is what? Death. And so oftentimes, Jesus uses this metaphor of finance because finance is the thing that we find to put our, it's protective. The scripture even says in a good way that in the Proverbs that money is protective. It is very protective.

We just can't let it become a God. And it's so easy to put your trust in finance. I've mentioned before that every single one of us has that number in our credit, in our bank account, that when it gets under that number, now for some people, it might be $1.9 million. You know, you get below that, you're like, whoa, I'm starting to feel it right now.

The heat's on. Other people, $156. You all have that number, okay? There is a number. And when you look at it, sometimes it's 10 o'clock at night and I'll just go check things and be like, okay, you know, if I'm 10 bucks above the number, I'm like, okay, that's about where I want to be. I'm good. Okay, we have that number. Don't you hate when you go in there and you're like, it's like something's happened.

There's been a check that's, you know, somebody didn't cash, double cashed or cashed early and you have this issue. And then all of a sudden, what happens? You don't sleep well that night, right? Fear just strikes you. How tied into finance are we? Into our own, the way it makes us feel. Doesn't money make you feel good? Don't you like, it makes me feel good.

No, everyone's just looking at me, staring at me. It makes you feel real good. When I get an unexpected check in the mail, I love it. I love abundance. And you will have the church once again start speaking about abundance because it's so easy to take with Jesus because Jesus is trying to say, look, here's a great metaphor to show you a spiritual condition.

Let me speak about this again. There is a debt that you cannot pay. And this is one of the best ways for me to talk about it. But I don't care so much about money because, matter of fact, if I want to pay my taxes, where do I go? Yeah, Jesus goes down to the water and gets a coin out of a fish's mouth. I mean, that's how Jesus pays his taxes. Not fair, okay?

Jesus cares so much about money that who does he let hold his wallet? Judas. Read the scripture. You know, who's got your wallet? Great commercial. Judas, you know. It's kind of the same thing. They should have that. Bad guy to give up. Jesus is not tied up in money. The scripture says God owns the cattle on what? Thousand hills. Probably 10,000 would be even better.

He's an eternal God full of riches that goes so far beyond money. And as churches, when we start tying your prosperity, when it all becomes about money, we need to be very, very careful. Because what I found is I finally understand why Jesus talks about money so much. Because he's trying to point and show us about a sin and a debt that only he could pay.

He is the great, you know, banker, spiritual banker in the sky who can come and forgive all of our debts. And so, once again, looking at scripture, he's using, and it says in the, you know, the Our Father. If you look at some of the original language, it says, forgive us our what? Debts. Doesn't say sin. Now, we say sins a lot, and you can make the translation of that.

But Jesus says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It's very powerful. And so, realizing this understanding that our relationship with money should mirror our relationship with Jesus and righteousness, living abundant, free lives, free from being in debt spiritually, free from being in debt to others. It should actually have a mirror effect.

And I'm going to speak about what it should look like. Because not all debt is bad. Okay? The Bible doesn't forbid debt. So, if you look in the notes, it says this. The Bible does not forbid debt. That's interesting. Once again, the Bible does not forbid debt. It says don't give high interest rates, especially it's called, let me know the word starts with a U.

Usury. Like a 23.75%. But you're going to get a year and a half at 0%. Although we're going to charge you a 5% fee for the transfer. So, actually, you paid 5% for that money. Nonetheless, just when you get that little thing in the mail, just wanted to do that math for you. That when we look at this, it doesn't forgive debt. It just says don't have usury.

I say, if you look around, usury is rampant. I love how we blamed all the bankers. Okay? You want to know who got off on the, you know, off the hook on the 2008 meltdown and bubble? You know who no one ever, the politicians will never blame these people. Us. The consumer. Who said, I probably can't afford $3,000 a month, but I'm going to sign it anyways.

You know? You will never see a politician blame the consumer. I say, we have to take a little responsibility for signing on the bottom line. Because we are not a bunch of children walking around. So let's just, you know, I'm not saying the banks did a bunch of great stuff. You know? Not a bunch of saints as I look at what was happening on that end.

But we have to take responsibility as human beings for how we deal with money. And so I want to ask you this. What is your relationship with money? How happy are you when that number is really fat in the bank account? And how terrified are you when it goes to a place you don't want it to go? You see, Jesus lived in this harmonious relationship with the Father's love that he knew that God had got him.

