daily Broadcast

Why God Uses Some People More than Others

From the series How to Revolutionize Your World

In this message, Chip tells us that God specializes in using ordinary people to do extraordinary things. But there's a specific thing we need in order for God to use us. And those who have it have dramatically more experiences with God than those who don't.

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Message Transcript

God specializes in using ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Okay? God specializes. He loves to do it. He’s an expert at it. The pages of Scripture are filled with ordinary people. Fishermen, prostitutes, people that are uneducated, people that other people reject. And God specializes in taking ordinary, regular people of average intelligence and average gift and marred backgrounds and doing something extraordinary so that when the extraordinary happens, they realize it’s not the person but it’s God.

For some of you who think a little bit differently, let me state it negatively. Our limitations are not prohibitions to God using our lives but our limitations are the very platform on which God uses to display His grace. Most of us spend so much of our life, “I can’t do that because of…” “I’m not smart enough, I don’t have the training, I’m not bold enough, I’m not courageous enough, I don’t know the Bible well enough, I have…” The list goes on.

God specializes in taking that very limitation and making it the platform where He shows His greatness and His glory and His grace.

But for that to happen, for ordinary people, people like the person who is roughly not sitting to your left or to your right, but the ordinary person, if you look straight down, who is in your seat.

For an extraordinary thing to happen through an ordinary person like the person who happens to be sitting in your seat, something has to happen. Something has to happen.

In fact, it’s God primary agenda for every single person in this room. And it centers around one, simple, profound thing that has to happen in every single believer’s life.

And I want you to know, it’s not dependent on your intelligence, it’s not dependent on your education, your giftedness, your background, your wealth, or your personality. This one thing is available to every believer of every age without partiality.

This one thing is what separates religious people from people who revolutionize the world. This one thing can transform the most mundane and ordinary of our world into people who transform and shape and make history.

This one thing is what God commends. Every time it pops up in a person’s life, a person’s heart, in you, in me, in Scripture, He commends it. He values it.

This one thing, a hundred percent of the time, whenever the Spirit of God smells it in your heart and your life, it brings Him holy pleasure. Every time He finds it. This one thing is always rewarded by God. And this one thing is the basis upon which God evaluates your life at any given moment, in any given situation, and any circumstance, all the time. This one thing, He’s always asking. And He’s evaluating you and me.

And finally, this one thing is what God is seeking to develop and grow in your life more than any other thing.

Are you just about ready for me to say, “Ingram, would you stop with the introduction and tell me what the one thing is!” Right? This one thing is faith. It’s faith. What it takes for an ordinary person to do extraordinary things is one, simple thing: Faith. Believing God. I don’t mean intellectual ascent, I don’t mean agreeing with the Bible. I mean believing who God is and what He has said to the point that you act on it.

You act on it when you feel like it, you act on it when you don’t feel like it, you act on it when circumstances seem to lead and support it, you act on it when circumstances seem like it’s the dumbest thing in the world. Faith is believing God. It is the single most thing, He commends it, He rewards it, He takes pleasure in it.

Look at Scriptures. You are justified, how? By faith. You are to walk in the same manner in which you have received Him, which was by faith. We don’t walk by sight, but we walk by faith. Jesus said to a group of people, “This is the work of God, that you believe.”

Now, here’s what I’d like to do. I want to read one text and I want to give you an overview and the context of it. And then I want to give you seven ways to grow your faith. Seven object lessons so that I hope a year or two or three or four or five from now, even if you don’t remember any outlines, you’ll remember, “Let’s see, there was a Bible and a baseball glove and a 3x5 card,” and I’ll give you the rest later.

Open your Bibles, if you will, Hebrews chapter 10. This is a group of people who had done amazing things in their relationship with God and now they were up against some persecution and suffering and difficulty and they were shrinking back but they weren’t going back into the world. They were going back into being religious. They were moving away from grace, they were moving away from living by faith.

And so in chapter 10, toward the end, picking up the context at verse 32, the author says, “Remember those earlier days after you received the light? You remember, when you came to Christ? When you stood your ground and the great contest in the face of suffering? Sometimes you were publically exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were mistreated. You sympathized with those who were in prison and you,” are you ready for this? Here’s faith. “You joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had a better and lasting possession.”

He’s reminding them, “Where you were and the strong stands and how vibrant it is to be.” “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere or endure so that when you have done the will of God, you can receive what was promised. For, ‘In just a little while,’ speaking of Christ, ‘He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith.’”

