Giving Thanks for Financial Blessings
May 21, 2026
This week’s missionary letter is from the Owens family. They are church planters in Bulgaria. It says, “Dear Pastor and friends, thank you for your prayers for Tony and his family, whom I wrote about in my last letter. While writing this letter, I received a call informing me that Tony had passed into eternity. He had suffered greatly over the past few months. The doctors amputated one of his legs due to severe pain he was experiencing, and the toes and much of the foot on his other leg had turned black. However, in the past few weeks, his pain subsided. He was calm, at peace, and had accepted that his life on this earth was coming to an end. During my last visit with him, he pointed up and said, ‘I know I am saved, and I am ready to meet my Savior.’ Please pray for his wife, Rita, and their family, who were in turmoil. Rita accepted Jesus years ago in 2012, but their children and grandchildren still need the Lord.”
One Saturday, while making some visits, I was able to lead Lillianna, a 19-year-old mother, to the Lord. She and her husband came to church on Sunday night but slipped out quickly after the service before I could get to them. Pray that they will return, follow Jesus, and grow in their faith. Please continue to pray for the teenagers of our church. Pray that Robert and Katsi would follow the Lord and be baptized. Also, pray that Vaska and Danny will recognize their need for salvation and be saved. We are grateful our daughter, Julia, graduated from Bible College this month. She will marry Todd Fear on June 27th. We will appreciate your prayers for them as they begin their life together. Thank you for your support. Fuel prices have skyrocketed since the war in Iran. It now costs us over $170 to fill our van with diesel fuel. We covet your prayers as we strive to see souls saved and lives changed in Bulgaria. Serving for Jesus, The Owens family.
Let’s bring the Owens to the Lord in prayer. Dear God, we thank you so much for this dear family over in Bulgaria, spreading your word, planting churches, seeing people saved. Lord, thank you so much for their faithfulness. God, we pray that you would just supply for their every need. Be with their church, be with the people of their church. Be with the one who passed away, and be with their family, God. We just pray that you would just help his family to come to know you. God, this young mother and her family who she got saved and they came to church, God, we pray that you would just bring them back to church, even tonight, or maybe Sunday. God, help the rest of the family to be saved. Help them to be able to get plugged in and serve you. Lord, we pray for just their financial stability. God, I couldn’t imagine $170 each time having to fill up a vehicle, but God, I say this so often, money is the cheapest of your blessings. So, God, we pray that you would just bless them and give them what they need—health-wise and financial-wise. And Lord, most importantly, we pray that they would see souls saved through all of what they’re going through. God, we just pray that you’d be with them, and we ask all this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.
The Owens—we’ve got great missionaries, but the Owens are just some of the top-notch missionaries. They’ve been over there for 20-plus years, and almost every report they’re winning somebody to the Lord. They are faithful. You know, there’s not a right of role, but some missionaries, they just won’t leave the field. I’ve tried to get some of those—there are two Owens brothers we support—try to get them in here to preach a mission conference. They won’t leave the mission field, man. They’re there for life and just doing a great, great job. There were three of them, and one of them, the dad, passed away. One of them came back and became the pastor of the dad’s church, but two of them we still support. Just great people, great people. Praise the Lord, we get to have a part in the souls being saved over there.
If you need a prayer request card to fill out, one of those chairs in front of you ought to have that. Get that filled out. We’ll get all those passed over to Bill Senior, and he’ll lead us in prayer tonight, and we’re honored to have some guests with us tonight. Brother Patterson, would you introduce Brother Patterson? Got some guests. Would you introduce our guest for us tonight, please?
We’re glad to have Michelle Michael with us tonight. That’s great. I appreciate them being with us. And that’s awesome. Glad they are here with us. Good to see everybody else out. Boy, I don’t see anybody… Anybody got… We got one. Miss Nancy’s got one. That may be… We’ve got just a couple. We’re going to have to get going quick on it and get those passed in. Good deal. Good deal.
