Fishing with Jesus - Bob and Linda Lotich

Pastoral and his wife, Pastor Onika, they have come to our church before. And so we've been really, really grateful that what you're angrily asking us actually, is there any 힘 it has to have extra stress, a little bit of distance, strength from other people and says, I saw other people case... Where am I, what did I see? I had to get that from God. To speak from a person who's gone. When you speak to a person who needs to live so great in the honor, and we have felt so blessed. When we came out the other day, a friend of ours was praying over us and praying that this trip would be so refreshing. And we were just dealing with some stuff and I'm just like, you know, and it's been so refreshing. It's like, we're here to do work and we're here to serve y'all, but man, we have been so blessed and I just love your church, I love you guys. Well, and one thing that strikes me, I don't know if you guys have picked this up from your pastors, but they love you. I mean, the way they talk about you is just beautiful. And so know that, when they say they're praying for you, they are actually praying for you. They're not just like, well, it'll be okay in Jesus name.

They're going for it. So in case you haven't figured it out yet, surprise, we're gonna talk about money. That's very exciting. Okay, you're excited. No one ran out yet, that's good. All right, I'm glad to hear that. It's okay, hang with us. You can feel safe with us. We're not gonna talk about money in a way that brings you any kind of like, yuck. In fact, we're here to tell you that the Lord made you how you are on purpose. I am a spender, is there any one of us? Anybody else like me? Okay, all right. I'm a spender and the Lord has revealed to me that just because I like to spend, I'm not wrong. I've actually, he has put that in me for a reason and we're going to talk more about that later, but that was so freeing for me to realize that just because I wasn't the spreadsheet person, which thank God for you two, if you're in the room, oh, we are so grateful for you, that's how Bob is, but if you're not that, it doesn't mean that you're wrong. The Lord has put those gifts in you on purpose and so there is no condemnation for any of that. Well, and I just wanna add to that, again, being the numbers person who's looking at the spreadsheet and we're right in the budget or whatever,

God convicted me because for so long, I would do the math and figure out my thing and then she would come up with some idea and I'm like, the math is wrong. What you're doing is wrong and so we can't do that. My way's right, yours is wrong and God convicted me and said, nuh-uh, I brought you two together. I made her that way on purpose and actually part of that was for my benefit because I can get too out of balance over here and too focused on squirreling up, saving money for retirement or whatever the thing might be and God's like, no, I have stuff for you to do. Maybe I need you to give a little bit more, maybe I need you to go on a vacation, maybe I need you to whatever and she's really good at helping do that and so together, the two become one flesh and we create this beautiful thing. Oh, you love it? There's a place for us all. Yeah, so bottom line, whoever you are, whatever your tendencies are, if you are married in that situation, like, just walk with it, lean into that, lean into your spouse's strengths, don't view them as weaknesses pulling you down. Cool? Got it? Good?

Amen. All right, great. So what we're gonna talk about today is really how God does supernatural things in your finances of which I think we all would all like to see that, right? Lord. Regardless of where you are on the financial spectrum or on your journey because so many times for pretty much everyone, there is a roller coaster and so even if you're doing great right now, you probably won't do amazing for the entire rest of your life and even if you're at the worst point financially you've ever been, this probably isn't where you're gonna stay, especially as a believer following Jesus, right? Okay, but there are ups and downs and so no matter where on your journey today, I think we all wanna see God show up and do miracles and I still believe that the God that we serve of the Bible who has all these miracles over there still wants to do miracles over here and we're gonna explore a miracle, a financial miracle really that he did. We're gonna be talking about that today and we're gonna share a little bit of our story and how, man, we've just, we've seen some things, guys and I think that's why we're here is to just kind of share. show that and encourage that and hopefully

help you get your eyes on Jesus when it comes to your finances. So anyway, I wanna pray and then we're gonna dive in. So God, we just invite you into this room, into all the other locations, into the stream, and I just pray that you'd show up in such a mighty way, Lord. I pray that you would speak to each of our hearts as we're kind of going through this. I pray that you'd guide our words, Linda and I, and I pray that even in between our words, even if we don't say anything of value, Lord, that Holy Spirit, you would speak to each individual here today. That every single person would walk out with something from you. That their lives would be radically changed because of a revelation or an insight from you. And I just thank you for that in Jesus' name. All the people said? Yes! There we go. I love it, I love it, I love it. All right, so most people tend to believe because this is the world we live in and we're a little bit different than a lot of financial gurus and financial authors and stuff that you'll find. But most people, most financial books, I've read a whole bunch at this point,

