This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. We're continuing in our series called Resurrected Life. And as I talk about that, I want to just remind you what we're referring to here. When we talk about living a resurrected life, we're talking about what the Bible says is the very reason why Jesus came to die in a cross and rose again from the dead. It wasn't just to pay a penalty for sin, which it very much does, but it was also there to empower the Christian, the follower of Jesus Christ, to live a totally different life. In fact, the Bible puts in the terms of there is an old you that was self-centered and selfish that was only trying to protect itself and find security in itself that actually, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, willingly chooses to die to itself in faith, trusting that there is a new life that Jesus Christ himself will resurrect inside of you of a new nature, one that is God-centered, not self-centered. So when we talk about a resurrected life, we're talking about what it means to go away from an old way of thinking, an old way of living to be born again and to come alive to a new way of thinking, a new way of living, that's totally centered and empowered by Jesus Christ. So as we've talked about different things, we've talked about marriage, we've talked about parenting. Last week, Joe helped us talk about health, and this week we're going to talk about finances and how that relates there. Finances I bet has been on your radar screen more than normal in the last six to nine months. In light of where our country's at, what has been, for most of us that are alive still here right now, the worst type of financial situation our country's been in since we've been alive even, it has been a serious time. We know that our own state here, the state of Florida, is experiencing the consequences of that in very direct ways. We're one of the leaders, if not the leader, in a number of foreclosures and so on. Unemployment, I think, even around the nation, is right around 10% or closing in on it. It is a scary thing. There's some sitting among us here this morning, they don't have jobs. Some that are under employed here, some that are about to graduate from a school or graduate school, they're not sure they don't have a job to go to. There's some of us that are wondering, can we keep our homes? There's some of us that wonder, how are we going to send a kid to college? There are all kinds of questions on that. And what I want to tell you this morning is that the power in the life of Jesus Christ is powerful enough, whether it's good economic times or bad economic times to resurrect something that's unbelievably has the blessing of God, that unbelievably will give you hope in the midst of difficult times that will transform the way you think about your whole area of life, especially related to finances. So, rather than one particular passage, we're going to look at a bunch this morning. In fact, I've handed out a bunch of little slips of paper. If you've got one, when it's your time, if you'll read yours, nice, loud and clear, when it's that time. You might want to just jot down some of these scripture passages so you can go back and reflect on them later on during the week as that comes up. But anyway, what I want to challenge you to do this morning is to think about several things. But to help me get started off with that, I need five people that are willing to invest a dollar into today's sermon. And I want to start off with our students first. Do I have any students that are willing to invest a real $1 bill into today's sermon? Do any of you have a dollar bill? That's the real question, right? Gift cards are not accepted. IOUs from you guys are definitely not accepted. Is there any student that has a dollar bill that's willing to invest it into today's sermon? I see Becky Boss, Becky come and bring me your dollar bill. There's one. I have any other students. What was that? Well, obviously, I'm finding that really quickly. Thank you, Becky. Oh, OK. All right. Oh, Josh, that's your dollar bill, too, right? Yeah. Oh, here comes another one. Oh, this is my dollar bill. Hey, I have anybody else now that's willing to donate. I need two more dollars. Two more dollars. I got one here. Anybody else? Oh, here comes one. All right, I finally got four dollars. Now I've got to remember who you are. But I actually make no promises to give these back to you all at all. All right. So I've got change for a five dollar bill. I've got five ones. And in this morning, I have five changes that I want you to consider when it comes and relates to your finances. Five of them. We're going to start off with number one. If you have your outline there and you want to follow along with that, there's going to be five total there. We had a printer malfunction there. Sorry for the small box, but flip the page over to whatever you want with that. Five changes that will resurrect your finances. Number one, make God the ultimate thing, not money. Make God the ultimate thing and not money. So that begs the question to begin with. What is the ultimate thing in your life? And is it money? An unknown author said one time, the real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. And think about that for a second. What have you lost at all? And some of you are going, well, that's not that hard to do right now. But think about, I don't know if you lost at all. Ask yourself a question there. If you lost it all, would you still have a reason for living? Would you feel like your life still had purpose? If you lost it all, would you have still a sense of joy? I mean, not that you wouldn't be sad, but would you still have a deep sense of inner joy anywhere still in your life? Would you be able to find peace if you lost it all? Would