God's Power & Your Obedience

Good to see everybody this weekend. If you're new around here, my name is Whit. I am the pastor here and we're glad to be gathering and worshiping with you this weekend. If you happen to be joining us online, maybe you're traveling this weekend or maybe you're just homebound right now and you're not able to join us in person. Glad to have you as well. And then let me also welcome our churches in a women's prison that's Eddie Warrior and the guys over in Dick Connor. We have churches there and we like to welcome them each week so can we just kind of put our hands together and say hello, good morning, welcome. We are in week five as Pastor Chris said of our life lesson series. What we're looking at is biblical wisdom for life. This is simple stuff. You don't have to have a master's degree in theology. You don't have to have gone to Bible college. You don't even have to have had an above average IQ, right? You just have to be willing to put this stuff into practice. Simple stuff, not easy, but simple. But when you apply it, it makes a big difference. This is foundational stuff. Kind of what we might call common sense biblical wisdom that when you put it into practice, it makes a huge difference.

And for some of us, this is stuff that we've known or maybe you've taught for a long time. Other of us, this is like light bulb on kind of a whole new way of thinking for us. It's having a transformative impact. For some of us, it's just a great reminder of things that maybe we've known, but haven't been applying for some time. We've been talking about how the Lord leads us in steps. I talked about how the doing or putting these things into practice really makes a difference. And the last week, Pastor Lee, put forward this such a big truth that you really have to grasp and that is that God can bless me anywhere. And if you miss that, I would love for you to go back and listen to it because it is. It really kind of sets the stage for, again, everything that we're talking about in this series. And if I was to put a theme on all of this, as I've been just kind of thinking about, what's this series really about? It's really kind of thematically about the idea of agency. I don't know if you're familiar with that term and kind of the way that I'm using it. The Cambridge Dictionary defines agency in this way. The ability to take action or to choose what action to take, to put it in plain terms, taking responsibility for your life. If you're gonna follow God, you're gonna have to reject that kind of modern notion that you are a victim, that you are a passenger, a passive passenger

in your own life and your own circumstances. There's too strong a narrative, kind of a cultural current these days that basically tells you it's not your fault, that you are where you are because of them. They, billionaires, corporations, crooked politicians, whatever, no doubt, the world is a messed up place and people do wrong and evil things to each other, but you are not a victim if you're a believer. You have agency. Your life is not in someone else's control. You have the power to take responsibility for the things that you can control. And there's a whole stream of thinking in our world that basically wants to put our actions in somebody else's or something else's hands. I'm not responsible. I can't be held responsible for whatever it is that I've done. It's their fault. You see this playing out in the news lately and I'm not even gonna get into it because I think you probably can guess what I'm talking about, but it's not my fault. It's blame it on whatever system that you wanna blame it on. It's not me, it's them. In spite of whatever evidence to the contrary, there may be. This is a stream of thought, right? That tells you it's not you, it's everybody else.

But if you're gonna follow God, you can't really take that mindset. You have to take responsibility for your own life and your own actions. You'll never really get anywhere with the Lord unless you learn to start exercising some agency. And what we're gonna talk about this week really is in this theme and in this vein. So if you have a Bible, I want you to open it. We're gonna be looking at Exodus, chapters three and four. Now, while many of you are opening your Bibles there, let me kind of set the stage. If you're familiar with the story of Exodus, you remember God's people have been enslaved in Egypt. For 400 years. But the Lord has heard their cry and he is going to send them a deliverer, specifically Moses. Now, Moses was the child of Hebrew slaves, but interestingly, he was raised in the home and in the house, the palace of Pharaoh himself. When Moses comes of age, reaches adulthood, he goes out one day to see about his people, the Hebrews. And he witnesses an Egyptian overlord beating mercilessly in Israelite. He realizes what he's done, what kind of problems this could create for him. This is an act of treason. So he buries the Egyptian in the sand, hoping that no one will notice.

