It's wonderful to have her as a guest today. As we think about going toward the promised land, I think about the journey that God has called us to be about. Dave, I cannot believe it's been more than two and a half years since you and I connected as friends a long time, but we connected in a different level. And that was a discussion regarding the possibility of bringing our two ministries together. You were over there on that side of the valley. I was over here on this side of the valley.
And we began to dream about what would happen if God would bring together these two bodies of believers that we're a part of. God began to do something in our hearts. And over the course of a number of months, and then a year, and then two years, the churches came together and we saw Venture Christian Church birthed. And a year ago today, we began to worship together as one congregation in Jesus Christ. That is God's vision. And today we say happy birthday. Yeah, amen. Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday. You bet. And so we've come together. And inside your worship folder today, you're going to find the little blue sheet, which we normally have our sermon outlines. But today we're doing it just a little differently because this is going to be a dialogue sermon. In fact, it's rather spontaneous. We have some things we know we want to talk about, but I don't know what he's going to say or do. And he doesn't know what I'm going to say. No surprises here.
No surprises here like last night, right? I want you to take a look at that because Venture's vision, the vision that gave us birth is right here. And we believe with all of our hearts that this is God's vision for us as a congregation. We have been on a journey. God has said, step your feet into the water. I'll part it. God has said to us, I have a land for you to possess. And we have said by God's grace and goodness, yes, Lord, we will go toward that promised land.
And this is the vision God has given us. I wish I had time to read all of this. I don't, but I do want to point out to you the paragraph that says, knowing Christ and making him known, loving God and loving others, growing into a real community of heaven on earth, a part of God's kingdom. That's something that matters. Everybody wants to be a part of something that matters. We believe with all of our hearts that what we're about here matters and it matters forever.
Now as Pastor David and I have thought about this vision, we've had a dream ourselves. We call it our pastoral dream. And on the back, on the other side, you'll find that the Venture's vision actually runs over into the back page. But then you'll notice a line that says, a pastoral dream for Venture. We want to share with you that dream this morning and some implications of it.
Pastor Dave is going to talk about that, but Dave, you know this last year has been a year of rather unusual focus, hasn't it? Absolutely. Well, as Gail and I talked about the message, we understood that for this last year, we've had a focus. Now how many of you have ever built church buildings before? Can I see your hand? Well, if you have, you know that in building church buildings can sink the church because there can be tremendous conflict there as well as financial responsibility.
But quite often, it sinks the pastor. It is not unusual that as a pastor gets into some type of building program within a few months or even during the building or the building itself, they resign and go someplace else. I've seen that over and over again. The other thing that we have known is that as we have studied mergers, we understand that the majority of churches who work at merging don't make it. And the congregation can sink or particularly the pastorate can sink.
Matter of fact, I knew of another church right here in town, two pastors were going to merge, some things didn't go right, and neither one of them are in the positions they had before. So what are we saying? This last year, we've had a focus. And it's been a tremendous focus to do two things that one by themselves could have drowned us. Remodel a building and get it all done and to merge a congregation.
And one of the things that we're about saying today is that that focus now is going to shift to the task that God has called us to. Now what's the task that God has called us to? Well, if you go over to Acts chapter 6, it says that when the apostles saw all the things growing in the church and all the things that needed to be done, they called the whole congregation together, made sure that some deacons were selected to take care of the things that the church needed to have done.
But the job of the apostle was to minister in the word of God and for prayer. And so we want to say to you, for this whole last year, we have been focusing on merger and on building. It's now time for us to get back. Hallelujah. To our focus. Yeah, I got to tell you, God didn't call me in the ministry, didn't call Galen into the ministry to be a contractor. I didn't call us to sit down in all kinds of business meetings and take care of every finance thing in the world.
Didn't call us just to merge churches, but to be about the kingdom's business and the kingdom's business always involves people. And so there's a focus shift coming into our life because God has blessed us and a merger has come together. We're in this building now for our second weekend. And now we're kind of excited to get back to the focus that we're talking about. People and Jesus, the word of God and prayer. And you need to know that we're excited about getting back into that area.
Listen, there's a pastoral dream for venture that comes our way. If you want to pull out this little blue sheet, let me encourage you to do that. Now, let me ask you, as you read the Bible, how many of you remember there are Jewish believers and what's the other group called? What kind of believers? Gentile believers? How many of you know that they had different food habits?
