Get To Give

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. So we are going to finish a series, Time, Talent, and Treasure. We've been kind of walking through the idea of generosity. And a few weeks ago, I mentioned a book called Be Rich.

Andy Stanley wrote it. It's not about what you have, but what you do with what you have. Kind of the thesis of the book. So it's not necessarily about the money we have, but what we do with the money we have, right? That kind of determines whether we're rich.

And I mentioned something. Number one, there was good news and bad news, right? And the good news is you're rich, because when we look at the rest of the world, and we see that 99% of the world is a lot poorer than us, that we're actually in the top 1%, if we make over 30,000 more or more a year, we are actually in the top income earning people in the world. So that's good news. But the bad news is that it's harder to depend on God.

And we're faced with a lot of distractions. But we have a great responsibility. Because we are blessed. And when you think about Thanksgiving, we think about being blessed, right? We're blessed.

But why are we blessed? And that's what I want to get to today. And I want to take some time to talk about a subject. And this is always the one sermon. If you're new with us today, you're like, oh, no, he's going to talk about money.

So let me just say this. We're going to talk about money today, okay? And if you're a guest with us, this is not usually our normal pattern. We don't talk about money every week. But we do talk about money because we believe in the whole counsel of the Bible.

And we want to manage our money well, right? So we're going to talk about that today. And what's interesting is if you listen to this and you pull this in with the right heart, I think it will really help you. It will bless you. And you'll be able to do some things that you didn't think you were capable of doing.

It's all about coming into this with the right heart, the right heart. So let's just ask God. God, give us the right heart during this message. Amen? Amen.

Give us the right heart, Spirit. Holy Spirit, you are here. Give us the right heart. So how many of you want to be above average, right? Yeah, yeah.

We want to be above average. I want to be above average. All of us want to be above average in something, right? In fact, we want to be above average in all things. And if you're, how many of you would say that, or let me put it this way.

How many of you Redskins don't really feel like you're above average right now? Redskin fans. I find it interesting how a team can be thrown under the bus as soon as they start doing really bad. I think I saw a post the other day of, you know, there was a dollar. They were selling tickets for a dollar or something like that.

And somebody said, well, I'm not going to even buy a ticket for a dollar and take my, you know, not something to the game. It's too embarrassing. I don't even want it for a dollar. You know, we don't want to be below average. We care about our sports teams being above average.

We care about our lives being above average. But unfortunately, and to be honest, a lot of us, if we're really honest with ourselves, we're below average in our giving. We're below average in our giving. In fact, there was a study done and it compared the top 20% of wage earners and the bottom 20% of wage earners in the world. And they found that those who were in the bottom 20% wage earners in the world give significantly more.

Give significantly more, whether it's financially or in any area. But mostly they're talking about financially, they give significantly more. In fact, they give two to three times more than those in the top bracket. And what you find out is those who make less than $12,000 a year, those who are below the poverty line, actually give the most. Isn't that something?

Actually give the most. Why is that? Because the more you make, the more you give, and it's easier to give $120 than $20,000. Think about it that way. It makes it harder to give.

But don't feel bad because we are above average in a lot of areas. We're above average in shopping. We're above average in spending. Our country indicates that, right? We know how to spend money.

Our government knows how to spend money. And we spend more, more, more than we take in. We're really, really good at that, right? Above average, above average in those areas. But why did God bless you is the question.

Why did God bless you? Two things. It's for our enjoyment, number one. So I want you to get that right. That God doesn't expect you to be impoverished.

When he gives you money, when he blesses you, when he gives you things in your life, it is for your enjoyment, as 1 Timothy 6, 17 says, who richly provides everything for our enjoyment. So he gives us things so that we can enjoy. We can enjoy. He gives us enjoyment. But he also, number two, wants us to be generous.

To be generous. He blesses us to be a blessing. He blesses us so that we get to give. Not that we give to get, but we get to give. I get an opportunity to give.

And he wants to bless us. It's for our enjoyment, number one. But it's also, he also wants us to be generous. If you have your Bibles, turn to 2 Corinthians 9, 11. I'm going to be hopping around a little bit.

This is more of a topical message. So you kind of bounce around a little more. It says this, you will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through us, your generosity will result in what? Thanksgiving to God.

I love that. How you've been made rich in every way so that on every occasion you can be generous. Why? Why are we generous? Ultimately, to give praise to God.

So think of it this way. You take a little bit, just a little bit, of what you have and give it to someone else. And you watch them as they receive that. Give praise to God. God bless you.

