IYKYK

Yeah, there's that pad. I like it. We're going to be in the Bible today. I hope so, right?

We're going to be in Malachi, chapter 3.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Malachi, chapter 3. If you don't have your Bibles, you still got a phone. You still got a phone. You can pull out your Bible.

Internet's not good so you probably won't be able to download it if you don't have it.

But you should make yourself a little apple note- unless you got an Android, some sort of note- and, download the Bible when you get home to some good, reliable internet. Because we use the Bible every single week here at Orbit Church. It is our heart that people would find peace and develop Purpose By revolving everything around Jesus, and by everything I mean everything. It kind of makes sense to me, right, like if we're going to believe that, we have a, a God that created the entire universe and then sent his son to die on the cross and then resurrected from the grave, and then the church exists right now so that God, God, would receive honor and Glory, it makes sense to me that if all those things are true, then it would it.

It would be like incumbent upon us to spend our lives thinking about it, living around it just never made sense to me to introduce Jesus as a small ingredient into my super hectic life.

I would. I would rather introduce my life into the Peace of Christ and revolve everything around him. So that's what we do here and we have about I guess there would be five, right? We have 5gs- that's what we call them because we're trying to be clever, because you know you got.

You got 5gs on your phone.

See, it says 5G on my phone. That tells you it's bad data here. Instead of LT or whatever, 5gs. And these are kind of your general Pathways to approach God.

We would say these are not things you have to do, but these are things that when you do them, it opens you up to receive Revelation from God.

And we say: to gather, that's attendance, grow, that's, you know, reading your Bible, taking Steps of Faith group, attending a small group or spending time in biblical Community. Give, that's giving of your tithe. Or, being generous above and beyond the tithe and go, which is like serving and inviting. We think when we do those things, not only are we taking a step of faith, and when we take steps of faith.

God blesses it.

But when we do them we learn more and more about God. It's just like any other relationship. There are certain things that you kind of generally do them if you're in a good relationship, and we talk about all of these things and we try to do it most weeks, but on some occasions we will pick one of them and do a whole series over it. We did the interconnected series back in August and that was a good series.

It helped people not only, I think, connect with God and grow, but it helped un help people understand how, when you serve or when you join a small group, you can become connected with Biblical community and then find God through that too.

So we talk about all of those 5gs and over the next five weeks, including today, we're going to be talking about one of those. It's let me introduce it with the text. First, Malachi, chapter 3, and here's what it says in verse 10. We'll read all the way through verse 12.

He says: 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. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your Fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe, says the Lord Almighty. Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land, says the Lord Almighty. I want to talk to you about the G of giving over the next five weeks, and in a moment I'm going to introduce what we're calling a year end offering.

But I used to be really good at talking about giving.

It was easy to talk about giving before I'd come out here, started the church and received little commentary, from different people who have had experiences at other churches, but after a few comments you start to get a little timid. I realized in the last service how timid I was, but our leadership told me he said: Matt, stop qualifying, stop, stop, you know, equivocating, stop pulling back on what is the truth of God, and just be bold and clear. So what I want to do right now is I want to commit to you that I'm going to be bold. I'm going to do my best to be clear, what I'm not not going to do unless I accidentally do it.

You know it's an accident if I do it.

What I'm not going to do is I'm not going to apologize. I'm not going to apologize for what God's word says. God's word says here: test me in this, says the Lord, and see if I won't bust open the floodgates of heaven and unleash it in your life. He says: this is a one area in the Bible where he says: test him.

He doesn't say it.

In fact there's kind of this General understanding when you test the Lord that it's not the optimal thing. But he says in this: test me and see if I won't bless you. He says: trust me in your finances and see if I won't bless you. And every time I equivocate or or scale back out of fear of Retribution or someone leaving the church, I pull away from the message, which is the truth of God that says: when you trust him in your finances, you are blessed.

Now I'm going to break that down over the next couple of weeks, but my hope would be to persuade everyone in this room to trust God a little bit more in the area of their finances.

And we titled the series: if you know, you know, look at your neighbor, say if you know, and you respond to them. You know, see, that didn't work the way I wanted it to, but that's okay if you know. You know how many of you yesterday got that text message where it said I YK, YK, and you didn't know what it stood for. Y'all okay, coupled, didn't?

