After this, maybe he'll bring me back. Can we give it up for your senior pastor?
Yeah. No, Pastor John's been so good to us. We came out here in March and he
just regularly like more than anybody else. I didn't tell you this but more than
anybody else, he'll just text me and say, how, how are things going? You wanna
chat or actually, you don't even tell you call. You're like the only guy that
calls and then I answer it and then by the end of the conversation, I'm feeling
encouraged and so just know this, he said it. But when, when you give to this
church Mission Grove, it goes a portion of it goes to Vision Arizona, which is
gonna go to helping us and many other churches launch here in the valley if they
were to give you numbers. Uh We saw some numbers this week at S two about how
many churches are being planted, how many souls are being saved, how many people
are getting baptized and putting Jesus at the center of their life? It's crazy
and all of that is impacted in part by your generosity. So thank you. Guys so
much. We are also grateful for the pipe and drape. Some of you in here may have
been a part of putting up that pipe and drape for years when you guys were in
the set up, tear down phase. Now you're not. And we get to be blessed with that
pipe. And so thank you so much uh for that in the first service. I kinda, I
stuck to my notes a little more than usual. But today in this service, I wanna
just really uh be vulnerable with you and start by asking you guys a question
because sometimes for me, like, you know, playing a church is hard, right? We're
having a blast. It's the most fun thing that I've ever done in my life. Um But
you know, the passage in scripture where Jesus sends the disciples out two by
two and they're going like from door to door and says some are gonna receive you
and then others aren't. And then you gotta shake the dust off your feet. I've
been doing a lot more dust shaking than I've ever done in my life just because
planting a church is difficult and I love it. Um But so often when you think
about people coming in, when you think about uh resources coming in and all of
the things that go with planting a church, you can really easily get to the
place where you feel like you're in lack where you feel scarce and, you know,
I'm, I'm looking forward to the blessing of God, but right now it's easy. I
think it's a temptation from Satan to get me off my game. But I, I sometimes
feel scarce. Anyone in this room feels scarce once in a while. You know, you can
be honest, maybe you never do. And that's cool if that's the case come right up
here, chat with me and give me some feedback on how I can never feel serious
again. You know, I've trusted in Jesus, peace of God that surpasses all
understanding, it's guarding my heart in Christ, Jesus. That doesn't mean Satan
is not trying to chip at it piece by piece, you know. And so so if you know that
come come hang out with me, but for the most part, we feel scarce, it might not
be a perpetual feeling, but we feel it. And on the other end, we, we really
wanna be blessed by God. We wanna see the abundance that Malachi says that he'll
provide that. If we trust him specifically in the area of our finances, he'll
bust open floodgates and a lavish blessing on us. Now, that's finances, but in
general, God will lavish His presence on your life as you're faithful to him.
And we want to get to that place of abundance yet we still feel scarce. I mean,
let me ask you this and I need like if you're willing, 100% participation how
many of you wanna be blessed by God? All right. Now, I can't see all the hands.
So let's just say it out loud. How many of you want to be blessed by God? Yeah.
Amen. We all want to be blessed by God and as we seek God and start to receive
that blessing, that doesn't mean there's no difficulty as we receive that
blessing and we find ourselves in a scarce position and more than anything, a
scarce mentality. And today I wanna talk to you guys. I guess if you were to
title this message, I would call it the heart of generosity, the heart of
generosity. We're in the series called A Generous Life. And so I wanna talk
today about the heart and I think the heart comes from a posture, not of
scarcity, but a posture of abundance. And I wanna articulate that by giving you
guys a passage of scripture. It's in Second Kings will be in chapter four.