you have hope? I'm talking if you literally lost it all. The house, the bank account, if you lost it all, would you? If money is something that you need to be the ultimate source of answering any of those questions, then money is becoming an ultimate thing for you. It's a good thing, but you've let it become an ultimate thing. And God says very clearly that he is the only one that's supposed to be an ultimate thing in your life, not money. And if not then, then ask yourself why? I mean, why would God say this? Why would God say that he's supposed to be the ultimate thing? Well, who's got Luke 16, verse 13? Chapter 16, verse 13. Who's got it? Read it loud. It says very clearly right there in God's word. You know what? You can't serve two masters. You can either be devoted to one, and you're going to hate the other, but you're not going to be devoted to both. And God says quite plainly there that if money is your master, then you're in a hate God in comparison. But if God's your master, then in comparison you can hate money, you'll despise money. Not completely, it's a good thing, but you will despise it in the sense of it being your ultimate thing. But my question for you this morning is money become an ultimate thing for you. Because God says that place is reserved for him and him alone. If money is the ultimate thing you look to to give you joy, hope, life, then money is become your God. In fact, the American journalist and author Ambrose Beers, who lived back in the early 20th century, he defines money this way. Money defined is the God of the world's leading religion. Do you want to know what was the world who most the world worships? It's money. It's their God. It's what they're looking to to answer those hard questions. Why am I living? What's going to give me peace and happiness? What am I clinging to and looking to to give me security, ultimate security? It's often the case money for most of us. If money is your God, then you become a slave to it is what the Bible is getting at. Whatever is your God is the one that you are enslaved to serve and slave to worship. It was where part of the problem begins. Exodus 23 says this, the first of the 10 commandments, who's got it? Jeff, get here, Jeff, a little louder. Commandment number one, you should have no other gods before me. Thanks, Dave, for trying there. It's the very first commandment. Why is it the first commandment? Because all the rest of them hinge upon it. If God is not the one thing that you serve, the one that you are enslaved to, although the Bible says he invites you not as slaves, as sons and daughters, to be adopted into his family. If you serve him, then you can't serve anything else, and you can't serve money. God is the only source of true hope, joy, and life. In fact, Philippians 4.19 says he's got it. God says he's going to supply all your needs according to his riches. Now let me ask you to thank for a second. Think about God's riches. In his account, what does he not have that you're lacking? What does he not have the power to give you that you need? What does he not willing to do because of his love for you? He says according to his righteous and Christ Jesus, who, by the way, is the one that lay down his life for you. God's inviting you this morning to say, look, there's only one thing that's supposed to be your ultimate thing. And can you believe it for this is a possibility, a strong possibility, if you ask me, that this entire recession, that especially this country and the world is feeling, is from the very hand of God as a gracious tool to remind us that, look, don't put your trust in this, because it will disappoint you, because it can't satisfy you ultimately, because as easy as it comes sometimes, it can go just as easily. It's a good thing, but it's not the ultimate thing that's for God and Him alone. In fact, Galatians 5.22 and 23 tells us what God produces, that we think this will produce, but what God produces. Who's got that verse? Nice and loud. But the fruit of the Spirit stand up. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. You know, I bet every single person, if they had a choice of the fruit of the Spirit, if they thought they could get that out of life, and that was a guarantee, they wouldn't care about this, but the problem is we think this is what's necessary to experience the fruit of God's Spirit, the love, the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, the gentleness, faithfulness, the self-control. We're looking in the wrong place. As God says, you know, it's a fruit of my spirit. It's not from this. Change number one. Make God the ultimate thing, not money. And once you've done change number one, you're ready for change number two. Change number two is this, give God your first and your best. Give God your first and best. Embracing change number two is completely dependent upon you embracing change number one. Until you come to a place where you realize that God is the ultimate thing, you're never going to give him your first. You're never going to give him your best in life that he requires. And that is, by the way, something that he requires. Somebody read Exodus 23, 19. Nice and loud. Who's got it? Which fruits? The first fruits. Now, this is written back during a time the agriculture was the main monetary tool of the time. He says, you should bring your first fruits, the things that before you feed yourself, before you feed your families, the things that you look to and that first come in, those belong to God. Set those apart to him. What else does he say? Number 1829, who's got that the best? Not the mediocre. Not the one that you really don't, not the mountain you really don't care about anyway. This is the very best that you have. Your first, your best God challenges you to give. Because God