By the way, this is not a New Testament concept. He is quoting Habakkuk. “My righteous one,” the people whose lives and hearts are aligned rightly with God are always aligned with it rightly on the basis of faith.

Now, look at the next verse very carefully. “And if he shrinks back, if she shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him or her.” What’s it mean to shrink back? To stop walking by faith; to withdraw; to just become religious; to just being moral, good Christian; to do just enough so that you don’t get too much abuse out there but there’s no risk, there’s not faith, there’s no following.

Then notice what he says, “But we are not those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who believe and who are saved.” And then the familiar passage, but I wanted you to get the context. I wanted you, that’s the runway, and then the plane takes off and says, “Now, if it’s so important, if you do not please God if you’re not living by faith, and He takes no pleasure if you shrink back,” well then the author says, “Well, let me explain to you what faith really is.”

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” Example number one: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible.”

By faith, we believe God spoke and reality came into existence. He’s the source, He’s the Creator. Example number two, “By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain. By faith he was,” getting the idea? “Commended as a righteous man. And by faith he still speaks, even though he’s dead.”

Illustration number three: “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so he didn’t experience death: ‘He couldn’t be found, because God had taken him away.’ For because he was taken, before he was,” you getting the idea here? “Commended as one who pleased God.” Why? Why were they all commended? They lived by faith.

And without faith it’s impossible. Not hard, not difficult, it’s impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to God must believe two things. First, that He exists and second, that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

Example four: “By faith Noah, when warned about the things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

Final example for our time: “By faith Abraham, when called by God to a place he would later receive his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

By faith, by faith, by faith: Isaac, Joseph, David, the whole chapter goes through men and women who lived by faith and flip to chapter 12. After this great litany of people, “Therefore,” what? “therefore,” here’s the application, “since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses,” in other words, people who have lived by faith, “let us throw off everything that hinders.”

Anything that keeps you from living a life of faith, get rid of it. That’s what he says. And by the way, some things that hinder you and hinder me, they’re not even bad. They’re not even immoral. They’re often good. But they’re not the best.

I don’t know about you but you know those guys and gals who run the marathons? I’ve not seen a lot of them with backpacks. Have you? They have those super light shoes, those tiny, little, embarrassing shorts. They have stripped down because what they understand is they’re on a race. And anything that keeps them from going where they need to go, how they need to get there, they get rid of.

And God is saying that to us. And then He gets even more personal: “Throw off everything that makes us hindered and the sin that easily entangles us.” See, faith and sin, they don’t operate together. You gotta deal with the addiction, you gotta deal with the lust, you gotta deal with the time issue, you gotta deal with the money issue, you gotta deal with a lack of forgiveness issue.

Get rid of that which entangles and deal with the sin, get right with God and then notice what he says, “And let us run with perseverance or endurance.” Have you noticed how that keeps cropping up? It’s hard. It’s hard to live by faith. You’re a spiritual salmon swimming upstream. It’s always upstream. It’s difficult. It’s in the midst of opposition. Your flesh doesn’t want you to go there. The world tells you you’re a fool and the enemy is luring and tempting and trying to get you off course.

“But let us run the race with endurance, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame.”

And why? For the joy set before Him He suffered now, delayed gratification, in order that He could have relationship with you, that you could, by faith, have relationship with Him and in relationship with Him, a process called “sanctification” would occur where He would so transform you from the inside out that a regular, ordinary person like you or me could be used by God to be a vehicle of grace to do literal miracles in the lives of others.

Now here’s what I want to say: That’s the will of God. You can come to church, you can read your Bible, you can give some money, you can be a nice person and you can be not living by faith. You can be in God’s family. You can be on your way to heaven.

I’ve had days, I’ve had weeks, I will confess, I’m sure I’ve had months in my life, as a pastor, that I wasn’t living by faith. I was trying to manage, I was reading the Bible, “Help me, God. Take care of this, take care of that.”

And out of my own energy, out of my own strength, trying to live the Christian life, but not necessarily living by faith. Not acting on and believing what God is has said based on who He is.

It is impossible to please God and your life can have no impact, nor can you bring joy to the Father unless you’re living by faith. The only time Jesus rebuked His disciples is when they failed to exercise faith.

Now, have we made the point that faith is important?

