Managing God's Treasure 2

OK, we're going to go ahead and get started. I don't know if people got, messed up because of the time change or they were here last week and figured out I don't know what I'm doing and, decided not to come back. so that's a possibility too. I know we have some extra visitors this morning.

We have some high school folks. coming in. Somebody mentioned, we might even have some junior high folks, joining us this morning, so that's a good thing. Let me go ahead and pray and, then we'll get started.

Lord, thank you just for your, your goodness towards us. there's there's so many things that, that you do. I especially thank you for the Holy Spirit. I've been thinking about that, a lot this week and just, reaching out to experience, the nearness of your spirit, revealing my heart and, and leading me.

I just pray you would guide us this morning as we, as we work through your word and we work through a topic that I know is, is very much on your heart. Every resource we have belongs to you. Everything we have has your name on it, and your desire is that every single thing do the maximum good. and Lord, your good is our good.

your good is us experiencing true life. Lord, help us to learn to manage the treasure that you've given to us. That we might experience. Your true life.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. While we're getting people coming in, I'm just gonna deal with a couple of things. last week, there were some people who came up after the class and asked a couple of questions.

The big question that I got was what about student loans? What about student, student debt? next week we're going to talk about student, about debt in general cause once you have debt, pretty much all debts created equal to some degree. not totally, but there's, it's debt is debt is debt.

But, so we're gonna talk about that, but the, the, the topic got me thinking and I remembered that somebody here at church had written a book about it. And I reached back into my mind and sure enough, Alex Chediak, or Doctor Chetiak, has written a book called Beating the College Debt Trap. And I sent out, I think I sent out a, the information on the book when I sent out the last email and I'll send it out again. It is a really good book.

I haven't completely finished it, but if you, it's not gonna help you a whole lot if you already have student loans out. But if you're someone Who's either, currently in the system or you are looking in the future towards going to college and wondering where the money is going to come from. It is an excellent book. It is full of just real, like a really, really good wisdom.

I've, I've read about a third or getting close to a half of the book and it is just full of great wisdom., Doctor Chetiak is a professor. He, he's an insider. He's been around the system-wise, he's done a lot of research and he gives you the insider's guide to how things work and what to look out for. Cause we'll talk about this next week.

When it comes to debt, our culture is, our culture just sells debt. It's just, it's just an it just seems it's an expected way of life. Everybody borrows money and the people who, who want you to have debt, just sell it like it's, it's nothing. And that's no, and reading Alex's book, cause I never went through that.

I went through college paying, paying cash for college. It was a lot cheaper then and, and my lifestyle was Well, pretty much primal. my, my dad gave me 100 bucks a month. 100 bucks a month, a month, and I had to, I had to get shelter, clothing, food, all that out of that 100 bucks.

True story, I, I, I saved money. On 100 bucks a month from my dad. He did not spend it all. now we won't talk about what I ate.

We won't talk about how I got around. I own no, not owning a car is a is a huge blessing. If I could go back to not owning a car, I would. It's a huge blessing not to own a car.

You save a huge amount of money. But anyway, where was I? but anyway, I, reading through the book, the colleges just sell debt like it was, it was nothing. You walk into the financial aid office and they just, oh yeah, here's, here's this and sign that, sign this, sign that.

And all of a sudden you, you're You're in a lot of debt. So we're gonna talk about that a little bit next week, but I highly recommend that book. It's, it's really, really good. Even if you're not planning on college, going to college, and he actually talks about that too.

College is not for everyone, he talks about the alternatives. It's just, it's just a really good book. It's something that I would, especially if you're in the teen area, starting to think about your, your future, those kinds of things. We're gonna talk about debt more next week, probably the debt.

I won't say expert, is, is Dave Ramsey. last time we taught this class we used Dave Ramsey, but if you have debt, this is probably the best, one of the best resources you can use to get out of debt. He's very motivational, lots of great ideas for how to get yourself out of debt. So, enough said about that.

The other thing that came up, was someone talking about should we ever have debt, and we'll talk about that next week is, is, is debt just universally Bad, is, is taking out debt a sin, in other words, and we'll talk about that a little bit next week because I want to dig into that a little bit, a little bit more. All right. Let's talk about last week's this week's assignment real fast. before, before we do that, I need to, Get that to stop doing what it's doing.

So that I can switch. So I can switch pages. There we go. This class is part of the equippping for the journey class or the journey series, just gonna remind you, and here at Cornerstone we are on a journey from brokenness to wholeness and this class is being taught within that context.

I said last week, I am not essentially a finance guy. We all have to be finance people to some degree. My, that's not my major. Thing in life.

There are, there are people in our congregation, many of whom have been talking to me and I really appreciate it, who are finest people. They love the numbers, they love budgets, they love all this stuff. That is not me. I'm a gospel guy.

I love the gospel and what I I'm finding and what keeps me motivated is getting me to do things I've never done before is the fact that managing God's treasure is one of the major keys to moving my heart and that's what I really want. I often say I really want to be a real human being and that's what I want. I want to be a real human being. And managing treasure is a big part of that transformation.