And so when Jesus speaks about money, realizing he's not speaking about it because he needs money. He needs a bigger, fatter tithe from you. He needs your money. He doesn't need your money. But what he wants to show the analogy is this. You had a debt that you couldn't pay. And I came and paid that debt for you. I am the one who relieved you of your sins.

And that is the gospel. That we are sinful people. One of the topics I'm going to be speaking on in the next few weeks before we start the giant series. So excited about the giant series. King David, I just really am stoked about it. Especially him in his early years. I'm going to be speaking about sin and what that means. And I hear pastors don't speak about sin anymore.

So if you want to miss that week, I'll let you know. It's in the next few weeks. But I will be speaking about sin. The Bible doesn't forbid debt. But it does equate debt with sin. I think I've laid that point out well enough. We see this throughout scripture. With Abraham, what does it say happened to him? If you look in that verse in Genesis 15, 6.

What's the key word there? What was his faith? Did what? Credited him. And so faith has the ability to come and pay your debts through what Jesus did on the cross. Faith. Faith is this, it would seem invisible. It would seem like an elusive smoke. I mean, what is faith? The Bible says that faith is belief in something you can't see. And it says, as we read last week in the Easter message, that faith is made of hope.

Because faith leads to hope. And that faith, in Hebrews chapter 11, is a substance. We know that if you want to talk about the spiritual debt that we have, and each one of you, if you were to look at the red line, if you were to check your spiritual bank account, before you were under the blood of Christ, it would be an infinite number that keeps growing.

In the red. A negative number that no person, no thing, no good work, no good act could ever fix. Only Jesus can come in and erase that debt. That is why it is, Christ's following is such a stumbling block. It says that there is only one way to receive a relationship, an eternal relationship with the Father, and it is that Jesus came in and he paid our what?

Debt. So when you hear the church, and if you ever hear me, start talking about money in a way that is more about the financial elements of it, and less about what God has done through his son on the cross to relieve us of that debt, let me know. Be wary of those churches that speak so much about money, but rarely about sin. We talk about these things.

And so we see this, that Abraham's faith, he believed in the Lord and it was credited to him with righteousness. If you want to have your debt of sin canceled, have faith in the blood of Jesus. That is the gospel. Is there such a thing as healthy debt? Absolutely. If someone were to come, and this church has done a great job. It is a debt-free church.

It is not something I created. It is something I inherited. And it is a great part of, and also you inherited. I'm just a congregant here. Happened to be, my job is to be the lead pastor. But this is a church that we have a picture of them burning the mortgage in 1973, I think. Burning the mortgage of this church. Now, the fact that they had a mortgage was a good thing because it was something that allowed us to be where we are today.

If someone came to us today and said, I have a $3 million house. I owe $100,000 on it. We're going to give you the $3 million house, but you're going to have $100,000 to pay off. Would the church accept that debt? I believe the elders and I would encourage us as a church to accept that debt. There are examples where debt can be used in a positive way.

Debt can be used to bring abundance. We know that a mortgage, as long as we can afford it eventually, by the time you pay it off, you're not in your working years anymore, hopefully, and you can live there for free. That's part of the, quote, American what? Dream. Dream, right. And it is more and more elusive these days. Here's the context as you look into your notes.

Debt is a result of the fall of mankind. Before the fall of mankind, in the garden, in that perfect place with God, there was no debt. Let me just speak about this quickly. First of all, the ground in the garden produced. It produced so sufficiently, there was never a lack. One of the reasons we go into debt is because we have a lack, and we live in a fallen world.

And so perhaps some of you have had a health issue. And I read about the amount of consumer debt that happens when someone has a health issue. What a bout with a disease will cost you. I listened to that this week. It gets expensive. And so some people are in debt not because of their own decisions, but because they've been taken advantage of by somebody.

Or perhaps there's been a health issue. And so debt happens because we live in a fallen world. But in a perfect world, there would never be debt. And so part of debt came because the ground, as we see in Genesis 4.12, because of original sin, quit producing like it did. It was just this abundant place that had constant fruit. They had more than they could want, more than they needed.

There was always enough that was left over. There was an abundance. It says it produced, meaning that there was no lack. Rather, there was an abundance. I want to say one of the things that credit card debt does, it offers you, and you'll see this all the time in the commercials. Be aware this week as you watch those commercials. Credit debt offers abundance, but with chains.

