Good morning. Amen. Hey Jimmy. It's good to have you back, man. Good to see you. Aww. I love Jimmy. I wish I could pull off his look. It just wouldn't, you know, tattoo. Wouldn't work. Wouldn't work for me. How is everybody this morning? We good? Good, good. Well, it is it is now officially summer. I mean, I guess it was last week, but there's something about it being June. It is officially summer, and that is that is really exciting. I'm so glad you're here. If you are here for the very first time, welcome to His Hands. We are a family of people that love God very much. We love each other very much. In fact, everything we do here centers around one purpose. We want to love people to Jesus. This is a place where people come to get God's love, grow in his love, and give it away. And if you need to get it this morning, we want you to have that. If you need to grow in it this morning, we want that to happen. And if you're at a place where you're like, look, I want to give it away, then there are so many ways you can do that through Teams, through all the ministries we have here. Just ask and we'll point you in the right direction. I've got uh two really quick announcements before we jump into the message this morning. The first of which is about tonight. Comedy night is uh is tonight, uh 6.07. Doors open at five o'clock, and you can still purchase tickets. Uh, there will be some tickets for sale at the Connect Desk where you can sign up for teams and groups and things like that uh this morning. But uh I know there's not a lot of tickets left, so grab those quickly if you'd like to. They're still $10 and they're still $8 if you buy two or more. Um I'm not sure exactly how many we have left, but they'll let you know at the Connect Desk. It's a good thing just to get together sometimes and laugh and enjoy life. I had a friend text me this week, a guy I love very much, and he said, Man, there is nothing I need more right now than just to forget about everything going on in my life and laugh a little bit, and that is gonna happen tonight. Uh, want to talk really quickly about baptisms. Uh, we have baptisms coming up on June 21st, which is Father's Day, and uh, and man, there could be no better day to be baptized than on Father's Day, because whenever we get baptized, whenever we get saved, we give our life to Jesus. Those are church words, right? Saved, baptized, what does that mean? We give our life to Jesus, we commit our life to him. The Bible says that God adopts us into his family. So we get a new Father. God literally becomes our Father. So I think Father's Day is the perfect day to get baptized, and you can sign up today to get baptized in the lobby. Now, you're not signing up to be baptized in the lobby. That is not what's gonna happen. Uh where you're gonna get you're gonna sign up in the lobby to be baptized and here. It's word choice. So um, yeah, go ahead. But uh, but it's gonna be a great day. So be here on the 21st and be here to celebrate everyone that's getting baptized, cheer them on. We are a family, and whenever whenever people get baptized, I always hear one of the same things. Like, I'm nervous to be in front of that many people. And what I always tell people is this it might be 500 people, it might be 600 people, whatever, but it's five or six hundred people that are here to cheer for you. They are here to celebrate this decision that you've made. And so let's be here for that day and celebrate that with everyone. One final little thing, just a request of you that you would pray this week for our high school students. They leave tomorrow morning for Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We have more. Yeah. Yes. Only like eight of our high school students come to nine o'clock. The rest you'll you'll see at 11. Um, and a bunch of them help out a lot. You guys are all amazing. How many of you guys are helping out at the 11 o'clock service this morning? Yep, there you go. Isn't that awesome? Um but we are taking 100 to Tennessee, so we will have 100 high school students uh out of state, and we have amazing volunteers, amazing leaders that are gonna be there. Every single year, God shows up in a big way. And I want to thank all of you who donated to sponsor kids that could not afford to go. Every single student got covered for the trip, every single one. So thank you for that. But um, but just pray. When you think about them, just pray for safety. Pray that God shows up in a massive way, that anyone that does not know Jesus, when they leave on Monday, knows Jesus by the time they get back on Thursday evening. So pray for that. And speaking of prayer, let's just pray together. Jesus, thank you so much for being in this place. We love you. We are blown away by who you are, by how real you are, by the fact that you love us, just like we sang. You you took on the weight of our sin. So you don't demand from us, you give to us. And it is incredible to serve a God like that. So thank you, Jesus, for being who you are to us. Thank you, Father God, for loving us like you do, and thank you, Holy Spirit, for speaking through uh everything that happens here and in this world that declares who you are and how much you love us. So we just we thank you, we praise you, we ask all this in your name. Amen. Amen. Well, um, I'd like to start this morning by by just giving you a confession, and it's not gonna surprise you. Um I have I've never had abdominal muscles in my life. Um I mean I've I have them, but you can't see them. And and that's the way it has always been. In fact, I grew up playing sports, and I remember I remember this really distinct memory in middle school. I was in I was in seventh grade, and I was the starting point guard on the on the seventh grade traveling team. Okay, so that was kind of a big deal. And I had I had a girlfriend named Sarah that went to our school, and she was gonna come to practice. And I was excited about that, right? I was really excited about my girlfriend coming to practice because I was one of the better players on the team at the time at seventh grade, no big deal. There weren't NBA scouts there or anything like that. But um, but I'm there and and I'm like, ooh, Sarah's coming, and I'm gonna impress her, right? Like I'm gonna do my dribbling, I'm gonna make some shots, I'm gonna do my thing. So there she is in the stands, practice starts, and my coach says, Hey, we're gonna go shirts and skins. So uh starters, you're skins, and I was like, well, crap. Uh this is because I've just always had the body of either a 40-year-old man or like a four-year-old boy. That has always been my figure. In fact, my son and I, he's five, we have we have the same figure, right? We look the same in swim trunks. I've just I've never had that before. I I wanted to, and in high school, in high school I got committed. I decided in high school I am going to have abs. And I made a decision, I took some action to make that happen. And that action was not doing a thousand crunches a day. That would that would have probably been a good idea. The action was that I ordered a product that I saw on an infomercial on television. Okay? And you may have seen these products, they still sell them. It was this it was this band that you you wrap around your waist, and then it hooks up to a battery pack and it zaps your abs with electrical shock to make them contract as if you're doing sit-ups. And I'm watching the infomercial, there's a person watching TV smiling, and then apparently getting a six-pack, and I thought, that that is what I need. I