That's good?

That's good. The rest of you guys, Kudos, Kudos, you understood? There's a lot to here. Here's what I'll say: the.

The struggle with talking about giving is everyone's got an opinion on it.

Only some have experienced it. What, what, what God does when you trust him in this area? What I love about giving is it's one of the G's, the 5 GS, right, that when you do it, it kind of requires something. It requires you to reorient your life.

Right, I can step into serving and then maybe the next week I stop serving.

I can step into a small group. If I didn't Vibe with it, I kind of step out of that small group. All it is it's adjusting my calendar a little bit. But when it comes to giving, if you're going to give the way that God called, call us to.

And here he says the tithe which the Bible in the ti.

The tithe in the Bible is 10% of the first fruits in an Agricultural Society which we bring to today and we say: 10% of your gross income. That's what we say. That's a lot. I don't know about you, but most people have already allocated 10% of their income, and it might be to savings.

It might be to investment- stocks were doing okay this week.

It might be to spending money on your kids. It might be to saving for your kids College. It could be, for that extra money you want to spend at Starbucks to get that extra shot and that extra pump. It could be that you're paying 10% of your income toward debt or credit card debt, whatever it is.

People have generally allocated that, and so the invitation to give of our tithes and our offerings from the Lord requires us to look at that honestly and say: well, how can I be obedient in light of how I've been living?

And you have to start moving things around. Here's why I like talking about giving, because if, if you can take that step of Faith, almost every other step is easier if you can take this step. It takes so much Faith to reorient your life around Jesus in the area of your finances. That that's how beneficial I think this conversation could be, and we titled it if you know.

You know, because if you haven't, if you've never trusted the Lord with the tithe, you can.

I'm not going to free speech, you know. First amendment, you got free speech. You can talk about it, but you don't get it. I'm not trying to be rude or negative.

There would be a group of people in here who have started tithing and they've experienced it.

I've never met one of them who regretted it and so what I? What I'm trying to say is if you, if you know, you know I'm not going to make it awkward by telling the people who know to say something, then you're sitting next to somebody who didn't say something. Now it's an awkward conversation. Oh, you're not given.

I don't want to make it awkward, but if you know you, you get it.

And if you have not trusted God in this area, I want to help you, but you don't quite get it, and I know that sounds pretty intense. Let me, let me break it down for you. Anyone like Disney World or Disneyland in this place? I mean just just for fun, let me ask how many of you don't like it.

That's why you're not tithing, I know.

Like it's just, it's too expensive. I never went to Disney World or Disneyland until I was 34 years old. I know the people who have been. They're like: oh my gosh, you missed out your entire life.

What kind of trauma did you go through?

And I never went and I always knocked the people who who went. It's like: why wouldn't you go somewhere else in the world? Disney World versus the world, like there's a lot of cool cities and at my first church there would be these like full grown adults didn't even have their kids with them anymore. Every year, couple times they're going to Disney World and I just thought: y'all, y'all look crazy, little weirdos.

Why would you go to Disney World as a full- grown adult?

That's what I thought. And then, we even have some friends like they know everything about Disney World. It's like they're trying to sell it to us all the time and I'm, like you, crazy. So we went one year because we were visiting friends in Tampa and we decided to go for a day and it was: was it your birthday, Hannah?

That's what it was.

Hey, there's a seat right up here in the front, cuz I'm gonna call you like 10 million times and I want you to be seen, . So she came up to me. She said, Matt, I really want to go to Disney World. I'm like, G, I don't want to go to Disney World.

And then she said, let's just go for a day for my, for my birthday present.

And I'm like, okay, we'll go for a day. And then she brought me the ticket cost and I was like goodness gracious, and so we went for a day. It did, I know it did. It cost us like 800 bucks for a day.

It was crazy.

However, since we had these weirdo friends who would always go, they helped us get the genie passes, and so we were able to visit two parks- I hope they don't watch this sermon, Hannah, and so we went, and I need you to know I didn't know. I didn't know how good Disney World was. It's so cool. I'll never forget I was standing there for like an hour and a half in Space Mountain line and that y'all know.

