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- [00:01]
A
Boys need to be served. Men serve. I'm talking about putting childish things away. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, they came to Jesus and they said, teacher, we want you to do. Man, this sounds like Americans. We want you to do for us whatever we ask. I'm gonna, I'm make sure it gets on the screen. I want you to believe this is in the Bible. Mark 10:35. I don't know if it. Do you guys not have it? Oh, man. Well, it's there. Mark, chapter 10, verse 35. They say, we want you to do for us whatever we ask. Wild. It's wild. That's in the Bible. Jesus goes, you just have no clue. Let me just. That to me is boys right there, right? That's just boys. That's just immature boys. I come to God with a list of demands, just immaturity. Look what Jesus says, verse 42. You know, those who are regarded as rulers of the gentiles, how they watch this, they lord it over them and the high officials exercised authority over it. So he's saying, you understand how this works in the world, right? Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first must be slave to all men. Serve men, serve. Men have a desire to be great, but Jesus redefines greatness. He says, I'm going to let you be great, but the way to be great is by becoming a servant. So here's my question. Who are you serving and whose life are you making better? One man said it like this. In order to be happy, you need someone to love, something to do and something to look forward to. Happiness is not a certain amount in the bank. Happiness is not a zip code. Happiness is not an address. Happiness is purpose. Someone to love. That's love. Something to do. That's faith. Something to look forward to. That's hope. First Corinthians 13 says, there's faith, hope and love will have them forever, for all of eternity. You can't be happy until you have faith, hope and love. Until you have purpose. Happiness is not found in being served. Happiness is found in serving. Happiness comes from purpose, not ease. My goodness. Alright, so here we go again. I need you to serve. Go ahead, throw it up on the screen. Here we go. I better see some phones right now or I'm going to cuss. I need guys in the parking lot, I need guys on safety and I need guys hosting and I need you to join a team. You have five states. Pull out your phone or I'm going to say the F word. Just kidding. I'm not good. Faith, faith. Fight future. If you're a first responder, if you've served in the military, police officer, ems, firefighter, I need you on that safety team. I need you. I need you. I need you on the safety team. We need hosts, guys who are helping people. Sit. Get seated. I need 100 men today to join the team. We have 900 people on our serve team. We need 1200. So I need 100 men who is not on a team right now who will join a team. I need to see your hand right now. If you'll join a team twice a month, you'll serve. Okay, Grab your phone. I need 100 men. Okay? So grab your phone and hit that QR code even if you haven't finished next steps. We'll figure all that out later. You're like, sweet. It's been five years. Who was that? Yeah, you guys, it's one hour, but I don't even care. I need you. I'm asking you right now. Grab your phone. Join a team. The game is better on the field than in the stands. Church is better when you're contributing, not just receiving. There's something about getting involved. Amen. Five more seconds just to make sure. Any last straggler. Can I see one more hand? I feel like I'm doing a salvation call. I just feel like there's three people on this side who need to surrender their life to. Okay, let me ask you this. Leave it up for one more moment. It's only going to get worse. I'm about to talk about giving, so just relax. You want me to wait? How many are on a team and you love serving in the house of God makes some noise. You love it. It's amazing. It's amazing. You find friends, you find community, you find brotherhood, man, it's so good for you kids. Yeah, we're not doing kids today though. We're doing parking safety and ho. That's where I need help. I need help. All right, lastly. Almost done. Boys are greedy. Men are generous. Everything I'm about to say could sound self serving, so I'm just going to tell you. I'm 42. No. No music. I'm done. No music. I'm not going to make this emotional. Thank you.
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Sorry.
