Bee Generous

It's good to be here. I get now to put it on my resume that I spoke in the movie theater. There you go, and my mom would be proud of me for doing that because she always took me to the movies. I am the founding pastor of Spring Branch Community Church, if any of you have ever heard about Spring Branch, and I spoke there for 26 and a half years. I want to thank Pastor Leon for inviting me.

He and I have been good friends for a couple of years now, and I think what you guys are doing here is really, really great. But the real reason that I'm here, and you sang about it in one of the worship songs this morning about being changed by grace, your life being changed by grace. A long time ago, in a land far, far away, called Indiana, I accepted Christ. But let me tell you how that happened. I was coming out of high school as an agnostic, because I saw the word agnostic on a vocabulary test, and it just hit me, that's me.

I just don't know. I don't know. I can't figure it out. And even though I grew up in a church, and even though my mom took me to a church when I was a little kid, I think the best thing she ever did was she sent me when I was about five to a vacation Bible school, because I think somehow seed got planted when I was five. But now, let's say I'm 16, 17, 18, and I cannot figure it out.

So I am a resolute agnostic. I just can't get it. And I got so frustrated that I finally went to see a friend of mine. And I said, Bob, there's got to be more to life than just what man can do. And we were sitting up in his bedroom.

I was 20 years old. And he looked at me and he said, he said this, I've been praying for you for two years. I've been praying. And we went to school together since the second grade. And I just had lunch with him just the other day up in Maryland just to reconnect.

And I talked to him about what I'm doing right now. But he said, I've been praying for you for two years. He opened his Bible. He read something. I have no idea what he read.

I went home. I got in my bed. I cried. I cried real tears. And I said, oh, God, if you're there, can you help me?

A couple of days later, I was in an accident. I was working for a trucking company and a truck was backing up to a warehouse. And I was trying to help the driver. You sort of wave in the mirror and you kind of go like this. You're getting close to the to the dock.

And and all of a sudden the back of the truck hits my head. My head is pushed into the corner of a brick wall. And I am I feel the pressure of the truck coming back and I am stuck fast. And I don't know what to do. And I am just yelling my head off.

And they come and they pull the truck up. If that truck hadn't stopped, if that truck came back one more inch, I was done. So my whole life was in that one inch. That night I sat on the front steps of the house I grew up in. And I realized I almost died today.

So I kept searching, kept thinking about what Bob said to me, couldn't understand it. And so finally I hitchhiked 800 miles to see him in Indiana at the school he was at. Taylor University. It's a Christian university right in right smack in the middle of Indiana. It's all flat.

I never saw I never saw land that was all flat. It was like roads went north, south and roads went east, west. And that was it. And it was flat as anything. And I knocked on the door of his dormitory and he opened it.

He said, what are you doing here? And I said, I am looking for the meaning of life. He said, get in here. And he threw me in a bunk and I stayed there for a whole week. And just this is how God works.

Remember, he was praying for me for two years. This is how God works. I arrived at that university on the eve of their spiritual emphasis week, where they had a guest speaker who came and talked every night for five nights. And the whole student body went to the gym. And this guy who was from California, he spoke every single night for five nights.

I have no idea what he said except for two things. He said, Jesus Christ is alive. He can change your life if you let him. And he told a whole bunch of stuff and read scripture, I'm sure. But I remember two things.

Jesus Christ is alive. He can change your life if you let him. And I tried to figure it out and I tried to figure it out and I couldn't figure it out. I went to a Bible study with a football team at the end of the Bible study. First Bible study I was ever at in my life.

At the end of the Bible study, they prayed for me. I felt goosebumps. I don't know why I was alone walking back across campus, but I was alone and I couldn't figure it out. And I knew instinctively I had to do something. And so I did the only thing I knew to do.

I looked up in the night sky. It was clear. It was dark. It was cold. And I said, OK, Jesus Christ, if you can change my life like these people say you can, go ahead and do it.

And I felt, you know, it's hard for me to describe it, but it was almost like a rushing wind. It was like if you turn around, you see those bright lights. It was like those lights lit up inside of my head. And I knew that somehow I was connected. I wasn't connected.

