"Financial Freedom--Shortcuts"
Pastor Larry Fryling
Christ's Community Church
Sept. 29, 1997
Perhaps you haven't been here before or you've missed a couple of times
recently. Let's review what we've covered so far because we've already
had three messages on money. I know what you were thinking when I got into
this series. Five weeks of, alright folks, give, give, give, we'll take
another offering and I haven't done that-YET. But what we've talked about
in message #1 is the idea that we need to get into our minds that everything
that we have belongs to God because everything in this world belongs to
Him. At best, you and I are simply leasing it for a period of time. Maybe
it's something I have that's going to wear out or be stolen. I had it just
for a certain period of time. Maybe it's something that's relatively permanent,
but when I die I'm going to leave it all behind. Because all of my stuff
belongs to God, God has a say on how all of my stuff is to be spent. God
isn't interested in just getting 10% off of you. He's interested in getting
involved in every aspect of your life, including your possessions and your
finances.
In message #2 we talked about the fact that there are different categories
of people. The first category is people who are poor. The 2nd category
is people who want to be rich. The 3rd category is people who are rich
and one of the passages that came out of that is God's definition of wealth.
Wealth is Godliness, that is the character of Jesus Christ being developed
in us plus contentment. I'm at peace with whatever I have. The Bible says,
that's what wealth is. We talked about the dangers that we fall into in
society that says, "I want to be wealthy". There's a price to pay and there's
a damaging spiritual price to pay.
Last week we came to another message and we were talking about financial
worry and basically the sum of that message is Jesus is teaching us that
between our possessions and us there has to be a disconnect. As long as
I get my contentment and my peace and my security out of my stuff, I'm
always going to be worrying about it. But, if I suddenly shift my allegiance
from over here to the Kingdom of God, now I'm worried about what God is
worried about, reaching other people from Him, loving other people. That's
where my worry is and suddenly I'm not worried about all my stuff over
there anymore. Instead I've got this great focus because now I'm seeing
things through God's eyes.
This morning we're going to take the next step and this may be a painful
step for some of us, if not all of us. Because we're into the next step
now of God's involvement in our financial lives. To get us to start thinking
about this, sometime ago I watched the movie Jurassic Park. Somebody gave
me the video and I went home and I found that it didn't bother me at all,
although my palms got sweaty watching certain parts of that thing as these
dinosaurs broke out of their confinement and started eating people. I won't
forget the scene of the man with the shotgun going out looking for the
dinosaurs and suddenly, boop, right out of the bush this one came and the
man went, "oh, you're sneaky", and the next thing he knew, he was the dinosaur's
lunch. I won't recommend going out and buying the movie just to prove myself
on that one and you know as I go through life I don't have a lot of dinosaurs
that I'm worried about attacking me. But there is a monster in my life
and there's a monster in yours and his name is MORE. He attacks like that
dinosaur at those unexpected moments and he comes into our lives and he
suddenly creates all this emotional havoc.
Let me tell you about a few times I've been attacked by the monster,
MORE. One time was in a previous church and I had a Tuesday morning prayer
meeting and a good friend of mine was involved in the prayer group and
we met every Tuesday for breakfast and prayed together and we were walking
out of the church and we're in the parking lot next to his car and he says,
"you know, I've got to share something with you. My wife and I are having
a hard time financially. As a matter of fact, things are really tight in
our house". As he talks he began to share more and more and then he said,
"I only make?" and he gave me a number. That number went in my ear and
immediately went into my shoulder top computer and I calculated how much
he made and figured out almost instantly that he made 2 ½ times
the amount that I was making. The MORE monster devoured me. I almost didn't
hear the rest of what he was saying. Like, how can you stand there and
complain to me that you're making 2 ½ times what I'm making and
you've got trouble. What do you think I'm dealing with? Or there's the
time when you pull up at work and suddenly your co-worker pulls up in that
great brand new car, or that great big truck, or that great big 4-wheel
drive. Just moments before your car was okay and suddenly it's a piece
of junk. The MORE monster comes and?. Your house is okay until you go to
somebody else's house. Then you come home and you kick the front door and
you say, "this place is terrible" and you suddenly become envious. Then
another person says, "hey, guess what they did at my company. They gave
us a bonus" and your shoulder top calculator starts working and you're
thinking, listen to this. They got a bonus of this amount of money. Do
you know how long I have to work to make that kind of money? Now you begin
to say to yourself, "if I only had that, I would be happy". There's a jealousy
and an envy that begins to bubble up inside your soul. That's the MORE
monster. He doesn't gobble you up from the outside like Jurassic Park does,
he works from the inside and you can feel it about right here in your chest.