they all approach finances one specific way. And that is basically, regardless of whether it's investing or whether it's getting out of debt or budgeting, it's all the same thing. It's like, hustle and grind, do what you can do, you know, have a bunch of discipline, right? Create a better budgeting app, like, you know, create the perfect debt pay down thing or whatever. But ultimately, what it all comes down to is doing it in your own strength. Yeah, and you better just be better. Just do it better, right? Have you felt this? Has anybody else felt this? Just do money better. Because I've definitely felt it. And we did that, and we did that for many years. And the truth is, this can actually yield some fruit, which is why it just keeps going around and around and everybody keeps saying it, right? Because, like, it's simple math. So let's say you go get a side hustle and you start earning a few hundred dollars a month and you're like, all right, I'm not gonna go spend it. I'm trying to get out of debt, so I'm gonna put that towards my debt, and now my debt goes down by a few hundred dollars a month. You do that over and over and over again, I think we all know this, right? It's simple math, so you start moving forward financially. So conceptually, that's really easy to understand,

and it's like, oh yeah, if you have a lot of discipline and you hustle and you work at it, it's like, yeah, you're gonna get ahead. But what's gonna happen at the end of that? You're gonna pat yourself on the back and say, oh, I worked really hard for three years and I paid off my debt. You know what I mean? And again, there's nothing wrong with that. Like the Bible obviously, or maybe it's not obvious, the Bible talks about debt a lot. I love what God told Israel, I want you to be lenders and not borrowers. I want you to be the ones earning interest and not paying interest, okay? So the Bible talks a lot about that, but the point is, even though there's this method that is perpetuated by pretty much every financial expert out there, we accidentally discovered a different way. And that's what I wanna talk about today. Yeah. You wanna read it? Yes, we're gonna dive right into John 21, verses three through six. And we're reading this in the New Living Translation, so it's a little more conversational. But verse three says, Simon Peter said, I'm going fishing. We'll come too, they all said. So they went out in the boat,

but they caught nothing all night. At dawn, Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn't see who he was. He called out, fellas, have you caught any fish? No, they replied. He said, throw out your net on the right-hand side of the boat, and you'll get some. So they did, and they couldn't haul in the net because there were so many fish in it. So I wanna talk about this second way of doing things that we kind of discovered. So like I said, first path kind of approach to finances, which is probably what you've heard all your life, any financial book you've read, any financial class, whatever, is the one where you have the effort, you have the discipline, you're hustling, you're doing everything you can in your own strength. So the purpose of what we're talking about today, we're gonna call this fishing all night long, okay? This is what Peter was doing in the boat. He said he'd caught nothing, okay? And again, he could have fished all night long and maybe caught some and whatever else. But I think all of us probably know what that feels like with our finances, like where you're doing the right things, but it feels like I'm not moving forward. In some cases, it feels like I'm going backwards. It's like, I'm just trying to buy groceries.

How did they get so expensive? Like, what happened, you know? So that's fishing all night long. The other path still takes effort, and we still have to do something, right? But now it's not about us just working harder. It's about listening to Jesus and following His lead, following His instructions, right? And this, I believe, is where you see the financial miracles. This is where you see things where it's like, I couldn't have done that. Wouldn't we all rather that in our finances? I'm okay not getting the credit. I just wanna see God do cool things through us, right? And so we're gonna call this path fishing with Jesus, okay? So as we're talking, so we have fishing all night long, just as a reference point. We spent many years doing that. And then we have fishing with Jesus. And that's how do we do this His way, right? Because the thing is like this fishing all night long thing, it's like with all the self-discipline and whatever else that you can muster, like it really can change your finances. But when you learn to do this fishing with Jesus thing, like this can change the entire trajectory of your life, of the generations behind you, okay? And so this isn't a small thing, all right? So hang with us.

