Speaker 1:

Hey, good morning man. This is actually a really special Sunday, uh, in the history of our church. And that is today's actually the first Sunday that our newest campus will be in the same series we're in. So they're going to follow a week behind just because we haven't got all the equipment installed in there. So we went on welcome, of course, you folks in auditorium that you folks up, pleasant view and for the first time, welcome you folks at Pelzer. We are glad you're a part of us this morning.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible]

Speaker 1:

we are so proud to be associated with you folks, et cetera. What God's gonna be doing at Pelzer. And we're excited to be as a shining light, continue to be shining light on the Hill there and man, and we're just praying that God will move through. There'll be tons of you folks and uh, to kind of spreading, making his name famous in that area. So, so that's awesome. So let's have a word of prayer and then I'll share the Lord. Thank you so much for the way you continue to expand your kingdom and Lord in a world that um, so much bad news gets a lot of press. It's, it's pretty cool to think about a church getting a fresh wind and um, another, another area of our community that is kinda be shining a bright light for you and Lord, we do pray, um, as we've prayed for central campus for pleasant view as we pray for Pelzer and coming days as we pray for the online campus. Lord, we just, we just ask that you continue to shine a bright light. Lord, we want to, we want to be, we want to be pleasing to you. We want you to feel free to use us in whatever way you see most fit. So thank you so much for your goodness. Thank you so much for allowing us to be part of your story. I pray now in the next few moments that you would hide me deep, deep in your cross. I pray for those folks listening here in the auditorium. Those folks who are at pleasant view, those folks at Pelegrin and of course those walks that you're watching online. I pray, Lord, that you would give us all ears to hear. So wouldn't just be my words. It might be anointed, but actually our ears would be anointed for what you would, you would say to us. Um, cause we want to leave here and be a little bit more like you. We just want to be more like Jesus in your name. We pray. Amen. Oh, this is kind of one of those Sundays, uh, that we all did the same song in all of our venues. And um, so I asked, um, all the different folks in the chapel asked folks, uh, kinda in the auditorium and ask folks Pleasantview Pelzer if we would all do the same song. It's a Hill. It's a Hillsong song. It's a song by Hillsong called, uh, awake my soul. And um, and I'll tell you why we brought that. We started listening to it around the office a few weeks ago and it sort of just just rested on us and it became kind of a hearts cry for many of us. I was on the elliptical, uh, listening to music to distract me from the great amount of pain I was experiencing as I was on that elliptical and I was somewhere between being blinded by pain cause I was really pushing it and praying and I was listening to music. And the cry of that song actually got my attention in the midst of all of it. And, and the song is basically a prayer and the prayer is simply this, God, would you awake my soul? God just awake, whatever that soul piece of me is, would you, would you Uster it? Would you cause it to awaken from its slumber? And I w I just want you to think about that for a moment. If you could imagine your soul could actually feel alive, could, could feel awake. Certainly one of the struggles of following God is our souls can be lulled to sleep. This happens for everybody. It happens for good people. It happens for people that are faithfully following God. It happens for churches that eventually our soul sort of get lulled to sleep and sometimes our souls get lulled to sleep because the burden down by life or by life's trials, meaning those moments were trying to engage in our community. You're trying to get the kids where they need to be. You're trying to balance all the calendars in your home. We're trying to get a project done at work or whatever your deal is. We actually get focused on what is before us and overwhelmed by what's coming up. Does that sound familiar to everybody? So we rush from one event to another from one meeting to another from one commitment to another. And sometimes those commitments involve the local church. And when that becomes the steady diet of who we are and how we live our lives, our souls stop thriving. They stop growing and they kind of go to sleep just because life is so doggone busy. John Mark Comber just released a book called the ruthless elimination of hurry. And in the book, he lists symptoms of hurry, sickness, people who souls have kind of gone to sleep because of running from one event to another because of the pace of life and and with, when these symptoms are present, there's a pretty good indication that your soul is at least nodding off. So here's the symptoms. He, he listened in his book, uh, irritability. This would be an important time not to poke fingers or use your elbow anywhere near to people that are sitting around you. Hypersensitivity. See, I told you to restlessness, workaholism, emotional numbness. Again, keep your elbows to yourself. And I'm so glad Lisa's not in this service. Out of order. Priorities, a lack of taking care of your body, which obviously isn't any of us. Um, escapist behaviors, in other words, distracting behaviors, things that we will binge on nor to not deal with the president or just to check out, slipping in our spiritual disciplines. I just don't have time today or whatever. And then, and then ultimately isolation. Now when I read that list, my first thought was here would be a good time where I could just open the altar and everybody could come because I know that someone had just read your mail, right? I mean this is, this is kind of what we wrestle with, but I, I only work one day a week and I feel like you'd feel ripped off if I stopped right now. So I'm going to go ahead and give you the rest of the message, but you can still head to the alter at some point. So sometimes what will happen is our souls fall asleep because we're busy. But here's the other thing I noticed sometimes our souls fall asleep because of the weight of guilt or regret. Even good Christian people who are doing great things with their lives can't get over kind of their guilt and regret. So we carry this type of sole melatonin, if you will. We live in such a way that ignores our sin. Or maybe we even try to numb it. And we all understand this. Everybody has tried this. I meet people all the time who carry this kind of weight, some private behavior, and they'll say, Hey, I'd like to meet with you. I'd like to have a conversation and it's going to be like an addiction or a bad night that happened, or a season in college and something that happened in the early years of their marriage. And they'll come to me and they want to confess her or something like that. And, and I'll hear and then I'll usually say something like this. So, so what you are saying is you are, you're jacked up. This is why I don't do a lot of it. But so what you're saying is you're, you're jacked up and you've made big mistakes in your life. Is that right? And they say, yeah, that's right preacher. You nailed it. Welcome to normal. You think you're special, you're not special. You're just as jacked up as the rest of us are. Welcome to normal. And again, this isn't my strong suit, but the Bible actually said that that is true of all of us. Don't, don't be suspect of people who claim to have messed up. Be suspect of people who pretend they never have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Don't wonder about people who share about their struggle in your small group are falling into temptation at some point in their lives. Be suspect of people who say they've never been tempted. Both people are the real messed up ones.

