Giving God His Due

SERMON: 2009-11-15--ac0934--giving-god-his-due SOURCE DURATION: 00:48:16.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidates [0] through [4] maintain a consistent style of theological exposition and application (the main sermon body). Candidate [5] marks a clear stylistic shift into highly structured, poetic language that reads like an extended prayer or hymn invocation. Therefore, candidate [4] is the last segment belonging to the core sermon material before transitioning into non-sermon liturgical content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:29:46.280-00:29:51.180, 00:45:56.040-00:48:15.080 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I said last week that as God's people gather for collective worship Sunday after Sunday, we need to come prepared not only to receive, but also to give. Because that's what public worship is about. It's meeting with God, He gives to us, and we return thanks to Him. In worship, God communicates His grace, His love, and His mercy by His Word, through His Spirit, and also through the giftedness of other members in the body of Christ. And we in turn return thanks to Him. We do that in our prayers. We do that in our collective worship, particularly in our singing, as we'll talk about a little bit later, and we also do that in the presentation of our offerings. And so in the time that we have this morning, let me try to cover each of those bases as thoroughly but as quickly as we can. First of all, giving God His due means that collectively we offer to Him our prayers. Scripture says, one more time in Acts 2 verse 42, "They devoted themselves to the apostle teaching, and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer." As I pointed out a number of weeks ago, it's literally the prayers. It's talking not just about our individual prayer, but the collective prayer that we pray together. And throughout the ages, as I've also said before, prayer is one of the distinguishing characteristics of God's people. It's one of the ways in which we connect with God, and God in turn connects with us. There's an old hymn that puts it this way, "Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, the Christian's native air. His watchword at the gates of death, He enters heaven with prayer." Prayer enables us to connect with God and to listen for God to connect with us. Now as we do some reflecting together on the subject of prayer, I find it helpful to remind myself of three things. Number one, there are different kinds of prayer. Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 6.18. He says, "Pray in the spirit," this is in the context of spiritual warfare, "Pray in the spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests." There are different kinds of prayer. Many years ago somebody gave me a little acronym that I have found very helpful to just sort of remember what these different kinds of prayers are, so they can be incorporated one way or another into my prayer life. The little acronym is the word "Acts," and a lot of you will have heard it. "A" stands for adoration. Adoration is reflecting on God's attributes, His character. Somebody has said there are over 200 attributes of God in Scripture. And sometimes the best way to get out of the places where we find ourselves is to reflect on God's attributes. You're lonely. It helps to dwell on the omnipresence of God. You feel beset by things that are too big for you. It helps to reflect on the omnipotence of God. That is, He's all-powerful. Adoration throughout Scripture is a very significant component of prayer. "C" stands for confession. Confession is clearing the air between God and ourselves. David said, "Be merciful to me, a sinner, against you, and you only have I sinned." "T" stands for thanksgiving, giving thanks to God for all the blessings of His grace. "Praise be to God," says Paul in the book of Ephesians, "for every spiritual blessing in Christ in heavenly places." And the "S" stands for supplication. And supplication means asking God for His mercy. "Have no anxiety about anything," says Paul, "but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." Supplication is not only for ourselves, but it's also for others. And in that instance, it is called intercession. And Paul says that intercession ought to be made for all people, especially God's people. And one of the ongoing ministries of Jesus at the right hand of God the Father is that He ever lives to intercede for us. When your issues and my issues come up before God, and the devil wants to come along and accuse us, so to speak, then Jesus stands before the Father and He says, "Excuse me, for him or her I died, he or she is eligible for the blessings of God." And one of the characteristics of God's people in corporate worship as we pray is we intercede. "I urge then," says Paul, "first of all that requests prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone." There are different kinds of prayer, and those ought to balance out in our individual and corporate prayer life. Then there are, of course, different ways of praying corporately or publicly. In our tradition, the most common way is somebody leads in prayer and the rest of the congregation joins in. That's perfectly legitimate. There are many examples of that in Scripture. At the extreme other end is a public praying where everybody prays at the same time simultaneously. I think you find an example of that a few chapters further on when the early church is facing persecution and the Bible says when they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God and they said, "Sovereign Lord, you made heaven and earth and everything that is in it and on and on it goes." It's possible in that context that there is one person praying and everybody else is