My Portion | Drew Ritchie

Thank y'all. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. Whether you're joining us in person at Dallas, Keller, North Richland Hills, or West Fort Worth, or joining us online, thank you so much for being here, and thank y'all for doing that.

You know, I think if you were to, like, Google, like, what's the sound of what the church is supposed to sound like, that's what I kind of picture is probably some amazing singing, but I really love to picture just people talking and just doing family and doing life together.

Now, how many of you know what this is on this table beside me? Can you tell what this is? It's a cake. That's right. I know today is a family worship Sunday, so this is on here specifically for y'all because I thought you would appreciate it.

Let me turn it this way. There you go. I actually, we got this cake from Walmart, and it was all white, and I had a friend walking across the upper balcony, and I said, can you tell from up there what this is?

And they literally were like, are you doing paper origami for your sermon?

And so they could not tell. So we added some sprinkles. We added a number three. We added some color. So you could tell this is a cake, right?

So what do we do with a cake? You eat it. That's right. But before you eat it, you have got to get a portion of it.

Okay. I got icing on my fingers the first go around, so hopefully I can avoid that as much as possible. Oh, boy.

So there's a portion of cake, and let's get, okay, here's another one. Perfect.

Okay. Now, I want you to imagine.

That, I want you to imagine that I invited two students up here, and I told them, hey, y'all, one of you is going to get this piece of cake, and one of you is going to get this piece of cake.

I want y'all to think about what kind of reaction we would probably get from that, right?

For those of you, if you have children or if you've been alive for two seconds, you know that whenever you offer two pieces of cake to somebody,

they're going to constantly,

they're going to constantly compare their piece to somebody else's piece, right?

You know, at a wedding, I know the rule. If Catherine says, would you go get me a piece of cake?

I know I have to try and get a corner piece because it has the most what?

That's right. That's exactly right. Now, I'm actually someone that's team, like, less icing. Any less icing people?

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Man. Scan that QR code for a poll of which you prefer more.

No, I'm just kidding. But seriously, the point, though, is that from a very young age,

very young, our children and all of us, we look at the world through a lens of, well, they got that much.

And this is how much I got, right? I actually feel like there's a trick that I've learned as a parent.

Whenever I make breakfast for our kids, I'll usually do like a skillet with like eggs, hash browns and sausage.

And I've learned that when I give each of them their own plate, they eat it very slowly and they maybe don't eat all of it.

But if I put all of it on one plate and give them each a fork, they watch each other eat.

The food and they're like, wow, they're really eating that food. I need to make sure I get some.

They literally eat more because they're watching the other one of them like, oh, man, I need to make sure I'm getting enough of this breakfast.

Can you see what I'm saying? And so I want you to think about even as adults, we do this.

I'm guilty. You know, whenever there's a little bit of the Blue Bell ice cream left, you know, not enough that you scoop into bowls, but you just eat it out of the carton.

Right. I'll sit there with Catherine. We'll each have a spoon and I'll kind of watch.

And I'm like, OK.

She got two bites and I've only gotten one so far.

It's like, oh, she just got a bite with cookie dough in it.

That's worth like three bites. You know what I mean?

Like we do this. We do this math to make sure I do.

I'm guilty. I want to make sure I get enough of my portion of this ice cream.

I remember as a kid, whenever it's Christmas morning, I think you probably can relate to this going out and looking under the tree.

And you without knowing it, you're doing some mental math like, OK, I see like four boxes that say my sister's name on it.

And I see three boxes that say my name.

So therefore, one of those boxes better be a really nice gift.

So we do this where we start to compare and we see this all around us in so many examples.

We see people that are super talented.

They're good at singing. They're good at sports.

They're good at art. And we think, wow, they got all that.

What's my portion going to be?

We see people who they have a lot of friends and we look at that and we think about our own life and go, well, what is my portion and what my piece of life going to look like with friendships?

We look at people's life, their lifestyle, their family.

We see all of that and we think, what am I going to get?

Basically, we look at life like a finite cake, a cake that's going to run out.

And all of us are standing around it and we're thinking, OK, if they're getting that much and they're getting that much, I got to make sure I do what I need to do to make sure I get a big portion of this cake.

I need to make sure that I get the best portion.