Speaker 2:

Yeah,

Speaker 1:

all have sinned. Scripture says it's plain, but Satan will try to get us all to carry that weight as if we're the only ones and I see it happen across Kristen gum. At least my exposure, the parts I'm exposed to. Scripture says Satan comes with the unholy Trinity to kill, steal, and destroy. That's what he's doing. He's doing it in your life. He's doing it in my life and we can see it all the time. That's his agenda. So when the soul falls asleep,

Speaker 2:

[inaudible]

Speaker 1:

because of the weight and the guilt and we try to numb that or tried to ignore that. Or who do you thinks at work? I mean who's having his way with you in those moments? I mean, if you're feeling oppressed by the bad nights you had or the bad season, or the bad thoughts you had yesterday or the bad experience, if you're feeling burdened by that. Now I'm not talking about unconfessed sin. I'm talking about people that are continuing to carry the guilt of sin. They've confessed. Who do you think's behind that? It's only three choices in my mind. It's either the Satan, God or Mickey mouse. And so you got to kind of choose which one of those, and I'll give a clue. It's not going to be Mickey mouse you follow. Sometimes that puts our soul asleep. So back to the day I was on the elliptical, I don't know if it's the current state of my soul or the weariness of balancing professional ministry and personal devotion, but it just overwhelmed me. And my first thought was as I was working, I say, Lord, if it's possible or if it's necessary for my soul to be awakened, I want it. I don't wanna assume I'm cooking with Crisco here. If my soul needs to be stirred and awakened, I want it. And so I, I just started joining my voice with the song and my heavy breathing cause I was still working out and I made this into some kind of prayer and I hiked to my focused on the lyrics of the song hoping that I could find some keys that may be God would use to unlock a sleeping soul within some insight into what it would mean. And it was actually the verses that got my attention. So listen, listen closely to the verses.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible]

Speaker 3:

there is a sound hi love to hear is the sound of his saviors in to the room where people pray, where we hear praises. He, whoops.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible]

