This coming Tuesday is election day. I know you probably hadn't even noticed, hadn't heard about it. But yeah, it is political season. I want to encourage you to vote. I want to encourage you to get out there. It's estimated that about 32,000 Christians in America are not planning on voting. We need Christian values in the voting booth, if not in government.
Okay, you can't always get them in government, but we can at least get them in the voting booth. Right? And that's you. So I hope you'll be there. I heard that in the last two years, local, county, state, and national elections all combined, there have been about 800 elections decided by either a tie or by one vote nationwide. So you matter, and it's important for you to get out there.
I want to give you four things that you ought to do. Okay? This is your homework for this week. You need to do these four things. You need to start with prayer. We all need to pray for our nation. The Bible says, "If my people, called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, I’ll heal their land." So it's really incumbent on us to pray. Pray about what you do, pray before you vote, pray for God's wisdom in what you do, and then go vote. Vote your values, vote for Christ, Christian ethics.
And if you can't vote for Christian ethics, vote against anti-Christian policies. Sometimes that's all we can do. You know, we can vote against things that are clearly unbiblical. I don't really like lowering the pulpit of the Lord Jesus Christ down into politics, and so I don't ever do that because the kingdom of God is so much higher than politics. But what does happen is that politics attacks Christian values.
And so we can't give up that ground. The Bible is very clear on Christian values around things like the right to life, around things like human sexuality, around children, and how we care for migrants. There are a lot of things that political parties have attacked that are biblical. And we can't walk away and say, "Oh, we can't get political." We didn't get political; they got unethical. And we stand for what the truth is.
So we continue to preach the truth, proclaim the truth, and vote your Christian values. And when you can't vote for Christian values, vote against unchristian policies. Can I get an amen on that? Okay, so do that. Go vote.
And then number three, we trust that God is in control. He's already given us prophetic words that in the last days there will be a great falling away and even the elect will be deceived. So there's going to be great deception, great debauchery in that. We know that's going to happen, but God's got us in His hands. And so we're going to trust Him.
Okay, we're going to believe that however things turn out, that God's still in control, and we're going to believe Him. And most of all, we're going to do number four. We're going to love people. The Bible says, Jesus said, "By this, all men will know you are my disciples if you elect a Republican."
Okay, actually, that's not in the Bible, is it? I'm sorry, I got that confused. It says, "By this, all people will know you're my disciples if you love." I'm going to hurt your feelings. Okay, you ready for this? Jesus is not a Republican. And He's not a Democrat because He's not an American. He's the savior of the whole wide world. He's bigger than all of this.
He'll participate in all this because it matters to us and it matters to our lives. But please, let's not reduce the eternal savior of all humanity down to a political side or stance. He's bigger than all that. So we're going to pray. We're going to vote. We're going to trust God for the results. And then we're going to love people no matter what.
Because you know what? If the world was all right and everything was perfect, why are Christians here? Christians are here to be the solution, not to just point out that there's a problem. We're here to be the solution. When Jesus saved you of your sins, you were afforded a place in heaven. Why didn't He sweep down like He did with Elijah and take you to heaven in that moment?
Why? Because He left you here to be a solution to the problems of the world, not to just point out that there's problems in the world. Anybody, any idiot can point out there's problems in this world, but Christians love through it. We care for people in spite of their mistakes, knowing that we have our own issues. Can I get an amen to that? If you can't amen yourself, amen for your neighbor's mistakes.
We choose to love people anyway. So I want to ask you to join me in prayer for this week, for you, for your candidates, for the people that are going to end up leading our nation, and most of all, for the people who need to come to know Jesus.
What I hope happens in the next four years, man, I hope it's a robust economy. I hope everybody makes plenty of money and everybody gets a job. I hope everybody's gas prices go down. I got all kinds of hopes, you know, I hope liberty, blah, blah, blah. But man, you know what I really hope? I hope that we usher in the last harvest before Jesus returns and takes us all to go be with Him forever. And that we see millions of people come to faith in Jesus.
