Why 90% Is Better Than 100% | Crossroads Messages

- What if generosity wasn't about giving something up, but actually stepping into something bigger? It's easy to think of generosity in terms of sacrifice. We got often uses our obedience to expand our faith, stretch our vision, and invite us into a greater story. My name is Mika, I'm the Prison Director here at Crossroads. And this weekend, Brian Tone will be talking about what happens when we trust God enough. Take a step, see where he leaves, with the haven tool. (upbeat music) (audience applauding) - One of our favorite weekends here at Crossroads, and I'm gonna talk today about one of my favorite things. I'm gonna talk today about the adventure of obedience. I have friends who tell me regularly, I would do things that I'm doing if it wasn't for you. Friends who said, "Man, I would've never gotten "on a motorcycle or done a camping trip "or hunting," or whatever, I'm told that frequently. And I want this for you. I wanna take you on an adventure today. I want you to join me in talking about a thing of obedience that the Bible knows as tithing. (audience applauding) Oh my gosh, you're excited about this, are ya? Oh, you are, you're unbelievably excited, I can hear it. It's gonna be great. Let's pray about it right now. God, I thank you for your goodness, and your generosity to us.

Thank you for the ability to have things and do things and be the people that you've called us to be. And God, I'm thankful for this talk, and I'm excited about it, and I ask you to help me be helpful for your people. I pray these things in your name, Jesus, amen. Yeah, so I've had a role change. I am now the founding senior pastor, and so I don't set things like the preaching schedule anymore, or decide who chooses to preach, whatever. So it's my first weekend in my new role preaching, and what do they assign me? (audience laughing) I was like, you rap bastards. Why would you do that, too, is why I actually thought. And then I actually second my next exact question, my next exact response was, oh no, this is great. I love this. I honestly, I love this. Because never I've given a talk like this over the past 30 years, I know that you put stuff on me like, "Well, you're just saying that "because you have to hit meat budget." Well, you're saying that because you have to, you know, make sure you get a paycheck. The great thing is, there's, doesn't matter whether you listen to me or not, or change anything or not, there's, I have no responsibility

for anything to be affected by your obedience. My salary cannot change. It cannot change, no matter what happens. In fact, in fact, I realized, man, when other churches invite me in to talk about this, I get excited, genuinely excited. This has been a core spiritual formation principle for me. It's been a core discipline. And when I tell you what tithing is, you're not gonna like it or agree with it or understand it maybe. But just give me about 30 minutes, 35 minutes, to see what God does with you. 'Cause this is really cool stuff. So tithing, tithing is when you take the first 10% of any financial windfall you get. The gross 10%, not net gross, God owns it all. The gross 10%. And you give it to the church that you're a part of because that represents the work of God in your life. Now again, you might go like, I'm not sure, fine. That's why I get to enjoy this with you. This is really gonna be a lot of fun. In the book of Leviticus, chapter 27, verse 30, it says this, it says, every tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or the fruit of the trees, it's the Lord's, it's holy to the Lord's. The word holy doesn't mean moral. Holiness involves morality, but it's only holy and morality is only holding the sense

of once you become changed in terms of your practices, you will be holy, which means set apart distinct. That's what holy means. It's set apart, it's distinct. God has said, he is holy, he is the holy Lord. He's set apart from you and I. He's distinct from you and I. Even though we were creating his image, he is on a completely different category, completely different plane. That's what holiness means. So it says here, the tithe is when you take, you take, well, I had to explain to me this way and I'll explain it to you. I explain to my kids this way. I've got $10, $20 bills here. When my kids get up, they get up. You probably, no one probably has a dime in your pocket here at all. And $1 bills probably don't mean that much to you, but maybe you have a 20. So it would be like this, okay, look at this. The first one, first one, the first one comes in, that's wholly unto the Lord, that's set apart, that's distinct, that's off the top, that's God's. And then you get the second one and the third one and the fourth one and the fifth one and the sixth. So we have security here today because I'm looking at certain people, I'm gonna get mugged afterwards. And the seventh one and the eighth one and the ninth one

