Surrender

Today's blog is taken from the words of Rick Warren's Purpose Drive Life Daily Devotion.

The most difficult thing for many people to surrender is their money. Many have thought, I want to live for God but I also want to earn enough money to live comfortably and retire someday. Retirement is not the goal of a surrendered life, because it competes with God for the primary attention of our lives. Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and money,”

(Matthew 6:24 NIV)and “Wherever your treasure is, your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21 NIV). The supreme example of self-surrender is Jesus. The night before his crucifixion Jesus surrendered himself to God’s plan. He prayed, “Father, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine” (Mark 14:36 NLT). Jesus didn’t pray, “God, if you’re able to take away this pain, please do so.” He began by affirming that God can do anything! He prayed, “God, if it is in your best interest to remove this suffering, please do so. But if it fulfills your purpose, that’s what I want, too.” Genuine surrender says, “Father, if this problem, pain, sickness, or circumstance is needed to fulfill your purpose and glory in my life or in another’s life, please don’t take it away!”. This level of maturity doesn’t come easy.In Jesus’ case, he agonized so much over God’s plan that he sweat drops of blood. Surrender is hard work. In our case, it requires intense warfare against our self-centered nature.

I truly feel that society is suffering today financially, because God is wanting to get our attention and that many of us are in these financial problems and circumstances because God wants to change us, so that he can fulfill His purpose in our lives. The only way He can do this is for us to surrender in this area.

Surrendering your control over your money means:

· Following God’s lead without knowing where he’s sending you;
· Waiting for God’s timing without knowing when it will come;
· Expecting a miracle without knowing how God will provide;
· Trusting God’s purpose without understanding the circumstances.

We must remember one thing. When we approach money with a clinched fist, no more money can get in. It is only when we release the strong hold or open our fist and surrender it back to God, is when God can truly bless us and perform a miracle in our lives with our finances.

Is your fist or your heart open or closed to God when it

comes to your finances?

"Help us through our cash crisis"

Today, I was sitting in a waiting room while Makalee was taking a dance class and picked up Red Book magazine, August 2008. I was just thumbing through it and came across an article titled "Help us through our cash crisis". I started reading it and it really got my attention as it was talking about how you should track your spending and start a budget. Well, you know with me being the nerd of the household and being a total geek about FPU, that was all I needed to read to keep me focused on what they would recommend next. The writer stated that the couple that the story featured "are like lots of Americans - good people, who got in over their heads". Then, in steps a financial advisor who was there to give them a money makeover and was offering her expensive wisdom. She states that this couple "feared money management and that this fear has led to poor decisions and has kept the couple from tackling their fear and their debt in order to get back on track." OK, so I agreed with these comments and read on, right up until I get to the point where the financial advisor actually says "if you tithe less for just a few months, you can pay off one of your credit cards." If any of you know me, from then on out, I could not read any more as my mind was going off and asking how could a financial advisor really say that. Then I realized well one who was not a Christian could say it easily.

Stockbridge Community Church just started our 5th Financial Peace class this past Sunday and we had 50 individuals there. Their first homework assignment is to actually put down their expenditures on paper in a budget. I am certain that some of these families once they actually write it down will realize that there is not enough money at the end of the month, just like this couple did and they will begin to panic and try to determine how to make the number balance out with nothing in the red and where they needed to cut back. I would just like to strongly caution all of you class members to stop and think about what expenses you will cut out and how they will really affect your life. Let's start with a simple list of extra items in the budget for this couple:

• Cable $150.00 (wow, you have all the channels)


• Dining Out $300.00 (loving those Friday night steak dinners aren't we)


• Gym $80.00 (that you never attend)


• Tithes $400.00 (not even a real tithe and 10% of their income)


• Starbucks $ 50.00 (or should we call it $5Bucks)


• Groceries $800.00 (holy cow, I guess they eat at home well also)


• 2nd mortgage $92.00 (that was used to pay off credit card debt that that recharged)

I know this sounds harsh and I really do not need mean to beat anyone up, but I know that at one point in my own life I could raise my hand and say hey that looks like my own budget.

So now is the time when you have your budget committee meeting with your spouse or accountability partner and you must then decide what you must cut out of our expenses to have a zero balanced budget. I will admit that I have recently actually had someone come to me and ask me the question "if I could not tithe for a while, we could make it, what do you suggest?"

I responded like this. This is really a decision between you and God and that Dave says that if he can just get people to give something it is better than most. I can tell you that statistically only 5% of Americans give a true tithe, a tenth of their income. Of the others that give an "offering", on average these evangelical Christians give less than 3% of their income. So Dave says if you give anything at all when you start this program, it is better than most give.

This is what I can tell you from a true experience in my own life. I have found that when I give back what does not belong to me anyway, I ALWAYS seem to be able to make ends meet at the end of the month. Sure, I have to cut out drinking tea when I eat out. For my family that is $20.00 a pop, because we have 6 children. I also had to cut my cable bill down to nothing, but hey, I have now have time to read and write this blog. I have read more books the last several months than I have my entire life. I have to use the cash envelopes to track my grocery spending and it is not always easy, but otherwise, I too, would spend $800.00 per month. I love a good Starbucks coffee and I will admit that I struggle with that one, so I made sure that my blow money is used up every week in that area.

The point I am trying to make here is that when you start managing your money the way God intended it to be managed, you will not have to cut out or back your "tithe" to God. God will always provide for you what you need. I will leave you with a few Bible verses and let you make your own decision about what you will cut back in order to have a balanced budget when you are ready to do your budget.

Psalms 24:1 "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" - how can we even think that it is ours to decide how much we will give back to God anyway?

Malachi 3:10 "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it" - what HUGE blessings are you willing to give up in order to get a balanced budget? I bet this is not a guarantee the credit card companies can make when you pay them their full amount due each month?

Stuff by George Carlin

Last night Jamie and I were watching TV and on GBP they were doing a dedication to George Carlin. Now, I am not at all a George Carlin fan, but Jamie made me sit there and endure the TV show. He started doing his comedy act about "stuff" and it reminded me of what we learned in FPU about having "stuffitus". George looks at it like this:

• The whole meaning of life is trying to find a place to put your stuff. Really? at least that is what society wants you to think, isn't it?


• If we didn't have so much stuff we wouldn't need a house. That is a good point. We could become a missionary and not worry about leaving our stuff behind...hmmm.


• Your house is a place to keep your stuff, so you can go out and get more stuff. How many times have you just gone shopping just to get more stuff you did not need, to impress people you did not like, with money you did not have?


• Sometimes you got to get a bigger house to hold all of your stuff. Why, because you have TOO MUCH stuff. I wonder statistically how many people in America have more house than they can afford, just to store all of their stuff?


• Sometimes you even have to store your stuff. There is a whole industry based on keeping an eye on your stuff. Now that is where it gets to be a really big addiction and why Dave calls it "stuffitus".


• We think to ourselves when we go to other people's house and see their stuff "what an awful stuff it is". And, this is when greed steps in and we start coveting our neighbor with what stuff they have. Did you even stop to realize that this is one of the ten commandments, thou shalt not covet their neighbor?"


• Sometimes we've got more places than we've got stuff, so we have to go out and buy more stuff. And this causes debt up to our eyes balls my friends.

Amen to most of this right? At least until you have had a change about the way you think about money. If you truly hear what Dave tries to say in the weekly sessions of Financial Peace, you will understand that society has sold us such a pack of lies about how having stuff gives us power, control, prestige and fame. Then add having to pay someone for that stuff which we must have right now, just makes us "normal". Well, most people do think that, but once you really start to understand that God is very clear when he says that you will either love God or money and you can not love both, is when you really start to understand that "stuff" is not all that important any more. I want to be "weird" and try and change the way our community thinks about stuff. Stuff is OK, as long as stuff does not consume your life to the point where a comedian such as George Carlin has to write a script about it and sells millions, because it is true.

Transformed from the inside out

Music lyrics really speak to me and it is so funny how I am always looking at how things in life relate to Financial Peace. Our church praise band has started learning a new song. The title is "From the Inside Out". The chorus of this song begins "My heart and my soul, I give you control, consume me from the inside out Lord...". The road to financial peace is a journey. It is not easy and takes a great deal of discipline on our part. For most of my life, I allowed society to control the way I thought about money and having stuff. The real success of reaching true financial peace is to understand that this world, money and all stuff is God's and that if you can release control to God in these areas and allow God to change the way you think about money from the inside out, that you will truly have financial peace. A couple in our church will be screaming, "We are debt free" by March of this year. They began FPU in February of 2008 and had the average debt of most Americans. People may ask how did they do it? The answer is very simple. I have seen such an incredible change from the inside out in this couple. Having stuff is no longer what life is about to them. They have given all control of their money to God and God is rewarding them for that. One of the verses of the song says "YOUR WILL above all else, My PURPOSE remains, the art of loosing MYSELF, in bringing you praise". Are you ready to let God's WILL shine from the inside out and loose yourself and find your true purpose in life? When you do this, it brings true financial peace.

Criminalize Usury

You are probably asking yourself, what is usury? I would have asked the same thing had I not read an article that was given to me from a member of our congregation. The article was titled "A suggestion for correcting the economy" written by Joel Hilliker and was published January 2009 in The Philadelphia Trumpet. The definition of usury in the Webster dictionary is the lending of money with an interest charge for its use ; especially : the lending of money at exorbitant interest rates3: an unconscionable or exorbitant rate or amount of interest ; specifically : interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money.

Can you now say AMEN to the concept of criminalizing usury? The article says a great deal, but a few things it said is evidence that we must learn to live without credit and credit cards as not only does this make us slave to the lender, but also it is in direct violation of what God said is the right thing to do. In Deuteronomy 23:19 God actually forbids us from charging interest - "Do not charge your brother interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest." In Nehemiah 5 the entire story is about how God specifically condemns charging even 1 percent interest.

So why do I tell you all this and how will it help correct the economy. The writer of this article must have hooked up with Dave at some time, because he writes that the availability of easy credit teaches self-indulgence and financial irresponsibility. He goes on to say that it puts people in debt, which is a form of slavery, and leads to financial ruin. He suggests that if we criminalize usury it would teach the value of financial discipline, patience, self control and hard work and in the long run would increase individual and family wealth. The writer goes on to say that interest always tends to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. NO wonder why the banks buildings are so much more larger than our own!!! In a Bible-based economy, loans are actually a form of welfare, given to benefit the poor, not the rich.

How could that be you may ask yourself. Well, think about the interest you would have paid on $150,000 house over a 30 year period. Almost half, $150,000. If you were not charged interest, I bet you could find a way to invest that $150,000 of interested charged and I know that would change the financial status of your household. I know it would mine.

This article suggests that we need to start focusing more on God's laws, because had we have done this all along it would have prevented this financial meltdown. In God's abundant government people would buy only what they need, when they can afford it, and when they have the cash to pay for it. This prescription would solve the problem, because it comes from the greatest economist who ever lived. God designed a perfect economic system and all we would have to do in order to make it work is to follow His law.

What an economy and a wonderful world that would be. We would strive just like they did in the times of the Bible. This blog title just makes me shake my head and ask, wow, is it possible for that to happen? YES!!! We can make that happen one family at a time through Financial Peace University. I am on board, are you?

Loses his own soul - continued

God is truly amazing to me. This morning I was reading my Purpose Drive Life devotion and guess what verse the speaker referenced? Mark 8:36 NKJV - “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” To be honest when I wrote the blog yesterday, I knew these were words to a song, but did not know that they were a Bible verse. I mean, before I was walking with God daily, I would have thought oh wow what a coincidence. But now, I know that there is no such thing. God is trying very hard during this unstable economy through many voices to get this message across to all of us. The speaker goes on to say "our objective-in-Jesus is to rid ourselves of any gods we’ve fashioned from our own hands and to serve the one true God". What God are you serving today? Is it money? Are you losing your soul to it? I just want to remind you that it is never too late. It is possible to take control of your money and not let it control you. Are you ready to make a change? Then it takes faith in God and the principles of Financial Peace to do so. Come join the crusade. It is not just about taking back control of our money, it's about taking back control of our lives and no longer serving at the altar of money.

Gain the whole world and lose my soul

There is a new song out by Toby Mack on 104.7 The Fish, called "Lose My Soul". I am not much for rap music, but I love the words to this song. When I hear this song, I think about how what he says applies to money and what it takes to have financial peace.

"I don't want to gain the whole world, and lose my soul......Lord forgive us when we get consumed by the things of this world, that fight for our love, and our passion...."

God's Word has over 800 scriptures on finance in the Bible. God knew that this subject was going to be a struggle for us, which is why he talks about it so much. Financial Peace is not about not having stuff. It is about not letting stuff have you. It is about remembering what the scripture says in Matthew 6:24. It is your choice, God's free will, to decide whether you will serve God or money...you cannot serve both God and Money.

When we choose society's way of doing things in life, we get consumed by the things of this world. This causes tension within ourselves and the devil starts taking over your soul. I do not know about you, but having things and gaining society's world view of what is important is not worth it to me to loose my soul in eternity.

Where is your "free will" headed? Are you choosing the path of loosing your soul?