Father, in the name of Jesus, we pray for our nation. We come together in agreement for the United States of America. And we know, God, that You have a will and a way for this last season of the last days, God, that You are soon returning, Jesus. You're going to take Your children to be home with You. And all that really matters is that the lost are ushered into the kingdom, that they find the love of Jesus. They come to know You, Lord.
So I pray for the right persons to be elected from the White House down to local government, God, that Your will be done in those elections. And we pray for us to show Your love and show the kindness of Jesus so that people are brought to the harvest. Give us wisdom about what we say and what we do.
And all God's people said, amen. Give God praise in advance for His results over our nation. Amen.
Hey, if you're a first-time guest, you picked a perfect time to be at Daystar because right around the corner, you're going to find a lot of people that are going to be this time of year, every year. I like to start looking toward the next year and cast vision for where we're going to be next year. And that's what we're doing in this next series.
This is called Legacy 25. And I'm going to be casting vision about our church. And we're going to start with, who are we? Who is this church? This is why it's great if you're new to our church. And maybe you've been here for about a year and really hadn't got down to the square brass tax about who is this church and where have we been? Where are we going? And what's your part?
That's really the whole message. Are you ready for that? Who are we? Where have we been? Where are we going? And where do you fit in? That's what we're going to talk about today and over the next few weeks.
And I'm releasing today what we call the Legacy Report. Now, if you've been around Daystar a long time, we used to call this the Annual Report. And it is an annual report that tells everything that this church has done in the last year through your generosity.
Now we do this for two reasons. First of all, we're going to be like Jesus, and God so loved the world that He gave. He's generous. He's generous in every way. And I want to unashamedly challenge you. If you've been here very long, you know I challenge you to be generous with your time, your talent, and your financial treasures.
And so we're going to keep doing that. But this report kind of celebrates, hey, because we were generous, because we served, because we give, because we do missions work, this is what's happened. But also, it is a way to hold ourselves accountable to the community.
And so the annual report is public. It's on our website. You can go click on it. Actually, on the back of your sermon notes is a QR code. Please don't go there right now. All right? But you can look at that over this next week if you want to.
Actually, I can show you what that page looks like. So it's going to load up, and it's going to kind of look like this. And it's going to have this awesome lady right here with this joker beside. That's beautiful. That's me and Leslie. And it's sort of a letter. It starts right there. But it's got a lot of stuff.
But it starts telling you just numbers and the numbers of people that we've reached and the number of people who've come to faith in Jesus. How about 3,189 people coming to faith in Jesus? Over 1,000 baptized. Another in Uganda of over 1,000 coming to faith. Come on, wonderful stuff.
By the way, that's Daystar Cathedral. If you've never been to the Daystar campuses, you've got to get to Africa and go to this campus. All right? We go two or three times a year. You ought to check it out. But that's Daystar Church. Your generosity built that building, and we have filled it many, many, many times over with Muslims coming to faith in God literally every week.
All right? So awesome stuff right there. We'll talk – you'll see stuff about outreach and all the different stuff. I won't go into all of that right now. But you can see there what that report looks like. I'm going to X out of that so you don't get distracted. And we're just going to celebrate some of those things.
You know, years ago, I was talking to a guy named Ken Lawhorn. He was the guy who handled our church books. Every month, our church books are sent out. An external firm handles our church accounting and sends a report back to our church and our board of directors. We have an external audit.
And this guy, he said to me one day, he said, "Pastor, I used to be the CEO of the largest church accounting firm in America." And he said, "I've done hundreds of church books, but I've never done a church." He said, "I've done churches larger than yours, but never done a church that was more generous in my career than Daystar Church."
I'm so proud of that statement. And that's who we are. You know, who is Daystar Church? You can't say who we are without knowing our mission statement. Say it with me out loud because I want everybody to memorize it. "We believe in community transformation through the church."
We believe in community transformation through the church and of Jesus. Those two words, the love and power, they're not just sweet words, flowery words, you know, but they are action words, and they're in order. Okay? They're both action and order. They have to go in that order. You have to love people first.