God bless you. God bless you. Thank you. That's what it's about, just seeing them find God, give praise to God, give thanks to God. But why is giving and why is money such a hot topic when we talk about financial giving?

Why is that? Here's the reason. Because money is the number one competitor of our soul. It is. Jesus talked about money because money makes us do things that we don't normally do, right?

It makes us act ways we don't normally act. And he tells us that, and he shares with us in scripture, and you know Jesus talked so much about money. Not because he was concerned about money, because you're concerned about money. We're concerned about money. We put money in the place of God often.

So Jesus had to direct this to the people. And in Matthew 6, 24 he says no one can serve two masters. Either you can hate the one and love the other or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money, right? And some versions say mammon.

That's the God of money, because it's a God. It can be a God in our life. So why do we serve money? What are the reasons we serve money? There's two things here.

First of all, it gives us a false sense of happiness, right? If I have enough, I'll be happier. If I have enough, I can have more stuff, and I can have all these things, and it makes me happy. But true joy is only found in God. Because the more you have, the more you realize how much you need a Savior, because it's not fulfilling that thing inside of you, right?

So it gives us a false sense of happiness, right? Second thing is it gives us a false sense of security. If I have enough money, if I can save up enough money, if I can store up enough money, I will be secure. But when somebody gets sick, maybe a terminal illness, there's not enough money in the world, right? We would give every bit of money for a loved one, but there's not enough money in the world because it gives us a false sense of security.

The only security we can have is in God. So that's why money is such a hot topic. And if you bring up money in church or in a service, in fact, just a few years ago, I shared a message on tithing and giving and offering, and we lost a family of seven in our church because of it. They just felt we didn't need it. It's a hot topic.

But guess what? It's God's topic, and we talk about it, and we want to be blessed, and we want to bless others, and we want to see God do amazing things through our life and through our church. So what do we do? We talk about money. It's what we need to talk about.

So how do we break this? How do we break this vicious love of money cycle? Simple answer, and y'all know the answer. You know where I'm going with this. It's giving.

It's giving. So how do I give? How do I give? Well, there's two things I want to talk about with giving today. The first one is giving strategically.

And this could be a life-changing thought process if you take this the right way, okay? If you take this to the heart, it could be life-changing, giving strategically. Second, Chronicles 9-7 says this, or Corinthians rather, each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves what? A cheerful giver. So you need to, first of all, be strategic.

What does that mean? Put some thought into your giving. Be thoughtful. You need to decide in your heart. This means you need to spend some time thinking about what you want to give and how you want to give.

Because here's the deal. If you give reluctantly or under compulsion, you've got two things going on here. Either you're selfish in your heart, and for most of us it may not be that, is you haven't give much thought. And if you give thought to why you're giving and what you want to give and be prayerful and considered of what you're going to do with what God has blessed you with, it will go a long way. So the challenge is that people who are blessed like us, the big challenge is giving whether we should give spontaneously or give strategically.

And for most people they give spontaneously. And we want to kind of get away from that because we want to be thoughtful of that. Now there's nothing wrong with giving spontaneously, okay? If somebody's going on a missions trip, you want to give to that. If somebody's in need in our church or in our small group and you want to help them out and help them with the rent payment, that's great.

There's all kinds of things. If a natural disaster takes place and we want to help and we want to give spontaneously to that, those are great things. So I'm not knocking down spontaneous giving, but we often do only that. And I think it really hinders what we're really capable of doing if we don't put thought, put heart to what we're giving to. Think about it strategically giving.

Miranda and I, just for example, give strategically. We think a lot about what we give to and how we give. And every year we get together and we talk about how much more we're going to give and what areas we're going to give in. And in that strategic giving, we start off, we always start off with the tithe, with the tithe. We always give a tithe.

We've never not given tithe. When we were making, when I was only making thirty-something thousand dollars a year and she was making hardly anything, we tithe. We've always tithed. That was something that we established in our marriage from the beginning. Now let me preface talking about tithe with this.

If you are not a believer today, if you're not a follower of Christ, you're off the hook, okay? This does not apply to you, and it may even sound crazy what we're talking about, right? This thing called the tithe. But if you're a Christian, I kind of want to speak to you on this today, because it makes a lot of, for us who are believers, it makes a lot of spiritual sense to tithe. Not necessarily literal sense or physical or tangible sense, but it makes a lot of spiritual sense to us.

If you go back to Malachi 3.10, it says this, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. So it talks about bringing the tithe. Tithe means ten percent. I also find it, and I was just saying, I'll share this a little later.

