Affluent Savvy
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The big idea, again, is that God wants you to have all the money you need to do to everything God wants you to do. God wants you to be able to earn money. Proverbs 13:11 says this, “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.
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Learn More »The vast majority of everything that we do, it’s really honestly, it’s more like you have a little child and you’re trying to teach the child how to change a tire and so you do everything. You pay for the car, you have filled the car up with gasoline and oil and kept it maintained. You take it to the service station. You put air in the tire. Then, you want to train your son on how to change a tire. You loosen all the lug nuts, you put it up on the jack, you’re the one that cranks it up, then you have your son take a lug wrench and go over and he puts it on the already loosened lug nut. Let’s say we’re putting the tire back on by now. He turns it and he tightens it a little bit, not tight enough to really hold, but he tightens it a little bit and he says, “Daddy, I changed a tire.” That’s about what it’s like when we think that we are the ones who are creating the wealth. Even though he gives us the dignity of causality, let’s make sure we have the right perspective of how much causality we’re bringing to the party. All we’re really doing is putting a little lipstick and rouge on something that God, himself, is the one who has done. Or like the CEO who has been working at the company for 90 days and the company comes out with a new product that’s been in R and D that they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars on over the last ten years. He’s been there 90 days. It’s a rip-roaring success and he claims credit for it. That’s kind of like what it would be if we were to say, “Yeah. But you should have seen this when God had it all to himself.” Whatever it is, our occupation is. If you’re a lawyer, just think about the hundreds of years of legal precedent and case law that have been developed so that you can walk into a courtroom and make a presentation based on the law of the land and so forth and so on. He made everything. God has made everything. Everything that God has made is good and he loves us enough to bless us to be able to have a little degree of influence over it in order that we can take that last step to get the payday out of it. Here’s the Big Idea for the day. God wants you to make all the money you need to do everything that God wants you to do. God wants you to make all the money that you need to do everything God wants you to do. Money is a hand of providence. Notice I didn’t say it’s the hand of providence. Money is a hand of providence. God uses money to direct us. We need money. It’s a necessity. Money is a necessity. It’s how we provide for our families. God uses money as a hand of providence to direct us where he wants us to go, to do all the things that he wants you to do. How exactly does God do this? How exactly does God do this? How does God advise us to make money today? I’m going to give you four areas to look at. The four areas are, number one, earning. Earning or providing. Let’s talk about providing and the big idea. The big idea, again, is that God wants you to have all the money you need to do to everything God wants you to do. God wants you to be able to earn money. Proverbs 13:11 says this, “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” He who gathers money little by little makes it grow. There are four ways, four classic ways that God has given us for earning money. Number one, our labor. We go out and we do the work. We physically do the work. The second way is by employing others and making a return on the labor of others as well. Some of us have that entrepreneurial piece going. The third way that God has given us to earn money is to credit others or to loan it out. We can put our money in a place where we can get a fixed return on it. Then, the other way, the fourth way, is we can invest it or take calculated risks. In other words, we take the money and instead of loaning for a fixed return, we put it into maybe a stock or a real estate investment where there’s an uncertain return on it. We can make money that way. My labor, I can make money on my labor. I can make money on your labor. I can loan you money or I can invest money. Those are the four ways that we have to earn money today. The idea of get rich quick schemes are much better when they’re considered instead … Instead of a get rich quick scheme where you put all your money in one big thing, the Bible commends the principle of diversification. Ecclesiastes chapter 11 verse 2 talks about dividing your money up between seven, maybe eight, different possible things. It says, “Bread cast on the water …” I need to look it up because I can’t remember it. I’m trying not to have you look up a lot of verses here. I’m giving you the addresses this morning and just repeating the verses. This one, I need to look up. “Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.” In other words, not every deal works out. Not every investment works out. Not every employee works out. Not every loan works out, for crying out loud, for that matter. In fact, even my own labor sometimes doesn’t work out. The idea of diversification in the earning. Then, secondly, is saving. We have earning and then we have saving or investing. Again, the question is: How does saving and investing and the big idea, how do they work together? The big idea, again, is that God wants you to have all the money that you need to do everything God wants you to do. How does that fit in the area of saving and investing? Proverbs 21 verse 20 says this, “In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a fool devours all that he has.” God does not want you, to at the end of your life, to be dependent upon your children. Now, some of you will be. That’s just the way it is. God gives us this option of saving and investing so that we will have in our wise house, these stores of choice food and oil, or in our case today, it would be some sort of retirement plan. Just this whole idea of diligence is so interesting to me. Most of you have these Bibles on your phones and iPads and browsers and all that. I’m looking this up. I wasn’t planning to do this. The word “diligent” in Proverbs. Proverbs 10:4, “Lazy hands make a man poor but diligent hands bring wealth.” 12:24, “Diligent hands will rule but laziness ends a slave laborer.” 12:27, “A diligent man prizes his possessions.” 13 verse 4, “The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.” 