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Well, good morning, Echoes Church. How are we doing this morning?
Man, always an honor, always a privilege to get to be with you. Again, I don't know if you follow me on social media or not, I was posting yesterday. We took about 500 men through Echoes Church through an all day intensive experience that was
it was pretty amazing. If you see guys walking around kind of funny, it's because we started the day by doing 1,000 lunges. And so they're they're struggling today. But it was a powerful, powerful day that I believe will mark our church and that our church will be different because of what the men of Echoes walked through yesterday. And so we're just man, we're excited. We're honored. We have some of the leaders that are here with us this morning. And so
man, I just I think if you're here, that God has you here for a reason. I just wanna remind all of us that this looks like a high school performing arts center, but this is the thin place. This is where the realities of heaven will collide with the realities of earth. And it's in this room where marriages get restored and addictions are broken and chains fall off in the name of Jesus. And so let's not let's not forget that as we start opening God's word today. Again, we're starting a series today called more than enough. We're gonna spend the next three weeks looking at what it means to operate from a posture
of kingdom generosity,
and that the the way we spend our money potentially is the greatest lead indicator of the condition of our heart and our soul. And I don't know why, but we just get so weird when it comes to talking about money in the church. And my my hope and my goal today is to walk out of here with you not feeling a single bit of condemnation from me, but just a level of holy conviction to go, man, let's live into
the calling and the assignment that is on our life when it comes to how we manage our resources. K? The the the theme verse for the next three weeks that I want to really drill into the heart of every single member of Echo's church is this that's found in Proverbs chapter 11 verse 24.
It says, the world of the generous gets larger and larger, and the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. I want God to increase your character. I got I want God to increase your influence. I want God to increase
your anointing. I want your world to get larger and larger. And the scripture says that we've gotta operate from a posture of generosity. And if we do, our world will be made larger and larger. God will trust us with more and more. So this morning, what I wanna talk to us about, and I wanna share with you why
I tithe. K. I wanna talk to you about why I tithe. I'm not gonna try to convince you that you should tithe. I just wanna show you what I think the Bible says about it, and I wanna teach you some principles that I've learned over the years as I've made tithing a part of my disciplines and my spiritual practices, and we'll let the chips fall where they may, and we'll let spirit of God work out with each of us what it is that we need to walk out if you're with this morning. So let's pray. We'll open up God's word. Father,
God, our hearts are already stirring with expectation for what it is you're gonna do today. God, I'm just thankful that we don't have to do some magic incantation, say the right words to get you to show up. No. Holy Spirit, you're already here. You're moving. God, you were in this space before we got here this morning.
And, I just pray that every single person today that they would hear specifically from heaven. That, god, you will remind every person in here how much you love them, and that people would walk out of this room different than having walked in here because, Jesus, your spirit, your presence,
it will change us. In Jesus' mighty name, all god's people said, amen and amen. I heard a story a few years ago about a wealthy guy that had kinda got to the end of his life, and his kinda dying request, his dying wish to his wife was to take all of the money that he had made because it was his. He built the business. He had done the stuff. He built the bank accounts. He wanted her to empty all the bank accounts and to put all the money into the casket with him, and he wanted to be buried with him. And she thought it was a crazy request, but he was he was relentless. This is what I want you to do. I want you take all the money. I want you to bury it with me. And all of his friends knew about it. The wife's friends knew about it. And so the day at his funeral,
they're getting ready to lower the casket into the ground, and the wife's friend reached over and asked her. She said, hey. Did you honor his request? Did you put all of his money into the casket? And she said, of course. He's my husband. So I wrote him a check, and I put all of the money with him into the casket. Right?
The reason that I start there is because we we've got to just laugh and kind of lower the spiritual temperature in the room because I don't know why we've been conditioned in church to get really weird when we talk about money. The truth is that all of us know that we can't take it with us, but we operate from a posture as if we are we are our own god, and that somebody at church would have the audacity to talk about what god says about our money. We just get weird. And so my hope and my goal this morning is to just show you. Here's what the scripture's saying. I wanna talk to you about again why why I tithe, but before I get there, I've gotta first dispel a few myths. There's some myths that are potentially even kicking around in your heart, in your head right now. I've heard these a thousand times. Again, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard these, I would be a wealthy man. Right? The first myth that exists when it comes to money in the church is that the church just wants my money.
