Good morning. Super eager to share with you today. As he said, we’ve been regular attenders here for some time, and this is a topic close to my heart for several reasons. Let me start by sharing radical generosity. When I did the obligatory search on Google to find out about radical generosity, I was amazed how many articles and books and curriculums and My goodness, there’s a lot available.

Marketing wise, if we’re talking about radical generosity, I wonder how much have done a search like this before. So I get to launch into this talk about what it means to be radically generous. And I think some of you today may be a little bit surprised by where we’re headed. First, let me start by introducing my family.

That’s us, wife of 38 years and six grandbabies. Let’s hear it for grandbabies, those of us that have them. Is there anything better in life than those crazy grandbabies? And then you probably have seen a couple of these. That’s Jake in the bottom left, Kaylee in the center. That’s our wonderful daughter and our other daughter, Whitney, and her husband, Jeff.

So we’ve been blessed with two daughters, two amazing son in laws. And among all the other things they’ve done, we really appreciate those six grandbabies, if I haven’t mentioned that. We’re going to talk about life and I have the privilege of talking about the beauty in giving. I’m going to fly.

Because I have so many good stories that to crunch into just two hours, I don’t know how I’m gonna get through it. It’s gonna be very challenging, but I’m gonna do my best. So let’s begin with Uncle Gordon. I wanna do a brief recap. Uncle Gordon, Pastor Alex talked about, and I loved his description of Uncle Gordon.

And a couple things came to my mind about Uncle Gordon. Three things in particular about this slide that I was really moved by. I’m wondering if you were as well. Number one, what a beautiful model and example of generosity. Thank God that Pastor Alex had someone that he could look up to that could set a standard and that he could think about even after he’s gone.

So that’s beautiful. Second thing, I’m wondering how many of you thought what I thought. I wonder if my nephews will remember me that way. Will they say Uncle Dave was the most generous man? Will my children say my father was the most generous man I knew? Will my grandchildren say Pops? That was the generous man.

The third thing that I was struck by, I’m wondering if you were struck by this as well, is this is the first time in two years at South I’ve seen evidence that Pastor Alex at one time had a proper haircut. I’m just wondering if you guys thought these things, these are the things that were going through my mind, alright?

So there it is, and you look good right there too, just so you know. Let’s talk about what a generous life really is. And what it means to live generously and what it is that Christ did. And we’re setting this standard. And I’m going to, again, I’m flying through scripture here, but goodness gracious, when we talk about what the Lord gave to us, the ultimate, he so loved us, he gave his son.

None of us want to give our son. But when we think about a radical gift, there’s probably people in the room that have lost a child. Goodness gracious. How do we ever measure to that? And then we talk about, close to that, the opportunity for us to potentially give up our own life because of love for another.

He sets this standard in his word. In 1513, there’s no greater love, he says, than to lay down your life for one of your friends. And then, again, in recapping, we talked about the poor widow who drops in her two last copper coins into the offertory. That’s all she had. And Christ says what? He says, to tell you the truth, she gave more than all the others.

If you’re worried about how much you give, you can stop worrying based on this scripture right here. Because she drops in two copper coins. And imagine Christ seeing that, saying they gave out of their wealth, she gave out of all she had to live on. And you hear these two coins hit the bottom clang. And what went on in her heart and her mind?

Thank you, Lord. that you have bestowed and entrusted upon me these two little coins that allow me to be part of this body. And she’s genuinely grateful for that. For those of us that suffer from the sin of security mindedness, this is radical generosity going on here, not because of the amount of the gift, but because of the faith and the love that she has in her heart.

Amazing. So the last scripture example on this beginning part is Two more. Mark, love the Lord God with all your heart, your soul and your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Is that enough to drive us towards generosity? Love. Is that attractive enough? Does that move us to action the love for others?

Do we have to see someone in need before we take a step to that? And will that move you towards greater generosity? And then, love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, your strength. Again, loving your neighbor as yourself. So I want to tell you, I went through every missionary on the website, learning about all of our missions, all of our things that we give to, and I was struck by how many times in the videos on our website, missionaries came up to speak and said, thank you to this body.