We don't care where you came from, what you look like, who you vote for, how you dress, what you've done, or what your reputation is. You are welcome in this place. Everybody is loved every single time of their life. Every time we have church, you are welcome in the building.
And we're not going to wait on you to get here. We're going to go get you where you are. We're going to serve people. We'll get outside the walls of this church, and we're going to love on people. And you'll see that just in the last year on that legacy report, we've invested 3,293 serve hours outside the walls of this church, serving more than 7,000 people who never set foot in our church.
I think that's an important part of this church. We serve. Come on, give God praise for that. Some of you did that just yesterday. We serve.
One of my favorite stories of our church, I like to tell it every now and then, was when we had a big Easter service, and some guys from the jail were allowed to come to church, and they had to wear orange and white striped jumpsuits. And I saw them all sitting there, and I asked the officer in charge of them, the deputy, could we give them all Daystar shirts?
Could they at least? Because if they wear their orange pants, it won't be seen sitting down, and they could wear a Daystar shirt. And he said, "Yeah, they'll just slide it on over the top." And so they got their Daystar shirts. They were so thankful, gave them free coffees, and several of them got saved. It was just a great Easter.
And a couple of months later, that deputy called me back and said, "Pastor, I want to let you know one of those guys," he called his name, "said he got out. He got rearrested on a drug charge." I said, "Oh, that's bad." And he said, "Yeah, but he got his mug shot wearing your Daystar shirt."
I was like, "Okay." He said, "And I think it's going to be in the paper. I just wanted you to know." And I said, "Well, send me that mug shot." And that next Sunday, he didn't know what I was going to do with it. I threw it up on the big screen and I said, "Daystar, in case you wanted to know who we are, this right here is who we are. This guy's who we love."
And I said, "The most important thing is when they do let him out, I want him to put that shirt back on, find his way back into this family, because the God who began a good work in you is going to complete it."
Man, you know, we've been laughed at, made fun of. People talk about just anybody can go to that church. Yeah, anybody can have a big old church if you don't care who comes. Yeah. I mean, the things people have said about y'all, it's hilarious.
You know, this is a church that welcomes everybody because we believe if you start with love, people will get close enough to the second point, which is what? Power. And the Bible says, Paul said, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God that brings salvation to everyone."
Not just the people who grew up in a good old Baptist church or the people who grew up in a good Christian environment, everybody, drug addicts, broken people, people with gender dysphoria and confusion, people who've done the most horrible things are all a part of everybody, and everybody's sin is a pretty big deal.
But how many of you know God's power is bigger than everybody else's sin? 100%. And so it's not a self-help center where you come in and pick up a few principles to lead your life a little bit better. It's a supernatural center where you could be set free from your addiction today. You could be different today. You could come to faith. You could invest your whole life in Jesus Christ, and the supernatural begins to change you right here, right now, today.
So we believe, because we believe so much in God, it's easy to believe in you. We believe in you. We just believe that God put things, the Bible says before He formed you in your mother's womb, He knew you and He knit you together uniquely, perfectly. Man, there's something special inside of you.
We believe. We believe so much in God that we have to believe in you. It doesn't matter what you started with or where you're at right now. It's not about where you are today; it's about where God is going to take you.
Who are we? We are community transformation. People change. People different through the love and power of Jesus. And now where have we been? 24 years ago, this church, believe it or not, was a handful of wonderful people in a 60-year-old moldy church building.
But God told us we're going to become Daystar Church. A city on a hill. A light that shines in dark places, a place that cannot be hidden. And God sent us; He gave us these marching orders. He gave me three words, phrases that we're going to focus on, and He said, "I'm sending you for these three groups of people," and this is still who we want to reach: unchurched people.
These are people who have never been to church. All they know about church or Christian people is what the pop culture has told them, the lies about how we hate and we judge and we're anti-gay and all the other things that they say, and they don't know about Jesus. They don't believe the Bible is relevant or true. They've heard all the lies about the Bible.
And you know what? So we don't build a church that just fits you if you're a Christian. We build a church that will appeal to unchurched people and make it easy for them to step into the faith family. We don't want people to feel like they got to dive into the deep end of the pool immediately, but we want to welcome them slowly and let them come to know how great our God is.
