Heart For Generosity | Pastor Adam Peterson

man, I want you to know when you show up in this place, man, we care about you. And how many of you, you're really good at not knowing the lyrics to songs? How many of you are good at making up your own lyrics to songs? I'm going to try to say the lyric of the song because I would probably butcher it, but it's towards the end of the song and it's talking about people that are walking through something difficult, having the church to lift your hands in that moment. And that's based off of an Old Testament story with Moses where he had some brothers who lifted his hands and God worked a miracle. And so what I want to do this morning is, in a sense, we want to just come alongside you and lift your hands, not physically but spiritually. And we want to do that just through a very short time of prayer this morning, and so what I would ask is this. If you're going through something in your life right now where maybe you would say, it's not the hardest thing I've ever walked through, but it's difficult and it's causing some stress, it's causing some worry. Maybe it is difficult, maybe it's causing you to even lose some sleep, and man, you're just, you need God in this moment of what you're walking through. Would you just lift your hand right now? We're not going to embarrass you, but just lift your hand up. Look around, you're not the only one. Thank you so much. All right, you can put your hands down. What I want to do is pray. And we're not going to do anything other than pray. We're not going to touch each other. That's weird because you might not know that it's not weird to touch each other. It's weird to touch somebody you don't know or have somebody you don't know touch you, and so we're not going to be that. But we do want to just pray together for you right now in this moment. And so I'm going to do the heavy lifting. I got the microphone. I'll pray out loud. But we are a church that believes in the power of prayer, not being a spectator sport where one person prays and we all just listen. So I am going to invite our whole church to pray. Some of you are comfortable with praying out loud. You can do that in your seat. We're not shouting it just right where you are. Others of you are more comfortable praying to yourself, but collectively right now, we're going to pray for those people that just raise their hands. Now, here's the thing. We don't really know what they're walking through. We just know they raise their hands. Here's the really good news. God knows. He's the God who sees. He's the God who knows. Now, sometimes it's easier to pray for somebody when you know what they're going through, because then you know how to specifically pray. But right now, in this moment, what we're going to pray is, God, you know, if they need peace, give them peace. If they need hope, give them hope. If they need healing, bring healing. Whatever it is they need, God, would you do it for them? Will you join me in prayer right now? Come on, let's go. Thank you, God, that we are a part of a church family that cares for one another. We love each other, and God, most importantly, we love you, and we thank you that you love us. Many of our brothers and sisters in our family raised their hand saying, "I'm walking through something right now, and God, I need you." And that is the best place to start. God, we are confessing our need for you right now. And so whatever it is that they are going through, God, I pray that you would remind them that you are for them, that you love them, that you are with them.

You are ever present in their time of need. And so we put our hope and our confidence in you, that you are working, you are moving, even when we can't see it. We can trust you, and we pray this all, and the name that is above every name, the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, "Amen." All God's people said a better right man. Amen, amen. All right, so let me address the elephant or the jaguar in the room, I should say. Pastor Adam, are you aware that the jaguars are playing right now? Yes, I am. Pastor Adam, do you want to know the score? No, I don't. Because as much as I love my jags, I love Jesus more. Now there was a temptation to spend this entire service praying for the jaguars, doing nothing else but prayer. But there's probably a church up in Philadelphia that's doing that for the Eagles right now, and so we're just going to trust that God's will will prevail, and there will be victory. And so if I see you glancing down at your phone at some point during the message, I'm just going to assume that you're reading your Bible, and you love the Lord, because He will not honor you if you try to watch that game during this sermon. If you're watching from online right now, what's up online family? We are so grateful for you. If you're trying to watch this message today and the jags at the same time, that's not going to work either. So come on, let's go to the men and women in the correctional facilities who are laughing at us for being fans of the jaguars. We love you, you are our church family. We are so grateful for you. I have the great honor of alongside my wife, pastoring and leading rise church. We're so grateful that all of you are here today. We are in a series called A Heart for His House. And we've been establishing this for a while, but it is worth repeating. So let me say it one more time. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, which means you have called upon Jesus to come into your life, to be your Savior and your Lord. Here's some really, really good news that I hope excites you this morning. He lives in you. Okay, it doesn't excite you, that's cool. He has taken up residence in you. You are the house of God. And I'm grateful for God that comes into our house and he starts cleaning things up

and making us more like him. But we've also said collectively we come together as individuals and we make up the church, which is God's house also. He is here with us. And so if God has a heart for our lives, we want his heart. If God has a heart for our church, we want his heart for our church. If you're with me, say, yeah. So today I'm so excited to preach on this topic. I'm so excited to preach that we wanna have a heart for generosity. 13 years I've been preaching about generosity and it elicits the same response every time. Three claps, one late woo over there in the back corner. I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I know one day. One day I'm gonna stand up on this stage and as your pastor I'm gonna go, I'm gonna talk about money today and every single one of you are just gonna go, I've been waiting for this one. Let's go. And so let me say this. We are talking about money today. We're gonna talk about generosity really today at the beginning. And let me just address a couple of things. One, if you're a first time guest in our church today, you're like, this is the one.