Speaker 3:

there is a sound. Hi love to hear is the sound of the saviors. Will Betsy walks into the room where people tray, where we you worship. He is the,

Speaker 1:

the part that really got my attention was this mental image, heart image of when we gathered together whether together, whether alone, but we have these moments of worship and we have these moments of prayer and we connecting to God for the first time. I got to thinking what is God seeing? And hearing in those moments and the song says that what God is seeing and hearing as we pray, as our acts of worship are done, he's hearing our faith and that lit me up. I guess I would say that awakening for me was connecting my acts of obedience that I do as in following God, the things I do for God, to God's awareness of my faith can. Can I say that again? Just in case you're, you're checking out. What connected for me was that my acts of obedience that I would call worship in my life, not just Sunday, Monday through Sunday, whatever, that God sees my faith through those acts you fall in. Now, if I could say it another way, God, here's my faith in my worship of him and when I say worship, I'm not speaking of just what we just finished. I'm thinking about my everyday life, what I do in my expressions of gratitude or whatever I do as an as an offering to my life. See, worship for me is my expression and belief of God's worth ship in my life. Worship for me is an expression and belief of God's worth ship in my life. So when I come in here and sing a song, or when I pray in the morning and the chair, before I get going or read a book, I am expressing God's worth ship in my life and through that he seeing my faith. So whatever I do is worship. God hears faith. Whatever you're doing as worship or whatever, we're not doing, God hears us faith or let. Does that make sense to everybody? So when we sing songs, our enthusiasm, arson, Saturday hall are are all expressions of the faith we have and what we're saying when we pray, our sincerity, our passion, our devotion, all expressions of the faith we have in the one we're praying to, what we do in private, in the deer stand or at the gym or in the library, all can be expressions of God's worth ship in my life. And for the first time, those expressions, God is looking down at us and smiling because he sees our faith.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

I was talking to a friend recently who is an avid weight lifter. He trained six days a week. And he approached me because he wanted to know what I was doing to take such great care of my body. And so I thought, you know, we, I'll just share some tricks, you know, things I've discovered along the way with the can of Pringles and such. And so we were, we were having breakfast one day and my friend told me that he actually came to a point in his training where he flatlined in his strength, stamina and endurance. Flatline. Not in the sense like he died, but like flat lines fired. Like he'd, he'd flat level, he couldn't get stronger, do you know, I'm trying to say. And so that, that kind of happened. And so he was eating right and he was working out those, I said six days a week, but he was maxed out. He wasn't seeing any progress. And so he went on to share with me that he approached someone who was in the field of physical training and, and you know what the first question my friend was asked by the physical trainer, what are you doing for your legs? And the answer was my friend was actually skipping the leg workout to electing to focus on chest and back and arms. Once he started working out the legs, he saw progress again. So after hearing his story, I called my friend who have hap helps with the strength training for Clemson's football team and I told him what I just shared with you and basically said, is there any truth to this? Is there any science? And Adam's at all, man, most definitely we have a saying in weight training world friends don't let friends skip leg day. He said science has proven that increased leg training increases testosterone and legs are the key to handling all the strength that you're going to build with your upper body. If you don't have the legs, he says you are disproportionate and unable to continue growth. Here's what I want to go after in the shortage series. Ready? What if we're skipping leg day as a church?

Speaker 4:

What if[inaudible]

Speaker 1:

our soul is falling asleep because we're skipping the most important piece of worship? What if we are failing to acknowledge God's worth ship to us

Speaker 4:

by skipping leg day?

Speaker 1:

What if our faith is plateaued or nodding off or maybe full blown asleep because we continue to neglect

Speaker 4:

spiritual leg day.

