'Tis The Season Week 2 | Pastor Adam Peterson

Today, my name is Adam. That was my wife, Rebecca. Together, we pastor in Lead Rise Church, and man, today is a good day to be in the house. I am not sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not sure if our stream is working because our internet has been down all morning, and appreciate you, Comcast, for helping us out there. So I don't know if we're streaming online right now, but I'm gonna welcome you anyways, online family. We're so glad that you are here with us right now. If you're here with us, and then to all the men and women in the correctional facilities, come on. You are our church family. Let's go. We are in week two of a series we kicked off last week called Tis the Season, and if you were here, you heard me tell ya, I love Christmas, guys. I can't get enough of it. I am just in my Christmas era right now, okay? I love everything about it. I got the lights on the house. We got the trees up. Like, we decorate like crazy. I've been baking. How many of you just feel like baking when Christmas season rolls around? Come on, I'm in an eating era right now. Like, if you, like, I'm eating everything I want.

This is just eating season right now, and when January comes around, that's problems that January Adam will have to deal with. But I'm just enjoying every bit of it, and what we're doing in this season of Christmas is saying, hey, there's a lot of good things that we can bring into our lives, but really, we wanna live in a constant state of that. Last week, we talked about gratitude, that, man, this is a season of gratitude, but as followers of Jesus, we wanna live lives of constant gratitude. Can I get a better amen? And so this morning, I wanna preach on this topic, a season of generosity. I appreciate the one yes. The rest of you are like, what are we doing here? All right, let me bring you in. Can I nerd out for just a second on you, just for a little bit? Anybody who just wanna raise their hand and say, I'm kind of a little nerdy at times? All right, and that's your first step. If you don't know that you're kind of nerdy, you need to know that. One of the areas, and you might not think this is nerdy, but I do, I love all the superhero movies. I can't get enough of them. My son and I, we've watched every single one of them together, Marvel, DC, like, give me all of it,

and if you don't know anything about the superhero movies, let me get you caught up very quickly on one specific character, and you probably already have heard of him, you know about him. His name is the Incredible Hulk. Come on, anybody know anything about the Incredible Hulk? All right, so the Incredible Hulk is this big, green monster, but before he became the Incredible Hulk, he was Bruce Banner, just a scientist, and I don't have time to get you caught up on how things happened that he became the Incredible Hulk, but there is a moment that happens to Bruce Banner where he no longer becomes a human being, but he can Hulk out and turn into the big, green, scary monster. Now, many, many years ago, this movie came out called The Avengers, okay? And The Avengers was just like a bunch of superheroes, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, all, eh, Nerd Alert, yeah, all the superheroes, and they get together and they form The Avengers, and they're being attacked by these aliens, and the Hulk is nowhere to be seen, and then all of a sudden, here comes Bruce Banner rolling up on a moped, and Captain America's like, it's about time, bro, where you been? We could use your help, and this big alien spacecraft is coming at him, and they're like, we could really use the Hulk right now,

we don't need the scientist Bruce Banner, we need the big, green, scary monster. And Captain America looks at Bruce Banner and he goes, now would be a great time to get angry, because that's how he went from being Bruce Banner into the Hulk, he got angry. Some of y'all, when you get hungry, you Hulk out, don't you? You get a little hangry, you go from being who you are to this like, I need, you know what I'm saying? Just my wife? No, okay, all right, so Captain America looks at him and goes, now would be a great time to get angry, to which Bruce Banner looks back at him and he goes, that's my secret, Captain, I'm always angry. How many of you know somebody like that? Always angry, yeah, yeah, yeah. How many of you are like that sometimes? Okay, okay, put your hand up, we'll pray for you. The world would look on at Christmastime and they would say to all of us, man, now would be a great time to get generous. There are a lot of people who do not follow Jesus who will get generous at Christmastime, or maybe be generous at other times of the year. The world would look on and say, hey, now would be a great time to get generous, but as followers of Jesus, we should look back and go, that's our secret. We're always generous.

Woo, all right. I worked all week on this Hulk Bruce Banner illustration. I had to rewatch it. It's the movie clip to make sure I was getting it right, and I was like, I'm gonna nail them with this. We're always generous, and they're gonna lose their minds. And you didn't, which tells me we got work to do. As followers of Jesus, hear me very clearly. We don't wanna just live in one season of generosity. We wanna live in a constant state of generosity. Is God always generous to you? So if God is always generous to you, then we want to let that generosity that he has poured out on us flow through us to others. And so today I wanna talk about this, our finances and kindness. A season of generosity, a constant state of generosity when it comes to our finances, and a constant state of generosity when it comes to showing kindness to others. Now, if you're a first-time guest, you picked a doozy. Welcome to Rise Church. We're talking about money today. I'm so glad you're here. But I actually am glad you're here because I think you're gonna hear us preach and talk about money maybe in a different way than you've heard other churches. If you come to Rise Church and you don't give in our church, you're like, why are we talking about this, man?

