Seek Jesus First; Provision Becomes the Byproduct

there's these moments in time in the church where we hear things like God provides or he's our provision, and it's the seasons like coming out of a December or coming through. They said that between like December 20 or 2020 to now, we've seen like 30% raise in, all of our prices, especially food and groceries. So like, feel it, and you have to ask yourself the question, does God really provide? [00:30:29] (28 seconds)  #GodProvidesStill

Now here's the cool thing. In the series, not gonna lie, I tell you the truth. It's in the bible within the first four books, the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Jesus himself says, I tell you the truth 70 times. And he reserved one of those times of I tell you the truth specifically about provision. So that's what we're gonna look into today. [00:30:57] (26 seconds)  #TruthAboutProvision

And, I always preface it and I say, you gotta know whether you've been coming to Compass City for a while, maybe this is your first time. What you need to know about us, we believe the bible is the truth. That it's our standard of truth. It's not debatable truth. Our culture changes. The laws even change. Our own opinions change, but you need to know we believe the bible doesn't change. It is our standard of truth. And then within the bible, you have these red letters. These red letters are the words of Jesus. And you gotta know the words of Jesus are exponentially more important. [00:31:23] (40 seconds)  #BibleIsOurStandard

So, he tells us this, I tell you the truth statement. And what what he's saying is your motives are not correct. And you gotta know is that provision comes without ulterior motives. This is important. Provision comes without ulterior motives. So the day before Jesus feeds 5,000 people with fish and some loaves of bread. And so these people are looking for Jesus. He was in Tiberias. He's now on the other side of the lake, and they're like, hey, where'd Jesus go? And they're looking for Jesus not because they love Jesus, but because they're like, hey, day one, we got a free meal. What's day two gonna bring? You know, Jesus is gonna pay off my mortgage? Is Jesus gonna provide me a, you know, a new horse? Whatever the case, they were looking for Jesus with ulterior motives. [00:33:51] (52 seconds)  #NoUlteriorMotives

You know, he had me, and I actually stopped in the middle of that. I was so taken back in the moment. I stopped and like, hey, man. I just need you to know I care about you. I wanna hear your story, but I'm not interested in what you're selling. And after that, he did not come back to the church. But it was this this defining moment for me where I realized I didn't want to have a church like that. And so you need to know Compass City is set up a really intentional way. Whether it's your first time or you've been around for a long time, we don't allow anything inside of our church which is outside of our church. [00:35:56] (39 seconds)  #ChurchWithoutAgenda

You'll never see although there's a lot of really great nonprofit organizations, there's a lot of really great other, pushes and and things that are really valuable in our culture, we will never have that in our lobby. We'll never gonna have that on a Sunday morning because I want Sunday morning to be completely without ulterior motives. So that when you come into church for the hour a day you're at Compass City, the only thing you're hearing, the only thing you're being challenged by is Christ. Who is Christ and what does he mean to you? [00:36:35] (35 seconds)  #ChristOnlySundays

And and you also need to know about for me, Brian Dixon, one of the things that I personally hate, I hate being manipulate manipulated. And I hate manipulation in general and watching people be manipulated. And I also recognize religious people, some religious people have historically been very manipulative. So, I'm I'm in this interesting space, but I need you to know, here at Compass City, we have never nor will I ever manipulate anybody. [00:37:11] (33 seconds)  #NoManipulationCompassCity

I'm an anti manipulation guy. That's why I I think the scripture and God is big enough that he can stand by himself. I don't have to convince you. I don't have to scream and shout and play the the emotional music loud to get you make a decision. No. No. No. It's on you. Right? Our we're all on our own spiritual path. Now, I wanna encourage you and challenge you to follow Christ, but you need to know when I'm up here, I'm always gonna talk about the things in the bible. [00:37:44] (27 seconds)  #NoManipulationHere

I'm an anti manipulation guy. That's why I I think the scripture and God is big enough that he can stand by himself. I don't have to convince you. I don't have to scream and shout and play the the emotional music loud to get you make a decision. No. No. No. It's on you. Right? Our we're all on our own spiritual path. Now, I wanna encourage you and challenge you to follow Christ, but you need to know when I'm up here, I'm always gonna talk about the things in the bible. [00:37:44] (27 seconds)  #ScriptureStandsAlone

And and this is really important because there's a greater question that Jesus is doing here as he's leading us down this road. He's seeing there's ulterior motives of these people, but it's an important question for us to ask ourselves today is what is our ulterior motive with God? When I come to God, am I coming to God like, God, want you, but like, here's my list. And one of the ways this happens sometimes is, do we see God as a genie or as a savior? [00:38:31] (36 seconds)  #SeekGodNotGifts