You've been there, you've felt that.
This morning what we're going to talk about is how to deal with that
MORE monster. One of the things that happens even to people in churches,
but predominantly in our society, is that the MORE monster becomes part
of our lives and part of our life style and our being and in the church
what happens is in order to satisfy the monster, we end up running ahead
of God. We start taking shortcuts to get the things that we think God should
give us. To illustrate that this morning, I'm going to tell you the story
of a guy named David out of the Bible. Maybe some of you have read the
story of his life. David started out as the son of a shepherd. He starts
his career simply out in the fields taking care of sheep. One day an old
prophet comes by the name of Samuel and he says, "David, God is not happy
with the King that's presently there, King Saul. You are going to be anointed
the next King of Israel. When Saul dies, you get the job". So he anoints
him. It's kind of a secretive thing. David ends up, because he goes out
the Goliath giant, he ends up in the court of King Saul. Saul sees the
success, Saul sees the blessing of David and becomes insanely jealous and
he attempts to kill David. One story, David's up against the wall and Saul
throws a spear at him and it just misses him. David decides this is not
a safe place to hang out so he takes off. Saul begins to hunt him. In one
of the stories, David has his men with him and Saul's getting very close
so all the men decide to hide in the back of the cave. Saul, as he goes
by the cave says, "it's kind of hot out here and I've been riding all day.
I'm going up in that cave and I'm going to take a nap". He goes and lays
down in the front of the cave and the men at the back of the cave look
and there in the mouth of the cave is King Saul and they go, "David, this
is your lucky day. Look, God just delivered him right into your hands.
Take your spear over there and as he's sleeping, just kill him". David
at that moment stops. He does a value check. What are the things I value
in life? He does a heart check. He does a spiritual check of his life and
he turns to his men and says, "I can't do it. I will become King when it's
God's timing for me to become King. I'm not going to take this matter into
my own hands. Nobody is ever going to say, "I became King because I killed
Saul. I became King because God said it was time for me to become King".
David let Saul go.
Later, Saul's killed in battle. David becomes King. When he came to
the point of maturity and God said the time is right, David was given the
Kingdom and David led the Kingdom of Israel into its golden age. Never
was the nation of Israel so prosperous and never had things gone so well
and now David was in charge. Let's take the tape and fast forward to the
end of David's life. In the later years of David's life, he starts to become
careless. His work ethic disappears. When the King's men go out to battle,
David stayed home and he sent his generals and his troops to fight the
wars. David begins to develop family troubles. His son ends up doing a
revolt against his own father. His morals begin to come apart. David starts
doing things because he begins to drop the spiritual shield that he has
and instead of making all the values and the heart and the moral checks,
David just does stuff now because that's what he wants. He's teaching us,
even as we get older, we have to be careful in our lives. You always have
to be on guard because it doesn't do any good to start the race, if you
don't finish it. So now David is making some bad decisions and one night
he goes out on the roof and he sees a beautiful women and her name is Bathsheba
and it was lust at first sight. He says, I want her. He had all kinds of
wives, but he said, I want her. He sends the guys over, she spends the
night and as a result, she gets pregnant. David calls her husband off the
battle field and the idea of getting reports from him. He says, "go home
to your wife". That way later it will look like it was his fault, his pregnancy.
