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Let's go to Matthew chapter 25. I'm going to jump way ahead if we can. Matthew 25, verse 14 through 30. That's the parable of the talents. And if I can give a little context, anybody remember the parable right before that was about the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins. And that's actually a parable on stewardship as well, being prepared and prepping and getting ready and being ahead. But when some scholars say that this parable of the talents is actually about how a steward is to get ready, it's dealing with the readiness of a steward. And I'm going to turn around and read it off the board. If you can't, it's way too small. I should have made a couple of different slides, my bad. For it will be like a man. This is talking about the kingdom of heaven.
Going. On a journey who called his servants and entrusted them to his property. To one, he gave five talents to another two and to another one to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded them and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one. One talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he had and he who had received five talents came forward, bringing the five talents more saying, Master, you delivered to me five talents here. I have made five talents more. His master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a. Little I will set you over much enter into the joy of your master and he also who had two talents came forward saying, Master, you delivered to me two talents here. I have made two talents more and his master said to him, well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much enter into the joy of your master. He also.
So who had received the one talent came forward saying, Master, I know you to be a hard man reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground here. You have what is yours. But his master answered him, you wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gathered where. I have not scattered no seed, then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and that my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. This right here for to everyone who has will more be given, but he will have an abundance. I'm sorry. He will have an abundance. But from the one who. Who has not even what he has will be taken away. Verse 29 perplexed me for a long time because it said, but from the one who has not even what he has will be taken away. And I'm like, Lord, what does that mean? I don't know if anybody else has ever had it where you literally got paid and then you put your money in the bank. And then all of a sudden you turned around 30 seconds later and it was gone. Anybody ever been? Like that? I was like that. Like, hold on. What just happened? I know. I know. I walked in there. I know I put it in there, but for some reason it's gone. And I remember where I was standing in the church. My wife and I, we had a considerable amount of fun sitting there when we first got married. And I remember standing in the corner of the church worshiping greater grace by myself, just praising the Lord.
And God said, Jeremy, you're comfortable. And I said, oh, because I instantly knew what that meant. I didn't know what that meant. Oh, I knew. And all of a sudden, all the stuff that we had, it wasn't at once. It was gone. I'm looking like, what in the world just happened? It wasn't. I don't know what happened. And I'm asking and I'm like, Lord, what is going on? He loves me too much to allow me to. Reap the benefits of false fruit. He loves me too much to reap the benefits of false fruit. I had made what I had. My God, if anybody ticked me off at work, I'd go in there and log in, see my account. Be like, felt really good about myself because I didn't need you. You need me. If I need to walk out of here, I can. That's not even my normal attitude. But I was relying on that and leaning. And the Lord loved me too much to allow my might and my power, my army, my things that I lean on to allow them to stand. And one of the things that we talk often is he's coming after my props to replace them with his pillars. This is full of pillars.
But the first one that I want to talk about is, is that it always starts with the heart. God. Always starts from the inside out. Always. I believe it's Proverbs 4, 23. It says, keep your heart with all vigilance from it. Flow the springs of life. And I don't know if you remember, but the way that that steward viewed God was the way he decided to steward his money. So based on your view of who the father is, determines my view of. True stewardship, because as a fiduciary, if you come into my office, I'm wealth management. So you bring me your money, I may be responsible for handling that money for you, but that is not my money. I don't have the legal right to reach in there and be like, I just need 20 bucks. Let me go ahead. Grab that. I'll put it back next week. That is not my money. I don't have that. So he, everything I had will be taken away from. Me.
If I decide to just double dip inside your money, understanding fiduciary responsibility when it comes to handling the things of the Lord inside of his assignment, he places your provision, he places your promotion, he places your protection inside of his assignment inside of every assignment of God, he places the provision, he places the promotion. Remember, you have done well. I will now set you over much. The promotion is inside stewarding and handling faithfully what God has given me. You are not responsible for the yield. I hope you hear that. That took so much stress off of my life as a melancholy. I mean, I stood up at night crunching and trying to figure out every angle running every scenario, trying to feel it. And figure out everything. You are not responsible for the yield. God is. We are responsible to be faithful and obedient to the assignment that God has given us. The enemy has twisted and perverted and thought that I'm just one strategy away. So much oppression from the illusions that the world tries to lay on us. No matter how hard I try. The world will always tell you. If. If you make five easy payments at $39.99, you can have it. I'm here today to tell you that's a lie. Don't fall for it. You are not $39.99, five easy payments away. Please understand that's a lie. The promotion is locked inside the assignment that God has us.