We haven’t been part of this body that long, and this is a generous church. I heard it over and over again. So I want to make sure that all of you know that we’re appreciative of that. I wanted to tell you. Thank you. Thank you for what you’ve done. Thank you for being generous. I heard it over and over again.

So this talk is, usually when I speak, I’m somewhere between inspirational, encouraging, and too bold. This is my style. So I’m shooting for challenging. That’s gonna be my goal. But I figured I’d start by just telling you thank you. Treat this almost like if the shoe fits, wear it talk. There’s probably not a scripture I’m gonna share you haven’t heard before.

There might be a couple stories. But my hope is just to have all of us move one step closer in our relationship with Christ. One step closer in our faith and our trust of him. So I want to explain this chart came from Mission Increase Foundation, and this chart speaks to understanding what hampers us in our spiritual growth.

This line, the left side of the line, represents the day we accept Jesus. That’s our first day. And then the arrow on the back represents the end of our lives as we journey towards Christ pursuing spiritual maturity. Pursuing this place where we’ve been ready transformed towards the image of Christ. I like to describe that arrow as this elusive place where the closest we get to it, the further from it, we realize we are, but we’re moving and we have to go through these stages based on what we get to go at our own pace.

But the stages we go to are based on what? How much we pray, how much we’re reading the Bible, how much we’re getting good training at church. How many Bible studies were in? Are we discipling anybody else? Is anybody discipling us? These are the spiritual disciplines that move us down that line. Are we giving?

Are we giving generously? Are we giving sacrificially? Are we giving radically? These are the ways we move down that line. And many of us are on a very slow pace. And others of us maybe a little bit faster. So this book, Revolution in Generosity is one of my favorite books. We call it the Green Book. And it’s a collection of essays.

And in this book, we learn more about what it means to be transformational. That subtractional stage is a normal stage. It means that when I begin, if there’s any new believers in the room, I wouldn’t ask you to raise your hand, but it’s normal for you to have a subtractional mindset about giving right now.

Because most of us are accumulating things, and we have debt. Debt meaning we spent more than we have. So it’s hard for us to give money away, because if we give money away, we know that’s less money than we have. That’s a subtractional mindset. So if I have this subtractional mindset, then I’m afraid to give that money away.

As I start to give money away, and I start to listen to the sermons, then I start to understand, I can afford to give a little. God’s providing, it’s okay. And as He begins to provide, guess what? I can give a little more. And I start to. Enjoy it. And that’s a transaction. I get something out of it. So transactional is where most Christians spend the bulk of our lives.

We give to get something back. A good feeling. I want to impress the pastor. I want to be a good husband and be a good example for my wife. I want to set the pace for my kids. I want them to see this so I’ll get something back. I want my name on a building or in a program or on a brick. So most of us give transactionally our entire lives.

But that’s not what Christ was describing in the early stages. He was talking about transformational giving. Sacrificial giving. And that’s what we’re shooting for. So in this book, We learn about the sacrificial giving now, one of the authors of chapter two is one of my heroes. He’s the local Dr. Craig Blumberg.

Some of you may have heard of Craig and in this chapter two, he cites these things. Now, I thought the best way to do this is not to read this to you. Let’s take one full minute and take a second and just read this if you would.

Craig Blumberg is a very well respected New Testament theologian. He recently retired from Denver Seminary. I’m just curious, anybody read his things or knows who he is? Yeah, good. So you know what I’m talking about here. This guy knows his stuff. He’s amazing. So what’s he saying here? He’s saying that this is who we are as Christians.

Stewardship and biblical generosity. Dare I say radical generosity. It’s part of who you are. It’s essential in the journey of spiritual maturation. You can’t get around it. It’s linked together. He says stewardship then is this daily practice of the steward who places into God’s service, the entirety of our lives, his or her life, our lives.

It’s all of it. It’s not just financial resources. It’s our time. It’s our love. It’s our energy. It’s our belief. It’s everything we own. In first Chronicles 12 when David is blessing Solomon’s church, he says, everything in the heaven and earth is yours. Oh, Lord, he says, everything in the heaven and earth is yours.

