Jesus and the Generous Life | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:10 A couple of months ago, Pastor Wendy at our Brookside location said, Hey, this is a good book you might want to take a look at. And the book was written by Chris Anderson. It's called Infectious Generosity. And knowing that I was going to be preaching a series of sermons on being more generous, and I picked it up and I had a chance to read it. It's pretty interesting. Chris Anderson is the man who oversees and is the CEO of the TED Talks and TED organization. And so you've maybe seen the TED Talks, you know, short videos of people telling their stories and the things, their insights on life. And, you know, it's interesting. He's not a pastor. In fact, I think he's an agnostic. But his contention is what the world needs now is more generosity. He needs, the world needs us as humans to learn how to live more generously towards one another. And he begins his book with this interesting story. So the book's filled with these great stories of generosity. But one of them is just such a simple little picture of generosity. And I thought you might enjoy seeing it.

3:03 Let's take a look. So as you look at this, this is somebody's dash cam that's capturing this. And here's a man, it's raining, and I think this is in Washington, D.C. It's April 2022. It's raining. and you notice he sees a person on the side of the road. And if you look very carefully, that person is in a wheelchair with a towel over their head while it's raining. And there's a person standing behind them who also is getting wet without a towel on their head. And this person has jumped out of their car. He's noticed that there's somebody on the side of the street there. He's noticed there's somebody who is getting soaking wet and got a towel over their head. Notices somebody else who's standing by them and jumps out of his car at the stoplight, takes their umbrella, runs over and hands it to the couple who are standing there in the rain. That's just a tiny little example of generosity. Such a small picture. Here was somebody who actually noticed that somebody needed something. And by the way, probably their only umbrella.

3:55 I only carry one umbrella in my car. Probably their only umbrella. They're going to get to where they go to work or wherever they're heading, and they're going to need their umbrella because it's raining. But they jump out of the car and they give away their one umbrella to somebody who is in need. Now, this by itself, for the people who might have noticed, maybe if anybody was paying attention in the couple of cars around them, they would have noticed that. And I don't know what you would have said, but I would have thought, hey, that's really cool. I wish I would have thought to do that. And fortunately, this person had a dash cam that had recorded this. And when they got home, they thought, you know, that was kind of moving to see this happen. I'm going to post that. I don't know if they posted on YouTube or where they posted it. And all of a sudden, it got picked up on social media. And before long, there were millions of people had seen it. It got shown, I think, on Good Morning America or the Today Show or one of those, around the world people saw it. This man who's an anonymous person who in just one moment notices somebody who's in need, gets out of their car, gives them what they have, and inspires millions of people. And you can't unsee that. I mean, I have an umbrella in my car all the time, and I'm thinking, next time I got to pay attention. Is there somebody who needs it? And be able to jump out of my car and do the same thing because he's inspired me with an infectious generosity. All right, in today's message, we're going to consider what Jesus had to say about generosity and wealth. So what did Jesus actually say about generosity and wealth?

5:12 And you know, when Jesus is teaching about this, it's not during a stewardship campaign. It's not at a time when he's going to ask people to fill out a pledge card or make an offering to him. No, there were people who made offerings to make possible his ministry. Some of them are named, actually, some of the women who made possible the ministry of Jesus and the disciples. But Jesus isn't teaching for those reasons. What he says about generosity and wealth, and he says amazingly, he says a lot about it, is because he wants to liberate people, because he sees that there's a pastoral need, because he sees there's a spiritual and theological issue at play in people's lives, and they need to learn about generosity. They need to learn about the right relationship with wealth and possessions. Now, remember, Jesus is preaching to first century farmers and fishermen, shepherds and shopkeepers, working class people, although he's also preaching to and ministering to people who had some means as well. So Jesus didn't see money as evil in and of itself. So you've heard it said sometimes money is the root of all evil.

