All right. Well, Church. How’s everybody feeling this morning?
Good.
All right. We’re gonna have a great time getting into the Word here together this morning. And I’m just so grateful that I get the opportunity to preach for our annual missions contribution. And if you’re visiting with us, like I said earlier, if you’re online, if you’re here with us in the room every year as a Church, we take up a special offering, one big, large amount to go towards God’s work in the world internationally, but also here locally. And I’m so proud to be a part of this Church, to be a part of the Orlando Church, but to be a part of the international Church of Christ.
This is a part of our DNA. It’s thinking about what’s beyond the doors of this room and what is in the world around us, the needs of those around us. And like I said earlier, this is one of the greatest things I think we get to do as disciples of Jesus. We may not feel that way exactly. And we’ll talk about that a little bit today, but we are at the time of year again, we are jumping into God’s work beyond the north region of Orlando. And I don’t know about you, but sometimes the offering and when we talk about it, we have the time of the service, it can feel a little bit like white noise. You get that sometimes? I’m the only one. Okay, fine. All of you righteous people, let me tell you about me, the sinner, okay?
That it can be really hard sometimes to feel like that this is just how we’re just supposed to give. And especially because it’s online, there’s not a physical plate anymore. You know what I’m saying? The plate has a stress that comes with it. Right? I remember when the transition first happened to getting online and the plate was still being passed around, and I would just feel so guilty as the plate was coming in front of me like, I have nothing. I have nothing. I know I gave. I promise I gave.
But it always helps my heart to consider why we do things, to ask those questions. Why do we give? So it’s not just an act of righteousness. It’s not just obey and give your money, okay? God wants our money.
God knows how dangerous money can be. We’re not talking about it that. We want to talk about why we give. Six years ago, we went to the Reach conference in St. Louis.
How many of you were there? Okay, good. Chunk of us. One of the main sessions in St. Louis was we were doing a discussion about as a Church, where are we at in our goal to reach the world?
And this booklet was passed out. Actually, I don’t know if you had to buy it or not. I have one. The ICOC Global Missions Reports. This is six years ago, it was an update of how are we doing in the world?
How are these foreign mission fields in particular doing? I think it was important for us as Americans to be able to see that there’s more going on. And if you don’t have this, you can actually download it for free. It’s online. Now, this was an important I remember this lesson for me because I have struggled at different times. I grew up in the 90s in our Church.
When we’re going to plant a Church in the city with 100,000 people, we were all about the out, the go, the go, the leave the go. And there was a part of me at different points when I got in high school and College, like, okay, do we still have that vision as a Church? There’s times I’ve been worried that we lost it. Now what I will say is reading through this, we haven’t. We may not see it the same way. We may not hear about it in the same way because we used to have a lot more videos that were put out.
Like this is all the things that God is doing. Even though we have social media and have every ability to hear about it, we are absolutely still making disciples of all Nations, Church. There’s still a dream to reach the world and continue the work of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. And I want to show you a page from the book because it goes through the 14 world mission societies that are around the world. And what you see highlighted there, those are our mission societies. That’s the Caribbean and South America, the Southeast Missions Alliance and stuff.
I hope that what you see here is that we are a part of something bigger. We are included in a much bigger thing that God is doing around the world. God is moving in phenomenal ways and that needs to encourage us, that needs to fill us with faith. But out of these mission societies, we’re responsible, like I said, for the Caribbean and for South America, specifically Argentina.
I messed up the thing again. Okay? In the Caribbean, we have twelve nations and 38 churches. All right? In Argentina, we have about five.
There might be more. It’s a little bit hard for me to figure that out online. Now over the years, the Orlando Church is not just given to these churches. We’ve given to Europe, to different countries in South America and Asia. We’ve helped to plant churches locally in Melbourne and in Claremont. And so I want to in a special way as a Minister in this Church, I want to say thank you to you guys here in the north region and how proud I am that we are a Church that thinks this way.
It’s not just about us. It’s not just finding a great building one day.
That’s not who we are. That’s not our goal. That’s not what we’re chasing after. We want to see God move throughout the world. Let me ask this.
How many of you have ever been in the foreign mission field? Either you’ve lived there or you visited. Anybody? All right, that’s awesome. So in California, where we were at for about twelve years, the Church that my wife and I were a part of out in California, the Middle East was our mission field. And six years ago, I had the awesome privilege of being able to take my wife and my daughter to the Middle East for 18 days.
