The Faithfulness Principle | Jud Wilhite

All right, now at this point, why don't you open up your notes in the app. You can see the teaching notes and follow along, but let's welcome up Pastor Judd as he shares with us a message of hope. All right. Good to see you guys today. Thank you for being here on Valentine's weekend. Come on, somebody. Love it. Glad you're here. Big shout out to our central locations that are joining us, Central Sunrise Mountain and Central Summerlin, Central Kingman, Central Alliante. Thank you guys for being with us today. And this week I was reading a story about a guy that our culture would consider an incredibly lucky guy. He's lucky for a lot of reasons. One reason is he kind of cheated death. He was in a car wreck. It was bad. He was in a coma for two weeks. He actually died on the table for 14 minutes and then came back. And then after he came back, he's like, I'm feeling so lucky, I'm gonna ask my girlfriend to marry me. Because hey, why not? He almost died.

And she said, yes, amazing. Then he got a lottery ticket, true story, and he scratched it off and he won a car. It's like the luck just keeps coming, man. In fact, this news story wanted to do a story about this news group, a story about him. And so they were filming him and they said, hey, let's go kind of reenact you buying a lottery ticket and we'll catch it on film. And so he goes in, he buys another lottery ticket. He comes out. I kid you not, the dude scratches it on the screen and wins $250,000. He's lucky. He's a lucky guy. If I believed in luck. Here's the thing. We throw the word luck around a lot, right? People say, man, I'm a lucky guy. I'm a lucky gal, right? You know, or we look at somebody's situation and they say, man, must be lucky. Somebody is out on Valentine's partying it up, having an amazing time. Somebody's like, man, lucky. Must be lucky. But can I just confess to you that I understand how we throw that word around, but as a follower of Jesus today, I don't really believe in luck.

I believe in a God who is sovereign and who's in control. And I believe in a God who blesses his people. And so I'm not dependent on luck today for my security. I'm not dependent on luck today for my sense of joy. I'm not dependent on luck for what might or might not happen. I'm depending on the goodness and the grace of God flowing out into my life as I follow him in faith. And it's important because today I wanna talk to you about a principle that can actually position us for more blessing from God. How many of you would like to be blessed by God? I mean, if you're a follower of Jesus today, you're already blessed by God, but who doesn't wanna be more blessed? I'll take all the blessing I can get, man. God, you got more for me? I want it. But I'm not depending on luck for that blessing. I'm depending on positioning myself in such a way, according to the teaching of the Bible, that I am positioned to be blessed and used by God in more and more significant ways. I call it the faithfulness principle. And the faithfulness principle is simply this. When you are faithful with little, God can trust you with more. When you're faithful with little, God can trust you with more. And so if you wanna position yourself

to be used more and more by God, then walk in faithfulness to his word. Work on serving him with your whole heart. Put him first in every area of your life. Show yourself faithful, and you basically can be entrusted then with more responsibilities. I was watching a podcaster this week, and he was pretty frustrated. He's a newer believer, and he was frustrated. And he was talking to this guy, a fellow Christian, and he said, you know, this whole Christian thing, he's like, this is what I don't understand. Like, it's hard to be a Christian. I'm trying to walk faithful. I'm trying to manage my business in a godly way. I'm trying to do all these things. It's hard. But then somebody can go out there and just be a crook and a liar and a thief and do whatever they want, and then on their deathbed, they choose to believe in Jesus, and boom, we're both in the same heaven. And he's like, how is this fair, right? You know, help me. And he's not wrong in the sense that the Bible teaches in Ephesians that we are saved by. Grace, not by our works so that nobody can boast. So when we place our faith and trust in Jesus,

whether it's on your deathbed or whether it's today or whether it's midlife or the beginning of life, when we place our faith and trust in Jesus, yes, if there's true repentance in our heart, a true turning back to God, we'll be forgiven for our sins, we'll be forgiven for our past. We could spend eternity with God in heaven. But don't miss this. That's how grace works and salvation works. But you can be used in this life to the degree that you show yourself to be faithful to God. He can use you more. He can bless you in more rich ways. He can work through your life in more powerful ways as you show yourself to be faithful. So it's not like what we do doesn't matter. Our obedience matters because our obedience positions us to be blessed more and more by God. In fact, faithfulness is the way you position yourself to be more blessed by God. Faithfulness. Now we've been in this teaching series called Jesus on Money, and we've just been like peeling all the layers back, saying, what did Jesus say about material things, stuff, and money? We typically do a giving series once a year at Central, so don't freak out. I don't talk about this stuff all the time.

