How to Walk in the Will of God

I want to talk to you today about how to walk in the will of God. I think sometimes we make the idea of God's will something exotic and far away and distant. It doesn't feel tangible. It doesn't feel tactile. It doesn't feel very practical. And I think that's one of the ways the enemy keeps us from actually walking in it. We sort of have this like romantic notion of what it is going to look like one day win. Because no one wants to say like, "I don't want to do God's will." All of us deep down like, "Well, yeah, that's what I want. But I'll know it when I get there and that's going to be amazing one day win." But here's what I want to show you. God's will for your life is not about your future. It's about today. It's about right here, right now. He's present in your life today. These are the days, your opportunity to walk with God. It's right in front of you and to see His will come to pass in real time. Good news. God has told us very specifically, very clearly, that He has a plan for your life. It's Jeremiah 29. He says, "For I know the plans that I have for you." Now, you might be like, "Well, that's the problem. He knows. I just don't know. I want to know, but if you tell me, I would know." Well, here's what you need to know. His plan for you is good. It's not evil. He wants to prosper you. He doesn't want to harm you. He wants to give you a hope and a future. So it's not just important to just keep in mind. God does have a plan for your life. But the Scripture also tells us that He expects you to know that plan. He wants you to know what that plan is. In fact, in Ephesians chapter 5, He says, "Therefore, do not..." Someone say, "Do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is." So check this out. "If today you don't know God's will, that's not wise."

Why? You can't very well do something that you don't understand. You can't very well do something if you don't understand what it is that you're supposed to be doing. Now, I understand that even a broken clock is wrong most of the time, but it gets it right a couple times a day, right? A broken clock is right at 3 p.m., it's right at 3 a.m., as long as it's broken at 3 o'clock. But we don't want to accidentally stumble upon God's will sometimes. We want to be clear about what it is so we can seek it out so that every single day when our feet hit the floor, we can be a seeking missile towards the target that He has in heart. Anybody want that? Like, you want God's will? I want God's will. And that's where it begins. Doing God's will starts with wanting to do God's will, and then it requires understanding of what that will is, and then every single day it's the choice to walk in to participate in it. And that's what I want to teach you in the weeks of this series, a very practical series that's going to help you understand it so that you can walk in it. I'm going to start in Colossians chapter 2. If you have a copy of the scripture, I'm going to read these two verses, chapters 2 of Colossians verse 6 and 7. I'm going to read it one time, and then I'm going to refer back to it again and again and again. So don't just rely on the verses on the screen, either punch it up in you version, or better yet open it up in your Bible so you can underline it and highlight it and write little things in the margin, right? It's been said, if you mark the Bible, the Bible will also mark you. So I think it's really helpful to do so. Colossians 2, Paul speaking, as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith as you have been taught abounding in it with thanksgiving. Now these two verses, what we have here, is God's will for every single Christian. There are ways in which God's will for your life is not God's will for my life, right? We can't push upon each other our callings, but what Paul gives us here is the will of God for every single believer. And that's what he desperately wanted the church at Colossae to understand so that they could participate in, so that they could walk in. We know that because if you flip just one chapter to your left in chapter one, we get Paul's first, which is kind of epic to get a glimpse into what Paul prays for people he cares about. And in verse nine, he prays this, for this reason, we also sense the day we heard it.

His will you can't do it if you don't know we want you to understand his will not just in some wisdom But in all wisdom and spiritual understanding now backing up context-wise What he says when he says since the day we heard it since today we heard it He's referring to the fact that he had never been to Colossae He did not plant the church at Colossae many people when he writes to them He said hey, I led you to faith in Christ I'm your spiritual parent when you lead someone to Christ spiritually speaking They're like a son in the faith to you a daughter in the faith to you But Paul did not plant this church his son in the faith Epaphras did so Paul viewed the church at Colossae as his spiritual Grandchildren and like a spiritual grandpa, he cared for them and he wanted to see them moving now Grandparents love to see the grandchildren moving. That's why they give them so much sugar, right because the grandparents know They're sending them home at the end of the night. So it doesn't matter how how bouncing off the walls. They are It's not their problem anymore. So what does he say? I want you participating and I want to see some movement I want to see you bouncing off the walls with energy for God. I'm praying for you, right? So pro-tip parents pro-tip grandparents pray for the will of God for your children If you're not praying God's will over your kids every day You need to start today You need to start immediately both to pray for God's will to come to pass in your life And for God's will to come to pass in your children's life They need to know that the highest success in your mind in your heart for them It's not what school they get into it's not what career they go on to do It's not how much money they make that success for you for you in your heart as for me in my house Is that they would serve the Lord all their days. Come on We want our kids to walk in God's ways. We want them to know God's voice We want you to be filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding that you would understand you We don't want our kids to be foolish, right? We don't want our kids to be Undiscerning we want them to know what the will of God is we want them to prosper Spiritually speaking to walk in God's good and perfect and acceptable plans that he has for their life So how how's he gonna connect the dots if that's what he's praying for how is he going to help make it happen?

