The Treasure Principle | Jud Wilhite

Well what an incredible time of worship with our central family. I know that's always one of the most special times in the experience for me, but right now we want to give a couple of shout outs. We want to shout out to everyone who's watching online around the world through our online location. Yes we also need to give a shout out to all the men and women watching with our partnership with God Behind Bars. Can we clap it up for them? We love you guys and you are such an important part of our church. Well if you want to follow along with the teaching notes, you can find all of that in our Central Church app. But guys let's welcome up Pastor Judd as we start a new series. All right, all right, all right. Good to see you guys today. Thank you for being here with us. I want to say a big shout out to our central family locations that are joining us this weekend. I want to welcome Sunrise Mountain and Summerland, our Kingman family, Aliante. Grateful for all of you guys and glad that you're here. So let me ask you, just reflect on this for a minute with me. What would you say is your greatest physical treasure in life? I'm not talking about people, but like that thing that you treasure the most in life. Like I know for me it would have changed over the years. When I was a kid I can remember a season where my greatest physical treasure was a Huffy bike that I got for Christmas. It was black and yellow. It had the Velcro pads, you know, that went around the frame, went about in the handlebars. And that bike was the bomb, man. I washed it. I took care of it. I oiled it. When it had issues my dad helped me fix it. Come on, that was my treasure. Just don't mess with the bike. And then I can remember like, like a little later as I got older, once I turned 16, I was able to get a driver's license. My greatest physical treasure would have been the Buick Skylark that was the hand-me-down car from my older sister to me. It sat in our driveway for like a year. Anybody grow up in a family where a car just sits in the driveway for a year and it's normal? You know what I'm saying? It just like sat there. Now this car was amazing to me and it didn't have a like a starter that worked in it, but that's no problem because it was a manual. So I could push it down the road and jump in. Some of you old school people will remember and you pop that

clutch, you get it going fast enough and you can fire that thing off. You don't need a starter. And I couldn't afford a starter because I spent all my money putting a stereo in this car because I have priorities, people. All through high school, this is not an exaggeration, all through high school, I would park on inclines around the school so that after school I could get my car out by myself and get it running down the hill enough to jump in, pop the clutch. But I had tunes once I was going, man, the stereo was up. It was awesome. It's my greatest treasure. And then I can remember like after Lori and I got married, we bought our first house. It was built in 1915. We paid $75,000 for it. Can you come on, can you even imagine? And we did a ton of work on it. I mean for two years it was just a constant. All of our money, all of our time, all of our energy went into this house. We took the sheetrock down on the inside. We had to redo the sheetrock all in most of the house and the ceiling. It had a basement that was dirt, so you would go downstairs into this basement. It was dirt. It had one light bulb. Truly, you click the light bulb. I called it the Jeffrey Dahmer basement, you know. You just didn't know where the bodies were buried down there, but you knew there had to be some, you know what I mean? My brother-in-law, he gave so much of his time. He was an electrician and we and I, he and I, we rewired that whole house. We did all the work on it, all this stuff. For two years we worked on that house. And then, you know, finally it was completed. We loved that house. But here's the thing, like when you think about your greatest physical treasure, I don't know what it may be for you today. Maybe it's an heirloom. Maybe it's something a family member gave you. Maybe it's a piece of jewelry or a watch or maybe it's like golf clubs or I don't know, a car, a boat. I don't know what your thing is. Maybe an old Cowboys jersey from back when they used to win, you know, pulling it out back in the day. The thing is about all of our physical treasures is eventually they deteriorate and they get passed on for something else. That bike that I loved eventually made its way to some landfill somewhere. That Buick Skylark got sold. You know, the the house that we poured so much into as soon as we finished. By the way, this is how it often

goes. As soon as we finished, we thought we would be there for years. We felt like God was calling us to move to California. Hello? What were we smoking? But that's what we thought and that's what we think God did in our life. That's what happens. By the way, every time we've started working on a house, I'm like, you know what this means, right? We gotta be careful. But we moved and left that house. Have you ever been to a landfill? I don't know if you've ever actually gone in a landfill. We filmed some video once at a landfill outside of the Las Vegas area, and it's one of the large landfills in the country, and it's just unbelievable. You're standing on literally stories and stories of junk, tons and tons and tons of junk mixed with dirt, all padded down and drilled down into the ground. Then the next layer goes, then the next layer goes. And when you think about it, I remember just standing there looking out and thinking, these were someone's treasures once. This is what they saved for, they hoped for, they longed for. When they got it, they thought they would be so happy to get it. Some of them felt like, man, if I just got that thing, I'll never need anything else, right? Like a whole landfill, just full of what was once people's treasures. And that tends to be what happens

