Okay. All right. Good morning. Welcome. My name is Tim Bounds. If we haven't had a chance to meet, I'm one of the pastors here, and occasionally I get to have these conversations with you. So we're smack in the middle of this conversation. We we're gonna be, it's gonna be three weeks. We kicked it off last weekend. I hope you got a chance to be here. It was absolutely this profound, kind of amazing moment. I, I like people, uh, sharing and communion with each other and us talking about this idea of blessing. And it was, it was so good. And this whole conversation is happening around, uh, a table, uh, because we are talking about this, this idea of what it means to be blessed, to be a blessing. And if you'll remember, Greg talked about Jeremiah 29, this really important passage where, uh, where God essentially says to Israel, listen, you're in hard times right now, and you're gonna be here for a while. So grow where you're planted and be a blessing to the people around you. And if, if, if the, if things go well in your community, it'll go well with you. And you guys remember that, that part of that was this idea that we who are following God, we who follow Jesus, we are blessed to be a blessing. This is a part of what it means to the people of God. And has been since the very beginning in Genesis 12, when God called Abraham and said, I'm blessing you to be a blessing. Blessed. That word in the Hebrew is the word Baruch. And maybe some of you remember hearing Greg drop a little Hebrew on you in the prayer as he kind of kicked things off last weekend. And I don't know about you, it kind of caught me by surprise. Baruch, at a blessed are you Lord. Now, does anybody know what the word for blessed is in the Greek? Anyone? Neither do I. I have thought maybe somebody here can help me. Help me out. No, it's the word Rios. Uh, so that's the Greek in the Latin. It's the word bayi. And that's actually important for us to hear because, uh, baati blessed, uh, is where we get our word beatitudes. So some of you know, there's this really famous passage in Matthew chapter five that we call the Beatitudes. Maybe some of you mentioned it with your Jesus quotes, a, a, a moment ago. But, but this is a place where Jesus begins to describe the kingdom of God. And he says, blessed ti in the Latin, blessed are the poor in spirit. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. These words were world changing. They have reverberated throughout history for 2000 years. But I love, uh, the way Dallas Willard kind of helps teach us a little bit about these words that Jesus spoke, these beatitudes. He says, listen, you need to think of these. Jesus is not giving us instructions for how to be blessed. He's not saying, if you wanna be blessed, then you need to become poor in spirit. He's not saying that. He's not saying that these are particularly pleasing conditions for God to see you in. That's not what this is. What Jesus is saying here is, listen really good news. If you're poor in spirit, if you're struggling, if you're grieving something and you're sad, if you're lost, if you are discouraged, disillusioned, desperate for things to be made right in your world, if you're grieving, if you're one of those people who always seems to come in second place or last place, or you're one of those people who runs towards opportunities to make peace, and you watch the rest of the world run in the opposite direction, he says, the good news of the kingdom of God is that you are blessed. You're blessed. Now, what I think is so beautiful and important about that is that there are some of you who are here today, and this is why you are here. This is why you've shown up. Now, you, you probably wouldn't use those words. You wouldn't say, I didn't. I I came here to be blessed or for a blessing. You'd say it differently, wouldn't you? You'd say, I came here looking for answers. I came here because I've, I've got questions. I have this deep ache in my soul for questions about does life have meaning? I sense that there's something spiritual about this life, but I don't even know where to look. I've heard about this. Jesus, I'm open, but I'm trying to figure this out. I'm tired and I need rest. I'm hurting and I need comfort. I'm lost. And I need peace. I need hope. I need a blessing. I need a community that I can belong to. Well, listen, the good news is that there are a whole bunch of people that you're surrounded by right now who would say that they have found all the things you're looking for in Jesus. And so we are so glad you are here. We're so glad you've come. We can't wait to share this blessing with you. See, for those of us who do follow Jesus and who have found hope and peace and comfort in, in all of those things in Him, one of the things scripture tells us is that we are blessed to be a blessing. And so, uh, just think about it. All of us who've gathered together here in Chesterfield at Mid Rivers and Grants Trail and Fenton, all of you who are watching this online, all of us are here having this conversation in buildings and through technology because somebody before us came along and was so blessed by Jesus that they said, I'm gonna bless the next guy. I wanna make this a thing that somebody else can participate in and be a part of in the future. And so here we are, and we all get to experience this together because we are blessed to be a blessing. And that's what we're gonna talk about today, is what does it mean to share this blessing that we've received? So let's pray. Can we, father, I'm asking that you'd meet us right now in these moments and that you would give, give us ears to hear what you would have to say to us today. I I truly believe that there's something, uh, for each of us, uh, not my words, God, but your words. The, the word of God, the, the, the Bible and, and what we're looking at. I'm praying that each one of us would hear your Holy Spirit giving us a sense of how you're calling us to take the next step. We need you. So meet us here now. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Alright, uh, well, what I wanna do to kind of dive in a little deeper is actually go back to something we did last weekend. Do you guys remember last weekend when you took a Bible trivia quiz? Some of you're like, this is your first one. You're like, what kind of church is this? No, it was fun. It was fun. We did like a multiple choice. Which one of these phrases comes from the Bible? Which one doesn't? Do you guys remember this? Yeah. Okay. Part two this week. So we did multiple choice. Now we're gonna do true or false. I'm gonna put up a bunch of things, uh, one at a time. And what I want to know is, did Jesus say this or not true or false? And if you're playing the home version here, I want you to shout at your screens. Those of you who are watching online, do this with us. Okay? But here we go. Uh, true or false? Did Jesus say this? I am the way and the truth in the life. True, true. Good. You got it. You see how this works? Alright. John 14 is where Jesus says that. Let's do the next one. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. It's true, it's true. Jesus said that. And some of you're like, well, that doesn't sound like Jesus. Well, it would take some unpacking to explain what he's saying there. But that's in Matthew chapter 10. Let's go to another one. How about money is the root of all evil? Good. Good. That's false. That's false. Uh, as a matter of fact, if you go to one Timothy six, the Apostle Paul says, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Do you see how there's nuance there? All right, but that one wasn't Jesus. So you got that right. Next one. Hate the sin. Love the sinner is false. It's false. It's false. You're right. Uh, Saint Augustine said this, although it took a lot longer to say it, and it was another language. So we've just condensed it. It's it's good, it's good stuff. It's true. But, uh, Jesus didn't say it. Alright, next one. Due to others, what you would have them do to you. True. If I wait long enough, you'll change your answer. Right? That's the golden rule, right? We call that the golden rule. Listen. Uh, part of why that one's confusing is because it's in a whole bunch of different faith traditions. There's an Islam, Islam version of, of this. There's a, a Buddhism speech is the golden rule. So some things are universally true. This is true. Jesus said this in Matthew chapter seven. Okay? All right, let's do one more. One more. It is more blessed to give than to receive. This one's true. But this one trips us up a little bit because it doesn't appear in any of the four gospels. So let's just, let's stay with this for a second. What do you mean it's not in the gospel? So, Matthew, mark, Luke, John, first four books of the New Testament, they tell the story of the life of Jesus. A lot of his teaching is in these four books. This phrase comes from Acts chapter 20. There's this place where Paul is talking to the leaders of a church in Ephesus, and he's actually getting ready to say goodbye to them. And at the end of this big, beautiful speech, he says to them, now, don't forget what Jesus said. It is more blessed to give than to receive. But Jesus said this, uh, if you have a red letter Bible, one of those Bibles where they put in red ink, everything that Jesus said, you can go to Acts chapter 20 and look, and it'll be in red ink. You know why? Because Jesus said it. Now, how do we know? How do we know? Jesus said this. How do we know that? That Paul's not just making stuff up to try to sound smarter than he really is? How do we know he's not misquoting Jesus? Because, because we misquote people all the time, don't we? Come on. Yes you do. Yes you do. You say, well, you know, Winston Churchill once said, no, he didn't. You're just making that up. It's that, it's like that really, really important thing that Abraham Lincoln said a long time ago. You guys know the problem with quotes found on the internet is they're often not true. So this is important. If, if, if Jesus, if Paul claims or Luke who wrote the book of Acts, if he's saying that Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive. How do we know? Jesus said that It's actually a really important question. I'm just gonna give you a really short answer. The answer is, there were plenty of people that were living in Paul's day and in Luke's day who had listened to the teachings of Jesus. And if Paul had been making stuff up, they would've called him on it. They would've said, Nope. Nope. Jesus didn't say that. But it turns out that they had heard Jesus say this probably multiple times. It just didn't find its way into one of the four gospels. The gospels don't contain everything