I was connected because I said, OK, Jesus Christ, if you can change my life like these people say you can, go ahead and do it. And I've been connected ever since. And that's why I'm here today. So I am Michael Simone. I am a pastor.

I am a Bible teacher. I am a grandpa. I love dogs. And and don't boo. I'm a New York Yankees fan.

OK, there you go. Thank you. OK, well, I'll take it outside after the service. OK. All right.

So I am on Christian fellowship. It's so wonderful. Christian love, Christian love. OK, so Pastor Leon asked me to kick off this series on Be Generous. So I'm going to do the best job I can.

And so let me just pray. Heavenly Father, take this time. Take this message. But moreover, take the series that you are preparing for Salt Church and use it to your honor and glory. Press every single message into our hearts in Jesus name.

Amen. People have all kinds of ideas about life. They have different kinds of philosophies about life and they say different things about life. I was up in Williamsburg the other day having pizza with my grandchildren and I saw this sign. And here it is.

The best things in life are cheese. Now, there's a guy in the front row who knows that's true. His name is Frank. You can talk to Frank afterwards. But that's not really what life is all about.

Life is not about cheese. I'm lactose intolerant. Cheese went away from my life a long time ago. But here's the deal. Everything in life is about money in one way, shape, form or another.

Everything in life is about money. Let me prove it to you. The other day I'm driving by my friend's house and here it is out on the curve. This is a defunct water heater. It's defunct.

It's over. It's done. And so I talked to Mark who was in the garage. And he told me about how he spent $100 trying to get this thing fixed. He put new parts in everything.

And finally, he just had to go ahead and buy a new one. So the new one he had just installed. This one's out on the street. If you get a close up of that little yellow sign, you see something there that says money. It takes like 500 and some dollars to run this baby for a whole year.

Remember, everything in life is about money. The other day, I have always wanted to go to a Duke basketball game. Anybody know Mike Krzyzewski? Would you call him for me? I want to go to a Duke basketball game.

And I can't go because I don't know anybody. But my son the other day goes, hey, I know somebody. And I talked to him. And boom, I got tickets to the Duke Citadel game. It's on November the 22nd.

And he got them for free. But ... Look at the lower right hand corner. There it is. They cost a hundred and two dollars per ticket.

He got for everything in life. Somebody has season tickets and it costs money for season tickets because everything in life is about money. So the other day I was a fugitive in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I'm driving around. I'm a pastor.

I'm driving around. You can go ahead and put that up. I'm driving around and I had expired tags for about two months. So I'm driving around town praying that I won't get pulled over by a Virginia Beach City police officer. It was just not a good idea to be praying.

You know, please don't. I got pulled over once and it turned out that the officer was one of my previous students at St. Leo University. So I prayed right then. I said, oh, Lord, I hope I gave him an A in the class.

And he let me go. But a lot of times I pray to I prayed. He let me go. I pray to get out of trouble. So here I had expired tags.

Those are the new tags that cost me a boatload of money. And then apparently I had some some past due personal property tax or whatever. I was a fugitive, but I got out of being a fugitive by going to DMV, waiting about four and a half hours, getting a number, having to call my number. And then I was off because everything is about money. And here's a picture.

This is one of the most expensive things I ever did in my life. OK, I got I got married 45 years ago yesterday, 45 years ago yesterday. And I was starry eyed. Look at that hair. I look like one of the Beatles.

I had hair. I had sideburns. And she looks just like that today. If you see her, she's up in Williamsburg taking care of our grandchildren right now. So she didn't get up at O Dark 30 and drive down here with me.

But, you know, that was the greatest thing I ever did in my life. It was also one of the most expensive things I ever did in my life. But that's just because life is about money. And then finally, I was watching TV the other day. And sometimes I'll get stuck on watching a pastor because I want to see, like, what's he going to say?

And how's he going to say it? And I caught Andy Stanley. Andy Stanley said this. He said, what's the win? What's the win?

In the areas that matter most, most people never define the win. Win. Most people never define the win. So the win about money is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about your win options.

We're going to talk about the big questions of Be Generous Questions. We're going to watch a little short video, and I'm going to tell you some stories. We're going to wrap this thing up. But the win is when you pack your coffin. And I just want to put that on the back burner right now.