Because pro tip God wants you as much as you can to be the answer to your own prayers I believe one of the reasons God burdens us to pray for certain people or things Is so that we can then with that burden be a part of making it happen I like to put it this way God wants you to pay for what you pray for so be careful what you pray for You might get a yes from God and a new assignment, right? So for example, maybe you're praying for a co-worker or a neighbor to come to know face Well, you don't get up and say amen hoping that God gives that job to someone else The reason he had you pray for I believe in many cases is so that you could put yourself out there and buy them to church next Sunday Invite them to coffee tell them the gospel be willing to face ridicule or embarrassment and tell them about Jesus He wants you to pay for what you pray for so Paul prayed That this church in Colossae he had never been to would be filled with the knowledge of wisdom and spiritual understanding And so what is he gonna do to be the answer to his own prayers? Oh, hello He'll keep writing the book of Colossians one of the most Christ Exalting books in the entire Bible. He is the image of the invisible God the firstborn of our all creation through him for him By him all things exist and we're created he will lift up this biological praise opening back to heavenly places for them to see who Jesus is because guess what you can't be filled with all Wisdom and spiritual understanding if you don't know Jesus and walk with him in intimacy For as Paul will tell us in Colossians chapter 2 verse 3 in whom Jesus are hidden all someone say all the treasures of wisdom and Knowledge it is wisdom personified that we've now that's what we find in the person of Jesus Christ that means then the closer you walk with Jesus the more you're going to understand God's will for your Life if you're not doing that today. You are out of God's will So to ask the question what school should I go to should I start this career launch this business marry this person? That's getting the cart ahead of the horse if you're not walking in a flourishing Vine branch connection John 15 5 with Jesus Christ. Well, that's great about Jesus, but I need to know at right To waste any of your energy going what's God's will for this without dealing with the most important thing? buying all the dressers, right? But you don't even own a house yet. Like, wouldn't that be preposterous?

What are you doing? Do you just like Allen Wrenches? Do you just like meatballs? What are you doing? You just like single-use furniture that can't survive a move 'cause it's just made of sawdust and good intentions. You know what I'm saying? Like, no, God bless the Swedish, right? You don't go buy a dresser in a bed and if you don't have a place to live. If you're not walking with Jesus Christ and doing the most important thing concerning God's will, why would he waste his time telling you some other peripheral tertiary or worse issue in your life? You are needing to just, you know, not get ahead of yourself in that way. Another way to theologically refer to this is God does not care about some specific area of your life if you're not walking in harmony with the general will of God, okay? Those are two theological categories, specific will of God versus the general will of God. That is to say, what is God's will for you that is also God's will for me automatically? You are not that special, you are not a snowflake, you are a child of God, bought by the blood of Jesus, you're a part of the body of Christ. This does apply to you too. Yes, you, every one of us, what is God's will that is in the general senses will for every Christian,

if you're not doing that, it doesn't matter about the specific issue. If you're not walking in the revealed will, he's not gonna give you his concealed will. And a lot of times I think we get all tripped up in an area where we feel like he hasn't told us what to do. Meanwhile, we haven't done something he has told us to do. So the best thing you should do, every time you feel stumped in an issue when you're like, "Man, I just don't know what the will of God." Don't rush to ask people to pray for you. Go ask yourself honestly, am I in harmony with what God has? Is there anything God's told me to do that I'm not currently doing? Let me do that. This is what's gonna follow is five things that we could call the will of God starter pack, right? We can get more specific and we will throughout the weeks of the series, but every time you feel stumped, come back to these five things and ask yourself the question, are any of them lagging? And if so, give them a boost. And then we will deal with all of the lesser issues. Does that make sense? Five things, jot him down, number one, you need to grow in grace. I can speak to you that it is God's will for you to grow in grace.

