Cultivating Stewardship

SERMON: 2014-10-05--cs1402--cultivating-stewardship-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:25.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 23 is the last segment of spoken sermon content (a rhetorical question leading to a conclusion). Candidate 24 is marked as [BLANK_AUDIO], indicating a non-sermon material break (silence or music cue) immediately following the speaker's final words. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I pointed out last week that historically God's people have been some of the most generous people in the world. And I gave you a three-fold reason for that. Number one, the character of God. God is a generous God. He is the overflowing fountain of all that is good. Number two, we're created in the image of God. We share his character by nature apart from the fall. As the Canadian blood bank likes to say concerning the giving of blood, it is in you to give. Third reason is in Christ the image of God is being restored to us. Because of the fall, it's become distorted and twisted. We've become self-centered and selfish. But in Christ, God becomes our father. The Holy Spirit begins to increase our level of faith and trust. And the result is that we begin to share increasingly in the generosity of God. And so in this little mini-series and Cultivating Stewardship, there really are two questions that we're trying to address. The first question is this, how has God blessed me? In other words, what resources of time, talent, and treasure has he entrusted to me? And then secondly, how can I maximize my fruitfulness? We don't all share equal talents of time, talent, and treasure. But the question for each of us is how can I maximize my fruitfulness to the glory of God? In your bulletins this morning is a fairly extensive insert entitled "Participating by Giving." I want to ask you to pull that out for just a moment, if you will. And on the back panel, you see there a chart that breaks down the giving pattern in the congregation to the ministry of this church to date. And you'll see there four columns. On the left, the giving range from zero to nine thousand and up. Then the number of donors in the congregation that fall in each of those ranges. Then the total number of gifts in each range. And then the average per donor. Now there's one mistake in there. If you drop to the bottom of the average per donor a listing, the total giving units, 357. You see the sum total raised there, 590. That next figure is wrong. It reads 162.85. And there is a five missing. It should be 1652.85. That's the average giving per giving unit in this congregation. Now we share this with you this morning not to shame you if you're on the bottom end of that list, or for that matter to pat you on the back if you were towards the top of that list. We share that with you so that you get a good feel of where the giving is at in the life of this community. In your mailboxes today is the third quarter statement of giving to the church. And what we want to encourage you to do is take a look at what you have donated so far and see how it fits into the overall pattern. Recognizing that you may well be giving to other causes or to other situations that's not reflected here. This is only a reflection of what you've given to and through the church. But the aim, again as I said, is not to shame you, but to give all of us an opportunity to reflect together on how can I maximize the resources that God has given me. How can I be as fruitful as possible under the blessing of God. Now last week I shared with you that during holidays Michelle and I visited friends of ours in Nova Scotia. They together with their offspring run quite a large apple orchard operation. And one of the reasons I wanted to meet with them besides renewing relationships because we hadn't seen them for a number of years was to find out why his operation was doing as well as it was doing. Because you see growing apples of late in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia has been a tough business and lots of apple growers have gone out of business. But my friend has not only succeeded in staying in business, but he has thrived beyond expectation far more so than many of his neighbors. I want to find out what is it that you're doing that is maximizing your productivity given the fact that you have no more and no less in terms of resources than your neighbors. And so pretty quickly it became apparent that he and his offspring had learned to maximize resources in ways that many of their other neighbors were not able to do. They tore out old orchards that grew old varieties that are no longer selling very well. They invested a significant amount of time and effort in finding new varieties that demand premium dollars on the market. And then as I pointed out last week, they have adopted a whole new system of doing orchards. This particular picture of high density apple growing where they plant as many as a thousand trees per acre. And I don't know if you can see that one tree off to the side there, but you see how much fruit this thing is. Can you see that? How many apples on that tree? Well, you have a thousand of those per acre of a variety that is popular and that sells well. You're in business. And they have done by God's grace and his blessing extremely well by maximizing their productivity. So how do we do that spiritually, particularly in the context of this campaign that we're conducting? How do I maximize my financial fruitfulness in the kingdom of God? Well, last week we looked at one principle