Today. It'll be on the screen. But if you have your phone or your physical
Bible, I would encourage you to join me in opening there and I'm gonna read it
for you in a second. Um But let me give you some context. It's one of my
favorite passages of scripture. And for years, I would say every single week,
this is one of my favorite passages of scripture. So this is one of my favorite
Old Testament passages more specifically in you know, the historical literature,
probably my favorite Old Testament passage. So not, not too specific, I guess,
but second Kings chapter four, what's happening is Elisha, not Elijah. Elijah
came for him, went up in the whirlwind left his coat for some reason. And then
Elisha gets the coat slaps the water. A bunch of prophets see him all of a
sudden. This dude's got a school of prophets hanging out with him. And then
second king starts to tell us stories about what happened with Elisha, the
prophet. Now, if you go read commentators and other scholars, they're not gonna
give you a whole bunch of information because what they have literally is what
you have. They have these stories of how God used Elisha to perform miracles and
prophesy over the kingdom or to the kingdom of Israel. And so we don't have much
information. Literally, we have these stories. But when I look at this
particular story that will be in today, I get really excited because it gives us
at least some sort of revelation about who God is and how he operates through
this miracle that Elisha performs. So let me read it for you today. Starting in
verse one says this, the wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried
out to Elisha, your servant, my husband is dead. I don't know why I went in deep
voice. It's a woman speaking baby, you're a servant. My husband is dead. And you
know that he revered the Lord. But now his creditor is coming to take my two
boys as his slaves. Elisha replied to her, how can I help you? She just told
him, tell me, what do you have in your house? Your servant has nothing here at
all. She said except a little oil. Elisha said, go around and ask all your
neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the
door behind you and your sons pour oil into all the jars and as each is filled,
put it to one side, she left him and afterwards shut the door behind her and her
sons, they brought the jars to her and she kept pouring when all the jars were
full. She said to her son, bring me another one. But he replied, there is not a
jar left, then the oil stopped flowing. She went and told the man of God and he
said, go sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is
left. Now, by comparison, I think most of us, if we're honest, would admit that
this woman, you know, the widow of a prophet who just died. Her situation is
pretty dire. I think we could all agree in comparison to our situations,
whatever that might be, it could be hard, right? Like you might have some family
members who were ill or in the hospital and man, my heart goes out to you and if
you let me know about it, we'll be praying for you. That's a hard situation to
be in. Um many of us have financial situations or hardships that are difficult
to be in. And that's not easy. I wanna empathize with you because all of us have
specific scenarios to each of us that are difficult. They might inhibit us from
feeling abundant and feeling the blessing of God and put us into a place where
we feel scarce. We're self focused. Some of us have gotten to the place where so
many bad things have happened to us that we become self focused. But the
negative to being self focused for too long is it almost makes us narcissistic.
And when we're narcissistic, we are anything but generous. And if we want to
develop a generous heart, we've got to shift that right. And our situations
though hard, I think pale in comparison to what this woman is dealing with. The
context. Here is her husband who was a prophet had some debts before he died.
And when he died, you have some predatory lenders come into the widow and her
two kids trying to take them into debt slavery just to give you the the
situation. I don't know about you. I've got some bad stuff that has happened to
me over the years of living, but I've got two kids now and though they are
sometimes anointed annoyances from God to help me become more patient. I love
them to death. And so if I were in this scenario that that would stress me out
and this woman is stressed out and if you were in that situation, you'd be
stressed out because the creditors are coming and they're going to take your
kids. And so she's in this place where she's feeling like she can't do anything,
she's up against a wall and there's nothing that she has that is gonna enable
her to get out of this situation. And so she goes to the only person she
believes can solve this problem. She goes to Elisha who is a prophet of God and
has performed miracles in the past. So she goes to him, tells him the scenario.