needs it, right? Because God's up there and God's saying, man, if I had your two bucks, I would be living. Right? What does this mean to God? How does he need this? He did pretty good, creating the universe, right, with the spoken word that we live in. Creating us, of course God, has no need of this. But why does he tell us? Because we have need of it. We have need to give him our best, to give him what is first in our lives. It's a sign. It's a reminder of our love for God, when we do something like that. I remember the summer that I had decided I was going to get engaged to Laura. Of course I was thinking, I've got to get a ring. And all you guys who have been married have been through that scenario. So I could have gone down day one with my quarter, which is what it all cost back then, and gone down to a little gumball machine, because they had lots of plastic rings in there. And I could have gotten a very high quality plastic ring. And get them that and presented that to her, right? Well, even though I could have done that, okay, that would be next to, you know, that would result in homicide, which would be a bad thing. No, of course I want to do that. Okay, it had to be not just even a mediocre. It had to be for what I could do my best. I worked a job for an entire summer saving up for that one ring. Because it had to be the best, at least in the best that I could do. It had to be what was first, because what did it represent? It represented something that I wanted to share my life with, who I was going to say till death do us part. You don't just say that to anybody, but who you do say it to, you bring your best. You bring your first. I remember when we were looking at buying a car a few years ago, we were, knew we were going to be adopting, and at that time we didn't know we were going to, I don't think we didn't know we were going to have baby number six, but we had to find a large car. Okay, well, a car that would seat eight, and there's not too many cars at seat eight, but you know what, we learned our research carefully, the cars, and safety was a high factor. We didn't just want a car that was okay, all right? We didn't want a car that was like your old, is it Ford Pinto? You know, that, you know, just don't get rear-ended. Okay, you'll be fine. You know, no, we're putting our kids in there. You know, we wanted it to be the safest thing. We wanted it to have all the side airbags and the front airbags. We wanted to know that we'd be securing it. We wanted to know that if there wasn't accident, got forbid that this vehicle would stand and survive pretty fine. And if you've seen our vehicle, you think, yeah, that will survive a nuclear Holocaust. You know, it's, but we had to do that because we wanted to do that because our children deserved our best. They deserved first things because they were valued, because they were, they were precious to us. When God's telling you to give him your first and give him your best, he's giving you a tool to say, look, God, you are my ultimate thing. And how can I test that because I'm going to continue to give you my first and my best in my life? So when God tells us to give it the tithe are 10% as a minimum, as a starting place, to him and to his service, it's not because he needs it because you need it. And he graciously is inviting you to do that. And could you think in your current economic situation here that he might be graciously inviting you to a deeper relationship with him and a trust with him in your current financial situation, which I bet is not as good as it was a year ago. Think about that. Change number two is give God your first and your best. And that leads us to change number three. The next change of the five that you need. Don't settle for living in debt. Don't settle for living in debt. Many of us in this church started back in January, a financial peace university course, which many of you have heard of Dave Ramsey and his material. It was the first time we'd used it here in our church. It was the first time Lord and I had personally been through it and many of you, we had a few that had been through it before, but we had about 40 people go through it in the church here. So many of you here have been through that course and experienced that here. Some of the things that we learned in that class, which by the way I would highly recommend, which has been really good, is that according to the recent USA Today article about debt, did you know that 78% of baby boomers had mortgage debt? That's almost 8 out of 10. Now, if you look at that just back, say like back to the 1940s and 50s, you could flip it. Less than 20% of people even had a mortgage at all for their home. Things that changed. 59% have credit card debt. And 56% have car payments. Radically different statistics than what you would have seen if you were growing up and living in the 1940s and the 1950s. Things that changed. Amazingly, debt used to be looked upon back in the early 20th century as something that, oh, well, there are a few people that just have to do that sometimes. Things get tough and they have to do a second mortgage. They even have to have a mortgage, but those are for the people that are really struggling. But if you look at our culture here today, everybody just about is in some form of debt. I would guess that 90% of us at home homes here probably are still paying off a mortgage for that. At least. But the car payments, the credit card payments continue to be there. There's the thinking rationale that Dave Ramsey points out in his course too that you always have to always have a car payment. You just got to assume that, well, that's just kind of part of life. Everybody has a car payment. Well, that's not the way it used to be. And who says you got to do that? And he comes through and gives you step-by-step plans of how you can, within a couple of years, get a really workable car. And if you keep working the plan over a period of five to ten years, you can get and keep yourself regularly working and having a very, very nice car with zero car payments. If you're intentional, if you plan, if you make it important to you, debt has become something that we've just settled as part of life. But not according to what God in his word says. God's word warns us to stay away from debt. Who's got Proverbs 22-7? The rich ruler with a poor and the borrower is servant to the lender. Earl Wilson said this, if you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. It's amazing how important you are to some people after this a couple of car payments, isn't it? Who's got Romans 13-8? Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. For he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The Scriptures encourage us to stay away from debt. Don't owe anybody anything except to love them, just as Christ has loved you. By God's grace, some of you probably have learned that lesson and are learning that, and many that went through this course have learned that. I know that's something that by God's grace that the Lord and I have made as a priority, there are 18 years of marriage. You know, other than a house payment, but to stay out of debt completely, wherever we can, to not have a car payment. You can do it. It is possible. And it is a very incredible tool that God uses to keep you free from the love of this, so that your heart can be focused on him. Well, change number three. Don't settle for living in debt. Change number one was make God the ultimate thing, not money to give God your first and best. Three, don't settle for living in debt and change number four. Create a plan that will work. Create a plan that will work. The old adage holds true that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Anybody that's lived long enough to have tested that theory would say, yeah, that's probably true. If you set off without a mark, you set out with nothing to aim at for, well, you'll hit that target every single time. But God knows it's important for us to focus, to know what we're shooting for. Just thank for a second here about the amount of energy and time that most of us put into getting from point A to point B. I'm talking about directions. In the last ten years or so, whether it's Google Maps, whether it's MapQuest, or how many of you raise your hand own a GPS? Nothing to be ashamed about, yeah. Can you believe what that has done in our technology and helping us plan? Now, of course, the GPS is doing most of the hard work, isn't it, as far as the plan? But you know the destination. And the destination is plugged into that baby. And then if you know exactly how you want to go and where you need to go and stop on the way, anything can compute whether or not there's going to be traffic concerns, right? If you've got some of the nicer versions, it takes that into consideration. It can get downloaded traffic reports and if there's been a crash, it can reroute you. And what happens beautifully if you make the wrong turn? It says recalculating, right? It's like, yes, recalculating. How's it recalculating because there's a plan? It's revolutionized. I mean, it's changing our reputation as men, isn't it? Those that don't have to ask directions, of course we don't have to ask directions because we've got our GPS. It's changing our entire reputation as men. But isn't it amazing the amount of focus and the energy and the time we placed and just helping us get to a physical destination, whether it's a vacation, whether it's getting to business appointment, whatever you need? But how much time do you actually spend investing in preparing a plan for yourself financially? Of knowing what's important, knowing where you want to be at one point, knowing where God tells you you should be, knowing what will actually help you meet the goals that you hold closest in your heart and life? The things that when you're retiring and looking back on you want to say, yeah, we put first things first, we made some goals and we were able to achieve them by God's grace. But how much time are you spending planning with that? How much time do you really devote to that? Well, the scriptures tell us we need to follow sound biblical principles. That's the first part of making a plan. It's not just coming up with anything. We've got to follow God's principles and how to do life because He created it. And foundational number one principle under that is to not do it out of love for money, even as we talked about in number one. I'm point one, who's got first Timothy 6, 10? Damn, and who's got Hebrews 13, 5 going right along with it? Because keep yourselves free from the love of money because rather than carry George Washington in your pocket, God say, you know what, you've got my Holy Spirit in your heart. And if you think George Washington can solve your problems and get you where you want to be, well, you know, George has got some limitations that you need to consider. But you can have my Holy Spirit. And every follower of Christ does who comes and lives inside your heart that guides you that's transforming into this new creature in Him that will guide you. Because God says that He's going to provide for you. He'll never leave you. He'll never forsake you. George will. George will leave you and forsake you if you put your trust in George. Jesus Christ will not. Following sound biblical principles where I love a God, not the love of money is where our plan must always begin. But then also involves making wise financial choices. Who's got Proverbs 14, 24? Wealth of the wise as their crown. The folly of fools, yields, folly. God tells us that you've got to be wise to be wealthy. To trust God and know that. Let me give you some examples of that. There's no practical in our financial peace university courses help with this. And tremendous amount of ways for many of us. But here's one place to begin. Use a budget. Now, notice I said the word use. I didn't say make a budget. How many of you have made a budget before? All right. Since Lauren, I got married, we made budgets. We can go back and look at, ooh, you know, 1994 budget. 