Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 2: A good chunk of my junior high years, there just wasn't a lot of money around.
Speaker 2: Now this was nice.
Speaker 2: It taught me that I didn't have to spend a lot of money.
Speaker 2: My friends and I would go out and they would have food and I would not.
Speaker 2: And they would say, hey, are you hungry?
Speaker 2: Of course I'm hungry, just don't have any money.
Speaker 2: If you have a junior higher who has a spending problem, I recommend this strategy Just take the money away and then they can't spend it.
Speaker 2: Sorry, if you're a junior high, go to the fusion.
Speaker 2: You don't have to hear these harsh messages.
Speaker 2: It was coming around Christmas time and I don't know if my folks said this directly, but I was getting the vibe that maybe Christmas was going to be without presents this year and in my English class we were supposed to write an essay about what we wanted for Christmas and I remembered like being worried that morning and then remembering God and being like you know what would be good Another Christmas would be great, that would be great.
Speaker 2: I wrote that essay and my teacher called my mom and thought I was dying of cancer or suicidal.
Speaker 2: She's a great teacher.
Speaker 2: But this morning we're talking about the financial woes that continue right.
Speaker 2: As a junior higher, my parents tried to protect me from some of these things, but as I've grown up and I've had to take responsibility for my life and the lives of my children and my wife, there's a lot of things to worry about.
Speaker 2: We are in the wealthiest country that has ever existed.
Speaker 2: I know that wealth isn't evenly distributed, but we also worry more than we ever have.
Speaker 2: If you try to get into a counselor, you know that this is the case.
Speaker 2: They're booked up, they're booked up, and so if you're a teenager, you know that college is super expensive.
Speaker 2: How are you going to pay for that, especially coming out of school when you don't know if you're going to be able to land a job or you have entry level salaries?
Speaker 2: How are you going to afford housing Mortgages now if you have the same house, like if you got a mortgage two years ago and you had the same house under 7% interest rates, your mortgage monthly rate is twice as expensive as it used to be.
Speaker 2: That's tough.
Speaker 2: That's tough If you're trying to pay for kids.
Speaker 2: The last estimate that I saw was $218,000 for zero to 18, excluding college, to raise one child.
Speaker 2: My wife and I have four of them Planning for retirement?
Speaker 2: Are you saving enough?
Speaker 2: What if you live to be 95?
Speaker 2: Do you have enough money Taking care of elderly folks or trying to provide for your family if you're gone?
Speaker 2: Trying to figure out a way to pass on an inheritance to an ungrateful generation?
Speaker 2: You know these financial problems we have.
Speaker 2: They go on and on and on.
Speaker 2: But the thing about worrying is that if you worry, you'll get to the end of your life and you won't have financial decision regrets.
Speaker 2: You will have a lack of financial decision regrets.
Speaker 2: To be more clear, worry keeps us from doing anything and sadly, that's a decision as well.
Speaker 2: This series, trustonomics, is about laying a foundation for you during financial hardship, and this morning we're going to square up against kind of first step.
Speaker 2: How does faith hit the road?
Speaker 2: How does rubber hit the road?
Speaker 2: How does faith hit our lives when it comes to financial hardship?
Speaker 2: And if we're worried about things, what does faith have for us?
Speaker 2: Jesus here.
Speaker 2: Jesus is about to tell us how to not worry.
Speaker 2: And so if you don't want to get to the end of your life filled with a lack of financial decisions because you worried away your life, then this message is for you Matthew 6, 25, sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 2: This is a famous sermon that Jesus gave outside.
Speaker 2: That'll be important for later.
Speaker 2: He just taught about finances.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't treasure things, material things, on earth.
Speaker 2: You should treasure things that are eternal, things of God, things in heaven.
Speaker 2: That's where our treasure should be.
Speaker 2: You can't serve both God and money.
Speaker 2: And then this is the verse 25 here.
Speaker 2: Therefore, you can't serve both God and money.
Speaker 2: Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, what you drink, about your body, what you will wear.
Speaker 2: Do not worry is a command for those of us that are following Jesus.
Speaker 2: That's what the sermon on the Mount's all about.
Speaker 2: What does it mean to follow Jesus?
Speaker 2: And one of the signs that we're pulled by worldly things is if we worry about finances.
Speaker 2: Therefore, don't.