If it's a corner for you, if it's the center for somebody else, I need to make sure I get what I need and what I want.

We live in this constant narrative of believing that my plate is going to be insufficient.

We live focusing on what we don't have.

We live focused with this underlying belief that we're never going to be able to get everything that we need.

And we believe the lie that my portion is lacking.

Are any of you exhausted by living a life of constantly looking around and constantly looking at yourself and saying, I'm just not getting enough of the cake?

My piece.

My piece is not as good, is not as big as everybody else's.

Do any of you want to know what a freedom could look like from not having to be that person that's constantly looking for what am I going to get?

What's my portion going to be?

And I believe scripture has a message for us.

Now, before we go any further, I'm going to ask my friend Reginald to come up and take this off the stage so that y'all aren't salivating the entire time during the sermon.

Thank you, Reginald.

Just so you know, Reginald was my rooted group facilitator.

So, yeah, that's right.

Let's thank Reginald.

Thank you, Reginald, for getting that for me.

Okay.

I'm always nervous whenever I do a prop.

I didn't want to get icing or drop the cake.

But, you know, I have to admit, that prop was a piece of cake.

It was not too difficult.

I knew Rick would be proud of that joke.

Okay.

So, back to scripture.

If you want to turn in your Bibles, if you want to follow along on the screen, we're going to read from Lamentations.

This poem is a very heavy poem, and it's got one place where there's hope in the poem.

And we're going to read from that.

In Lamentations chapter 3.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.

For His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, the Lord is my portion.

Therefore, I will wait for Him.

Now, if for any of you that sounds really familiar, it might be that you grew up in a heritage like me,

where this was a song that we would actually sing word for word.

And I'm a little nervous to do this, but I'd ask that you indulge with me.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new.

Every morning, great is thy faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion, says my soul.

Therefore, I will hope in Him.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate y'all doing that with me.

Yeah, good job.

Way to go.

This is what we're saying.

All that I had expected from the Lord is gone.

Yet, because the Lord is my portion, therefore, my hope has not left me.

I have known that I was going to preach this sermon for a while, for probably two months.

I've known this was coming up.

And a song that has really been on my heart, I've been listening to it a lot on the radio, on YouTube,

is the song called My Portion by Shane and Shane.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with that song.

But over and over in the chorus, I sing out, you know, you are my portion.

And I had a moment where I realized,

what exactly do I mean whenever I say, God, you are my portion?

How many of you have ever thought of that?

Because if you're like me, the word portion doesn't really seem like something that's

something we would describe God as, right?

If you look up in the dictionary, the word portion, it's going to say something like

a small piece of a bigger thing.

So we're saying like, God, you're my small little piece of something bigger.

That doesn't seem right, right?

So what I did was I reflected, I talked to people, I talked to Jill Shelby and Debbie

Loy, and I just said, when y'all hear portion, you're my portion.

What do you think of?

And so I went on this study through scriptures, and what I found was so life-giving, I knew

this had to be the sermon.

So I hope that as we go through this, you experience the same thing that I did.

So early, we're going to unpack a little from the Bible, but early in Israel's history,

they're in the wilderness, or I guess they're on their way to the promised land.

This is before they get exiled in the wilderness.

But they're on the way, and God says, I want you to make your firstborn sons priests to

me.

He tells them, I want you to make your firstborn sons priests to me.

He tells them to do that.

But then a few books later in a book called Numbers, in Numbers, he says, actually, instead

of your firstborn sons being priests, I want you to set aside one of the tribes of Israel

to be a royal priesthood for me.

And he picks Aaron's tribe, the priest Aaron's tribe, the tribe of the Levites, to be his

royal priesthood, to stand as substitutes and representative for all the firstborn sons

of Israel.

And he tells them, whenever y'all get to the promised inheritance land that I have for

you, where you're all going to get exiled, I want you to make your firstborn sons priests

an allotment of your land.

The Levites, the tribe of Levi, they will not get a portion of the land.

They will get me as their portion.

Here's how it says it in Deuteronomy 14.

And you shall not neglect the Levite who is within your towns, for he has no portion or

inheritance with you.

Joshua 13, 33.

But the tribe of Levi, Moses had given them no inheritance.

