How Well are We Accomplishing Our Mission?

[0:00] Got it. Well, welcome to church. It's interesting as you walk with the Lord and He gives you many testimonies and memories and events, etc.

[0:15] ! That even the songs of the church, they start to have certain stories, certain memories and stuff that go with them. So this morning I had that twice in these songs that our praise team chose.

[0:28] The first one, when we were singing, Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, I remembered little Latilia. How many of you remember when little Latilia used to come to church? She attended with us for, I don't know, maybe six years.

[0:41] A little teenage girl, we baptized her. That was her favorite song. Riding in the car, we always gave her a ride to church. She would often say, as we're going to church, let's sing that Praise the Lord song.

[0:53] And we would sing that together. So I can't hear that song without thinking about her. Don't know where she is now. God bless her wherever she is. And then that trust and obey song.

[1:03] This is really a Jordan story, and I've probably been messing it up. But I think there's some story in her family. I've heard two or three times that the family, when she was just in a high chair, we're talking like two years old, this family was going through a terrible struggle.

[1:18] Oh, the microphone began to work. Whoa. Miracle. All right. Today, our usual sound man had other things to do, so we're figuring that out as we go.

[1:33] Anyway, then, so here she was, about two years old, sitting in a high chair. Family was going through some real hard financial struggles, and her parents were talking with each other about, you know, how are we going to pay this bill?

[1:45] How are we going to make ends meet? Whatever. So here this little two-year-old sitting in a high chair just speaks up and says, You just have to trust and obey. So what a great song.

[1:57] And sometimes out of the mouth of babes. Did I get the story more or less right? Yeah. Pretty close. All right. Anyway, today's sermon, every year I try to give an update on the previous year, how the church spent its offerings, especially how we spent our offerings to do ministry outside and beyond these walls.

[2:23] And I had had this all sermon already, and I got to say special thank you to Gay, who always works really hard to get all this information compiled for me.

[2:33] And she's not here, but Candy is the head of our finance team. I said Gay's here. Candy's not here as the head of our finance team. She also helps some with that.

[2:44] So a shout-out of thank you to Candy. Anyway, I appreciate them giving this information. So I was ready. I usually try to do this right around the 1st of February. It gives Gay a month after the year ends to get all the totals together.

[2:58] And then I tell you, well, the Sunday I had planned to do it, Pastor Leonel from Columbia showed up. And it seemed more important for him to be able to give us a Columbia report.

[3:08] So then all of our other topics and speakers were all scheduled until today. So now you're going to get a sermon that's based all about last year's money.

[3:20] It has nothing to do with what's happened in the last five months. So let's go to the Lord in prayer. We're going to be talking today about show me the money. Let's pray.

[3:32] Father, God, we're only here because you've called us out. You've saved us. We are attracted to you by your spirit.

[3:45] And we're here to hear your word. And we know when we come together and we praise you and we give our offerings and we sing the songs that it's because we love you.

[3:57] We're seeking your face. We need to hear from you today. Oh, God, these people, Lord, they don't need to hear from me. What do I know? But they need to hear from the high heaven.

[4:09] So God, speak through your word and touch your people and change our hearts. In Jesus name. Amen. There was a man who was not a churchgoer and he went to the local Baptist church on a weekday, went into the church office, asked to speak to the preacher.

[4:28] And he went in and sat down and said, preacher, I'm not a churchgoer, but I have this dog I've had for 15 years and he just died. And I am so heartbroken about it.

[4:39] And I was just wondering, would the church be willing to give a funeral service from a dog? And so the preacher says, well, you know, we really don't do stuff like that.

[4:51] We really don't. He said, but I tell you what, I've got a dog I really love to. And there's this new non-denominational church that just opened in town. Check with them.

[5:02] You don't know what they might permit, but we just don't do stuff like that. And the man said, okay, I'll check with them. He says, before I go, give me your opinion because I'm not a churchgoer.

[5:12] If they'll do something like that for me, would a good donation for that be $50,000? And the pastor stood up and said, why didn't you tell me that dog was a Baptist?

[5:25] Well, all of us, we, you know, money can influence so much about us.

[5:37] And when we hear a minister say he's going to talk about money or stewardship, the word stewardship, we just always think about money. And that is a big part of it.

[5:48] But today, the next slide, please, we're going to really look at the totality of what is stewardship. It's giving God every part of you. It's giving all you are, all you have to God for his glory.

