While I’ll admit to having had a wee bit of fun with this podcast, its a serious concept that every Christian needs to grasp. God doesn’t just give us stuff and take stuff away, the real passion of His heart is intimate relationship with Him.
God Giveth & Taketh Away is 6.5MB in size and requires iTunes or Quicktime to view.
I come from a family of pastors – My great grandpa was a pastor, my grandpa was a pastor my uncle is a pastor and so is my father. The description of an overseer/pastor/elder in first Timothy three is pretty darn critical to their lives and due to the power of Christ in their lives, has not been something that they didn’t stack up to:
1 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.
2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
4 He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity
5 (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?),
6 and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.
Nestled in the middle of that description is the requirement that is most applicable to the focus of this site: Free from the love of money. The Greek for the text translated about freedom from love of money is two words: not (μή) eager for base gain (αἰσχροκερδής). The second word is a compound word combining disgraceful (αἰσχύνω) and gain (κέρδος), or a disgraceful, dishonest, wicked, embarrassingly motivated increase in wealth. Practically speaking a leaders (elders) in a church should be focused on the edification of the saints and the maturation process of the sheep. The leader should be focused on what God’s word says and not using that position of authority to maximize financial well-being.
Things this passage does not say:
This passage seems clearly oriented towards the character of the overseer and not the financial wealth of the overseer. This passage does seem to indicate that the person is managing their household already. That’s where many people fall into a stumbling block. It is apparently common for paid leaders of small congregations to be in debt. This is simply not a good thing for a long list of reasons (you can read a few of them here) but part of it is that financial strains can sometimes weaken the will and cause leaders to stumble. In one town that I lived in a church’s pastor took the church credit card (why did such a thing exist?!) and maxed it out – on things for himself. This not only should have brought him under extreme scrutiny, but it should have also alerted the congregation to the needs of that family on other levels.
I happen to know that the three elders/overseers at the church I go to are not broke. I know that they have carefully and methodically increased their net worth outside of the church body [to imply without dishonest gain is an understatement]! Instead, they have looked to manage their finances in such a way so as to take care of their families and reduce any financial strain on the congregation. When the flock gathers at any given time under their teaching the focus is on God’s Word and not on funky distractions. The result is a growing body of sheep with a great respect for their leaders. You just can’t beat that!
Its a wee early for implementing a New Years resolution, but its never too early to start doing some of the things I’d like to do. One of the reasons that I moved from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) in 2004 and relocated my family to Denver was to go to a church here. It was a big move with some big implications. We left friends there in DFW but we hadn’t found a church we felt comfortable calling ‘home’ and after giving up (we were notably picky and have since learned to mellow out… but that’s another story) we looked at a few places to move and finally picked Denver. At our church we have learned a major amount of things about our relationship with Christ. One of the passages that has rocked my world since moving here is Second Corinthians 3:18:
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. [New American Standard]
This passage describes a relationship with Christ that is intimate and unencumbered with the normal distractions of life, but instead lends itself to the illustration of a bride and groom looking at one another, gazing with nothing between them. I recall standing on the stage in our wedding ceremony and looking at my wife-to-be and thinking, “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful – I must continue to behold her, to gaze at her and enjoy her beauty.” If anything had come between us I would have known it! Money can be one of those things that draws your gaze away from beholding. It can act like a hand that sticks out between you and the Lord and blocks your gaze. If money becomes one of those elements then its time to move on. It is time to get rid of the distraction that has interfered with the beholding of the Lord.
The consequences of beholding the Lord is that money and wealth get their proper place in life. You don’t find them to be worth beholding because they don’t hold a candle to the glory of the Lord! The consequences of beholding the Lord also include our spiritual growth. As we meditate on God’s glory (the emanating character of Christ) this passage tells us that we’ll be transformed into His likeness. Money can barely transform us into anything, and at best plastic surgery is temporary… but beholding has eternal benefits – I like that.
This is by far the most taboo post I’ve posted to date. You’ve been warned 
One of the things that I don’t see posted on Christian Personal Finance Blogs that I think need mentioning is the fact that there is a lack of “to others” in most churches. Each Christian should seek out opportunity to serve one another with financial and spiritual and labor oriented needs. What if you could help someone else at your church save hundreds of dollars by coming over and doing some honey-do list items on Saturday because you saw the opportunity, you met the need, and you loved them with the very life of Christ?