I just file that back here right now because we're going to get there when we end the message today. But you have a bunch of options, really, about winning in your life. You can have the wrong win, right? The wrong win, which is like you have no clues, kind of like me when I was an agnostic. I had the wrong win.

I didn't know what in the world I was doing or where I was going. And a lot of people, sadly, don't even realize they're living the wrong win, and they're just going on down the road. Or you can have the play it safe win, where even if you're a Christian, you can play it safe. You don't have to take any risks. You don't have to do anything.

You just sort of show up. You say yes. You do what somebody asks you. You bring a turkey. It's sort of the play it safe win.

But that really isn't the point. Then you have the next couple of options, which is the high maintenance win, which is like you are a high maintenance person, and you want everybody to take care of you. You want everybody to meet your needs. You want everybody to jump when you say jump, and you want them to say how high. And you think you're winning, but you're really just living a life of manipulation, a life that's not really helping much.

Or you can have the generosity win. And a generosity win is most important of all. A very famous person gave the following commencement address. I want you to try to guess who this person is, okay? A couple of years ago, I found out what you can't take it with you means.

I found out while I was lying in a ditch at the side of a country road covered with mud and blood, a bone from my broken leg was poking out the side of my jeans like a branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm. I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you're lying in a ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard. We all know that life is ephemeral, but on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life's simple backstage truths. We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we're just as broke.

Warren Buffett, going out broke. Bill Gates, going out broke. Tom Hanks, going out broke, not a crying dime. Sooner or later, things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you have that you can really call your own, your body, your spirit, and your mind. So I want you to consider making your life one long gift to others.

This is a fascinating comment that this person makes. So I want you to consider making your life one long gift to others. And why not? All you have is on loan anyway. All that lasts is what you pass on.

We have the power to help, the power to change. Giving is a way of taking the focus off the money we make and putting it back where it belongs, on the lives we lead, the families we raise, the communities that nurture us. So I ask you to begin giving and to continue. I think you'll find in the end that you got far more than you ever had and did more good than you ever dreamed. Who do you think wrote that?

Who do you think gave that speech? I'll give you a hint. Scary person, write scary books. Stephen King. Stephen King gave that speech.

So look, there are three questions of be generous. There are three questions that are going to define everything that you're going to live and breathe and understand about generosity. You're going to answer these someday. You might be answering them today. It might be a year from now, but you're always going to answer these three questions.

The first one, where did it all go? Where did it all go? The second one, what did I spend it on? And the third one, what has been accomplished for eternity? Another way of saying that is, what are you doing that's going to last forever?

What does the Bible say? Let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 8. I'm going to pick this up because it's a little small. 1 Corinthians chapter 9. To the Lord's people.

And they exceeded our expectations. Just like you're trying to exceed the turkey expectations. They exceeded the expectations. They gave themselves first of all to the Lord and then by the will of God also to us. So we urge Titus, just as he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part.

But since you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness, and in the love we have kindled in you. So that's kind of like a description of the Christian life. Since you excel in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness, and in the love we have kindled in you. Now here he goes. See that you also.

Excel in the grace of giving. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. We go to 2 Corinthians 9. Remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Of course, if you've heard that verse before, and maybe a pastor told you that word is really hilarious, in the Greek, hilarious. For God loves a hilarious giver, and God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. And that's the verse I want you to remember, and hang on to, during this series. Because there's a lot of verses in Scripture about giving, but that's one of the best that you're ever going to read. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good verse.

And let me unpack that for you. I'm going to ask that everybody have one of these now. We're going to have these passed out. Everybody have one of these? And while we do that, while we do that, we're going to take a commercial break.

And I was here last week just as a person sitting in the theater, and these were on the tables. And so I took a bunch of these. It says Salt Church on the front, and then it says something extra to show you God loves you. And I have used these all week. I even used one last night.

I used a bunch of them. And I have gone broke using these cards. No, I haven't gone broke. But it was so amazing. There was a woman who was crying in a Wawa because she couldn't feed her kids.

I don't even know why I was in the Wawa. Something kind of nudged me, go inside the Wawa. And she was just crying and crying her eyes out about her kids. And I was able to help her because of this. I was able to help a homeless army veteran last night up in Williamsburg using this.