[6:04] That's what stewardship is. So I'm not preaching a message on stewardship because we want more of your money. God doesn't need your money. They don't even want your money. God wants your heart.

[6:15] But he knows that your heart is really tied up in your money. And so this is why sermons occasionally have to be preached on the subject of giving so that we keep our hearts right with God in this matter.

[6:31] And so, again, we're not after your money. You're going to, I'm going to give you a report. You're going to see that our offerings have been very adequate and we've been able to do a lot of good things with it.

[6:43] Well, what is a steward? Next slide. Stewardship. It's not a word we use often. We don't use the word steward very often. So here is a definition of what it means.

[6:55] A steward is a person who manages another person's property, finances, or other affairs. So we just don't use that word much.

[7:05] But really, if you manage a store or whatever, you are a steward of that store. Whatever you do for somebody else, you're being a steward for them. So then, as you look at the scripture, Psalm 24, verse 1, whose property are we managing every day in our lives?

[7:25] Well, Psalm 24, verse 1. The earth is whose? The earth is the Lord's. The earth and everything in it.

[7:37] What part of it? Everything in it. The world and all of its people belong to him. The world and how many of the people?

[7:49] All belong to him. Now, some will reject him. But he owns everything in this earth. He created every bit of it. We did not.

[8:00] None of it. God has done all of that. So, what he's given us the privilege with just one short lifetime. It's all we've got. This is our one chance that all that God has given us, how will we use it as a steward of his property?

[8:18] It's a test for us. How are we going to do? And the truth is, we don't do real well much of the time. But God is working in our hearts and he's showing us and teaching us.

[8:30] Now, if I believe that I own all of my stuff, and most of us do believe that, and especially as we come in the world and we begin to accumulate things, children, my goodness, every child's prayer is, God, give me this and God, give me that.

[8:47] I want to win the ball game. I want to get a bicycle for Christmas. You know, whatever. And as we grow as adults and in the Lord, hopefully we begin to pray more and more about God's kingdom and less about our kingdom.

[9:02] And hopefully we begin to learn more that the earth is here. And we're just here using his stuff. He's giving us this opportunity. Well, if I think it's my stuff, I'm going to always be in a conflict with God.

[9:17] Lord, you want me to do what? I've got to give an offering or Lord, I need to go help that person. But what I wanted to do was this, and our life will be full of conflict. But the sooner we, and the more we can grow into, and it's not a one-time decision like, boom, now I'm trusting the Lord and I'm obeying.

[9:36] No, it's a daily kind of thing. It comes up again and again. Who's the master? You or God? And you have to make that decision again and again. But if I'll begin to realize that all of my possessions really belong to God, all of my time, because he gave me life.

[9:57] My heart's only beating because he's keeping it beating. The air that I'm breathing, I don't own this air. At just every moment, everything about my life, it's God's.

[10:09] And the more I can be at peace with that, the more I can be at peace with everything else in my life. Now, let's consider another great scripture verse.

[10:20] Romans 12, 1 and 2. Paul says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, remembering how merciful God's been to you, okay?

[10:35] Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Your body, a living sacrifice. It will be holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.

[10:48] Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is God's call to every person who says, I'm a follower of Jesus.

[11:00] He's saying, He offered his body for you. He died on the cross for you. Will you live for him? He died for you.

[11:12] Will you live for him? Will you give back to him your allegiance, your life, your love, your passions, your hobbies, your time?

[11:23] Will you offer these things to him? And it will be a living sacrifice. And here's our problem. He says, Don't be conformed to the pattern of the world.

[11:33] The pattern of the world is just so different. The pattern of the world says, I need to get more and more and more stuff. The pattern of the world says, I need to always be happy.

[11:45] It's all about me. The pattern of the world is, I need my leisure time. I need my toys. I need my fun. I need my hobbies. I need, you know, it goes on and on.

[11:57] I, I, my, my. That's the pattern of the world. And he's saying, don't conform to that. But let the Holy Spirit work in your heart to transform and renew your mind so that you will indeed be more like Christ.

[12:14] And so we begin to see the struggle. The next slide. Here's our struggle. The world is saying, you need all of this stuff. And God is saying, the earth is the Lord's, everything in it.

[12:28] And the world is saying, no, it's yours. Fight for it. Get more of it. But our problem is, that the more, if you've accumulated much in your life, and I've accumulated way too much, okay, right up front, I'll just tell you, I need to downsize.

[12:46] I need to clear out the clutter. But the more you accumulate, have you noticed that instead of owning your possessions, they start to own you?

