- Hey, welcome to the fourth week
of Life Groups for the message series I'm in.
Big thank you to all of you who are leading groups
and are hosting and opening up your homes
or meeting wherever you're meeting.
I pray that you find fulfillment in making a difference
in the lives of others.
What are we, we're in.
We are invited, we are invaluable, we are influential,
and today, we're talking about being invested
in God's church, we are invested.
What we know about our hearts is that
our hearts typically follow wherever we invest.
Especially when we invest financially,
our hearts tend to follow.
If you buy a small portion of a stock,
you start to study that stock.
If you buy season tickets,
you start to follow that team.
Our heart tends to follow wherever our finances go.
And I wanna start by looking at big picture.
I'd love for you to read scripture.
We're gonna look at Matthew 6:16-19, Matthew 6:16-19,
look at the words of Jesus about heart and investment,
where we invest our resources.
And I want you to think about how you grew up.
In the message, we talked about two different mindsets.
We talked about a scarcity mindset
and an abundance mindset.
I grew up, honestly, having a massive scarcity mindset.
Those who have a scarcity mindset tend to believe
that there's not enough to go around,
that there's one pie,
if someone else gets a piece of the pie,
there's less for me.
There's never enough.
And those with a scarcity mindset
find it very, very different to give.
This was me, completely in every single way.
Then there's an abundance mindset.
Now, an abundance mindset is not the same
as the prosperity gospel.
The prosperity gospel teaches that if you give,
God has to give back to you.
If you give $1,000, God gives you $10,000 or whatever.
That's not at all what I believe.
But what I do believe in is an abundant God.
God owns everything, God loves to bless his children,
God never, ever lacks.
God is a provisional God, God is a very good God.
An abundant mindset really believes that,
that if I give, there's still gonna be enough.
If I'm a blessing to others,
it's gonna be a blessing to me.
God blesses me to be a blessing to others.
It's not about storing, it's more about pouring
or letting the blessings flow through you.
Did you grow up with a scarcity mindset
or with an abundance mindset?
Let's take a moment, let's talk about that.
Let's talk about how we grew up,
and then we're gonna believe for an abundant mindset
because God has not called us to store
but to pour blessings into others.
So we'll talk about, first of all, how you grew up.
What was your mindset like?
What did you learn from it?
Okay, for the second question,
I'm gonna give you a chance to tell a story,
perhaps of how you saw the faithfulness of God
when you were faithful to bless somebody else.
I'd love for you to talk about how God
abundantly provided for you
as you found joy in giving to someone else.
For example, we looked at the story in the very first week
about the sinful woman that broke open
the alabaster jar of perfume,
and she took her most valuable possession,
with an abundant mindset,
she poured it over the feet of Jesus.
And this is an extravagant act of worship.
What's interesting is if you read
another Gospel writer's version of the same story,
another version talks about Judas,
and Judas says this, Judas is like,
"Wait, that's a big waste.
"That could have been sold
"and the money could have been used
"to be given to the poor."
And so you see both mindsets.
You see the woman who has an abundant mindset,
"I'm gonna give extravagantly to Jesus,"
and you see Judas, who has a scarcity mindset.
"There's not enough, we can't afford to give that.
"We could have used it for something else."
Interestingly enough, we know what Judas did.
Judas ended up selling Jesus,
betraying him, for what, for money.
That scarcity mindset ended up costing him
in a very, very real way.
And so you can see those two mindsets at play.
I'd love for you to talk about a time
whenever you did something
that was generous to someone else,
and you either sensed the blessing of God,
or maybe you even saw the provisional blessing of God.
One of the first times we saw this was years ago,
we had money saved for a vacation.
We always would pay cash for a vacation,
so we would save up,
and we had a significant amount saved for a nice vacation.
And we had another friend from our small group
that wanted to adopt and couldn't, couldn't,
couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, and finally,
there was a very expensive international adoption,
and they couldn't afford to pay for it.
We felt prompted to take our vacation money
and to give it to this person from our small group
to help them have the funds to adopt.