Oh, Lord, is that our attitude or are things ours? We live in a culture today that says it’s yours. You earned it. You deserve it. You made it. It’s yours. You decide you deserve it. But that’s not what God says. David continues. Your hand controls power and might. It’s which at your discretion, Lord, who’s which midder made great and given strength.

Is that our attitude towards generosity? Is that how we think? Later in the chapter, he says when he’s talking about giving, and he sets this incredible example of giving the gold and the wood and the silver and the onyx and all these gifts that he gives towards this temple, and he challenges everybody to give sacrificially, and he says.

These amazing words. But who are we? And who is God’s people? Who can only give back to God what He has entrusted to us? Because everything comes from your hand, Lord. That is an understanding that most of us don’t carry with us. It’s counter cultural. It’s not what you’re going to hear from our culture.

And it’s the attitude we need to have. So I wanted to change the mission increase foundation graph of transformational into something even easier to understand. So is it possible that we could say this? Is it possible that I could push the button and say this? That if we really understand the spiritual maturity and how we’re growing in generosity, How we’re growing in our understanding of biblical stewardship.

We could accept the fact that all of sin and fall short of the glory of God and we probably begin very selfishly. This is mine.

And maybe we move towards unselfish as we get closer to God and we read his word. And we give something. And I wonder how many of us live there. And then hopefully we continue to grow in our trust and our faith and our love. And we put people around us that can benefit and we become generous and ultimately maybe even radically generous.

So how do we make this transition down this line and what prevents us from doing it? The truth is that we got to stop and understand our mission. Our mission statement. Many of you have owned a business before. You know how important a mission statement is. A mission statement it’s the compass, it’s the direction we gotta follow and everybody on the team should know the mission statement.

So what is our mission statement as Christians? What moves us down that line of spiritual maturity towards our mission statement? I wish we had time to go through the entire room and ask everyone individually. What is our mission statement? What is our cause? As Christians, what drives us every day? What magnetizes us towards radical generosity?

And the answer is very simple. The answer is not easy, but the answer is very simple. God gives it to us in commissioning statements. He tells us

in these five commissioning statements. He says, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you, part of our mission. In Mark 16, 15, go into the world and preach the gospel to all creation. That’s a mission of a Christian. It’s a mission. It’s a mandate. It’s our compass. In Luke, we’re told them that as it was written, the Messiah will suffer, rise from the dead on the third day and repentance of the forgiveness of sins Will be preached in his name to all nations beginning in Jerusalem.

This is our mission to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins now you might be thinking is that my mission and Therein lies the problem because it’s very hard to move down that line of spiritual maturity in Transformation into the image of Christ if we’re on our own mission That’s the challenge.

My mission before coming to Christ was to have a great family life, and I felt like to have a great family life, I had to have a lot of money. Do you know how hard it is to give money away when you’re focused on keeping your money? I was always in conflict. Because I didn’t want to give money away, I need that to hit my goal, to hit my mission.

And as you get closer to God, you start to understand that He’s the provider, and that the joy comes from sharing. Then everything changes. How are you doing on your mission? How are we doing when we look at what we’re, how we’re supposed to be spending our lives? He said to them, it’s not for you to know the times or the dates.

He said, I will be your witnesses at the end. You will be my witness in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the end of the earth. So what is your mission? To be God’s witness in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. What is your mission? What is your mission? Somehow we have got to make our lives count and work towards that goal of being the witness for Christ.

This is really hard. And then this last one, Matthew 28 28, 18 through 20. When God says go and make disciples of this scripture. Let’s One of the mistakes I’ve made being up here is I didn’t look at that clock to see how much time I have left. So I am flying through this, but I want to make just a, this point is so critical.

Imagine God dead, rising from the dead, being seen by the prophets and others. And as he’s ascending into heaven, he says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded.

Surely I’ll be with you always to the end of the age. I love the surely I’ll be with you always to the end of the age because we know we can’t do that alone. But can we do the other three? Can we try to go and make disciples? Can we walk with them until they understand what it means to be Christian and then baptize them?