It's not, I used to always think about there's the, there's the give and the keep, right? You have the give side of, of your, of your budget and the keep side of your budget. And I, I give and what takes care of that part, right? I've done the God part.

I've, I've given, I've given more than most people or whatever, whatever I'm thinking over here. And I never really thought about the keep side. But God's stuff is on the keep side too. The stuff that goes that way is God's treasure and the stuff that stays on this side is God's treasure.

And both of them are in my possession to change me. So I, I, I need to bring the gospel to the keep side. And we're gonna be talking about budgeting today and that's why I'm now for the first time in my life, excited about budgets. I've, I've, I've started budgets several times.

I've used different software and spreadsheets and eventually I just, I just lost interest. I didn't see the point and, and stopped. But I'm realizing now what really is in this thing is, it's the power to, to change me. That's what God is really interested in.

Here at Cornerstone, we want to take the gospel to every area of life. Milton talks about reasoning from the gospel to everything. And we want to reason from the gospel to our finances. What does the gospel mean for our treasure or the treasure that God has put under our care?

We want to apply gospel thinking to all of our decisions. We want to live, we live inside the gospel. and inside the gospel we go from brokenness to wholeness, and I, trust me, I've tried this, do not try to go from brokenness to wholeness outside the gospel. that's, that's surefire miserable life, pretty much.

Maybe you'll make it, maybe you won't. life inside the gospel is where you want to be, and we want to do our finances within this gospel. If you're doing your finances over here or over here, they're not playing a part in this process. We want to bring our, we wanna bring our finances inside our gospel thinking and that's the goal of this class.

Jesus says that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, which means that every single finance decision is what decision? It's, it's a gospel decision. Every decision you make deals with you, with moving you from brokenness to wholeness. Every single decision, let's say you make a what?

Oh, I. That's no fun. Yeah, everything I think. That's gonna cramp my style, like, I had to think about all these decisions and think, think, think, think, think.

Oh no. If you want this, this doesn't cramp your style. This is going to, it makes your style. it, it, it, it, it will, it will make your style.

So that's, we'll talk about that a little bit more, a little bit more later on. All right, let's get to, last week's assignment and I'm gonna skip over the goals and reviewing stuff here and get right to, the Meat of this and go over. What in the heck? All right, there we go.

OK, last, your assignment was to go home. And start doing inventory, looking at where the treasure is. You can't manage. What you don't know.

And for me, it's, I, I've, I've been going through this process for the last month or two and I'm pretty surprised about what I didn't know. there's, there's a number of things out there I, I, I was not aware of. So I'm just gonna, kinda put it out to you guys, any interesting discoveries as you took inventory of treasure or as you began tracking where your treasure is flowing? Did anybody Have any surprises, things that were Things that were strange or you didn't, you didn't, you didn't know what's going on out there.

Find any hidden treasure? Yes. year old car and I've been spending So you, you added up the The expenses and they're higher than OK. Well, a new to you car.

Yeah. Yeah. so yeah, that's a good discovery. You get a, get a handle on how much it's, it's actually, it's actually costing.

Anybody else? Discovery that you made, just checking into your stuff. You found, you found something, you went, oh my goodness. Yeah, January, uh-huh.

There you go. That's a good idea. I like December and January. Holiday shopping I, it was pretty heavy Yeah, you're gonna get months that are really, really heavy and we're gonna talk about that today when we're doing, we start going from tracking our spending to doing budgeting is you want to start looking at expenses, predicting expenses and then putting them in your budget so that you're putting that money away over a period of a period of time.

So you're not getting these. these surprises, getting a handle on which months. The other thing that's helpful to do is to take those monthly, some of those monthly expenses, for example, going, going out for coffee or whatever and multiply it by 12. And see what it costs for an entire year.

I, when I was, when I was teaching, I used to talk to the I, the, the tech guys a lot. At, at the school and those tech guys went out for lunch together every single day. Every single day they go out to lunch someplace. And, I just asked him, do you have any idea what that costs?

And He didn't know. He didn't know what, what the cost was. I said, you, how, how much, how much do you spend on, on lunch each time? And he told me and about, it was like 8 to $9 or something like that on lunch.

And I said, OK, so that's times 5, that's X amount of dollars per week and then, so let's multiply it times, let's say there's 4 weeks in a month times 4. That's, it was like a couple of $100 a month. And I said, what's multiplied by that by 12? We multiplied by 12 and He, he was It was, it was breathtaking.

I said, you, I said that's why I bring my lunch every day. that's why I bring my lunch because it, it adds up to a, a, a lot of money eventually to be doing that. So there are things like that, that, that, that the tracking part will, will help you with. For me, doing an activity like that actually changed my life.

when I was young, I was just, I was pretty much, oh, the one we're I think is lazy. I was just flat lazy. All I cared about was doing what I wanted to do. I wouldn't, I didn't do school homework.

I, I, I didn't do anything but what I wanted to do. When, when I got control of my lunch money, I didn't even spend it on lunch. I, I saved it up, came home, bought candy and sat down in front of the TV and watched TV and ate candy. That's the kid I was.

