Why does God care about how I use my resources?
WATCH
Giving Grace, 4 of 4 from June 15th, 2025
"God uses our hands to bring blessings when we open them to him."
2 Corinthians 9:6-15 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon explores the Biblical principles of giving, emphasizing that Christian giving is not about obligation but about grateful, cheerful, and generous gifts according to God's purposes. Pastor Michael highlights that God uses our hands to bring blessings when we open them to Him, and that giving has benefits both for the giver and the receiver. The sermon stresses that all we have comes from God, and our giving should reflect our gratitude and submission to Christ's gospel.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 What needs do we need to share?
💬 What do we expect to harvest from how we have given in the past?
💬 How are we partnering with Jesus to introduce your neighbors to Him and inviting your neighbors to follow Him?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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[The following transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.]
Good morning, church.
If this is your first time with us, welcome to our neighbors.
I'm glad to be with you.
We've been in this series for the last four weeks that we've called Giving Grace.
And as Ryan kind of alluded to, this is not usually how we approach like a Sunday morning.
And I shared when we started this series that as we are preparing, what is it that we're going to teach on Sunday mornings?
We have a habit that we get together in January with the other pastors of Neighborhood Church.
and pray through what are what are the passages what are the scriptures that the lord's leading us to address on sundays and so uh i shared that uh in november of last year um as i was praying through like god was just leading like hey you should do a follow-up series to uh first corinthians which i taught when i first started preaching
And I felt like I needed to do 2 Corinthians.
And that was the leading, and that was before I even started studying, before I knew what was in it.
And then we came in January and put the 2 Corinthians collection of series on the calendar.
And then we discovered that there were all these budget conversations that we needed to have.
And it was like, oh, well, it's really cool that God led us to be in these chapters to have these conversations at a time when we actually would really need them.
So I'm grateful for his leading.
Have you ever noticed that communication is really, really hard?
Like, have you noticed that?
Yeah, communication is really, really hard.
Have you ever had or been the recipient of taking good information the wrong way?
Like what was said was true or good or helpful, but you took it the wrong way.
Has that ever happened to you?
Has that ever happened to somebody you're trying to communicate with?
You just took the information the wrong way.
Okay.
As I was thinking about this, it just brought me flashbacks of when I was working landscaping.
And specifically, whenever we had an irrigation job,
I apparently am the worst at this because my supervisor would say, okay, this is what we're going to do.
This is how we're going to do it.
And he would explain to me the why, which is helpful for me because I, like, most of the time will not do something unless you can tell me why I need to do it.
Like, that's just my own problem.
So he would say, here's why we're doing what we're going to do.
I was like, okay, great.
I got it.
And he said, this is how I want you to do it.
Now, I guess I didn't pay attention or I like I don't know.
I don't really know.
But the number of times that he would say, hey, here's what we're doing and here's how I want you to do it.
And so he would leave and I would glue all the pipes together and I would install all of the materials.
And in my head, I'm figuring out, OK, he said this is the why of why we're doing it.
And so the what of what I'm doing is moving towards the why.
Right.
In my head, that's how I think.
But the number of times that he would show up.
and say to me, Michael, this is not what I told you to do.
And I would say, in fact, it is, because you said you wanted the water here, here, and here, and that's where I got it.
And he said, yes, I wanted it here, here, and here, but I wanted it this way.
And I'm like, oh, dear.
And so the number of times that he would come behind me and undo everything I had just done to put it back in the way, like, I'm sure it's a me problem.
It had nothing to do with his, like, control issues.
But, like, even when you get...
good information, good information can be taken the wrong way, right?
We know that?
Yes.
Okay, cool.
It's helpful to me if you just tell me.
We have been in this series looking at some principles for generosity as they relate to us as a church.
So as we are talking about generosity and giving as a church, most of the principles have actually been related to us collectively as a community.
We said when we've received it, we share God's gracious generosity.
And giving is designed to improve the overall health of the entire body.
and and proper giving procedures honor jesus and encourage the body like that's a lot of body language but today we're going to move from thinking about giving as a collective to thinking about giving personally as an individual what does this mean for me okay which is good and helpful because usually that's what i want to know what do you want from me right however
I know that it is possible to communicate good information in a way that's received incorrectly, right?
The principle is good and true, but depending on how these verses have been presented to you in the past, it may be that we have misheard or misunderstood some of this good information and seen it applied incorrectly, okay?