liked watching TV, which is what put me in front of the infomercial in the first place. I thought this is perfect. So I ordered it. I was at an age where I hadn't had a bank account. I called, I said, yes, I want this product. It came to my house, it was easy enough. I put it on. It came with this gel that you had to put on your skin, because apparently putting shock pads directly onto your skin is a really bad idea. And so I sort of like lathered up in this gel. It's kind of humiliating. And then I wrapped this thing around me and I turned it on, and wow, did that not work at all? Like, that thing, that thing didn't work at all. It hurt. In fact, there was one part of my stomach that I didn't put enough gel on, and it burned a small hole into my into my skin. That's what it did. And so I did not get a six-pack. I've still yet to have visible abs, but you know, never give up hope. And uh what I did get though was a hole in my skin. That was the result of my purchase. And so you're laughing at me, and you should be, because I should have known better, right? When you see an infomercial, especially if it's an infomercial for something that's like weight loss related, there's always this phrase that shows up on the bottom of the screen when the person's giving their testimony, they're holding their giant pants, right? You see that every single time, and what is that phrase? It says, results not typical. You guys know it. You I should have paid attention to that phrase. Because my results, I think, were more typical than the average person. I think a hole in your skin was probably more typical than getting a six-pack while watching television. So I learned my lesson. See, the thing is, I wanted results in my life, I wanted something to change, and all of us have some aspect of our life that we want to see change. We want to see some results. And when we are really results driven and we don't know exactly how to go about finding those results, we will we will do some things that we might regret, we will do some things that one day we might even look back and laugh at, right? Because when you're desperate for results, you're willing to try things that you would not try otherwise. You know, if you're pretty happy with your figure and I said, Hey, would you like to wrap an electric band around your stomach and hook it up to a battery? You would probably go, I'm good, I'm fine. But if you want results, you're thinking, yeah, that might work, I'll do that, right? All of us have those moments in life that we either look back on and laugh at, or maybe even cry a little bit about, but it's because we were we were desiring a result that we did not know how to pursue. And see, we look at our lives, whether it's our finances, our marriage, our relationships with our kids, our relationships with our parents, our studies, our careers, you name it, there are aspects of life that we we desire results. Maybe we've desired them for a long time, maybe we've even given up a little bit on ever having those results, but we want them, and we've tried several different ways to find them, but nothing has worked for us. And so life sort of becomes this never-ending cycle of trial and error. I think a lot of us could look at parts of our life and say, yeah, trial and error is the approach that I feel like I've been taking for years and for years and for years. And sometimes trial and error is really good. Sometimes it's good just to try something to see if it works, to find out, no, that doesn't work, or yes, it does, and now you can apply that filter to your life. That's great, but God desires so much more for our lives than just trial and error. He really does. In fact, in 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 3, the Bible says that by his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. Talking about Jesus. So God has given us everything we need for living this life that he has called us to live. God often gets characterized as a demanding God, this God that demands results. Rarely does he get characterized as a God who empowers his people for those results. But that is what scripture teaches. That God loves you so much that he loves all of us so much that he doesn't just say, hey, change this, make this better, do better, do more. God says, I want to give you everything you need for those results in your life that you desire. I want to empower you with what you need to do well, with what you need to succeed in those aspects of life that you you desire to see changed. We have a God that wants to empower us. And it's impossible to feel empowered if you don't feel like you know how to go about finding those results. We're all in very different places here. Some of us have been following Jesus for years, some of us it's kind of a new part of our journey. Some of us are just sort of feeling that out, but all of us would readily admit that we would like to be closer to where we know we're meant to be. We all want to be closer to God. We all want to be closer to that life that we believe that we are meant for. And God loves us so much that He wants to empower us to get closer by giving us the how-to's, by showing us how we can move forward, how we can grow. So we're gonna spend the next several weeks looking at some how-tos in Scripture, some things that Jesus gives us, some steps that Jesus teaches us that we can begin to apply to our lives and start walking toward God in a more purposeful place. To start walking toward his purpose for our lives. And we could pick a million different things to talk about because scripture really does speak to every aspect of life you can imagine. But I said last week that we're gonna focus on three. Three how-tos from Jesus. It's how to give, how to pray, and how to fast. And we didn't pull these out of a hat. This isn't arbitrary. In Matthew chapter six, Jesus focuses on these three things for the entire chapter. He's talking to a group of people that want to grow. They're like us, they want to grow closer to God, they want to grow in their life with him. And he says, Look, I'm gonna give you some steps. I'm gonna teach you how to give, how to have a generous heart, I'm gonna teach you how to pray, how to not be intimidated by going to God in prayer, how to feel like you can approach God and live in constant communication with him. I'm gonna teach you how to fast, how to how to purposefully set things in your life aside so that God can fill you with something you need even more than food, or maybe for us it might be entertainment or whatever that might be. We'll talk about that here in a few weeks. These are three spiritual disciplines, we we might call them, that God wants to empower us with, and each one has the ability to give us a giant leap forward in our relationship with God and in the life that we are living. So we're going to explore these three things in the order that Jesus lays them out. Last week we looked at giving, having a generous heart. Jesus says in Luke chapter 6, verse 38, give and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back. That is financial advice that you will not find anywhere in the world except through Jesus. Give and you will receive. It's very counterintuitive. The truth is, Jesus offers us a radically different approach to understanding finances and our resources than this world. He says, if you want to receive, you need to give. And we live like this because we're afraid that we're gonna lose what we have. We're holding on tight because there are all these forces in the world trying