echoing, but it's also possible that everybody ships in and they all pray together. I know that in times of revival, I know that in Acts chapter two when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, and I know that in many cultures all around the world, that's how people pray. They kind of have to get used to it a little bit and not be too distracted by the guy next to you what he's praying about. And then there's sort of an in-between, isn't there? And we've done that here too when we've had concerts of prayer or times of prayer in the congregation where everybody gets split up into little groups of two and three and you share together in that context what the prayer requests are. And no matter what it is that you do, when you move out of your comfort zone, and that's the third thing that's worth mentioning, there is a learning curve that we need to be prepared to step into. It's very interesting that when you read the Gospels, the disciples follow Jesus around and they listen to him teach and they watched him heal and cast out demons, but there's only one thing they ever asked him to teach them. Do you remember what that was? They said, "Teach us how to pray." Interesting, isn't it? There was something about the way Jesus prayed and something about his intimacy with the Father and his ability to get answers from the Father that the disciples looked at and they said, "We don't know how to pray. Lord teach us how to pray." I remember years ago, first church I pastored, we had a whole ministry of men's discipleship groups we met regularly and at one of those meetings, we had a young fellow present, he was somebody's friend, but when we joined together in prayer, he prayed with a passion and a fire and a power that I said to myself, "Lord, I want to learn how to pray like that." Prayer takes learning. Individual prayer takes learning, but public prayer really takes learning. The advantage of course that we have is that God has given us his Holy Spirit and his Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don't know how to pray as we ought to, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words could not express. And part of learning is just watching others and having others model for us what prayer looks like. It also happened the other day, I was listening to a conversation between Bill Heibels of Willow Creek fame and a pastor called Jim Nicodem, and Jim Nicodem pastors a church in Illinois that is really committed to prayer. He has authored a book called Prayer Coach and they're talking back and forth in this conversation about what prayer mentoring might look like. And I have selected a little audio clip for you to listen to as Bill describes teaching one of his newly converted sailor buddies how to pray. Listen to this. I'll never forget teaching a sailing buddy of mine who had just become a Christian, we were in a restaurant and this was going to be his first public prayer. And his name was Tom and I said, "Now Tommy, you can do this." Now we're going to start right here, we have food and we're just going to thank God for the food and I'm going to ask you to do that. So he looks across the table and he goes, "How would I start that prayer?" I mean, just dead honest, "How would I start that prayer?" And I said, "Well, you could start by saying, 'God.'" He said, "All right." He said, "What would happen next?" So you could say, "God, thanks for the friendship that Bill and I have had for a couple of years and thanks for the food." I was like, "Okay, how would I end that prayer?" It was just a classic conversation of he didn't know the beginning part, the middle part or the end. And those of us who grew up praying and listened to people pray for too long and wanted to shut people up from praying, we've been around it, we're pretty comfortable with it, but boy you take the average sort of non-verbal businesswoman or businessman who is very self-conscious about words and this is a fairly tall order and we ought to give people a little bit of time to develop in this area and a lot of just training, just coaching. Most of us have been there, particularly as it relates to public prayer. So if we're to follow the example of the early church, which was devoted to the prayers, then we not only need to be present collectively when those prayers are being made, but we need to enter into them. I have no idea what each of you does when we have congregational prayer. I know congregational prayer has far more power than just individual prayer because it is a reflection of the union of God's people being joined together. Perhaps you count ceiling tiles or you're into the events of last week or into the worries of the week ahead of you. I would strongly encourage you to actively participate by saying the amen in your heart, taking those prayers home and making them an ongoing part of your own life. And when you're invited to publicly say amen, which means so be it or let it be so, then say it with all of your heart and with all of your mouth. And when you're having coffee with a friend or a neighbor or an acquaintance and they share with you some of their struggles or their difficulties, then listening to the Holy Spirit and weighing the appropriateness of the occasion, don't be afraid to reach out and to say, "Is it okay with you if I pray with you about this?" Most non-Christians, interestingly enough, are not half as scared about that as Christians are to do it. Did you know that? Most people feel incredibly honored that you would care enough to want to pray for them. And even many times if they don't particularly believe in God or believe that God is going to do anything, they're often surprised what God does because one of the best ways to get answers to prayer is to pray precisely for those who are on their