Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] This is our Better Together Sunday.
[00:00:04] And I want you to understand what we mean by better together.
[00:00:13] We believe that God made every single one of you unique.
[00:00:23] There are no cookie cutters.
[00:00:28] There's something unique about you.
[00:00:31] There's something beautiful about you. There's something talented. There's something gifted.
[00:00:39] And when we bring the best of what God has made us together onto a team, we are able to accomplish things that we can't do by ourself.
[00:00:56] We're able to accept challenges because we're drawing upon the goodness of God in every single one of us.
[00:01:06] So we're better together because Christ created us with these unique abilities and then he brings us together into the church, and then the church does things that glorify God in the world.
[00:01:25] Better together means every single one of us need to find somewhere in the church to serve God.
[00:01:33] I guarantee you there's something here that you can do and do well. And there are people that you would enjoy doing it with.
[00:01:43] You just have to make the effort to sign up.
[00:01:46] If you sign up for something you don't like, no problem.
[00:01:51] You didn't join the army.
[00:01:55] You can. You can leave that and go to try something different. All right?
[00:02:02] But we have achieved what we have achieved because we're better together.
[00:02:08] Let's pray.
[00:02:10] Our dear Heavenly Father, you have the best ideas about living well.
[00:02:23] You challenge us to confront what is flawed, broken and underdeveloped so that we can be everything you created us to be.
[00:02:39] I pray this morning that you would help us to think spiritually about what enough means in our life.
[00:02:52] And then I pray that we can live better lives in Christ's name. Amen.
[00:03:01] Around 900 years before Christ, the nation of Israel was in a time of political chaos.
[00:03:16] One king was knocking off the next king, ruling for a few years, getting knocked off. There was no political stability.
[00:03:29] An example, King Ella reigned two years over Israel, and he was murdered by the commander of his chariots.
[00:03:39] Zimri, who murdered Elah, was king for seven days, and his rival, who was the commander of the army, attacked him.
[00:03:54] Zimri lost the battle, went into the palace and burned the stinking palace down. Because he said, I may not be able to reign here, but neither is Omri.
[00:04:07] So Omri moved the capital to Samaria and built another fort and another palace.
[00:04:15] Omri brought some stability.
[00:04:19] He ruled for 12 years, 885 B.C. to 874 B.C.
[00:04:29] and when he died, his son Ahab became king.
[00:04:35] Ahab is identified in the Bible as one of the most wicked people who ever ruled in Israel.
[00:04:46] Now, if you read Kings and Chronicles, they had some big losers.
[00:04:50] But to be the worst of the worst. Ah, Ah.
[00:04:56] Ah.
[00:04:57] That's not good.
[00:05:00] Ah.
[00:05:01] You're not going to get a cookie for that.
[00:05:03] Ah.
[00:05:04] And I want to tell you a story this morning from the life of Ahab, because it illustrates the idea I want to talk about.
[00:05:13] So Ahab grew up the oldest son of the king, and his dad ruined him.
[00:05:21] He was selfish, arrogant, and entitled.
[00:05:25] And he never even considered the idea of enough.
[00:05:30] To him, there was no such thing as enough. Whatever he wanted, he felt, he felt entitled to.
[00:05:39] He was massively wealthy. He owned massive acres of land.
[00:05:45] But right next to his property, there was another man named Naboth, and he owned a single vineyard.
[00:05:55] It had been in the family since Joshua's conquest.
[00:06:00] Generation passed it down to generation passed it down to generation.
[00:06:05] And one day, King Ahab went over to Naboth's vineyard and he said, you, vineyard is right by my place.
[00:06:15] And I have an idea. I want to tear the vineyard down, and no, I want to put a garden here.
[00:06:21] And so I want to buy your property. How much do you want for it?
[00:06:25] And Naboth said, yeah, I'm not going to sell it to you.
[00:06:30] He goes, okay, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll trade you a better vineyard for your vineyard than the one you have right now.
[00:06:40] And Naboth said to Ahab, the Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers.
[00:06:49] Naboth said, look, it's not about the money.
[00:06:53] It's about my family identity is wrapped up in this. And we feel like this property was given to us by God at the time of the conquest, and I'm not selling it to you.
