Treasure and Trust, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Before we get started today, I want to invite you to listen to the very end of the program as we have a special message from Pastor J.D. about giving Tuesday tomorrow that you won't want to miss. But first, there's a cliche phrase we often use when someone gets saved. We say that they gave their life to Jesus. But do we really know what that means? Today, we're unpacking what it looks like to surrender to God in our day-to-day lives and truly give it all to Jesus.

We're in a teaching series called All In. If you've missed any of the previous messages in this series, remember you can catch up online at jdgreer.com. Right now, let's join Pastor J.D. for the second half of a message he titled Treasure and Trust. Is God your primary treasure and trust? Is God your primary treasure and trust? You want to know how you can know?

Here's how you know. Does He have full authority to tell you what to do with everything in your life? Have you come to a point where you've told God He can have it all, all of it? Is your life a blank check to God? Everything you own, everything you are, everything you have, everything you ever hope to be, is it in His hands to do with what He wills? Is He your primary treasure and is He your trust?

Because if He is, then your hands are off of everything and He's got a blank check. Here's a second question. Are you pursuing an earthly kingdom or are you pursuing a heavenly one? Are you pursuing an earthly kingdom or are you pursuing a heavenly one?

What are your resources and your talents being used to build? Please don't misunderstand me. I am not trying to tell you that you need to go into full-time ministry.

I'm not trying to tell you that. God made you good at business for a reason. God gave you the talents He gave you, but the question you've got to ask yourself is what's your primary goal and what you do? Is it to bring glory to God and to leverage what He's given you for His kingdom?

Or have you only looked at what He's given you as a way to build the kingdom that you are aiming for on earth here? One of our pastors this week told me about a couple he knows he's good friends with who saved for years for retirement. Man, they had one dream in their life and that was to buy a beach house and retire there.

Husband played golf, wife could do whatever she wanted to do. So they did it. Man, they hit all their financial goals the day they retired. They bought a beach house on that same day with cash. He said that they moved down there, got down there, just everything that they hoped it would be.

He said after two weeks, two weeks. So they're sitting in their beach house one night and they look across the table at each other and they say, What are we doing? Everything that will matter in eternity is about three hours away from where we move because that's where our kids are. That's where our grandkids are. That's where the church that we've invested our lives at is. And we're here on vacation for the last 20 years of our life. That's what we want to do before we meet Jesus is we want to take everything he's given us.

We want to take this chunk of time and we just want to go on vacation. Can I tell you something? I have a feeling that some of you may twist this.

But please just hear me what I mean. Retirement is not a biblical concept. Retirement is not a biblical concept. Ceasing from one kind of work, right? Because you don't need money from that kind of work and you saved up so that you don't have to work the last 20 years. That is a biblical concept.

Yeah, that's fine. But spending the last 20 years of your life before you meet King Jesus on vacation? That's not how I want to stand before Jesus. In fact, taking that last chunk of time when arguably you've got more free time and more wisdom, you've got more to offer the kingdom of God than any other time in your life, spending that on vacation, doing nothing, that's not how you want to walk in front of King Jesus when he says to you, what kingdom were you actually living for? You did all this so that you could retire and just get older and play golf and sit in a beach house and achieve some dream? What kingdom were you living for? Why would you take the time that I gave you and spend it on yourself? You understand what I'm saying? I just use that as an example. What kingdom are you most living for?

Which one is your trajectory? Those are my questions for you. Now let me apply this to us as a church. Because I think that we as a church are at a moment very similar to Abraham. I told you last week that we've been selected for grace and I gave you examples of that. I think we've been selected for blessing. I think God has chosen us to give us a great name in our community.

Don't think of great name like famous or awesome. Think of great name like instrument of blessing. That's what it meant for Abraham. And I believe we're at a Kairos moment for our church. You know what Kairos means? Kairos is a Greek word that Bible writers use to mean a divinely appointed moment where God is on the move. It means that God is doing something. He's about to do something in his plan. And so he gets his people to a place and he speaks to them at a specific moment and says this is what I want you to do.

Kairos moments require special kinds of sacrifice. About two weeks ago I was asked to go to lunch where there's a group of rehabilitating prisoners that comes with several of our church members every week. There's one of them in particular. I've noticed he's been here since May. And he comes every week and I found out that his name is Mohammed.

If that tells you anything. And so I said, why are you here? He said, man, I can't describe it to you. He said, but there's something. He said, there's an authority of God here. He said, something I've never found in Islam. He said, I get my three hours out of the prison every week as long as I have a chaperone and I come here. And he said, there's something here I don't know.

I can't describe it. I just know that God is here. And I had lunch with him two weeks ago with him and some of the families that were a part of his life. And he's basically talking to me about why he can't really follow Jesus yet. And about halfway through the conversation I looked across the table at him and I said, Mohammed. Now I'm not normally this bold.