Back to the text, Paul said, "As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him." Pop quiz, how'd you get saved? There's one answer and one answer that is correct. The answer would be grace. Do you know what grace is? Let's spell it out. G, God's, R, riches, A, at, C, Christ's, E, expense. That's how you got saved or you're not saved. If you would say anything other than grace, you are not a Christian. For what? Ephesians 2,8 says salvation is this and this only. For by grace, you have been saved through faith and that, check it out, not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. So if your answer for how you are saved is I go to church, I read the Bible, I do good deeds, I mow my lawn, I walk a little ladies across the street, I'd never cheat on my taxes, I have integrity, I'm an American, I have an American flag, I drink Bud Light or don't drink Bud Light, like if it has anything to do with Bud Light, you're not a Christian. (congregation laughs) If it's your John Deere tractor, no, listen, salvation is grace or you're not a believer. You can only receive Christ, God's riches,

opened up to you at Christ's expense. If it's Jesus on the cross and nails through his hand to nail through his feet and you're sitting on his shoulders and you without one plea, just saying I was blind and now I'm found, I was lost, but here I am, I couldn't see, but now I see because you saved me. If it's not that, you are not in Christ. The only way to have salvation is to admit you don't deserve salvation. To think you deserve it automatically means you don't have it. You will not meet one person in heaven that you need to ask, how'd you get here? The answer will always be for every single one of us, Jesus. It will always be grace. It will always be what, unmerited favor. Now, bring that with me. As you received him, so walk in him, okay? How quickly we who have been saved by grace through faith shift into a work. Where it's all about what I do and what I don't do. And what you do and what you don't. You watch this, people get saved and they're so happy to be grateful, he saved. And then they walk with Jesus for a minute and they start to think it thinks should be a certain way. And they'll leave a church because their needs weren't getting met. And they'll be expected to serve. And it's like, whoa, you're trying to use me, right? And all of a sudden, right?

All of a sudden, the subtle narrative is I deserve a few. I met a guy one time. I said, hey, you should serve in the church. He said, I've been coming to the church for a lot of the church. I said, are you serving? He said, nah, my old church, I served for 20 years. And then he said this to me. He said, I've paid my dues. Oh, you paid your dues. Oh, wow, how lucky God is that he has you having done all that you did for him. You see what I'm saying? The subtle narrative is I do this and then God does this. And then here's the test. If you want to see if there's any legalism lingering in your heart, like a smoldering fire ready to erupt into a fire that will burn down your life and file many, because legalism ends one way, the grave. Because it's all about you being the stuff. It's all about you being the hero. It's all about you and I being hot, you know? And what we can accomplish. And no one walks like Gaston. No one talks like Gaston. In a spitting contest, no one spits like Gaston, right? It's all about us, right? Here's how you test. What happens when you suffer? You can say it's all God, all his grace. But when you suffer, if you get mad at God,

you're betraying that you sort of believed, if I do this, God should do that. If I do this, life should go this way. When you suffer, if you go, hey, God, you're going to work this off for good. I don't deserve anything. You're walking with God in grace. But it's easy to walk with grace to get saved, but then treat amazing grace. Like it was just there to make us Christians, not how we're supposed to walk as Christians. When Paul says, as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him. What does that mean? That means that every single day, day 200, day 2000, day 200,000, as a Christian, you should wake up and say, I need your grace today. I don't have what it takes today. But a lot of us don't want to do that because we're okay getting into Christianity as the damsel in distress, but that's not fun for day 200,000. We want to sort of feel like we have some things come. We've been walking with Jesus for a while, and eventually we start to feel like he owes us. And the one with nail-scarred hands owes us nothing. We owe him everything. And our mentality should be thank you, God. I'm just grateful to be alive, just grateful to be not headed to hell.