That's not even as good as some of them, but I'm standing there and you know what I felt?

Like I'm going to space. It felt like I was going to space. And then I went to the Avatar ride and it felt like I was on Pandora, which is the world that Avatar's in. Anyways, I felt like I was there and then when I left I was like that was a big waste of money, but it was fun.

But I'm not going to remember the fun.

No, I remember how it felt and then I loved it so much. I went to Disneyland again and then I went into, like, the Star Wars world. I didn't know until I experienced it how cool it was. And if you ain't been to Disney World, don't knock all them people spending all that money.

Now, some of you need stop going to dead over Disney World, but the rest of you, it's pretty cool to go to Disney World.

I would say in a much better way. God calls us to test him in this, because he knows what happens on the other side of that trust and faith, that when we trust him to the point of tithes and offerings, he unleashes blessing on us. Now I want to be very clear with you guys. Why would we do the series near a year end?

We're doing it near year end because my wife and I have developed a habit over the years of trying to increase our faith in the specific area of our finances.

So this is more of a personal thing that we're bringing to the church because it's been so powerful in our lives- and there are a lot of other churches that do it, but it's been so powerful to us. So what happens for me and my wife is: we get near your end and we've been tithing, for many years. I think when we got married we were tithing right and we got some cool stories from that early day because we were poor and we kept tithing. But anyways, we've been tithing for a while, but God never called us to decrease our faith.

In fact, he only calls us to increase it.

And so at the year end, we always increase above and beyond the tithe to give at year end, but there's more to that and I'm going to show you guys a video in a moment that will introduce it. But there going to be three action steps from this series: The. The first action step is for those of you who maybe have never trusted God in the area of your finances, and I want to invite you to pray and consider what it would look like to give for the first time throughout the series or when we come together on December 8th, at the end of this series, there going to be some offering kiosks right up here. I'm going to.

I'm going to break this down for you, but pray about what it looks like to give for the first time.

There's some of you who you've given to the church. You've given, sorry, you've given to God through the church. I want to be very clear about this, but God calls us to be obedient to the tithe, which is 10% of our income, and many of you have been giving for a while. But God is calling you to increase to the whole tithe, .

He says, right before.

We said he says: but you ask: how are we robbing you? He says: in tithes and offerings you are under a curse, your whole nation, because you are robing me, robbing me. He says: bring the, the whole tithe into the storehouse. He's calling us to bring the whole tithe.

So some of you are going to pray about what it looks like to increase your giving to the Lord and, trust me, you going to see a blessing.

He promises a blessing. And then the third thing: those of you who have been faithful and consistent in your tithing to God through the church you're going to give potentially above and beyond. Now, that looks differently for each person, but those are the three action steps. In fact, on your seat, you will see an envelope.

There's a lot of things that don't make sense, but when you know, you'll know, and I'm going to show you a video in a second to give you that Clarity.

All that- to say this is something very deep and personal to me in my wife- is something that I've seen at other churches, and I have seen the mighty power of God Unleashed in my life. And over the next few weeks, you're going to hear story after Story of people who have positively been impacted by trusting God in their finances. This isn't something we should scale away from. In fact, it's something we should lean into, even though it's a topic that might be difficult for you to have in your family, and I noticed in the first service.

It's difficult for me to talk about it, but I'm going to move away from that because I care more about your faith than I do the fears that are keeping me from talking about what God's truth says.

So I want you guys check out the screens. There's going to be a little Story video. This is going work. In 2017, my wife and I heard about something that we had never done before.

It was called the year in offering.

The way that that would work is we would start asking God to reveal something to us, and the task of this yearend offering was to boil that idea or Revelation from God down to a word or a phrase, and, near the end of the year, we would bring that word in tandem with an offering to God. Now we've been tithing for years, giving 10% of our income because God calls us to. That's just obedience, but at year end, God was calling us to continue to believe him, and so that year-, it was a tough year. A lot of things were occurring in our lives and we weren't necessarily in a surplus of cat, and so, as we started praying, God started to reveal himself to us, and he- he revealed to me specifically this word: discipline.