This ain't in my notes. In the last season that we just walked out of, April 15th, my wife got terminated. He looked. He looked at each other. I'm starting my business. And I said, okay, God, this don't make sense. We have a 94% reduction in our income than me the year before. And then my wife then, and we're starting the business. And they put me on the shelf for two years and say, you can't do anything for two years. And I'm sitting there saying, okay, this don't make sense. God, I got a family of four. This don't make sense. These numbers aren't going to add up. I can tell you real quick. And math ain't math. Every two weeks, $1,250. Every two weeks. And I'm sitting there with a family of four saying, God, this don't make sense. According to my math, we got about five months before we going to have a problem. Savings and chicken. I'm staying up at night trying to figure out every angle, every which way to figure this thing out because this don't make no sense. And not only that, there, he's like, no no no. Jeremy, you don't go and market yourself or that's a hard thing. You sit and you serve the people that I send you. April the 15th at night, the Morton's was sitting at our table. My wife crying and I'm looking and I say, well, we got an opportunity to figure out what we really believe because you can have a theology of something all day long. I can, I can quote the scriptures. I have the theology. That part. Wasn't a problem, but will you stand on that theology and understand that he is sovereign in the midst of the fire?
I said, will you stand on his sovereignty? And it hit me one day that sometimes I think my God's provision ended when I got the job. I thought God's provision ended when we got the opportunity to make that commission. I thought. I thought God's provision ended when this sale went through. No No No. God's provision is there the whole time. I don't have the ability to communicate the depth of looking at my wife, looking at God, not having an answer and looking there and she got to tell the kids and I got to tell the kids and it's like, Hey, do we believe that God really will provide our daily bread? Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about inviting your children into the conversation of your daily bread? I trust God for my daily bread. And again, there's a difference in the theology. And I remember when I began to realize I was arguing with God over my daily bread, it was around 2015 because when we first got married, I'm like, God, if I can make $30,000, Jesus, I'll be doing that thing. Well, that's almost double. Like, boy. I can. I can do some stuff. Then we got it. And I'm like, you know what, God? My bad. Hold on. If I can get 60, I can really do some stuff. I can really do it. You know, then we got, I still wasn't doing, I said, you know what, God, like Abraham, please Lord, don't be mad at your servant. If I can get six figures, just let me hit that. I promise you I'll be good. I know I'll be okay. I still wouldn't. Okay. I said, God, if I can hit two and when it came out my mouth, I said, Jeremy, you got a problem. I don't think that. Oh no. I said 30, 60, a hundred. I'm going to keep going. And that's where the Lord began to show me that I've been arguing over my daily bread. Do I trust his sovereignty as a steward that inside of what I need, he has provided, do I trust that I have the theology, but can I walk that thing out? Can I walk that thing out with you, God?