and the tenth one, like what investor in your life, someone's gonna invest in your life or invest in your business, who would ever pour money into you and say, I just want one time 10% back. No, they wanna recap, recoup all of their expenses and then they want more on top of that. God just says this first 10%, you don't own that. That's not yours, that's not yours. You set it apart, that is unto me. I believe that tithing, starting out, starting out, tithing was the hardest adventure for me in my walk with God, starting out. That's what every adventure is. Every adventure is adventure because it's hard. If it was easy and predictable, it wouldn't be an adventure but be just what you did. Actually my first adventure with God was when I stopped underage drinking and abusing alcohol when I was 16 years old, that was the first adventure. Like, yeah, I gotta stop this, I gotta stop this. This was really the next big one that happened with me and I've tithed for well over 40 years and I want you to know why, I just thought, okay I'm excited to talk about this, what do I do? I've done this before but I haven't done it for a while. I'm gonna give you six reasons, this is my personal story. Six reasons why I've tithed and I wanna encourage you to do the same. Number one is this, all success, all success comes from regimented systems, all success.

If you wanna be physically successful, you have to have a regimented system. You have to know what days the week you work out, when you work out, what you do when you are, you don't just wake up on a Monday morning and go, yeah, I think I'll try working out this week sometime. No, no, no, you go like, no, this is what I'm going to do and just like, you don't wake up and go, yeah, yeah, I think I'm gonna try being generous this week. Nope, nope, doesn't work that way. Everyone thinks they're generous, everyone thinks they do. They are, I don't have never, anybody who doesn't think they're generous, everyone who believes they're generous. Truth is, the only people who start to be having the generous conversations are those who have a regimented system. Everybody wants to be relationally successful, has a regimented system. You know, when your date night is or when you're gonna hang out with your friends, whatever it is, you wanna know how to be spiritually successful, you have a regimented system. You know what your Bible reading plan is. You know when you read your Bible and if you don't have either, guess what? You don't read your Bible. You know when you pray. You know the process by which you pray. And if you don't know the process by which way, then you don't pray.

Every, everything in your world where you're successful and you get ahead and there's a regimented system and tithing is a regimented system. Number two, second reason why I've taught it for 40 years is it is the clear teaching of the entire Bible. It could not be more clear from start to finish. You have in the Old Testament, you've got a guy by the name of Abraham Abraham. This is by the way before the Ten Commandments, before the law comes, I read to you that passage before, which is in Leviticus. Leviticus is part of the law portion of the Bible. In the book of Genesis, before the law comes around, Abraham is being used by God. And God has a vision for him, Abraham is prompted to go to Melchizedek, a high holy priest, and give him a tenth of everything he owns. He tithes across the more tenth of everything before, God actually said to do it. People in the Bible actually did it. Then God actually gives very clear instruction to do it. I'll give you some more later on. I just read you one in the book of Leviticus. And some of you are going, aha! But this is all Old Testament. This is all, no, no, no. I said the clear teaching throughout the entire Bible. Old and New Testament. Some of us have a little love. Brace it on, W.W.J.D., old school bracelets,

but made a comeback, what would Jesus do? You know what Jesus would do? He would tithe. How do we know this? Because he said so. Let's read his words. Luke 11, 42, 44, he's talking to the Pharisees, the hyper-religious people. He says, woe to you Pharisees for you tithe, mint, and rue, and every herb, and you neglect justice and the love of God. So you're so into the law, you're tithing in arbernacular today, you're tithing your parsley, you're tithing your hot pepper seeds. You just want to make sure you get the tithes right. And he says, you should have done the former, you should have done that without neglecting the latter. Meaning what? You should have tithed, but you're not loving people and worried about justice. There's other things that God wants to receive your generosity on. The tithe is just the way that you honor God and give him back, return to him, what is his? The tithe is not all that we give, are three compassion kids. That's matters of love and justice. People we've helped get into a down payment for a house, that's love and justice. Being some friends pitched in for another friend to be able to have living quarters, a nice trailer to buy for them. That's love and justice. I always have people we support different ways. Some of those are taxed right off, some of those are not.