Of course, the secret doesn't stay secret. So Moses flees Egypt. He winds up in a place called Midian, where he will spend 40 years as a shepherd in the wilderness. After 40 years of being in the wilderness, he is at Mount Horrib, later known as Mount Sinai. He's tending a flock of sheep. When he sees a bush that's burning, but not consumed, he is curiosity is peaked. He turns aside, what's going on over here? And the messenger of the Lord or the Lord himself begins to speak to Moses from the burning bush. Giving Moses this call, this assignment, and if you have your Bible open to Exodus three, we're gonna begin reading in verse 10. The Lord speaks to Moses saying this, "Come, I will send you to Pharaoh "that you may bring my people the children of Israel "out of Egypt." Now we just kind of read over this because we're mostly familiar with this story. We kind of miss the significance of what the Lord is actually saying to Moses. This is staggering. I will send you to Pharaoh, only the most powerful ruler of the most powerful nation on the planet. You're gonna go and bring my people the children of Israel out of Egypt. Put an impossible task.

Who could do something like this? He's just one man. And you see this sort of idea or feeling reflected in Moses' response. Look at what he says in the next verse. "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh "and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" But the Lord said, "I will be with you, "and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. "When you have brought the people out of Egypt, "you shall serve God on this mountain." Mount Sinai, of course, that happened. The Lord goes on to continue to speak to Moses, and Moses continues to feel more and more questions, objections about how all of this is going to happen. And in verse one of chapter four, Moses answers the Lord, and he says, "But behold, "they, speaking of Israel, the Hebrews, "they will not believe." Or listen to my voice. Well, they will say, "The Lord did not appear to you." In other words, how are they gonna believe that you've sent me? What will be the proof? I can't do this. And the Lord says to Moses, what is that in your hand? When you're trying to move forward with the Lord, when the assignment that he's given you or perhaps even just the call, the leading,

that the Lord has put into your heart. Many of you, you know exactly what this feels like. God's put something in front of you, but you have no idea how it's gonna happen. When you're trying to figure out how to move forward with the Lord, here's what you do first. Number one, you start with what you have. Notice the question that the Lord asks Moses, what is that in your hand? Life has a way, does it not overwhelming us? The challenging situations of life are certainly this way. How do I move forward? What are we gonna do? Life throws any number of challenges at you that seem bigger than what you can handle. But also even just the positive stuff of life often feels overwhelming. If you've planned a wedding, you know what I'm talking about. If you've moved from one house to another, you know how overwhelming even those basic actions and activities can feel. They're overwhelming, how do I move forward? What's my future gonna be? What school am I gonna go to? What will I major in? In all of these issues, there's questions that are connected to one another. It feels like to make one decision, tips over dominoes on another decision

and it can feel kind of paralyzing. How do I move forward? What should I do? When you're trying to figure out how to move forward with the Lord, start with what you have. This is how the Lord works. He invites you to use or to trust Him with what you have. Even though it feels overwhelming, even though the situation feels like it's more than what you know what to do with, you start with what you have. You can see this in what Moses or how Moses responds. Look again at verse 11 of Exodus 3, who am I? This is well beyond me and rightly so. It's an understandable question. This task is too great for Moses. The assignment too big. How am I going to be able to do this? How is whatever it is that you're asking me to do possible? And if you follow the Lord, you will find yourself. You'll find yourself in this exact same position. You won't be asked to do something this big. What Moses is asked to do is bigger than probably anything that any of us will be asked to do, but all the same, we face things that are bigger than what we feel prepared to handle. How do you move forward? Well, the question that the Lord asks Moses applies to us. What is that that you have?

What is that in your hand? And what we have here is the beginnings of a biblical pattern. We're gonna see all throughout scripture that this is how God likes to work. Too often Christians think that when God's gonna do something big, he's going to give you something new. So what we do is we go looking for the answer to whatever challenge that we're facing, we think the answer will come out there. Lord, just lay it on me. Whenever you're ready, just give me the answer. Give me, change my circumstance. Change my marriage, open up a new opportunity for me. But so often, in fact, almost always, what the Lord does is rather than starting out there, he asks you to begin with what you have right here. What's in your hand? Let me show you this from a lot of different places in scripture, the same pattern plays out everywhere. Do you remember David and Goliath? How does David kill Goliath, or maybe more specifically, what does David use to kill Goliath? Does God give him some new technology? Does David call in a drone strike on Goliath? Goliath has no idea what's even hit him. No? David doesn't even use the armor that's made available to him through King Saul. It feels unfamiliar.