I wanna share a little bit of our story where we started just to give some context because a lot of times we talk about money. And so people think that we were born with a silver spoon and we just had all this stuff going on and we were not great when we began. So I'm gonna start with my financial cry out to God bottom of the barrel moment, okay? So this is for me about 20 years ago now at this point. And I found myself about a thousand miles from home. I had $7 in my checking account. I had one credit card, which was the absolute grace of God because I didn't even know you could have more than one. And if I would have had more than one, I would have been in big trouble. But I just had one credit card that was nearly maxed out. And about that time, I'm driving down this road and my car breaks down. And I'm like, how do I, because I was trying to like get my paycheck to go deposit at the bank so I could pay my rent that day so I didn't get kicked out of my apartment. Like all of this stuff is going on. I'm like, how do I get my car towed, fixed, and then get there and do all this in three hours and let alone I have $7 and about 200 something dollars of available credit on my credit card. Like, so it's just that moment, you know? And I think a lot of us had moments in our finances where it's like, I'm clueless, you know?

Like, I think Peter probably felt like that. Like working your butt off all night long, doing the thing you know how to do, the thing that you're actually gifted at doing, right? And yet it's not working. So in that moment, I remember grabbing that steering wheel and like crying out to God. Hot tears coming out of my face. And I'm like, God, I don't even know how I got here. Like, you know, all my friends actually thought I was good with money or knew a lot about money. I worked at a bank, guys. Like, and this is the financial mess I found myself in. And I remember just, I don't know how I got here, God. But if you know anything about how to get out, like, can you please help? Can you get me out of this? And that might have been the first time I ever invited God into my financial life and ever actually prayed. Because I think so many of us feel like, well, I don't know if he's interested in that. I don't know if he helps with that. Like, I know it is important things, but I don't know about money stuff. Now, I'm here to tell you, man, like we've seen too much. We've been talking to Christians about money for almost two decades now. And the miracles that we've seen, like there's, I wish I could just like take all my faith

and just like give it to y'all. Because it's like, we've seen too much of what God is doing. And there's not enough people talking about it. And what's interesting about that is we never talked about, we're gonna share some of our story in a minute. We never talked about the miracles that God did in our finances. And he convicted me like crazy. Because I never wanted to talk about this stuff. Because it's like, I feel weird talking about money, feel weird talking about what God does. And God's like, no, you need to get out there and tell my people what I'm doing. Because not enough people are telling of what God has done in their lives. And specifically in the area of finances, that's what we're called to. Yeah, and you know who's not scared to talk about money is God. It is all throughout the Bible. So if you need wisdom, read the Bible, it's in there. It's, to us, I think when we first discovered it, it was shocking to me. I was like, he has advice for investments? I didn't realize that. I didn't know he wanted to tell us about all this stuff that applies to our lives now. So this is Bob's starting point. My jumping off point was similar but different. I was about 20 years old, living in my parents' house.

I had my first job, and I'm working full time. I've got a car payment and a cell phone bill, right? My parents are buying my toothpaste at this time, okay? I had it good, I was made in the shade. And somehow I found myself in the position of having debt collectors call me, because I was not paying attention. I was spending probably 150% of my income. I told you guys I was a spender, all right? And I didn't know what I didn't know, and so I get myself in this position. They end up calling my parents' landline, and my mom finds out, and I'm so embarrassed and so. filled with shame, because I think I should know, but I don't know, and I'm so embarrassed that I don't know how to ask for help, and so I kind of played it off. You know, I was at that age where I'm like, it's fine, Mom, it's fine, I've got it under control, and I did not have it under control at all. And so I remember praying and saying, Lord, can you help me with someone? Can you help me marry someone who's good at math? That was the only prayer I knew to pray, because I thought, at least, you know, calculators don't help me. They just are not an aid to me in any way. I just mess up the numbers somehow enough. All right, I gotta say this. Okay.

