Home-Field Advantage | Week 4 | Bill Bush

seek life over lifestyle. We're gonna see that the problem is we confuse lifestyle

with life. Almost everything we think we need, everything we describe, everything we often pray about to God, all the things we think this is how to make a life, this is when my life will be better, this will bring contempt. They're all lifestyle issues.

They're they're all things that have to do with lifestyle, and we don't seek what real life is. We don't. And then here's what I gotta say before we jump into a passage here and start looking at it, is simply this, I'm gonna pre throat punch us. Okay? I'm gonna call the shot right now.

And I'm gonna challenge you guys to just be patient and listen, because some of the stuff we're gonna say in here is gonna make some of you angry because you won't do it. The people that's gonna make angry is p some of you that are Christians, you believe in Jesus, but you refuse to look at money this way.

You you you try to seek life and lifestyle equally and you're gonna get upset. Can I just warn you that that anger, especially in guys, is fear? It's simple fear. Because you can't figure out if I do it this way, how will that ever work. I've called my shot, I've pre called it out there,

and so now you know. Now let's look. What does it mean to seek life over lifestyle? Or actually, does it mean to have that reversed?

Well, look, I wanna start we're gonna start and end in Matthew chapter six. I'm gonna read part of this story that Jesus is teaching. I'm gonna come back to the end. In the middle, we're gonna do a lot of rapid fire through a lot of verses. So, you know, I don't think you're gonna be able to keep up. I'm even gonna use the screen here and and get over my trust issues of people and trust this because I can't turn that fast. But we're gonna see in the middle, most of these passages are gonna be from the writings of a guy named Solomon, but we'll we'll see that. But first, let's start in this Matthew chapter six passage. This is in the middle of Jesus'

teaching the Sermon on the Mount. It's his longest recorded teaching, and right in the middle, he knew he had to stop and talk to people that wanted to follow God. They said they love God, but they had to get he needed them to get money and possessions correct on what it's all about. And he's basically saying,

you seek lifestyle, but you can't seek lifestyle over life.

It won't work. It won't work. So here he says this, starting in verse 19 of chapter six, he says, don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them,

and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. And then he says this, wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. It's interesting. Most people when they quote Jesus saying that, they say wherever

your heart is, your treasure will be. We always think of it reversed. Jesus said it opposite of how most people think. You think, well, whatever my heart is, then that's where my treasure will go. But he says it backwards. He basically says, wherever you put your treasure, that's where your heart's gonna go.

Now I'm just gonna warn you, this is why a lot of people are gonna be angry and a lot of people are gonna be afraid at the end of this. Because this is one of the few things that Jesus says, in order to get your heart to the right place, you actually have to act first. Your heart will go where you act,

and most of us wanna wait till we feel something before we do something. When it comes to this issue we're gonna look at here, because it's an issue of idolatry, it's an issue of raising something up to replace God,

and the only way you can put God back where he's supposed to be is by taking the thing that's on the throne off. So you're gonna have to make a decision with what you do with your money in order for your heart to go where it needs to go. Alright. That's that's what that's the first thing that usually

stops us in this moment.

He says, because no one oh, then he goes, that's where your heart will be. He goes, your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your whole body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is. See, he's actually saying to actually try to act and say, gotta put this where it's supposed to be so my heart will follow.

He's like, that's how you create that healthy sight. You get to see, you'll see things from God's point of view. The problem is when you have that unhealthy view, a lot of us, what we think is light is not light.

You think you have the money thing right in your head, but you don't see it from God's point of view, and now you've actually lied to yourself. And you're you're confused and you're in absolute darkness even though you think you see it correctly. Hence, why I think some of you are gonna get angry,

because you think you have it right and you don't. And I know this because by the end of the sermon you see, I've been there. I have been there so many times. And now he explains what he's talking about to a much more obvious in your face way. Verse 24, no one can serve two masters

for you will hate one and love the other. You'll be devoted to one and despise the other. And he goes, if you haven't picked up on what I'm saying, he then says, you cannot serve God and be enslaved to money at the same time. It's funny when he says serving God, all through scripture says that's what gives you freedom.

When you go after money, you're enslaved. And you cannot do both at the same time.

We can't do both. And he says that is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life. And then when he goes on everyday life as he's describing what you're gonna eat, what you're gonna wear, where you're live, all these things. He's describing lifestyle.