The guy never went home. David has to send that man back and he sends him
with a note to the general saying, "when he goes into battle, put him in
the front of the lines until he's killed". Bathsheba's husband is killed
in battle. David brings Bathsheba home and he has one more wife. What happens
at this point is God comes to David and says, "David, you are out of bounds"
and he does it through the prophet Nathan.
I'd like to turn in your Bibles with me to II Samuel 12. David, you're
out of bounds, so God sends a prophet to talk to David and this is what
the prophet says.
"The Lord sent Nathan the prophet to David. When he came to him he said
there were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The
rich man had very large number of sheep and cattle but the poor man had
nothing except one little yew lamb he had bought. He raised it and it grew
up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and
even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came
to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own
sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him.
Instead he took the yew lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared
it for the one who had come to him. David burned with anger against the
man and said to Nathan, "as surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this
deserves to die. He must pay for that lamb 4 times over because he did
such a thing and had no pity". Then Nathan said to David, "you are the
man". This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, "I anointed you King
over Israel. I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's
house to you and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house
of Israel and Judah and if all this had been to little, I would have given
you even more".
David, you can see in the story that a rich man taking the poor man's
only lamb, was something that was wrong but somehow in your mind because
of your desires and your own wants, you can take one man's wife and make
her your own and end up killing him, David, you are out of bounds. What's
interesting is that God says to him, "I would have given you more. If you
had trusted me to this point in your life, but David you're becoming spiritually
lax and one of the things that's beginning to happen is you're starting
to take the shortcuts. You're starting to get into areas that I don't want
you to go because you don't want to wait for me to give it to you". If
we continued reading the next part of the chapter what God was saying to
him was, because you have chosen this, there are going to be some nasty
things that are going to happen in your family. Ultimately, the baby that
Bathsheba is carrying dies. But that was the beginning of the end for David.
The end of the golden age as turmoil now took over his family.
As I read that particular passage that phrase, "David if that had not
been enough, I would have given you more" is something that you and I need
to consider this morning. In God's dealing with David, what God is dealing
with is that His concern is, was, and always will be character. God's concern
for David was not his wealth. Not all of the possessions, not the number
of wives he had, but God's concern was David's character and this morning
that is God's concern for you and me. From a previous message that wealth
is not money. It's Godliness and contentment and some of us have walked
out of here frustrated and said, "but why don't we have more money. Why
aren't we richer?" The answer is God isn't that concerned about that stuff.
He owns everything. He will give it to us when we need it, but His concern
is that you and I develop a character. You see, we're in a loving relationship
with God. In that loving relationship there is safety and that safety is
that as you and I grow and mature, we become slowly and gradually more
and more like the person of Jesus Christ. His character begins to develop
within us. We're in effect in God's school, in His class and it's character
school. God is going to keep moving us along. It's in every part of our
lives but it also includes our financial lives. We can't take that one
part of our lives, separate it out and say, "God I want to grow over here,
but this part I'm going to keep for myself". So this morning what we're
going to do is the ideal like David. We're in character school, but we're
going to tie in this element of finances with the verse that said, if this
were not enough, wouldn't I have given you more. To do that, we're going
to look at three shortcuts that often times we make in order to get what
we think we need or what we deserve in the area of finances. We're going
to look at what it's done to our lives and we're going to look at what
the remedy is for it. David took the shortcut with Bathsheba and as a result
got some negative things from God. If we take financial shortcuts and don't
do things God's way, we're going reap to that also.
Let's start with #1. The number one shortcut on our list is gambling.
Just so that we can evaluate where we are in our lives, the question that
follows is: in the last 3 months, or the last year, have you gambled? This
could mean something like buying a lottery ticket, a sports bet, going
to Reno or Vegas, playing the tables, playing the slots. You know what
gambling is, the question is, in the last 3 months or in the last year,
have you gambled? I've heard people have told me that they like gambling
because it's so enjoyable. I've been to Vegas. I've been to Nevada and
various casinos, and I'll tell you, I've yet to see anyone happy doing
it. Because the purpose of gambling is how can I get more money fast? Let's
face it. You and I don't want to go out and buy lottery tickets because
we like to save little scraps of paper. You and I go out and buy lottery
tickets in the hopes that those numbers will match the numbers that are
in the newspaper and suddenly you and I can have a large sum of money.
