Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Jeremiah 29

JEREMIAH 29 // MULTIPLY PT. 3

All right, go ahead and find your seat. If you have your Bible, grab those or open your Bible app. Whatever you want to do. We’re going to be in Jeremiah 29. How many were able to keep up with the teaching online last week? Just a couple, that’s a concern. 

Which, speaking of last week, we were playing a game called How To Really Miss The Weather. For those of you that are wondering, Why did we cancel? Because in order to get that process rolling correctly, if it’s during a week, like it’s a Wednesday night, we always kind of try to follow what the school district is doing, but that doesn’t really work on Saturdays. 

My goal is always to keep people safe, and so we looked at the weather and tried to follow the forecast as best possible, and it looked like it was going to be really gross and slippery. And so we always are going to try to err on the side of keeping people safe. But I don’t know that we could have inverted the two weekends more oppositely. So, I apologize for that. I take full responsibility for it. My goal will always be to keep people safe. 

But from here on out, the answer is probably going to be, I think we’re going to put our heads together, come up with a better plan, like on a snow day, we just do one gathering. And those who want to come can come because the whole shutting down thing creates such a fire drill. We spent the whole day filming a video and editing it and getting it out. 

So, those of you that didn’t watch it didn’t hurt me at all. Don’t worry about it. But it was good. There’s a lot of good stuff in it that we’re not going over today, so you’re gonna have to go back and watch it. 

THE LORD IS AT WORK IN THE BUSINESS SECTOR

We’re gonna be in Jeremiah 29, and we’re here. If I could say anything about this passage, this is something I feel like the Lord’s really been putting on my heart through the holidays. And I didn’t expect to come in at the beginning of this year with a different passage. I figured we’d come back into the book of Revelation, but I felt like the Lord just kept imprinting and pushing on my heart about some things in this passage.

And one of those that I don’t really know how to articulate is I really think the Lord is in the business sector more than He’s ever been. I think the heart of the Lord is in the business sector more than it’s ever been. I think the intention of God for His people is that we are in the business sector more than we’ve ever been. 

I think there’s something the Lord wants to release into this house– an entrepreneurial spirit, ideas for business, starting new things– and I think this passage, this teaching, is intended to propel that. It’s really intended to help us understand what He says about what it looks like to be the people of God in the midst of captivity. 

REVIEWING OUR STUDY SO FAR

Now, you might say, I don’t think we’re in captivity. From a Biblical worldview, we are. 1 Peter says that you are strangers and aliens; you are not of this world. You’re like, Well, how did that happen? I was born here. Because the moment you gave your life to Jesus, you were born into the Kingdom, and you then were translated– the theological term– into a new bloodline, and that citizenship is now from where? Heaven. So you became a child of Heaven, a citizen of Heaven. 

And so when we jumped into this passage, we just looked at this simple phrase: we need to remember that where we are living is not where we are to live from. And if where we are living is not where we are to live from, then where we are living is not supposed to drive how we live. Our response patterns aren’t going to ever be in response to what’s going on around us. They will always be from the impetus of Heaven. 

There’s a phrase that I began us with a couple weeks ago, and it’s in Jeremiah 29. I think there’s a truth that comes through it, and the truth is this: the people of God will always live from one of two places: we’re either gonna live from the promise of God or from our perspective. 

How do you know which one you’re living from? If I’m living from the promise of God, then what the Lord has said and how He’s taught me to live determines my trajectory. If I’m living from my perspective, then I’m constantly in response to what’s in front of me. Okay, it’s good and quiet, we should get going. 

JEREMIAH 29

Let’s read through the passage so we have good context, and then we’re going to look at some of the phrases. “Jeremiah wrote a letter from Jerusalem to the elders, priests, prophets, and all the people who had been exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. This was after King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah, and all the craftsmen had been deported from Jerusalem. He sent this letter with Elasah son of Shaphan and Germariah son of Hilkiah, when they went to Babylon as King Zedekiah’s ambassadors to Nebuchadnezzar.” 

Just a second, before I keep going, I have to say this– I ignored wanting to say it last gathering. The Babylonian agenda was to take everybody who mattered out of Jerusalem. They were to strip the Jewish people of their leadership, all of the craftsmen, all of those who would shape culture. The Babylonian agenda was to bring them to Babylon so that Babylon could retrain them and shape them. At the same time, when this is what the world says, God makes a different statement, which is, I’m going to put you into Babylon to shape it. 