to take from us, but here's a problem with that. When I live like this, I may desire that God give me more, but where is he gonna put it? My heart is not open to more. But if I live like this, if I live with an open hand, there is room for God to give me what I need. There is room for God to give me more, and when God sees that he can trust people with what he gives them, that they will be generous and kind, they will walk in Jesus' footsteps, they will look to meet needs. When God sees people like that, he knows he can trust them with more. That's a promise that Jesus makes. And so we talked last week how the first step in that process is to look for needs that we can meet. We introduced all of us to an organization called One Need, which is an organization that we are now partnering with as a church. I'm really excited about it. Uh, if you weren't here last week, listen to the message. We'll give you more details about it. Essentially, they exist to connect people that have legitimate needs, needs that have been vetted and checked, and needs that are certain that they are real needs. It's a good idea to give money to these people. And they connect those people with a huge nationwide network of people that want to give. And that nationwide network of people is something we can be part of, and because of the size of that network, people only have to give a few dollars, two dollars, five dollars, but massive needs are met because of that. In fact, this last week I got an email from one need about a need that had come across, and it was a need for I think $400, $500, and I got excited because it was the first need that I was gonna get to contribute to. So I clicked the link and I'm gonna give five dollars to this, and the need had already been met, and I was like, dang it. And now I feel like it's a competition when it comes to generosity. You know, I'm gonna check my phone and be like, I'm I'm gonna meet this need. I'm gonna do it. You know, I wanna I wanna meet a need because so far everyone I've tried to meet, it's gotten met before I can even give to it. But that's that's an amazing thing. You know, single moms have their rent paid when they're struggling because thousands and thousands of of Jesus' followers say, Yeah, I can give $5 to that. And if you want to know more about OneNeed, there is a desk in the lobby this morning over by the source, and there'll be someone there to kind of help explain OneNeed to you, to get you signed up if you'd like to. It's an amazing ministry, so be part of that. Last week we did not talk at all about giving to his hands at all. We just talked about the concept of being generous. And I did say last week that this morning we were gonna spend some time looking at how giving works here, where we're at financially, where we need to be. We do that once a year. And if you're here for the very first time, you're probably thinking, Great, I just lost the church visiting lottery. Um, it's a morning about giving. And and I'll just say this uh this is not a trap, okay? This is not a trap. Your arm is not about to be twisted. There will be no giant thermometer that is wheeled out onto the stage. Uh we're not launching a giving campaign today, there's no pledge drive. We we talk about this one time every single year. In fact, the last time we we did this was last June. We take one Sunday and we just say, hey, as a church, where are we? Where are we going? Where do we need to be? And we do this for a very important reason. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus says this, verse 21, wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. You know, if you look at my bank account, you will find out pretty quickly what I value. And I'll probably look like a 12-year-old to you, just so you know. You'll be like, Best buy, uh quick trip. Why are you at quick trip so much, spending a dollar? I'm like, I like soda. You know, I see a quick trip and my eyes light up. Like, I I could drink 32 ounces of soda right now. I'm all about it. Let's go. Let's get that, right? And for years I used to hide those purchases. When I would buy gas, I would always go buy the soda and then say, charge me $20 and put the rest on pump seven. And Megan wouldn't know I was spending all this money on soda because I was hiding it with the gas. And don't judge me, because some of you have done the same thing. And I found out, I found out in our second year of marriage, Megan was going to Target to buy groceries, and she was occasionally buying personal items, but it was falling under the groceries category. And I'm going, like, why are we spending so much on groceries? She's like, I may have purchased a few articles of clothing at the same time, and you know, it's it's just for those of you that aren't married, this is what marriage is. Okay? It's like a constant negotiation. It's exactly what you have to look forward to. It's wonderful. The point is this you learn a lot about someone when you look at how they how they value money, how they spend money, how they view money, right? You learn a lot about what's really important to them. That applies to churches as well. And so if you're here for the very first time, this is actually, this is the perfect Sunday for you to be here because you will learn so much about our heart, so much about how we view money, how we use money. And I'll say this, I actually enjoy this Sunday about as much as any Sunday each year. I really do, because I am proud. I am literally proud of the way this church handles finances, the way this church talks about it. I love the fact that we talk about Jesus about a thousand times more than we talk about money, because that's not the way it always is. But money is a reality of this world, and Jesus talks about it. He gives it focus in Matthew 6 for a reason. We want to manage it well. So let me start by saying this. One year ago, one year ago, I stood in this exact spot. There's an X right here that you can't see, so it's probably right here. Um I was in this exact spot, and I shared with you that giving needed to make an increase, that we needed to step up giving-wise. And there was a really simple reason for that. If you're unfamiliar with the story, I'll give you the quick version. This church was started in 2005 by two people, Stephen, Susan Craig, who I love very much, and they're like my spiritual mom and dad. Uh they started this church, they bought the property, they paid for half the renovations, and and I think it's okay for us to know this. Uh, it was $10 million that they gave to start this church. And that was before any of us were here. This was before any of us had ever walked into this building. It used to be a Kmart, if you didn't know that. And so I think we improved it a little bit. So uh $10 million they gave before any of us had ever walked in here. So we could have a church where we would feel the love of Jesus like never before, where we could be authentic, where we could create a culture, where you don't have to be the church version of yourself. And and I'll speak personally. This church has saved my marriage. This church has made me a better father, this church has made me a better man. This church is where I have fallen in love with Jesus. And amen. And it blows me away that two people who had never met me or any of us were willing to give $10 million so that could be possible. And for years, on top of that $10 million, Steve and Susan personally financed the church. So when there were months, which was really often because we were a very small church