But when we do, we usually dive in and it's really practical. You know, like we talk about like tithing or giving or saving. But this year I thought, let's just peel everything back and go back to what Jesus said, right? Let's just look at Jesus' teaching. And his teaching is less like concretely practical. If you want super practical, we have a great seminar for you called God's Way with Money. There's a great resource out there, a guy named Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace University. Great resources for like how to deal with budgeting and spending plans and debt and all of that. But Jesus is gonna talk to us more high level about how we relate to God and stuff and things in our lives. And so we've been looking at it and we've kind of boiled it down into four core principles. We'll bring this up on the side screen here. But the first principle we looked at is what we would call the treasure principle. Jesus says, where your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be also. Powerful message about storing up our treasures in heaven. And then we looked at the security principle last week, which is basically this,

that only a rich relationship with God can give you security in your life, real security. It doesn't come from how much is in your bank account. It doesn't come from how much you've saved. Like only a rich relationship with God can really give you that sense of security. This week, we're gonna talk about the faithfulness principle. When you're faithful with little, God can trust you with more. And then next week, we'll talk about the generosity principle that you can't out give God with your time, your life, your stuff. So when it comes to what we might call the faithfulness principle, Jesus shares it four different times in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So it's really important to him. He brings it up again and again. Two times, it's around the same parable in different Gospels called the parable of the talents. We're gonna talk about that or the story of the talents. And then one time he shares this principle in what's known as the parable of the shrewd manager. We'll discuss that. And then he mentions it again in Matthew 24 about a faithful servant. So here's what he says. This is kind of the core idea of the principle.

Luke chapter 16, beginning in verse 10, this is Jesus teaching. Again, four different times in the Gospels, he makes this point. And so here's how he makes it in Luke 16. He says, if you are faithful in what? Little things, right? Little things. If you're faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities. And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? So Jesus is saying, look, it's a simple idea, right? The little things in our lives matter. And I think it's about way more than money and stuff, right? I think it's about, am I willing to be honest in my life? Am I willing to be honest in my business? Am I willing to be honest as a follower of Jesus? It doesn't mean I have to walk around and tell everybody everything about my life, right? There are some things that are private and there's some things that you share, but am I willing to be truthful and honest in what I say? Am I willing to be a man of character or a woman of character that lets my yes be yes and my no be no? The more I grow in that faithfulness,

the more I show myself capable of having even more in my life. So if some of you right now are praying, God, give me more influence. God, give me more impact. God, grow my business. Help us have a greater impact in our community. Listen, the way you take steps towards that is first of all, you're honest and you're faithful in the little things that you're dealing with right now. So you show that as God blesses you, you're ready to take those steps in the future. So the first thing I would share with you, if we want to basically in our. Manage well, what God has given us is just this idea. Manage your little, manage your little. I shared a couple of weeks ago about my first car, which was like this Buick Skylark that sat in our driveway for a long time after my sister discarded it. And eventually I turned 16 and I was able to drive the car, put an amazing stereo system in it. And here's the thing, as soon as I pulled out of the driveway in that car, I thought that car was mine, right? It's my, I drove it like it was my car. I turned the stereo up like it was my car. I tried to look cool in it, like it was my car. I drove it like it was my car. In fact, at one point when all my buddies were in it,

I'm like, hey, let's see how fast it can go in reverse. Just like a very bright man does. I threw that car in reverse on a dirt road and I floored it and we're going as fast as we can. And I didn't realize that the road ended and teed on another road and I went flying off into a ditch. And so then we all got the car back up on the road and it ran a little funny after that. And eventually my dad realized the bumper was up messed up. You know, he walked around the back of the car and he's like, and I had to explain to my dad what happened with the car. And I remember learning a very important lesson in that moment, which is that car was not mine. My dad made it very clear that he maintained the rights to the car. I had the responsibility to the car. If I took care of that car, if I drove it well, if I did not ever again with my friends in the car, throw it in reverse and try to see how fast I could go, maybe I could be trusted to drive the car again, right? Can I tell you, I think that's a spiritual principle Jesus is trying to teach us again and again, which is everything we have in life comes from God. Our breath, our soul, our life, our stuff, our job, our opportunities, our experiences, everything we have in life comes from God. And ultimately we are entrusted to manage what he's given to us, right? We don't own it.