Like we saw last week and the week before, right? We saw baptisms. And then here’s the thing that we mess up. Can we continue to talk about Jesus with other Christians, teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded? Can we do that as a community? Will we do that? The truth is most of us don’t know what our mission is.

George Varna, a research think tank, does all kinds of research, and they said, we need to reclaim the Great Commission in our church. There’s a great divide going on, a great disconnect, if you will. And in this study, they decided to ask 2, 000 Christians what the Great Commission is. It’s only the mission statement of Christianity.

Let’s see if we can even identify it. So they did the study, and guess what they found out? We can’t identify it. All U. S. Christians, they asked 2, 000, 12 percent could tell you what it was. 12%, 36 percent of practicing Christians, a third. Now, here’s the bad news. They didn’t say, will you tell me the Great Commission?

What they did is they handed them an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper with five Bible verses on it, of which one of them was Matthew 28, 18 through 20. And they said, can you identify the Great Commission? Now I’m thinking you should be thinking, Not good. Next step, they asked 500 Protestant like pastors, do you think that the Great Commission is the mission statement of Christianity?

Thankfully, 85, this is the middle graph, because of time, let’s go quick, 85 percent said yes. So at least 85 percent of our pastors in a pulpit believe that the Great Commission is the mission statement of Christianity. But you’ve gotta ask yourself a critical question here. If 85 percent of pastors.

believe that it’s a mission statement and they’re the ones training congregants, why is it that only a third of Christians can point to it when it’s handed to them? And rather than string up our pastors because we love them, let’s take some responsibility ourselves and ask ourselves, are we discipling each other and others sufficiently?

And the answer unequivocally to that is no. So how do we do that moving down the line of radical generosity? How do we do that moving down this line of spiritual maturity? How do we do it? We have to go to Jerusalem. We have to go to Judea. We have to go to Samaria. We have to go to the ends of the earth.

And we have to change the way we live off our own mission statement onto God’s mission statement. And all of us have to navigate that line ourselves with God as our witness. So where do we go to Jerusalem? And the answer is, right there. Our Jerusalem’s right there, on the other side of that wall. It’s our food bank.

What could happen at our food bank? How do we exercise radical generosity at our food bank? We can write monster checks for the food bank. You could write a 70, 000 check today to bring the budget of South Fellowship back up to where it should be at this point in time. That’s awesome. That would be radically generous.

You know what else you could do? You could show up Wednesday night and help stock some shelves. You could bring food Wednesday night and be generous. What else? We could come and stand in line with the people that are in line to the food bank and get to know them, talk to them. We could walk with some of them.

We could build a, I know some of you have done this. We could build a relationship with some of these people. This is Murdad. Murdad is in line, in our alley. And my wife calls me and says, I just met a couple guys I want you to meet. I go, you’re at the food bank. She goes, yeah, there’s a guy here I want you to meet.

I go, all right, we’ll set up a coffee. The next day we met up for coffee down here at Atlas and I get a chance to meet Murdad. Murdad’s in line. For food, because he needs it. In our line, right here. Murdad is Iranian. Came from a Muslim background. Came to Christ. Understood the Great Commission. And decided that his role was obedience to it.

And started sharing Jesus everywhere he went. In Iran. And got in some pretty big trouble. Had to flee. For his life.

Came to the United States, went to one of our little internment camps at the border, got held there for a couple weeks, got released as an asylee because his life was threatened, finds his way into Colorado because of a generous act of someone else. Constantine gave him a place to live, and he shows up at our food bank to eat.

And we get a chance to get to know his story. And we get to build a relationship with him. And he’s a, he was a mechanic in Iran. He had to give that up. So we all have a chance if we have a broken car to use Murdad and help him. That could be our act of generosity getting our car fixed. We have a chance to build a friendship.

Here’s the amazing thing. Did you ever think that someone who stands in our alley, in line, for food, could be more radically generous than all of us? Gave up his life in this country. Can’t see his mom and dad anymore. Has a brother he hasn’t seen. Gave up his job all for the sake of Christ. Is that not radical generosity?