I don't, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Good! I want the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart. We are never the church that wants to beat you over the head with God's word. We just wanna build you up. We wanna point you to truth. Can I get a better amen? Now, here's what I know about you. Without even having to like talk to you, I would assume the majority of you in this place today want to be generous. Like if I were to pass the microphone around this morning and go, do you wanna be stingy or do you wanna be generous? I would assume the majority of you want to be generous. There's probably a handful of you, maybe somebody watching online that would say, no, I have no desire to be generous. I want to keep what is mine. I don't wanna give it away to anybody and we're so glad you're at our church. I would assume the majority of you want to live a generous life. And from time to time, there's gonna be moments where you will give generously in what I would call spontaneous generosity. So let me brag on you one more time. I know I did a little bit last week. Let me brag one more time. We said, we're gonna do this Hope for Christmas Outreach.

And if this is new information to you, that just means you haven't been to church in a while or this is your first Sunday. We did this big Hope for Christmas Outreach where 190 kids, it's actually over 200 now because we had more kids come this past week. Over 200 kids are now going to get Christmas presents on Christmas morning because of you. Over 200 kids are not just gonna get one present, they're gonna get multiple presents. So that means collectively over 600 Christmas presents were purchased because of you, okay? These are families in our community and in our own church. All the parents, they're gonna come pick them up this week. We get to give the gifts to the parents. I'm just making it clear to you one more time. I know if you heard me say this, the kids will open these presents on Christmas morning and they'll not even know that our church played any part in this. Because the parents are the heroes, amen? And but you were the ones that came alongside the parents and said, we wanna help. We wanna be generous. And you weren't planning on doing that, were you? You heard us announce it. You thought, oh, I'd like to be a part of that. I'd like to go help out. You were only planning on maybe getting one tag. Maybe you ended up grabbing two tags,

but it was a spontaneous moment that you had not planned for in your year. But when it was presented to you, you responded. And you responded with generosity. What an amazing church you are. Let me just brag on you and celebrate you. I'll clap for you. Let's go. No, no, no, don't clap for yourself. That's braggadocious, okay? I got you, okay? All right. Spontaneous generosity. Always gonna have moments for that. I heard a pastor say this, but we need to live lives of planned generosity. Meaning I'm not waiting for the moment to come to be generous. I'm planning to be generous in every area of my life. And you know this to be true. How many of you like to stop and get coffee on your way to work, okay? Yeah, yeah, a lot of you do. So many of you, like you stop and get coffee on the way to our church, man. Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Eliano, Seven Brew, Dutch Brothers. We're sponsored by all of those, apparently. I see y'all walk in. Y'all are like, I ain't drinking this coffee.

I'm getting my own coffee. You never bring me one. I appreciate that. That's fine, whatever. I'm not hurt. But if you wanna get coffee on your way to work, you have to plan to leave earlier. Because that line's gonna be long. And you don't wanna show up to work late. If you're trying to go out on a date night, parents, what do you have to plan for? or you gotta get that babysitter. Unless you just wanna lock your kids in a padded room for the night and just go, good luck, throw some food in there. Depending on the restaurant that you're going to, you need to plan ahead and you need to call and get some reservations. If you wanna watch the Jaguars kick some butt today, if you're not on the train, get on it. We are leaving the station, we are going Super Bowl bound, baby, okay? But if you wanna watch the Jaguars win today, you need to plan on being at home at one o'clock for kickoff, planning. When it comes to generosity, we wanna live spontaneous where we give spontaneously, but we also plan to give. We call that, we don't call that, the Bible calls that tithing.