[00:07:09] Ahab had never heard no.
[00:07:14] First time in his life, somebody simply said to him, no.
[00:07:19] And being the wonderfully mature person he was, he went home, got in bed and pouted, Wouldn't get out of bed.
[00:07:38] Sometimes I think thoughts when I'm preaching that I can't say, and I just thought one.
[00:07:47] And so his wife, who was as wicked as he was, her name has become synonymous with evil. A Jezebel, she was the daughter of evil is BAAL the First, the King of Tyre.
[00:08:07] And she grew up very, very wealthy.
[00:08:11] So she goes in to see Naboth and she says, oh, poor baby, what's wrong with Papa today?
[00:08:22] And he said, I can't have the. I can't have the vineyard. So unfair.
[00:08:27] I never get what I want.
[00:08:31] Waa, waa, waa.
[00:08:38] And jezebel his wife, said to him, do you now govern Israel?
[00:08:47] Rise, eat bread, and let your heart be cheerful.
[00:08:52] I will give you the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite.
[00:08:59] Ah.
[00:09:01] And so Jezebel takes a piece of papyrus, and she writes a letter to the elders of the city that Naboth lives in.
[00:09:18] And in her letter, she says, this is what I want you to do.
[00:09:22] I want you to declare a special day and get all the city together.
[00:09:29] And then I want you to set Naboth in a prime place and hire two lowlifes to sit on each side of him.
[00:09:44] And at a strategic point in the meeting, I want these lowlifes to stand up and shout, naboth cursed God and the king.
[00:09:58] And then she said, I want you to have some people ready. When they do that, your people grab Naboth, incite the crowd, take him out of the city and stone him to death.
[00:10:16] And they did what she told him to do in the letter, and they stoned an innocent man to death because the king was selfish.
[00:10:32] And when Jezebel heard that Naboth was dead, ah.
[00:10:43] As she went and said, naboth is dead.
[00:10:49] Go look at your vineyard.
[00:10:52] And as soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.
[00:11:05] And it looked like this selfish man had gotten away with something very ugly.
[00:11:15] But what most of you don't know is one of the most powerful prophets who ever lived was alive. Then Elijah.
[00:11:24] And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, arise and go down and meet Ahab, king of Israel, and who is in Samaria. Behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession.
[00:11:40] And you shall say to him, listen at this.
[00:11:43] Thus says the Lord, have you killed and also taken possession.
[00:11:52] You shall say to him, thus says the Lord, in the place where the dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick up your own blood?
[00:12:06] And of Jezebel, the Lord also says, the dogs shall eat Jezebel within the walls of Jezreel.
[00:12:16] Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city, the dog shall eat. And anyone who dies in the open country, the birds of the heavens shall eat.
[00:12:29] It's pretty harsh, Church.
[00:12:32] Ah.
[00:12:34] Ah.
[00:12:35] There's something about greed that particularly offends God.
[00:12:45] There's something about selfish greed that particularly annoys the heart of God.
[00:12:56] Ah.
[00:12:57] There's something about living a life that never defines enough, that God feels like it wastes his eternal purpose in that soul.
[00:13:22] But the author of First Kings tells us that when Ahab heard this, it affected him.
[00:13:32] He thought differently about the life he had been living.
[00:13:37] He reconsidered.
[00:13:40] And when Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes and, and put on sackcloth.
[00:13:47] That's sackcloth is.
[00:13:50] They made a wool like garment out of hair.
[00:13:56] So instead of weaving cotton or instead of weaving linen, they, they, they weaved the rough hair of camels.
[00:14:07] And it was a very, it was a nice outer garment in the winter, if you wore something between that and your skin. But when you wore that on your skin, it could rub your skin raw. It was a sign of self punishment.
[00:14:26] He put on sackcloth and fasted and lay in the haircloth and went about dejectedly.
[00:14:37] And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite saying, have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me?
[00:14:46] Because he humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days, but in his son's days I will bring the disaster upon his house.
[00:14:58] Listen what happened.
[00:15:01] Ahab had lived a selfish and greedy life and it ruined him.