with a very big building, uh, when there were months where giving didn't cover the finances, they just wrote a check. And they personally paid salaries, they personally paid the electric bill, you name it. But see, we knew there would come a day when the financial responsibility of this church needed to shift from Steve and Susan to all of us. And that's not because their resources financially couldn't handle that. It's actually for a very different reason. It's because the vision of this church is so much greater than any one person's finances. The vision of his hands church and what this church is supposed to be, what this church will become, is greater than any one person's resources. And so we knew there would be a day when that shift would need to happen, and that shift began last June. I explained where we were. I explained where we needed to be. I want to say this, and I'm really excited. I want to go ahead and set the tone for the next 15 minutes or so. You have total permission, as always. I don't know why I have to do this, but just so you know, total permission. If you want to clap, if you want to cheer, go for it. Because I get this blessing right now of standing in front of you and thanking you for your response last year. Because we're talking, oh yeah, you're going. See, I said that, and now you're like, I don't know when to clap. So you don't have to clap. There's no reason. I'm just saying I want you to feel this is more of a family conversation. Uh this isn't a normal message for me, so uh, it's gonna come a little differently, but uh, but this is just us talking and sharing some wins in the last year because I'm excited to do this. I want you to know that my faith was challenged by all of you last year. Because I knew you would respond. I knew that. This is not a typical church, right? The love here is not typical, the authenticity is not typical, the the whole culture here, it's not typical, and I should have expected your response to be anything but typical as well, and it was, but I did not expect it to be what it was. So I want to thank you because my faith grew as a result of your response. We are talking about a results not typical type of response. This is a results not typical type of church. So in the last year, since I talked to you about this, giving has increased by 60% at his hands, which is awesome. And that's a really big deal in one year's time, and it's an amazing thing because we didn't kick off some some campaign, there wasn't some marketing effort where we asked you to commit to a certain amount. Uh that didn't happen at all. In fact, all we did was explain last year our our approach to giving. And if you're here for the very first time, this is how it works. It's it's really simple. We base it all off 2 Corinthians 9 7. 2 Corinthians 9 7 says this you must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure, for God loves a person who gives cheerfully. So I want to break that down really quickly, because this verse, it is the foundation for how we view giving at his hands. It begins by saying, you must each. And what that really means, it's just true, is that giving is something that all of us are called to, to some capacity. If this is your church, if you say his hands is my church, this is where I connect with God, I believe in the mission and the vision of his hands, it says that we are all called to collectively share in the responsibility of giving. It blows me away that two people took on the burden of the finances here for themselves for years and they did it willingly, but but this teaches us that that responsibility is for all of us. It's a collective responsibility. But here's where it gets really interesting. The next part says you should decide in your heart how much to give. Now, I grew up in a church culture that took it upon itself to decide for me how much I was supposed to give. And so I was taught at a very young age that you must give 10%. That is the bare minimum. In fact, the phrase that was used often in the church that I grew up in was it's God's tithe and your offering, which is a really clever way of saying 10%, which is the tithe. Tithe means tenth. So the tithe that belongs to God, and just so you know, you're also expected to bring your offering on top of that. It was almost like it didn't count unless it was above 10%. The first 10%, that's just that's just God's, that's like taxes. And then if you really want to be generous, you'll give above and beyond that. And here's the thing: tithing, it's an amazing principle. It is a biblical principle, and it works. My wife and I tithe. We give a tenth. And we have found that 90% of our income goes a lot further with God involved than 100% does without him involved. We have found that out. Many of you tithe, many of you believe in that. It's true, it does work. Um, you do that, but I'll say this it's a principle, it is not a law. And it's not something that the New Testament, this new relationship that we have with God, makes a law. But I grew up and it was not taught to me as a principle, it was taught as a law. You must give 10%, and it became this burden on so many people. People felt like if they if they couldn't give 10%, if they weren't at a place where that even made sense to them financially, they felt like they were failing God. I felt like that often because my wife and I have not always given 10%. We did not start there. For years I felt like every time I was giving 2% of my income, God was really, really disappointed. But here's the thing, God honored that 2%. God honored, he honored us when we forgot to give for a few months when we were young. We're like, oh no, and because we didn't manage our money the right way, we didn't have this giant collection of what we should have given, so we're like, what do we do? And we just gave what we had. God honored that. See, Scripture says that you must each decide in your heart. In other words, it is between you and God. It is not the church's place to tell you what you must give. I said this last week, but I think it bears repeating. Church leaders in America need to stop trying to get people to give money to their church. They need to start trying to make sure their church is a church worth giving to. I believe that very much. And my wife and I, we give here because this is a church worth giving to. But it's between us and God. It's between you and God. So the commitment is this: I will never stand here. No one else will ever stand here and tell you what you have to give to please God. It's not our place. It is between you and God, it's part of your relationship with Him. And if we did stand here and told you, hey, you have to give this percentage, you have to give this amount, that would be pressure. And that very next part of the verse says this don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure. If you ever feel pressured to give money, here. Don't give a dime. Don't. And you know what? If you ever feel that, you need to come talk to me because it means we've we've done something wrong. Because this is not a place that believes in pressuring you to give. That's why we don't pass a plate. We don't pass a plate because I'll just be honest, I believe that's pressure. I know that's pressure. Because I've I've been in cultures where that was the case. I get the logistics of it. I get that, you know, hey, we can pass this plate, everyone gets it, and there's I guess a convenience in that, but there is no way as a human being for someone to hand me a plate or a bucket or whatever