I just thought it was cool in my study that any time you see 10 in the Bible, it represents testing. And later on, I'll talk a little bit about how God tests us in that one area. But the 10, the tithe, is 10 percent. That's what we believe is 10 percent. I like to call it the training wheels of giving because it gives us a standard.

God laid out a standard for us to give. And what we believe, and what I believe, and what a lot of scholars believe, there's different views on this depending on interpretation, but that the storehouse, the storehouse in the Old Testament is a type and shadow of Christ and His church. So I believe that the first 10 percent, this is what I believe, this is what Miranda and I go by with our strategic giving. We always give the first 10 percent to the local church. Why?

Because we believe that the local church is the most powerful organization for life change in the world. We believe hands down the one that Jesus established, the one Jesus founded, is the most powerful institution in the world to change lives, and that's what we believe. So we give that to the local church first. I also like this idea. It says that there may be food in my house.

There may be food in my house. No tithe, no food. Some of you are thinking, where's the fried chicken? All right? But I think this might, you know, in the context of the scripture, there's two things going on here.

Yes, they're talking about food, and I'll show you this here as Hezekiah talks about this in 2 Chronicles. But spiritual food. Let's talk about spiritual food for a minute. If we're tithing into the storehouse, there is plenty of food. There's plenty of feeding.

There's plenty of getting fed. Look what it says as Hezekiah makes an order. See, Jerusalem was getting away from the tithing. They weren't tithing into the storehouse. They weren't tithing as God had commanded or put an ordinance, an order.

If you look at the original Greek, ordinary ways of structure for everybody. He put this together. He put ordinances together, and they had gotten away from it. So He, Hezekiah, and I don't have this in your notes, so just follow along with me if you want to go to 2 Chronicles 1 through 6. You can follow along.

You want to write that down and go back and look at it later. That's fine. He said, He ordered the people living in Jerusalem to give a portion due to the priests and the Levites so they could devote themselves to the law of God. What does that mean? If you don't tithe, you can't get good food.

There can't be careful handling of Scripture. And it says this, as soon as the order went out, the Israelites generously gave the firstfruits, meaning the 10% of their grains, new wine, olive oil, honey, and all the fields produced. Now, some people say, well, this is just talking about like, you know, food, and it's talking about cows, and it's talking about all these things. Yeah, that was their money. That was what they had.

That was their currency in this day. So they're giving these things. They're giving wealth to the temple. And they brought a great amount, a tithe of everything. And the people of Israel and Judah who lived in the town of Judah also brought a tithe of the herds and the flocks and the tithe of the holy things dedicated to the Lord their God, and they piled them in heaps.

And then it goes down to verse 9, and Hezekiah kind of looks at the priest and says, what's going on here, you know? Look at, what about these heaps? And Ezariah, the chief priest from the family of Zadok, answered, and he says, since the people began to bring their contributions to the temple of the Lord, we have plenty to eat, plenty to spare, because the Lord, get this, has blessed His people, and this great amount is left over. You see the principle here? You see how that works, that God, if we bring in, if we're tithing into the storehouse, we're growing, we're getting fed, we're creating an environment where people, where God's kind of working spiritually.

It's not about a pastor's salary, okay? It's not about any of that. It's about having a healthy church. You know, when people come into our church and they're like, you know, I went to that church, but you know, I just wasn't getting fed. You know, I just wasn't getting a good food.

You know, the first thought I think is, first of all, you know, is it a healthy tithing church, number one? Because typically healthy tithing churches actually have really deep and good teaching and strong teaching, because the tithe, the principle of the tithe. And then the second thing I think is, are you tithing? Because if you're not tithing, you may not be getting fed the way you need to, spiritually. There's blessing in that.

There's blessing being fed through the tithe, through the tithe, first ten percent. Some ways say this, well, it's an Old Testament law. You hear that argument a lot, right? I posted something on Facebook the other day, kind of tongue-in-cheek, you know, the cat, and you know that little cat image on Facebook that's been going around, and it's been driving everybody crazy, like the girl's going, ah! And the cat's doing this, and you say, call the ministry, and the cat's like, you don't even tithe, you know?

And oh boy, it went off. And I did that on purpose, by the way. I just wanted to see people's reactions, because I know it's a hot topic, it's a hot subject, and it's worth talking about, right? It's worth talking about, and worth getting involved in, because it's something that we don't talk about enough as church people, right? It's an Old Testament principle, it's an Old Testament, but here's how I argue that.