He doesn't know what to do with it. What does he bring into battle? He brings into battle the familiar weapons or tools that he was used to, the shepherd's staff and the sling. Look at Exodus, or excuse me, first Samuel 1740. Then he took his staff, what staff, his shepherd staff, in his hand. I want you to notice as we read through all of these stories together, you're gonna see the emphasis on taking things in your hand, you see it here in just this verse, his sling was in his hand. The hand, biblically speaking, is a symbol of agency. What is agency again? It's taking control of something. It's choosing to take responsibility for that which has been entrusted to you. So what does David bring against Goliath? He brings the tools of his trade. He brings what he knew. He brings his staff and his sling. He puts them in his hand and God does an extraordinary thing through ordinary means. This is how the Lord works. This is the pattern. What is that in your hand? Same thing happens with Gideon. Do you remember the story of Gideon? Gideon's no special guy, he's an ordinary guy, but he's treading wheat in a wine press. You don't tread wheat in a wine press.

You do that on top of a hill where the wind can blow the chaff or separate the wheat from the chaff. But he's down in a wine press because he's scared of the Midianites and the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and says, "Gideon, you mighty man of valor. Gideon felt like anything but a mighty man of valor." And then the angel begins to give him his assignment, his task. You're going to go to war against these Midianites. The Midianites were so numerous, there was, I mean, there was no army you were ever going to be able to assemble in Israel that could stand against the armies of Midian. But the Lord tasks Gideon with putting together an army begins with 30,000 men. That sounds like a lot. It's nothing in compared to what Midian had. And then the Lord whittles that down to 300 men. What did they go into battle with? Look at Judges, chapter seven, verse 20. Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars. And notice again the emphasis on their hands. They held in their left hands the torches. And in their right hands the trumpets to blow. What did they cry out a sword for the Lord and for Gideon? This is interesting. Let's just kind of make a couple observations. They had trumpets and torches, no swords. The sword was in the Lord's hands. What they had was what they had, torches and trumpets.

They took what they had though in their hand and God worked an extraordinary miracle through ordinary means. This is the pattern of how God works. He transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary but only when you take what ordinary thing you have into your hand and trust the Lord with it. What's that in your hand? What do you have that you could put your hand to? Let me give you a couple more stories. Second Kings, chapter four. There's a widow, her husband was a prophet, he had died. And she finds herself in... And in those days when you incurred a debt that was too great, you couldn't pay it back, they could take your children, in this case her sons, into slavery. She goes to the prophet Elisha, cries out to him, they're coming, the creditors are coming to take my sons away from me, what will I do? And I want you to notice how Elisha responds. Then Elisha said to her, what shall I do for you? Tell me, and notice the similarity of this question to the question that the Lord asks Moses, what's that in your hand? What does he ask her? What do you have in the house? Look at how she responds. She responds how so many of us respond when the Lord begins to ask us this question. I have nothing.

Nothing in the house except a jar of oil, the very thing that the Lord would transform. Remember, when we want God to do something, we want him to bring it from out there. Give me something new out there, I have nothing. You give me something new. Transform my circumstance. Change my marriage, but often what the Lord wants you to do is focus on what you have. We wanna focus here this on what we don't have control of. God wants you to focus on what you do have control of. So often our prayers are, Lord, do something about the things I can't control and no doubt the Lord will intervene in the things that you can't control. But hear me, he's not gonna do much. If you're not doing something with the things, you can control. This is why Lord fix my husband isn't going to be much of a prayer that the Lord will answer. Lord, fix my wife. You know what he will do something with? Lord, work in me. Let it begin with me. That's how you respond to situations that are outside of your control. Instead of, Lord, change my circumstance. Ask the Lord, Lord, what do I have that you can begin to work in and through me?

What's that in your hand? When the Lord wants to, when you're trying to move forward with the Lord, start with what you already have. So look at what the prophet says to her. He says, well go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels, and not too few. Then go in and shut the door behind yourself and your sons and pour into all these vessels. And when one is full, set it aside. So she went from him and shut the door behind herself and her sons, and as she poured, they brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, bring me another vessel. And he said to her, there is not another. And then look, this is fascinating. Then the oil stopped flowing. How many of you know at this point she wished she had borrowed more vessels? Yeah. Had she known how contingent the Lord's provision would be on her action, perhaps she would have done more. What then did the Lord do? He used what she gave him to work with. This is how the Lord works. He will use what you give him to work with. So again, we circle back to the question,