Really, only one announcement. We’re using the bulletin for announcements. And soul winning—this is our last spring organized soul winning. You can go soul winning if we don’t do it, but organized—you know, it’s the only one left this Saturday. And the Hamiltons have got… I think they said eggs and sausage and bacon and steak and biscuits and pancakes, and what else you want to say? You know, I mean, I don’t know what they’re… They’ll have a good breakfast. They’ll have something good for us. Waffles, all right. We’ve got to get them all in there, you know, so I appreciate that. And I think Brother Joshua’s filling the card out. But brothers, go ahead and get started. Maybe they’ll get it in real quickly here. Brother Joshua’s filling one out.
And we’ll get Bill Senior. We’ve got a lot going on tonight, so we’re going to just move right along with it. And that’d be good. Brother Bill, for you to come, please. Just kidding. All right. Hamiltons. God is good all the time. Let’s pray for…
Your manager, Todd’s Six Miller’s dad passed away on Tuesday. He was a longtime pastor in North Carolina. Let’s pray for that family. We’ve got another one coming up. How many unspoken requests? My hand’s up. Joshua, God’s faithfulness. Amen. I’ll tell you, that’s awesome, and he’s more faithful than we are, you know, at least I am. So thank God. Applying for a new position at work. I was talking to Joshua about that. Hopefully, he gets that job. Pray for him. Pray for souls to be saved Saturday. Jail Ministries, June 5th. Pray for that. I need workers. Still need jail workers. Not to put a plug in there, right? All right. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Dear God, lovely, we come to the Lord. Thank you so much for your love and mercy towards us, that you sent your only begotten Son, Jesus, to die for us on that cross. Because of that, Lord, we’re on our way to heaven. We accepted you. And I pray that if there’s one soul tonight here that hears our word, that hears the word, that they would be saved before it’s too late. Bless these prayer requests. I pray that you’d be with Joshua in a new position at work. Thy will be done. Pray for the Sick Miller’s family. Their dad passed away Tuesday, a long-time pastor in North Carolina. I bless that pastor’s church there. Just bless our church, be with our building program, be with our country, with President Trump’s decisions to be made. And I just pray that Thy will be done, in Christ’s name. Amen.
You can keep your seats, but we’re going to do something a little different tonight with this one. We’re going to sing the chorus first, okay? So if you’ll turn to page 125, and just think about the words as we sing this song. This is what we need to be doing, okay?
In your Bibles, by the way, I do have my right notes tonight. How about that? I tell you what, that’s unusual for Wednesday night. And we’re going to do things a little bit different. We’re in Psalms, Psalm 105. If you have read our church constitution or bylaws, I’m sure you’ve read every word of that, all of you members. And I wasn’t—if I wasn’t the pastor when we put them in, whatever—the third Wednesday of the month is when we have our business meeting. If we have any business to take care of, and often we don’t, but in May, we always vote in a new budget. And our budget goes from June to June and into May. And so in a bit here, we’ll give those details and we’ll vote on that. We’ll have a business meeting here in just a bit, but I want to talk for just a bit about this—just about God’s goodness financially to our church. I just want to brag on the Lord a little bit tonight.
But before we do that, you got your Bible turned there? I’m going to ask you to come forward, so you might want to just lay it beside you there somewhere where it’s marked, because we’re going to come pray. Let me tell you a little bit about the meeting. We had a meeting this afternoon with our real estate agent, our finance person here. We had seven people in my office. And, you know, you get seven people together, and everybody’s trying to give their side. And we prayed at the beginning of it. God just blessed that meeting. It was a good meeting, fairly smooth. We’ve got a couple of things to iron out: insurance, and, you know, once you close and somebody else owns that building, someone else has insurance on it, and all those good things—just some details. But a very good meeting. That looks like the schedule would not be a hindrance at all. Very good on the schedule.
And so, praise the Lord for that. But probably our biggest concern is: Can they fulfill? Now, they’ve set a $2.3 million cash offer, but we haven’t seen $2.3 million cash, you know. And so we have asked for proof within five days of signing. If they can’t show us proof, then it’ll be null and void. And so we haven’t signed. They don’t want to sign until we get all the details worked out. We’ll be calling our insurance agent tomorrow and some of those details we were talking about. And our real estate agent said, rightfully, he said, “You know, we can talk all day, and it was a good conversation. But he said, really, we don’t know for sure about this insurance. We just need to talk to the professionals, the insurance people.”