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If you've never given before, I'm asking people to tithe today for the very first time. Nope. None of. None of that. Because you don't get Caesar on Monday when the bank account hits and the paycheck hits and you got to tithe. Caesar ain't gonna be there. It's gonna be you and God. And you're gonna have to learn how to give. Okay, so here's what I'm going to say about. I'm going to talk about giving and tithing. And here's all I'm going to say. I'm 42. I've been tithing since I was 15 years old. I tithe now with a lot more money than I ever thought I'd have. And I tithe on $200 a week. My wife and I are the first in either side of our family to break out of poverty and into real generational wealth. We both come from trailer parks, literally trailer parks. We own multiple businesses. We had money before we started this church, and we stewarded money before we had this church. And we learned how to give before we started this church. And I'll say this, and we built this church on giving in 2023. Some of you who don't know, because so many of you are new in 2023, we gave 70% of our income back to this church. On average. Now, not on average. Every other year, we've given at least 30% of our income back to this church. The first year of the church, we didn't receive a paycheck. We just gave and gave and gave. I'm a giver, so I make no apologies for what I'm about to tell you. And I'm inviting men to take a step of faith with me. When my friends would go to Chipotle and I was 18 years old and I went home and ate a turkey sandwich because I wasn't going to rob God. When I needed to have a formal suit for a church event, but I didn't have money. So I went to Target and I bought a suit and I rolled up the sleeves and I rolled up the ankles and I went to the event and I made sure not to eat or get any food on it because the next day I had to return it. Cause I couldn't afford a $40 suit from Target because God got my tithe. So you could sit there and go, it's easy for you to say, this is all self serving for you. No, it's not. Because I'm actually only here. Like I wanna just say this. I gave my way to the level I'm at now. Did I work hard? Yes. Do I work hard? Yes. Did I prepare? Yes. Did I? All the other. Of course. But there is a side of this where boys want to take but men Learn generosity. The world of the generous gets larger and larger. Walked into Starbucks today. Man from church. Bill, grab me. Jamin. Hey. Dinner last night at the Wynn with Marcus Jaben. Look over my friend Tommy saying hi. Walking through the airport in Dallas. Are you. Are you Pastor Jabin? I saw you. I saw you preach at Elevation. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, it's me. Can we take a picture? Yeah. Larger. I'm from a town of 1700 people. Over 5000 people are going to walk through this property this weekend. Larger. I was in Destin on Tuesday preaching a group of 10,000. A church of 10,000. I was in Dallas last weekend preaching to a church of 8,000. Larger. I. My world got bigger when I chose to be generous. It's not bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger bling. Bigger. Bigger. It's bigger impact. It's bigger faith. It's bigger stretching. It's bigger sacrifice. It's bigger obedience. The world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. The one who blesses others is abundantly blessed. Those who help others are helped. So here's the question I've written down. Will I live big or small? And you have to get. I want to just be strong here. You have to get past the idea that you are doing this church or any church a favor. You've got to get past the idea that when you walk through those, past those boxes and you throw a 20 in, you're doing me some kind of favor or a church a favor. No. You are partnering with God for the preaching of the gospel, the exaltation of Jesus, the mission of seeing a city reached and souls saved. Are you partnering with us? Yes. Am I grateful? Yes. Do I say it every week? Thank you? Yes. But you have to mature from I'm helping him out to I'm partnering with God. Does that make sense? Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you robbed me. God said you robbed me. You ask, how are we robbing you in tithes and offerings, and you're under a curse, the whole nation, because you're robbing me. God didn't say I'm cursing you. God said you're under a curse. Let me explain it. Anytime you do things your way and not God's way, it's a curse. If you don't pray, God doesn't curse you. But you're cursed. If you don't forgive, God doesn't curse you, but you're cursed. What am I? What do I mean by curse? You don't have the wind of heaven at your back. You're on your own. You're limited to you. So if you refuse to pray, God isn't going to kill you. But. But you don't have the wind of heaven. If you don't forgive, God's not going to wipe you out, but you don't have the wind of heaven if you, if you don't love, God's not going to curse you, but you're going to. You're going to be all of that. Does that make sense? When you don't tithe, it's not that God curses you. It's that you've closed the door to the opportunity that God wants to bring into your life. Now watch this. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse and you know, and someone right now. Because I can hear your thoughts. Because I'm a prophet. That's Old Testament. Well, it isn't for me because I'm in the New Testament and this works. So I don't know. I don't, like, I don't even know where to go with you on that because I've been under the new covenant now following Jesus for 27 years as a tither. God says, you're right. This is about honor. It's about robbery. I'll tell you right now. When my daughter brings home a boyfriend or tells me about a boy in this church and dad little so and so, wants to take me on a date. Whatever I'm telling you right now, the first thing I'm doing is I'm pulling up his tithe record at this church.
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Because if he'll rob God, he'll dishonor my daughter. If he can't even honor God, his creator, how's he go? How's he gonna honor my baby?
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That's gonna be an ugly convo if I see a zero. So bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this. God says, put me to the test. See if I will not open up the floodgates of heaven, pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. Does that mean God's going to make you a millionaire? No. Does that mean. Does that mean if you give a dollar, God's going to give you $10? No, I'm not talking about some cheap, cheesy, gross thing you saw on Christian TV at 3am that's not what I'm talking about. But I am talking about the fact that when you honor God in the tithe, he gets involved in your life through Opportunities through promotion, through favor. You're not. You're not gonna tithe and wake up tomorrow morning and open your eyes and there on the bed is a stack of cash. That's not how it works. An angel's not gonna knock on your door and hand you a check from the bank of heaven. That's not how it works. But you start getting opportunities, you start getting ideas, you start getting thoughts, you start having favor. Doors start opening, promotion starts happening, and your financial level grows. Why? So you could just have more stuff? No, we don't give to get. We give to give. Again, all these, all these preachers taking the people's money. 5% of American Christians tithe. This obviously isn't working. Only 5%. We have about 5,000 people who come to our church on any given weekend. If we just took the median income of 75,000 a household, let's just say each couple or person's given five grand a year, they're tithing. Our budget would quadruple, multiplied, multiplied, multiplied, multiplied millions if people just gave 5,000 a year. If. And obviously there's going to be a millionaire that's going to give a lot more and there's a person that is going to give a lot less. But if we just balanced it out, our annual giving would quadruple. Think about that. And we have a very high giving church compared to America and compared to the stats. Okay, so here's what would happen if every man in this room started tithing. The church would do more, and you would be free. The church would do more. We could do everything God's put in our heart to do. One, two. You would be free. You'd be free from greed, and you'd be free from the love of money. I gave my way out of small. I gave my way out of greed. I gave my way out of fear. I gave my way out of poverty. And when I say poverty, I mean a poverty mentality of I'll never have enough. My life has been built on giving, not taking. And giving works. It is God's system of increase. And today I'm asking every man in this room to begin tithing on the 1st and 15th of every month. I have automated giving, automatic giving. It just goes right out of my account. I don't have to pray about it, think about it, do spiritual warfare about it. I Give on the 1st of every month. I give to the legacy team. I give an amount over and above my tithe to help the building, help with debt, and to help with the parking lot that we're building. I want to ask you to join me as a giver. Sacrifice, be a part. Well, I don't want to. Fine. Doors are always going to be open. We don't check tithe at the door. But I want to challenge. Boys are greedy, men are generous. Every November, we do a series called the Miracle Offering. We're going to do it this year. A lot of you are so new to the church, you don't even know this. Let me tell you why you're here. Let me tell you why you're in this building. Somebody paid for that seat you're sitting on. And when I say that, I mean literally for two and a half years, I stood at that high school and I said, those seats are going to be $279 a chair. People went, but aren't you glad sitting on that nice soft seat today? I said, those parking spaces are going.