6:06 The Bible does not say that. This is what the Bible actually says. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. The love of money. The question is our heart and the position that we place money in in our lives. And then Paul goes on to say, and this is Paul we're hearing here. He goes on to say, those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Now, Jesus, when he speaks about wealth and he talks about the desire for wealth, he describes it as like a field with thorny plants or weeds growing all around, choking out the life of the plants that are healthy and good. That's the role that the desire for wealth plays in our lives. In Luke chapter 12, we read that Jesus was teaching and in the middle of that, there was somebody, well, let me just read it. Someone in the crowd while Jesus was teaching said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. Now, that's interesting. How many times maybe you've seen, I've seen many, many times families who ended up torn apart because a parent or a grandparent did a lousy job of preparing the family for the inheritance and what was going to happen and who was going to manage it and whether it was distributed fairly, all of these things. And so brother or sister, brothers and brothers come to hate each other, or at least dislike each other, no longer talk to each other because the inheritance, that's what's happening right here too. Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. To the man who shouted, Jesus offered these words of warning. Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. I'll leave that on the screen for a moment, if you'll put it back up there for a moment. And I'd like for you to say that last part with me, what's in capitalized? One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. See, Jesus is trying to make something really clear to us about where life is found. I memorized that scripture probably 35 or 40 years ago because I never wanted to forget this truth, that one's life, my life, does not consist in the abundance of my possessions.

8:02 Neither does your life. Life is found somewhere aside from amassing more and more possessions. Jesus goes on to tell a parable to this crowd and the man who's asking about, you know, asking Jesus to settle the inheritance. By the way, Jesus says, look, that's not for me to do. Somebody, you're have to talk to somebody else about that. I'm just going to tell you, be careful that you're not motivated by greed. Be careful about how important possessions and things are, because they'll destroy you and destroy your family. So he goes on to tell this parable of a rich man. And this rich man, his crops were just, they were bumper crops. And so he had so many crops that it overflowed the barn. The barn that he had, he couldn't store all these things. And so he decides, you know what, I'm going to just, I'm going to build a bigger barn. I'm going to tear down my barn. I'm going build a bigger barn and put more stuff in there. And it reminds me a little bit of today, the massive industry that is storage units across the country, you know, because we all have so much stuff. There's not room for it in our basements or our attics or our houses anymore. And we don't want to get rid of it. We don't want to give it away. We got to keep it and save it for some point down the road when our kids end up getting rid of it in a dumpster when we pass, right? That's how it often ends up happening. So Jesus is talking about this man. He says, this man decided to tear down, instead of giving away what he had, he decided to tear down his barns, build bigger barns. And that very night, Jesus says, he dies and he hears God say to him, you fool. Like now who's going to have all the stuff that you decided to build bigger barns to hold on to?

9:24 Like your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions, Jesus says. And then he says, so it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich towards God. So he's saying, you know, if you got all this, why don't you share some with other people? Why don't you make sure that you're giving faithfully to God? And then you're going to find more joy and you're going to find that your old barn is probably adequate to hold it all. All right, so that reminds me of something else Jesus said. This is in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter 6, he says this, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. And then this line, why don't you say it with me? For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. This is so interesting. Once more, he's talking about treasures. What do we do? and how often we're storing up treasures for ourselves here on earth. That may be our retirement funds.

10:15 And by the way, he's not saying don't have savings to take care of yourself in the event of a crisis. Don't save up for your retirement so that you're not a burden to anyone else and you can take your, no. Those things are fine. What he's saying is be careful about your heart because if in your heart you begin thinking it's all about how much wealth I amass, how many treasures I have, all of these things that you can devote yourself to, you've missed it already. Don't store up for things that can be broken, lost, stolen, or going to deteriorate. But instead, store up treasures in heaven. So what is a treasure in heaven, and how do we store it up? That's the work that we do for God and for other people. It's our generosity towards God. It's our generosity towards other people. And these are the treasures that we store up in heaven. Jesus goes on, and by the way, I was thinking about this, and I was thinking, you know, what happens when we read this, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also? It's a fundamental truth. And we know that. When our treasure, when the thing that we treasure the most is stuff, right, it's possessions or wealth or accomplishments or whatever, what we find is that ends up driving us.