I think it’s radical generosity. We have a chance to be radically generous with this upcoming Christmas shop. I know you could make a present and drop it off. That’s generous. That’s probably unselfish. Maybe generous, depending on how many presents you buy. But could you show up and build a relationship with someone or take somebody, drive them home or bring them a Christmas dinner?

Could you build a relationship with some of the people there that need gifts? Could we let them into our lives? This is Hannah. You guys know Hannah. She’s a missionary here. She works with immigrants and refugees. Could we adopt some of these people in showing more generosity? This is Jose.

This is, her legal name is Miriam. My wife comes home one day, And says she’s works with Afghan refugees, and she says we’re adopting a young Afghan woman. We’re adopting an Afghan woman. What exactly does that mean? She says. We’re adopting her. I go. What does that mean? She says. It means we’re adopting her.

So I went, those of us been married longer than 10 years, and some of us close to 40. I went to my office, got myself together and came back and said, Okay, dear. And she says, Look, here’s what this means. You had a third daughter. So we take on a third daughter. It’s been years. And if you’re in our family, you’re going to baseball games.

You’re going in and out burger. You’re coming to Christmas and Thanksgiving. And we love her. We love her. And we’ve walked with her. We’ve walked with her through She was a Muslim. Then she’s an atheist. Now she’s an agnostic. And I’m hoping that she gets to be a Christian someday. We may not live that long.

I don’t know, but we’re going to keep modeling Christ and loving her. And giving her anything that we have to help her see Jesus. And who is the beneficiary of that relationship? We are. She’s a joy. How many immigrants, if you went with Hannah today and said, all right, I’ll take a family, I’ll take a kid, I’ll take somebody, help me, you would be so blessed.

You’d be so blessed. And then, as I’m going on our webpage, I’m thinking, where’s Judea? Judea’s all these places around us. The Shugarts are in Mormonville, they’re in Utah. And they’re helping Mormons. And they’re not just trying to witness to Mormons to understand who Jesus is, they’re also helping Christians that are out of faith now.

that leave the Mormon belief and they’ll probably think about it. They got scammed. How are they going to keep loving Jesus? So they’re working like we need to pray for them. We need to take a short term team there. You could send them Emails and encouragement we could organize a group of people to pray for them Any of these things would be moving down the line towards greater generosity.

We have eight Mobilizers. I use Rodney Pennington because he’s a good friend at OMF. OMF is also one of our clients. I love OMF. And I love Rodney Pennington. That guy is a superstar. He’s so efficient. He’s a great leader. And he’s totally committed to advancing the gospel of Christ. He’s unbelievably generous.

Have you emailed him? Have you prayed for them and their family? Or any of the other mobilizers? Can we take a step? Wait, that was too bold. Let me go back to challenging. Will you take a step towards loving them? Will you take a step to pray about it? Maybe adopting one of his children and sending him Christmas in July or doing something extraordinary for them.

And then it goes on. Maybe you need to take a short term trip to, Luxembourg. It’s somewhere between Germany and France. The Hammersmiths work with young life. So would you want to be on a short term missions trip to help kids see who Jesus is? Take a step, do something radical, take your family and then the carches up in there in Toronto.

They’re church planting with non believers, people that are new in their faith. And there are, I was just in Toronto. You cannot believe how diverse it is there. There’s so much need for us to exercise some radical generosity towards reaching the lost. All over Judea, and then I want to just tell this quick story.

This is for you guys right here But it’s also for guys my age Quick story. This is one of the missionaries. I get to work with his name’s Luke Maddox and Luke got lost after high school Got went down the wrong road started using too much marijuana drinking too much and was lost So like a lot of kids that are lost 18 19 years old they come to Colorado and work the ski slopes And Luke was working on the ski slopes and his mom, who’s a dedicated Christian, led Bible studies, his dad, who’s a lawyer and a judge, they pray and pray, and she says, I’m, it’s the end of the year, I’m going out there, see if I can bring him back, and they pray, how do I get Luke back?