And then we had a good five-minute talk about how insurance is a racket and all that. And I told him, I said, “If we divide in this room here, we know where we have common ground, let’s just talk to my insurance, and we all come together on that agreement right there, you know.” And God bless. We’ve got praise the Lord for that. But it’s not done until we close. Our real estate agent today, and he’s been doing it for, I think, 38 years, he said, “You’re not really done until it’s closed, and then you make sure the check doesn’t bounce,” you know.
And so let’s pray. Let’s just ask God to bless. It was a good meeting, but it’s not all said and done until we close. So we’re praying that we can use the funds from the sale of this before we have to draw from the loan on the building. And so that’s our major prayer request. Things look good. They are moving forward. There’s been some snag, we’ve worked past them, and it’s going fairly good. So keep praying. Let’s just—God’s been the one to make this thing happen. It’s been the Lord from day one. It’ll be the Lord that finishes it out. So let’s go to the Lord and pray. Would you come? Would you come? We’ve been praying at 7 o’clock. We’re close to that time, and let’s just come together and pray.
Hey, well, Brother Casey, can I get you to be one of the men leading us in prayer, if you would? And Brother Troy, have you led us any? Come on, Brother Troy, let’s get you up here leading us. These two men will lead us in prayer. But let’s don’t just listen to them pray.
They really start talking about God and all the things He’s done and giving Him thanks. It’s the same—much of this is the same as 1 Chronicles 16 when David brought the ark back. And so some say that’s David’s dependent. We don’t know that, but we’re just going to look at the very first verse. Let’s stand if you would please. Psalm 105, in verse number one. And using it as a springboard, he says, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name, keep praying,” in other words. Make known His deeds among the people. Now, some of these things you’ve probably heard, but I’m going to try to do a little bit of that—make known His deeds among the people tonight. We’re just going to—just going to—not even a Bible study, not really preach tonight. I’m just going to tell you some of the blessings God’s given to our church over the years financially. We have a business meeting. God’s been so very, very good to us, and not that we deserve it, just as grace. And He’s blessed us. I’m just going to try to share some of these stories. Maybe you heard, maybe you haven’t. And they’re just bragging on the Lord for a little bit, and then we’ll get to the business meeting. All right. Would you pray with me? And let’s just thank the Lord for His goodness.
Father, you really have been so very good. And, Lord, just your patience, your love, your provision all these years, Lord, from day one, really, before it ever began—just you providing for your church. Thank you, Lord. Father, would you fill me with your Spirit to magnify Jesus, make you look good? And I sure would like to do that. You deserve that, Lord. And Father, we ask for this in the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen. Thank you so much. If you may be seated.
We found us a little bit in daycare to start our church in, but we didn’t have any chairs. And so we checked around, and the cheapest place was… Time to pray, time to pray. I already made the donuts. Click it off. I mean, we already got her done, you know. And Sam’s Club was the cheapest place to get chairs. We’re just going to get metal chairs, folding chairs. But we didn’t have a Sam’s Club card.
And so we were visiting other churches before we started this church, you know, and so we were visiting. So we met a family we knew way back in Florida years earlier, going to church in Murfreesboro here. And I said, “Hey, Brother Sutton’s in there. Brother Sutton, you got a Sam’s card?” He said, “Yeah, I do.” And we talked about it. And I met him down a couple days later at the Sam’s Club down there in Murfreesboro, John Rice Boulevard. We met down there, and we were going to buy chairs.
And they didn’t have a whole lot of internet and all that that we have nowadays. And so we checked; they were out of chairs. And so he said, “I tell you what,” he said, “I got an extra Sam’s card. Here’s my Sam’s card, extra, whenever you use it.” And he gave me a little envelope. He said, “They’ll take care of the chairs, and there’s $300 inside that envelope.” And that’s how we started our Rutherford County Baptist checking account. We started it with that $300. And in LaVergne, believe it or not, we trusted the bank in LaVerne. What about that, you know? That’s how our church account started. And we went up to the Sam’s Club a couple days later, up there in Antioch, and we bought our chairs there, and they ended up—I don’t know… maybe could find it. It would take me forever to find it. But if I remember right, it was like $299 and some cents. I mean, just God provided. That’s the way it’s been from day one: God providing for the church. Very first chairs we had, that’s what we had.