that is critical in understanding and that is the fact that we must understand the law of sowing and reaping. Second Corinthians 9, 6, later on in this episode where Paul is encouraging the Corinthian Christians, he says, remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. And in conversation with my friend, I discovered that in order for him to maximize his fruitfulness, he had to spend a lot of money planting a thousand trees in what is known as the tall spindle system of apple growing involves an incredible investment. You've got to spend between 10 and 15 grand an acre to start that kind of an orchard. The advantage is that you start bearing fruit in two or three years and by year seven or eight, all things being considered equal, you have your money back, which is half the time of a traditional orchard. But you see, you have to sow in order to reap and that is a universal principle, not only in agriculture, it is a universal principle in all areas of life. What do you have to do if you want to have friends? You got to make friends. How do you build muscle tissue? How do you, you know, develop your brain power? You have to use it or you lose it. It's very counterintuitive, particularly when things are tough. We want to hold on to what we've got, but scripture says that is the opposite of what you need to do. You need to invest it. I recall a former pastor here telling this story of a traveler in the desert coming to the absolute end of his water supply and, you know, at the verge of dying of thirst and then he comes along a pump in the desert and by the pump is a little bowl of water that he just anxiously wants to drink, but there's a little sign that says, if you want water, you got to prime the pump with this water. Who is prepared to take that kind of risk knowing that if it doesn't work, you're out of the water that you could have had, but that, you see, is the nature of faith and that is the nature of sowing and reaping. It is always a question of can I trust God to look after my resources? The book of Proverbs puts it this way, one man gives freely yet gains even more and other withholds unduly when it comes to poverty. So again, here's a question to ask, how much sowing are you doing? And some people say, well, I can't afford to sow and I would say to you, if you can't afford to sow, you cannot afford not to sow because that's what's going to multiply the resources. Even if you're at the bottom of the scale, you've never contributed anything beyond, you know, your own particular needs and your own expenses, then if you want to multiply your resources, it starts by putting seed in the ground and trusting that God will honor it. Brings us this morning then to a second major principle that we need to understand and that is this, we need to understand the difference between stewardship and ownership. We need to understand the difference between stewardship and ownership. Now, an owner owns by definition what he's got, his possessions, his goods, his whatever. And as an owner, he can do with his possessions whatever he wants to. And if he wants to spend it recklessly, that's up to him. If he wants to invest it wisely, that's up to him. If he wants to give it all away, that's up to him. An owner owns his stuff and can use it the way that he sees fit. A steward is a bird of a different feather altogether because the word steward, and it's not a word that we use commonly anymore today, is of course a manager. And a manager manages somebody else's possessions. And when you manage somebody else's possessions, you have to manage them with his best interests in mind and you're going to be held accountable for how you manage his goods. And if you're a faithful steward, hopefully you will be rewarded, but I can guarantee you if you are an unfaithful steward, you're going to be held accountable for squandering the trust. And here lies the problem. And here lies the problem not only for secular people, but even for many of Gwan's people. We confuse the two. We think we're owners instead of stewards. We think my body is my own, my money is my own, my resources are my own, my life is my own, I can do with it what I want. But that's not a biblical world in life here. The apostle Paul puts it this way. I love the way that he puts it in the context of spiritual gifts to the Corinthians who were quite arrogant and proud of all the good things that they possessed. He says for who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive and if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? Why do you boast? Why do you think this is who I am? You see, what happens of course is that we tend to think that what I've got is the result of my own cleverness, my hard work, and I've earned this money so I can spend the way that I want it. I've built this empire and I'm in charge of it. It is my doing and I have the right to enjoy it and perhaps even look down my nose at other people who haven't been as successful as I have been. That's perfectly natural, very human, and very immature because that's what the Corinthians were doing. They thought they were really something forgetting that whatever they had was a gift from God. I mean, here's a practical question. So you're proud of what you've been able to accomplish in life, but let me ask you this question. Who gives you the strength to get up every morning to go to work? Who puts his breath in you so that you can breathe to carry on from day to day? Who gives you the wisdom to make the kind of decisions that need to be made in order to accomplish the goals that