That's love and justice. That's our might, it's just out of love. Don't have to do it, don't have to do it. But just out of love and justice, we want to do it. God's returned his, we did that, but this was something that we wanted. That's what Jesus is saying here. He clearly couldn't have been more clear to his followers that I expect you to tithe than this. It's just like, no, God wants all of us. Not just 10%. I find that people are talking more and more about grace-giving, people who don't like tithe. By the way, you know who doesn't like to tithe? People who don't tithe. The people who don't believe in tithe are people who don't tithe. It's like an obese person trying to convince me I shouldn't work out. I'm like, sorry, dude, you do not have the life that I want. You don't have that life that I want. And when I hear people talk about this and I know some of these people I'm like, dude, I do not want your life. I don't want, it's not where I'm going. And I hear people talk about grace-giving. As if I don't have to do tithe, grace-giving, as if grace is less than 10%. Let me tell you what, grace is everything. Because Jesus didn't tithe his life, he gave his life. All of it, all of it on a cross. All of it lays his life. How dare we use the words, word grace, as if it's cheap? I'm not going to honor God with your obedience, but I'll do grace-giving.

In fact, Jesus deepens the demands of the Old Testament. He deepens them. He says, you've heard, said, "I for an eye, tooth for tooth." That's the law. And Jesus goes, "Babam, the next level." He says, "But I say to you, turn the other cheek. Take the abuse." You've heard it said this, but I say pray for those who personally. You've heard it said, you've heard it said, you should not commit adultery. But I say to you, if you look at somebody you're not married to, lustfully. In your heart, you've committed adultery with God. There's a break between you and God. He deepens the law. He never eliminates it. He fulfills it. This is what him and his grace doing does. This is so crazy. It's why I would honor him because he's given me so much, so much. He's given me my life. And this is the teaching throughout the entire Bible. I'll give you another one a little bit here. Number three, all my spiritual heroes have told me to do this. All of them. Every single one. Comes up again and again in the Bible all the time. Spiritual heroes who aren't alive anymore like Martin Luther. You might not know who Martin Luther was. I'm not crying. I've got the allergy thing going. My eyes are like always watering these days.

I don't know what that is. I'm not crying today. I don't plan on it. I've become a crier recently. What are they talking about? Martin Luther. There you go. Martin Luther. Martin Luther. Martin Luther. He lived in Germany way back when? 1500, 1600s. You might know Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Became Martin Luther King Jr. because his dad, after American pastor, went over to Germany. He heard the story about Martin Luther who started a revolution of trying to reform the Catholic church. Everybody was Catholic then. Martin Luther King's dad was so inspired by this. He changed his name to Martin Luther and then he named his son Martin Luther King Jr. And Martin Luther said there's three conversions that everyone has to go through. The conversion of the heart, the conversion of the mind, and the conversion of the wallet. These are three things that we don't want to give to God. Everyone who's ever discipled me, who's had a glyphosate for every single one. People who led me to Christ. Denny Patton. People who led them to Christ. every person I've read is every seminary professor I've ever had, everybody who's inspired me, every single person I've ever known as a faithful, consistent, spiritually-dape,

vibrant, ex-factor person, all of them, all of them, all of them ties, all of them. And again and again, those of us who don't come to this, just me, God loves you. Yes, He loves you. He'll always love you. He'll always be forward. But there's just an, there's just an ex-factor of obedience. So God goes, "Hmm, okay, okay, I understand where your heart is." Number four, when I tithe, I solidify that honoring God is my first priority, my first priority, because that's the way the things we honor, right? The things that are, things that are, things that are first to us. And Ezekiel 44, 30, it says this, "And the first of all the first fruits of all kinds and every offering and of all kinds from your offerings, the first shall belong to the priests. You shall give to the priest the first of your dough." That's a blessing, that a blessing may rest on your house. The priests that overseeing the whole sacrificial system and all that, the first fruits, the first. Because if we give it to them the first, it means something. I spend my time with God in the morning because I want to give Him the first part of the day because that's the best part of the day. For me, I want to give Him the first part of the day. Good news for you, the Jews actually believe the first part of the day being dark for the next day. So if you're like, "The best part of you is nighttime." Well, that'd be okay. Come on, you could say that's the first part for the next day. But that's how we know something important. It's the very first thing. Now, when I've gotten, when I get paid or have gotten paid for, you know, here across, it's been digitally. So as I set it up digitally through the app and other things, it's just good to immediately just goes out. I don't even think about it. So I do that first, but man, old-school days, old-school days, like I would get an actual paper check and I would actually have paper checks and write out my bills. The first one, first one before the mortgage, before the first gets the first fruit, the first one goes back to the church. I'm a part of that represents God and is stewarding that. And I'll get into that in just a moment, the very first one. It's the first fruits. My first house that Lib and I got, we got in this house and then God called us to come to Cincinnati and start crossroads. So we had to sell that house. We only in it for about a year and a half. I made in the year and a half. I made $15,000 on that house in a year and a half. When we got that closing check, it was minus all the stuff and the fees and I got that check, that $15,000. The first thing we did, $1,500, that was God's. First thing. That's his. That's his first fruits, very first thing. Like, I can't believe. Let's stay in this house for such a short time. Boom. Then we came to Cincinnati and finally got in the house. We always do