We went to three different countries. We went to Dubai, we went to Lebanon, and we went to Jordan. And let me tell you, it was eye opening, it was humbling, it was faith building. It was inspiring. It was challenging and incredibly rewarding to be there.
And if you have the means, I want to implore you Church. If you’ve never visited a foreign mission field, you need to. You won’t ever question why we give an offering like this again. It has completely changed the way that I approach this kind of a service in this kind of a day. This isn’t a transaction. It’s not God collecting his annual tax from me.
This is something that I am giving to my brothers and sisters to help them spread the gospel. I have a few pictures I want to show you that are meaningful to me. This is Ala and Daniela. They’re a young couple out in Lebanon. He’s Syrian and he’s actually got a sister that’s a disciple out in California that we’re really close to because he’s Syrian, he’s never been able to leave Lebanon.
He’s not allowed to legally. And they are being trained up to be the next leaders in Beirut. They have a beautiful daughter. It’s been a crazy thing online. His sister finally got to go visit.
She left Lebanon and was never able to go back because she’s Syrian as well. But she got to go visit with her husband and daughter for the first time in I think, ten years this summer or a couple of months ago. We love Ala and Daniela. This is Manuel and Lilit. They’re an incredible couple.
That’s my two year old Payton right there. So they never wanted to have kids and they got to hang out with Payton and they were like, I think we need to try this. Now, they have their own child and they actually led a mission field. They’re in Armenia now. They left to go to Turkey to be able to lead their own Church.
It’s like nine people. This is Sammy and Fadia. They lead the Church in Iman, Jordan. Sammy has one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever heard because he was imprisoned in Iraq, beaten to the point where he couldn’t stand left the gates open. They said, if you can walk out, you can leave.
He has stories of writing scriptures on the wall with chicken bones so that he could read his Bible from memory. They’re an incredible couple. And my daughter just adored being with habibi sammy. That’s what she called them.
This is Jesse and Mufid. They leave the Church in Lebanon and they oversee the Middle East. We’re up in the Cedars of Lebanon. You can see some of those trees. There are older than a lot.
We’ll just say that. We’ll say they’re very old. Okay? And Mufid and Sammy were in competition for who loved Peyton more for most of the time that we were there.
I got to preach for the Church in Beirut, and they rent from a seventh day Adventist Church there. And while I was preaching, their power system is such a mess that in the middle of preaching, oftentimes the lights will just cut out. So the disciples would just pull out their phones and turn on their flashlights and we would just keep going. So this was that. This was me preaching about youth and family.
This one is very special to me. The man up there on the front, right there’s, my dad. But that’s a man named Daniel Bokman. Daniel was one of my first mentors when I was ten years old in Orange County, California. And I remember seeing him up on stage when I was a kid being sent to the Middle East.
I hadn’t seen him for 20 plus years. And then when I went to go visit Dubai, I got to see him again for the first time. So when I say visiting the foreign mission field changed me, I’m not giving to even a Church necessarily. I’m not just giving to God. I’m giving to people that I know that I love.
This morning, I want you to think about that word for a second, though. I want you to think about the word love. Man, my phone’s got all kinds of messed up. It’s supposed to look prettier. Just imagine it is, okay?
What does the word love mean to you? How do you live it out? I have a few quotes in scriptures for us. Love is not just a feeling. It’s a commitment and above all, a sacrifice.
I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s got some incredible quotes about love. This was one that stuck out to me. If my love is without sacrifice, it is selfish. Such a love as barter for there is exchange of love and devotion in return for something. It is conditional love.
And you all know Mother Teresa. If you really love one another, you will not be able to avoid making sacrifices.
Parents know that, right? To love your kids, you sacrifice sleep, money, energy, sanity.
Yes. And I’m right on that one. Then let’s go to the Bible. John 15:13. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Last one here. The most popular scripture in the entire world. People that don’t know the Bible have this one memorized. For God so loved the world he gave his one and only son.
What’s the common thread here? What are we learning about love from these quotes in the Scriptures? Real love comes from sacrifice. It requires sacrifice. So today our title is Sacrificial Love.