you are pursuing? More than that, who has enabled you to be born and to be raised in a society that has encouraged and empowered you to accomplish what you have accomplished? Can you imagine how different your life would be if you were born in a third world country or if you lived in Syria or Iraq? There are people out there every bit as smart as you and I, but who are struggling to stay alive because of the circumstances in which they find themselves? Whatever we have is a gift given by God. Scripture puts it this way in the book of Deuteronomy because God knew that when he blessed Israel, they would have the same problem. And here's what God says in Deuteronomy 8 verse 18, "But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth and so confirms his covenant which he swore to your forefathers as it is today." It is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth. Everything we are, everything we own is a gift from God. We are stewards, not owners. And as stewards instead of owners, we are responsible before God. We are responsible before God to handle his stuff in a way that honors him and that puts his interests ahead of our own. Isn't that a marvelous thought to contemplate? Because you know what else that means? That means that when you and I come to the end of our lives and when history ends, we're all going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ and he's going to hold us accountable for what we have done with what he has entrusted to us. And if we have put his interests ahead of our own, then we will hear the words, "Well done, good and faithful." Servant, you have been faithful over little, I will put you over much. But if we haven't been faithful, then you know what he's going to say? "Depart from me because I never knew you." Incredibly sobering words. The parable in Matthew 25 of the three servants who received five, two, and one talents is a powerful explanation of this biblical truth, isn't that? The guy with five talents invested it, got five back, received praise from the master. Same thing with the guy that had the two talents, invested them, got them back, multiplied them, praised from the master. But the guy with the one talent, remember what he did? He stuffed it in the ground because he thought his master was cruel and harsh and he didn't want to risk losing it. And the master was furious with him. You know why? Because the bottom line for that particular servant was not the master's well-being, but he was covering his own behind. He was more concerned about his own standing than he was for the coming of God's kingdom. And you've heard me say this before, God would rather have you and I take a chance, make a mistake, invest our time, talent, and treasure in the coming of his kingdom even if we lose it as long as his interests are more important than our own interests because that is what he is after. He wants us to be faithful in the little. How can he entrust us with eternal riches where we get to run his kingdom for all eternity if we haven't learned to manage our time, talent, and treasure on his behalf in the here and now? We are stewards. We're not owners. So that's a very important principle. There is still a third principle that I want to try to touch on in as much time that we have this morning. I need to skip ahead a couple here. And that is this. Proper stewardship takes careful thought and planning. Let me say it again. Careful stewardship or good stewardship takes careful thought and planning. And that's one of the reasons we read these verses together from 2 Corinthians chapter 8 because I find it incredibly instructive how Paul goes about encouraging these Corinthian Christians to increase their level of generosity. We don't have a lot of time to talk about this, but he starts off by playing two provinces against each other. He plays the Macedonians off against the Achaeans. He plays off Macedonia over against Corinth because he had earlier told the Macedonians how generous the Corinthians were. They had already organized this whole campaign to raise funds for the poor saints in Jerusalem. And this he says, and you can read it later on in the chapter, this has stirred up the Macedonians to become incredibly generous. Now he uses the generosity of the Macedonians to stir up the Corinthians saying to them, the Macedonians out of their extreme poverty, they gave everything they had. They pleaded with us for the privilege of giving to the relief of the saints in Jerusalem. And he says, now I want you to get on the wall to make sure that the offering that you've promised, that you can raise it. Because it isn't good enough to make promises and pledges, what really matters is can you carry it through? And in the process of doing that in this particular passage, he outlines for us a number of very practical principles on stewardship that we would take well under advisement. And let's see how far we can get just running through those very quickly. Number one, he says, our giving should be deliberate. Our giving should be deliberate. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give. Too often what happens with people when it comes to stewardship is we spend it on our expenses. We spend it on our own pleasures or entertainment. And then if anything is left over and the collection plate comes around or some cause is being collected for, well, I'll dig in my pocket and maybe I'll put in a 20 or I'll put in a 5 or I'll put in a quarter. And then I'm pretty proud because I'm being very generous. Giving needs to be deliberately planned. We'll talk more about that in a moment if we have time. The second thing I want us to notice is that giving should be freely. It should be from the heart. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. One of the men here the other day asked me the question, you know, he said, why is it that God loves a cheerful giver? I said, you tell me. And he said, it's because God hates sour dough. God hates sour dough. He loves a cheerful giver. And moving along, our giving should be proportional. Verse 12, if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have. It's acceptable according to what you have, not according to what you do not have. We cannot give what we do not have, but we can give from whatever little we do have. And then Paul goes on to state for us the biblical principle that drives giving in Christian community. Listen to these verses. Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you're hard pressed, but rather that there might be equality. At the present time, your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, the magical word. As it is written, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Who here remembers where that quotation comes from? He who gathered little did not have too little. How is that word again? He who gathered much did not have too much. He who gathered little did not have too little. The quotation marks comes from the Old Testament. The manna in the wilderness. You remember the story. God said, "I'm going to feed you from heaven." And God says, "Every morning when you get up, this manna," the word means what is it because they didn't know what it was. It was bread from heaven. You can only gather for the day. And God's people are always very human, isn't it? Because what if it doesn't come tomorrow? So let me gather as much as I can. What happened when they gathered as much as they could? It was spoiled. So now God says, "Well, when it comes to the Sabbath, you're not going to get manna, so on Friday, you've got to take a double portion." And these good faithful Israelites, what do they say? "Oh, but then I disobeyed God last time. I'm not going to disobey him this time, so I'm only going to gather for the day." Guess what happened? Little hungry on Saturday, weren't they? And Paul uses this story to drive home an incredibly practical biblical truth. And that is the principle of equality in the body of Christ. Remember how John put it later on in 1 John chapter 3 verses 17 and 18, "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth." And here lies the challenge for Christian community. If God blesses you, the purpose of the blessing is to share it with others around you so that there is no inequality in the body of Christ. My experience is the poor like that a lot better than the rich. Isn't that the truth? So the challenge is to have our hearts transformed. You know, this doesn't mean people aren't responsible to work. It doesn't mean creating a welfare state. I mean, you know, communism tried to do it by legislation. That didn't work. Western governments try to do it by taxing the rich and giving it to the poor. That doesn't really work. What God is after is generosity from the heart. And if we are led by the Spirit and if we understand that everything we have is a gift that God has given us to use for his purposes, then as we do that from the heart, we share generously in places of need for the glory of God. And very often I hear stories of people in a community like this or in other churches who struggle and are in despair and God will lay their need on somebody else's heart. They will invest money into their situation or whatever else. And it just is an incredible blessing. I've told you this story before when Michelle and I were at seminary. The last year of my seminary, a life there. We had just gotten married, wanted to prove that God was our provision, gave for a whole year on the little money that we had received at our wedding. The Lord arranged free rent or free lodging for us that particular year. But I'll never forget two kids that I barely knew, barely knew, decided that they were going to forward their tithe to us for the course of that year. It helped us get through. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but to this day I carry those folks in my heart because I know that they were motivated by the love of God and they were a tremendous blessing to us in our own time of need. Well, one more thing just very quickly that I'm going to ask Dearon to come up. Our giving should be regular. And the scripture verse to go with that is from the earlier letter to Corinth, 1 Corinthians chapter 16, the verses 1 and 2. Now about the collection for God's people. Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first day of the week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income. There's the proportional giving thing again, saving it up so that when I come, no collections need or will have to be made. On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income. Dearon was telling me the other day, why do you think the Canada Revenue Agency wants business owners to deduct at source as opposed to waiting to the end of the year? Because they're smart enough to know that when people wait to the end of the year, there's usually not much left over, isn't that true? And isn't it true in your own giving patterns to the church, if you wait until the end to determine what your offering is, it's almost always gone before you get to the offering. You've heard the story about the farmer whose cow was pregnant and gave birth to twins. And