He's describing the things that we think of his life. He goes when you go after those, when your mind focuses on those, when that's what you think it is, you will actually try to serve God, but the reality is God's not the source of life. You're not going for life. You might approach God to give you the resources you want of life, and you have this mixed up view of who God is and what it's all about, and and and and then when God does provide, yay, God's good. When God holds out, even though you're trying to be faithful, you're frustrated because you think, I God, I did what I'm supposed to do. Where's the contractual

return that I'm supposed to get? There's even an insidious gospel out there called the prosperity gospel, oh, as I trip over, which will trip you up just like that. That

says it has the word of God as its foundation, but it's not. It's got these legs that'll trip you. And and and and and what it is teaches is that you know what? God wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, and all you have to do is have enough faith, and you should have these things. That is a lie from the pit of hell. It's actually anti gospel. It's basically saying you can serve two masters. If you serve God, you're gonna really get the true master you want, the money, the health, the wealth, all the good things, and they say because you know the bible says God wants to bless you especially if you're faithful to him. The problem with that gospel is blessing does not equal

what we think of as blessings. They replaced blessing with lifestyle. It couldn't be further from the gospel than anything else. It's deceptive. It either makes you discouraged when you try to have faith and nothing happens and people tell you, I guess you didn't have the right faith. And that'll make you angry,

or it'll make you prideful because you do get end up successful. And you think it's because I'm better than everyone else. He's saying you can't serve these two masters. Don't get caught up in lifestyle,

seek life is what he's gonna be saying. So let's talk about the two questions. How do we get in trouble and what's God's way to avoid this?

Well, how. What we're reading here first and foremost is when we seek lifestyle over life, the reason that's a problem is because we try to fulfill eternal longings with temporary things. We try to fulfill eternal longings with temporary things. You see money is the number one thing we replace God with.

Matter of fact, Adam and Eve, if it was today, instead of a piece of fruit that would be tempting, there would be a briefcase full of cash. It would be sitting there because

it's the way that we say, hey, if I had more money, I could have some things. And the things we're actually seeking is these eternal longings, these things that God's supposed to provide, things that he built us to have, but we think the money will go for the temporary fix. We get this because in Solomon,

who was the third king of Israel, the son of David, he start off God gave him a supernatural gift of wisdom to know God and to know things. He was really smart. He started off very faithful to God, but then he faded,

and he was the richest man who ever ever lived. They say he was worth somewhere between 2 and $3,000,000,000,000 in today's money. That would mean if you took the top 10 richest people on the planet right now, he could walk in the room and say, make more a month than all of you guys are worth. That's how wealthy he is.

And he decided to go on this journey of I'm gonna find meaning in life, and he used his money and went after more and more and more and more. And then when he was older, he came back to the Lord and realized he'd blown it and he wrote a book about it that the Holy Spirit inspired called the book of Ecclesiastes.

If you really want a good listen, go back. I did a series through that called More, And everything he said, I went after more of. He had all the money to do everything. He went after more political power to change the world, more, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll basically, more houses, more stuff, more this, more that. And he said, no matter how much I get, it didn't matter.

It wouldn't fulfill the longing. And he has more money than any of us will ever have. And we think if we have a little bit more, he had it all. And he said, you're not. And our problem is we want the right to prove that for ourselves.

That's what we want. Well, I'd like to find out that money can't purchase happiness. I'd at least at least try. That's our problem. We wanna try it out for ourselves. But in chapter three verse 11, he kind of explained what the problem was. He says, God planted eternity in the hearts of men,

yet we still don't understand what God is doing one thing to the next, one moment to the next. We get confused by God. You know why? Because he planted an eternity on it. We were built for eternal things, eternal longings, but we live in a temporary world.

And the reason we get confused by God is we continually try to fulfill eternal longings with temporary things, and it will never work. You're always gonna want a thousand to $1,500 more. You're always gonna want more. And then you get two people married

that want more, but they want different things to try to fulfill those longings, and you're gonna be in a perpetual fight. Always. And the lie that many believe is if we just get to this income level, that'll stop that. It will not. It won't.

Because we think more money is gonna solve the problem. Matter of fact, here's what we actually think more will bring us. This is why it's a problem. We think having more will bring us more satisfaction, more significance, and more security. My life will mean more. I can do more. I'll feel more satisfied,

have more contentment, and I know it'll bring more security. It's a lot nicer to have a lot of money so I'm not worried about financial problems. You think you're gonna all of these things, but you know what these are all related to? The same thing that we said what causes conflict

is these desires within us. Last week, I talked about the desire to to have to feel and to be. It's the same it's the same root. It's what it is is those desires were God given. It's eternity planted. We are built to find our satisfaction, significance, and security in our relationship with the Lord.

We're gonna always want more of God, but that kind of more leads to contentment, to a peace, to a satisfaction, to a security, and all of that. The problem is whatever you seek more of, you want more of.

You seek life and life through Jesus and truly sell out, you will want more of that. If you seek this through money, you're gonna just want more money.

And that's why you can't serve two masters. That's why you can't do it. Like look, satisfaction. Ecclesiastes five ten, here's what Solomon says. Those who love money will never have enough. You'll never have enough. How meaningless to think that wealth brings true happiness.

You know, we live in a world that we say, know, in The United States, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now it's life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness. And it seems like the wealthier we get, the unhappier we are as a people. And then we think that more significance,

we think it's gonna bring. But in Luke twelve fifteen, it says this. Then he said, beware, guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own. You know what we often do? We we we we we our net worth with our self worth. We confuse our value with our valuables.