[12:58] Everything needs maintenance. Your house needs maintenance. Your cars need maintenance. All of your various toys. Well, you know, your golf clubs have to be polished.

[13:09] Your fishing rods have to be messed with, and new line put in them, and oiled, and your lure, you've got to get a new lure for this Saturday. Your boat motor needs tuning.

[13:19] Your, I mean, the more stuff that you have gotten, the less time you have. It'll just eat your life up. And so you'll be like the guy in this cartoon, who feels a slave to the things that he has gotten, that he has.

[13:38] I'm afraid sometimes we're like another guy that went to his pastor. He goes in and he says, Pastor, I want you to talk to you in private.

[13:50] We're having a little problem that I know the church is getting ready to build a new building, and you've asked everybody to pledge and give as much as we can afford, and the truth is we just can't afford anything.

[14:03] But you also said, I heard you say that if we couldn't afford to help financially, there was other things we could do. So I want you to tell me the other things I can do. So the pastor said, well, okay.

[14:16] Well, now he's a member of the church. The pastor knew him well and knows about his hobbies and routines and everything. And the pastor says, well, I'll tell you what, we don't have to have your money.

[14:27] There are ways you can help. I know that in the summer, especially, you love to fish, and it's a good thing. I don't blame you. I know you fish as much as you can. So how about for this summer, you take some of that fishing time, and you come and maintain the church lawn.

[14:44] You manage, cut all the grass, keep the shrubs trimmed, empty the trash. If you'll take that fishing time and do that, that'll free up money we can put in the building. And he says, and then, I know that when cold weather comes, you are a basketball lover.

[15:01] And so you love to watch every college game on TV, every program game. You go to as many high school games as you can. You just love basketball.

[15:12] How about just this coming winter, take that basketball time and give it to the Lord, because then the building will be all framed up, and we're going to be inside painting, and you can come and help us paint the building, and that'll be a wonderful thing.

[15:28] So yeah, there are ways you could help. And this guy says, he's thinking about it, and he says, you know, pastor on second thought, will the church take a credit card?

[15:42] We just want to control everything, don't we? You know, we're just not ready to really say, Lord, I'm yours. But here we see in Romans 12, the verse we just read, that is the true path to happiness.

[15:57] That's true worship. When we give him our lives. Now, Jesus is our example in everything. So how did he spend his time? As far as we know in the scriptures, he never really had any excess money.

[16:13] So he wasn't one who was going around giving offerings, but he did have his time. And what did he do with it? Well, he stated his mission at the very beginning of his ministry.

[16:25] And here you see it, a quote from Isaiah, that Luke said, that Jesus was reading from the book of Isaiah. And he read these words.

[16:36] He said, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me. Because the Lord has chosen me. He has commissioned me to encourage the poor.

[16:49] Did Jesus spend his time encouraging poor people? Yes. He has commissioned me to help the brokenhearted. He would go to those who had somebody in the family had died or was dying or they were whatever.

[17:03] He would minister. He would help them. He was commissioned to decree the release of captives. He went among all kinds of people with alcohol addictions and prostitutes and gambling addictions.

[17:19] And just what we would call kind of the trash of society. The poor class. He went among them and declared to them that they could be released from this captivity.

[17:31] He proclaimed good news that the kingdom of God was coming. He gave recovery of sight to the blind. Physically blind and spiritually blind. And he kept announcing, this is the year of the Lord's favor.

[17:45] You don't have to wait. You can come to me now. You can follow Jesus now. That's still the message of God. And so he went about there. And this is all in Luke 4, 18 and 19.

[17:56] You can go back and read that whole part. But how about us? Well, we say that we are Jesus followers. That's what the word Christian comes from.

[18:09] It was originally like Christ ones. Christians, Christ ones. We are Christ ones. And so his mission becomes our mission. He died for us.

[18:21] Will we live our lives for him? So every church has a mission. And this is our church's simple short mission statement. Next slide, Mark. Our simple short mission statement.

[18:35] Working together to make disciples and share Christ's love. That kind of takes what Jesus said and makes it a lot shorter. But we're really trying to do the things that Jesus was doing.

[18:49] And so to me, the question that I really want to spend a little more time going through with you today is, how did we use our money to do that? Next slide, please. So we're back here again to, are we fulfilling that mission?

[19:03] Are we sharing the love of Christ and making disciples? And part of that you can tell through, show me the money. Now, if, you know, you might tell me that you love whatever.