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To be $3,000 of parking space. This building's going to be $500 a square foot.
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And people, people sacrificed, people gave and couples prayed and they got together and they made a covenant with God and they said, we're going to give $1,000, Pastor, or we're going to give 5,000 or we're going to give $20, Pastor. It's all we've got. Some people were able to give a million dollars. Watch. And since we moved in this building in May, just since May, We've seen over 2,000 people give their life to Christ since we moved into this building. That's worth celebrating. I said, that's worth celebrating.
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Because it's not about money. It's about honor. It's not about money. It's about souls. It's not about money. It's about the gospel.
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How many people. How many people baptized? Yeah. Stand up. I'm done. How many people baptized this year? I don't know. Eight hundred. Pushing a thousand. We'll probably break a thousand next week. Baptisms, you know, churches don't see that in a lifetime. You just want my money. I don't. If you came up to me today with a million dollar check, my salary doesn't change. No one's salary is going to change with that. We're just going to build the parking lot and we're just not going to have to borrow money to do it. Does that make sense? So in November, when we do our giving series, don't be shocked. It's coming. And I'm going to ask every person in our church to pray. But two things. You're going to hear it a Lot. Pray and obey. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit what you're supposed to give and then you're going to give it. That's the offering. But the tithe is the budgeted cutting Covenant, cutting 10% out of my income. I give it to God. I trust God. And God, when you create a gap in your life, in any area of your life, when you cut covenant with God, you now allow him to fill that gap. And God never blesses you back with what you gave him because you can't out give him. He'll always make sure it's more because. Because he wants to do this with you. He wants to show you this life. And again, I know some of you guys because I know you personally, you might not have a job right now. I'm not asking you to do that, you understand? But I'm talking to you who it's time. It's time to take the step again. We're not checking. I'm not going to be out there say let me see your, Let me see your bank app. So let me see what you're. I'm not doing that. But I. Unless one of your little 10 year old sons wants to date my daughter, that I'm too young. But he turns 18, he better start tithing now. I started tithing when I was 15. Changed my life. Changed yours. So here's my third slide. Here we go. I'm glad you're laughing. Yeah, it's a joyful laugh. There you go. That's good. We're cheerful givers. Pastor, I want to ask you to make a covenant with God and begin to tithe. Watch what God will do in your life. Telling you you can't outgive him. I'm telling you you can't outgive him. What if you committed to the rest of this year? I'm going to be a tither. Next three months I'm going to get serious about. I'm going to make a budget and I'm going to do this, man, I'm telling you, it'll change your life. It'll change your life. And there's always two groups of people who are not giving. There's the group that tells themselves they believe the lie. Man, what could this even do? It's so little. What's 100 bucks a month? What's 50 bucks a week? It's so little. Oh man, it's powerful. This church is not built on two or three big givers. This church is built on everyday men and women who give their little to Jesus and He multiplies it and he breaks it and he blesses it and he presents it to the father. There's another group, maybe you're very wealthy. Here you go, man. If I started tithing, that'd be $100,000 a year. That'd be 500,000 a year. That would be. That's too. Oh, my God. What would we. What would you do with all that? Preach more, reach more, serve more. See more people come to the kingdom. Steward better. I'm telling you, they're building a stadium right now for 3 billion. Oh, my God. We're tripping over a million dollar parking lot. Come on, we got to think bigger. $4 billion sphere. What is happening? And we're over here tripping out over this building was 25 million. That's nothing compared to what the world's doing. Church thinks small. We got to do more. We've got to start more campuses. We got to. We gotta reach more people. And I'm talking straight. I know I am. I know I'm talking straight. I know it's uncomfortable for some of you. It's not for me. It's what transformed me. Because money's no longer my God. I don't worship Mammon. I don't serve Mammon. I serve God.