I have heard this, again, is mostly on social media where people say this, but there's a thought in the back of our head. Man, the church just wants my money. All the church wants is my my income. Right? They just want my money. And I just wanna tell you as a guy that's leading a a body of the local church, the the church doesn't want your money.
This is perplexing nature of the invitation of faith that you and I have been invited into, that God doesn't actually need anything that you and I offer. He doesn't need our expertise. He doesn't need our resources. He doesn't need our our our wisdom. He doesn't need our money. God doesn't need anything from us to accomplish his purpose on this earth. And the truth is, Echo Church is in an incredibly healthy financial place. We operate with margin every single month. We're putting money away into savings every single month. But we all we are also in this really unique position where, again, look around. Our services are busting at the seams. We're figuring out overflow services. We've got four of them going. We're 10 old and we're we're a church that averages about 3,100
people every single weekend. K? Now we also we also understand that with that comes significant financial resources,
but the beauty is is that God has been more than sufficient to meet our every need, and that God will continue to fund his mission on this earth. God does not need your money, but he does want your heart. And he does understand that your heart and your wallet are more connected than we could ever possibly imagine, but you better believe that God will accomplish his purpose on this earth with or without our participation.
But you do get to be a part of it if you want to make a decision to do that. The second myth is that the church shouldn't talk about money.
There's just certain topics the church should never talk about. Right? Now again, I understand, I guess, on the surface why we would say things like that, but the truth is is the number one reason that marriages fall apart is because tension around money. Right? This the only topic that I I actually can think of that universally applies to every single person in the room, every single weekend, regardless of season of life, regardless of married or unmarried, kids or no kids, is all of us have been given resources to steward.
All of them are different amounts, but money is one of the only topics that universally applies to every single person in the church. And I also, again, I think that we should care about the things that God cares about. We should talk about at church the things that Jesus talked about. And I just wanna show you a couple stats
that will blow your mind when you begin to understand how much the Bible and Jesus talks about money. Hey. You gotta remember Jesus was a brilliant communicator. He would often teach in these things called parables.
He would try to think, okay, how do I how do I translate this deeply complex theological issue and translate it to a bunch of farmers? He'd go, the kingdom of God is like it's like a guy that has a 100 sheep. Alright? One guy loses a cup and he would just take these these stories,
these complex ideas and put them into really simple stories. We call them parables. What's amazing is if you go and look, two thirds of all the parables Jesus taught dealt with handling money.
Two out of every three parables he used was to illustrate how you and I as lost and dying people should use our resources to glorify God with him. If you go look up the entirety of the gospels, k, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four books in the Bible that record the life of Jesus, 10%, one out of every 10 verses in the gospels deal directly with
money. You take the Bible at large. You do an assessment of the entire thing. There are 2,300 verses in the Bible that mention finances. So when people say things to me like the church shouldn't talk about money, it's clear to me that you haven't actually read the bible
because you would be okay with us talking about faith and prayer in church. Right? But you realize 2,300 verses about finances is five times the amount of verses that we have about faith and prayer.
All that to say, finances to God matters a huge deal. Here's why Billy Graham has a quote I wanna share with you. He says that if a person gets his attitude towards money straight, it'll straighten out almost every other area of his life.
The reason that God talks so much about money is because if you get this area of your life right, it'll set you up for more success than you ever dreamt possible. But if you miss this, if you get it wrong, I'm telling you, it will set you up for more failure than you ever knew possible. Money
matters to God. We've got to. We've got to talk about it. The third myth is that tithing is an old testament law that is no longer applicable today.
Now again, this is a whole theological thing. This is mostly guys conversations on social media going, I don't tithe because it's an old testament law, it's like, I I operate under the covenant of grace. It's like, bro, tithing was never when you really look at it, it was never a part of the law to begin with. K? If we're gonna talk about the law, it's a whole, again, rabbit trail. There's a whole lot of them, but the majority of ones we talk about are the 10 commandments. At some point, Moses went up onto Mount Sinai. God gave him, here's the rules. Here's 10, you know, chores like a chore chart. Here's the 10 rules. If you wanna live in my house to thrive under my leadership, here's how to order your life. And it's true that you read those 10 and tithing is not one of those 10 laws.