And we were so thrilled to do it,
but at the same time, it was like, "there's our vacation,"
and we were really needing a break and a vacation.
Well, right after we did that,
someone else from small group,
without even knowing that we'd given the money,
reached out to us and said,
"Hey, we have a condo in Colorado.
"Would you guys like to go there for free for vacation?"
And which, totally bizarre,
is this family has ended up blessing us
year over year over year over year.
Well over a decade, we've gone to this same condo
and been blessed.
It's my favorite place to go in the entire world,
and it came as a blessing, I believe,
to faithfulness in giving.
We took what we really couldn't afford to give,
but we felt called to give it, we gave it,
and then God gave back.
We saw the blessings as blessings poured through us
rather than storing it.
Your story doesn't have to be that dramatic.
They all aren't that dramatic.
Sometimes just a realization of "God used me
to meet the need of someone else,"
and I find real joy in that.
Let's talk about a time
when you had more of an abundant mindset.
You said, "You know what, I believe, by faith,
"this is what I'm supposed to give."
It could be finances, it could be your time,
it could be something that you sacrificed,
but God used you to be a blessing to someone else.
How did you see God's provision
through your abundant mindset of generosity?
Let's talk about it, and let's build each other's faith.
Honestly, sounds bizarre to our rational mind.
It's something that you would only do by faith,
and that's the principle of the tithe.
And what is the tithe?
Well, the tithe comes from the Old Testament Hebrew word
(speaking in foreign language), and it means a tenth.
And we believe that we worship God
with 10% of what he trusts us with.
We give it to him joyfully,
and then by faith, somehow,
and again, this makes no sense rationally,
but we believe by faith that God will make
the 90% that's left over go further
than the 100% that we had.
We give it as an act of worship.
We return it to God, we believe that it's his.
It's a crazy, ridiculous act of faith,
and we do it with an abundant mindset.
If you have a scarcity mindset,
you're never, ever gonna have the faith to do this.
We believe that God is a provisional God
and that God blesses us, sometimes financially,
not necessarily financially.
The blessings of God can go much, much broader and bigger
than just financial blessings.
I told a little bit of the story in the message
about my first tithe years and years ago.
What's kind of cool right now
is that I had money saved for a car.
I gave my first tithe, which was a lot of money,
and recently after that, my grandmother gave me a car.
And then I took the money I had saved for the car,
and I bought my first rent house back when I was 19.
What's really cool is I went to an open door this last week,
and the very person that was the guy
that sold me that rent house and carried the note
was actually at the open door.
Cool story, that's pretty neat.
But that was the beginning
of really seeing the blessings of God.
I cannot say that every time we gave a tithe
that someone gave us a car.
That never happens, I don't want you to ever believe
any kind of message like that.
But what we do believe
is that when we trust God with the tithe,
that we worship him, that he shows up,
and he is faithful.
It takes a lot of faith, a lot of abundant faith
to believe that.
What I'd love for you to do, if you're a tither,
is to talk about it,
to tell how God has built your faith
through worshiping him with the tithe.
If you're not yet a tither at this point in your life,
you may just talk openly about where you are,
about what God is doing in your heart.
I'm not ever gonna tell you
you have to be a tither to go to heaven.
That's simply not true,
but I do believe there are blessings from God
as we do not store,
but we let his goodness flow through us.
So let's build each other's faith.
Where have you seen the faithfulness of God
as you tithe or as you give
or wherever you are in your journey toward generosity?
What we know is that God is the most generous God.
He gave us his son,
and it's our honor to give him our hearts,
our time, our mind, our body, our soul,
a part of what he blesses us with financially.
We are vessels for his blessings to flow through.
We don't store, we pour them out.
So let's talk about it.
How has God built your faith as you've been generous
through the tithe or otherwise?
Let's talk about it, and then let's pray,
and let's be very sensitive
to how God wants to use us to be a blessing to others.
(uplifting music)
♪ Good God ♪