And in light of our lack of discipline, that year, we took all of the money that we had spent on clothing and unnecessary food purchases, compiled it together and gave that amount at year and offer.

That next year was crazy. Right after we gave I found myself without a job. Right after we gave, my wife had just started her job. We were in this position where we were like God, what are you doing?

The next year started, 2018, and my wife is gaining in clientele.

By the end of that first month, God had provided just just enough for us to get by by June of that year. God had blessed my wife with the single largest paycheck that she had ever had. Now she's the bread winner and I'm freaking out on the inside, but I'm seeing God work on the outside, and by the end of that year, I looked back and I saw God's faithfulness. Over that year, God actually disciplined me.

Every year, my family would do this: we would pray to God for a work, receive Revelation from God and, year end, we would bring an offering above and beyond our tithe to see what God might do near the end of 2021.

God brought me to a passage in Ephesians: he'll do immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine. And God provoked me with this thought: if he'll do immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine, then maybe I'm imagining too little and maybe I'm not asking God for enough. And so that became my word: that we would believe him for in ask. And that was the year where God would ask us to start a new church, and you can see now What the Lord Has Done.

There's a cool scene in the Old Testament.

When the Israelite people cross the Jordan River, God tells them to pile up some UNH unshaped stones into a pillar that would become an altar of remembrance for for God bringing them across the Jordan River. So for us- and I hoped for this church into the future. Every year this is like laying a stone of remembrance, and for me and my wife, we continually look back to these words: if you know about the faithfulness of God, you'll do the same thing. Well, that was me.

Ah, put it.

When I watch that video, y' y, I mean, y'all saw pictures in the video I- I kept thinking when I was speaking of I need an editor, a video editor. If someone else wants to do that for me in the future, right now it's just me. So if you got gift in video editing, call me up and we're going to chat and you're going to join a serve team, and you're going to help me make videos in the future. But for me, when I was putting together that video, the thought kept coming to my head: don't put those pictures in.

They won't know what it means, but every time I would see those pictures, like I, I'm prompted, I think, by the spirit of God, to tear up, because what you don't know, I experienced, and I. I can only communicate so much about what God has shown me, and at some point the leap of faith needs to ensue so that you can see the, the mighty power of God. There's a verse in the Old Testament that actually says: come, Behold The Mighty works of God, but the way that you translate Mighty there can actually be terrible, and so what I found in my faith with God is that, when I trust him, he reveals himself to me mightily, and it's not about the situation I walk through, it's about me continuing to walk through it with him, and so, rather than just do a whole bunch of preaching, I wanted to share what I've seen and experienced in this process of trusting him financially. As you saw in the video, that word that God brought me to was discipline, and, like I said in the video, I thought I need to get in shape.

That's been my like constantly.

Ever since I was 19, I've been trying to get back to 19 years old. I'll never forget. There was a guy who was like, hey, you're going to get older and you're not going to look like that anymore. I said, whatever, bro, he was right.

And, so I was like: I'm G to do discipline, I'm gonna get in shape, I'm GNA run.

I started training for a race that I never ran, all that stuff, and that's what that like I like. God, give me discipline. That's what I'm praying for this next year. But what I saw that year was that he took every circumstance and used it to discipline me in order to refine me into the person he was calling me to be.

And what was happening up to that point was I was in an onboarding process at a job, that I was fairly confident I would get.

We decided- decided to give at year end, a significant amount to us at the time, above and beyond our tithe. And then the next week they let me know I was not going to be having that job and my wife had just started seeing clients. She's a coup's therapist and so, in client Fields, where you require clients, you don't get paid unless you see clients. You only had one client at that point.

Well, by the end of January of that next year, God had fully provided, just enough for us to get by.

But I'm jobless, I'm struggling and I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm processing through. I don't know if you've ever been in that season where, like, something didn't work out the way you intended it to. But then, and then you're in this position: like what do I do?

Do I need to go into a different field?

