In that season. I think that I started just like taking God at his word for things. God's word said to tithe, and my understanding was that that was 10%, and so I was like, okay, Carz, like we are supposed to be giving like 10% of what we're bringing in. And that was so hard because, like you always hear people talk about like oh yeah, well, when I started tithing, I realized I could just like shift my finances around and the money was here to give, but for us it wasn't there for us to tithe. Like that was me looking at, like taking money out of our groceries, like it wasn't, like I could just stop a date night or something, like it actually wasn't there.

And so it was a huge step of obedience for us to say, Okay, God, like well, if you say to do this, then I'm going to do it, but you're going to have to show up. He showed up every time. One time, like I was like door dashing and I literally had like our like six week old baby in the back door dashing like to make in me and I was tithing $32 and if you do math of what 10% was like we didn't have any money and literally as soon as I tithed, I got a like door Dash request for $32, and I just remember being like: okay, God, like you really do see us. I think it came a little bit later, U for me, since I was the, since I was the one like I was working and I mean I was providing, how, in the world, like are you going to like help me pay this for,400 rent? It just took a long time for me to get to the place where I was like, wow, there's something to this, like he is doing something.

When we went to go meet with Matt and Hannah for the first time, I knew so clearly that God had called us out here that I had already budgeted for the move, but we were looking at moving within like a few months, and I knew that it was going to be over $7,000 for us to move out here. What's Wild is that the Lord literally provided like to the penny, and then it came like the first month, though, of bills where he hadn't been working yet you're almost like trying to like talk it out with God, where you're like maybe we like don't have to tithe off of this or like whatever you know, and so we tithed off of like what we had and again, the Lord like increased our faith in that season. We were like searching for equipment and stuff out that for our, for our church, and just trying to figure out, okay, how can we get this soundboard or whatever? I was doing a meeting with this a called five words, in Phoenix. And I was just like, hey, we need this equipment for our church, we need this equipment for our church.

And it got towards the end of the call, literally to the point where, the guy interviewing me was like, all right, man, so we'll talk to you later. Have a great day. And I just felt God pressing on my part. You need to like, you need to ask him if they're hiring. And I was like he was literally about to press the end button for the call and I was like, hey, actually, are you guys doing any hiring?

And, he was like, actually, yeah. He was like: do you have any experience? I was like, no, that next week, I think I had a job. Not only that, God provided in another way, with a different company, and we were able to lead worship at churches all across the valley. God provided up until the point where it was like, wow, how in the world is this even happening right now?

 We get a job when I wasn't going to ask and then I'm leading worship, doing exactly what I, what I'm supposed to do in this season. But I feel like we're really getting to live in the blessing now. I mean I'm fulltime sta at the church now and living my dream and, getting to work with people that I love, and I mean this is just, this is everything I've ever wanted, and more. Once you see how good he is and like, once you witness, like his character, then it gets to the point where it's like, if you don't see it yet, it's like, oh, I just don't see it yet. Like you no longer wonder if he's going to come through.

I'm just so confident in the fact that, like he's going to show up and he's provided so much peace in our finances that now it's like a second nature, like I just do it, like we get paid and that's the very first thing that I do because I don't know. It's like I can't live without tithing now, if that makes any sense. That was kzen, Maggie Goggins. It's so frustrating to try to compile someone's Story down to a 3 and a half to 4 minute video. I was even more frustrated about it this week than I was last week, because I don't like to see myself on video.

So that was good to keep short. But this week, like, if you know, you know, like, if you know what those two have been through over the past couple of years, you, you see that and what I've, what I've learned in my life and what I've seen in their story, what I've seen in the stories that you'll see over the next couple of weeks, is that when God calls you to something, if you take a step of Faith, provision follows every, every time. Time. I mean, it might not be exactly what you want, but it's still provision. Sometimes, you, you wanted maybe something that was super sweet, tasty and hit your pallet perfectly, but then you get broccoli and you know like, but it, but it provided, and let's be real, broccoli is better for you than that other thing I was talking about.

 I, I was thinking as I was watching that video: , of all the, all the things that I've been through in my life, I remember when my wife and I, I, first got married. You remember that- I hope so- spent a lot of money on it. It was 2012. That's how old I am. Peoples, we're professionals.