Can you imagine like the picnic that we're having today, the Jewish believers all bringing their kosher food and the Gentile believers bringing their pickles, pig feet? Can you imagine what kind of consternation that would have caused within the life of the congregation? Well, that's kind of what's happened to us over this last year. We've come from a similar but yet different culture. God is always about blending His family together. And that's what we've experienced. So where do we go now?
Well, if you take a look under a pastoral dream for venture, it says, our shared dream for venture Christian is that of a church known as God-centered, purpose-driven, people empowered. Everybody has a right to minister as the children of God. It is a congregation full of life and exciting to experience with a place for all ages. I don't know if you know or not, we've got some great things going. We have 80 young people coming to our college group now. Some just tremendous things.
We've got all kinds of people, young people in our children's program, a place for all ages. Now, you've got to grab this. We're not talking about a small church. It is both numerically large and spiritually deep. Its methodology is fresh and innovative, respectful of tradition, but not bound by it because we live in a changing culture. Don't change the word, but sometimes you change your style. And openly trust God for supernatural results. What are we saying here?
We're saying unless God shows up, we've just wasted our time. Unless God comes to us in the midst of our worship and our prayer and our study, there isn't any transformation within us individually or collectively, and we invite the supernatural nature of God to show up and to bring results in the midst of what we're doing. It is a church. It is characterized as a community of joy. We'll say some more about that in a moment, but notice that the dream continues with a very significant sentence.
It says, venture is renowned for its integrity, reflecting its highest priority, which is to glorify God by bringing his wonderful life and message of grace to others by serving them in the name of Jesus Christ. Our mission is to serve others, to love them in the name of Jesus Christ, and in doing that to glorify God. Yeah, amen. Guess that next one. Let me ask you something. Have you ever known some ugly, attractive people? You know what I'm talking about.
There's something compelling about these people. You want to be with them, but as you looked on the outside, they're not the most attractive people in the world. Now we're talking about an inward attraction here. We're talking about a church that is attractive with compelling worship, powerful teaching, and real relationships that equip people to live extraordinary lives of God-honoring purpose.
As God's forever family, it cares for the hurting, restores the fallen, embraces the lonely, and offer hopes to the desperate. And I have to tell you, after last night's service, one of our key leaders in recovery ministry grabbed me and said, do you know why I'm doing this? And then began to share with me what he sees taking place in the heart of the desperate, those who have been downfallen and lonely as he cooks for them and shares with them.
And a community has been made out of those who have had some desperate struggles in the midst of their life. He told me that, and he wasn't boasting in this, he said he had put in 400 hours this last year. Isn't that great? In cooking primarily for CR and their Friday evening events. I love those phrases in that last paragraph. That closing sentence captures so much of our passion for serving others. So we ask the question, does this church, this kind of church, exist? Frankly, not yet.
Not perfectly. Not here. Not anywhere. But the dream is becoming a reality because God is at work in the people of Venture Christian Church. Do you believe that? Is God at work in our midst? Is he making us this kind of a church? That is our dream. And I know that all of you share that dream with us. Our aim is real people who have real stories that they're willing to share honestly and transparently and who form together real community.
And our question is, will you share the dream and its implications with us? We want to talk about some of those implications this morning because they really begin to flesh out this dream. The first implication is this, that we dream of a church with dynamic worship services that no one will want to miss and a congregational life that is God-filled, attractive, and life-changing. We have just come together in this beautiful new worship center. And it's comfortable and it's beautiful to the eye.
It's pleasing. And I think those things are pleasing to God. He's given us wonderful technology that we can use. But you know something? Powerful worship is not about any of these things. Powerful worship is about experiencing God together. It's about being a God-filled people. That's what powerful worship is about.
And therefore because our congregational life, and that means us individually and as we come together because we are God-filled, because our lives are attractive, and because our lives are changing, being transformed by the power of God, when we come together that worship is going to be powerful. And the result of that is when people come here onto this campus and there are guests and they visit with us, as they will on October 4th and 5th in a big way we trust, on our grand opening weekend.
As they come here, they're going to sense God is here. Is that a dream you share? We want people to know that God is at work here. And what He's doing is not because of the things, but it's because of what He desires to do in the lives of people to change us all to be like the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to see our congregational life more infused by prayer. One of the dreams I have in this coming year is that we will see prayer begin to emerge in new ways in our congregation.
And that as we begin to express our worship and our trust in God through prayer, then God is going to begin parting those waters and doing those extraordinary things to enable us to possess the land. I think most of you recognize it because you were here when we did it. But underneath your feet and on the wall surrounding you are the scriptures and the prayers that we wrote before the carpet went down and for all the walls were painted.