Question: How do you get faith? You ever think about that? How do you get it? My parting thank you is to give you seven ways, alright, to grow your faith.

So, if you got a little pen you can pull it out, you can draw pictures, take notes. The number one way to get faith, you start here, is the Bible.

It is absolutely impossible to live a life of faith unless your mind and your heart are, literally, soaked in Scripture.

You need to become a man, you need to become a woman of the Word of God. You need to read it, you need to think about it, you need to memorize key passages, you need to let it soak in, you need to get it on tape, you need to put it on CDs, you need to listen to it as you drive.

Like a Crock Pot, you need to take your brain and soak it in the truth and be so filled with God’s Word and understanding of the truth that when you watch CNN, ESPN, and read the paper, you will read it through a biblical grid.

Faith is birthed out of the truth of Scripture.

If you want to bring pleasure to the heart of God and if you want to please Him and if you want to be a man or a woman of faith, it is impossible until you become a person of the Book.

Tell me what’s important in your life. And then you rearrange your life to get in that Book fifteen to twenty to thirty to forty minutes a day and you do that for six months and it’ll transform who you are.

That’s how you get faith, that’s how it’s birthed. If you do not do that, everything else doesn’t work. And we are living in America with a biblically illiterate Church. And what you want to do is listen to people like me or other people to do your spirituality for you and catch a five-minute snippet off the radio and try and live off that.

I got news for you. When you have cancer, what I say on the radio is not going to help much. I want to encourage you, teachers are important, there is no substitute for God’s Word in your mind, in your heart, to be a man or a woman of faith.

Second, are you ready? Object lesson number two, if you’re a woman, put down a purse. If you’re a man, write “wallet,” or make a picture.

Did you notice the very first evidence of faith in Hebrews 11 is what? God spoke and all that came into existence, He created, right? He’s the source, he’s the Creator. What is the second illustration?

It’s Abel. The very first human illustration of faith is Abel gave a greater sacrifice. Go to Genesis, read the story. Cain gave something, sometime, someone that when he gave it he could give it here, give it there, it grew here.

And what we know about Abel is he gave his first and he gave his best and what he gave, when he gave it, was gone.

I don’t know where you’re at in your life. Until you learn to give God the first and best portion of your finances, you will never walk by faith. Never.

I mean, is He your resource or not? Do you believe God is real? He commands you, minimum, give a tenth or so. The average Christian doesn’t give, doesn’t give regularly, doesn’t give off the top, and doesn’t give their best. And they’re not experiencing supernatural power.

The way you learn to experience God is you give your first and your best off the top. Because you’re not in a third world country, you’re not saying, “Lord, give me a bowl of rice today,” and God does and you go, “Wow, You’re real.” If God took a nap for forty days, the average, American Christian wouldn’t know it because you’re not desperate.

But I’ll tell you what, you start giving off the top, it will create a situation in your finances, in your life, where you’ll be going, “Whoa, how are we going to take care of this?”

Now, do you want faith or not? This isn’t, these aren’t put here randomly. The very first illustration of faith is there is One who created all that there is, the invisible, from invisible to visible and He is the Author and source of all there is.

The second illustration is that someone believed Him to the point that he took the very best that he had and he gave his first and he said, “I worship You and I depend on You; and so I give You my first and my best.”

And then you will see God work in your life. You know what? Otherwise, it’s intellectual, isn’t it? “Oh, I believe in God.” Oh, really? “I believe in God, yeah.” You believe in God when you take a step and He better come through for you.
The very first human illustration of faith is Abel gave a greater sacrifice. Go to Genesis, read the story. Cain gave something, sometime, someone that when he gave it he could give it here, give it there, it grew here.

And what we know about Abel is he gave his first and he gave his best and what he gave, when he gave it, was gone. When you sacrifice a cow, it doesn’t come up and grow the next year.

And here’s what I want you to know. I don’t know where you’re at in your life. Until you learn to give God the first and best portion of your finances, you will never walk by faith. Never.

I mean, is He your resource or not? Do you believe God is real? He commands you, minimum, give a tenth or so. And if you want to be legalistic give 7.5 percent… I don’t want to go there.

But what I’m telling you is the average Christian doesn’t give, doesn’t give regularly, doesn’t give off the top, and doesn’t give their best. And they’re not experiencing supernatural power.