Do I need to stay at home? My wife and I had just had Lucas U the year before, so he was one year old- and so she's working and I'm watching the kid, and I'm spending my whole February watching the kid and cooking lunch and dinner for the kid and watching House Hunters and, Naked and Afraid, just trying to get by. And so, in a moment of desperation, I reached out to somebody who was at the organization that had not given me the job and I said, hey, is there anything that I can do in this process of me looking for what, what God has for me? And he said, well, we can't pay you for this, but, you can go an hour and a half away to this place in hicky, North Carolina.

They have about 220 people meeting and they need a leader.

So you can go do that. We'll probably give you reimbursement for gas and your lunch that day. And I'm processing through it. I'm like I'd always done this for pay, Lord.

What am I called to do here?

And God revealed to me very quickly. Hey, you know what? Your faithfulness to me in Ministry is not contingent on a paycheck. So why don't you go?

Trust me in this process?

And so I went up there. We'd wake up at 4:00 in the morning or 3:45 in the morning, drive up an hour and a half to get to Hickory, North Carolina, to meet at morrettes Mill, which is a setup tear down location we would set up, with my one-year-old and my wife sitting in the car until it was time for her to come in and she would help with singing and things like that. Then we would leave at probably two or three in the afternoon to go back to where we were and then I would spend the rest of the week prepping for that but also looking for a job and. In that same February my wife had our first miscarriage and I'll never forget I was driving to the airport to go for an interview at some church job and she calls me and tells me this and we're processing through that.

And then I get, didn't get that job, came back, .

But then that weekend I get to go and that group of people in that picture prayed over me to bring me in to be their lead- sorry, to be their leader. And, it's freaking weird, sorry, pardon my French, . And then by Easter we saw 465 come to Easter. And then, we did baptisms the next week and 27 people got baptized.

And I'm not getting paid, I don't have a job, but I'm seeing the Lord work.

And then we, we come back, I start working in real estate, which is random, and I sell one house and by the end of that year I end up taking a job with that same company who had declined the first time around. And I stepped in and it was right after I'd chosen my next year's word, which was patience, because I didn't know when the Lord was going to redeem me from that. And the week after we gave and chose patience, I, I got that job. And then the next week we had our second miscarriage, and the second one's way harder than the first one.

But then, the next December, after we chose our next word, Michael was born, and I guess I didn't.

I didn't do this in the first service, right? I? I guess all I'm trying to say is what I've seen God do in my life, and, and again, you know what? I haven't said anything about money.

All that stuff was happening and God continued to provide.

That June, God had provided my wife with the crazy large paycheck and I'm like I don't even know if I could do this. If I get back in Ministry, she's going to keep being the bread winner still is half the time. And, now we're in a place where I don't even I mean we think about it, just to be responsible. But I'm not worried about it because I've learned that when I trust God, with whatever amount of money, God continues to provide, because it's concern is not really my provision.

He's going to do that.

His concern is my purpose and he continues to move me forward in purpose, and what I've seen in my life is the truth of this. He says: test me in this and I will bust open the floodgates and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I don't know that any of your households could store the blessing that I could communicate to you if I kept talking. I only got a limited amount of time.

It says I got 9 minutes left, so I'm not going to keep talking, but every one of those words, we came at year end trusted God that he was going to be doing that for us in the next year, not knowing what it was going to be.

And then we prayed about what it looked like to give above and beyond our tithes and offerings at year end. And then we watch. Good things happen, bad things happen. We're always blessed materially, but more than that, we are increasingly blessed spiritually, and so I mean, how bad of a person would I be if I've experienced that and didn't share that with you all the same time I get to walk through it?

I would be in my mind- maybe not yours- I would be withholding from you the blessing of the Lord, and all I'm inviting you into is to not withhold from trusting the Lord financially so that you can receive the blessing of the Lord.

Now I've been pretty clear about this up front. I think, I think I've communicated by telling you my story that I'm not some Prosperity preacher who says: if you give, God will only-, God will bless you financially within a specific time frame. I haven't said that. I think my story tells you that.

Nope, I gave and it got bad, but then it got real good, real good, and so that's what I want to communicate to you.

