Today's scripture reading is from the book of Luke chapter 12 verses 13 to 34 and you can find that Underneath your seats and the Bibles on page 103 1 1031 Someone in the crowd said to him teacher tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me Jesus replied man who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you then he said to them watch out Beyond your guard against all kinds of greed a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions And he told them this parable the ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop He thought to himself what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops Then he said this is what I will do I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store all my grain and all my goods and I'll say to myself you have plenty of good things laid up for many years take life easy eat drink and be merry But God said to him you Fool this very night your life will be demanded from you Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself, but is not rich toward God Then Jesus said to his disciples Therefore I tell you do not worry about your life what you will eat or your body What you will wear life is more than food and the body more than clothes consider the ravens They do not sew or reap they have no storeroom or barn yet God feeds them And how much more valuable are you than birds? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life since you cannot do this very little thing? Why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the lilies grow they do not labor or spend yet I tell you not even Solomon and all his splendor was dressed like one of these if that is how God cloths the grass of the field Which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire how much more will he clothe you? Oh you of little faith and do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink do not worry about it for the pagan world runs after all such things And your father knows that you need them, but seek His kingdom and these things will be given to you as well Do not be afraid little flock for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom Sell your possessions and give to the poor provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out a Treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted where no thief comes near and no moth destroys for where your treasure is There your heart will be also this is the word of the Lord. I
Want to urge you to come back tonight at six o'clock. We're going to have our annual Thanksgiving Sunday evening pray service. We've been doing this now for Six seven eight years, I guess and it's always a tremendous time because people come we see we're going to meet right here in the room at six o'clock We're going to sing some songs and then we're going to open the floor up to people to share their stories about how God has been faithful and good to you this past year So it's very inspiring. They're always great Testimonies of how God has shown himself to us this past year We ask you to do this little extra thing if you can it's not a requirement But if you can when you come forward to share your story Bring an object or a memento or picture or something Tangible that people can see that sort of goes along with your story and what you'll do is you'll leave it up here on stage and Everybody else who shares stories will leave their objects up here on stage two and then from our seats We will be able to not only hear about God's faithfulness and love But see it So that's going to be tonight. I hope you'll come it'll be a great time And then also I want to remind you about what's happening on Thanksgiving day There's this orange piece of paper inside your worship guide We always have a dinner for the homeless around us on Thanksgiving day and this year is no exception We want to encourage you to take part in that as a church family You can do that actually by coming to the dinner and helping serve or you can also Or instead of that fill out this little orange sheet of paper and tell us what kinds of food items you're going to donate toward the dinner I'm told that we need a good number of these things in order to have enough food to have our homeless friends go away very Satisfied on Thursday. So this is a great way to serve others So if you could just kind of scan through the list of items that we need and decide whether you're going to bring them during the week or come actually on Thursday or what have you just fill out the form put it in the offering basket when it comes by a little while later And we would deeply deeply appreciate you doing that. All right. Let's talk about money today. Oh, yes, everybody loves Sermons on money, you know our attitude about it should be Not I have to talk about money, but I get to talk about money So let me set it up this way First of all, let's go back in our minds to something to happen early on in the life of Jesus We're told in the book of John chapter one That on a particular day Jesus was walking along beside the sea of Galilee and John the Baptist saw him and When John saw Jesus he said be hold the lamb of God and When John said that it drew the attention of course of many people among whom were two disciples We believe they were Andrew and John And when Andrew and John heard John the Baptist say about Jesus behold the Lamb of God They followed Jesus as he was walking along so Jesus was walking along the sea there And he was aware of Andrew and John back there behind him And so we're told that John that Jesus turned around and looked right at him and he said What do you want? Now we're not told exactly how he said that. I'm sure he didn't say what do you want I Think it was what do you want One of the other translations of that same story puts it this way Jesus said to them what are you seeking now you are not Andrew and John This is not the Holy Land I Am not Jesus boy am I not Jesus? But that question is just as applicable today here at UPC as it was then What are you seeking? What are you seeking? What's the governing passion of your life? That's what that word seek means to seek means to desire to pursue to want To earnestly run after what are you earnestly running after today? What do you