We are surrounded by God words and by prayers that we've offered to Him to make this a place to His glory and to His honor. Listen, that really begins to happen. What Galen was talking about is that life transformation begins to come to us, not just the knowledge of a word, not just knowing about Jesus, but becoming Christ followers in such a way that Jesus is revealed within us. By the way, as Galen and I have talked about this, we're so excited about you. You guys have done such a great job.
And this is all part of the celebration that we're having today. But I don't know about you, but I played some golf this last week and it was a thing where the four of us were against all the other foursomes. It was what they call a scramble. And when we got on the green, which was good for us, and when we were able to sink the putt, we all kind of rejoiced together, so why don't you just turn around and give some high fives to some folks and say, you've done good.
Just give a high five to someone around and say, you've done all right. Hey, Galen, I'll be there. You've done good, man. This is great stuff. Because I got to tell you, you've done a great job. Listen, we know the difference between a congregation that's responsive and willing and ready to go somewhere with God and the transformation that comes with Jesus Christ. And we know when that's not happening. And when that's not happening, you got dead church and we don't have dead church.
I mean, God's just doing some great things. I want you to take a look at the next thing that we have here. I like this. Galen said this one was mine. We dream of a church where holiness and joy, love and laughter abound. Now what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, the first of it says this, we expect you to behave yourselves. Can I put it any better than that? You know, the kids begin to leave home and they go out the door and they go to school and you kind of say, don't embarrass us.
Or sometimes the kids say to the parents, my kids say to me, Dad, we're going out to eat, don't embarrass us. Because I'll talk to the waiter or whoever like they're a long lost friend. You know, we'll do things. I remember my dad, remember those days when somebody else filled your gas tank? Do you remember that? I remember being in the car with my dad and we pulled up to the service station and dad would start talking to the attendant like he had known him forever.
And that was all right when I was five years old, but when I was 15, it made me want to kind of crawl underneath the dashboard. Dad, you don't even really know this guy and you're talking to him like this. I had to learn that's just who my dad was. But listen, people say, well, we go to church here, but people don't know we go to church here. Oh yes, they do. Oh yes, they do.
Occasionally I'll have somebody walk up to me and they'll point to somebody over there and they say, do they come to church here? And the way they ask the question, like they're surprised. We know that people see us within the midst of the community. Somebody said to me, pastor, how come you don't have any Jesus bumper sticker on your car? Well, because sometimes I don't want to embarrass Jesus.
You cut somebody off in traffic or something, you got that Jesus little thing on your thing, what in the world's going on? Listen, behave yourself in the midst of the community. In the midst of that, listen to what we're saying here, is that we want to be a joyful community. Now, part of that joyfulness is expressed in the fact that we have laughter here. Now, what are we saying about laughter?
Well, what Gail and I, whatever time that Gail and I have here, we want to promise you, we are still going to keep sharing with you the same bad jokes. And maybe some new ones. And maybe some new ones that are bad. Whatever. I mean, just so there can be a midst of joy and laughter. By the way, Gail, happy anniversary. Oh, you're so thoughtful. Now, I want you to see this. I need to open this up? You need to open it up. I want you to, you know, what does it say? You did it. Put it up close.
And you did it big time. Little rap going on here. Now, listen, I expected the next service where you'd be able to sing that and to do some stuff here. I'm really touched. You go this way or this way? I'll go one way, you go the other. We'll see what happens. We'll stir up something. Listen, we believe that coming into the presence of God is a joyful experience. Now, how many of you are 60 years old and older? That's a good part of this.
How many of you remember going to church when you were younger, particularly you guys, where you had to wear those narrow ties and those tab collars? Do you remember that? And if you didn't dress up with that, that looked like you were half choked to death, you couldn't go to church. Do you remember that? Your blood supply was being cut off to your head. As a teenager, I look back and say, how didn't we pass out during the middle of service?
There was kind of a thought that said, if you didn't look like you had been pickled in some type of juice and frowned when you went to church, you weren't serious enough. But I got to tell you, something happened in the Jesus revolution here in the United States where all of a sudden, to me, the joy of Jesus came back into the church. So we can be very, very serious about our faith, but at the same time, we can rejoice in him and celebrate in him. Now, Jesus kind of said it this way.