The tithe predates the law. The tithe predates, it goes back to creation, it goes back to Adam and Eve, it goes back to Cain and Abel, it goes back to Abraham, it goes back to Jacob. There wasn't a law set, there wasn't an ordinance set. The reason God put ordinance in place is so that we could stay true to what God had created, and what God had designed so that His people could be strong and healthy people, spiritually healthy people. It predates the tithe, and not only that, Jesus confirms it.

People kind of look over Matthew 23, 23, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, you who pay tithe and mint, and anus and cumin, and have neglected the wealthier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith, and everybody kind of focuses on that part, and it needed to be said because they were arrogant, and they were throwing their tithes in the bucket, they wanted everybody to look at Him, look at me, I'm so holy, and I'm so righteous, I'm holier than thou, and yada yada, you know, look at me, look at me, and Jesus did not like that at all. But we seem to glance over the last part of Matthew 23, 23. It says, these you ought to have done without leaving the other undone. So he confirmed the tithe. Well, somebody says, well, these you ought to have done means, that's talking about mercy and faith and what have you.

Well, then look at the other part of it. If we can flip it without having the other undone. So I got you both ways. There's no way to argue your way out of that, that Jesus confirmed the tithe. So Miranda and I believe that's ground floor giving.

We do that. We have done that. And a few years ago, it was kind of funny. I was, it wasn't funny because God called me out on it, but I was looking at our finances and I'm like, man. And I told Miranda, I said, wow, we would have a lot more money.

We'd have a lot more money if we didn't tithe like we did. You know, I was looking at my account, I'm like, wow, we would be in pretty good shape. And then God spoke to me. And you know when God speaks to you, he speaks to you pretty strongly. He says, no, you wouldn't.

You wouldn't have what you have if you didn't tithe. You wouldn't be blessed the way you've been blessed, blessed with a healthy family, with, with, with strong friendships, with, with ministry and, and the things I've done in your ministry, you would not have any of this if it wasn't for me. That's my money, not your money. We believe that's ground giving. Here's what it does.

Two, two things real quick. Tithing teaches me to put God first. First fruits. That's why we call it first fruits. Deuteronomy 14 says the purpose of tithing is to teach you always to put God first in your lives.

So we give God our first. I'd like to say it like this, give God my first and my best and trust him with the rest, right? So he could do, he can, he can, he can do much more with that, right? I'll get to that in a second. Secondly, tithing increases my faith in God.

Tithing increases my faith in God. I believe that he can do more with ninety percent in my life than he can with the full hundred. I just believe that. And some of you who are faithful tithers, tithers understand that. You've seen it happen, right?

You've heard the stories, you've seen the stories, I've heard the stories, I've seen the stories. Had a guy call me one time, says, man, I tithed for the first time ever. It was amazing. And then I got a promotion, you know, at work. I mean, just, just God does things, you know, and it happens often.

I mean, I'm not saying that's always what's going to happen. That's not what it's really about. But I'm telling you, there's a lot of stories like that. I mean, there was like silly little stories. Oh, I put my last ten dollars in and I walked out and I was walking down a street and there was twenty dollars laying on the ground.

So God doubled my, I had a lady just, just cheering about that. Oh, I got twenty dollars because I gave ten and I didn't have any other. You know, and then God does things like that. God, God does things like that. It's, it's amazing.

It doesn't, it sounds crazy, but that's what, what God does. And that's how God is. And God wants us to be blessed. He increases my faith. Because if you don't give first, it doesn't take faith because you just give whatever's left, right?

That, that's the problem with it. We think, well, I, I, I'm not gonna give my first. I'm gonna, I'm gonna wait. You know, I'm gonna see. And some of you can testify to that.

I know I've been there before. Amen. Amen. Yeah, thank you for your honesty. I've been there before.

But that's, that takes away the faith card. See, God is telling us, put your first out. Put your first out. Do it and see what I don't do. And, and, and this is the only place in Scripture, can I go back to the 10, the 10?

In Scripture, anytime you see 10, you see the number 10, you always see testing, right? The plagues of Egypt, 10, 10 plagues, right? The wages of Jacob, 10. God tested his, his wages in 10 times and God increased his wages, right? And there's, there's multiple accounts in Scripture of 10 and testing.

But this is the only place in the Bible where God specifically, he doesn't just test, he says, test me at this. He says, I want you to, to test me. Test me with the 10. See how significant that is, the 10 and testing? And he says, test me in this, says the Lord Almighty.