So I'm aware of that.
Um, and just want you to know that as we are taking a look at these verses in particular, we have systematically kind of spent three weeks talking about all of the ways that this gets worked out as a community.
Okay.
Um, and so I'd encourage you if there's something that you're like, I'm not quite sure about that.
Like all of the sermons that we've done are on our podcast or on our website.
You can go back and review those.
There are even summaries of them.
And so I just want you to know all of that kind of stuff, but I want to pray too.
And so I'm going to invite you.
I'm going to pray.
If it's okay with you guys, I'm going to pray just a prayer for our fathers as it's Father's Day.
And then when I'm finished, I'm going to invite you to pray together with us the disciples prayer.
Right now we're praying it out of, oh, today we'll be praying out of the English Standard Version.
I didn't even know that was in my slides like that.
So the words that we say are not necessarily important.
However, it's the heart.
that Jesus is trying to communicate here.
So the specific translation is not the details we want to get hung up on.
So all that to say, I'm going to pray.
I'm going to pray for dads, and then I'll invite you to pray together with me.
Oh, loving God, we come together on this Father's Day reminded not just of our earthly fathers, but also of you.
You tell us that all who believe in you shall be called your children and you invite us to address you simply as our Father.
And so for the wonder of your love for us and for your creation, we praise you.
We praise you that despite all of our weaknesses and disobedience, that you do not view us as subjects or as servants, but as children.
We rejoice that you want us to see you not as some deity just remote in splendor, far removed, or as a jealous God just demanding our homage, but as a father watching over us with infinite care and tenderness.
And so we ask you, teach us not simply to say our father, but to mean it.
that our hearts would recognize that you love us as deeply and dependably and devotedly as any human father and infinitely more.
We praise you for your great love.
We ask that you would teach us that however far we stray from you, however much we may reject your love or ignore your guidance, that you still go on reaching out, longing to draw us close once more.
We ask that you would empower us to forgive as you do our earthly fathers when they have not measured up to your perfect love.
And we thank you for all of the ways that we have felt your love through our father's strength and leadership.
And so we do honor them this day and lift them up to you.
And we thank you for the ways that they have reflected your love to us.
So we pray now together.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespass as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen.
You've got to be careful praying that one with your eyes closed around here.
You never know what's going to come out.
Hey, let's turn in our Bibles to the book of 2 Corinthians.
We're going to be in chapter 9, and we're going to be picking up in verse 6.
If you want to navigate with us there, it's on page, well, verse 6 is on page 1208 in the Blue Bibles.
If you want to follow along, that's what I'm using, because the text of these Blue Bibles is big enough to see from space.
It's super helpful.
And if you don't have a copy of the scriptures that's in a translation that's kind of easy for you to understand, I'd encourage you to just take one of those blue Bibles and write your name in it and take it home with you.
We'd love for you to have that and be able to meet with God through his word.
So 2 Corinthians 9, and let's start with verses 6 and 7.
As we move towards the end of this series...
Verse 6 reads, the point is this.
That's good.
I like it when God's clear.
Okay.
The point is this.
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Let's pause there.
So maybe you can see why, like, I want to make sure that we're clear that we can take good information in the wrong way.
And maybe you have experienced in the past these verses being taken out of their context and used in manipulative ways.
And that is not my heart at all.
However, I do want you to know what God says.
And so that's why we are moving through this.
And these are words that are in the Bible, right?
Okay.
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
So our principle here, or the point here, is that giving has benefits.
When we talk about giving, there are benefits that God says that we appreciate as the giver that if we had not given, would not come to us.
Giving has benefits.
That's good to know, isn't it?
I think so.
And he uses this language of sowing and reaping about seed and harvest and stuff like that.
And we don't really do a ton of agriculture.
We kind of meddle a little bit.
But God just gave me a gift this week that in the week that I was preparing a sermon talking about sowing and giving, he would drop an illustration right in the middle of my kitchen.
So I'm going through my day and like I see my wife, lovely wife, you guys, Jessie, she's so beautiful.
She's working on something.
What are you working on?
And she says, I'm working on dividing up broccoli seeds, right?
Oh, broccoli seeds.
Okay.
All right.
So now I'm remembering she had planted a couple of broccoli plants the season before.
And then when we
neglected them and they all went to seed, she had actually chopped off all the seed pods and put them in a paper bag so that they would dry.
And so she has this bowl full, she's like taking the chaff of the seed pod off, has this bowl full of broccoli seeds.
