Fueled by Worship

We say this all the time. One of the things that marks us as Christ Church. One of our values is we talk about we are biblical that we're not going to do something that God does not call us to do, that scripture does not move us to do. So when you say this idea of let's go out, let's start more churches, let's be a part of this. Where do we find that in the Bible? Well, I'm glad you asked. Crossurch family, we're excited as this new season we go into. At this time, you'll actually our ushers will go around and we're going to be handing out these commitment cards that we're going to put in every single one of your hands during this time. But here's what I want you to hear. Maybe as you kind of step in and maybe it's your first time today and you're like, "You picked a good Sunday to come up. We're starting a 2-year capital campaign." All right. Um you're like, "Ah, they want my money." But here's the thing is what you're going to see is we we're not asking anyone to give today, but to pray, to observe, to see what God is doing and where God is leading us. It's amazing as we get to hear from Pastor Jackie who oversees our collective just the heart that we have at Cross Church. And here, maybe you haven't met me before, my me, I'm Pastor Andrew. in my heart that as we continue to go down this road is we just be receptive and open to where God leads us. As you get this card in your hands and before we dive into our text, you'll start to read over that probably and when you get bored, you'll start to peruse some more things and you might hear a number like 7 million be like, "How will we ever get there?" Like, "How can we reach that mark?" But here's what's exciting about this is this is our collective giving across all of our churches here at Cross Church. So maybe if you look on the back of that and it's going to see your two-year commitment and what that looks like as one year and look at what's every month is this is all of your giving of what you maybe regularly give if that is you in our church plus what God is putting on your heart to be a part of where we are moving. And there are many of us who maybe you've heard this for a little while. Uh we had a vision meeting about a month back and we've had meetings with some key leaders and those who serve in great ways in our church. And as you've been praying through, we're excited is next week at 5:00 all of our churches from across our valley and beyond are meeting here as a time of worship and prayer and advanced commitment that we would love for you to register for. If that is you that you are ready for that of we're going to take that first step. But here's what's exciting in this time. That you are at a church where we're not just going to sit back and say like, "Hey God, how can we just spend our days until our days are gone or until Jesus comes back? How are we just going to sing some songs and and open God's word to see what's next? But how are we going to be on mission? How are we going to go? How are we going to make Jesus known in a way that changes not only what is happening today, but for generations to come?" So before we dive into our text, can we just give one more hand for our God on how great that he is and we say this all the time. One of the things that marks us as Christ Church is one of our values is we talk about we are biblical that we're not going to do something that God does not call us to do that scripture does not move us to do. So, when you say this idea of let's go out, let's start more churches, let's be a part of this, where do we find that in the Bible? Well, I'm glad you asked. If you have a Bible, go ahead and open up to Matthew 28. And we're going to spend some time kind of bouncing around to a few different scenes in scripture. But in Matthew 28 19, we actually got to sing this song. A man at our worship our worship team, they wrote a song. I said, Josh, can you write a song for this? He's like, I got it. AI was gonna be my huckleberry. No, I'm just kidding. Um, it didn't write the song. He actually wrote it. Uh, but in our worship, Jesus did a great job of setting our hearts and the mood right. And this is exactly what we're proclaiming here in Matthew chapter 28 19. It says this, "Go." He didn't say, "Stay a while. Be comfortable. Just accumulate. Build your own kingdom. Continue to just be comfortable with the season of life you're in." But Jesus when talking to his disciples says, "Go, go, therefore, and do what? And make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age." You see, we believe that as we go into this season informed by the great commission that we have continued to do this, we've made our mission. We say this all the time that is to make Jesus known. But in this next season that we've already seen God do, we fully believe in our heart that God has called Cross Church to be all about fulfilling the great commission one church at a time. And you may ask, you're like, "Well, I I just looked at the great commission." And he doesn't even say the word church in there. Instead, he says, "Go make disciples." He says, "Go baptize people." Well, here's the thing. What we've seen throughout history and what I firmly believe in today is the greatest vehicle to make disciples is the church that Jesus has