She says, she says your servant, my husband is dead and you know that he revered
the Lord. She goes to him, she's like she's all in. She's trying. She's like,
all right, how can I talk to Elisha to get him to listen to me? Uh She knew my
husband, he revered the Lord. He's super spiritual, very special. She goes up to
him and says, now his creditor is coming after me and he's gonna take my kids
and put them in slavery. She's trying, she put it all out there. She's
vulnerable with Elisha and he responds to her and I think it's helpful before I
give you the response, you've seen it. But before I give you the response. I
think it's helpful to note uh that often we take our problems to God with
expectations about how God's gonna work. We say God bless me, bless me, bless
me. And often God's reply to us is counterintuitive. It's a little different
than we would have expected from God. We say bless me. We expect God to bless
me. But often we, when we say God bless me, God says, I'm gonna do it a little
bit differently than you would expect. The same happens here with Elisha. She
goes to him, gives him her problem and he responds with how can I help you? That
was funny, right? Like if I'm the woman, I'm not. But but if I go to somebody
who I believe can help me. You perform miracles on other people. Many of us go
to God the same way I saw how you bless that person. I saw how you bless that
person. I saw how you blessed me in the past. Now, I have expectations of you
blessing me right now. We go to the Lord with expectation about what he'll do.
And then he kinda responds in some ways with a question. And right here, Elisha
says, how can I help you? Which would really tick me off if I'm the woman, bro.
I just told you, I told you all my stuff and I know you can help me. Why are you
asking me this question? But he doesn't stop. He continues in his response. He
says, how can I help you? And then he asked her a question, a better question, a
more specific question because she's asking him for a blessing. And he asks her,
what do you have in your house? It reminds me of a situation in the New
Testament where Jesus is about to feed 5000 people. Uh But before that happens,
his disciples have this moral conundrum and very difficult situation where
they're like, oh my gosh, these guys have been out here for three days. They
haven't eaten any food. We gotta send them back and they go to Jesus asking him
if they can send them back to town so they can buy their own food. And it's
almost as if Jesus knew the return rates of people after COVID or something like
that because he's like, they're not going nowhere. He says you feed them and the
disciples talk amongst themselves and they're like all frustrated, like, are you
kidding me? They're all messed up. They're talking about Jesus is illogical.
This doesn't make any sense. How are we gonna feed all of these people with so
little bread? In fact, we don't have any bread. How are we gonna do any of this
stuff? And they're doing this in front of Jesus. Jesus recognizes and he tells
them two more things. He says, how many loves do you have? Go look and what we
recognize in that situation, very similar to this widow here. They hadn't taken
inventory of the things that they already had. And for many of us, we're going
and asking God for more, more, more God. Here's where I wanna be. Here's where I
am in this gap is the blessing of the Lord. And I want you to fill that gap and
the Lord is looking at us like bro, I already blessed you with this. I already
blessed you with these people. I've already abundantly provided for you, but
you're not seeing it because you're not looking for it. And I wanna ask you the
same question be my first point. God will use what you have. So go look, think
about what God has already blessed you with. If we would spend more time
grateful for what God's already provided and less time asking him for what He
could possibly provide. I think we'd be a much more happy people. We would live
from a perspective of abundance. We'd be like Paul in Philippians chapter four.
He said, I've learned to be content in any and every circumstance regardless of
whether I have plenty, regardless of whether I have little, I'm good. And he
said in a different text. Second Corinthians, his grace is sufficient for me in
any time of weakness. Paul recognizes that because God has already worked in my
life, I'm solid and I can be abundant. So I don't have to stress out about what
I don't have and what I want you to know is that you have enough. The disciples
had five loaves and two fish, but they hadn't looked for it. They had to go
steal it from some little kid. Hey, hey, when you look and you find it, I don't,
what would that conversation look like with the little kid? Probably took a
little consideration. They walk up and said, where did this kid get all that
bread? Hey, bro. Picture of grown Peter talking to a kid. I don't know how old
he was. Where did you get all this stuff? He's like, hey, we kinda need to use
this stuff. That was a whole conversation that had to happen. But many of us, we
resist the full conversation and we don't even go look to see what God has
blessed us with. So I came up with a little list because many of us in America,
we're like the, the, the top wealthy nation in the world. Yet we struggle with
scarcity when we are more abundant than everyone else. So here's a list of what
I have in my house and, and you can say amen to this preachers don't make a lot
of money, do they? Not in comparison to some people? So here's just what I have.