But what is left out of that argument, of that myth,
is that the principle of tithing is something that actually predates the law. It goes way before Moses ever got the 10 commandments. You see it all the way back in the book of Genesis. K? This idea of tithing, the word tithe comes from a Hebrew word that means it is measure. K? Measure is the word that we see all throughout the Old Testament and it literally translated, it just means a tenth.
And there's a principle, though it's not a part of the law, there's a principle that exists all throughout the Bible that the people of God take a portion,
a tenth of what God has entrusted them with, and they bring it back to God to remind themselves of a lot of things that we'll get to in just a second. But there's a portion of us going, hey, we take part of what is ours, We give it back to God through the local church. The Bible calls it the storehouse through the local church for a variety of reasons, but we see this all the way going back to Genesis chapter four. K. Genesis chapter four is right after the fall. Adam and Eve were walking around, had the greatest assignment on the earth, run around naked, multiply the earth, eat whatever you want, do whatever you want, like the greatest job in the world, but they they fell into sin and now we're all here and having to wear clothes and go to church like this. Right?
Genesis four follows them getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. They have their first kids and we see the principle of tithing come in for the very first time. Genesis chapter four verse three says that when it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. Abel also brought a gift. What's interesting is that these two brothers are bringing a gift to God though they were never commanded to do it. There was something inherent into the the the people of God to go, we bring a part of our resources back to him, but notice what Abel does. Abel also brought a gift. It was the best portions of the firstborn lands from his flock, and the Lord accepted Abel and his gift, but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry and he looked dejected.
The two brothers bring God an offering with completely different heart postures. The first brother brings God an offering out of what was convenient, leftover, easy.
It's the equivalent of right now you reaching into your pocket, grabbing a couple bucks, and dropping in the offering box on the way out. It actually says that the Lord rejects that offering.
But the brother that goes, I'm gonna give God my first and I'm gonna give God my best, God receives it and God blesses it. So you're gonna learn today that tithing has much more to do with your heart and what is first in your life than it does with the dollar amount that you give to God.
What God wants primarily, why tithing is such a big deal is because God is in desperate pursuit of your heart. He's a jealous God and he wants to be your only God. And in the world that we live in here in the East Valley, the number one lower g God that is that is fighting for your time, attention, and treasures
is the God of mammon, the god of money and resources, and keeping up with everybody around us. Right? We gotta get another another car. We gotta get the next boat. We gotta do the next thing. And the reason that a lot of us can't afford to tithe is because our money is spent chasing
things that don't really actually matter. You keep reading the Genesis story, you'll run to into a guy named Abraham.
Abraham is the father of the faith, and you'll notice something with Abraham. Almost every time he got a windfall of resources, he would take 10% of it, set it aside, and he would bring it to the high priest at the time named Melchizedek.
You get on in Genesis, you'll get to a guy named Jacob. Jacob makes a promise to God that he'll give him 10% of everything
that he was ever going to earn. I I say all this to say to belabor the point that if you think that tithing is just something that just popped up when the law came around no. No. No. It existed way before the law, hundreds of years before the law ever occurred. The principle of tithing is all throughout it, and here's the definition that I wanna try to teach us these next few weeks about tithing. Tithing is the principle of returning to God the first 10% of your income.
This is abundantly clear. Tithing is taking 10% of your income and people get all weird. Is it net or is it gross? It's like, dude, I just pray about it and start somewhere. K? If that's the only argument we're having is about whether tithing on net or gross, we're moving in the right direction. Right?
Tithing is the biblical principle of returning to God the first 10% of your income. I wanna read with you Malachi chapter three verse eight. I'm sure you've heard this in a church setting before, but this is again why it's so important. This isn't the the opinion of Daniel.
This isn't the opinion of the prophet Malachi. This is God speaking through Malachi. He said, should people cheat God? Yet you've cheated me. But you asked, what do you mean? When do we ever cheat? He says, you've cheated me out of the tithes and offerings due to me. And because of that, you are under a curse. Your whole nation has been cheating me. So bring all the tithes into the storehouse. Again, every bible commentary
person will agree the storehouse is the local church. This is not a knock against other nonprofits, but a tithe is not money to a nonprofit. It's a it's a it's a an amount of money that goes to fund the mission of the local church. It's the storehouse,
and then we give out of generosity and overflow to other things from there. He says, we do it to the storehouse so there'll be more than enough food in my temple. If you do. Again, it's a conditional statement. You don't have to do this.