what's that in your hand? Let me give you one more story. I could give you a lot more because this principle shows up all through the scripture. But let's look at one from the New Testament, John chapter two. Do you remember John two? It says Jesus first miracle. Where is it at? A wedding feast. They've run out of wine. And in those days to run out of wine at a multi-day wedding feast was a big deal. Kind of cultural faux pas. Jesus' mother Mary happened to be there and she goes to Jesus and says, hey, what are you going to do about this? Jesus is like, what do you mean, what am I going to do about this? My hour has not yet come. It's not time for me to kind of step into my ministry. Mary doing what only a mother can do goes and turns to the servants, ignoring Jesus and says, do whatever he tells you to do. I love this, she just mommed him right there. But isn't this a great piece of advice? Couldn't we kind of sum up like all of Christianity, all of Christian discipleship in this one verse? I think we could just kind of shut our Bibles and go home if we could just do this right here.

Just do whatever he tells you to do. That's Christianity 101. Do what he tells you to do. And what does he tell them to do? We're going to get that in the next couple of verses. Now there were six stone water jars there. That's what they had. It was already there. They didn't have to go find something new. They just used what they had. When you're trying to move forward with the Lord, start with what you already have. There were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rights of purification. "Fill the jars with water." Now there's nothing miraculous about this. There's nothing supernatural about this. There's nothing extraordinary about this action. You, I, anyone, we could do all of this. Let's go a step further. There's nothing miraculous about David Sling. There's nothing miraculous about Moses' staff. In fact, I've held the staff of Moses myself. It's true. I was in California a couple of years ago at Rick Warren's library. He has an incredible library, and I've been able to go there a couple of times. I was with a group of pastors, and he was touring us around. Pastor Rick loves kind of church history and Christian

history, and he has all these interesting Christian artifacts. And one of them he has is the staff of Moses. True story. It's the staff that Charlton Heston held in the Tin Commandments movie. I got to hold it, the staff of Moses. And I threw it down, and it didn't become a serpent. It's an ordinary staff. I assure you, there's nothing magical about it. Don't read into this magic. We often want to give these kind of-- these tools that God uses. We want to assign to the magical properties. There's nothing magical about these jars. The Lord is merely working through what they have. So what does He do? They fill the jars with water. They fill them to the brim, and then He says to them, now draw some out and take that to the master of the feast. You know the rest of the story. The water is turned into wine. Again, what is the Lord doing? He's working with what they already have. Now, why does God do this? Why do we see this pattern so much? Well, there's a principle here underneath all of this that is so important, so huge. If you don't get this, you will not really understand how you're to follow the Lord, and what the Lord is even trying to do with you.

Here's the idea. Write this down. God is committed to partnering with us. This is staggering to think about. That God, the all-sufficient God, all-powerful God, the God that has no need of anything. God doesn't need you. Do you know that God didn't create mankind because He was lonely? God didn't create us either as pets. Do you know how He created us? As partners. It's a staggering thing to think about. This shows up on the very first page of Scripture. God's commitment to partnering with mankind. Genesis 1, starting in verse 26, then God said, "Let us make man in our image "after our likeness and let them have," here's the key word, dominion. He is divesting mankind with authority. Now, where does authority come from? Let's ask maybe a broader question. Who holds all power, dominion, and authority? Sometimes we sing about this in church. Who holds that? Who does that belong to? Church, not a trick question. Who does it belong to? God. So if you and I have any dominion at all,

where has it come from? God, if He has it all, then if we have some, where did that some come from? God, this means that God is willfully, sovereignly, strategically chosen to partner with us. And what that means is that He has tied Himself to us. If you've ever led anything, led a group of people, you know that when you delegate authority to someone else, you are tying yourself to them. Are you not? In some sense, you're hitching your wagon to theirs, right? You're saying, what I've got now is going to partly belong to you. And what you do with it is going to have an effect on me. Now, we don't often think about God this way. We often talk about the sovereignty of God. That just means that God is in control of all things. And in a sense, that's exactly true. But there's an aspect of this that we miss. That God has sovereignly chosen to partner with man for better or for worse. He's chosen to divest some of His authority to give it to us. We see this in the very next chapter, Genesis 2. Look what happens. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see. What will He call them? Now, this is delegation.

