From Consumer to Steward

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. Good morning. Welcome again to Thrive. It's good to have you here on our second week of this series called Shift, as we are making some pretty radical shifts in our lives from before to after or from one mentality and outlook to another. Last week we looked at the shift from a mentality that we are slaves to the shift of being the children of God and what that means in our lives and how the freedom that we have in that. So in the book of Acts, Paul, towards the end of his public ministries, before he's entering a time where he gets placed in prison here and there to the point in Rome, in Acts chapter 20, he knows this is the last time he is going to be speaking with the leadership at a church in Ephesus on his way to Jerusalem. And he speaks a word to them that is profound and he shares a word, a sentence that Jesus taught that I think is a profound one for today. It's from Acts chapter 20 and he says, and you can see it here in this light blue, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And though that's not recorded anywhere in the four Gospels, Paul knows it is a word through, from one apostle to the other, to one disciple to the other, that they heard from Jesus and Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Now here's a fundamental change I've seen in our society. Maybe at one time we used to believe it was more blessed to give than to receive. I'm not sure if we did. But today we've reversed it. Over the course of my life, most people think it's much more blessed to receive than to give. And if I can't get it, I'll take it. And I'll get as much as I want. We have fallen into what I would say is a consumer mindset. It's all about me and what I can accumulate and what I can hold on to and how I experience it and what joys there are in that. Now I'll tell, at the same time though, the consumer mindset is rampant through our society. Most people want to consider themselves givers. That is, I give, I'm a very giving person. But they give after they have taken a lot. And they only give out of their surplus, they only give out of excess, and so they still have a consumer mindset, I can only give when I've gotten a lot. And when I give, it doesn't really affect me deeply, it's just an excess. A few dollars here, a little time there, and I get to live the way I want and experience all I want. Now in this series called Shift, we're going to see that that consumer mindset's got to go. And I think that consumer mindset is behind a lot of the tensions we have in our society right now, including some of the racial relationships that we have in our society. And so we're going to look at this shift from being a consumer to a steward when we read through 2 Corinthians 9, verses 6 to 8. This is what Paul says, the point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, having all that you need, all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. We've got some fundamental work to do today on this shift, because I think too many people are convinced really life's about consumption, it's what I get out of it, then what I can contribute. So we're going to look at these three points today from this passage, the contrast, the struggle, and what that shift looks like. Now why do I say that we need a fundamental change? Because 20 years ago, when I was a pastor out in California, in a medium-sized congregation, we were working through all sorts of budget constraints at different times, and I was really emphasizing to one of the members of our church, who happened to actually be the president of the congregation at the time. He was the leader of the congregation, overseeing kind of all aspects of it alongside of me. We were partnering together in that ministry, and I was bringing up how we needed to reach out to this community, and do more things in this community, and how we got to serve this community. And the community of Visalia, California at the time was very diverse. There were 100,000 people that lived in the town, but there were 70 different languages spoken in the homes of those people. So we were dealing with one of the more diverse communities in America, and we were trying to reach out to different people. But when I was talking about this, the president stopped me in a meeting in front of other leaders and said, time out pastor, but wait a minute, what about us? Shouldn't the church really be for its members first and foremost of all? We need to get our meat needs met first before we talk about anyone else. And you know how talkative I am, you know how loquacious I am. I was stunne...