The way you learn to experience God is you give your first and your best off the top. Because you’re not in a third world country, you’re not saying, “Lord, give me a bowl of rice today,” and God does and you go, “Wow, You’re real.” If God took a nap for forty days, the average, American Christian wouldn’t know it because you’re not desperate.

But I’ll tell you what, you start giving off the top, it will create a situation in your finances, in your life, where you’ll be going, “Whoa, how are we going to take care of this?”

I don’t know where you’re at, but, now, it was, everyone was pretty fired up when we were talking about, “Yeah, you want faith, yeah, you want to see supernatural things? Yeah!” Got quiet when I talked about your wallet.

Didn’t it? Now, do you want faith or not? Do you think the Holy Spirit was just thinking, “Hey, you know, wonder what you…” This isn’t, these aren’t put here randomly. The very first illustration of faith is there is One who created all that there is, the invisible, from invisible to visible and He is the Author and source of all there is.

The second illustration is that someone believed Him to the point that he took the very best that he had and he gave his first and he said, “I worship You and I depend on You. All I have and all I am belongs to You. You are Lord; and so I give You my first and my best.”

And then you will see God work in your life. You know what? Otherwise, it’s intellectual, isn’t it? “Oh, I believe in God.” Oh, really? “I believe in God, yeah.” You believe in God when you take a step and He better come through for you. And that’s why finances are so important.

I hated to preach about money because I was desperately insecure. I’m still desperately insecure and I like to talk about money now. You know why? What I found was, I started talking about money, people took steps of faith and what I found, it was the lordship of Christ; it wasn’t about money, it was about their heart. They got their heart rightly connected and then I got stacks of letters and emails like this where people’s lives are changed.

And I thought, “Wow, when you talk about money, you’re really talking about lordship. And until people take that step, no real power happens.”

Third object lesson, are you ready? This is a baseball glove. Got it? How do you get faith? It starts by soaking your heart and your mind in the Word of God. It then begins to grow where you tangibly take your first and best finances and give them as an offering to God.

And third, faith is caught much more than taught. It’s caught. Here’s what I want to tell you. It’s a mystery. I don’t know how it works. But I can tell you this: I have gone to the Philippines and been on the back of a motorcycle with Tom Randall and three or four or five days with him you just start looking at life differently. You know? You just look at, “Yeah, they need a hundred thousand dollars,” and there’s a general with a machine gun over there and Tom goes, “Yeah! Man, I think God’s probably in this. What do you think, Chip?”

And you leave three weeks later and he gets a letter for fifty thousand, and someone pledges twenty-five, and another group comes and the general puts down his gun and becomes a Christian and you think… “And I know this guy!”

Now, I knew he could play basketball. And then Tom will tell you, “I’m still in the living Bible and I didn’t go to any of those seminaries and those Bible schools but seems to me all you have to do is just do what this says.”

You must get around people that have faith. There are three ways you catch faith: People, places, and books. People, places, and books. Dawson Trotman’s autobiography changed my life. Hudson Taylor’s biography changed my life.

Why? I read and I saw an uneducated eighteen year old on a motorcycle who dreamed a dream and prayed crazy dreams. George Müller’s book changed my life. He prayed and millions and millions of dollars… “God…” here are his orphans. They don’t have food, here’s a man, he prays before God; here’s a promise, “God, You said You would do it. If You’ll give it…”  “I’ll give it.” And God did.

George Müller is an ordinary guy, John Wesley is an ordinary guy, Hudson Taylor is an ordinary guy. God did extraordinary things because they had faith.

Often, faith is a way of looking at things. God wants to do something through you that is so beyond your imagination but you, “Ooh, no, this is how, this is, how do you this? Because I don’t know. I know.”

Faith starts when you become a man or a woman of the Book, you give God your money, and you start going on a mission trip, a place where you get around a Tom Randall, or an elder, or you read a biography and you start to catch it.

Next, are you ready for this? 3x5 cards. But down a 3x5 card. I’m getting fired up, I have to watch my time. Someone is saying, “Like, what else is new?” Under this, will you write, “Sanctified dreaming”? Psalm 37:4, it’s a habit I picked up probably about eight years ago.

Psalm 37:4 says, “God delights to give us the desires of our hearts.” That is, we delight in Him, He wants to give us the desires of our hearts.