And the scriptures where we're talking about the readiness of a steward, um, there was four quadrants. Sorry, y'all. Uh, they doing a great job cause I'm all over the place right now. And I want to point something out before you go to that one, go to, um, our story for a second. Cause Jeremy, you hit on something, um, when you're talking about the significance of stewardship in whom we had that light bulb moment of what it really was. And so I'm going to read an excerpt from, um, our book that we're writing of every significant step in our stewardship journey became with an invitation to trust God's design more than our desire for control. Along the way, we discovered that stewardship begins. It's where the illusion of ownership ends and where every illusion exists, bondage exists. Say that one more time. Please hear me where every illusion exists. Bondage exists. Um, yeah, no matter what area it is, the world is not selling you silver or gold. They're peddling fear and they know fear will make you move. It is the number one seller in this world. Okay. I'm in the rooms when they're talking about it. Fear is their tool of choice. And so they use that and they leverage those things. But I love how Jesus, something I heard Dennis Peacock say, he said, Jesus came not to take you out of poverty, but take the poverty out of you. There is no such thing as lack in the kingdom. Jesus came not to take you out of poverty, but to remove the poverty. He said, you're not going to take the poverty out of you. There is no such thing as lack there in the kingdom. There's no such thing as a pie. God created a garden, not a pie. When there's a limited mindset, then therefore they will, you will fight over your slice. As Pastor Glenn was saying a few weeks ago. They know this and will keep you entertained fighting over a piece when they get to play in the garden. Okay. what I'm trying to say is I've seen it where poverty is not a dollar figure. America tells you, you know, if you make less than X amount of dollars, then there's poverty. That's not poverty. You might be broke, but that's not poverty. Those are two totally different things, two very different things. Poverty is a mindset, is a state of being. It is a heart posture and position.
It is not, I've got people sit in front of me with millions and millions of dollars and still in their eye at the end. We're discussing end of life. Typically, I'm discussing generations and the end of life with people, and there's still the emptiness even though they have big net worths. Poverty is not a dollar figure. And so I'm sitting there saying, Lord, what is this? Like, what? is it? Everybody's seeking something, but then I found it. Second Peter, we're seeking impact and purpose in this life, and what we found is that it usually lies on the other side of your alignment, agreement, and accountability to the Father. The alignment, your agreement, and accountability to the Father. So when it comes to something I like to call order of operation, operation, I've done this before. Real quick math problem. One plus two times three. What's the answer? Seven. Three. Huh? Seven. Answer is seven. Usually I get quite a few nines in there, because what we do is we'll say one plus two is three. Yep. And then three times three is nine. Yep. And what the Lord showed me was that sometimes as stewards, we can do the right functions, but do them in the wrong order. And we mad and frustrated, because I'm like, I'm doing this right, and the wrong answer. And I can't tell you how long at night I stayed up when the family went to bed, and I'm walking the floor frustrated, because I'm doing everything I knew to do right, boy.
I mean, you talk about paying tithes, sweeping the floor, going to work, anything need to happen. I was doing all of it, and for some reason, the brother was still coming up empty, trying to figure out what is going on. I know it can't be God, so I was beginning to look at me. It's got to be me. And I was tearing down the image of God that was in me. I don't know if you heard what I just said. I was tearing down the image of God that was in me. I've got to be broken. Something is wrong with me. I need to start over. I need another strategy. I need another tactic. I need another this. I need another that. And life will always be broken. I need to start over. I need another that. And life will always be broken. I need another that. And life will always talking about walking the floor, trying to figure out what's going on. You know something else? Got Mr. Stern here. Everybody ever heard, if you're on fire, you're supposed to stop. You're supposed to stop, then you drop, then you roll. But what happens if you just keep rolling until you're tired, then you drop, and then you stop, Mr. Stern? What happens? You say you burned up, I'm still on fire, but I'm working hard. I'm doing everything I knew to do. I'm walking that floor at night. I'm just rolling, just rolling, trying to do everything I knew to do. I'm rolling, but I never stopped first. It takes great faith to stop when you feel like you're on fire. It takes for real faith for you to just stop when you feel like, hold on, bro, something's on fire. The last thing I want to do, see, it doesn't say do the opposite of what God said. He will encourage you to begin to roll real fast. And a lot of people are just rolling, but hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I think the first thing we're supposed to do is stop. I've noticed in the stewardship triangle, there are three things, three major areas where the enemy tries to get us to do things out of order.