Now, it’s interesting, those metal chairs after a while, they get, you know… I mean, if that preacher wouldn’t preach, don’t be so bad, you know. But after a while, so we were going to upgrade and systems update, you know, we were going to get padded chairs. And I’ll never forget, we’re trying to raise money for a padded chair—there used to be in the senior saints, those blue chairs, we had the chrome rim around them. That was the chairs. And we were trying to raise money for them.
I never forget, I just thought I’d include this in it. I had a family that was visiting. They were coming from the trailer park there in LaVergne, on Ferguson Sandlot, right there to the corner. Big old trailer park there. They lived in there. And they called me on a Friday, and they said, “Pastor, we want to give $300 towards chairs.” Now, anytime you give me $300 for the truck, that’s a big deal, but back then, that’s a lot of money, you know. And my thought is, put it in the offering plate Sunday, you know.
And the guy, he’s in heaven now. He did have some true mental issues, and he would change, you know, boom, like that. And he said, “You better come get this money because I’m liable to spend it before Sunday.” I’ll be there, amen. I went there and asked the wife and said, “Now, you know about this? You’re all right?” She said, “Yeah, but you better get it now because he will spend it before Sunday.” And God even provided for the second set of chairs, you know. I’m just saying God’s been good to us.
I mean, from day one, it’s been the Lord, just God providing so many different ways over and over again. I thought about 2007, we were here at this location, and this really was woods back here. The plateau where we have service on the hill was there, but there was a gravel road leading back. There was just all woods, and you could drive that little dirt road—Miss Mickey remembers and whatnot. Some of you remember that. And we were going to clear that out a little bit, and we’re going to add on to the parking lot. And I can’t remember, it was $40,000. I’m not sure, maybe more. I remember we had a thermometer, and we were trying to get to that, whatever it was, and that for us, that’s a lot of money. It’s still a lot of money, amen, you know, a lot of money. And we were trying to raise that.
And the man was coming at that time—you never know it—but he had a lot of properties. And he sold one of his properties. And he gave a check—most we’d ever had at one time. We haven’t changed that until recently—but he gave $30,000 at one time. And boy, the thermometer went all the way up. And I’m just saying God always has the right person at the right time for him. He’s always taking care of this church. It’s just amazing to watch the Lord provide for His church over the years.
Now, we did—kind of 2013, 2014 was our toughest financial years ever. I mean, they were just very… just we couldn’t pay our bills. Only time ever we’d been like that. We were just touched about a year, a little over a year. And we went in a little debt, and we couldn’t pay our bills. And we had to cut budget across the board. I mean, it was just a very tough time financially for a church. God was really testing us a little bit. And it’s amazing. I remember one man, a good man, but a businessman type man in our church. And he kept telling me during that time, he said, “Pastor, we need to find good quality families. We’ve got to have good quality families that can tithe, you know.” And I think, “What do you think we’re trying to do, buddy?” But I remember he kept saying that.
And here’s one little interesting story about that time. Our youth director at the time, he was trying to move into some apartments—him and his wife. It would be an upgrade for him. But there were apartments where you could not make a certain amount. They were nice, they were new, but it was, you know, you couldn’t make too much to live. If you made too much, you couldn’t live there. And, you know, we had to cut… That was one of the worst budget deacons’ meetings we ever had because we had to cut everybody—everybody, everything, everything just got cut across the board. And but, you know, so we had to cut that man’s salary, and we didn’t know it, but a little later on, he tried to get that apartment, and because we had cut his salary, he just fell into the wire where he could move in there. And once you move in there, and God bless him, but later on we increased it back up. Once you’re there, you’re there, you know. God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?