Look at Malachi 10, 310, the second part of that, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so many blessings that there will not be enough in the storehouse. And we saw that in the Old Testament, and we can believe that today. We're whole Bible people, right? We believe in the full counsel of the Bible. We don't believe that's just Old Testament, we believe that's for us today.

And types and shadows, types and shadows of Jesus Christ and the church and everything is connected to the New Testament, and we see that. So we, we, we, we, we test God at this, right? And see what he does. Test me at this. God, your Father is saying, let me show you the blessings.

And then once we get, I know I spent a lot of time on the 10%, but after we get 10%, we discuss prayerfully what we're going to do with the rest. We, we prayerfully and strategically, we, we, we've supported kids in third world countries, we've supported other ministries, we've supported other causes that we believe in. Again, we've supported church planting. We still support all these things, church planting. And, and a lot of the things that we value the most, we prayerfully and strategically and thoughtfully plan these things out.

And each year we come back and we look at them again and we say, okay, what are we going to give to this year? Sometimes Miranda just does it and says, Leon, I know, I know you're not going to be mad about it anyway, but I went ahead and started giving to something else, you know? I'm like, okay, go do it, go do it. Yeah. Because she understands, you know, how we feel about giving.

And we give over, beyond, above the 10%. We always do with the training wheels of giving and we've seen God do so many things. And secondly, we give sacrifice, uh, sacrificially. Because here's the deal, blessed people, blessed people, rich people give extravagantly. We do.

People of God who are blessed give extravagantly. Look at Solomon. Solomon. He could have given a few bulls, but he gave, he won't, he didn't want to just do a few bulls when he was given to the temple. He gave a thousand bulls, right?

I'm going to give all I can. David, he gave to build the temple, uh, the things that he gave. And we're, let me just step back here because some of you are probably thinking, oh man, it's David and Solomon. They were wealthy people, so it was easy for them. Let's go back and see where David came from.

He didn't have much, but he had God. He was called a man after God's own heart. He had a heart for God. God desires us to have the heart that David had. David gave so much, so extravagantly to the temple.

He didn't even get to see the temple built. God would not allow him to, but he gave extravagantly. They say that the worth that he gave would just be far surpass Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and the wealthiest people in the world by far. In history, this was probably the most extravagant gift that he could possibly give. Here's what else I want to say.

I believe this, that God, the reason that God blessed David and blessed Solomon wasn't because Solomon and David were good at making money or whatever. I think he knew their heart. I think people are blessed with finances because God knows that they're going to do the right things with him before they even have the finances. Their heart's already aligned. Oh, he can do it because he's wealthy.

It's easy for the wealthy people to do it. No, I think God does it because he already knows where they're at and they'll do with that money. I have a friend who's super wealthy in this area. Every business he creates, every business he makes, it just makes money. And it's just amazing.

I'm like, man, how does that happen? How do you do that? Some of you probably even know him. He was in law school with my wife. And it's like everything he touches turns to gold and he's just doing it.

But when I talk to him, I talk to him. It's really not about the businesses. It's not about the money. He wants to give it all away. If anybody's hurt or in need, I contacted him not long ago.

I'm not going to share his name because he might not want me to do that, but I contacted him on the phone not too long ago because I have a family in need. And I thought, I said, hey man, are you connected to an organization or something? He says, no, I'm not connected to an organization, but what do they need? I got the money. I can do it.

What do they need? Do they need childcare? Do they need food? Do they need help? Do they need help with the rent?

I've got it and I want to give it. See, I believe God does that for people. I believe that the truly rich people that God, He blesses them. It's a heart alignment issue. It's not about, I'm going to have money, therefore I give.

It's, I give, therefore I have money. Faith. Sacrificial giving. I love how Jesus in Luke 21, 1 and 3, He says, as Jesus looked up, He saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury, but He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. Some mites is what some versions say, some of the smallest of currency.

And truly I tell you, and He looked at them, He said, this poor widow has put in more than all the others. not because she has, because her heart is aligned in the right place. I was in Kenya a few years back ministering there with preaching and sharing the message of Jesus with, with, with a lot of different people. And, and we had this pastoral conference and people were walking miles and miles, hundreds of miles to this conference. You would not believe it.

We had this conference we put together and, you know, conferences here in America, they're like, oh, they got to be big and light shows and you got to have the best speakers and you got to sell way ahead of time. We just kind of threw something together. And we have hundreds and hundreds of pastors walking hundreds of miles for days to come to this conference that we were at, to hear little old measly me and whoever else was there, you know, share ministry and the gospel and things like that. My father was there with me too. He was, he was preaching.