10%, 10% of what God has blessed you with, you return back to the Lord. Not just 10%, the first 10%. Meaning God, I'm gonna put you first in every area of my life, including my finances. And if we wanna boil it down, can we just get real honest in here this morning? And again, I don't mean this to offend you, let me just say it like this. Like if you ever feel guilt when it comes to somebody talking about money, that's not God, okay? We never put guilt on you here. We never put shame on anybody here. It's not like we pass the buckets and notice that a few of you didn't give, and I'm looking at the Usher team going, let's run it again, right? We've never taken up two, I got friends who have been a part of churches, they were like, they counted it in the back, it wasn't what they needed, they ran it again. We don't do that, okay? Thought about it, but we don't. But the Bible would call it the tithe. And the tithe is putting God first when it comes to every area of your life, but specifically your finances. And if you wanna argue with me that the tithe is Old Testament and blah, blah, blah, blah,

like we can go through that together, it's cover to cover in the Bible. It's the 10% of what God has blessed you with that you just return back to him. It's not you giving it to God. Hear me clearly, he doesn't need your money. He's doing all right. Walking on streets of gold, gates are pearly, he's doing good. It's not like God's like, we were not gonna be able to pay the bill up here until you gave me that. I needed that. We don't ever wanna put guilt on anybody. God doesn't want you to give out of reluctance or out of guilt. The Bible says God loves a cheerful giver. But if we were to really boil it down, it's not us giving to God. It's not us even returning anything to God. It's really us not stealing from God. Oh, you don't like how I said that. Okay, Malachi, you're not gonna like this either. This is the Bible. This is God talking. Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, how are we robbing you? In tithes and offerings. This is the Lord looking at each and every one of us going,

hey, I have blessed you. I want you to trust me in this area of your life. Now, when it comes to our church, what we're inviting you to be a part of is advancing God's kingdom here in this place, in this house, in this city, and around the world. You just watched a video from Jamaica. From Jamaica. You, if you give in this house, some of what you gave went to go bless somebody you'll never meet that are going through things that you're not going through right now. And we're saying, and why would you not wanna be a part of that? But first and foremost, for me, it's a obedience thing that I want every single one of you to learn to walk in. I want you to be able to go, I know God is my provider because I'm trusting him over here in the area of finances, and he's coming through. He is faithful. He is trustworthy. And some of you don't know God as provider yet because you're not stepping out in faith to trust him. And that's the first and foremost. So if you're here this morning, you're like, so what's up, y'all need money? Is like, y'all can't pay the bills? Is that why we're talking on finances? No, we're actually really good.

If I could give you the sneak peek, and we are an open book. If you ever want the sneak peek, we'll give it to you. If I could give you the sneak peek behind the curtain of how well we're doing financially, you would be blown away. And maybe you've been a part of churches where they mismanaged some money in the past. That is not how we work here, okay? We have taken our money, and we have faithfully stewarded. We got money that's earning interest. God has been good to us. And let me just say this, and I don't mean to hurt your feelings when I say this, and I don't mean to make. you feel bad, but we're doing good when the majority of our church doesn't even give. That's just a reality. And all I'm saying is what you're experiencing here, the building that you're a part of and everything that our church is doing is because of the generosity of others, join us to be a blessing to the next person. All right, all right. One more verse, come on, y'all are with me, y'all loving it, let's go, this is so good. Hey, remember the words of the Lord that Jesus said. I love how he says remember, meaning you're gonna forget. I got three kids, my youngest is eight, I gotta look her in their eyes, go look at me, look at me, look at me, right here, right here,

right here, right here, right here, right here. Repeat after me, remember this. This is what Luke's doing here in Acts. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus when he said, it's actually more blessed to give than to receive. Now, the beauty of the Hope for Christmas outreach that we were a part of is that we got to be a blessing to others, when these kids open up a present on Christmas morning, I wish you could see the smile on their face over the presents that you gave. You were a blessing to them, but isn't it just like God to go, hey, not only are you gonna be a blessing to somebody else, but when you give, I'm gonna bless you in the process. Because that word blessed means happy, it means joyful, it means when you give, you get to step out in faith and say, God, I trust you, and then you get to see him provide, you get to see him work, you get to see him move, and it's gonna fill you with some joy. Guess what? When I pay for my groceries, I don't get blessed. I mean, I'm grateful for the groceries, but I'm not there looking at those bills, those groceries rack up and go, yay, I get to give them a lot of money. But when it comes to the kingdom, oh, what a joy it is to give to the kingdom of God. When I see another life changed in our church, when I hear about another man or woman behind bars