And we know that because when you're around someone that makes significantly less money than you, you tend to automatically think what's wrong with them. Do they not work hard? Are they not smart?

Or you think the other. You just think you're automatically, I'm a little bit better than you because I have more education and live in a nicer neighborhood than you.

Your kids get a friend, they live in a super nice neighborhood. They're friends, you're like, okay. I'm more happy with them over there. The kid has a friend that lives in a ghetto, you're like, We

we confuse these things. And then we think we have more security too. Well, Jesus, go read this on your own. In Luke 12 in in in the same passage that we just read out of, that's in the context of a parable where a guy

became wealthier. His his farm became successful. He was, what am I gonna do with all this? He built bigger barns. Basically in today's province, he got a fatter bank account. You know, he he had he had invested in Bitcoin at the right time, know. And he he he did all this, and what he said is, I'll just build bigger barns and I'm gonna rest rest in the morning, I'll be satisfied, I'll be secure, and then it says, the Lord came and says, you fool.

And he died that night. Jesus' point was not to say, if you try to hoard wealth, I'll kill you. What he was saying is, the parable was to try to say, you think that that just having more is gonna provide security and satisfaction, but it is so unstable. You can never trust it.

And what's gonna happen? You die and all that for nothing. You spent all your effort on that. So basically, when you look at that, the reason you can't serve the two masters of God and money at the same time is money is our number one replacement for God. If I just had more money,

just like Adam and Eve, if we had the if we eat this fruit, we'll know what God knows. We'll have a freedom. We'll have we do it because we think it gives us all the things we long for that can only come from the Lord. But we're trying to get it ourselves. We're like two year olds. I'll do it myself. But

it won't work. It won't work. Because you know what it actually brings? Let's read a whole passage in in in Ecclesiastes. Continue on past chapter five past verse 10 and let's read verse 11 through 17.

He says this, the more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. There's a parenting lesson in there too, I think. So what good is wealth except perhaps to watch it slip through your fingers?

People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much, meaning if they're not making a of money but they work hard, it's it's it's hard, but it's honest work, they tend to sleep better. But the rich seldom get a good night's sleep.

He goes, there is another serious problem I've seen under the sun. Hoarding riches harms the saver. Money is put into risky investments that turn sour. Everything is lost. In the end, there's nothing left to pass on to one's children. We all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty handed as on the day we were born. We can't take our riches with us.

And this too is a very serious problem. People leave this world no better off than they came. All their hard work is for nothing, like working for the wind. How many of us are working for the wind in our lives? Throughout their lives, they live under a cloud, frustrated, discouraged, and angry. Frustrated,

discouraged, and angry. In those verses says here's what getting more ends up bringing you. These three things, it ends up bringing you more expenses, more worries,

and more pain if you lose it. Because if you bank everything on your security and contentment, everything on having more, what happens when a pandemic hits and you have less?

It's more painful. Know, more expenses, what he was saying is, you know, we always say the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Yeah, and their water bill is higher too.

And and you know the more worries because you worry more about if you're if you are counting on that to provide these things, you're always paranoid about losing it. You're always paranoid. They they did a study recently because they everyone talks about that point 1%, all the super wealthy people.

They did a study on on who are the people that are in that, you know, the five to 10%, which is pretty much, I can guarantee, almost everyone in this room. And they said, we are the worst.

We are the ones that ride our children the most. We put them in everything. We spend all that time. We want them to get a great education. We wanna get and part of that drive is we know we're doing better off than most, but we know it's on and we're on this precipice, like, could easily go backwards, and I don't want that happen to my kids. So we are running around ragged all the time trying to push and push and hustle and do all this stuff to try to maintain this level.

And that's what happens when you make money and success, that's your value, that's what you think life is about. When you think life is all about lifestyle and coming to church is about being a good boy and girl and praying to God so he'll bless me with the lifestyle,

you end up doing what this said at the end of that passage. It talked about these four things that you end up gloomy, discouraged, frustrated, and angry.

And you know what ends up happening? Here's the model that most of us are living in and why there's so many fights, the why sixty five percent of all marriages that fail claim it was finances that were causing the main problem.

Because when you end up in that moment, you end up having this moment where your yearning exceeds your earning. You get overextended. You constantly hustle to make ends meet, and that ends up making family life deteriorates and everyone's in a bad mood. Sound familiar?

And and and then when

wife is complaining to husband, you're gonna work all the time, you work too much, I have a job too, and you have the fight of who's working the hardest, and you say, yeah, but I'm bringing in the most, I'm working the hardest, and you know what, I'm providing for this family, I can't believe you're attacking me, I'm providing for what are you providing?