That’s supposed to say love. You get the idea. Let’s say a quick prayer here and we’ll get into it. Father, I just want to thank you so much for the opportunity to preach your word and to prepare our hearts for the act of giving that we’re going to do at the end of service here. God, I pray that you will soften our hearts, that you’ll help us to be in a state of honor of humility before your word this morning.
Please speak through me. Allow me to share what you want said and no more and no less, we love you. And thank you. It’s in your son, Jesus, name. Amen.
All right, today we’re going to be doing a study of Second Corinthians eight together. So turn your Bible over there. But it’s going to take us a little bit to get there because I want to give us some backstory. Okay? Paul is writing Second Corinthians. It’s a follow up letter, not just the First Corinthians. Actually, a lot of scholars believe there probably was a letter in between that we don’t have. But in chapter eight of Second Corinthians, he specifically refers to a special contribution. What you may not realize is that what we’re doing here today, this was done thousands of years ago. This is not some new thing for us.
And this special contribution was going to support the disciples in Jerusalem and Judea. Now I want to take you back to where that Church started. We’re going back to Acts 2, because this is important for us to wrap our head around in context. So in Acts chapter two, the first Sunday sermon ever preached that we know of, or at least biblically Peter preaches the message of Salvation. And how many people become disciples in one day? 3000. Most effective sermon ever, right?
I will never preach a sermon that good.
But to continue this story, in verse 45, it says that they stayed. The people that had gathered around from at least twelve different nations, the Jews that were coming in for the, not passover, the Pentecost service, they got baptized and almost all of them stayed. And it says that they stayed and they sold their property and possessions. This is what we love to use when we talk about Church, right?
What we actually don’t think about with this is as an evangelist, as a Church leader, this is kind of a good news, bad news situation. Okay? Good news. Thousands of people become Christians and every day more being added. Amen to the glory of Jesus.
But there’s a problem because now we have thousands of people to take care of who don’t have homes, who don’t have jobs, who need food.
So when we see they sold their property and possessions and gave to each other, we’re like man so faithful, but you’re kind of like. But they had to, to survive, to live, to eat, they had to sell everything. They had to figure out that they had to be a commune in its purest sense of the word, to take care of each other. And out of this, the first Church is born.
So the Church keeps growing. It keeps growing until Acts chapter seven, when Stephen is martyred and after he’s killed, it says that the Church is scattered. They leave from Jerusalem and head out to all the corners of the Earth. What we find out is that was actually God’s plan all along. God was going to use this tragedy, this faithful man’s death, to send his people around the world, to continue to really move the great Commission forward.
But there’s still a large contingency of people in Jerusalem. Now fast forward some years later to Acts chapter eleven. Paul is in Antioch, and there’s this Prophet, this guy named Agabus. And he says a very startling prophecy in verse 28, it says, one of them named Agabus stood up and through the spirit, predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. And this happened during the reign of Claudius.
Now, this scripture kind of hits a little bit different two years after Covid, right?
But as a result of this, this Prophet comes in and says, hey, guys, I know everything’s moving, but something is about to happen that we’re not ready for. It’s going to wreck everybody in the Roman world. And as a result of this famine, the Church had a ton of issues. There were a bunch of disciples there. They’re hit with a famine.
There’s food shortages. And then not only that, the Romans, being the Romans, decided that the best way to help people that can’t grow their own food anymore is to implore a double taxation. So imagine that. Imagine we’re at a time of inflation. You can’t get a job, you can’t grow your own food.
And the Romans come knocking on your door and say, Guess what? You owe double what you did last year.
The city was overpopulated. And not to mention, this was the Holy city of Judaism. So what that actually meant was there’s a lot of history to show this, that it was common for Jews to basically retire and move to Jerusalem. So they had a constant, steady stream of widows, elderly people, and just people that needed assistance. This Church needed serious help.
As a result, Paul and the other leaders are trying to get the other churches around to support Jerusalem. Verse 29 to 30, it says, the disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea. This they did sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul. So here we see the first official special missions offering 2000 years ago.
And this is not unlike what is happening around the world, but specifically our mission fields that we support in the Caribbean and Argentina right now, currently. Covid has had devastating effects on these countries. You think our lockdowns have been hard? We never had people in the streets trying to beat you to get back in your house.
They’ve had a much more wrecked economy through this. And our inflation is nothing compared to what some of these countries have been dealing with.