Anybody who's good at math, you will know that I'm not good at math. I'm just, like, proportionally a little bit better than her, okay? No, he's way better than me. So, you know, so what happens is we bring these two messes together. The Lord brings us together, and it was awesome and lovely, but we're still kind of both in these messes. The thing that we had going for us is that I was willing to say, he was willing to roll up his sleeves and make the spreadsheet, and I was willing to say, whatever you say, I'll do it, as long as I can buy mascara, I'll be fine. And so we had a deal. Yeah. So we start, essentially, getting married, and we're kind of coming out of this thing, and, you know, and we're really doing, I would say, fishing all night. Like, it was tight. We were trying to pay off debt. We were following Dave Ramsey and, you know, living on rice and beans, to the point that, like, what would happen is we'd have our weekly grocery budget or whatever,

which I think was like $45 a week or something. Again, it's 20 years ago, but still. Like, it was. You guys all feel really bad for us now, don't you? So on Fridays, by the time the money ran out, Fridays became my fasting day, and so I didn't eat many lunches on Fridays. You know, and so, but the point is, like, we're hustling, and we're grinding, and we're doing it all, and like, and again, we're seeing some progress. Like, it's math, so it is working, but, like, in all of that, again, we're like, we're patting ourselves on the back. We're not thinking about God. Like, you know, we're doing this. Like, we're the one, I'm the one fasting. I'm the one making a stack. I'm the one with the strict budget, whatever, right? And we saw some progress. Yeah, yeah. We did see some progress. I mean, it was working. The math was working. We can take credit and pat ourselves on the back for that. Right, sure. But what's interesting is then we, we started, like, really getting, like, okay, we need to move. Bob gets a pink slip at his job,

so they're like, you're out, but you've got six months left to stay here, and we realized that we need to move out of our apartment. It's not becoming the safest place to live, so we're like, we gotta switch apartments, which means paying more money, and I remember we're driving around, and I felt like the Lord said, I want you to give more money in this season while you're trying to pay off debt, and I was like, what? It doesn't make sense. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but I felt it, and so I tell Bob, I'm like, I think we're supposed to give more money. You know, I'm all excited, and he's thinking about that spreadsheet at home, and he's just like, what? And so he says, okay, when we get home, I'll look at it. To his credit, he looks at the spreadsheet, and there was something about it that didn't feel like normal. It felt like it was Holy Spirit-inspired. You know what I mean? And so the two of us get an agreement on this. We wait till we're in agreement, okay? We get on the same page, and we decide we're going to do this. So we start giving a little bit more money, what he had told us to give,

and what's crazy is that all that debt got eliminated. While we're giving what we were supposed to be putting towards the debt, we started giving it away, and instead, the debt just gets taken care of. And we're just like, well, that was wild. That was crazy. I wasn't expecting that to happen. I mean- We couldn't take credit. We couldn't take any credit. Again, it didn't match the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet said it's going to take whatever years to pay off that debt, and God just did something, and it broke his spreadsheet. Who would like a broken spreadsheet? Every time. Wow. You want me to keep going? You keep going. All right, we're done. See ya. No, I'm just kidding. So we do that, and we start making more progress. I had a whole bunch of credit cards I brought into the marriage. Why are you looking at me like that? Same. She had some. I had some student loans.

We've all had cars. And so we just started paying that stuff off, one after another, after another, after another, and it's like, this is getting cool. Now, here's a financial lesson for you today. If you don't know this, when you pay off all your debt, or really any debt, you pay off one debt, suddenly you have extra money each month. How cool is that? You get rid of that one credit card that you're paying $200 a month towards, like now you have an extra $200 a month. Okay, you start adding that up and we got to the point where all this stuff paid off. Now we have a couple thousands of dollars a month that we can put towards something. And my number one goal and obsession in that moment was to pay off our mortgage. And so we're now taking a couple thousand dollars a month, putting it towards that mortgage payment, okay? And I, because I'm an American and I want things quicker, like all of us, you know, so I was praying this one day and well, before I get there, I had my spreadsheet at this point in our mortgage and we're putting a couple thousand dollars a month each, you know, towards our mortgage payment and all this stuff. And my spreadsheet is saying, we're gonna get this house paid off