What do you want me to do next? What do you want me to do next? What do you want me to do next? So grow in grace. Don't ever come to a place where you let legalism creep into your heart. Let every day be you growing in walking with him completely dependent on him. Only grace can keep you standing in suffering. Romans chapter five verse two, Paul says, and this is the same language from Ephesians two eight. By grace you have been saved through faith. Notice through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And in our sufferings we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. When we remember that it's all grace. In suffering we can actually rejoice. That's the context for the book of Romans. Christians in Rome dealing with suffering and persecution. He's saying we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God because the best is yet to come. And grace just keeps getting better. And it's never about us. It's always about what he has done for us. All right, so we want to grow. Secondly, in a grove. We want to grow in a grove. Maybe just maybe today the reason you feel like you don't know God's will

is because you aren't growing in a grove like you're meant to. But you're trying to do it solo. Verse seven, Paul said, as you receive Christ, Jesus is Lord, so walk in him rooted. That's the next word he says. You see it in your Bible? Rooted. What, think about it. What gets rooted to become powerful? The answer would be a tree. That's not how trees come from the nursery. When trees come from the nursery, they're potted. They have a burlap sack around them, tying up their root ball. It's just, and it can be knocked over. Have you ever had a potted tree standing there? Have you ever had a tree in a root ball? You could tip that thing over. No big deal at all. But not so once the roots take hold. And that's what God wants your life to become like. In fact, Psalm 92, verse 12, he says, the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. I don't know if you've ever been anywhere tropical where they have palm trees in gale forest winds, hurricane winds, those palm trees can almost go sideways.

And they won't get knocked over. Because of their roots. And the same thing is meant to be true when you're walking with Jesus planted in Him. He wants your roots to go deep down, but not just by yourself, also into the body of Christ, which is why He compares this to a cedar tree in Psalm 92. I find it interesting that out of all the trees He could compare us to, He calls us a cedar, why? Because you will never see a solitary cedar in your life. And imagine how boring the trail of the cedars would be if it was just a cedar tree. Right, no, there's a lot of them, what? There's always a grove of trees planted together, working together. Their roots intermingled together. The point is, if you want to take out one cedar tree, you got to take out the whole grove. There's power and strength in numbers. Walking with Jesus is not meant to be an experience where you're like the lonely, solitary oak tree, or where you remain perpetually like you came home from the nursery with your roots all tied up in a sack inside of a pot. Some Christians are like that. And now the benefits are, a potted plant is portable. I can go over here and hear this. I can go over there and get the blessing. As soon as the conviction or the newness works off, I can just go where the wind takes me,

always perpetually pursuing the future exotic will of God. Because it doesn't feel like I thought it was going to feel over here. And my season has changed and it's exciting to be portable, but you know what you're never going to be when you're portable? Powerful. To be powerful as a tree, you got to be planted and your roots got to go deep down. I'm intermingled around the roots of other believers. This is God's will for you that you would not live life solitary, that you would be set and knit into a family, that you as a joint, that you as a part, would be a part of the body of Christ with him as our head, functioning as a body, doing the vision of the head so that we could see his kingdom grow as a part of a team. Which is why Hebrews 10 says, don't neglect meeting together as is the habit of some. But encourage one another and all the more as you see the day drawn near. I wonder if perhaps you feel just a sense of dryness in your walk with God or you just feel like you're drifting. You don't feel like there's that purpose. You don't feel like there's that sense of mission. And that's because perhaps you're not on a team. Or even if you come every once in a while, you're not plugged in, you're not a part of the house. Giving and serving and being known and being encouraged and being the one giving the encouragement. Some days strong when someone else is weak, some days weak when someone else is strong.