So she comes out to Colorado, goes up to Breckenridge, goes skiing for him for a day, and while they’re skiing on a green, Luke falls and breaks his femur. That’s Now Luke says today that was God because mom never knew the trees I was skiing through and the rocks I was jumping over. But that had to be God for me to fall on a green.

And while Luke was recovering, a local elder man, 60 ish, who’d been in ministry before, came and sat by his side and discipled him because Luke had nowhere else he could go. And he challenged him. Every day. And he shared scripture. And he said, when you can walk, I’m taking you. We’re gonna go. You think you’re excited looking over the tips of your skis at a double diamond with a bunch of moguls on a snowy day and you think that’s exciting?

As soon as you’re better, we’re going to the Ukraine. So he loads him up and he takes him to the Ukraine. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on there. And this man teaches him how to feed those that haven’t had food, bring water to those that didn’t have water. And Luke’s heart changes pretty quick.

And then he says, Oh, this isn’t all. There’s a pastor here from the Ukraine, and he’s actually loading the van to take supplies to the front lines. He says, I want you to see the realities of war from a different perspective. I want you to understand what the realities of war really are. I want you to see how much God’s people need generous people.

He says, I want you to live it. So they strapped a Kevlar vest on him and a hard hat, and away he went, flying through the front lines. delivering this food. He says it was unbelievable. They were going through these stops and people were waving their arms. Go! Bombs literally falling around them. They would pull in under a tree.

And as soon as they did, he said, people would come out of nowhere for water, for food, for blankets. They hadn’t seen anybody in months. And he said, we were giving them this food. And he said, it was unbelievable. And the pastor taught him to say, listen, this food is in the name of Jesus. This food is for you.

It was provided by the Lord of the universe. Don’t lose hope. Have faith. Look in their eyes. Look at the change. And I just want to challenge all of us with gray hair. Could we be generous with. Four hours a week, two hours a week and start discipling some of these youth in a different way. Could we take on women of the church that they’re single moms here and others?

I know some of you are doing this, but could we take on the lives of some of these kids and walk with them? I’ve been discipling kids from Front Range Christian School for many years. It’s so awesome. I have to pay them eight hours a day in the summers. 120 bucks, 15 bucks an hour. Guess what?

It’s not worth it for the money. They don’t do that much work. It’s just not worth it. I have to do it back after they’re done anyway. But the chance to capture them and share Jesus with them and build a relationship with them. It’s so worth it. And then they grow up. One of them’s in pilot school. He’s at Moody Bible doing pilot school to fly missionaries into the jungle.

I had the privilege of mentoring him for three years. I got to speak in his life. It’s so wonderful to make these kind of commitments. Are you generous enough to do that? Are you radical enough to give up something in your life to speak into the life of one of these youths? Guess what happened when Luke gets off the front line?

He goes back to the tent, and he tells these kids who’ve lost everything about Jesus. He’s all in now. He’s all in. He gets it. Life transformed. From super selfish to transformed. I don’t expect or encourage you all to leap frog with that intensity. But can we take a few steps down the line of spiritual maturity?

Can we move down the line? And then the Maxwell’s. Can I see back there, Brian or Chris? How much time do I have? Because I love this story, but I think I’m going along. 10 minutes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Here we go. So 2009, Tyler Maxwell calls me and says, Hey, you’ve helped a friend get to the mission field. And I need your help.

My wife, Amy, and I want to go to Kenya. How many of you are on the Tyler and Amy Maxwell team? Just raise your hand if you are. Oh, good. No, you better keep giving the general fund because they’re part of our church. This is an unbelievable story. He says, we want to go to the mission field. There’s a place in Nairobi, the Ahadi boys home.

We feel called to take those orphans. There was eight boys at that time. I said, what kind of experience do you have? We’ve got three kids. What kind of education do you have? I drive a Coca Cola truck. What about your wife? She’s the mom. How much do you need? We figured we need 85, 000 a year and 37, 000 to get there.

I said, okay, we’re gonna have to build a conversation. How do you do that? We’re gonna build a presentation. He goes, okay, fine. How do I do that? Go? You’ve got a computer No, but I’ll borrow one. We’ll use PowerPoint. What’s PowerPoint? So I went home to Kathleen and I said, Sweetheart, we’re gonna have to pray like crazy on this one.