You're working so hard to provide lifestyle. You're working so hard to provide for your ego. The fact that you wanna feel this satisfaction

that it's really about you wanting to prove your worth through what you do. What the spouse is really saying is, but are we being good parents? Are you around for the kids? Are you around for me? Are we around for each other? Real life deteriorates as we go after more lifestyle. That's the problem.

Bottom line is how we get in trouble is you gotta ask yourself this simple question. Do I have money or does money have me? Do I possess things or do they possess me? Because you can try to follow Christ but still be possessed by possessions. You can try to follow Christ as master but still really be about lifestyle,

not about the way, the truth, and the life that Jesus wants to provide. You can try to spiritualize our quest for lifestyle.

And I think that's why just a slight little throw punch here. I think that's why we as Christians sometimes get so obsessed with politics. And yeah, we claim it's freedom and that, which is part of it, but a lot of us are really mad because if this person's in office, it's affecting my bank account.

And we're actually more upset about that.

That's why most elections, the truth statement is it's that the economy is stupid.

Rarely does someone lose an election when the economy cranks when they're in office. It does happen. It has happened.

But that's usually the exception, not the rule.

So what do we do about it? What's God's way? I wanna throw a list up here,

and and with this list, it's like this is kind of the thing that if I was to talk about let's be physically healthier, I could share here's the reason, here's the why, and once you land the why, it's good because you kinda already know the list.

You know what's gonna be said. You go to the doctor, hey, you're not healthy. You know what he's gonna talk about? What are you eating? Are you exercising? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And usually it's because you've never really changed the heart. You never really grabbed on to the why.

And then you just have to choose to do the list. But this in scripture is how God says we are supposed to operate with money. This is how you put your treasure in the right place so your heart can follow. And then what's important is the order. And it's simple. You give back to God first. You then save for the future.

Then you plan your spending. Then you keep and then through this whole process, you keep good records. And then you enjoy what you have. Most of us enjoy what we have without planning our records, without planning our spending, so we don't want to look at the records.

We don't wanna see what's going on because we already know we've been enjoying without a plan, and we never get to the first two. Americans are the worst savers in the world even though we have one of the highest income rates.

And so this is the order. We gotta get it in the right order. So the first thing is you give back to God first. There's that's critical. To come to church, to tithe, to do all these things, to give back to what God's asked us to give back, order matters more.

It's the order. You don't give your leftovers. You don't do everything else, and then you see what you got, and you give some of that. That does not please God. That's not even the purpose of why he asked us to give. You're not even following the purpose he had for it. Proverbs three nine and ten says this,

honor the Lord with your wealth and with the leftovers of everything you produce. Now what does it say? Best part. Now in in in it in the Hebrew, that best part means best part. It means first and best. Matter of fact, how they gave back was they, you know, they had they had they raised animal, her her sheep.

And and what you were called to do is is you were supposed to give the healthiest of your first born the first born of your flock, and it had to be healthy. It had to be without blemish.

You had to bring a perfectly healthy. Because you know what the temptation would be? Is to get around to bringing one, and what you would pick is the least healthy one.

Because what you figured is the way I survive is I gotta have another generation. I gotta keep having a generational thing. And so if I gave you my healthy one and my best one and I kept the the ones that came after, if the first healthy one I gave, what if the other ones aren't healthy?

They're gonna die. So you know what I'll do? I'll wait. I'll make sure I'm okay, and then I'll give God the sick one that's gonna die anyways. And in the book of of of Malachi, Malachi,

God called out the Israelites for that as an abomination.

And he said that's not I will not bless you. I will not protect you in that if you will not honor me. But then he turned on the positive and he goes, test me. This is the only time in the bible that God says, test me on something and see if I I don't protect you and make it work out. Take the risk and trust me first.

When we give to the Lord, you go, what does the Lord want? Start with a percentage. I'm not gonna sit here and demand, but just to let you know in the old testament, we always talk about 10%. That was a starting point. 10% was just what supported the temple. Basically, that just went to the church. They ended up giving 30 to 40% of their income a year.

Let's start with a percentage. Nice thing about a percentage is, if you made nothing last month,

it's nothing.

But it needs to be a priority. It needs to be a percentage. And the other thing the scripture talks about is it should be progressive. As we make more money, we should be raising our standard of giving, not our standard of living. Because giving first to God is an act of faith, but it's really an act of protection

and it's an act of blessing. Here's what I mean. When we give first, we now say, God, if I gave you 10%, 15%, whatever percent I give you, when I try to live on only 80%,

I'm inviting you to say, have trusted you for all these things. I've trusted you for what's I'm not trusting in this. So it actually forces my attitude to shift and go, I'm gonna have to totally rely on God, and God promises he'll take care of you when you trust him first. And so now, would you rather have you responsible

for a 100% and taking care of all the problems, all the downfall with no protection, or would you rather have 80% with God taking care of everything? And if you said rather keep the 100%, that's a very prideful thing that you're saying, God, I'm better with money than you and I can handle myself in this world.