I just did what I wanted to do. I wasn't a bad, I wasn't the bad kid, well, most of time I wasn't a bad kid, but, but I just did what I wanted to do. When going through elementary school, all my classes were chosen for me. When I got to high school, you, I got to Choose my own classes.

I remember sitting in in 8th grade and I got this piece of paper that says check your classes and I'm sitting in my advanced English class with all these hard assignments and smart people and I went There's the hard class, there's the easy class. But, I just went through and I selected everything that was easy. Just write down the line, every, I, I'm not taking this intro to super duper conductivity sinus thingy here. I'm taking, science for people who just want to get a grade.

That's what I'm taking, that's what I signed up for. And so I went off to, I went off to high school, it's probably the easiest schedule on campus and my I think it was my freshman year, I was, I think it was my English teacher who asked us to do an inventory, and not of our money but of our time. And I went through and inventoried my time for like a week or a month or something, got it back, lined it all out, and I looked at it and I went, I'm a vegetable. This is pathetic.

I'm not going. I'm not doing anything. I'm not going anywhere. It was, it was a, it was a revelation.

And from, from my perspective, that was actually the Holy Spirit waking me up. This is a lazy kid. Our neighbors would take us, to take me to Sunday school and Sunday school just seemed like a huge waste of time. It's a lot like regular school.

And it, the, the topic didn't seem very interesting. And I remember after a couple of visits, the guy who was teaching class took me outside and said, you're such a good kid. I, he gave me a harmonica and I thought, well that's it. I've got this stuff down.

I'm a good kid, that's what it's about. I'm good, so I didn't, I didn't want to go anymore. Well I, I could go ride my bike. Why do I want to go sit in Sunday school?

So I, I, I gave up on that. Religion just seemed to me to be a waste, a huge waste of time. Why add all this stuff onto your life? It's like a big add-on that was unnecessary.

But that, that experience woke me up. It just, it was like, it was like a kick in the head and I began thinking, well, I, I really need to get grab a hold of this, and I basically changed. Went out, went out for sports, that lasted one day on the basketball team. But, and because I learned I hadn't done anything, right?

You, you, you don't get very good at basketball, eating candy and watching television. so it got me interested. I so I had to discipline myself, so I found a sport. I decided to do tennis.

I could practice that really hard, practice really, really well, got on varsity my freshman year, and then next year took the hard classes and just began, it, it just, it completely changed me. I had a lot of making up to do because I couldn't spell to save my life. I never practiced my spelling words. And just a lot of things I was behind that.

It took me all the way until probably my sophomore year of college before I really caught up academically with all the stuff I hadn't done. And eventually I, I said, well, I should check out this religion stuff, maybe there's something to it. And so I, I started reading different books, picked up a copy of the Bible at the bookstore and read it, and make a, make a long story really short, eventually became a believer and that completely revolutionized my life. So, these kinds of things were taking inventory can be very, very helpful activities.

and it was for me, just, just, just seeing it on paper and even now looking at my finances and seeing them on paper, my bad decisions and my good decisions are right there in front of me, right? The, the, the, the, the, the money that's not doing anything or it's getting wasted or things are happening are right there in front of me and that's gospel stuff. That's really, really, really good stuff. So if you haven't gotten into that, I encourage you to do it.

And, I encourage you to get to get busy on that. All right, budgeting. As I said before, there are people who love to budget. They love to keep all the numbers straight, they like to add them up, they like to see everything, they like to make sure everything's organized and everywhere.

That is not me by default. And so what's the problem? Well, Dave Ramsey catches it, catches it really well. He says wealth building is not rocket science.

It really isn't. getting your finances in order is not complicated. so it's just a good thing for me and probably for you. Winning at money.

And whatever your definition of winning at money is, that his definition of winning is not quite mine. My definition of winning is moving from brokenness to wholeness with my money, but he says 80% is 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge. What is, what isn't the problem, what to do isn't the problem, doing it is. Most of us know what to do, we just what?

Don't do it, right? We know we should be doing X and we don't do it. The problem is with our, it's not with our want to, often we want to be better. Our problem is with our are due, it's with our actual behavior.

Well, what does the gospel say to that? First of all, the gospel says, what is your root problem? Is your root problem your circumstances? Is your, is your root problem that your income is low?

Is your, is your, is your root problem that you've, that you've, that, yeah, you, you've got too many expenses or blah blah, all the whole list of, is, is that the root problem? No, the root problem is not our, not our circumstances. The root problem, and I like the way Dave Ramsey says it, our root problem is the person in the mirror. that is our root problem.

And what it is, it's, it's a failure to understand the true nature of our brokenness. That's where the gospel is amazing. The gospel gives us the freedom to do what? Take away the mask.

And look at ourselves as we Really are. Without any fear. No fear We can face up to who we really are. And to a certain extent, well that way, and we can live with ourselves.

I can live with my, in the gospel, I can live with myself in a broken state. And please, please, please, please, please don't define yourself out of brokenness. We tend to do that. We, we, we change the bar, right?

We move the bar to a different place, we redefine it, that's how we deal with brokenness. We look at brokenness and go, OK, I, I guess redefine it. I'm good. No, you're not good.

Right? You're not gonna be good tomorrow, you're not going to be good the next day. You're not going to be good until you see Jesus face to face. Right.