Now we've been married about 12 years and, we got married, and we pretty much spent the majority of our savings on the wedding and the honeymoon. Now, granted, like I was 23, I didn't have, I didn't have that much in savings, you know. So, wedding and honey mood, we spent a huge portion of our money. Hindsight, I would have just eloped, but it's too late now can't do that anymore. I'd saved the money on that shrimp cocktail that I never got to eat, cuz, no, they put it.

They didn't put in the back of my car to take to the hotel and I was literally starving that first night. By literally, I mean not literally, but I was hungry anyways. I thought y'all would think that whole story of me not enjoying a portion of my wedding was funny, but you don't whatever, get over yourselves. So we went on our honeymoon to Costa Rica.

That was fun and, we bought things that we didn't need, like trays that you never use. You know what I'm talking about? Those little like Mango Wood trays they have down in, South America that you buy cuz you're like I'm totally going to use this, but then you never touch it, but it costs you way more than you should. So we came back from our honeymoon with a bunch of trays and then we looked at the bank account and we were like, we barely have enough to survive. And then the first paycheck came in and, we looked at our bills.

Now we had decided we're going to be people who trust God first with this, so we had already taken 10% of our gross, come out, gave it to the Lord. And then I looked at my bills: right, that's, that's, that's the way that I do it, cuz I believe God, but I hadn't seen him work at that level yet, cuz we were newish to tithing. I looked in my bills and I was like I don't know how we going to do it. I was struggling, and it was about $73, that we were going to be short, $73. And you know, these days you're like $73.

What's that, Matt? Like that's, that's a steak from the grocery store. These days, but back in 2012 it was a little different and I was young, new to this. That $73 was really stressing me out because I'd been ingrained since I was young. Don't, you got to pay your bills and it was a $73, I think it was a water bill or something similar, and I was freaking out for like three or four days cuz it was coming due.

And I remember I was coming back from class, I was in seminary at the time- and we were on campus at one of the married apartments and I was sitting in my wife's car and she had a Saturn View, which is a car she never should have had. Who buys Saturns? They don't even exist anymore and there's a reason why. But it was a Saturn View and I was sitting there, stressed out, scared to go into the house because I was going to have to tell my wife about we weren't going to be able to pay this bill and I don't even know why. But there's a compartment on the left side of her steering wheel and I opened it.

I had no reason to expect anything, but in that was cash and, to the penny, that was the amount of cash that we needed for the about about 73 bucks, and that was crazy to me. Here's what had happened two years before her dad had put that money into that little compartment for when she went back to school so she'd have excess money if she ever broke down or something like that. And no one ever looked in that compartment except for me. That day I looked in that compartment it was $73 and I remember in that moment that was the time where I decided: you know, I think I can trust God, with what he's asked me before, which is the tithe we had tithed, we obedient and God provided. I was stressed out for 3 days, but at the end of that three days I was like, okay, okay, I, I can trust God with this.

The text that we talked about last week was Mali 3:10, and he says: bring the whole tithe- it might be on your screen- bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. Last week I really camped out on that text: the idea of testing God in the area that he invites us to test him. This is the only area in Scripture that he calls us to test him in, I think he tells us to test him in that because he knows how we all get when it comes to our own personal needs and finances. He tells us because he knows our flesh.

He's like: just test me, just try it out and see if I won't bust open floodgates of heaven and unleash blessing on your life that can't be stored in any Storehouse. God's desire for you, after you test him, is to see him. And when I was watching that video I was thinking, man, somebody's going to be in the room, cuz this was me back in the day. Someone's going to be in the room thinking, oh wow, you didn't get groceries for your family because you tithed. But that's not what she said.

I've heard people say this before. They say, well, God doesn't want me to go homeless and, I agree with that. I don't know that he necessarily wants you to go homeless. But when we trust him in that area, sometimes it requires us to make hard decisions to trust him, even when things don't make sense financially in other areas. There have been many times in my life where I've had to choose to trust him when I didn't know how certain things were going to occur and that thought came to my.

Well, God don't want me to be homeless. God wants me to, to provide for my family and all these other things. But there's something that's worse than homeless to God and it's you walk around life being hemless, like he wants you to be, living life constantly connected to him. And what I don't want you to hear me saying is a bunch of weird catchy things to persuade you or manipulate you into giving to the local church. That's not what I'm trying to do.

What I'm trying to do is help you understand that when you trust him, blessings follow. When you trust him, provision follows, and so over the next couple of weeks we're going to be spending some time talking about the idea of giving. I would encourage you, just stick it out. Just stick it out. Pastors would tell me every single time we'd go into a giving series.