11:15 Our heart follows the thing that we are devoting most of our time and attention to. And I was reminded of the Lord of the Rings series and the books as well as the movies. And in the Lord of the Rings, there is a hobbit whose name is Smeagol. Here's a picture of Smeagol. And he's just a good hobbit. until he finds, or his cousin finds, the ring, the one ring, this powerful thing that somehow becomes the thing he is so focused on. And as he becomes focused on it, he desperately wants to have it until he kills his cousin in order to have it. And then as he focuses on this, it becomes his precious. If you ever saw the Lord of the Rings series, it becomes his precious is what he calls this ring. And it consumes him. And so this is what he becomes. He becomes golem, you see in this next picture. Smeagol becomes golem when he is possessed by his possession, when suddenly this becomes the thing that he treasures most. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

12:13 Be careful what you treasure or who you treasure. So for me, my primary treasure, my aim is my primary treasure is God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to follow, serve, and love him. And then after that, my wife and my children, my granddaughter. And then somewhere in there is the church and the rest of my family and friends. But seeking first the kingdom of God, Jesus goes on to say, helps us avoid all of these other things, the worry, the stress, the fears that come with making the wrong thing your treasure. He goes on to say this in the same passage. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? What does he mean? What is he talking about? He's talking about what you focus your attention on, what you're looking for, what you're looking at. This is your mental horsepower as well as what you're allowing into your mind through the eyes.

13:07 What you're focused on, what you're looking at, ends up either a reflection of the light that's already inside of you, or it ends up destroying the light inside of you and fills you with darkness. What is it that consumes you? What is it that you're really focused on? If you think about it, this is what matters most to me. If it's not God, what is it? And for me, it's God. At least that's my aim. is for it to be God. And then after that, for it to be my family and friends and living out the faith and the gospel, the church and all these other things. And then finally after that, it's, you know, the means that I have and the possessions that I have and the means that I have, income, is a means to another end. It's accomplishing God's work and it's living faithfully for God in my life. All right, in that same chapter in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter six, Jesus makes it even more clear that the struggle for wealth in our lives or with wealth in our lives is a struggle about idolatry. what is God in your life?

14:01 What is the one thing that matters most to you ultimately in your heart of hearts? And he says this, no one can serve two masters. For a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth. Money, wealth, they're important in our lives. They're a means to an end. They're a way of accomplishing certain things. But when we make them the focus, when our eyes are focused on them, when our heart is focused on them, then we've actually made them into a God. We've made them into a false god or an idol. And everything else gets messed up when that's what we end up doing. I want to mention one thing. This is, so every year when I prepare my taxes in the spring, I prepare a document for the accountant. And it lists all of our income. I do this, you know, kind of a record for me too, all of our income. And then I list on here all of our deductions. And the deductions, the biggest category of deductions, and really almost always the only category of deductions for us, is our donations. And then I pass this on to the accountant and they start working on our taxes.

15:04 And this is my 1040 or Lelon and I's 1040 from the last year. And one of the things we give them, we give them the receipts from all the places that we donate money to. And including this one, this is my, this is this year's donation statement from contribution statement from Church of the Resurrection, my pledge. And this is just this last week. So I'm not, I haven't quite finished it yet. My pledge will be finished by the end of December. But here's what I wanted to say. all three of these things are 1040, my tax information for the accountant, and our donation statement to the church and other organizations. These are value statements for us. Like the reason why I like doing this is when I look at it, I go, that's what matters to us. These are the things that are our highest priority when it comes to what we do with our resources. And for us, now this wasn't true when we were younger, but for us today, you know, what we give to God through the church and through the other things we give to is more than our house payment. It's more than our car payments. It's more than our vacations combined. It's more than all of those things combined is what we're going to give away because this is our highest value. I'm not saying that should be true for you. I'm just saying at this point in our lives, that's where we are as a family, LaVon and I, in what we do.

16:17 All right. So I want to take a moment to talk about a path to financial freedom. This is just like a little recipe. You might agree with it. You might disagree with it. And to do that, I'm going to talk about a little box we're giving away to all of our children in sunny school at all of our locations today. So this box has three smaller boxes inside of it. And these are penny banks or piggy banks. So the idea is that our children, when they get an allowance or they get money for their birthday or whatever else, they might use these three boxes as a way of saving. Now, I learned this from my mom when I was 14 years old and I gave my life to Christ and I decided I wanted to start giving to God. And at that point, I was starting to work very, very part-time for my stepdad. He was in a construction site. He was building houses, and I was helping out a little bit. So I got an allowance, and I got a paycheck. And my mom gave me three envelopes. I didn't have three boxes. She gave me three envelopes. One on the outside said give, and she said, that's where you start. And the second one was save, and then the third one was spend.