One case in point was recently on Gather Little By Little when the pastor’s wife verbalized something that was odd: Thank God for Credit Cards. That is putting a reliance on the wrong things for sure. Hopefully this post will outline some of the philosophical changes that need to be put in place in the life of believers when it comes to finance and the body of Christ.
Relationship with God
This post doesn’t mean anything if your relationship with God isn’t first priority. The Bible says that the Christian has been identified with Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating in the Heavenlies (Romans 6:6, 6:8; Col. 2:12; Col 3:1-3). That identification means that you don’t have to be dealing with any guilt for sins past or present. It also means that every Christian can boldly approach the throan of God (Hebrews 4:14-16) because you’re seated there in Christ (Colossians 3).
II Corinthians 3:18 tells us that we’re to behold the Lord Jesus Christ for spiritual growth. This beholding is part of the relationship. I liken this to a bride and groom gazing at one another during a wedding ceremony. If anything were to get in between them they’d know it! At least in their minds would be, “Hey! That’s not my husband!” or “That’s not my wife!” Think of your relationship with the Lord as the same thing. That relationship must come first before the rest of this post will have any value. If you’re not sure about some of this, I’d strongly recommend the daily devotional “None but the Hungry Heart” which you can buy at mjsbooks.com [disclosure:I have helped with that site in a very limited way but do not get compensated. One of the elders at my church is the steward of that site].
Relationships with One Another
The body of Christ is made up of individuals that have hearts, minds and spirits (spirits that commune with the Holy Spirit, 1 Cor 2:12). This body works as a unit. As Paul illustrated in I Corinthians 12 each person plays a part. Here’s the thing though: there is a very real need for the body to have a strong inter-personal relationship focus which operates like a neurological network. That is to say: I should know you, and you should know me because we’re in the body, and we should know each others joys and sorrows! We should each choose to cultivate an attitude of intimacy so that we can understand when needs arise. I personally believe that credit card debt in the church is evidence of shallow relationships. I’d be ashamed to tell anyone that I have a need because they don’t know me and I’ve put on a false face! The opposite should be true. We should be gladly admitting our needs and fulfilling them for one another (Romans 12:13).
As that last reference to Romans 12:13 states we should be giving to those who are in need. This can come from an attitude of service, but it can also come from the provision that exists in our own resources. While I’m getting out of debt I simply don’t have lots of extra money to throw around to help others, but once I’m out of debt, I will explicitly seek to give some of my money to those in need. Each believer who is not in need should wait on the direction of the Holy Spirit (sometimes its a phone call, sometimes its an observation, and sometimes its a prompting from God) and give to those in need through financial or service oriented opportunities. While I don’t have money I am going to serve others with my time and abilities.
An Attitude of Unity of Mind and Unity of Body
We as believers need to have unity of mind. In a relativistic culture that teaches, “We just need to disagree, ” we need to have a counter-culture mindset that says we agree that we may disagree here, but we’re working towards unity. I disagree with lots of Christians about lots of things, but I never once set those things aside as something to be ignored. Instead I see that as an opportunity for us to grow together and fulfill the command of the scriptures to be of the same mind (Romans 12:16).
An attitude of unity of body is similar to a unity of mind. We need to see to it that we’re hospitable to one another and identify how our lives can intersect beyond a handshake and a howdy on Sunday morning. Acts 2:42-47 describes the very first church, and in doing so it clearly explains that they were intimate and united spiritually and physically.
A Doctrine of Provision
All of this boils down to a doctrine of provision: God provides the needs, God provides the solutions, and God provides the agents of those solutions. Philippians 4:18-19 clearly presents the idea that God handles needs. It is clear that in times of need we have growth in our lives, so God can be seen to use these needs and provides them (James 1:2-4). The real area that I desire to see growth in the lives of believers (those who blog and those who do not) is the understanding that the doctrine of provision accounts for an agency! We are agents of God in the lives of those around us. God will provide fulfillment for needs. Period.
Conclusion
Practically speaking as Christian Personal Finance bloggers I would love to see a greater call for serving one another and helping others in the body get out of debt in creative ways. There is far too much ‘me’ and ‘I’ going on in the form of ‘get yourself out of your own debt.’ This isn’t to say that this is all bad, we need to own our mistakes, but it is to say that we should look for ways to help folks get out of debt and instead teach them to grow into financial dependence on God with personal responsibility for our stewardship as believers. What things can we add to this concept to help teach a greater attitude of servitude? Serving one another presents opportunities for saving, learning, growing, love and a whole slew of unity and goodness.
WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS VERY PERSONAL OPINION AND RELIGIOUS CONTENT. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THAT MOVE ALONG.
If there was a super-hero in my life as a kid it was my grandpa Peterman. He’s 83 I believe and he and my grandma are out from California to visit my parents and several grandkids’ families. This morning at breakfast with Grandpa he gave me some advice that was 80+ years in the making: don’t focus on what doesn’t matter. Sure, that sounds so logical and common sense – but how have I (and you, too) applied that advice. How have I managed my time and my life with focus on what matters? You see, I’m a Christian. One of those fuddy-duddies that just doesn’t care what popular culture believes, but I haven’t been focusing on what matters in that part of my life and letting that influence every other decision I’ve made – including my finances.
What I’m referring to isn’t about abandoning money for religion. I’m not talking about, “What would Jesus do?” I’m talking about total saturation. What is Jesus doing now in and through me in my life in every moment. Its about relationship with Christ in finances. Its about relationship with Christ in my relationship with my wife. Its about driving with Christ, showering with Christ, and as much as I hate it, its about doing the dishes with Christ. It isn’t about praying more, fasting more, doing more or being more. Its about my being at all.
My grandpa used to work at a soda fountain/pharmacy at the corner of 7th and Logan in downtown Denver. Its now the excellent Benny’s Mexican restaurant. My grandpa used to work seven days a week, ten hours a day. For five dollars. Five. Dollars. Seventy hours a week for five dollars. Sure, he was a young teenager then, but he was still working. In his own life he has done well financially in various ventures but none of those ventures came without his hard work. Hard work that he wishes he’d have done with less hours now so that he could have spent them with his family. Time that he could have spent growing in his walk with the Lord rather than being distracted by deadlines and such.
I have a great admiration for my grandpa’s life achievements but I appreciate his candid, honest discussion of things with me this last week. He loves me, he loves his family and he loves the Lord. There is nothing that this blog can possibly teach you about money finances that is more important than to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and to manage your life with that relationship in focus. I’m motivated to pay off my debt now more than ever, I’m motivated to save to go visit my grandparents at least one more time before they get called home to heaven. I’m motivated, but not by fear, uncertainty or doubt, but instead by my relationship with Christ.
OK, and the desire to not work for 70 hours for $5.00.
One of the things that amazes me is that I have friends who are at various income levels and that some of my friends make millions of dollars a year and some are living what would be considered sub-poverty level lives based on their incomes. While income scenarios do come into mind at times I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the person’s pocketbook and instead think about their personal wellbeing.
One of the things I want to ask readers of this blog is this: Do you find yourself distracted by poverty, do you ignore it, or do you see poverty as an opportunity for growth in the world around you?
This blog is about my personal learnings on personal finance. Its personal by definition as a blog and its personal because its about finance. Poverty is a word used to describe a financial state but it doesn’t indicate an emotional state (necessarily) and I think that to a certain degree someone who is frugal with a good income and someone who is frugal because they are very limited by their income would be more suited to hanging out than people with similar incomes with radically different expenditure levels.
The other side of poverty is that it does impact some people harder than others – and in those cases what can you and I do to help? Do we help in volunteer projects that educate people about personal finance? What about excellent humanitarian projects like PlayPumps.org?
In our house we have a few things that we’re trying to do to help manage Christmas’ big expenses and turn them into moderate and or tiny expenses. As the title implies you’ll want to plan ahead for Christmas expenses, holiday travel expenses and of course stay away from credit cards where the bills come later after the kids have played with the empty boxes and wrapping paper and left the toys for the dog to chew up.