And let me tell you, you need this root system to go deep down into the soil, intermingled around with other believers before the trial shows up. You need to have it there in the time when the gail force wins are there, that your anchor holds and that you have people in your life to comfort you when you're weak and to comfort when you're the one who's strong and they're weak. So you can weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. As an interesting experiment, sometimes go look in the New Testament and count up the uses of the phrase one another. We just read one of them. Don't forsake meeting together with one another. Then count up all the other one and others and I want you to ask yourself this question. How many of those can you do alone? The answer is zero. So how much of the New Testament experience will you not be living out if you're not planted in a local context of a body of believers? The point is your local, if you're rolling solo, you need God's people in your life. You got to grow in a grove and you have to be willing to be known. You have to be willing to enter into the messiness and at times the monotony of a body of Christ

as we all imperfect people bug each other. That's part of the iron sharpening iron to become more like the body of Christ. Third, we want to grow in godliness. Godliness, we need to be increasingly evident in our lives, not by legalism, okay? It's not like, oh Lord, do you see, I stopped cussing. Aren't you proud of me? Lord, I spend three hours since my last is in. Aren't you gonna pat me on the head? I think God's like, well, I do hate this in but love this inner. So yes, great way to go, little Johnny. You know, come on, get out of here. It's not about us doing enough good and then he's like, well, here's a gold start on your chart. No, no, motivation's all wack. Motivation's all wack. If he's given us unlimited grace and every day wants to keep giving us what we don't deserve, we're never coming to a place where I do this. So now you, God, have to do that. That makes God your dance monkey. That makes God your pet, your personal assistant, not your lord and your savior. If every day you come to him for grace that you don't deserve, that then makes you want to be like him and do things that he would be pleased by,

not so you would get his approval one day but because you already have his approval in Christ. That he already today looks at you in Christ, if you're in Christ and sees the right. And you keep just saying, I can't believe you keep pouring this grace out. That then makes you want to live a godly life, okay? Or to put it another way, he wants your life to be built up tall, okay? So your roots go deep down, but then your life gets built back up. Now it's interesting, we went down deep so we could go up high, welcome to building. So much of construction is site work for so long. It's like, where's the building? They're just, are we wasting all this time? No, they're getting this lab ready. They're getting the foundation ready. They're making sure this thing can actually hold the weight of what gets put on it. Now, as we walk with Christ in his body, we're going to get to use gifts and watch God work through anointing. We're going to watch the spirit bless the uniting of these different parts together to do things that none of us could take credit for on our own. But lest our character isn't in place, we will implode as victims of our own success once God begins working through us. So yes, we do want to get built up and established

in the faith and see incredible things happen to the infinity and beyond, all of that is true, right? I has not seen ears not heard what God is prepared to do through those who love him. But we must not do so at the expense of integrity, in structural integrity. And as Paul shifts into from a plant who's got roots to this imagery of a building that is going to soar high like a skyscraper, we have to think, eventually it's going to catch up to us if he keeps adding level after level year after year, higher up, higher up, higher up, further up, further up, further up, if we even get one degree off from that level, if there's not integrity, if there's not character, soon will come the swift fall and destruction of that structure, right? We can be eventually at a place where we have so much fruit in our branches, but there's not roots down to sustain it and we topple because of what we were holding. And this can happen as a Christian, this can happen to a church. So we have to grow in godliness, okay? So this is why Jesus got attacked when it came to his purity by the devil, because he knew if he could defile him, then he could wipe him out, but Jesus kept saying, it is written, it is written, and what did he do? He used the word of God like a shield to extinguish the fiery darts of the wicked one. So as you grow, the enemy's coming for your integrity.

What is he gonna do by attacking your purity? Purity is God's will for you. Can I get a text for that, a verse for that? Of course, I'm gonna give you a verse for that. I studied all week for this sermon, 1st Thessonians 4, for this is the will of God. Can we get clearer that, can anybody like, are you like, do I need that in the Greek? Like, this is a, a, a, right? I'm buying pillows at Ikea, do you have a house, right? This is the will of God, your sanctification. Godliness would be synonymous with that. Sanctification means set apart or more like Christ in your day to day living, that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that you would know how to possess your own vessel in honor and sanctification, not like the Gentiles who go about in passion of lust because they do not know God. If you know Him, if you've seen Him, if you, if you really have had your, your mind blown by the one who is the image of the invisible God who is the first born over all creation, whose head and hair are white like wool, whose eyes are like a flame of fire, feet are like burnished brass, who comes on a white horse with a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth to judge. You see, if you know Him, you want to be like Him. Holy, holy, holy. And anything in your life that would defile,