with all the things we pursue in life. Now, I hope you love your treasures and can enjoy them and get joy out of them. I hope you have physical treasures, nothing wrong with that. But here's the thing, all of that stuff will eventually pass away. And I think a lot of us, we spend so much of our lives on the treadmill of getting more and having more and raising our standard of living and being able to get this and being able to go here and being able to do that for all of these things that in the end just end up in the landfill, but they leave us exhausted, running on this constant treadmill of more, never feeling like we have enough. Anybody felt like you're like a hamster on the hamster wheel lately, just running along, hustling, doing everything you can to just try and stay afloat. And so every year at Central, we try to pause and take three or four weekends and look at what the Bible says about money, how to manage our money, how to handle our money. And that's what we're gonna do over the next four weeks. But I'm excited because this year, I wanna take a little bit of a different angle towards it. I just wanna look at what Jesus says about treasures and stuff and money. Because I believe as a follower of Jesus,

that Jesus was not only God incarnate, but that he is the greatest teacher to ever live. And so I actually care more about what Jesus says about money and stuff than I care about what a podcaster says or what an influencer says, or even what a pastor says. I wanna know what did Jesus say, right? What was his perspective? Because as a follower of Jesus, I value that more than a financial advisor, even more than a family member, even more than a friend. Jesus wasn't trying to hustle me. Jesus wasn't trying to get anything out of me. I think Jesus is pointing me to biblical truth and perspective that can help me find more freedom on the treadmill of stuff in our lives. And so if we're gonna look at what Jesus actually said about money, a great place to start is Matthew chapter six. Now, if you start in your New Testament, starts Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. If you're reading through the first book of the latter part of your Bible, the New Testament, if you're reading through Matthew, you're gonna get to chapter six, and it's one of the first places you're gonna see Jesus give an extended discussion about money and stuff in our lives. And so let's look at Matthew chapter six, verse 19. When I get to the red word, if you'll say it real loud here with me, it's just how we engage with God's word.

But check it out. These are Jesus' words, not mine. This is what Jesus says. He says, don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven where moths and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your, what? Heart will also be. Now, there's a lot here, but let's unpack some of this. First of all, Jesus, I don't think he's saying that we shouldn't have things that we consider treasures. I think he's saying we shouldn't treasure things that don't last, right, where moth and rust destroy them, things that just end up at the landfill at the end of the day. He's saying, look, you can spend your whole life storing up all those kinds of treasures, but it doesn't last. He's saying treasure things. Just treasure things that last forever. And so when he uses this phrase, treasures in heaven, his original hearers would have understood this to mean acts of kindness, acts of generosity, going out of your way to help someone, being good to a neighbor. supporting the synagogue or the temple financially.

Yeah, all of these things are storing up treasure in heaven. Jesus is saying, look, you can't, basically he's saying you can't take it with you, right? But you can send it on ahead by storing things in heaven. I don't think he's saying that you can't have anything in this life, but I think he's saying in this life, make sure you're prioritizing things that will outlast this life, that won't simply end up in the landfill when it's all said and done. Then he makes this, I'll take that one person wanted to clap. Let's see. We received that. That's a good word. That's some wisdom, right? Then Jesus makes what I think is maybe one of the most profound statements in his earthly teaching. He says, where your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be. It's profound at a lot of levels because like the heart in the ancient world, it's not just your emotions or your feelings. The heart was the most inner core of who a person was. It directed their deciding, their acting, kind of everything they did float out of their heart, right? And a lot of times we wanna say like, well, these are the things I care about in my heart and it has nothing to do with what I have or where my money goes or anything like that, right?

