Financial Unity

Alright, we are finishing a series. This is our last installment of our series, Extraordinary Relationships. We don't want just ordinary relationships, we want extraordinary relationships. And the theme verse for this whole series, and I've been repeating it every week because I want you to get it in your heart, right? It says, don't become so well adjusted to the culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

Is that what we do? We don't even think about where we are because we get so... What's all this stuff that's going on around us? We've become callous. Some versions say you've become callous to the culture.

Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. That's what we want, an internal change that makes a real difference. Readily recognize what He wants from us and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, because this is what the culture is doing, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity.

That's what it wants to do. It just drags us down. It wants you to be immature. It wants you to be messed up, okay? God brings the best out of you and develops well-formed maturity in you.

That's what we all want. We all want to be healthy families. We want to have healthy relationships. We want to live for God and He has that for us. So we've been walking through a series and just to give you a recap and you can go back and listen to this.

Week one, we said it starts with heart because you don't have your heart right. Nothing else works. You can make all kinds of decisions and directions, but it's not going to work if your heart isn't in the right place. And then week two, we talked about conflict. Dealing with conflict.

I've had to use that myself here recently in a few situations. And I failed in a few situations too. I had to go back to my own notes and say, Lord, I did that wrong because conflicts are going to happen. And then we talked about friendships. The importance of having the right people around you guys.

I hit on that all the time. You've got to have the right people around you because they determine where you're going. They're determining how you mature in Christ. You can either go backwards or you can go forwards. You can stay where you are, but God wants the best for you.

So He asks us to surround ourselves with good, godly people that support us and walk with us and we encourage each other. You need mentors in your life. You need all those things in your life. We need friendships in our life. And then Michael Simone, who's here with us today, surprise, surprise, yeah, shared on marriage with us and how we are to live out our marriages and some really important points in that and mothering and raising children and things like that.

And then last week, mothering and raising children, sorry, my wife shared with us on that. Just some points about kids. Miranda shared with us. So today we're talking about financial unity. And it's really important that we get this right, okay?

Being unified in finances is so important. People neglect this all the time. One of the top reasons for divorce. Money, okay? And I can't tell you the conversations where I talk to people that don't even know what each other, what's going on in each other's bank accounts, much less the sharing unity and how to be generous.

And we want to be generous people. And it affects your marriages. It affects your children. It affects the people around you. It affects future generations and on and on and on.

It's significantly important that we operate in unity. And you know it affects the local church as well, right? I mean, if we're a bunch of people in here that aren't generous and are in debt because we just care about ourselves, then we can't really do what God's called us to do, amen? That God's called us together to give, together to be generous, together to do the impossible, because through Christ all things are possible. In one person, it's impossible, but together we're forced to be reckoned with.

And God wants all that for us. So today, I'm doing something a little different. And some of you are like, I'm finally getting to hear Pastor Leon speak after a few weeks. Amen, yeah? Well, guess what?

I'm not speaking today. I'm doing something a little different. I wanted to, and I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this message. I would love Robert Morris to come and speak for us. If you don't know who Robert Morris is, he's the pastor, founding pastor of Gateway Church, one of the largest churches in America.

But he is like the man when it comes to finances. But because we're a small church, I can't afford to get him here, okay? So what Robert does is he allows us to show his videos or his preachings in live audiences to churches. And it goes right along with this series. In fact, he was doing a relationship series of the same title.

In fact, I've kind of borrowed that title from him, okay? Or from the series that he was a part of. So I'm like, okay, so you guys need to hang out late. Some of you are like, oh, video teaching, really? I promise you, this is going to be empowering.

It's going to be powerful. God's going to do some things through this because this man is so anointed when it comes to finances. So I'm going to allow him to teach us today through video, okay? And I'll come up in the end. Hang on the whole time, okay, guys?

Don't leave. Don't leave until you get to the end because there's some powerful stuff in this message. So without any further ado, Lydia, if you could play our video. I want to talk to you about financial unity. Now, you need to understand that years ago, they did a survey about the number one cause of divorce, and it was communication.

I actually disagreed with it, but I didn't say anything. I figured they'd figure it out at some point, and they did. They decided to find out what . . was the number one cause of communication for divorce.

Guess what it was? Finances. So this is an important part. So whether you're married or not, let me say this to you, you're still married to Jesus and you're part of the body of Christ and he has joined you with brothers and sisters in Christ that can help you be in unity in your finances with them so that they can help you. So this is an area that every person needs.