it is, and me not be aware of the fact that someone sitting next to me is watching me. Or someone sitting behind me is watching me. And I remember when I was in college and I gave once a month. I started for the very first time budgeting out and giving once a month, which is, in my opinion, the best way to do it. I remember those times where I would hand the next person the plate or the bucket, and I wanted to say, I gave last week. I promise. I'm not, I'm sorry. I felt so guilty. And it's just because it's naturally a pressuring environment when that happens. We don't believe in pressure here. We don't believe in that, so we don't do that here. Don't give in response to pressure. Don't give reluctantly or because your arm is being twisted. Give because God has put it on your heart to give, and you want to respond to Him. I could sum up, amen. I think that's the right way to do it. I could sum that whole philosophy up in a really simple phrase. We trust God to put it on each of our hearts how much he wants us to give, and we trust each other to respond. So to make that personal, I trust God to put it on your heart, how much he is calling you to give, and I trust you to respond. I trust you. And you guys have responded in an amazing way. Like I said, giving has gone up by 60% in the last year. And then let me talk to you about some amazing things that have happened as a result of that. Many of you who have been here for a while know that we give 10% of everything that comes in here back to the community. If we're gonna go real old school church terms, we might say that we tithe the tithe. We believe that as a church, we should give. It would be wrong for us to say, hey, be generous, but we're gonna keep it all for our purposes. So we give 10%. Now, last year, 2014, from January to June to this time of the year, we as a church had been able to give $29,000 away to charity, which is really amazing. That's exciting. Organizations like Papa's Pantry, the Hope Center, the Cherokee Family Violence Center, those are organizations that we give to. One Need is now one of those organizations as well. We were able to give $29,000 away last year up to this point. But because you have responded, because giving has increased, from January to June this year, we have been able to give away $52,000. So that's amazing. That's amazing. On top of that, there are some things we've never been able to do before. We've, for the very first time, been able to set aside finances to meet special needs that we hear about in the community, needs that we're not aware of right now, but if someone brings something up to us, something we feel like we really need to get involved with, we can. So last year, I'll give you an example uh during Christmas Angels. Last year, and if you've you've never been here around December, every year we sponsor a lot of kids, we buy them Christmas presents, and that's called Christmas Angels. We did it last year. There was a young girl that put down groceries on her Christmas wish list. And the person who got that said, Hey, that that's that's unusual that a little girl would ask for groceries. And so this person went to their house and they came through us, they said, Hey, would it be okay if we did this? And we talked to the school system, we found out some more information, and they said, Yes, please do it, and we investigated, and it was a really rough situation. Two grandparents were raising uh three of their grandchildren, three girls, and they were not expecting to have to raise their grandchildren. There were circumstances uh involving the mother that made that a necessity. They were doing their absolute best to provide for these kids, but both grandparents have disabilities. The grandmother has Parkinson's disease, and it's uh fairly advanced, and so as you can imagine, they're just way behind in a lot of different ways. And their house had had really fallen into disrepair, their roof was leaking practically everywhere. Their kitchen was nonexistent. We're talking uh no flooring, just subfloor, no refrigerator, the uh the the food was being stored in coolers, no dishwasher, so all the dishes were being done in the bathtub because there was also no sink that worked. There was no drywall on any of the walls, there was no ceiling in the kitchen, it was just all exposed to the roof, so it was cold. And that meant that these kids that live there, one of which is this little six-year-old, seven-year-old girl that just captured my heart the very first time I ever walked into that place, that's the conditions they're living in. It's not their fault. It's not those little girls' fault that that's the way things are. So we found out about that. Juan Reyes, who leads our love squad, which is an amazing team of volunteers that donates their abilities and their resources to go help in situations like that. He said, Look, we need to get involved with our love squad, but this is more than just the normal love squad project. So it's gonna take some finances, it's gonna take some networking to find other companies that might be willing to donate materials, but there will be cost involved. And I was able to look at Juan for the first time and say, you know what, we can handle that as a church. We can do that. We could. And so, yeah. So um I'll I'll tell you some results of that. As of today, uh, that family has a new roof on their house. Completely new roof. Brand new, it's awesome. That uh that kitchen that I mentioned to you, in fact, we have some pictures we'll put up. That kitchen that's just no floor, no appliances, no counters, no sink, uh, no drywall, exposed wires, no ceiling. Uh, that is what the kitchen looks like today. Um, it is a brand new kitchen. We we had to take the picture while they're still working on it, you know. So uh, you know, take the that guy doesn't live there, he's fixing things. Uh and and see this family, they put down groceries on a Christmas angels form. And what they got were groceries because we took care of that. We made sure that they their kids got all the toys and all the stuff that they really wanted for Christmas. They also got a brand new roof, they got a brand new kitchen. Uh, a bunch of volunteers from the church showed up to clean up their yard in a big way, and and these people were were blown away by that generosity. Because we're talking about results, not typical type of generosity. And it affected them in a way visibly that you can only imagine. But that would not have been possible without you. So thank you for stepping up. Thank you very much. Now there are some things I want to talk about really quickly that have to do with us as a church internally, because your generosity and your response has allowed some amazing things to happen here as well. We have a very small staff, as you know. We always have. That's actually part of our passion as a church. Having a small staff means that we spend more than or less than half what the average church spends, the average church our size. Uh so I shared a little bit about that last year. Just so you know, here's kind of our philosophy when it comes to what we spend internally. It is really normal in church culture, especially as churches get fairly large, for the church as an organization to decide how much to spend on everything you can imagine, and oftentimes to buy the latest and greatest of everything that exists, but then make it your spiritual responsibility to fund a very expensive way of doing church. We believe in finding the most cost-effective way of making sure