And like just all around, I've been able to just simply use this because God is going to be abundant in blessing me. And God is able to bless you abundantly so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. So this is just a fantastic tool. And I wanted to thank you for that. Hey, let's look at these.

I call these the be generous principles. OK, more time asking God to show you what is really important in your life and less time demanding God answers all your questions before moving ahead. You know, I did church for so many years. I didn't have all the answers most of the time. But I had a God who was leading all of the time.

And that's what you have, too. More time in activities that lead to spiritual growth and less time in activities that just burn time. And we live in a culture that burns a lot of time. More time in building relationships of integrity and truth and less time maintaining superficial relationships that stay cordial yet go nowhere year after year. There's a lot of conversations.

Hey, how you doing? How's everything going? Hey, how about the tech game? Hey, how about the the the William and Mary game? Hey, how about the Boston Red Sox?

Hey, how about, you know, whatever? It's like like more time in building relationships of integrity and truth and less time maintaining superficial relationships that stay cordial yet go nowhere year after year. I just started a Bible study with three guys. We meet at Nick's down the street here every other Tuesday. And it's about just knowing each other more deeply.

We're looking at the book of Nehemiah together. We need more of that. More time in examining, evaluating your values, motives and behaviors and less time gossiping about others, values, motives and behaviors, which some people in the body of Christ think is kind of a spiritual gift. You know, I'm going to tell you about this person. Let me tell you about that person.

Let's just be done with that more time trying to figure out what Jesus was talking about in terms of your daily life and less time applying Jesus words to what others should be doing. That's the the log in your eye little parable that Jesus talked about. Take the log out of your eyes before you take speck out of somebody else's eye. More time serving others, less time expecting others to serve you. More faith, less doubt, more vision for God can do, less worry about we can't do more change, less stuck.

Let's not get stuck in the rut all the time. Let's not get stuck in the rut all the time. More generosity, less waiting for someone else to give. Let me tell you a quick story about about not getting stuck all the time. I was doing a marriage seminar out in.

Oh, somewhere in Iowa and and and Purdue was coming in to play the football game. And, you know, they just knocked somebody off yesterday. But there and I was in the lobby with the Purdue football team and they were like the Nephilim. They were like giants. I mean, I never saw men this this big.

I mean, they were just huge. And so I thought, you know, I've got I got to teach in the morning. I have the afternoon off. So I went up to him. I said, hey, can you get me tickets to the game?

And this is homecoming. It was homecoming for the Iowa football team. And and they said, no, we can't get you tickets. But go over and talk to this guy. Maybe he'll leave you a ticket.

We'll call maybe. So I went over and talk to somebody. And so nothing really happened. But I went to the game anyway. Everybody in the state of Iowa wanted to be at this game.

It was in a stadium that seated over 100000 people. So I went there. I parked my car. I parked where it said, you must have stickers to park here. And I thought I got stickers on my car.

I got I got stickers. So I parked and I walked to the stadium and I was standing there. And everybody's going every which way over 100000 people. And I pushed I pushed on the gate and the gate swung open. I said, this is a sign.

So I walked through the gate and I waited for somebody to stop me. Nobody stopped me. I said, this is a sign. So I kept walking. I saw a ticket stub on the ground.

I said, this is a sign. I picked up the ticket. So now I got a stub. I'm inside. I walk in.

I walk out to the 50 yard line. I watched the game. Eddie George, who got the Heisman Trophy that year, was playing. And it was an amazing game. It was incredible.

The place was packed. Everybody wanted to be at that game. And I was at the games. And so I went back to do my evening presentation, my marriage weekend presentation. And I said, you know where I was today?

And they said, where were you? And I said, I was at the game. And they said, how did you get to the game? How in the world did you get there? Everybody in the state wanted to get to that game.

How did you get there? And I said this. I refuse to be stuck. If you're stuck, most of that is you're allowing yourself to be stuck. Wherever it is in your life that you're kind of feeling stuck.

But you don't have to be stuck. More change, less stuck. This is how Isaiah said it. Isaiah 55. Come all you who are thirsty.

Come to the waters. And you who have no money, come by and eat. Come by wine and milk without money and without cost. See, in our economy, everything has a cost. In God's economy, nothing has a cost.

God's about free. God's about freedom. God's about giving. And he says, why spend? Why spend?

Money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy. Why go to work every day? And you have a big hole in your heart. Listen. Listen to me and eat what is good and you will delight in the richest affair.

Give ear and come to me. Listen that you may live. How many times did it say listen? Listen. Listen to me.

Listen. Three times. That's a huge emphasis. Listen that you may live. And here comes.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you. My faithful love promised to David. Be generous. What is it? It has always been the generosity of love.

You know what I do nowadays either when I have this card or when I don't have this card and somebody has a need. Look at that person. And I think this. If that was my sister, I have a sister named Patrice who lives in New Jersey. I also have a sister friend who lives in North Carolina.

If that was my sister, I would just give it. And then I go, she is my sister. So I'm going to just give it. Or if my brother Joe needed something or my brother Mark needed something and they call me, I would just give it. So if this person needs something and they're my brother, then why don't I just, why don't I just give it?

See, there's four ways that we end up spending money. We spend money in a functional way. You know, the other day, my wife wanted one of these expandable hoses so she can water the flowers from the backyard all the way to the front window boxes, the pansies. So we went online. We found one of those expandable hoses that expands to 100 feet.

That's function. We pushed by it and it got delivered a couple days later. Function. We do that a lot. Then fun.

We do fun stuff. We go to a game or we go to a, we go to Busch Gardens or we go and do something that we play putt-putt golf or we just go to the beach. We do things for fun and we spend money in that. Sometimes we do things and it's foolish. We spend money foolishly and we end up losing money that we really could have done something better with.

But everybody makes a mistake here or there along the way of life. Nobody gets through it perfectly. But then there's faithfulness. When we spend in faithfulness, there's an exponential return. I want to show you a quick two-minute video and I'm going to talk to you about how God has been faithful in something in my life for about the last 10 years.

A life can be turned in a moment. Sometimes by simply asking a question, what is your dream? The question changed everything for the small village of Kovee in Togo, West Africa. An outpost on the edge of nowhere became the somewhere God was going to answer the question. What is your dream began to illuminate our hearts and write a story on our souls.

It is that epic story of God's love and grace in which we all find out, to our great surprise, that we are together His family. A family that gives to those who are without. A family that shares wisdom where it is needed. A family that brings water to places where there is none. Through the outreach and stewardship of Togo Network's big water projects, the dream is being fulfilled.

We help build water towers for people in need. But we are the humble architects of so much more. We establish communities of faith, relational economies with the tools they need to thrive and grow. Things like water systems, health care, education, orphan care, and leadership training to help create the greatest impact from one generation to the next. We are a servant leadership organization empowering people to sustain themselves through hard work, prayer, and bringing real faith and real life together.

Turning struggle into hope, insecurity into stability, encouraging the dream and delivering the promise of a future. A future blessed by God's holy hands. So look within yourself and create a life-turning moment. Ask yourself the question, how can I help? Let's dream together.

Find out at togonetwork.org. So about 10, 11 years ago, I was at a leadership conference in Copenhagen. And I had been a couple of times, and I always looked forward to being there and meeting people. But this year, let me tell you how God works.

This year, this little country in West Africa, Togo, sends one pastor every year to a Bible school in Denmark. And that year, they sent a man named Michelle, Pastor Michelle. And he was in his 30s. He was going to Bible school with a lot of kids that were like 15, 16 years of age. But he was resolute on he was going to get better as a Bible teacher.

And he came to the conference, and we were on the same serving team. And so Michelle asks me, his name is Michael in French, and I'm Michael. So we're both Michaels. And he says, will you have lunch with me? And I said, I will have lunch with you.

And we went to lunch, and I'd never met somebody face-to-face personally from Africa before. I had never really felt a call to go to Africa or serve in Africa to do anything. I had people invite me before, but it just wasn't God's timing. And I'm looking at him across the table. And I said, what can I ask him?

That would be a good question. And I said, I have it. Here it is. What is your dream? And Michelle said, to save my village.