But we can move. And part of moving in the gospel is, is in one sense being comfortable with the brokenness and staring it in the face because we are, we are truth suppressors, that's what we do, that's a key to our brokenness as we suppress what is really true about us. The gospel says, sets us free to look at the real truth and not pretend. it takes away, worrying about what people think about you.

I really am jacked up. I am jacked up. But I am I'm moving. I'm, I'm gonna, I, tomorrow by, but with the help of God, I will be, I will be better.

So that's a, that's a key part of it. And Paul talks about this, this idea of living inside our brokenness. This is Paul writing to believers as a believer, and I'm not gonna read the whole quote, but he says, the willing is present in me and the doing of the good is what? Not.

You've experienced that? That is, for me, everyday life. That's everyday life. I wake up in the morning reminding myself of my brokenness.

Here, I, Lord, these are the things I know are wrong with me. And then I just, I, you go to the point, well, the, the thing is where do you go with this? Where do you go with this? and Paul's going to answer that question.

he says, Cause this is where you can go. He says, wretched man that I am. You can become depressed, right? Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from this body of death?

Thank, he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Does he all of a sudden make us good? No, what's the answer? We don't go from being broken to being whole.

We go from being broken people outside the gospel to broken people inside the gospel. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because, and there's no more law of sin and death. I now sin.

But I don't what? I don't die. I sin, but I don't die. That's amazing.

That might lead you to say, well, OK, well, I can just sin. If you think that thought, you got it. That's exactly the inference you would make. It's that crazy.

If you think that you, you've got it. It's that crazy. I can sin, but I don't die. Now, do I sin?

No, I don't want that, I, I, I want to be free from sin because the cost of that freedom from the law of sin and death was huge. It cost the death of God's son, that's what he goes on to say. So with the, what the law could not do because as it was to the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin. He condemned the sin in the flesh.

So the cost of that freedom is immense, but it is true freedom. I sin, but I don't die. And that is just an amazingly wonderful place to be. why?

So that the law, so the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who what? Do not walk according to the flesh but walk according to the spirit. So we go from walking in this. tension to walking with a companion.

So on the journey we have someone who goes with us, we have the Holy Spirit. And so as we begin thinking about budgets or, or money, We have the freedom to face up to our mess ups. Right? I can look at my spending, I can look at all the things I've done, I can go, OK, I sin but I don't.

I don't die. I sin, but I don't die. And I can turn. With, with no fear of condemnation to the Holy Spirit and say, Holy Spirit, help me get better at this.

And so what we want to get to is this idea of spirit-filled budgeting or spirit-filled management of our finances. not, not because, not under guilt, not under condemnation, not because Dave Ramsey says I have to, or whatever. We want to set, Paul says to set our minds on the things of the spirit, right? So to set our minds.

Human beings do not have a neutral. There's no neutral setting to a human being. Yeah, I'm, you can't just say I'm just cruising right now. I'm in neutral.

We're never in neutral. There's no, there's no neutral setting. Our default, if, if, if you, if you stop setting your mind, you go to what? You go to, you go to your default which is your flesh.

Right? That's what you're going to go to, you're gonna go to the default and so we have to set our mind. Setting your mind means a what? It means a Plan, see where I'm going?

Right? Budgets are a Plan Budgets are part of setting your mind on the The spirit You want your budget to reflect the things of what your flesh. No, you want your budget to reflect what? The things of the spirit.

So, it, it makes sense, you wanna set your mind on the things of the spirit before you even open up your finances, before you even start mint, before you even pull out that spreadsheet, before you do anything. You wanna set your mind on the spirit, study, ask and plan in the spirit. Ask the spirit to show you where you're messing up. And, our budget's legalism.

They can be, yeah, that's exactly the point. Budgets can be legalistic. You can, you, and, and your flesh likes to do this. Your flesh wants to do things legalistically and some of the people, and this is gonna sound bad, some of the people who do budgeting, who like budgeting, I would argue do it legalistically because what they're doing is they're doing their budgets, they're looking over at people like me possibly.

And they're going Hmm Yeah, they pull out their phone. And they can go, yeah, I've got $10 for lunch today and, I know exactly, blah blah blah, and they can just tell you right down the line, everything in it. And it's, it's very likely that they are, they are budgeting what? Legalistically.

Or you say, well, why don't we go out to lunch today or go do something? Well, pull up the phone, put them in. Not in the budget or whatever. It's, it's, it's very, it's very legalistic.

What we want to do is we want a budget by the spirit and not the law. Because, and, and why do we want to be a plan? Because a lot of times our, our spending or our use of the, of, of, of resources is impulsive. I see it.

I like it I I buy it. And the bad thing about our culture is we carry around tools in our pockets that give us unlimited access to all of our money. Right? I love it, I love living the time we live, but I can pull out my wallet and access to almost every penny I have from my wallet and take out my cellphone, I can get the rest of it.

it's We have that access all the time and I even have access to money that I don't have. in the old days, taking out a loan was a big deal. It was done very, very rarely. Loans were a very big deal in the old days.

not a lot of people got them. Today it's just, it's in your pocket. can't afford that cool TV set. Unlimited access to money.