You have to understand that what the world says means nothing to Him. He always has an agenda for what He wants to do in your and my life by placing us into situations, and it has nothing to do with the intent of the world. That’s why the Scriptures say, “Why do the nations rage?” They can say what they want, they can preach what they want, they can declare what they want, they can go on whatever news network they want and say what they want. And His answer is, I will do what I want to do, as long as My people will do what I tell them to do. Digest that one for a second. 

“This is what Jeremiah’s letter said: The Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, sends this message to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem.” Just set your mind with what’s getting ready to be said. They’re in captivity. They’ve been exiled. They’ve been yanked out of their homes. They’ve been yanked out of their futures. They’ve been yanked out of their land. 

They’ve lost everything. All the retirement savings, all the things, all the storehouses, everything they’d set aside, it’s gone. They’ve been removed, and you could imagine their mindset is, If we just hang on, we’ll get out of here, and we know God will save us, He’ll take us back. We can go back to building our lives. 

And here’s what He says to them in captivity, “Build homes and plan to stay.” Now for us, here’s what I want us to understand. We looked at this, probably in last week’s teaching and the one before that you missed. We looked at this, and His statement is, “Build homes and plan to stay.” 

What has to happen for you to build homes and plan to stay? You have to determine that where you are is where you’re supposed to be. And you got to get out of your mind this wonder of like, I don’t know, where do I go? Maybe I should go here. Maybe I should go here. Maybe the finances are too tough in Fort Collins. Guess what? There is a giant in every land. Maybe this one is fiscal. It’ll be something different somewhere else. Do you trust Him to place you where you’re supposed to be, is the question. 

“Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food you produce. Marry, and have children. Then find spouses for them, and have many grandchildren.” I still want to reteach this. I’m not going to out of principle. You can decide what principle that is. 

And then He sets this verse– this first one I look at– “Multiply! Do not dwindle away!” Right in the middle of this phrase is this edict: multiply, do not dwindle away. It’s like an emphasis statement. Everything that came before it, everything that comes after it, is kind of hinged on this idea: multiply, do not dwindle away. 

MULTIPLY, DON’T DWINDLE AWAY

The first thing I want to highlight for us is this isn’t given as an idea; it’s given as a mandate. It is to be understood as marching orders as the people of God. That His statement over your life and over my life is Multiply, do not dwindle away. 

Now, in context, you could argue, Well, this comes directly after the mandate to build a family. God just wants us to all have like eleven children. Here’s my thing: if eleven children makes you happy, have eleven children. Just be in unity as a couple. That’s all I’m asking. 

While you could take it to mean that, I don’t think that’s what this says. I actually think this is to be understood as growth and expansion in general. It is to be directed at every aspect of our lives: multiply, don’t dwindle away. 

There’s two words that have to be understood. The word multiply means in the Hebrew to increase, to become abundant and numerous. To increase, to become abundant, and numerous. The word dwindle: to diminish, lessen, or give less. 

So we, His people, who are in captivity– which we can replace that phrase with, wherever we find ourselves– we are to increase. We are to become abundant and numerous. We are to refuse to shrink back or diminish. In other words, we’re to approach our lives with an attitude to overcome and not to fade away. 

John Maxwell, one of my favorite quotes in the book Winning With People, he just says, “Your attitude affects your altitude.” The attitude we are to have as the people of God in our day, in our time, in this region, is we are to have an attitude to overcome, not to fade away. And that requires a belief in our calling. 

It means we have to settle in our hearts He put me here for a reason, and He put me here to do His bidding, and His bidding is to multiply, not dwindle away. It means I have to trust His goodness. Lord, I trust You. You’ve got good, pleasing, perfect things for me. I don’t have to be in fear of the future. I don’t have to be in wonder of what if? I can just chase the dreams You put in my heart and trust You to help them come about. 

WE ARE TO ENGAGE THE CULTURE

And it requires engagement in the culture around us. I would submit that we are to become so fueled with vision, with business passion, with passion for excellence, with integrity, that we position ourselves before the Lord so He can pour into us all the opportunities and blessings that He wants. That He is looking for His people to become actively, aggressively overcomers in the region they’re in. 