I don’t know how God’s gonna do this. But they were coachable. And they went on their first appointment. His dad. His dad says, I’m in. 50 bucks a month. Praise the Lord. 8, 450 to go. We’re on our way. His dad gave him the name of somebody from the church. I was praying that person would be here today so you could hear this.

And that was an older man and an older woman. And they shared the conversation about the Hottie Boys home. They shared pictures of them. And then, they were so nervous. And then I said, we never ask people for money. We ask them to pray. We’ll follow up in three days. And Tyler and Amy called me. And they said, How’d it go?

It went good. Did you tell them three days? Yep. Did you pray with them? Yes. Did they, you go through scripture? Yes. Anything else? She goes, yeah there was one little problem. She said, the lady got up and left about halfway through. She left? Yeah, she left the table. For how long? Five or ten minutes. I said, Tyler, did you cuss?

No, I swear I didn’t cuss, he says. I said, then what happened? We don’t know. She came back, she had some tissues, she was crying. I said, I don’t know what happened, dude. Just wait three days and then call them and let’s see what God does. The next day at noon, Tyler calls me. And he says, guess what? I go, what?

Why are you calling me? I’m trying to work here. He says, the lady just called. She says, we don’t want to wait three days. We want you to come over tonight. I said, awesome. What’d you say? He says, I told her I had to call you first because I didn’t know what to do. I said, Tyler go over there. See what she has to say.

Goodness gracious. I said call me when the appointment’s done that night. He calls it. They’re screaming from the car. You’re not gonna believe this You’re not gonna believe what whoa, calm down. What happened to me? He says. Oh my gosh, it was unbelievable The lady comes back. She says for the first thing we sat down and she says i’m so sorry You’re sorry.

I’m so sorry. I left I cut you guys off. I had to leave the room. Why? She says I received my husband and I received this inheritance. We didn’t know what to do with it We’ve been praying that God would send us a sign send us someplace worthy of it And we were getting all these things in the mail and all these people calling it We never felt the green light to go and she says when we were sitting learning about the Ahadid boys She said we knew that God sent you and she says we want to be your sending organization Patter says, you know what happened next?

I go, no, they handed us a check for 37, 000. I said, looks like God wants you in Nairobi. And now these guys in the last 14 years. Unbelievable. 500 kids that they’re out helping. They’re on their second compound. They’re building buildings. They got at one point, these people have matured into leaders doing God’s work.

Unbelievable. Radical generosity that came with no skills, no experience, no education, and came from the heart of someone who loves Jesus. And wants to love his people. What can God do if we’re willing to be radically generous? So I got a fly two weeks ago, three weeks ago, maybe a month ago. He calls me and Tyler says, Dave, I need you to help Becca Bindang.

Who’s Becca Bindang? Becca Bindang. I call her. We set up an appointment. We zoomed. She lives in Malaysia. She’s, this is for you guys. She lives in Malaysia, her mom’s Malaysian. Her dad was British. So she speaks all the tongues of the native Malaysia. And she also speaks perfect English. With a British accent.

It’s really cute. And she says, I’m going to UD, which if you don’t know, that means college. And I decided to give it to London, but it was very difficult because I had to keep up with my schedule and I knew what that meanT. so she’s amazing. And she tells this story about non believing that didn’t know Jesus.

Mom was part of the religions there. Dad was an atheist. She says, I get there and I get three roommates. And she said, my three roommates were amazing. My three roommates. I loved them. They were, they took me home with them. They showed me around town and I was going to be a performing artist. I knew that I had great things, fame and fortune.

All I was a performer and I was there to perform and I knew that I had to study, but I noticed that these women, all they did, they prayed and they loved it. They had this book and they were studying all that. I said, what are you studying? They said, the Bible, what’s the Bible. They showed me the Bible and I was just out learning, growing.