They'd say, hey, prep for people to stop coming to church over the next four weeks. I said, why is? Because it's a giving series and I had started giving at that point and I was always baffled why, when people would hear the message that would has made such a significant difference in my life that they would just pull back. But I've seen it myself. So I want to encourage you, stick it out and, if you're willing, test him and see what God might do.

 I can't preach the same message every week, but I will encourage you, go back and watch the, the first message from last week. It sets up this entire Series in a in a way. That's, I think, pretty special. And the one that we posted is the second service where I accidentally cried and I didn't like it. I didn't, I didn't enjoy it at the time, but I think it could be helpful for you to see how, how powerfully, that has impacted me over the years.

And then, over the next couple weeks, what we're going to be doing as a church is we are going to be praying. We're asking God to give us two things. First, we're inviting him to give us a word or a, a thought process for the next year, the, the. The underlying question is: God, what are you doing in my life, what do you want to do in this next year? And as you ask God, he will kind of start to reveal things to you.

And when he reveals it to you, what I want to encourage you to do is boil that down to a word or a phrase, and again, that's why going back and watching last week will really help you-, because I kind of set that up pretty effectively-, but we're praying to God for a thought process that we boil down to a word or phrase, that that word could be something like someone wrote on the board out there: patience. Maybe you're praying to God for patience in your life and he's going to produce something in this next year, for you. Maybe you're praying to God for discipline. Maybe you're praying over the next year that God would give you growth in certain areas in your career or finances or anything. Pray to God, ask him to give you that word, and then we're going to bring that word together.

On December 8th. There's going to be some kiosks right up here. We're going to have a whole moment where we bring our faith in the form of a word, drop it into those and we're going to be praying that God would do something powerfully next year. The second thing we're going to be praying about is that step of faith when it comes to giving, and there are three different categories of people that I'm regularly thinking about. The first one is those who have never tested God in the area of their finances.

 Maybe you've come to church, week in, week out, and every time you hear about giving you're like, nope, not even going to try that because I ain't got enough money. I want to encourage those of you in here who have been in that place: pray about what it looks like to test God and what it looks like to trust God, and you're going to give for the first time on December 8th and I'm believing that that's going to unlock something in your life that is very powerful. Second group of people I'm thinking about are those who have maybe been testing God a little bit, but just like Malachi 3:10 says, it says: bring the whole tithe. We believe that tithe, and I could give you the whole long story of this, but I believe it's still relevant in the New Testament that Jesus assumes the tithe when he's talking about giving. He invites us to give our entire lives, but financially he assumes the tithe, which we believe is 10% of our gross income to the in the Old Testament local Storehouse.

But we don't operate in an agrarian society right now. Maybe sumon Buck, I do, but they still get cash at the end of the day, right, and so what we say, is 10% of your gross income to the local Storehouse or the church. This is not just for the church, though it benefits the church. This isn't for the lead Pastor, though it benefits the growth of the church. This is for you to see God's blessing Unleashed, and you're going to bring the whole tithe, the whole 10%, for the first time on December 8th.

And then the third group of people I'm thinking about are those who have maybe been faithful to the tithe for years. That's where me and my wife find ourselves. That's where several people in this room find ourselves. We've seen that faithfulness, or we've seen how our faithfulness has produced, but God didn't call us to stop increasing our faith in him. So we're going to bring an offering above and beyond the tithe on December 8th, so you can hear that, no matter where you are in your faith, there's a step for you, and we're going to do this together.

And- and I think we're going to do this in the future too, because I've seen God work again- if you're here for the first time, or if you weren't here last week, go back, watch last week's sermon. It will help you significantly, because I got stuff to talk about today. But that's what we're going to do, and today I want to talk to you kind of about maybe what you saw on that that screen, but I'm thinking about my own personal walk with God- that there are many areas that God would have called me to take a step of Faith. Or he did call me to take a step of Faith, but because of my own logic or, let's be real, lack of faith, I didn't take that step. And so my sermon title for today is: if I knew then, if I knew then you, when I say that, you can all think of situations in your life where, if you had known what would occur had you taken a step, you'd have done it, like anyone in this room.

Can you remember something off the top of your head? I can remember a few things. I remember, I interviewed for a job at a church and- and again I'm happy with where God placed me- I want to be very clear up front, but I remember thinking this: I interviewed for a job at a church and it was a great interview. And I ended up taking a different gig because there were some other things about that one. And then two years later I was looking and had I stepped into that position that I didn't take.