And here's the thing, because he owns it, he can take it away, right? He can give us more to manage or he can take it away. And I'm not talking about salvation. Salvation is by grace through faith. But I am talking about obedience and faithfulness to grow in the blessings that God can pour out on us in our lives. Now, Jesus tells two parables that get to this idea of the faithfulness principle. A parable is a word that just means to throw alongside. So when we talk about Jesus' parables, he would often tell a story and throw it alongside a key idea or a point that he was trying to make, right? So parables are the stories of Jesus. One of the famous ones is the parable of the talents, okay? Talent was just a figure of weighing things in the ancient world. So a talent would be about the equivalent of 75 pounds, okay? But you'll understand why it's the parable of the talents as I explain it. So in Jesus' story, there's a rich guy and he sort of represents God in the story. And there's three servants that would represent us, like his people. And in Jesus' story, the rich guy gets his servants together. He says, hey, I'm going away on a long trip and I need you to manage some of my wealth. And so he gives one guy five bags of silver, five talents of silver.

Each bag would have been like 75 pounds of silver. Hello, that's like multiple years worth of wages. This was an incredible amount of money, right? He gives one guy five bags. He gives another servant two bags and he gives another servant one bag, okay? And he says, manage my resources well until I get back. And so he goes away. Now, it says that he gave each of them according to their abilities. So life isn't fair. God doesn't give us all the same opportunities. God doesn't give us all the same skills. God doesn't give, but we're responsible to manage what God does put in our hand, right? So they turn it around. The guy with five bags of silver goes out, works, invests it, puts the money to work and doubles it. He gets 10 bags of silver, right? Guy with two bags of silver goes out, works hard and doubles it. He's got four bags of silver. And the guy with one bag of silver thinks, oh, I don't wanna mess it up, I'm afraid. And he buries the one bag that he has. Master comes back and says, all right, tell me what you did with my money. And so the guy with five bags of silver says, look, I doubled your money. And the guy with two bags says, look, I doubled your money.

And the master says the same thing to them. This gets to the faithfulness principle right here. Matthew 25, verse 21. This is how the master responds to those who managed well what they were giving. Says the master was full of praise. Well done, my good and faithful servant, he says. You have been faithful in handling this small amount. which, by the way, was not small, hello, but if you think about it from a God perspective, everything's small, a billion dollars, small, right? You've handled this small amount well, look at what he says, so now I will give you many more, what? Responsibilities, let's celebrate together. Somebody needs this word today because you're praying for God to give you opportunities, you're praying for more responsibilities, you're praying for God to raise you up and put you in more influential positions, but here's the thing, first you've gotta prove that you can be faithful in the little so that God can trust you with the more, and there's a couple things we see in this story, we see praise, right? Well done, my good and faithful servant. We see promotion, right? Now you're gonna have even more responsibility, and then we see a party, let's celebrate together, and I think when we're faithful in our lives,

and none of us are perfect, but we're trying to grow in faithfulness in our lives, I think we can expect that kind of a response from God. He says, well done, my good and faithful servant, he promotes you in your life, and he celebrates the steps that you've taken in your life, awesome, right? But then there's this other guy who had one bag of silver and he buried it, and so when the master calls him up, he says, I knew you were a harsh master, he said, I was afraid, I didn't wanna lose it, so I buried it in the sand, here's your one bag of silver back, and interesting, Jesus, in the story, the master says, take that one bag of silver and give it to the servant who has 10 bags of silver, and he says, those who have will be given even more, in other words, if you manage it well, you'll receive any more, he says, and those who don't have, even what they have will be taken away from them. If you don't manage it well, right, it's all God's, you don't drive the Buick Skylark well, dad can take the keys away, right? So we gotta be faithful in our lives. Now, what causes us to bury our blessing? We all have blessings from God, some of you have five talents, some of you have two talents,