He said, everybody will know that you are my disciples by the way that you love one another. Our fellowship is precious to us. It is in the midst of the fellowship, which the love of God has revealed that takes us all the way to heaven and we begin to enjoy each other here. Because I have to tell you, you are not just my here and now brother and sister. You are my forever brother and sister.
In the meals that we share together, like at the picnic today, we'll just go on forever and ever and ever. For we are loved in Christ Jesus and he has given us to each other and our love is a forever love. Can you say amen to that? We want a church like that. Amen. How many of you believe that God is full of joy? Do you believe that? How many of you believe that God is holy? Yeah, God is both, isn't he? Somehow we get in our minds that holiness and joy don't work together. But they do.
They are mutually exclusive. Holiness produces joy. And our heavenly father said, you be holy because what? I'm holy. Because I'm holy. That's right. And the joy that he produces in our life is deep. It's not flippant. It's not superficial. It's a deep, abiding delight in God and what he's doing in our lives. Well the dream continues as we think about another important concept. And that is we dream of a church in which Christ followers are growing towards spiritual maturity.
Notice that it says towards spiritual maturity because it's difficult for us to ever say we really arrive, isn't it? Now if you have arrived at complete, full spiritual maturity and you are perfect, please come up afterward and share your secret with me because I need to learn that. I'm still growing towards spiritual maturity. And we see a church where we as the people of God are growing. We've been born into God's family and now we're growing up and deeper in our faith.
This happens in a process that Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter 4. He says that God gives different spiritual gifts to a church. Apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers and evangelists. And he says, and he does this to prepare God's people for works of service. You know we're all ministers, aren't we? We're not just the ministers of the church. The staff is not the ministers of the church. We have that title but we're all ministers. We're all to be doing the works of ministry.
And he says that God wants us in our role to prepare all of us to do the works of service so that the body of Christ, that is the church, may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. In other words, that we become fully developed and like Jesus in the way that we live our lives.
Then, when that happens, then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. You all saw pictures of that terrible hurricane that struck Texas this week and how the winds blew and the waves came in. And we live in a world like that, folks. There are assaults against us as people who are made in the image of God.
There are assaults against us as the people of God who are walking with God made all the time. What we believe is under assault in our culture. He says if we want to avoid being tossed back and forth, then we need to grow up to spiritual maturity. He says, speak the truth in love and we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head that is Christ. And so we dream of a church that is in process, a church that is growing, pressing on the upward way as we used to sing.
You notice that the evidence of spiritual maturity in this text is at least twofold. There's unity and then there's stability. Unity. This has not been an easy process, we know, as we've come together. And some of you emotionally are still kind of caught in that process of coming together as one body. What we want to say to you is that today as we celebrate this anniversary, it's time to recognize that this is God's calling in our lives and to press on toward unity.
To put aside whatever differences there may be. To forgive one another if that's what is required. And then to press on to become one. Paul says in Romans chapter 15 that we are to accept one another in Jesus Christ. And there he's talking about the Jew and the Gentile that Dave was talking about earlier with their vast differences. And Paul says, hey, get over it. You are in Jesus Christ, now accept one another. Dave and I are very different. That's no surprise to any of you.
We're different in style, we're different in personality. But you know what? We're unified in the purpose of God in this place. You need to know that. We're on the same page in fulfilling God's vision for this place. That doesn't mean we're going to agree on everything and there are times we don't agree on things. But we work through that and press on toward the purpose of God. Paul says accept one another. So spiritual maturity means that we grow into unity.
And this next year I pray with all of my heart that that is a focus for all of us. That we focus on what God is calling us to be in Christ Jesus and we accept one another. And he says along with unity is stability. Spiritual maturity means I become stable. I'm not tossed around. I don't get thrown back and forth by the things that hit me. By the things I hear. By the cunning and crafty scheming of men. Rather I am growing stable in Christ Jesus. I'm growing up into him.
So we dream of a church that's growing toward spiritual maturity. And this happens by a lot of tools in our lives including being here like this, spending time with God in prayer, but also in connectedness. And you need to know how important that is, that we be connected. We rejoice in what God is doing in the mid-sized groups of our church. We have seen growth in the terms of numbers of groups and in the groups themselves. We have one group, the one I call Horizons a while ago.
Coi Inia. I don't know why I can't get that in my mind. Coi Inia has grown, what, 100 did we hear? We enlarged some rooms up there to increase capacity for our life communities and that group is already starting to fill up the larger room. How frustrating is that, right? Oh, that's a great problem. We have almost 400 adults now coming to life communities. Praise God for that. We have a lot of connectedness happening in small groups as well in the church. What do we hear this week?