called us to be a part of. Is the church is what makes disciples. The church is what preaches the gospel. The church is what equips the saint. The church is what sends people out. And here's the thing, the more churches we start, the more people that hear the gospel and the more baptisms that happen and the more eternities are changed. Statistics show that starting churches is also an effective mechanism. An existing established church on averages baptize 3.5 people per year for every hundred people that gather consistently together. Now, I don't know how you baptize half a person. um we're Baptist here, so we baptize that whole person. Let me just say that. Um but about three and a half for every hundred that attend on a weekly gathering. Now, here's the encouraging thing is we are established church that has been going for over 25 years here at Cross Church in Surprise. Last year, our rate was seven per hundred in attendance. So, this is a great commission church reaching and loving the people. You can give God a hand for that. But here's why we start new churches. Cuz new churches, church plants, instead of baptizing 3.5 for every hundred people, they baptize 11.7 for every hundred that are gathered. So when we revitalize churches, when we start churches, we see more people coming to faith, more people hearing the name of Jesus and responding to him in going and fulfilling the great commission that Jesus has given us. But here's the question as we talk about that of how do we start a movement of multiplying churches? H how how do we do that? And and really the question is what fuels a movement like this that changes people's eternity that changes the world we live in? How do we keep that going? Because you look throughout history, even look in our present is movements come and go. Political movements come and go. a political movement uh you could argue just ended yesterday as a leader who had reigned for almost 40 years was killed. Is is political movements come and go? Social movements come and go. Uh online social media viral movements, they come and go and thank goodness they go. But every when they come, we want them to go faster, right? The the the fun thing about having little kids is like my uh four-year-old, he does the trends when they've already been done for 3 months. All right? He's still saying six, seven. And I'm like, "Bro, I think the teenagers are o over that, but I don't even know how you know about that, but can you stop saying it?" And he just says it over and over again. I think he's hilarious. But but trends come and go. Movements are birthed and movements die. But how do we have a movement that keeps going? How do we have a movement that is bigger than ourselves? Cuz here's the thing at Cross Church is we want to be a movement church. We don't want to be a comfortable church. We want to be a convicting church, a caring church, a growing church, a church planting church, a church that multiplies, a church that sends, a church that goes while it grows spiritually and numerically here. A church that is a movement of starting more churches as we've done in Phoenix and in Cornville and Elmarrage as we will see happen this year in Mayor and Glacia de la Cruz and in the ones that we do not know about yet. You see, as we create this move, we continue this movement that God has placed on our heart. As we create through this let's go initiative a war chest of church planting resources, we need to first evaluate on what is our motivation? What is our fuel that makes this possible? And here's the thing. It is not better strategies. It is not more money. Even though we will ask you for more money in the coming months, but ultimately the fuel for all of this is worship. And today, that's exactly what we're going to see this morning. We're going to see three scenes from scripture that show us how worship fuels the mission. And we start in Matthew 28, starting in verse 16. It says the 11 disciples traveled to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. I love this little scene that's kind of like the little preamble to what then Jesus goes in and gives us the great commission, the greatest commission that history has ever seen, the greatest marching orders that our world has ever known. But the first thing we see as the scene is set up is that worship positions us for mission. You see, as they go, I I I love this. They were directed to go there. And and some maybe have heard from Jesus firsthand, or some had heard through the women that saw him at the tomb or through other sources, hey, Jesus wants you to go to this place upon this mountain. And and think about this for a second is what these men had been through. They watched Jesus die, brutally murdered on a cross. They watched the life leave his earthly body. They saw him bleeding, whipped, destroyed, hanging on the cross. And then when that happened, what did they do? They scattered in fear. Peter denied him three times and then ran away. He was the leader of the rest of them and he fell just as quickly as the rest of them did. They had thought everything that they had given their lives to was over. They thought the movement that they were a part of had died. And now we shift to this scene where they're climbing this mountain probably wondering what