My first Sunday in the house and I'm, you're gonna talk about money. I actually think you picked a perfect Sunday to come 'cause you're gonna hear us talk about money in a different way than maybe you ever had before. If you're the person that invited the first time guest and you're like, bro, I invited a guest today and you're gonna preach on Monday, it's a perfect topic. Trust me, trust me, trust your pastor. I got you, okay? And then secondly, if you're here and you're like, are you preaching on money because this church can't pay the bills? Like are you guys behind? Like, no, we're good. Our church is in such a healthy place financially. It really would blow you away and we're there. Listen, we are in a healthy place 'cause we steward the money really, really well in this house and so I'm super grateful for that. And so I'm just preaching on generosity just because the Bible talks about it, all right? And so there's this reality that God wants us to trust him in every area of our lives. If you're with me, say amen. Amen. All right. But for some reason, the hardest area that we find it hard to trust God is with our money. And if you're like, how do you know that to be true? It's because I pastor a church

where the majority of people don't give. Which means I have people that are in the church that I pastor who love God, who are trusting him in some areas of their lives, but they are not yet trusting him in this area. So it's my responsibility to get up here, to open up God's Word, to preach the whole Bible to you. And the Bible has a lot to say about money, about our heart, about generosity. It's my responsibility to preach. It's your responsibility to take this Word and put it in to action. And so I'm just up here just as God's servant proclaiming his Word to you today. Don't get mad at me, can I get an amen? All right, so this is gonna be really easy. Three thoughts today that I wanna share with you. The first one is this. We serve an overwhelmingly generous God. Okay, I'm gonna read this phrase one more time. And I'm gonna need you to be a hollow back church this morning, okay? I'm gonna need you to come into alignment with this. Some of you are offended. You're like, I can't believe you're teaching on money. Listen, the only people that get offended that churches teach on money are the people that don't give. And that's why we're teaching on money. So I'm gonna say this point one more time. And I just, come on, can we be a church

that gets excited for God today? We serve an overwhelmingly generous God. (congregation cheering) There we go. Here's what that means. God is generous with his love. How many of you God loves you more than you deserve? He's jus- "We serve a God who is generous with his mercy. "We serve a God who is generous with his grace. "We serve a God who is generous with his kindness. "We serve a God who is generous with his patience." Anybody grateful that God is patient with you? Anybody grateful he is generously patient with you? We serve a God who is generous with his faithfulness. God is generous with his strength. God is generous with his provision. He is so generous to us. Here's how I wrote it down. You ready? God gives generously, abundantly, consistently, readily and graciously. (congregation applauds) So most famous Bible verse in the entire Bible, John 3 16, right? For God so loved. He didn't just love, he so loved. For God so loved you and me that he what gave his son. He gave us Jesus, all right? If you're new to church, new to Christianity,

let me go all the way back to the beginning. God creates the garden. It's perfect, it's awesome. He puts Adam and Eve in the garden, everything's great. And he says to them, enjoy it all. It's all yours. Just don't do this one thing. And what did they do? They did the one thing that God told them not to do. And from that moment of their disobedience, sin now enters the world. Sin is now in the world. All of us are born with sin. Raise your hand if you were a really good sinner. All right, if you weren't a good sinner, that just means you didn't know how to do it right, all right? And so we're all sinners. And God could have looked down from heaven and go, well, there's no hope for them. They're just a bunch of sinners. Do you know what you and I deserve because of our sin? We deserve hell. Do you know what God gave us? He gave us Jesus. So God looks down at us and he goes, I see their sin. They don't deserve anything, but I love them so much. I'm gonna give them Jesus. And Jesus comes and he generously gives us his life. And he dies on the cross and he sheds his blood so that we can be forgiven of our sins,

so that we can call upon Jesus to be our savior, so that we can have a relationship with God. This, come on guys, this is the God we serve. He is generous, so let me paint this picture for you. The God we serve has generously given us Jesus, which has changed so many of our lives. And because his generosity has changed our lives, we now want to live generous. We wanna be generous with our time. We wanna be generous with our words. We wanna, I wanna use the words of my mouth to build people up, to encourage generously. I wanna pour it out on as many people as possible. I wanna be generous with my actions, the way that I love people and serve people. And then I wanna be generous with the resources that God has given me. So God's generous, when God comes to live in me, I get all of him, therefore I become generous. Second thought is this, here's the struggle. Generosity isn't natural. It's supernatural. There are people who don't follow Jesus, they're don't believe in God, and they're generous people. But collectively, for our society and the world that we live in, most people are not just, all of a sudden, naturally generous. So this supernatural thing has to happen in us that changes our mindset when it comes to generosity. I can remember about four years ago,