desire the most in your life to experience to have to be a part of? What are you after in life? Everybody here's got an answer to that question. What are you after? What do you think about when your mind doesn't have anything else to think on? What do you dream about when you wake up at night and you're staring at the ceiling? What is it that comes into your mind and heart? What do you treasure? More than anything else in the world That's the question Jesus was asking them. That's the question the Bible is asking you And Jesus says here in our text in verse 31 to seek To pursue to dream about to want The kingdom of God to seek God's kingdom means to Center your goals in life around God and his purposes in the world To seek God's kingdom means to devote yourself to bringing everything your life touches Under the rule and the reign of God your home Your family your school your campus your workplace Your neighborhood Your city The gym where you work out the grocery store where you do your shopping the people you meet throughout the day in short To seek God's kingdom means that everywhere you're going the the prayer Jesus taught us to pray thy kingdom come is always on your lips
And we say wow that is huge That's a lot that's an enormous calling To seek God's kingdom. So you're saying might can you break it down a little bit? Can you make it a little bit more practical? I have 30 minutes maybe 35 or 40 So I can't possibly talk about everything that means to seek God's kingdom So let me just be selective and talk about two things the first very briefly and the second one is where we'll park the rest of the Rest of the hour to seek God's kingdom involved at least Giving your time and giving your money Giving your time and giving your money So first Seeking the kingdom of God making that your goal involves giving away your time In verses 16 through 21 Jesus tells this story about this rich man who whom he calls a fool he was a fool because he thought that he Needed more money more stuff to make himself happy I want to reread Verses 16 through 19 and I'm going to emphasize certain words. So listen as I read verse 16 Through 19 Jesus told them this parable the ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop He thought to himself what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops Then he said this is what I'll do I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones And there I will store all my grain and my goods and I'll say to myself You have plenty of good things laid up for many years take life easy eat drink and be merry You notice all the personal pronouns there This man is completely consumed With me myself and I Notice no mention made anywhere to hear about his family I suppose he had one but he's not talking about his wife or his children or his Neighborhood or his town it's all about himself His time in other words is devoted completely to making himself happy comfortable secure famous successful or whatever So if you're going to be a kingdom seeker You've got to start by realizing that God has given you a very precious commodity It's called time. It's 24 hours a day seven days a week And God wants you to invest that time in the needs of other people not just yourself Here at UPC if you're a little bit new around here you notice the things on our walls and the things that are printed on our worship guide We exist to help people know God grow together and serve others. That's our mission And it's the serving others that I'm kind of hitting on right now Back in September we talked about what it looks like at our church to know God And then in October we talked about what it looks like here to grow together This month's emphasis has been on serving others and that's what we're talking about right now And I wonder if you do me a favor. There's a lot of paper in your worship guide this morning pull out the green one And let's just focus on it for a moment because We're talking about time. We're talking about giving it away to others serving others Not like this rich man, but just take a look at the green insert And you see several opportunities in order to serve at our church Now I'm looking at a lot of people who are already adequately plugged in you don't need anymore Opportunities maybe your calendar is full of serving others But there are also others that I'm looking at that are not plugged in yet You're you're new here or you don't have a ministry going on This is for you So I want you to notice mana ministry Christian help True life choice Are all listed there with some jobs that need to be done But then let's take a moment longer to look at Barnabas ministry That's something that a lot not a lot of people are familiar with Barnabas ministry is Simply this it's a bunch of people 75 or 100 of our people who volunteer to do the things that are listed here prepare meals for people when they come home from the hospital Visit folks who are in the hospital and help people move Those are three kinds of Laborers that we provide people who need help in our church If you're not doing something already why not do one of those three or more than one And that'd be a great way to serve others a great way to To be not like this rich man a great way to spend some of your time doing things that really do benefit other people So that's called the Barnabas ministry You can check those boxes and fill in your name email address and phone number And this goes in the offering basket later on this morning Just wanted to give you that little bit of practical application So if you're going to obey verse 31 Which says to seek God's kingdom Then you have to see yourself as a steward of time in the first place And give away your time invest your time in things that bring blessing to other people Got it Now let's move on to the second thing which I'm going to spend the rest of my time on Seeking the kingdom of God involves not only giving your time but giving your money Giving your money We are finishing up today a series of messages that I've called dare to be a disciple And what we've done is all this fall we have looked at what it looks like to be a disciple That is a maturing reproducing follower of Jesus And today we go to one more and this is the