I'm like, oh, that's awesome.
And her mind is blown.
She keeps looking at me and she going, there are so many seeds here.
And I'm like, yes, dear.
I can see that.
And she said, no, so many.
If I were to get like 10 of these seeds at a store, it'd cost me three bucks.
She's like, I only had two broccoli plants last season.
Only two.
And look at this bowl full of seeds.
I'm like,
Yes, dear.
Like there's lots of broccoli plants that we could grow.
And each one of those seeds has the potential to grow that many more seeds.
Okay.
So the principle in the scriptures is, thank you for letting me use your image this morning.
Sewing and reaping seeds and harvest is actually an idea of investment, right?
It's not just spending money, it's investing in something that's gonna get a return.
Because especially for farmers, your seed is not only the crop you sell, but it is also the plants that you'll grow next season.
If I sow just a little bit and I get those plants and I have to sell all of those plants, then I have hamstrung myself to be able to have something to plant for the next season.
I have to buy seed again.
But if I sow extra so that I can sell some and let some go to seed, I will have enough for this season
And I'll have more to sow next season.
It's an investment, right?
So if you sow sparingly, you reap sparingly.
If you put 10 seeds in the ground, the maximum that you could hope to get back is 10 plants, right?
And each of those plants then has the possibility to grow hundreds of seeds out of it, right?
But if you only sow two seeds in the ground, the maximum number of plants you could get is two plants.
And if you're like me, there's no guarantee that either of them are going to make it, right?
Because as soon as you sow them, it's like, Lord Jesus, you got to do something here because I know I will kill this, right?
Right?
And here, so whoever will sow sparingly will reap sparingly.
Whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
Each one, so then how do we apply that?
Each one must give as he's decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
I said weeks ago, I said the Christian giving, the principle of Christian giving is not the tithe.
It's not just 10% on top of whatever.
And like, once I give that and set that aside to God, I'm done.
I don't owe him nothing else, right?
He says, that was a system that I use for taxes for a nation that I set up.
But that's not what I'm asking Christians to do.
Christian giving is grateful, cheerful, generous gifts according to God's purposes, God's will for others.
He says, I want you to give what you can gratefully and cheerfully give according to my will, according to my desires for the benefit of other people.
Is that 10%?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Is it 90%?
It could be.
I don't know.
But Pastor Ryan shared that a healthy body is in a constant state of gratitude.
It's acknowledging that everything I have, every seed, every plant, everything I have is a gift from God.
And so I'm going to start with gratitude.
And then when I see a need, as I pray about that need, I realize that I may be the person whom God has entrusted with something to help meet that need.
And if I get to be the hands and feet of Jesus, that should make me feel good.
I should be cheerful about meeting that need, right?
God loves a cheerful giver.
it's later in my notes, but I'll say it here again too.
Pastor Ryan also noted that God only wants us to give what we're able to give.
He's not asking for things we don't have.
He says, I've given you some, and I'm asking to you to give out of some of what I have given you.
God doesn't ask us to give things that we don't have.
He asks us to give what he's given to us, right?
Okay,
The pattern for giving is not tied to our ease.
It's not whether or not things are going well.
It's whether we are grateful and cheerful and generous.
And the pattern for giving requires a willing heart.
If we come in and say, I didn't really want to, but the preacher I grew up with said, I got to give 10%.
And so here it is, like, leave me alone, God.
I did what I said I was going to do.
That's not what he's after.
He doesn't care about your money.
He had it all to begin with before he gave it to you.
If he wanted it back, he'd get rid of you and just take it.
He can do that.
He's God, right?
And I don't say that to be mean.
I just say that because sometimes we get ourselves inflated.
How dare God ask me for something that he gave me?
Anyway, I don't even remember what I was saying.
I'm sorry.
Here's the deal, and this is for me, okay?
Because I have to learn these principles before I can preach them to you.
I just get hesitant about letting people know where needs are.
I'm like, I don't want to be selfish.
I don't necessarily want people to know.
I get nervous when I say, hey, there's a need here, because then I feel like, oh no, what if people feel obligated to give?
But the thing is, is that when we hide opportunities to give, we prevent others from being able to use God's gifts for needs.
If we hide opportunities, we prevent others from using God's gifts for the thing that he gave it to them to be able to do.
And so when we hide those gifts, like we are slowing the work of God.