he was so excited about it, he went running to his wife and he said, "Guess what? We've not only got one calf, we've got two calves, and I'm so thankful to the Lord for this, that one calf I'm dedicating to the Lord and the other calf I'm keeping for ourselves." Time goes on. One of the calves gets sick, dies. And with a sad face, he comes and tells his wife that one calf has died and she says to him, "You know, that's really too bad because now we're without that income from that particular calf." And he says, "Oh no, that's not the case at all. It was the Lord's calf that died. It's always the Lord's calf that dies." Haven't you ever discovered that? The biblical principle is one of first fruits. You know, when the early immigrants came to this country, many of them were poor as church mice, but many of them would take their paycheck and before they spent it on groceries and they spent it on bills, they had, in their case, two envelopes in which they put money. The first was the offering for the church and the other was what they were dedicating to the cause of Christian education. And they learned to live on the rest of their money. You know, in this day and age, a lot of us live way beyond our means and because we live beyond our means, we can't do what God is calling us to do. And what God is after is to bring us back into a biblical place of stewardship where we responsibly learn what it is to steward the resources that God has given us so that we, in turn, can be a blessing. If you look at your own life, how blessed you have been by other people who have invested time, talent, and treasure in you, can you imagine what a blessing a congregation like this can be to the city, to the province, to the nations? If we take our resources, sow them generously as the Holy Spirit leads us, do it wisely, with great forethought, and watch God increase the harvest of our sowing. Little enthusiasm here, would be. But you see, that takes faith and it takes discipline. And I'm going to ask Darren to come up. Darren, as many of you know, used to be a pilot with the armed forces, and has more recently left the armed forces, and now is a banker. And if you can believe it, even bankers can be saved. So. I'm going to keep it short, but it is a 20-year walk. We're going to take the highlights. So we're going to go back to 1995. I was a young lieutenant in the Air Force. I got my first posting to Victoria, BC, to fly helicopters off our warships. Meg and I were pretty much newlyweds, just us, no children, no dependents, and possibilities were endless. Positive possibilities were endless, but I messed it up early. I was an early Christian, so early in my walk, very controlling with my money. I was smarter than God when it came to money, and it was my money. So I was going to take care of that. Between '95 and '98, I basically almost put us in bankruptcy. I purchased a beautiful townhouse that I could not afford. I filled it with beautiful items I could not afford on credit. And to top it off, I bought a brand new, we'll call it sports car, that I couldn't afford. And then I made a budget to prove that I couldn't afford it at the end of it. So that was a mess. This was actually the beginning of my banking, I think. But anyways, so that was a three-year storm in the making, and by '98, the storm had arrived. In the spring of '98, I was deployed to the Persian Gulf on one of our warships. We were paycheck to paycheck, and Meg was constantly having to look for a higher paying job, more hours to make ends meet. So I left in April that year. By May, she got fired. And I remember, I got a call on the ship on HF radio that my wife is in distress, and we were in big trouble, and I was halfway around the world, and there's nothing I could do about it. But it gets worse. Five months into the deployment, I had back issues. I was returned to Canada with medical issues, removed from flying duties. My pay went down because of that. We were maybe a week and a half from financial ruin. We were like one paycheck from being ruined. So that was '98. I joined a men's group that fall. The leader of the men's group was an investment broker. He was doing really well at the time, but he had known hard times from that industry. And he spoke often about the importance of stewardship, ties, and offerings. And slowly, I began to listen to my control on finances became, you know, I was less controlling over time. Anyways, by Christmas of '98, I remember we went to a hockey game in Victoria, kind of like the Belleville Bulls level, and I sat beside this gentleman, this men's group leader, and I had a chance to ask him some questions about his giving. And I asked him, "How do you decide how much you give?" And he always said that he gave 10 percent, and then for offerings, how the Lord led him. I thought that was interesting. I said, "How often do you give?" He says, "Every week," because that's how he got paid. I thought that was interesting because I knew his paycheck was tied to the stock market, and the stock market goes down some weeks. So, you know, I asked him, "Do you just like get a refund or claw back from God, or what do you do?" And, you know, he actually said he always tied 10 percent, whether it was a gain or a loss that week. So, whatever the number was, positive or negative, he gave 10 percent. I was like, bam, a 2 by 6 on the back of my head. Like, the level of faith to do that is unbelievable. He must have had resources, but that was a huge level of faith. So, anyways, that Christmas of '98, I gave what I could, and I gave $25. So, I did