Why do we invest like this is our home? Why do we live like this life lasts forever? Contrary to the “you only live once” (YOLO) mindset that is plaguing this generation, this is not our home, and we will spend eternity in one of two places.

In week two of The Treasure Principle, Pastor Leonce shares the next two keys of faithful stewardship over the finances God has entrusted us with. Having a clearer understanding of living for eternal purposes is understanding these two keys: Heaven, not earth, is my home, and we are to live for the line, not the dot. God has given us an awareness of the eternal and our unsettled hearts without Christ can attest to that. We were never meant to live our lives accumulating. Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way; “Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected…. Hoarding is idolatry.”

For the Christian, we have such a beautiful inheritance that is “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading”. Such a gift can never be gained here; It is in Heaven.

God sees our faith and our finances as inseparable, yet many of us don’t know how to handle money. How we handle money is a revelation of where we’ve directed our hearts.

To change the way we handle money takes a radical shift in thinking of how we view money. If we believe the Bible, then we must begin to believe that God owns everything, and we’re just His money managers.

This week, Pastor Leonce preaches a sermon not only about our finances, but more importantly about God, who is our treasure. To begin this three week series, we focus on two principles that are key in shifting our thinking about our finances, as well as questions to ask ourselves that will challenge our spending habits, and ultimately our hearts.

Henry Martyn, a missionary to Persia and India in the 1800’s said, "The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become."

God has a special care for the nations; Especially the disadvantaged. Because our God is a missionary God, and the spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, it is only appropriate that we be missionaries and love the nations as God does. The nearer we get to God, the more intensely missionary we become because loving God deeply necessitates that we love the sojourner. It compels us to love “the other”.

If we’ve been loved by God we are commanded to love the sojourner.

In our final week in Glocal, Pastor Leonce challenges us with these question: Will we live out the gospel we profess? Will we love the sojourner? He explains how we can genuinely love the other and see the sojourner as Christ saw us. It isn’t a list of do’s and don’ts, rather it is a call for our hearts to be transformed.

Why is it so important that we lose our lives for the sake of those who don’t follow Jesus? Because all other gods are worthless idols. If we believe what the Bible says then we believe there’s an urgent need of the nations to proclaim Jesus, worship in the splendor of His holiness, and sing to the Lord a new song. The nations need a new song!

Because Christ has redeemed us and given us a new song, it is our joy to meet the needs of the nations with this song. Hudson Taylor, one of the greatest missionaries this earth has seen once said, “If I had 1,000 lives, I’d give them all for China.” Let us live with this sense of urgency for those who don’t have access to the Gospel, and let us live with this passion to bring joy to the nations.

This week Pastor Leonce walks us through Psalm 96 and shares why we must take the Gospel to those without access to it. He gives us two practical ways we can begin to burden our hearts for lost people around the world, and ends by challenging Christians to ask the Lord if He’s calling us to go. How beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news!

“God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose.” As Christians, it can be easy for us to see missions as a mandate. It can be easy for us to see what Dr. John Piper describes as “renouncing the quest for worldly comforts” as harsh, unfair, and uncomfortable. But it’s God’s desire that we join His passionate efforts to bring gladness to the nations.

The extraordinary thing about God using us is that we don’t have to be extraordinary. From the beginning of time He’s used the most inadequate and feeble men and women to bring His purposes to pass. That’s good news for us! The burden of saving is on God. All we have to do is be available to be used.

This week Pastor Leonce shares what the gladness and joy of God is to the nations and how we can be a part of this radical mission to bring the knowledge of God to people groups all around the world. Missions is not just a mandate. It’s the means in which we bring the most beautiful news to people desperately in need of it.

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

If you had to define your life’s mission, what would it be? If you are a follower of Jesus hopefully it would contain something about discipleship. While there are many things vying for our attention and our time, Jesus left humanity with one thing to do: share the good news of the gospel. Even for those of us who truly believe the good news that Jesus came down and died so that we could have life, it’s still hard to share it with others. Before Jesus left the earth, he commanded us to share this good news! We have the comfort of knowing that all authority has been given to Jesus and therefore to us.

