it is absolutely fantastic to be here in this great church you may be seated
I can’t possibly tell you how honored I am to be here of course this church is known far and wide as one of the truly
great churches in the world and I know you feel a sense of privilege and joy that you’re a part of it and I hold your
pastor Kevin and and Sheila in such high regard and uh we’ve had a great time
this weekend and I just appreciate everything that I’ve been a part of around here including this amazing
worship experience wow
[Applause]
so you know what I’m just going to jump right in is that okay I have a a lot that that I that I want to share with you this morning that I hope will be
meaningful to your life I want to talk about how much God wants to bless you is that okay
how much God wants to bless you so I I was wondering why everybody or most
people at least where I’m from say bless you when someone sneezes I mean it doesn’t really matter in the New York City metropolitan area at least where
you are you could be in a crowded Subway you could be sitting at a Yankee game you could be walking through Central Park and if anybody anywhere sneezes
there are less use all around it’s about as uh holy as the New York City metropolitan area gets
I learned that in ADC ad600 an epidemic of the Bubonic plague was spreading rapidly and
sneezing was an early and obvious symptom that someone had this dreaded disease so Pope Gregory the Great issued
an edict ordering that everyone with an earshot of a sneeze
was mandated to utter an immediate prayer praying that God would save the sneezer from the plague and the prayer
was simply God bless you now I really like the idea that when a
person manifests a symptom of sickness that those around them offer a prayer the Lord bless you may God deliver you
from sickness and restore you to Good Health bless you Odd as it may seem bless you actually
captures the heart of God for people in ways large and small since the very beginning of time
the very first description of God’s interaction with the people he had created is found in Genesis chapter one
where we are told God blessed them he created the man and woman in His image and then immediately he blessed them and
then he in the same breath it appears purpose to them Genesis 1 27 and 28
tells us that God created human beings in his own image in the image of God he created them male and female he created
them then God blessed them would you please say that with me please then God bless them
thank you the very first thing that happens between God and people in scripture is that then God blessed them
and said be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and govern it he blessed them and then he asked them invited them
to join him in his work now it’s important to know that you really can’t overstate the importance of this I like
to imagine God standing in the garden with the first man and woman newly Made In His Image full of joy and
passionately declaring his love for them telling them how much he valued them and wanted to be in relationship with him
and have them partner with him in his work I think he swore to them that he would do good to them and promised that
he would help them do good in this world he blessed them but then of course the man and woman sneezed
and they fell sick they fell very very sick of course I’m talking about what we
call the fall God gave Adam and Eve a choice as to whether or not to do life his way or to do life their way they
chose to do their life their way and the plague of sin infected the human race
now Humanity would still no good but they would also for the first time know evil now because of their own choice
they would not only experience blessing but they would also experience the curse the curse means I think simply living
outside of God’s full blessing anything less than the blessing God wanted for the people he had made nevertheless we
must never forget that even before the man and woman sneezed God said bless you
he anticipated the sickness before they got sick see blessing is what God wanted
in the beginning and blessing is what God’s determined to have in the end and blessing is what God wants for you now
now it’s important to establish this everything in scripture and in fact everything in human history is a
response to what happened in the first three chapters of Genesis everything in human history is about what happened there and there are at least three
fundamentally important things that we learn in the first three chapters of Genesis first of all and again the importance of this the magnitude of this
cannot be overstated we learn what God wanted if you want to know what God wanted look at how God created the world and
put people in it because that’s what we learn about what God wanted he wanted to be in relationship with the people he
had made and to bless them and to have them join him in his work to spread the god image in Eden everywhere on this planet and to govern this planet in
partnership with him so first of all we learned what God wanted secondly we learned that human beings rejected what God wanted
thirdly we learned that God began to execute a plan that he formulated before the foundation of the earth to bring
