Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to The Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Lofton, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you
Charlie Loften: are joining us. And if
Charlie Loften: you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point. You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us.
Charlie Loften: Hey, good morning. If you are new, I'm Charlie. I'm the lead pastor here and really glad that you are here. I would love a chance to meet you if I haven't. We have a table in the back where I'll be.
I have a gift that we would love to give you. We can get your information, find out ways that we can help you get better connected. So we'd love to meet you after the service. I want to just give you a little bit of insight into me, some of this won't be not surprising to some of you, but I'm pretty well known amongst my friends and people even who know me a little bit to be kind of a really anxious sports watcher. I just get irrationally nervous.
And one of the difficult situations to be, like to me, I'm at my best if I'm in the building, right, because I've got a job to do. Like I'm there to help. I'm in the building. Watching on TV is tough, but following like like I'm not even where a TV can be, and I'm just trying to follow it on my phone in some way is really stressful to me. And especially if I'm in an environment where I'm supposed to be being social, right?
I'm supposed to be being social. I can't just be sitting here on my phone. Every and also, you pull out your phone and try to subtly try to see what the score is, whatever, put it back in your pocket, try to be cool. But here's the thing that I do, and this is going to lower your opinion of me a lot, is if, let's say, we're not doing well. Let's say it's a basketball game, we're down by 10 points.
And I'm like, ugh, I'll put it back in my pocket, And I'll wait a couple of minutes before I check again, but I'm sure it's going to be even more bad news, and I can't take all the bad news at once. So I'll hit refresh on the page, and I'll put my thumb over the opponent's score. So when I hit refresh, all I see is our score.
Charlie Loften: So if we were
Charlie Loften: down by 10, and in the two minutes I've been off the phone, we've only scored four, I know it's still bad news. I put my phone in my pocket. I can't take all of it. I just have to come at it briefly, or maybe I'll be at the play by play, and I'll just slowly scroll. Whoop, something bad happened.
Phone back in the pocket. I just can't because, again, I'm being asked to be social, And I'm not great when sports anxiety is taking over me if you're also asking me to be social, or especially if you're asking me to be pastor social, which is another level of expectations. Anyways, I bring all that up. Was like, that's funny, but I ask you this. Have you ever done that, but not with sports, but with your bank account?
Have you ever logged on to your online banking software? You get a notification that, oh, your credit card bill statement is ready. And you're like, and like it's like, don't care. I don't even want to look. I don't even want to look.
I don't want to check. I don't know what the equivalent of putting your thumb over it would be. But just like I don't know. Like, it just actually just happened to me this morning. As some of you know, my wife and I went on an anniversary trip to Rome and to Greece.
We just got back about ten days ago. And I just got just this morning, the credit card that we use, it has no fees on using different currency or whatever. It says, your statement is ready. And I was like, do I or do I not want to click this? Because I don't know how you view money on vacation, but it's like, it's not real money.
Right? I mean, like, not real money. But eventually, you get a statement that tells you that it was in fact real money. And there's just something about money. It just causes a bit of anxiety.
And the honest truth is, at the point in which it became obvious that this is what we're talking about today, it generated a little bit of anxiety. There's something about it, this fear that can come from you open up, you maybe haven't been keeping track of it very well, and you open up your bank account, and you're like, I need it to be at least this much. Or you open up a credit card statement. It's like, I need it to be less than this much. And you just kind of are holding your breath, and you have all this anxiety and fear around it.
We're in a series right now called Off Ramps, where we are talking about the things that are most likely to one day separate you from the path that you feel like that God wants you to be on. That will be like, I'm walking with God, things are good, and then something happens. Last week, we talked about being busy, how being busy can become such a distraction for us that one day we look up, and my relationship with God and my connection with His people is gone. Number one and number two, without any doubt in my mind, are money and sex. And we're going spend these first two weeks talking about money and the next two talking about sex.
Because they are, they're the big ones, right? And I think about this just in my life, and I joke with people all the time. I don't want my name to ever be a headline. I don't ever want to be the headline of any article. You think, why would you say that?
