You are invited to delight yourself in the Lord so your desires naturally shift toward His purpose. Begin sowing your time, talent, and treasure into His kingdom with patience, trusting that He will bring the harvest in His timing. Start today by asking God to reveal where He wants you to invest your resources for eternal impact.
Welcome to the Real Church podcast. Our mission is for you to know the love of Jesus and live out your God given purpose. Now join us and listen in to the latest message from pastor David John Phillips.
So where you wanna go? Where do you wanna go in life? Like, really, let's think about it. What are the dreams and the desires that God has put into your heart? A lot of times those things can start with statements like, Man, wouldn't it be cool if we could only I've always wanted to What what are the dreams, the God given dreams he's placed inside of your heart?
Let me ask it another way. If you could do anything in the world, anything at all, and time wasn't an issue, money wasn't an issue, location wasn't an issue, what would it be? Watch this. *Psalms-37:4* says, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Delight means, like, what does delight mean?
Delight means, like, great take great pleasure in. It's a feeling of happiness and satisfaction and enjoyment. So as you delight yourself in the Lord, your desires will change. Why? Because by taking pleasure, taking satisfaction, taking enjoyment into the Lord and Jesus, then the things that are not of Him will eventually not give you as much satisfaction, as much pleasure, as much fulfillment, as much enjoyment.
Your desires will naturally, supernaturally begin to shift. Those things that weren't of him that you held on to so tightly, you will give up. And your hopes and dreams that were selfish or of the flesh that that were of sin will be ugly to you because you will want what he wants for you because you have begun to take satisfaction, enjoyment, fulfillment, and pleasure in Jesus. Those dreams that I talked about in the beginning, those deep desires, those things that you've always wanted to do, some of those are God given. Some of them aren't, and some of them are God given.
And and there is a way to ensure that your God given dreams come true. And that is what I want to talk to to you about. And and the way to do that is to learn to delight yourself in the Lord. As you are learning to delight yourself in the Lord, meaning you're building a relationship with him, you're you're being discipled by him, you are in pursuit of him and he's revealing himself to you, but he's also revealing to you who you are in him. He will make those desires that he's placed inside of your heart begin to come to the surface.
He will make the dreams that he's called you and he wants you to accomplish begin to come to the surface. He will bring them to mind. Why? Because He has a very practical way of bringing about those desires that He put in your heart. The practical way is delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
But as you delight in Him, as I'm saying, he will bring those desires to the surface and he will lead you in paths of righteousness for his sake. Right? He will he will make those dreams come to pass. How and why? Ephesians-4:10 says that you are God's handiwork.
God created you for Ephesians-4:10, he created you for good works that he prepared in advance for you to do that you should walk in them. So he created you to fulfill the dreams that he's put in your heart, and you will not walk in in your life. You will not be fully satisfied. You will not walk in fulfillment unless you are walking towards fulfilling the dreams that God has put in your heart. And, there is a very practical way to ensure that that happens.
As a matter of fact, God wants you to fulfill those dreams because you fulfilling those dreams is a vital part of his plan in the world. And he wants to give you the grace. What is grace? Undeserved favor. He wants to empower you to fulfill those dreams.
Are you willing to take the steps necessary to fulfill those dreams? How does that happen? Remember, he wants to give you grace and the Bible says God gives grace to the humble. So as long as you say, no, he opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. As long as you say, no God, I'm going to accomplish my dreams in my way the way that I wanna do it, you're literally going to be opposed by God.
But as soon as you say, *Lord*, I give you all of my dreams, I give you all that I am, that's humility. I need you to accomplish my dreams which are your dreams that you've put in my heart. He gives you grace. He literally empowers you to do it. And the dreams that were not from him, like, if if if you manage to make them happen in your life, you're not gonna find fulfillment from them, and they're not gonna last.
But God's dreams, they last. They give you fulfillment, they develop character, and you're walking in all he's created you to be. So, there are some practical steps to make that happen. What are the steps? You may ask.
Let me tell you. *Genesis-8:22* says, As long as the earth endures, seed, time, and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease. I wanna focus in. I wanna drill in on that first part. Seed, number 1, practical things to make the dreams that God has given you come true.
Number 1, seed, time, and harvest. You sow a seed, there's some time for development, and then there is a harvest. This will always be on the earth as long as the earth endures, and it is key to you realizing the dreams, making reality the dreams that God has put in your heart. Number 2, *Genesis-1:11*, it says this, then God said, let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with with seed in according to their various kinds. And it was so.
Verse 12. The land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. So, number 1, seed, time, and harvest. Sow a seed, wait some time, reap the fruit of that harvest.