Speaker 2: Therefore, don't worry.
Speaker 2: Now, this isn't like that.
Speaker 2: Uh, the Bob Newhart sketch I don't know if you're familiar with Stop it.
Speaker 2: It goes like this he's a psychiatrist Gal comes in.
Speaker 2: She says I'm uh terrified of being buried alive in a box, and then he's super calm and says you know, like here's, here's my pricing structure.
Speaker 2: It's $5 for the first five minutes.
Speaker 2: It's free.
Speaker 2: After that she said, oh, that sounds great.
Speaker 2: He's like I have two words for you.
Speaker 2: You might want to write them down.
Speaker 2: You know you.
Speaker 2: If you want to write them down, that's fine.
Speaker 2: It's two words, you could probably remember it.
Speaker 2: And she's like oh, okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: And he says Stop it.
Speaker 2: For those of us who struggle with anxiety, we've been told that as well.
Speaker 2: Have you tried?
Speaker 2: Have you tried not being anxious?
Speaker 2: But here Jesus is going to lay out the case for why.
Speaker 2: It's going to lay out the case for why in verse 25.
Speaker 2: Life is more than food and the body, more than clothing.
Speaker 2: Life is more than food in the body, more than clothing.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 2: So if you're worrying and you're just over and over again, you're going to miss life, you might justify it by saying ah, but if I don't have the things that I need to survive, I won't be alive.
Speaker 2: Good point, but surviving isn't thriving.
Speaker 2: And if all you do is worry, that's where you end up.
Speaker 2: Worry is an over concern, it's a rumination on thoughts.
Speaker 2: You know how?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy if you go to counseling and it's CBT, the basis is this If you change your thoughts, it will lead to different behaviors, and if you behave differently, it can change your thoughts, and so by working on both in conjunction, you can transform as a person.
Speaker 2: That's cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 2: Jesus here is saying we need to think differently about the context of our financial worries.
Speaker 2: If all you do is think about surviving, you're going to miss life.
Speaker 2: You'll just spin and spin and spin.
Speaker 2: Verse 26, again he's outside.
Speaker 2: He says look at the birds.
Speaker 2: I've been to this part of the Sea of Galilee.
Speaker 2: There were birds.
Speaker 2: You can imagine them right now.
Speaker 2: Are you imagining birds?
Speaker 2: Great, we're on the same page.
Speaker 2: There are birds in the air.
Speaker 2: Do they sow or reap or stow away in barns?
Speaker 2: No, they are terrible planters.
Speaker 2: They are terrible at heart.
Speaker 2: They miss harvest time.
Speaker 2: They don't store anything.
Speaker 2: Their economy is jacked up.
Speaker 2: Birds they're really missing trading opportunities.
Speaker 2: The birds, they don't do any of that.
Speaker 2: Yet your heavenly father feeds them.
Speaker 2: This isn't saying that we too shouldn't sow or reap or store.
Speaker 2: It's saying we are already better at finance than the birds are.
Speaker 2: But they don't worry.
Speaker 2: But they don't worry because God will provide.
Speaker 2: They wake up.
Speaker 2: They're like another good day.
Speaker 2: Early bird gets the worm.
Speaker 2: That's me.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go get that worm.
Speaker 2: There's a worm out there for me.
Speaker 2: I imagine that's what birds say.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 2: Do they know English?
Speaker 2: Worry gets you focused on the wrong things and it also devalues you.
Speaker 2: Did you catch that question at the end here?
Speaker 2: Are you not more valuable than they?
Speaker 2: Are people not worth more than birds?
Speaker 2: Of course they are.
Speaker 2: They're made in the image of God.
Speaker 2: There's dignity to all people.
Speaker 2: Praise God.
Speaker 2: Third argument Anxiety doesn't add to your life.
Speaker 2: In verse 27, he says it this way can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?
Speaker 2: Or maybe you have a translation that says an inch to your stature.
Speaker 2: It does worry add anything?
Speaker 2: That answer is no.
Speaker 2: If you get in the spin cycle of thoughts, you end up back in your same spot.
Speaker 2: If you're like, oh, my kids struggling in school and if they don't get past this class, then their grades are going to be messed up, and then they don't get into the college that they need, and then they won't have the career to find a spouse to be able to support the children, my family line is ruined and you end up in the same spot that you were in.