And we’ve heard about some of this because we’ve had some of these videos where they’ve been able to share with us. We’ve been able to talk to disciples that have come over to visit from Argentina. And although their circumstances have been challenging, what I love hearing is that they’re fighting to walk with God and be faithful.
They’re doing it still.
In 2 Corinthians, paul is petitioning the disciples to support the Church in Jerusalem with all of its challenges, and he’s petitioning them the way that we’re trying to support the Caribbean in Argentina. So I want you to turn with me to Two Corinthians, chapter eight.
Now, this verse or these verses, we’re very familiar with reading, they get read a lot for an offering talk. But I want us to consider that backdrop first before we dig into these scriptures. This is Paul not saying, let’s take up our weekly offering together. He’s saying, look, your brothers and sisters in Jerusalem and Judea, they need your help. Okay?
That’s where these verses come into play. 2 Corinthians, chapter eight, verse one. And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the Grace that God has given the Macedonian churches in the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty, welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able and beyond their ability entirely on their own. They urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people.
And they exceeded our expectations. They gave themselves, first of all to the Lord and then by the will of God also to us. So we urged Titus, just as he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of Grace on your part. But since you excel in everything, in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness, and in the love we have kindled in you, see that you also excel in this Grace of giving. I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others.
We’ll read verse nine as well. For you know that the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor, so that through you his poverty might become rich. Okay, so the first thing that Paul does here, it’s interesting. He doesn’t really do this in any of his other writings is to refer to another Church and how they gave. So think about that. As he is talking to this Church in Corinth, he says, Let me tell you about our Church in Macedonia, about your brothers and sisters there. And the first thing he points out about them is that they had a desire to give.
They wanted to give, and not just did they give. They gave out of a very severe trial and extreme poverty.
Now, the Greek for this when it says extreme poverty means extreme beggary. The image that gets into their head is that this Church is begging for bread. Okay? So think about that for a second. The Church in Macedonia had its own problems, lots and lots of them, apparently.
And think about how bad things must have been in Jerusalem for Paul to say that the Macedonians were in extreme poverty. Wrestle with that. The Macedonians were giving to Jerusalem, even though they were in extreme poverty. That means it was really bad in Jerusalem.
Now, you might feel poor, have experienced some poverty in your life. We’ve never experienced 2000 years ago extreme poverty. All right. If you’ve been raised in America, you’ve never experienced extreme poverty because there’s always programs available to you.
Now, in spite of this condition, look at what Paul said about them. It says that they had overflowing joy. They welled up in rich generosity, and they gave beyond their ability. Now, I don’t know how this scripture hits you, but this is incredibly convicting to me. He tells the Church he’s telling a Church that is rich and well off.
The Church in Corinth was very well off about a Church that is struggling with their own stuff. Matter of fact, they could have probably taken up a special missions contribution in Corinth for the Church in Macedonia.
So he tells this wealthy Church that, Let me tell you about your poor Church that is giving. And this Church in Macedonia is saying we need to give to our brothers and sisters. The word says they begged Paul.
Why was this such a big deal to this Church?
Now, I want to show you the God’s word version of this again in verse four. It says, they made an appeal to us, begging us to let them participate in the Ministry of God’s kindness to his Holy people in Jerusalem. What was it that stirred in the hearts of the Macedonian churches, this poor Church that needed help themselves?
It was compassion.
They cared about their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem and Judea. They cared about the work that needed to be done for them. What’s interesting about this is from the context we can maybe infer a little bit that Paul didn’t even ask them. How I envisioned this, this is me, this is not the Bible.
This is me. Let’s clarify. Is Paul saying, hey, I want to let you guys know what’s happening in Jerusalem and Judea. He’s visiting Macedonia and he goes, hey, guys, let me tell you about what’s happening in Jerusalem and Judea. And I just want to ask you guys to be praying for what God is going to do there. We’re going to go ask some of these other churches to give.
So be praying that God will help us support it. He’s probably fully aware of how much Macedonia is struggling. So he’s not saying, I want you guys to give. I picture him just saying, Just pray for him. All right, the Macedonian churches go, wait a minute.
What? No, we got to give too.
We’ll pray for them. Yes, God willing, let’s do that. But we’re going to give, too.
I lost my place. Give me a second. Sorry.
I imagine them saying, man, you got to let us help.