Life would be easier, we'd have money to spare and in effect what we're
telling God is, "here is a great shortcut". In doing this oftentimes we
check out of God's character class. We check out of "I'm content living
with God's provision for my life. I don't want to work, I don't want to
budget, I don't want to save. I don't want to develop patience, God I want
money now". The basis underneath the whole idea of gambling is a discontentment
with where we are. I would be much better off if I won $20 million in the
lottery. I would be much happier. I need more money fast.
The second shortcut that we often take is stealing. I wrote surprise,
even in the church. I don't mean by that you've been stealing from the
church. What I'm talking about, even in the church, there are people that
we find it easy to steal. It may be that you went to work and something
ended up in your purse or pocket, your briefcase or in the trunk of you
car. Maybe it's going through the store and with a feeling of "I've been
shopping at this store for years. They've made more than enough money off
of me". Suddenly that ends up going home with us unpaid for. Stealing appears
in a variety of ways so the question we have to ask is, in the last year,
have you taken something that wasn't yours?
A number of years ago when I was in seminary, I worked in a grocery
store, and one day at break I was reading a grocers magazine. They said
the one problem in dealing with employee theft is that the employees have
soothed their guilt to such a point that if you approach a cashier and
say, "have you been taking money out of the till?", or to the bookkeeper,
"have you been adjusting the books" or "have you been taking things off
the shelf and putting them in your pocket?" they won't admit, they won't
believe they've done anything wrong because the feeling is, "I deserve
it. I've worked here for years with these low wages. I've worked extra
hours and what remuneration do I get for that? There's not been a raise
in this place for x number of years. I shop here a lot" And the stuff ends
up in our briefcases, in the trunks of our cars and in our pockets and
purses. You see, the shortcut is, "I deserve it and so I'm just going to
take it. I'm going to speed God's process along here. Why wait and save
and budget and all that kind of stuff when I can just take it now." It's
amazing the different forms that Bathsheba takes. You want her, just take
her.
Number 3 shortcut is consumer debt. When I say consumer debt, I'm not
talking about a controlled, planned business loan. I'm not even talking
about your mortgage, I'm talking about credit cards and debt for anything
else in our lives. On the top of the next page you notice that there are
numbers. In America in 1976 the average debt, credit card debt, in a household
was about $2500. In 1986, it went up to about $6300. This year, it's over
$12,000 per home. The question is, do you pay off your credit cards each
month? This year when I was on vacation in Oregon, I went to buy a newspaper
and ended up with the Oregonian. It ended up being a providential purchase
of a newspaper because out of that I picked up an article about a new game
show that's called "Debt". The understanding of this program is you don't
work for prizes. What you do is you share with everybody how far in debt
you are and if you win, you can get up to $20,000 to pay off your debts.
Wink Martindale is the host and the show is becoming so popular it might
move to ABC and have even a broader market. What was interesting was what
was said in the article and about a shift that we've made in American society
over the past few decades and that we in the church have made also that
we have not acknowledged or been aware of. I want you to listen as I read
right from the article. It says much of the show's strength comes not from
its competitive edge, questions ring more from People magazine than Jeopardy,
but from its philosophy. Some of the most popular game shows from the 1950's
or 1960's like "Let's Make a Deal" and "The Price is Right" awarded prices
so that the contestants could go home feeling prosperous. Most families
would have spent months saving to buy that washer or take that European
vacation. Debt is as different from those shows as the 90's are from the
50's. This is a quote from Andrew Golder who is the Senior producer of
the show "Debt" and one of its creators. He says, "When we were looking
as a game show to develop, we figured by the way Americans were spending
money, most of them had already bought their prizes. What most people needed
instead was a way to pay all those bills". The numbers buttress his point.