I mean, I guess there's a chance local pastor wins lottery. I guess that's a possibility, right? But if I were to tell you that there was a headline, and it says local pastor blank, what's next? Stole money, had an appropriate relationship. It seems to be the number one and two things that are derailing people like me, but it doesn't have to be someone who is in the profession.
It happens to all of us. Hey, man. Did you hear about so and so? Woah. What happened?
Money or sex? And it is one of these things that if we don't get it right, if we don't begin to really trust God's plan, his provision, His boundaries, His path. And we slow these can be really slow off they don't have to be big, quick off ramps. One day everything's fine, and then you stole a million dollars. It's a slow burn very often.
We've got to get our mind right about it. So we're going to do the next two weeks on money. We're going talk about really two different ways people can get it wrong or can kind of start on this off ramp. One is, we're talking about today, is just an overwhelming amount of fear and anxiety around money. The fear and anxiety around money is so crippling that it overwhelms me, or an unhealthy infatuation and love for it.
And the Bible speaks very clearly about both of these two and helps us understand the solution, how we can do better. And so what we're going to do is we want to be in a passage in Matthew chapter six. And just like we did last week, last week I kind of picked the classic passage that is used, the story of Mary and Martha, to talk about busyness. And today, we're going do the same thing, the very classic passage, very commonly taught around the area of fear and anxiety around money and stuff, and it is Jesus speaking in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter six, starting with verse 25. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?
So do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
So don't worry. Don't worry about these things. People are just you're so worried. Don't worry about what you're gonna eat. Don't worry about what you're gonna drink.
Don't worry about your clothes. Don't worry about where you're
Charlie Loften: gonna
Charlie Loften: sleep. God has creation everywhere, and he's taking care of them. And he's going to do the same for you. And really worrying isn't gonna help you anyway. Worry doesn't help.
And in fact, people who just kind of obsess about this, this is what people who don't follow God are like. And when you don't trust God, you have such little faith. If you just could trust God, things would be okay, but listen, let me understand this, and he kind of sums it up here. Verse 33, a very fairly well known verse. But you, you, you, you seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness.
And all these things that people worry about, all of these things, they will be given to you. Don't worry. Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow's worries are coming. Just put your faith and trust in God right now in this moment.
Now he is speaking to a group of people who are essentially living day to day. By and large, a large number of people that are hearing Jesus speak are the kinds of people who are waking up every day wondering where today's food is going to come from. Or maybe, you know, I've got two, three, four, five days worth of supplies, but really, every day, every week is kind of a challenge. And so he's speaking to really poor people. Now some of us may have some firsthand experience with that level of poverty, but most of us probably either aren't, or maybe at some rare point have had that.
So he's talking to a very specific group of people, and that God is going to make sure, even if you are desperately poor, God is going to make sure that you are taken care of. Doesn't really speak as directly to the money anxiety that people who, by comparison, are doing pretty well, But I think there are definitely some principles here, sorry for the big word, that we can kind of extrapolate, we can kind of build from what He's talking about to them to kind of help us understand some things that Jesus wants to say to us about the way that we approach our money, and how we can also be free from this anxiety around money and stuff that can be incredibly crippling. And just like we did last week, and I probably will for a while here, rather than because we're talking about off ramps and whether or not you're on the right path or starting to drift over here, going to rather than our kind of our main points being declarative statements, they're going be questions to kind of help you process and think how close to this off ramp or how far down this off ramp am I?
And the first question is this, how much money, I mean how much anxiety is money causing you? How much? A little bit? A lot? Is it crippling?
Does it vary from day to day, week to week, month to month, bill to bill? How much is like and I think it's a really important thing to be honest about it. Because again, in a sermon like this with a diverse group like this, probably fall into quite a few categories. There may be some of us here, or actually I'm actually doing pretty well. I don't have any stress about money, feel like we're managing things well, things are going good, and I'm feeling good about it.
And if that's you, I'm not asking you to take the week off. You keep listening. It'd be important maybe for later, but celebrate the fact that I'm giving a really, what can be considered a really awkward sermon, and right now you're chill. Just celebrate that for you. There's another group of people here that the answer to the question an hour ago would have been, no, I'm actually doing great.
