God bless you tonight to know that you serve Jesus, and Jesus believes in you more than you believe in Him. God bless you tonight to know that you're leaders in God's biggest idea. He's got this huge plan for us, in Jesus' name. Amen.
[Pastor Mike takes up an offering for Shane]
Great to have you here. Great river of life. We're going to just take up an offering right now, and just honor God in giving. One of the things I noticed: Noah believed the word of God. He had a word from God in his generation, and he believed it. It's really amazing how, as a man of God, he took hold of what God said in His day, acted on what God said, and then became a pioneer of faith in his generation.
The Bible tells us that straight after the earth had been destroyed, and the ark came to rest, that he offered a sacrifice. Interesting, you'd think that the last thing you would do, when all the animals and everything has been wiped out, and there's only just an ark full of animals left in the whole world. You'd think the last thing a person would consider doing, is to take them, and to start to offer some to the Lord. Quite extraordinary really, isn't it?
But this just shows you, just in Noah's heart, just a heart of gratitude for the word that God had given to him, for the grace that God had given to him, to be able to walk in what he'd been shown; and he expressed it by building an altar, and making an offering to the Lord.
That was a very, very expensive offering; and I believe that one of the things that is an evidence of being right before the Lord, is that we have a heart of generosity to God, a heart of generosity for how He gives to us. We take up an offering, just a free will offering, just out of our heart, out of a heart that's generous and thankful, and says:
Lord, thank You for what you've given to me. May you give me also grace to walk in it; and our offering is a tangible way, it's an act of righteousness, a tangible response just to what God has been speaking to our hearts.
Shane lives by faith. That means he has no income from anywhere. The only income he has is what people who receive his ministry give to him, and so it's always right that we sow, and we sow generously, so we want to do that, want to give generously. Okay, come on, let's give Shane a great welcome as he comes back up again.