Speaker 1:

What if we're honoring God with our attendance, with our Sunday morning activities? Maybe we even joined a small group. We're praying with the family and yet if we were honest, we'd say our soul is asleep. I wonder if how the church is handling our stuff is reflecting a soul that's sleeping. I wonder if we skipped spiritual leg day by failing to express our faith with our finances. I wonder if we express our faith in God and singing and prayer

Speaker 4:

and yet

Speaker 1:

we're actually expressing our lack of faith in God, our lack of his worth ship and how we use our money. Do you use the song lyrics

Speaker 4:

when I give, does God here faith

Speaker 1:

and I can hear your pushback. I mean I would Tom, that's a pretty big stretch to make how I use my money and leg day. The same thing. And in fact the first time I heard somebody teach on money, I actually left that service kind of angry as I imagine some of us are going to do today. But I, I'd grown up hearing that God is love, but then I find out that he actually cares a lot about my checkbook and that caused a disconnect in me. Huh. I actually understand some of the emotional reactions to this, but if you do any research on any of this, um, you'll make a rather uncomfortable discovery on this. And I want to say I don't, I don't know how we were all doing this. I don't know what we all choose to do in our homes. That's your business. I have the honor of signing a giving statement, maybe a thousand of them, whatever, maybe thousands by the end of the year. I get that honor. But I really don't see what everybody gives. So just relax. I have no idea. Amazon knows and so does Apple, but I don't have a clue how much everybody gives. Okay. I don't have that clue. But if you do any research, you'll find a couple things. Jesus offers more wisdom about money and stuff than any other subject except the kingdom of God. Don't ignore it. Don't push back. Don't get guilty. Don't build a wall yet. What does that mean? Why does Jesus teach more about that than any other subject? Depending on how you tabulate the results, and you can do it for yourself, but of the 37 parables, Jesus tells, 18 of them mentioned money or possessions. 11 of them focused directly on just money. Out of 37 parables, Jesus talked more about money than he did heaven and hell combined. For those of you who think I don't teach enough about hell, there's your statistic. He talked more about money than the other two combined. So why did he do that and why are we ignoring it? Why did Jesus say our money was such a big deal in our spiritual eyes? See, our uneasiness about money, I think is rooted in our unwillingness to accept that our relationship with money has strong spiritual implications even further. How we handle our money speaks honestly about the faith we have or do not have. Jesus tells us why these are red letter words in your scripture. If you were to look them up for yourself, he says this, nobody can serve two masters either he'll hate the one and love the other, be devoted to the one and despise the other. Just to make it really clear, Jesus says you cannot serve both God and money. Now by that sentence, what he was trying to say was you cannot serve both God and money. The first conviction about this particular verse, you know, as I think about it, you know, you've probably heard something like it, but it's, it's difficult to serve God and money. That's a conviction. In fact, if you and I can agree with that in principle, you know, who wants to say they spent their entire lives serving money? I mean really, when someone speaks word over your life or words over your life, do you want them to say, man, that Tom was so rich? Let's stand for closing prayer. I mean, is that really what we want to do? That going to be a win for us in our lives. No. Nothing about family or purpose or fulfillment, just just alive spent on building up his bank account. And even though we may desire more money, none of us would teach our children to become as rich as they possibly can and it would be good. But none of us teach our children, Hey, what's most important is for you to make a lot of money. Well, no, we want our kids to be fulfilled. So we have no problem with these words of Jesus really. But what he says next kind of messes it up. He says this, the Pharisees who loved money heard all that Jesus was saying and were sneering at Jesus. We may have had some sneering going on so far this morning and they said to her, he said to the Pharisees, you're the ones, check this up. Who justify yourselves. Don't raise your hands, but anybody.

Speaker 2:

Yeah,

Speaker 1:

who justify yourselves in the eyes of people, but God knows your heart. What's highly valued among people is detestable in God's sight. So the conviction I have about this versus most of the time when scriptures mentions farracies, they're talking about me at least to some degree.

Speaker 2:

Okay?