have done beat or fix our uppers historically. And what do you know? We're in this house for, gosh, I don't know how long we're in it for, I don't know, five years. Five years we made 70 grand and five years on this house. Like, geez, get that check. The first 7,000. That's God's. Because God increased that. Well, how can we live in this house and all of a sudden gains value? Crazy. That's the heart. It's the first fruits. When I get a speaking fee, when there's a book writing thing, the very first thing I do is not put into savings, not spend the very first, that's God's. You gave me that deal. You gave me that blessing. So I'm just saying, thank you back to you, God. I can't believe you're using me the way you are. It's the first, the first fruits. And Malachi one to two, which is the last book in the Old Testament, the last book in the Old Testament. And this is kind of the classic tithing passage I'm going to give you, spend some time here. But this is critical, this part of the book of Malachi before you get to that classic passage I'm going to give you. Because this is the heart behind the whole thing. God is concerned about the heart of his people. His people are not understanding him. And so the very beginning, the book of Malachi says this, "I have loved you," says the Lord. But you say, "How have you loved us?" God says, "I love you. I have loved you." But the people aren't feeling it. They don't understand. How do you, it's possible to be so removed from the love of God that you don't even believe in the love of God. It's possible to be so removed from the awareness of God that you can't comprehend that God actually still loves you. This is the place where his people are. how have you left? I'm not seeing it, I'm not getting it. How is this? And then God spends the rest of the book trying to help them understand and help them see where things have gotten cloudy in their minds, what they might be missing. And it comes to Malachi chapter three, verse eight. And I'll just read this a little bit verse by verse. Here's what says, "Will a man rob God?" God says, "Yet you are robbing me." But you say, "Robbing you, how have we robbed you

"in your tithes and contributions?" This one that was God's, they said, "Oh God doesn't need that." He doesn't need it, or they've forgotten about it, and God says, "You're robbing me. "You're taking from me." It's hard to feel in a loving relationship with somebody when you're stealing from them. If someone breaks in your house and steals from you, you're not gonna have a lot of loving feelings. And they're not having any loving feelings for you and they steal from you, just none. Like stealing, killing, God's got, "Dude, you know this. "This isn't generated. "This is mine. "Set it apart, that's mine. "And yet you're stealing from me." And he says this then, "You are cursed with the curse. "For you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. "Have you ever felt like, "I don't know what it is, but just life isn't working? "I don't know what's happening, "but I'm just not getting any traction here. "I don't know what's going on, but I just feel distant. "I don't know. "That can be likened to a curse. "I'm not saying some voodoo which someplace "put some spell on you, and that's why things aren't going well.

"I'm saying, we live in a broken world "that's all consumed with ourselves "and all selfish about ourselves all the time. "It's the curse of this world we're in." And God says that if there's a curse on you, here he says it, the way you break the curse is to tithe. I'm just telling you what's in the Bible. If you believe it, if you don't believe the Bible at all, but what's crazy is that people say they believe the Bible, and yet this stuff isn't personalized. God says this is the way you break the curse. You return the temper, you return the thing you stole. Or from here on out, you go like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, it's yours." And then it continues and says this. "Your tithes and contributions, "contributions are things above and beyond the tithe, "tied and contributions." That's what Jesus was talking about, the tithe, and then wade your matters of love and justice. You are cursed the curse. You've robbed me the whole nation. You bring the full tithe, the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my home. And thereby, put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. They would surrender the tithe. The reason why it's important, I believe, to bring your tithe to the local church you're part of is that's your storehouse.