But it’s just a tough time financially. Oh, my goodness, just we just couldn’t make it. And while we’re talking about it, look over, if you will, in Matthew 17. Matthew 17. And over here, this is where Jesus and His apostles are talking about taxes. And He’s in… Yeah, you better pay your taxes or else Uncle Sam’s going to come after you. And that’s basically what is going on there. And once you see this, Matthew 17, look in verse number 27. He said, “We need to pay our taxes.” Notice what He says to do, verse number 27: “Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go out to the sea, cast in a hook.”
He said, “We need money to pay.” Yeah, go fishing. “Cast in a hook. Take up the fish that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his mouth…” That’s a weird way to get money. “…thou shalt find a piece of money. That take and give unto them for me and thee.”
Now, don’t you know there’s a lesson there? Remember Jesus told him, “Hey, follow me and I will make you what?” Yeah. But what’s it put up? I remember I love it. We had our different men give devotion in the soul winning class for a while. I remember Brother Marlin’s—basically this is it and his perfect man: “Keep casting. Keep casting. Keep casting. Keep casting.” And I said, “That’s it. You keep casting. Everything can be all right. Try to win them. Just keep casting.” And he said, “Put a hook in the water.” That’s what the Lord Jesus is saying. And when you catch one, He’s opening up the mouth, the money will be there. Now, He’s saying so. And in God… God takes care of a church that’s about what He’s about. And He’s about winning lost souls so they won’t spend eternity in hell, so they go to heaven. He gave His Son for that. That’s the heartbeat of God.
And don’t you know there’s a church busy trying to try and take care of that? God’s going to take care of their finances. That’s what he’s trying to teach. Hey, go get a fish, look inside that, and there’ll be some money in there. And let’s go back to our story. We were having a tough time financially. This is not sinful or wrong, but we had said we’re going to knock on every door in Smyrna, and we’re going to try to do it in one year. But man, you start talking on every door—I mean, I mean… You know, even the ones down there, down that driveway back there in the woods, and they got dogs there. We tried, you know. We tried everywhere. It ended up taking two years for us to do it. And when you knock on every door in Smyrna, you know, we all—my hand in half is up—I like to go to good fishing holes. I mean, some people, well, I don’t want to catch bluegills, you know. I mean, I want to just catch bass. I’m like, a bluegill is better than no gill, amen. I’m not expert fishermen. I just want to catch something, you know.
And so, but we wiped all the trailer parks and apartments out, and we had to go to those, you know, the nicer neighborhoods, praise me four. But typically, you’re not going to have a lot of results in those neighborhoods door-to-door. You’re typically going to use a little bit different angle to try to reach those folks, you know. And here’s the thing: our soul winning a little bit just kind of dragged, and we weren’t maybe quite as on fire about lost souls at the time. And we came out of that two years, and the next year, I looked at my notes today in Vision Bank, and we said, “Hey, hang all that knocking on every door to those rich neighborhoods. We’re going to go to every good fishing hole we can find.”
I mean, we went to every trailer park, every apartment complex. If there was a poor neighborhood, we were there and there and there again. Honestly, we went to the projects in Nashville that year. We said, “We’re just going to try to win the lost,” and typically you have a better result there in those poor neighborhoods. And we just—we didn’t—we just were just trying to get people saved that year. And we… we just… I’m talking, we went up to Nashville frequently that year, just the projects, and just trying to get people saved. I mean, I remember going to the park in LaVergne there, Veterans Park, on Saturday, it’s full. We just prayed, Lord… We had a lot of teenage—older teenagers at that time, and that bus—we had a pretty good-sized bus of teenagers who were soul winners—and we just go all over that, but we just tried to win souls. And God blessed. We had—I checked it today—we had 459 people saved.
Now, thank you, Matt. I’m telling this story for a reason. We went to every poor place in the area, for the most part, honestly. We didn’t get any good quality families—same old people—but man, our offerings took off. You know, the amazing thing is, ever since then, God’s just blessed our finances. It was a year of testing, a year and a half of testing. God… He grew me something, I don’t know. But I’m just saying one of the reasons I believe God’s blessed our church financially is just because trying to win the lost, stayed after the lost. Go get a fish, look in his mouth. God’s been so good to us, and it’s just blessed financially.
Now, let’s get a little bit closer to our, you know, more recent blessings financially. At the end of 2019, we had tried to build here, and nothing perked around here. And we tried about a year, year and a half on that. And just Del Stover worked on that a lot. So we remember the Stovers. Did a great job just a little bit in it. And so we started to look at that property over there. And God really just did a miracle where we entered into contract for $1.3 million to buy that. That was a miracle in itself. That property, a little bit more of the land than our 15 acres we bought with the Breadstores and O’Reilly’s—a little bit more of it. But it had sold like 11 years earlier for almost $3.5 million. And we’re buying it, you know, 11 years later with everything, and we bought it, we got it for $1.3 million. Just… that was a miracle. Took a lot of stories there, just God… God was in that, for sure. That was a God thing.
And then the thing—once you get in the contract, you’ve got to pay for the crazy thing, you know. And we’re like, “Boy, can we really get… can we get a loan for $1.3 million? I mean, we’re not the biggest church in the world, you know?” And I don’t forget calling our banker at the time. We had been with him for years and years. He had changed several banks, and we kind of stuck with him. We changed banks with him. Good guy. And I called him and I said, “Hey, what are you thinking?” And this is about the first thing he said: “Man, you preached my life Sunday.” And I said, “What do you mean?” You know. He said, “I’ve been watching on YouTube.” And I was shocked. Never asked him, never told him, you know. He’d visited the church time or two way back, but he’d been watching on YouTube. God had his heart ready.
Ain’t all those bankers, those big loans—they had to go before a committee and get the committee to approve it. And he told that committee, he said, “If there’s a church in the area that I want to stick my neck out for, this is the church I want to do it for.” Man, friend, that was the Lord.
Now with that, I thought about this today, just kind of preparing, just the miracles of God. God’s did so much, and it’s all the Lord, but just so many stories. But I thought along that time there, we needed a roof, and we had tried a couple years earlier to get insurance to pay for the roof. You know what I talk about, we all try that, you know. And God sent the right adjuster this time. He was from Alabama. Come on now, you Alabama haters, don’t go there now, you know. Tennessee, yes, I understood, but Alabama there. Got a son born there, and always started talking about that. God just… God just, you know, God can give you favor with the people. God does that. It wasn’t me, but just the Lord. And we got… we got the insurance paid for our roof, and Brother Michael Meneal was involved in all that. And then Brother Michael…
Brother Michael, man, he does a good job. He’s a stickler for it. And he said, “Wait a second. We have the same color, the same light, everything, you know.” But if you—I don’t even know if you can see it anymore. Brother Michael, he knows. He can still see it. If you’re out in the parking lot and it’s a sunshiny day and right angle and the sun shining, you know, the 95.3 degree angle, you know, I don’t know what it is. If you look real closer, you can see just a touch of a difference of color. Not the same color. You know, everything’s the same, but there’s just a touch difference. Will it bother this man? He said, “You know, it’s my church. I put a new roof on there. I want it right,” you know. And I’m like, “All right,” you know. But it looks pretty good to me, you know. And he worked at that, worked with that.
Now here’s the thing: we had already gotten the roof pretty much for free, and we got a new roof put on, and then we got a check from the shingle company for right around—some around $20,000. Now, don’t you know when that bank’s looking at your numbers to see if we can give you a loan for one, isn’t it a blessing for Disney? $20,000 added into that bank account. And we needed that right when they were crunching our numbers. We needed that. I’m just saying how God… I mean, have you ever heard of getting your roof for free and getting $20,000 out of it? Come on now, you know. I’m just… these are only God things, you know. The Lord has taken care of His church over the years in so many, so many different ways. They’ve been so very, very good to us. And so we’re able to buy the 15 acres for $1.3 million right at the end of 2019. And then in 2021, we sold two of those acres. Now, remember, we bought 15 for $1.3 million. We sold two of those about two years later for $1.15 million.
It’s just God. It’s just the Lord. And that’s the only way to explain all the blessings, all the years, just how the Lord has taken care of His church. And I don’t want to take too long. We do have a business meeting, but a couple more. And I hope it just increases your faith and gives us reason to thank God for His goodness. Man, He’s so good to us.