I also don't want to be a wimp and say that God doesn't bless you materially, because he does that, and I would be a liar if I didn't say that. In fact, when you trust God with your finances and bring the whole tithe into his storehouse- which he has said from the early church that it is the local church that we're supposed to bring our tithe into-, when we bring that in, He blesses us both materially and spiritually. I want you to know: to me, the spiritual is way more important than the material, but I'm not going to lie, He blesses materially, and there's probably not a single person in here who has trusted God financially and consistently who would say different. I've never met a sing single person who has trusted God at the level of the tithe and regretted it so much.

So to, if you really want to, I'll probably give you a refund for three months of tithing.

If you feel like it didn't work out for you, is it 90 days or your money back? I believe God at that level and I want you to believe God at that level. Some of you are looking around and saying we're in a gym and I'm like, yep, we're in a gym. We're going to be in a gym for a hot minute, even if everybody starts giving.

But what I know is going to take us to the next level, where we're going to see more people in the West Valley come to Faith and start revolving their lives around Jesus, where we see more people serving, more people seeing the Peace of Christ in their life.

The way that we're going to get there as a church is if we all- not just me, not just a couple other people in their holy huddle, but all of us- start trusting God at a higher level and being faithful to him and obedient in every area that he calls us to. It's not just Gathering, it's not just opening your Bible once in a while and feeling bad when you don't. It also incorporates the giving component. In fact, God's given us all that we have anyways.

All he asks is for us to give, 5% less than the Barista start at when I'm buying coffee these days.

He asked for 10%. I was workshopping that. I don't know if it weren't, but do you realize your Barista ask for more than than God asks? They started at 15% and I'm like you just made me coffee person.

I'm going to be gracious anyways, that's a I digress, I digress.

And there there are people who come from different backgrounds with this and I want to communicate to that because you might be coming in here. It's like, oh, look at this pastor again talking about giving, and I'm not going to lie, I'm talk. Clearly, this is a giving series. I'm talking about giving, but for me it is not about the finances.

The finances are a pathway to Greater Faith.

What I mean by that is that when you give, it requires you to think and pray. I don't know about you guys, but there's still not been a conversation yet with me and my wife when it comes to finances. That has gone just immediately perfect. The first time someone brought something up, I'm not lying.

I mean sometimes it's like, hey, do you want to buy this for the kids?

And we're like, yeah, sure, that's easy conversation. But even the other night- Hanah, I'm bringing it up- we were talking about where we're going to save. We were talking about where we're going to save, and I have one view of it and she has another view of it, and we have different views of it. It's hard to talk about finances, and that's good, because what's going to happen after this, this meeting here today, if you, you pray and think about this, is maybe, if you're married, you're going to come together with your spouse.

You're going to say, hey, what does it look like for us to be faithful?

And you or the other person is going to be like, no, we can't. No, and then one person is going to be like I think we should, and the other person's going to be like: you're not the one looking at the finances, sweetie. And then this going to be a conversation. That's good, because I think sometimes you have to run into points of tension in order to find the peace that God has for you.

And when it comes to your finances, you're going to find Financial Freedom.

On the other side of making a tense and hard decision like I'm not going to tell you how to spend all your money, I will say that all of your money came from the Lord and he ask for you to trust him with your finances. In fact, he's much better than than you are at dealing with your money anyways. I'm just being real with you. I know enough people.

I know I know how debt is.

You know it's like M. We all could use a little bit of Financial Peace University in our lives. But God, he doesn't need it. He knows math way better than you do and if you give him 10%, he's going to do so much more with that 10% than you were ever going to do with it.

Be at best you going to earn a couple percentage points in the stock market if you're responsible.

But man, the Lord has gotten me so many more dividends than that in life. But this is if you leave here and you think this is about finances, I've not done my job. This is 100% about faith. It's about faith and I want to be clear about something, because this is what has made me so hesitant up to this point.

To be super bold and clear about it- is that there's a level where I, as the pastor, a very clear level.

I, as a pastor, have a- I kind of have a dog in that fight. You know, like, if I'm going to do full-time Ministry, if we're going to hire more people, if we want to do all that God's called us to do, it takes money to do that. And there's a level where I've hesitated because I don't want you to perceive me as asking for me. I don't want you to perceive me as asking for the future of my goals at the church.