Have you ever worked for a boss that struggled to delegate? That maybe he would tell you he was going to give you an assignment that then he would kind of come around behind you and sort of do it the way he wanted it done all along. And really, it felt like he never really had any power or authority or responsibility to begin with. It's not fun to work with someone like that, someone who's a control freak, someone who can't let things go. There's no real partnership there. You're merely sort of being used. Maybe you can endure that for a while, but it's not the best kind of work environment. The Lord here wants to see how. but look at the next part. And whatever the man called every living creature, check this out, that was its name. In other words, the Lord is willing to live with the choice that he has entrusted to us. And we see this in the very next chapter. God has given us free will to the degree that we can use it against him. This is staggering to think about, but such is the commitment of God to partnering with man. That he's going to honor the dominion and the free will and the authority that he's given to you. This is God's level of partnership. He wants a partnership with us. And those sin is entered into the world. Nothing on this front is changed. God is still committed to partnering with us.

This is why the Lord will not do for you what he expects you to do for yourself. Do you remember what James, the brother of Jesus, wrote? He said, "You have not, "because you, anybody know the rest of that verse? "Because you ask not. "As if to say there are some things God would do for you, "but you're not asking for them." So he won't. This means that God's will then is somehow and sometimes, maybe more often than we realize, contingent upon our choice in action. Stop and think about this for a minute. We can maybe ask the question like this. If the widow woman had never gathered the jars, the empty vessels, would God have worked a miracle? No. Did God desire to provide for her? Yes. But was he going to do it? Regardless of what she did? No. He was going to wait for her to act. Would the staff have been turned into a serpent? Had Moses not thrown it down? No. Did God desire to do it? Yes. But it was going to require Moses' participation. Friends, this means something that perhaps you've not thought.

Are there things that God desires to work in your life but he's just waiting on you to act? God sees like a good parent. This is what good parents do. Good parents don't do everything for their children. Can I tell you, moms and dads, particularly of young children, one of the best things you can do for your children is to let them struggle and to let them fail. It's one of the hardest things that you'll ever go through as a human being, watching your kids struggle and fail. But you do not dare bail them out. If you do, what you're doing is you're removing from them the consequences of their actions and therefore they cannot mature. You have to let them struggle. And it's gut wrenching and heart wrenching is apparent but you have to let them live according to the choices that they've made. So too, God does this with you. Why does he do it? 'Cause he's a good parent. He's a good father. He's not going to step in and do for you what he has given you dominion and authority and power and agency to do for yourself. So I ask you again, what is that God's put in your hand? What has he given you? What has he entrusted you with? I love this quote from St. Augustine.

It perfectly summarizes in such a short statement exactly what I'm getting at. He puts it like this, without God we cannot. Without us, God will not. Wow, is that really true? Yes, it's true. Some things are contingent upon our action. Does this mean that if mankind chooses to go against the grain of God's will that God's will will not ultimately be done? No, in the end God will do what God's going to do but you get to decide how much you're going to participate with that sovereign will throughout your life and your choice. You get a choice in the matter. How you're going to flow with the Lord. I came across this quote from Harry Emerson Fostik. Probably a year or so ago on my kind of Devo book that I use and this just struck me. It sat with me for more than a year. I've just kind of been sort of taking this in because it was hard for me to even accept it first but this is true. Look at what he writes. He writes this, "Mister Eckhart, the mystic, puts the truth with extreme boldness." Look at this statement. God can do as little without us as we without him. What? That can't be true.

If at first this seems a wild statement we may well consider in how many ways God's will depends on man's cooperation. He goes on to illustrate it. God himself cannot do some things unless men think. God never blazens his truth on the sky that men may find it without seeking. It's only when men gird the loins of their minds and undiscurgibly give themselves to intellectual toil will God reveal to them the truth even about the physical world. And God himself cannot do some things unless men work. wants the lightning tarnished and cathedrals built. He will do the work himself. That's an absurd and idle fatalism. God stores the hills with marble, but he never built a Parthenon. He fills the mountains with ore, but he never made a needle or a locomotive. Only when men work can some things be done. Here's the principle. If you're constantly waiting for God to do it for you, I think God's looking at you going, what are you gonna do with what I've already given you? Give me something to partner with. So the posture of a Christian should not be, Lord, lay it on me. I'm ready whenever you're willing to do it for me. And too often this is how we pray. We pray about things that are completely outside

