Grow in Giving

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. My name is Hunter Kessler. I am the Campus Minister and Worship Coordinator here at Thrive. Normally John is up here and I'm back here playing the drums too loud, but we're switching it up today. So we're all going to get out early, right? We're going to have a good time. Get our Sundays rolling nice and quick. I've got a wedding to go to later. It's been a busy week. At any rate, I'm honored to be able to be up here and hopefully God gives me some good stuff to say. So if you've been around with us any time since the new year, you know that we are currently in the series called Keep the Change. So this is the third week of the four-part series. And as you know, as the new year rolls around, many people get into the inevitable mentality of new year, new me. And that usually ends up lasting three, four weeks, maybe if we're lucky. So we figured going into this series that we would take that. It's an appropriate time to look at that and just really lean into it and look further into our motivations for change and how Jesus fits into all of that. So one of the first couple weeks, John mentioned what some of the popular New Year's resolutions are. And we have a chart right on. So these seem to be pretty consistent throughout the years. The top three are usually eat healthier, get more exercise, and save some money. I thought it was a little bit humorous looking at this chart a little closer. I thought it was odd that they put more in the parentheses. People aren't just trying to save money. They're trying to save more money. And it just makes me think like saving money is a good habit to have. There's nothing wrong with that. But people aren't just trying to save money. They're trying to save more money. People that took this poll went in and they're like, yeah, I have money saved, but I need to save more money. It's almost like these people are just collecting money or hoarding money. It's good to have savings in case of an emergency and stuff. But just having cash locked away to have cash locked away doesn't really make sense to me. Maybe that's because I don't have money to be saving. But it's just not a hobby to me. And it almost looks like that. Looking at this chart, almost like collecting baseball cards or records or shoes. Does anybody collect anything for fun or has collected anything before? Yeah. So you guys know that feeling, right? I collect records and I can always add more records to my collection. Right. So I understand that. But again, I don't understand it with money. It's almost like people just open their bank app and look at it and they're like, that's a good number. I like that. That makes me happy. But just like any collector of anything, what happens? Eventually it's not enough. Right. Let me ask you guys this. How much money is enough money? It's more. Right. It's always more is always enough. Right. When I get more money, I could do blank. You know, if I had more money, I'd buy a bigger house. I'd travel more. I'd get a nicer car. I'd get a new guitar or a drum set or a phone. I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with the comedian Daniel Tosh. A few years ago, he he had a bit that was kind of on the same lines of this. He's talking about, you know, everybody knows the phrase money can't buy happiness. Right. So he opens with that. He's like, you know, money can't buy happiness. But you know what money can buy a jet ski. And have you ever seen somebody riding a jet ski? That is sad. Answer is no, you have not. It's funny, though, because everybody knows that saying. Right. Money can't buy happiness. But we still try to buy things that bring temporary happiness. Right. Or in attempts to avoid being that person, we save away our money forever and never touch it. Now, before I get too far into this, I want to make a personal disclaimer. I have not figured this out. I am no financial guru. And being entirely honest, every person that I that knows me very well that I shared what I was preaching on suggested that I change it. So if that if that gives you any idea of where I stand in my abilities to keep my life in order, everyone is like, maybe you should switch. But I definitely think that God planned this intentionally. You know, he's got a good sense of humor. He didn't do this to embarrass me. But I think he knows that you always preach best when you're preaching to yourself. So that's my disclaimer. And if I say anything wrong for the rest of the day, I'm no longer liable. So my hands are clean. So we're going to take a couple steps back and look at that chart again. The top three New Year's resolutions, eat healthy, get more exercise, save more money. Now, these are all good things. Right. But there's something that they all have in common. The motivations, more times than not, are with the self at the front end. Right. In other words, they're ...