But by the end of the semester, I started to think to myself, maybe I should listen. And the second semester, being loved by these three women, by just these three roommates, loving her over and over again, she said, I had to ask myself a question. How could these girls love me so much, and love someone else even more, and me not at least take the time to find out who it is that they love?

So she started studying the Bible with them. And she says, I’m coming to Christ. They converted her! To Christianity, it comes time for her baptism and who better to baptize her than the roommates. And here’s Becca getting baptized by her roommates. Talk about radical generosity. You can actually pray somebody into the faith.

Oh, man. And now she starts to get discipled and she starts to understand maybe my life as a performer isn’t as important as I thought it was. So she says, I’m going to take a year and I’m going to go on mission. And she goes to India and she goes to some places in Asia and guess what happened? Somehow she ends up in Nairobi, Kenya, and she starts plugging in.

She ends up at this place called True Ministries and she falls in love with the ministry in Asia. She falls in love with Tyler and Amy Maxwell. Wow. And she sees herself with these kids, and she says, I don’t need to be on stage. I don’t need to be another Hollywood person. I don’t need to have any, I just want to share the gospel with those that don’t know it.

How amazing is that? That God would give us a front row seat to that kind of radical generosity. And then, closing out, my goodness. You watch this video from Joy and some of these others, and you’re like, wow. Dr. Brodsky and what’s happening? Can we be praying for the ends of the earth? Is there more we could be doing to pray for them to go to give?

Here’s my last slide. Elder Steve shared this. I could not agree more with this sermon about four or five weeks ago. I love last week’s. I love talking about this topic because, our culture does not want us To know about this topic Because our culture is all about us. It’s all about spending money.

That’s about going you know when God says in Romans 12 do not conform to the patterns of the I urge you brothers in light of God’s mercies Use your bodies as living sacrifices. Therefore do not Conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds So we can test and approve God’s will for his life.

What’s he talking about here the patterns of this world? us And how we live our life on mission for ourselves. Instead of for a God that loves us. Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to be unselfish. The opportunity to maybe be generous. And the opportunity to be radically generous. Because here’s the amazing, ironic thing.

If we do this, we actually become the beneficiaries of those acts. The frustration and the anger and the hurt that exists in this world is because most of us are not achieving our own little mission. But it’s so much easier to achieve God’s mission because it’s marked by faith. It’s marked by love. It’s just effort towards loving God’s people.

And he describes it to us. This passage, this last passage, I love this passage. It really, it describes what Brodsky’s about. It describes what these missionaries are about. It describes what we should be about. It describes the pastors and elders of this church and others. It means that we need to be building God’s kingdom.

That’s where our joy lies. And all of us need to understand this scripture. This scripture is Paul teaching Timothy how to raise the congregants. Timothy’s a young guy, he’s scared. So Paul’s writing him letters to Timothy and he says, do this. He’s short little letters, but do these things. And he says this, love this.

You heard it. He says, command those who are rich in this present age not to put their hope in wealth, which is so fleeting, but to their trust in God who provides for all of their needs. Says, command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds. Command them to be generous and willing to share. Cause in this way, they’ll sort for themselves treasures as a firm foundation for the coming age and take hold of life.

That’s truly life. Listen to this, who’s rich in this present age in our life, everybody around us. Have I commanded you to be rich in good deeds and generous to share? I hope I have today. That’s one of my goals. I’m commanding you. I want you to command others. Why? Why should we do these things? Trust God.

Why should we be doing these things? So that we will store up for ourselves treasures as a firm foundation for the coming age. You’ve heard this before. In Matthew, don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and rust destroy and thieves will break in and steal. You’ve heard this.

Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. You’ve all heard this. Give me a nod of the head. Yes? Here’s the part we probably haven’t heard. So we will take hold of life that’s truly life. For our benefit. So we can get to know Murdad and be inspired by his radical generosity. So we can adopt refugees and watch their life and watch their transformation.

So we can help missionaries advance the gospel and share in that. So when you hear of a Tyler or Amy Maxwell, you can say, we gave to that. We prayed for them. We’re part of that. We visited them. That makes a difference in my life. That is what brings me joy. And that’s the challenge to become radically generous.

Thank you guys.