Now, I think about how I’ve counseled people in the past for special missions contribution. All right? Telling them, okay, give sacrificially, but be wise. And there have been situations where I’ve known people that have been in some tough situations. I say, Look, I think it’s still good to give.
Then God tells us that he wants to work in this, but be wise. Take care of yourself.
It says that these disciples were in extreme poverty, and Paul still took it. Like this reminds me, I remember hearing a lesson years ago about the widow with the two copper coins. All right? Now, that story should bug you on some level, especially if you love people. This woman came up and gave everything she had and Jesus let her.
If she just gave one coin, that still would have been 50%, Jesus could say, okay, give 50. Take that one. Go get yourself some food. Jesus, let her give it.
I’m not bold enough to ask that of any of you.
Paul, let this Church, this Church that was begging him to give, let them give what they could. And it probably wasn’t very much. In all honesty, they had extreme poverty. They gave more than expectation. But that may be like, hey, here’s $5 and here’s 50 instead.
It probably wasn’t very much, but still they took it.
Now, it was out of this spirit that God blessed what they did beyond expectation. Their compassion spurred them to do something, and it wasn’t about the money. God doesn’t care about the dollar amount. He controls every bank in the world. He doesn’t care about the amount of money we give.
He cares about our hearts to not be attached to money, and he cares about our hearts to care about other people.
Now, I want you to consider something about this. Macedonia is a Greek city run by Romans, and Jerusalem is a Jewish city that’s also ruled by Rome. But it’s over 1000 miles away.
This was the first century. They had no cell phones, no Zoom, no WhatsApp no Facebook. They had no way to be in contact with Jerusalem.
They probably never met any of them and probably never would.
They had no reason to give to this Church on their own. No reason.
And they were probably hearing this news about Jerusalem over months at a time, maybe even years. We don’t really know.
And then here’s the kicker. They had to trust somebody to hand deliver their offering across the sea a thousand miles away and trust that it would get there.
I got a question for you. Any of us who have gone through some struggles financially and poverty, okay? How many of you would feel great at the time where you are the most strapped financially, not just giving money like that, but giving money and trusting somebody to take it 1000 miles away to get it where it’s supposed to go and you would never hear about it again?
Nowadays, if we aren’t 100% sure of where our money is going, we usually don’t like to give, right? I’m that way. I want to research a company if I’m going to give some of my hard earned money, or maybe we go to the place of like, well, once I’m out of debt and not dealing with my own stuff, then I’ll give something.
Think about the faith and compassion that the Macedonian churches had to have in order to do this.
It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable. And they begged the Apostles to do it. They begged for this.
We’re living in one of the richest countries in the world, maybe one of the richest countries that’s ever existed, and we struggle to give a tithe sometimes. I think Church, we need to increase our faith because there’s another side of this, too. The Macedonian churches never met the disciples in Jerusalem more than likely. We know the people we’re giving to.
We know the churches. We’ve seen them. We’ve had midweeks and been taught by them. They’ve come to visit us. They’ve come to preach to us.
Some of you have gone to visit. We know who they are, how much more? That doesn’t even require this kind of faith.
And ultimately, Paul says at the heart that they had in verse five, you got to love this.
They weren’t about the expectation of others. Macedonia wasn’t comparing themselves to anybody else that says they gave first to the Lord. They knew ultimately, this is God’s. Whatever he chooses to do with this, we’re going to trust him with it. When our hearts are wrapped in giving to the Lord, let me tell you, compassion oozes out of you. This is actually the concept biblically of stewardship. It’s the understanding that every cent you have in your account right now, it’s not yours, it’s God’s. You’re just the manager of it. If it’s God’s money and you think about the things that God cares about, then you can’t not have compassion.
There’s a lot of double negatives I apologize.
And here’s the other side of this, too. God always wants to reward and bless people who honor him first and foremost, especially with their money. I want to clarify, this is not prosperity gospel that I’m talking about. This is not gift to God $5 and he gives you $50. But I will say I have plenty of examples of people who do give sacrificially and God goes, okay, I know what they’re going to do with this, so I’m going to trust them with more.
Or maybe it’s God taking care of us in ways that aren’t financial. Maybe it’s just a blessing. Maybe it’s something that you will never know until you get to heaven.
It’s one of the only things in the Bible where God says, hey, I want you to test me in this. Test me with what you give and how you give. Watch what I can do with it. And I want to say again, Church, thank you. Hopefully this has not come across like I’m beating anybody over the head.