And so that's why we just say, we put up on the board, like, hey, here's the need.
And God could do, like, way more with that need than we could ever imagine.
I'm floored at what he's been doing this year.
So, friends, what needs do we see that we need to share?
Because we have this idea, I think, that I just got to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and if I need help from somebody else, I am a failure.
And my friends, that is not how Jesus designed his body to work.
He purposefully gave somebody in our community more than they need so that when you realize your need, God can meet your need through another person.
That's what he wants to do.
That's how he designed it to work.
Yes, God could just make a glitch in the matrix and suddenly all the numbers in your bank account have extra zeros.
He can do that.
but he's not actually worried about the money.
He's growing the relationships in his body and strengthening his church when we are growing in interdependence.
We need one another.
That's why we journey together.
Spiritual growth happens best in community because we need one another.
So what needs do we have that we need to share?
Now, oh, I would say two.
This is really like, I just want to throw back to what we talked about last week because all of the language is here.
And so we talked last week about like what God is leading neighborhood church to do, neighborhood church in Ocala and in Lakeland and in Sebring.
How are the three of our congregations going to work together over the next 10 years?
And so we talked about the Grove Initiative, how our goal is to follow Jesus into our neighborhoods to plow the ground and sow the seed and reap a harvest.
You're like, oh, that's the words in the text.
This is where we got it from.
Okay.
Okay.
And what we mean when we say plow the ground is we want to do the dirty work of training leaders, of inviting people from where they're at to bring them to a place where they're willing to lead other people.
And when we talk about sowing the seed, we're talking about planting and starting other churches that are going to make disciples and train leaders and all of those kinds of things, because that's how this keeps going.
And then the thing that we really get excited about is reaping a harvest.
and that's evangelism.
So we said we'd like to, over the next 10 years, train and unleash 100 new leaders, plant three new churches, and baptize 1,000 new followers of Jesus in the next 10 years.
And so that's Grove Initiative.
That's one of the things, when you give to Neighborhood Church, is one of the, or a collection of the things that we are actively working towards and figuring out how to do over the next 10 years.
All right?
Now, I need to give you a warning because good information can be taken the wrong way.
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
That principle is true, period.
But what you sow matters because it determines what you harvest.
So, if you sow greed...
you reap greed.
If you look at those verses and you say, ah, I got it.
I'm going to give Jesus 10 and then he's got to give me 20 back because I sowed generously and now I have to reap generously.
Okay?
If you look at these verses and you are like, oh, because your heart is geared towards this kind of thing, you say, oh, I can use this to satisfy my greed.
If you sow greed, you will reap greed and it will eat you alive.
So do not use these verses to try to manipulate God.
into doing what you want him to do, because he may take your $10 and then give you a blessing of having to depend on him because you're $10 short for everything you wanna buy.
I found this quote, it's an old English proverb, but he who serves God for money will serve the devil for better wages.
If we come to God and say, God, you got to give me, I gave you this 10%.
Now you got to give me 20 back because I sowed generously.
Now you got to be generous back to me.
Like if you do that, the devil can come up with a bunch of money too, right?
And so if you come to God and try to manipulate God in that way, like eventually the enemy is going to give you an opportunity to make more money following him.
than walking with Jesus.
It's not manipulated magic.
God's not a cosmic vending machine, okay?
He's not investing in crypto.
All right.
But I'll remind you too that intentions are not actions.
Intentions without actions bring hurt to the body, I heard someone say.
So then let's reflect together.
If what we sow determines what we harvest, what do we expect to harvest based on what we've given in the past?
Like for yourself, for your family, as you are reflecting on like the ways that you have given of your time, talent, and treasure over the last two or three years, what would you expect to harvest?
The big idea is this, that God uses our hands to bring blessings when we open them to him.
God uses our hands to bring blessings when we open them to him.
Let's read a couple more verses here.
I'll start in verse 8.
And God...
is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.
As it is written, he is distributed freely, he is given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever.
So, giving has benefits, and God supplies givers.
let's be clear that anything that we have to give is something that has come from God's supply.
That's what he's saying here.
And again, as Pastor Ryan has showed us, God only wants what you're able to give.
He's not asking you to give things that you don't have.
That's called stealing.
And we can sometimes call it a credit card or we have all kinds of polite ways to talk about it.
But he's not asking for what you don't have.
He's asking you to give what he has provided.
Okay?
God only wants what you're able to give.