It's like that stuff's over here, but what really matters in my heart is over here. Jesus is saying, no, no, no. If you wanna know where your treasure is, well, man, where your treasure is, that's where the desires of your heart will be also. It's like the old show, Jerry Maguire. There was a line in that movie and the guy said, show me the money. Remember that? And what I think Jesus is saying is, listen, show me where your money goes without compulsion, joyfully and gladly, and I will show you what you treasure, right? Where your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be also. So how do we treasure what is most important in our lives? A couple thoughts from this text. The first is we've gotta reframe our finances, reframe how you see your finances and your stuff in your life. Like who are my clean car people? Any clean car people here today? You know who you are, like you really like a clean car. You probably married a messy car person, right? Who are my messy car people? Yeah, you just don't care, man, it doesn't matter. You don't even see the old McDonald's bag and the floorboard, the fries down under. You don't smell that latte that's just been baking

in that cup sitting in your car for multiple days. You don't even notice it, man. I know this because I'm a clean car person and I married a I don't care, not so clean car person. You know what I mean? And when we're driving along, this is all the clean car people are about to feel me here. When we're driving along, Lori will just lift her foot up and I'm like, ah, and then like it physically hurts me, she puts it on the dash, ah. Come on, clean car people, you know what I mean? There's gonna be a footprint there. And I have learned because I value my happiness and my marriage, I don't say anything. I just keep smiling. Jesus died for my sins. Everything's still okay, it's gonna be all right. I don't say anything, but when she gets out of the car, I hang back, you know what I'm saying? I grab a rag and I wipe that thing down because killing me over here. I used to go all out, clean the car. Any of you do this? I mean, I'd clean the car, I would detail the car. I got the buffer, I got all the stuff, man. I'm out there with the tools, wah. You know, I'm getting the scratches out, everything. I like work it. And then I get all done and Lori would get in

and I'd be like, I cleaned your car. And I mean, I'm expecting cheerleading. I want rah-rah, I want her to jump up and down and be like, Judd is great. Judd cleaned the car, Judd is great. Wow, you cleaned the car. Let's look at it, oh, it's so amazing. There's no dirt everywhere, there's no french fries, there's no old latte milk smell, this is so good. And you know what she says to me? She's like, oh yeah, great. Anyway, she starts talking about something else and I'm just over here like, glad I did all that for you. And I had to learn over the years, and this is a big word for somebody today. Look, you gotta figure out how your spouse receives love and give them love in the way they receive it and then figure out how you receive love and why you do certain things. I've learned today, I clean the car for me. She doesn't care, I care. So I give myself a big rah-rah out of it. I'm awesome. Look at that. Look how clean the car is. You know what I'm saying? And the worst thing about a dirty car is, like, the windshield. You know what I mean? When the windshield gets all mucky and dirty, my daughter, it's like she's driving in a war zone sometimes. I walk out, I look at her car, and I'm like, how can you, the bugs, the gook, the stuff, and then all the off-gassing on the inside that starts to, like, give a film to it, you know? I'm like, how can you even see? I'm out there, like, her car's a dirty mess, but I'm cleaning that glass, right? Because I want, you know, don't die, you know? And I think this is kind of what Jesus is going to get at when he's talking about where we store our treasures

and how we view our things, because he's going to challenge us to see our things clearly, to reframe how we see money and how we see things in our lives. He's trying to clean the windshield, if you will, give us a clear perspective. Look at what he says the very next sentence, Matthew chapter 6, verse 22. He says, your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is what? When your eye is healthy, he says, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is. Now, when Jesus says your eye is like a lamp, the way that his original hearers would have understood that is, you know, the eye, you know, it's really all about, like, your perspective on things. A person with a healthy eye, a good eye, would be a generous, life-giving person. The word Matthew uses here implies a single-mindedness, a single purpose. They're not double-minded. They're not trying to work you. They're not trying to scam you. They're not a hustler, right? They see you. They see a situation. These are just people that want to do good and help others and honor God. That's a healthy eye, right? And have you noticed, think about, like, the most life-giving people in your life, the most kind, generous, life-giving people. Have you noticed, like, sometimes you can see it in their eyes? Like, they just have bright, life-giving eyes. This is what Jesus is calling out. But then he says there's another kind of eye, the unhealthy eye. It could be translated even the dark eye or the evil eye. And Matthew uses a term that could imply or does imply being double-minded or even duplicitous in how you view somebody. This is a person that even if they seem kind and generous, they have an angle. You know, just because somebody seems kind and generous doesn't mean they aren't trying to work an angle on you, right? Everybody says, oh, yeah, we've been there, right?