You're surrendering it. It's God, you're surrendering it. If you're taking God's money, God's tithe, and you're still playing God with it, eh, okay, I'll set us for 10% for things that move me and I want to be generous too. I'll set us for it. And I know people like this, they keep it in account and then they go, "Oh, I want to give that." "Oh, I'll give that, I want to give that." I mean, that's better than not putting 10% in an account someplace. That's better than not being strategically thoughtful about generosity at all. That's really cool. But there's a whole different level spiritually when you rise, no, no, no, no. I have surrendered this. I'm not playing God with this. I don't decide who gets this. I don't decide what missionary it gets. I don't decide, I don't, I, I surrender. It's a storehouse and in the storehouse, there's things that the storehouse can then do because I've surrendered it. Isn't Thanksgiving food drive an incredibly fun week? It's so fun, so fun. And we love that because I can bring, like pick up our box or how many we do, pay our box, you bring, that's a contribution.

And the storehouse, like in that video you saw, there's forklifts, there's boxes, there's staffing infrastructure. I mean, a hundred and some thousand people get fed, not because people had just a hard fort, but because the storehouse had been outfitted with infrastructure and that's how we do these things. That's how we rescue girls in the sex slavery industry. That's how we, that's how we see people brought out generational poverty in our cities is the things that we do in Dayton and Columbus and Lexington and Cincinnati. It's because the storehouse can do infrastructure and that's the potency And then it says this in this passage, and this is the part that I, man, I just kind of poo poo for the longest time. I didn't want to talk about it for the longest time, but it's here. So I'll spend a little bit of time on it now, and then I'll get back into it about five minutes. It says this, "Test me. Bring the full time of the storehouse. There may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test," says the Lord God. If I were not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. It's the only time in the Bible where God says, "Test me. Test me." And just see if you don't experience my love. Just see if you don't experience that blessing. Now, this blessing does not, it's not a blessing like a sick twisted televangelist. You give this, and then you're going to get more digits in your bank account. It's not that. But it's like the breaking of the curse, the clearing of the heart, the reunification of an understanding of God's love, God being engaged in our life because it's been seven before it's worth saying again, "I would rather have God involved with 90% of my money than him not involved at all with 100% of my money." And that's what he says there. "Just test me in this." And so our church a number of years ago, we decide to test God in this and just say, "Okay, well, what we'll keep is going, we want to make it as easy for everybody as possible to be faithful and obedient to God.

So we start the tithe test where you can give, you can tithe, 10% of your gross income, two crossroads. And after 90 days, if you don't sense the presence of God, you don't feel like it's worth it for whatever reason, we'll refund you all that money. Like we'll take it. The church will take that test even if some of us are a little bit hesitant about it. And so we've been doing that for years and here's one person's story. Every one of these scenes has a story about what God has done. And there are more stories that we can tell. This is Jacqueline's story. Hi, I'm Jacqueline Couturek and I go to crossroads Oakley. Right in the beginning parts of COVID, I found myself in the middle of a marriage breakdown. I had found out about infidelity and divorce was imminent. And so that along with the world kind of being in turmoil at the same time was very destabilizing. For a brief period of time, I felt like, does this Christian faith work? Like honestly, like I had really, I never fully lost faith. I would not say I ever went that far, but I really questioned like, does it work? But I still came back to the fact that I still believe and regardless of what has happened, you know, God doesn't owe me like a happy life. And so I had been going to crossroads. I continued to go to crossroads. And during that time period, it was really like those moments where you're like, okay, I can hang on another week. At that time of the divorce, I was also starting my own business. So they happened within a couple of months of each other. I assigned the loan documents for the business. I had started the construction process at the office space and then my life fell apart. It was during that time that I decided to do the tithe test and to test God and all that. So the 90 day tithe test was a commitment to give 10% of my income and to live off the 90% that was remaining. So the reason why I did it is because I didn't have anything to lose. Like, I felt like everything that I had thought that I had, I didn't. Like, I've gone through hell and I survived somehow and I'm rebuilding. So I'm still here. And so why not? It was easier than I thought it was going to be, but I started it during a time in which it was scary to start. God provided for me through all of it. Good employees who were dedicated to good friends that were supportive and encouraging to my parents who were super encouraging and supportive and involved at that point. To my, even my kids being encouraging and supportive during that time, the old me could not have envisioned my life. And she could not have envisioned that she could have found happiness again in peace and joy and stability and that she did and has been able to do what she's done over the past six years when we all come together. The church is able to do so much.