exactly they're going to run into and what they're going to encounter. And in verse 16, it just says that they went here because Jesus had directed them. The first thing I want you to notice is they went where Jesus told them to go. Obedience preceded their encounter, preceded their eventual worship. is they didn't wait for Jesus to come find them. They went to the place that he designated. I I I'm slowly moving some of my parenting style in this direction of telling my kids to do something and hoping that they show up. All right. Um I got to range from 9 years old all the way to almost two. And then when my kids are really little, you got to do everything for them. You got to put their shoes on. You got to fill their water bottles. Now, when you have some older kids, uh you tell them what to do. And then when you don't want to help the younger kids, you tell them to help the younger kids as well. And instead of like getting my kids into the car, which is a chore with four children in a minivan. All right. Um I just say, "Hey, I'm going to go get in the car and back it out of the driveway. Come get ready and show up in the car or I'm leaving you here." All right. And then I nicely, patiently wait in my car until it takes too long. Then I go inside and yell at them some more to hurry up and get back in there. But Jesus just said, "Hey, show up at this place. I'm I'm not going to come find you. I'm not going to hold your hand. I'm not going to tie your sandals. I'm not going to make sure you have a water bottle. Just show up here and I have some direction for you." I think there's some maturity in our faith that eventually we have to move from God coming to us and holding our hands along the way to then just listening to the obey the commands of God in obediently following them. You see, God went and got us for our salvation. He revealed himself so that we could say yes to him. But there's a point where he has given us instructions for obedience through his word and through the church where we just have to go to where he is moving. But I love this. It leads to verse 17. It says, "When they saw him, they worshiped, but some of them doubted." I love the honesty of scripture here that it doesn't tell us that they just worshiped and all of a sudden this big old worship gathering just continually spread out and everyone was lifting their hands. Everyone was excited. Everyone was all together with it. It says instead, some of them doubted. Some of them had seen the risen Jesus Christ in front of their face. And they were still struggling with how to process it. Still struggling whether or not to believe it. Still struggling whether or not they were going to accept it. You see, worship and doubt existed in the same moment. And even though there was doubt, they worshiped anyway. In the same group, there was worship and doubt. Maybe even in the same hearts, there was worship and doubt. And here's what's important for us is we can't wait until our faith is perfect to begin to worship because none of our faith will be completely perfect. We need to worship in the middle of our doubts. We need to worship in the middle of our struggles. That we bring those to Christ. that we bring those to God and say, "Gee, I don't have all the answers, but God, I believe that you do." And this is also just a beautiful picture of how we respond to the gospel. You think about this for a second is they saw Jesus risen from the grave. The Jesus who had lived for a perfect life for the past 3 years, they saw him commit no sins. They saw him perform miracles. They saw him teach. They saw how this guy had authority and was separate and different from everyone else. And then he told them, "Hey, I'm God, by the way." And they're like, "Sure you are." And then he died. And then he came back. And as he came back, they're seeing this resurrected Jesus. They're seeing that all this true, this gospel that everything scripture pointed to was true. And some of them worshiped, but some of them doubted. And you see as we proclaim the gospel, the good news of Christ that Jesus is Lord, our world will respond in these two ways just as we do is they some will worship but some will doubt. Some will doubt so much that those doubts will never be answered and they'll run from him. But our goal and our mission and our priority is we keep showing the risen Jesus to people so that we can worship him that we can accept him and it changes everything about our life. You see this is huge in this first step that what was so important is when they encountered the Jesus Christ the truth of who Jesus was it led them to a place of worship. Now, maybe you're today, you're sitting here and maybe you have your doubts. Maybe you're holding this commitment card and you're full of even more doubts than you were before you walked in. Maybe you're thinking like, "What difference does my participation make in this?" Or, "Do I really need to give to this? Can I just hide in the shadows and they'll never know?" Yes, you can. But you're robbing yourselves. Let me tell you, your participation isn't primarily financial. It's an act of worship. It's saying, "God, I prioritize you over blank." It's saying, "God, you are more important than whatever else I fill in my life." In a very practical sense, worshiping