last Mark of a transformed life there are nine of them and we've already covered one through seven and nine we skipped eight And now we're going to do number eight look at what the definition is A transformed person that is a disciple is somebody who practices biblical principles of financial stewardship This is our One of our nine marks of a transformed life. This is what we want as a body To be striving for If we're going to be followers of Jesus Christ and it has to do with our money You know Jesus had more to say about money and possessions than any other single subject Even heaven and hell That's kind of important I think and this passage is a really good example of some of his teachings about money Look at verse 15 with me. It says be on your guard against all kinds of greed A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions Now let's be aware that nowhere in the Bible is rich is is richness or wealth condemned Do you hear me nowhere in the Bible does God condemn being wealthy? In fact, there were a lot of biblical characters who were wealthy just as there have been Bunches of godly men and women down through history who were blessed with great wealth but trusting in money will ruin you Loving money will destroy you as Paul says elsewhere in 1st Timothy chapter 6 It's the love of money. That is the what? The root of all evil the love of money the attachment to money to seeing in money more than what it's supposed to give us So what I want to do this morning is answer three questions about giving money Let me give you what they are first and then we'll look at them one at a time first What is Jesus telling you to do in this chapter about giving second what gets in the way of you're doing it and third Why should you do it? Why should you want to do it? So if we can accomplish those three things that'll be real good So let's start with the first question What is Jesus telling you to do here? He's telling you and me To share our material resources with those who don't have them He is saying give generously and give sacrificially to the advancement of the kingdom of god Give your money to funding kingdom advancement Verse 33 establishes this he says sell your possessions and give to the poor Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out a treasure in heaven that will not Be exhausted in other words what Jesus is calling us to do is to give until it hurts See what we're tempted to do when it comes to this matter of giving And I know because this is my temptation is to get our paycheck And to start doling it out to all the things that we want to dull it out to We want to pay our bills and then we think what we want to buy and then we think what we want to enjoy and maybe there's Restaurant we've been wanting to go see or a movie that's on or music We want to download or whatever it might be and we dull it out and dull it out and dull it out And then we see what's left and we say okay now I should give something to and so we give Hopefully a part of that or maybe all of that But we wait until the end of the line to give to god and in the Bible god talks about giving the first fruits to him Giving him the best of what we have and learning to live on the rest To emulate the Macedonians is really what I'm talking about the Macedonian people were a group of Christians Whom Paul tells us about in second Corinthians chapter 80 says they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability Could it be said of you that you give beyond your ability That you give until it hurts that you give because you've given up other stuff that you possibly could have bought Give so much that all you have left is stuff that you'd have to sell That's what Jesus says Sell your possessions and give to the poor because you don't have anything left to give you've got to sell your stuff on eBay To give more Well, that sounds simple enough right But are we doing it? Are we Christians the majority of us in America giving until it hurts? What do you think? Well, if you'd look at some if you've seen some of the statistics I've read you would say no probably not You know only one third to one half of us church members financially support their churches The average donation by adults who attend us Protestant churches is about 17 bucks a week Think of all the other things we give way more to than that Most Christians give somewhere around three percent of their income to the cause of Christ So here's our second question the first question was what is Jesus telling us to do and we've seen that he's telling us to give until it hurts To sell our possessions and give to the poor Second question is what is getting in the way of you and me doing that And Jesus says in this chapter there are two things that get in the way of our Giving one is greed and the others worry So let's look at those two first is greed greed is getting in the way of giving Notice Jesus says in verse 15 be on your guard against all kinds of greed The Greek word for greed literally means the insatiable appetite for more More clothes more electronics more music more stuff Something new or something bigger better faster and nicer than what you already have That's greed The other obstacle is worry. There's greed. There's worry He says in verse 22 of our text therefore. I tell you do not worry about your life What you'll eat or about your body what you will wear He says life is more than food in the body more than clothes and verse 25 Says who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life Jesus is saying If worry is characterizing you it is it is coming up the process. It is preventing you from giving The word worry comes from the German word vergan which means to choke worry chokes off the spirit of Glad and generous and sacrificial giving And many of us are worried aren't we? Sure we are we're worried today. We're worried about the economy. We're worried about what's going to happen with health care We're worried about what's going to happen with taxes. We're worried about our 401k and our investments and things like that And those worries Jesus is saying will absolutely choke off your obedience to verse 33 About giving So what are we going to do about it? Well, I'm going to tell you some