The Lord.

The God of Israel is their inheritance, as he promised.

Are you starting to kind of pick up that originally this word in Hebrew that meant like an allotment,

a portion of the land, over time starts to develop more and more to mean an inheritance

because originally their portion of land was their family inheritance.

And then in Ezekiel 44, it says this, I, God, am to be the only inheritance the priests

have.

You are to give them no possession in Israel.

I will be their possession.

I want you to think for a moment in a rural tribal culture, just how crucial your land

is.

This isn't like nowadays where if Catherine, I need to go eat, we're going to go to Walmart

or we're going to go to Kroger or wherever you go, no free advertisements.

You know, you're going to, wherever you go and just get the food that you need, right?

That's not how it was back then.

Your sustenance came from the fact that you had land that was hopefully going to yield

a crop to be able to provide.

For your family.

And yes, the priest received a tithe from all the tribes in their land, but they were

not going to have that possession of land as their inheritance.

Their inheritance would not be that crucial thing.

Their inheritance was going to be God himself.

So after all that, do you feel like that's a small thing anymore to say that God is my

portion?

God is literally saying you priestly tribe, you won't have anything that looks like what

the world describes.

As an inheritance, you won't have wealth.

You won't have power status or land.

You won't have any of those things, but you will have all of me.

That will be your portion.

We see in Psalms, Psalms actually six times takes this word portion and uses it.

And the Psalmist, you can tell they've been living in their old Testament scriptures.

They've been reading this.

They've seen what God promised to the priests and they've started to adopt this language

for themselves.

In Psalm 16.

You know, I added this passage like towards the end of this, and it's turned out to probably

be my favorite of all the passages in this sermon, but this is a dynamite, just such

a good line.

Look at this.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.

Now look this, you hold my lot.

Now lot, think about like we live in cities where your lot is half an acre or here it's

like 0.001 acres or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Like you have your lot of land in the city.

And this is what I'm talking about.

This is what I'm talking about.

This is what it's saying.

You hold my lot.

God, the lines have fallen for me.

The lines of my lot have fallen for me in pleasant places.

Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance back then.

And today your lines, if they had a river going through it, if you had a lake or a pond

or beautiful pasture land, your lines fell in a beautiful place.

What the Psalmist is saying, God, my portion of land is you.

And I am declaring that my lines have fallen in a beautiful.

Nobody's land is better than where my lines have fallen.

Psalm 17, it says this.

This is actually the Psalmist kind of speaking against his enemy.

It says,

Arise, O Lord, confront him, subdue him.

Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword, from men by your hand, O Lord, from men, watch

this, of the world whose portion is in this life.

They know what their portion is.

They know what they're pursuing and what their inheritance, what they want it to be.

And they've chosen a portion that looks.

It looks like this world.

And now Psalm 73, whom have I in heaven, but you, the earth has nothing I desire besides

you, God, my flesh and my heart, they may fail, but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever.

Where have we traded in our portion, our inheritance of God for portions and inheritance of this

world?

I want you to think.

Maybe go back to the Old Testament story, if you're familiar with it, of Jacob and Esau.

Where have we traded our birthright for a bowl of stew?

Where have we chosen like, well, the thing I'm running after, where I want my lines to

fall, I want my portion to be possessions, earthly treasures that are going to rust and

they're going to decay and you can't take them with you.

I'm going to make sure that my portion are these short-term pleasures, these rushes of

adrenaline, these amazing moments that aren't necessarily going to satisfy my real desire.

We pursue status and power and influence that make us really important in this world,

but least in the kingdom of the heavens.

Or this fourth one, I'm very, I'm really glad we're talking about is I have been guilty

of being someone where when I think about my portion and my inheritance, I think, well,

you know, I've been a really good Christian my whole life.

I've really worked hard.

You know, whenever I was a kid, I memorized all those scriptures and I got all those stickers

on my chart.

And so I'm actually really pumped about what my portion and my inheritance is going to

be because my righteousness has determined that I'm going to have a great inheritance.

And we've entraded in the inheritance that God wants to give us, where God wants to say,

I want to be your portion.

I want to be your righteousness.

And we've chosen our own righteousness because we think it's actually better.

Let's look at one story of that in the New Testament.

This is in Luke 15.

It's probably one of our most popular stories in the entire New Testament.

There are these two brothers.

And one of the brothers goes to his father and says to him, hey, dad, you know how I'm

supposed to get an inheritance after you die?

Well, I would like you to go ahead and give me that money and I'm just going to go off

and leave here.

And if you don't realize how extreme of an insult that would be, just imagine saying

that to your parents.

Hey, you know, whatever you're planning on giving me whenever, you know, you're not around,

can I go ahead and have that and not see you anymore?

And he goes off and he squanders all of his inheritance.

He's living in this situation where he's literally.

Envying what the pigs are eating.

And he says to himself, you know, if I just went back to my father's house and I was just

a servant in his house, it would be 10 times better than this.

And so he decides to go back home and he's rehearsing in his head.

What am I going to say to my dad?

I'm going to fall on my knees.

I'm going to say, I would love to just be your servant.

And the father, when he sees him from a long way off, he runs to him.

He embraces him.

He puts on a robe around him, gives him the family crest, the ring on his finger again

and throws a party.

He picks the best calf.

They have a huge steak dinner that night.

It's amazing.

And the older brother won't go inside the party.

The older brother is outside and the father goes to the brother, the older brother and

says, hey, we're throwing a party for your brother in here.

He was lost.

Now he's found.

He was dead.

Now he's alive.

Don't you want to come inside?

And the older brother, I can just picture him saying, listen, I've worked hard all these

years and never disobeyed you.

The inheritance that I have.

It's coming for me.

I've earned it.

I deserve it.

And my brother, can't you imagine him saying that?

My brother, that guy, he took his inheritance, wasted it.

And now you've let him come back and you're throwing him a party.

And here's what I picture he's thinking in his head.

How is this going to impact my portion?

How is you throwing this party going to impact what I'm supposed to get?

What I actually earned, what I actually deserve.

And this is the father's response.

You will.

You will get everything that I have.

Now, will you come inside to the party?

And it says that the brother doesn't.

And over and over again, we make the same mistake as the older brother.

If you're like me and you've grown up thinking that your own righteousness is going to be

your portion, missing out on the banquet of the father saying, my portion is so much better

than whatever you think your righteousness is.

The older brother is looking around at what everyone else is getting.

He's thinking, well, don't I deserve more?

What about me?

And the father's response is, you don't understand.

Why are you worried about what your brother's going to get when you still get everything

that I have to offer in God's kingdom, your brother and your sister getting more does

not mean that you get less in the economy of this world, this cake, whenever other people

get a piece.

Yeah, you get less.

That is not God's economy.

That is not God's kingdom.

Because when your brother and sister get more.

Of the portion of God, it does not decrease how much of God you get.

So let's circle back to see this kind of amazing, I hope how the text and God's word is so powerful,

how it constantly reminds us of these truths.

So we begin in numbers with God saying, I want you to set aside a priestly tribe to

be the representatives of the sons of Israel.

And their portion is going to be God himself.

And then he says, by the way, I'm going to send to you my true son, the true firstborn

son of God, the true high priest.

And he's going to come to be the firstborn son of God and firstborn son of creation.

And guess what?

His inheritance was an is God is his portion.

The enemy is actually going to try and tempt Jesus in the wilderness and say, Hey, do you

want all the kingdoms of this world?

I can give it to you.

Would you like that to be your inheritance?

And Jesus's response isn't, well, you can't offer me that you don't have the power to

do that.

That's not Jesus's response.

He says.

I'm good because I know that the Lord is my portion.

Therefore, I will wait for him.

Jesus on the cross.

He could have said, man, I deserve to have God as my portion.

When I look at all these people, they don't deserve any of that, but he didn't.

He invites all of us who are in him to be a part of the inheritance of God.

And so now we are a priesthood of all believers.

We are the firstborn sons and daughter of the king.

And your portion, your inheritance is not something that this world can take from you.

It's not something that's going to fade, not something that you can't trust.

Your portion is God himself.

As Romans tells us, we are heirs with Christ and we are co-heirs.

We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

First Peter, it tells us, where am I?

First Peter, it tells us you have been born again into a living hope.