We try to not let gifts be the part of Christmas that we look forward to and instead think of the gift of Christ and the time that we have together as the important part. Oh, and most items my sister makes for food – we definitely look forward to those things.
Today after church I got the opportunity to talk to another fellow at church who is older than me and I asked what he was up to. He said he was cleaning out his house before he dies. This was a little disconcerting in that you usually don’t hear of people preparing to die. However, as he went on to explain his thinking I was both impressed and I thought, “I will need to do that, and I want to tell others about this great mindset.” You see my friend has had to clean up after three older relatives who died.
He had to go into the houses of people who have collected things their whole lives and, with the help of others who were appropriately involved, attempt to throw out the unwanted, pass out the sentimental things, and give away or sell things of value that are still not wanted by others. He said he’s just trying to do some of these things before he gets so old that he can’t do them. He’s thinking of his son and daughter who are not in need of that burden, but would much rather go through the grieving process being able to focus on the good memories of their parents rather than sifting through stuff.
If you have parents who are getting old take a moment to discuss this idea with them. You might choose to pick up the book ‘It’s All Too Much!‘ so that they have some good motivation. The idea is not to get rid of everything, but to get rid of any clutter or excess items that are not going to be valuable to family members. I recently had another friend tell me that they moved their parents across town and they had several weeks of garage sales to get rid of stuff as well as finding things like fifty gallon drums that were empty but there because at some point in time they’d been ‘left’ there… nobody needed them, nobody wanted them, but they’d been collected and forgotten. Take the time now to go through those things while everyone is hopefully cognizant, and get ahead of the potential stress. You may enjoy the memories reminisced now together rather than having more reminders of past times later, but diminished by the distraction of ‘junk.’
I have many friends, and for that I count myself blessed, but we generally avoid talking about personal finance (with some exceptions). Why is that? Maybe we’re used to thinking of that as taboo, maybe we’re too embarrassed or maybe we just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I think I’m done pussyfooting my way around finances with my friends. As I evaluate the list above none of those topics have to involve me talking about my income or them talking about their income. None of those topics require me to know more about their actual financial situation than I do now for me to carefully and tactfully bring them up. I love my friends and family and want them to have a financial future they can be excited about, have rest about, and know the potential freedom of their goals. I’m most definitely feeling confident that my discussion of these things can be done with genuine friends and that we’ll both walk away from the conversation having learned a thing or two.
Today is my nine year anniversary. I’ve been married so long now that its harder to remember being not married. Sure, you may already be thinking that at thirty I shouldn’t have forgotten the first 21 years of my life, but those older memories are not as fresh as the ones I have with my bride.
Saving money by kissing your wife (or husband) is not as simple as you may think, you’ll have to do it a lot. You’ll have to kiss your wife (or husband) and mean it. You’ll have to tell them that you love them all of the time. And mean it. You see the best way to be a financial success is to do it together. Making the choices together will help improve the quality of your relationship because it will require you to think about things and respect one another. If you run into an area that you don’t agree… sit it out. Talk about it. Don’t force a decision. There are very, very few times when you won’t be able to sit on decisions – but by working through all of the other things with patience and getting to know one another you’re going to be able to hash out the forced decisions much easier.
Kiss your spouse, tell your spouse that you trust them! Trust is critical to financial well being because you’re a team working together to succeed. If one of you gets dragged around kicking and screaming eventually it’ll just be a drag to do anything because of all of the screaming. There is sometimes this myth that marriage is about communication. It isn’t. Communication is the result of a mindset change. You have to change your mind about your partner: you must realize that the two of your are one now. There aren’t two people there and so since the two of you are one you’ll have to communicate. But don’t worry about the communication until you’ve both agreed that there is only one of you now due to the marriage. You’re united like cement and the bond requires that you make unified decisions that are a result of communication.
I love my wife and she and I hope to save lots of money over the years from kissing one another and telling each other we love each other. Because we made that choice together, we’re communicating together, and we’re saving together. The golden years have started because they’re years that we’re together and dedicated to one another. Yeah for unity!
© 2012 finances.randypeterman.com · Proudly powered by WordPress & Green Park 2 by Cordobo.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional | Valid CSS 3