Speaker 2: There's no difference that was made.
Speaker 2: You just worried yourself in a circle, circular thinking.
Speaker 2: It doesn't add to your life.
Speaker 2: Here's in economics.
Speaker 2: There's this idea of opportunity cost.
Speaker 2: It's very simple when you think about cost, you should think about all of the costs.
Speaker 2: So, if I buy a new pair of shoes that are I don't know how much do Yeezys cost $600, that $600 shoes not only did I spend $600, but I didn't spend that $600 on a whole bunch of other things.
Speaker 2: This is true with our lives.
Speaker 2: This is true with our time, right?
Speaker 2: If I worry an hour away, not only did I not add anything to my life, but I cannot get that hour back.
Speaker 2: I did not use that hour for anything else.
Speaker 2: This was me in my 20s, and this is a common guy thing.
Speaker 2: We worry about having a great career and so we don't make any decisions about a career.
Speaker 2: We're kind of underemployed.
Speaker 2: Underemployed.
Speaker 2: And then your 30s happen and then you don't have the same options that you did when you were in your early 20s.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's over, I'm not.
Speaker 2: You know, wave the white flag, give up on life or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's just a real statement, right?
Speaker 2: These are facts.
Speaker 2: You can't go back to your 20s and live them over again.
Speaker 2: Opportunities are gone.
Speaker 2: Worry took some of my life.
Speaker 2: If I get in my head about things that keeps me from relating to my children or calling my mom.
Speaker 2: Worry keeps you from enjoying the things that you already have, and that's why we say worry, don't work.
Speaker 2: This is based on a country chorus that Pastor Steve Furtick wrote.
Speaker 2: It is as follows work, don't worry because worry don't work.
Speaker 2: Right, work, don't worry because worry don't work.
Speaker 2: You guys should.
Speaker 2: You're going to sing that to your neighbor ready.
Speaker 2: Work, don't worry because worry don't work.
Speaker 2: One more time Work.
Speaker 2: Don't worry because worry don't work.
Speaker 2: Man, let's go to Nashville.
Speaker 2: You can get addicted to worry.
Speaker 2: I think this is how it happens.
Speaker 2: If you're in your spin cycle, right, and then the problem resolves itself, you're like what I was doing worked, but then there's a lot when it doesn't work, when it doesn't work out.
Speaker 2: We lie to ourselves and we're like man.
Speaker 2: I should have spun faster, could have got to more thoughts.
Speaker 2: I could have got through more concerns.
Speaker 2: I should have thought about all of the negative things that were even possible.
Speaker 2: That would have helped.
Speaker 2: Another illustration he's outside says look at the flowers.
Speaker 2: Birds don't worry about food.
Speaker 2: Flowers, they don't worry about clothing.
Speaker 2: The flowers of the field.
Speaker 2: They're more beautiful than even Solomon in all of his splendor.
Speaker 2: This is verses 28 through 30.
Speaker 2: Even Solomon, in all of his splendor, is not dressed up as nice as the flowers are.
Speaker 2: The flowers don't labor or spin.
Speaker 2: They don't work at all and God dressed them up.
Speaker 2: They don't spin either.
Speaker 2: They don't worry.
Speaker 2: God dressed them up.
Speaker 2: Who would have thought that Jesus, talking about food and clothing, would be predicting like 85% of Instagram?
Speaker 2: You want to see a picture of my great-great-grandfather?
Speaker 2: They had those old cameras where he's kind of like you know, you're staring at the Norm McJohnnell jokes like I got to get back to them all, but our great-grandchildren would be like hey, do you want to see 10,000 pictures of my great-grandma's brunch?
Speaker 2: Our dietary concerns are a little bit different.
Speaker 2: There's the ultra-processed foods that you got to be careful of, the gluten-free diets or keto or whatever you're doing.
Speaker 2: Clothing has different brands, communicates with a different kind of person, but the flowers don't worry about anything and they're pretty good.
Speaker 2: Verses 31 and 32.
Speaker 2: If you just look at the world, though, this is what they chase after.
Speaker 2: The pagans chase after these things.
Speaker 2: Jesus talking to a Jewish audience saying hey, you guys take God seriously, don't do it like people who don't.
Speaker 2: If you get in the rat race if you're keeping up with the Joneses.