Number 2 is seed according to its own kind. What are you talking about, pastor? All this seed and and plant stuff. Let me let me tell you. Romans-1:20 says this, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his his eternal power and divine nature have clearly been seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse.
What's that saying is we can look at nature and we can see how God works. See, time, and harvest is a principle of nature and because God created that, we can know that that is a principle of how He operates, His kingdom operates, and will always be. It's just it's a principle of the way things happen but also seed reproduces according to its own kind. Period. So tell me this just to just to drive that point home.
If if it were my dream and let's say my God given dream to be a professional basketball player, But yet, I sowed, I spent, I sowed all of my time, all of my effort, my time, my talent, and all of my treasure, my money, all of my time, talent, and treasure into working on cars and learning about cars, am I going to fulfill, am I going to reach the dream of becoming a professional basketball player? Absolutely not. Why? Because seed reproduces according to its own kind. I can pray and hope and all this stuff, but if I'm not sowing seed into becoming a professional basketball player and waiting the appropriate amount of time, sowing the right seed, waiting the right time, then you guess what?
It's never gonna happen. I might own an amazing car 1 day because I sowed seed into working on cars. I might maybe start a mechanic shop 1 day because I sowed seed into working on cars and learning about cars, but I'll never be a professional basketball player because that is the opposite of God's principles that he put into nature, seed, time, and harvest. Number 1, sow a seed, wait some time, enjoy the fruit. Number 2, seeds reproduce according to their own kind.
Right now in your life, your life is a product of the seeds that you have sown. Period. But pastor, I I've been sowing some good seed in my life lately. Like I've been doing, I changed, I've been sowing good seed in my life. Why am I not seeing the fruit?
Why am I still getting junk in my life? Why am I why is the fruit of my life still producing junk? I just should I just give up and go back to the old stuff I used to do? Remember the bamboo seed? Think about a bamboo seed.
You sow a seed in the ground of bamboo and you water it every single day. 3 months later, nothing sprouted up. 1 year later, nothing sprouted up. Watering it every single day. 2 years later, watering every single day, nothing sprouted up.
What do you do? You throw the water away, you get angry, and this ain't working, I'm gonna go and do something else. If you do that and you quit watering that bamboo seed, you are not gonna get the fruit of the amazing bamboo shoots that that you're supposed to get, the the bamboo poles and stuff. You're not going to get that because you quit seed time and harvest. Don't quit while the seeds still growing underground.
Don't quit before you reap the fruit. It's worth the time. 3 years go by, you're watering everyday bamboo seed, nothing. 4 years go by, nothing. 5 years, on the fifth year, all of a sudden you see a little shoot out of the ground.
And then after 6 weeks of growth it has grown 90 feet. You would have never saw that growth if you quit watering, if you didn't wait the appropriate amount of time. Different seeds require different amounts of time and the seed always reproduces according to its own kind. So let me ask you this, is where you're sowing your time, your talent, and your treasure, Is that is that should you reevaluate? Let me ask let me rephrase it.
Should you reevaluate where you're sowing your time, talent, and your treasure? Should you reevaluate that? Because it's going to produce fruit in your life. Let me ask you this question, does where you sow your time, your talent, and your treasure prove that you delight in the Lord? Does does where you sow your time, your talent, your treasure prove that you take pleasure in him, that that he brings you joy and happiness?
Because if if he does, if he does bring you joy and happiness, then you can bet that the God given deepest desires of your heart will happen. The fruit of the seed sown because you're going to sow, you're going to sow your time, your talent, and your treasure into what brings you joy and happiness. You will. So what if we shifted where what brought us joy and happiness? And we can do that by spending time in relationship with the Lord.
And because as we get to know him more, he will bring you joy and happiness, and you will begin to sow into the things that he has called you to sow in because you love following what he says. But if you're not sowing into him, into to delighting yourself in the Lord, then you're not sowing into him. If the places, people, and things in which you're sowing your time, your talent, and treasure do not show that you delight in the Lord, then I can guarantee that you will reap the fruit of the or the results of what you have sown. And it will not last and it will not bring you fulfillment. Because when you're walking in or towards you you're I'm sorry.
Excuse me. When you are not walking in and you're not walking towards what you were created for, you are left empty. And God does not want that. He wants to give you grace. He wants you to experience and realize the dreams that he has placed in your heart.
Another way of saying that and of saying all of this is this principle. You ready? Sow where you want to go. Say it again, write it down, remember it. Sow where you want to go.