So if you ever come to church, you've been in church, you know some of you have been baptized in so many waterways around here that every tadpole knows your first name. Okay? All right. If that's you, got me too. Okay? I was first baptized in the chain of Hatchet Creek. All right? I go back in the day.
But you know, if something we do doesn't make sense to you, it's probably because you have been saved longer than Billy Graham. All right? We love you, but we're trying to reach your cousin who's not been in church in 30 years. Is that okay? Is that cool? I hope it's okay. You're going to have to fire me because that's what I'm going to do until you fire me.
Secondly, we're reaching over-churched people. I know it. I see it every day. And in North Alabama, there are so many over-churched people covered up with church, been in church, know all about church, and they think they've met Jesus. They've only met religion. They don't really know the relationship with God.
They don't know the God that can forgive any, you know, they have been indoctrinated with church, but not with Jesus because they're so judgmental. They're so hateful. They look down on people. They're so afraid that sin might sneak in the door. If they really met Jesus, they'd realize His light is so miraculous and powerful that sin can't stand in His presence.
I'm not worried about somebody's sin. The power of God is going to set everybody free if we just worship Him in spirit and in truth. So there's a whole group of people like that we want to reach.
And then there's a bunch of people that are like, "I love Jesus, but I can't put up with church people." Some of y'all know what that feels like. They've been somewhere where it's just an environment of just judgment and, you know, just chaos. And there was so much hypocrisy.
And they just said, "You know what? I'm through with that." That's how Howard Posey was when he was through with church. Howard said, "You know what? I love Jesus, but man, I've been hurt too many times. I've been through too much junk. We're going to love Jesus from home."
And his kids, his teenage kids fell in love with the youth group at Daystar, and they drug Howard to church. And now that whole Posey clan has led dozens, if not hundreds of people to our church. And Trish, the young lady who wasn't going to go to church anymore, is now Pastor Trish. Things change. Come on. That's who we are.
We look at every person and say, "You know what? God's not finished with you. God wants to finish with you. God wants to do something in your life."
And where we're going, you know, our church is a multi-campus church. You know, when our church grew so rapidly and I was so young, I was so young. I was okay. And everybody's like, "A guy that young shouldn't have a church that big." I was like, "Me? I agree. I'm totally down with that. I don't know what I'm doing here."
We didn't know we were going to be a multi-campus church. We just, you know, God just kept giving us influence in other places, and we kept reaching places. And so, you know, now we're a church in Coleman and a Hartselle campus and a Madison campus and an amazing ministry in a Uganda campus, and our online campus is our fifth campus.
You may not see it if you come physically in the building, but it's growing so rapidly. Just yesterday at the serve project, I was out at some government housing, and a young single mom ran out like she was a member of this church. I'd never seen her, but she immediately recognized me.
She's never been in the church building any Daystar campus, but she watches online every week. I invited her to come be in the building. I hope she's here today, but that is what our church is doing. It's reaching people.
And in the last three years, all those campuses have seen 10,814 people accept Jesus and almost 3,500 of those people get baptized in water. Can you give God praise for that? Amen. Amen.
So, you know, our church just reaches out to people and has such a great missions focus. And we love people like crazy. That missions arm is led by Pastor Kip and Cheryl, and Kip loves so much. He loves so much that we do not even let him have a church credit card or he can't have a church checkbook because the power would not be turned on next week.
He would give it all away in one week. I'm pretty sure Cheryl doesn't let him have their money either. Like he just gives it all away because he has such a heart for reaching people.
And several years ago, Kip doesn't preach any of the Bible stories like I would preach them. All of them different. And he ruined a great Bible story for me several years ago. It's Mark chapter six. It's one of my favorite Bible stories, and I have a really good way of preaching it, but I can't preach it that way anymore.
It's about Jesus feeding the 5,000. Remember that great story you heard in kids' church, right? Not the way Kip tells it. I promise you, you've never heard anybody tell it like that. He sits, you know, he breaks a boy's lunch, and he feeds 5,000 men plus women and children, maybe 15,000 people. It's amazing.