Hear my heart this morning. There are a lot of people given where we operate today as a church that are ex LDS people, and you've been sold a false gospel
that says that you have to give so that you can get to the highest level of heaven. And let me tell you that is just not true. That is a lie from the pit of hell. That you actually you can get to heaven. You can be in a saving relationship with Jesus without ever having given a dime.
But here's what I also want you to know. It is impossible to get the fullness of heaven into your life today
without making a decision, not because you have to, but because you get to, because you get to trust God with your resources. It's not about getting into heaven, it's about getting heaven into us. Amen? He says that if you do, if you do, here's what will happen, says again, the Lord of heaven's armies. This is God speaking.
I will open the windows of heaven for you and I will pour out a blessing so great that you won't have enough room to take it in. The only time you'll see this in the scripture says, try me. Put me to the test. Why should we consider trusting God with our resources?
Because the promise from God himself is that he will open up the window blessing on your life. And it doesn't just mean with resources.
He will open up blessing on your business. He will open up blessings in your marriage. You will begin to bless relationship. You will walk in favor. You will walk with anointing. I'm telling you, whether you know it or not, what you need more than anything else is you need the blessing
that only God can provide for you. You need the blessing that only can come from heaven opening up the windows to you. But I know you're sitting here like, bro, these are all Old Testament verses. K? This is always my favorite part of the conversation with anybody that's like, well, tithing is an old testament thing that doesn't apply today. I always ask the question, okay, well, if Jesus said that we should tithe, would you then tithe?
And people get really weird because they're like, well, I think so, but I'm not I wanna read the verse first to see. I don't know if it actually says that, and they get all squirmy. And here's the best way you can you can remember. Okay. Where does Jesus talk about tithing? It's Matthew chapter 23 verse 23. Here's how you remember it. 23 is an important number. Why? Because Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player in the history of the world to the glory of God,
and if you are here today and you think LeBron James is the greatest basketball player of all time, you are welcome to leave Echo's church. There are there are plenty of churches for you. Jokingly, right, I I I correlate it to Michael Jordan's the goat, Matthew twenty three twenty three. Here's Jesus talking about the issue of tithing. He says, what sorrow
awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees, you hypocrites? He's gonna start with a correction to the religious leaders. Says, for you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens,
but you ignore the more important aspects of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. K. Here's where he starts.
He says, you guys have become so religious in your duty, which is also not the goal. The goal is not to just check a bunch of religious boxes. K? That's that's a dead religion that can't save, does not open up the window of blessing of favor on our life. He says, you've made it this religious rule out of everything you grow in your herb garden. I also need it to be stated. We don't need you to tie that of your herb garden to Echo's church. K? We we prefer cash and stuff online. Alright? But
he said that you you are religious about this, but you've neglected you've neglected what the church is primarily here for, love, injustice, and mercy. K? That's what we're supposed to be known for, not just this religious activity.
And this would have been the moment if Jesus' goal and attempt was to say, guys, tithing, that was like the Old Testament mean God, but God has changed his mind today. K? He's different. Jesus is now the hippie, sandal wearing guy that jumps around in flower fields, and everybody loves to follow him because he doesn't ever ask you to do anything hard. This would have been the moment for Jesus to correct all of the misinformed theology, but he doesn't do that. He actually says, you should tithe.
Yes. Just don't neglect the more important things. His correction wasn't that the tithing was wrong. The correction was that you've, in your religious spirit, you've neglected the most important things. The love and justice and mercy, reaching the lost. See, all the money is to fund the mission.
But when it's all about the religious activity, you lose the heart of God in the middle of the whole thing. And I don't know why it is this way, but our hearts are so fickle. We do rebellion really well and we do religion really well.
But trying to find the middle of this beautiful relationship with God where we operate from a posture of we don't have to, we get to. It's an honor and it's a privilege to serve God.
I don't have to show up early to set up the church. I get to show up early to set up the church. I don't have to give to God. I get to be a part of funding his mission on the earth today. I'm telling you, it changes everything.
But watch your heart. We do rebellion really well, and just as easily we'll slide into religion. We've got to try to fight for the middle. Jesus affirms the tithe. Paul,
the second most important figure in the New Testament, he also affirms the same thing. First Corinthians chapter 16 verse two, Paul says that on the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money, here it is, in keeping with your income, saving it up so that when I come, no collections will have to be made.