And you need to know that if you think of God that way, there will come a time where you're praying to God and you're asking for something really righteous and really good, and that prayer request doesn't come through, it doesn't get answered. If you think that your faith is dependent on what God answers, you're gonna have a lot of resentments against God. Because God doesn't come to serve us, We're actually here to follow him. And we gotta know God loves us so much, he wants the best for us. What I think is best may not be what God thinks is best. [00:39:33] (39 seconds)  #FaithBeyondAnswers

And so it's really, really important that we understand that God wants the best for us. And sometimes we gotta trust that what happens in there is that he's gonna answer what's best for us and not what we think. You ever ever been there where you're sure something's happening in the moment, but then on the other side of the coin, when you look back, hindsight's twenty twenty, you're like, thank goodness that didn't happen. In the moment you thought it was the right thing when it wasn't. Well, in the same way, if we focus our faith and we understand our belief system to be around a God who has to answer our prayers in the way we want them, we will be disappointed. [00:40:12] (37 seconds)  #TrustGodsPlan

And the reality is what Jesus is saying is don't invest your energy in things that are of not value, that will decrease in value, things that will disappear, things that you can't take with you. Think about it today. Your highest producing stock, let's say you got into Nvidia early. One day, Nvidia will be worthless. Whether it's five years from now, fifty years from now, a hundred years from now, your best producing stock will be worthless in someday. [00:43:18] (34 seconds)  #InvestInEternal

And what Jesus is saying is don't invest your energy into things that will one day be worthless. And he's saying the things that we love to hold on to, to collect, they will one day not be worth anything. Perishable things. And we end up focusing our lives always on these things because they are demanding our time and attention like the bill. Right? When you lay your head down at night, you're probably maybe wrestling with a problem, or maybe there's a outstanding bill. You're trying to figure out how you're gonna pay it or flex it. [00:43:52] (36 seconds)  #ValueWhatLasts

We get focused on these things, but what's interesting is when you focus on Jesus, provision becomes the byproduct. But if you focus on the provision, Jesus is not the byproduct. What Jesus is trying to teach these people, he says, focus on me and the provision will come. Don't focus on the miracles, just focus on me. Learn to invest your energy in things that are non perishable, and he's talking about spiritual things. [00:44:48] (32 seconds)  #FocusOnJesus

So Jesus trying to make it really clear for them. So provision comes when you really trust in God. Now what's interesting here, when you go down, so the New Testament was written in Greek, There's lots of really great programs and books where you can go back to the original language and see what these words mean. So that word believe is translated in Greek, pisteu or pistau. And what that is is actually the word trust. The interesting about the word trust is that it's a verb. [00:45:57] (31 seconds)  #TrustIsAction

And in fact, there's only one place in the entire bible where God calls us to actually test him. He says trust him a lot in the bible, but there's one place in the bible where God says, test me, and that's with finances. It was with the tithe. He said, test me, bring your full 10% to the church and test me to see if I will not provide and bless you. And it's important to understand, tithing is the mechanism to focus on Christ and not the provision. [00:48:34] (38 seconds)  #TitheTestTrust

And it's important reminder for us that provision comes from God and not from man. And you gotta hear this, provision comes from God and not from man. Yes. Your business or your work and your boss is in control of your raises and you get a check from somebody, but that is not where provision comes from. It's a reminder that Jesus is the provider of all things. [00:51:32] (29 seconds)  #ProvisionFromGod

And and he actually threw us a bone in this moment because the track record of humans is we kind of worship and they'll follow the things that are easily seen. Like, if God would have never appeared and he's, you know, we would have been worshiping the wind or the mist and the clouds and the movement, mother earth. But he threw us a bone where Jesus came to earth. Jesus was God with skin on. You cut the skin off like Terminator in the movie, it was God. And he did that because we needed somebody we could tangibly see and follow. And so here's this moment, Jesus is God and our provider. [00:52:10] (38 seconds)  #GodWithSkinOn

When you see somebody and you're trying to like close the deal just to build this relationship, like that's not trusting God. Now, I know within the business world, just like with everything, there are strategic relationships you build. There are these things you have to do, but there's a different when you do it authentically, caring for a person, and then just trying to use a person to get to the next thing. We all know those feel completely different. [00:53:22] (31 seconds)  #AuthenticRelationships