How many women are in? 250 this week. 250 women in our Bible studies. That's without Jewel and some of the other things happening yet. These are just the seven or eight women's Bible studies and there are other ministries as well where women are connecting. We had 60, maybe 80, we've had different numbers on the number of men who were in the men's Bible study on Tuesday night. And Dave mentioned to you, we have 80 in our college group. Isn't that amazing? 80 students in our college group.
We don't have a real residential college here either. That's right. Which is the typical place where these things grow. We have 80 students and it doesn't count those who've gone away from here to school and other places. So folks, God is at work. He's building us into communities and out of that community, out of that being together, He brings us to maturity.
I just hope that if you're not a part of one of these groups that you will get connected because coming here on Sunday for one service is not enough. It takes more than that to grow to spiritual maturity. We have to decide that we're not going to be people who are one year old in Christ 10 times over, but rather we're 10 years old in Jesus Christ. That there's a growth, not just a repetition, but a growth in Jesus Christ leading us on to the greater things. Hey, I got long winded on that one.
I apologize. Listen, we decided that when God first put this vision into Galen's heart, that if we were going to do this, we would be Jesus's odd couple. Which one are you? I'm the messy one. I'm the messy one. I know who I am. I'm the disheveled guy. That's why you're so good to me. Oh yeah. It's just that simple. We understand God gives us different gifts and talents. We come from different backgrounds, different parts of the country, different ways in which we'd go about church at times.
If we were the same, one of us would be unnecessary. Absolutely. That's right. And that's true of the whole world. That's right. God uniquely gifted us. I have to tell you, we believe in what we call the priesthood of believers. That means every child of God has a right to serve in the kingdom ministries. So one of the things I've always said to the church, if you go to the hospital and somebody says, who are you? You say, I'm one of the ministers from Venture.
Now that gets kind of funny because a number of years ago when we're over at the old South Valley Church, I gave people the same permission. I got to church on a Sunday morning and one of our church leaders had had a mild heart attack late Saturday night. And I was busy that day, but all through the day people had gone to the hospital over at Santa Teresa at Kaiser to see him. I didn't get there until nine o'clock at night. And I wasn't quite sure what room this guy was in.
So I went walking up to the nurse's station. I knew the floor and I went up to that station and this gal looked at me and I said, I'm looking for so-and-so. And she looked at me and said, do you know how late it is? And I said, yeah, but I'm looking for so-and-so. And she said, well, who are you? And I said, well, I'm Pastor Sackins from the church. And she kind of looked up to me and she says, how many pastors do you guys have? You know?
And then she said to me, there have been too many pastors here already today. You can't see them. And I said, but I'm the pastor. Listen, I've been to the hospital a lot so I found the guy. Anyway, but listen, God has called us wonderfully together to minister together. I want you to look at the next thing that we're going to talk about.
This thing simply says this, we dream of a church where joyful, generous giving is the norm because of an eternal kingdom perspective has gripped our imagination. Here's what we're saying. We believe because we have a great vision that God will provide great resources for it. Now, I realize that people who come to church, the last thing that they really want to talk about is giving and finances and so forth, but yet it's an integral part of my relationship with God.
And when Gail and I were talking about who was going to do what, I said, man, I'll take that and as we always do, we say, God, we got something that we're supposed to talk about. Now give us something to say. Give us some biblical insight that we haven't had before. Teach us some truths that we haven't seen before. And I got to tell you, the way it came to me this week is that I was in this charity golf tournament and I had a foursome that I was part of a foursome.
And one of the guys that's part of the foursome is a Christian businessman in our valley. I've known him for years. He doesn't live here, real close to us, and he doesn't attend church here. And I saw him. Matter of fact, I'd been out practicing a little bit and got done doing that and he arrived a little bit later. He wanted to get some practice before we went up. And I saw him and we greeted each other and then he went off to the driving range and he came back.
And we talked about very quickly, you know, how's the family, et cetera, et cetera, very shallow, you know, at first. But all of a sudden he looked at me. He looked at me with an intensity. Very early on in our conversation and he says, how's your tithing? And just the way he said it surprised me. I looked at him and I said, well, if you're asking me personally, I'm fine. And you need to know I am.