stuff in just a little while that will do something about it but first I want to take you to a third thing that's that's stopping us from giving Because greed and worry are really symptoms of a deeper problem and that problem is idolatry idolatry now think about something with me my wife and I were listening to a sermon by Tim Keller kind of my Favorite preacher out there we were listening to a Tim Keller sermon last week and he was making this point that That we all need to worship something Right, I mean we've talked about this before we all need to worship something It's like Bob Dylan says you got to serve somebody We're all wired to worship something we are homo religioso man the religious And Keller was saying that when you worship something You give it glory And that word glory means weight So when you decide that you're going to worship something you're giving it the greatest weight In your life or you're making it the center of your life on which you are depending And then he went on to say that when you worship that thing when you make it the center You actually enter into a covenant with it Now covenant is a big concept in the scriptures and back in the ancient Near East where the Old Testament was written Nations would make covenants with nations like a bigger power a greater power a small power would make a covenant with the bigger power And they would say we promise to obey you We promise to submit to you We will do what you say and in exchange for us obeying you you will bless us You will protect us you will provide for us you will give us benefits But if we do not obey you and if we do not serve you then you have every right to come into our our nation and punish us and even destroy us See that was a suzerain treaty It was a covenant and what Keller says and what the scriptures really indicate is that when you worship something You enter into the same kind of covenant agreement You make this legal binding contract in your mind in which you give yourself to this thing That you think will meet your need and you make a treaty with it You say I promise to obey you and to submit to you and to serve you and if I do that you must bless me You will defend me protect me and if I don't obey you you have the right to destroy you And one of the things we worship here in the United States the most is money and possessions And people throughout our country are entering into covenants And maybe you have entered into a covenant agreement with money and stuff and things And what you've said is I will give you the right to protect me to make me happy To give me benefits To watch out for me and in exchange. I will serve you And if I don't serve you then you the curses of the covenant will fall upon me So I get the blessings if I obey and I get the curses if I don't do what you say The problem with this is That worship of anything besides God always sets us up for bondage The idol drives you it will enslave you And when it comes to money You start to hear the curses in your head when you don't live up to what you think that idle demands You feel bad about yourself if you don't keep up with the Joneses right You feel inferior If you drive drive around a beat up old car See that's the curses of the covenant. I'm going to feel inferior because of my stuff And you feel less of a man and less of a woman if you don't have the newest clothes See those are the curses of the covenant that are falling upon you because of this covenant you've made But listen listen money and possessions and stuff The Bible says are false idols They were not designed to be gods They can't deliver what you expect them to they can't make you happy Instead what they'll do is they'll demand more and more and more of your allegiance and you'll never feel secure You'll never be happy you'll never have enough. That's what greed is the insatiable appetite for more And then it'll also create that spirit of worry in your life because you're worried that you don't have what it takes To really be a worthwhile person The only being who can deliver you who will protect you and who won't destroy you Is god you were made for him So repent of your idolatry Jesus is calling us to turn from trying to build your righteousness and find your happiness on anything besides faith in Christ Root your identity in Jesus Find your happiness in him and then that greed and that worry that Jesus talks about in this passage will be idols that you crucify Okay So we've answered two out of the three questions We've said what is Jesus telling us to do and we've said give Secondly, we've found that what gets in the way of our doing that is greed and worry and idolatry Third question is why should you give? Why should I stand up here today and say you have every reason on earth To be a generous sacrificial giver What are the incentives as it were? I'd like to offer you four Four incentives four answers to the question. Why should you give number one because your money has vast potential for good When given away Your money has Incredible potential to bless others when you give it away in the Again in the worship guide today you have a red piece of paper would you look at that with me? This is about this tree over here to my left and you're right. It's looking a little naked today Except for the lights, but in a few weeks. It's not going to be that way because this is our annual giving tree campaign The giving tree what is that? Well, we've been doing this for about five years now. It's our way of ministering to some of the local ministries around us that we serve and you see a list of them right here on this red sheet of paper and underneath each agency or each need Are a number of things a number of items that we would love for you to consider Purchasing and bringing back and on December 13th everybody will walk up out of their chairs and bring the gifts up to the giving tree That's how it works But I'm just simply pointing it out to you right now so that you'll go outside after the service and talk to someone at one of the tables Who can help decide help you decide which things you would like to give But my point being what if everybody here at UPC participates in the giving tree What if we have so many gifts that