And it's also saying why is God taking my money? He's the one that gave it to us all and he gave us breath and the gifts to even make the money. So he's not taking anything from us. He's asking us to trust him with a percentage of all that he gave to us. We're not owners, we're stewards.

And that's why you give first, it gets your attitude right. It focuses your treasure to where your heart needs to go. This is the part I knew would make some of you mad because I know the percentage in this church. There are a heck of a lot more people that love Jesus, that sing and worship, that do not do this.

And the challenge is if you ever want it to work right, if you want to get off the crazy train, you're gonna have to start here. And then it's an act of blessing. You know why? For two reasons.

They've studied over and over again that when they look at people that try to stop getting in debt, try to stay out of debt, that try to be more responsible, try to think about this, it seems like God knew the way we're wired, especially with the fall,

that the only way we can battle greed and battle materialism in our heart consistently is to be more generous. Generosity is a shield that God handed us. We

need to think of it that way. You wanna battle that heart that wants to overspend, that wants to take over? The only thing you can protect yourself from that desire is to choose to be more generous. So And that's what a lot of us go, if I do that, I can't get that. Yeah. But if you do it, you'll stop wanting to go buy all that stuff. That's the crazy thing.

That's the way that protects you. And then the last thing, it's a huge blessing because God's gonna take what we give. He doesn't need it. God has the ability to make it rain and have inflation not go up. He's not like The United States that just prints money and then it becomes cheaper. He could do all of this without our money, but he allows us

to take what we give to him and he multiplies it in a way that you would never expect. Like even when we announced these baptisms,

people that are generous, we're able to do like what we did hosting hosting the the homecoming for the Heisman. We're able to do that because you guys are generous, because the people that give matter of fact, out of our generosity,

we pass it on. We have Christ Culture Church meeting at 11:00. It's a guy I've been coaching. We're trying to help this church get launched. We let them use our facility, and guess what? At the next service, they're baptizing 10 people now.

And I am telling you, 10 people whose eternity has been changed and probably their whole family legacy will be changed, and that's because those of you that decide to give to God first, God allows us to be a part of that. But if you think of it as yours and you're chasing lifestyle,

you're getting upset with me right now and trying to think of the excuse as to why you shouldn't do that. But we have to get that straight. And it's not just about I need you to give them because this is the whole list. The second point is just exactly the same. This is just as critical. Save for the future.

We gotta be smart. We have to be smart. When when my oldest who's now in call my youngest who's in college now, when she was like 10 years old, we heard a conversation

going on in her room with her brother at the time who's, you know, three and a half years older. He's like almost in high school, and then we found out same thing was happening with the sister who was even older, was like, you know, 17 at the time, and we heard her heard her brother say, hey,

you gotta be kidding me. So you're gonna give me 20 now, but when I get my birthday money in two weeks, I have to give you 40 back? She goes, yeah, if you want the 20. And then I hear him say, last time you only made me give you 30 back. Last time,

and you did the same thing and you only made Micah give you 25 back. Why are you charging me more? And she's like, because I don't like you as much.

And I'm listening and I go in and we're talking to my wife, I go, our youngest is a loan shark.

And then we went in and I talked to her, go and said, it turned out she had a thousand dollars in her room, because one, every time she got birth to me, she didn't spend hardly any of it. She was saved. She saved. And not only did she save, she got so much money saved. We go, right, if I knew you had this much money sitting here, we would have probably got you a bank account. Someone breaks into our house, that's your room's the most valuable room in this house.

I don't think anything else in this house adds up to a thousand dollars, including your mom's wedding ring. And I was like, man, and I go and then I had to have this conversation with her that was like part pride, part I had to correct her. Because I said, wow, way to save and way to let your money work for you.

That's smart. But the bible looked frowns upon really high interest charging, especially amongst family members. So if you wanna lend your brother or sister some money, fine, but don't charge them. Just let them pay you back. So her answer was, I'm not gonna lend them any more money

because I wasn't doing it out of the love of my heart. So she was being smart, a little bit excessive, but smart. But a lot of us never we don't we don't save. Look what this verse in Proverbs says here. Proverbs

twenty one twenty, The wise have wealth and luxury, but fools spend whatever they get. Now what's interesting, wise,

when Solomon's writing this, there the wise, there's the wise, there's the fool, and there's the mocker in in in there's these three main characters in the book of Proverbs. If you go read it, give you a little teaching here, you'll know what you're reading. Wise means not just smart.

Wise means I trust the ways of the Lord. So someone who trusts the Lord, they will have wealth and luxury. Now this is not a prosperity thing. Wealth and luxury just basically means you have bread, have wine, you're gonna exit, you'll you'll have what you need. And if you're smart and you save and don't just spend,

most likely almost 99.9% of the time, you end up like my daughter. She ended up with a thousand. You end up with more. You just do. And there's a greater feeling when you save for something then you get it than just spending.