The first one is your role. That's the identity. That's understanding who am I before God. The second one is your heart posture. Talked about how important the heart is. And the third one is then understanding the responsibilities that we have as a steward. A lot of us immediately want to go to the responsibilities, but the first one, we need to stop and back on up and understand first, who am I and who is he? I can't understand who I am until I understand who he is. And so when it comes to the role of a steward, remember, I said, I'm not responsible, for the yield, but the role of a steward, the role of a steward, when it comes to stewardship, it is not about your money. Stewardship is about your whole life expression, standing before the Lord. Stewardship is an act of worship. Stewardship is not about your money. I'll never forget. God told me, Jeremy, you're not stewarding your money. You steward your values. Say that one more time. You don't steward your money. You steward your values. And from your values will shape your beliefs and from your beliefs will shape your habits and from your habits will produce the fruit of what's going on inside your money. Thank you. This is great.
So when it comes to standing as a steward, there are four categories. I want you to understand this. There are four categories. If you come into my office, I've got this same slide, but in financial terms, there's no difference between standing as a steward before God and how I can try to manage your portfolio so that you don't run out of money at the end of your life. And if I can help you run out, not run out the money at the end of your life, you can same thing to help you not run out of money at the end of the month too. Does that make sense? So the first thing is you've got to assign the flow. That's that ugly word, budget. Some sort of budget, because inside of every seed that's been giving you is the assignment of given by God. There's a certain portion that needs to go to do certain things. And so understanding the assignment. The second thing is flexing with the seasons that God has you in. I've had a season of plenty and I've had a season of none. I'd much rather this one, but I think Paul said, whether I'm a bound or a base, it don't matter. I'm still content. Being able to flex with the Lord based on the seasons that he has you in. The third one is managing volatility is what I would say if you walked in the office. But what that really means is learning how to discern the seasons and understand the times. The sons of Issachar understood the times. They understood what was going on. We don't know everything, but you've got to learn how to practice. Put my head between my knees and saying, God, what are you doing in this season? And I want to get on board with whatever you're doing in this season. And then the fourth one is building the storehouse, having inside of every seed. And this is my grandfather. I grew up in Louisiana. We, when every time we pick watermelons or whatever the fruit was, whatever the first that came up in the sweetest ones, we would take those seeds and set them back. And I'm like, grandpa, who taught you how to do that? Who told you how much to set back? Who told you this? When to set back? He said, well, you knew you had to set back because if you ate up everything now, you're going to be hungry next month. And he said, I can't stand the lazy person. Like grandpa was lazy. Eat up everything you got. And then you want me to take care of yours. That's a lazy person. I said, hold on. And my wife said something to my, to my daughters. Once my older girls, she said, hold on. You don't have the opportunity to spend your money on your wants and then want to spend my money on your needs. Like, uh-uh, that ain't how this thing gonna work. I said, girl, I need to put that on the billboard. Where you get that from? Inside of every assignment is the provision, the protection, and the promotion from God. In that first quadrant, we're going to talk about, the budget. But before we do that, there's another principle that I want to draw out real quick this week, setting up for next week. When it comes to the budget, did you notice that he said he buried it in the ground? And God said, you should have at least put it in the hands of the bankers. The environment matters. The environment where you steward your money matters. It really matters to God. I bought this, this fish, and they're very large fish. Started out, it was my kid's fish. Now it became my fish. And I'm learning and reading up on these fish that are now my pets. And one of the things they said was, this size fish has to be in this size tank. Because if you leave that fish in this small tank, then that fish that was meant to be 20 inches long will never grow. It'll stay there. Based on the environment, that you put that fish in has the potential to stunt the growth of that fish. And sometimes we got to understand the importance of where we're putting the money, because we could be stunting ourself. This is not about salvation at all. This is all dealing with the sanctification and the tool. It's an immediate feedback loop. When you run out and they say, I ain't giving you no more. And it's like, oh, snap. It's a wake up call. Not about the money. It's where are we going to trace up and understand the values that God has for us? Because did you know there's two things that finance boils down to? There's only two, an agreement and information. I'll give you an example. If you come in the office and you say, hey, I want to buy this house with this amount of money, that's an agreement. And I agree to pay you this amount of