All of our giving to anybody for any reason comes from what God has given to us.
He's given us resources.
He's given us experiences, and he's given us abilities, and he's given us the time to share them with others.
So when we think about this, I think the quick thing is to reach for your wallet and be like, he's talking about money.
But God's given us all kinds of stuff.
He's given us money for sure, but he's also given us a place to live.
And many of us, he's given transportation that's reliable.
He's given us family connections and business connections.
Like all of those things are gifts from him that he wants for us to use to be a blessing to other people.
So if I take my house and say, God, I'll give you every other part of my life, but don't you dare ask me to use my house.
He's like, actually, it would be super great if people could come over and they could eat at your table and you could point them to me.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but all my bedrooms are filled up.
I got so many humans in my house right now, God.
You can't ask anything more of me.
And he's like, yeah, but you got a couch.
It's pretty comfy.
Like, yeah, but you, God, don't make me.
He's like, yeah, I'm not making you.
I'm just giving you the opportunity.
And it may be that he's asking me to ask somebody to sleep or give somebody the opportunity to sleep on my couch.
But it may be that he's given me the opportunity to ask one of you who has an extra bed to open your bed in your home to somebody else.
It's not just the finances.
It's my car.
Like, I got places to be.
I got things to do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so do other people.
And you could bring other people along with you as you're going.
And take that opportunity where somebody is literally locked in a steel box with you to tell them anything you want to tell them.
And perhaps you could talk to them about, I don't know, your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who saved you from all your sin.
And who richly provides cars for you to be able to give rides to people.
I don't know, hypothetically.
I could imagine a possibility.
But the central theme is not money.
Did you see it?
It's grace.
He's not just talking about your finances.
He's talking about his rich grace to you.
He makes it spiritual.
It's not just about the stuff, the materialism.
It's about what the materials are doing in your soul.
And if your stuff owns you, and you don't own it, then you don't own it.
And giving it away might give you a better degree of freedom than it might be a blessing to whoever you're giving it to.
The pattern for giving is to God first, and then to others, because everything we have comes from Him.
And all of the stuff here...
This is kind of important.
It might be, I don't know.
All of the stuff that God has given to you, like as you're thinking back, all of the stuff that God has given to you is for the purpose of increasing your righteousness.
Wait, I didn't see that in there.
Look at verse 10.
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for your food will supply in multitude your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
Right?
He says, I'm at work, like I'm pulling the strings of your time, of your calendar, of your paycheck, not because I just want to extract more of you, not just because I'm trying to make you feel guilty, but because I want to save your soul.
And these things get wrapped up in your soul and you anchor yourself to things that are passing away.
Give them away and live as I've given you to live.
because I want to increase the harvest of your righteousness.
I want to make you more like my son, Jesus, who did not have a home.
God uses our hands to bring blessings when we open them to him.
But friends, blessings are anything that brings us closer to God.
I think we have a category, like when we think about harvest and we think about blessings, we've got a category of what that fruit might be.
I want this blessing.
But blessings, biblically, are anything that God gives you that makes you closer to him.
So he may meet your financial need, and you may be so excited that you fill up with gratitude and praise, and you get closer to God because you see that he met your need.
Or he could take that same amount of money, give it to you, and it...
Increase your confidence somehow that you think you generated this and suddenly think you don't have any need from God and you take that gift and you walk farther and farther away from you.
In that case, what you have called a blessing is in fact a curse because it has caused you to move farther away from him.
A blessing is anything that leads us to draw closer to God because he is the only one that we need.
He created us to need him.
And that is why we are so thirsty to worship something, anything.
Because if you don't worship God, you'll worship your job.
Fathers, you'll worship your kids and your family.
You'll worship your ability to produce stuff.
Like we, it's not as though if I don't worship God, I worship nothing.
That's a joke.
Everybody worships something.
Some people bow at the altar of the news all day long.
We all are designed to worship something, but God created us in ourselves a need for him that only he can satisfy.
And so he says, I will bless you with things that are going to bring you closer to me.
It may be that him not providing that financial need causes you to go to him more earnestly in prayer and realize that I have nothing if I don't have you.
And so that lack of supplying is actually a blessing that you can then say, but what I do have, I can use for God's glory, and out of the great affliction and suffering and the lack of supply, you can be generous to other people as the Macedonians were.
Blessings are anything that bring us closer to God, and they're not all financial, and they're not all increases.
Increases may in fact be curses if we allow them to cause us to lean on anyone other than God himself.