But since we’ve been trying to raise funds for the new building, yes, God’s been so good, but can I say God’s people? Y’all have been amazing at giving. I really have. I mean, so many different people just giving in and over and above. And I thought about, y’all remember when we had the bucket offering? How many remember when we had the bucket offering? And we passed out buckets, and you bring whatever you can in that bucket, you know, and we had buckets all over here, you know.
And we had a teenage girl that rode the buses. And she had a lot of—now, for her, it was her treasure—and she brought in some trash bags of her stuffed animals. And honestly, hopefully they’ve moved to a distant state and moved again since then. I hope they’re not watching, but you really couldn’t get any money off of it. But her sacrifice, and some of her people heard about it, and they gave in honor of those—I think it was $300, $400—in honor of those stuffed animals. And I’m just saying, I’m just saying, God… Don’t you know God pays attention to a sacrifice like that? And the giving of God’s people has been amazing, just truly amazing.
Look over in Philippians. Philippians. You all right if I go over a little bit? We try to keep it short on Wednesday nights, but… I heard one amen. You all right if we go a little bit? Y’all going to be okay or not? Good deal. Okay, okay. Thank you. Thank you. You say, “I don’t mind it. You’re going to take longer anyway,” but try to be gracious about it. Come on.
Sometimes we quote this verse, but we don’t get the context. We won’t be longer—much longer. We will get to business. I want you to see this. Philippians 4. God’s using Paul to pen these words. He’s writing to the church at Philippi. And look in verse number 15, Philippians 4 and verse number 15. You there? Amen?
Notice what it says: “Now ye Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed unto Macedonia, no church communicated”—now in that communication, he’s not about giving—“communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only.” Paul was on a missionary journey. He said, “You’re the only church that gave to me.” “For even in Thessalonica you sent once and again unto my necessity, not because I desire a gift, but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But I have all and abound. I am full, having received the epiproditis [unclear word], the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God.”
Don’t say is that rain out there? We got showers of blessing. That rain or the air conditioning kicking on? I don’t know. Bill says we don’t know. All right. So in other words, the church at Philippi took care of Paul, the missionary Paul. Took care of his needs, met his needs. They took care of missionaries. You get that? That’s what’s going on here. Now, he said, “You gave to my needs. I’m a missionary. I’ve been getting the gospel out. You’re helping me do that.” Then verse number 19: “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
I don’t like to steal verses from somebody who’s claiming it, and I don’t try to do that. But if you look really at the context real strictly, it’s when this church took care of Paul, and Paul’s telling them that—the missionary Paul. And Paul’s telling them, “Hey, but you know God’s going to take care of you. You took care of the missionary. God’s going to take care of you.” That’s what’s going on.
And you know when we started raising funds for the new building over there, I’ll be honest, as far as a pastor, I did go through a little phase where I thought, “Man, we need to kind of… we’re not going to push too much for faith promise giving this year because we got to… we got to raise money for the building.” Business-wise, that makes a little sense, but Bible-wise, it doesn’t make any sense.
You know, sometimes godly business and business sense—they kind of join together. But sometimes it doesn’t make any business sense, but it’s God sense. And that was one of the things. God said to Paul, “You’ve been preaching all these years, giving it, and you’re going to cut back on the giving so you can build that… build that building and all that?” you know. And the Lord convicted me. Probably went through our church too, because we kept going, you know, mission conference, we kept trying to encourage you to give more and more. And you probably went through the same thing, but you know, our faith promise, our mission giving has gone up. And it’s amazing, guys. Our missions giving has gone up. It’s amazing to watch that building fund go up.
And that’s what’s happening biblically. He said, “Hey, take care of the missionary, and God takes care of you.” You know, in 2024, we gave something around $70,000 to missions. Building fund—oh, man, it’s grown. 2025, we supported about 53 missionaries, and you know, we give often extra, you know, if a missionary is going through a tough time or just a program or project, going all the way up with that. And I’m just saying that’s part of God’s formula working to get to 60. Right now, boy, this mission conference last year, you all gave so much committed to give, and we’re at 56, 57, all I heard from a missionary or pastor missionary today. And it’s always changing. We got some coming in, we got some more missionaries coming in. We’re working to get to 60, but you always got somebody coming off the field and all that’s going on. But I’m just saying you’ve given and given and given to missions. It’s amazing.
2025, our building fund grew from a little over $300,000 to over $600,000. It’s a little bit like on paper—you can’t figure it. Well, you can’t on this paper here, you know. Take care of God’s missionary, God takes care of you. It’s just amazing, and God’s been so good to us. And just all the people giving, just really amazing.
Our recent offering, we needed about $90,000 to keep from borrowing from the loan. That’s a lot of money for our church, and you’re already doing so much. And boy, God… We had over three different—one of them was stocks—and then two different checks for $10,000. And Wednesday or two ago, we had another for $5,000. All together, counting the $14,000 of building fund every month, we’re right there at that $90,000. It’s just amazing. All you can say is, “God’s people.” And it’s not just been… We’ve had some large offerings at the building—the building ceremony, the official one where we had the mayor and all that there. We rode along there, we had someone give stocks. We’ve never had stocks given to us, you know. Stocks—I thought that’s where they got you in handcuffs, you know, in your head there, you know. But somebody gave us stocks, and it was around $40,000.
I’m just… all these are God things. These aren’t us and me and all that. It’s just the Lord. God and… but anyway, everyone said, “Oh, it’s not just been wealthy people.” I thought about our recent groundbreaking, you know, our third one, you know. And a lady came to me—you know, I don’t think they have much at all—and she gave me either… I can’t remember, either it was a $10 or a $20 bill. And she said, “Pastor, I want that to go to the building fund.” God sees those things. Prayer on the square has some people that come, and I know where they live. They don’t have much. And her and her son have been raising money. “We want this $200 to go in the building fund.” I’m just saying that’s the Lord, and people giving sacrificially, and God sees that and He blesses. I just for a little bit tonight just wanted to brag on the Lord how good God’s been to us. And we could go on with story after story, all God’s blessing on His church. And it’s the Lord.
Let’s do this. Let’s do this. We’re going to have a word of prayer. And I think Grace is playing tonight. If you want to come to the altar, you’re welcome to. But let’s just thank Him. I mean, just wherever you’re at, let’s just thank Him. There’s just spend some time thanking the Lord. However, God leads you. Let’s stand. We’ll have a quick word of prayer. Let’s just spend some time thanking the Lord. If it was up to me, we’d be… we wouldn’t have it. You know, we’d be so messed up financially. Just the Lord’s been good. Let’s praise Him for His goodness. Would you do that? Father, thank you. You’ve been so better—10,000 times, a million times better than we deserve. Thank you. Thank you for your provision. Thank you for how you have uniquely and amazingly given what we need, when we need it, the right people, just all that. You’re in control. Praise you, Lord, for it all. And bless our few minutes here, let us give true, sincere thanks and praise to you, in Jesus’ name. We pray. Amen.
We’ll just spend some time just thanking the Lord. If you need to slip out, of course, you’re welcome to. But if you can stay, we’ll just go over the budget, and the deacons and myself, we hash out numbers and whatnot and try to get together. We can’t make decisions, but we can recommend to the church. You vote on it. We’ll try to explain those numbers to you here. Just know we’ll have a word of prayer, and if you need to slip out, you can. Won’t you stay if you can? And we’ll just go through the budget, and we’ll have the minutes read, and then the budget we’ll vote on it here in just a bit. Let’s pray and we’ll get going. Love to have your staff. You can… Father, again, thank you for your goodness, Lord. And you just really just better than we deserve. Bless our meeting tonight. Bless the future, Lord, when you work out the sale of this property and the new building—all those details. We put them in your hands. Thank you. You’re capable, you’re able. Use this, Lord, please, and that’s in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Original File: 2026-05-21 - Pastor Paul Chisgar - Giving Thanks for Financial Blessings to RCBC - Wednesday PM 05⧸20⧸2026