Speaker 2: This is the race.
Speaker 2: Can you die with more stuff?
Speaker 2: But there is no winner to that race.
Speaker 2: Rather, our Heavenly Father knows what we need.
Speaker 2: He already knows what we need, like the birds, like the flowers that could be us.
Speaker 2: When I look back on my times of anxiety, I often was trying to solve a problem in the future, as if it was entirely up to me to solve.
Speaker 2: I'll say it more explicitly I was forgetting that God is also in the future.
Speaker 2: I was forgetting the promises that God made, the work that he began in me He'll bring the completion, and that all things he will work for the good of those who love him.
Speaker 2: Well, that's my own devices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's worrying, but God doesn't sleep or slumber.
Speaker 2: He's working on your behalf all the time.
Speaker 2: Why would we want to forget the greatest treasure that we have, and I'll say it again, the great treasure.
Speaker 2: Verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Speaker 2: Do you remember how the context of this passage?
Speaker 2: You can't serve both God and money.
Speaker 2: You've got to choose.
Speaker 2: In economics they talk about trade-offs.
Speaker 2: You've got to make a choice.
Speaker 2: You've got to choose between efficiency or if you have more.
Speaker 2: Whatever Like one or the other.
Speaker 2: You've got to choose somewhere in between, or all or nothing.
Speaker 2: Here there is no trade-off.
Speaker 2: It's either God first or nothing.
Speaker 2: Either you seek first the kingdom of God or you serve false idols.
Speaker 2: And here it says and then it will be added unto you.
Speaker 2: Now, all these things doesn't mean the new iPhone, 14 and Yeezys and a Tesla and a mansion, on and on and on.
Speaker 2: All these things are the things that you need to do, what God has for you.
Speaker 2: But I just refer to God as our greatest treasure.
Speaker 2: Is that true or not?
Speaker 2: Do we obey God?
Speaker 2: Do we follow Jesus because of the good stuff that he gives us?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a reason.
Speaker 2: But better yet, follow Christ because you love Him, and then all these things will be added unto you.
Speaker 2: Grace, then obedience, then blessing.
Speaker 2: Verse 34, tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Speaker 2: Do not worry about tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow will worry about itself.
Speaker 2: Today has enough trouble of itself.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is like hey, I know you all struggle with worry.
Speaker 2: If you could just limit yourself to worrying about today, that would be great.
Speaker 2: Rather, god is trying to work into our lives this new perception on our finances, on our life itself.
Speaker 2: We put God first.
Speaker 2: God is in our future.
Speaker 2: God was in our past.
Speaker 2: God has done amazing things for us.
Speaker 2: We'll continue to do amazing things in us and through us, and so we don't need to worry about tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Leave that to tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow can worry about tomorrow.
Speaker 2: But there are troubles for today.
Speaker 2: There is work to be done today and we have to rise to the occasion.
Speaker 2: We can't just stay stuck in anxiety.
Speaker 2: I will reveal some of my nerdiness to you.
Speaker 2: I like chess, thank you, nobody laughed again.
Speaker 2: If you play chess, even if you don't, here's a tip about chess you make better moves if you take longer to make them, not always, but generally.
Speaker 2: If you play Blitz chess, which is you try to finish a game in under a minute, you make mistakes because you're not thinking through all the things that could go wrong on the board.
Speaker 2: So you become a better chess player if you take more time.
Speaker 2: Okay, does every chess player worry?
Speaker 2: I think worrying is an over concern.
Speaker 2: At some point you have to act, and if you never act, you stay stuck and worry.
Speaker 2: You can worry time away where you know you're probably at the best move that you can make and you need to make a decision.
Speaker 2: But you can worry forever.
Speaker 2: Today has troubles.
Speaker 2: Today has work to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not the Sabbath.
Speaker 2: You should take a day off.
Speaker 2: Some of you especially work way too much, but when it's time to work, we should work.
Speaker 2: If you are crippled, like me, by a fear of failure, it's going to keep you from doing the work for today.
Speaker 2: One more analogy, less nerdy Baseball Pictures.
Speaker 2: Relievers come in at the end of the game and they try to finish the game.
Speaker 2: They usually throw really fast, from really hard, not always, but they almost always throw better if they're from behind, if they're down, if they're losing, why Aren't they worried?