some of you have one talent, you're like, I don't have any talents, no, you have talents, God's given you skills and abilities and opportunities and relationships, he's put things in your life, the question is, what are you gonna do with the things that he's given you in your life? Why do we bury our blessing? Well, here's a few thoughts from the story, one is, sometimes it's just like self-pity, the guy in Jesus' story that buries the treasure, it's like he's got some self-pity going on and he's like, well, I thought you were a harsh guy, he's making all these excuses, I was afraid, and this is kind of what self-pity does, it comes in, it says, you know, I'm not as talented as other people, I wasn't given the same opportunities as other people were, like, you know, doors didn't open for me, I'm not as lucky as some other people are, and fundamentally, that's like self-pity, and can I just let you in on a little something here? You cannot blame your way into the blessing of God. A lot of people just blame and throw all this guilt and everything on everybody else, rather than looking in the mirror and just going, maybe I didn't have every opportunity, but I had some, maybe I didn't have every talent, but I had some, maybe I didn't have all the resources in the world,

but I had some, and God, let me be faithful with my little that you have given me in my life. Self-pity can be a reason we bury our blessing. Here's another thought, self-doubt. Self-doubt comes along and we say, you know what, I'm not good enough, I'm not talented enough, I'm not smart enough, I don't have it together enough, and we allow that self-doubt to cause us to just bury some of the gifts and talents and abilities that God has put in our lives. We struggle with self-pity, self-doubt, another reason we bury our blessing, we just get self-centered. Sometimes we just get all caught up in ourselves. Anybody ever get all caught up in yourself? You know what I'm talking about, I do. You get all caught up in yourself, and man, you just start making it all about yourself, and you know what's interesting in the story Jesus tells the parable of the talent? The master says to the guy who took the one bag of silver and buried it, he calls him a wicked and lazy servant. Dang. And yeah, it's a wake-up call. It's a wake-up call for all of us, because all of us have gifts, talents, and abilities. Don't let your self-pity or your self-doubt or your self-centeredness blind you to what God can do through you and in you. He can do it through you as a father,

he can do it through you as a mother, he can do it through you as a friend, he can work through you in your family, he can work through you at your workplace, he can work through you in your church, he can work through you in your community. God has given all of us gifts and talents and abilities, and if we will open our hand and open our heart, he can use us to make a difference in somebody's life. Thank you. Thank you, God. Turn to somebody and just say don't bury it! Don't bury it! Don't bury it! We're all tempted to bury us sometime, but listen, if you dream of having more or being more or doing more... It doesn't start with big opportunities and big natural gifts. It starts with the little that's already in your hand and asking the question, how can I use well what God has already given me? Listen, listen, if you're praying for more financial resources, well be faithful with the little money that you have. Be generous back to God through your giving. Manage your expenses diligently. Try to make your little grow, right? If you're praying for more growth spiritually, look at what God has already put in your life, celebrate it and be faithful with it.

If you're looking for more impact, be faithful managing the impact you already have today. If you're desiring more responsibility, be faithful with the things that you're responsible for today. Listen, there is a buildup to every breakthrough. Now this is a word for somebody today. There is a buildup to every breakthrough. Some of us are praying right now for a blessing and we're not yet prepared for the blessing we're praying for. Some of us are praying for it, but we're not yet prepared to handle it. We're asking for more in our lives and we aren't ready for that. Listen, the breakthrough that you desire can break you if you aren't ready to carry it. And so there is a buildup that needs to happen in our lives before every breakthrough. First, we need to prove that we're faithful, right? God blesses us, we bless him and others, and we show that we can handle more. God gives us talents, we manage them for him and for others and we show that we can handle even more. It could be that today some of you are praying for a financial blessing and you are telling yourself that when you have more, you'll honor God with it. When you have more, you'll help others with it. When you have more, you'll help the poor and the under-resourced and those who are hurting.