Some of you have more, some of you have the same, maybe a few of you have less,
but here's what's in my house because God will use what you have to bless you
and to bless others to give you happiness, to make you feel abundant, to give
you gratitude. He will use what you have. But if you never recognize what you
have, you're gonna still feel scarce. And scarcity is a cycle you don't wanna be
in because it gets you into a place where you never feel happy. Here's what I
have in my house. I got Cable direct TV. I don't, I mean, some of y'all do
though. I got rid of that a long time ago, multiple TV. S furniture, old
furniture vehicles, owned, leased, paying off, uh, toys for adults, kids, toys,
phones, old phones, drawers full of chargers and other electronics that I
haven't used in a long time. I got subscriptions. Hulu, Netflix, Disney Plus
HBO. Max. It's Max now it's not HBO anymore. Peacock, Paramount Plus Amazon
prime stars NFL, Sunday ticket, MLB access. I don't have those two because I
don't want to pay for it. But some of you have them, um, pickleball stuff, golf
clubs, random equipment for that podcast. You're gonna start one day camping
equipment that you never use. Frisbee golf stuff. Some of y'all got boats in
Arizona. Uh You got summer clothes, winter clothes, dress clothes, beach
clothes, sleep clothes, old clothes, work clothes. Maybe when I lose weight,
clothes, give away clothes and, and don't, don't even get me started on your
shoe game. Like some of y'all spending $200 on shoes. There ain't nothing wrong
with that but you got them, you got them, blew me up blood. You got them and we
got plenty of olive oil, coconut oil, sesame oil, grass seed oil, avocado oil,
baby oil and even essential oils. This woman, she's got a little olive oil.
She's in a dire situation yet. Elisha has the gall to say. What do you have in
your house? You coming to me stressed out about your life. What do you have in
your house? Have you looked, have you considered how God has blessed you?
Because God fully intends when he blesses you with something to use what he has
blessed you with in order to accomplish his purposes in you and through you. God
has blessed us. I want to just be on you. He's blessed me. He has blessed us.
But why do we see where He hasn't blessed us all the time? We got a shift from
scarcity to abundance because He has blessed us so abundantly. Uh and the
disciples, they find this kid's bread and loaves, they take it and it's not
enough, but they found what they had and when they took what they had and
brought it to Jesus, it was more than enough. And so you might have less than
somebody else down the street, down your road. You might have less than somebody
else and think you need more. But what I want you to know, is that whatever you
have, if you take inventory of it and bring it to your creator, he will bless it
abundantly so that it becomes enough for you. And in some cases, more than
enough to accomplish what he wants you to accomplish. Don't say I'm blessed or
I'm not blessed when you're sitting here in excess. Don't say that. And I I'm
saying that to you guys, I don't want you to feel like, like I, I'm not saying
it to myself because I am like, like so often I wake up and I think about all
that I'm lacking. But in Christ, Jesus II, I genuinely lack nothing of what I
need at least. And so man, when he has blessed us, shift your posture to where
you look more at the blessing than you do at what you lack. That's your first
step to get to a mindset of abundance. That really is. I think the heart of
generosity. My second point, he'll not only use what you have, but he'll use who
you have. I, if you go back to the text, it says this in verse three says, uh
Elisha said, go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for
just a few, then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons pour oil
into all the jars and as each is filled, put it to the side and then she left
him and afterwards she shut all the doors and did the whole miraculous thing.
But in this moment, how does God through Elisha tell this woman to operate? He
tells her to look at what she has. We find out she has a little bit of oil. Then
he tells her to take jars from the people in her community so that she can fill
them with oil. What does that mean? Because I don't wanna allegories this text
and, and make it mean something, it doesn't mean what it means to me is that in
this moment, the way that God chose to work is to utilize what she had and who
she had. God will use who you have. God put people around you on purpose so that
they could encourage you. God put people around you on purpose so that you could
encourage them. God put people in this room together so that they could be
knitted together as the church body and bless one another as we attend and
gather, bless one another in small groups, bless one another financially. When
it's relevant, God has put us all together on purpose so that we can accomplish
His purposes. And God's not gonna do it just through you. God wants to
incorporate the people around you. And so many of us, we become almost
isolationist as individuals. We're so individualistic in our society back then.
It was different. This woman was in a small community. Her husband died. She's
probably on a first name basis with every single person in her village and they
know she usually has olive oil. So I'm probably gonna get some olive oil from
her. They would have known each other because they were kind of a, a connected
society. But we're in a different type of society and we have become so
isolationist, so individualistic that we refuse to rely on other people that we
refuse to be a blessing to other people. But what the Bible communicates to us
is that God wants to use those around you to be a part of the blessing that will
both bless you and others think of the disciples in the New Testament. Same
passage. It wasn't the disciples who provided the bread and, and the fish. It
was someone who was there, some kid who was there. God wants to use what you
have and He wants to use who you have. I'm saying this to somebody who came in
here for the first time today and you've been doing life on your own. There's no
point in doing life on your own. It's not beneficial to you. The way that God
wants you to live. Your life is in community with other people who are pursuing
Christ Jesus. He wants to use those around you. Everybody look to your left real
quick. You're not, you'll see the back of someone's head. All right, everybody
looked to your right. You're gonna see the back of somebody else's head or like
if it's you, you're gonna see the wall, right? My point is there are people in
this room that God intentionally placed you in the vicinity of so that you could
either be blessed or be a blessing. Some of you have an encouraging word for
somebody else, but you're scared to say it. God wants you to say it. Uh Some of
you need to receive that encouraging word rather than saying, oh, that person
was weird. You know, you need to be in a place where you recognize God wants to
use what you have and he wants to use who you have it. It's interesting to me.
Um because God tells Elisha to tell this woman that she's to borrow jars from
all of her neighbors and the, the, the assumption, you know, we know this,
right? She's gonna fill those jars with oil and sell them back to the community.
Now it will be a blessing to the community, but ultimately, that income will be
a blessing to her. So Elisha tells her, take inventory of what you have, take
inventory of the people around you and see who you can borrow that jar from. And
this is when the miracle begins. So I wanna read the rest of this passage one
more time. Here's what it says. In verse five, she left Elisha and afterwards
shut the door behind her and her sons, they went to all the neighbors, they
brought the jars to her and she kept pouring when all the jars were full. She
said to her son, bring me another one like the DJ khaled of jars. But he
replied, there is not a jar left. Then the oil stopped flowing. She went and
told the man of God and he said, go sell the oil and pay your debts. You and
your sons can live on what's left. Now, I wanna reduce any confusion someone
might have because I'm talking about oil, which is a uh a commodity in the
ancient world that she could have sold at a price. The oil was not the blessing
in itself. The oil was what was in her inventory. And what she did in that
moment was she listened to God through Elisha. She took inventory, found that
she had a commodity that was beneficial to the rest of the community. Then she
went to the people that God had placed in her vicinity, asked her sons asked
them for jars. She brought the jars and started to pour oil. Now, she had only a
little oil but since she had a scarcity mindset, we don't know. II I personally
think I know it was a miracle, but I personally think she hadn't really taken
inventory of how much oil she had. I only got a little oil. Some of y'all, y'all
have more than you think you do. And when you take inventory, you start to
recognize that God has already blessed you with more than enough. Now, the
beauty of this situation, let's just assume she's fully accurate. She had only a
little oil. What was cool was when she did what God called her to do and the
jars were coming in, she was able to fill jar after jar after jar after jar. And
when she filled those jars, she wasn't immediately out of this debt, slavery,
dire situation she was in, she had just filled the jars. Now, when she filled
the jars, she went and sold them to the rest of the people in the community,
which provided the money she would have needed to pay the debts. Here, here's
where that's relevant. When God blessed her, what she had to do first was take
the resource that she had more than enough of and get rid of it to bless the
other people in the community and then she was able to keep the remainder. What
does that mean? It means that often God will bless us by the fact that we have
given it out. What is it that Paul says? He says, I have become a drink
offering. Paul says in Romans, he says, offer your bodies as living sacrifices
wholly and acceptable to God. I say all of that to say this, that God wants you
when you are blessed to use that specific blessing to be a blessing to other
people. And so my last point right here is that God does not want you to waste
the blessing. You see what happens here is that this woman took all of the oil,
put it into these jars and when the jars were done, then the oil stopped
flowing. So she took all that. She had put it right there in front of the Lord.
And he made it just enough. I found in my own life that often, sometimes he does
bless me abundantly beyond what I could have asked or imagine. Right. Sometimes
that happens, but very often God blesses me with exactly what I need in order to
accomplish his will. What do you see with the Israelites? You see that He
blessed them with Manna from heaven? And how much money did they get anyone
enough for that day? Except for on Sabbath they got two. Right. Right before
that. How does he bless people? He blessed them with water from a rock. I don't
know how much they were able to get, but I know they had to go grab it and then
bring it back to their household. It was enough for them. He blessed them with
quail. We see in the New Testament that God regularly blesses people, but often
the way that he blesses people is not with some crazy amounts of abundance, but
with just enough to accomplish what they're called to accomplish. God doesn't
wanna waste anyone in here agree that God's a good businessman. Now, if I were a
messenger of the Lord and I went into your house or I went into your community.
And I was assessing, I used to be an auditor, by the way. So technically I'd be
really good at this process and I were assessing for the Lord, not for me.
Right. If I was assessing for the Lord, whether you are stewarding the blessing
that God has already lavished on you, what would the report be? Would you be
stewarding the blessing that God has already lavished on you as an American
citizen in Phoenix, Arizona, one of the highest uh costs of properties in the
country? Or would you be maybe not stewarding? Well, the blessing that He has,
which would it be for you? Because I think God's a good businessman and what God
wants to do is to not waste His blessing. And so when He lavishes us with
blessing, he is calling us to do what he wants us to do with that very blessing.
If He's giving you stuff, use it for his purposes. If he's given you a community
of people, connect with that community so that you can accomplish his purposes.
Because if God's a good businessman, then what he wants to do is invest properly
into those who were effectively steward that which he has given them. God does
not want waste. And with this woman in the ancient world, he stopped the pouring
when she stopped the bringing of jars and then she sold it. She got to keep what
was left and utilize it to live on. And for many of us, I think we find
ourselves. Let's just say this cup is you right? It might not be you. But for
the statistics, it probably is. And um we ask God for the blessing. Say God
bless me. God bless me. We all want a blessing from the Lord. We ask God to
bless us and he blesses us. He blessed us with that whole list of stuff that I
got in my house. He blessed us with a mom or a dad. He blessed us with a
community of people around us. He blessed us with his grace that's sufficient
for us in any, in every weakness that we have. He helps us in areas that we
never could have thought that he would help us in. He's given us a gifting
that's utilized. He has given us so much and we keep asking and we keep asking,
I know Pastor John stressing out right now because it's overflowing. He keeps
blessing us. David says in the psalms, he says my cup runneth over and our cup
runneth over with the blessing of the Lord. And we keep getting it and we keep
getting it and we keep getting it yet because of our scarcity mentality, we
never give it, we never share it. We never do what God's called us to do with
it. Second service. So I can get it a little bit wetter, but I might run out of
water here, right? We are blessed beyond imagination. Yet when someone says
we're called to, to give of our ties and our offerings. Yet, when someone says
we're called to give an encouraging word to someone who's broken in their
spirit. Yet, when God calls us to go overseas and be a missionary or when God
calls us to be nice to people that we think are weird, whatever it might be when
God calls us to give of ourselves as a drink offering so that His purposes might
be accomplished through you. For them. We struggle because of the scarcity
mindset. We're blessed, but we're stressed. But what God wants us to recognize
that we're blessed living in excess so that we can then bless others. Now,
here's the other scenario because God's a good businessman and that's a lot of
waste. But what if we receive blessing from God? We say God, I recognize that
everything I have comes from you, everything good comes from God, everything in
my household, every person that's around me. God, I'm gonna live my life in
perpetual gratitude because you have called me to love and honor you and I get
to participate in the miracle of life transformation. My cup is not half empty,
it's half full, it's filled to the brim. My cup doesn't run my cup isn't running
over right now. Um Because what I'm gonna do because I recognize how God has
blessed me is. I'm gonna take that blessing and I'm gonna pour myself out as a
drink offering. Literally, this could be a drink. It's water, right? It's a
drink offering. I'm gonna pour it out. But the difficulty of pouring out into
someone else is you're kind of emptying yourself. But here's what God does. He's
a good businessman and because our cup needs replenishing, he'll replenish us.
But the expectation is that when we're replenished, we fill others. We use our
resources, we use our relationships so that God's will might be accomplished in
this world so that people may know Jesus in this valley. And when we empty
ourselves out, Paul says again, a living sacrifice wholly acceptable to God.
It's not, you're radical, you're crazy. You're ridiculous. It's not your
unreasonable act of worship. He says, it's a reasonable act of worship to lay
myself down for the greater purpose of the good news of Jesus being spread, oop
is empty. And as it pours though I might be emptied, I fill somebody else. And I
gotta ask you this question, the scarcity mindset, we're blessed, but our cup
runs over and we've not blessed others. And the nature of that is we haven't
really even enjoyed the blessing that came in addition to what we've been
hoarding. So I need to ask you this question, who was more blessed, the person
who gave or the person who only received the way the blessing of God works is He
wants to funnel His blessing through you to other people. And when you receive
it and then share it, you receive more and then you share it, you receive more
and then you share it. But if we are scarce, we are holding that which God has
given us. And it's not bad to have a blessing from God. But what is a struggle
and keeps you in a negative mindset is the fact that you're not receiving it
with gratitude and immediately dispersing it to those who need it. But the heart
of generosity comes from a posture of abundance because even if I have nothing
physically, still filled to the brim spiritually because it's grace, if nothing
else is sufficient, and there's some people in here, you need to shift your
posture. I need to shift mine for sure. You need to shift your posture from a
place where you feel like you can't give encouragement where you feel like you
can't give financially where you feel like you can't do anything because you're
so strapped by your concerns and you got a shift to where you recognize that
what you have is meant for a greater purpose than holding it. Jesus tells a
parable of a man who stored all the stuff that he had been blessed with in a
storehouse. And then that night, his life was taken from him. And the
implication is that when we hoard what God has handed us. It falls into disuse.
Don't be someone who hoards it, be someone who hands it off to others. And there
are people in here. You desperately need to shift that posture and have one of
gratitude that'll produce abundance. You no longer looking at what they have.
You're feeling great about what you have and there are other people in here.
You're struggling with this entire message because you haven't had a personal
relationship with Jesus. And I wanna help you recognize this, that when you
trust in Jesus, the Bible says, when you confess with your mouth, that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart, that God raised him from the dead, you can be
saved. And when you are saved, you now have a different perspective. The Bible
says that we've been sealed when we're saved, sealed by the Holy Spirit into an
eternity with God in heaven, in recognition that you have eternity with God in
heaven completely and radically shifts the way that I operate here on earth. So
for those of you who need to trust in Jesus, I wanna give you a basic template.
A prayer to God that would align your thoughts to His. You might pray something
like this. Everybody's head bowed and eyes closed. God, I believe that Jesus
Christ is the son of God. I believe he died on the cross and rose from the
grave. Father, forgive me of my sin. Make me a new creation and I will follow
you all the days of my life. Head still bowed. There's some of you in this room,
you desperately need to shift your posture. And I'm gonna tell you this, it is
hard to shift your posture. But the way that you do it is meditating on God's
word. And as you meditate on His word, think on the things that are true, right?
Honorable, pure, lovely and of good repute. The peace of God will come into your
life and give you gratitude which will enable you to shift your posture from
scarcity to abundance. God, I pray that you would make that shift for people in
this room right now. Give them clarity on the specific area that that relates to
God. Be with them right now, reveal yourself to them. It is in Jesus name that
we pray and all God's people said amen.