Speaker 1:

And it's offering a lesson to those of us who call ourselves believers. We can often put our name in the place affairs, even though none of us really want to be called that Pharisees are simply believers in God who've tried to make following God all about doing in behavior. And I get it. And respectfully, I bet you do too. But here, here's the other conviction I get. The people who loved money were sneering at Jesus. I doubt any of us would say we love money. Certainly none of us would say we love money actually more than Jesus, or at least we wouldn't be proud of that. But Jesus is addressing the behavior, the Pharisees who are justifying themselves and then Jesus says, God knows the heart. There is a sound I love to hear. It's the sound of the saviors robe as he walks into the room where people pray, where people worship, where people give and when we worship, when we pray, when we give, he hears faith. Money is a difficult topic. There's no doubt, but money isn't complicated. In fact, if you allow me to be so bold, I'm going to continue to do this through this series, but all the money in your life will actually go into one of these five categories. Every dime you make. The first one, of course, the one we all love. This is the, so somewhere in your life you're going to make somewhere between 20 and 30 or 35 or 40% of what you make. We'll go right there. The second place of our lives, that money goes, we'll go to debt. This is whatever you how she bought car. You drive closure where whatever you purchased I purchased on credit. Then of course there is this area of lifestyle. Why you bought the car you did. Why are you wearing the clothes you are, why you live in the house you live are, and why you do what you do, the trips you take. That's lifestyle. Then there's this one over here, that savings and then this one here is giving. Now, if you're normal, which I'm assuming the majority of us, these three taxes, debt and lifestyle often prevent us from doing much of these to am I fair? Even though our hearts may say, Oh man, I really want to do this, man, I really want to be part of this. However, our lifestyle, the debt we've accumulated and what we have to pay to live is keeping that from happening. Every dollar a dime you may goes into one of those five areas. So do you want homework? Assuming you'd be willing to come back for the series, but if you want homework, take a look at your budget and figure out your percentages. I can tell you that the last I checked, this particular area was less than 2% average, so don't feel bad yet. We'll do that later in the series, but don't feel bad yet. I mean, that's not what we're trying to accomplish. This is just kind of an awareness thing right now. Just a quick poll. I want you to actually raise your hand. If at any time in your life you have felt there is more month than money, would you raise your hand? Come on everybody that everybody kind of has felt that, right? Yeah, we're pretty cause we're normal. So as I reflect on the early days of our marriage, Lisa and I developed this progression. We didn't mean to develop it. It just happened out of this sense that there's I always more month than money. So here's what that looked like. We would say there's more month than money, therefore we need more money. And I would bet you two have had this dialogue in your own home. It's a natural progression. There's no, or there's more month than money, therefore we need more money. And sometimes that transfers over. True. You need to get another job, you need to make more money. You know, you need to stop spending, you need to stop doing the debt, whatever. It's a natural progression. And if it's been part of your at one time, another welcome to normal. If there's more month than money, we must need more money. Never mind that. We can't pay off the credit card debt. Nevermind. We can't afford the mortgage. There's more month than money, so we need more money and that progression just cycles on repeat and to be quite honest with you, destroys homes. Guess what, Lisa and I had to learn. The progression isn't true. This isn't true. More does not make me happy. If you landed a job where you were paid more or if you won the lottery, it would not make you happy and I can hear it. I know. Let me try preacher, I understand. I get all that and I'll prove it to you though. Think back to the jobs you've had in your life. Maybe you started out working fast food or babysitting or mowing yards. I started out loading up trucks and Washington and cleaning up a laundry mat. You started entered the working world, so you got a little money, little change in your pocket going jingling Lingling nevermind. And you entered the world that may be so dated nomadically what I was saying, but that's fine. I'm happy in my world. So, and you entered the world of earner and as soon as you hit it, the world of earner you. In other words, you entered consumer. So we got earners in consumer, you know, now I entered that world and this is most likely the time you discovered for the first time I need more money. Can I get more hours? Can I do another shift? Can I get a raise? When I went to purchase something I really wanted, there always seemed to be a shortage. Y'all remember the first time you got your first adult job? That sounded bad. Do you remember that? Do you remember the first time you got a job that had like a salary or something like that? When I was trying to say you are making like let's just say 18 to 20 grand a year or something like that. For me, it was after college. So I thought, wow, I'm pretty much rich now. I mean, what am I going to do with all this money? I mean, I got so much money. This was the second time in my life. I quickly discovered I could always use more money. There always seemed to be a shortage for the first nine years of our marriage, one of us leasing, I was in school of some kind. So in the 10th year we finally arrived at the status of dual income family and we had big paying jobs, youth pastor in medical residents. We were killing it, you know, we are moving. It was, it was amazing. And so we were living large dual incomes for the first time in our marriage. And then one night, Lisa couldn't keep her hands off me. It was horrible. Next thing I know you got kids coming along the way, you know, it's like, honey, I told you, I said no. I said, no, no means no. So we quickly moved to the children entering our home and we quickly moved again from rich to