everything happens here and it happens with excellence, but we want to find the most cost-effective way to do it so that the burden of supporting it financially doesn't fall on you, and it doesn't have to be this big high-pressure thing, and you can know with confidence that we're using it wisely. And so we spend less than half of what the average church our size spends. I'm really proud of that fact. One of the ways we do that is with a really small staff. Two years ago, we had two people on staff. Two full-time staff members, we had three part-time people. The average church our size, just so you know, would have 10 to 15 full-time staff and about six or seven part-time staff. And we had two. And we did a lot with those two people, but in order for us to launch some new ministries, in order for us to do things better in a way we hadn't been able to do them before, we needed to grow our staff. Because of your generosity, we now have five full-time staff members and seven part-time people. And that's all happened in the last year, and it's all been completely feasible financially because you have responded, because you've given. And here's some great things that that has led to. Um, I have sanity for the first time in my life. I'm just gonna throw that out there, okay? Um that's what it feels like. Sometimes it doesn't, but but when you're five people is still five full-timers, it's still a crazy small staff for a church our size, but when you're used to two, it feels amazing. So thank you for that. Um, more importantly than anything that benefits me is what we've been able to do with that. So, for example, uh years ago we had Wednesday night groups and classes, and that was a great experience. Many of you were probably here for some of that. We were able to average about 150 adults on Wednesday nights. So we had 150 adults that were connected together in relationship with one another, growing closer together, helping each other grow closer to God. But we needed to launch something different. 150 was not gonna cut it, and not everyone can do Wednesday nights. And even though this is a big building, it's not really designed for like small, intimate connections. It's a lot of big spaces. And so we needed to launch home groups. When we launched home groups last January, many of you were willing to step up and say, hey, I'll open my home and I'll let a bunch of strangers come into my house that I've never met before, and I'll just trust God and trust the team at his hands to help me navigate that. But because you have done that, and by the way, any home group leaders in the room, can you raise your hand? Thank you, home group leaders, for doing that. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Um, my wife and I have a home group too, and and you might be thinking, ooh, uh, having a home group, man, I don't know. I'll tell you some secret benefits of leading a home group, just so you know. Um, or even being in a home group, if you're gonna move in the next six months, join a home group, okay? Because last night I was helping a buddy in my home group move a king-size mattress and some stuff up a bunch of stairs because he's moving, and guess who he asked? Home group. If you're about to get married in the next year, join a couples group because you're gonna have an amazing shower if you join a couples group. It's gonna be awesome. You need to, it's okay. Jesus said, be innocent as doves and shrewd as snakes. So it's okay to do those kinds of things. You know, if you want to lead a home group, you might think, oh, I have to clean my house once a week, but ladies, that means you get to tell your husband once a week, we have to clean the house, I need your help, and there's people coming over, you need to make this happen, and we have to do it because uh that's the way it works. So it's a it's a good thing to do, trust me. There's benefits. But home group leaders, in all seriousness, you did a big thing by taking on that responsibility. Even though we had amazing volunteers do that, we had to have someone on staff to give that the attention it needed, to launch it, to sort of tweak it as it's gone along. We're still tweaking it, we're still making it better. And we were able to bring that person on staff as a result of your generosity. So today, we have over 400 adults that are involved in home groups. We've gone from 150 to 400 in the last year and a half. That means 400 adults now are connecting together, have relationships with one another here in the church, and are helping each other grow. Our kids area in the last two years has doubled. We averaged 90 kids in the nursery two years ago. We averaged 200 kids in the nursery, and by nursery I mean just that's all, yeah, clap for that. Clap for the people who help in the nursery. That's what you should do. Those of you who volunteer in the nursery, you're amazing because when I say 200 in the nursery, I mean 200 kids five years old and younger. That's just the five-year-olds and it's 200, it's doubled. Our kids area has grown so much in the last couple of years, which is a wonderful thing, that we've actually had to add a new space for kids. We had to move our fourth and fifth graders into their own space because there was no more room. It's a good problem to have. And we made room everywhere else for more kids, and our fourth and fifth graders now have the tree house, which some of you have seen that space. It's just down the main hall. If you haven't seen it, you need to go check it out. If you have a child that will one day be a fourth or fifth grader, you need to see that space. Even if you don't have kids that live at home, just go in that space and imagine what they would have said about it when they were in fourth and fifth grade. And that space, it is excellent. I'll tell you this when it comes to us financially, we don't skimp when it comes to kids. Over half of our staff is devoted to kids' ministries and children's ministries here at the church. We we value kids very much. And we don't skimp, and so that space, yeah, you should clap for that. Kids are not an afterthought at all here. And so that space is amazing. And it and it took financial resources to make it what it was. We were thrifty. We we brought in like 150 pallets from all over the community and tore those things apart and used the pallet wood to do some cool stuff. That was free. We we did everything we could to make it cost effective, but from the get-go, we said this space will be amazing. We want fourth and fifth graders to walk in here and be blown away. Jesus said, when he left, when he ascended to heaven, I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you may also be. And we want to make sure that every time someone walks into a space that is for something specific, for an age group, here at his hands, they walk in going, I feel like Jesus Himself prepared this place for me, and that is the tree house. We could not have done that if you had not responded. We couldn't have done that. So I want to thank you. See, all of these things, they're really exciting to talk about. It's wonderful when we can talk about results that we can measure. More kids, new spaces for our kids, more that we can give away to charity. You know, those new staff members that I talked about, I want you to understand that for every one person we have on staff that's gifted and talented and amazing, we have 50 volunteers that are gifted and talented and amazing that are serving. You guys make these teams possible. You're amazing, you're incredible. I