in three and a half to four years, which is amazing, right? That's so cool, okay? But again, like I said, I'm an American and I want microwave, I want quick, you know? And I'm working on it, I'm working on the patience because I think this is God's way to take your time with things. But anyway, the point is I had the audacity to go pray and ask God, can we do this any faster than three and a half, four years? Again, silly, three and a half, four years is pretty great. But guess what? I don't think God's afraid of our big, audacious prayers. And I think when he's the one that's gonna get glory in it, I think he's actually, he's excited when we pray these bold prayers, right? So I am walking around this field by our house, no one's around, it's probably about the size of a football field, surrounded by trees. I would go out there and pray all the time and this one day I'm praying, God, is there any way we can get this mortgage paid off faster? And he had an answer for me. And it was one of the clearest things I've ever heard in my life from him. He spoke to my heart and he said, if you really wanna see me move in your finances, I want you to begin giving your age

as a percentage of your income. Same. So suddenly I'm like, I think I'm 12 years old, maybe 10, maybe five, I don't know. What's my actual age, Lord, are we doing dog years or be the opposite, let's reverse dog years. Anyway, so at that point I'm 31 and I'm like scratching my head and I'm like, where did this come from? Like, is this the devil? It's like, no, it's probably not the devil. I don't think he'd want us to give more, he probably knows how this whole thing works, you know? So I'm just sitting there thinking, running math in my head and like doing the numbers and it's like, wait a minute, so if we take, if it's 31%, that means all the money we're putting towards the mortgage is gone. It's like, I don't even know if we can buy groceries, like I don't know how this is gonna work, I gotta get to my spreadsheet, you know? So I'm like trying to do it in my head, but I can't figure out how this is gonna work and then I have this aha moment where it's like, wait a minute, God, I just came to you and asked you to help me pay this off faster and now you're telling me to give all my money away, like this is going the opposite direction. This is the worst financial advice ever. Like literally, any financial advisor

would just laugh at this, this is the worst way to pay your mortgage off fast. And so I'm feeling crazy and so I went home and talked to Linda, I'm like, maybe she'll talk me out of this crazy idea, I don't really know, but she did not. I did not. Okay, so what's interesting, I think most people would expect me to freak out over this, but here's the advantage I was telling you before. Remember how he's the spreadsheet guy, I'm not. What happened to me instead was I didn't freak out over the numbers, I actually, my faith got activated. And so when he's telling me this, I'm like, hey, remember that time a few years ago when we asked him for help and he told us to give more and we actually, he helped us, he paid it off. But not only that, that idol that we had created out of paying off our debt, he kind of knocked it off its throne so that he could be there exclusively instead of us putting something else up there. Remember his faithfulness, remember these other things that have happened? If he's asking us to do this, I wonder if there's something cool waiting for us on the other side. And this is the advantage, I want you to understand this, there is an advantage to having all the numbers written down and knowing what's going on. And I thank God every day that Bob is that person. But I also don't wanna forget that I have the advantage

of being able to lock in in faith when I'm not looking at all the things that are written down and all the lists of what's going on. It helps me to keep my focus on Jesus. And so that's what I did, I was like, let's go for it. Let's do it. So I went back to the spreadsheet, typed it all in there and it's like, it was gonna be three and a half, four years to get it paid off and now it says like 10 years. And I remember just like looking at that and just be like, all right God, I give it to you. which is so important to me, but I feel like this is where you're leading me, it doesn't make sense, but I lay it down. And I'm not doing this because I think I'm gonna get anything out of it, I'm doing it because I feel like you're leading me to do this and whatever you have, so be it. So that month, we began giving 31% of our income. It's about tripling our giving and the first month we survived, which was great. We bought groceries, it was cool. The next month, again, it was good and then it went on and on and on. To the point that 10 months later, we walked into our old bank, banks with all the beige walls and all that stuff. So old, boring bank, we walked up to the counter, pulled out our checkbook and wrote the final check

to pay off our mortgage. It was 10 months. Spreadsheet said 10 years and God did it in 10 months. Okay? Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. And I think what's so cool about this, I just want to highlight, is we knew that we knew that we knew that all of you know, if you know us well enough now, that we can't pat ourselves on the back for that. There's not a single ounce of anything that I can stand here and say, oh yeah, we just did that really well. We had a great budgeting spreadsheet. It's just not that. It was fishing with Jesus. Right? We were fishing all night long and we saw him show up in such a miraculous way. Now, what was also really cool about this, like that's awesome. That's a highlight. It's like, great, you paid off your mortgage, all that stuff. But what was so cool for us is that when we did that, we now have 31% every month earmarked for giving. Do you have any idea how fun it becomes when you have a pile of cash that you've pre-decided that is going to be given away? And so you are looking around,

God, what is the opportunity? Where can I give? You have no idea how fun that becomes. You talk about freedom. That feels freeing. Because I'm sure each one of you have seen some injustices in the world that you would love to help take care of that problem. And when you have the resources to do it and it's set aside so that it's no longer yours, like you've put it in a separate place so that you can't spend it. That's how we do it. Do that. You should do that. Put your stuff aside so that it's not yours to spend. It's in a completely separate bucket so that when you see that thing happen, you're like, Lord, what do you have for me here? And then you can be activated. You can actually do the thing that he's asking you to do and you're already ready. Yeah, okay, so do this, right? Anybody can do this, okay? Super practical, but I'm telling you, this is a game changer. Not with your 31% of your age, whatever. Just anything, even if this is $50 a month. This is what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16 too. He told them on the first day of each week,

set aside and save from what you earn so that you can give it when he comes. Because what doesn't work is when you get paid and you go spend it all, I'll give what I got left. That doesn't work. I promise you. I've been doing this long enough. It just doesn't work, okay? So what's so cool about this or what we kind of learned from this miracle is that, like I was saying, when God moves like this, it's like you can't take any credit. And it's similar to, if you think about Peter, how silly would it have been for Peter to come back from the shore and say, guys, check out what I just did. Look at my fishing gift. Look at my fishing skill. Look at these special nets I got. Look at what just happened. He knows that he knows. He falls on his knees. He knows where his help comes from. He knows who gets glory for that. And when we do it all in our own strength and when we have a great spreadsheet and we execute it perfectly, and again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but man, I like the fishing with Jesus side. It's cool.

I don't need any credit. I don't need the glory. I just wanna see God do cool stuff. And what's been so fun about this is this is what we see in 2 Corinthians 9. You read that chapter. It's all about giving and it's great. But what you see is this idea that we are blessed to be a blessing. We are designed by God to be a conduit. And I'm telling you, some of you in here, again, that debt payoff, that's not just about you. Of course God loves you and I believe he wants that for your benefit, but man, the number of people that you can impact and reach as he allows that blessing to flow through you, it's powerful. It's powerful. All right, so I wanna come back quickly to Peter's miracle and just hammer home a couple things that I think are worth noting about this miracle, okay? Because I think these are things that I'd love for you to just not forget as we're going through this, okay? So Peter was skilled. He knew what he was doing, right? Right? He was a gifted fisherman, but that wasn't enough. Some of you might be really good at budgeting. You might be really good at penny pinching.

You might be really good at all this stuff, okay? But there's gonna be a time where that's not enough. And that's when we wanna go fishing with Jesus. How about we go fishing with Jesus all the time, right? It's also worth noting that God didn't remove the work. Peter still had to do something. It wasn't, you just sit on the beach, I'm gonna have all these fish jump on the beach. There's a quote that I love by a guy named J.G. Holland, I think it is. He said, God gives every bird a worm. He feeds all the birds, but he doesn't throw the worm in the nest, right? Like we have a part to play, okay? And so it was the same way for Peter. He had to cast the nets, right? The other thing that I think is worth explaining here is that the instruction didn't make sense, okay? This is that thing where it's like, you have to step out of trusting in your own intellect, trusting your own spreadsheet and everything else and trust what the Lord is leading. So I wanna take a minute here. We're gonna pray because I believe God has some of this for each of us, okay? And again, this is not a formula. This is not something we're telling you to give your age, but like, I do wanna challenge you. Like, what does God have for you to do? What is that instruction?