Let's just say this: it was a. The church grew very large and it, like it's meaningful to people all over the world. Now there's a huge online Ministry and I would have been like the number two teaching Pastor. I ain't stressed about it at all. I'm glad God brought me here, but for a moment I was like man.

If I knew that, let's be real, I wouldn't have done any of it, but there was a moment. There have been some moments in my life when it comes to Investments. There have been some moments in my life when it came to how I parent my kids. If I had known that my kid was going to say that, I probably wouldn't have put that on the TV. If I'd known my kid was going to repeat it, I probably wouldn't have said it in the first place.

All you parents have been there. Yeah, I, I've been in the church a little bit so, and I was a youth Minister for a while. It never failed. Youth Min or youth kids, these kids, these youth, whatever you call them- they would come up. They would come up and they say, yeah, my mom said this and I'm like, oh, did she?

Now I was usually talking bad about how I was doing the ministry. Kids will say the darnest things, don't they? If I knew then I would have, I, I should have, I could have. Maybe I could have titled this message- maybe I still will- on YouTube so that people click on it. Maybe it'd be good clickback should have, could have, would have.

If I had known then what I know now, things would have been different. And I think back to that moment when I found that $72, 73, sorry, $73- in that weird random compartment in this Saturn View that Hannah never should have bought I. I think back to that and said, man, what had I known then, what God was capable of? Maybe I would have taken a step of Faith earlier. This is why, in the Old Testament, God regularly calls his people to remember what God did.

He says: raise up an Ebenezer, which is a stone, aan or Evon, however you want to say it in Hebrew, a stone of remembrance. He's constantly tell: raise a pillar group up a, put up a group of rocks that are all different shapes and sizes, lifted up here so that you can can remember that God brought you over the Jordan on dry ground. He wants them to remember the things that he's done, because we are so prone to forget what he does. I hope that we can be a church that doesn't regret the lack of faith that we could have had. I want to be a church that leaps forward, regularly taking steps of Faith, because the Bible communicates to us regularly that God provides in line with our faith steps.

In fact, there's some things coming down the pipe that I'm not going to tell you about today, but I'll tell you about over the next couple of weeks. That are real Faith moves for us as a church, and what I've learned in my life is that, while God keeps me provided for in times of stagnancy, God truly blesses Faith steps, and so I don't want us to be a church that fails to take Faith steps out of fear. I want to be a church that takes Faith steps, trusting that provision follows those Faith steps. And for me, I didn't know it back then, but I've had enough examples now in my life that would hopefully provoke me to take those steps. Maybe many of you in this room you didn't know a couple years ago, you didn't know at your last Church what God was capable of.

But God might. God has invited you. But God might bring you to the place where you're willing to take a faith step and see what you were unable to see because you never took that step. In fact, you will not know about the floodgates of blessing that he'll unleash on your life if you never take that step. There's a there's a scene that we've gone over in John chapter 4 and- and I almost preached a whole accidental sermon on, but I said I was going to wait and preach it later- and it's in John 4, in verse 10, if you remember this story about the woman at the well.

Jesus goes through Samaria when he doesn't have to and he, meets this woman at the well. We find out that this woman has had five husbands and the one she's with now isn't her husband. I preached a whole bunch of messages on those. You can go back and watch that- but I was struck when I hit verse 10 in that moment wasn't even planning on talking about it. But here's what Jesus says to her when she's asking him for normal water.

Right, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Many of us are in this place where we don't know the glory, the power, the nature of God. But you can. But you can now. This woman continues to have a conversation and we get down to verse 28 and here's what this woman does: she came with her jar.

She came to the well with her jar. Why did she come with her jar, you might ask someone. Tell me, because she wanted to fill it up. Oh yeah, she wanted water. She wanted to fill it up.

And it says in verse 28 and 29: after they've had this conversation, she says: I perceive you're a prophet and she's excited about this conversation- verse 28. Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to town and said to the people: come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? Now in this interaction? When she came up front, she did not know who he was.

She's missing the whole point. But after the conversation she had with Jesus, she is now- and it's so strange- like unconcerned with her physical needs because she's so consumed with the conversation that, no, that's me guys. Maybe one second everybody. Yeah, sorry, guys, I flipped it down right here and then I thought the battery died and then I ruined the whole situation. It's not about the microphone.