Well, maybe. But at this point I knew the Holy Spirit was putting this in my heart. I said, Mohammed, you already believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, don't you? He looked down and he said, I do. I said, so the question for you is no longer is Jesus the Son of God.

It's just, is he worth everything you're going to have to leave to follow him? He said, that's right. Here's what I said to him. I said, Mohammed, I want you to go back to the prison tonight and I want you to think about how valuable Jesus is. I want you to think about God giving himself for you.

And I want you to let that work in your heart. And then the Holy Spirit says something else to me. The Holy Spirit said, he's ready to do this now. And I looked at him and I said, Mohammed, you're ready to give your life to Jesus now, aren't we?

Aren't you? He said, yes, I am. I said, would you like to pray right here, right now?

And would you like to trust in Christ as your Savior? He said, yes, I would. I said, do you need me to tell you what to pray? He said, no, you don't. He bounced his head. I put my hand on him.

There's about seven of us at the table. We were in a public place. Everyone knew that except for Mohammed. Mohammed was praying like it was just him and Jesus and they were the only people in the universe. And he was calling out on God's name.

He was with wails and supplications. I'm watching, I kid you not, our heads are bowed. This whole prayer lasts like six minutes. I'm watching our waitress. I'm looking out of the corner of my eye and she's like, what is going on?

Because the whole restaurant is like, what is it? There's like a little Holy Ghost thing happening at our table. We baptized him at the nine o'clock service today as a follower of Jesus Christ who gets out of prison. He gets out of prison in 43 days. And he says, I'm a 50-year-old man who's beginning a whole new life. And he points at a couple of people this morning. He said this in the baptism. He said, because they got invested in my life and they showed me who Jesus is.

That's what God is giving to us. God is using ministries in our church like our student ministry. Our student ministry baptized 120 high school students this past year.

Some of us grew up in churches where you didn't baptize 120 people in 20 years. I told you about our kid, our small group. We have 311 small groups as a part of our, these small groups are places of intense ministry. Yes, you are growing deep in God's word. That's one of the primary purposes of small groups. But I don't know if you know this, but our small groups are also a place where a lot of people come to Jesus, sometimes before they ever step foot in here. I hear about that all the time.

They are places where people's lives are saved. And that's, I got a letter this week, or actually a few weeks ago, and I had this girl's permission to share it with you. She said, I need you to tell you this story. She said, my small group literally saved my life. She said, I was so depressed that I was driving on my way. I was going to commit suicide when a girl from my small group picked up a phone and called me and just said, God put you on my heart to pray for you.

And I just want to check on you and see how you were doing. She said, I pulled the car on the side of the road and I wept and I told this girl what was going on. She talked me back. She's introduced me to the gospel. She said, not only did she save my life, I've now found Jesus Christ, my healing. She says, God is changing my life. That's how God is using some of our small groups.

He uses them to save some marriages in our church. This week, a guy in a small group told me this story. He said, there's a guy in our small group who decided he was going to leave his wife. He said, he just had it. He was done. He said, we got together. The guy's in that small group and we set him down and we said that this was the dumbest thing you could ever do. We told him that he should not do this. We talked him back off the ledge. He said, this is several months ago. Not only is their marriage saved in that moment, he said, it's been restored.

It's at the healthiest place that it's been in years. I said, how did you do that? That's like marriage counselor kind of stuff. He's like, I don't know, man. We just, he did two things. We just quoted Bible verses at him and duct tape. We duct taped him down until he could not leave. That's not really true, but metaphorically it's true.

They, you know, it's just, that's how God uses things like this. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. We'll get back to our teaching in just a moment, but I mentioned it before and we'll talk to J.D. about it later on today's broadcast, but I want to make sure you know that Giving Tuesday is tomorrow.

If you're not familiar, Giving Tuesday is an international giving holiday that takes place the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. And each year J.D. Greer ministry selects a gospel centered cause to support thanks to the generosity of our amazing Summit Life family. And this year we have the chance to do something incredibly exciting. We have recently been given the opportunity to place Summit Life on the airwaves all over Southern California, one of the most strategic locations in the world with a population of over 25 million people in desperate need of the gospel.

But to do this requires a significant investment by the ministry. So any gift you give tomorrow will be matched up to $50,000. All you have to do is call us tomorrow with your gift or give online at jdgreer.com slash donate.

And don't miss out on this. Every dollar given tomorrow goes towards this worthy cause. We want to welcome new friends to the family, so don't forget to give your special Giving Tuesday gift. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Let me show you where we are as a church.

Again, why I tell you we're at this place because I want you to feel what I feel about this. Let me put up a chart that shows you our actual attendance growth over the last 10 years. If you average those numbers on the right side, it averages to 34.5% a year. We've been growing at 34.5% a year. Now I know that you would say, well, as you get bigger, that will slow down.