1996 budget. You know, we really got serious 2000 budget. Whatever else. But you know what, it wasn't until 2008, really, and going through the financial peace university group, that we are using a budget. I can't tell you many times, we can make it. We are great at making budgets. But using it is completely different, isn't it? Using a budget is part of a plan to know and to follow. A little latimer said this. A budget is a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions. Now, you're always kind of wondering sometimes, or at least we were in the past like, all right, you know, what are we spending, you know, for food, or, you know, what does it cost to do that, or, you know, or how come we're always kind of running out of the end of the month there and stretching? Where is it all going? What you do, a budget, and you track with it in a real way, responsible way, and you find out real quick. And you take uses like working with cash, which is another real practical thing, using cash. I've been surprised. I was surprised that just to learn things from the class of things like that, you know that you'll spend, I think, what was it like? Those have been to the class, help me remember. In the like 14% more or so on average, that you will spend more just by using a credit card than using cash. Can I thought, oh, that sounds kind of exaggerated. Are you really, do you go out somewhere? I mean, because, I mean, many of you probably are like us, and we had used credit cards, but we always paid them off the end of the month. But am I really going to spend more if I go in and use a credit card? Well, since we started using cash the last few months, you're going to be amazed. This feels different. You know, to come in and actually, you know, see George and his cousins going to somebody else feels different. You are somehow more conscious about it. The statistics are true. These are helpful tools. These are things to help you develop a plan and using and thinking through things that will help serve you in that. Having an emergency fund, these are some of the things that are suggested and that the Bible encourages us to save. It says, just like the aunt saves for the winter time, so you too should sound investing, looking at principles and making sound and wise investments for the future, not playing the lottery, making good decisions, wise decisions. The Bible encourages to make those components part of our plan. You know what? Just like the GPS, FPU, Financial Peace University of that course, it can be a great tool to help you do that. This might sound like I'm making this big plug for Dave Ramsey. I didn't know anything about Dave Ramsey's on January. I don't read all his books or anything about that, but I can tell you, having been through myself is material and never having been through a course like that, that you have a lot to learn if you go through that. And just the whole process, the whole technique, and doing it with some other people would serve you greatly if you did that. In fact, I want to be so bold to say, I think every single one of you should, if you haven't, gone through that. Unless you've gone through some other like crown ministry course or something like that. Because my bet is, you don't have a well thought out plan if you haven't. Use an expert to do that. Now, the Timmer Creek Science class is a pretty good science class, and they could design you a GPS. But let me ask you this, would you buy the Timmer Creek Science class GPS or what's yours, Jed? What brand is yours? Jed, I don't even know. What? Garma? Garmin. Garmin. Sorry, it's my loss coming out. Garmin, would you buy a Garmin one? Which one would you want to spend a 1 to 200 bucks on? All right, why? Because it's not high school students designing it in a science lab who are learning, right? Because you know there's a level of expertise. You know it's been tested. You know you can trust it. You would do that because you want to make sure you have a good plan. You know, FPU will help you or something like that will help you know your destination. Because I bet half of us here, if you haven't been through something like that, don't even know your destination. What do we feel like our values as a family, where we want to see ourselves financially down the road? GPS is great because it has all the facts, right? It knows where all the streets are. Okay, it knows where the highways are. It knows where the toll roads are. Hemant was the last time you gathered the facts about your own situation. That was a great course just to help you think through the facts and figure out the things about that. How are your mutual funds doing? Have you checked? I mean for years I haven't checked just because I've been like, you know, if I don't know it, then I can't get that bad, right? No, that's ostrich theology. You know, no, you got to check. You got to know. I remember a couple of years ago, I had a family that I knew that came and told me, in fact, this guy was laid off from work. He said, you know, they had been through the financial piece class at a different church before they came to ours. And they said, you know, if we had not been through that class, we would be suffering right now. But because we had three to six months in an emergency fund, we're able to survive and ride through this wave of