I mean, it's so often, and it's kind of pivoted a little bit, like when you have an issue, when you have a problem. Like if there's a, you know, you just need to have this. It rarely says, go on that trip. Back in the 80s, it did. I don't remember if you remember the 80s and the 90s. It would be like, get this credit card, because you can take that trip you always wanted.

They've kind of learned, like the culture's changed a little bit. So it's not like, you know, we're going to give you a $10,000 limit just in case there's that problem, you know. But basically, you know, they're showing pictures of a person running on the beach in Greece, you know, or whatever. So there's a lack, and sometimes there is a lack. And I want to say if a lack happens in your life that is not your fault, I want to say that, you know, God our Father is a loving Father who wants to help you get out of that.

And I want to give you a word that if you want to make it your, I would say, purpose in a lot of ways, to get out of any debt that is not from that situation or from a poor situation, that God wants to partner with you in that. One of the most powerful things that this congregation, what you have as members of this church, is we are a debt-free church that has about a half block of ownership in La Jolla, that we have had people come and stewarded it very, very well.

And what it has allowed us to do, because the majority of churches have between, they give 35 to 55 percent of their income giving to a debt service mortgage payment. Did you know that? Majority of churches, I read it this week, 35 to 55 percent of your tithe goes to pay a mortgage. What I love, when I was looking at a church to take over, I decided I didn't want to come into one that had saddled itself with debt.

We have the ability to take those mortgage payments and increase the staff to pastor here, and that has been the goal to do that. And so we see this conduct, that debt was a result of the fall. Mankind, as you'll see in the notes, was also saddled with covetousness after the fall. They want more than they have. And so because of sin, sin causes us to want what we cannot have.

The book of Romans says when you put a law in front of mankind, they immediately will want to break the law. When I speak about sin, you are going to hear that whatever line you put, man will push that line. So when we talk about sexual identity or whatever sexual issues that are going on in the culture, there's a line right now that is being pushed.

I want to say that once that line becomes the normative of culture, there's going to be a new line. That line will never end, and it'll push and push. Why? It's the nature of mankind. It's covetousness. It's wanting what we can't have. And hyper-covetousness is the inability to say no to yourself. You see, so much of consumer debt is not because someone was sick.

It's not so much because you had an issue in your life. It's because we want that car that we really can't afford. We want that thing. We want that trip, whatever it is. And so to ask ourselves, how's your covetous meter in your life? Jesus speaks a lot about it. Do not covet what? Your neighbor's wife or property. It's this idea of, you know what, God?

You are not sufficient. And this is the sin in it. You have to understand why sin is sin. Covetousness says to God, you are not enough for me. You are not enough, and I have to have more than you are willing to give me. So I am going to go out on my own and get what you will not give me. Now, David had this issue. We're going to talk about David. He had some giants in his life.

David had hyper-covetousness as we look at his life. We'll keep moving on. Mankind now had a debt of sin, as we talked about, that could not be paid. It says in Romans 3, 23, the wages of sin is death. And so as you look in the scriptures, so often when we think about debt, you look at it as a way to think about our spiritual debt and then the goodness of God to come in and pay our debts.

How's your debt? I don't want you to raise your hand. I don't want you to say. But how's your relationship with debt? How comfortable are you with debt? And what will you do to realign your physical life and monetary life with the freedom we're supposed to have in Christ? See, imagine if our financial lives, even if you don't have the ability, if you start to work to make your financial life match what Jesus has promised in the spiritual life, then we will begin to see a change and a shift of the way of our lives.

And so bringing those two together in parallel. One of Jesus' core message was freedom and abundance. And a life filled with debt is contrary to the entire core of the gospel. Let me just say this again. It's easy just to look at debt. And until I read the scriptures this week, I didn't realize how much debt, having personal debt, says about perhaps our understanding of what God and Jesus has called us to and what he offers to us.

Let me say it again. One of Jesus' core messages was freedom and abundance. And a life filled with debt is contrary to the entire core of the gospel. In Ecclesiastes, I love the book of Ecclesiastes. If you're having problems with covetousness, read the book of Ecclesiastes. I read it every year. I just got done reading it. And it says that the sleep of the wealthy man who has a full stomach is not good.

It's interrupted. You ever try to sleep on a full stomach? It's kind of hard sometimes. The older you get, the harder it is. The heart starts racing. You can't sleep. I used to be able to go to In-N-Out Burger, drink two espressos, and go to bed. Like, what's the problem now, you know? But it says that the hungry man, oftentimes, if you look at this, the empty stomach sometimes will lead you to sleep better.