Regardless of what you think there is relevance to the fact that our budget is about one half covered by the local church and the other half is covered by by fundraising.

I have done right, like those. Those are things that I think about. There have been a lot of people asking me about when we're going to get a building and I'm like eventually, and all I want to say in that moment is: it takes money to get a building. You going to tithe and I don't, I'm not, no, no, no, no, no.

I want to be so clear, like I'm not lying.

I'm about as superficial as everybody else. Once in a while there are things that I think about. That would make it to where it benefits me to come up here and talk to you about giving. But I want to be clear.

I am not asking you to trust God with your tithe because it benefits me.

I'm not asking you for the growth of the church. I'm not asking you so that we can get land or a building one day. In fact, that is all like. If you're a philanthropist, cool, I might ask you for some excess if you just need a tax write off or something like that.

But that is not what I'm trying to do.

I'm trying to help you trust God, because it will benefit you, not just the church. Now there's a byproduct. There's a byproduct that, if we all have faith in the area of our finances, God is going to bust open floodgates in all of your lives. And when he busts open floodgates, we're going to be amped and excited about what God does.

And when we're amped and excited about what God does, guess where you're going to come more often, right, I mean, I don't know about you, but if you see the work of God in your life, you're not going to go to church less.

You're not going to serve less. You're not going to grow less. You're not going to go to less groups. In fact, you're going to trust him in that and you're going to see all that he does.

You're like: I want more of that and the more of that that you want, the better that is for the community around us.

But that's faith and it's for you. This is it. Giving is for you. It's not not for me, it's not for this church.

This is, this is the vessel through which God called you to trust him, like that's the church's role in all of this.

But when you're obedient to God, He blesses you. This last year- and I'll close with this- this last year- and it said it here- my word was abundance and, the way we did it. I want to be just so clear. The way my wife and I did it is: typically we'll come up with our words first, and the way that we come up with these words is: I'll look in God's word-, I, I'll be standing in the shower thinking about a sermon and then I'm like, oh, that's a good word, God's trying to teach me something here, and then what I do is God gives me kind of some themes that I'm going through, and what I do is I boil that down to a word or a phrase that makes it clear about what I believe God's going to do next year.

This isn't some random superstitious word.

It's like: all right, money, I want more money. I'm gonna write down money. That's not what this is. This isn't some weird transactional Superstition that we're doing here.

This is you asking God: what do you want for me in the next year?

What are you doing in the next year? What do I need to pay attention to in the next year? This is super simple, but when's that last time you actually stopped, paused and said, hey, God, what do you want from me this next year? Some of you probably never done it, and that's okay.

But that pause enables you to connect at a deeper level with God, and I promise you, when you seek him, where he will be found.

He will be found by you. He will reveal to you some themes and you can boil down those words. And this last year, we were boiling down some words and I was realizing something. Every time we would have an event, I'd be looking at different parts of the event and I would not be celebrating the positive things that happened, and that's a bad characteristic for any new church planter, right?

So I was praying to the Lord.

He said, Matt, you need to recognize you've already got what you need. And so I boiled that down to the word abundance. I needed to have an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset, where, even if we don't have as many people as I want, wanted on a Sunday, we're still good. Like today is actually better than last week when we had more people, because you guys are engaging at a different level, right?

So I'm being abundant, and that was the word I came up with.

And then my wife and I we came together and this is how we always do it. You can do it differently. We said, hey, what are we going to give? And she's like: well, I've got a number, what are you thinking?

And I said I don't have a number, but I got a thought process, and my thought process was: we got to preach at a lot of different churches last year because I wasn't doing this on Sunday and they would give periodically an honorarium.

And so what we did was we took all of those honorariums, added them up and said I think that's what we should give at year end. And it turned out to be the exact number that she was thinking, and so that was like: okay, good God, you just made it clear, that's awesome. And so we gave that at year and, above and beyond our tithes and offerings. We did that in tandem with the word.

And then January comes around and I'm praying and fasting up in the mountains, as all good pastors do.

I'm just joking, I'm just joking, I was, but I was. I was praying and fasting in the mountains cuz I needed a, I needed a break and to shift some heads space. And it was a good week. And I came back, and some of yall know this story.

I came back and I was feeling abundant because, while I hadn't had food that week, God had blessed me with more Revelation about who he is and I was amped and ready to tackle the next weekend.

And I get back on Wednesday and I'm about to turn right, out of this. I was here, I was about to turn right after picking up my kids to go eat borrows, to break my fast. You know what I'm saying. It was gonna be good.

And then I got a call from the cops and that's when they told us that our trailer had been stolen and they stole about4 to $50,000 worth of equipment from our church.

And had I not been praying and fasting, had God not been revealing himself to me with this perspective of abundance when I was standing around there, David. Are you in here? David? You right here.

You remember you went out there, didn't you?

I was standing there at the south of Buckeye, right on the tree line in the middle of nowhere, and I was looking at the trailer. They had ransacked that thing. And the first words out of my mouth- I don't know if you were there at this point, but maybe you were, it was: we are not at war against flesh and blood. And I'm not that cool y'all.

I am not that cool on a normal day.

I'm like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? The church isn't going to work. We don't have any. We're not going to be able to do this.

We don't have a.

They stole the. They stole the speakers or I don't know. No, they didn't steal the speakers because we put them in the context, but they stole other stuff. And it was going to stress me out.

I'm freaking out.

We only had like three weeks before launch and I was like: what are we going to do? But not that day. That day I just been praying and fasting. I've been thinking on the abundance that God had already given me and I said: we're not at war against flesh and blood.

I didn't know what he was going to do, but I felt in my spirit that he was going to do something, because he didn't give me that word for no reason.

I didn't trust him for no reason and then, by launch, I can tell you this: the only reason we were able to launch at the level we launched was because of all the faithfulness from other people that came in terms of financial gifts. People heard about what had happened, started attending the church. Some of our most committed people are here now, heard about that trailer getting stolen on Facebook and they started coming because that had happened to them in the past, asked. Where we are now is in a lot of ways, because of that moment, and so the word abundance.

It's like we lost the trailer, but God blessed us with something greater and I guess I haven't come up with my word for this year.

Usually I do when I get to this point and I'm preaching and stuff like that. I wish I could have brought it to you as soon as I get it. I'll bring it, but I'm still Waring between a couple of things. But I want you to start today praying to God.

God, what do you want?

What are you going to do next year and, as he gives you Clarity, you're going to boil that down to a word and if you have that envelope there, on the front of that envelope you can see the I, YK, YK, and below it says: what do you believing God for in the next year? On December 8th we're going to come in and we're going to write down our word on that line and we're going to drop it in two little offering kiosks that'll be right here and then on our way out, as soon as you get your word. You saw that little plexiglass thing. We're going to write our words down because what I don't want to happen is people to write something down and then forget about how faithful God was.

We're going to remember these words.

We're going to we're going to break these words off of the envelope right here and we're going to put them together as a staff and we're going to pray over these words and, in tandem with that, you're going to have a conversation with your spouse about what it looks like to honor God in the area of your finances. Some of you are going to give for the first time and that's going to be a big step for you. Some of you are going to increase to the tithe and some of you are going to give above and beyond the tithe. It's going to look different for each of you-, even different years.

It will be different, but I have seen and I'm now testifying of the work of God in that specific area.

I'm not going to apologize for it because it would be withholding information from you that would change your life, because he says this: test me, test me. That's what this series is about, and once you've tested him, you're going to know what we're talking about. Y'all stand with me. I'm going to pray for us and we're going to finish in a little bit of worship.

Father God, we thank you for today.

We thank you for your goodness, your faithfulness to us. I pray that you would give people clarity as they try to boil down their thoughts to words. I pray that, as people are processing through what it looks like to be faithful to the tithe or to whatever offer offing level they're going to give at year end, I pray that you would speak to them and, let it be something that they have discussed with you and those who are relevant to the conversation, not something that is just flippant, but something that's focused, filled with faith and God. I pray that this next year, story after story after Story of your faithfulness will ring through this church.

In fact, even if we did grow, I don't want it to be without this type of Faith.

So build our foundation. Be honored and glorified as we worship you. It's in Jesus's name that we pray. God's people said: let's worship.