And can I just say the reality is, if we won't do it with a little, why should God believe we'll do it with more, right? Let's be faithful with the little. And so some of us are waiting on a blessing and maybe God is withholding the blessing because he's waiting on us. Show that you're faithful with your little and God can show up in that and move in a big way. Don't bury the blessing that he's given you. Manage what he's given you in your life well. When you're faithful with little, God can trust you with more. So manage your little and then here's a second thought, leverage your little, leverage your little. Now, the parable of the shrewd manager is another story that Jesus tells and it's really interesting. It's one that's kind of thrown people ever since Jesus first told it. 2,000 years, this is the parable you read and you go, what? And it's for a lot of reasons. So in Jesus' parable, well, the main reason is that the main guy in Jesus' parable is like a scoundrel. And so this rich guy has a business and he has an accounting manager who oversees his affairs and he finds out that the accounting guy has been making bad business deals, right? Losing him money and so he basically comes to him

and he says, hey, I want you to get an accounting of everything, get it pulled together because we're done here, you're gonna be fired. So this guy's like on his way to a judgment day situation, if you will. It's not looking good. And he does something kind of interesting. He kind of says to himself, well, what am I gonna do? You know, I'm losing my job, everything's gonna be different. He says, I'm not strong enough to do manual labor and I'm not, you know, I have too much pride to beg. He says, I know what I'll do. And so he calls together all these people that owe the manager money and he calls them up and one by one he goes, how much do you owe the master? And however it is, he cuts it in half. Now you just owe him this much. And he just starts forgiving all these debts. It's not even his money to forgive. He's stealing from the master, right? But what's interesting and what throws everybody about Jesus' story is the master kind of looks at this guy and says, he like admires his creativity because he's trying to make friends because he knows as soon as he gets laid off, he's at the mercy of those people, right? To help him in his next phase in life. So normally in Jesus' stories, you know, the bad guy gets caught, he's punished.

It's a warning to not do the same. But in this parable of the shrewd manager, the master's admiring how clever this scoundrel is. He works the system. Here's a guy who's facing his own kind of judgment day. He's losing his reputation, his job, but he finds a way to use resources that are not even his to set up a new life after his current life is taken away. Right, that's kind of the idea of the parable. And then we get to Luke chapter 16, beginning of verse nine. And here's how he, this is the lesson, right? This is what's thrown alongside the story in Jesus. Teaching, here's the lesson. Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to a what? Eternal home. And that's a cue there, eternal home. Jesus is saying leverage your life on earth for more than just earth. Have an eternal perspective. Like, think about it like this. Like, think about it like Monopoly. Who are my Monopoly people? How many of you love Monopoly? You're really good at Monopoly, some of you. You know, Monopoly can be mean, man. It can be mean. And some of you are really good.

Now, I've got some Monopoly money up here. And do you know they give you like, I think it's $20,000, $20,580 is the total Monopoly stash, right? And you can play Monopoly and you can win Monopoly and you can lose your cool at Thanksgiving, you know, on Monopoly and all of that. But then in the end of the day, you've got all this money. What's it actually worth when it all goes back in the box and the game is over, right? Sort of like, like I got $100 right here. All right. I mean, who would take the Monopoly money over the $100, right? We're all like, yeah, give me that 100. Think he's gonna give that away? No way, I got lots of services this weekend. Don't even think about it. I think the point Jesus is making in the parable of the shrewd manager is partly this. You came into this world with nothing. You will leave with nothing. So leverage what God has given you in your life for the good of others. They will welcome you into your eternal home, right? In other words, the Monopoly money all goes back in the box. And guess what? Even the $100, it all goes back in the box when the game of life is finished and none of it really lasts.

So be generous with your time, your talent, your stuff, your life. Leverage it for more than just what's right in front of you and God can use that. Be faithful with your little and he can bless you and work through that and he can give you more. Be faithful with your gifts, your talent. Be faithful with your resources. How are we faithful with our resources? We give, we help those who are under-resourced. We help those who are hurting. We give back to God through our local church. We tithe, we're generous. We take what God's given us, our time, our talent, our stuff, we're generous to family. We're generous to friends. We take care of people around us. If you're a parent today, you work hard to be a good, honest parent full of character as an example for your kids. That's being faithful with your little. Some of you are here today and you didn't have a great parental example maybe in a great father, or you didn't have, you know, maybe a mom that was a great parental example in your life, but you can't lean into self-pity. You can't give into self-doubt and you can't give into self-centeredness. It's on you to break the chain in your family. It's on you to step up and step in and say, I'll be that man.