Having spent freely during the recent economic expansion, U.S. consumers
owe a record 1.1 trillion dollars on debt other than home loans. The article
goes on to quote one of the contestants, his name is Hertz, and it says,
take Hertz, a handsome 34 year stand up comic who faults his wife Susan
for much of their $8300 debt. She buys too much girls stuff, he tells the
television audience. The truth is that Hertz likes his share of stuff,
including brews with the boys and dinner on the town as he reveals after
the show. "It's one thing to make a nice salary", Hertz said later, "but
even then, why shouldn't my wife and I go out to dinner". You have to buy
a new computer for your recipes. Put them in a wooden box and you'll be
run out of the neighborhood. Of course, you have to run up debt on your
credit card, life's expensive. Do you see the cultural shift? The mentality
was that we will save and work and buy the washer. Today we bought the
washer, now we need to know how to figure out how to pay for it. Do you
see what happens in a perspective from God? Instead of waiting for God
to develop me in the character class, to develop the patience, to develop
the discipline, to develop the stamina to say, "I'm going to hold off on
that purchase". We now buy it and then find ourselves praying to God saying,
"how can you help me pay for this?" Do you see the shift and do you hear
the words of God spoken to David, "if it were not enough that I were giving
you, I would have given you more". But we don't have time for that anymore.
Since we have the opportunity for easy credit, easy debt, we're looking
at America in a tune of $12,000 per household and we check out of class.
"God, I don't want your provision, I want more. God, I don't want to develop
the character quality of patience, I want more. I don't want the character
quality of discipline, of budgeting, of savings, of being content where
I am, God I want more and I want it NOW." And we get it, but we've lost
the whole school of God's character and we stand still in our development
and in our maturity. I look at this and I can't figure out which commandment
we violate. Is it the first commandment? "You shall have no other Gods
before me?" God, how can I be content? I need more and if I have this,
are we placing that before God. Is it a violation of the first commandment?
How about the tenth commandment? "You shall not covet". If I go over to
your house and see something that you have and instead of saying, "wow,
I would really want that", I can stop at the store and with my Discover,
Master Charge or Visa pick it up and get it home. Someone even suggested
this week as I was reading, it's a violation of the eighth commandment.
"You shall not steal". They say, what is it when you go in the store and
you take something that you can't afford to pay for? We have got to be
careful. You see, we are learning not to wait and we're teaching that to
our children. How do you tell children that in life they've got to be patient.
In life, they've got to work. When they look at us and they see that we
have it and we have it now. There's no growth in character. There's no
growth in conviction. There's no growth in trust in God, hear that, that's
David's problem with Bathsheba. There's no growth in trust in God and there
is no building of contentment to be content where I am within the limits
of the provisions that God has given me. I want more and the monster rumbles
within and I feed him and he eats me.
I know what you're saying. The same thing I say. "But, how can I be
content where I am? If I just had a little more, things would be better".
I want to show you that every area that God puts us is according to His
provision for our lives, according to the gifts and the abilities and the
talents God has given us and the jobs that we have and according to the
possessions that we have. God has given us not only those things but certain
lessons to learn.
Let's look at some of these. God's boundaries, where I am. The first
one is minimal.
Suppose right now you have minimal income. As you look at yourself
and according to all the statistics, you are not a wealthy person. What
is God trying to teach you by being within those boundaries? There could
be several things. One could be discipline. The ability to say no. NO,
we can't afford it, we don't have it. No. It could be simplicity. To be
able to look at your life and say, "I could load all my possessions in
the back of a U-Haul truck right now. Maybe I wouldn't even need that,
but I could live very simply. I don't need all the big stuff, as long as
I have clothes on my back, a roof over my head and something to eat, that's
enough." Simplicity. Here's a word you don't hear in American advertising,
frugality. To take that penny and stretch it as far as you can.