And when Debbie and I got married, we came from two different backgrounds. Debbie came from a home where loving God, they went to church, they tithed, great, but they, both parents worked. And they, um, um, uh, it was, uh, they, they didn't just barely get by, but they, um, barely got by. And, um, uh, but I came from a different home and I'm, I'm sorry, you're going to get upset at me about this. I, I came from a wealthy home.

Uh, my father owned a company, uh, I do know what it's like though. I do know what it's like to have difficulties. There was a time when our helicopter broke and I had to take the chauffeur. The chauffeur took me to school. So I'm sorry.

I understand completely. So don't talk to me about suffering for Jesus, you know? Uh, so, but, um, anyway, and that's not true. That's just a joke. You know that, but, um, I, my father though, great Christian man, first Christian in his family, first one to believe in Jesus, first one to go to college.

And God blessed him. And one of the reasons God blessed him so much because he was extremely generous. He bought cars for single mothers in our church. He loaned money to people. He, at one time he bought a smaller company because the husband, uh, the owner of the company died in his fifties.

And he bought the company so that the 24 employees wouldn't be out of work. And he paid the widow for the rest of her life. That's what he did. And over a million dollars by the time she passed away. So my, I grew up, yes, in a, in a, uh, an affluent home, but in a generous home, I watched my father be generous.

And something happened in my own heart in the area of generosity. I though went a different way. My sister was the head cheerleader. She was most popular of the high school. Um, I went, um, uh, very insecure, very inferior.

I went into drugs and alcohol and, uh, in the immorality and, um, uh, didn't get saved until I was 19 years old. As a matter of fact, I got saved in a motel room, not a hotel room. There is a difference. I got saved in a motel. A hotel room called Jake's Motel, room 12.

There were only 13. I took room 12 because I thought 13 was unlucky. And they actually provided pets though. They were about that long. And so anyway, but when I got saved, I just got radically saved.

And I worked for my father's company. And I started trying to share Christ with everyone. I would just be so scared to do it. I used to leave tracts. I don't know if any of you remember the little tracts, gospel tracts.

Do any of you remember that? Is there anyone old in the church? Okay, so because I couldn't talk to people. And so I would leave a big tip with a tract and I didn't even know. I remember this guy told me, he said, he asked me about tracts.

Tracts to me were, you know, things you have on your arms, you know, because I was in drugs and all. But so that was our background. So when Debbie and I got married, she had this kind of, we better hold on to it because there might not be enough. And I had this, no, we give and we give generously and we give extravagantly. And so we had some working through some things.

The other thing was that Debbie is a brilliant, brilliant woman, but math was not her subject. And I don't know if any of you can relate to that. But math was my subject. My father, because of his company and because of his intelligence, he's actually a certified genius, but he's a certified mathematical genius. And my son, I have a son who went to Baylor, who's also a certified, certified mathematical genius.

Both IQs over 200. Okay. So, but apparently it skips a generation. So, but numbers add up in my mind without me trying to get them to. It just, it just happens.

If you just start naming numbers, they add up. And so Debbie and I were buying something one time, right after we'd gotten married, we hadn't been married very long. And it was $7 and 99 cents. And, um, the lady at the cash register said, I'm going to have to add the tax on the calculator because the cash register is broken. And I said, it's 66 cents.

Just that quickly. It's just, that's just normal. It's very simple. And so I said, it's 66 cents. And, um, she looked at me for a moment and then she did her little thing, you know, and then she said, it's 66 cents.

And I said, okay, you know, so I got out in the car and Debbie said to me, how do you do that? Now, I thought that she was actually asking me. How I did it. Now, I didn't realize she was just complimenting her man, you know? And so, I did what young husbands do.

I was stupid, you know? And so, and I even went farther. You're going to, in a moment, realize how stupid my answer was. I said, well, sugar, $7.99 is close to eight.

Our tax percent is 8.25. Eight times eight is 64. Quarter of eight is two. 64 plus two.

1. I said, that should happen in less than a second in your mind. She said, it doesn't. And then she said, but I do know what 25% off means. So, I still think she's thinking math.

I've gotten past that now. I understand. She's never thinking math. And so, I said to her, I said, so if you're buying something for $100, I mean, this is easy. You know, $100, round amount, this is simple.

So, I said, so if you're buying something for $100, and it's 25% off, I said, what does that mean? She said, it means it's a good deal. And then she said, and again, this is a brilliant woman, just not math. And so, and then I said, she said, and if it's 50% off, it's free. Now, to a mathematician that, you know, I said, what?