17:13 And the saving was sometimes saving up for something I wanted to buy that I couldn't buy just with the week's allowance or paycheck. And so there was give first, save second, and spend third. And that's what we've given to the kids. So we've got a box that says give. And we want to teach in Sunday school. We're teaching our children. That's where you start. With your allowance, with your birthday money, whatever you have, start by thinking about what portion you want to give. And we're teaching them tithing. Give the first tenth to God through the church. And then, you know, maybe you want to give more than that to a variety of organizations. But the second is to save. And we talk about setting aside the next 10% to save. And then finally, what you have left is the 80% that you're going to spend. And so this is just a very simple thing. Our kids are going to receive this at all of our locations. Your kids are going to receive it in Sunday school. And what I'd love for you to do is to talk about it when you get home with your kids. I'd love for you to talk about it.

18:05 And I'd love for you to talk about this as a rhythm or a pattern for their lives. Can you imagine what would happen in their lives if from the time they're three or, you know, third grade or fourth grade or kindergarten or first grade, from the time they're little children, this was the rhythm they got into? And you see, my mom taught me this because her mom, I think, taught her this. And so we learn this from our parents. How do you handle money well? And often today, parents are not teaching their children about how they handle money. So it's interesting. If you were to start off tithing, giving your first 10%, you're going to find it's going to be a practice that enriches your life forever. And then if you save the second 10%, if you started that when you were just a kid and you did that when you started thinking about retirement, you graduate from high school and you're starting to think, with my jobs, I'm going to put 10% aside for my future, for the future me. And if you did that starting when you were 18 years old or even 22 when you graduate from college, you're likely going to have enough for retirement. If it's invested well, you're going to be okay. Imagine teaching your children this so that they would be okay when they retire.

19:00 And then finally, live on the other 80%, right? You can spend all the rest of it after that, but start here. So anyway, I want to hold onto that for a second. I'm going to just set this right over here. And I want to come over to these apples. So this is an illustration we've used before. We have 10 apples that are here. And, you know, what we're saying is take the first apple that you have, and we want you to take that first apple, and we want you to give that to God, right? That is God's portion. We learned last week that God says the first tenth belongs to me, so we give that to God. And then if you were to take the second tenth and say, I'm going to set that aside and not touch it, and that's going to be there invested for my retirement. And then you've got all these other apples that you can eat. You can eat all these other apples. And this is the rhythm that we find in Scripture. Well, Scripture doesn't talk about saving the 10%. It does talk about giving the first 10%. But if we were to try that, you know, you find something pretty amazing happens. Now, here's what happened in our lives.

19:52 LaVon and I, for the first six years we were married, we could only give the first 10%, and we could only save, you know, to begin with, we had nothing we put in savings. And we lived paycheck to paycheck every single week. But after we graduated, after I graduated from seminary, suddenly we had a little bit more money, and we started being able to give away, or not to give away, to save 10%. So we gave 10%, we saved 10%. Now, those eight apples, we learned to live within what we had. That 80%, we tailored our budget to fit that. So that meant old, beat-up used cars, and it meant apartments and tiny houses and not buying new stuff. And then our income grew. And as our income grew, we found that this 80% worked out pretty well. And then the day came where our income, about 10 years, 15 years into the church, our income began to be about the average of the income in about a five-mile radius of Church of the Resurrection. and like we had locked in our lifestyle before that. So, you know, we bought a house.