you want no part of, why? Because it would violate your integrity. Sin brings disintegration. It causes little parts of you to break off, little parts of your soul, little parts of your heart. So, so, so let's say you're walking with God fully, but there's a little bit of porn in your life, right? Which by the way, the word immorality is the word pornaya. Guess what we get our English word porn from? God's not about you having pornaya in your life. Well, now you have to start covering your tracks. You can't exactly open up your phone and airplane mirror it to the TV in your Fresh Life group meeting. If you haven't first thought about, oh my gosh, did I close all the tabs, right? Did I delete all those text threads? Was my wife going to find this on my computer after I die? Like you're always thinking about all these things. What, what is that doing? That's disintegrating you. Because some little part of you has to be like, keep the, keep the charade alive, keep the game up, keep the, like you're putting your mask on. And if you are one way at school and another way at church and another way when you're with this group of friends and another way at this function over here, that you're disintegrating yourself. God wants integrity. He wants to build your life up,

floor after floor after floor after floor. "to secure all of the fiery darts of the wicked one "that you're always on guard, always ready. "The enemy's trying to defile you. "He's trying to get a Trojan horse "into the gates of your city "so he can unload all the soldiers "and bring the city down." So what do we do? We ward off the disintegration of self with integrity. But there's only one us. God, this is who I am. I bring it before you. And then we have to also do the same thing, disclosing what we're struggling with to the people of God that we can be healed from these things. We confess to him to be forgiven. We confess to one another. Again, you cannot confess your sins one to another if you're living a solitary Christian experience. If you don't have Christians in your life, you can unburden your soul with and say, this is an area where I'm disintegrated and I wanna unite my heart to fear his name. You're not growing in Godliness. Therefore, you are out of God's will. You're not living his intended best for you. You're not moving towards the future and the hope 'cause you're having yourself taken out

by this lack of Godliness. And God wants you, he loves you so much. He wants you to grow in Godliness. And then number four, to grow in giving. To grow in giving. This is generosity. How do we become more like God, which Godliness has defined as being more like God without being generous? I had to do it because this whole thing starts with as you therefore have received him, so walk in him, who is God? He's a giver of good gifts. He's a father of lights with whom every good imperfect gift comes down. Every good and perfect gift comes from God 'cause he's a good giver. God so loved the world. John 3 16 says that he kept and I got you. He kept it. No, no, he gave. That's what good givers do. They give good gifts, okay? So if God so loved the world, that he gave, why? 'Cause love always gifts. Check it. You can give without loving, but it's impossible to love without giving. Anything your heart is actually invested in, resources fly towards.

That's why Jesus said, wherever your treasure goes, your heart will be there also. So we cannot walk with a generous God, matching his cadence step for step, if we're not living a generous life. How do you begin to live a generous life? It's called the tithe. Scripture says we honor God as the owner and giver of everything by returning automatically the first and best 10% of anything he entrusts to us. Parents, this should be taught to our children and modeled before them at the youngest of age. $10 birthday present from grandma in the envelope. Amazing. We honor God who gave us all good things, who is our life beyond the grave. We honor God every time he entrusts us with any blessing by returning the first 10%. So that first dollar of that 10th, that belongs to Jesus. And then you could say, hey, and maybe we saved the next couple of dollars. 'Cause once you put your mind in heaven, you're automatically gonna become smarter with what's left in your hands. The other nine, you're gonna get better at. So now let's talk about saving. And yes, let's also talk about spending. What do you, what's in your heart to buy? God's a giver of good things. He blessed you with this because he wants to bless you.

Okay, so that plays out. That happens with a hundred dollars. That happens with a thousand dollars. That happens with a million dollars. John Rockefeller, he once said, I would not have tied on the first million I made, had I not tied on the first 10. So when we start small with the building box, it can grow with us. Now technically, I shouldn't have even started with tithing, because tithing isn't giving. There's not one verse in the Bible that says, gives to God a tithe. You notice that says, return. You return something that belongs to someone else, because they said it's theirs. If I loaned you my truck to move, that was not an invitation. And you brought it back, would you put a bow on it, like it was a gift? Look what I gave to you. I would say thank you for a return. I wouldn't say thank you for giving me that truck. You returned what was mine to me. That's the tithe. Giving technically begins once you've already returned the tithe. We actually should call tithing not stealing. That would be what tithing actually is, right? That's a way to grow the church, right? But it's actually biblically true.