Really? Why don't you look at the last four years there? 37%, that's greater than 34.5%, 36%. If we grow at the next 10 years at the same rate we've grown at for the last 10 years, this is what it will look like over the next 10 years.

2,021,111,401 people. I know what you're saying. You're like, there ain't no way possible that you can grow at 34.5% for the next 10 years. And part of me wants to say, oh, you have little faith. But the other part of me says, you're probably right. I understand that as numbers get bigger and that percentages change. I understand that.

I'll concede that. So let's cut that by 40%. Let's say that we only grow about 20%. That's fair, right? Here's what the next 10 years look like at 20%.

11,000, 12,000 people. Can I be honest with you guys? We don't have the facilities to be able to facilitate the kind of ways that God is using our church to reach people. Right?

I mean, it's like I tell our staff. This is a little cheesy, but it makes a point. How many pickles can you put in a 10-pickle jar? Huh? How many? 10. How many if you pray about it?

10. Right? Because God doesn't fix some things through prayer. Prayer actually is what he uses to fix some things in the sense that we become the answer to that prayer. We are at a place where God is blessing us and he calls us to go into the unknown and it requires a special moment for the people of God to step up and to say, I see what you are doing.

I know what you are asking and I will offer what I have so that you can do what you want to do. I mean, just so we're all on the same page here, I've never understood Jesus' vision for his church to be small. Never. You want to know why? Because when God called Abraham, he said, I'm going to make you the father of many nations. And Abraham was like, which one? And God was like, all of them. I'm going to make you, Abraham, have children like the stars and the sky and the sand and the seashore.

And Abraham was like, really? Like that many? I only wanted like three, maybe four. You know, like how many is that? You make reality TV shows about people who have more than seven kids.

Really, I don't. And God was like, you just don't understand how much I'm going to actually do through you. When Jesus would do his ministry, he would gather thousands. When the Holy Spirit planted the church in Acts 2, he chose the day to plant the church that there was the most people in Jerusalem, which was the biggest city in Israel. And Peter preached a sermon and 3,000 people got saved and baptized in the first church service. The next week, you know, Acts chapter 3, 5,000 people get saved. By Acts chapter 4, you get so many people that are a part of the church that they can't, there's hardly anywhere in the city, they can all get together at the same time. So they do that a couple times a year, all come together. And then the rest of the year, they meet, it says house to house, which means they were the original multi-site mega church.

Boom, right there, all right? Acts chapter 4, just carrying on the love. I have never understood this to be a small thing because I know that the stake is too high and Jesus is worthy. Jesus is worthy. Souls are valuable, people are valuable, the mission is urgent and Jesus is glorious. There are three questions I this year have written in my Quiet Time journal that I ask about myself that I would commend to you.

I want you to ask these about your life and then we're gonna ask them about us as a church. Is what you're living for worth him dying for? Is what you're doing with your life worthy of the magnitude of his sacrifice? Does the scale of your dreams match the scale of his sufferings? Jesus didn't shed his blood for you to sit at a beach house and grow old and play golf.

Nothing wrong with beach houses and playing golf. I'm just saying there's something greater that God did for you that requires something different from you. That's why I get so excited when I talk about these things because I start seeing what God could do if we as a people went all in.

We could send 500 missionaries, we could plant twice as many campuses, we got high school students to reach and college, we got places to bless in our city. I see and I sense God on the move. So yeah, we got things we gotta walk into but my prayer for you, see, is that this would be a profoundly, a profoundly pivotal moment for many of you. In taking your treasure and trust off of this world and putting it into God's kingdom.

C.S. Lewis said this, get this, wealth has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world. Which means that if you have wealth, and all of you relatively speaking do, relative to everybody else in the world, it has a way of knitting a man's heart to this world and that's a spiritually deadly condition. So you wanna know one of the ways that God will rip your heart away from this world and put it into another one? One of them is when you suffer, right? But another one is when you have an opportunity, a Kairos moment, to sacrifice. Because in a Kairos moment you have a chance to say, God, I'm gonna transfer things that I treasure and trust here, I'm gonna transfer them to your kingdom. Jesus said it like this, I love this, Matthew 6.21, where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be.

Past or confession. I always tend to reverse the two clauses of that verse. I always wanna say where your heart is, that's where your treasure will be.

Because the point I wanna make is where you're giving shows where your heart really is. So where your heart is, that's where your treasure is. But that's not what Jesus said there. He actually made that point elsewhere and it's a true point, all right?

So I'm not like totally off when I say that. But in Matthew 6.21 he says where your treasure is, that's where your heart is going to follow. The reason he said that, watch this, is because he's given you a means, he's given you a means to get your heart in the right place. Because wherever you put your treasure, your heart, like a magnet, will go toward that thing. Does that make sense? So it means when you plant your, you put your resources, you put your hopes there, your heart goes there.

