All right. Well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here and making grace a part of your Sunday. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service if you'd like to do that as well. This is the fourth part of our series that we're kicking the year off with called Prayers for You. So it's different aspects of life and kind of prayers over those things for 2025. And so we've looked at marriage, and we've looked at kids and legacy. We've looked at life in general. And this morning, we're going to talk about finances. We have a prayer for you with your finances in 2025. And now as I say that, that this morning, I'm going to do the sermon about money, the whole room tightens up, right? Some of you brought guests and you just thought, are you serious right now? This is their first time and this is what you're going to preach. Some of you are probably here for the first time. You wandered in, maybe you've watched a few online and now you're like, okay, I'm going to go kick the tires. And on your very first Sunday, you're like, I'd like a pass, please. Can I come back next Sunday when we're not talking about money? And so I know that the room gets tight when this topic comes up. I'll be honest with you. I don't love talking about this either. And I'm going to tell you why in a minute. But just because I know that that's in the room, I want to say the quiet part out loud to diffuse maybe some of the discomfort around this topic, particularly in a church setting. This is the first thing on your notes. If you have a bulletin on the top of your notes, there's no fill in the blanks. This is just a statement that I'm writing for you that I'm going to say out loud and we are going to acknowledge. This morning is not a thinly veiled attempt to use the Bible to guilt you into giving us your money. Okay? That is not what we are doing. I've been in those. I've sat in those sermons. And they strike me as incredibly disingenuous. And if you have been a part of Grace for any length of time now, I've been here since 2017, April of 2017. I'm finishing up, believe it or not, my eighth year here. You know that I don't preach like that about money. You know that it is really important to me that this not be self-serving. And that's why I don't love to talk about it all the time, because it's really, really hard to thread the needle of appropriate biblical teaching on the topic that doesn't come across as self-serving for me. Because, let's say this part out loud too, I have a vested personal interest in you getting good at this. Right? I do. But that's not the place that I'm coming from. I just have to acknowledge that as true. I actually, and so I know that this is going on. This is kind of the reason why I don't, I'm not, I don't just jump at the chance to preach about money all the time. I was talking to a buddy yesterday and he said, what are you preaching about tomorrow? He doesn't go to church here. He lives, he lives down in Fuqua. He said, what are you preaching about tomorrow? And I said, I'm preaching about money. And he goes, ah, the obligatory money sermon so you can get that building built, huh? And I went, sure. But we know that that's in the mix, right? We know that those thoughts exist. And I can acknowledge that too. And I've been on both sides of it. So the absolute last thing I want to do is be disingenuous in what I'm sharing with you this morning. But here's the reality. The Bible talks about giving and finances a lot. If you do a quick Google, you'll find people out there who say that money is the topic that Jesus spoke about the most in his ministry. Now that is misleading because I'm not going to get into why because I have a lot to cover and I don't have time to get into why. That's misleading. I don't think it's fair to say that the most important topic to Christ in his lifetime was money. He gave a lot of examples that involved money, but he wasn't talking specifically about giving or about finances. But the reality is that this topic comes up a lot in the Bible. And if you were to make a grid of all the topics in the Bible, all the things that show up throughout Scripture, and then look at how often in my nearly eight years I've addressed those things, one of the things that the grid would reveal is that I have fallen woefully short of my responsibility to teach us about this topic because it is one that shows up with great frequency in Scripture and does not show up with great frequency in my preaching calendar. So let's talk about money this morning because the Bible talks about it way more than we do. To illustrate this point and to give us just a good swath of the philosophy of giving from Scripture, and then to draw out a singular point that I believe jumps out of the text of all of these verses, I want to read to you six different passages on money. It sounds like a lot. It is a lot. They're going to be on the screen. You read with me. This is an overview beginning all the way back in Deuteronomy, moving all the way to the book of James, kind of a sweeping view of how God thinks about giving in his children. We're going to start in Deuteronomy chapter 15. He writes, there will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be open-handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. There's always going to be poor people, and you should always give to them. This is an instruction from very, very early on. Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Bible, and it means the law repeated. So it's really just a summary of the first four books, more specifically Leviticus and Numbers. So this is the very beginning, the foundation of faith. He is saying from the get-go, you will always have needy people around you. Be the people who give to them. And then we jump to the end of the Bible, James chapter 2, suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, go in peace, keep warm and well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? What good are you? You're just a well-wisher. I remember years ago, and I told, sorry, Andrea, I told Andrea, who's running our slides very faithfully this morning, that I wasn't going to talk in between these verses so she could leave them up there. So now there should be a blank slide, but there's not because I'm going to tell you something real quick. I remember a few years ago when Jen and I first moved here, we lived off of Tealbrier, right there off of Spring Forest. And so we would go to the Harris Teeter and there's a St. Jacques used to be in there. And next to it, some store went out of business. And then another store called Pet Wants was going up in there. And because I frequented the Harris Teeter, I noticed that they were there. And I noticed it was kind of a mom and pop operation. It looked like family was doing it. They were working really hard in the store for several weeks to revamp it. And one night I was at the grocery store late. Probably when you live 35 seconds away from the grocery store, your nine o'clock purchase of Ben and Jerry's statistic goes through the roof. Okay. So I was heading over there probably to get a pint of Ben and Jerry's Americone Dream. Thank you very much. And I noticed that they were working in there. And I was just touched by how hard they're working on this place and the hopes that they must have for this place. And so I went and I knocked on the door and some guy looks at me like, what, we're closed, you know? And I go, and so he opened the door and I said, hey, I just want to say, I've seen you working really hard. I've seen what you guys are doing here. I think it's great. I hope it goes really well for you. I hope this is a fantastic store. And he goes, thanks so much. We're actually having a friends and family sale tomorrow if you'd like to stop by and get anything. And I went, okay, yeah, great, thank you. And the door shut, and I was like, no way. I'm not buying anything from there. I don't like my dog. I'm not going to go spend money on a thing I don't want. I don't even want to spend the money we do spend on her. I'm not going in your store ever. I just hope it goes well. And what I realized is it's one thing to be a well-wisher. It's another thing to be bought in. James says, don't be a well-wisher. Oh, you're cold and you're hungry and you need? Be warm and well-fed. I'm going to keep my wallet in my pocket. Don't be a well-wisher. Malachi 3, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. Then Jesus in Mark chapter 12 tells us this, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes about giving. Remember this, whoever then last, Jesus in Matthew chapter 6. This is a big verse about giving that is really indicative of the culture of giving a grace. And so while we're here, I just wanted to share this little bit about the way that money is handled here, because if you haven't been going here for a long time, you may actually not know this. But at Grace, this predates me. This was the culture when I got here. They've always taken very seriously, we've always taken very seriously, this direction from Christ to not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing, to give in secret and to give in private and not ostentatiously. And because of that, when you give, there are only two people on the planet who see what you give. One is our office manager, Julie, our children's assistant office manager, Julie Sauls, but that's because someone has to manually process the check. So if you write a check, someone has to fill out a deposit slip and put that in. Someone has to see it, and so that's her job. That falls to her to do it. The only other person who sees what is given, this includes elders and this includes our finance committee, is our finance manager, a guy named Tom Ledoux. Tom lives in Michigan, and you never have to look him in the eye, so it's a really great setup for you, right? You won't find yourself in Bible study with Tom feeling uncomfortable because he knows some things. Those are the only two people. No one else knows, no one else has access, no one else sees, and so this is something we take very seriously. But as I looked at all of these verses, I don't know as I read through those what kinds of themes leapt out to you. I don't know what you perceived. I don't know what kind of impression they made. And we could probably look through those six verses and do 12 sermons out of them. There's enough things in there that are worth talking about and unpacking. But the thing that I saw the most as I went through those verses, because it wasn't just those verses that I read. When I sat down to do this and to start preparing for the sermon, I just read all the verses I could find on giving in Scripture. And one of the things that was incredibly apparent as I read through those, and I think is's highlighted specifically in these verses is this. Giving has never been optional. Giving for God's children. If you call God your father and Jesus your savior. Giving has never ever been optional. If you look back through the verses. Especially that last one. Jesus' words about giving to the needy and not letting your right hand know what your left hand is doing, how does it start out? So when you give to the needy, not if, when