is acknowledging that God is more important than the other stuff we fill our lives with. And here's the thing, God is more important than our comfort. He's more important than our anxiety. And all of a sudden when here when they see Jesus and they start to worship him, their priorities realign. They stop running in fear, they stop going back to their old lives and they start leaning into what God had for them. Here's what I'd like you to do at this time is if you grab that card, here's what I want you to start praying over this week is praying over God, what do I need to say you're more important than? And it might have no reaction to to what your finances are with this. But maybe there's something that is so is more important in your life practically than God and you need to set it aside. Maybe this is a step for you that you need to commit your sin to giving it over to Christ and letting him forgive it. Maybe you are too comfortable. Maybe you are chasing the wrong things and you need to realign to what God has for your life. You see, often I don't think we give God our best. Often I think we just leave him with the rest. We just say, "God, here's what I have left over. You can take it." Instead of giving him what is his first. But you see, worship not only positions us for mission, but then we go to our next scene. And if you have a Bible, you can flip over to Acts chapter 1. In Acts chapter 1, it's just a couple books over after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You get past the Gospels. And in Acts chapter 1 through4 is kind of this passage and this next story we see but we're just going to hit four verses in here starting in verse 4. And some time has passed that as Jesus has given them this great commission then he starts teaching them and he has this time where he starts showing them how the Old Testament all points to himself and some say he spent 40 days with them. But then here's we pick up in verse four. He says, "While he was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the father's promise, which he said, you have heard me speak about for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit in a few days." Verse 6. So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses." Again, he's giving the great commission again in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. You see, worship not only precedes mission, but it also worship prepares us for power. As we jump forward in this story, Jesus has given them their marching orders. They are ready. They're at the final moments before he will then ascend into heaven to sit on the throne. But just before this in verse 5, he says, "Hey, I know you're ready to go, but just wait a little bit longer." He's like, "Just wait a little bit." He's like, "I know. I know you're pumped up. I know you're excited. I know you're ready to go." And they're probably like kids in a candy shop. They're like, "God, they're like, Jesus, we're ready. We saw you rise from the dead. we we heard all your teachings. You emphasized it over and over again. They're pumped up. They're ready. That doubt has probably started to fade away. And they're saying, "Let's go." And Jesus says, "Not yet." And it's the question becomes, why did they need to wait? Because they needed something they didn't have yet. They needed power. And the power they needed, he tells us in verse 8, he says, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." that they didn't have the right type of power in order to make this message stick in order to really create a movement they needed to. So then how did they pass the time as they waited? Did they go play video games or binge watch some shows or get their affairs in order, go make some money on the side? No. Verse 14 tells us how they spent their time. It says they were all continually united in prayer along with the women including Mary, the mother of Jesus and his brothers. They gathered in the upper room. They prayed. They worshiped. They waited on God together. They were continually united. This wasn't a one-time prayer meeting. This was constant. This was consistent. They were together. They were united. And here's what's so important in this is unity in worship creates readiness for God's Holy Spirit to move. Is the Holy Spirit will never move in a church if we are not united together in worship. You see, that's exactly why we gather together as a church. We gather consistently, not just to fill our schedule. You could fill your schedule with football or sleeping in. Um, I don't know if I want to fill my schedule of football anymore cuz I'm a Cardinals fan and it is getting depressing more and more by the day, but you have a lot of things you could fill your Sunday mornings with. But we come together to worship God, to read from his word, so that it gets us all on the same page of this mission of how to do God's work in the world around us. You see, worship doesn't just position us for mission. Worship prepares us for power. When we gather in this worship and prayer, the Holy Spirit starts to move. Our hearts are aligned. Our division melts away. And I think what we're asking God to do through this next season, what we're asking him to do through Let's Go, we're asking him to expand our reach, to plant more churches, to