That’s not what this is. Sincerely, with all my heart, thank you. For those of you that have been giving for years and years and years, thank you. Thank you. We will never know the extent that God is doing with a day like this.
I like to imagine you kind of picture what heaven is going to be like at times. I hear a lot about the viewing room where God gets to show you parting the Red Sea and all that different stuff, right? But imagine that there’s a moment up in heaven where God goes, hey, I want to show you where your money’s going. Let me show you what I did with it. Let me show you where I took it.
Let me show you who it helped. Let me show you the ends of the Earth that this traveled. As we’re talking here, I know that maybe some of you are even thinking, I have nothing to give. I’m a poor College student. I’m in high school. I have no job.
Maybe you’ve got health issues that cost a lot of money. Maybe you’re drowning in school debt or maybe debt from poor choices, right? That’s life. We’ve all been there, most of us. One of the things I love about this time of the year, though, is hearing what God has done and what God continues to do in a time where things are not perfect.
And like I said, I want you to imagine I want you to imagine what God is going to tell you one day in heaven, the things that are beyond us, the things that we will never hear about, the stories that we can’t hear about.
As we’re wrapping up here the interesting thing about this passage that we talked about, how Paul was sharing to the Church in Corinth about the hearts and spirit of another Church. He doesn’t do this very often. Like you think of the Berean story in act 17, right? It says that the Bereans were more Noble character than the Thessalonians. The Bible doesn’t usually do like this is how this Church did compared to this Church.
I think Paul was trying to stir the hearts of the disciples. Not by himself, not by let me preach at you. Let me give you orders to give more because you’re more financially well off. But I think he’s trying to use the hearts and faith of another Church to stir the hearts of those that were not in the same kind of financial situation. I don’t know if you caught it, but in verse eight, he does something very specific there.
He says, look, I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with another Church.
Think about that for a second. What if Paul was writing to the Church in Orlando, to us? He says, I want to test you, north region of Orlando Church of Christ. How would we stack up? How would you stack up? Would we have the sacrificial love that we’re talking about here today?
Again, the point of this guy is, I hope you know, I’m not trying to make anybody feel guilty. I’m not trying to squeeze blood from a stone from you. If you are not financially, whatever. We’re going to pray for our offering in just a moment. And real quick, the way is to give you can go online to our website.
You can use our Church app. We will have a box right here up on stage. If you have a check or cash or something like that that you would like to give when service is over, you can come up and drop that in the box. And if you’ve already given, I’m not trying to get you to give more. Please hear me in that and trust my heart with this.
If you have given already, I want to ask you to pray that the worship, the desire to see God do didn’t stop when you clicked the button that we will pray for how God will use what we are giving.
Last year it was so encouraging. We gave far beyond what we were expecting to give for our world missions. And God has been using it. The stories keep coming. I think we’re probably going to hear some more next week.
And if you can’t give today, we still have a few weeks before we’re going to gather what we’re actually going to send out. So you can still give it online. But we are giving first to God, Church. Not to the Orlando Church of Christ, not to the Caribbean, not to Argentina. We are giving first to God, and we’re giving it to the work that he’s doing within our brothers and sisters. We have no idea how far reaching our sacrifice will be and how God will use it.
And if you’re visiting with us, I’m not trying to compel you to give either. If you would like to don’t feel any obligation but we are grateful if you do. Let’s say a word of prayer and we’re going to end our service.
Father, I do just want to thank you so much.
Thank you for your belief in us Father thank you for the ways that you challenge our hearts that you lead us to a place of Holiness that you desire for us even when it comes to our money to think differently than the world does about it. And God, thank you for how you’ve used the Orlando Church over the years to do work here locally in the Caribbean and other places. Father thank you for where our dollars have already gone to. God, I want to ask you right now in this time here Father, that you’ll be with what we give to you. That it will come out of an understanding of us giving first to you and then to see the work that you will do with it. God I pray for our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean in Argentina. I pray that you will instill them with faith and not just the money that we sent to them but got the faith to see your work being done in South America and in these parts of the world.
Help them to be faithful stewards of what is sent. God thank you for the hearts of everybody here today. We love you. Thank you for being able to participate in this Grace of giving. In Jesus name we pray Amen you.