The disciples keep giving, and there's baskets of leftovers when they're finished, right? And Kip said, "What if Jesus set them all down in rows, and He only fed the disciples who passed out food for the first three rows? And when they came back to get more food, the first three rows were hungry for more. And He gave them the same amount, and He went all day long, and He only fed the first three rows, and He starved everybody else."
And then he said, "You know what that is? That's what the American church looks like." Right there. Ruined that whole story for me right there. It really is the truth. If you are an American, you're on the front three rows of the blessings of God.
Do you realize that everywhere you turn, there's a Bible? Everywhere you turn, there's Christian television. Everywhere you turn, there's Christian opportunities. Everywhere you turn, there's blessing. I've been on the first three rows my whole life. I was born and raised in the most Christian environment in the history of the world. Are you aware of that?
You might say America is so unchristian, but it is still the most Christian environment on planet earth today. You were raised in that. You were raised in the most blessed environment financially, in the safest environment. It's amazing when you start looking at all the different ways we have been blessed.
Think about it. There have been billions upon billions of souls to live on this planet. And there are 8 billion people alive right now. And you right now, if you're an American citizen, are in the top 5% of the wealthiest people on planet earth today, and you're in the top 1% of all the people who ever called planet earth home.
And that humbles me. And it excites me about things like our opportunity. But it also scares me to death because of this one little-known statement that Jesus made. We just brush right over it. But He said this, "When someone has been given much, much will be required in return."
The message paraphrase says it like this: "Great gifts mean great responsibilities." See, God owns everything. Can I get an amen to that? I mean, the next breath you breathe is His, the lungs, the health that you enjoy, all of it. And everything that you have is His investment in you.
And for some reason, He chose to invest in us way more than most of the people who have ever lived on planet earth. And here's what the Bible simply says: When you get much, you need to do something with that much. You need to make sure that you are paying that forward.
And the simple truth is that Americans have been so blessed for so long that we don't even know what the back of the line looks like. You know, back there, those people on the back rows who didn't get fed. We don't even know what that looks like.
Poverty in America is $30,000 for a family. And I know that can be tough to live on, but the international poverty line is $2.14 a day. And it's a crazy reality.
And here's the thing: The problems of our world will not be fixed with money. There is no chance. No government program, no church generosity campaign. There is no way. There's no amount of money, no nonprofit, the United Way. There is not enough money to solve the problems.
The solution to the money problems, the health problems, the starvation problems, the sin problems, the solution to the problems of our world is one thing: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Come on, praise the Lord for His word if you believe that. That's the only solution.
And if you're an informed person, and if you're a fair-minded person, you can't argue against the fact that wherever the gospel is openly preached, the blessings of God have followed historically. You look at places that oppress the gospel; they're the most terrible conditions in the world.
But places like Europe and America, and even places where the gospel is emerging in Africa, there's clean drinking water, there's better health care. Everything gets better when the gospel goes somewhere. And you know why that is? Because Jesus was right when He says, "If the Son makes you free, you are free indeed."
You're completely free. You're not just financially free. You're not just free because you have a cup of clean water to drink. You are completely free, and the skies are the limit. There's opportunities in your life.
That's why, as a church, we want to show God's kindness and generosity in all kinds of ways. We build orphanages and schools, and we provide clean drinking. We've built medical clinics. We do all kinds of things. But our first priority from this pulpit to everywhere else we serve outside the walls of this church is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The reason that we're able to build an orphanage and house hundreds of starving children is because of your generosity. The only reason you're generous is the gospel of Jesus Christ reached you. If we stop with the gospel, the generosity will end.
Aren't you thankful the gospel made it to you? I mean, think about how it started. Twelve apostles were beaten and dragged behind chariots to death. Some were boiled. Some were crucified. And after that, the early church was horribly treated, thrown to the Roman Colosseum to fight animals. Some were lit on fire and made into Roman streetlights.