love you. But our volunteer teams deserve to have someone here on staff that is giving them their attention, that's devoted to making sure they can do things as well as possible. For the very first time, and I'll move on, we have someone on staff that is 100% devoted to what we call adult growth. And so, in the course over the course of the next year, the next two years, you're gonna see more options available for you, more ways that you can grow. Because we want to be just as purposeful about growing, about growing all of us as we are about growing our kids. And we've never had someone on staff that can give all of their attention to the adult ministries here. Everyone's had to sort of do that as their second job. Now we have one person that can focus on that, and it's gonna make a huge difference in the next year. I love it when we have results that we can measure, but I want to talk for just one second, and I know this is maybe going a little bit longer than normal, but I appreciate you bearing with me. This is a one-time a year thing, so it's important we do it right. I want to talk for just a second about some of the results that we cannot measure. Because I believe this very much. When a church is what it's supposed to be, when it's a movement of people who are working alongside one another to go after the vision and the mission of Jesus, there are results that are so powerful that you cannot measure them. And it's those results that actually get me the most excited. Because here's the thing, I cannot tell you how many marriages are together today because of this church. I cannot tell you that. I have no way to measure that. Now I can I can give you examples. I could talk to you about a couple friends of mine named Tammy and uh and Alan. Tammy and Alan are amazing people. Uh their marriage, uh, we talked about this last week, and they said, Yeah, you can share this. Uh their marriage. Was in a really rough place a few years ago. They had been separated for almost two years. They'd been part of his hands for a number of years, but but their marriage was in a rocky place. Divorce was a constant, a constant word mentioned, and uh many of us have been through divorce. We know how hard that is. And even if we felt like it was the right decision for us, we'd probably say, I don't wish that on anyone else. They have kids. Their kids would have been affected greatly by that divorce. And one day, Alan, just sort of at a desperate place, not knowing where to turn, showed up here at the door randomly on a weekday, and he said, Hey, is uh is anyone here that can talk to me? And we had two people on staff, so there was one person at least here, and and he came in and he had a conversation with someone. Someone prayed for him, and for the very first time he had hope. So he left, and he and his wife started to talk again. They started to do some counseling, and some of that counseling work, some of it they didn't think was a good fit, but they just stayed at it. Fast forward to today, that was 2012 when he showed up here on a weekday. They've been back together for over two years, which is awesome. They love each other very much. In fact, Alan said, I love my wife more than the day we got married. Their family has stayed together, and just a few weeks ago I met, I'm at lunch with them and they're sitting across the table going, we want to get involved in like missions. We want to go overseas and serve people. And I'm going, the the change in the last two years, it is it's unbelievable. And see, if if not for his hands, they may be in the exact same position. If not for this church, it's very possible. God is a big God. He doesn't work just here. There's a lot of great churches, and even outside of the church, God is always working. Right? God doesn't like he doesn't need us, but he has chosen to use us, which is a really amazing privilege. I can't tell you that if not for his hands, they would have gotten divorced. But I will say this results not typical. Right? And they will tell you that because of this place, they had a safe haven for their marriage to heal and to grow. And they wanted us to say thank you to everyone who prayed for them and to everyone who just makes this place the friendly, loving, safe place that it is. Because their marriage is alive and it is thriving for the first time ever. Then we can't measure how many people have that same experience. I can't tell you how many people will not ever get to a crisis moment in their marriage because they have this place. And because of the relationships they have here, because they're in a couples group or something like that, their marriage is never even gonna get to that crisis place. You can't measure that, but it happens all the time. I cannot tell you how many children will never have to experiment with drugs or substance abuse. I can't tell you how many children will never have to pursue relationships that are unhealthy, go down a really unhealthy path because this place exists. There's no way to tell. I can give you examples. There's a girl named Taryn that many of you might know. We had a God story, and Taryn was part of that a few weeks back. Taryn is a college student. She is incredible. When she was in the ninth grade, I believe, her stepfather, who is the father that she lives with, was diagnosed with ALS, which, as you might know, it's an incurable currently. Uh fatal disease. People rarely live beyond three or four years when they're diagnosed with ALS. And you know how hard high school is, anyway? Especially for a high school girl, and now you're gonna put on the stress of a stepfather who she's gonna have to watch just get sicker and sicker and sicker, and her mom's gonna have to stop working so she can just take care of her stepfather and all the stress that that's gonna put on their family financially, emotionally. It was the perfect scenario for a high school kid to just implode and to go off the deep end and to pursue some things to cope that are really unhealthy. But see, Taryn didn't do that. Taryn leaned closer and closer into God. Taryn got more and more involved here in the youth ministry. Uh, to this day, Taryn is one of the most involved young people that we have at this church. And again, if not for his hands, the same thing very well may have happened. Because God is a big God. But I'll say this results not typical. Taryn's mom came to us three weeks ago, walked up to one of the women who had mentored Taryn while Taryn was in high school, and she said, I want to get involved in this place. Because my daughter is amazing. These are her exact words. My daughter is amazing, and everything she is, she got here, and I need that in my life. We can't measure how many Terrans there will be because of this place, because we don't know what they would have been without this place. Two days ago in the car, my five-year-old son, Liam, who is he is he's my pride and joy. My five-year-old son says, Dad. I looked back and I said, Yes. I mean, I didn't look back, it's a mirror. Uh, you know, my good dad. I said, yes, and he said, When I get to heaven, I'm gonna run to Jesus. And when I was five years old, I did not know who Jesus was. And to think that my son, at five, is envisioning himself running into Jesus' arms in heaven. There's something that that did in my heart, and I can almost picture him walking past that statue up front and knowing that that's the image he has in his mind. See, as a father, I I'm so confident in the kind of people my children will become. A lot of that has