I'll be that man. I'll be that woman. I'll be that grandpa, right? I'll be that brother. I'll be that friend. I'll be faithful. And as you do, God can give you more impact, more responsibility, and more meaning and purpose in your life. Be faithful with little, show you can be trusted with more. Last week, I challenged the Central family with a simple idea when it comes to supporting your local church. I wanna say it again this weekend. If you're here today and you're visiting Central this weekend, I'm so glad you're here. I think that's amazing. I wanna encourage you when you get back home to support your local church. And can I just say a word to those of you that love this place, they call this your place of worship. Support your local church because we all give to it. We all support it with our time. We all support it with our serving. And what happens? Millions of people get food. Prisoners all over the country get encouragement and help. Those who are suffering and hurting 24 hours a day

can call and get prayer and encouragement. People get prayed for. People get helped. People start following Jesus in their life. And when you start following Jesus, your life starts to change. I mean, hearts start to get healed. Bitterness starts to get let go of. We start moving into forgiveness and love towards one another. We realize that life isn't just about what we can get out of it, that life is about serving and being there for God and being there for others. And we as a church, not only just as individuals, but we as a church, we have to be faithful with our little. If we're faithful with our little, guess what? We could be trusted with more. But first, we gotta show we're faithful. We gotta be faithful. So give something in your life. Give it regularly. Grow spiritually. It's how it works with prayer, with Bible study, with every aspect of your life. Give something, give it regularly. Grow, be faithful with your little. Can I celebrate something with you? In this teaching series, we're gonna celebrate some generosity

because we celebrate baptisms a lot. We celebrate people who come to faith in Christ often. We celebrate people that jump into like our academy and start going deeper with their biblical education. You know, we celebrate amazing steps that people take serving others. Can I just celebrate some generosity with you right now? Last week, 90 individuals or families decided to start giving to support their local church. And 58 individuals or families made a commitment to increase their giving to their local church. You know what? They benefit from that because they're following God in faith. We benefit from that because our generosity helps us fuel the mission to do even more for God and his glory. And together, it's a cycle of generosity, right? So we prove ourselves faithful in the little things. And then God can open the door for us to step into many more responsibilities. It was important enough to Jesus for him to emphasize it four different times. You're saved by grace through faith alone, but you position yourself for greater and greater blessings throughout your life when you are faithful to God in the little things in your life, right? I heard a story this week about a guy named James Harrison. He was like, had a life-saving surgery when he was a kid. And so when he was 18, he wanted to give back.

So he decided he was gonna donate blood even though he was kind of afraid of needles. And so he goes and he donates blood and they find out he's got this special antibody in his blood, they call it anti-D. And in about 17% of pregnant women, this antibody can make a real impact in preventing potentially fatal diseases in babies. And so he realized his blood was special, right? So he started doing it regularly. James Harrison donated plasma every two weeks for 60 years. He never missed an appointment. He never missed an appointment. He passed away this last year, but get this, he gave blood 1,173 times and he potentially saved more than 2.4 million babies. Come on. I mean, that's just a dude who realized, I may not have much, but I got blood. And he used what God gave him and look at the impact it made. And when they asked him, they said, you know, like they asked him what he thought about being like the most prolific blood donor in the country of Australia. And he said, I hope it's a record somebody else breaks. And I just read that and I thought, man, I knew it wasn't about him. He wasn't looking for the credit. He was leveraging something God gave him

for the benefit of others. We're all better when we do that. The Bible says that you and I have been forgiven, healed and restored by the sacrifice of Jesus, literally by the blood he shed for us. We needed it and he gave it freely. We received a spiritual blood transfusion, right? He gave his life so that we could rise up into new life. That's how the good news works. It's how grace works. It's how the church works. Jesus gave so that we could live. We give so that others can live. We're rescued to be rescuers. We're faithful with our little so that God can do big things in the lives of others. So this year, let's position ourselves to be even more blessed by God. Let's position ourselves to be even more used by God. Let's position ourselves to basically ring out of this life, whatever we can for the glory of God and for the good of others. Can I encourage you this week, when you feel like you don't have enough, you don't have enough time, you don't have enough money, you don't have enough skills, you don't have enough opportunities to get out of that train of thinking and look more at what you do have. God, show me how I can be faithful with what I do have.

Show me how I can steward well what I do have. God, help me not get into self-pity. Help me not get into self-centeredness. Help me not to bury what you've given me, but help me leverage it for your glory and for the good of others. And he'll do it. He'll work powerfully in your life as you surrender it to him. I think about my own life. When I first started out as a pastor, I was studying to be a pastor. And the first little church that I was pastoring was like, well, I guess it would technically would have been the second church I was pastoring, but it was this little community of faith. And I would go to college and study during the week, and then I would drive, you know, hour and a half out to this church on the weekends and we converted a room in this little church where I lived, like it was my house. And I would live there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, it was a little church, they couldn't afford anything, you know, so I just went, served these people. And I remember this little church, I walked in to 15 years of family conflicts, all between like these two or three families that was like the whole church. And I was gone after about the first month back at school and I come back on the weekend

and they'd all been fighting all week long. Everybody gotten sideways with each other, all this stuff unraveled, and this whole church split down the middle. There's like 10 people showing up on Sunday. And I remember sitting on the front steps of that church, bawling my eyes out and just thinking like, man, I should do something else. I mean, God, obviously this isn't working. You ever felt like that? Like, man, God, I don't know what you were doing, but look, I was a mess and I've told you that all along, but I told you, you probably shouldn't put me in a role like what am I doing here? Just messing everything up. And I look back now and I realize that was one of my hardest seasons and it was one of my first seasons. And it was a test. Will you be faithful in the little? Will you be faithful when it's hard? Will you be faithful when you don't understand? Will you be faithful when people you don't even know attack you? Will you be faithful when people accuse you and you hadn't even been around long enough to do anything wrong? Right? Will you be faithful? And I look back now and I realize

the learnings of that phase of my life have followed me all my life. God may be, you may be in a tough spot right now, but listen, God may be preparing you. You want a breakthrough, but you're not ready yet for the breakthrough. You gotta learn to carry some pain first. You gotta learn to walk through it first. You gotta learn to be obedient. You gotta learn to preach and serve and live for God without the applause of anybody. Then you're ready, right? Then you're ready for God to begin to move and work through you. And I believe he'll do it. So don't lose hope. Keep hanging on. God loves you. He has a plan for your life. He has a purpose for your life in Jesus Christ. I believe it with all my heart today. He's given you gifts and talents and abilities and things. Leverage them for him and do good for God and for others. And he will bless you as you do. And maybe you're here today. Maybe you've never crossed the line of faith. I wanna give you an opportunity just to reach out to God, to trust him, to commit your heart and your life to him, to follow him. And so would all of you bow your heads and close your eyes.

And if you'd like to become a follower of Jesus today, you could begin that journey by just repeating after me a simple prayer, either out loud or in your own heart, just to step back towards God, to say, dear God, I thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus into the world. I believe he died on the cross for my sins. I believe he rose again. Forgive me for my sins. Give me the gift of eternal life. Help me face the challenges I'm up against. God, I surrender my life to you in Christ's name. Friends, with every head bowed and every eye closed, if that's your prayer today, would you just slip your hand in the air? If you're in one of our prison locations, watching this with God behind bars, just slip your hand in the air. If you're at one of our locations at Summerlin or Kingman or Aliante or Sunrise Mountain, slip your hand in the air. If you're watching online, just slip your hand in the air and reach out to God and acknowledge you're gonna trust him. You're gonna follow him. You wanna be faithful in the little things. God, I thank you for each person just reaching out to you today. And I pray you'll move in their life, heal, restore, forgive them,

and use them as they follow you in faith. We commit all of these people to you and ask your Holy Spirit to fill them, your forgiveness to flood their life, your purpose to lift them up and carry them along as they follow you in faith. We thank you for them. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.