21:5, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.” God’s way of making money is to go out and earn it. It’s to invest and save. It’s to be diligent about this because diligence is wise. God doesn’t want us to be dependent upon our children at some later date. To save and invest is one of the two major ways that God has given us to make money. God, again the big idea, God wants you to have all the money that you need to do all of the things that God wants you to do. All right. The third way is through sharing or giving or tithing or generosity, however you’d like to say that. Generosity. Let’s talk about generosity and the big idea. God wants you to have all the money that you need to do everything that God wants you to do. What do you think God wants you to do with your money? Well, he wants you to take care of your family. He wants you to help build his kingdom. We might as well look at it because every time anybody talks about this, they always go to Malachi chapter 3. We might as well too. Go to the first chapter of the New Testament and turn back two pages to Malachi chapter 3. We will start at verse 10. We will start at verse 10. We’ll look at 10 to 12. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. Test me,” and this says the Lord almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out such a blessing that you will not even have enough room to take it in. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the Lord almighty. “Then all nations will call you blessed.” One of the things that God wants us to do with our money, the reason he wants us to make money, is so that we will help build his kingdom. I like the idea of the tithe. It’s a 10% tax. God says, “Look. Everything belongs to me, but I’m going to entrust what I have to you. All I want for you to do is to give me back a tenth to go over here and do the things I want you to do with the money in addition to taking care of your own family. In addition to taking care of your own family, I want you to help other people take care of their families too. I want you to tithe. I want you to make all the money that you need to do all the things that I want you to do. This is one of the things that I want you to do. I want you to earn money for your family, I want you to save money so you won’t be dependent upon others, so that you’ll have financial independence. Then, I want you to take 10%,” in the New Testament, the idea is proportionate giving. It ties in offering. It’s 10% or more. “I want you to take 10% or more of your income and help other people. I want you to make all the money that you need to do all of the things that I want you to do and this is what I want you to do.” Look, there’s so many different ways to do this. One of the really big things now, in an increasingly wealthy country like ours, is a lot of people are doing reverse tithes. A lot of people are giving 90% away and living on the 10%, some of the extremely wealthy people. Other people have put a cap on their standard living and then they just give away everything over that. That’s what Patsy, my wife and I did, 30 years ago. We just said, “Okay. We have all we need so anything above this cap, we’re just going to give it away.” That’s the way we lived our lives. It’s a life of generosity. It’s a life of generosity. God wants you to make all the money that you need so that you can do all the things that he wants you to do.
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Read More »Then, the fourth way. We’ve had earning, we’ve had saving, we’ve had generosity. Then, we have debt or borrowing in terms of a way that God wants us to make money. Proverbs 22:7 says, “The borrower is the servant of the lender.” I’ve only ever wanted my name associated with one maxim or one proverb or one idea. It’s this. Debt is dumb. Debt is dumb. Proverbs 22:26 and 27, “Do not be a man who strikes hands in pledge or puts up security for his debts. For if you lack the means to pay, your very bed will be snatched from you.” I think most of you know, but some of you may not know. I accumulated, over a period of seven years in my business career when I went into developing new buildings, a huge amount of debt because that was the only way you could do it and I wanted to make a big name or whatever motives. I’m not even sure what I was trying to do. I don’t even like money, to be honest with you. I could care less. You want my money? You can have it. I’ve always enjoyed the deals. The scent of the deal. I wouldn’t even mind losing money if I could just do the deal. I’m not even sure I like money. The point of that is … I’m not even sure I know what the point of that is. Just forget about it. I did spend seven years accumulating a massive amount of debt and then the Earth collided with the moon and I had short money when I should have been long with the money. You know short-term construction loans when I should have had long money. The market collapsed and so I was upside down. Basically was something like this. Let’s just say one day, the accountant said, “You have $100 worth of properties and $75 in mortgages.” In six month’s time, the accountants came back and they said, “Oh, those $100 worth of properties, scratch that out. Those $100 worth of properties, they’re now only worth $50.” This is exactly the proportion. Property values plummeted 50% in six months. That’s why we talk about risks when we talk about making investments. What’s the problem with that scenario? I have $50 worth of properties, what’s the problem? I still have $75 worth of debts and mortgages. It took me seven years to accumulate all this mortgage debt and then it took me another seven years to work out of it. That’s like fourteen years. I have quite a bit to say about debt, quite a bit, quite a bit to say about debt. This is what I have to say. Debt is dumb. Those are the four ways that God gives us to make money. Now, God doesn’t give us any prohibition against debt. Howard Dayton and Bob Shoemaker back here is the area director for Compass Finance God’s Way, works with Howard closely. I have it on good authority that Bob Shoemaker is the top guy worldwide for Compass Finance God’s Way. Howard Dayton is a friend of mine. I used to be his bartender when I was in college. He owned a restaurant and I was his bartender. He had to get out of that business because I drank all of the profits. I drove Howard out of the restaurant business and now he’s this great financial guy, all because of me. You should have seen Howard’s life when he had it to himself. Anyway, Howard, I did communicate with Howard on this subject and Howard doesn’t have a problem with a little debt. He says that it’s a good idea to have a plan to pay it off as quickly as you can, but you can’t really buy a house, most of us, can’t really buy a house without a mortgage. Our ministry, which is buying the building, as it turns out, we probably need to take a mortgage, at least early on, in order to get it going. Howard’s okay with that. Howard’s okay with that. Howard is the leading financial thinker in the world today, from a Biblical perspective. Maybe he and Ron Blue would be tied or something like that for first place. It’s okay. Debt is what? Dumb. Oh, so dumb. I was a developer, real estate developer. We had a developer’s credo. “A dollar borrowed is a dollar earned. A dollar refinanced is a dollar saved. A dollar paid back is gone forever.” The big idea here, God wants you to make all the money you need to do all the things that God wants you to do, but remember, debt now is not actually a way of making money. The problem with debt is what? You have to pay it back. You have to pay it back.
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