that Jesus said. They just contain the things that the authors wanted to make sure you knew about. So Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. What do you think? You think that's true? Yeah. Guess what? It is at the very core of the Christian faith. See, uh, one of the things that we learn is that this is who God is. God is a God who gives, he's a generous God. In fact, the heart of the gospel, one of my favorite Jesus quotes is, for God so loved the world that He what gave, gave he gave His one and only son. That's the gospel. So that means that those of us who follow Jesus, if we're going to reflect who God is to the world around us, if we're actually gonna be a part of what he's doing, then we have to reflect his generosity. We have to be generous. We have to give as God gave. And we believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Once again. That's why a, a table is such a beautiful thing for us to be having this conversation. Around last weekend, we talked about, uh, what it means to welcome people to the table, hospitality. Now we're gonna talk about generosity. And yes, part of that means we're gonna talk about what it means to be generous with our money. I love watching half of the room just go, I'm out. I'm out. Listen, um, I have been, uh, a pastor here at The Crossing for 17 years. And man, I was looking back and it's been, it's been an amazing 17 years. We've had, we've had good times. We've had tough times. Remember Covid, that was a tough time. That was one of those. But I've gotten a chance to talk to you about all kinds of things. I went back and looked, I, we, I've talked to you guys about prayer. I've talked about the Holy Spirit. I've talked about Jesus's authority and how we can trust scripture. I, I, I've talked about really, really fun beautiful things like friendships and relationships and belonging and all of that stuff. But I've talked about some pretty tough stuff with you too. We've talked about grief, we've talked about surrender. We've even talked about sex. And some of you right now are going, can we go back to one of those subjects? 'cause we don't wanna talk about money. And the church turns out Jesus talked about money a lot and a lot of us wish he wouldn't have because it's just icky. There's something about talking about the money, money in the church. And maybe some of you even have baggage with this, where you came from a church background and you were coerced into giving money to the church, or you were made to feel guilty if you didn't. Maybe you grew up in a setting where you were taught some really not great things about how money in the church works and you were taught that, that your material blessing is an indicator of how much God loves you. Can I just call out right here at the outset that that's not biblical? In fact, Jesus himself in the first century, walked around and pushed against that teaching 'cause it was prevalent then too. That's not how this works. So lemme just say a couple of things right off the bat in this conversation that hopefully will ease the tension just a little bit. Um, first of all, I'm not gonna do any of those things today. I'm not gonna coerce you, guilt you, none of that. Uh, in fact, let me just go ahead and say whatever you do with your money is between you, your spouse, if you're married and God and maybe an advisor or an accountant. If you have one of those, that's a good idea. But I dunno if you notice, none of those are me. Okay? So relax, you can just, don't worry about me. This is between you and God. But um, in fact, lemme just say sometimes we always say this about money. Um, almost every weekend when we talk about our offering, we say something to this effect. If you're one of those people who's a little bit nervous right now about this conversation and where I'm going with it, and you, uh, maybe you're in a place where you're still trying to figure out if you can trust Jesus, let alone trust the church. If that's you, then I wanna make this easy for you. I would say you should hold off on giving to the church for a while, okay? If you go back to this verse in Second Corinthians verse, uh, chapter nine, Paul says this, um, really beautiful thing. He says, each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver. Now, that's really plain language, but if I could explain it to you in a different way, I would just say what Paul's saying is if somebody's going to give money to the church, it's not because somebody else made them feel guilty about it. It's not 'cause somebody twisted their arm and said, you have to do this. When people give money to the church, they're actually gonna get to a place where they've allowed God to speak to their heart on this matter. And, and they do it cheerfully, joyfully. Some might even use the word enthusiastically and some of you're listening to that and going, that's crazy. And it might be, but you know what? You're surrounded by crazy people. 