This is the beauty of how God has orchestrated how the mission of God on the earth today will be funded. We all give the same amount sacrificially.
We don't give the same amount from a dollar standpoint because we give proportional to our income. K? But as your income increases, our giving to the church is supposed to increase as well. And notice what Paul says. He says that if the church would tithe,
we wouldn't have to take up special offerings. K? We are going to have to at the end of the year, maybe the beginning of next year because we're gonna send a bunch of students to summer camp, and summer camp is crazy expensive. We're going to raise a bunch of money to send these students there because we think investing in the next generation matters a ton,
but we're going to have to come up and go, hey, we gotta raise money. We're gonna have to take a special offering. What Paul is saying is still true today. If everybody in the church just made a decision to tithe, the storehouse would be full, and we would never have to come and ask for special offerings because we would just be operating out of a posture of obedience, and the storehouse would be full, and the mission of God would be funded on the earth today.
All that to say, to belabor the point, if you try to argue with me that tithing is not biblical or it is not a New Testament principle,
I think you are just flat out wrong. But I know giving you the what isn't gonna change your heart. It's just like your kid. They always ask the question, well, why? You're like, because I said so. You're like, that's not good enough. Well, it was for my parents. Alright?
They always ask why? Why do I have to do it? So I wanna just share with you. Again, this is why I tithe. This is why I continue to choose to give to God first before everything else in seasons of overflow and in seasons of lack and seasons of ministry and seasons of marketplace
that I've made a decision with my family to go, look, we're giving to God first. We're setting aside 10% of our income to go to the church, and we're gonna try to give above and beyond that. Here's why. The first reason why I do that is because tithing puts God first in my life.
Tithing is a constant reminder to me. And I don't know if your heart is the same way, but man, my heart is incredibly
fickle. It is a terrible thing to lead me because it constantly leads me into places of going, wait, I could do so much more with that money. But look at all my friends, they got this or they got this. I I wish I had that. I need that thing. And all of a sudden, your heart starts to lead you down these paths, and tithing every single time I get paid is a reminder for me to stop and go, no. No. No.
Is first.
And what's amazing to me is if you think about it for a second, when you get paid, k again, I've got I've got $10.20 dollar bills up here. K? Just imagine with me for a second, your paycheck is $200. Alright? It's gonna be it's gonna be tough out here if that's what your paycheck is for a while, but just go with me for for a second, easy math. How we approach giving often is we get our paycheck and we go, okay. I've gotta pay my mortgage. I've gotta pay my my car payments. I've gotta keep the water on. I've gotta keep utilities.
I've gotta make sure that the boat is paid. We got travel baseball. Right? And then all of a sudden, you get to the end, you come to church, and our our intentions are good, but we go with that. This is all I have.
And so then we chop it up, and if anything, what we do is we give God just like a little bit of the leftover, and I would say that's that's a tip. And what God is after, what God cares about more than what you give is he cares about which one you give. What God wants is when you get paid,
the very first thing that comes out of your bank account is to God. Because it reminds you that you're not in control, that you're not the owner. The business actually isn't yours. It's God's.
The breath in your lungs is only there because God gave it to you this day. What God is really after is he's after your your first. I wanna show you a verse that blew my mind. Deuteronomy chapter 14 verse 23. The purpose of tithing is to teach you to always put God first in your lives.
God wants to teach you what it practically looks like to make him first. What God after is the thing that is first in your life, and I promise you, if you look at your bank account, what you pay first, it shows your priority.
What we do as a staff, which is amazing to me to think. Guys, we have 22 staff members here at Echoes Church. We started this thing with, like, three or four of us in shoestrings and bubble gum. K? And
I don't say that to pat ourselves on the back, but what what I do every single Monday with our staff, the way that we start our weeks is together with all 22 of them. We sit at our headquarters and for the first hour of our weeks, we pray together.
We seek the face of God together. We spend time in God's presence together. And if you just think about what that meeting cost us from an HR standpoint, you could argue that it's a really poor investment. It's poor stewardship of our resources until you understand kingdom economics.