I've just practiced tithing for a long time in my life and the blessings of God have flowed into my life, I think, because of that. God promises it. And I said, well, I'm fine. And he said, no, no, no. He says, how's the church's tithing? And I said, what? You know, he's never said anything like that to me before. The only time we talk about money is when I would say, how's the business going? You're being prosperous or not?
Because I've known them when the business is up and I've known them when the business has been down. And I said, what's up? And he said, well, Dave, he said, you need to know that joyous giving has broken out in our church. And he says, it's broken out in me. He says, I've never seen anything like this before. And I said, well, what's going on? He says, you know, we're in the midst of the recession. And last month in August, without any campaign, without anything, we doubled our monthly need.
And I said, what happened? He said, God has broken out in generosity in our people and our congregation has been filled with joy. And I said, God, that's what I'm talking about this week. To know what it is to be a part of God's great venture of knowing that it all belongs to him, to know that I can't out give him. And listen, people say to us all the time, how's the finances going?
Well, praise God, last week, our finances begin July 1, our fiscal year begins July 1, right in the middle of summer when all of you are gone. And so last week was the first week that we made budget. Last week was the first week. So somebody says, well, what does that mean? That means all summer long, it's like breathing air through a straw. Just trying to keep the general fund strong. But we know that God is the God of our resources.
Somebody asked me last night, they said, what kind of home did you grow up in? Well, I grew up in a wonderful, loving home. Have to tell you something though, my dad all of his life struggled with this thing called tithing. And I know he struggled with it. I have to tell you, there were some blessings that probably would have come to our home if my dad would have gotten hold of those principles earlier.
Because when you begin to follow the principles of God in celebratory giving, the windows of heaven just breaks open. Somebody said it this way, you got to practice the I-O. Those are just two letters. Somebody says, what does that mean? Instant obedience. By the way, do you have your wallet with you? Would you just take your wallet out if you have your wallet with you? Would you just grab it and take it out? I left mine home. Yeah. You have your wallet, I want you to take it out.
Take your wallet out and hold it up. Just kind of hold it up here. I'm going to have to hold this one up. Just hold it up. Now here's what we're going to do. I'm going to ask you in a moment to give your wallet to the person next to you. Now not your husband or wife, got to be somebody you don't know. And I'm going to ask them to give like they've always wanted to give. Now how do you celebrate giving?
You hold the wallet up to God, checkbook, whatever, and you say, God, what do you want me to do with this? And then you listen and hear. In an instant obedience, doing what God tells you to do, the windows of heaven are broken open with blessing. Let me tell you, I need to be blessed, so do you. And when I hold it before God and ask him what he wants me to do with it, and I respond, God opens up the windows of heaven. Can you say amen to that? I will say amen to that. I will say amen to that.
We need to wrap this up. What are we asking from you? Here's the question I have, what step would God have you to commit to this morning to be a part of this dream? For some of you it may mean coming next Saturday and joining us at the Discovery 101 class and getting into the groove for membership here at the church. For others of you it may mean getting into a small group or into one of the mid-sized groups, one of the life communities we have as a church.
For others of you it may mean taking a step toward tithing. If you can't do 10% right now, if you don't have the faith to do that joyfully right now, then give 5% or 1%. So you're just talking about that because the church is sucking air through a straw. Let me tell you something. If you think that's my motive, then you make the decision what percentage God wants you to give and give it somewhere else. And try him and see if he doesn't bless you when you give.
The reason that we want you to give joyfully is because that brings the blessing of God upon your life, upon your life. Maybe it's a step of saying, Lord, I am going to be inviting my friends. We're going to give you a postcard next week. Do you have that postcard with you? This postcard is something that looks like this. We're going to give it to you and you can give it to people, you can mail it to them and invite them to be here for the grand opening.
But folks, we need you to be a part of the dream. And we need you today to say, I'm going to take this step, at least this step is going to be my part. I'm going to be growing towards spiritual maturity this year, whatever it is. Let's pray together. Would you stand with me as we close our service in prayer? Father, I pray that we will catch the vision, that we will see the dream you have for what this body of believers can do, not only in our day, but in the generations to come.
Lord, help us to see the legacy that we're leaving to the kingdom of God. And I pray today, whatever that step is for each one of us, that we will take it in faith and with joy and with I.O. and obedience, knowing that when we do that, it blesses your heart and your blessings will come upon us. Father, thank you for this wonderful group of people who are here in this service. Thank you for their support. Thank you for their love for us. Thank you for their love for this church.
Thank you for their love for Jesus. As in his name I pray, amen. God bless you.