I got a phone call from a guy, and I usually don't pick up random numbers, and I don't even know how this guy got my phone number to be honest with you. If you have my phone number, and you give it away to somebody, I'll kill you, man. Do not be give, like, and let that just, I won't kill you, I'm a pastor, I won't do that. You know, don't just give, like, let that be anybody on board with that, like, don't just get, okay, okay, okay, okay. All right, so anyways, this guy gets my number, I answer the phone, and when I say, hey, who's this? And he goes, this is so-and-so, I'm not gonna say his name, I knew who he was. I knew who he was because this guy had attended our church from time to time. When I say he attended our church from time to time, what I mean was he was a creaster. And if you go to Ross Church, you know that, And it's not gonna offend them today 'cause they're not here. Because a creaster is somebody who only comes to church on Christmas in an Easter. They're not here, so they're not offended. Raise your hand if you used to be a creaster, any recovery creasters? Let's go! Let's, you used to be a creaster,

and now you're at church on a rainy Sunday in October? Look at you, man, let's go. (audience applauding) And so this guy, the reason I knew who he was is 'cause he was the type of guy, like some of you dudes in here today, like you kind of stand out in a crowd, like there is noticeable differences about you. And so anyways, he's like, "Hey man, can I talk with you for a little bit?" I'm like, "Of course." And he starts telling me how God is working in his life. And I'm kind of blown away 'cause I'm like, "Well bro, you only come to my church on Christmas in Easter." Obviously God's doing something if you're willing to call the pastor right here, and you wanna talk about this. And he just starts telling me some stories. And I'm just sitting there going, "Wow, this is kind of crazy." And he starts telling me how God's been putting different people in his life. And he was going through something really difficult at the time, but he could see the hand of God even at work in the middle of that. And he didn't have the words for it, but what he was telling me was, the Holy Spirit was moving in his life and drawing him to God. And this is what he is voicing to me.

He's going, "I honestly, man, I'm just gonna be real with you. "I don't really follow God." And I'm like, "I already knew that, but that's cool." Anyways, he was like, "But something is drawing me to God. "I think I need him in my life. "And I'm on the phone, I'm in my front yard. "I can remember this." And I'm like, "I am about to have a conversation with this guy. "And he is about to give his life to Jesus "on a random phone call." (audience applauds) This is crazy. And so we had been talking for, I don't know, about 30 minutes or so. And then all of a sudden, he shifts the conversation and this is what he says to me. I don't remember the exact wordage, but it was something like this. So tell me about the whole money thing. He was like, "What is God want with my money?" I was like, "God doesn't want your money. "God's good, he doesn't need your money." He was like, "Tell me what do you guys teach "and everything." So I just kind of broke it down for him. I'm like, "This is what the Bible says "when it comes to our finances, "that everything we have that belongs to God, "he wants us to entrust, to give back to him, "and be found trustworthy with it.

"And I'm walking him through. "And I'm like, the tithe, 10%, whole thing. "Bubble, blah, blah, blah." And he goes, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second." He's like, "Pastor, I don't think you understand "like I make a lot of money." And I was like, "Praise God." "Praise God, you make a lot of money." And I'm telling you, this is a true story, guys. And he goes, "And my wife, she almost makes "as much money as me. "Like if we were to give 10% of our income, "that would be a lot." And I was, again, I was like, "Praise the Lord. "Let's go, man." And he goes, "I just don't think I could do that." And I was like, "Well, it's not like you have to, "but this is just something that God would start "to work on your heart. "It might not come around." And so we're working through this together and he's just getting hung up on the money. And then the conversation just ends. We ended up having one more phone conversation and it went back to the money again. And then he never called me again. And then I would send him a text and he ghosted me, no text back. And that was four years ago. I haven't heard from him