back what he wanted this plan was fulfilled and is being fulfilled through the Life Death
resurrection and exaltation of Jesus I mean Easter is really essential to what it looks like for the blessing to come
back and there’s another part of this that’s
that’s really big it’s that God will have in the end what he wanted in the beginning
and he will accomplish it through the work of Jesus Christ God did not change his mind when Adam and Eve fell ill
he had decided to bless them and he put into motion a plan to bring the blessing
back and everything in history is about this everything in our lives is about this scripture ends with those who
believe in Jesus living in a Garden City which is a restoration of Eden to this planet history ends the way it began
with God getting what he wanted the last chapter of the last book of scripture revelation 22 brings us back to what God
wanted in the first chapter of Genesis revelation 22 tells us no longer will there be any curse
the Throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him that looks a
whole lot like what God wanted in the beginning so in the last chapter of Genesis revelation God has what he wanted in the first chapter of Genesis
and this is important this is an important framework for our lives now because what God wanted in the beginning
and what God’s going to have in the end should give us a pretty strong hint of what our lives should look like now
but of course we know that between Eden and the beginning and Eden in the end the blessing in the beginning and the
blessing in the end there’s a whole lot of wilderness Adam and Eve of course were cast out of the garden and Into the
Wilderness why because in our Genesis Humanity chose to live their own way instead of God’s way and through their
own decision we’re separated from God exiled from Eden and left to sort things out in the wilderness in the meantime
God begins to execute this plan he had conceived before the he even created the world to redeem Humanity to buy back
what they lost in the garden and to restore them to the blessing that he had intended this plan again culminates in
in the Life Death resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Jesus did has already
done what is necessary to bring the blessing back and restore us to Eden because cause of Jesus life in the age
to come will look like what God wanted life to look like in the beginning and that should inform what our lives should
look like now but we all know there’s a whole lot of wilderness between the beginning and the end and this is part
of the reality that we have to face in our lives the blessing we experience is experienced in the context of the
Wilderness we taste it but we won’t fully know it until the age to come but nonetheless we taste it now
several years ago my wife Sharon and I visited uh the Sistine Chapel in Rome
and we spent considerable time I did at least just gawking at Michelangelo’s the
creation of Adam is 1512 A.D Masterpiece now Michelangelo didn’t write them to
put the modesty bar there I think that we did that but nonetheless there’s this there’s this amazing painting that all
of you have seen pictures of if you’ve not personally seen it that to me this is this is Adam in the beginning this is
the before he got sick Adam this is before the fall Adam this is this is this perfect specimen of a man and you
can imagine God reaching from heaven and saying I bless you to this man several years later I was at the John
Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles and I saw another painting that struck me it’s John Francois malay’s painting it’s
called man with a hoe in his hand this painting first displayed in 1863 depicts
a large dirty brutish man bent over a hoe attempting to turn Rocky thistle
ridden soil into a productive field he’s clearly exhausted by his back-breaking
labor Malay the painter who painted this was a religious fatalist who believed that people were tragically condemned to
Bear a heavy burden and when I stood there in that Museum and studied malay’s painting and saw this weary man I
thought this is what Adam must have looked like after the fall this is this is Adam in the wilderness
this is Adam now trying by the sweat of his brow to produce something from soil
that was so different from what he’d experienced in the full blessing of God in Eden Adam worked in the garden but it
was sweatless work but now Adam is this tired man who God wanted to bless but Adam rejected his Blessing and it
occurred to me that far too often that burdened guy is us humans
post fall making mistakes suffering pain torn by broken relationships fighting burnout slammed by world events far too
often lonely anxious or sad my question the question I asked myself standing
there looking at this guy was can God bless that guy can God bless guys like that can God
bless troubled us as we attempt to navigate the terrain of a damaged world
and then thankfully I was able to draw back on everything that I know from scripture and answer the question with the resounding yes God can bless that
man
[Applause]
that’s that man primarily because God wants to
and he can and will if we’ll let him now let me dig into this thought just for a
couple of minutes I think in our lives then we should live with a mentality where we’re expecting more Eden and less wilderness
would you please say more Eden less wilderness so I think now the the reality is a
result of the Fall is now there’s this this Wilderness that exists between Eden past Eden future but that there should
be an expectation from everything I understand in Scripture that wherever we are there’s blessing nonetheless even in
the midst of a broken world we experience blessing again we don’t have it in the way that we’re going to have
it in the world to come but we have it nonetheless we have eternity in us now we have life Abundant Life full full flourishing life more and better life
than we ever dreamed of this is what Jesus came to bring to us we experience this in the context of wilderness but we
experience it nonetheless there should be an expectation that we that we are going to then experience more and more
Eden in our lives and less and less Wilderness one of my favorite passages of scripture uh is in Isaiah chapter 9 where the prophet Isaiah is talking
about what’s going to happen when the Messiah Jesus comes to make everything right on this planet and he says that of
the government of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end you’re familiar with that passage of scripture it’s loaded with meaning of
the end when he when Jesus comes to restore his rule to this world as his rule increases
in our domains and in our lives there should also be an expectation that there is an increase of peace and that word
peace that word peace is you most likely know is associated in the Hebrew with the word Shalom and Shalom speaks of
everything working together in harmony the way God intended it this is what peace means when you look at it in most
places throughout scripture both Old and New Testament it wasn’t just the absence it didn’t mean we’re not fighting so we have peace we signed a peace treaty it
means and that’s how some people think they think they believe in Jesus and maybe God you know he considers this to be made right with him and now you know
we’re no longer angry at each other or something like that but but when you believe in Jesus so much more happens than that see because now his government
his rule his intentions what he wanted the way he created things to be now comes into your life and as that reality
continues to grow and expand of the increase of his government and peace there is no end there should be a
constant expectation that as I believe in Jesus and follow Jesus my life continues to look more and more the way
God wanted life to look like
so we should be expecting that and we we should get a picture in our mind that says something in our lives that looks
less than what God wanted is not an acceptable thing so um this past January uh
our church the Life Christian Church in West Orange New Jersey did a series around this this book pastor Kevin
referenced the Lord bless you and by the way I have some celebrity endorsers of the Lord bless you like Kathy Lee
Gifford but more importantly Kevin Gerald okay I just want you to know that I went for the big time
anyway so we do this series and and I did a a message where I talked about some of the things I’m talking about
here this weekend and at the end of the message we ask people to take a card that was in the seat back pocket in
front of them and uh it was a card that on one side said Wilderness and on the other side it said Eden and we said that
we want you to write on the Wilderness side something in your life that is less than what God would have
intended for the people he made in the beginning and then on the opposite side the Eden side to write what that thing would look
like if you were experiencing more Eden and less Wilderness in your life and we had a giant cross on the stage and
people came forward and we have fixed those cards we have fixed the Wilderness side to the Cross because Jesus he he
nailed he nailed the curse he nailed the Wilderness to his cross
and eaten faced out so so I went later and looked at the cards all of them were Anonymous and someone had written on the
Wilderness side a broken home on the Eden side they wrote A Healthy Home somebody on the Wilderness side wrote
cancer on the Eden side they wrote complete Health somebody on the Wilderness side wrote struggling financially on the Eden
side they wrote Financial Freedom on the Wilderness side somebody wrote my daughter’s loss of faith on the Eden side they wrote my daughter acknowledges
Jesus his Lord of her life I’d like for you I’d like for you today
to look at something in your life that you know isn’t what God would want for you and to say I’m going to have less
Wilderness and more Eden as the government of Jesus increases in my life
[Applause]
what a fantastic group to be able to speak to and I know there are a lot of beautiful people at the other campuses as well
so here’s my definition of blessing my definition of blessing which I’m not going to get into today but just I’d like for you to hear this is that to be
blessed is to be in harmonious relationship with God who wants to do good in you to you and through you it’s
just kind of what we dig into in the book to be blessed is first of all to be in harmonious relationship with God this thing doesn’t
work if you if you haven’t made peace with God and if his peace is an expanding in your life to be blessed is to be in harmonious relationship with
God who wants to do good in you to you and through you now having said that let me spend the rest of my time quickly offering three things to know about
God’s desire to bless you okay three things to know most of my time will be spent on the first point it’ll take a moment to develop again I remind you
that everything in history and in your life is moving toward Eden I just want you to have a sense of a gravitational
pull in your life toward what God wants for you okay and so God’s story with Humanity
begins in the Garden of Eden and in Eden what did life look like well some of what we know is that human beings lived under God’s blessing and this blessing
showed up in a relationship with God so harmonious that they walked with him in the garden every day this blessing showed up in the relationships they were
fully transparent with one another unaffected by shame this blessing showed up in their work they worked so
purposefully in concert in alignment with God that they didn’t even sweat this blessing showed up in their health they were not sick or in pain this
blessing showed up in their resources they had everything they needed and more you want to know what life is supposed to look like when Jesus comes and brings
us life in all of its fullness that’s a picture of what life should look like more and more so of course they lost
that but then Jesus came to bring it back he came to bring the garden back you know that story some of us will talk
about it probably two weeks from now on Easter where Mary Magdalene goes to the garden and she’s looking for Jesus
and uh the tomb is empty and she’s a little bit freaked out by all of that and she turns around and scripture says that John’s gospel says she sees the
gardener and the gardener says I’m Jesus I think a lot of people think you know that that was just an odd mistake that somehow
gets recorded in scripture but in fact she did see the gardener not that
person gardening that Garden but she saw the gardener who created and cultivated
the Garden of Eden and put people in it Jesus came
to bring the garden back and it’s fascinating to note in scripture how much this restoration of Eden is referred to here’s an example one of
many ways we could talk about this so consider the physicality of Eden now what am I talking about I’m saying know that everything in history is moving us
back toward Eden all right so consider then just the physicality of Eden what we know from scripture some of it’s
somewhat speculative but but there’s enough in scripture for us to get a sense of what Eden might have looked like physically scripture indicates the
Eden was situated on a mountain that the four Great Rivers which water the Earth derived from one source of water in Eden
in Eden we’re told there grew every beautiful tree and tree that was good for food the animals were not wild and
Adam was able to give each one its name and although much more could be said about the beauty of that place I’m
struck by the information in Scripture that the ground of the garden was evidently littered with Precious Minerals
sparkling gems colorful jewels the prophet Ezekiel refers to those walking in Eden as walking among the
fiery Stones now our knowledge of this is limited but it makes sense to me that what had to be worked so hard for in the
garden was easily I’m sorry in the wilderness was easily obtained in the garden I imagine Adam and Eve walking
along and having to keep from stubbing their toe on a motherload of gold sticking up from the ground
yeah I mean in that great Garden City to come we’re going to walk on gold
so it seems to make sense to me at least this is the idea to conveyed in Scripture that Eden you would expect
that what had to be worked so hard for in the wilderness was just there in the garden so when the prophet Isaiah
for instance prophesied about what would happen when the Messiah came he frequently used edenic language now you
might not have noticed that but if you look for it now you’ll see this showing up in scripture in a particularly the Messianic prophecies those prophecies in
the Old Testament that told us that Jesus was going to come and what would happen when he did so for instance Eden was a garden well here’s what Isaiah
says about when Jesus comes he said the Lord will surely Comfort Zion which typically refers to the church in prophetically and will look with
compassion on all her ruins he will make her deserts like Eden her wastelands like the garden of the Lord joy and
gladness will be found in her Thanksgiving and the sound of singing or Eden was situated on a mountain Isaiah said in the last days the mountain of
the Lord’s Temple will be established as the highest of the mountains it will be exalted above the hills and All Nations will stream to it or even was the
world’s source of water well Isaiah tells us that because of what Jesus is going to do that water will gush forth
in the wilderness and streams in the desert the burning sand will become a pool the Thirsty ground bubbling Springs
in Eden we’re told that the animals were not wild except one snake perhaps but Isaiah said that through Jesus the
wolf and the lamb are going to feed together and the lion will eat straw like the ox and dust will be the Serpent’s food they will neither harm
nor destroy in all my Holy Mountain says the Lord or eaten was littered with precious jewels well Isaiah prophesied
that God said by unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my Covenant of peace be removed Afflicted City last by
storms and not comforted I will rebuild you with stones of turquoise your foundations with lapis lazuli I will
make your battlements of rubies your Gates of sparkling jewels and all of your walls of precious stones I say this
to reiterate that what Jesus did through his life death resurrection and Ascension is moving everything back to
Eden everything a gravitational historic pool pool that’s pulling everything back
to Eden and I repeat myself intentionally you should expect that if you have believed
in Jesus that everything in your life is moving toward Eden as well
with this great Biblical word regeneration is a word that lets us know that when we believe in Jesus and we’re born again
that we’re regenerated and renewed by the Holy Spirit regeneration in the English pardon me in the original
language of the New Testament is a combination of two words Genesis and again to be born again to be regenerated
is to experience Genesis once again I’m telling you Eden is in you and your life
is going to look more and more like Eden what would that look like for your relationship with God to look more like
Eden your relationship with others your health your work life your financial life I challenge you to accept nothing less
then everything looking more like here’s the second thing to know it’s to know your so that
so one of the big ideas in the Lord bless you is that blessing is inextricably related to purpose
in other words God didn’t just bless Adam and Eve period he blessed Adam and
Eve and then he connected the blessing to them doing what they were made to do
so we’re told God blessed them and said be fruitful and multiply fill the Earth in government and what this meant was
that these people created in God’s image were to multiply the god image through the Earth and they were to take what
they hadn’t eaten and spread it everywhere Eaton was the only cultivated place on the planet from what we can tell the rest of it needed cultivation
and God says to human beings I’ve made you and I want I want us to do this together we’re going to have an amazing time and I want you to partner with me
and spread who I am the god image that I’ve made you in every place on the planet the bottom line is blessing was
connected to purpose there was there was there was it was a it was um I don’t know I probably should think more about
this before saying but but maybe it’d be correct to say it was a means not an end I think God wants to bless us well I think I’m going to stick with that for
right now that that this blessing is supposed to flow through us and and you know it blesses us but it blesses us and
you see this through scripture all over the place I don’t have time to talk about it at length I’ll just read you one verse of scripture that will help you kind of frame that in your mind it’s
it’s where the psalmist said may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us so that your ways I
need to read that again and I need to emphasize the right part okay may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us so that your ways may
be known on the earth your salvation among all nations the land yields its Harvest God our God blesses us may God
bless us still so that all the ends of the Earth will fear him so
as as you’re coming more and more into denic reality and experiencing God’s
blessing God says I want you to share this with other people I want you to get involved in what I’m
doing in the world I want you to invite somebody to come to Easter to experience a relationship with a gardener as well
so they’re ha so as God blesses you more and more what is your so that and then here’s the third and final
thing know that you will be blessed because God’s heart is to bless you
in all of its simplicity blessing comes to us because God wants to bless us
now there are things that we need to do and can do to align ourselves with God’s good intentions all right
no time for that to get into that at any length today but it’s through our faith in him and through our obedience to him and walking with him it lets him do more
and more of what he wants to do in our lives but the whole thing starts with God’s good intentions the heart of God
is to bless you and see it starts from grace and some of us may be sitting here saying I don’t know if God would want to bless me in fact I’ll just tell you I
think most of us have a tendency to default to shame that that we we go back to Adam and Eve after they fell and
we’re hiding from God and God saying I know you messed up but I hadn’t changed my mind about you we’re just gonna have to get this program back on track right
we default to shame we try to cover ourselves and by our own efforts or or just whatever and and God says I’ve made
the provision for you through Jesus to cover your shame and I and I and I and I I want to bless you so don’t hide from
me and I think a lot of us just like I don’t know why God would want to bless me and maybe if you were dealing with some other human being that might be a logical thing to say but that’s not who
you’re dealing with God wants to bless
you years ago I heard an ancient parable
based in a remote Village in India pardon the graphic imagery it is a graphic Parable but it’s the crudeness
of the parabolic parabolic detail that makes the a beautiful point it’s a story of a young man living in this remote
Village in India again an ancient story and um he falls in love with a girl in a neighboring Village
and uh his love for her is sincere and overwhelming her love for him is really
non-existent in fact she ends up to be incredibly evil and cruel person and as he as he tries to bring her to a point
where she will marry him she just uh puts him through all kinds of ridiculous games to get him to prove to her how
much he loved her and finally reached a point where as incredible as this is remember it’s a parable this girl asked
this guy to take his mother’s life and to bring her his mother’s heart so that
she could show so she could know how much this this young man loved her and the young man’s tortured for a while
doesn’t contemplate her but finally enraged with he thought love he takes his mother’s life and he takes
her heart and he starts running from his village to her Village and as he’s running he trips and falls and his
mother’s heart falls on the ground and this young guy scrambles around looking for his mother’s heart and he he finally
finds it and he picks it up and as he’s standing up he hears his mother’s voice coming from her heart saying son are you
hurt son are you hurt we I think all instinctively grasp the
power of this Parable it’s the story of A Mother’s Love and we all know that With Every Beat a mother’s heart speaks
to her children and says I love you I love you I love you the power of a mother’s love is
unquestioned but there is a power even greater and that’s the power of the love of God
the Father The God Who created us and the God who
wants to bless us if we could hold his heart in our hands I believe every beat would convey his
love and then every beat would say I want to bless you I want to bless you I want to bless you I want to bless you
this is the heart of God for you and I’ll close with this
my prayer and confession of Faith over you from Deuteronomy chapter 28 where God told Moses to tell the children of
Israel how much he wanted to bless them and Moses stood there and said hey if if
we’ll walk with God
[Music]
they’re going to be all kinds of blessings that are going to accompany you and then he enumerated multitudinous blessings that they should anticipate
and I believe now as the you know that was to Abraham’s seed and we are through Jesus scripture says Abraham seed that
these blessings should be expected by us as well please receive this confession right now because of God’s heart to
bless you you will be blessed wherever you live you will be blessed wherever you go your children will be blessed your business will be blessed your
finances will be blessed your ministry will be blessed you will be blessed in everything
thank you you will be blessed in everything you
put your hand to people even your enemies will see that you are blessed and reverence God and respect you
and the Lord will grant you abundant prosperity and open the Heavens to bless
all the works of your hands why because God wants to bless you
[Applause]
thank you
[Music]
so powerful you want to thank him one more time
[Applause]
clap like you report you’ve just heard foreign
[Music]
will be out signing books and the unfortunately just the Tacoma location but I believe books are
available at all of our location the book is in small helpings for some of you that might say I’m not a good
book reader long reading it’s devotional Style and I’ve really loved and appreciated
this book
[Music]
I’d like you to just say something I love confession I love the way we received a declaration a few moments ago but why you remain
standing and if you’re not at other locations please stand with us I’d like you to just say God is a good god
and he does good things for people like me say it again God is a good god
and he does good things for people like me
I’ve loved the presentation today of God’s blessing it’s about as persuasive and convincing
I think as a human orator or communicator could be on a topic like this
and yet and likeness with which with Pastor Terry and what he said the human part of
us is still is still affected by and in resemblance to
[Music]
Adam who hid himself in that Garden we still Feel So Unworthy
and at times we feel so insignificant bypass a word like this and we allow
the strength of it to really get into our soul and I want to ask all of our church family
today to meditate on this I hope you’ll get the book but even if you don’t to meditate on it and find a way to
continue in the aftermath of this service to dwell on the idea
that the Lord has blessed me and to remember that he is a good god
no matter what people say or what happens in the world that he is a good god and that he is doing good things right now
I want to we’re not there thank you for staying wherever you are in the spaces that you are thank you for that honor in this closing moment but what I want to
just say is that the greatest of all that he has in mind for you began with something that we call Salvation And it
begins with salvation begins with the forgiveness of sin and it puts us in right standing with God meaning that no matter what we have
done or no matter what we might feel shame about or feel unlovable because of
what it simply means is this Amazing Grace of God has already predetermined
that when we surrender our heart to him that he began this process called
salvation in our life by the forgiveness of our sin and I don’t know who might be here this
week that has maybe drifted away from God’s plan for your life or God’s will or God’s purpose or who might be here this weekend who
would say I don’t think I’ve ever really come to this point before in my life and today you might be feeling that that
drawing of God and I’m going to invite you to join our church family in a simple
prayer of new beginnings a prayer that will change your entire future
not overstated I can point you to hundreds thousands of people
that are here today who began this journey and when they began in A Moment Like
This their life was forever changed and I hope that gives you the confidence today whoever you might be and I pray
you have hope right now and that you will say this out loud from your heart if you would this is a beautiful moment for you
and we’re going to pray it along with you just say with me Lord Jesus
welcome to my world I ask you today to come into my life
to forgive me of all my sin to make me a new person I receive your salvation
I receive a new beginning starting now and I boldly declare
that by your promise I will never be the same again I believe that
I received that and I thank you for it in Jesus great name
and I want to be the first to welcome you to the family of God
[Applause]
I’m gonna ask you if you just prayed that prayer and got a brand new start I’m going to ask you get a boldly raise your hand at whatever location you’re at come on let’s get a little exercise by
going public with your faith right now and raise your hand around the room that you’re in yeah hands are going up right here hands are going up I see hands and
at every level of the broom right now I see Hands going up God bless you welcome
welcome welcome welcome welcome to the family of God and we are so
delighted and so thankful that you are here with us today
you may be seated you just have me stand pastor Kevin I did because it’s it was the most
important moment of the day and again congratulations to anybody who just stepped into a brand new start in
your life with Christ we get excited about that we don’t have we only have a couple more
moments and the reason I ask you to sit down is because I want you to be able to focus and and and read you
know reset in this moment as I share one line out of scripture
and you prepare your giving the giving you’re going to do on your way out today many of you give online
others of you give right here weekly when you exit the service and I want to
share this thought with you today the Bible says may the Lord be exalted or may the Lord be magnified
who has pleasure in the prosperity
of his servant or another rendering might say the increase of his people
the Lord takes pleasure I have to say to you as a pastor today
that I understand the headlines the news
the media and I wanted to give you a word that is not entrenched in what
they’re saying I wanted to give you a promise of what God is saying right now
and that is that he takes to life especially in times whenever we put all
of our faith in him because the economy is swayed things are down people are losing jobs sources of incomes are going
away businesses are not doing what you hope and then we turn to a verse like this and we say really he
takes pleasure in blessing me even in a season like right now and the answer is absolutely yes
[Music]
absolutely yes Delights he Delights and you’re doing good
even when other things are doing bad you receive that
you receive that today we’re going to receive the offering in
just a moment but before or on your way out but the envelopes are in the aisle way right now and I’m going to ask at all of our
locations I sure do love you Champion Center in all the locations in Dupont Yakima and Bellevue and online we
love you we’re we’re delighted that we get to do this together from different locations it’s
so so awesome but I want to say the blessing of the Lord is on you in Yakima and the blessing of the Lord is on you
in Dupont and the blessing of the Lord is on you in Bellevue and the blessing of the Lord is on you in Tacoma and the blessing of the Lord is on you in your house right now wherever you are and
it’s on your family and it’s on your children and the Lord is taking pleasure in your blessing and in your Prosperity I’m
going to ask all of the location pastors if you would to come to the platforms are not already there grab hold of a mic because you’re going to pray the church
out at your location today amen