20:47 We've been in the same house for almost 25 years. My car, my Ford Mustang GT I bought in 2012. You know, it's 13 years old and I still love the car, take care of it. And so, you know, and this is kind of how we live our lives. But we found that we had a lot more apples, right? From when we started. And so here's something we learned along the way. And this doesn't apply to some of you and it'd be the farthest thing, you know, in the world, but it does apply to many of you if you're making an average income in this, you know, in these communities around here, is that you got a lot more apples than you could probably eat. And if you have more apples than you can eat, then the question you begin to ask is, what might I do with those that I can't eat? Like there's about, I don't know, a hundred apples in here. So 10 of those go to God and 10 of those are going to be invested in savings. And I'm going to eat 80 of them, but how many apples can I eat in a month, actually. And so you begin saying, well, I wonder if I can actually give away more and if I can actually save more. And so for Levonomy, it's at one point 20 years ago, it became, well, let's give 15% away and let's save 15%. And then we found we could give away even more than that because when we started giving 15% away, when we traced that out to when we retire, we were going to have enough for retirement. So we didn't need to eat all these apples and we didn't need to put any more in savings for retirement. And so we said, how can we give away even more?

22:08 And that's what many of you have learned here at Church of the Resurrection. And so I just want to say, I don't know if you're one of these guys or gals, you're a family, you have just plenty of apples in your, you know, in your, in your bushel basket, then maybe you begin thinking, what more can I do? How can I make an even bigger impact in the world? All right. So I want to mention before I jump out of that. Oh, by the way, one last thing about this is when it comes to measuring yourself against other people, or even, let's just say judging. First of all, the least happy people are the people who are measuring themselves against other people all the time. But I also want to say when it comes to judging. So it's possible for us to look at other people and we don't know how much they make and we don't know how much they give. And so we begin judging them based upon, you know, the car they're driving or the house they're living in or whatever else. Somebody told me the other day they were disappointed in me because I had chiefs tickets. I have season tickets to the chiefs. I'm like, okay, whatever.

23:01 You know, but here's the thing. You don't know what that other person is giving. So you see, so I remember years ago, there was a pastor and he was driving a new, had got himself a new Toyota Prius, environmentally friendly Toyota Prius, back before there were electric vehicles. And he saw somebody in the church parking lot who was driving a very nice Mercedes and said, you know, it's just hard for me to understand how somebody who's a committed Christian could drive an expensive car like that. And I said, well, hold tight for just a second. Let me just ask you a question. How much does it spend for your Toyota Prius? They told me. I said, this guy makes 10 times what you make, but he spent three times what you spent on your Prius. So what that tells me is that he's spending far less as a percentage of his income on his car than you spent on your car. There's no room for you to judge. And then on top of that, what you don't know is that person gave away half of his income last year, and you're struggling to get to 10%. So the point is, don't judge other people, because you simply don't know what their means are. And when they have significant means, then whatever it is they're doing may be very different in comparison to you.

24:02 Don't judge. What you're really asking is, what am I supposed to give? What am I supposed to save? And how am I spending what I have? And when you do that, you find yourself a lot happier and you find yourself becoming more the person God wants you to be. All right, so that leads me to the joy and blessings of the generous life. Here Jesus said, and I love this phrase, give and it will be given to you. A good portion, packed down, firmly shaken, and overflowing will fall into your lap. The portion you give will determine the portion you receive. So Jesus is making a promise here. Now, this is not like some, you know, one of these televangelists who's promising, if you give, you're gonna get this much in return. It doesn't really work that way. We give to other people and to God because that's part of what God calls us to do. But Jesus is saying there are blessings that come when you figure this out. This is what Malachi said in the passage we looked at last week.

24:54 Test me in this, the Lord says, and see if I will not pour out for you a blessing from heaven. And so Jesus is saying these blessings are coming. And if you think about, you know, there were people that had aprons, you know, in agricultural settings, you had an apron you wore, you know, you opened it up and people could pour the grain into your apron. And so I want to take these apples down for just a second and just give you one last visible picture of what this looks like. So you think about the grain and he says, you know, give and it will be given to you. Pour it out, he says. I'm going to pour this over this way. and if this container represents your life, he says, it's gonna be shaken together, it's gonna be pressed down, the blessings God's gonna send, and it's gonna run over, falling into your lap. if you're generous with what you do. And I'm not just talking about your offerings to God.