'cause there's just people in this church who actually love investing in what God is doing in his kingdom. Through the church, you're actually surrounded by people who look forward to this. In fact, this whole conversation we're having, we're not having it out of urgency. We're not having 'cause the 'cause The church is in trouble. And we need you all to, we are blessed. We are blessed with people who continually invest in what God's doing in this church. So lemme just say one more thing, um, a a about this that I hope will help this idea, uh, about, um, giving is not in any way about earning God's love or favor or blessing. You gotta understand that. Um, if you wanna know how much God loves you, you only have to look to the cross. That's it. That's it. God poured out all of his blessing and all of his favor and all of his delight on you in the cross is this beautiful demonstration of how much God loves you. Listen, your worth is not measured in dollars and cents. It is measured in the blood of Jesus. And God did not believe that that was too great a price to pay for you to be reconciled to relationship with him. That's how much he loves you. It's immeasurably more than you realize. The apostle Paul says, God demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It's more than you can imagine. And I say we really have to start here. If we're gonna figure out what it looks like to be generous to the world around us, then we've gotta understand the generous love of God. John says, we love because he first loved us. So let me ask you, if we're gonna talk about this loving relationship, what are some of the key components of a, of a strong, healthy love relationship? How would you answer that question? Do you, do you have some thoughts? Like, is it, um, quality time, you really gotta spend time together in order to have a healthy, loving relationship? Maybe, uh, maybe Yeah. Faith, is that what you said? Yeah. Like maybe there's like vows we take to each other. Commitment, faithfulness would be another word there. Okay. Here's what I want you to, you guys are giving me answers already. Tell the person next to you, okay, talk to each other wherever you are, have a quick conversation. What are some of the components of a, of a loving relationship? And then y'all can tell me more here in just a minute. Alright? Okay. Now, here in this room somebody, uh, I, I heard faith, I heard a couple other answers. Give 'em to me again. What are some of those things that you guys just talked about? Trust. Trust, trust. Any others? Oh wow. Okay. Good. That was like 50 of you just all at once. I I think I heard communication. Um, I what somebody over here said something. A sense of humor. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, you don't want to be a total drag to the person that you're in a love relationship with, right? That's good. Alright, can we go back to that word? Trust? 'cause a lot of you said that word and I think that's it. Uh, when we're gonna be a committed love relationship with somebody, we wanna know, we can trust them, don't we? But isn't there a corollary to that? Like, when you're in a relationship with somebody who is trustworthy, don't you start to want to try to become the kind of person that they could trust in as well? Yeah, I think it goes both ways. So, um, so now let's talk about that in the context of our relationship with God. Do we trust him? Do we trust him to keep his promises? When it comes to the idea of giving financially, do we trust God to provide for us? Is he trustworthy? That'll give us everything that we need, even if we give some of it away. Maybe another way of asking this question is this, these days, what are you putting your trust in? A loving relationship with God who is faithful or money? See, a lot of times I have conversations with people about this idea of giving. And what we, what we often say is, look, I I want to be able to do this, but I have goals. I like, I have financial plans that I'm working towards, and I just, I I I wanna make sure I'm focused on those things. Listen, if that's you, I just wanna say this like lovingly I think you're missing the point. 'cause if you really do trust God with your resources, two things are gonna happen. First of all, he will reorder your priorities, your plans are gonna change. They just are. But also he's gonna take care of you. He will provide, I I mean, you might even get to a place to where you find yourself surprised by how this works. So I want us to keep all of that in mind. But there's this story in the Old Testament. Um, a a a a prophet named Malachi, God is speaking through Malachi to the people of Israel In another difficult time in their history, the people of Israel have turned away from God. And God is calling him out. He's saying, listen, you've gotta like, uh, you're, you're not, you're not giving the tithe like I commanded you to. Now what's the tithe? We'll come back to that in a second. But the point is, the people of God have turned away from God and they're no longer giving their offerings up to the temple, and God is calling them out on this. And so I want you to look at what he says to them in Malachi three. He says, bring, uh, the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, test me in this. So as it turns out, this is one of the few places in scripture where we say, see that God actually gives us like the opportunity to test him on something. Now there's more to that story and we'll come back to it. But what God is saying is, listen, I love you. Try me see if I'm not faithful, you can test me on this. Now, part of what I love about that passage is that we are actually in kind of a similar situation today in the church. Not the crossing, but like the Big C