How about creativity? I was almost moved to tears one time in a church
with a family that was a minimal income family. They came to church one
Sunday and they celebrated the Lord's Supper and when the wife took the
cup and I said, "take, drink, remember, and believe that the blood of our
Lord Jesus Christ was shed for a complete remission of all you sins", she
drank the cup and she looked at it. She flipped it upside down and when
I went to their house, she had collected all the communion cups from the
church and those were the ornaments on the Christmas tree that year.
Creativity. Maybe God is teaching us to have fun with limited resources.
We don't always have to go to the movie on Friday night. Let's go for a
picnic at the park. Let's go down to the beach and cook hotdogs by the
ocean. Creativity, fun with limited resources. Maybe God's teaching to
give the widow's mite.
Remember the story of Jesus standing by the temple and this women walks
by and in our terminology she threw a penny in. She gave in accordance
with what she had. She threw a penny in and Jesus commented and said, "she
has given a lot. She doesn't have anything, but she gave". God's teaching
you where you are in that minimal income to be faithful to Him, even with
a little. The final lesson He's teaching is contentment. I can be content
with this.
That situation in your life may be permanent. You may never have a lot
of money. It may be temporary, but while you're in that period of time,
it's the time to learn those lessons. Not to take the shortcut to consumer
debt. It's time to live within those boundaries. Some of us aren't there,
some of us are in the next category of greater. We have greater wealth.
We don't have that feeling of we've got to stretch every penny. But then
there are lessons that God wants us to learn. Take all the lessons from
#1 and move those down and then we'll get some more.
God wants you to learn discernment. How much is enough? When I go back
to Michigan and I go back to the neighborhood where I grew up in, where
there are small 3 bedroom houses and there were families with that 3-bedroom
house and all the neighbors had it and now as I go back, I say, "well how
about that family, do they still live there?" "No, they're gone". "Well,
how about that family?" "No, they're gone". All these couples now that
their kids are older and they've grown, they all say they now have more
money than they ever had before. It's amazing how much you spend on kids.
We've got all this extra money, what do we do with it? They've all built
huge mansions out in the country, seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, for two
people. As Christians we need to struggle. How much of a car do I need?
Do I need the greatest, biggest, sportiest, fanciest car or what's adequate?
The amount of money that I saved in between, what do I do with it? What
do I do when I watch TV and see little children with bloated bellies because
they're starving to death? Then I look what's in my driveway. You see,
it doesn't become easy because it becomes a struggle in us. What does God
call us to do with the discretionary money that we now have in our lives?
How do I deal with more? How do I get to the point of saying, "God, enoughs
enough. Just because I have more, doesn't mean I have to spend more, God
you've blessed me enough".
What would happen tomorrow if you went to work and your boss came to
you and said, "you know how much you make a year?" and you say, "you bet",
and you give a number. They said, "because you're such a good employee,
we're going to double it". What would you do with that extra money? Where
you put it, where I put it, tells where our heart is. I don't have an answer.
All I've got is a struggle and that's what every Christian should have.
How do I help the poor without them becoming dependent? How do I look at
the world that doesn't know about Jesus Christ and how can I spend on me?
How much should I give to that? That's where the struggles are. How do
I give generously? Do I get up to 10% and then say, "God, there's your
tithe". Do I go to 20, 30, 50% because I don't need all of that anymore.
I'm past the widow's mite stage, I can give much more than that.
How about the third category. Those that have much. These are people
that have great wealth. What are the lessons that God's trying to teach
in that area. These aren't easy lessons are they? I can see the wheels
turning out there as I'm talking. This is tough stuff. For a person with
tremendous wealth, one of the things that God's teaching is humility. Boy,
I've got to be humble. Everything I have, it comes from God. The abilities
that I have, it comes from God. Dependence. One of the greatest pulls Jesus
taught us about wealth is that is pulls us away from God. It's easier to
trust a portfolio than it is on someone you can't see. Sensitivity to the
poor. If they just worked harder, they'd be as good off as I am. Generosity.