Let me give you just an example from my own life. About the time that I getting out of the Navy, God gave me this deep desire for leadership. I was I had got to just spark this relationship with him in my life that was more on fire than it had ever been. I was desiring to get in the word, I was praying and and he because of that he brought this desire for leadership to the surface, something that he has created me for, I know that. And so when he brought this desire for leadership to the surface, what did I do?
I began to sow my time, my talent, my treasure into learning all things leadership. I went to get my masters in Christian leadership, I began to read books about leadership, I began to get around great leaders and let them sow into my life so I could produce the fruit of what they were sowing and learn. Them sowing into my life began to to produce the fruit of leadership in my own life. I began to grow at my my job that I was working at. I began to lead more teams.
I was put in charge of more and more teams and eventually at that church that I was working at became 1 of the pastors of the church. Why? Because I was reaping the fruit of what was being sowed into my life. The books, the time, all all that stuff. But it doesn't just stop there.
Watch this. Every fruit has seed. You follow me? Every fruit has seed. So I'm I'm because of the seed sown into my life, my life is bearing fruit and every fruit has seed itself.
Now, what do you do with fruit and seed? Do you do you eat the fruit and the seed? Chew it up and swallow it? If you do that, it might taste good but the seed is not accomplishing its purpose because a seed is meant to be sown. It's meant to be planted in ground so that it can produce more fruit.
And, when you sow seed in every seed, think about an apple, An apple has seed. If I sow 1 apple seed and it produces an apple tree, how many apples are on that apple tree? An infinite amount. It can continue to produce apples and other seeds, and in that 1 little seed is a whole apple orchard because all of the fruit that comes from it also has seeds. You can plant those.
Next thing you know, you have no idea what the the fruit is from the seeds that you sow. We'll go back to my leadership example. My life begins to produce the fruit of the seeds of leadership sown into it. So I begin to lead teams and other people. So what do I do with that fruit?
I enjoy doing what God's called me to do, eating, enjoying the fruit. But then I also take the seed and I begin to sow it in other people's lives. I begin to to teach what I've learned along the way to those that God brought in my path or or to seek out people who want to learn and sow the seeds of leadership in their life and then begin to watch them bud as leaders and grow as leaders and produce fruit and it's amazing. The more that I poured out and sowed seed into others, the God give the seed the seed and that God had given me, the more that I sowed it into others the more that God put me in charge of. Why?
Sow where you want to go and you will reap the fruit of that harvest. It's not super special, it's just a product of what God has placed into nature and he wants us to follow the principles of who he is. This is a principle of the kingdom. So where you wanna go? The Bible says in Matthew-6 21, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
So if your heart is there, you will eventually be a part of it. So where your treasure is, there your heart will be and then you will eventually be a part of where your treasure is of what you're sowing into. Let me give you another example of sow where you wanna go. My father started a church 20 years ago called River of Life Church. And during the course of him sowing the seeds of ministry into the community, part of the fruit of that was that drug addicts begin to be set free, become a part of his church.
Next thing you know, God's teaching them the principles of following his kingdom. Some of them become amazing businessmen and other things. And then God began to put a desire in my father's heart to start a drug rehab. Why? Well, he was faithful with the little that came, the the drug addicts and things that came to sow ministry into them.
Now he's seeing the fruit of that ministry and now God wants to give him more. So where you want to go? Watch this. So God gave my dad this desire to start a drug rehab. So a bigger scale of what he's been doing already.
So what did he do? He sowed where he wanted to go. He went and found another drug rehab that was doing what God had put in his heart And he sowed a financial seed, a few thousand dollars, into that drug rehab. Had no connection to him, but he's just king kingdom minded and sowing into the kingdom. This was a a Christian rehab that was changing people's lives so he's sowing into the kingdom into what God had put the desire in his heart to sow where he wanted to go financially.
Well, he began to experience the fruit of the seed that he sowed. Like 3 weeks later, seed time 3 weeks in this case harvest a nursing home was given to him so that he could start a drug rehab. The nursing home wasn't ready. It was going cost too much money to get up and running. And he felt like he should wait.
Just a short time after that, a second nursing home was given to him that was fully stocked and fully furnished. And they started a drug rehab called Fresh Start. It is 1 of the most amazing drug rehabs in Louisiana, 70 percent success rate, and it all came from seed time and harvest. Dad sowing ministry into drug addicts, seeing the the fruit of that ministry, their lives transformed and changed, and then God bringing the desire to the surface to start a rehab, and then him sowing a seed into another rehab kingdom, didn't even seem connected, but God knew he was sowing into good ground and he reproduced. Boom.
He gets this drug rehab and it's amazing and now you're seeing the fruit of that all over Louisiana. It's creating businesses. These drug addicts that were once on the streets are now now lives are transformed. They're starting businesses, becoming teachers, and even PhDs PhDs and and some of the greatest teachers. It's amazing.