[00:15:09] He wasn't happy. It didn't matter what he had gained. It wasn't enough.
[00:15:14] And in a moment he stepped over the line and ruined his life.
[00:15:21] But God is a God of mercy.
[00:15:24] And when Ahab said, instead of indulging myself, I'm going to discipline myself.
[00:15:35] Instead of giving myself more, I'm going to take something away from myself. And he fasted.
[00:15:43] And when God saw that Ahab had learned from this foolishness, God said to Ahab, this disaster will not happen in your lifetime.
[00:16:00] God blesses those who can be corrected and redirect their lives.
[00:16:10] I've told you this story because I want to teach the principle of enough.
[00:16:17] It is countercultural in our society to be people who define enough.
[00:16:26] I'm going to be using ideas from Morgan Hussle's book the Psychology of Money.
[00:16:39] It's a very interesting book because all his principles he tells a real life story about.
[00:16:48] Ah, let me tell you one.
[00:16:53] This young man, at the very beginning of writing programs that changed businesses, he wrote a program that was so good that a company paid him and he was in his 20s, $10 million for it.
[00:17:19] Ah, but this kid was brilliant but foolish.
[00:17:27] And one day he was having lunch with his buddies at a marina and he gave his buddy a big wad of money and said, go down to the coin shop and, and buy me 10 gold coins.
[00:17:46] Now a gold coin is $4,000 apiece.
[00:17:51] The guy got the coins. Everybody thought he was going to give them a gold coin.
[00:17:57] He said, come with me. They walked down on the pier and the idiot took these gold coins and started throwing them like jumping rocks on the water.
[00:18:10] And he threw all 10 of them into the water.
[00:18:16] He went bankrupt.
[00:18:19] All right, so this, the, the book teaches incredible principles and, and, and it tells real life stories to go with them. And so some of what I'm sharing with you today about enough comes from this book.
[00:18:34] First of all, let's start with a general definition of enough.
[00:18:38] What does enough mean? It means to begin with, you have a sufficient amount to meet your needs. All right? If you can't buy groceries, you don't have enough.
[00:18:52] If they're turning the electricity off in your house, you don't have enough.
[00:18:57] We're not talking about a, ah, living off the grid here.
[00:19:05] So enough begins with saying, do you have a sufficient amount to meet the basic needs of your life?
[00:19:14] All right?
[00:19:16] But enough doesn't just mean you're not starving to death because there's such a thing as emotional well being.
[00:19:25] So enough also means you have an adequate amount. You have in a reasonable amount of resources in your life that you're not living under emotional duress.
[00:19:40] You have enough.
[00:19:42] That there is the possibility for contentment.
[00:19:50] Paul gives us advice in First Timothy. He says this godliness, it's this, I translate this word piety, and I'm going to explain, I'm going to define piety for you. Piety with contentment is great gain.
[00:20:07] Listen, we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.
[00:20:17] Now let's put this idea of contentment together with enough.
[00:20:22] Contentment is built on two words. And the first is. The first means self and the second means sufficient.
[00:20:33] Contentment doesn't mean you have enough on the outside to make you happy on the inside. Contentment begins on the inside.
[00:20:47] It says, I have found within myself a sufficiency that doesn't make me need the accoutrements to feel like I'm living a good life.
[00:21:04] Hey, get a clue where you live doesn't make you a better person or a worse person.
[00:21:13] Church.
[00:21:15] And often where you live does not have anything to do with how much wealth you have.
[00:21:22] I've known people who were very rich and looking at their house, you could never tell.
[00:21:28] And I know people who were on the verge of bankruptcy and looking at their house, you just thought they were rich.
[00:21:35] Contentment is not something I draw from the outside and Pull in.
[00:21:42] Contentment starts with something on the inside that helps me define the outside.
[00:21:51] Ah.
[00:21:52] Contentment begins inwardly, not from external stuff.
[00:22:01] Listen, contentment is only possible if you define enough for yourself.
[00:22:10] If contentment begins on the inside, then I have to say to myself, this is enough.
[00:22:19] That creates the floor for being content.
[00:22:24] If I don't know what enough is, I can't ever be content because I'm chasing the next thing. The next thing? The next thing.
