Sunday Morning Service 12/28/2025 - Multiplying Our Efforts

And we learn just even a key verse out of the Old Testament is there are blessings today if you obey my commands, and there are curses if you don't. And so just as much as we would think that consequences means negative, and if I don't do the right things, then I'm going to end up having this life full of all these bad stuff coming at me. I want us to focus on the positive. The latter might be true, but sometimes we don't think about the fact that an obedient lifestyle also produces great results. Consequences, consequences, so to speak, and blessings that we can never imagine. [00:23:57] (38 seconds)  #BlessingsAndConsequences

They all reflect the character of God. They show us who he is. And I can't think of anything more important than for us to know our Father and to know what he's like and why that's so important. In fact, that concept is really a great illustration for us to think about this morning in regards to rules and following them and the covenant relationship that comes with it. [00:24:53] (26 seconds)  #KnowGodsCharacter

But the boundaries that we see in God's word are very similar to what we do as parents. And these guidelines are set down for a number of reasons. First, we're going to see this morning that they're designed to create prosperity and a thriving life for your kids. You want the best for them, right? You want everything to be better than what you had and what you had to go through and how you had to live. Every generation is like that. And so we provide that prosperity and that thriving through giving them a pathway to follow, a way to keep in line. [00:25:55] (39 seconds)  #GuidelinesForProsperity

You know, we've got a lot of kids here in the room. If you're ever wondering, why do my parents have so many rules? Why do they give us so many things that we have to do? One, they want you to have a great life. They want you to be prosperous. They want you to thrive. They want you to be happy. But the other thing is that they want to have a great relationship with you. And they want it to be healthy and beneficial. [00:26:46] (22 seconds)  #BoundariesBuildThriving

I love how God has grown us, but I believe that God can multiply us. The same principle that we're looking at, obedience plus God's blessing equals multiplication, there's also a promise in it. And the promise is this, that what we surrender to God, God will multiply. What we surrender to God, God will multiply. [00:36:32] (29 seconds)  #SurrenderAndMultiply

Remember that partial obedience is still disobedience. We've convinced ourselves in this day and age that, right, like a white lie is really not a lie. It was justified. And really what the Bible has to say is that partial obedience is really disobedience. And what it does is it kind of creates this clog in the pipeline of blessing. We think that it's okay, that God looks past that. But really what we're doing when those finally build up is that we've created this wall between us and God. It builds up and his blessings can't get through to us. [00:47:09] (42 seconds)  #NoPartialObedience

You're not going to win when you go into that battle, you would think. By every human calculation, you're on a suicide mission. And Gideon could have said, God, I need more men. I need more weapons. I need you to be more strategic. But instead, he stepped out and took willing action. He stepped out on faith. Faith requires you and I to do something despite the numbers. [00:51:52] (28 seconds)  #StepOutInFaith

The idea is not to take people from our current groups and just spread them out more. The goal is to multiply them. The goal is to invite more people. To bring more people in. To share Christ with more people. Where that baptism gets used maybe ten, twelve times a year. Instead of once or twice. That we see one person come to know Christ. And then all of a sudden, their husband or wife wants to know Christ. And then their kids come to know Christ. And then all of a sudden, they're reaching out to their co-workers. And they're reaching out to their friends and their neighbors. That is multiplication. [00:58:09] (40 seconds)  #MultiplyDisciples