of our control. As I said before, Lord, fix my husband. Lord, fix my kids. Lord, fix this situation out there. And certainly again, the Lord is willing to act in some regard, on behalf of things that you can't control, but primarily where you ought to be focusing is on the things that you can. Lord, what have you given me that I can work on? What can I do to make this marriage better? So often what we wanna do is kind of put the problem outside of ourselves because conveniently it means we don't have to take responsibility. And we're good at that as human beings. We're good at blame shifting. We're good at kind of assigning the bulk of our problems to external circumstances. It's the economy. It's my boss. It's my job. It's a place that I work. It's crooked politicians, whatever, fill in the blank. We want it to be somebody else's fault. But if you're gonna learn to follow the Lord, you have to recognize that he's waiting for you to give him and trust him with what you have. Now this leads me to kind of the next logical conclusion. And that's this, the Lord can't bless what you won't give. The Lord can't bless what you won't give. And this is the problem right here

for so many of God's people is that we refuse to give the Lord what we have. Or maybe better said we talk ourselves out of giving the Lord and entrusting him with what we have. How do we do that? A couple of ways I want us to focus on. Number one is this, we believe that what we have isn't enough and won't make any difference. So what do we do? We minimize the resources that the Lord isn't trusted with us. We do this all the time. I've done this, I'm sure you've done this too. We look at other people and we think their situation, their gifts, the resources, the relationships, the connections, what they can do. Oh, it's so amazing, so incredible. And we discount what God's given us. Often we feel like that when God was passing out gifts, resources, responsibilities, he's skipped over us. Everybody else has got some amazing gift. I've got nothing, I've got no testimony. I didn't come for money. I don't have those kind of connections. I can't talk like they can, whatever. It's like we're always focused on what we can't do rather than showing up before the Lord with a willing heart focused on what we can do. And so we put the problem out there. It's what I don't have, but that's not how the Lord works. Remember what we said, start with what you have.

I want you to see how seriously the Lord takes this because you will be held accountable for what the Lord has given you. Your gifts intellectually, physically, spiritually from a resource perspective, the Lord will hold you accountable. What's that statement? To whom much has been given, much will be required. You see this in the parable of the talents. Do you remember this parable? There's a master who's going away on a long trip. And he invests or he divests his resources to his servants, to one he gives five talents. This is not speaking about like talents. Like we think of that word, it's talking about money. He gives one five, another two, and the third one. And he's expecting them to do something with what he's given them. And when he returns, he finds that the one who has five has turned that five into five more giving back to the master 10. The master says to the servant, well done. To the one who had two, he's turned that two into four, well done. Good and faithful servant. To the one who had one though, he said, I knew you were a hard man. And quite frankly, the risk was just too great. I went and just, I buried it. I just, I didn't want to risk it. I never put it out there. I never tried anything with it. I just buried what you gave me. And the master is furious with the servant. He said at the very least, you should have entrusted it to the banks

where you could have gotten some interest, at least, off of what I gave you. And I want you to notice how the Lord, how seriously the Lord takes this. Matthew 25, 29, and 30. "more will be given, and he will have an abundance." He's speaking here of those who do something with what they've been given. The one who puts their hand to the thing that the Lord has given them, the Lord will give them more. He who is faithful with little things will be faithful with much. The Lord will entrust him with more. This is a biblical spiritual principle. What will you do with what the Lord's given you? But from the one who is not even what he does have will be taken away. And then we often skip verse 30 as preachers do because quite frankly it's scary and kind of ugly. Look at what the Lord says and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. It just tells us how seriously the Lord takes this. It expects you to do something, you discounting your gifts. Oh, it's amazing what they can do. Oh, I just wasn't entrusted with that much. Oh, they have more ability than me. That excuse will hold no water when you stand before the Lord. He's going to ask you, what did you do

with what I gave you? Your responsibility is not how much or how great the Lord has given you. Your responsibility is to do something with what you have. Whether it's five talents or one, it makes no difference. The idea is what will you do with what you've been entrusted with? Number two, the reason we do very little with what we've been given is that we mistakenly believe that we'll begin to trust the Lord when we have more. Now this shows up a lot. I've seen this with some of my kids. I've got three adult kids, my son Elliot, particularly kind of falls into this category. And Elliot, if you're listening this weekend, please hear me. (congregation laughing) This is his thinking, I'll try harder when it really matters. In other words, this right here is not all that important, not worth me giving that much effort to. But when it matters, then I'll flip the switch and turn it on. And the biblical principle is, no you won't. I'll take care of my car if I had a nicer car. No you wouldn't. Take care of what you have now. Then the Lord might be able to trust you with more.

