I was honored to have 60+ people attend the shooter fellowship at The Open! Praise The Lord! Heres the notes for the talk: Giving Thanks: What do you have to be thankful for? Personally Im thankful for my family, shooting abilities, victories, coaching to pay the bills, opportunities to speak in to peoples lives and tell them about Jesus :) Theres some verses in the Bible that talk about giving thx in all circumstances. Theres lots of things that are pretty easy to be thankful for right...money, job, cars, relatinships... Hardships? The last few talks Ive given we talked a lot about giving thanks in hard situations and how trials and difficulties produce wisdom, character, perseverance if we turn to God. Lets flip back to the good stuff since we dont talk about that often... I think we can easily start taking our gifts, talents, resources, and money and start putting our hope in them more than our hope in God! I want to hone a little on a topic thats not talked about enough in church and Christian circles, but its giving thx for possessions or money! Yea I said it, money. I think what we do with those possessions is a good gauge at where our heart is! How many times a day do we think about money? What if we replaced those thoughts with thoughts of God or thanking God for money? Read: 1 Tim 6:10-19 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. (1 Timothy 6:10-19 NIV) Its important here to understand that money, if not thought of from Gods perspective can become an idol. An idol is anything that exalts itself above God and takes your focus off him. If youre doing a good job not letting something become an idol in your life you will be marked by the fruit of the Spirit... What are the marks of some one whos walking with God? Gal 5:22, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self control. Now, money and the love of money can create quite the opposite affect to each one of those attributes.... So we have to check our hearts. Are we thankful for our things? If we didnt have anything would we still be thankful? Well the answer to both has to go through the Gospel! We have something to be so intensely thankful for and thats God giving us eternal life. The messes that we create in our lives can turn to messages if we link our lives to His, then the tests that we have in our lives will become testimonies if we understand how much God loves us. Right? God loves you so much that he sent his one and only Son so that you would have eternal life. See cuz our sins, our mistakes, separate us from God. But God sent Jesus to live the perfect life that we cannot, die the death that we deserve and raise from the dead to beat death and says that if we put our hope in Him that we will have eternal life! And not just eternal life, but the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that rose Christ from the dead lives inside of us! So with that being said going back to having resources, money, time, we shouldnt be greedy with it. God wants to bless you with things so that you can bless others! When we focus on our stuff and let it control our thoughts and our emotions we loose sight of God and we start getting worried, we start feeling discontentment right? If I just had a bigger house, or a nicer car, or a different shotgun or more time to practice shooting, or this job or that job... Id be happier, grateful, gracious, more loving, joyful...ect Would you? See scripture has a principle. When youre faithful with little God entrusts you with more. When you start giving, God will give you more. Proverbs 11:24 Give freely and become more wealthy; be stingy and lose everything. The generous will prosper; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed. (Proverbs 11:24, 25 NLT) Not giving makes our hearts more selfish but giving allows us to stay focused on God and His work inside of us.... Paul is basically touching on the emotions connected with material stuff...he says, charge them not to be haughty and set their hopes on certain riches which is to say, tell them that they are not better than someone else because they have money. And (2) their life will not be better because they have money! Now, if we actually believed those two things.... How would that affected your emotional relationship with money? Because the emotional illusive pull that money has on our lives, is that if I get more, my life will improve! If we got a bigger house, or if my mortgage was down or I pay stuff off or have more shells to shoot or a different gun or more lessons, my life would just be better! Would it? Would you internally be more satisfied, more fulfilled, more at peace, more at ease? One great old preacher said, money is like marriage, it only makes you more of what you were before you had it! You dont deal with a moral deficiency by getting married. Dont deal with a financial deficiency by getting more money! Biggie Smalls said before he died Mo money Mo problems! But look at verses 17-19 Read God wants to bless us lavishly.... But we need to subscribe to his economy... So when we have problems, when our life gets about our stuff and not about God we have to go back to some basic Biblical concepts... Matt 6:25-33: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:25-34 NIV) Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness... When you seek God, and understand how much He loves you, your heart will turn to Him and He will give you happiness, joy, peace, money, whatever you need #lavishly God loves you and wants an intimate relationship with you! Trust Him with your life and He will make your paths straight!
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 01:54:25 +0000
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