One of our members told me this this week, who is, I had never heard somebody explain it like this and I thought it was, thought it was brilliant. He said, he's a very generous man, and he said, he said, J.D., I want you to know that the sin that I've struggled with most of my life is the sin of coveting. He said, since high school, he said, you know, somebody has a nicer pair of tennis shoes than me and I get jealous of that. He said, so as I get older, it just becomes nicer things I'm jealous of. He says, you want to know what's done more to curb the sin of coveting and jealousy in my life than anything else? He said, generosity, giving away.

He said, here's why. He said, in the last five years, I realize I've given away more to the kingdom of God than any of my friends have used in buying a beach house. I could have bought a beach house with cash, just in what I've given away to the kingdom of God in the last five years.

He said, so when a friend of mine drives up in a brand new car, my heart now says, I could have had that. I could have had that if I chose. But I chose to invest my money and my life in that kingdom. I chose that. He said, and that has shattered this coveting heart because I know that I've put my treasure there and my heart is now going with it.

You see, I want this to be a moment for many of you where your kingdom is actually clarified and where you have a chance to put your treasure where you know it ought to be and then let your heart follow suit. Can some of you admit that you're where Abraham was, that metaphorically you're childless? Will some of you men just admit that money's not working for you? That's why you've got to have a new hobby every two years that's ridiculously expensive?

That's why? Because you're just bored in life. And what you need is not a new hobby. You need a whole new basis for your life. You need a new kingdom to serve. You need a new source of treasure.

You need a new source of trust. And it's about time you realize that you don't come to God to put him in orbit around your tiny little pathetic planet, that you come to begin to orbit his. This is his universe, and you've got to say, you're my treasure, you're my trust, you're my kingdom, and this is about you. Do you still like motivation to do this? Can I give you one last piece of motivation?

This is probably the most important thing. You know what the real meaning of Abraham's story is? The real meaning of his Abraham story, as with all Old Testament stories, follow this. You know who the real Abraham was, the ultimate fulfillment? It was Jesus. Jesus was the one who left his father's country and went out into the void so that he could build a people of God. Jesus was the one who was in Isaac when he walked up on that mountain, except when the heavenly father raised his knife above Jesus to sacrifice him, no angel came and stood in the way.

No angel came and stood in the way. Jesus had that knife plunged deeply into his chest because Jesus was the lamb who was going to be slain in our place. There was no lamb in the thicket that was there to replace him because he was that one. And his blood was shed so that we could become the people of God, so that we could be saved, so that we could receive the blessing. And now we can look at God and say the same thing the angel said to Abraham, because you didn't withhold your son from us. We know that you love us.

We know. You are being asked to go all in for a God who went all in for you. And when you understand that, what fills your heart, humility, gratefulness, God, you went all in for me. I didn't deserve this.

I deserve to be destroyed in the flood of your wrath. Because you chose me for blessing, gratefulness, and then excitement. You get to use me to make my name great in somebody else's life. And that makes you what 2 Corinthians calls a cheerful giver. A cheerful giver. And God loves cheerful givers.

You want to know why? Because cheerful givers get the gospel and God loves it when people get the gospel. Are you prepared to go all in? Is that your prayer? Welcome to Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. So tomorrow is an international holiday known as Giving Tuesday. We have a really cool opportunity here at Summit Life to further our mission to take people deeper into the gospel as well as advance the gospel wider into the world. Yeah, Molly, we've got a unique opportunity for our whole Summit Life family to rally around a great opportunity to reach more people. You can help us launch Summit Life in Southern California, an area that we know that the need for our message is great. Our west coast or our left coast, as some people call it, is a place where there's a lot of ministry needed, whether it's people that are immigrating into the area or people that are just far from God.

It's not a cheap market. And so we're asking that Giving Tuesday this year be dedicated to helping us get the gospel there. It's what I always tell our Summit Life audience. You're not really giving to us as much as you're giving through us to be able to see the gospel go forward in some places where it's really needed. We are aiming to raise $50,000 to bring eternal hope and encouragement to listeners out there.

And here's the good news. Every dollar you give is going to be doubled thanks to a very generous matching gift. We believe God has opened the door for us to be able to do this.

And if so, we know that means He's going to put it into many of your hearts to come alongside of us so that we can go forward in this together. Every donation given tomorrow at jdgrier.com will go exclusively to this expansion. So when you give on this Giving Tuesday, it's going to go to opening the door for this gospel ministry in Southern California. Remember, any gift you give tomorrow will be matched up to $50,000. So it's crucial that you visit jdgrier.com slash donate. Once again, that's jdgrier.com slash donate. This is such an important opportunity, and we're so thankful for each of you who give to make this a reality. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us tomorrow as we discover what it looks like to go all in with God in the area of our finances on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.