[19:19] I can't think of anything right now. But the best way for me to know what you really love would be to see how you spend your time and also how you spend your money. It doesn't matter what you say you believe or what you say you love.

[19:33] Show me your credit card statement. Show me your bank account statements. And I can look through there and say, oh, this is what you really love. This is where you're putting, you know, you put your money where your heart is.

[19:44] More than just where your mouth. It's where your heart is. Jesus said that. He said, where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be. And he said, so be sure your treasure is where.

[19:58] Jesus said, be sure your treasure is in heaven. Because where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be. And our world tells us to accumulate our treasure here.

[20:08] But God says, no, no, accumulate your treasure there. That's eternal. This is very temporary. You're just a temporary steward here managing God's resources. And so this is also true for a church.

[20:23] Next slide. A church. I want to look at what we did in 2024 that year. And how did we use your offerings to try to fulfill this mission?

[20:34] This mission of making disciples and sharing the love of Christ. And so I'm going to go through and just show you some totals. And again, thanks to Gay for looking through checkbooks and stuff to put all this together.

[20:49] Next slide. First, let's look at what we did with money locally. And this is money that we spend beyond our church activities, outside of the church walls.

[21:00] So I'll be glad when we get that bigger screen back there. We're going to put a giant screen. We've already, somebody donated it to us. And I'll be able to read every word from here.

[21:11] But this is a little small, so I'm going to turn around this way. So in the local area, we helped a lot of people. We spent $2,700 helping with home repairs, car repairs, paying somebody's rent when they're about to be evicted or whatever, some other important bill, giving away food, helping with certain medical expenses, that kind of thing.

[21:33] We keep a community mission fund. And we don't just give it to anybody anytime. But if they come to us, and it's obvious that it's a very clear need, usually your deacons will discuss it, and we'll make a decision about helping.

[21:47] Then, every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the folks that we know that need food, we take them, well, we used to take a basket of food. Now we give them a food line gift card so they can go get the foods they like.

[22:00] And then Veterans Day, we give an appreciation gift card to all of our veterans. We did $1,200 on that last year. We also, this isn't in dollars, but people in our church helped to pack 10,000 chicken boxes that were given away to people in need and having hunger around Thanksgiving time.

[22:24] Then we did, as a church, a food drive for the Bread of Life. Our children led that a year ago. And we, you, brought cans of food. And that turned into 400 cans of food that we took down and gave at the Bread of Life.

[22:38] And then, you don't know about this, we don't talk about it a lot, but every month we mail a postcard welcoming everybody new who has moved within five miles of our church.

[22:51] They get a postcard from us that Glenn used his talents and gifts to help design. And it's a really attractive, you know, you're welcome to the area.

[23:01] We know you're new in the area. We'd love to have you come visit us in our church. Let us know if we can do anything for you. Very attractive, a little welcoming to our community.

[23:12] Then some other things we do in Lee and Chatham County. Next slide. Yeah, there it is. I was waiting for it to change.

[23:23] It's already changed. So, you know, we have a crisis pregnancy center in Sanford. There's also one now that has just begun in Siler City. Maybe next year we'll choose to help with that and some.

[23:34] But we gave $2,600 to help women who are pregnant and in a crisis and needing help. We gave money to help with that.

[23:45] The Sprott Youth Center is a little community building right over here behind me, about a block. I think you know where the Sprott Center is. And the community uses it for everything, for youth basketball to family reunions or whatever.

[23:59] We think it's a good thing that our church helps keep the doors open there. I think that the treasurer told me last year that we're the only church that regularly supports that.

[24:10] And so I'm glad we gave about almost $1,000 to help keep the Sprott Center open for our community. We gave $2,600 to our Baptist Association that's in Lee and Chatham counties to help other churches and help the churches work together.

[24:28] Our local elementary school, Moncure School, last year we spent right at $1,000 when school begins each year. And if you've never helped with this, you ought to.

[24:39] It's fun. They have the open house right a day or two before school starts. And we go over there with all kinds of notebooks and crayons and pencils and paper padded, all kinds of stuff.

[24:51] And any person that comes up and says, yeah, I need that, we give them a bag full of school supplies. And then all through the year, some people in our church go over about once a month and take some goodies to the teachers and leave it in the staff break room with a little note that it's from our church.

[25:15] God bless you. We're praying for you. So it's a nice thing to do in the community to show some love of Christ. And we always host the National Day of Prayer. It doesn't cost us much.

[25:26] We just have to buy a few materials. So altogether in 2024, we gave $11,500 outside of these walls in Lee and Chatham County and especially right in Moncure.