So, the plan is, is dealing with that impulsive, impulsivity and it's also setting our minds on what? Your budget should reflect the things of the spirit. So you're much more, with a budget, you're much more likely to operate in a spirit-filled way. also, God has created us this way.

God has actually created us to be planners. He's, he's he's created us to be creators. Human beings are amazing creatures. We really are.

we, we, we are absolutely amazing creatures with amazing capabilities. Amazing, amazing creatures. let us make man in our own image. We are in the image of God, incredible creatures.

Right? God says fill the earth and subdue it. Make the earth, make all these resources serve you. That's a powerful creature, isn't it?

Very powerful, but all of this takes planning. No planning, no power, or very little power., God said cultivate, cultivate it, to keep, take care of it. humans were created to be amazing. Amazing takes planning and planning will make your style amazing.

So it's, budgeting is not cramping your style. Budgeting is Making your style go crazy. That's what, that's what I learned in my, in my freshman year in high school. The Holy Spirit waking me up and saying, you need to get control of your life.

so you can have an amazing life. You just start planning so that you're like, so that the power that the things I've given you, the talents I've given you can actually be used. You have to sit down at night and practice your drums, you have to plan for that. It has to be part of your schedule.

you got to get out of your default. OK, is, is budgeting biblical? You find the word budgeting in the Bible, is it there? Well, in the original Hebrew, in the original Greek, and is that all of you?

No, it's not, you're not, you're not gonna find the word budget in the Bible, but we do find a lot of budgeting type of language. now here's some things that are not a budget. There's a lot of us, including me, for a lot of times you'll say, do you budget? I would have said yes.

If you ask me, do I budget, I would have said yes, I budget. because I'm, I'm financially stable, I've got money in the bank. I'm prepared for retirement. I've got, I've got emergency money.

I've got, I don't worry about car repairs. I don't, I, I'm just pretty much financially in good shape. I didn't have any, any problems. so some people say why budget because I spend less than I make.

I know how much I make and I spend less. That's a budget. That's Not a budget. having adequate savings for emergencies and retirement, is that a budget?

It's a good thing, it's a good thing, it's a good thing, but it's not a budget. I give 10%. Yeah, Is that a budget? No, we, we'll, we'll talk more about this later on, the, the 10% thing, but, that's not, that's not budgeting.

A budget is where you give every dollar a job. It is It is a plan to make your money do the most good. Your impulsivity won't do that because you, you, it, it just, it, it's not set on the spirit. Now there's a place for, there's a place for doing things, making decisions in the moment, don't get me wrong, that's why this is not legalistic.

if, if I have to spend more money in a category or whatever, for some, and I've got a reason to do it, I'm, I'm going to do that, but it's, the plan is where you're making every dollar, And it's done before you split, you, you spend. It's a plan where you sit down and say, this dollar is going to do this, this dollar is going to do that, every dollar has something to do and every dollar should be doing something that's going to move you from brokenness to wholeness. you, you want that, you want those dollars to be making your life what God wants it to be.

And that's a really, really good thing.

You want it to be true life and that doesn't mean you don't go to Starbucks. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to take your lunch to work every day. you can go out to lunch, but you're going to plan that. You're gonna say that going out to lunch with my colleagues is part of my true life.

I, I want, so I'm going to budget for going out to lunch with my colleagues one day a week or two days a week. That's part of your budget and I'm not going to do this because that's a priority. That's, that's true life. It's not cramping your style, it's just making your style really awesome because now you go out to lunch, you have the money, you're not gonna be worrying about, you can't make your, you can't.

Take care of your utilities or something, right? So it's done before you spend. The other reason the budget is our king expects a return. the resources we have are his.

They just are. That's, that's just a fact. Every resource I have is God's and God expects a return. He wants the result of our management to be, he says this, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so they may take hold of that which is what?

Life indeed, right? He wants us to, to, he wants, that's the return he wants. That's a pretty cool return. Right.

Our king wants the treasure he's given us to make us. Whole And that requires, that requires planning. OK. What does the Bible say about budgeting?

What should be in your budget? So we're gonna get down to some brass tacks here. The first thing that should be in your budget, when you start budgeting, start deciding what dollars are going to do, the very first thing that should go in your budget is giving. Number one thing in a budget should be giving.

Why giving? Why would you put giving first? What's that? The Bible says to you, now we've got, we've got Proverbs 3:9, honor the Lord from your wealth, from the first of all your produce.

But, but let's think in terms of what I've been saying all along, that's true, the Bible says to you, but it says to you for a reason. What's the reason to put giving as the first thing in your budget? Yeah, that's, that's what I used to look at it. If I look at that and I would go, especially when I was, when I was in college, and I was really good with my money in college.

I was not a good giver. Very good with my money, but not a giver. Cause I would look at that giving category and I really did not understand what it did. It just didn't mean anything to me.

There was a command there to give. But I was, it was always a, a game in my head. And it was usually the thing I did at the end of the month or it's the thing I did where I had some money in my pocket. it was never first.

It was never first. Right, and part of it's, yeah, the money's not gonna go cause you're gonna, you're gonna spend it, yeah, wait. I understood a giving, especially. Uh-huh.