Too often what we think is I'll do better when the Lord gives me, well I would give if I had more. No you wouldn't. Because generosity, you hear me. Even if you are the kind of person that says I would give more if I had more money to give, you totally misunderstand what giving is in the first place. Giving is not giving back to the Lord what you don't need anyway. Giving is trusting the Lord with everything you have, no matter the cost. That's the idea. That's what it means when we give. And this is why I'm constantly kind of instructing our pastors, stop talking about generosity when we talk about offering. You're not being generous when you give to the Lord. Thank you for your generosity. You're not being generous. You're simply giving back to God what he gave you. How is that generosity? If I give you a thousand dollars and then you give me a hundred back, are you being somehow generous to me? It all belongs to him. When you give back to the Lord, do you know what you're doing? You're saying everything belongs to you. I just trust you with what you've entrusted me with. You know what you're doing?

You're taking into your hand what the Lord has given you and you're entrusting him with it. You're partnering with the Lord. And here's what you're believing. You can do more with the little that I'm giving back to you than what I can do with all of this on my own. That's what giving is. That's what tithing is. It's all a principle of honoring the Lord is trusting him with what he's already trusted you with. It's not generosity. You're learning to trust the Lord. But what you're doing is you're saying, now if I had more, I give more, no, you won't. Because that's not how this works. What you do with small things is the best indication of what you will do with big things. So don't tell me you'll turn the switch on whenever it matters, know what you're doing here. And now is the best indicator of what you will do if the Lord was going to give you more. So what does that mean? It means wherever you are, do everything as unto the Lord. Yeah, this flies right in the face of kind of our cultural sort of narrative. I love this verse from Ecclesiastes chapter nine verse 10. Look at this. Whatever your hand finds to do, this is so cool.

Look at this, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength, another translation, do it with all your heart. This is so opposite, isn't it? Stop and think about it to what our culture tells you. If you're young in here, the message that you've grown up hearing is find something that you can give your heart to. Find your passion. You ever heard somebody say this? If you find your passion and you give everything to it, you'll never work another day in your life. Can I tell you? That is baloney. (congregation laughing) I'm telling you that's not how life works. What it's causing a whole generation of young people to do is to hesitate to wait. Notice what the scripture says. What your hand finds, not what your heart finds. We're waiting on our heart to find something that we love. Can I tell you, when you're 23, your heart is stupid. You have no idea what you really want. Stop waiting around to find the perfect situation. And so many young people are like, I don't want to screw it up. And so they're waiting and they're anxious and they're dealing with choice fatigue because they mistakenly believe that if they don't take just the right step, that somehow that won't lead them to the perfect outcome. Leave that to the Lord. Your job is to do what you can with what he's put in your hand.

Has he given you a job opportunity? Yes, but I don't like my boss. I don't like the work environment. So what, whatever your hand finds, not your heart finds, what your hand finds to do, you do it with all your heart. My, all that flies in the face of the whole kind of quiet quitting thing. Or basically we show up and we give a halfway effort. This is probably your coworkers. And it's the kind of current cultural climate. Well, if you'd give me something worth working for, I would work. You do have something worth working for. You're working as unto the Lord. So what do you do? You give your best wherever you are. You have it, I don't love the situation. That's irrelevant. What your hand finds to do. Do it with all your strength. And what you're doing is you're trusting your future to the Lord. Believing that even if your boss never sees you, even if you never get the promotion, even if you, serving and loving your husband, doesn't cause his heart to soften right away. You stop preaching to him and you just start loving and serving. Or vice versa the other way around. And you trust the outcome to the Lord. You do it with all your heart. What your hand finds to do. Too often we're focused on what I can't do anything with. You can't change your husband. You can't change your wife. You can't change your boss.