I feel like you see that. You see that every week around here. There's something that is going on. There's something that we're doing. There's some kind of impact we're having. I'm excited and proud to be part of a church that has such an outward focus. I cannot believe my life. I cannot believe I get to live this life. (upbeat music) - Beautiful, beautiful. Number five, five of six reasons why I tied. Number five, living on less helps me better manage the rest. I actually got this from my son, who clued me into this. When you go, "Who?" I have this process of now 10%. I recognize that God is going back there. You go, "Okay, I got a button down. "Make sure I got enough month left "for the rest of my money here, "or money left for the rest of my month here." I've got to actually get on a budget. I've got to actually figure out how much I'm spending on things. I'm actually going to have to be thoughtful. I might actually have to cancel a streaming service or two. I mean, some of us are paying for streaming services we've forgotten about. It's just coming out.

It's just coming out and we've forgotten about it. Some of us were just accidentally losing money and if the clothing could be really easy, if we just said, "Okay, I got to buy." Why am I spending my money on it? Where is that? You'd never be able to convince me that if I had invested all the money I've given, whatever we've done, live and I, that we would have more somehow because we've been able to invest and save what we have because the tide has forced us to be very purposeful and disciplined. That's part of why I do it. And six and final is, I want things to happen that I can't do on my own. And this is one where if I gave this talk a while ago, I would have been very bashful about this because there's nothing, I hate everything about the health and wealth gospel. I hate everything about, as I heard someone say recently, profilying, saying, "If you give, you're gonna get more and God's gonna give you more money back." I hate everything about the televance list stuff. I hate all of it, all of it, all of it. And this kind of goes right in that vein and therefore I poo poo, I tend to poo poo this, at least publicly for most of my life, but finally I realized,

I gotta start talking about the goodness of God because there's been things that have happened that live when I just go, that was just God. And it probably was tied to us being faithful and us feeling this love because we've been faithful in returning this first 10% as his. I'll just give you a few examples. Our first, when we first married man, we were so poor we couldn't pay attention. (audience laughing) We were so poor we couldn't pay attention. And then of course we're gonna have sex and we couldn't afford contraception. I just said this getting ready for today. Like, that's one of the words that I think I've typed out. I've never actually said. So how do you say that contraception? Turn to the person next to you and just tell him contraception. Tell him right now. Go ahead, turn to him right now. Bo, tell her contraception. Okay, just, you know, I'm trying to give them a hint. I don't know, just a fun word. Anyway, so we were not using contraception. Didn't wanna spend the money on any contraception things we had. And so we were doing other creative means. And I'll just say that my daughter got born because of that.

And it was Lib's fault. I'll give you more of a breakdown someday as to exactly how that happened. But here we have, we're pregnant and we don't have the money for contraception, let alone medical insurance. And we go to the hospital trying to go through this process. And we got, we found out, was charity care. Charity care, you might be offended if you get charity. God bless America, hallelujah, we got charity. We got charity, it was amazing. We thought, that moment, we thought, yeah, God's taking care of us. We have to have some really crappy cars in our life. Really, really crappy cars. And they're crappy because we can't afford to get rid of them. And they're crappy because someone gave it to us, but it was free and we eat another year out of it. And every time we had that, I was like, yeah, God's being good to us. Maybe we often wonder, maybe, maybe I got this plum job at Crossroads because I tithe. Maybe, maybe, 'cause there's other people I know who applied for this who knew the Bible better, had better prayer lives and didn't say words like contraception during a talk. And honestly, I talk with peers of mine or pastors who will not give this talk. You know why they will not give this talk? Because they do not tithe.