Yeah, it is. It's an, it's an act of worship and it's an act of honor. It's, for me, the way I, the way I'm beginning to think about it now, it is also the single greatest thing I can do with my money to move me from brokenness to wholeness. It has the single most power to move my heart.

I want to do it first. Because I want the movement. It's not about 10%. It's not about, I'm, I'm giving my tithe.

I'm, I, I'm giving what, what is God's due, and God is due. But God has, God has said this for a reason. The reason is it has this, it has the number one greatest power to make me a real human being. It has the most power to give me true life.

Giving is very, very powerful and it's not like the guys on TV, you give and you'll get a Cadillac or you'll get an SUV, you'll get whatever. No, I, I, I really don't want, I, I don't really want those things. What I want is I want true life. I want to be a real human being.

and, giving is not going to get me a, a Mercedes or whatever, but it is going to give me true life. Thoughtful giving especially. Thoughtful, we're gonna talk about that in the last, the last session. Giving thoughtfully is a huge way to have true life.

To be connected with where your money is going, to understanding it, to understand when you give to your local church, you're giving the light, you're giving, you're giving money to a vital body, that is, that is, that money is flowing through the veins of the people around you and making other people whole. having that rich understanding of where your money is going, not just like, well I gave my money. it's, it's that And it and it makes you want to give more. There's, there's more life to it.

And it's, it's good to do it first cause then it's planned. I can remember going to Uganda and I would take quite a bit of money with me, but I never really had it in my mind how much I was going to spend. And that would play with my mind the whole trip. What did I miss out on By not really setting a budget, I missed out on A good chunk of transformation.

That that money I spent there would have done a lot more to change me. If I had said in my heart more what, what, what I was doing. I did not, my, I, I had a great experience, lots of great things happened. But more could have happened if I had what?

Right from the beginning, right? This will change me. I want, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna plan it out. So when I go, I just mm.

I can just give, I can do, I can do what needs to be done. So giving goes first. second is savings. Second thing you want to do is save.

You want to plan the savings, the second is savings. scripture says there's precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man swallows it. Up If you don't say first, what's going to happen? You're going to swallow it up., I remember my dad used to ask me, is your money, your money is, when I would want to go buy something, he would say, oh, your money is burning a hole in your pocket., I was, I was an impulsive kid.

I was, I was very, I was, I was pretty impulsive as a little kid because I just wanted what I wanted and, and my dad would try to teach me not to be impulsive and he wasn't very successful. It, it really took Jesus to do that. It, it, it, it really did. It took my heavenly Father, my, my earthly father did not give me a great example, but he didn't, he wasn't able to change my heart.

the 2nd thing, the 3rd thing you want in your budget is avoidance of debt. and avoidance of debt is a lot about planning too. If your car breaks down, should that be a surprise? No, it shouldn't.

your kids need braces. All these, these things that are budget breakers. Right? You, you want them not to be surprises.

That's why saving has to go, just, just, just like, avoid saving has to be first, but you want to avoid debt. so you want to make sure you're, you're, you're, you're saving so that you avoid debt. And if there is debt, you want to make sure that your budget allows you to pay it back quickly. But, because it is, you gotta, you gotta understand it's serious.

The Bible says it is what the borrow is the lender's. Slave, right? And, and here's how I look at it. That money that's going to pay the, the, the lender is money over which I have no control.

It's money over which I cannot help, it cannot help me move from brokenness to wholeness. I can't do with it. It's, it's going. It's gonna go wherever it's gonna go.

It's one of the reasons I took a long time to buy a house. It's like just that idea, this money is just locked. something changes, I have to, and people used to tell me, you're just throwing your money away, throwing your money away, throwing your money away. And I would argue no I wasn't, no I wasn't, no I wasn't.

I was not throwing my money away renting. that was a very, very, that was, that was very necessary for, for changing in my heart at that point. so, you want to make sure that if you do have debt, and we'll talk about this next week, is you want a very serious plan in place to pay that back. that, that should be a high, high priority.

you should be willing to make some pretty, crazy sacrifices to get that because you want to get that, those funds back to where they're doing what. Gospel good. Not just paying back good. Does that mean debt's a sin?

No, I, I, I personally don't believe that debt's a sin. I, I believe there are circumstances under which you can borrow money where it makes Very, very careful sense, very careful sense. But you really, really, it's, it's a very, very dangerous thing and it's something our, our culture pushes in a way that is quite honestly ridiculous. So, it's a way that they enslave, our, our culture is being enslaved, where we can't take God's riches and make good gospel decisions with them because we made an impulsive decision back here.

We have a nice TV set, but, now, My car breaks down or my neighbor needs this or my friend needs that. I can't do, I can't make gospel decisions with that money. provide for your family. your budget should reflect solid provision for your family if you, if you are married., this is one thing my dad taught me really, really well.

he always put, myself, my sister and my mom above himself. However he budgeted, it was always family was the main part of his budget. And this is pretty clear. If you don't do that, it says what?