Notice how through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Notice that your hope is not dead because your savior is not dead.

You have been born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

That is our portion.

We get to boldly approach the throne of God without fear of condemnation.

That is our portion.

Now, I want you to think about.

If we begin.

Our life from this posture of we don't have enough.

Our cup is lacking.

Our portion is not as good as everybody else's.

When we become part of the family of God, we live from a new reality where we know our portion is God.

Our portion is Christ and he is more than enough.

And we believe the truth that my portion is full.

I want you to really stop and think about that.

What would it do to your life?

If you knew that God.

It was your portion and you trusted that he was more than enough.

Think about the things that you're worrying about right now.

Think about the things that when you look around at your neighbors, you look around at your friends and people around you and you think, well, I don't have what they have.

When I turned 16, I didn't get a car like that.

I didn't get a car at all.

Well, my house, you know, we've been working.

Our house doesn't look anything like their house.

You know, my career doesn't look anything like their career.

What if we trusted instead of letting that voice win?

We said, God is my portion.

I have everything.

I have everything that I need.

Here's how Paul would have put it or puts it in Philippians four.

I know what it is to be in need and I know what it is to have plenty.

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether I'm well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Do you want to know what freedom looks like?

It looks like that.

It looks like no matter what the circumstances are, no matter what the narrative is of, oh, I don't have enough.

I'm not.

I'm not enough.

I have Christ.

I have God.

I have an inheritance that can never be taken from me.

I get to boldly approach the God of the universe.

My portion is enough.

And when we experience that freedom, we move from a posture of lack to fullness to overflowing.

We live out of our new, our new purpose where our portion is overflowing.

Here at the Hills Church, we have a mission statement and we say it like this.

We exist.

We make and grow followers of Jesus.

And we do this together by being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did.

So let me tell you about what Jesus did.

Because Jesus lived out of a posture from the truth that his inheritance was God and that that was more than enough.

He was able to give out of the abundance of that.

Jesus says he prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies.

He anoints my head with oil.

My cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me.

All the days of my life.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

So let's look at what this looks like for Jesus.

If you're familiar, the story of feeding of the 5,000, there's, there's more than 5,000 people there.

And Jesus is there and he's saying, let's feed these people.

And what, you know, this little boy brings up five loaves and two fish.

And you can imagine that the, all the apostles, all the people are like, I'm going to get this much of that bread.

Does that make sense?

Like if we divide that up among all of us, like I'm not even going to be able to see the crumb that I'm going to get.

And yet the language of, well, my portion is not going to be enough.

What does Jesus do?

Everyone eats plenty and there are 12 basketfuls left over.

Jesus is more than enough.

And the wedding at Cana, everyone's like, we're going to run out of wine.

This is going to be so embarrassing.

What are we going to do?

Jesus' mom is like, talk to him.

He'll help you out.

He'll get you set up.

Jesus, he's like, okay, I'll do it.

And not only does he make like five barrels of wine, it's the best wine anyone's ever tasted.

And so we see this, well, we don't have enough.

Jesus is saying, not only do we have enough, we have more than enough.

And it's the best you've ever tasted.

We see every time we take the bread and drink the cup.

Every Sunday you've heard us say, this is God, Christ's body.

This is his blood.

And yet we've never run out.

Jesus, you know, for centuries, we've been eating a piece of his body.

We've been drinking an ounce of his blood and he's never run out.

There is always enough bread, always enough wine.

Because with Christ, when you live out of apostasy,

the posture of knowing that you have fullness in your portion,

you can always give and give and watch it multiply and multiply.

Let's read this amazing quote by Henry Nouwen.

He's an amazing author and theologian.

And this is what he says.

How different would our life be were we truly able to trust that it multiplied in being given away?

How different would our life be if we could but believe that every little act,

every act of faithfulness, every gesture of love, every word of forgiveness,

coming out of the overflow of our lives,

every little bit of joy and peace will multiply and multiply

as long as there are people to receive it.

And that, even then, there will be leftovers.

I want you to imagine what that would be like.

I'll tell you what it looks like.

It looks like me being brand new here and hearing that Emmanuel is going to New York

and going, we need to hold on to that guy.

We can't let go of him.

We can't do that.