And she said, she went like this, like, she goes, like, I didn't understand math. And she said, Robert, everybody knows if something is 50% off, it's buy one, get one. So, she said, if it's 50% off, it's free. And then she said, and if it's 75% off, you're making money. So, what that explains is, is that we were not in financial unity when we got married.

Okay. Let me just say that. All right. So, but there's a story in the Bible about multiplication. And we all know it, and I don't want you to be shy away from multiplication.

It's just where Jesus multiplied two fish and five loaves. But there are two principles in there that will help you and your spouse or you and your brothers and sisters in Christ to understand God's math, which is very easy for everyone to understand. Okay. So, Luke chapter nine, verse 12, it says, when the day began to wear away, the 12 came and said to him, send the multitude away that they may go into the surrounding towns and country and lodge and get provisions for we are in a deserted place. In other words, no, you know, in and outs, no fast food restaurants, right?

But he said to them, you give them something neat. And they said, well, we have no more than five loaves and two fish unless we go and buy food for all these people, for there were about 5,000 men. Now, I need to stop just for a moment. This is called the feeding of the 5,000, but that's a little bit incorrect and misleading because it wasn't 5,000 people. It was 5,000 families.

You see, in Jewish culture at that time, the way they counted a crowd, if they counted this crowd right here, they would only count the men. And the reason they would do that is they were counting heads of households. They were counting the men, which would give them a very rough estimate of the size of the crowd. Average children at that time was three to four in a Jewish family. And so, as a matter of fact, this is backed up by the same account, Matthew 14, verse 21.

Now, those who had eaten were about 5,000 men besides women and children. So, the only reason I'm bringing this out is to let you just know he didn't feed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. He fed 5,000 families, possibly 20,000 to 25,000 people. This is a bigger miracle than maybe you realized. Verse 14 again, he said to his disciples, make them sit down in groups of 50.

Just want you to know Jesus is a mathematician, too. All right. So, and they did so and made them all sit down. And then he took the five loaves and the two fish. And looking up to heaven, he blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude.

So, they all ate and were filled. And 12 baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them. Now, this is not theological. This is just my personal opinion. So, 12 baskets were left over.

Personally, I think Jesus wanted each disciple to have a doggy bag. This is my personal opinion. Okay. But here are some things you might not have noticed about the story. Verse 12 says, when the day began to wear away.

Okay. In the Greek, that means when the day began to wear away. Okay. In other words, they invited this guest speaker. And let's say the service started at 10.

And it's going to be over around 11, 11, 15. And at 12, he's still going. And at one, he's still going. And at two, he's still going. You've already missed the first game.

At three, he's still going. At four, he's still going. At five, he's still going. At six. The Bible says, when the day began to wear away.

Okay. So, I like to use my holy imagination. I don't know if you've ever done this. Debbie calls it my human imagination. But I call it holy.

Like in the world. Like in the world, like in the world. Okay, but what I like to think about, what would I have done had I been in that situation that day? Well, I would have formed a committee, personally. I like committees.

And so, I'd have got some people together, some of the disciples. Let's just say the disciples got together, and I like Peter. The reason I like Peter is because I feel like the weak parts of Peter are the parts like I am. In other words, Peter normally said the wrong thing at the wrong time, if you study it much, you know. So, I wonder if Peter said something like this, guys, I'm about to starve.

I mean, it's the longest service I've ever been to in my life. And if I don't eat soon, I'll die. I'll die right in the next 12 seconds, I will be dead. And I'll tell you what else, I think the people might even be getting hungry. And one of them, like John, who was very brilliant, might have said, that's it.

And Peter said, what's it? Let's tell Jesus that the people are getting hungry. Because he seems to care a lot about the people. He doesn't seem to care much about us, but he does seem to care about the people. So, now let's imagine that you are the spokesperson.

So, see the podium there. Let's say Jesus is at the podium, 25,000 people, and you are elected to go talk to Jesus. Because the inference from Scripture is that they interrupted his message, okay? So, you walk up and you say, Lord, excuse me. Lord, Lord, Lord, excuse me.

Excuse me. Boy, this has been so good today. I tell you, this has just been, oh, it's this series of messages you're bringing all in one day. But we were thinking that the people are starting to get hungry. Now, I could go all day.

I just told the brothers, I said, I could go all day listening to this. You know, I could go all day. But we think, and the restaurants are about to close. And so, we feel like that you should just wrap it up. And Jesus might have said something like, so y'all are concerned about the people, right?