church as the people of Israel. Were with Malachi, there's a statistic that came out just a few years ago. There are about 247 million people in the United States who identify with the Christian faith 247 million. I don't know if that means they go to church if they're practicing, it's just they identify with the Christian faith. But out of that number, 1.5 million give regularly to the church. Now imagine with me for just a moment, what could happen, what the world could look like if the people of God said, I believe that God is in charge. I believe I can trust him with this. I believe that Jesus has overcome the world and I'm gonna step in and be involved in what he's doing. When you start to think that big, it could inspire you. For some of you, it just raises more questions. So Tim, if that's what you're saying we're supposed to do, honestly, I I like, where do I even start? And, and what's the difference between giving money to the church versus some other organization? Uh, can I really trust the church with all of this? Listen, all of these are really important questions, and what I wanna do is try to answer a bunch of them fairly quickly. I I've got some stories I want to tell you. I got something I want us to see before we're done here. But, um, if you want to dig deeper into some of these questions, lemme just tell you we've, we've got something really cool that we wanna offer you guys. The, um, if you're asking questions about what God thinks about our finances, if you wanna know more about how to earn and save and invest and spend and give and all of those kinds of things, well many of you have participated in the past in classes with us, like financial freedom, financial foundations, those kinds of things where we've talked about biblical principles about all of this stuff. Come this January, we're gonna do something completely new. The Crossing is gonna offer our own version of one of those financial classes. It's gonna be so good guys. We believe that if we're gonna continue to be a part of what God is calling us to in the future, if we're gonna keep moving forward together as a church, building this kingdom and seeing God do amazing things, we want to be a church that understands what God has to say to us about our financial resources. So we're gonna spend several weeks, uh, it's a class, it's outside of the weekend, but our lead Pastor Greg, is gonna be teaching it along with some of our other pastors. We're investing time and resources into this class and we want to invite you to come and be a part of it. Many of you are gonna need to join us for that. So stay tuned. We'll give you details as they get closer, but that's gonna happen in January. For now, let's just answer a few of these questions. Let's talk about the tithe first. What is the tithe? Well, that's an Old Testament word. It literally means 10th. That's what the word means. So the people in the Old Testament who were following God were commanded in his law to give up a 10th of their resources, their grains, their herds, all of that kind of stuff as an act of worship at the temple. But if you read all of the Old Testament law, what you start to see is that they were supposed to tithe in other ways as well. They were supposed to tithe to care for the poor and needy in their community. There were a few other things. And so when you add it all up, it comes out to a lot more than just 10%. But that's what the tithe is. Now, when you get to the New Testament, they don't really talk about the tithe very much. Instead, what you see is that the people of God start to be invited to, uh, to be generous towards God and towards his people. And you'll see passages like one Corinthians 16 and two Corinthians eight and nine, which we just looked at a minute ago, where Paul starts to give instructions about this. He says, listen, uh, your giving should be regular. It should be proportionate to your income. And most of all, you should be intentional about this. But what you also see in the New Testament is there are times where people are radically generous towards God and his people. You'll see examples of people selling like land and possessions and bringing that to the church so that people can be cared for and their needs can be met. Sometimes you'll even see people like churches gathered together and raise money to fund somebody who's getting ready to go on a trip where they're gonna go and tell other people about the good news of Jesus. It's like these churches are saying, listen, we don't even know who those people are, but we see that God's calling you in that direction. And so we're gonna fund your travel. We're gonna pay for that so that you can go and fulfill that mission that God's put on your life. Now what's awesome is you see those kinds of things happening in the New Testament in the early church, but you see it happening here at the Crossing too. And we get to be a part of this, uh, this thing. And over time it becomes like this act of worship where we get to come before God and say, we're offering up our resources to you, God. And now use it. Use it to accomplish all of the good things that you have in mind to do in our world. So if your question is, well, then where do I even start with this? I would say start with being intentional about it and just start somewhere. Really, it's that simple. Pray and ask