Speaker 2: Because they have to perform well in order to win.
Speaker 2: So then, who are we comparing them to in this analogy?
Speaker 2: Pictures who are ahead, pictures who are winning.
Speaker 2: They don't throw as well.
Speaker 2: Why A sports terminology, introduction One the loser.
Speaker 2: The loser at the time is playing to win and the winner is playing not to lose.
Speaker 2: Fun fact anxiety.
Speaker 2: The exact same neural pathways as excitement.
Speaker 2: One is focusing on the good things that can possibly happen Excitement, junior high fusion, car wheels and another is focusing on the bad things that can happen.
Speaker 2: Does Jesus ever tell you to stop thinking about the good things that God's going to do in your life?
Speaker 2: Stop thinking about God's faithfulness yesterday, today and forever?
Speaker 2: No, it's this focus on only the negative things, to the exclusion of God.
Speaker 2: This is on me.
Speaker 2: I've got to do it In terms of the race that we run as Christians.
Speaker 2: We're supposed to run as to win the prize.
Speaker 2: You've got to play to win, and so many of us are playing not to lose.
Speaker 2: So many of us are too scared of all the things that can go wrong, forgetting the birds and the flowers.
Speaker 2: We're more valuable than them.
Speaker 2: Our lives are longer and more important than theirs.
Speaker 2: God takes care of them.
Speaker 2: We're forgetting that worry doesn't work.
Speaker 2: We're forgetting that God knows our needs and that worldly people are already chasing after these things.
Speaker 2: We can seek first the kingdom of God.
Speaker 2: So applications now We've gotten through the text and you know a country song about worry don't work and now we'll just apply it.
Speaker 2: So if you struggle with anxiety, you know that typically this isn't a conversation that we have.
Speaker 2: We don't tell people to not be anxious anymore.
Speaker 2: There are chemical imbalances and childhoods and things that we don't fully understand on any given person, and that's true.
Speaker 2: But we can't think differently.
Speaker 2: It is possible.
Speaker 2: Okay, so if you have generalized anxiety disorder this is my brief aside It'll go something like this you don't know what you're scared of.
Speaker 2: This here specifically are you scared about food?
Speaker 2: Are you scared about clothing, life, body?
Speaker 2: Then there's arguments.
Speaker 2: Jesus is making a case on why we don't have to worry about those things.
Speaker 2: If you don't know what you're scared of, you can't apply this text to your life.
Speaker 2: So don't beat yourself up.
Speaker 2: First figure out what you're scared of.
Speaker 2: But that said, emotions are our language of significance.
Speaker 2: It's our perception of reality, and when we perceive things in a certain way, we feel a certain way about them.
Speaker 2: That's why, when you're arguing with your spouse and they say something crazy, you say you're being too emotional, which isn't a kind thing to say.
Speaker 2: What you want to say is I disagree with how you're perceiving things.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's that important.
Speaker 2: I think it's like this I don't think it's that important, right?
Speaker 2: Jesus is making these arguments, your financial worries.
Speaker 2: In light of nature and in light of all that God is doing, it doesn't feel the same anymore, right?
Speaker 2: There's a song that I love.
Speaker 2: It's called Is he Worthy, and it's kind of a call and response.
Speaker 2: It starts off with the world being not great, and then you agree with it, and then talk about God being good, and then you agree with it.
Speaker 2: The God being good part goes like this Does the Father truly love us?
Speaker 2: He does.
Speaker 2: Does the Spirit move among us?
Speaker 2: He does.
Speaker 2: Does Jesus, our Messiah, hold forever those he loves?
Speaker 2: He does.
Speaker 2: Does our God intend again to dwell with us?
Speaker 2: He does.
Speaker 2: All right, you feel differently now.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it takes anxiety completely away.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying this won't be an ongoing battle, but this, jesus, is how to.
Speaker 2: Jesus is how to, for fighting anxiety is a list of whys that we're to rehearse, and you have those arguments now.
Speaker 2: So I will give you a very specific context in which to use them.
Speaker 2: Every month, I do the finances, I do the data entry.
Speaker 2: If you don't do this, I recommend it.
Speaker 2: As a data person, you can't change what you don't track.
Speaker 2: That's an overstatement, but it gives me job security.
Speaker 2: But it's hard to know.