25:50 I'm just talking about in life as a whole. And this is what Proverbs was teaching last week. The generous person shall be refreshed. And what Malachi was preaching last week when he said, you know, test me in this and see if I won't pour out these blessings. And Jesus himself is saying, the portion that you give will determine the portion that you get. And when you are generous, what you find is it's pressed down into your life, running over into your life, the blessings from God. I have to tell you, in so many ways, I look back over my life, lobotomy, from those two kids who got married who were living below the poverty level. And I've just seen this as a rhythm in our lives. We sought to be generous. We sought to put God first in our lives. And what we saw were blessings, all kinds of different blessings in our lives. That doesn't mean that hard things don't happen. It doesn't mean that life isn't difficult just because you tithe or you're giving. It just means that somewhere you sense God's presence, God's leadership, you find God's blessings in ways that surprise you.

26:41 All right, we're talking about money, but we're talking about way more than money. We're talking about our time, our talent, and our resources. And that's where I want to begin to wrap this up. So we know that there's one word that captures the central ethic of the Christian faith, and that is agape. Agape is a Greek word that means love, but it's not a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's not a romantic love. It is love in action, right? And love in action actually looks an awful lot like generosity. It's giving of yourself to other people. It's the guy who gets out of his car and takes the umbrella to the person on the side of the road. That is agape, right? It's what we do towards God in our generosity with our time, our talent, and yes, our resources. It's what we do towards other people. Selfless kindness, that's what it is. And our offerings are an expression of agape. So is our generosity towards people who are in need. All of that is a sign of agape. Jesus says, this is my commandment, that you love one another. That you love God, you love one another.

27:35 now uh you remember of course that when jesus asked what the greatest commandments were um he he said jesus said uh the greatest commandment is to love god with all your heart soul mind and strength with all that you are and all that you have you love god that's why our offerings come first right it's like that first statement it's it goes along with loving god with everything that we are but then he added love your neighbor as you love yourself now you remember there was somebody who asked the question well who is my neighbor who don't i have to love Who am I supposed to love? Who don't I have to love? Jesus answered two questions with the parable he told, the parable of the good Samaritan. He answered the question, who do you have to love? And he also answered, what does love look like? And you remember the story, the man who was on the side of the road, left for dead, beaten. He was robbed, he was beaten, he was left for dead. And along come two religious people and they bypass him entirely. They missed out on what love calls him to do, what it means to love God and love your neighbor.

28:28 But along comes the Samaritan. He sees the man on the side of the road. He stops. You remember he bandages up his wounds He puts his own cloak on him. He puts him on his donkey, and he walks all the way to Jericho. And when he gets to Jericho, he provides medical care, he provides food, he provides clothing, and he provides shelter to meet the man's needs. He cares for him. And Jesus says that's what love looks like. It was generosity, unmitigated generosity. You know, every sack of groceries that you have brought here to Church of the Resurrection is an act of agape. Every time you've given a pint of blood to somebody who is in need is an act of agape. Every time you've volunteered to read to children or to help with a school in all of our school projects here in Kansas City, every time you see your neighbor who's in need, every time you've taken a meal over to somebody who just got home from the hospital, all of those things are generosity and they are agape. And this was meant to be our way of life.

29:21 We are meant to become more and more generous across the course of our lives. And as we do that, we find healing happens in the world. We find love is spread in the world. We find other people are moved by our generosity to become generous themselves. It becomes infectious. And the world has changed. And our lives are changed. All right. Earlier this year, I saw a video of one of our members. And it was a profound picture of Agape. Jeff Reisinger is a committed member of Resurrection. He's a part of our staff parish committee. He is an executive staff member at the University of Kansas Health System. and the video was a 30-minute interview with him put on by the hospital system itself as shown to employees. Now, what I'm about to show you, Jeff didn't really want anybody to know. He wanted to be anonymous about this. He didn't want people to know and finally somebody said, you know, if you share your story, there'll be other people who might be inspired by your generosity, by what you've done and maybe they'll want to do the same and I wanted to share this with you as a picture of agape, as a picture of generosity and this is just two minutes of a 30-minute interview.

30:21 Take a listen. You never know what will change the course of your life. For Jeff Reisinger, it was a Google search and then a pop-up ad. And this little pop-up ad kept coming up on the bottom of the computer screen that said consider being a living liver donor. He didn't click the first time, but he eventually did. Hey, what is this? How does it really work? Jeff learned livers regenerate or grow back. A healthy person can donate and save someone else. It's called a living liver donation.

