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Introduction
I want to welcome you again this morning.
First, to those joining us online, we are so thankful for our online technology that allows you to be a part of our church family today.
I also want to welcome those who may be joining us for the first time today.
I hope your time with us today is encouraging and helpful, and I look forward to meeting you.
I would also say if you are new to our church today, it would be helpful for you to know that we practice a form of preaching called “Expository Preaching”.
What that means, is we believe the Bible is best taught by taking books of the Bible and then breaking them down from beginning to end, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.
Our goal, to better understand not only what God’s Word says, but what it means in our lives today.
That being said, we are taking a break from our expositional style for the next few weeks as we focus in on the New Year.
Because as we enter 2022, I believe God has big plans for MCF.
However, if we want to accomplish what God has planned, we have to be prepared for what lies ahead.
And so in oder to help prepare us I want to take the next few weeks to focus on four New year commitments.
Commitments that I believe are necessary for you and I if we truly want to accomplish God’s plan and purpose in 2022.
Commitments that will requires us to stay focused on the spiritual not the physical.
Commitments that will lead to more joy, more hope, more peace, and more purpose in your life.
Commitments that I believe will lead us into a deeper relationship with Jesus.
That being the case we aren’t going to wasted any time as we jump into our first commitment today which I have simply titled “A Commitment to Give”.
And when I say give, I’m talking about what we need to be willing to Give God as we move into a New Year.
You might say, “Ok Pastor, that sounds good, but before I commit to that I probably need to know what God wants me to give Him.”
Well, according to Jesus, He’s asking us to give Him more than most realize.
Because according to Jesus:
Luke 9:23 (ESV)
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Jesus says if you want more of Him in your life, then you need to be willing to give up everything, which is what picking your cross up represents, and follow Him.
So, a great question would be, “What exactly does that look like?
What does it mean to give up everything?”
Well, from my experience, “everything” for most of us tends to fall into three life categories: Our Time, Our Talent, and Our Treasure.
Our time being what we give our time too.
Our talent being what we give our gifts and abilities too.
And our treasure being what we give our resources too.
And so that’s what I want to talk with you about this morning.
Because I believe if you and I are willing to give God more of these three areas of our lives, we might be surprised to find out how God much God wants to give back while at the same time working in and through our lives.
So, to get us started, I want to introduce you to the first area of giving that God wants us to give Him:
Area #1 - God wants me to give Him more of my time.
The truth is, time is a valuable commodity.
And it’s valuable for one key reason:
Reason: We only have a limited supply of it.
In other words, we don’t know how much time we actually have, which makes the time we do have extremely valuable.
Because the fact is, none of us know when our time will be up.
For some it could be today.
For some next week.
And then for some it could be 50 years from now.
The reality is, none of us know when we’ll take that final breath.
But what we do know is there will be a day when we do.
The Bible puts it like this:
Job says our days and months have already been determined by God.
Which means while we can’t see it, there is a countdown clock running on your life.
And eventually it will hit zero.
Some of you are like, “Hey pastor, thanks for the encouraging word this morning.
That’s exactly what I need to here.”
Sorry, not trying to be a downer.
But that’s the truth, right?
Time is something we value because we don’t know how much of it we have, which is why I think the Bible encourages us to make good use of it.
Paul puts it like this:
Paul says because our time is limited, we need to make sure we are using it wisely.
And He says the best way to use it wisely is to use it in accomplishing the Lord’s will.
Which is what we are talking about.
The question then is, “What does God want me to use my time to do?”
Honestly, that’s a loaded question and there would be a number ways to answer that and a number of ways to determine it.
For example, one way to determine what God wants you to do with your time would be to simply pray about it.
To ask God what He wants you to do with your day, your week, or the year ahead.
Another way would be to sit down and list out all the things you need to do, and then prioritize them by importance.
And then some might say in order to determine what God wants you to do with your time, you need to focus your time on what He’s gifted you to do.
And honestly, those are all great ways to determine how to use our time.
But what I’d like to suggest to you this morning is that maybe it’s not as complicated as we tend to make it.
That in order to give God our time and do what He’s called us to do, we simply need to be available to whatever needs to be done.
In other words, to give your time to God means you give it to the need at hand.
Now you might be thinking, “Ok pastor, I kind of get that.
But it seems a little vague.”
I get that.
So, to help us understand what I’m talking about, I want to look at a passage found in Acts 6.
A passage that involves a situation in the early church where a need arose that needed to be met.
Luke describes it like this:
Luke says as the church grew, there was a group of people who were being neglected.
But it wasn’t just any group, it was a group of widows.
Women who had lost their spouses through death.
Why were they being neglected?
We don know.
But we do know it was a big deal.
A big deal because according to God’s Word, orphans and widows are high on God’s list of priorities.
The Apostle James put it like this:
James says you don’t neglect widows or orphans.
And so when word came that there were widows being neglected, this got the attention of the disicples.
Because Luke goes on to write:
Acts 6:2 (ESV)
2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples...
In other words, they called for an all church meeting.
Because this is a need that needs to be taken care of.
So it’s all hands on deck.
So what did they decide to do?
Well, what’s interesting isn’t in so much on how they decided to handle it, which we will get to, but what the initial expectation to meeting the need was.
And we see this in what Luke says next.
Because he goes on to write:
What Luke seems to imply here is that initially everybody was of the opinion that the twelve disciples should be the ones who dealt with this.
After all, they’re the ones getting paid to do ministry.
So they should be the ones who set time aside in order to minister to the needs of these widows.
It’s their job, right
But Luke says the twelve didn’t agree with that.
In fact they say, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.”
So, what does that mean?
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