That if you grew up like me and the mindset was, Just hang on and wait for Jesus, He’s coming to get you. That’s actually not what the Scriptures teach. What the Scriptures teach is you are saved, it is secure because of Christ and your faith in Him, you don’t have to walk in fear, now go kill it until He decides to come back. Put down roots, plant, dig in, be a positive change to the region you’re in. 

He goes on and says, “Work for the peace and prosperity of Babylon. Pray to the Lord for that city where you are held captive, for if Babylon has peace, so will you.” This phrase– pray to the Lord for that city where you are. You see, the people of God are always both spiritually and naturally to be connected to where they’ve been placed. It should never be said of us that we’re a spiritual family, but we don’t really care about the natural place we’re in. 

You see, His goal is that we shape wherever He puts us. He says work for the peace and prosperity of the region you’re in. The word work here is not the right term at all. In the Hebrew, the word is actually to seek, and it carries a mandate to be consistent, to be regular, and to be in pursuit of something. If we put that together, what it means is, we– His people– are to be focused on and working towards the peace and prosperity of the cities we’re in at all times. 

This isn’t just a spiritual term; this is a fiscal term as well; it deals with the marketplace. The word for peace here is shalom, and it’s this all-encompassing word, and it should be understood by us as wholeness, health, and prosperity. So you and I are to be focusing on the wholeness, the health, and the prosperity of this region. 

It’s so counter to this idea of, Just hang on until Jesus takes us back. It’s so counter to this concept that was preached over and over and over to me in my Pentecostal upbringing: Just come out from among them, be separate. You know, like, what they have, it’ll get you. You’re gonna get their sin all over you. 

His answer is, I want you to go take your righteousness into the marketplace. I want you to take your light into the marketplace. I want you to begin to shape the marketplace with who you are. It’s a mandate to engage the culture for the better. 

I’d love to say it this way: be great at work. You don’t know my boss. I don’t care. Your boss does not kill your ability to be great at work. You are one hundred percent in control of how you handle yourself at work. Be great at it. Be great in business. Be integrable. Be generous. Be everything that He shows us that He is in the marketplace. 

Be great with your influence. Understand that you brush up against people all day long, and the intention of Heaven is that you are to influence them. Greater is He who’s in you than he who’s in the world? You’re like, Yeah, but they’re just such a bad influence on me. That means you don’t have the government of Heaven. Period. What should be happening is, every time you get around them, you’re like, Oh man, there’s so much righteousness going on inside of me, I can’t wait to slap it on them. 

INTERVENE FOR PEACE

It means that we are people that add to the wholeness, the health, the prosperity of the city that we wake up every day, we walk into this region to be an asset, to be a resource. We have an attitude that builds people. We’re peacemakers; we’re not tension makers. You see, for so long, we’ve decided it’s us against them. Church, it’s not us against them. It’s us in the midst of them. 

He says, pray for this city where He has placed you. The word pray here is palal, and it means to intervene and treat or interpose. Now I had a– don’t know what it was, a weakness or a weirdness, I’m not sure– in high school, all the way from middle school up, you know how guys want to fight, and nobody ever really throws a punch, they just push each other? The pushing around, I was like, Whatever, it’s stupid. 

But when they would get to where it was actually a real fight, I remember one clear as day, I was a senior, and I walked out into the parking lot, two guys were beating each other to death– one guy very much more than the other– and I stepped in between them. Now, the understanding is, if you’re going to hit him, you’re going to have to hit me. I had really big friends, I was captain of the football team, I was pretty secure with where I was at in life, but something was going on inside of me that couldn’t handle it. 

That’s the idea of this word. This word, palal, means to inject yourself into a situation. It means to intervene. It means that what you see going on around you in the world causes you so much problem that you have to put yourself into the midst of it. That’s intercession. 

That’s what it means to start carrying the needs of the region around you before the Lord. It means that you have compassion, and you see their situation at such a level that you have to inject yourself into the middle of it before the Lord. 

INTERCEDE FOR OUR REGION

How do we intervene? We carry an attitude that just says, Everything I see that’s not Kingdom, I’m going to take before him. You’re like, Well, what if I don’t have a place to take it before Him? We’re going to get there in a second. 