earliest part of the Christian journey. It takes a lot more faith when you're further along the way. But God delights in showering His presence and His favor on those. I had a lady come to see me here just a couple of weeks ago. She was really struggling because financially she was in a deeply difficult place. She had two houses that were on the market. None of them were selling, couldn't find the help that she needed to fix one of them up. And we just said, "Listen, let's pray about it." And wouldn't you know it? In one of those moments when God delights to show His face, a whole bunch of her friends showed up to help her fix one house. The other house was on the market, sold in no time flat. And there was a joy in her heart that wouldn't have been there if we hadn't taken that risk of stepping into it and saying, "Lord, show us Your face." Showing God His due begins with taking seriously the public ministry of prayer. More than that, however, it means not only that we share our prayers with the Lord God and with each other, but it means that we also share our worship. Scripture puts it this way, "Come, let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker." And the word "worship," as you know, comes from an old English word called "worth-ship." And worship is defined in the dictionary as an expression of reverence and adoration for God. An expression of reverence and adoration for God. And while worship encompasses the sum total of our lives, in that all of our lives are to be worshiped before the face of God, in corporate worship, it comes particularly to expression in our collective music and singing. Psalm 100 verse 2 puts it this way, "Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him with joyful songs." And throughout history, God's people have always been a singing people. And when it comes to singing and when it comes to worship, there are again three things similar to the subject of prayer that we were just talking about that are worth our while to reflect on just very briefly. First of all, there are different kinds of songs, and they parallel closely to prayer. There are songs of adoration, "My God, how wonderful Thou art, how great is our God." There are songs of confession, Psalm 51 in the hymn book, "Broken, humbled to the dust by Thy wrath and judgment just." Songs of thanksgiving, wholehearted thanksgiving to Thee I will bring, or give thanks with a grateful heart. And then, of course, there are songs of supplication, "From out the depths I cry, O Lord, to Thee, Lord, hear my call." And different songs express different emotions. Scripture separates songs into psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. And the psalms, of course, are a reflection of the inspired poets in Scripture, and they cover virtually every emotion, from excitement and joy to grief and to sorrow. Songs are compositions that are made under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that expand beyond the theology of the psalms, and then spiritual songs are songs that are given spontaneously, where in a moment of joy, the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you sing with joy what it is that God gives you deep within your heart. And so, there are different kinds of songs. And part of the challenge of corporate worship is to find songs that resonate with the needs and the hearts of God's people and that echo to God what really lives inside us. And if you're in a really difficult place and all the songs are upbeat, it's hard to enter in. And if you're in a place of joy and all the songs are dirges, then it doesn't give voice to what lives inside you, which brings us to a second problem. And that is the fact that there are, and you know this, different styles of music. Do you know, I did a little research on this, do you know how many different sub-genres of music there are in the world? I counted, and it's only a rough count, at least 1,200. Most of these you will never have heard of. There is a thing called bamboo music that comes from some Pacific island where people are pounding bamboo, but it's a bunch of broad categories, probably a dozen or less that are very common to our culture. So let's do a little test here. How many of you here are devoted country listeners? Put up your hand, come on. People like Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, Paul Brandt, Tim McGraw, and a whole bunch of others. So let me see that again. All right. Let's do a tally here, somebody keep track of this. Pop, including Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, American Idol, pop, who's into pop music here? Well, less than country, I have to tell you. Classic rock, Coldplay, Rolling Stones, Beatles, oh, look at that, my land. Any heavy rock devotees, AC/DC, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, anybody dare own up to that? Yeah, a few brave souls. Who? You'd never know what lives in people's hearts. Any jazz devotees, Nora Jones, Diana Krall. You're getting a picture here, eh? R&B, Whitney Houston, Beyonce. All right. Going over into gospel, Southern gospel, traditional hymnody, how many of you are into that? There's purpose to this, as you will discover soon. Contemporary Christian rock, 10th Avenue, Toby Mack, Hawk Delson, Starfield. Christian pop, Mercy Me, Casting Crowns, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, oh. Worship Christian, contemporary worship music, Hillsong United, Chris Tomlin, Brian Dirksen. Now you get a picture here, don't you? You can see why so many churches have worship wars. Because when you bring this collectively together, no matter what genre of music you're following, somebody is going to be happy, hopefully, and somebody is going to be unhappy. And so churches have huge discussions over the years. What do you do