to do with Megan, who is incredible. But a lot of it has to do with this church. The fact that I know my children are gonna grow up here gives me a confidence in the kind of kids that they're going to grow into. And this place exists because of you. I mean, my son for the very first day today is in the grove, which is the K through third grade room. This is his first day in there, and I'm like kind of emotional about that. Uh, I'll be giving a lot more attention to the grove, so I'm gonna be paying attention to what's going on there, you know. Uh and I think about my son being in a treehouse and being in our youth ministry, and I I'm blown away by the fact that I don't even have to wonder what my son would be like without his hands because he'll never have to experience that. See, those are the results we cannot measure, but they're real. They're real. I want to wrap up by saying thank you again to your response last year. The work is not complete, it's not done. We're able to start doing some exciting things we've never done before. We're gonna keep giving money away to people in need. We're gonna keep setting that aside to meet needs. We're gonna keep making everything we do here better and better and better. Here in a few years, we're gonna have to replace our roof, which is uh is gonna be a really fun uh process. I actually am looking forward to that. Uh, that's gonna cost a significant amount of money. For the very first time ever as a church, and this is really exciting to me, for the very first time ever, we are starting to pay off the loan on this building in a much more aggressive manner. Now, I said that Steve and Susan gave $10 million to start this place, but the other part of that was taken out in a loan. But but check this out, because of their generosity and because of how they set everything up, uh, it's a 0% interest loan. Okay? So which is which is amazing. So I I told this to someone the other day, hey, just imagine you're buying a $200,000 house. I use that number because it's really easy to do the math for me. Uh, you know, a $200,000 house, and someone walked up to you said, Hey, I'd like to give you a hundred thousand, and then I want to make sure that the other hundred thousand uh is a zero percent interest loan. What do you say? And you'd probably say no because that is way too good to be true, right? That's like, nah, that's the what's the what's the catch? And and that's exactly what Steve and Susan did and how they set this place up. And so we have this incredible opportunity now to start paying off what's left in an aggressive way so that we can hand our children a debt-free church. And that's going to happen. And I believe it's gonna happen way faster than common logic would even say. I believe it's gonna be a results not typical type process. And what's really exciting is that I'm saying that, letting you know that we can actually afford, for the first time ever as a church, to start paying off that loan. We can afford that. We could not do that a year ago. But you responded. And when people respond to what God is doing, the results are never typical. So I want to ask you to just keep it up. I want to thank you for what you have done. I want to thank you in advance for what you will continue to do, all of us collectively. If we hear from God and we just give what He puts on our heart, we'll always have exactly what we need to meet our needs here and to meet big needs in this community. If giving is something you have not started doing here, if that's a step you have not taken, you should feel zero guilt for that. Zero guilt. I'll encourage you though, start somewhere. Just pray. Today, pray. If you have a spouse, pray together and say, hey, let's just talk about that in a few days. Should we start at 2%? Should we start at 1%? Whatever God gives you though, just commit to that. Commit to that, give it once a month. That's the approach we really recommend. Commit to a percentage. A percentage is the best way to do it for a couple of reasons. Number one, uh, it's much more representative of where we are financially to give a percentage. Number two, if you ever have a situation in life where you make less, that that number can go down because it's a percentage, and you don't have to feel guilty that you're giving less because you're giving the same percentage. It's it's a really good way to do it. But pray. It's between you and God, and just commit. Watch what God does. Watch what he does. Because I'll tell you this: there's gonna be a day. There's gonna be a day where someone gets to stand here. I hope it's me. Uh someone gets to stand here and say, hey, um, I want to give you guys the yearly update on where we're at. In the last year, we gave a million dollars away to charity. That day is going to happen. It absolutely will happen. There will be a day when someone will stand here and say, hey, uh, the building has completely paid off. And now we can take that money and we can roll that into not a uh, I will not be driving a really nice car the day that happens. I will promise you that. Um I love my my 2006 Toyota Scion with the squeaky air conditioner belt. I love it. Uh it's my baby. No, see what happens is when this building is paid off, we're gonna roll that money into doing more for this community. We're not gonna roll that money into doing more for ourselves at all. We're gonna pray and wrap up with some more worship. Thank you, by the way, for bearing with me. I know that this is not the typical message. Uh if I wanted to, I could get really rah-rah right now and just be like, hey, we're gonna do this, or we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. But see, I don't even have to do that. Because I know you. This is a church that responds to God. And I'll finish with saying this. If you read scripture, there is one common thread in every miracle that ever happens. And that common thread is not the person who performed the miracle. Jesus did a lot of them, but a lot of other people perform miracles too. The common thread between Jesus and between every other person that ever got to do and witness a miracle was this. They responded to God. That is all it takes. Jesus himself said, I just watch what the Father does and I do it. Everything I do comes from the Father. In other words, Jesus said, I respond to what God leads me to do, and the result of that is miraculous. As a church, when we are people who just respond to what God puts on our hearts, the result is miraculous. The result here is miraculous, the result in our communities is miraculous, the result in all of our individual lives, it is miraculous, and I trust you, I love you. Thank you for being people who respond to God. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you for uh for being a result, not typical, God. And thank you, Lord, for this group of people who are so responsive to the way you lead, so committed to your love, to your mission, Jesus, that they give. They give their time, they give their talents, they give their resources, their finances, God. They they make this place what it is. A church is not a building, a church is not an organization, it is people, and I'm so thankful, God, uh, to be part of this group of people. Thank you for everything you have done. Thank you for what you're going to do. We are so excited to see what the future holds. And as a church, we are committing to you that we will be people that respond to you and we will see you do miracles because of that. We love you, Jesus. Thank you. Amen. Thank you, guys.