the math last night, and I actually had to move the decimal point in my banking calculator. That was basically 1/100 of a percentage of my income that year, and I actually had to borrow it from a line of credit because I didn't have the 25 bucks to give the church. It was really embarrassing. We had a huge problem. Anyways, we entered '99. That was the fourth year of the storm. I heard a teaching from Clive Pick on stewardship, tithes, and offerings. It really impacted Magda and I. We decided in '99 to start tithing 10 percent on our net income, so after tax. It was a tough year. We cut back a bit, or sorry, cut back a lot. Magda got a bit of work when she could, when it was available. So, by the end of '99, we hit a huge hole. My medical issues for my back had really worsened. I was facing what they call a medical review board. That's basically where they decide to keep you or cut you. For the military, usually 50/50. We were broke. The housing market in B.C. was crashing. We were just hanging on. I remember going to my commanding officer and saying, "Either bankruptcy or proposal was probably in my future," and he reminded me that that was an item for dismissal for an officer in the military. I could be dismissed just on those grounds. So, yeah, this is great. Here we come. So, spring of 2000, God plucked us from the fire. The medical review board ruled in my favor. They said, "We're going to keep you, but we're going to take you off of helicopters and put you on airplanes." Better for my back. We got a new lease on life. I got a new flying job up Vancouver Island. My pay went back up, but the road ahead was going to be really, really, really rocky. It's like I told Pastor John, it was like trying to lose weight. The first five pounds are brutal. The last five pounds are brutal, and you've got to work out the hallway in between and stick with it. So, February 2000, we moved up Vancouver Island. Our townhouse did not sell. We couldn't find anything to rent. We bought a little 1938 house in town, in Comox, B.C. So now I'm carrying two mortgages. This is awesome. Plus, I get to leave the province to Port Echla Prairie, Manitoba for four months to take a flying course, increase costs. The military did help me with a short-term loan to try to carry both places, only for six months. I passed the course. The townhouse sold three weeks before the six-month cutoff, and we took a $48,000 loss on the townhouse. But it actually made me happy that it sold, so that was a good thing. It was only $48,000. Anyway, I'm just being really open here. Just about done. So now it's $2,000. Between 2000 and 2003, we really began to walk out the recovery, our financial situation. We re-heard that teaching by Clyde Pick on stewardship. We created a budget once the townhouse was sold, a budget of just what we needed, not what the Joneses had, but what we needed to live. We put tithes and offerings, our giving at the top of that budget, and we've kept it there ever since on our family budget. Our family budget is handwritten on a piece of paper, nothing fancy, and we've always kept it that way. We started walking out the recovery. We started tithing 10% of gross, so before tax, whatever came in, on anything that came in, and at the frequency we received it, so then it was twice a month with the military. Huge temptation throughout that time. Why? Because as soon as we started tithing, I'll say as per scripture, that's a long story, but as per scripture, everything we owned seemed to break. I mean, if it had a motor, if it ran on electricity, if it was a vehicle, it broke, and it broke hard. Huge temptation to cut back. Well, we'll cut back this month and then fix it up, and then we'll catch up. That wasn't going to happen, so the motors of our hearts were tested during that time. So that's like 2000, 2003. So how does the story end? We were able to find some great mentorship at our church on Vancouver Island in these areas of stewardship. We never gave up on trusting God's word that he would provide for our needs, and he never let us down. We left Comox with a good house sale. It literally made up within $100 of the losses from Victoria five years earlier. Ten years later, so if we roll ahead to last year, the faith that I had built allowed me to leave a great-paying Air Force job with the security and benefits of a government job for family stability to improve that. I really needed that faith to go into really what's a sales related job with no guarantees. We still work our finances week to week. We've never given up on God's promise. He's never let us down that he will provide for us. The numbers have seemed impossible in the past, but he did never let us down, so thank you. And if Darren's story registers with you because I learned a long time ago, it doesn't matter how much money you make, it's how much you spend that determines how much is left over at the end of the day. There are some websites listed on the bottom of this that have a lot of resources in terms of managing money, both practically and in God's way, and let's step out in faith. Let's just stretch ourselves wherever we find ourselves in our giving pattern in a way that gives God the opportunity to come through afresh and show us how great and how big he is in terms of creating his character of generosity in our hearts and in our lives. Can we do that? [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:46:20.480; remove through 00:46:25.000] [BLANK [CUT]_AUDIO] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:46:25.000; resume after this marked segment]