The next level of generosity, once you've tied, but I have to start there because you can't technically give until you're tithing, right? So the next level, there's three, is offerings. An offering is to find is anything above and beyond your tithe that God moves in your heart to give. And there's no cap on that, right? And then the third level of giving, which most Christians will probably never receive, is what is called a hilarious gift or a radical act of generosity. And this is something free will, again, that you're capable of moving into if you watch God move in your heart the revelation comes, I can't out give God. The more I give, the more I watch Him bless me. And as I walk in that blessing, I'm able actually to give what a certain point in my life would have been never possible, radical level of generosity. The point is we get to grow, do you see what I'm saying? In giving, which is what we have to do by training that muscle. Paul told the church at Corinth, 2 Corinthians 8, "Since you excel in so many ways in your faith, your gifted speakers, your knowledge, your enthusiasm, and your love from us, I want you to excel also in this gracious act of giving." He's saying, "I want you because you're doing so well in so many ways to also crush it in this way, but you're gonna have to try,

you're gonna have to train, you're gonna have to trust. You don't get off the basketball court after not playing for you, and instantly have your timing come back. It takes being in it, the muscle memory. You have to hone that. I want you to excel at it, but it's gonna take you working at it systematically and watching your life grow in this way. Plus, I love the thought that our giving isn't really about what we're gonna accomplish when we give to God. He paves his streets in heaven with gold. Let that sink in. So if it was really about money, which is what we act like with that is like, "Oh, I just want my money." He would just send three angels with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow if it was really just about the money to unearth a couple bricks. It's about, I think, getting our hands open because clenched fists can't receive a gift. And once we open up our hands to give the five loaves and two fishes that he's entrusted to us, we get to watch him do a miracle with that we could never have done ourselves. And then he then is able to give the blessing to us that he actually intended to, 'cause it's always more blessed to give than to receive. But you don't get to participate in that

when you're not giving or when you're stealing. Okay, I'll take your silence as my cue to move on. But I will point out in talking about sex and money now, we're talking about some pretty, whoo, touching some tender tissue. You know what I'm saying? For a lot of us, these are like the two real biggies. And this is where God wants us to focus what we need to think about when we're asking about some lofty thing about God's will for my life. He's like, let's talk about your sex life. Let's talk about your financial health, right? And I always like to think about Matthew 28 whenever I get to a subject that makes me feel tender when God touches it, right? Matthew 28 is the resurrection of Jesus' question to dead. Because a lot of us are trusting Jesus with our future in heaven, but we're unwilling to trust him with our finances. How preposterous is that? It was Tim Keller who once said, if what Jesus says about his resurrection isn't true, nothing he says matters. So don't get bogged down and I don't like what Jesus has about sex. I don't like what Jesus says about money. The real question we should be asking is, did he rise from the dead? 'Cause if he rose from the dead,

everything he says matters. If he didn't rise from the dead, nothing that he says matters. So when you feel some kind of way about what he says about finances, I would just ask you, are you willing to trust Jesus with your eternal future but not your finances? Are you telling me, you're willing to trust him with your soul but not with what you do with your sex life? That's crazy. All right, so we wanna grow in giving. And then number five, lastly, gratitude. Simplest of all, 'cause it needs a least explanation. God has a will for your life and it is that you would be a thankful person. And so that means if you're a grumpy person, that means if you're a cynical person. That is to say if you're a person who likes to complain, if you're always finding fault, if you're always pointing blame, if being around you is like just this big bummer, this is a good question. What is your impact on a conversation? What's your impact on a text thread? Does it overflow and abound with Thanksgiving? 'Cause that's what verse seven says are questions too. We are to abound in all of these ways that we're growing with Thanksgiving.

It's actually one of the easiest ways to check, am I out of God's will? Am I being thankful? In fact, we're told that exactly in 1st Thessalonians 5, one of the clearest texts on the will of God. In everything, give what? Thanks. For this is the, finish it with me. Will of God in Christ Jesus for you? Not to dabble in God's will, thanksgiving, but to abound in it, to overflow with Thanksgiving. I think gratitude is one of the most underestimated, but powerful, life-changing tools you have in your arsenal. It does so many things. It triggers peace. Every time you tell God, thank you, it triggers his peace and it diffuses anxiety in your life, protects you in emotional storms. Gratitude keeps you from a victim mentality and keeps you from that entitlement that keeps you shifting towards legalism and away from grace. And let's end with this. Gratitude is powerful because it keeps us from breaking the heart of the one who allowed his heart to be broken for us. The text is Luke 17. The context is Jesus heals 10 lepers. Nine of them return to their regular lives, having been healed, but never saying a word to Jesus.