Speaker 4:

shortage because them dang kids fun to make, but they're expensive. Shouldn't have said that. But that's kind of where I feel about all that right now. This is not going to end well. I really hope Lisa's dad doesn't come

Speaker 1:

the service, the second one today, cause that's normally where he comes. Sorry Jim. So after 30 years of being on this journey with Lisa, after decades of ministry and walking with people through job changes, financial setbacks, here's the truth. I offer you to sink your teeth into ready a little bit more. We'll make you do more of what you all ready do. That's the truth. The progression you've developed isn't true. Test me on it. Try it for yourself for as long as you want to be on that rat wheel. Just make a little bit more. Just make it a little bit more and I'll be able to do all the things I want to do. The reality, here's truth, you can decide it for yourself. But at what's been true in my life. As I reflect back on my 29 years, here's what I've discovered a little bit more will make me do more of what I all ready do.

Speaker 4:

It doesn't matter. Ready? How much you make, your dependence on credit will be the same. No matter your income, you will grow into the lifestyle you desire. No matter how much money you make, even if you get a raise, you will go into a debt at the drop of a hat if you did it before the race. I'm not saying all debt's bad. Stay with me in the series. If you win the lottery, you will be just as stingy or generous as you are. Now. More does not change that. You'll just do it with more bandwidth because you're making a little bit more. I've seen this happen over and over and over again and until Elise and I came to the understanding, lack of money was not our problem. We just stayed on the rat wheel. A person who is stingy with little will continue to be stingy when they get the new job I've seen. It could give you names. A person who is selfish with the little will be selfish. No matter how much they make. A person who is reckless with the little will be reckless. No matter how much they make. A person who lacks discipline with little will lack discipline with much, and here's the big one. A person who does not worship God with little will not worship God with much. Again, I've seen it happen over and over and over again. If you are not worshiping God as an expression of his worth ship in our lives as an expression of your faith with what you have right now, that will not change when you're making more money. The problem is this. Everywhere you go, there you are however much you make. There you are. Everywhere I go, I'm there and I'm part of the problem. Does that make sense? All right, so let me just ask some questions and I'll stop before you throw vegetables.

Speaker 2:

Okay?

Speaker 4:

Aren't you tired of the never ending cycle of more's better? Aren't you tired of that? Doesn't that seem like such a waste? You go on your bust, your gut to try to get more, and then you find out these suckers take more. Then that just irritate the fire out of you. So then you research online about how to avoid them. Then you look at how long the jail sentence would be if you really worked a, not you, you went through all that. How about this one more personal. Aren't you tired of always arguing in the people you love the most about money?

Speaker 2:

Yeah,

Speaker 4:

that's the same argument. Aren't you tired of never being satisfied with what you have? So it spiritual leg day for life. Friends don't let friends skip leg day. And we're going to dive into what we would prefer to skip. And in this series we're going to ask ourselves the hard question. What does our handling of our money say about our faith or lack of? So Lord, I thank you that this community that we love each other and know each other so well, we can have these kinds of conversations. And Lord, as I reflect on all the series I do over the years, all the messages we prepare, it never fails. This is the topic that changes people's lives. We can and week out, every time we do it comes up and says, man, this changed my life. And Lord, it's so clear throughout the page scripture, and yet, Lord, we're just not comfortable talking about it. We just would rather skip it. So Lord, my prayer for the next two to three weeks before we head into Christmas, that we would all pause and have spiritual leg day conversations around our home. We take those five areas, see how we're doing, get a reality check, and then allow you to show us a better way. Allow you to show us a better way for us to do this. Lord, you are valuable to us and we want to show you our worth ship through all areas, show you your worth, ship to us through all ears, including our money and your name. Amen.