30:55 The Hulls had never heard about it either until Jeff got gravely ill and his son Josh stepped forward. He said, you don't need to look for a donor for my dad because I'll be the donor. But their blood types didn't match. Jeff Reisinger, a complete stranger who saw a pop-up ad, offered to be the donor. The miracle of being able to help someone, and it felt compelling to me. Josh donated to another stranger in need. He said, Dad, we're going to save two people's lives. The chain of transplants took place at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center back in January of 2023. Father and son walked the halls post-surgery and eventually figured out their mystery donor. Josh stopped by one night. And he came over near my bed and he just said, why?

31:50 And he didn't understand. He knew why he would donate to his dad, but he just asked why. It's the most significant thing I feel like I've done in my life, is to be a part of this process. Jeff Hull's life completely changed, too. He's back to hunting and living a full life with grandkids. I feel wonderful. I just got back from a 10-mile bike ride. I left weights, did bands this morning, went out hunting. It's like another life. God gave them a miracle.

32:24 We talk about it every chance we get. It's something so special. And we feel like we've been given such a gift because of death. But like you said, our death has the opportunity now to watch our grandchildren grow up. What you get in your heart and soul from this process is far more than you give. And I would just encourage anybody that's in a position to think about this to realize that. What you get out of the process is far more than you give. Pressed down, shaken together, running over. This is a picture of such beautiful, selfless agape, right? It's a picture of a generous spirit who says, you know what, I've got something I can give, and it's costly. But I'm going to give that. And I believe that was both an expression of just faith and his desire to love God and to love his neighbor. Okay, today, this is the day for resurrection when we ask you to return your commitments, your commitment card for next year, when you make your pledge for next year.

33:23 So if you're worshiping with us on TV or online, I want to say this. If you have a church family, your primary commitment is to your church family. If you want to help out here with resurrection, that's great. It costs money to be able to produce our online and our TV and to broadcast it every week. We'd love for your help. But your primary commitment is to your local church if this isn't your church. But if you say, you know, resurrection is my church, I'd like to invite you to join us. You can do this online. You can go to core.org slash next and make a commitment for next year. If you're at one of our locations, I just want you to know today, if you are a part of this church, you might be a visitor, this really isn't for you. But if this is your church family, we want you to take the time to fill out a commitment card if you haven't already, to pray, to fill it out, and that your commitment, what you write on this piece of paper right here might be a reflection of your love for God. It might be a reflection of your values, of your love for God, of your worship of God, of putting God first in your life. And I wanna give you some specific encouragement in this.

34:17 If you don't give anything right now, I'd like to invite you to consider giving $10 a week. That's a start. That's moving you towards tithing. It gets you, it's a baby step, but it gets you that direction. Not everybody can do that, I understand, but most of us probably could. And so I'd like to invite you to do that. If you're currently giving to Church of the Resurrection, I'd like to encourage you to take a step towards tithing by increasing your commitment by $10 a week. So whatever you gave last year, add another $10 a week to that. Many of you are doing better than that. And you could say, you know, I think I can do a little more than that. And LaVa and I are going to do more than that. I'd like to invite you, if you're a person with enough apples, I want to invite you to take a bigger step towards tithing this coming year. So we're going to invite you to fill this out. Those of you at our locations, I want you to have it in your hand because we're going to pray over this right now. And for those of you who are online, I want you, after the prayer, to be able to click on the link, core.org slash next, and to be able to fill out your commitment today. And what I believe, what I know is true, is that our giving is a way of putting our treasure somewhere we want our heart to follow.

35:15 And that is to God, and to God's work, and to being more generous people. And where our treasure is, our heart will be also. So I'd like to invite you, if you hold this in your hand, if you're at one of our locations, and for those of you online, I want you just to be able to bow your head with me, and let's pray together. God we thank you so much for everything we recognize that our very life is a gift from you in fact why don't you just whisper this under your breath wherever you are why don't you just whisper this prayer God thank you for everything and I recognize my life is a gift from you help me to grow in generosity.

35:52 That what I write on my commitment card would be a reflection of my love for you. and my desire to put you first in my life. Help me to grow in generosity in every part of my life.

36:12 And I offer my life to you.