[00:22:36] There is a means to enrich the soul and its contentment.
[00:22:44] There is a means to leave the soul in chaos.
[00:22:51] And its selfishness.
[00:22:53] Contentment does. Contentment makes the soul feel rich.
[00:22:59] Selfishness makes the soul feel poor.
[00:23:05] Ah.
[00:23:09] And in defining enough, we have to look at the second thing. Paul says here, you can't take it with you.
[00:23:20] If you look at everything you have and you divide it into, I value this the most, I value this the second, I value this the third.
[00:23:32] If you just look at everything you had and then you say to yourself how much you value it all. Right now I just want you to think about what you value the most.
[00:23:48] Is what you value the most eternal or temporary?
[00:23:57] If it's temporary, you can't take it with you.
[00:24:02] You get this, all right? If it's eternal, you can't ever lose it.
[00:24:11] I want to be more specific.
[00:24:15] You have 10 gold coins.
[00:24:22] You like them.
[00:24:24] Like those people on TV, they like to rattle them around in their hands.
[00:24:29] You have those 10 gold coins and you like having them. And there's nothing wrong with it all.
[00:24:39] You can hold on to those 10 gold coins until you take your last breath, and somebody you may not even like may end up with them.
[00:24:53] On the other hand, if you have enriched your soul with true love, when you take your last breath, that true love becomes even more valuable because in that moment, it becomes eternal.
[00:25:12] Did you get this?
[00:25:14] Ah. You can't take it with you.
[00:25:18] So start defining enough by saying, can I hold on this forever, or am I only holding onto this temporarily?
[00:25:29] And I want to pay a bigger price in my life for what I hold onto forever and what I only hold onto temporarily.
[00:25:41] You have to define enough for yourself. Nobody else can do that.
[00:25:46] Okay, I want to be plain about this. I'm not telling you what enough is.
[00:25:53] But I am saying to you, at some point in your life, you need to get dead serious and. And you need to tell yourself what enough is.
[00:26:03] Some years ago, I preached a sermon series on defining a lifestyle.
[00:26:08] And as we did that sermon series, I did that for myself.
[00:26:16] As we did that, I Started saying to myself, no matter how much I make, no matter what raise I get in the future, I live at this level.
[00:26:28] I drive a Ford F150.
[00:26:31] Because I defined my lifestyle at a Ford 150.
[00:26:37] I didn't define it as, when I get enough money, I'm gonna buy a Escalade. Okay? I said, when this. I define my lifestyle here, all right? And then everything I make after that, I get choices about life.
[00:26:55] If I just keep raising my car payment every time I get a raise, I lose my choices in life.
[00:27:04] Do you see?
[00:27:06] I will never have enough to do everything I want to do because I can't define enough in single areas.
[00:27:16] I. Are you thinking with me here?
[00:27:19] You have to define. You have to define enough. All right? Now I want to tell you. Everything has a price.
[00:27:29] Everything has a price.
[00:27:33] One of the biggest mistakes I made in my life is when my kids were young. I worked too much.
[00:27:41] Ah.
[00:27:44] I would get all wrapped up in the church. We would be doing stuff.
[00:27:48] I would miss my vacations.
[00:27:51] I would work my day off. Okay.
[00:27:55] Okay.
[00:27:56] The price I paid was not worth what I lost.
[00:28:04] Is there anybody out there who feels that way?
[00:28:07] The price I paid in my work life was not worth what I lost because my kids grew up overnight.
[00:28:20] Church, if I had it to do over again, I would have said enough at work, and I would have said a little bit more at home.
[00:28:35] I paid a price, and I can't ever change that. All right? When you define enough, you have to look at your life and say, is it really worth what I'm losing, dad?
[00:28:55] Is it really? Your kids are going to be adults.
[00:29:01] Ah. Is it really worth the.
[00:29:06] The extra whatever to miss that time with them?
[00:29:12] Ah. All right.
[00:29:15] Spouses, your best lifelong friend.
[00:29:23] Ah.
[00:29:24] Ah. Don't lose the. The wonder of the friend. Friendship of your spouse because you can't define enough in some other of their areas.
[00:29:35] Are you hearing this?
