THE GENEROUS LIFE -sc.com

 THE GENEROUS LIFEWEEK ONE: AwarenessMain Idea: Being aware of the people around you is an integral part of living a generous life. Prayer: “I want to experience the joy that comes from being generous. I ask that today an opportunity to be generous will come my way, and I will recognize it when it does, and that I will have the courage to jump in and give.”Scripture: Mark 5:21-34 , Romans 12:2IntroductionIf you were to do a google search for, “weight loss pill” you would get over 150 million results in under one second! Millions of websites make the promise of a better body by just taking a simple pill. Even more stunning is the fact we buy into it. Last year, over 33 billion dollars were spent on various weight loss products. At the same time, the FDA reports that 39.6 percent of Americans are overweight! Isn’t that crazy? I think the conclusion we can all come to is that our world is full of “miracle cures” that never deliver on what they promise. Most of us are skeptical when something seems too good to be true. So with this in mind, this morning I’m going to offer you something to radically improve your life in every way. It will make you happier, healthier, more fulfilled, and will give you a legacy lasting far beyond your lifetime! Now before you tune me out - consider this: The reason so many people go for the miracle weight loss pill (even when they know it won’t work) is because deep down we all want the best version of life possible. We were created by God with a desire to be fulfilled...to be happy...to live for something more than just our own stories. We are on a search for significance and fulfillment, and today I want to offer you a pathway towards the life you have always wanted. The good news is, it’s not a pill and I don’t need your credit card number to get it. What am I talking about? One word: GENEROSITY.Today we are starting a three week series called, “The Generous Life.” I am going to show you from scripture, how living generously can open the floodgates to the best version of life possible, and set you on a path to happiness, purpose, and impact. Main TeachingAs we get going, I want to take a moment to tell you what generosity is not.Generosity is not just your money. You might be sitting there thinking, “Oh great...another sermon series about money.” But generosity has to do with so much more than just your money. Is money part of it? Absolutely. But, a generous life is about being generous in a variety of ways. Let’s stop for a minute and think about the different ways we can be generous:We can be generous with our thoughts: Are we generous in the way we think about people around us? Have you ever seen someone at a store, and the first thought in your mind is, “what’s wrong with that person? Why are they dressed like that?” The Bible talks about loving our neighbors as ourselves - but how often do we give the people around us the benefit of the doubt? We also must consider the way we think about ourselves. Before we can think about others the way God thinks about them, we have to view ourselves through God’s eyes. Negative self talk is always a reflection of an incorrect view of God. Do you pay attention to your, “self talk?” Do you think about what you think about? We can be generous with our words: The book of Proverbs says, “careless words stab like a sword, but the words of the wise bring healing.” Do you use your words to bring healing to the people around you? Do you build people up?We can be generous with our money: Every time we give financially it softens our hearts and we become more like Jesus. Giving our money takes the focus away from me and puts it onto others.We can be generous with our influence: Most of us would not be where we are today if someone hadn’t made the choice to be generous with their influence. We all have influence...networks...connections. Are you using those to bless others?We can be generous with our time: Sometimes the best thing we can do for another person is take the time to stop and help...or stop and listen...or stop and celebrate. Are you using your time in a generous way?We can be generous with our attention: We live in a world that is operating with an attention deficit, but we can be generous by giving people our attention. Are we on our phone when we are with our children? We have all felt the power of someone who is fully present with us. Are we fully present in conversations with others?We can be generous with our belongings: We all have “stuff” we can use to bless others in creative ways. Do you see the point? Generosity is about far more than your money. Generosity is about taking your entire life - everything you are and everything you own - and using it to bless the people around you. And, since generosity isn’t about money, we can also make this statement: Generosity is for everyone. You don’t have to be rich to be a giver. You don’t have to be a millionaire to be generous. In fact, let me give you a spoiler for this whole series right now. The requirements for generosity are as follows. It’s very complicated, so get ready to write it down:Identify an opportunity.Take action.That’s it! It’s that simple. Your life can be completely transformed by the power of generosity if you are willing to become intentional about identifying the opportunities around you, and taking action on those opportunities. And here’s the bonus - if you do this, you will have a tremendous impact on the world around you. This is our pathway to the Generous Life: Awareness - Action - Impact. Over the next three weeks, we are going to unpack these ideas, and I cannot wait to see how God transforms your life, and the life of our church through the process. Today we are going to start with the first step on our path towards a generous life: awareness. Stop and think about how many things each of us experience on a daily basis. There are sights, sounds, tastes, touches, and smells all around us. In fact, if we were to try to put a number on how often we use our senses, it would be impossible to do it. Science and research tell us that our senses never stop working, even when we are asleep! We are literally sensing things all of the time. We live in a perpetual state of sensory overload. And because of this, our brains are working overtime to categorize what our senses experience. This is why you can brush your teeth in the morning, and not give it a second thought. It’s possible for us to experience hundreds of millions of things every day, and only be aware of a few of them. Not convinced? Try this experiment: who are the last 10 people you saw today? Who are the last five people you talked to? What did you talk to them about? If you're anything like me, these things are quite hard to remember. The point is this, we are experiencing things everyday without actually being aware of those things. Our brains efforts to categorize our experiences actually make it harder for us to be fully present and fully aware on an everyday basis. Yet when we look to scripture, we see Jesus as a person who never seemed to miss a moment. Have you ever noticed this? What an uncanny ability Jesus had to maximize opportunities for impact and for generosity. This morning I want to show you one of these moments. Let’s look together at Mark 5:21-34;21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.Now let me give you a little bit of context for the story we are reading. This comes right after Jesus healed a man possessed by demons. It's a very intense encounter in the life of Jesus. He is taking a boat across to the other side of the lake, and a large crowd is gathering around him there. Jesus has barely had time to get out of the boat, when a very prominent and