This week Pastor Ethan explains what it means to have this authority and shares what this looks like practically. As people who carry the best news in the world and who have been given the authority by Christ to share it, we don’t have to worry that we’ll say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. The Lord has promised that He is with us always. Let’s trust that He will give us the words, and let’s trust that He will do His saving work.

Is Christianity the only way? Contradictory to God’s word, seventy percent of Americans say “no”. Sadly, many of us who claim to be Christians do not believe that Jesus is the only way to God or to Heaven. The truth is, every human being desires something better. There’s an innate longing in each of us for a Heaven of some sort. So why is it so hard to share the truth? We live in a culture where exclusivity is mean and to say that one way is the only way is prideful and inconsiderate.

Jesus knew that this hard truth of Him being the only way to the Father would be tough for us to understand and share with others. That’s why He leaves us with one command. “Believe in God; believe also in me.”

This week Pastor Leonce gives us three ways to respond to the truths that Jesus shares. Jesus is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. Jesus is the only way to see God. Let your heart not be troubled, and just believe.

In a culture that glorifies the accumulation of “stuff,” there is an enormous social pressure to want what everyone else wants, and to purchase these things regardless of the costs. Because of the way our money and possessions have a way of controlling us, we are warned all throughout Scripture to flee from the sinful pursuit of money and possessions, and to not set our heart on riches. Jesus takes this so seriously that He tells us in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we must sell everything for His sake.

Jesus loves us so much that He’d rather us be sold out for His sake, than to be a slave to our possessions. We can either continue to buy the lie that tells us our value is determined by the things that we “own,” or we can trust that Jesus can and will save us from vanity.

This week Pastor Leonce explains exactly what Jesus meant when he told the rich man that in order for him to have eternal life in Heaven, he must sell everything that he has and give to the poor. He guides us in asking ourselves some hard questions and evaluating our view of possessions. What Jesus teaches is a hard truth for any believer, but a joy to know that our treasure is not be found in this world. Our treasure is in Heaven.

“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’”

Obviously, Jesus does not mean this literally. We are not expected to destroy those body parts that we sin with. All throughout Scripture we are told that at the root of our sin is the heart. His use of these words is to show the severity of our sin. He would rather us take drastic, painful, and uncomfortable measures to cut off the things that would cause us to spend an eternity apart from Him. He would rather us lose an eye than to lose our lives.

Without a proper understanding of Jesus and His character, these words seem harsh and insensitive. But Christ loves us so much that he wants us to walk in the fullness of life. This life is only found in and through Him. Sin separates us from Him and ultimately leads to death.

Thank God for the Gospel! Because of God’s grace, we can kill sin and experience life that Christ offers.

This week Pastor Leonce explains the truth about this hyperbole and the seriousness of sin. He pleads with us to see our sin the way the way our Father does and offers three suggestions that we can use to begin to kill the sin in our lives.

“Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’”

It’s easy for our love of everything else to come before our love of Jesus. Without the Holy Spirit working in our lives, it’s actually natural to idolize any and everything above Christ. If someone were to ask you if you had any extra time, would you say yes? Perhaps it’s American individualism or just the professional atmosphere that values production to the point of exhaustion and values the bottom line over people’s health, but our lives are so jam-packed with work, recreation, family outings or obligations that there’s no room to fully live out what it means to be a follower of Jesus. How can we give our life away when so many things have already staked their claims on it?

If we are followers of Jesus then we know that God is love… So is He really telling us that we must hate our families? What Jesus is saying in this sermon is again antithetical to our natural human desires. Since He is love, then we know all of His commands are birthed out of love. This gives us great comfort.

This week, Pastor Leonce explains exactly what Jesus is getting at with this text, and shares the applications that this text gives for those who are followers of Jesus. In losing the whole of our lives for Christ, we actually gain everything!