But the fact that you brought it up, now I'm feeling something. Thanks for that. And then there are some of us that we didn't need a sermon around the anxiety of money to be keenly aware of the amount of stress and fear that I have right now. Because the reality is there's a couple of different ways that fear can kind of manifest itself. One is, again, it just crippling.
I think about it all the time. I obsess about it, and very often maybe it can create a hoarder's mentality. I can't spend anything. I can't do anything, and I'm so paralyzed by what ifs, and fears, and things that happened in the past, or things that might happen in the future that I have to over manage it, overthink about it, and it's just something that cripples me. It is like I'm carrying around this giant backpack full of rocks, and it's this burden that I'm constantly aware of.
But also, there are some of us, right, and I provoked it a little bit, where you're no, I'm fine, actually. I'm actually fine. I'm actually fine. I'm fine when I don't think about it. And I begin to just put my head in the sand, and I don't think about it.
And so I spend as if I don't have any problems. I live as if I don't have any problems, and I like everything is fine because I'm just choosing to not think about it. And I put my head down, and I just live my life. And the reality of it is, I don't want you to have a little any fear and anxiety, but maybe you should at least notice a little more. Maybe a little fear might do you some good, but we're ignoring it.
But it's just different ways, two very distinct coping mechanisms around the same kind of fear. And I think it is important for those of us who kinda maybe have our head buried a little bit to to be honest. Money money is a stressor for me, and avoiding it and not thinking about it and pretending that it's not there and not looking not not getting online to check where it's going, not looking at this, not looking at that. It it is it is freeing me in the short term, maybe. But in the long term, something big is coming because of my fear and negligence today.
And if you are someone, though, that is maybe just even more honest about it, and you just feel crippled by it, I think it is good in this moment to say, I hear Jesus talk about this, people who are fear. I'm hearing Charlie talk about it. People have a lot of fear and anxiety. That's me. I think a moment of honesty and clarity about kind of where our heart is really is the is is the first good step to kind of getting off this on ramp and off and and and back on the right path.
And so back to this kind of this main verse here, verse 33. Because maybe it's a little bit, maybe it's a lot, maybe it's overwhelming anxiety. Well, what does Jesus say is the answer? Verse 33, again, very common verse. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Jesus is like, man, you've got all these anxieties and fears about where this is gonna come from and where this is gonna come from. But if you'll just put your faith and trust in Him, seek first His kingdom, His righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you. You won't have to worry about this anymore.
You can know that God has got you, and you can be free from the anxiety and fear that just can cripple you with money. And again, this is a very common verse. It's a very popular verse. It is the kind of thing that you're going to find on church signs and billboards and all sorts of Christian knickknacks, right? And it's very common.
And I think there's something that we love about this because he's offering something that we all desperately need, this freedom from the fear and anxiety where money can just cripple us. But there is a there's a qualifier. How much money how much anxiety is money causing you? Does your use of money align with Jesus' values? I mean, he says it.
He doesn't just say, and don't worry about that, God's got it. There's a qualifier, but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and then all these things will be added to you in will. You get aligned here, and you'll get all the rest of this other stuff. But you're going to have to get aligned with what it is that He says that you need to be doing. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.
And again, on a billboard, cat poster, decorative rock, you put that verse on there, and it's, oh man, yeah, that's good. It's good. Good. Seek first again. I was like, I go to church.
I go to church. I'm pro Jesus. I don't necessarily know what righteousness means. It probably means being a good person. So I'm pro Jesus, trying to be a good person.
Therefore, I'm good. Right? Right? But, really, the question is, if we were to look at the way that you use money, the way that you deal with money, the way that you handle money, would you say that your values are aligned with what Jesus is saying here, or are they aligned more over here? Again, two very simple ideas.
Seek first the kingdom of God. Is the top priority that you have with your money advancing the kingdom of God. Cover to cover in scripture, Jesus says it, Paul says it, it's all throughout the Old Testament, that what God has said is that he would like a portion of what you what what you have to give it back to him, not because he needs it, but because you need it. You need the alignment. You need the alignment.
Like, my money, I want my money to be aligned with who Jesus is. I want my life to be aligned with what Jesus wants from me. I want His kingdom to be a top priority for me. And I want, in this most important area of my life seemingly, I want it to be aligned. And so the first thing that I do is I make sure that my top priority is generosity, advancing the kingdom.
Again, God does not need money. We need to give money, and by extension, the causes that are advancing his kingdom do need money. But really in this moment, this is not about whether or not a church needs money or a missionary needs money, which they do. This is more about what you need. And what I need is freedom.
I need freedom from anxiety. I need freedom. And if I and if I want to do that, I I I need this for me. One of the jokes that I'll say in connections from time to time when we're talking about giving is like, please get offended all you want about me talking about this and how I must be one of those pastors that is obsessed with giving, and then go to a different church, and please, I'm begging you, tithe there. This is not about me in this moment.
In this moment, this is my concern for the crippling fear and anxiety that gets the best of us. And if I want, what I need is God's blessing and His provision, then I need alignment. I need alignment. And so first and foremost, I seek first His kingdom, but then also is righteousness, which for our purposes today, we'll just say righteousness making the good choice. Making a good choice.
And so not only am I giving, but am I making good choices? We'll talk about this more next week when we talk about kind of the other side of of problems that come with money, not fear and anxiety, but just kind of an an obsessive pursuit of it. Like, not only do I give, but I'm also saving, not in a hoarding fearful kind of way, but just in a preparatory way for things that will come in the future. Again, cover to cover Bible that makes this clear. The wise person, the righteous man, he will take what he has, and he will save some for unknown certain unknown things or known things.
I'm going to save. And I'm also not going to allow debt to get the best of me. I'm not going to spend more than I have. And so I'm going to give first. I'm going to save appropriately, and then only spend what is left.
It is a very simple idea. It is not complicated. It has not gotten more or less complicated. Our culture continues to change, and our economy continues to change, and there's lots of talk out there about minimum wage and whether or not this and this generation's ability to buy a house and all these different things. Yes.
And there are things about this system that are completely and totally unfair and are getting more and more unfair for younger and younger people, but the principles are still the same. If I want my life and my financial life to be blessed by the hand of God, I need to align with his values. And by that, what that means is I'm going to first value his kingdom and be a generous giver, and then I'm going to do right with what I have. I'm gonna save, and I'm gonna spend appropriately. And then with that, I've sought his kingdom with my money.
I am living by his righteous rules with my money. And now peace and trust are the result, which really kind of leaves us with just one last question. How much do you trust him? And I don't mean in a generic way. I trust God.
I'm here, aren't I? Right? I came here. I'm trying to be a good person, but I mean, if your money and your financial life is aligned this way and is ultimately taking you down a path that is gonna be a real problem, it's not a question, do I generically trust him? Do I trust him well enough to realign?
He has told me this is where the path of peace and prosperity are. This, his kingdom, his righteousness, that is where the peace and the prosperity comes. I'm I'm on a fear based path. I'm in I'm in control path. Because the reality of it is our fear and anxiety around money can come from one of two different places.
Right? There's things that can happen around our world. Most of us here, we didn't decide to invade Iran. Say all of us, none of us decided that. None of us decided that.
None of us are in control of gas prices. There's lots of things that can markets and all sorts of financial things. There's all sorts of things that happen beyond our control all the time that lead us to fear and anxiety. There's another category too. Sometimes it's not things beyond our control.
It's things because of our control. It is my control that is the problem, and I need to realign. I was thinking about this all week, kind of the two biggest seasons of my life where fear and anxiety around money really crippled us, crippled me anyway. The first is when we were in seminary. This is a now a twenty six year old story.
We moved to Colorado. I had a two year old, a baby on the way, and decided that really what God wanted most for us was to go to seminary, which is preacher grad school so we could move from college ministry to to pastoral ministry, and so we did this. And as this is the story with every time we've ever moved from one town to another, we left the house unsold in Conway, Arkansas. So now I'm delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut with one kid and a kid on the way and a mortgage for a house that we don't live in anymore. And that was for several months.
Meanwhile, we're having all sorts of just kind of random financial things happening with cars and just it was it was just chaotic, and it was one of the it was far and away financially one of the most stressful periods of my life. We didn't have very much, and what we did have seemed to be going to all these things that were something other than the food that we needed. We gotta pay for school. We gotta pay for the apartment that we're in. We gotta we gotta do all these things, and now and now we gotta fix this car, and we've gotta pay for this mortgage.
It was incredibly stressful month after month, and we were there for two years. Probably the second most was actually just about a couple of years ago. And as as many of you may know, a couple of years ago, after my father-in-law passed, my my my wife's dad, we invited Heidi's mom, my mother-in-law, to come live with us. And if you don't know my mother-in-law, I can't imagine that you've been coming here more than once because she knows everybody. If you don't, I'm not sure which one she is.
She's the one that's this tall. That's not true. That's an exaggeration. It's really funny. Anyway, she's great.
I think she knows more of you than we do. I mean, she's great, and we have loved absolutely having her, and it's been awesome. And what we decided is she was going to sell her home. We were going to sell our home and move into a home that we could have together that would kind of suit everyone's needs, which was a great idea, but it kind of just put us in a very different sort of situation. The bills were different.
The utility bills were more, and there was just a lot of just kind of fear. And you move into a new house, you find all the things that are broken and need to be repaired, and there were just so much there. And I just remember just week after week, month after month, being like, I just need things to settle down. I need to get in a rhythm. How much is all of this going to be?
And I remember just feeling just so much just ripped anxiety about it. And in both of these things, two things are true. In both of them, it was very clear that this is what God wanted us to do. He wanted us to go to seminary and and to get this degree. He wanted us to love and support our incredible mom and our family, just big picture.
Both of them, we were doing what God called us to do. And the second thing that is true is that every step of the way, God was taking care of us. He worked it all out. And again, these are two extremes. One's an old story, one's a new story.
One, we no money. We've had plenty of money. And God was there the whole time. We're doing what he wanted us to be, and my fear and anxiety contributed nothing to it. And in hindsight, it's ridiculous.
I really wish, I really wish all I had for you was a twenty six year old story. But apparently, there's still just some of that in me. And really, it's in all of us. This fear and anxiety about what's next and do I have enough and what's going to happen next. But really, the fear can go away if we will just trust him enough to get aligned.
There is no reason to fear. No reason to have any anxiety. No matter what's happening out here, no matter I I may you make a make a dumb decision. Make a dumb decision. Something happens in our world, and and things can change drastically from one of those two things.
But that doesn't mean that fear has to come because I've aligned. I'm putting my faith and trust, not in God simply generically, but in his particular provision and the promise that he gives, that if I will seek him first, his kingdom, his priorities, his values, his righteousness, his rules, his boundaries, then all these things will be taken care of, and I can rest. It consumes our mind. It eats away at us, and if we're not careful, gently taking the slow off ramp is gonna lead us to someplace really bad someday. But if we can trust and realign, you can be free.
Let me pray. God, I pray. That's what I pray for. I gotta just pray for freedom. Freedom from anxiety.
Freedom from control. From fear, from feeling like it's all on us. That God, what would it look like in our lives if we were free? If we could genuinely trust you and know that you've got it. So God, pray that you would give us the courage, the courage to realign, The courage to show our trust by living out the priorities and the values and the boundaries that you have put on this area.
That we would relinquish control in that way and receive back from you confidence, assurance, and freedom. We're so thankful for your son and all his words that he had to say on this matter. God, you did not leave us you did not leave us drifting on our own in this area, but god that your son taught on it so much. We're so thankful for him and his words and more than that, we are thankful for his life and his death that gives us life with you forever, and it's in His name
Charlie Loften: that we pray, Amen. Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to thegrovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening. And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues of dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate podcast.
It's on the same feed, however you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.