And that's why he says, the fool, there's the fool number. The mockers says, know what God says and I don't care. I actually make fun of it. Some of you, the talk we're talking about right now, you're gonna mock God on this. But a lot of us are stuck in the fool category. Fool can be translated stupid.

Stupid is as stupid as this you might know better, you might even mean well, but you just can't seem to get past the stupidity. And he goes, someone who's dumb, a fool spends whatever they get. So this means I got paid and I immediately spend it. So that's the bible says that's stupid to just get paid and spend.

Like get your paycheck, cash it, spend it. Or wait there, oh, it dropped into my account. I'm spending it. I'm on Amazon. Here I go. But what does that say about most of us? There's a whole another level. Does God have another word for this? Most of us in this room don't even wait to get paid before we spend it.

We're spending like my kids were with the with their sister. We're spending money we don't even have. We're leveraging money we haven't even paid.

And you know what? You gotta understand basic economics. Put me in, I don't do that. It's tight, but I got I go I go, I'm not talking about getting a house payment, you'll never own a home. You can do that, and that's actually an investment that grows. But what happens?

Why does the average income out here, the average family lives on a 115 to a 120% of their income every year? You know, I don't I don't pull out the credit card that much. Yeah. But let me ask you this. How often have you refinanced your house?

I'm gonna you didn't think there would be economics in a sermon, but here we go. Say you refinance your house three years ago. You pulled out $75,000 and you spent it. So over the last three years then, basically since it's gone, you have averaged spending an extra $25,000 a year over what you make.

If you make a $100,000 a year, that comes out to you have basically lived on 125% of your income for the last three years. Now if you keep going after ten years, you've only lived on several, but you're still over your income level. The problem is most of us refinance more often than that. That's the way we do it.

You're leveraging the fact that I'm a house. So that's why it happened in 2008, 2009. We all leveraged everyone on these loans because they're like spending more than they can make, and all sudden their house is not worth what it was. They're underwater and they know that the rate the mark is coming back. My house is I'm not gonna make any money on this thing. I'd have to hold this thing for thirty years, so people just walked away. Even people that have jobs, they can make the payment.

They just turn their keys in.

See, we don't we're we're we're we're even a lower level than this. We don't even wait till we get it. And you know why that's a problem? Because that's why we don't give back to God and we don't save. Because if you were to do something like I used to teach, just start living on a margin. Give 10%, save 10%, live on 80%.

The problem is most of us are living on a 120%. So to try to do that is not just a 20% shift, that's a 40% shift. And when you look at 40%, you're like, what is gonna happen to my lifestyle? You know what? You're gonna adjust it to where you actually are in life.

And it's painful when you realize how far beyond you've gotten, And it's difficult. So you gotta start somewhere and take baby steps towards it. But that's why we don't save and that's why we don't give. And then after you've given and after you save, now you plan your spending. Proverbs twenty one five says this,

good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.

It means it it means you gotta have a plan. If you're trying to just get more money fast, if you're gonna answer that letter from that Nigerian prince, you know, we look for the quick ways. We're like, you know what, some of you, your financial plan to get out of your mess is, I'm so glad that sports betting is legal in Arizona now.

And you know, we we we just it says work hard but make a plan. You gotta plan it out. You have to take give first, save first. That's right off. And then take what you have left and now you have to make a budget. You gotta plan.

Matter of fact, love this quote. One of my favorite quotes from Bill Earl says, when your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep becomes your downfall. Probably could have just said that over and over 15 times and closed in prayer, and that could have been the sermon.

Because this is that is why you're fighting all the time. And so you need to plan the spending. And the next thing, keep good records. Look what it says in Proverbs 27, 23, and 24. It says, know the state of your flocks and put your heart into caring for your herds. For riches don't last forever

and the crown might not be passed on to the next generation. What he's talking about is back then, their job, their finances was their herds. So he's saying, you gotta know what's going on. You gotta know this shit. You gotta know what's going on in your finances. And one of the things is to plan, you gotta keep records.

And and and this is this is simple, basic, this will be good, take a picture of this, teach it to your kids. Many of you probably should teach it to yourself first.

But it's really easy with record keeping. There's just a few things you need to do. This is all you need to know. What do I own, what do you owe, what do I earn, where does it go? That sounds stupid, but I'm telling you, how many of you in the room are like, wow, that is so clearly something I know but I do not do.

Do you keep track of what you own? Like a lot of times when you try to look at what you own, you might realize I own nothing. I'm making payments on everything, including that toaster. Why did I rent to own?

And you're like, I owe everything. I own nothing. Wow.

That I kinda know what I earned, but I didn't really look at where it goes. This is the one. Especially when you'd actually start to make a little more money, this is where you get into stress. You get in a break, okay, we're doing better. We can handle our bills, and you get to that level you're still fighting because you have no idea where it goes. And especially Amazon, you know, you get Amazon packages delivered every day, and there's multiple people, you and your wife. You're like, wait, I just ordered a whole bunch. You ordered a bunch, how are we gonna pay for that? And then you end up just not having a plan.