Now, passages like this have been twisted. I don’t mean the desire of your heart is for a Rolex and Lexus and a third home and a huge bank account. If God happens to do some of that and use it for His glory, okay. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about when you have desires in your heart that you know for sure are right out of Scripture. I know for sure that God will honor the desire of my heart to be a loving, understanding, faithful husband.

I know for sure from Scripture that a desire of my heart that I prayed this week that I would be bolder and share my faith and really care about people who are lost. I know He wants to fulfill that desire.

And so I sat down and I thought about my kids and about my wife and about ministry and my job and I began to write down some desires of my heart. And I said, “God,” I didn’t try and memorize them, I wasn’t trying to produce anything. “But I just want to keep, I want You to know, these are my desires.”

Because what your desires do, you always gravitate toward where they are. And so I wrote down, I’ve got a number of them, but, for example, first couple of years here, I knew I needed to work on my preaching. And about eight years ago I wrote down, “I’d like to preach great messages for the glory of God that are used to transform multitudes of people’s lives.”

It was so hard to write that down. You know why? Did you hear what I said. I want to preach great messages. I mean, do you want to hear okay messages? Do you want to hear, like, nice messages? Above average, barely messages?

See, there’s all this false humility. What’s God want preached? I want to preach great messages, biblically sound, relevant, transformational. And I began to put that as a desire.

And then I did a Saturday service and an elder reviewed me and a staff member reviewed me and people gave feedback and I went home and worked for three or four hours and then I realized that killed me the next day so I got up for two or three hours and I kept revising the messages and learning and learning and learning and learning and learning and learning and learning and growing.

I am an ordinary guy but God put a desire on my heart and I put the desire before God and over time, little by little, He’s been giving me the desire of my heart.

I put one, we were on two stations, I would like to see the radio ministry explode and become a tool in God’s hand that would bless and be used in the lives of millions of people in the next decade and beyond.

Now, you know what? It sounds arrogant, doesn’t it? I mean, you check your motives but isn’t someone going to do that? Isn’t God looking for someone? Aren’t His eyes going to and fro throughout the whole earth that He could find a man or a woman that He could strongly support?

I thought, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and we’re on two stations. This is just what I’d like to see, God, if You don’t do it, it’s okay. It’s fine. Doesn’t have anything to do with my identity or my ego or whether I’m a good person or a bad person. But, you know what? It’s a lot of work and it takes just as much energy to produce the material for two stations as two hundred or three hundred or five hundred or five thousand.”

Here’s a desire. It’s just a desire. See, you give Him… what are your desires? “I’d like to see each one of my children hunger and thirst for righteousness and know deep in their souls how loved, significant, and valuable they are in Christ, totally apart from anything or anyone. It’s just a desire. God, if You could give me anything, I’d like to see Eric and Jason and Ryan and Annie grow up and thirst for You and be so secure and feel so loved that it wouldn’t matter what other people think.” It’s just a desire.

What’s your desire? What are you asking God for? What’s the Scripture say? He longs to do what? He wants to reward those… He wants to give us… we have to believe that He’s a rewarder.

When is the last time you really asked God for something? Have you done any sanctified dreaming? You start with the Word, you give Him your money, you decide how you’re going to catch some faith, and then ask yourself, you’re only going to go through it once, well, what do you, I mean, have you ever even asked God for anything?

What would you long to see happen in your life, your family, your marriage, your singleness, your ministry? What would you really like to see happen? God wants to get behind someone.

That’s faith. It’ll grow your faith.

The next thing, you ready for this? This is very complex. This looks just like a spiral notebook. And this looks like a pen. And it’s object lesson, one, two, three, four, five.

And what I would say to you is under this one you can jot down, “Earnestly seek Him.” I don’t know about you, if at this point in time you’re thinking, “You get up every day, you have long, deep seasons of time with God in prayer, you love to pray, your mind never wanders, you pray very specific things, and He answers on a regular basis,” you are excused. The rest of us will stay in the room.

Verse 6 says what? “He’s a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him.” What’s it mean? It means you seek God like you seek the stock market, it means you seek God in the same way when you’re single and you’re looking for a mate, it means you seek God the same way when you’re young and you want to be a great musician or great athlete.

You go for broke, you get your schedule, you track it, you have a passion. And the reason I gave you this, and I don’t think everyone needs to keep a journal.