use cross church in ways that we have never seen before. And I'm convinced that what we need most isn't a better strategy. It's not even just more money. That is a part of it, but it is not the main thing. What we need more than anything is a movement of God in the form of the Holy Spirit to go with us. Grab this card again for a second. And I want you to look at this. And here's what I firmly believe is that the power of this campaign is not going to be in our finances. Whether we raise the money or we don't raise the money. And we're believing in God. We're stretching ourselves. We're asking God, take us on this journey. Are we bought into what we're what where you're going and where you're leading us? But the power is not in a dollar amount. The power is in the Holy Spirit to move. Here's the thing. We could raise every cent in more that we are looking to do in order to start more churches. But if God does not open those doors, if God does not raise the people that we need to send out that we will talk about in a minute, if God does not do his thing by the Holy Spirit convicting his church and moving them into mission, then none of it matters. And you see, this campaign is going to be funded, is going to be fueled, is going to be powered by the Holy Spirit, not by our means. And here's what's so great in this story is 10 days after this, they celebrate Pentecost, which is a Jewish holiday. And this was a special Pentecost because it was the first one after Jesus. And in that time, all of a sudden, they start preaching God's word. The Holy Spirit fell. 3,000 people were saved and the birth of the church started. And you see, it wasn't by their clever words. It wasn't by their funding mechanisms. It wasn't by their strategy. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that moved them. You see, worship, it positions us for mission. Worship power is us uh for to move in him. But we also it goes to our last scene that we see in Acts chapter 13 where we get to see how worship continues to move in the life of the early church and in the movement of starting more churches. And in Acts chapter 13 starting in verse one, it says this. Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius ofSirene, Manin a close friend of Herod the tetrarch and Saul. The church at Antioch was booming. It was a great church exploding by sharing the news of Christ. And in this time where everything seemed to be going right, they're growing. They're reaching more people. They're baptizing. It looks so great. Verse two, as they were worshiping the Lord and as they were fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Then after they had fasted, after they had prayed and they had laid hands on them, they sent them off. You see, our last way that we see worship fuels the mission is worship propels us into multiplication. Well, we have another jump in here where the church, they've been growing and and growing despite opposition. They've survived persecution. They've survived attacks from the Roman side and the Jewish side and everything else between. And now we come to the one of the most pivotal moments in church history. The church at Antioch, they had preachers, they had teachers, they had a strong leadership team. and and all of a sudden as they're praying and fasting in this thriving healthy established church and they're worshiping, the Holy Spirit says, "Set aside for some people for me. I'm going to send them out." Now, now stop right there and notice what was happening when the spirit spoke is it says they were worshiping and fasting. This wasn't a strategic planning meeting. This wasn't a leadership summit. This was a worship gathering. And in the middle of worship, God spoke. Now, that sounds exactly how it should be, but often times, I think sometimes we think that God just speaks to us when we're logically making a sound decision and where everything lines up. All of a sudden, God is going to give us the direction for our life. But sometimes it's in the middle of just the messy praise and outburst to him. Maybe God speaks to us when we're worshiping with our church family and singing and praying aloud. May maybe God speaks to us when you're singing in your car, depending on what you're singing in your car, and depending if you're flipping someone off on Grand or Bell Avenue in your car. All right. Um, and maybe the Holy Spirit's speaking to you in a different way. I'll be like, "Hey, maybe you're lower a finger a little bit and take your foot off a gas pedal." Um, maybe just me. Um, I don't actually flip anyone off. Uh, just cut them off. So, I believe that's a form of growth. Anyway, um but maybe God often speaks to us when we are seeking him through praising and through prayer and not in the logical things of doing a budget meeting with our spouse or making sure our job is everything squared away. God often speaks to us when we are seeking him. And as we go into this season, some of you hear the word campaign and that sounds like a dirty word in church. And I'll be honest, I don't like that word either. That's why I'm going with two-year disciplehip initiative. It just sounds so much more spiritual. All right, but that's exactly what it is. It's calling us of how are we going closer and trusting God more. How are we giving