Your body will shut down. It says that there are, that being rich brings a lot of curses with it, or can bring curses with it. And so we see that one of Jesus' core messages was freedom and abundance, and a life filled with debt is contrary to the entire core of the gospel. That doesn't mean you're a sinner. That doesn't mean you're bad. I'm not slapping you on the wrist.

I'm saying, do you want your life, your financial life and picture, to represent what Jesus has given you and the riches of his kingdom? That's what I want to continue to do. And as a church, now, once again, I didn't create this, but I would say that the finances of this church and the way that it has been done for the last, I think, since the beginning, has been a very righteous model.

And many of you were here as part of that. But you see the blessing that has come from people that said, we want our church finances to be in alignment with how the Father loves us and what he has in abundance for us. And so we're in a very good position to follow in that and to have freedom to do what God has called us to. Because, as you know, debt will keep you from actually doing what you want to do.

You might have covetousness and you have some things you think you want to do, but when you have debt, you're going to get to a place in your life where you're like, you know, I really want to go back to college. Are there some things you really want? And when you have debt and we've allowed ourselves through hyper-covetousness to follow after fleeting things, trips, the new whatever we want, then you will get to a place in your life where you actually have some things that you want to do or perhaps God has called you to do and you might not be able to do them until you're unsaddled, until you take the chains off.

Jesus came to set us free. How important is it to you to be free from debt? John 10.10 says, Jesus says, I have come that they may have life and have it to the full and have it in abundance. Circling the tower, getting ready for a landing. Here we go. The stage for debt and forgiveness is set in the Old Testament. Now, you know, in the Old Testament, if you gave someone a loan, you would only want to do it at the beginning of a seven-year period before the Jubilee year.

Every seven years, did anybody know what you had to do as a Jew back in the time before Jesus and in Jesus' time? You had to forgive the debt. Every seven years, there was no debt. You had to forgive every single debt every seven years. The model of grace and freedom is set. I got to say, you're probably not going to get a call from Citibank and say, hey, it's the seventh year.

You're free. God lets you go. A lot of times, people would not give a loan a year. You know, you would see that the debts, as you look at some of the historicity of the Jewish culture, as you got closer to the seventh year, loans would get fewer and further apart because you only had a year to collect. But there was this model where Jesus says, I want to forgive everything you've ever done.

I want to forgive you. You look at the story that we spoke about the debtor of prison, this guy that has this million dollar, you know, multi-million dollar debt. And Jesus gives this analogy to say, you're free. You can walk. All the things you've ever done. You see, this is the grace of the gospel. It is all throughout the text. If you read from the beginning, right after the fall of mankind, in Genesis, I believe it's Genesis 3, immediately God says that he is going to send his son and precursors his son that is going to come and pay that debt.

Jesus is here to pay your debts, your spiritual debts. And if you want to partner with him to pay your financial debts and say, God, I want to come in alignment with who you want me to be in regard to my wallet and in regard to my trust and what I actually trust in and you begin to work towards that, he will begin to get your life on track in that way. We have found that.

I've seen it over and over again. Let's talk about, so in Deuteronomy, you have the passage there. I won't read it. It talks about the release of debt. Now, I'm going to talk just four quick things and then we're going to bounce about how to live a debt-free life. And it's not just about getting out of debt. I spoke to somebody this week and they said, you know, I don't have any debt.

We haven't had debt for 25 years. And I was like, yay. And I was like, that's awesome. You're amazing. But it made me think, is that the goal? That I don't have any debt? That I have a bunch, you know, a big ledger in the, you know, that with a lot of money and no debt and everyone pays me and I'm the one who gives the loans? I don't think that's the key, although it's a good thing.

I think the key is having a holistic understanding of what debt means in all areas of your life. We're going to look at those quickly. First is this. Freedom from debt needs to be a culture of your life. Start with your own spiritual debt. Freedom from debt. It isn't about your credit card. I mean, that's part of it. But it's looking at your own life and saying, where do I feel guilt over something I've done?

Where do I have this guilt? Where do I still feel like I'm carrying the debt? This is where it has to begin. I want to say, if you're going to get out of debt financially, the first place to start is understanding your debt spiritually and coming to Jesus and having the blood of Jesus to forgive us of our debts. That's the first stage. We always want to take it back to the thing that matters most.