He has denied the face and is worth worse than an unbeliever. because if, if you're not doing that, you, you just don't really understand God's treasure. God's treasure is to move you from brokenness to wholeness, it's to make you a real human being, and if, if you're, if you're being selfish and not providing for your family, you're just becoming a worse, you're becoming a worse human being. And if you're doing it in the context of the context of what you're, you're pretending to have real life or pretending to be, or how whatever is going through your head, you're just making things worse.

And so Paul's language here is very, very serious that it needs, it needs to take richly reflect provision for your family. Rather than buying yourself a new drum set or buying yourself a new bicycle, Yeah. your budget should reflect provision for your parents. your parents are getting older., some of you, you, you may have, some of you may have already lost your parents, what I'm talking about.

it's expensive when, when, when parents get to that point and thankfully my parents made a lot of, made a lot of good financial decisions and were financially stable and able, my mom was still able to handle it, but it still cost me a lot of money. airplane tickets, hotel bills, all kinds of stuff. It's expensive type stuff but it is. I, I can tell you from personal experience, I would spend that money again.

I would, I would spend it, I would, I would double it for, for, for what that experience taking care of my parents did the move from brokenness to wholeness. God wants you to have that money there because it's Whatever's going on between you and your folks, it, those, as they get older and they, and they need you and you can be there, it's, it's a very rich and fulfilling time. I know some of you out there can, can attest to this, that should be in your budget, preparing for that.

Just put it in your budget.

your parents may still be in really, really good shape and running marathons and all kinds of stuff, but, put it in your budget to be ready for that to happen, because the return on that is killer. It's just a killer return, there. your, your, your, your budget should reflect your learning contentment. This is gonna sound bad.

but your, your budget should reflect you're not buying things you want to buy. yeah, it, it, it should reflect making decisions not to buy things that you want to buy. this, this need, want business. what's a need, what's a want?

We have a lot of things in our need category that don't belong there. Very shortly, Paul defines what we need pretty. Compactly, right? food and covering.

I hope covering, includes shelter and clothing both isn't that one word. I, I haven't, I didn't check out what the Greek word is, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but he defines, need pretty narrowly. and we want, we, we want to be learning contentment. We want to be like Paul where we can live with a lot.

Nothing wrong with being rich, there's nothing wrong with having a lot of resources, but we also wanna be in the mindset that we also know how to live with little. We wanna live, we wanna learn how to do self-denial and enjoy self-denial. Learn, just learn the, the wonders of, of contentment, of being content and, and, and that thing is not as important as it might seem to be. That's heart changing stuff and you gotta do it in your budget because when you get in the store, what's gonna happen?

I don't have to be, you get me in fries, man. And you get me in fries, I got my credit card. Oh my gosh, everything is so cool. there's all kinds of stuff that I would like to have.

I guess, this is, it's like geek heaven. it's, it's, it's, oh, yeah. So you, you, you've got, you've got to, you gotta think that through. I, I don't, I don't need a new computer.

I don't need those fancy headphones. I don't need, I, that contentment. Contentment should be in your budget. OK, starting a budget, I, you should have a second handout that looks like this, navigating your, navigating your finances.

This doesn't seem too complicated to me. I, I don't like doing budgets, but it's, it's not been, it's not, it's not because it's hard to do. That's, that's for me it's, it's not. it's, it's addition, subtraction, multiplication and, and division, it's all stuff I learned by the time I was in what, 2nd grade, 3rd grade.

I did pay attention in class. I didn't do any homework, but I pay attention in class. but what you wanna do, to start a budget is you, you gotta have, first of all, there are lots of tools out there in our culture. if you're saying I don't, I can't have the tools to do a budget.

get real. There's all kinds of apps, mints, and all kinds of different kinds of apps. I've put some of them in here. I'll put some more in the email I send out.

There's lots of stuff. There's lots of different kinds of spreadsheets you can get and I'll send out some more examples of those to you. This is just an example of one. the two things you got to get a handle of to begin a budget is you got to have the, you got to have your, your income.

And then you've got to have your spending. So you want to get all of your income figured out, your income from, wages, your income, from dividends, your dividend, your, anything that's coming into your bank account every month counts as your income. It talks about that here on the paper. If you have inconsistent income.

You want to get an idea of what, like, look at last year, get out your tax forms from last year. What was your total income divided by 12. Now I'll give you, give you some idea what things are like monthly. But those of you who have inconsistent incomes, no, it's a lot scary, it's a little more scary because you do, you, you might have a month that's double what you normally get, you might have a month that's 0.

and you probably already know that budgeting for you is like life or death. You could really mess yourself up if you, spend everything you got one month and you have nothing for the next month. reimbursements are not income. If you have a job where you get reimbursed, I, I go out and buy X, when I was a teacher, I spent a lot of money on my classroom, most of it not reimbursed.

but if I did do something where I could get reimbursed, when I got that money, I, I tend to look at it as, that's money. I just got money, that's, that's income. I can go spend that, right? No, it's, it's not, it's reimbursements are not income, so don't count reimbursements as income.

expenses, estimate your irregular expenses. If you have expenses that don't stay the same, like if your utility bill goes all over the place, estimate what's your average, utility bill to budget for each month. If you're in Because budgets are monthly. You're doing a budget each month.

a budget is to tell that month's money what to do, right? So budgets are by month. So you're telling your money what to do that month. If you're in the summer and you use more air conditioning and the electricity bill goes up, it would make sense in that month to budget more money for that.