I was preaching. We were doing a lot of things together. My, my father has the opportunity to, to do a lot of missions and stuff. He's a pastor himself and, and I hate that I don't get to go as much as I used to with him, but I, I, I plan to do that more in the future. But this man came up to, to my father.

We were, we were there and he pulled out this little hat, this little wrinkly old hat and it had Kenya on it. It had a little, little flag. He said, pastor, pastor, I want you to have this. I want you to have this. And we kind of looked at that hat and we're like, you can buy this at a quick mark.

You know, you think that, right? I mean, it's not much, but what we didn't realize is for this man, that was a huge gift. It probably took a month's wages just to buy that hat for him. These are very extremely poor people. These, this is not a country that just, they're very impoverished.

And he gave that hat and he had a big smile on his face. Another story I heard from a pastor friend is, uh, they were in, um, in a, in a third world country and a lady comes in and brings a Coca-Cola to their table. You don't see Coca-Cola in a lot of these countries unless you have money. And she's like putting fixings on the table and things like that. And, and, and, and he's like, oh, wow, you know, we got, we got, this is a, this is a great spread and, and this and that didn't mean a whole lot to him, you know, from a personal standpoint.

But what he learned is this lady was so excited to serve, so excited to serve that, that, that these pastors, these ministers that had come into that area that they, that they saved, she saved up, they said she saved up for a year, a year so that she could put food on the table for these people that had come in and were visiting. And we complain about messages of giving. We complain about money, but these people, they are so excited about what God has done in their life that they're doing all that they can. Here, here's the thing. I think about my kids, my children, I've already bought them Christmas presents and I'm super excited.

I just want so badly to give them these presents, right? Gifts, because I know it's something they'll like, something they'll need and, and all of that. And I'm, I'm super excited. I, I, because why? Because I've put thought to it and I've, and I've, and I know them well.

And that's what God wants to see from us. He wants to see us put thought, thought. He wants us to be excited and he wants us to save up and, and, and do what he, he wants to see us in relationship with him that way. And you know what? He's on the other side and says, I want to bless them so badly.

I want to do some things so badly. I've got something great for them. I've got something. I know them. I created them.

I made them. I know everything about them, and I have something for them. I'm just asking them to do this, and He's waiting in heaven to do that. He's waiting right here to do that. He's just asking you, test me at this.

Give. We don't give like average people. We give like wealthy, rich people in the kingdom of heaven. We get to give. We get to give.

Let's pray. Let's just allow a second for the Holy Spirit just to speak to us for a minute. Father, what are you telling us? What are you sharing with us, God? What are you saying?

For some of you, God may be saying, go get them, because you're doing a great job. You are there. You're wealthy. You're a rich giver. You're not a below average giver.

Give. Give. And do more. Do more. For some of you, you may feel like, yes, I'm not there yet.

And God's speaking to you and saying, it's time. It's time to lean all the way in. I need you all in, because I'm ready to bless you. I'm ready to do amazing things in your life. For some of you, it may not even start with something like this.

Maybe it starts with just a relationship with Christ. It might be that to be truly rich, you need to start there. That I want to give my life to Christ. I want a relationship with him. I want to know this God who knows me and is up in heaven, or not even up in heaven.

He's with me right now, reaching out to me. And he cares about me, and he wants to bless the socks off of me, but he's waiting for me to connect with him. And that is the greatest decision you ever make in your life. So wherever you are in this spiritual walk, this spiritual journey, the steps you're taking, God's meeting you right there. So if you would pray with me, just pray in the spirit, pray to yourself, pray out loud if you want to.

But God, I want to do all that you've called me to do. I want to follow you with every bit of my heart. If my heart is off, I want to realign my heart with you. That I will no longer be selfish. I will no longer be envious of others.

I will no longer hold back because I don't trust you. Because it's really about you, God. It's about what you're doing. It's about your kingdom. It's about your purposes.

And I know you got my best interest in mind. I know you're not after my money. You're after me. You're not after anything else but just having my heart. So God, I give you my heart today.

And perhaps if you've never given your life to Jesus, just give it to him. There's no magic in the formula. It's just Jesus reaching out to you and say, I've given my life for you. Just confess. I confess my sin to you.

I confess that I've been far from you and I haven't aligned my life with you, Jesus. But today I give my life to you. I know that you love me. And I know you died for me. So come into my life.

Come into my heart. Make me new. Change me from the inside out. I want to walk with you from this day forward. In your name.

Amen.