with that diversity of musical tastes? Because every one of those categories that I named, with rare exception, each one had a number of you putting up your hands. And I would say you'd be hard pressed to identify a single majority. And so in conversation at staff, and in conversation at council, and conversation with John Roper, who heads up our music ministry, of course, we have these discussions all the time, particularly when somebody is unhappy about something. And John's come up with a model that I think really serves us well. And John says think of it as a family living in a house. And all the different age groups and all the musical tastes are like the bedrooms. Junior sits over there and he listens to his hard rock, and Susie sits over there and she listens to her jazz, and father sits over there and he listens to his country music or whatever. In the context of their bedrooms, everybody can play their own thing. But when you come together in the living room, what you have to try to find is a style that the whole family can buy into. Nobody will ever be fully happy, but hopefully nobody will be fully unhappy in that process too. And so our music style here is geared to serve as a vehicle, as best as we know how, to reflect as much as we can who God is and what God is doing in our lives to give glory to God. And sometimes we will be successful over here, and sometimes we'll be successful over here. And the challenge then is for God's people to move forward collectively in that process of worship, which again brings me around to the third observation that I want to make, and that is that there is learning involved in this whole process. Worship is a learned activity. The big danger that any of us face is that we confuse our preferences in style with holy inspiration. And the tendency is to say, well, a certain music is holier than others. And I think there are forms of music that are rebellious and there are forms of music that are not in keeping with how God has created things to be, but I also know that a lot of what we like or what we don't like is the product of our experience. Wouldn't you agree? The product of what we have been exposed to. I grew up in PEI listening to a country music station. And I loved country music, especially in the days when it was country and western. I got to college. I got stuck with some roommates that loved classical music, and they ridiculed my hillbilly love for the country. And some time later when I served as manager of our college radio station, we had two guys in our operations board who could not have been further apart. There was John Eric Van Lunkheizen over here who was a hard rock devotee, and there was Kenneth A. Bush over here on the other extreme who was a classical music fan. And I mean fan as in fanatic. And so you can imagine the discussions that we had around the table as to what our playlist was going to look like. And you know, it is so important then to come with an attitude of humility and a willingness to learn. You have no idea where Roper found this thing. This is called The Seed Sower, Sunday School's gospel meetings. It's a song book issued in 1897. And on the front inside cover, you have some practical instructions about the do's and the don'ts of collective worship. Let me read you a couple of them. Don't sing too loud. Don't sing through your nose. Don't sing through your teeth. Don't keep time with your feet. And don't imagine that noise is music. Don't be afraid to open your mouth wide. Don't crowd nor drag the time, follow the leader. Don't hold on to the last tone after everybody else stops. Don't forget that it's just as bad to sing a lie as to speak it. Don't stop or begin to sing in the middle of a sentence or stanza. And here's one, don't dog ear or deface the singing book, it cannot defend itself. Don't try to sing praises to God with gum in your mouth, much less tobacco. Oh, for the old days of the spittoon. And then don't stick up your nose and refuse to sing because you don't like the peace. Some very practical advice this morning in terms of what being devoted to prayer and by extension worship looks like in the believing community. Come with a heart that understands worship is about God and it's not about you. And the less you feel like worshiping, the more you need to worship because that is called in scripture, a sacrifice of praise, a sacrifice will cost you something. And in terms of practicality, sit together as much as you can so that you can join your voices in harmony. And if you're a weak singer, then find somebody sitting next to you who is a good singer. There's a lot of space to fill in this building. The acoustics of this building have been designed just for the record, half ways between what is needed for speaking and half ways what's needed for singing. How many of you here were at the BCS gala dinner last night? Just give me some hands. You'll have noticed two very interesting things. You'll have noticed how easy it was to sing in the half of the gym where we were sitting. True? You'll have noticed how hard it was to hear the spoken word. True? Why? Because of the acoustical properties of gymnasiums. There's a lot of reverberation. Reverberation is great for singing. It is miserable for speaking. So this place was designed right smack dab in the middle with acoustical properties that enables you to hear clearly, but that can also facilitate singing. But there's a lot of space to fill. So when you come here, don't stand here with your arms like this. And don't keep your mouth shut. If Elsie and I can make a joyful noise to the Lord, so can you. Use energy, but step into it because God is enthroned on the praises of his people. So lots more I could say about that, but I've got more to say on another topic. So first