you do it. Deuteronomy, very beginning, there will always be poor people. Be people who give to the poor people. James, when you encounter someone who is needy, and you will, be the person that gives to them. Malachi, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. The tithe that you're giving, that you're expected to give, that's going to be given, bring it into my temple. When Jesus looks at the poor widow and she gives two cents, I think sometimes we would think that he would go to her and he would say, hey, you take that back. You need that more than the church does. You take it. That's not what he does. Instead, he honors it because of the assumption that this is something that she is going to do. In Corinthians, whoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly and vice versa. But he says, when you give, not if you decide to give, but when you give, determine what you want to do, not out of a sense of ought, but out of a sense of want to, because God loves a cheerful giver. But what I see as I read through these scriptures and I read through the rest of the Bible about these scriptures or about this topic is that giving is not optional at all. In fact, giving is essential to becoming a mature, healthy believer. It is part of the essential nature of sanctification and growing in our spiritual maturity and in the depth of our spiritual lives. As a matter of fact, I would say it like this. Thinking that you can become a healthy Christian without the discipline of giving is like thinking you can become a healthy person without the discipline of exercise. If you want to be healthy, if you want a good heart rate, if you want your blood work to come in right, and I'm about to be 44 next month, so I'm getting to an age where I have to start caring about those things, and I'll probably know what my cholesterol is here in the next few months. If you want to be a healthy person, you can eat right. You can eat like a rabbit. You can monitor what goes into your system. You can be careful about not consuming alcohol or not consuming other chemicals or whatever it is. You can be careful about what goes into your body. You can be careful about what you eat. You can be diligent about your sleep time. You can do a lot of healthy things. But until you're exercising, until you're getting your heart rate up for 30 minutes a day, you will not be a healthy person. And I believe that trying to be a healthy Christian, trying to grow in our faith and in our spiritual maturity without the discipline of giving is just as silly and as much of a pipe dream as it is to try to be a healthy person who does not exercise. Which is why it's important for us as we look through scripture to acknowledge giving, in God's view, has never been optional. And I don't think that that's how we think about it. I think for a lot of us, we do think of it as optional. Maybe not intentionally, but by default and behaviorally, we approach it as something that maybe I need to do one day sometimes. I used to joke, I used to be, when I would drive, I was a bit of a speeder. Our state patrol person is not here today. So yeah, I speed all the time. And the older I get, the less I do it. This morning I was driving in, it's 0 dark 30 on 540 to get here. And I looked down, I went, because I was driving and I literally thought, am I going too fast? And I looked down and I was doing 58 miles an hour. So I was, it was under control. So I don't speed very much anymore, but I'll still do it sometimes. And I'm always going to go a little bit over the speed limit because, come on, no one wants to be. Don't be the jerk that goes to speed limit. Nobody likes you on the road if that's what you do. Get out of the way. And so I used to joke because sometimes it would come up in different circles, especially like pastor circles where you're trying to out-compete each other in righteousness, and someone would be like, yeah, I don't speed because I believe it's a sin and it's wrong. And I would just say like, you may be right, but God hasn't gotten that far down the conviction tree on me yet. All right? There's some bigger fish to fry in my life than going eight over. All right? So I haven't gotten to that portion of conviction. I think some of us think about giving that way. Yeah, that's a thing I need to do one day. I know that's an essential part of the Christian life, but, but not yet. There's some bigger fish to fry. And I think what these, what these scriptures show us is no, no, that's a pretty important one. That's what, that's essential to the nature of being a Christian. It's an expected thing of believers. But I think that even in light of that, maybe we don't put it off and go, gosh, one day I'm just not there yet. Later on in my spiritual maturity, I will get there. Maybe we think of it like this. Maybe it's just hard for us to do it. Maybe we don't have a lot of extra right now. I mean, inflation's up. Things are tough. That's a bit, I mean, everybody, a lot of people that I know have had to tighten the purse strings a little bit in the last two years. And so maybe for us, the idea of giving is something that we want to do, but we just don't feel like we can afford it. Or we just don't feel like it's wise. And so we put it off. But whenever I think about that, first of all, if you look at the way that Jesus applauds the old lady who gives out of little, that's a good indicator that that may not be a good way to think about giving. I can't afford it, so I'm not going to do it. Another thing that informs my thinking on this is a conversation I had with Jen years ago. Early on in our