[BLANK_AUDIO] And I just wonder, like, are there opportunities I've had God because of that? I can't pin it to it, but it just seems strange that I would be the one that he would allow to come and start this thing. It's beautiful. I don't understand how many health crises we've had averted. God is that tithing? 70 miles an hour? No helmet? Go through a deer in a motorcycle? My wife has a severe, massive stroke, can't talk, can't walk. And next week she's playing tennis? Is that tied? I don't know. I don't know. I think some of this has to be, right? I got three kids, three sons-in-laws, daughters-in-law, whatever, three kids-in-the-all got married, three kids, and soon to be nine grandkids who live within ten minutes of us, nine grandkids. We have an amazing, loving family. It's amazing. It's beautiful. And is that because of our decisions to tithe, the adventure that forced our family in early on, like any vacation we went on was only a free vacation, whatever a family member would kind of glob us into some spare room of a condo there, renting or something like that. To tithe and do other things that God wants to do, generously. We had for long seasons when my kids were going up to the star crossroads, no cable. No cable. My kids used to sit on the stoop of the stairs looking out the window of our house in the apartment complex that was 20 feet away into their, into their TV, watching TV without any sound, because that's the best they could do.

And we have so many stories like that. Is that what bonded us together? Is that what it did? That's actually real to you. That's actually real to you. I pulled out this, this reminder of this, just this morning, I pulled out this, this wall of mine when I pulled out this, this stuff. This wallet is made by the same guy who makes the ring that I have on my hand. He owns a company. It's called Groove Life. They donate all the rings to our couples camp. We renew our vows at couples camp. Pretty intense, pretty good dude. When I met him, he said, "Hey, tell me about your family and are they walk with Christ and everything?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, they all are, they all walk with Christ and they all, and they all tithe and he stopped me and said, "Huh, I see what you did there." And I think what he was saying was, "You're about ready to ask me for money." That's what I think Peter was thinking we used to have. I see what you did there. I said, "No." I said, "When I found out that all my three adult grown children of their own volition and their spouses of their own volition, tithe, the real tithe, and they didn't do it because they had to, what I found out out was like, "Oh my gosh, God really has their hearts. He has their hearts because the only person who ever ties with someone who says, "God, I want you to have my heart. You can have my heart." So I said, "That's what it is because I'm so proud of my kids." And that's a sign. There's a bunch, but that's a sign that God has their heart, that there's a love thing

happening in my family and it ties to this in a big way. That's what I want from you, for you, not from you, for you. I want for you to have a fresh awakening of the adventure of God in your life and to have an adventure of love and to honor him, to honor him as he so clearly has helped us to understand how to do that and to experience that love in a fresh, invigorating way. So we're done here. We're going to have people down in front of all of our sites praying for you. Maybe this kind of jogs something for you. You want someone to pray for you, you can come down here in your prayer. You can also go and find out about the 90-day tithe test on our app or on our website, 90-day tithe test. And you can also go big day today, baptism information sessions at all of our sites. God's doing a really good, fresh thing in our church and I think he's doing a really good, fresh thing in a lot of us. Let's pray about that. God, I am thankful for what you're doing in our midst and in our lives. And I thank you, I sense that God, I think you're moving the needle on some hearts in here today. I thank you for using this time and these words to bring people in a deeper awareness of your love. Thank you for being so kind and so patient with this information and so kind and so patient with all that you've given. You are just good. We just said you are good. Thanks for spending a few minutes with us today. Our encouragement is simple, as always. Don't just hear God's word today. Take one step because of it. Maybe that's open in your Bible. Maybe it's spending a few quiet minutes in prayer.

Maybe it's forgiving someone or asking for forgiveness. Simply saying yes to whatever God is putting in front of you today. Whatever that next step is, take it. And if this message encourages you, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a video message or write to us at [email protected] Our team reads every letter. We love to walk alongside you. So next time, keep pursuing Jesus. Keep opening his word. Keep saying yes to him one day at a time. See you soon.