money. And I agree to pay you this amount of money. On the first. Cool. Now it's on that bank to understand the source of that information and how accurate it really is. That's what all finance boils down to. Agreements and information data. With that being said, sometimes we form agreements with money and we don't know. Give you an instance. I formed agreements with some money and I didn't understand what was happening on the inside. And I'm sitting there, didn't realize that I made a truce with the enemy. Essentially, if you let me do these things, then I'll repay you over here on this side based on the heart condition will flow to an agreement. And that's where we began to form a lot of our stewardship habits. So one of the things that I would love for us to do is to build a relationship with God. And that's where we begin to form a lot of our stewardship habits. Do we have it? Okay. So with that being said, one of the things that we're going to do is take an assessment. And then if you, everybody throughout the week, one day, figure out two numbers, my nuclear number, my lifestyle number. These numbers are important. I don't care if you have a billion dollars or if you have three, don't matter. Know your nuclear number, know your lifestyle number. Number is what happens if everything shut down? I lose, we lose all income. There's nothing coming in. What are we going to do? What needs to happen for us to be able to survive? If we got to cut, you know, cable off, we got to cut this off. Like what is that number? The second number is your lifestyle number. Where am I? What does it require to us to maintain a month with what we're doing? Right now, those two numbers are very important. If you can do those two numbers this week, and then we got one more assessment with the actual building blocks of a budget. A lot of people say, man, I struggle with budgeting. What I found is not really that we're struggling with budgeting. Sometimes we struggle with one of these building blocks that are inside the budget. Sometimes I don't want to be truthful. I don't want to face reality. As long as I can keep maintaining, as long as I can keep moving and doing what I do, leave me alone. Like I don't want to do a budget. Just let me keep doing what I do. Truthfulness is really facing and dwelling in reality of what's happening. So I may not want to face the truth. Sometimes I have a hard time discerning what's getting ready going on. Again, going back to those agreements, I formed an agreement inside of there. Sometimes with my money, I might struggle in executing the actual assignment and then actually reviewing and returning the consistency that's necessary. Sometimes it's not the whole budget we struggle with. It might just be one building block. So what we're going to want to do is take that building block. And then I've got several habits that are each one of those building blocks. You don't try to fix everything. That's not what we're looking to do. I want you to think about one building block. Let the Holy Spirit guide you. And we're going to form one habit and work on that one habit in agreement and alignment underneath God. Is that okay? And so we've got an assessment and we have a little technical difficulty. So I don't know if I got it, but we'll get your email and we can get it sent out to you. So we're going to work on that. My wife just told me it is up there. So it looks like that. And essentially where this came out of was our own journey. When it came out, money is not just money. Money is spiritual. It brings up spiritual things. We were making well over six figures and we're in poverty and had no idea. We were on food stamps sooner. And out of poverty, making six figures. I don't understand why I need to budget my gas. We're not in debt making six figures. And so we're doing a budget and I'm like, we can put, you can put whatever number you want there. I don't care. Cause I'm going to drive where I'm going to drive and I'm going to go. So I'll pray for me. Every, and we, we've been teaching this stuff since high school, college. Like we love it. I was a kid asking for stocks. At five. I was like, wait a minute. What the stock market is. What you mean? My money can make little money babies with interest and grow sign me up. But every single time we would sit down to do a budget world war three, baby, here we go. Crazy. And so one day we were sitting there like, all right, it's budget time. I'm sitting there stretching, getting ready. Cause I knew he's about the box. Like, cause I'm going to get my way. We're about the box. And we have the money. We have the money. I went to school. I got a whole bunch of degrees. I don't understand why I can't spend our money. Cause your money is my money and my money is my money. So if I want to get my nails done, if I want to get my hair done, if I want to get a massage every week, the money is there and we're not in debt, then why not pray for me? And you tell me to budget my game. It's not as strict as what y'all think. To come home. My wife loves to come home and it was her mommy time. After work, she pull in the driveway. She sit there in the car and it's to an hour in the car. Oh, don't brother. Don't have a problem. I'm going in the house, but my wife loved to let the car run. I might be cold. There's no heat. It's silent. That joke is just running. It's for an hour. I didn't see it. I don't see the, I still don't see it. The money is there. I went in the house, Google, Mr. Google, how much fuel for this type of vehicle is being consumed when this runs for an hour. And so your boy walk over there. As you say, the prosecutor came out, we get