They're healed, but now they go home. One of the 10 lepers comes back to Jesus, falls at his feet and says, thank you. You know Jesus said, we're the other nine. Luke 17, 17, where are the other nine? Why did they not come back to say thank you? Now, I don't think he said this with a passive aggressive tone. Like, I can't believe they didn't give me. I think so, I think so like that. I think he was sad because he had more to give him. But they didn't let him because they weren't grateful and gratitude unlocks the doors of our heart so God can get in with his favor. While we're busy thanking him, he's loading us down. With blessings that we can't contain. That made him sad because he knew the miracle was meant to be just the beginning. So what miracles in your life have you not returned back to the feet of Jesus to thank him for? You might be noticing the overall theme of the sermon is let's not get the card ahead of the horse. We feel sometimes like, well, I don't have God's ghosting me. He's not been telling me, he sent me nothing to tell me what's next. We should really be asking, are we in a place where we even have service? Because if we're not growing in grace and growing in generosity and growing in giving and gratitude and all this, we don't got 5G.

And if you ain't got 5G, how are you gonna be expecting him to tell you what's next? No, you gotta make sure you keep the 5G up. If you, how is he supposed to text you if you ain't got no service? And these things in our lives, if we abound in them, we will neither be fruitful nor unbear in. Ephesians 5 puts it this way. "You were once darkness. "Now you are light in the Lord. "So walk as children of light, "for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, "righteousness and truth, "finding out what is acceptable to the Lord." John Lennon used to say, "Life is what happens "when you're busy making other plans. "Well, I guess Paul is saying that God's will "is what happens when you're busy bearing fruit. "So look at the soil right around you. "These are the days, let's bear some fruit "and we will discover God's will along the way." Now, one last thing before we dismiss, and it's this, 2 Peter 3.9 says God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Beloved, if you are headed to hell today, you are out of the will of God, 'cause he's not willing to any should perish. He does not want you to die in your sins, and that's why Jesus died for you on the cross, but you can't very well walk with Christ

if you haven't first received Him. So today the invitation is to receive Christ Jesus as your Savior and Lord, to repent from your sins, to turn to Him in faith and to invite Him to come into your heart and watch Him heal you and begin to change you as you walk with Him. Let's pray together. Downing our heads, closing our eyes. All of us just take in a moment to consider where we're at with God. Perhaps for each of us, there's a different area where we need to get that G back on. Maybe we've dropped the bar. Maybe it's giving, maybe it's being in a grove or grace or godliness. If you would be honest enough to say, there's some area of my life where I'm out of step, out of sync with God's One. I want to get that bar back. I want to get up to that 5G so I can have full reception. Could you just raise up a hand to God today? Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, I see these hands. I'm so blessed to see the courage and the vulnerability in this body. May you bless them with your strength and your peace. God, I'm so thankful for this church. I'm so thankful to teach your Word. I'm so thankful for this day that you've made.

We rejoice, we walk in it. I pray you bless your people with your presence. You can put your hands down. I want to now invite anybody who's not trusted in Christ to make the most important decision of your life. To give your heart to Jesus. I'll never forget making this decision. I was a freshman in high school. And I realized I needed to invite Jesus into my heart, not just Christianity, into my schedule. It changed everything for me, and that could be you today to say yes to Jesus, to let him save you and heal you so you could step into his will that you would not perish. If that's you I'm describing, I want to pray with you. I want you to pray this out to God out loud after me. Pray these words with me. I'm gonna ask the church family to pray this with us, to show that we are with you as you step into the body, this grove. Say this to God. Dear Lord, I'm sorry for my sins. Thank you for your grace. I can't save myself because of the cross. I believe you can come into my heart, make it your home. And with your resurrection power, help me to walk with you one day at a time until we meet face to face in Jesus' name.