Yes, Lord. It's all about the people. And then maybe you've never seen this Scripture. Look at this one, verse 13. But he said to them, well, then you give them something to eat.

Excuse me. See, we read these things in the Bible, and because we read them so much, we don't read that part. You give them something to eat. And so, maybe there was some kid that snuck back into town, to, you know, like Fish and Chips or Long John Silver or something, and he's walking by, and you, you, you. You know, you grab it, and he bought the two-piece meal with extra rolls, and so you, and you say, well, this is all we got, you know, and maybe someone says, hey, that's, that's what, that's it.

That's our answer. What's our answer? Let's tell Jesus, this is all we have, and he'll let the people go, so you're again, you're the spokesperson, you say, Lord, Lord, excuse me, excuse me, you know, you know, a moment ago where I was telling you, you know, how good the series is, and you, you said, you know, for us to, you know, give the, you know, people something to eat, and, and we, we've been working on that, and, but we only have two, Peter took it from him, Lord, I didn't take it from him, but we only have two pieces of fish and, and five rolls, and so we're thinking, we should, you know, and the Lord says, so let me get this straight, so you have two pieces of fish and, and five pieces of bread, is that right? Yes, Lord, that's all we have. Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

Have them sit down in groups of 50. Lord, well, we, we, we don't, we don't have a lot of these snack packs. We just, we just, this is the only, we only have one, and Peter ate some of one of them. So now, okay, just, just think for a moment, because here's what we don't quite get, the very, the next, this verse 16, he blessed them, them's a pronoun, it's going to refer to the five loaves of bread and two fish. He blessed them and broke them and gave them to the disciples set before the multitude.

So I'm wondering even if like Peter figured it out and thought, well, you know, he, he's going to, he's going to multiply it. When he prays, I'll bet it multiplies right in front of our eyes, but that's not what happened. So Jesus picks, picks, picks up this piece of bread and says, Lord, bless it, breaks it and hands half of it back to Peter. Uh, are, are, are you through praying? Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm through.

Just pass it out. Do you want to pray some more? No. I, I, I, he didn't say this. The text doesn't imply, but, but just think that this is, this, this is biblical what I'm saying.

He could have said something like, Peter, I've blessed it. Now watch what happens. I blessed it. Now see what happens when you give it away. Now, personally, I think Peter would have walked up to the first person and said something like this.

Take just a little piece. I said a little piece, pig. What is wrong with you? Just take a little piece and go down the road. And he gets down to the end of the aisle and there's this little piece of bread left.

Sweat pouring down his face and all of a sudden the bread grows in Peter's hands. You know what I think we miss? The miracle did not happen in the master's hands. It happened in the disciples hands. So there are two principles of multiplication, two principles of being in unity in your finances that you need to get.

Here's number one. It has to be blessed before it can multiply. What if the disciples had just given it out before Jesus blessed it? It never would have multiplied. It's the blessing of Jesus that causes it to multiply.

And I don't have time to do a whole message on this, but basically this is what the Bible calls tithing. When you give the first 10% to the body of Christ, to Jesus, then Jesus blesses it. And according to Hebrews 7, Jesus himself receives our tithes and blesses them. So we give the first portion of Jesus and it's blessed. So it has to be blessed before it can multiply.

Here's point number two. It has to be given away before it can multiply. What if the disciples, after Jesus had blessed it, had eaten it? It never would multiply. Even though it was blessed.

Do you know how many people tithe, but don't give over and above the tithe? And yet what they have has been blessed by Jesus. And yet they never give it a chance to multiply. So as I said, this is what I grew up with this. My dad did this.

My, my father was the most generous person I've ever met, you know? And so I, I, I, when I, I didn't get saved again, I went the wrong way, but at 19, I got saved in that motel room. Well, the first thing I want to do is I wanted everybody to get saved, but I couldn't talk. I didn't know how to talk. And, and, and so I, I would just, I would just try to share with people.

But what I started doing was started leaving like a little gospel track that would share the gospel. You do, do y'all remember those? I used to share a gospel track and I'd put like a $20 bill in there, even though the meal was $10, just to try to get them to read it. And I can remember the first time I. If I ever did that, this lady told me when we went back to the restaurant like a month later, she said, hey, I read that little book you gave me, and I gave my life to Jesus, and I called my husband and read it to him, and he gave his life to Jesus, and my wife and I just said, that's great, and I said, what do you mean you called your husband?

Was he at work or whatever? She put her head down, and she said, no, he's in prison, and a few years later, he got out, and my wife and I baptized them together, both of them. Got bad funds. From me just giving a little $20 bill to her. There's so much to it, and so Devin and I just started giving and blessing people, and she grew up with this mindset of not having enough to give.

I grew up with this, having more to give, but when we would talk about it, see, let me say something about this. I see things, and she feels things. I make decisions primarily based on what I think. She makes decisions primarily based on what she feels. Mind-willing emotions.

You have a mind, you have emotions, and then you make decisions with your will, see? And so we are together, though, because I can see how it will work, but if she doesn't feel good about it, I don't do it. She might feel something, but if I don't see how it can work right now, and I can do the math, and I can do it, sugar, I can do that in six months from now, she'll say, fine, let's just wait. Because she understands I can see things she can't see, but I understand she can feel things that I can't feel. You understand?

We're a team. It's called relationship. It's called extraordinary relationships. Listen, you're better with someone else than you are by yourself. Do you understand that everything that God created, he said, was good except for one thing, and that was when he was created man, and here's what he said.

It is not good for man to be alone, and all you have to do, ladies, is leave for a few days. That's the only thing God created that is not good. It is not good for men to be alone. I don't know if Adam was running around the garden with scissors or what. I don't know, but God basically said, that's not good.

We need relationships, and the only way to have extraordinary relationships instead of ordinary relationships is to come into unity. And the best thing, the easiest thing to come into unity on is on your finances. Respect one another. Respect your differences. So, Deb and I started giving.

Now, you have to understand that I was an evangelist. I wasn't a pastor back then. Back then, I was an evangelist, which basically meant that I would go to churches and do revivals. And after I would preach, they would give me love offerings. Some gave me like offerings.

Oh, I did not. I don't like it. Like one other thing. I was like, don't say anything else. No, you're like, don't say anything.

Some gave don't like offerings, you know, so, but I went to this church and there were like 60 people and it was the only meeting I had for the whole month. And God spoke to me, I don't want you to manipulate. And one of the things he told me was, I don't want you to, from now when someone, when a pastor asks you, what are your financial requirements for coming? You say, I have no financial requirements for coming. And evangelists just didn't do that.

They used to tell you you have to do this and you have to pay this and you have to pay my expenses and you have to pay at least, I need an honorarium of at least this much. And God was teaching me to rely on him. So I told this pastor, I don't have any financial requirements. I don't have financial requirements for coming to this day to a church. None.

And God's always just taking care of me. And so anyway, I told this pastor this, he gets up and tells the whole church. So they give this, he said, let's give him a really good love offer. And so at the end of the service, we're standing at the, at the front down here and, and he, they bring him the check. They counted it.

The deacons had, or whoever counted the finances. And he, and the pastor looked at the check and he said, look at that. He said, that's the biggest love offering we've ever given. And he was excited. The givers are excited to give.

They don't give begrudgingly. They give it, they give cheerfully. So he said, look at that. He said, I'm so excited. Look, look at that.

And I looked at it and it was enough for the whole month. And I, that's the only meaning I had. And it was enough for our whole month's budget. And, but while I'm looking at it, I'm looking at the pastor and I glance over his shoulder and there is a missionary at the back of the church that had spoken right before I spoke. And the Lord, I, I believe it was the Lord.

I heard this voice say, give him the love offering. But I, I didn't think it was the Lord actually, because, because what I, what, what I thought was get, get behind me, Satan. That's not the Lord. I remember telling him that's not you, you know, that's not you because this is what we need for the whole month. You provided this for us.

And the Lord said, I told you that I would tell you what to give, where to give and when to give. God might tell you just to buy a meal for someone. God might tell you just to take a meal to someone's house. He might just say you send this card of a word of encouragement with a scripture in it. It's, it's not always money.

Just give, just be givers, just be generous people. And so, um, I, I endorsed the check and I went to the missionary after the service and I said, I'm going to give this to you on two reasons. One, you never tell anyone. And number two, you never ever, uh, and I said, don't look at the check until after you leave. And so then Debbie and I went outside, um, and there were like, uh, uh, five couples in the parking lot and they said, Hey, we're going to go eat some pizza.

Would y'all like to go? And we said, yeah, you know, you know, cause we were broke. And so, um, so we went to pizza. And so the six guys said a little one. In the table, six guys on the other, these four guys started talking, and then the guy sitting across from me, he started talking to me, and he just leans across the table like this, and he said, how much was the love offering?

And I was kind of flustered. I thought, why is he asking me that, you know? I mean, it's my salary. I mean, why would he ask something so personal, you know? But I told him.