ready to do this budget thing. And I sit down and I say, I have a number that I want to show you. This is how much this cost us for you to let the car run just sitting in the driveway. And I would like to show you, this is what my, this is how much this cost us for you to let the car run just sitting in the driveway. And I would And so we sitting there, we going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I call it the tug of war because we were sitting there. I'm wanting her to see my way. And she want me to see hers. The money is there. I still don't understand. And we're going back and forth. And then finally, one day something hits it. And I was like, hold on, hold on, hold on. We're fighting for you to try to get me to see your way. And I'm fighting you in the way I'm built. I'll wait till you get me. Years. But I ain't going to move. Sit right here. And we'll. I'll wait you out. I will. And I don't care. You'll see it one day. You'll come back. And so we sitting there doing that. And one day, finally, we sit there and we say, shouldn't we be figuring out what the Lord wants us to do? I'm sitting here fighting for you. And I drew a diagram, those simple lines. And I'm like, I'm over here. And you're over here. And I'm trying to pull. You to my side. And you trying to pull me to yours. Because it's a merger. We got married. Where is the Holy Spirit on this graph? And should we both find it and get where he is? That's what we want to do. And so out of that arguments and the tug of wars that was going back and forth, back and forth over numbers and something I heard Dennis Peacock say and BLS is that you can be technically right and relationally wrong. And that changed. I can be technically right, but relationally wrong. That changed my whole life. Because see, I'm like, no no no. I'm gonna wait you 10 years because this is right. And I'm stonewalling my wife. Then the scriptures say that if you have a heart against your brother, you're supposed to leave it, go and then come back. How important is the agreements that we have made relationally before the Lord that we're supposed to be stewarding? More than my money. And so a lot of times when we're dealing with couples, we're saying, hey, instead of playing tug of war over who's right, controlling, owning or possessing this thing, mark on this where we are not to shame each other, but because there are some things I'm like way over here on, but Carla's way over there. And it was like, oh, you need to lead on that. I don't need to lead this. You lead this. You lead this. You lead this. You lead this. that area because you way better at that than i am my wife if you give her a bottle of water and she has one she'll keep it for a week until she know because she hates to run out and it finally hit me one day i was like oh snap jeremy why are you over the food budget like babe will you take the food budget yeah cool because i'm i ain't worried no more i know we ain't gonna run out because she she gonna pinch that penny like what no no no so this is designed not to shame but to figure out where the strengths are and the key is if we're both way over here and there's a gap that's where you may want to introduce somebody to help you feel that gap does that make sense so i don't care how long you've been doing it and how technical we still do it because sometimes we may shift but it's to be able to figure out where exactly and i'm not trying to fix everything i want one thing a brother is simple i'm gonna take this one thing and lord will you help me somewhere along the way in this and out of these building blocks we'll be able to rock out through next week because this is a foundational piece in all of finance and it's something that never goes away just like blocking and tackling the football whether you in peewee or you're in nfl fail they both practice the same thing on the first day because the foundational pieces matter and i don't care people say budgeting do you use this app do you use that i don't care what you use as long as it's zero base we didn't use all of them the envelope system worked well for me it did not work well for us so when that happened like well let's change all i care about is a zero base budget zero base budget means every single dollar penny has an assignment before you get it it has an assignment before it hits your hand they've done a study they say people make better decisions when you make the decision before you get there in the moment you make a really wise decision then but if you do it in the moment you usually don't make the decision before you get wise of a decision so before that money comes in we need to make a plan so when that money come in it already has an assignment you need to execute now we ain't thinking we not we've already discussed unless the lower is the only one that's going to break this party up so being on the same page being in agreement being in alignment in those things are what matters yes in the stewardship assessment what if let's just go to uh any of the sections i guess what if one of the spouses thinks they are very strong in an area but the other spouse doesn't agree that they're strong in that area like what if you have beautiful opportunity to face reality with loving kindness have i drawn the we have go ahead we um what yeah yeah you know your household whether you need to mark a line and then the next person like a voting booth come in and mark their line but it should be on the same line you're going to see it anyway the key is seeing and i purposely did not put numbers on there because people don't like to grade themselves weird and some people grade harder so it's not about the number the most beautiful thing that comes out of it is asking questions about why are the markets placed will you go to the five building blocks one it's bigger on that sorry go ahead that part so this is the one that's going to be the most beautiful thing is what the assessment is broken down the other one is so so as far as yeah so when it comes to the gold is the conversation trying to get down the gold in it is trying so i don't ask a why question because you get defensive and you the other person digs in so i'll ask every other question except why what led you to write that down when did that show up somewhere in the past ask any kind of those questions that you want it's about the conversation not about the mark and you'll find gold in there and the person will just start talking and they'll share their heart and be like man i don't even realize that was in me the conversation is what matters the most so yes yeah absolutely sorry um so i remember and y'all remember i was a liar and so if there's a liar in the relationship and we and truth is number one see i see what you did there i see what you did there if i'm at a place where i'm not willing to be honest about this with my spouse do i need it immediately need to seek some counsel i would say yeah you need a support system i do certain things in the office and then there's certain levels where it's like we need professional like for real that's good to be able because remember you can be technically right but it's all about the relationship the relationship matters more than what we doing with this money he who is faithful over the little will be set over much the people stewarding the greater thing which is people one of the things that we hope this brings out is an acquisition a lot of times people go into a marriage or even if you're not married even single um everyone wants to make each other comfortable and so you want to merge things that is a world system or we believe it is a world system if you're a liar then hopefully once we stop trying to merge and we let holy spirit acquire each one of us and make us one as the bride of christ then those lies will come true out or what any of those things will come out because we're being fully acquired by the holy spirit instead of trying to merge us and we find his identity instead of our identity i'll say this part on that when you talk about merging it came out one day i was like you know the people that are bound by shame is everybody in the middle the people who come to me and ask for help are the wealthy people or the poor people neither one of them have shame it's all the rest of us in the middle where we don't want to seek help and as we heard earlier the last few classes that this is supposed to be our help mate the protectors and if i don't if i'm hiding from the one that was designed to help protect me i am greatly harming us and so this is about returning back to be able to stand naked and unashamed the relationship because the shame is what prevents and it's a blocker which actually one of the points in here i remember where it was like you know what i keep going to god asking god to forgive me but i went to carl and i say i need you to help me because i realize i'm getting forgiven but i'm not getting healed and i want to be healed i want my finances healed i want us healed i want to be healed i don't just want to be forgiven does that make sense and so uh being able to be hit that point where it's like i went to the ent doctor today and i've had this chronic cough for seven years and the lady brought the scope that they stick down anyway and she was like i'm sorry i said hey i want you to understand some there's a certain amount of pain and frustration where you will be immediately compliant you could have brought that joke it had been 30 foot long though as tired as i am of this cough i'm ready sometimes we just once we get tired enough we'll stand you know what humble ourselves when that first remember instead of me trying to roll and fix it that was my issue i try to fix it so she don't have to know about it i try to fix it so she don't feel the way i try to fix it that's me rolling before i stop and so working together is stopping and being in humility saying i don't know like i straight up don't know but he does i trust him that's the only answer i got right now in this situation i trust him and so us walking this thing out so what we're talking about is the foundation of stewardship not necessarily just how to get your money right because that's the 599 99 plan you got their strategy for days google it like it's out there but i was like lord there's two questions why do people get out of there get back in get out of there get back in get out of there get back in i want to know that and then why doesn't money transfer well i wanted to know that and so while i was studying that's been my life passion and mission trying to understand those two things and so that's what we're going to jump into but it starts with doing these things so now we talked a lot about stewardship before getting to the definition of stewardship um but we want to talk a little bit about the definition of stewardship and i wanted to lay a lot of foundation because really it like putting on glasses looking through a completely different lens through every single situation and i know we catch ourselves all the time to the point where now our kids will use our own words on us and be like but is that being a good steward of that reese do you so sunday my uncle it pulled in the driveway and my son's like daddy will you get that card from is that a good choice with our resources he's seven he's questioning me he said with our resources is that a good choice is that a good a good thing with our resources how much does that cost my seven-year-old's doing this but there's one of these things um outside of the uh the one of the last things we get confused in that triangle is um understanding delegation as i said before you can't delegate your responsibility but if you came into my office i would ask you a question typically hey i want to understand what you're delegating to me do you want to delegate the task to me do you want to delegate the project to me or do you want to delegate the problem to me please help me understand because when it comes to delegation like i can the task i can help you come up with a financial plan give that to you you walk out the office and go do that yourself not a problem however you want to work the project you want me to do that then you want me to research some companies for you great i can do that too or the problem says you know what man hey take care of all this for me and what i see is there are times where we're delegating to god saying god well i'm gonna delegate the task to you just give me the plan and the strategy and i got this thing or you know what god helped me figure out a few things and i got this thing but the other delegation when it comes to stewardship is an understanding that i can do nothing you get to the point where you i delegate and i say god i can do nothing these folks about to walk in this office and i have nothing for them of myself but i know inside of you there's the promotion there's the provision and there's the protection that is necessary for your stewards so lord will you please show me because i have a problem they're walking in in 30 seconds but i trust you you have to do the same thing in your stewardship journey be honest and assess am i delegating to god the task the project or the problem and the last thing that last slide is repentance because that is one of the foundational pieces of stewardship i see david the the ability to return quickly to to repent quickly come back to god and to repent quickly and to repent quickly quickly is key and throughout this process being gracious in the repentance process and stewarding each other throughout the process is key it all boils down to worship at the end of the day and what we are created for can you know the definition for a moment stewardship is the whole life worship practice of faithfully cultivating and protecting everything god has entrusted to us resources relationships and responsibilities for his glory and the good of others under christ's loving lordship so we're getting ready to close and as we said we've got the information okay for those two assessments for everybody um to have before you leave tonight and then like we said believe we're gonna have people available uh as far as we can get as far as with the if you need to talk to somebody don't walk out with trying to start the healing journey please um i'm gonna have you pray everybody over everybody here in just a second but i would like to ask the um elders and the family life ministry team to come up if you would we i mean how many of you know you do an altar call after a biblical stewardship for me right i was telling someone uh at the beginning of the evening that i've went through levels of repentance over missing it financially with my wife and uh it really came down to the pride that pushed independence and not seeking wise counsel and you know what the fear was is not looking like i knew what i was doing and i didn't but i will tell you um real time john and cheyenne lanae and i we have a business together at eight o'clock this morning we were in the middle of the night and i was in the middle of the night and i was in the middle of the night in his office seeking wise counsel over an investment that the lord has blessed us with so that we could find god's kingdom assignment in it and not make any assumptions so i want to encourage you um there are resources in the body and that's just not a plug for jeremy but seek wise counsel and um yield uh surrender um i think it was dennis peacock as well that said that biblical success is obedience it's that simple it's just being obedient and uh you know to be a disciple means to be a lifelong learner and so what we're talking about here is opening yourself up to be a lifelong learner and to be a vessel of the lord for his resources to be a funnel and just to be obedient so i'm going to encourage you with that i'm going to have jeremy um pray and then you're dismissed if you want to visit i would ask you please go outside and i'm going to have jeremy um pray and then if those that might want to come up and get prayer we certainly want to create a space for that so why don't you give them a quick hand tell them thank you for the preparation and i'm already looking forward to next week so really good father we thank you and we glorify you father you are true you are good and you are a rewarder of those who diligently seek you father may that be the pillar in the lens at which we look through to begin the walk in healing walk in righteousness and deliver the impact to this world the building of your kingdom the stewarding of your resources and to show the love the perfect love that casts out fear that restores that protects father we thank you for what you're doing and we ask right now lord to do a work we won't go digging for anything but we'll be obedient if the holy spirit shows us and we ask now father to put your finger on what you desire for us to begin to walk forward in and we'll trust you in it in jesus name we pray amen