[00:29:36] No one can define enough for you. You have to do it for yourself. But while you're doing it, please remember, everything has a price.
[00:29:49] Ah.
[00:29:50] The next idea, to define enough, you have to stop moving the target.
[00:29:58] This is easy for me to illustrate. When Shay and I got married, we drove junk cars. We were going to college. We had no money.
[00:30:07] We were working our way through college, and we played Will it start or Won't it Start?
[00:30:17] We're going to go do this if the car starts.
[00:30:24] I had a Comet that was perhaps the worst car that was ever made.
[00:30:31] And when it wouldn't start, I would reach underneath the dashboard and jiggle the wires around. And then sometimes it would start.
[00:30:41] Ah.
[00:30:42] And then we saved up some money and we went to Ed Mullinax and bought a Ford Pinto.
[00:30:54] Red fire engine, red two door hatchback.
[00:31:01] I thought I was driving a Mercedes Benz.
[00:31:05] That thing started every single time.
[00:31:10] Didn't break down on the road.
[00:31:12] Ah.
[00:31:16] There was so little chrome on those bumpers that they almost looked yellow. They didn't have enough chrome on them to be shiny Pintos. Pintos.
[00:31:30] At the time, we thought, we have made it.
[00:31:36] We've made it.
[00:31:38] Guess what? I felt that way for about three years.
[00:31:42] That's how long it took me to pay it off.
[00:31:45] And I was looking for something better.
[00:31:49] Church.
[00:31:51] Well, then I got another car.
[00:31:54] Paid that off. Now I'm looking for something better.
[00:31:58] Okay. I kept moving the goalpost.
[00:32:01] Do you see?
[00:32:03] All right. And when you're young, that's fine.
[00:32:07] I couldn't dream of buying a Thunderbird. All right.
[00:32:10] Okay. But at some point in our life, we have to break that habit and stop moving the goalpost.
[00:32:18] When we went to college, we rented a apartment that was a converted garage, and it wasn't even converted. Well, we thought if we could just get a regular apartment.
[00:32:36] Ah.
[00:32:38] Ah.
[00:32:39] Where the floors didn't move at night.
[00:32:44] Cockroaches.
[00:32:47] Ah.
[00:32:50] Ah. All right.
[00:32:51] Well, we got a decent apartment.
[00:32:55] And then. And then we lived in some apartments. And. And Shea and I started talking, and, man, if we could just buy a house.
[00:33:02] And we saved up some money and we bought a house on West 56th street in Cleveland.
[00:33:13] These things were small.
[00:33:15] Our living room was so small. We had six for a while and then a seventh.
[00:33:22] It was so small, it would fit a couch and a tv.
[00:33:25] And if you got to the living room first, you got to sit on the couch. If not, you had to sit on the floor. That's how small that house was.
[00:33:32] But it was Taj Maha to us. It was the first house we'd ever.
[00:33:37] It was.
[00:33:39] We had our own yard, our own driveway.
[00:33:43] All right?
[00:33:46] And then we lived there for seven years.
[00:33:49] And, you know, it's really not big enough for us. And. And.
[00:33:57] And then my friend Don Dooley, wonderful man, showed me he would build a house for me that we could afford.
[00:34:12] And we went from this little cracker box house to a colonial.
[00:34:19] Okay.
[00:34:21] And that's fine.
[00:34:22] Okay.
[00:34:25] The trouble happens now I move the goalpost again.
[00:34:29] And it really isn't that I need a bigger house. It really isn't that I need more space. It's that my ego wants a bigger house or I want people to see me in a different way.
[00:34:43] And we stop buying the house that we need, and we start buying the house that nurtures our ego.
[00:34:52] What have we done? We just keep moving the goalpost and moving the goalpost and moving the goalpost. And so we don't ever have enough because we keep moving the goalpost. Are you with me? All right, young people, it's fine when you're working your way up, but there has to be a point in your life where you draw the line and say, this is our house, no matter what we make. And we're going to have the opportunities and the freedoms to do other stuff, because we're not.
[00:35:25] Because we are defining a lifestyle that says, this is enough.
[00:35:30] All right?
[00:35:32] Ah.