marriage, I was a poor student pastor and she was a poor private school teacher. And we bought our house. We got married in 2006. We bought our first house in 2007. Excuse me. We bought our first house in 2007, which is wonderful because we bought it, I think, for like $180,000, our very first house. It took 10 years for that house to be worth $180,000 again. It was just right at the brink of the recession. By the next year, that thing was worth $125,000. Great. So we're not living in plenty. We are living in very close to want. We don't have a lot. And Jen's dad has always been a remarkably generous man. And I remember making the comment to her, I hope one day we make more money and live more comfortably so that we can be generous like your dad is. I want to have that experience and be that kind of, now the word I would use is be that conduit of grace to other people. And Jen said, yes, I hope so too, but my daddy always taught me that the way you give when you don't have a lot is the way that you will give when you do have a lot. So the generosity trait starts early. And his larger point was, if we are people who think one day when I have more margin, I'll be more generous. There's no magical generosity button that gets hit when you have plenty. However generous you are with little is how generous you will be with a lot. So if you want to be generous one day, then you need to start being generous today. It's never been optional. And because of that, the encouragement today, what I want to press upon you is just the idea of being faithful in your giving. My prayer for you, these are prayers for you. My prayer for you for your finances this year is very, very simple. My prayer is that you would be faithful in your giving, whether you're giving out of little or you're giving out of much. Each one has different kinds of pains associated with it. But my prayer is that you would be faithful to what God expects of his children, understanding that giving is what's best for you. Being a generous person is what's best for you. Understanding that you will not mature as a Christian into full maturity if this is not a part of your regular discipline. So my prayer for you is that whether you give out of little or you give out of a lot, that you would simply be faithful in that giving. And like everything else, when God tells us we have to do something, when God says do this or don't do that, it is always because he has our best interest in mind. So giving and being a generous person is actually what's best for us, which is why I'm preaching the sermon today. Because if you study scripture, it's very clear that this is what God wants for us. And if I don't tell you that, then I'm derelict in my duty. So we can be adults and have an honest conversation about it. Giving is something that God wants you to do. It has never, ever been optional. Now, the question then becomes, okay, if it's what's best for me, why is it what's best for me to give away the money that I feel like I've earned? Here's why. Three reasons. There's more than this, but three reasons. Giving reminds us, invites us, and fuels us. The act of giving reminds us, invites us, and fuels us. Here's what I mean. The act of giving reminds us, first and foremost, that what we're giving is not ours to give. We are simply giving back to God what he has entrusted us with. It is the idea of stewardship. The act of giving, whether it's to the church or to a nonprofit that you believe in or to anything else that's going on in God's kingdom, the act of giving to God's kingdom is a reminder every time I am giving out of my allotment that God has assigned to me, I am not giving out of my possessions. Do you see the difference? God has allocated his resources out amongst us, and he's trusted us to be good stewards of those resources and to direct those in ways that build his kingdom, not our own. This is the idea of kingdom builders. This is also the idea of being a conduit of grace. A conduit connects to one source and funnels those resources to another source. So when I say at grace, we are conduits of grace. Yes, we offer grace to one another, but we're also, we also understand and see our lives as a conduit from God to the people and to building his kingdom. And so when we give, we are reminded of that conduit status. We are reminded of who we are and what we have. And we're even reminded if we're willing to take it a step further. Okay, I have these resources and I'm reminded that they're God's, they're not mine. I would take it a step further and I would say, yes, and the talents and abilities that you applied to garner those resources were also given to you by God to be a steward of and to use. So the fact that he allowed us to have resources is his gift and grace anyway, so we continue to be a funnel and let those resources flow out of us in generosity. It reminds us of how we should think about our finances and our resources. It puts us in the proper perspective. A wonderful thing about giving, maybe the best part, is that it invites us. You could say it invests us here too, but giving invites us into ministries that we might not be capable of doing ourselves. It's one thing to go to a charity dinner, to a charity gala where they're going to give you a cold chicken or a cold barbecue or something and a salad that's really terrible. Like we've all been. It's like $150 a plate and I'd rather go to McDonald's. But you go and you sit and you hear about the ministry and you hear about the thing and maybe you write a check for $200 or whatever it is you do. It's one thing to go to a charity gala or a charity