Finally I am writing my second article on finances. In college I took personal finance classes. I have also listened to Dave Ramsey a lot, who I think is one of the best financial advisors on this country today. I know how to stay out of debt and how to save money. When I wrote my first article in this category, I had absolutely no debt and about 10,000.00 in savings. That may not sound like much to many of you, but to someone who was making only 24,000.00 at the time that is a lot of money to have saved up.
Since that time, I have built a house and had our first child, a baby boy named Isaiah. I did not listen to the financial wisdom that I had heard from my teachers and have read in the Bible. So now I have a house payment that I barely make each month and medical bills that have just stacked up and up and up. Now I have decided that in order to be happy I need to turn things around. I need to take the commandments of the Bible and use them to better myself. I should have built a smaller home to start with. I should not have spent my emergency savings on the house. If I had kept my savings where it was I could have paid off all of the doctor bills, and the only debt I would have would be a small house payment.
I should have done all of those things, but I didn’t. The situation I am in now is not great, but it does benefit any one who is reading this series. You get to see how God through his word can get someone out of a mess like this. My case might not be as serious as some, but the principles used in scripture apply to your case as well as mine.
The first thing I decided to do was sell my truck and pay off most of my medical bills. I have had my truck up for sell for a long time now with only two calls, and not one serious call. I had almost quit tithing entirely, but even though I did not think I had the money to tithe I started back here recently. I was counting on the word of God to somehow give me the extra money to tithe.
Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
Yesterday, a man came up to me and offered exactly what I wanted for my truck. He said he would be back this Monday with the money. I have confidence that he came by because of the promise made in Luke 6:38. I plan to continue tithing and hopefully take advantage of many more of the promises in the word of God. I hope the you will follow along with me as I continue to get out of debt and move forward into a life of contentment.
This will be the first in a series of financial articles about financial contentment. I will set a good foundation of the attitudes you must have about finances before you can change the situation that you are in financially.
So, is materialism god to many people?
Here in America at least, if not most countries, materialism is god. Things people desire keep them stagnant in many ways. It imprisons them in dead-end jobs and leaves people cut off from the things that really matter in life. People miss the important things in life working to earn money to buy more stuff. The things you have are why you are stuck at a job you don’t like. The things that you don’t have, but just have to get will be the reason that you stay at the job that you hate. Some would say that there is no staying put in life. You are either moving forward or moving backwards. This point of view is probably more accurate for most of the world. While you may be stuck in some aspects of life, you are probably on a downward spiral in most areas. The never-ending quest for more leads most people into debt, which leads to marital strain, which leads to divorce, which just leads to many sorrows throughout life.
Surely, you have heard it before, but the love of money is the root of all evil. Money is not evil by any means. In fact, money is great, every piece of money you have ever owned was a blessing from God, whether you believe it or not. James ch. 1 says “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father”. Therefore, money in itself is not evil. Paul says it is the love of money. The thing that gets people into trouble is that they love money (hope I did not sound too redundant there). People cannot get enough money. They spend more than they have, so, they always need more to cover what they have already spent. If you will be honest with yourself, most of you reading this blog love money.
You may say “If I loved money so much surely I would have more of it.” Well, in reality most of the people that love money are living paycheck to paycheck. Because the love of money is not simply the love of money, but is the love of what money makes available: power, position, and/or materials. The love of money could be defined in part if not completely as materialism. Materialism, or the love of “stuff”, is then according to scripture one of the main causes of evil. According to the apostle Paul in 1Timothy 6:6-10 those with much are not content. His advice and God’s advice is that if we have food and shelter we should be content. Anyone reading this hoping to get out of debt and take control of their finances should take that to heart. Contentment with the small things is the key to true happiness in your financial life.