There are people that give, but they give to take, right? They have an unhealthy eye. And Jesus expands it, and he says, if your eye is good, everything in your life will be good. In other words, if you see money, stuff, things with a pure heart, you want to honor God, you want to do good for others, it will impact everything else in your life. If you come at it with an angled heart, trying to work an angle or manipulate or, you know, take advantage of situations, that will color your whole life with darkness, right? One way to look at it is to just think about kind of our mindset. And so I'm going to go to the TV screen here and just sort of break down like a generosity mindset versus a scarcity mindset. And I think a generosity mindset is more of the good eye, healthy eye kind of mindset. It's going to start this way. Let's bring this up. First of all, you see my little eye over there? You see that? Yeah, you're welcome. God provides, right? The way a healthy perspective on our stuff starts is with the realization that God provides everything that we have. God takes care of us. And he's a good God, and he's a generous God, and he's not going to leave me high and dry. God provides. I live in a world where there is more than enough because there is a God who provides more than enough for me.

Starts with a generosity perspective. Then it goes to God provides, I manage. I don't know where you're at on your spiritual journey, but as you grow, you will more and more come to a realization. As you study the Bible more, you'll come to a realization that God owns everything. This is the biblical worldview. God owns everything. Everything, everywhere. God doesn't need anything. God doesn't need your money. He doesn't need your stuff. He owns everything. But he allows us to manage a portion of what he owns. It all belongs to him. We get to manage it. If we manage it well, he may bless us with more. Not just so that we have more, but so that we can manage it well also. God provides, I manage, and then here's the third thought of like a good eye, healthy eye, generosity mindset, others benefit. Can I just tell you, like the heart of God, I believe, is to bless his people. You see it all through the Bible. I think he loves to bless his people, but he doesn't just bless his people for them to be a cul-de-sac. He blesses his people for them to be a bridge, right, to pass the blessing on to others. Some of you, he blessed you with a family grounded in faith

and they pass that faith on to you, and one of the ways you can be responsible with that is to take that faith and pass it on to others, right? Some of you, God blessed you with certain friendships, skills, talents, abilities. He didn't just give you that so you could be awesome, and I'm sure you're awesome. He gave you that so you could also use that stuff for the benefit of others. Man, find somebody in your work sphere or in your career path that's younger than you that could use some help and encouragement. Open some doors for them. Allow what God has put in your hand to be a bridge for other people so that they can go far in their own lives, right? God provides, I manage, others benefit. Here's a scarcity mindset, okay? And this is our dark eye. We'll bring this up here. This is our evil eye. Look at that. The scarcity mindset, the unhealthy eye. I'm real proud of the, you see the eyelid too? Yeah. The unhealthy eye. Okay? It starts with a mindset, not that God provides, but that others take. In other words, everybody's working an angle.

Everybody's out to get something from me. Everybody's coming at me, and life can feel like this sometimes, and we can embrace. I think this is a predominant worldview in our culture. Others are out to take what I have. I have to fight for it, scrap for it, protect it. I have to look out for number one. It's all on my shoulders. Others take. And then, rather than manage, what do I do? I store up, right? I gotta store up treasures. I gotta store up everything I can. I gotta put all the money back I can. I gotta put all the savings back. I gotta store up investments, cars, things, the treasures. I store it all up, because it's ultimately, it's all about me, right? And then the third kind of perspective here, I benefit. Not to the benefit of others, but only to the benefit of me. But here's what I would suggest. When you take a healthy mindset perspective, you benefit and others benefit, right? When you take a closed, unhealthy perspective, only you benefit. And ultimately, this ends in a lot of frustration, in a lot of difficulty, and I think in a lot of stress, because it's all on you.

Jesus is saying, we gotta see things with a healthy perspective. It all comes from God. I manage it. Others benefit. And when you get that kind of perspective in your life, it can be transformative. Listen, when you think money and stuff is the number one goal of life, that's gonna leave you stressed out. You're gonna think that your net worth is your self-worth. Right? You're gonna think your whole life is about accumulating stuff until you get to the end of your life, and then we all realize it's not. I've been with a lot of people on their deathbeds. And how much they have doesn't really matter in that moment. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Jesus is saying, don't just store it all up here. It's okay if you have things. Don't hear me wrong. But I think he's saying, also store it up in heaven,

because that's where you store that will last. It will continue on. So first principle from this is we gotta reframe kind of how we see stuff in our lives. And you might just think about that chart, the healthy eye, the unhealthy eye. Think about your own life. There are seasons in our lives, if we're not careful, we can start to get an unhealthy perspective on things and stuff. And just do some heart diagnosis. God, where am I and how I see stuff in my life? Here's another thought. And that is, then choose your boss. Who's gonna be your boss? When my kids were little, they'd be like, you're not the boss of me. I'm like, oh yeah, I am. Right? You're not the boss of me. I remember the worst boss I ever had was working the breakfast shift at Grandy's. I don't know if anybody remembers Grandy's. It was a Texas thing. It was a fast food restaurant. And I had the worst boss ever. I had to show up at 4.30 in the morning every day to make the gravy. And I was the only one responsible to make the gravy. And if I didn't get the gravy right,

it took so long to make that by the time they opened, the gravy was gonna be wrong for the whole morning shift. So I had all this pressure on me, you know, like you gotta make the gravy. I mean, this lady, she was like that character from Seinfeld, you know, the soup guy, right? You know, no soup for you. She was like, no joy for you. And she would come prancing in. I'd already been there forever. I felt like alone, you know, opening the thing up, getting the gravy ready. She'd come in and she'd get her spoon every day and she would dip it in. the gravy and she would taste it. And literally, I kid you not, if the gravy was good, she said nothing. And if it was bad, she would go off on me about how bad it was. Now, here's the thing. This is like kind of idiot-proof stuff. I just followed the same directions every day. It was all pre-laid out. I mean, how can you get it wrong? I basically came to realize whatever kind of morning she was having was how she was gonna treat me when she came in that day because I made the gravy the same way every single day. Tough to work for a hard boss. But imagine if you could flip that around then

and get a kind, loving, generous, just boss. This is what Jesus is gonna basically challenge us with. Look at what he says in the very next sentence. Matthew chapter 6, 24. He says, no one can serve two masters. You will hate one and love the other. You will be what? Devoted to one and despise the other. Okay, what's he talking about? Well, here he tells you, you cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. You can't serve both. He's saying, choose your boss, right? Choose your boss. Money is a wonderful servant. It is a terrible master, right? As a servant, it can open doors, it can give you freedom, it can give you choices. I hope God blesses you with a lot of money. But don't ever allow that money to be your master, right? Because when you make money, number one, you will never have enough. You will always be stressed out. It will consume your thoughts, your worries, your fears all day, every day. It's all you will think about. It becomes your God. And Jesus calls it out. One of my, an old colleague, Tim Keller, wrote an amazing book called Counterfeit Gods

several years ago. And we're gonna bring this up on the slide. He talks about the different gods that compete for number one in our heart. And he just, you know, the primary ones are money, sex, power, and success, right? These are like the number one things competing for our hearts. These things are not necessarily bad, but if you make any one of these things number one in your life, you're gonna be caught up in a world of hurt, right? If you make sex number one, you make power number one, you make success number one. Some of us in the room, hello, some of us at our locations, hello, you're success addicts. You never thought about it as an addiction, but I've had that addiction. And I'll tell you, it is an addiction. And it's hard to break, to find your identity back in who Christ says you are and to ground yourself in that. But Jesus, when he's calling out these different things that compete in our hearts, he only calls out one that primarily is the greatest competitor in our hearts with God. And he calls out money, right? He says, you can't serve God and be enslaved to money. You can't do both. And that's a challenge because, you know, we live in a culture, we say it on our dollar bills, right?

In God we trust. And of course my question is, do we? Right? Do we really trust God above money and stuff and things? And in this materialistic consumer culture, it's a challenge because everywhere you look, it's about more and getting more and having more and banking more and putting more back, right? It never ends. Bible says, if you love money, you will never have enough. You will never have enough. And so I think Jesus is giving us a challenge here. And the challenge is we all need to look at our hearts and just think, am I really putting God first in my life when it comes to storing treasures in heaven? Money, stuff, time, talent, everything he's given me, am I putting him first? You know, when I was just became, one of the lessons I learned is the best way for me anyway, to learn to be good with money, started when I began doing good with money, right? The best way I learned to be good with money, it started when I committed myself to doing good with money. In other words, not making it all about me, helping others, being generous, allowing my hand to be open, what God brings in, I pass on to help others. And when I made that decision, it was life-changing. I remember I was a brand new kind of early follower of Jesus. I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

playing in a band, working in a water park, living the life, right? And I went to church and in church, I heard about like generosity for the first time. And this guy was challenging us to tithe based. on this kind of biblical principle you see in the Old Testament, Exodus, the book of Leviticus, where the people were commanded to bring like a 10th of everything they produced because it belonged to the Lord. And so I was challenged to like to tithe. By the way, tithing isn't just like $5 in the offering plate. I mean, that's great, I'm for it. But like tithing means 10th, that's what it means. And so it was the first time in my life as a young believer, I decided, all right, I'm gonna do this, you know, I'm gonna tithe. And I wish I could tell you like once I made that decision, everything went great in my life. But can I tell you, I made that commitment and I worked at a water park and it rained three days the next week. Bro, they don't pay you when it rains. When it rains, they send you home, you know what I mean? And I'm like, and I wasn't like stressing about it until I got back to church and I'm like, oh yeah, I said I was gonna do that. But it rained, God, you know what I'm saying? Like, come on, man, it rained.

Anyway, I made that commitment. I kind of did the math and I'm like, all right, you know, I'm gonna do it. And I took that step and it was a defining moment because I felt like as in my adult life, it was like the first time I had ever tithed. And I got in my car and I'm driving home and I'm thinking, should I have done that? You know what I mean? Like, is that crazy, right? Like, I'm not quite sure how I'm gonna gas the car up to get back and forth to work with all the things going on. And I pulled up to our little place. I shared a place with a couple of roommates and I walked up to the porch and there were, I kid you not, all these groceries sitting on the front porch. And so I kind of opened the door and I said to my roommates, we're like, there. I'm like, hey man, you guys see these groceries out there? They're like, no, we don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, somebody left a whole bunch of groceries out here. Like, what is that about? Nobody knew anything to this day. I never found out how anybody knew what happened. Maybe like some benevolence program got lost and dropped them on our door, right? Because they were like, you know, I don't know. Like, they were just there. So I just remember this moment though

of like kind of realizing, I felt like God was teaching me my initial lesson, which was trust in me. Don't trust in stuff. And I will take care of you. I will bless you. I will take care of you. Um, it was life-changing for me and a cool moment. I shared this a couple of years ago when it happened, but I got to go back to that church 30 years later and speak on a weekend and I told them this story. And it was so cool to just be there and be able to do that. But that was where it started for me. And I've just faithfully tried to be generous and tithe and honor God and be generous with time and generous with what he puts in my hand. And what I've seen over all these decades is God has been so faithful to me. And I believe he will be faithful to you. Honor him, store your treasures in heaven. And maybe that's time serving somebody in need. Maybe it's going out of your way for your neighbor. Maybe it's sending a text. I got a text today from a pastor, retired pastor who God has used in such tremendous ways. And he just continues after years of being retired to keep texting me and others. And he'll watch my messages. He doesn't have to do this.

And he'll text me encouragement, you know, and I'm like, he's storing up treasures in heaven, right? Like he's sending it on ahead through his encouragement, through his kindness. It doesn't have to be financial. It can be in a lot of other ways. But my encouragement to you is you can store up treasures in heaven through a lot of things, but don't only store up treasures in heaven through other things. Also store up treasures in heaven by being generous financially, because you will grow if you do. It's the same with serving. It's the same with reading your Bible. It's the same with praying. If you'll get up and you'll start doing it consistently, right, you will start growing. You start, you get up 15 minutes early to read your Bible or stay up 15 minutes late every day and start reading your Bible, what's gonna happen? You do it consistently, you're gonna grow. You're gonna get closer to God. You're gonna understand more about your faith. You start praying every day, right? A few minutes before you go to bed or a few minutes after you get up, what's gonna happen? You're gonna start feeling more closely connected, more tied in spiritually. You're growing spiritually, right?