Speaker 2: It's hard to make financial decisions if you don't know what your finances are, and so you have to track everything that you spend on, like if your wife or kids or if anybody has different credit cards.
Speaker 2: You got to list all the credit cards out, all the accounts out, checking and savings, whether you're pulling stuff from it, all the cash expenditures.
Speaker 2: Write these down.
Speaker 2: It's very simple.
Speaker 2: I write the date and then I categorize them, but you don't have to yet.
Speaker 2: Then I write where I spent it and then I write how much this is available readily on Google Drive or Apple iOS stuff.
Speaker 2: You can do this.
Speaker 2: It's kind of mindless.
Speaker 2: So if you want to automate it, I can help with that as well.
Speaker 2: This is step one, kind of finances 101.
Speaker 2: Then you can make decisions about your finances because you got finances in front of you All right.
Speaker 2: When I do this, I have a choice that I can make.
Speaker 2: I can get worried as money goes out the door.
Speaker 2: Or and this is what I recommend to you you can bring Matthew 6 into that time.
Speaker 2: Just rehearse God's faithfulness.
Speaker 2: It might go something like this God, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: This is a prayer, god.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for what you've already given me.
Speaker 2: God, I know that you are acting for my good, that you know my needs and that you love me and God, I'm so thankful for what you've given God.
Speaker 2: You also want me to not worry, and so I asked not only now, but going forward God, that you would sink it into my bones.
Speaker 2: God, that I would trust in you, that I, every time I look at a bird and I think of your provision, every time I look at a flower, I might think of your provision.
Speaker 2: God, in Jesus name, amen.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 2: This can, this can be your financial time.
Speaker 2: Right, there's no reason why you can't bring God into your finances.
Speaker 2: In fact, jesus is saying you can't.
Speaker 2: You have to if you serve God.
Speaker 2: This is how it's got to be, okay.
Speaker 2: So you're gonna track your finances right now we're in week one.
Speaker 2: We're gonna track finances, we're gonna, we're gonna rehearse the arguments that Jesus made about why we don't have to worry.
Speaker 2: And here's here's the final point.
Speaker 2: I want you to start tracking, riding down you can just, you know another column.
Speaker 2: Here's column number four notes when God has been faithful, all right.
Speaker 2: So I'm rehearsing this with my wife, who's taking care of some four-year-olds right now that you know.
Speaker 2: Pray for her.
Speaker 2: Going over this with my wife and she is just bursting at the seams to remember God's faithfulness in our lives.
Speaker 2: Well, I switched careers a year and a half ago.
Speaker 2: Now I'm 30, I was 35 on Monday and so that's later.
Speaker 2: You just, it's a late career switch.
Speaker 2: I was nervous about it.
Speaker 2: I was worried.
Speaker 2: We had a credit card pill that was bigger than we had expected because we didn't stop spending as much as we had hoped and we didn't know how we were gonna pay for it.
Speaker 2: And Then a check from the IRS came Because we overpaid a previous year's taxes.
Speaker 2: We had done our taxes, the same with the same guy for our entire marriage, but this year God gave to the hundreds amount the exact amount that we needed.
Speaker 2: You could say coincidence.
Speaker 2: I say God's faithfulness, right, you, you guys.
Speaker 2: This May we be a church that proclaims God's faithfulness in our lives.
Speaker 2: People in our community are going through financial hard.
Speaker 2: People in this church are going through financial hard times right now we can speak Christ to them.
Speaker 2: There's a deeper well to draw from.
Speaker 2: The greatest treasure is available to us.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's pray, heavenly Father, lord, again we confess our need for you.
Speaker 2: Again, we apologize for any worry, any overwork in God.
Speaker 2: To compensate, god, we ask for a deeper faith in you because you provide, because you are faithful, because you promised, because we have seen it done.
Speaker 2: God, we pray this into our lives.
Speaker 2: We pray that you would buy your spirit, move in this church in powerful ways, that we might be a church that loves, not just with our mouths but with our actions and with our pocketbooks.
Speaker 2: God, that you would make us in your image, that you would transform us to be more like you.
Speaker 2: In Jesus name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out fierce that church.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Speaker 1: Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the fierce leadership podcast, available Wherever you get your podcast from.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
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Speaker 1: You would share such things.
Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening, oh.