and I have not seen him at our church again on Christmas and Easter. And I thought, how crazy is this that God was obviously getting this guy's attention. He saw his need for God, but somehow the money side of things is what got him hung up to where he never fully entered into this with the Lord. Now I'm not saying that's where you are, but I am saying that some of you, you're really good with God and you love God and you wanna follow him, but yet you have still not entered into this side where you go and God, I know I can trust you. And for some of you, let's be real. You might be sitting there going 10% man, like that wouldn't be a lot. Others of you like, actually that would be a lot. I'd have to change the thing. That's kind of the point. And at the end of the day, generosity isn't this natural thing. It's a supernatural thing that God's gonna do in you and through you, okay? So this verse right here at the end of Matthew 26, Jesus says this and this really doesn't have to do with money in the context that Jesus was saying it, but I believe you can apply it to every area of your life. He says this, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Here's what that means, that the Holy Spirit of God, if he lives in you, if you're the house of God,

the spirit of God in you wants to be generous. The Holy Spirit is always gonna have the heart of God. So the Holy Spirit in you is like, let's be generous. Every time those buckets are passed, you're like, yeah, we should give to that. But then the flesh kicks in. And the flesh is your sinful self and your flesh is gonna go, oh, we can't do that. 'Cause if we did that, then we wouldn't have this for ourselves. And if I gave that, then I wouldn't be able to do this. And it's this back and forth, this like tug of war match. You understand what I'm saying? And so as followers of Jesus, man, we wanna be led by the Spirit, not the flesh. 'Cause the flesh is a liar. The flesh says, oh, you can't give and the Spirit's like, yeah, we can, God's gonna take care of us. He's a better provider than I am. So let's have a little bit of fun this morning. I love the internet, how many of you love the internet? All right, this is one of my favorite things on the internet right here. You've never done this before. Just Google this phrase right here. The phrase is, I wouldn't tell people I'd won the lottery, but there would be signs. And this just is awesome. How many of you have ever thought, man,

if I ever won the lottery, I know exactly what I would buy. Yeah, yeah, there would be signs, right? We would know, we would know. For me at the end of the day, I don't play the lottery, personal conviction. If you're here and you're like, I do play the lotto. I heard a pastor say one time that if you ever win the lottery, you better not tie off of that to their church because God wouldn't bless that. I'm gonna tell you right now, you win the lottery in this church, you better tie it off a bit. We're gonna, we'll take every time you give, all right? God's big enough to bless that, I promise you. I would not encourage it, but we'll take it, okay? As followers of Jesus, there should be signs. The way you interact with people, that should be a sign. Where somebody goes, oh, you're different. The way you treat your spouse and your kids, that should be a sign that people see. The way you serve people. And listen, the way you're generous with your money, that should be a sign. And if it's not happening in your life, God wants it to be a sign because what he wants to do is he wants to take his generosity that changed your life. He wants to flow it through you so that your generosity impacts somebody else's life, all right? But it ain't natural, baby, it's a supernatural thing that only God can do in and through you.

So if you're feeling the fight, welcome to the club. Not a single person in here has ever been like, oh man, I've thought about that money I gave. Like every single time we give in our family, I think, whoa, I could use this over here. Spirit of God goes, oh, no, no, no, no. We're given to the kingdom, amen? Point number three, that'd be a fun toilet too. Some of you men spend way too much time on the toilet. You'd spend so much more time if that was your toilet. All right, if you're a no taker in the house, you ain't got time to write this one down. Maybe you do, you can take a picture of this, but here's the reality. We will stand before God and we will give an account for how we manage the money he has entrusted to us. All right, you're gonna stand before the Lord one day. You're gonna give an account for how you manage the money he has entrusted to you. It's not your money, it's is. But let's have another fun illustration. All right, I know the jags are playing right now. Trusting that the Lord's hand is on that team. Come on, Jesus. Got my lucky socks on today, let's go. All right, here we go. All right, but if I looked at you and I said, don't worry about the game. After church, let's go steal somebody's car. Who's in?

All right, security. Escort them out, we need to talk to them later. If I said to you, man, let's go steal somebody's car. That would be so, let's go rob a bank today. That would be amazing. The majority of you, all the wise people in the room will be like, we're not doing that. Sounds awesome, pastor. We're not doing that because we're gonna get caught. And when we get caught, we're gonna get arrested. When we get arrested, we're gonna have to stand before a judge and there will be consequences. You tracking with me here? When we don't give back to God, what all belongs to him, and here's the really good news. He's not asking for all of it. He's only asking for a little bit because he wants to know if your heart is willing to trust him. But when we don't do that, "You are robbing me." And it's my job, my calling, my responsibility to get you ready for the day when you stand before him. I wanna be the pastor who loves you so much that'll preach what you don't wanna hear. So that you get ready. Because if you don't get ready, if you don't get ready, you're gonna stand before him one day