unemployment. Of course, that was before all this stuff hit in the last six months here in our country. Create a plan that will work that's changed number four. And last suggestion. Last change I want to encourage you to make here this morning. Change number five. Work hard the plan you create. See, it's not just create a plan that will work, but you got to work hard the plan you create. Who's got Proverbs 3, 17? I mean, not Proverbs. Colossians. Colossians 3, 17. Whatever you do, do whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do all the name of Lord Jesus Christ, do it as unto God Himself, do it as worship, and do it wholeheartedly, is what this verse is getting at. And finances should be no exception to that. You should commit yourself to it. It's one thing, again, it's like the difference between having a budget and using the budget. You've got to devote yourselves to work hard and using it. Two things to do under this too is make sure you have focus. To take focus in your time and attention to make the plan work. If you're married, that means constantly connecting and talking to your spouse about it. For us, it's like every time we get it, every time it's a payday and a paycheck, we need to sit down and have a little budget committee. Talking through where we're at. The start of each month, thinking about, all right, what are the extra things happening this month? What's going to go on and having a plan and sharing it? You've got to do that. You need that also to help you with accountability. For those of you that aren't married, find a close friend that also shares the same values here and hold each other accountable. That's necessary if you're going to really work hard the plan that you have. And as Dave Ramsey says so well in his course, what kind of intensity should you have? Gazelle intensity. What kind of intensity is that? That's a gazelle running from a lion trying to prey on it. Whatever it takes, getting away at all costs because what's at stake is death in many ways. It feels like that. That kind of intensity, God's Word, is encouraging us to do, to focus at it with all that we have. It takes focus, it takes intensity. You can't play with your plan. You've got to attack it. And you've got to have other people coming around side you do that. That's not a great thing about the courses that you're with with other people. You're being able to share successes and share where you're struggling still in that. But you've got to find people to do this with. I'm trying to remember this exactly. Just in our own individual financial piece class, we have four of them in our church just since January. And we just ended a couple weeks ago. We calculated our total debt at the beginning of the class. And then 13 weeks later or so, we calculated what our current debt was. If I didn't miss Calcula, I think it was $80,000 of debt was paid off in the course of 13 weeks. Just in our small group. I don't try to figure out who I was in my small group and things like that. But what I'm trying to say is with intensity working your plan, you'd be amazed at what could happen in 13 weeks. Our class was like, wow. And that's just one of the four. I would imagine, I don't know, Dave, you know what yours group was yet? That's because I got another week, right? It's Darren out here. Darren, he's teaching. Darren, you guys know for yours? Huh? Not done yet. So it's your last class that you calculate that. So they'll get calculations here shortly. But that's pretty amazing. $80,000 in 13 weeks. You know, just with like six couples in there. With intensity, it can happen. If you work hard the plan you create. What is wrapping things up here this morning? It's time for a change financially. It's time to see your finances resurrected in a God honoring way here this morning. Those of you, by the way, and there's 40 or so of you who went through financial peace. Okay, you've gotten tools. You've gotten equipped. You've got to work the plan. Let's hold each other accountable. Let's encourage one another. Let's pray for one another. Those of you who haven't been financial peace university. That's just the tool that we're using. That's working well. We're going to start a new class this summer starting in June. I want to encourage you to consider signing up for that. Take the challenge. I challenge you to do that. And again, as your pastor, this is your church home. Let me say, I think every single person of you, every single one, every single family needs to go through it. Now, if you can't do it this summer, we'll offer to get in the fall. But you need to go through it. And you maybe not won't even realize how much you need to go through it until you go through it. Okay, and if your finances, you're doing perfect, then don't worry about it. Okay, but I haven't met anybody who's doing perfect financially. Who couldn't still learn, who couldn't sharpen things in a very important area of your life. If you trust God, He promises us to bless us as a result. That's the promise from God's words. We trust Him that He will bless that. He will honor that. And He does that in lots of different ways. It's not always monetarily specifically. But it quite often can be when we make wise financial choices. We see the financial gain. But He always does spiritually. He always promises to do that. So who gave me a $1 bill this morning? With your permission, I'd like to keep your one. And I'd like to give you a five. Who else? Now, y'all are going to have to come to me. All right. Well, Riley, why don't I just keep yours? I like to also ask Jerry Hirschler to come forward. Jerry has been in the Financial Peace University class. Dave, you got the mic. Just to share a little bit about what it's meant to them personally as a family. Well, Kathy and I went through. We