of all, we give to God his due in prayer. We give to God his due in our collective worship, particularly our singing. And then we give to God his due in the offerings that we bring. Scripture puts it this way, ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, bring an offering, and come into his courts. Now an offering, as you know, is a thing offered as a gift or a contribution. I found it intriguing in my study of Scripture this past week, the word offering or offerings occurs, if I counted correctly, 747 times in Scripture. That is a lot. And especially the Old Testament is filled with an emphasis on offering. And again, the offerings that we are to bring to God are to represent a sum total of who we are, but in the context of our conversation this morning, I want to talk particularly about what that looks like in terms of financial contributions. And quickly want to make three observations about that. Number one, offerings are a required part of worship. I quoted this verse earlier, Exodus 23.15, one of three Old Testament injunctions. No one is to appear before me, that is before the Lord, empty-handed. Why do we pass the collection plate as part of public worship? Well yes, it's partly to gather the finances that are needed to keep the place in financial solvency of course, but it's much more than that because offerings in Scripture are an expression of what it is that we owe God. God provides us with every imaginable blessing that you and I can experience. And when we bring the offering, first the offering of ourselves and then the offering of our finances as a token of the surrender of ourselves, then we are giving to God what is God's due. And to come without an offering, let me be very blunt about that, is an insult in the sight of God because he is worthy of everything that we can present to him. No one is to appear before me, says the Lord God, empty-handed. Second observation I want to make about this is that offering should of course come from a cheerful heart. Each man, says the Apostle Paul, in the context of you sow generously, you reap generously, you sow little, you reap limited results, he says each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. I like the story of the little boy, his father gave him a quarter and a loony because he wanted to teach him stewardship in Sunday school or in church and afterwards the father quizzed him and said, "What did you put on the offering plate?" And the kid said he put his quarter in and his father was disappointed because he was hoping that his lesson had taken root and that it's better to give than to receive and so on. And so he asked the kid, "Why the quarter and not the loony?" Well the kid said, "The pastor told us that God loves a cheerful giver and I figured I'd be a lot more cheerful giving my quarter than giving my loony." And all of us have been there, haven't we? But you see, the whole secret to giving is the recognition not only that everything that we have comes from God, but that we join with God in blessing him and facilitating the work of the kingdom of God all around the world. Paul puts it this way, speaking about the generosity of the Corinthian church, he says, "This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God's people, but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel in Christ and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else." It gives honor to God and it tremendously blesses people as they experience the benefits of the generosity. See, if we are to reflect the character of God and God is generous, then as we'll see a little bit later on, Lord willing, when we look further at the transformed community that is the early church, then it affects how you steward your finances because they're no longer just yours to use for your pleasure, they're yours to use on behalf of the Lord God. So offerings are a required part of worship, they should come from a cheerful heart and then of course they should be the best that we can give. Scripture puts it this way, "Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God." And Malachi, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." All of us have the fear, "I won't have enough." And most of us will have the tendency then to put in the offering plate the leftovers after we have spent it on our bills and our pleasure and all the other things that we have obligations for, and usually what ends up happening is the Lord God gets shortchanged because it's just not there to be had. And the biblical principle is, in terms of presenting offerings to God, we don't give him the leftovers, we don't give him in Old Testament language the lamb that is defective, we don't give him the sheep that is going to die anyway or the calf that isn't going to live, no, you give him the best and the firstfruits because it represents honor and privilege and it represents respect for God. How do you feel when somebody comes to you and they give you a chintzy gift that reflects no understanding of who you are and that is more an expression of who they are than it is about what you are? You're insulted and God frankly gets insulted when we're more concerned about looking after ourselves than we are looking after his interests. So God loves a cheerful giver, God wants us to give generously from the heart, and God wants us to honor him in all that we do. And I recognize that as we talk about this sort of thing it not only often makes us uncomfortable, but we have a wide range of givers in a congregation like this, just as there are a wide variety of musical styles, there is also a wide variety first of all in people's ability to give, but also in people's willingness to give. So as we wind this up a little bit, let me just show you a couple of figures that I think you will find