God's Math

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. Well, good morning. Good morning. I'm your fill-in. 20 yesterday morning, my phone rang, and it said on my phone, John Roth, and I was like, Oh, that's never good. on a Saturday morning. So anyway, but it's my pleasure to be able to fill in for him today. Lisa, is he well enough to watch right now, probably, or is he? Okay, Lauren John. So what I want to kind of bring to you this morning is, actually this is a message that I've done before. About this time last year, I was contacted by a very dear friend of mine who's a pastor in Illinois, and he said, I want you to come back to Illinois in June and preach, and I have a question that I want you to answer when you come. And so this was his question, and I'm gonna share with you this morning what my answer to that question was. And maybe you can think about how you would answer this question as well. But Jeff asked me this question, he said, What's that one thing that God has taught you which has greatly impacted your faith walk more than anything else? What's that one thing? Just one thing that's taught you, has greatly impacted your faith walk more than anything else? And when I got the question, my answer was pretty much immediate. It is something that starts with this and ends with this. And that's what I want to share with you this morning. To answer the question, I have to go all the way back to my high school days. This would have been '77, '78, sometime around there. I worked all summer with my uncle. We did some light construction things and, you know, for, A guy my age at that time, I made decent money. It wasn't great, but it was decent money. And I worked all summer with my uncle to save up enough money so that I could, you know, during school, have gas money and money enough to go out and do whatever. And so I worked all summer with him and one kind of early fall morning, school had started, I asked my mom. If I could drive my dad's '74 Camaro to school. She's like, You know, sure. He was out of town, he wasn't using. Yeah, yes, you can drive dad's car to school. And on my way to school, I went through an intersection and it was pretty slick that morning, slicker than I had anticipated. And instead of stopping at the intersection, I slid all the way through the intersection and hit another car. I'd only been driving for maybe a year at this point, so it was kind of devastating. And it wasn't a lot of damage, but it was enough damage to the front end that, well, when we got the estimate for how much it was going to cost to fix my dad's car, my mom looked at me and she said, Your fault, your problem. You have to pay to fix the car. What happened next is what God used to impact my faith walk more than anything else. Let's pray about it. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to be here. Lord, we pray for John this morning and we pray for all that are feeling the coughs and the sniffles and maybe feel it coming on or getting over it or The few of us that have been able to avoid this. Lord, we thank you for that. We pray for those that are sick today and pray that this will get over quickly and that whatever they need to be healed by you, that that will come quickly. And Lord, just in our time here this morning, I pray that as James said earlier, that people will have ears to hear. And just consider what's being offered by you. Not just today, but every day. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So, when I first realized that the cost of repairing my car, my dad's car, and everything that I had pretty much saved during the summer was virtually the same, I lodged my complaint to my mother. I said, Mom, that's not fair. All that I work for, I'm going to lose. to fix the car, and she was like, Well, that's a shame. And then she asked this question, Did you tithe on what you made this summer? She knew the answer. The answer was no, I hadn't. And I believe that right there at that moment, God wanted me to learn a lesson. that everything we have ultimately comes from him, and that when you return a portion of all that he gives you, you not only get to keep what you have, but he will bless you in ways that you can't even imagine. But if you withhold from him his portion, you might just lose it all. So ever since, Ever since then, a portion, a tithe, 10%, $1 out of every 10 that God blesses me with that I've ever earned is given back to God. So what's that one thing that God has taught me which has greatly impacted my faith walk more than anything else? Other than my relationship with Jesus Christ, this is it. God insists that 90% will go farther than 100%. That's it. Let me explain what I mean. What I'm going to share with you today could, other than your trusting Jesus as your Savior, be one of the most important messages you'll ever hear. and one of the most important things that you will ever do. And it won...