dinner. It's another thing to be a giver to that ministry and go participate in the blessing of what God is doing and where he is doing it, to be invested in this ministry so that when you hear the stories of the families that are reached, when you hear the stories of the children that are no longer orphaned, when you hear the stories of the women in third world countries who have been equipped with skills and have been running a successful small business on their own that is sustaining their family in ways that they were never capable of, you get to feel like a participant in that. You realize that your participation in that nonprofit, in that entity, in that institution is something that can be celebrated by you because I'm a part of this. It invites you into areas of God's kingdom that you might not otherwise go, and it invests you in what those people are doing. And I say this with all candor. God may not have put you in a situation in your life where you have the time, the skill set, the life circumstances that allow you to go to an African country and start a ministry that prohibits children from becoming orphans and trains up their moms so that they can sustain their family. You might not have the bandwidth to go to another country and start that ministry. But somebody else has had that bandwidth. And somebody else has done that. And you've got the bandwidth to go make money. God's given you those gifts to do that and you're good at it. Maybe you're good at it so that you can funnel those gifts into other areas of God's kingdom where his work is being done and where God is showing up. And now I might not have the skill set to go down the street and start the nonprofit and do English as a second language for Spanish-speaking parents who are just trying to navigate their kids through middle school. But I have the resources to help and to fund those who do have those gifts and talents. And so the opportunity to give invites us into ministries and into opportunities and into blessings that we might not otherwise have based on our gifting and our life circumstances and where we are. It invests us in what's happening there. And it's a tremendous privilege to do that. I think one of the great benefits of investing our lives in things that build God's kingdom is that he gives us front row seats into places where we would not otherwise get to go. One of my great joys of being a pastor is the sacred spaces that I get invited into because of my position. Sitting in the hospital room in the middle of fear and praying with people. I realize that's not a normal place for people to get invited. Being entrusted with people who come and sit down in my office and ask for help in certain areas of their life or ask for prayer about this or advice about this, I realize that that's not a typical life experience for everyone. Having the opportunity when there's something on my heart that I really feel like I need to say, I have a platform where I can do that. There's different things about my position that give me access to front row seats to what God is doing in different places that I might not otherwise get. And by being a person who is a generous giver, we now have front row seats into different places where God is doing work and we're showing up to build his kingdom and we get a unique perspective there. It's an invitation into the blessing of what God is doing. And then finally, candidly, giving fuels us. It fuels our desire to give more, to be more, to be involved more, but it also fuels the ministries of God. This is an undeniable fact. The very first time God instructs his people to give is in the book of Numbers. And do you know why he does it? He says, bring your tithe to the temple because the Levites are not allowed to have jobs. They do this all the time and we need to be able to sustain them as a society. So the other 11 tribes, you give 10% of what you have to the Levites so that they can serve us as our priests. It's God said to begin to give, to fuel the ministries that he is doing. And so giving, quite literally, fuels the ministries going on around us. To this end, grace is fueled by our partners. And this is where I just want to speak to you directly because you're grownups. This church is fueled by the generous giving of our partners. If you guys don't give generously, this all goes away. We have four full-time staff people. We have three part-time staff people. We pay them. If we don't give, Miss Erin is the first one on the chopping block. Out of here. Right away. No kids ministry. We have to pay rent. We pay $13,000 a month for this dump. All right? We do. We can't even get the pole removed. And every year they charge us more for common area maintenance so that our grass can look cruddy out there and we don't have any. We have to keep the lights on. We fund different ministries through the church. The reality of this place is that it is fueled by the partners. And if that's not happening, then this place doesn't happen. So one of the things that I've started doing in our Discover Grace class, if you want to be a partner of grace and you come to the class, I think we're going to have one in February or later this month, I guess. At some point we go, okay, what is required to be a partner here? And it's not in the writing yet, but I've started to say, if you want to be a partner with us, nothing's compelling you to do that. If you're here this morning and you're not a partner of grace, which we have partners, we don't have members because members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. That's how we do it here. If you're here