[00:35:33] The next idea to define enough, you have to stop comparing yourself to. To the person in the next higher class.
[00:35:44] This is what we do.
[00:35:47] We don't compare ourself to the people who are just a little bit below us economically. We compare ourself to the people who are above us economically. Right?
[00:36:01] I see some fancy car going down the road.
[00:36:05] I look in the window, see what kind of guy's driving that car.
[00:36:09] All right?
[00:36:12] I don't look at the stop sign at the guy who's driving the 1978 rusted Chevy.
[00:36:23] I don't look at that guy and say, I'm really, really blessed. I'm driving a Ford and not a Chevy.
[00:36:33] I'm really blessed.
[00:36:36] My truck fenders aren't falling off.
[00:36:40] I look at the guy in the vet and go, man, that guy's got it made, doesn't he? Do you see what I'm saying? If we're going to define enough, we have to stop comparing ourselves to just those who are above us. And once in a while, compare ourselves to those who are a little less blessed than we are and have a heart of gratitude that we have the wonderful things that we have.
[00:37:04] It helps us define enough.
[00:37:08] There's always a bigger boat.
[00:37:11] All right? This quote comes from Housel's book.
[00:37:16] An insatiable appetite for more will push you to the point of regret.
[00:37:24] It's what happened to Ahab. He had everything he could possibly want, but he wanted more, and it ruined him.
[00:37:33] Is it possible that in our demanding more, we end up ruining God's good idea for our life?
[00:37:48] Is that possible?
[00:37:50] Is it possible that your life was intended by God to be rich in more than just economic ways?
[00:38:01] Church.
[00:38:05] Ah.
[00:38:06] Is it possible that in your rush for more in one area, you forfeit the benefits and the beauties of other areas? Of your life.
[00:38:22] Enough makes it possible for us to be generous.
[00:38:28] If you don't define enough, you will never be generous.
[00:38:33] Now, I want to remind you that generosity is an issue in this church. I'm not passive about generosity. Here's our mission statement.
[00:38:42] This is why we exist.
[00:38:44] To attract people to the excellence of Christ.
[00:38:48] To invite people into the joy of ministry, to challenge people with the adventure of faith. And here it is.
[00:38:54] To teach the wisdom of a lifestyle of generosity.
[00:38:59] We exist in part to teach generosity.
[00:39:04] All right.
[00:39:06] In my life, 44 years pastoring in this church, I've had many people say to me, God, Doc, I can't be generous. I don't have enough.
[00:39:17] I've heard it hundreds and hundreds of times, all right?
[00:39:23] Ah.
[00:39:24] And sometimes, ah, ah.
[00:39:30] They've. They've had.
[00:39:32] They've had unpredictable life disasters. I'm not talking about that. Just talking about us who are living a normal life. All right, church, Because I defined enough.
[00:39:48] I have enough to be generous.
[00:39:51] If you don't, if you don't define enough, you'll never have enough to be generous.
[00:39:57] Do you understand this? Because you will keep wasting what should go to generosity in the pursuit of your next generation toy or your next ego boost, or your next, your next, your next, your next. Do you see?
[00:40:14] You will have enough to be generous. When you begin to manage what you have based upon your definition of enough.
[00:40:27] Ah.
[00:40:28] I want you to hear this.
[00:40:30] If you think you don't have enough to be generous, I want you to hear this. Paul wrote this to the church of Corinth.
[00:40:37] 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.
[00:40:50] Did you hear that?
[00:40:52] Some of you were daydreaming. Let me read it again.
[00:40:57] 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.
[00:41:11] I want to tell you what this means. God has given you enough to be generous. If you're not generous, you're mismanaging what God gave you.
[00:41:20] Church, you have not defined enough, and you're mismanaging what God gave you in the pursuit of things that are not gonna leave you content.
[00:41:34] And the result is you can't participate in other meaningful areas in your life because you've mismanaged in the pursuit.
[00:41:51] Of things that only have temporary value.
[00:41:58] I manage what God entrusts to me by defining enough.
[00:42:04] Enough includes the biblical principle of tithing.
[00:42:09] Ah.