And then he said four words, will you help me? Will you help me? And I was shanghaied. I was, you know, I didn't even know what to think. Because I want to know his dream.

I didn't want him to yank me into it. But that's how God works. Sometimes God yanks you into somebody else's dream. So I got pulled in. I said, the only thing I could say, I will try.

I didn't even know what I will try means. So I come back. I call a friend in Chicago. I said, what do you know about Jalen Wells? And he goes, well, I know somebody in Oklahoma City.

OK, I called the guy in Oklahoma City. I said, what do you do with Jalen Wells in Africa? And he goes, well, we have this system. Why don't you come down here? We're going to have a training next month.

The training costs $25, which I could afford. And he says, you get free lunch. Which, any time I get free lunch, I show up. So I go to Oklahoma City, learn about drilling a well. And the whole point is, they don't have clean water.

They have to walk nine kilometers to a river on a really bad dry season and get water. Or they're using muddy rain water that pools on the ground and has parasites in it. And the whole system breaks down because they don't have clean water. So two years later, we go back, got a drilling system, and we drill this one well. And I think, we are done.

We are good. It is great. We're done. And then Pastor Michelle looks at me and he says, but we need big wata. And I said, what is big wata?

He says, we have to go down. Because we only went down 50 feet. All we got was rain water that pooled on top of granite rock that was part of the geology of that area. And he said, we have to go through the granite to get to the big water, the big aquifer. So we go back.

We drill through the granite. That's 100 yards down. So you take a football field, stand it up, and go straight down that far. And you hit these big underground water sources that will last forever. So we did that, and we got water for 22 villages.

We started with one, we got 22. Now we just finished our second, Big Water 2. We got water for 30 village locations, and we're just starting Big Water 3 right now. And that's a story of generosity that goes on and on and on and on. And I want to thank you because through my relationship with Pastor Leon, you gave to Big Water 2 during this last effort.

And I would like to invite you to stay with us as we do Big Water 3 starting in 2022. There's information outside in the lobby at the table. Barbara will be out there to meet you. You can fill out a card and you can be on our mailing list. We also do orphan care for $20 a month.

We do medicine. We do leadership training. We do education. But the big thing is the water. And then these folks, they worship as intently as you worshiped here this morning.

And they love God as much as we love God right here this morning. And yet 5,000 miles away from here, they need water. We don't need water. They don't even think about turkeys at this point. The only way they get a chicken is the chicken runs by you.

You catch it first. It's hard to catch because they're so fast. And then you do the plucking and the cooking. That's Chick-fil-A. The chicken just ran by you.

That was Chick-fil-A if you can catch them. They need water and water gives them hope and water gives them a sense that God heard our prayers. So you can be the generosity answer to somebody's prayer today as you learn about being generous. Where did it all go? What did I spend it on?

What has been accomplished for eternity? See that you also excel in this grace of giving. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. And so let me close and give you the answer to what I asked you to put the back burner on, first of all. A century ago, a band of brave souls became known as one way missionaries.

Instead of suitcases, they packed their few earthly belongings into coffins and they sailed out of port and they waved goodbye to everyone they loved and everything they knew. They knew that they would never return home. A.W. Milney was one of those missionaries.

He set sail for the new Hebrides in the South Pacific, knowing full well that the headhunters who lived there had martyred every missionary before him, and they would probably martyr him too. His coffin was packed. For 35 years, however, he lived among them and loved them. He lived out the generosity of love. When he died, tribe members buried him in the middle of the village and inscribed this epitaph on his tombstone.

When he came, there was no light. When he left, there was no darkness. When did we start believing that God wants to send us to safe places and do easy things? Jesus didn't die to keep us safe. He died to make us dangerous.

Faithfulness is not holding the fort. It's storming the gates of hell. The will of God is not an insurance plan. It's a daring plan. The complete surrender of your life to the cause of Christ isn't radical.

It's normal. Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Father, pack your coffin and let me tell you, Salt Church, be generous. Dear Heavenly Father, we're humbled and thankful for this time this morning. As we move through this season in the life of Salt Church, Father, touch hearts, nudge hearts and minds to do your will each and every day.

And Father, may you receive all the honor and glory as we are generous, as generous as you have been to us. In Jesus' name, amen.