And you have a cash flow issue. If you just waited and had a plan, you could get that, then you could get that, but no, we didn't it's so easy. Just they have a button that you don't even have to go to your cart. It's like bypass the whole cart thing, you don't even have just one button, give it to me now.

So keep good records. And then the last thing, this is the coolest part. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy what you have. See most of us start there and that's the problem.

When all you do is enjoy what you have, you're probably not keeping records, you didn't have a plan, so there's no way you're saving and the last thing you could ever do is give. But if you do it this way, when you get to the other end, you actually do enjoy what you have without stressing over what you have.

Ecclesiastes six nine puts it this way, enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don't have.

Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless, like chasing the wind. So here's the problem, when I do it the wrong way and I try to get and then I get in all this debt, I start thinking if I only had this much more money, if I only had this you start dreaming of what's next, and the problem is every time we get so focused on what's next,

we don't enjoy what's now. And the biggest thing that usually we don't enjoy is the real life, the relationship with my spouse, being with my kids, you know, trusting the Lord.

But then in chapter five nineteen it says, and it's a good thing to receive wealth from God and good health to enjoy it. That's not prosperity. He's saying, when I do it the right way

what Psalm is saying is if if you trust God and you do it the right way, once you've saved, once once you give, once you save, once you've done all that, at the end, if God has blessed you, he says to enjoy your work and accept your lot in life. Your lot in life is if he has put you in a spot that your lot in his life is after I've done all this, I have more.

He goes, that's a gift from God. That's an extra gift. It's not an expectation, it's a gift, and you can now enjoy it guilt free, debt free,

and and it's so much more fun to go on that long vacation that you did the right things and you saved for and it's paid for, then you just racked up debt doing it and you enjoyed it at the moment. But you know when you get back, you're gonna be paying for this for the next fifteen years.

There's something about delayed gratification that makes it better.

It makes it better. I remember when I was first married in Karen and we're so broke that we if you know, we we we we

couldn't go out to eat at nice places, but if we saved and we're like, okay. Or someone gave us a gift card, we went to a nicer place and it was so awesome. Well, you get to the point where have expendable income, you're not even thinking about it, and then you you go out and you eat, and you're like, going out to eat is not that exciting anymore.

There was something about when I couldn't, but then you saved and then we did it, we put weight in, we're gonna go to this nice place. There's something about waiting and doing it in the right order that makes it more meaningful. It's more of a blessing.

So enjoy what you have. Because here's the bottom line. Close this up. Let's go back to Matthew six. Bottom line answer then is what what he says. We're gonna Matthew six, jump to verse 31. He says, so don't worry about these things. Talking about lifestyle.

Don't worry about those things. Don't worry about what you'll eat, what you'll drink, what you'll wear. These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly father already knows all your needs. Seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously and he'll give you everything you need. Seek first

life through Christ, and from his love, say if he loves me this much, maybe he's the wisest one to know what I should do with my money. And then do it in the order He says to do it in, and then you can enjoy it. Because you'll be a part of the kingdom and that kingdom life.

Because when you don't, you end up gloomy, you end up frustrated, you end up and I know, I know. Guys, as I as I as I point at you and say, guys, we need to do this, there's these three fingers pointing back at us and one pointing to God because he's confused by us all.

That we say we trust him and we say we wanna serve him, but the simplest thing ever, our checkbook, we do not trust him at all. And that's why we fight in our homes

over money, just as often as non believers. He's even saying, non people who don't know me, they're always worried and fighting about these things. You shouldn't be. And I know this for a fact because I live this. I've been in ministry since I was 19.

And and when I started dating Carrie and married her, she grew up in a Christian home, but I was worried because she grew up in a nice home and all this, and was like, does she understand what it means if she's gonna marry a pastor?

And and so I would start grilling her like, okay, What if God leads us to go be missionaries in the worst part of the world? What if we gotta go to Calcutta, you know, or something like that? And and she looked at me like, I don't wanna go. Why would you even say that? You're gonna be a youth pastor. I go, no. I'm just saying, what if God opens that door? It's like, because I'm in. I'm in, baby, and you gotta be in with me. And I acted like I was this great leader with all this faith, and she's like, okay. Well, if God really wants us to go, I don't wanna answer it now because right now, no. Because I haven't heard him say that. But if we feel like that's it, I guess I would do it. I'd cross that bridge when I come to it. I'm like, excellent. So I'm act like, you know, trying to really get her to be all in. All in. We get married. We combine the the the bills. We got to this point that I was working more, so she was actually could write paychecks

on time. So we got it set up with the system that she'll take care of this, and and then but we planned the budget together, and as we're planning the budget, she goes, okay, well, we're gonna start tithing. I think we should give at least 10% because that's what I was taught, that's what I wanna do, and I said, no way.