that are giving their life to Jesus Christ, it reminds me that what we're doing, man, it matters. It matters, and for us here at our church, come on, one more time, and then we're moving on. Ready, ready? It's just an invitation. Don't feel guilt, don't feel shame, but if there is conviction in your heart of, and this is one area that I need to step into, hey, then let's go. Start small and work your way up and start building some faith when it comes to your finances. How many of you know we serve a generous God? Woo! When the world says, hey, you need to keep, man, like inflation's crazy and times are tough and everything, may we step up as followers of Jesus and go, no, we're not gonna look like you. We're actually gonna be a blessing to others in Jesus' name. Second thing I wanna talk about is kindness. I love kindness. It's probably one of my favorite attributes about a person. Kind people are my kind of people. I love this verse right here in Proverbs. It says, kind words are like honey, sweet to the soul and healthy for the body. That's a strong verse right there. I told my wife just the other day, it happened around this year,

kind of like midway through the year when Thanksgiving rolled around. I just looked at her and said, I'm 41. I wanna enjoy what I'm eating. I'm gonna start making some good food. I love going to the grocery store and I love cooking. She said, good with me. And so I was making some food for Thanksgiving and I love cornbread. And so I made this homemade cornbread and it was so good. But the recipe that I found said, after you make the cornbread, take a stick of butter, a whole stick of butter, come on, somebody, melt it and then pour some honey and then drizzle it on top of the cornbread. Your man's just been eating plain cornbread his whole life and enjoying it. But when I poured that honey butter on top of it, it started to seep in to the pores of the rest of the cornbread and it took it to a whole nother level. I ain't going back. That's what a kind word is. It's like honey. Sweet, smooth, a little sticky. Gets all over you and it's sweet for the soul and healthy for the body. Can I tell you something? I think it's why you like coming to this church. Honestly, I think it's why you like coming here

because whoever stands up on this stage and preaches the word of God is not here to entertain you. They're here to engage you and build you up because you've been yelled at at other churches before. And maybe they didn't work out too well for you. May I remind you one more time, we are called Rise Church. We want you to be uplifted when you walk up. We are not down church, okay? We don't wanna make you feel worse than when you came in. A kind word and it's good. Can I tell you something? You're going into your workplace tomorrow and you're gonna interact with coworkers. who they're not getting a kind word from anybody. They're probably getting beat down when they go home. They're probably being beat down at work. They're being beat down. Like, listen, you alone might be the only person in their life that is speaking any type of kind word into them. And may this season and may our lives be generous with how we share our words with others where we are constantly building. We're not critical people. Man, we're encouragers in this place. We're gonna speak kindness into other people. It's the type of person that I wanna be. It's the type of person I wanna be around, man. I love being around kind people, but let me tell you something.

Kindness comes from the Holy Spirit. So if you wanna be kind, you need to be around the Holy Spirit more or ask the Holy Spirit to move in your life to make you a more kind person. Here's a couple quotes I came across on the internet. These aren't from the Bible, so don't be mad at me. A little spark of kindness can put a colossal burst of sunshine into a person's day. That's good stuff. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. Here's the last one. Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Listen, you're all going through something personally, and you know what a kind, encouraging word does for you. What if you could be that for somebody else? What if somebody you know, what if you walk into your workplace and that person that just kind of gets on your nerves, maybe they're actually walking through something terrible in their lives, and it's causing them to be miserable, but you have the opportunity to speak a kind word to them. God's gonna, listen, I'm not going into your job tomorrow. I'm probably never gonna meet the people that you work with. I'm never gonna meet the people that you go to school with, but you're there on assignment by God. Let him use you to speak an encouraging word, because you never know what somebody is going through. I was thinking about the Bible.

There's so much kindness in the Bible, and so many people that needed a kind, encouraging word, and the person that I kind of came across and said, this guy probably needed it more than anybody else, was the thief on the cross. When Jesus was hung on the cross, there were two criminals that were hung beside him. One of the criminals looked on at Jesus and were like, hey, if you're really the son of God, get us all down off of here, like do something, bro. He didn't believe he was the son of God. The other criminal looked on and go, bro, you need to be quiet. This guy is innocent, and then he utters these words. Hey, would it be possible? I know I'm about to die, but would it be possible if today when I die that I could be with you in heaven? And in that moment, Jesus could have looked back at him and go, no, bro, you don't deserve heaven. All the things that you've done. No, no, no, no. What did Jesus do? He responded in kindness, and he said, hey, you're about to die, I'm about to die, and today when we both pass away, you're gonna be with me in paradise. My man was in agony, and he was being tortured, and he was dying, taking his last breath, but he had some hope that started to fill up in his soul when Jesus spoke those words over him.