And then when the Bible was given to us, it was kept by church officials and authority figures in a language the common person couldn't read. And that was a way to oppress people. And so a guy named William Tyndale says, "No, I'm going to, I believe the Bible should be presented in a common language."
And he was hated for it. He went ahead and he translated it into common English, and they strangled him, and they burned him at the stake because of it. So just know this: when you casually grab your Bible for church on Sunday and throw it under your arm, or you open up the Bible app to see what the devotion for the day is, somebody died for that privilege to be in your hand today. Thank God for it. Thank God for it.
And don't just, we shouldn't just thank God for it. We should say, "Okay, now God, now how do I pay it forward? How do I give someone else that same privilege and opportunity?" Did you know that of all the nations on earth, one of the nations that's in greatest need for the gospel of Jesus today is the United States of America?
It's 193 nations in the world today. And the gospel, the church is growing in 173 churches. America is one of only 20 nations where the church is dying today. In America, 150 churches will close their doors for the last time between 7,000 and 10,000 churches closed every year in America. Only 4,000 churches are opening. It is a catastrophe.
Young people are leaving the American church in droves. The fastest growing religious affiliation in America today are the nuns, not Catholic nuns, the N O N E. When people are asked, "What's your religious affiliation?" and they check none. That's the fastest growing religious affiliation.
And something like 87% of American young people say that Jesus and the Bible have no impact on their life whatsoever. So where is this church going in 2025? We're going to focus on reaching the next generation. That's going to be our focus.
We've got 350 orphans that we want to give a new house to. They're living in an awful place, a little community called Kenya Maseki, Uganda. We want to build Daystar Village. In fact, it's already starting, but it's going to take a lot of generosity.
We've seen our student ministry in North Alabama grow. I'm so proud of our student ministry, but they need support. They need stuff. They need activities. We're going to support them in 2025. Somebody say amen.
Our Hartselle campus, we poured 400 yards of concrete. Everybody cheer for Hartselle right now. Come on. Everybody in Hartselle is going crazy. All right. But when that building is built, which it'll be built in the next few months, we got to remodel the existing building for next-gen for kids and students. That's going to take a lot of generosity.
You know, we have so much that we can do to reach the next generation. My friend, Sean Lovejoy, was preaching here earlier this year. You remember the little short guy who preached with a shield? You know, he's up there preaching, and he got up here and told y'all that I was an interim pastor.
I was thinking that with his butt right in front of everybody. I thought, "You ain't got a big enough shield for me, you little joker. Tell my church I'm an interim pastor." I had to sit there and hear him say that same sermon, but it stuck. You say I can remember it, right?
He was saying to us, "We are all temporary here. We are all here temporarily." You know what? And you're in the seat, and you're loving Jesus, and your family's growing and getting closer to Him because somebody ahead of you paid a price to bring the gospel to your feet.
And I've got to know that, you know what? Maybe, you know, maybe there's going to be a kid on the monkey bars at Daystar playground today going to be preaching my funeral one day. You ever think about that? Well, we got to build him some monkey bars out there.
Okay, we want to invest in children and families and students this year. And when I think about that, okay, when I think about our responsibility to the next generation, I think about this passage from Hebrews chapter 12.
Hebrews 11 gives this long list of great leaders and Christians and believers from the old days. And he says, "Therefore, since we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses," all those people died in the faith because they gave everything they had because they did what they did. And now they surround us.
"Let us throw off." Everybody say throw off. "Let us throw off everything that hinders us and the sin that entangles us and let us run." Come on, say it out loud. "Run." Let's run with perseverance the race marked out for us since they did their thing and they're surrounding us from the heavens, cheering for us.
"Let us do our thing and let's run the race that's marked out for us and fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." You know what? Nobody in here feels like they're rich. I get that.
You know, Gallup did a survey and asked everybody who they think's rich. And everybody thought whoever makes twice as much as them is rich. Everybody said that. They asked people who made $50,000. They said people who make $100,000 are rich. They asked people who made $100,000. They said people who make $200,000 are rich.
They asked people who subscribe to Money magazine, "What does it take to be rich?" They said $5 million. And they found out that the average reader of Money magazine makes $2.5 million.