I'm like, before you marry me, you better be willing to go all in with Jesus, you better be willing to to Calcutta, India. And she's like, I I wanted to go to Calcutta, but I wouldn't Calcutta a check to God that he asked for. Because I was a youth pastor working in a church that severely underpaid me,

even though they would end the year like ahead of budget, and then I'd get no raise, not even a cost of living raise. And and the ministry was killing it. So I had all these justifications in my head, guys, that said, I work like sixty hours a week. I'm tithing my time,

and I don't have to give money, and I'm actually really what I'm dealing with is a little bit of control. I wanted lifestyle and life, and I was a little bit bitter at the church, so I was like, why on earth would I write a check back to my employer

and give them a 10 to 15% discount on my services when I'm working overtime and getting underpaid to begin with. See about that light? The light I saw made so much sense. That's a way that seems right to man, at the end it leads to death. That made complete sense to me.

The thing I didn't realize is I was always stressed about money, I was always bitter, I was always thinking they need to pay me more, and I'm gonna look to leave. I wasn't focusing as much on what God had, and it was causing and the worst part was I was discouraging my wife because she has the gift of generosity.

So not only did she wanna do what God wanted us to do to begin with, she would always wanna go above and beyond. And I was saying, no. It won't work financially. It's dumb.

And I am ashamed to say I did that for like the first six years of our marriage as I was a pastor.

That really wasn't about an income issue. It had nothing to do with me being mad that the church I didn't think paid me right.

Because God asked me to do with my money is a matter of my heart. The whole point is trust me even when it makes no sense. And my wife kept telling me, telling me, telling me, and then one day my friend Randy is on staff here. We were at a church together, and he challenged me on that. And I gave him all my reasons why,

and he goes, you know what, I'll go to bat for you to get a raise, but here's the deal. Faithfulness to God has nothing to do with this. You think this is you can be faithful to God, but you're serving two masters here, man.

Just give do it in the order God says and you'll have him battling for you. I was broke, not just financially, it broke me when and really, it broke me when I watched how poorly I led our home. I had this compartmentalized idea of my faith that I can fully love Jesus and ignore what he said about money at the same time.

And a lot of you are in the same boat. You can't do it.

And so I finally went home, said that's it, let's do it. 10% off the top even before taxes because I think God gets his what he wants before the government. So I didn't do after taxes. It was before taxes, write a check right now, 10%, we'll start there and see where it goes. And that on paper with what I was making and what we were spending and where we were at made absolute I was already working in Orange County where there was ridiculous.

I didn't own a home. I could barely afford the apartment. I had the kid. I had another kid on the way. It made no sense. I was never this was gonna bury us, but it didn't. I didn't win the lottery, integrate, but just God took care of us. Things happened. We end up owning a home there.

Never would have, but things transpired that opened doors to be able to support my family because he said, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to God. Know what we needed. And he took care of it. I had to let go of the difference between need and want.

And I'm telling you, when I told my wife to do that, that was the scariest thing in the world, and I wanted to be angry about it. Matter of fact, the way I even said it wasn't the best attitude. When I said, where your treasure goes, your heart will follow, that's true. My heart was not there yet. I was mad, but I knew it was true.

And I said, fine. Write the check. We'll do it. She's, well, are you sure? I go, yeah. It's probably gonna fail miserably, and we're gonna end up homeless,

and it doesn't matter. I had all the wrong, but I go, but I'm gonna do it. And the weird thing happened. As we did it and God actually took care of us, it changed my heart. And more importantly, it changed my marriage to a whole new level.

About the only fights we've had over money in those years has been lottery decisions. Stupid fights. And God has provided. And I gotta tell you one last thing here, and we'll pray and get you out of here. If I didn't make that decision, I would have never trusted God to plant this church. We would not all be here.

And if the Holy Spirit has done anything in your life through this church, it was that moment. Because I would not have had the faith to walk away from everything I did have. Because I finally got to a place where God had blessed me and he said, walk away from it all to a place where you don't even have an income.

I would have never ever ever ever ever did it. And this, doing this with y'all, I love you guys, this is the greatest gift the Lord has ever given me.

So

what would be yours on the other side of this kind of trust? Father, I thank you. I thank you that you love us enough, that you care for us, that you don't want us to run after cheap substitutes.

So Lord, I pray for anyone in this room, anyone online, that if they're wrestling with this in their heart, Lord, that you would give them clarity, conviction, and courage. And Lord, I pray for those who are maybe gonna go have a fight after this because

one wants it, one doesn't. But Lord, I pray for those that are like my wife, that wanna be faithful. I pray for those that were like me that want to not be faithful, That both would just look to you and trust you. Help us to not let our possessors possess us. Allow us to seek life

over lifestyle. I prayed in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Hey. Thanks for being here, guys. Thank you for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and everything else happening here at Rock Point.