That's the type of people that we wanna be. We wanna speak kindness, we wanna speak encouragement and truth into people and show them love when nobody else is. People are being attacked by everything going on in the world. May we be the light of Jesus Christ and be generous with our kindness to others, amen? So when you leave today, we're gonna give you these cards right here. They're very simple, very basic. On the front of the card, it says this, an act of kindness to show you God loves you, and then on the back, it says, and so do we. Rise, church, and it's got our info, our address, our service times. What we're asking of you to do is this. Take as many of these as you want, and don't let the card do the talking. You do it, but let us come and tag team with you. Let the card be your tag team partner. Speak a word of kindness and then go, hey, and by the way, I'd love for you to come and sit with me at my church. We're a pretty nice church. I think you would like it here. We're encouraging. We got some kind people, not everybody. We got some jacked up people here, but you know what I'm saying.

Maybe you take these with you, and if you go somewhere to eat, and you got a waiter or a waitress, and maybe you can tell, man, they're having a rough day, you leave this card with a big old fat tip, more generous than you would normally give. Maybe they didn't have the best day serving you. Maybe it was because the other table of people that are dressed in church clothes weren't very nice to them, weren't very kind to them, didn't leave a very nice table. Very good tip. Now, they're not going to know that your church people because none of you are dressed like church people. That's real. I don't have much to brag on. Somebody told me I look like a 90s country singer today. So when the Thunder rolls and the lightning strikes, you know what I'm saying? But but you get the opportunity somewhere like God, like listen, you don't have to try to find it. It's probably going to find you. And in that moment you step up boldly and go. God has been so generous to me with his kindness. I want to show it to somebody else. Here's a beautiful verse in Proverbs. Whoever pursues righteousness and I don't have time to unpack that but that's important. Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will actually find life.

Listen, if you don't you don't pursue kindness, you're going to you probably going to be a miserable person. Pursue it. Run it down. Be generous with your kindness and be a blessing to somebody else. Amen. I want to give you a bonus one that I was not planning on bringing but I just felt like the Lord put it on my heart just yesterday. If you're watching the news was wild lot of different tragedy struck and there's been tragedy going on in our world for a very long time a lot of unrest. And so what I want us to be as people of God is generous with our prayer. Here's what we're saying and I appreciate the five amens the rest of you all like I don't know talking to the Lord. You wanted to amen. I know I know you're just upset about the bonus point. You thought we were done. When it comes to prayer. The reason we want to be generous with it. It's because people are hurting. And maybe we can't do anything to fix their problems. But when it comes to prayer, we can call upon the God of Heaven and Earth to move in their lives when I can't do anything for you. I can call upon him to come and do what only he can do. And let me just say this and I know I try to say it often enough, but if you're not coming to Wednesday night prayer

and worship, you really are missing out. I don't know if you're able to rearrange your schedules or figure it out, but we want you here. It's a powerful night where we just pray together and we worship God and seek him. But I just want to close with a time of prayer this morning. And here's the ask and you're going to have to get a little bold with this this morning. Would anybody just raise their hand and just go man. I am walking through some stuff right now and I could use some extra prayer. Anybody just want to be honest and raise their hand. And if you're raising your hand, just keep it up. You're already got it up. Just keep it up. Yeah, keep it up. Keep it up. All right. If somebody's hand is up beside you, would you just put your hand on their shoulder? Now if you don't know them and they look at you weird like you ain't touching me bro. Don't do it. Okay. If you're all raising your hand, just put your hand on each other's shoulders. And as soon as somebody touches your shoulder, you can put your hand down. Just want to make sure everybody's getting prayed for. We got one more hand one.

If somebody's you can put your hand down. You can put your hand down. All right. Yeah, let's go. I want to pray. And I want you to pray. Maybe you don't even know what they're walking through. You don't have to. You're calling upon God to move in their life. Hey, listen, if they're if they're desperate enough to raise their hand, that means something's going on right now. And what we're going to do is we're going to say God. We are relying on you completely. You're with me. Say yeah, let's pray. Thank you Jesus that you are here in this place today. Your sons and your daughters are here and they are calling out to you saying that they need you in their life. They need you to move and God what we're believing right now is that you're already on the move. We're believing God that you're already working even when we can't see it. We're trusting God that you will prevail. You are greater than anything that we could ever face. And sometimes God we get discouragement that comes along. Sometimes God we wrestle with doubt but in the process of all of that God, would you remind us? That you're faithful. That you're trustworthy. I pray peace into their hearts and their minds right now.

I pray hope restored. We pray for the miracle that somebody needs in this place. Nothing is impossible for you. We pray this in Jesus name and all God's people said, amen. All God's people said a better. Amen.