and you're just like, man, I'm kicking the tires, then what I would tell you is this part's not for you. It's for you one day, wherever you go, what I'm about to say is for you. But if you don't call yourself a partner at grace, then this part's not for you. But for the folks who come to Discover Grace, we say there's nothing compelling you to be a partner. You can come, and you can volunteer, and you can be in small group, and you can be an active participant in our church to whatever degree you want to be besides sitting on a committee or becoming an elder. But if you want to partner with us, then partner with us and support us financially. So here's what I would say about that. Scripture, and this is important, does not explicitly say anywhere that you should give to your local church. It does not come out and say that anywhere. But I think that's because the concept of a local church hadn't yet been, it was just the church, the church in Ephesus, the church in Rome, the church in Thessalonica. It was just the church. And in those churches, the expectation is you are giving because that's always been the expectation because the entire scope of scripture assumes that we know that. So what I would say is, even though it doesn't explicitly say it in the Bible, that I believe that you should give to your local church. I really do think that, and it took me some years to be able to say that, but the more I think about it, the more I study, the more I talk about it, the more I'm convinced that if you are a Christian, you should A, be a part of a local church, and B, you should give to that church. So I know the implications of that. We can all connect the dots. If you're a part of grace, you should give to grace. That's what Nate's saying. Sure. But here's what else I'll say. If you are a part of grace, and I don't think a lot of pastors would say this, and maybe the finance committee will get mad at me for saying this, but if you are a part of grace, but you don't give to grace, you need to find a church that compels you to give and go there. You need to go to a church that does inspire you to give. Because what I believe is, if you're here and you're thriving and your spiritual life is becoming healthy and your kids are thriving and they're being taught about Christ and you're experiencing community community. And you would call grace a blessing in your life. And you feel like you or your family or you and your spouse have benefited from grace. Then you ought to support grace so that other people can benefit in the same way. Because we are fueled by that giving. And if the ministry that you are experiencing from us is not compelling enough to make you want to partner with us in giving, then because I believe you should give to a local church, I have to believe that you should find one that compels you. But that's the encouragement this morning. Plain and simple. Adult to adult. This is what scripture teaches. We should be givers. We should be compelled to give to God's kingdom, particularly the parts of it where we are personally benefiting from that. So if we are a part of grace, we should give. Which brings me back to my prayer for you this year, that you would simply be faithful in your giving. I always say this, and I know a little bit contradictory to what I just said, but I can also be honest with you enough to say this. If you are someone, or if you are a couple, who is not in the habit of giving, and this is going to be a new exercise for you, and it feels remotely manipulative or self-serving that I'm trying to get you to give to grace, I would encourage you, as your brother in Christ, begin to give to things that aren't grace but that God is still doing. Begin to give to God's kingdom. Become a giver. And then in time, as it feels right, because God loves a cheerful giver, direct some of that towards your local church. But if you think that what I'm saying is self-serving, then don't give to grace. Don't do it under compulsion. But I would encourage you to begin that discipline and watch what God does as you become generous with your resources. So that's my prayer for you this year. And every year as we move forward. That as God's children, as believers, you would take seriously the teaching about giving in Scripture. And that you would be a person who is a giver. My prayer is that whether you have a little or a lot, that you would simply be faithful. Because that's what God calls us to. Let me pray that over us. Father, thank you for what we have. Thank you for what you've entrusted to us. I pray, God, that we would be good stewards of the resources that you've allocated to us, whether that's time or talent or treasure. Father, I pray that for those of us who are not yet people who give, for whatever reason, that we would be convicted and compelled to take steps towards becoming those people. That we would quit viewing this as something that's optional for your children, but view it as something that's necessary and good. Let us step into that generosity. Father, for those of us who were convicted by this long ago and are regular givers, I pray that we would be inspired. That we would be encouraged. That we would be grateful for all the opportunities we've had to give and all the times we got to sit on the front lines of what you were doing because you invited us in there through giving. But God, more than anything, I just ask that grace would be a church filled with faithful people, faithful to your word, faithful to obedience in you, and faithful to entrust you with their finances. God, we ask these things in your son's name. Amen.