[25:39] That's about one out of every $10 you gave, 11% of our offering. Now, reaching out beyond the walls of our church, let's go to the next slide.

[25:50] What did we do statewide in North Carolina? We helped the Baptist children's homes with $750. We haven't had a speaker come from them in a long time.

[26:01] And as I was preparing this, I thought, we need to get our speaker to come again and remind us of what they do. I looked up some statistics on it. In 2024, they helped 10,000 children in crisis in North Carolina.

[26:14] 10,000 who were neglected, abandoned, put out of their home, nowhere to go, whatever. They helped 10,000 children.

[26:26] I'm glad we were a part of that. We also help the—we give money through the collective North Carolina Baptist Convention. That's like an association of all the Baptist churches in North Carolina.

[26:40] And that's a few thousand churches. And somebody said that the last census showed that North Carolina has more Baptists than they do people.

[26:53] Think about that. Anyway, there's a bunch of Baptist churches. And all together, we gave $1,000 to help with the projects they do. And then our big one was we were removed, of course, by the Hurricane Havine crisis.

[27:07] And so you gave $5,150 to help with hurricane relief, not to mention that some of you personally went and helped with that.

[27:18] But then reaching beyond North Carolina, what did we do nationwide or all across North America? We gave to the Southern Baptist Convention, which is nationwide, all the Southern Baptist churches.

[27:31] We gave a couple thousand dollars. Right now, we're collecting this second line item up there. We are right now receiving the Annie Armstrong Easter offering.

[27:43] If you haven't given to that yet, pray about it. Give something. And I don't know how much we've given on that. Yeah, yeah, I should have asked you ahead of time. Do you happen to know what the total is so far? Only about $500.

[27:54] Only about $500. Oh, yeah, I would give, my goodness, look at that, 2,961 North American missionaries out trying to start churches, helping on Indian reservations, working in hospitals as chaplains all across the United States.

[28:10] And that's what that money for that offering goes to. And we're going to be receiving that for another week or two until the end of May. So give to that and just write on there either North American Missions or Annie Armstrong, and we'll be sure to send it that way.

[28:27] We also gave gifts for poor children in Kentucky. We sent 25 shoe boxes up there and spent $353 on that project. And then we help with children in the Virginia Mountains every year.

[28:41] We donate a lot of shoes, and some of you have been up to help with that. I appreciate Mike and Susan Douglas leading that project for us year after year.

[28:53] Man, those people are poor. The part of Virginia they go to up in the mountains, I mean, you can just sense the poverty there. Then we've also gone into New York City, donating coats there on the streets in New York.

[29:07] And our total expenses to help you guys go on various mission trips in the United States last year, about $1,316 less than we have often spent.

[29:20] The next one is how we reach out worldwide. And that's really probably the biggest part of our whole budget. We give 25% of our total offerings last year.

[29:32] Is that that number? 28% of our total offerings went to various mission projects outside of the United States. One is that Christmas offering we take up.

[29:44] We took up $965 and sent it in 24. We support a lot of pastors. Our church has a great special relationship with the country of Columbia.

[29:54] If you haven't been here a lot, you might not know about that. But we have a lot of friends there, a lot of churches we work with, missionaries we work with. So we support those pastors with about $7,600 last year.

[30:08] And we have a translator there that helps us a lot. And when we're not there, he's always working with our Baptist missionary. But he's not on any kind of salary. And so we just send a little help to him, about $150 a month.

[30:21] And so we sent Demas, $1,800. Viviana Pena, a missionary that we know in Venezuela, we sent her $4,300. Julio and Emily Pena, missionary counselors, we gave them $4,200.

[30:37] Ray Hoboth Ministries, which are missionary work in Haiti, we gave them $3,400. Courtney Mathis, who grew up in our church, is a full-time missionary in Bolivia.

[30:48] We sent her $4,700 last year. Gideon Bible Distribution, we received and gave them $300. And we also sent $3,500 to a church we worked with a lot in Colombia that took an old, ragged storage area and converted it into a beautiful Sunday school classroom for children.

[31:12] So these were the ways that we were spending money last year. Now, the next slide. This shows you then that of all the monies we spent for everything, lights in the building, mowing the grass, everything, last year we spent $102,000.

[31:31] And we received from your offerings $108,000. It means we only had an excess of about $6,000. And that'll be used in the coming year.