this platform cannot even contain them See that's the potential that we have to bless these people and this this is who we exist for We are a mission outpost To bless these needy souls and hearts around us. So anyway your money has vast potential for good But I want to I want to take this one step further if you will And show you what else we have potential of doing here at our church Think with me about some figures, okay For a moment let's just think hypothetically Consider that your household combined income is $40,000 Now some of you are thinking wow that'd be great Some of you college students at 40 grand that sounds really good doesn't it whereas others of us in here are thinking Well, we've got a lot more than that but just for the sake of comparison today Consider that your household makes a combined income of $40,000 and let's say that you're giving to this church $1,600 a year Now that's 4% of your total of 40 grand You're giving 133 dollars a month which amounts to about $1,600 for the year 4% What if we're thinking potential right what if you were to increase that From 4% of your income to 5% just move it up one click one percent a year. You're going to give to this church What that would mean is that you would be giving an additional $400 that year Or combined amount of two thousand of uh, yeah two thousand dollars you with me So you're going to give two thousand dollars because you're giving five percent of 40 thousand in order to do that in order to give an additional four hundred dollars It would simply mean eight dollars a week more than what you're giving already. I went to panera for lunch yesterday and I had a Turkey sandwich and a drink and a bag of chips and the bill was eight dollars and ten cents So I just spent what I'm talking about yesterday eight bucks a week. You're going to give more to the church than you Were before and you say that's not very much No, it's not but if everybody were to do that Let's say everybody were making 40 thousand dollars a year and everybody's giving not four but five percent a year UPC would receive an additional 144,000 dollars Just thanks to your additional eight bucks a week Which is easy to do All right, what about that? Do you know what could be done with an additional 144,000 dollars? I made a bunch of phone calls and emails this past week And I came up with a list of illustrations of what could be done right here at UPC if everybody just gave one percent more Assuming the facts that I just laid out and you're going to give eight dollars more a week Well 144 grand that is two and a half times our current missions budget We currently give about 60,000 dollars to missions and benevolence is outside this church That's about six percent of our total annual budget We can do more than that. Can't we Six percent, but if we had 144,000 dollars our mission budget would suddenly jump to 20% of our annual budget One of the agencies we help is Christian help They find jobs they give food and clothing away to Folks who are in poverty a hundred and 44,000 dollars is about a quarter of their operating budget for the year And I talked to the lady who runs Christian help and she said that 144 grand would help them expand their building in castle berry Which is currently maxed out and it would serve 2,500 clients with job counseling and food True life choice is a crisis pregnancy center that we support 144,000 dollars would pay the rent for a satellite office over here near UCF for a full year And buy an ultrasound machine and pay a year's salary for a part-time nurse manager All because you've given up one paneroon meal a week Wycliffe Bible translators some of you work for Wycliffe 144,000 dollars would provide translations of the Bible into The languages of the Kassam people of Ghana the Dhinga people of Sudan and the Monkaya people of West Africa Which is a combined total of 275,000 people all because of eight dollars a week The Jesus film a 144,000 dollars would fund almost four entirely new language versions of the Jesus film Third millennium ministries some of you are aware of what that is it's a Bible education Ministry here in Orlando for a hundred and forty thousand dollars Third mill would be able to translate and distribute their ethics one and two course into arabic And these materials are broadcast on four different arabic satellite tv networks in the middle east We could reach millions of muslims on eight bucks a week From each of you Earlier today we prayed for our missionary the week desiree heckman And i talked to desiree about this 144,000 dollars would cover her expenses for the next two and a half years She wouldn't have to go spending her time raising funds or we could even send 29 of her students on a student venture summer project Overseas I just recently got back from japan as i was telling the children 144,000 dollars would send the entire team of 50 volunteers that we had over there in two years to the next japan church planting institute That's a lot of stuff in other words my point being That we've got such potential right here in this room With just a little extra giving one percent more assuming you make 40 grand a year And i haven't even mentioned that i'd love a new couch for my office Now watch i'll get all these old beat up couches So why should you give because you're giving Can so richly bless others way more than you know And if we can do it together Wow What an impact we can make Second reason why you should give because when you give you not only bless others, but you bless yourself Let me appeal to your godly self-interest It says in verse 33 To provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted where no thief comes near and no moth destroys Every dime you give Every dime you give to the work of god is credited to your account in heaven now Ask me if i understand that and i'll say no i don't i don't know what that's going to look like one day But i take jesus at his word that my investment and your investment in the kingdom of god is an investment that will weigh better Repay any investments you have on earth When you and i get to glory we will receive these treasures in heaven coming back to us that we've invested here on earth So you'll bless yourself