You know, you take a risk and start praying about somebody you could invite to come along with you to church and you eventually, you know, bring that person along and you take that risk. You get to see what God begins to do in their life. Like you grow spiritually because you do that. And giving isn't the only thing, but it is a thing that when we do it, if we give something and we give it consistently, we will grow because we do. We'll grow because we do and we store up treasure in heaven. We'll grow because we do and we store up treasure in heaven. You can store up treasure in heaven by supporting great causes, giving to great organizations, giving to a lot of great ministries and things. I want to encourage you, if this is your church home and this is your family, if you love this place, support it, if you can, financially, as God blesses you. And know that when you do, like when I give to Central, here's some things that I'm aware of. When I give to Central, I'm helping my friends and neighbors who are facing food insecurity. You know, we distributed over 3 million pounds of food last year to people who are in need. Like, that's beautiful, right?

That pleases the heart of God. I know I'm part of that when I contribute and donate. When I, the book of Hebrews says, don't forget those who are in prison. And you know, when I contribute at Central, I'm helping those who are in prison. We partner with God Behind Bars. We do church services inside multiple prisons every weekend. And also through the Pando app, we're able to reach literally thousands of individuals all around the world in different prison locations who turn to this ministry for spiritual nourishment and food, and we're honored to do that. Jesus said to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When I give to Central, I'm a part of that going and doing. I mean, we see it. We saw over 12,000 people place their faith and trust in Jesus this last year, both in prisons and in our different locations. Amazing. We saw over 3,600 people get baptized. And we're trying to disciple those people to grow deeper in their faith. It's why we do Central Academy. It's why we offer all of these classes where people can go deeper and grow and learn more about God. It's why we do First Step and try to have a clear first way

that people can come into the life of the church and go deeper in their lives. We are doing those things. Jesus challenges us to be compassionate and to have care in our hearts towards others. And one of the things I'm so proud of that we do is 24-hour church. I don't know of many ministries in the world who do this, but I'm telling you, we take tens of thousands of phone calls, literally. I think it was like 72,000 conversations last year. In 20, I mean, 24 hours a day. And it's not just people in the Valley or people where our different locations are. It's people from all around the world that some crazy way find their way to our phone number. When I give to Central, I am a part of that. So my encouragement to you, wherever you're at, give to your local church. If this is your church, great. If it's another church, great. Give to your local church. Give to those things that God has stirred in your heart and realize if you give something, if you give it consistently, you're gonna grow. And God will work in that. And he will bless you as you do. It's how discipleship works. It's how growing in our faith works. And every time we do it, we're storing treasures in heaven.

Jesus says, don't believe the lie that your life is about what you own. No, your life really is about what you give away through your time, talent, and resources to your family, your friends, your loved ones, your community, your church. It's what you entrust as you pass on the blessing that God has blessed you with. That perspective will give you more joy, more peace, less worry, and less stress. That's some of what Jesus says about money. Next week, we're gonna go into another section of Jesus' teaching on money. We're gonna be challenged by some other things. Don't miss it, because it's gonna be powerful for you in your life. And I want you to know, Jesus, God, he doesn't need our money. He doesn't need our stuff. He wants our heart. If you're here today and you've been kind of running from God in your life, since he's been tapping you on the shoulder, and he's been calling you to come home to him, I wanna give you the opportunity to come home to him. God doesn't need anything from you. God wants your heart. God wants you to devote yourself to him and put him first, and he can bless you and pour his goodness and his forgiveness and his grace out in your life. So I'd love to lead you in a prayer

to ask God to take the number one place in your life. Would all of you bow your heads and close your eyes? If you'd like to take that step today, you can begin by just repeating a simple prayer after me. Just 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. 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, if it's your commitment today, do just slip your hand in the air. Whatever location you may be at, if you're watching online, just slip your hand in the air. Acknowledge that you're gonna trust Him. You're gonna follow Him. You're gonna put Him first in your life. Let's reach out to Him today. God, we just thank you for each person trusting you, reaching out to you. We pray you show up in their life big. Fill them with your Holy Spirit. Cleanse them from their past, their mistakes, their sins. God, give them a new beginning in you. Empower them. May they walk in your strength and your peace every day

as they follow you. We give you praise in Christ's name. Amen.