and here's the words that you're gonna hear from him. You wicked and lazy servant. This is a story in the Bible. Go read it in Matthew 25 where the master who represents God entrusts some money to three people. Two of the three, man, they took that money, they invested it, they made more money and God looks at them and goes, "Great job." The third one did nothing. And when the master comes back, he looks at that one and he goes, "You're wicked and you're lazy." This is a reality that when we stand before God one day, he's gonna look at me and you. And he's gonna go, "Wait a second. "I was generous to you. "I generously poured out my love. "I generously gave my son. "I generously showed you grace. "I generously was patient with you. "And you weren't even willing to be generous back." That's the wordage. Now, if you've grown up in church, you've heard other language that God might say to us when we stand before him in heaven. And the language that he shares in the same story to the two who manage the money well is well done, good and faithful servants. The only time that language is used in scripture has to do with money.

And for me, I wanna be able to stand before God and go, "God, I wasn't the richest man in the world, "but you blessed me and I took what you gave me "to use it to be a blessing to others. "You were generous to me and I took what you gave me "and I used it to be generous to others, "to advance your kingdom. "And I wanna hear the words, well done, well done." It's the only time I ever wanna hear the words, well done. I don't wanna hear it for my stake. I just wanna hear it for Jesus. Pastor Jonathan, you can join me on the stage. And I don't know how again, guys, I have no clue how this is gonna go down in heaven. But if God will allow me, I wanna sit on the sidelines as the people of Ra's Church stand before God. And I just wanna be there. And one after one, I just wanna hear him say to you, well done. And I'm gonna go, "Yeah, they were part of our church! "Whoo, I'm gonna cheer you on." Well done, yes! Well done, yes! That person, they made a stank face when I told him I was preaching on generosity, but they started giving! That's what I want for our church. It's what I want for your life. And if you're here today and you're like,

so the church just wants my money, huh? Nope. Here, can I say this very clearly without hurting anybody's feelings this morning? Can we all just get a little bit of thick skin in the room? Okay, online family, you've already tuned out, that's okay. We don't want your money, okay? Let me say it another way. We don't even need your money. We're already doing it without you. So if you think that I'm just preaching this so that you'll give, nope, nope, nope. I just want you to be generous. So if you don't give here and you're offended 'cause you're like, church just wants, be generous. You don't have to give to us. Just go be generous somewhere else to advance the kingdom of God. So don't walk away going, I knew it. I knew those guys just wanted my, nope. Don't give us a dime. Now, if you call this your home, if you call this your church, then I would invite you to invest here. But if this ain't your church, you don't have to give anything to us. Here's the good news. God doesn't want or need your money either. He's doing fine. He wants your heart.

So I, an artist. going to call a heart for his house offering in two weeks. Why are we doing it in two weeks? Because I'm giving you plenty of time to prepare. I don't want you to be like, I didn't know it was coming. Nope, you got two weeks to prepare. Why? Because the wrestle match is about to start. Where the spirit goes, man, this is what we need to do and your flesh goes, no, we don't. But in two weeks, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take up this special offering and we're all going to give all of us. Why? Because we all have something to give. Some of you have more than others. Praise God. Some of you only have a little bit, like literally, some of you have like a couple bucks to give. You're like, I am paycheck to pay, I am less than paycheck to paycheck. I might have tuba. Like, listen, you might think it's a not, you just give. How much should I give? You give whatever the Holy Spirit tells you to give. If you're like, all I have is a couple bucks, then you give that and you trust God. If you have more to give, then you give. It's the last week of October. Some of you are like, but I already gave online. When the buckets are up here, you just come do a double tap on them and go back to your seat. I already gave. Cool. We already gave. We're good. But we're all going to do it collectively. And what I'm praying is, it's a catalyst that gets your heart in that generosity mode. How many of you have kids? I mean, I have three kids. My youngest is eight. How many of you think it would be a good idea if I put her in charge of our finances? Yeah. If I put her in charge of our finances, man, you know what we would have? We'd have muffins to feed an army. That girl loves muffins. We'd have candy. We'd have squishies. We'd have needos. You don't know what those are. Don't worry about it. We'd have, you know, we'd have all this fun stuff. You know, we wouldn't have a house. Wouldn't be able to pay for our mortgage. Wouldn't have food. We'd have muffins. We'd be all right, I guess. God looks at you and he goes, "Oh, you're my kids. But I'm better at handling your finances than you are. And if you do it my way, you can trust that I will be your provider." So let's go. Let's enter into a place of trust in this difficult area of our lives. Let's advance his kingdom. And let's stand before him one day when we hear the words, "Well done. Well done."