I want you to understand in this that there’s a reason He put us on the earth with a mandate to intercede. It’s because you’re His child, and because you’re His child, He loves what you have to say; your prayers are pleasing to Him. 

He loves it when you start to carry His agenda to the world you see. When you look at it, go, I see this, Father. It’s not right. I’m asking You this. He loves that, when we start to adopt what matters to Him and we start to leverage it in the regions we’re in. 

You’re like, I don’t have any ability to control. Yes, you do. You have the ability, supernaturally, to declare things which aren’t as though they are. You have the ability to pull the Kingdom of Heaven into situations by looking at it and saying, I’m just declaring over this, Jesus, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven over this situation. I see this person. I see this husband and wife. I see this work situation. And I’m going to leverage my authority before You for their behalf. 

Maybe we consider that we’re on assignment in the marketplace with a supernatural authority and calling to become advocates for Heaven’s perspective and for the needs of the city. We’re there to leverage what matters to Him and to take what they need before Him. 

If you leave this teaching and the answer is, Yeah, prayer is a good idea, and you don’t do it, I 

have failed. Prayer is the most-talked-about, least-done thing in the church. We all love to talk about it because nobody’s gonna stand up and be like, You don’t need to pray. We’re like, That’s heresy. People would walk out of the church, but people will sit at the church and be like, we need to pray, and be like, Yeah, but I don’t, but it’s cool. 

How do you do this? Get to know people, dig into their lives, dig into their situations, and learn how– with compassion– to take their needs before the Lord. I know this person, you know, they’re addicted. Great, go to the secret place and begin to declare a brokenness of that addiction. Well, they got to want to. You know what? Unless the man is drawn by the Lord, he can’t come to Him anyway. 

So, there’s always a spiritual activity that precedes the natural activity. So, things that are needing to be broken in the spirit realm don’t begin with a person going, Lord, I need help. They begin with somebody going, Lord, they need help, and they begin it in the spirit realm. That’s our job, is to birth this thing in the spirit realm. We take it before Him. We leverage our authority. We leverage our favor on their behalf. 

LISTEN TO THE LORD’S VOICE

“Do not let the prophets and mediums who are there in Babylon trick you.” Look at your neighbor and be like, Uh oh. “Do not listen to their dreams because they prophesy lies in my name. I have not sent them.” 

Let me say it to you this way: just because somebody says, This is what the Lord said, doesn’t mean the Lord’s saying it. I don’t care if it shows up on Instagram or on Fox News or on CNN. I don’t care if it comes to a prophetic channel. If it doesn’t align with what this text says, it ain’t from Him. 

His statement to his people was, Do not listen to the prophets who are saying I told them to say this. I didn’t say it. The only way you and I can be safe in a culture like the one we’re in is to hold the Scriptures deep in our hearts– you should go home and read this and see if I’m full of it. 

We should be Bereans. That’s what comes through the Book of Acts. Paul says to the Bereans– this is Paul the Apostle– he says to them, I’m so proud of you. I taught you, and you didn’t listen; you went home and read it for yourself to make sure I wasn’t crazy. That should be our mindset, that the Scriptures are the authority that we govern ourselves by, not the opinions of leadership around us, not the voices that are chiming. 

He’s given us marching orders on how to live and manage ourselves. He’s given us marching orders on how our hearts are to be postured in this region. And there’s just going to be people all the time– there’s been a lot over the last few years– that they kind of are calling for the church to rise up and stand against, and if I could just say it kindly, it’s not Him. His heart is, Engage the culture to change it, don’t fight it. 

Are you saying go be like them? No. I’m saying be like Him with them. Well, they need to know where we stand. Sure. I want them to see it. I don’t want them to hear it. He says, Don’t let them trick you. Stay on course and stay faithful to what I said. 

THE TRUST FALL PROMISE

And then He lands this wonderfully well-known verse: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me. When you seek me, I will be found by you, says the Lord.’”

How many people know what a trust fall promise is? Anybody ever heard of what a trust fall is? Anybody ever watched The Office? The trust fall is this great team-building exercise that somebody came up with, I don’t know, way back when, probably in the Brady Bunch era. 