On an unrelated note, if you subscribe to that magazine, I need to see you in the lobby. Right? Building an orphanage, you might want to help with. Now, the point is a moving target. You're never going to look at it and say, "Well, I'm the guy that's got to make this stuff happen."
But I want to leave you this statement right here. I want you to let this sink in: God's more interested in your progress than your position. It's really not where am I right now, but it's where am I going. This church is about community transformation.
Okay? And really it comes from this statement: we're all being transformed in the image of God from glory to glory to glory. In this series, I want to unashamedly challenge us to be better stewards of God's resources. I'm going to challenge you to think about your schedule, about your budget, about things like that.
And I'm going to do some biblical management teaching that we don't do in church, but it's right there in the Bible. We don't do it enough, and it's going to help you with your finances. But I'm going to unashamedly challenge you to be more generous to help us reach the next generation with the gospel of Jesus.
And I want to show you this. Let me tell you what's tough about being a pastor. So there's 66 books in the Bible, 27 in the New Testament. There are three that are called the pastoral epistles, three books written just for preachers.
I mean, it's for everybody. It's really good leadership content, but it's called pastoral because Paul wrote them to pastors. It's 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus. And so when I read anything out of those epistles, I feel like it's my orders from Paul.
Okay? And here's what he said in 1st Timothy 6: "Command those who are rich in this present world to not be arrogant or put their hope in wealth." Let me just stop right there. Doesn't it seem like he was like literally in 2024 America when he wrote that?
We are so into our wealth. We're so into making money. We're so into looking a certain way. We're arrogant about it. And he said, "Don't do that." He says, "Wealth is so uncertain, but put our hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."
And so those good rich Americans, he said, "People like you and me, they're doing well, command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and be willing to share. And when they do that, they'll lay up treasures in heaven."
I want to encourage you to do that. Don't wait on me to tell you how to do it. Do it today. Go tip the waitress at lunch and blow her mind. All right? Go rake the leaves of the elderly neighbor in your neighborhood. Don't wait on the next serve.
"Oh man, I missed serve day. I had it on my calendar, and I meant that." Just today is serve day. Jesus said, "I didn't come to be served, but I came to serve." Every day is serve day. Serve somebody today. Love somebody today. Give today. Be generous today.
You cannot outgive God. God loves to fill you with every rich. That's what the scripture says. He'll fill you, but you can't be filled up if your hand is closed because you're gripping so tightly on what you have. Release it. Release your love. Forgive people who have wronged you.
Just, you want to hold it until they make it right? They can't make it right. Just release that, and you'll find God will fill you with more love. Release your money. You'll find God will give you more money. Release your time. "I don't have enough time. I got to be careful with my time."
Just release it and serve somebody. Give away some of your time. You'll find God will fill your hands. We want to live open-handed, not closed-fisted. I always say this: If you think I'm a money grubber, I'm trying to get something from you, try these Christian principles somewhere else.
Don't even do it at Daystar Church. I don't care where you do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to be like Christ. He'll blow your mind.
When the Roman governor drug Jesus out, Pilate was his name, drug Jesus in front of the angry mob. He asked the most important question. He said, "What would you have me do with Jesus?" He didn't know, but he was asking the most important question in all of human history.
Do you know that? That's the most important question in human history. It's more important than who's going to win the election on Tuesday. I promise you it's more important than that. Are we going to solve, you know, the electric problem or we don't have enough food to feed when the world has 12 billion people?
There's all kinds of problems that we don't know. But I promise you the biggest, most important question in human history is not about that. It's not energy independence. It is this question: What will we do with Jesus?
The only right answer is to accept Him as the only Lord and Savior of the only God and the only way to heaven, to make Him your Lord and Savior, and then generously pay that message forward to somebody else. God saved the world.
And so I was, I don't understand it right now, right now in a story with God's own principles of what does God mean to you, and at that moment, we're talking about Jesus. And so that's what the Lord says that the Lord wanted us to do with Jesus. In Jesus, God is...
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on Nov 04, 2024