Like throw your net on the other side, where it's like, that makes no sense. It's six feet apart. Like, why would it matter? What is the thing that he's asking you to do that might not make sense? Yeah, and if y'all wanna stand with me, we're just gonna pray, but I want you to listen to the Holy Spirit. And yeah, take this as a challenge. Don't take it as a formula. The challenge is to listen to the Lord and to obey, to obey what he tells you to do. And so we wanna ask, like, what is it that you want for me to get out of this message, Lord? Like, maybe there's something that you've been thinking about while we've been talking. Like, yeah, Lord, I've been asking you for this. Like, let's ask again if there's something that we've been missing, something that he wants us to do. Or maybe you're doing great financially, and the Lord has some work to do in your heart. Maybe you need to lay that down and ask him, what does he want you to do about that? Because honestly, both of these things were true for us. He used one method to do both of those things in our lives, and it was so powerful, because it was exactly what we needed. So, Lord, we just come before you.

We are so grateful that we all get to be here and be here as a collective group, but also as complete individuals. We have our individual homes, our situations, our jobs, family, and God, I'm asking that you would invade every single heart here in this area, that we would no longer put money as an idol for security, for safety, for status, that it would just be completely knocked off of the throne in our lives, and that we would put you back where you belong and keep you there. Pray you would remove any spirit of mammon that has tried to infiltrate in a sneaky way or an obvious way. Remove it from our lives completely, Lord, and we commit to doing things your way. We wanna hear from you. We want to obey you. Help us to do that today in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Woo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Man, can we give God praise for what Bob and Linda just shared with us today?

That is absolutely remarkable. I love how they share, too. I know some of the spenders were like, yes, I needed this. Our marriage needed this. But that was very freeing for me personally. Again, we've walked through this as a staff team, and we were gonna have some of these connect groups starting up off of Bob and Linda's material in a few weeks. I told them that when I invited them. I was like, hey, guys, I'm gonna do some more connect groups here at our church around this, because I can't imagine what it's going to be like when y'all are how you are, but then you get even more in love with Jesus, closer to him, and even more freedom. I cannot imagine. It's gonna be heaven coming to earth in some powerful and very significant ways. We're gonna kick the devil in the teeth over and over and over and over and over again, because it's already in your heart to do, but we're feeling a little bit lost, and I think God is giving us a path. But the greatest miracle is not you getting out of debt, though I would love for that to happen for you, and the greatest miracle. It's not your body being healed, and I'd love for that to happen to you. The greatest miracle is a person going from lost to found and from dead to alive in Jesus Christ.

That is the most important and the most amazing miracle. So for a moment, I'm going to ask you to bow your heads, everybody. If you're here for the first time, there's nothing spooky or weird going on. If you're already a follower of Jesus, this is your moment to be praying for those online and in the room who are not, and you're asking the Lord to begin to move on people's hearts. Because there are some that are under the sound of my voice, and they've never given their heart and their life to Jesus Christ, and this is your moment to respond to the grace of God, because He's not mad at you. He has forgiven you, but it's time for you to say yes to Him. If you're under the sound of my voice, and you've never given your heart and your life to Jesus, or at one point in time you did, and you've slipped away, and today you're saying, I want to give my heart and my life to Christ for the first time, or to rededicate my life to serving Him on the count of three, I want you to do something simple but bold. I just want you to throw your hand in the air and say, yes, that's me. I want to give my heart and my life to Jesus Christ. You're talking about turning from your own way. It's called repenting, a turn, a change of mind, a change of direction, and I want to go the way of Jesus Christ. Ready? One, two, three. Raise your hand up. You're saying, yep, that's me. That's me. This is beautiful. We've got friends all over. You're saying, yep, that's me. That's me. As you're raising your hand right now, you're responding to God's grace, and I can already see that. I can already, I feel this for sure, that you're changing the trajectory of your family's

legacy by you responding to the grace of Jesus Christ, that years from now, family lines are going to be different because you're saying yes to Jesus in this moment. This is not even just about your salvation. It's about the salvation of those even coming behind you. I'm going to ask everyone to put your hand over your heart if you would not mind. I want you to repeat this prayer out loud after me. Say, dear Jesus, I ask you to forgive me of all my sins. I admit I've made mistakes, and today, I give you my heart. I give you my life. Give me the power to live for you. In Jesus' name, amen and amen. Clap your hands.