And the idea and the spirit behind it is that you stand flat-footed, and all of your workmates are behind you to catch you. And the thing that goes through your mind– that’s supposed to go through your mind– is, Do I trust them to catch me? And to the level that you have deep trust and regard for those you work with, you fall backwards. If you’re like me, you’re like, Nope. That’s a trust fall. 

What God does here is amazing. He lays all this out: build houses, plant vineyards, eat the food, marry, find people for your kids to marry, have grandchildren. He just lays out all these edicts. And then He gets to the end, and He says, Here’s why: I know what I have planned for you. I know what I have in store for you. 

In essence, what He does is He plays His hand. He just says up front, I’m promising you I’ll take care of you. What He does by saying this is He leaves the Jewish people, and He leaves us with this question: do I think you’re telling the truth? Do I trust you? Do I believe You’re for me? Do I believe that in the midst of this chaos, You’re actually working for my benefit? 

WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY OF OUR TRUST?

How many of you would say right now, Yeah, I trust him. Let me see your hands. I hope that wasn’t– okay. It’s like, Man, I hope that wasn’t the response. How many believe He’s working for your benefit? Okay, so then what gets in the way of this? What causes us to not live this? I would say whatever causes us to not live this, whatever gets in the way of us doing this, is a place we need to take before Him and be honest. I know what You’ve said to do, and I don’t know if I can trust You. Here’s why: I’m afraid at the root.

How many understand what a spirit of foreboding is? I’m a firstborn. On the Enneagram, I’m a one. I got issues and I’m driven. Those are the two things you need to take out of that conversation. But I’ve lived most of my life with this sense of when’s the rug gonna get pulled out from underneath me? When’s the other shoe going to drop? When is this good stuff going to go away? Because it can’t really last. Anybody with me, you’ve wrestled with that? 

You see, those are the places we have to sit with Him and go, Look, I need your help because it’s really not about You, it’s about me. I don’t know how to trust You. I’m afraid. I can’t live what You gave me to live because I’m terrified. And we need to allow health to begin to develop in us. Because if we can look at this and say, This is for sure what He says, then the only way we move on is we either ignore it, or we get healthy so we can live it. 

Like, I don’t know how to get healthy. You know what I love about the Lord? One of my favorite things is anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. He says it over and over and over again. All you have to do is ask, and I’ll fix it. He is not that God that wants us to jump through hoops. His answer is, If you want health, I want health. I will respect your privacy enough that I won’t make you get healthy. But the moment you turn to Me and go, Man, I want to get healthy, I’ll be there for you. 

And we get so wound up in our heads that we’re not going to measure up and we’re not good enough, and somehow, some way– that’s just not who He is. Does He have a standard for us to live? Yes. Is He going to be our greatest advocate in that standard? Yes.

THE POTENTIAL IN OUR PRAYER LIVES

Second thing I want to highlight here is just these phrases where He says, “In those days, when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me. When you seek me, I will be found by you.” There’s like these hanging potentialities: when you pray, if you look for Me, when you seek Me. 

If we look at this language, there’s a reverse that we have to understand: if we believe what He says is truth– which I think is a good place to start when you read the Bible– if we believe what He says is true, then we must understand that what He’s actually revealing is that we won’t be able to find the right perspective for our lives unless we are disciplined in prayer to seek Him and find His heart on situations. 

It’s not just that, Well, I kind of know, but I won’t really know. What He says is, You will not know what I want unless you learn to pray. But when you do, I’ll be found by you. It puts an awful lot of potential in our prayer lives. 

I had three thoughts that I hadn’t considered around these ideas until this week. The decision to pray is actually a personal decision of prioritizing His voice over my situation. It means I would prefer to hear what He has to say than just discern it. It means I’ve made a decision that no matter what I face, I want His perspective, and I won’t actually make up my mind on said thing until I hear what He has to say. 

How do I know I can hear God? Well, welcome to faith. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” There are no illegitimate children in the Kingdom. There’s not a single person in the Kingdom where He says, You don’t get to hear my voice. There’s not a person in the Kingdom where He’s like, You know, I’m going to only talk to you through dreams. Jesus said, My sheep hear my voice, and I would contend that we learn and we fight to get there. 