Because kingdom economics goes, if you give God your first, the rest will be more than enough than you could ever possibly imagine,
and God will give you more than you could need in that 90% with you and him. And the 100% of you on your own, I'm telling you, it will always fall short. But we believe that if we give God our first, he's gonna give us supernatural discernment. He's gonna give us supernatural wisdom. He's gonna give us insight into things that we otherwise wouldn't have known, and that 90% with God in us is gonna go way further than a 100% of us on our own. The first reason why I tithe is because it reminds me to keep God first in my life. The second reason why I do is because it keeps me involved in the vision of the church.
Tithing is how we stay invested into the vision of the church, And I just need to tell you if you're not aware that we are in the middle
of an absolute move of the spirit of God, that we are sitting in what I believe is going to be it is the start. I think we're in the beginning inklings. The embers are burning of what I believe is going to be another great spiritual awakening in our nation, and that God is entrusting us to be a part of the front lines of that here at Echoes Church. Do you realize in ten months of being a church, we've had over 1,200 people say yes to Jesus. Next week with baptisms, we will cross 500 people who've said yes to Jesus in baptism.
I could tell you for days,
I could bring up family after family whose marriages have been restored, whose addictions have been broken, whose wayward children have come home because of the faithfulness of what God is doing here. But I'm telling you, if you're not financially invested in it, it will be their thing and not our thing. And God wants all of us to remember that we don't we don't go to church. It's not a thing that we do. It's a it's a thing that we are. We are the church.
And when your heart feels disconnected from it, I would venture to guess that it's often because your wallet became disconnected from it years before.
Your wallet, your investment started to move into other places, and it's amazing to watch as our investment goes, there goes our heart. Again, I'm not a big investment guy, but I don't know if you guys remember when Krispy Kreme was on like every corner there for like two minutes back in the day and you drove by and you prayed in the name of Jesus that the hot now sign was on. Right? And you could walk in and you just see that like milk and honey come flowing down from the glaze and you're just like, man, if I can put my mouth under that thing, I would do it for hours. Right?
All I remember when my mom was like, hey. We should invest in this thing, and she took, you know, the few $100 that we had, and we we started to follow the the journey of Krispy Kremes, and we started to watch, and we're every day, we're on AOL dial up Internet, while checking the stock price of Krispy Kreme donuts, and we're we're listening to earnings calls and interviewing the next CEO that's gonna come and lead the organization. Why? Because we had $600 on the line. We were we were invested in this thing. And then eventually, what happened? The stock split, it doubled, it grew. We took the money out at, I don't know, $2,000, and we were now rich.
And I've never cared about the operations of Krispy Kreme since then. And the truth is is today I'll walk in and I'll consume the donuts, but I could care less about the organization and the business of Krispy Kreme. And the truth is that's how so many of us treat the church.
We walk in and we'll consume what it produces, but we're not bought into the the core organization of what's happening. And I wanna remind you, the Bible is so clear. First Chronicles chapter 29 verse three says that, moreover, because I have set my affection
on the house of God, I have given to the house of my God over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house, my own special treasure of gold and silver, that our affection should be for the local church, for God's house. And I will be the first to admit, the bride of Christ, the church,
man, it's got some it's got some it's got some weird parts to it. And there are there are times you get the bride of Christ in the wrong light. You're like, bro, there's a mole and there's a hair on that thing. Like, I don't I don't know if I really like this thing, and and there are times that I wish that I wish that I could stay connected to the mission of God's work on this earth and disconnect sometimes from the church, but I'm telling you, as you read the bible, Jesus cares more about one thing than almost anything else on this earth, It's the church.
God's heart is for the local church. He calls it his bride that he laid down his life for, and it is absolutely impossible for us to say that we're in love with Jesus and we don't love his church. And how we keep our hearts connected to the vision of it is we attach our resources to it. Hear me.
If you are not bought into the vision of what God is doing here at Echoes, that's okay. I'm not asking you to give out of obligation. I would actually seriously, I would genuinely encourage you to go find a church that you do align with, and you can buy into the vision, and invest your resources there. Let your heart attach to it because I'm just a guy that believes that the local church can still change the world. As somebody whose life has been radically transformed by the local church, I still believe that this is God's plan a to reach the world, and friends, there is no plan b. And I just want us to know that we should love the church, we should raise our kids in the church, we should take communion in the church. If you're single, find a spouse in the church. You should get married in the church. When you die, heck, we'll bury you in the church. The church is something that our our affections are supposed to be towards, but if you stop and you wait until you feel like giving,
the day's never coming. Let me remind you what Jesus says. Matthew chapter six verse 21, wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
If you give to it, your heart will follow. But if you're waiting for your heart to get there, for your resource to it'll never happen. But I'm telling you, invest your resources, your heart will become attached to it. When when I tithe, I move from being a spectator to a participator in what God is doing through his church.