And yet, we have leaders here who trust and say, guess what?

Whenever we choose to send, God's going to multiply and bring Diego to us.

And God is going to bring multiplication to all of our acts of living out of the abundance

of knowing our cup is full.

By the way, if you don't know, Diego is going to be serving in our NRH student ministry,

in case that name.

Yeah, let's give him a round of applause.

That's right.

We begin our lives.

With a focus on what we don't have.

And when we become like Jesus, and when we do what he did, we give knowing that our portion

is God, and God's never going to run out when we give from that place.

So, to be a person of the way is to move from lack to fullness to overflow.

I want you to imagine, just to go back to my illustration.

Why don't you bring that back out?

No, I'm just kidding.

Don't bring it out.

Okay.

The cake.

I want you to imagine that I took that cake in the foyer and I said, hey, all you kids

in the room.

I want you to go get a piece of that cake after service.

I want you to imagine the mad dash that would happen to go get a piece of that cake.

It looks something like 2020 with toilet paper.

Okay.

All right.

I want you to imagine the mad dash for that.

Now, I want you to imagine I said, actually, y'all, by the way, there isn't actually cake

in the lobby, but imagine that there was billions of cakes in the lobby.

And I want you to imagine it wasn't some Walmart cake that I put like sprinkles on and like

icing, but it was like the best cake you've ever had.

When you went out there that time, your thought process would be, this is the best cake I've

ever had.

I'm not worried at all about running out of this.

And I know that there's enough of this that I could take this to my neighbor and I could

take it to their neighbor and their neighbor.

And we're never going to run out of this.

I picture that is what Jesus is saying to the woman at the well when he says, listen,

the water that I offer you, it's the best water you've ever had.

And you will never go thirsty.

It will spring up in you overflow like a well of living.

Water.

I want to be vulnerable for a second before we kind of finish.

When I think about where I feel lacking, where I think to myself, man, I don't have enough.

I, um, I'll admit that I have my moments where I see people's trucks and I'm like, man, that'd

be awesome.

Best life drew has a truck on a ranch and has like cows like that's best life drew all that

sounds awesome.

And I don't have that.

So I'm lacking or best life drew has most where I see people's like vacations.

I'm like, oh man, I'm, I feel lacking.

That I don't have that.

But here's the reality.

Here's the real place where I feel a lack, a real place where I feel lacking is that

I spend a lot of my day wanting to be someone that is important and that matters.

I want to be someone that people are going to remember after I die.

And I got to go to a beautiful, beautiful funeral yesterday for Kyle Cotton at the NRH

campus.

And I remembered having tears in my eyes thinking, I want that someday.

I want people to be at my funeral and to say that person mattered to me.

I know Christ more because of him.

I want that so bad.

I want that to be my inheritance.

I want that more than anything besides wanting my kids to have a relationship with Jesus.

That's like number one.

And this is number two.

And I have had moments leading up to this sermon where I've had those thoughts come

in about my importance and how much I matter.

And I've just been able to find a lot of peace saying to myself, Drew, God is your portion.

You may never get people at your funeral.

There may be one person at your funeral.

You may not matter to anybody.

You may not make a difference at all to anybody ever, but God is your portion forever.

And that can never be taken from you.

Is that enough for you?

If I get everything in this world except God, my cup would be lacking.

My portion would not be enough.

But if I have God and nothing in this life, the lines have fallen for me in beautiful words.

Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

We're about to pray.

And what I'd invite you to do is after this prayer, we're going to sing a song.

It's called My Portion by Shane and Shane.

And I want to encourage you as we sing, really lean in to the words, lean into the chorus.

I want to hear this place so loud crying out, God, you are my portion.

Dear God, we love you.

We thank you so much for all that you do for us.

We thank you for the gift of your son.

We thank you for the gift of your son that takes us from being people that spend all of our time thinking I don't have enough.

I'm not enough.

And not only gives us fullness, but also brings us to a place where we're able to give, knowing that you're never going to run out.

I ask that you search my heart and search our hearts, that we look at that place where we don't think we're enough.

We think we're lacking and speak to us there, God, and remind us you are our portion and you are enough.

And let us use that to then give and give and watch it multiply and multiply.

It's in your son's name we pray.

Amen.