And and the community now is seeing the fruit of lives transformed all because of seed, time, and harvest. Financially, God gives you money. Some of it's fruit to eat, some of it is seed to sow. And seed reproduces according to its own kind. But I worked hard for this money.
Yeah, but God gave you the ability to do so and he wants your heart to be with him and we know the Bible says where your treasure is, there your heart is also. So question, does where you sow the seed of your finances show that you delight in the Lord? Because God wants to bless you and he wants to give you the desires that he has put on your heart but that only comes as you learn to delight in him. For us of the financial fruit that God gives my wife and I, we sow the first 10% into the local church and always have. Why?
Because he's given us a desire to be a part of his body and we know that the local church is the body of Christ and we want to play the role that God has called us to play in the body of Christ. Want also, we want him to be the center of our finances. We do. And whatever give first in an area of your life becomes the center. We give the first to him so he will be the center of our finances.
So we are in the globally connected series. Every local church must be a globally connected church or must be becoming a globally connected church. And a globally connected church has 4 characteristics: it's a relational church as the majority of the church becomes relational, the church itself is a relational church. Number 2, part 2 was a discipling church. As the majority of the church becomes intentional about discipling, it becomes a discipling church.
Number 3, part 3 was a sowing church. This 1, it's a sowing church. As the majority of the church understands the concept of seed time and harvest, of sowing seed according to its own and reaping fruit according to its own kind, but then also sow where you wanna go. When we are each sowing our time, our talent, our treasure into the vision of God for our lives, we will start sowing the first of our time, the first of our talent, the first of our treasure into the local church. And when the majority of our church understands sowing, our church will become a sowing church.
We will get to experience together the fruit of the seeds that we have sown. So what is real church sowing into? Where does real church wanna go? Sow where you wanna go. 90% of what comes in, we sow into ministering being able to effectively minister to you guys, Sunday mornings, all of this this stuff you have going on, you know, this the the building and also being able to minister to our city.
90%, we're we're not as good as we will be tomorrow. We're not as good as we will be in a week or in 6 weeks or 6 months or 5 years, but we're growing. But we also we take 10% and we sow into the kingdom, into things outside of real church. Why? Sow where you wanna go.
We wanna build his kingdom not just our own. And so what is real church sowing into? See, I know that we will be a church that plants churches and so our leaders came together and found an organization that's doing just that around the world and doing it effectively. I began to build relationships with them, it's called they're called the Surge Project and we are going to sow $3,000 this week into the Surge Project. Why?
Because they've they've planted over 20,000 churches and we wanna be a church that's planting churches all over the world. So we're sowing where we wanna go and I know 1 day we're going to be doing that seed time and harvest. I can't wait to send our first team. I don't know when that is, it's not time yet, but it will be. Not only that, I also know God has called us to build relationships and disciple others and be discipled by others from all over the world.
Right? A globally connected church. And before we were even a church, before we even moved here, we took some of the money that God had given to Start Real Church and we sewed it into planting a church in India, being a part of that. Also, you've seen the first part of the series, you saw pastor John Wandera, he introduced himself and talked about how we met, call him my African father. He's a pastor of pastors, he leads a church network of hundreds of churches across 3 or 4 different nations, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, South Sudan.
It may have grown since then, I don't know. But what I do know is as you know, he said he has 26 children, 5 of them are are his own, the other 21 are orphans, were orphans and he adopted them and took them in to his own home. Kids ranging from, I don't know, 4, 5, 6 years old to even in their twenties. So he has this and I talked to our leaders and and they said, let's sow into pastor John Wander. Why?
Because we want we want we want to foster that relationship and 1 day maybe I'll get to take some of you guys to go and meet him and see his church and and help minister to some of his network, but 1 day he's gonna come here. We're gonna get to learn from him and the joy that God's put in his heart. Just sowing into the kingdom, we're gonna take $2,000 from what is given today and sow into pastor John Wandera. Church, you are a sowing church and this is what a sowing church does. Period.
And it's just the beginning. When you sow into a sowing church, the kingdom is multiplied and God blesses it. And we get to go where we sow. 1 day, some of you will walk with me to some of the with in some of the places that we have sown. Someday, we will send you to some of the places that we have sown, spreading the gospel of the kingdom.
It's gonna be amazing. A globally connected church is a relational church, a discipling church, and a sowing church. Part 4 is next week, the going part. And we are growing in all of these areas and becoming more globally connected. And I can't believe that I get to do it with you guys.
God bless you.
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