But I just decided that my mind wanders so much, and my life keeps going and I’m pulled in a zillion different directions, so I get up and I spend time and the first thing I do is read and then I ask God to speak to me and then I write down, “This is where I’m at and this is what I’m feeling,” and then I put all these little boxes, like today. And I wrote a box and prayer for my wife and a prayer for one of my kids and a prayer for tonight and a prayer for a meeting I had and a prayer and a prayer and a prayer.

And I asked God specifically, this is what I’m asking Him for today. And then tomorrow morning I’m going to get up and I’m going to look at those boxes and I’m going to put check marks. And I’m going to write dates next to them.

I mean, you’ve got to track your walk with God. You’ve got to earnestly seek Him. How many people just have money but they have no idea where it is and what interest it’s making and what’s going…

How many of you have kids and just say, “You know, I don’t know where they live, I don’t know what they’re doing, don’t know what time they come in. You know, they just come…”

Right? You track it, you know what’s going on. That’s what I’m saying. When you begin to get in the Word, give Him your money, catch faith, dream some dreams, and then earnestly seek Him, and track and think and ponder and evaluate and ask God to show you who you are, where you’re at, how’s He speaking to you?

He’ll speak. He’ll speak. He wants to speak! And that’s just been a tool that has been very helpful for me to get there.

The sixth way to grow your faith is remember Abraham? Abraham got a call, “Abraham, this is God.” “Yes?” “Yes, we’ve got a little committee of three up here and we got a great plan for your life.” “Yes?” “We want you to leave everybody and everyone you know.” “Yes.” “Great plan, tremendous reward, unbelievable benefits.” “Right.” “We’ll let you know that later. No, we don’t know that yet either. We know but you don’t. Just go.”

What did he get? He got a call. He got direction. I’d like to talk to mature Christians right now. I’d like to talk to people and you’re sitting in this room and you’re saying, “Oh, yeah, I could do a little better in the Bible but you know what? I’m in the Bible. Of course I could stretch my money but I read the Scriptures.”

You know what? I’ve been, you know a great place to catch, you want to catch faith? Catch it here. You get connected in one of those small groups, you’ll catch faith. And you know, maybe you’re keeping a journal, maybe you have your own way of doing it. But here’s what I want to say to you mature Christians: So what are you here for?

I mean, what are you here for? What’s God’s call on your life? What’s your vision, what’s your mission? I know the basics: walk with God, care about people, read…”

But, I mean, your role. What’s your niche? Why did He place you on the planet? And you say, “Well, I mean, I don’t know. I’m just kind of doing these things and it’s, I’m just sort of weaving my way…” Why don’t you ask Him? Why don’t you say, “Lord, I want to know.”

Now, He may just unfold it, He might not give you some big, clear way to go. But start asking and listening for a call from God. He wants to show you.

Now, if you want to grow your faith, I’m going to challenge you to get this thing and get in the Scriptures. I don’t know where you’re at.

If you’re not giving your money and if you think there are ulterior motives, give to World Vision. Our elders have blessed that. But start giving first and best, off the top, tonight. Talk with your wife before you get in trouble and start next week if it’s a real problem.

Third, catch faith. Get around some people, get connected, get in a group. Write down some desires. You want to end up seventy, eighty, ninety years old and think, “You know, I really wish I would have done something.” Write down what you long to do that you know is true and ask God to do it. And He’ll scare you and He’ll do it.

And then track what’s going on, learn how to pray, learn to process what’s going on and say to God, “I don’t know Your calling on my life.”

Final, number seven, are you ready? You know what you, you know, here’s the key. The last one? These are dice. These are dice. You really want your faith to grow, God will take you through that, and all along the way then He’ll bring you to a point and you know what you do with dice? You roll them.

And you know why you roll them? Because whatever they come up, they come up. Where there is no risk there is no faith. If there is no risk, you’re not even in the game!

At some point in time, He’s going to speak to you and your money, and He’ll say, “Go on this trip.” And you’ll pray about a desire and He’ll get you right to the threshold but it’ll mean you’ll have to relocate!

Or you’ll have to change jobs or He’ll speak to you and He’ll have it all lined up and He’ll say, “Hey, baby, are you in or are you out?” And you take all the white chips and you put the blue chips and the red chips and you take them and you throw them.

And there are a lot of people that know all of this up to here, whose lives are used about that much, instead of this much, because they just won’t throw the dice.

At some point in time you say, “God, I’m in,” and you take a radical step and He catches you. How about you? Where does He want you to roll the dice?