You can't change the company culture. What you can do is do what the Lord has given and put into your hand. Trust him and give your best. Do you see how kind of counter-cultural this is though? This is not how we think about things. The way we think about things is I'll really try when I have something worth trying, giving myself to. But the answer is if you're a Christian, you have every reason to give your very best. Because he gave his best for you. I'm going to close right here with a story that comes from the book I've kind of been promoting throughout this whole series. This is Gary and Cindy. I see Cindy right down here. The story of how they came to Tulsa. To go to Bible school. Trying to figure out how they're going to make ends meet. What had the Lord put in their hand? You read Gary's story, you'll find that what the Lord had given him was a horse trailer. And what he saw was that there was an opportunity to just begin helping people move. The Bible school they were at, there were students who needed help moving in to dorms. But this kind of opened up his imagination. Maybe I could do something with this. Maybe I could earn a little bit of money. It just started as a temporary thing. I didn't set out to start a moving business. But it was what the Lord put into his hands. Put flyers out, people began to call. They started using an old horse trailer. That's where they started. Nothing supernatural about that.

Nothing extraordinary, nothing miraculous. And yet the Lord did do a miracle. Because from those humble beginnings began a full-scale business. Detail, moving, and storage employed a lot of people, provided provision for them and their family. How did it happen? Just doing what you could with what the Lord had put in their hand. This is how walking with the Lord works. You read Gary's story and Cindy's story. It wasn't that they set out going, "I want to start a moving business." That's how we think of it. You've got to have the idea down in your heart. No, you just have to look around and go, "What does the Lord give in me? What can I use? How can I trust him?" I see Daniel sitting out here as well. Gary's memorial service. Daniel, you told the story of what four prostitutes in Africa. This was how they had to provide for their families. It's what they could do. It was the world that they'd grown up in. And somehow by chance, if I get this right, they had just overheard this teaching of Gary's. they just kind of overheard it. What's God put in your hand? And it just hit them. And one of them remembered that when she was a little girl, she used to make bracelets. Didn't cost much, but she could just make these little bracelets. She and her three other friends began making bracelets. You know what happened?

God lifted them out of that prostitution and poverty. And now they're able to provide homes and a living for their families. This is a biblical principle. What has the Lord put in your hands? It applies to finances, but it applies to every area of life. You can't control the things you can't control. What you can control is what God's put in your hands. And my hope and prayer for you this week is that you'll stop thinking about out there. What's going on there and them? And they stop even using those types of words and thinking of your life as sort of something that's happening to you. And begin asking, "Lord, what can I do in partnership with you?" And you will begin. Turning down the same road that so many church on the movers here have walked down, which is the adventure of a lifetime of walking hand in hand with the Lord and seeing Him do more than you ever thought possible. How does it happen? You start with what you have. Would you bow your heads, close your eyes. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Because your word is life. We'd be floundering around in the dark

if it wasn't for you. And yet you have chosen not to hide yourself from us, but to reveal yourself through your word, but above all through Christ. We took on flesh and blood to become one of us, to show us what it looks like, to actually live and operate in complete and total trust, dependency and partnership with you. Thank you for this vision, for this picture of your ways, your ways bring life and light. And I pray, Lord, that this principle, this idea, this question, that you ask Moses, but Lord, it's a question that I think you would ask all of us. What's that in your hand? Did you able to take this? Not just to hear it as a one time. Nice sermon, but rather to let this be a guiding principle for our lives, to live and partnership with you. Thank you for illuminating our understanding, for bringing revelation, knowledge to us, and I'll help us to act on it, because after all it is the doing that makes the difference. Give us the strength, the courage, the boldness to act. In Jesus' name and everybody said, amen. As we close today, our prayer team is gonna be down front. If you have a prayer need,

we would love to be able to pray with you and minister to you. And in the bookstore is the book that I mentioned step by step, that's Gary's book. Also, my dad, if you're looking for more on this, this whole what's in your hand thing, I stole all of this from my dad. That's where I got it from. He wrote a book called The Windows of Heaven, it's in our bookstore. If you're like, I need more of this, grab it, it's out there. That's a resource, they're available for you. Stand to your feet, we're gonna close with this blessing out of Numbers chapter six. And we like to say this out loud together as we end our services. So would you join me, words are on the screen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. I love you. We'll see you next week, you're dismissed. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches

in Northeast Oklahoma, each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning and community and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in-person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You