I don't want you to be sitting on the sidelines while God continues to do the supernatural here through his church. I want you to go, man, these are our victories. These are our stories of reconciliation.
These are our stories of redemption that God is moving through us and that we get to play a vital role in all of it. Here's the last reason why I tithe, and I think it's the most important one. Tithing gives me access to super natural
blessing. This is the thing that you need in your life more than anything else, is you need the favor, the anointing, and the power of God to flow through you.
What you need more than more wisdom, more than you need a bigger bank account or a better job, I'm telling you, you need the blessing and the favor of God on your life.
And tithing is how we unlock that into our lives. Again, Malachi chapter three verse 10, different translations. This the New King James version. I'm also gonna go one verse further than I stopped at before. It says, bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and try me now in this as the lord of hosts. If I will not open up for you the windows of heaven, and I will pour out for you such blessing that there will not be enough room to receive it. And God goes even further. Not only will he open up the heaven of blessing, he'll also rebuke the devourer for your sakes so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field.
Not only will God open up the windows of blessing, he will open up heaven's favor on your life. He also says that he'll go so far as to rebuke the enemy off of you. You know what you really need? You know what we really need? We need God to rebuke the enemy's desires and works inside of our communities, inside of our schools, inside of our children. We need God to supernaturally
intervene in our lives. And what if I told you that all it takes to do that is to begin to get in alignment with God in your resources?
That if you trust God there, the scripture say he opens up the blessings of heaven and he begins to rebuke the enemy off of your off of your life. Last verse I have for you, Deuteronomy chapter 15 verse 10 says, to give generously to them and to do so without a grudging heart.
Then because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. Here's what I'm trying to convince you of this morning, that if you make a decision to put god first, the rest of your life will be blessed.
And that doesn't always mean that you're gonna have just incredible amounts of money. And that if you give God $10, you'll get a thousand dollars in return. Now that's a that's a cheap version of the gospel. But what is clear is that if you trust God with your resources, you will walk in his favor and his blessing.
It is what you need more than anything else.
And I wanna make this really simple and really practical. And I know for some of us, we're sitting there going, man, I I I know my financial status. I know my bank account. I just don't have the margin to go all the way to, like, 10%. It seems insurmountable. And so I wanna just even lower the bar for us a little bit.
I think some people stop giving or they never start giving because it just feels impossible. And the truth is is there's a lot of spiritual disciplines. We don't ask people to start at a 100%.
Now again, if God is speaking to you and you go, hey, I need to do that, like, walk in obedience and say yes to stepping out in 10%.
But what I'm asking, what does this mean? What does this look like practically for us? We did a comprehensive study of where we sit today as a church. Again, we are a fast growing church. We have a lot of new believers here, so we understand that resources are going to be lower and lagging behind what a church of our size would normally be if we were a church that was 10 old. But when you look at the average income in our area, can you say the average income per person here is $50,000 a year? Average household income with two earners is a $100.
Based on those averages and our numbers, you average it out. Again, I know lots of people give more than this, but the average across the board that we give as a church is about 1.7% of our income. That's what it averages out to.
So what that tells me is that if we were to make a decision as a church to collectively go, man, maybe we can't start at 10. But if every single person here would consider where they currently sit with what they give to the church, and they would consider increasing it by 1%, if we all did that, we would actually effectively increase our bottom line budget as a church by 50%.
It would move the needle more than you could ever possibly imagine. And maybe if we just start there, we do something that we'll trust that God will continue to teach us and grow us. Next couple weeks, I'll show you. Does it look like to grow in generosity?
How to do this practically? What I'm asking you to start with is to make a decision to move to the right.
What do I mean by move to the right? Again, we got a graph. I just wanna show you real quick. This shows an easy breakdown. Just try to make it really simple. K. Average income is $50,000 a year. You can find yourself up here. What we're asking everybody to do is find yourself on the scale, and you go, what would it look like to take one step to the right, to increase by 1%?
If you're married, sit down this week and pray with your pray with your spouse and just go, hey. What what should our contribution be? Start somewhere. And if all you're doing, you don't give anything yet, you start at 1%, that's $9.62 a week. That's like half a Starbucks drink today. K?
It's like $20 for a Starbucks drink brought in and get me cream. You know? Like, it's crazy out here. Hear my heart. I just want you to start somewhere and watch what God will do as you make a decision to trust him. And then here's my second ask, is that we would be people who pick a percentage,
and then we make it automatic. See, so many times we just don't give that month because we we simply forget. And I want to ask you, I want to encourage you to make giving to God first, make it important.
Just like everything else, I don't get to the end of the month and go, man, I'll I'll see about paying my water bill this month. Right? Like, why? Because it matters. My my family needs water next month. So what do I do? I set it up on automatic recurring giving.
I can't tell you how much it helps us to be able to budget and forecast what we have coming in next month based off of recurring giving. So my two asks to make it really simple is start somewhere. It could be as small as 1%,
Pick a percentage, become a percentage giver, and put it on recurring giving and watch what God will do with your obedience. And I say it every Christmas. I'll say it again this year. I'm gonna say it to every person that walks in the door for Christmas. I'm telling you, I know you're just here once, but we do this every single Sunday.
If you give God a year of your life, if you go all in with God for the next year, I promise you at the end of next year, your life, your marriage, your home, your your business, all of it will be better. And if it's not, God will refund it all for you. I'm here to tell you, if you make a decision
to trust God with your finances and after a year, don't just do it for ninety days because truthfully,
sometimes we make a decision to trust God with our money. In the short term, things actually get more difficult. Why? Because the enemy doesn't like you doing this. He doesn't want you stepping into obedience and unlocking blessing on your life. But if you do it for a year, I promise you at the end of the year,
you will look back and go, man, I have seen the blessing and favor of God on my life. I've been doing this churching for a long time. It seems like people fall into one of two camps. People who've made the decision to trust God with their resources and go, man, I I can't out give God.
There's so much blessing that God is pouring out on my life. His favor is all around. Or there's people that just go, man, I can't afford to give, and everything feels tight, and everything feels tense.
It's because Proverbs says that the life of the generous, God makes bigger and bigger. But the life of the stingy, God God actually makes smaller and smaller. I'll teach you next week about what God is looking for is people that he can trust.
God is looking for people that he can trust that are are faithful with the little things, that he can make faithful with much. So just start somewhere. If at the end of the year, you aren't better off, find pastor Josh, and he'll refund you all your money out of his personal bank account. K?
I wanna make it really simple, really practical. We made these key chains to try to go let's make it tangible. Let's let's think about this. This matters. We're talking about advancing God's mission on the earth today. So we got these key chains. The ushers will have them at the door. They just have our logo on them, and on the other side, it has Proverbs eleven twenty four. And let's grab one. Okay? This is you saying, I'm I'm stepping in to saying yes to what God is doing. And just know, if you take one and you don't start giving, we will find you in the name of Jesus. Okay?
But just put it somewhere. Put it on your keys. Put it on your backpack.
And every time you see it, just pray and remind your heart, I am not my own God. I'm trusting God with every single part of my life. God, I'm asking you to make my life bigger and bigger. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen? Amen. Let me pray for you. Father, God, we thank you, Lord, so much that we get to give because you gave first.
That, father, would you remind us all this morning that the spirit of condemnation is not from you, that the enemy would try to come in and heap judgment on us, but, god, that is not from you. God, two thousand years ago, you gave your first and you gave your best. You gave the tithe of heaven who is Jesus.
You stepped out of heaven. You became one of us. You died the death that we deserve. And, father, because of your gift, we have an invitation to live. And, father, you not only save us, you give us purpose and meaning and significance. So, father, I ask, god, I pray that you would burden the hearts of your people
to fall in alignment with your will. And, father, we genuinely believe that we are on the verge of revival, but we know that every great revival starts with repentance. So, father, show us where we're wrong. Show us where we're off. Bring us back into alignment with you, God. Father, show us how blessed it is to get to give.
Jesus, we love you. It's in your name all God's people said. Amen and amen. You guys are amazing.