[00:42:11] The Bible teaches that in the Christian life, we all should set a percentage, and that's what we should regularly give to God.
[00:42:22] We should define enough so that we can return to God what is God's.
[00:42:30] And that's what the Bible calls tithing. All right, Ah, I've had people say, ah, no one can live that way.
[00:42:42] All right?
[00:42:46] People don't do live that way.
[00:42:48] Let me tell you something about this church.
[00:42:51] A year and a half ago, I presented to you a program for us to pay off this campus. We owed a million six hundred thousand dollars, and this church responded with generosity. And we just made a payment, and we have it paid down to $255,000.
[00:43:20] All right?
[00:43:21] Now look around. Does it look like anybody's starving to death?
[00:43:30] If you are, let me know. We got hot dogs.
[00:43:34] I'll give you as many as you want.
[00:43:37] All right, look around.
[00:43:42] Does it look like, ah, we don't have a budget to buy some clothes?
[00:43:49] I don't see anybody in here whose clothes are rotting off.
[00:43:54] Okay, look in the parking lot.
[00:43:59] Looks like this church is doing pretty well to me. There's some pretty nice rides out there. All right.
[00:44:05] Church generosity enriches you.
[00:44:11] Selfishness impoverishes you.
[00:44:16] I believe in generosity.
[00:44:20] Not just at church, but I believe in a lifestyle of generosity. I believe we should be generous in everything we do and everywhere we go.
[00:44:31] I am a firm believer that I'm looking for an opportunity every day to do something generous.
[00:44:40] Ah, you say, you know, Doc, I can't do it. All right, Let me tell you this.
[00:44:51] It's remarkable what you can do when you start defining it into your life.
[00:44:59] When I was raising five kids, we were poor, but we were generous. All right? My kids are all grown up now, and I did some work this week.
[00:45:13] I ran some stuff through that little computer, that little adding machine on my phone.
[00:45:20] And Sharon and I give about 30% of what we make away every year.
[00:45:27] Do we look like we're suffering?
[00:45:31] Do we look like God has ripped us off?
[00:45:35] Do we look like somehow or another we've impoverished ourselves by generosity?
[00:45:42] Church. It's just the opposite.
[00:45:45] Can you open your heart to this?
[00:45:48] God has provided us everything we need to be generous.
[00:45:53] But what we have to do is we have to define enough.
[00:45:58] And then we have to start using everything above what is enough for things that have more meaning, more purpose, more value, and are more honoring to Jesus Christ.
[00:46:12] Can you understand this?
[00:46:15] Enough empowers me to share with others.
[00:46:19] Instead of exploiting others like Ahab, Ahab had to exploit others because he never could get enough.
[00:46:30] In Christianity, it's just the opposite. I have this sense of enough, and I'm able to bless others.
[00:46:39] I'm able to help others. I'm able to do things that literally change people's lives in the moment that is eternal.
[00:46:49] Do you get this?
[00:46:50] That lasts forever.
[00:46:52] All this other stuff I lose the minute I die.
[00:46:57] All the generosity I have laid up for myself. Treasures in heaven. Do you hear this?
[00:47:04] So this is what I'm asking you.
[00:47:07] Will you enrich your soul by consciously defining enough?
[00:47:14] Join us in our mission to live a lifestyle of generosity.
[00:47:19] Will you proactively define enough?
[00:47:24] Will you put that definition into your budget? And will you join us in making a difference in this generation through generosity? Our dear Heavenly Father, I do hope in you.
[00:47:39] I do believe in you.
[00:47:41] I believe that this idea is a good seed. And I pray that you would sow it in every soul here today and every soul watching online.
[00:47:52] I pray that your spirit would sow it in good earth.
[00:47:57] I pray that it would not be snatched, the seed that was snatched away by the devil. I pray that it would not be on rocky soil and our hard hearts keep it from producing fruit.
[00:48:10] I pray that it wouldn't fall among thorns and thistles, and the cares and the affairs of this life would choke it out.
[00:48:16] But I pray that it would fall on good seed, good soil, and it would bear some 30, some 60, some a hundredfold.
[00:48:24] I pray that our generosity would make the generation we live in better for the honor and glory of Jesus Christ, Amen.