God for wisdom on this and then take a step. But think about it. I would encourage you to think about it in terms of portion of income, uh, over like, think of it in terms of percentages rather than amounts. Does that make sense? Now, um, your question might be, but Tim, what if I'm still uncomfortable about this idea of giving to the church? Well, we already talked about that, didn't we? If you're still uncomfortable with this and you still have questions, uh, you don't have to give anything yet. Start with your questions and you can, we can wait. All I would say is just don't, don't wait passively like keep seeking God. Keep asking him be what he wants you to do with this. Keep having conversations because ultimately, um, it's more blessed to give than to receive. Now, um, I can tell you that, uh, there may be some of you who are struggling. Um, you're going, look, it's not that I don't trust God, it's, I'm not sure I trust the people who are like handling the money once it's been given to the church. And listen, I get it. You just need to know that the people in this church who have been entrusted with the managing of our financial resources take that responsibility very seriously. The biblical word for it is stewardship. And if you've got questions about that, we try to be transparent, come talk to us. We'd be happy to help you with this. But, um, what if I don't have a job, Tim? Like what if I don't have a source of income right now? Do I have to dip into my savings in order to, to, to give to the church? Listen, as I understand it, uh, this whole idea of giving to the church is supposed to be proportionate to your income. So if you don't have a source of income right now, the last thing we would want you to do is start diving into your savings in order to give to the church. Okay? So, but I, I have a job, but it just, it's like money's tight right now. I'm struggling financially. Are you saying that I should still give to the church? Well, there's that should word again, listen, I say pray about this and seek God and, and ask him to meet you in the midst of your hardship, but be intentional. Perhaps there is some meaningful way that you could make a sacrifice that allows you to continue to be a part of what God is doing in his church. And maybe it's just, maybe it does start with an amount. Maybe it starts with you just saying, God just, I, I can only do this right now, but I'm giving this up to you and, and I want you to know that I trust you in this season. Now, some of you hear that and you say, how could you say that to somebody who is struggling financially? And if that's your question, a a couple of things. First of all, if you are not the person who's struggling financially, then I would say you get to have that conversation with God too. But if you are, then let us know how we can help. If there's things that we as a church could come alongside you and, and it would then that we get to do that side of things too. But this is the thing I want you to hear. There are people right now here who could come up on stage and they could tell you how important it was for them when they were in a place where money was tight and they were struggling financially and not sure about how ends were gonna meet, that they stayed faithful to giving to God in those moments. And they, they could tell you how God brought them through it. These turn into stories of God's faithfulness. These turn into stories of how when you trust God, it always comes through. Because here's the thing, this is the line that you all can take home today. If you don't hear anything else, I said, here's the line. You ready? God doesn't need your money. He doesn't want something from you. He wants something for you. It's a really famous verse in Matthew six where Jesus says, where your treasure is there your heart will be also. So quick story about that. We're getting ready to celebrate, uh, advent Conspiracy, uh, as a church. You heard about that moments ago, and I can't wait for you all to here if you've never done this with us before, you just wait. But as we've been collecting stories, one of our ministry leaders, uh, Daniel came in contact with, uh, a guy who leads a ministry in Portland, Oregon named Ron. Now Ron, uh, leads a ministry of about a hundred people there. And all of the people in this ministry come from a background of drug addiction, homelessness, or prostitution, or some combination of all three. So these are people who are finding Jesus for the first time in their lives. They're barely scraping by, but their, their leader, Ron said, well, what if we started to celebrate Christmas differently? And he introduced them to Advent conspiracy. And this just blows my mind. But over the last 12 years, this small community has been practicing celebrating Advent conspiracy together. They've raised enough money to dig 15 fresh water wells all over the world. Now you just think about how that changes not just the world, but that community. Suddenly these people who have had nothing get to be a part of making a difference in the world, they get to see God using them and being a part of their lives. And it changes you from the inside out. When you begin to see that you can make a difference and lives are changed and you see things start to happen in the community, and then you realize you get to be a part of making that happen. Your heart begins to get wrapped up in what God is doing. And you know what you find joy and hope and peace and comfort and blessing. And I know there may be some of you right now who are saying, like, just for example, Tim, this is kind of a hard message for me to hear from somebody who gets paid by the church. And if that's you, I get it. Lemme just say a couple quick things. First of all, not just me, but all of our pastors have been having really profound conversations about this in the last couple of years. And all of us are committed. We have all started giving to the church. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Um, we've all said we're in, oh no, we've prayed this thing through with our families and we, we are, we're coming alongside and we want to invest in what God's doing in the church. And you might say, well that's weird. Like you get paid by the church and then you give money back to the church. Why would you do that? 'cause of what I just said? It's a heart thing. So lemme just speak for me. Giving proportionally out of our income is something that my wife Kim and I absolutely love to do. It's changed us, it's changed our hearts. We feel invested in what's happening in this church. We've watched God sustain us through times when money was tight and he was faithful. And now we have these tender hearts towards the work that God is doing in this world and we're in. So, uh, last thing about this and, and then we'll move on. I just really, um, I've been thinking about this, praying about this literally for months. And so I'm just gonna say this. Give me grace. There's some of you that haven't thought about this or talked about this in a really long time. Maybe years ago you said, okay, this is what we're gonna do and maybe someday later we can stretch and we could do more. And I just wanna say maybe now's the time to revisit that conversation. Maybe now's the perfect time to say, you know what, we're struggling or things are, we're wherever you are, you talk to your spouse. If you're married or you begin to pray and you go, what would it look like for us to stretch from two to percent to 3% or three to five or five to 10 or 10 to more? I don't know, it's between you and God. But the truth is, this might be a tangible way that you can take a step now into trusting him even more. Now, even as I say that I wanna call out, I am fully aware of how generous this church already is. I'm telling you, as long as I've been here, I have been blown away by the stories of giving and generosity in this place. I've heard amazing things that have happened around here, like the tens of thousand dollars that you guys already just donated towards Convoy of Hope for hurricane disaster relief in the, in the southeast. That just happened. But get this, that's not even the latest headline. You know, what is this Give Food Plus thing that we just did. Can I share with you a little report from the outreach team? Listen to this. Now Chesterfield, this campus gave enough new coats for every student at one elementary school to stay warm this winter. Our Grants Trail campus delivered more donations of food coats and cleaning supplies than you ever have before. Mid Rivers, uh, uh, uh, uh, you delivered hundreds of boxes of food to longtime neighborhood partners, including one organization called R three Development, which is working to revitalize East St. Louis. So get a load of that. The Mid Rivers campus is giving towards revitalizing East St. Louis. How amazing is that? Fenton, you guys, you delivered over 2.6 tons of food. Look at you. I'm telling you, you guys are blessing this community in huge ways, but it's in small ways too. And these are stories that you don't always get to hear about 'cause they happen quietly, behind the scenes anonymously. But let me just tell you, I've heard stories where one family hears that another family is struggling financially, and then one of us pastors gets tapped on the shoulder and now we get to be like the lucky courier who just goes and says, Hey, I don't know where this came from, but here's a wa of cash. Be blessed. Do you know how fun that is? When we get to do that, sometimes it's a thing where like somebody will come along, some young aspiring musician and put a brand new instrument in their lap and go here. That's for you. You keep doing it. I've heard stories of people helping pay for other people's education. I've heard stories of people who were praying to God that somehow they, he would come through for them in a particular moment. And God shows up and it happens all the time around here. Sometimes it's stories like that, sometimes it's even smaller. It's like, Hey, can I buy you dinner? Can we go out for a cup of coffee? I just want to hear your story. Do you need a place to stay for a while? All of these things happen over and over around here, but those are all just ways that we're generous towards others. What about how people are generous in giving towards the church? That can sometimes be a harder story to tell, but let me give it a try. For those of you who give to the crossing know that hundreds of students are showing up at all four of our campuses and finding a place where they can belong and ask hard spiritual questions, and they're learning more about this life that God has invited them into. They're inviting