And then he said, where's the check? Like that. And so I said, Debbie has it. And I know you're not supposed to lie, but I didn't want to say we gave it to a missionary because we're very spiritual people, you know? I just didn't know what to say.

And so he said, go get it. I want to see it. And so I said, okay. So I went down to where Debbie was at the table, and I bent down, and I remember I said to her, how's your pizza? Is it good?

Okay, good. You know, there's nothing else to say. There's no check. So I came back, and again, I know you're not supposed to lie. I understand that.

But I just said to him, I said, it's in the car. And he said to me, it's not in the car. So I said, where is it? You know, you know so much. I was frustrated.

I was frustrated, and I just, you know, I didn't know what was going on. And so he said, you gave it away, didn't you? And I said, how do you know that? Because see, the missionary and I were the only ones left in the church. He didn't see me do it.

I said, how do you know that? He said, God told me. And he reached in his pocket, and he pulled out a check that he had written before he came to church. And he held it out. And as God is my witness, and as Debbie is my witness, because she knows.

And that man's in our church now. I asked him to stand up a while back and verify the story. He did. The check was exactly 10 times the amount of the check I'd just given away. Exactly.

And God started teaching us about giving sacrificially, generously. First thing we did was we bought a car for a lady, a single mom that didn't have a car. We had an old car. We had a $750 car we paid cash for, because God had told us to get rid of our big car we had a big payment on. And we had the $750 car, and we loved that car.

We loved it. We prayed over it. We anointed it with oil about a quarter a week. And we just loved that car. But God started speaking to give, and to give, and to give.

And we just kept giving, and we just kept giving. And then all of a sudden. The Lord spoke to me one day in my quiet time. I was reading Philippians 2, that God gave up everything. He gave up everything when he left heaven, became a servant, became obedient unto death, humbled himself.

And the Lord said to me, would you give me everything? Now, I don't, can I just say something? I don't recommend it, okay? The reason I don't recommend that is I recommend giving everything God tells you to. But I don't recommend giving everything, because people will do that sometimes, because they hear my story and they think, well, I want to get, you know, blessed like that too, okay?

But you only get blessed by obedience. So, just do what God tells you to do. Don't do what God told me to do. So, I went to Debbie, and I'd grown up with a lot of finances, and she'd grown up with very little finances. And I said, I have to tell you what I think God told me, but if you don't feel good about it, I won't do it.

And my beautiful wife said, what did God tell you to do? I said, I think we're supposed to give everything away. I think we're supposed to give everything in our checking account, everything in our savings account, everything in our retirement account. I think we're supposed to give both cars, and I think we're supposed to give our house away. And she said, I think that's the most exciting thing I've ever heard in my life.

And so, we did. We gave our house to a pastor that had five kids that didn't have a house. And we gave everything we had away. And a few days later, I'm reading about Solomon. It's a real famous story about Solomon.

It's the time when Solomon said to, when God said to Solomon, ask anything you want, and I'll give it to you. You remember that? Ask anything you want, and I'll give it to you. And I remember thinking, it said, at night, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at Gibeon, and said, ask anything you want, and I'll give it to you. And I remember thinking, I just had the thought, what happened that day?

That happened at night. What happened during that day? Well, go back and read it. It was tradition for the king to sacrifice one bull on the day he was inaugurated king, which that was the day. But Solomon sacrificed 1,000 bulls.

And that's the way you measure the king's wealth, three ways, land, gold, and bulls. So he gave a third of his wealth away. And I just thought, wow, God, that's just amazing that he gave so much and so extravagant. Now, listen to what I feel like the Lord told me. He said, I never say to selfish people, ask anything you won't, because I can't trust them.

I couldn't trust them with that. He said, but I always say to extravagant givers, ask anything you won't. And I wasn't even thinking that three days before we had just given. Everything away. And the Lord said to me, ask.

Ask anything you want. And I knew exactly what I wanted. Just like that I knew. Because you got to remember I didn't get saved till I was 19. I got married at 18 to this beautiful Christian girl.

Because I knew I needed to get my life right and I thought that'll help me get my life right. But I didn't get saved until nine months after we got married. And I need to be very vulnerable with you right now. I was unfaithful. And Debbie didn't know it.

And I thought, I'm gonna have to tell her at some point. And when I tell her, I'm gonna lose my marriage. And so when the Lord said, ask anything you want, I said, God, I want for Debbie and I to be madly and passionately in love for the rest of our lives. I don't want to lose my marriage. And this spring we celebrate 43 years of marriage.

You can have extraordinary relationships. relationships.