How to discern, how to distribute your money without ruining your children
or your family. What are the character lessons you want your children to
have? You've got to make those decisions and those are tough ones to make.
How not to bow at the altar of American consumerism? What are the important
things in life?
Now you know sometimes, as the line says, "I get tired in class, but
ignorance is expensive". We in the church often times try to take the financial
shortcuts. Our Bathshebas' could be #1, spending time and money, of which
we could afford neither. At the lottery counters and at the casinos and
at the slots. Our Bathsheba's could be full trunks and full pockets and
having things in our house that don't even belong to us. Or our Bathsheba's
could be #3, that we're eyeball deep in debt and we aren't willing to tell
ourselves the truth. Instead, we're busy filling out the second application
for the visa card or finding ourselves at these places that loan us money
at an exorbitant rate instead of acknowledging the fact that we are out
of control. They become our Bathsheba's.
Jesus said that we could be free. He talked about spiritual freedom.
He said, "I died on the cross for your sins", but it wasn't just dying
for us spiritually, it was dying for every aspect of our lives including
the financial area. He's there to say I'm going to enable you to be free
from the MORE monster. When God talked to Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden, they were told of empowerment. He said, "I am going to give you dominion.
As you work in this world, you're going to be able to hold your head high
as a servant of mine and you're going to look at this world and you're
going to be able to say to this world, God has made me a little lower than
the angels and I'm here now to serve". Let me ask, when we are dealing
with the gambling and the stealing and the consumer debt, do we feel we
have dominion? I think of the executive who makes six figures, who spent
wildly, who bought the biggest house, the nicest car, was up to his eyeballs
in debt, who stands before me with his head down and says "we're really
in financial difficulties, we may lose it all". He's embarrassed and he's
ashamed. As opposed to a young couple whose combined income is $30,000
and they say, "we budget, we plan, we're not going to be here forever,
we're going to save, we're giving to the Lord what the Lord wants from
us and we give it with tremendous joy". They drive an old beat-up car with
a bumper sticker on the back that says, 'don't laugh, at least it's paid
for'. Which one holds their head up high and which ones feel empowered
and which ones feel they have dominion? It's obviously the latter.
II Timothy 1:7, God has given us a spirit of power. We can have dominion,
but we have to take charge. It's time to stop the monster. #1, if you're
gambling, don't gamble again. Take the money that you put into gambling,
put it in a saving account, save it and buy something that your family
needs with it. If you're addicted, get counseling, get therapy, go to gambler's
anonymous, but don't gamble again. #2, if you have stolen, take it back.
Take it back and find the person in charge and say, "I took this". I checked
out of God's character class and what I could do six months ago, a year
ago, I can't do today. Take it back and say God has changed my life and
I'm bringing this stuff back. God is going to build part of your character
that you would never have imagined happening before. #3, if you're in debt,
credit card consumer debt, you'll never be free. Have a family meeting,
cut up the cards, put together a budget that you're going to stay with
and pay off the debt and make a commitment that you will never buy anything
in the future unless you have the cash in hand to pay for it. To live within
the provision of God's care for your life.
This is radical stuff, but it's Biblical stuff. The Bible that shuns
debt saying, be content in God's provision, is the God who set the plan
and says this is how to live. Right now it seems tough, so I'm going to
close with the words from Hebrews 12. Think of God's school. Think of God's
class and this is the motto that's written on the door of the classroom.
This is what God's going to do to you and me if we enter the class and
stay in it. It says?
"God is educating you. That's why you must never drop out. He's treating
you as dear children. This trouble you're in isn't punishment, it's training.
The normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children
to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect
our own parents for training and not spoiling us so why not embrace God's
training so that we can truly live? While we were children our parents
did what seemed best to them, but God is doing what is best for us. Training
us to live God's holy best. At the time discipline isn't much fun. It always
feels like it's going against the grain Later, of course, it pays off handsomely,
for it's the well trained who find themselves mature in their relationship
with God".
Let's pray together.
|