very interesting. These are figures of congregational giving through to the end of August. So they're out of date a little bit, and all of these categories will have been boosted up quite a little bit, but there's a few things here that are really worth noting. First of all, notice in this that we have on record 402 giving units, and by a giving unit we mean people who give either as individuals or people who give as families, 402 giving units. Our total budget as a church is in the neighborhood of $800,000, which means that in order for us to meet our budget from year to year, we need an average of $2,000 per giving unit. If you consider that we have 600 to 700 people present in, you know, that are actively a part of this community, a little bit larger probably, then it is about $1,000 per individual. Now please understand, some can't give that much, and others can give a whole lot more. And you see that reflected in the list of givers, and what's fascinating about this, and we're just talking about budget giving here, we're not talking about money that you put in the collection plate that doesn't have a name attached to it, or that goes to some external cause, we're talking about offerings that go to the church budget. Now notice an interesting figure, you have 25% of the 402 giving units that we have that are on record as not having given anything. Now that may be because you really don't have anything, and that's understandable. It may also be because you haven't yet learned to take stewardship seriously, and you're sponging off the Lord not only, but you're also sponging off the rest of the community. And then you'll see how it develops from there on, 11% less than $100, 9% less than 256%, less than $500, 12% up to $1,000, to put it positively, 8% $1,500, 14% at $25,000, 11% at $5,000, 4% at up to $10,000, and then 0.4% beyond that. As I said, those figures are out of date a little bit, and if we add the last two months' contributions which are significant, then those figures will nudge upward a little bit. Now here's what I want to lay on you this morning as charitably as I can. All of us find ourselves in different economic situations. The Lord does not ask us to give what we do not have, but He does ask us to give what we can give in proportion to our income. So here's what I want you to think about this week. Looking at that chart that was up there a moment ago, identify where your level of giving lies, whether it is zero or 10,000 and beyond, and then ask yourself this question before the Lord. First of all, am I doing what I believe the Lord has invited and called me to do? And if the answer to that is yes, then thank the Lord for a generous heart that takes delight in being faithful to your calling. If the answer to that is no, I think I can do better, then ask the Lord for grace to take seriously the issue of stewardship, because remember, empty-handed, nobody comes into the presence of God. You're insulting Him, and you're taking a free ride. I don't know how else to say that. But you say, "I've got nothing." Well, how about taking the buck that you spend on coffee, or the $10 that you spend on a meal out in a restaurant? And I don't begrudge any of those to any of us. But we have to start somewhere. And starting somewhere starts with the recognition we've all got a part to play, and we all have responsibilities before God, because God gives us His grace freely. And at the end of the day, it's not God who needs us, it is we who need God, because God wants to cultivate in us a generous heart. So ask Him to give you some sober self-evaluation, and then ask Him to give you grace to push beyond where you are to the next level, because faith is always a growing experience. And if we are to be successful financially as a congregation, then each of us needs to keep pushing forward into the resources that God has for us. Because you see, it's in that context, it's in the context of a generous heart, that God meets our needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. And if we had time, I could call any number of people up here to share with you the stories of how when in obedience to the call of God, they stepped into this area. God not only met them, but He far exceeded their expectations. And so, that's how we present to God His due. We pray together, we worship, we praise Him, we sing to Him with all our hearts, and then we present our offerings as a token of our own surrender to Him, knowing that everything that we are and everything that we have, it all comes from His hand. And God delights in a generous people who can show a world that is always saying there is not enough. A people who know their sources of supply is the God in heaven who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and the gold in every mine. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:45:56.040; remove through 00:48:16.000] The birds of the air are silent to call out your name, the earth has no voice and I have no choice but to beg if I got unashamed. Let the rocks be kept silent for one more day, let the whole world sing out, let the people sing, Almighty, Most Holy God, grateful for the ages, Almighty, Most Holy Lord, Glorious, Almighty God. One time marches on, the innocent's gone, and the darkness has covered the earth, but His spirit dwells, He speaks in His well, and the hopeless still offer new birth. He will break the leash of death, it will have no sting, let the prisoner go free, join the dance and sing, Almighty, Most Holy God, faithful through the ages, Almighty, Most Holy Lord, Glorious, Almighty God, Almighty, Most Holy God, faithful through the ages, Almighty, Most Holy Lord, Glorious, Almighty God. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:48:16.000; resume after this marked segment]