Whenever we have an obstacle or a giant in our life that we want to overcome, that you want to overcome, take it back and say, what does this mean to my soul? And let the beginning of this debt, of this pathway to get out of financial debt, if you are in financial debt, start with understanding Jesus' love for you and how you were freed from any debt of guilt or shame.

That would be the first one. Start with the beginning there. John 8.36 says, if the Son sets you free, you are what? Free indeed. It's a great verse. Write it down. If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. We want to live like it. Next is forgive other people's debts. Think about that. You know, He gives us the ability to forgive other people. I mean, there is probably few other things that allow us to be like God, like our own personal forgiveness to others.

Now, some people have been wounded very deeply and that might be a long journey. Might not happen to the end of your journey. But how free are you with a grudge? How free are you when someone, you know, does something that they've kind of, you know, all of a sudden, you know, they're ledger in your friendship. It's below the line now. It's in the red. How free are you with forgiveness?

I'm not saying you get walked over on a regular basis because we need to have truth in relationships and to say, I don't allow that again. I might need to separate myself from this, from you for a while or from the way you treat me or I don't allow that or Jesus loves me too much to allow you to treat me that way. So there needs to be hard conversations. But how free are you with forgiving other people?

How free are you? I spoke to somebody who was married this week and they said, you know, I had to tell my spouse, you need to forgive me. Now, you know, it was a small thing. It was a small argument they said they had. But he said, there's a culture of unforgivenness. I want to say when it comes to debt, I believe that if we understand that we have no debt because of Jesus has forgiven us and if we are free to forgive others' debts, I think that that will give a spiritual momentum into a financial life that matches that.

That make sense? That if we start with the spiritual, God has this amazing ability that when we start with the spiritual, it begins to flow into the rest of our life. Seek ye first the what? Kingdom of God and then what? All these things will be added unto you. The thing that Jesus spoke about most was what? The kingdom of God. The second was money. And so we start with the kingdom of God and if we get our life right and understanding that we have been freed from a debt and that we are, we are so, we are very gracious with our forgiveness, we will see it begin to flow out to the different terra firma of your life as the boundaries are expanded in your life.

Proverbs 20, here's a couple verses. Matthew 6, 12, forgive debts as we forgive our debtors. The next would be, third one would be get free from financial debt, whatever the cost. Get free. Make a plan, get free, get accountability, get free. Get free from going to Marshalls at nine o'clock because you feel lonely and you have nothing to do and you don't have the money to go to Marshalls even though you have a $25 gift certificate but you're going to spend 80.

You know it. Send your friend to Costco. I don't know. Don't look at new cars. Postpone your trip. Do whatever it takes to get out of debt. Debt is bondage and chains to us. The next would be this. The final one would be that I have after I get out of debt. I got to say, tithe. And look, you don't even have to tithe to this church. Like, you know, God is going to cover us but I have to preach about tithing because God is so faithful and if you have ever met anybody who has tithed on a regular basis, my wife and I have been, had a culture of tithing and offering since we've been born, excuse me, since we were married.

I come out of a very generous family that was just a cult, generosity was a culture in our family. I just grew up with it. We have seen, the amount of blessing we have seen and I'm not holding that as this carrot, okay? Tithe down the street. Don't tithe here. Just see what God does. But I believe that even though we don't have to, it's not a law anymore because we used to have to give in the Old Testament.

Because of the cross, we can give. Say, God, I just love you. I want to show you that I'm not dependent on money. I don't find my happiness there. I don't find my worth there and I want to give to you. Give, give, give. Give, find that place. I believe the local church is a great place to start. I believe the local church is kinetic in how it can change the world and we're seeing that happen here.

And if you want to tithe here, hey, we're not going to send it back to you. You know what I mean? Like, we'll be happy. Live a life that is gracious and a life that gives and you will begin to see God turn those things around. This is a overused verse. Ask the band to come up. Overused verse and I, and I, I almost don't like using it but it's a great verse. Malachi, one of the last verses in the scripture, you've heard it because it's so overused like to get people to give.

Okay, so, but it's true. It says, bring, if you look at Malachi, it says, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food for my house. Test me in this. Really interesting. says the Lord God Almighty and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. That's a powerful verse.

I want to say, test the Lord in that. Find the place that you think God has called you to give to and be hyper generous with all things. Amen?