were almost finished going through the Financial Peace University. And we experienced a lot of the things that Scott mentioned earlier. One of the things was a sense of encouragement. Both Kathy and I have been exposed to some, I think, some wise counsel and finances, but we simply weren't living it. So we had a budget. We made a budget. In fact, I'd make the budget. But I didn't make all the daily spending decisions. Kathy makes daily spending decisions. So I'd know what was going on as she wouldn't. And she's making the decisions. And so in the end, we just kind of would spend all the money that we had planned on saving. So we weren't getting anywhere. And it was just frustrating. And this was, you know, 20-year pattern. And at some point, you realize, well, we can go to war over our finances. Or we can just kind of keep going like we're going. And that's what we did. So the class was an encouragement. And Kathy took my job. She said, you know, sorry. You're fired. I'm going to manage the money now. And so she does. I pay the bills, which there's not really a decision involved in a bill. You pay it or you don't. But she knows what's going on now. So that was a good thing. And then I just try to, on a regular basis, say, okay, Kathy, how are we doing? And are we on track? So the encouragement to do that, to do the hard things necessary, to stop, in our case, money leaking was really good. Another thing that was interesting was having discussions about money and how we spend our money in the decisions we make about that in a community. Money's a weird thing. Nobody really wants to have other people get in there stuff too much, because, you know, you have people making judgments on your financial decisions. And that's just downright uncomfortable. But the bottom line is that having a discussion with safe friends is a really good environment to get a reference point on how you're doing financially. So there's three senses of community. One was the small group we met in, and we had a safe group. And the money discussion isn't, you know, it's not in the too much information category. They were safe discussions. But another sense of community was the audience in the videos. And the audience that has taken financial peace university, where there's a lot of people who have done that. So there's a broad range of people who have taken this class, and who are on board. So you sense, okay, so, you know, this isn't just out in the left field. There's a whole community of people who are thinking this way. And then there's Dave Ramsey, who says, you know, I'm sitting on a pile of money, and I've done this, and it works. And he's not, you know, he's not a get rich quick scheme. So he's a sense, he's an authoritative figure. So you've got the sense of community to reference your own financial decisions in, which is valuable, because I don't know about your experience, but my experience is you just don't go up to people on Sunday morning and say, hey, how are you doing? How's that now worth going? Is that going up for you lately? You know what I mean? You just don't have conversations about money like that with people, because it's just out of bounds. So it was a great opportunity to both be encouraged and to have some discussions about money in a community and a healthy community. So let me challenge you this. Take that little registration tab. Most of you have already maybe filled that out. But on the front there, where it says community groups, if you're interested in getting in a financial peace community group, just check that box and put FPU beside it or financial class, whatever, just so we will know. And we'll make sure we follow up with you and let you know when the next class we're just starting in June, where it will be, what night, and so on. I want you to be able to have that opportunity to be a part of that here. Let's pray that. Father, we just thank you right now for the opportunity to trust you with our finances. And I pray that you'd be working with every person here in the room here on this morning to challenge them, to encourage them, Father, right now, to make you their ultimate thing. And as a way of making you their ultimate thing, God, to trust you with their whole area of finances, to trust you, to provide for them, and to come now, and to come bivocally, God, to reject debt-living, to come and make a plan, and to work their plan, and to use tools like financial peace or other good tools that are out there to do the same thing, to take it seriously. So God, we could live like the light and the soft of the world that you call us to be as followers of you. And so we can experience true financial freedom, and not be worried about the future, and not be worried about where everything's going to come from, because we've made good choices, small choices, taking baby steps along the way to position ourselves to be faithful to you. So we'll be in a position to give like you've called us to, and so God will be in a position to truly be free and living and worshiping you. If I pray for those right now, I can't have a talk like this without praying specifically for those that are without jobs within our congregation. God, they need work, they need to be able to provide for their families, and your word tells them they should provide for their families. So God will be looked to you to show them and meet those needs, and those that are underemployed to provide better employment for them as well, and those that are hurting in our communities. Those are not sure about, well, not they can keep paying their mortgage. God, would you meet their financial needs in a powerful way as they seek and they trust you? So Father, now continue to come and pray our hearts as we come to your table. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.