more to him? And here's what I want you to hear is this was birthed not out of a strategic planning meeting in our church. Is this was birthed out of a time of prayer. Many of you know that we have a 6 a.m. prayer meeting that meets here every single Wednesday at 6:00 a.m. in this room. And that has been going on for over 10 plus years. And not as many people attend 6 a.m. prayer meeting on Wednesday as attend on a Sunday morning. Let me just tell you that in case you were wondering. But that same spirit is alive and moving. One of the reasons that in our Sunday time we set a time time to pray and corporately pray together is we want to pray through scripture. We want to praise through scripture. We want to preach through scripture so that God speaks to us and we can practice it during the week. Is we believe that when we worship God through prayer and through singing and through seeking him in his word that he starts to move through us. He starts to give clarity. And here's the clarity that he gave at the church of Antioch. He says, "Hey, see your two best leaders, Paul and Barnabas. Set them aside. pray over them and send them out. I think of what they're asking. He says, "Hey, you see your best Bible group leader, your most generous giver, your most faithful volunteer, your best staff member, your most talented singer." He's like, "See them, set them apart, and then go send them somewhere else." Here's what I'm excited about this initiative. And what I'm praying over as I pray over this card is not just the money we'll raise, but the people we'll raise to send out. One of the things I'm excited about right now as I con three guys into reading books for a year and meeting with me twice a month. And what I'm working on with those three men is exploring a calling in their life of what is God calling you to do? Is he calling you to be a part of ministry to maybe leave the marketplace or to change what you do there and to be a part of his church in a different way? And in this summer, we're going to have an internship where we're going to call people who have interest in ministry. We're going to call students who are wrestling with a calling in their heart of come be a part, see what this looks like so that we can not only send people out financially, but we have people to send out to start more churches. And you see here this multiplication happened because the Holy Spirit was calling out not them to just give generously but to go. And the remarkable thing is they did it. In verse three it says after they fasted, after they prayed, after they laid hands on them, they sent them out. There is no arguments, no debates. They just sent them. And this is where the gospel started spreading to what now has reached us today. This is when the church went from local to global and it was launched from a worship gathering. The first church planting movement in history. Bless you. That was the loudest sneeze I think I've ever heard. It was like kept in and then it just came out. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit speaking in a weird way. But the first church planting movement in history, it was born in a prayer meeting. And today I believe there are people that are in this room that God is stirring you in your heart to pray to him privately, corporately to worship him. And maybe one day he's going to call you to go somewhere to go and live out your faith. Then he calls all of us to go in some degree to share with our neighbors, to share with those we love, to invite to church, to tell how Jesus has changed our life, to start a movement that has reverberating consequences. And here's what I love in all this is all of it was about how do we worship despite the doubt that creeps into our life? How do we give to him? How do we seek him? How do we make a priority out of him despite all the distractions that so easily come into our lives? And maybe today you're still in a place of doubt and that's okay. Keep worshiping God through it. God will make it clear. But what all three scenes of this scripture have in common make crystal clear that is undeniable. This foundational truth is that worship is not preparation for the mission. Worship is the fuel for the mission. You know, I used to think that church was just about we sang songs just to get people awake and get people pumped up, right? And I was always like as a kid in church and we we sang some hymns then too and they weren't the cool redone hymns we do now. Uh they were the ones where you had a hymn book and you had to read notes in the music and I didn't know if I was on key or not. Um I don't even know if like half the people up here know how to read music anymore. They just like have dots, right, that they follow. Anyway, um but in there I was like, let's just get done with the worship and let's get to the good stuff. Let's get let's get to the reading the Bible stuff, the preaching stuff. Maybe that's how I knew I should be a preacher because I was actually looking forward to the sermon and people are like, "That's when I want to sleep." Um, but in there I was like, worship is just the prep ground. It's just preparing our hearts for then all of a sudden the good stuff. But as I've pastored for the last decade, what I found is worship is not just something we add