It's God math.
You're going to need him for your life to be right.
David Garland says this, God does not always test us through affliction.
Some of the most difficult tests come when we prove ourselves obedient to God in times of relative prosperity.
And so if life is good, my friends, don't forget Jesus.
If life is hard, don't forget Jesus.
And ultimately, you'll be thankful for whatever blessing he gives.
Look at verse 11.
You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.
When we rightly understand the way that God is blessing us,
in ways that may or may not feel like a blessing, we'll be thankful.
But don't forget we serve a master who said, blessed are the poor in spirit and blessed are those who weep.
Let's read a couple more verses.
starting in verse 12, for the ministry of this servants is not only supplying the need of the saints, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.
By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ.
and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.
Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift.
So in this series, we've discussed that Paul, as he's writing, is encouraging this church in Corinth to contribute to an offering that he is collecting and taking to Christians who are persecuted and starving in Jerusalem.
which is thousands of miles away.
They probably are never going to meet these people again.
That's what he's inviting them to do.
But Paul says here that as you give, there are going to be some results.
There's going to be overflowing and thanksgiving, and people's needs are going to be taken care of.
And so to be clear, giving is worship.
That is why we make space in our worship celebrations to give or to acknowledge those who have already given.
Because everything we do as a gift is worship to God.
And worship to God stirs up more worship.
There are some Sundays I don't want to be here.
Oh, am I?
I don't know if I'm allowed to say that.
Am I allowed to say that?
I think it's true of y'all too.
And that's okay.
But on the Sundays that I don't want to be here, I cannot tell you the number of times that the Spirit of God has drawn me into a spirit of worship, not because I showed up and not because I pulled myself up my own bootstraps, but because I heard you lift your song of praise to him.
And I heard you be grateful.
And it wasn't as though it just broke me and made me feel guilty, but it reminded me that my eyes were on the wrong thing.
And that I, even I, who came in here and told you that our purpose was to celebrate Jesus, could come here for any other purpose.
And he is gracious and kind to remind us that he is worthy of our praise.
And often he does that through the lips of people who don't even really sing that great.
Pastor Ryan's awful.
But when he sings out loud, I get to stand with him at the gates of heaven and praise our Savior together.
Worship encourages worship.
I don't know that that's true.
I don't know that that's true.
It's true in church, and it's true on Friday night.
It's true when you go to the sports field.
There's an energy when you walk into a place where something is being worshipped.
And we, as creatures who are made to worship, will worship whatever it is that's in front of us.
I think that's just a fact.
And so I'll not apologize for inviting you every week to come and sit and worship our Savior.
He's the only one who's worthy.
Pastor Ryan said it so eloquently, the rest of your life, from this day forward, the rest of your life will only make sense if Jesus is the center of your life.
Because giving to churches and people giving money away to folks that have needs, that doesn't actually make any logical sense.
Evolutionary biologists cannot understand if survival of the fittest is the way that the world works, why humans are so successful when we're stupidly generous to one another.
The rest of your life will only make sense if Jesus is the center of your life.
And the pattern for giving follows Jesus' example of love.
You remember?
This was back in chapter 8.
He says in chapter 8, verse 8, I say this not as a command, but to prove the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
The pattern for giving follows Jesus' example of love.
And believing that Jesus is who he says he is and that he did what he said he did changes who we are.
Verse 13, by their approval of this service, they will glorify God.
This is the phrase.
Because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ.
If you confess the good news that Jesus Christ came and died for your sin...
If you surrender your life to the Jesus who is saving your soul, it will reshape your whole life.
Submitting to Jesus for salvation changes what we do with all our stuff.
It just does.
And I'm not saying give it all away, unless that's what he's saying.
And I'm like, whatever it is that he's entrusted to us, he's entrusted to us for a purpose.
And it's not my purpose, it's his.
And so I would do well if God has, if everything, if God has all the stuff and he has handed me some of the stuff for a very small period of time, and ultimately he's going to take all the stuff back.
It would be good for me to know what he wants done with the stuff while I'm holding it.
If he wants me to hold it, I better hold it.
If he wants me to give it to somebody else, I better give it away.
If he wants me to take it and invest it in something that's going to keep growing, I better do that.
It is wise for us to ask the question, what does God want me to do with the stuff that he gave me for the time?
Especially if he has given us life to make it possible for us to use these gifts as worship.
Because you can be generous for yourself.