third reason Why should you give because when you give your passion for god and his kingdom increases i don't know if you've ever thought about this but Follow my my train of thought here when you give your passion for god and his kingdom which You want that right you want that It will increase when you give look at verse 34 Jesus says for where your treasure is there your heart will be also Now i would have thought that jesus would have said the opposite i would have said that he i would have thought he would say For where your heart is there will your treasure be also Not that that's not true it is true that where your heart is that is the things you love Those are the things that you'll give to but that's not what jesus says here He says where your treasure is there will your heart be also In other words jesus is saying that your heart follows your giving That is to say when you give your money when you invest your treasure in god's kingdom your heart gets more attached To that kingdom Show you a picture of a little girl her name is zero sandy a go And she lives in the philippines and my wife and i send money to the organization To which she belongs every month we send some money to children international To give food and Close and clean water and health care to zero Now i know i should care about every nation on earth but Your pastor is pretty bad center and sometimes i don't But when i heard about a typhoon that hit the philippines i cared about the philippines Because i have a stake in there named zero San Diego a little piece of my heart lives in the philippines Because i have my treasure there My heart is there too So if you would have a heart for let's say missions Give to missions and you'll get it If you want a heart for this church give to this church And you'll get the heart For where you invest your heart will follow Fourth and last reason why should you give Because god has given so much to you that's why Because god has given so much to you look at verse 32 Jesus says do not be afraid little flock For your father has been pleased To give you The kingdom Holy cow God has been pleased to give you the kingdom You know he loves us but it says more than that he gives us the kingdom of god earlier I talked about worry The antidote to worry is believing that verse Believing that god loves you so much that he gave you the kingdom What does that mean? Well, I don't know but at least it means That you were once his enemy and now you're seated at his table
if god did The big thing by sending Jesus for you to die on the cross for you Don't you think he will do the relatively small things of providing you with food shelter clothing So that you are free to give
Earlier today, I mentioned to the children Japanese yen and I have a few more of these here in my pocket Japanese yen. I was over there in Japan and I knew that very shortly the value of this yen would be nothing And so when I was at the Tokyo airport I walked over to the currency exchange booth and I gave them the yen and they gave me dollars Because I knew that yen would mean nothing in just a few hours Friend your money your stuff your things your possessions are one day gonna be Nothing they're not gonna be worth a thing so Come up with a new investment strategy Switch your money to another fund that pays you back dividends Namely give and lay up your treasure in heaven I've got a card that's going to come to you right now from our welcome team welcome team members if you would Go ahead and start giving out this card It's a card that you'll see a picture of right here on the screen and it's a card that we would like you to fill out Not today, but sometime between today and Christmas Eve So we're giving you time to take this card home and let's say that let's say you're married And you and your spouse need to pull out this card and talk about it Because what the card is asking you to do is consider a couple of changes That you'll need to communicate about For example if you look up there at the top of the card It says to check the appropriate box and return the card by December 24th as Christmas Eve On December 20th, which is the Sunday before that we're going to have an opportunity in the service For you to pull out your card and walk forward and drop it in a basket so It's something that you don't need to do today, but I do want you to do it between now and December 20th So that you can bring the card forward on that Sunday But there are several choices that we're giving you to think about and to pray about and to talk about with with your loved ones For example to increase your giving by 1% Of your income to support the ministry at UPC. That's what I was referring to earlier the 1% uptick Would you be willing to increase your giving by that 1% it might be as little as $8 a week Or the next one down is to commit to maintaining your current level of giving Maybe some of you are thinking I can't do more I'm giving all I can I am generous and sacrificial Then hear me say just feel free to check that box and hand it in Or the next one is to commit to giving 10% of your income to the work of God here at UPC So anyway go through there talk about it with your loved ones and your friends if you're single Take this home and talk about with somebody else like in your life group or new young adult group or whatever Pray over it bring it back on December the 20th be ready to walk forward and I believe it will be a great day Of celebrating what God can do through our church and through your giving and through mine Let's pray Our father in heaven. Thank you so much that once we were your enemies and now we're seated at your table You've been so generous and sacrificial with us and you're calling us today to Inter into blessing To participate with you in the work of your kingdom and to be a channel of blessing to others So father we pray That you will so move here at UPC that we will be broken vessels with open hands That we will give our time and our money To see that the kingdom of God advances Spirit of God would you please take your word and drill it deeply into my heart and into each heart here That we might indeed seek The kingdom of God and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen