Over the past eighteen months, we’ve experienced incredible momentum and growth at Hope Church. This doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. It means God is supplying us with more potential to reach people who are far away from him. We still have a big vision to pursue as a church, and we’re still all about attracting and engaging the unchurched. So in this season, we’re preparing to pursue what’s next. NEXT will advance our impact on the NEXT generation and the NEXT location of Hope, while taking ministry to the NEXT level.

God has always used ordinary people to do extraordinary things in our world. The people God uses have one trait in common. It’s not that they are smarter or braver than anyone else. The trait that they all have in common is trust. They trust God. They don’t just trust God for forgiveness and Heaven when they die. They trust God by obeying whatever he has to say, even when they aren’t sure how it will all work out. This trait shows up in the life of Abraham. God had a BIG plan for the life of Abraham – a plan to impact the entire course of human history – a plan to bless the entire world through the life of Abraham. Abraham was just an ordinary man with all kinds of flaws. But Abraham trusted God. The same offer is on the table for us. God still intends to change the world through us. The question is, will you trust him?

There’s a physical law that’s always at work. It’s the law of the harvest. You will reap what you sow. If you sow wheat, you harvest wheat. If you sow lots of wheat, you harvest lots of wheat. (It’s not too complicated.) But what most people don’t know is that the law of the harvest is also a spiritual principle. You can leverage it to your advantage, or you can ignore it to your peril. In this video, we’ll discover that there is a direct connection between your financial life and your eternal life. They’re linked. What you sow in one will produce a harvest in the other. What’s the connection?

How would you measure love? Love isn’t measured by feeling or by desire. Instead, love is measured by sacrifice. The deeper the love, the greater the willingness to sacrifice. That’s how we know God loves us. We know that God loves us because of what he sacrificed to in order to have us. Sacrificial generosity is a primary way that we express love. We sacrifice for the things and people that we love. That’s why we’re moving forward into NEXT. It’s an extraordinarily practical way to love God and to love the generation, and the people in the next location. Generosity isn’t about how much you give away, it’s about how much it costs us.

This is commitment Sunday – a day when everyone is invited to make a commitment to generosity for the next 12 months. Commitments are hard because they introduce a level of uncertainty. Will you be able to fully honor your commitment? What are all of the implications of following through on your commitment? Commitments are all about the future. And we are just uncertain about what the next year will bring. Today we’re going to discover how to have clarity on what to do, in the midst of an uncertain future. Clarity is found in God’s calling. If you simply decide to do whatever it is that he invites you to do, you can move forward into any uncertain future with great clarity and confidence.