You can give money away so that other people see how generous you are and think that you're great.
But Christian giving is giving not so that you get the glory, but so that God does.
Outcomes of God's grace through giving are material needs are met and spiritual gratitude continues to grow.
For the ministry of the service is not only supplying the needs for the saints, material needs are met, but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.
Verse 14, while they, those whose material needs have been met, they long for you and they pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.
God gets worship when his people supply, give supply to those who are in need.
And so give.
If you don't know where to give to, like the whole reason we exist is to invite our neighbors to meet and follow Jesus.
Everything we try to do is like, will this introduce people to who Jesus actually is?
Or will this be a way that they can follow Jesus, an invitation to follow him?
What greater need is there than the gospel for those who are perishing?
What greater praise is there than from one who has been saved from destruction?
And so if our goal is to make sure God gets more glory, then we can share the gospel message.
And those who buy into it can realize their danger that they may or may not have ever known that they were in.
And they can praise God for saving it.
So, I mean, the real question of the whole thing is, like, how are we partnering with Jesus to introduce our neighbors to him and inviting our neighbors to follow him?
Just a couple of points and then I'll close.
We automate the things that are important to us.
My mortgage goes out first.
Why?
Because it's important that I have a house for all the humans, right?
They think so.
I don't know.
I think we'd be fine camping in a bus or something.
But we have set it up so that you can automate your gift.
And so if you go into the app, you can set up recurring giving, and then that'll just be taken care of.
And it won't necessarily be something that you have to think about, which sounds like, oh, you're robbing that gift.
But it's not something you have to think about.
It means it's not something that you can forget.
And so if you need help setting up recurring giving, happy to talk you through that.
Jesse's much better at it than me.
But I would encourage you, if you're not doing that, then to do that.
If, my friends, if you did set up recurring giving at some point and have not looked at it in a minute,
I just encourage you to go back and check to make sure that your giving is matching up to what your heart says.
Because even on staff, we were talking about this over the last couple of weeks.
There were some staff who were like, I set up recurring giving years ago.
And then because we were doing this series, they went back and checked their recurring giving.
And it was like a quarter of what they thought they were giving.
And so if like, just go back and check.
Second, well, money is whatever.
I would like for you to know, this is a really long announcement to say, we're doing a class called Serve Basics on August 3rd.
That is how you can use your time and how you can serve.
And so I'd encourage you to sign up for that class.
You can do that at the More Info in the app for August 3rd.
And that's kind of a volunteer.
What's the heart of volunteering?
And it doesn't necessarily have to be Neighborhood Church.
We'll talk about all that.
You should sign up for the class.
But then in September, we've done the What's in the Bible class a couple of times over the last couple of years, which is trying to understand what's the big story of Scripture.
What is God trying to tell us in this big book?
We are in the process of developing a follow-up class to What's in the Bible, which is bringing the Bible to life.
Okay, I know what the Bible says.
I know what the story is.
Now what do I do with it?
How do I use this story of what God's doing to encourage other people?
How do I use this story of what God's doing to shape my life around him?
So that class is going to start on September 9th.
It's bringing the Bible to life.
Not like...
sparks and the magic of TV, but literally like taking the story of scripture and applying it to my life and to other people.
And so like, how are we partnering with Jesus to introduce our neighbors to him and inviting your neighbors to follow him?
That's three places to start.
But the cool thing is that God is way more creative than I am, and he may be already stirring in you what your next step should be.
And so I am just going to pray for you as we're closing that he would give you the faith to take whatever that next step might be, because God uses our hands to bring blessings when we open them to him.
Would you do that?
Would you like just open your hands?
This is a little bit weird, but just open your hands and let's pray together.
Lord, I know my propensity and my ability to do things with my body that my heart does not match.
And so Jesus, would you shape my heart to be cheerful and grateful and generous?
Lord, anything that I have that's a gift from you, if you ask for it, Lord, help me to be quick to return it to you for your purpose.
And I pray for these that are gathered here today that you would do the same in their heart.
Whatever that next step is that you're leading them towards, I pray that you would give them the faith today to begin that journey or to send that message or to ask that question to start.
And God, by your spirit and by your grace, I ask that you would lead us on to fulfillment because you're the only one who finishes what you start.
Thank you for this morning.
Thank you for your word.
Pray that it would be clear and embed itself in us in ways that we cannot escape.
It's in Jesus' name we ask.
Amen.