I sat down with him, and I didn’t hear it. Great. You also didn’t learn how to speak in five minutes. Children grow up, and they’re around the language of their parents, and they learn how to talk. Languages are learned by being introduced to them. In the same way, you learn to hear the voice of God by being around it. 

So you might not know what He’s saying all the time, but you just know it feels good to be with Him. Great. Start there. You might not even know what it feels like to know what the Lord– come hang out and worship and pour your heart out and find out. Oh, this feels amazing. Great. Start there. 

Second thing: looking for Him is a personal decision to commit my time and energy to the process. It always begins with a decision to commit my time and my energy to hearing His voice. And so often in our culture, we showed up one morning, and it felt dry. Or maybe we showed up one morning, it was awesome, and the next morning it was amazing, and day four or five, we’re like, Oh, it’s really dry. 

A. W. Tozer, in the book Pursuit of God– one of my favorite manuscripts ever– shares a concept called the abiding and the apprehending. In the apprehending, he will say we are to be in pursuit of God, where we’re chasing Him. There’s going to be times where it feels like He picked up and moved, and we’ve got to go find Him. And there’s other times where He’s camped. And the answer is, when He’s camped, stay camped; when He’s on the move, get moving. 

Seeking Him: the third thing He says, “When you seek me,” is a personal decision to remain committed to His ways, even in the moments He seems out of reach. Hey, I’m not bailing just because I can’t feel You. I’m not going to assume You hate me just because I can’t feel You. I’m not going to decide this is hogwash because I can’t hear You. I’m staying committed. I’m here. I will continue to seek You.  

HE WILL BE FOUND BY THOSE WHO SEEK HIM

To those three things, His promise is this: I will be found by you. Church, I would say it this way: our prayer lives were always intended by Him to be the secret weapon for the marketplace. If you are in business and you don’t pray over your business, you’re crazy. Because there is intel available in the secret place, unique information that isn’t available just by looking. He loves to share that with His children. 

Friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who fear Him, and with them, He shares the secrets of His covenant. I would love to ask you to consider what gets in the way of you believing in that? What gets in the way of you developing this prayer life? I don’t have time. That’s a lie. He had created a twenty-four-hour day cycle before this was written, 

He says to the Jewish people, when you pray– they were in captivity, they were forced to work by somebody else’s schedule– and He still says to them, I expect you to pray. We have a myriad of excuses for why we don’t. The only answer is to lay those down and say, No more excuses. I’m going to build a time with the Lord. 

I don’t know, how much time do I start with? Five minutes. Honestly, give me five minutes a day where you’ll sit quietly. Not in your car. That doesn’t count, that’s cheating. Why? Because when you’re in your car, you should be driving, and when I’m on the road, and you’re on the road, I want to know you’re paying attention. So does everyone else around you. Because it doesn’t work when you say, I’m sorry, officer, me and Jesus were having an amazing time when I hit that person. 

Give five minutes to where you’ll settle down and say, I’m going to sit with the Lord. Because what you’re going to discover is five minutes isn’t enough. You’re going to want to spend more. If you start with an hour, five minutes in, you’re like, This is dumb. I’m leaving. He’s not like that. He’s not austere. He’s not measuring the time. We measure time. He doesn’t; He’s timeless. 

What He measures is intent. He measures whether or not you were there to seek Him. 

You’re like, I don’t know what to pray. Well, Jesus taught the disciples what to pray. They said, Will you teach us how to pray? They didn’t technically say, Will you teach us how to pray? They technically said, Will you teach us to pray? And He gave him a grid. I know you really want to recite it. I’m not going to let you. 

So, why would the Lord have Jeremiah send this message? Here’s why I think: the people of God through history have always been predisposed to an us-against-them mentality, and God wanted to correct it in Israel and say, Hey, it’s not you-against-them. It’s Me-through-you-in-them. 

The truth is that we carry the seed of Heaven everywhere we go. And His expectation is that we are to expand and build everything we touch, that we are to be a people so fueled with vision, so fueled with purpose, that we don’t live in fear of the future, we don’t cower in the midst of tough financial climates, we just stand strong going, No, I know what He said about me here. It doesn’t matter what the market says, because He’s bigger. The question is, what will be our response? Will we be a people who live from His promise, or will we continue to live from our perspective?