[31:44] But I kind of like that we don't hoard a lot of the Lord's money that comes in and we immediately put it to work. We give it. We keep it moving through here. We just don't hoard a lot of God's resources that he gives us.

[31:58] And so then the next slide. To me, this really answers the question, are we using our money to support our mission? So our total expenses were, I mean, our total, yeah, everything we spent money, $102,000.

[32:12] And the part that we gave to serve the Lord beyond our church was $52,000. That's all those amounts we just went through together.

[32:25] Add them all together, $52,000. That means that we gave away over half of all of your offering. Over half. Most churches, and I'm not running down any church.

[32:38] Every church has to serve the Lord how they'll do best. Most churches set a goal. We want to try to give away 10% of our offerings this year. And they work toward that goal.

[32:51] I praise God that he has permitted us to be organized in such a way and given you the giving heart that we've been able to give away last year, 51% of every dollar you put in the offering plates.

[33:06] And then what do we do with that other 49%? Well, half of that, you can hold on a minute on that slide. Half of that percent just went to keep the lights on and stuff like that.

[33:19] And then, so that was like 25% of our budget. And then about 25% of our budget is still all ministry. It's literature for Sunday school. It's vacation Bible school.

[33:31] It's youth and children going on trips and camp and stuff. So we only spend about 25% of everything you give on maintaining the building and the structure.

[33:48] Three-fourths of it goes directly into let's make disciples and let's share the love of Christ. And I just thank God that he's permitted us to do that.

[33:59] And I think it's one of the most blessed things about our church. Now, next slide, Mark. I wanted to put this up. Like I said earlier, though, stewardship is not just money.

[34:10] It's also your time. And together, working together and working individually, you did so many other things. Just some that I'm aware of. Some of you regularly volunteer in some rest homes, nursing homes.

[34:26] God bless you for that. Some of you regularly volunteer at the Christ's Pregnancy Center. God bless you for that. Some of you regularly volunteer driving people to medical doctor appointments and stuff.

[34:39] Some of you regularly take food to people that you know are in need or they're going through a crisis. There's been a death in the family. You're right there, right away with some food for them.

[34:51] Some of you lead Bible studies outside of this church that you just lead a Bible study with some people, friends, whatever, beyond this church. God bless you. Some of you went for hurricane relief activities.

[35:05] Some of you, well, like here's a real recent one. Our girl from Columbia, Suri, I think it was about 14 of you families individually took her in for a day or two, entertained her better, did things with her.

[35:21] God bless you. All of that is giving stewardship of your time and your talent as well as your money. And God has been so good to our church.

[35:31] Now, again, this is just my opinion. Now, I'm going to wander from the truth, okay? Don't ever bank on my opinion, but I believe in the history of the church that we've spent, a church nation worldwide, I think we've spent way too much money on buildings, on fancy coffee shops inside the church, gymnasiums, whatever.

[35:59] And God has used some of that well. Most of the church real estate sits empty all week and gets used on Sundays. And so I just feel best knowing that the majority of your offerings goes directly to somebody in need with the message, God loves you.

[36:21] The church is helping you because God loves you. I just think that that brings a smile to the Lord's face. And I just feel good about that. Praise the Lord. Okay, well, we are not going to see how I'm doing on my time.

[36:36] Time to wrap it up. We never check up on your offerings. I can certainly say that for the pastors. John and I never count the money, never look at the money, never.

[36:47] That's not our problem. We've got a finance team that takes care of these things. But God knows what you give of your time and your talents and your money.

[37:00] And so he's the one you're responsible to. And so I just ask you, examine your own heart. Are you doing, are you being a good steward of what God has given you?

[37:11] Time-wise, other resources, your funds, whatever you've got. Examine your own heart. And then, trust in the Lord.

[37:25] He's given us all this stuff. We need to realize our stuff is not ours. It belongs to Him. And we have just one opportunity this lifetime of how we're going to manage it.

[37:38] And I really, don't you really want to hear Him say one day, look at you and say, Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.

[37:51] And not realize, oh gee, that thing I hoarded or kept up with could have been used for a better purpose. Or all the time I spent doing such and such could have been used in a much better way.

[38:06] So, let's, you know, consider our own hearts. Let the Lord show and instruct us in these things. I think I have one more slide. So, if you'll put that one up.

[38:18] Just a reminder. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. The world and all of its people belong to Him. Will you surrender your all to Him?

[38:30] Will you surrender your all? I'm going to ask the musicians to come and I'll lead us in prayer as they come. Dear Lord, we thank you.

[38:42] Thank you.