their friends to come and see wherever you are this weekend, go find a youth pastor. Grab their arm and say, you're not leaving until you, until you tell me stories. Because God is on the move. In youth crossing in these amazing ways these days, younger children have been exploring this idea of prayer together for the last several weeks. And they've been finding a place where they can belong. They get to hear spiritual truths about Jesus in a way that they can understand. And they're laying a solid biblical foundation that they can build their lives upon with adult friends that they will remember the rest of their lives. Folks are showing up across four campuses in classes learning about this faith that we call Christianity and what it means for us to do life together in a healthy way. There's small groups that are still meeting all over this community, even though the pray like this series has been over for a couple of weeks. They're meeting everywhere. And all of these resources and messages that they're unpacking together we're provided by the ministries of this church. People are serving their neighbors, those who are struggling or finding a place where they can ask questions about Jesus. And it's safe to do so. Lives are being changed. 20 somethings are finding a kind of belonging that they've searched for everywhere else, but they're finding it here. Thirties and forties are getting together with fifties and sixties and they're navigating life together and they're learning from each other's perspectives. Guys, that's a picture of biblical community. Churches and nonprofit organizations here in the St. Louis area are actually partnering together. They're collaborating with, if any, know anything about the history of St. Louis, like that's a miracle in and of itself. But they're getting stuff done in ways that won't make the headlines. Not next week, not next year, but in years to come. The message of God, uh uh, that that he has called his people to be one, across ages and races and nationalities and circumstances and all kinds of things that divide us. This message of oneness is finding its way into corners all over the world. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, different places in Asia, south America, central America. We just had a team in Honduras this week talking to people about this stuff. Guys, what I'm saying is the kingdom of God is in bloom. Amen. In so many beautiful ways. And I could go on and on and on. And the truth is we're gonna keep telling you stories about this in the weeks to come. So keep coming back and keep hearing about all this stuff that God is doing. But all of this happens because some people stepped forward and said, I'm just gonna trust God with this. I'm in. I wanna be a part of what he's doing. I I, I don't know how he's gonna provide. I don't know how all of this goes, but I'm not stepping away from this opportunity. I want to do this and I'm trusting God to take care of the rest. And I'm counting on his promises, his promise that in the kingdom of God, it is more blessed to give than to receive his promise. That our offerings will actually serve His people. His promise that in his kingdom, the poor, in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, those who grieve, those who are longing for things to be made right, that in him they will be blessed. See, we're choosing to trust something that we say so often around here about God that you cannot outgive God. Jesus says in Luke six, give and it will be given to you. But he goes on from there. And I want you to see what he says. He says, give and it will be given to you of good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. See, if you and I were neighbors and you were gonna buy grain from me and we were friends, and so you wanted to show me that you were being fair in how you sold me this grain, then you would pour it out from me in my, like in front of me, and you would start to fill up my container. And once you got about halfway, you would shake it together and press it down so that you could see I was giving you the full measure. You got it, but then you would, Jesus says it's even more than that. He goes on to say, listen, it's gonna be given to you, shaken together, press down and pouring over into your lap. This is a picture of how God provides for us in Malachi three. When he says, test me in this, he says, see if I don't throw open the floodgates of heaven so much that there will not be enough room to store it all. This is the lavish, excessive love of God and its grace, and this is what it means to trust him and to follow him into this story. So we're done. I got a little carried away there, but listen, I wanna close with a blessing. So would you stand wherever you are with me now? We've been talking about prayer postures and all of that kinda stuff. You might wanna do one of those even right now. You might wanna hold your hands up or you might wanna hold your hands out and just receive this blessing. Now, these are really old words, familiar, but I'm gonna tack on a little bit at the end. Are you ready? May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his shalom, his peace. But then church, may you never forget that you are blessed to be a blessing and may God meet all of your needs according to the glory of his riches in Christ Jesus. Amen. Amen.