She, she, like, she left what was physical to pursue that which was spiritual, and I think if there's anything that we can glean from this, it's that I think we might be too consumed in the physical and after a conversation, a regular, consistent conversation with Jesus, he would continue to inspire you to trust him with the physical and Leap Forward so that you would obtain something spiritual. That's really what this conversation is, this conversation about giving. Again, I keep saying this, because even this week I had a couple people ask me questions about it- this is not just for the growth of the church physically. This is for you to grow spiritually, because without him, you're missing out on so many components that would give you peace. One of the stories you'll see in the future is somebody talking about the fact that when they trusted him with their finances, with the tithe, there was a lack of concern that followed about their finances.

What does that mean? It means that peace ensues when you follow Jesus and subordinate the things that are physical. I want you to understand that when you pursue Jesus, he provides. When you pursue Jesus, the physical stuff is less important when you trust Jesus. Yeah, he's going to bless you physically.

We talked about that last week. He's going to bless you physically. I- I have not, been just crazy impoverished by trusting God with 10% of my income for 12 years has not happened, in fact, it's only improved and increased. And then my responsibility is also increased, because when you're going to revolve your life around Jesus and reorient your finances Around Jesus, you have to start looking at them a little bit more to understand them. How can I be faithful to God?

Well, I got to look at my finances, but when I do it, what I found is that God continually blesses me. But the blessing is not just physical. There's a unique miracle. I don't think the miracle of giving is that somebody gave and then God provided them with with like a sports car. I haven't heard any stories about that.

I think the blessing of giving is that when I've given a whole 10% of my income, let me break that down for you. Math wise, if you make a hundred grand a year, that's probably about 800 to 850 a month. That's a lot of money. Most of y'all been allocating that to other places, right? How is it?

And this is the miracle of trusting God in this. How is it that when I give something so significant that is physical in nature to the Lord, I'm less stressed about it the next week? How many of us know that's true? I heard someone. Maybe you weren't clapping, maybe you're just creaking your chair or something like that, I don't know.

I heard a clap. That was a spirit clap, I don't know. I hear you back there when you trust him. It's crazy to me, like when I was that poor way back in the day, I was for real poor. I identified with their story.

I was super poor, doing Seminary, paying for Hannah Seminary as well, and then working a job that was like I think it was what- $35,000 a year, trying to figure out how to live and tithe, and then, you know, start a family and all this other stuff and then drive like 30 minutes each way to get to school, all this other stuff. I don't even know how it worked, but for some reason, when I trusted God financially, I wasn't stressed about it. And then, guess what? No amount of stress was ever going to provide more money for me, but when I wasn't stress, it was still there at the end of the month. I don't know how to explain it, but that's the miracle.

The miracle is not that you got something cool, physical, at the end of it, the miracle that you were less stress and more filled with peace. That surpasses all understanding. My heart was more guarded in Christ Jesus. That's why this woman after the conversation is like: I ain't thinking about water anymore. I'm going to go share the living water with the Samaritan people group and we're going to do a whole series on this at the end.

 Well, at the beginning of next year it's going to be fun. I, I don't know what we're going to call it, maybe harvest season or something like. We're going to start a fast and then we're going to call a series harvest season, just so y'all think about food every single Sunday. I, I don't know. But that's not, that's tentative, that's tentative.

But she left it and I would not be doing you a disser. I would be doing you a disservice if, if I just told you about the physical blessing and didn't wholly promote the spiritual blessing that comes from it. I, I fundamentally believe that our job as a church is to help you with a spiritual blessing, not a physical one, though the church may help you physically. When you're in a time of need, I think the fundamental thing that we offer you is the words of Jesus, and that's going to help you way more than a little bit of physical blessing. And if I knew this back then, oh my goodness, there are so many different decisions I would have made if you knew.

Knew this back then, you would have. I'm not, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but when you know, you know I'm. Let's go to Matthew, Chapter 13. It'll be on your screens. You can turn there if you feel like it.

I'm going to give you another example of how the Scriptures communicate this, and here's what he says, starting in verse 44. He says: the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man, when a man, found it, he hid it again. Now hear this. And then, in his Joy, he went and sold all that he had and bought the field again.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of Great Value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. Is it that's such an interesting concept, the idea that you would find something that is so valuable that it would be worth everything for you to gain it. He says: this is the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a full focus on that which we believe to be more beneficial than that which is superficial.

And I know, I know we, we're so filled like my whole week. I mean technically, I got a job right, I'm working, I'm I'm prepping sermons, I'm trying to make sure that you guys don't leave. I'm trying to make sure more people come. I got a full-time job every single week and there's a huge portion of that job that I have like, I'm not doing it for free. You know, like I, I would do it for free.

Y'all heard last week- go watch last week's sermon. I talked about how I did it for free for a season. But you know, like I got to be, I got to, I got to have a house. I got to do these things right. My wife works full-time, right, she's been the bread winner, huge portion of our marage.

We- we spend a lot of our time- ACR income- so that we can live. I get it and most of our Lives is spent ACR. Like what do you do most of the week? Some of you, most of you hopefully, yeah, like you're working. And why do you work?

Some of you work because you have the job that you love and you don't care about money. That's fine. But most of you work so you can get an income, so you can provide for your family and so that you can do some of your hobbies. A lot of our lives are consumed with the superficial, and I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm saying there's something greater.

There's something greater and Jesus says: the Kingdom of Heaven is that thing that's greater. The king Kingdom of Heaven is that thing. When you get a glimpse of it, you're like: I'm willing to, to give my whole life for it. I'll quote all the time. He says: anyone who does not, lose his life cannot save it.

Anyone who does not bear his cross, take up his cross and follow me. Anyone who does not, self-sacrifice, anyone who does not, like, recognize the need to fully give everything in his life up to follow me, they're going to be missing out. But- and I talk about those all the time- but what he says here is really helpful because it gives you kind of the carrot to the difficulty. He's saying: this is better and when you pursue this, it is actually worth losing everything or selling everything or giving it all away, because what you gain in terms of peace and purpose and satisfaction and abundance and friendships and Revelation, that's the real carrot. That's what's really better.

It's not just earning income, it's experiencing God. That's what he created you for. I don't know if you knew this. He didn't create you to make a paycheck and go buy some stuff and subside. God actually created you for the purpose.

. The Westminster Confession says the chief end of man is to love God and enjoy him forever, not to enjoy the stuff forever. To enjoy him forever. Your greatest level of Joy will be found when Jesus is your priority. Now let me break this down a little bit better, because I don't know, I don't know about, I don't connect with pearls.

I don't wear them. I'm not one of them kind of pastors. You know you're not going to find me on preachers and sneakers. I'm not trying to go buy fine pearls. You know, land out here is a little too expensive.

I'm not. I'm not trying to buy a bunch of land, don't even know if it's got water going to it. You know what I'm saying. It's like I'm not, I'm not really connecting with those specifics. But I can tell you, back in 2017, I had a thought.

It was an interesting thought. It was a thought that I didn't act on now. If I knew then, when I KN, that would be different. But I remember hearing about this. I was thinking about investing a little bit.

I remember we had just sold our house. You remember we got some money back. I was thinking about investing and I heard about this company. I didn't know much about it yet, but it was called Tesla, you know- and I was like, Ah, that's a risk. I didn't know Co was going to happen.

I didn't know. I didn't know what was going to happen with Tesla. I had no clue. And if I knew, then somebody- come on, maybe you don't like that because he was too political this season, but- but maybe back in the 90s you had your opportunity to invest in Microsoft or apple. Or maybe back after the 2008 financial crisis, you heard about this thing called Bitcoin and you were like that's dumb.

And now you're like, oh gosh. I remember thinking about that. I'd forgotten that moment. I think it was traumatic, and so I'd forgotten about it until I was prepping for this sermon. I remember thinking like, if Elon Musk had come up to me in 2017, knowing now, knowing then, what I know now I would have, I wouldn't have just invested, guys.

I would have, regardless what you think about the morality of all that stuff, or electric vehicles, I don't even know. All I'm thinking about here is the bottom line when it comes to my financial investments: knowing, if I had known then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have just invested. I'd have probably said, hey, Hannah, you know that $35,000 profit we made on this house that we're probably going to spend on clothes and stuff that we're going to grow out of as soon as you get pregnant, as soon as I get not pregnant, but I'm with you during. You know how it is, guys. You know I'd have probably given them all that I had.

Am I right? Knowing what I know now, I would have. I would have lived on the street. What I, what I know now, guys, let me break this down. Maybe you don't look at stocks, but if you go look at a graph, I should have brought a graph today.

If you go, look at a graph and see where it was in 2017 and compare it to what it is now, if you go back and you look at Bitcoin. That thing was like pennies of pennies, of pennies of pennies and, oh my gosh, I'm so stupid. I wish I'd known then what I know now. And I'm not living in regret. That's pointless, that's not helpful.

I'm using this as a substantial illustration to show you how I'm not a good investor, but also to communicate to you, that God is way better than Elon Musk. He is way more faithful, he is way more consistent. Our God has proven himself to us. Goodness gracious, there is Hebrew and Greek literature translated into English for us to read and look at, and you got an app that you can even listen to it. You can listen to the NLT, you can listen to the NIV, you can listen to the nasb, you can listen to all these different translations and they all communicate the very same thing: that God is faithful when we trust him.

That provision follows a faith step to invest into the things that are greater than what we tend to invest into, and I give you that little Financial illustration to help you understand. You might not know now, but there will come a day where you'll look back and you'll say, man, if I knew then, I've done it for 12 years, but there were years that I didn't do it before. That I'm like man. If I knew then how faithful God is. In fact, every year when we come to this point, my wife and I have to remind ourselves, don't we?

It's always a reminder, like it's an argument, then a reminder. Is that what it is? It's an argument, then a reminder, where either she's saying I think we need to do this- I'm like hold up sweetie- or I'm saying, hey, I think we need to do this, and she's like I'm going to buy Christmas gifts, right, and we talk about it and we have to remind ourselves. Haven't we seen in the past God's faithfulness? And we ask this question every year.

I wish we weren't like Israelites, but we kind of are. We're like the Israelites who cross the Jordan. Even though they built an Ebenezer and we've got our work words, we still forget about his faithfulness. And so when God's calling us into the land of promise, we're like the 10 spies, not the two spies. There were 10 spies who, who, who went into the land of promise said: oh my gosh, those guys are big, we're like grasshoppers in their sight, which is like a self- projection.

They didn't even talk to the dudes. We don't know what they thought. They went into that land and said: I don't know if God can do it. But there were two who came back and said: well, we've seen him do it in the Jordan- sorry, not the Jordan, but in the Red Sea. We saw him do it with the pillar of fire and the cloud.

We saw him do it with the- the weird stuff like the frogs and the death of the firstborn son. We saw him do it with water in a rock. We saw him do it with Quail. We've seen God work. There were two out of the 10 and I wish I wasn't one of the 10.

I wish every year I came back and I said, hey, I'm one of the two, babe, I'm like a Caleb or a Joshua. I got the faith to move mountains. Today, I got the faith of a mustard seed: it's going to grow up. I've got all this faith and I'm ready to jump into it. So let's take that 10% and let's add on to it.

Sweetie, that's not me though. I struggle so much, but I've seen it and that's a normal tension. But I, but I hope over the next couple of weeks I can Inspire some of you to take a step now that would prevent you from looking back and wishing you had taken that step now and again. That step is going to happen on December 8th. Some of you may start earlier.

Some of you guys may wait till year end. I don't know what it's going to be for you, but here's what I know is what Isaiah 48: , 17 and 19 says, and I'll close with this. This is what the Lord says. Your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. I am the Lord, your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way that you should go.

If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea. Your descendants would have been like the sand, your children like its numberless grains. Their name would never be blotted out nor destroyed from before me. Why did I read that? I read that to you because when I was reading that, it made me think of this passage in John, chapter 4, where he says: if you would have asked, I would have given you living water.

But he's talking to a group of people who have forgotten and failed to obey his commands. You have an opportunity for obedience today and in the future. And again, we're talking about giving, but this happens in every area. Start praying now for the word that God would give you. Start praying now for the faith step he's calling you today.

Be a giving for the first time, increasing to the tithe or above and beyond the tithe, because when you trust him, floodgates of Heaven open, and it's not just physical, it's primarily spiritual. Let's pray, God. I thank you for today. I thank you for the faith that we see through Scripture from all these people who trusted you, without which we would not have examples to look at, God. I thank you for the examples that I forget about in my own life and I pray that you would give me continued ability to take Faith steps, and I, I project that prayer onto everyone in this room: that, God, you would give us the ability to take steps of Faith.

Some are called to serve, some are called to join a group. Some are called to open up your word for the first time, or the first time in a long time. Some are called to give. Some today, Lord, are called to trust you for the first time, and so, for anyone in this room, I pray that, if they're under the sound of my voice right now and they've never trusted in you that they would confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead. It's in Jesus's name that we pray, and God's people said: amen.