influential religious leader comes to him and falls down at his feet. This is one of those moments that no one could miss, because it's right in front of your face. Not only is it right in front of Jesus' face, it is also a very urgent situation. The religious leader, named Jairus, has a daughter who is very sick. In fact, she is near death. Jairus has one request of Jesus: come to my house and heal my daughter. Jesus responds exactly how you would expect him to. He drops what he is doing, and immediately goes with Jairus. This is where the story gets interesting;A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.As Jesus is headed towards a very obvious opportunity to minister, he is confronted by a much more subtle situation. The Bible tells us there was a woman in the crowd who was bleeding for 12 years. This woman went to doctors and was promised solutions to her issues, but nothing worked. As Jesus walks by in the crowd, this woman makes a very bold and desperate decision. She reaches out and touches the bottom edge of Jesus’s clothing. As soon as she does this, she is miraculously healed. It's important we don't miss the context of the story here. Jesus is headed towards an urgent opportunity. This opportunity is obvious, it involves important and influential people, and time is of the essence. Right in the middle of this opportunity, he encounters another opportunity so small and so subtle, that none of us would blame him if He just kept going. But look at how Jesus responds.30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”I want you to look at verse 30 for a moment. I believe this is one of the most profound phrases in scripture as it relates to a generous life. The Bible says Jesus turned around in the crowd, and asked who touched his clothes. What Jesus is demonstrating here is remarkable awareness. In the middle of an urgent moment, in the middle of a large crowd, Jesus doesn't miss an opportunity. And the disciples are completely shocked by Jesus' response. They can't believe that in a crowd of people with everyone bumping up against him, Jesus would somehow have the awareness to single out one dying woman who was insignificant when compared to Jarius and his daughter. I think the disciples are asking the same question that I find myself asking as I read the story. How in the world did Jesus do this? How was he so aware of what was happening around him that he didn’t miss a moment to be generous to this woman? This is an important question for us, because we are followers of Jesus. He is our blueprint, and our example for how to live here in this world. In other words, if Jesus was aware of the needs of others, then this needs to be our goal as well. Most of us live incredibly busy lives, and much like this story, we have things coming at us from every direction. Some of these things are incredibly urgent, some of these things involve important people, and some of these things are right in our faces. Yet how do we, as followers of Jesus, have the same level of awareness that he had with this woman? I want to give you an answer to this question right now, but before I do, I want you to understand why the question is so important. It is tied to a principle we must understand. Awareness Activates Generosity. The first step to a generous life is to become more aware of what is happening around us. People who are successfully living generous lives seem to have their antenna up at all times. For those of you under 30, you might not know what an antenna is. An antenna is that long piece of metal that is on the top of some cars. You might also see an antenna on top of your grandparents television set. Its sole purpose is to pick up the signal that is being transmitted from a radio or television tower far away. If we are going to cut through the sensory overload and identify opportunities to be generous, then we have to learn how to have our antennas up all the time.The disciples in this story were actually correct, everyone was touching Jesus. In the same way, we are intersecting with people all the time. But unless we develop the ability to be aware, then we will never be able to be generous. So how do we do it? How do we become aware of the opportunities for generosity that exists all around us? Today I want to give you one new habit to help you increase your awareness. I believe if we add this one thing into our daily routine, it will give us the awareness we need to live a generous life.Every Morning, Ask God to Make You More Generous. This little daily prayer will absolutely change your life. Prayer is essential if we are going to become aware of the opportunities around us. And it makes sense doesn’t it? If we are going to be generous to others because of God’s love for us, shouldn’t we start the day by inviting Him into our efforts? Our world is loud and noisy, and we are going to need some help to tune our hearts to the opportunities God has for us. Listen to what Paul says in the book of Romans, chapter 12.2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.Paul is inviting us to let God transform us by changing the way we think. Awareness Always Begins With a Shift in Perspective. We need God to give us a new perspective, because human nature is to walk through life in, “selfie mode.” Self-centeredness is our default setting, and it keeps us from being aware of the opportunities for generosity that are all around us. We need to start developing awareness by spending time with the God who created our hearts to be generous in the first place. Imagine if we started every day with a prayer like this one:I want to experience the joy that comes from being generous. I ask that today an opportunity to be generous will come my way, that I will recognize it when it does, and that I will have the courage to jump in and give.I promise you this: If you make a commitment to pray in the morning, you will be absolutely amazed at the opportunities for generosity that pop up all around you. And here’s a little secret: those opportunities were there all along. Praying and asking God for opportunities is a way to open your heart and change your perspective. It is not a coincidence that just a few chapters before Jesus’ encounter with the bleeding woman, he got up early and spent some time alone in prayer. Prayer aligns our heart with God’s heart, and it changes our perspective so we can live with a Holy Spirit driven awareness every day. I want to share a story with you to demonstrate the power of generosity and the importance of awareness. Conclusion(Show the Week 1 Sermon Illustration video, “I like veteran” and if you cannot show the video at church then consider previewing the video on your own and telling the story)Isn’t this a powerful story? I love the opening line: “The story starts with me eating chicken at KFC.” If you are like me, you are probably wondering, “how does someone stumble into a story like this?” The answer is awareness. Eddie didn’t stumble into this story. He had a perspective that created awareness, and when God needed Eddie, he was ready to go. I’ll end with this quote from Eddie that sums this up beautifully: “If you consider that you are a gift from God to the other people in the world, there really is something spiritual that takes place.”I want to end with the prayer I read earlier. Will you pray this with me as we seek to become more aware of our opportunities for generosity?Let’s pray togetherI want to experience the joy that comes from being generous. I ask that today an opportunity to be generous will come my way, that I will recognize it when it does, and that I will have the courage to jump in and give. AMEN ................
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