on. Worship is the thing that stirs inside our hearts a love for God. Hey, adoration to God and obedience to God that spurs in us is then how can we then be obedient to his word all of a sudden when we're singing out songs when we're praying to the God of the universe all of a sudden something starts to stir in our hearts emotions that we've repressed and did not want to deal with all of a sudden start coming bubbling up and all of a sudden our God is just shaping our heart to be a part of something that is greater than ourselves and here's what's so exciting cross church is that as we go into this season when we talk about worship when worship is our fuel it changes everything because we're not working for God's approval we're walking working from God's approval so that we can be on mission for him and in this next season of our church this next two years as we go down this path this next few weeks as we continue to unpack what it means to plant churches in other areas and how strategically God has shown us a vision for how to do that. Our goal here and my plea with you today is what does it look like for you to be engaged in that? You see, here's our number one goal during this initiative is that there is a 100% engagement from our church from every child to every adult. It's not going to be giving the same, but it's going to be giving something in your time, in your resources, in your abilities. is how do you engage with the mission? How do you be a part of what God is doing? Because there are doubts that will creep up, but how do you worship despite the doubt that is coming in your life? Our staff has been working and praying through this for over a year before we have brought this to our church. And in that time, uh we have been preparing our hearts. And in the last 6 months, as we've got more clarity on this, we've kind of brought it to our home level and started to pray through it. And as I started to have a card like this, me and my wife have been praying over what God's leading us to do. And here's the thing about me is I'm I've always been a faithful giver. I've been a consistent giver. I've given how God has called me to do, how I was raised, how how I know that because he has saved my He has saved me because he has so generously giving to me. I faithfully give to him. But I'll be honest, I don't generously give back to him. I'm like, God, hey, you want 10%, I'll give you 10% and we'll call it good. Like, don't come bugging me after that. I see a GoFundMe be shared on social media, I'm like, I ain't giving to that. I already go to God's church. Why I don't need to fund you, right? And I have a Scrooge in my heart that I've been faithful, but I'm not always generous. And in this season, God has wrecked my heart to call me, "How do I be more generous?" As me and my wife prayed over it, God gave us a number of how to increase our giving consistently. And we were good on it. We had a plan. I was going to move some back on my retirement. I was going to do this. It was going to hurt. It was going to be stretch us. But I was like, "Okay, God, I can do this. And then all of a sudden, we went into the new year and right before the new year started, my wife who works very part-time, one day in the office, one day at home, they came to her. They're like, "Hey, will you work three days in the office and take this new position where we got to eliminate it?" They're like, "We don't want to do that with our kids." So all of a sudden, that income was gone. I was like, "God, hey, let's revisit some numbers. Like, we got to talk about this." I agreed on the old number, but now I don't want to stretch myself that much. But what's amazing is as we prayed through this, all of a sudden I have a little side thing that brought in some money that God about closed that gap. And when he put on my heart was be faithful to this. Be generous to this. Don't just worry about whether you'll make things right. Okay? Don't be worried about whether you can trust me in this. Be faithful. Be generous to giving back to something that is bigger than you. something that will change people's eternities as we start more churches, as we baptize more people, as we make more disciples and we see a movement happen. And for you, your next step today is just to pray, to pray on how God would move your hearts. Maybe he needs to move you to be from faithful to generous. Maybe he needs to move you from just holding on to false sin and idols and other things that you have doubted whether or not you can trust God. But what we see from this book, what we see from this story is that we have the power through God to conquer anything. And as we start this journey together as a church, it is not about what we bring to the table. But is it about how Jesus Christ, the God of the universe, has died for our sins, has raised again to pay the price, has given us the free gift of eternal life, and who lavishly pours his grace on us day after day. And because of his great generosity, we don't have to be held back by our fears, by our anxieties, by our comforts, by our push of success. But we can realign our priorities and say, "God, you are most important. God, worshiping you is what fuels my life. And God, wherever you direct me, my prayer is that our church will say, "Let's go.