You probably know that's going to be there, so you're telling those dollars to do less and you might not, you might go out to eat one less time during that month or something, I don't know. But your budget allows you to plan that into your budget. Expenses that did not occur every month. You want to total those for the year.

Like car expenses. if you average, let's say $1000 a year on, car repairs. I have old cars so I end up, I end up spending quite a bit of money on, on repairs. As some people would say I'm nickel and diming myself to death., I, I don't think so, but anyway, what I need to do is I need to divide that if I'm spending $1000 a year on car repairs, I need to, divide that by, by 12 and then I need to budget that each month.

That way when the, when the car repair comes, the money is where? It's there because I've been budgeting that all along. So when the when the car, when the car needs new brakes or whatever gidgy gadget brakes and it's got to be replaced, I just go, yeah, I've got that money worth of check, boom, we're done, car's fixed. No, so that's, so those expenses you want to divide, do them, do them that way.

your goal, your goal at the end of the month, is when you subtract your expenses from your income, it's to have what? Nothing left over. This has been a, this has been a revolution in my thinking cause I, I've always had, my basic goal in life was to have as much leftover as possible. That's, that's where, that's my type of budgeting.

Starting in college when my dad would give me the $100. My goal was to spend as little as possible and I'll have some left over at the end of the month, I can save. but if you're budgeting, you want zero expenses at the end because you want to have planned that savings. You want your dollars to be doing the maximum amount of stuff.

Cause for me, quite honestly, that, you might say well that was really good. You, you were really a good person in in college. You were really careful with your money. My answer to you is no.

There were things I didn't do that I probably should have done. Right? Because I was always trying to get the lowest amount of money at the end. I almost never went out to eat.

Go out to eat, today, it's college campuses that the, the go out to eat is right there on campus. You got McDonald's and burger, whatever and also right on the campus. I, I just, that's something I never did. Was that good?

Well, yes and no. There's, there, there's lots of experiences where I could have been sharing meals with people and doing things that would have been good because I had this goofy focus on I would just spend, just not spend very much and have money always have money left over at the end. I don't think that did the greatest amount of gospel good. So looking back I go, good job Payne, you got through college debt-free and you saved a lot of money and But I look, I look back and I go, gospel wise, not so much.

A lot of, you, you, you could have done better if you had budgeted. And I would have said, if you said, said the budget, I would have said, you gotta be kidding. I always have money left over at the end of the month. I don't need to budget.

Me? Who needs, I don't, budget? I don't need to budget. that was my keeping your budget.

I'm, I'm running low on time here. We started a little bit late, so I'm, I don't feel too badly. A lot of people came in late, so I'm just gonna take a couple more seconds, of time here. keeping your budget.

Don't be legalistic, but do what you have to do. If you have an area in which you are impulsive, I don't, whether it's, I don't know what it, what it might be that you tend to buy gadgets for your phone or whatever it is or something. Maybe it's, it's groceries. You like, you like to buy a lot of different stuff.

If groceries are your priority, Give it a good budget, right? Give it a good budget. but if, if you're impulsive in that area, then you need to cut off your access to unlimited money. some people use the, the envelope method.

And I, and I would argue the envelope method probably should be a, a temporary measure, but you just, you just get cash, go to the bank, get cash, and they'll give it to you, believe it or not, they'll give you cash. take, take out cash and take, label your envelopes to the categories, put the, put the money for that category in that envelope and then when you go to the grocery store, you take your envelope and that's, that's all you spend. That's what's there. There's, if there's something really, some really cool thing that you'd like to eat, and you're out of money, well, you're out of money.

it's, you, you, you gotta do what you gotta do, if you've got an area that's out of control. and that's true in a lot, in a, in a lot, any addiction type of thing like that. There, there is a point where you, you have to take drastic measures and if drastic measures are necessary, take the drastic measure. and there are, there are other ways to do that too.

If you don't like envelopes, you can just put clips on your money. There's a, a variety of ways. And I'll send some articles and some video links out for you on that. The other thing you want to get, and I'm running out of time, so I'm just gonna go real quickly say this, is get an emergency fund.

If you have no money in savings, do what you need to do. Try to get $1000 saved up, bang. sell stuff, whatever, cause the thing that will kill your budget the quickest is what? Emergency, it'll, it'll, it'll clobber you.

All your great budgeting, it will clobber you. All your attempts to try to pay back your, your credit or whatever will, will clobber you. there's, a, if you want to do your budget on paper, this handout's got all the stuff in the categories, getting stuff in all your categories. I'm gonna be sending you some spreadsheets.

Mint works really nice. there's other software programs. I'll send out links to all those, during the week. So let me go ahead and pray, and then we'll, we'll go ahead and stop.

Lord, thank you for your, for your grace and your goodness. Lord, just, Just help us as we budget to be in your spirit. Let us be in the spirit in everything we do. Let us set our minds on the things of the Spirit.

Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen.