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ESCAPING THE BONDS OF DEBT
Well, hello everyone and welcome, once again, to The Journey. We are so glad that you are here. For those of us here in Manhattan, we welcome you and then I want to welcome those of us who are joining us from Jersey City. So a big welcome to those of you in Jersey City. Glad you are joining us by video. As we get started today, before we dive into the message, I want to take a moment and just share some personal news. As most of you know, back on June 19, Kelley and I had our first son. His name is Alexander. I look forward to you meeting him one day soon. I brought pictures, as a proud dad should. I brought some pictures for you to see, but they are kind of hard to see, so I’m going to put them up on the screen. This is one of him going home from the hospital. Then here he is in a new little outfit that I picked out myself. And it’s kind of what I sleep I most nights as well. And you know, some babies, I think he’s kind of a cute baby. I’m prejudiced, of course. But you know when they cry and make weird faces, have you ever noticed that about babies? So I took a picture of him crying, and he has the weirdest look on his face on this. That’s kind of freaky. Let’s move on to the next one. Here’s proud dad holding his son. Thank you for your prayers for me and Kelley and baby Alex. So I just wanted to share those pictures with you.
Today we are talking about Escaping the Bonds of Debt. So, if you want to go ahead and find your message notes. We all deal with debt. Debt is common throughout our day. The average credit card debt in America right now, is over $1.7 trillion. That’s bigger than the national debt. That’s just what we owe in credit card debt. $1.7 trillion. The average credit card indebtedness by young adult households in America, is now 24% of their income. In other words, almost one quarter of the income is going to pay down debt. One survey found that debt is causing 14% of adults to delay marriage. 20% to delay having children. And 40% to delay buying a house. They graduated. If you graduated from college this past year, the average college senior, nationwide, graduated with $19,000 in debt. And if you went to NYU or one of other fine metro area schools, you are way above average in this area, because you probably graduated with much more debt than $19,000. So debt is a real issue. The Bible talks about debt, the Bible says that debt is a source of pain. Would you agree with that? That debt is a source of pain. It’s a pain for me. It’s a pain for you. And fortunately, the Bible has a lot to say about how we can deal with this issue of pain. As I often do, let me remind you that the Bible is a very practical book. The Bible is not a book up on a self that is separated from our normal, everyday lives. Instead, the Bible is a very practical book and can be applied to all the different areas of our lives. And since we all deal with money, the Bible fortunately, has a lot to say about money. As a matter of fact, next to love, it’s the most common topic in the Bible. So you can imagine if it talks about money, it talks about human frailty, it is going to talk about debt. And what I want to take you through today, is what the Bible says regarding debt and how we can escape the bonds of debt. But look at Proverbs 22:7. We are going to use a lot of verses today from the Book of Proverbs. It’s a wisdom book and it has these wise sayings in it. So go ahead and find that in your notes, and let’s begin by reading, out loud, Proverbs 22:7. Here we go. “The borrower is a servant to the lender.” And many of us are serving our credit card debt, or our college debt, along the way. And when we talk about debt, unsecured debt, it’s the most common type of debt, but of course, there are other kinds of debt that we may deal with as well. And I want to begin by telling you, personally, this is a very personal message that I want to deal with today. Because, I’ve had to deal with these issues of debt.
In 2001, when God called Kelley and I to move from California, to come here to New York City to start this church and as you know, The Journey in Manhattan started in Easter of 2002. As God was calling me to start a church, shortly thereafter God placed another call on my life, and that was the call to be debt free. And I had to get together all that I owed. I had to add it all up and I found that I was about $20,000 in debt. A large part of that was credit card debt, another large chunk of that was where I was working on a doctorate and I had acquired some education debt, and I just had other little debts around. So, here I am, in the most expensive area of the country, with no money, no members, no meeting location, no church yet, and God is saying—I want you to get out of debt. Now, I’m going to talk a little bit about my process of getting out of debt, and what God taught me as I take you through this message. One of the things that I did, is I went to talk to a pastor at the church where I was at in California. I was on staff at Saddleback Church out in California, and one of the pastors there, his name was Tom Holliday. And Tom showed me from the Scriptures some Biblical ways for getting out of debt. So a lot of what I am going to share with you, is what he shared with me. But before we jump into the process of getting out of debt, let’s see if we are trapped in debt. You will see on the front of your notes, it reads—Danger Signs, the Bondage of Debt. Let’s see if we are in bondage today. Real quickly, these are the danger signs:
1. Living on credit instead of paying cash. Somebody in another service said—you mean there is another option besides living on credit? Yes, living on credit instead of paying cash. This is when you run out of money before you run out of month, as the case might be. So you are constantly using your credit cards. It’s really easy to tell if this is a danger sign for you. You just look to see if your credit card amounts are increasing—are they going up or are they going down? If they are going up constantly, then this is a danger sign for you.
2. You’re delaying payment or paying the minimum due. That’s a trap. Also, if you are missing payments. If you are making late payments. If you find yourself under tension constantly over money. If you ever bounce one credit card while paying another credit card. Then you probably have some debt. If you bounce checks along the way. These are danger signs, if you are doing this. You know, credit cards love minimum payment due. Because even if you just put on few hundred dollars and you pay the minimum, that means over the course of paying down that small debt, you will pay triple or even four times the amount of the original purchase. So, be careful of delaying payments, or paying the minimum due. That’s one of the bondages.
3. Unable to tithe or save. You are unable to tithe or save. You get to the point where you can’t give the 10% to God. You can’t tithe, you can’t save for your future because it’s taking everything to pay down the bills. You know, a lot of you want to give more to God. You want to invest money in eternity, but you can’t do it because you are strangled by this debt. And this is a serious issue because God says if you’re not tithing to Him, you are robbing Him. You may be robbing Mastercard, Visa or American Express, but don’t be robbing God. I’m going to talk about how important it is to put God first if you are going to break this danger trap a little bit later.
4. Unable to pay taxes. You are unable to pay taxes because of your debt. Now I realize this really doesn’t motivate you at all, as far as getting debt free, but it’s one of the danger signs, because Jesus said we should give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s. In other words, don’t be afraid to pay the taxes that you owe. But being unable to pay taxes is one of the danger signs.
5. Extravagant spending. I put that for you in your notes. We begin to overspend and we are constantly pushing for more. We want to buy things that we don’t need to impress people that we don’t like. We do that all the time here in America. We live here in this metro area in the extravagant spending zone. And we are very image conscious and you have to spend more so that you can look like more and it’s a danger signal that you are getting into trouble, that you are getting into debt.
6. This last one may surprise you, but the last danger sign of debt is that you are constantly looking for get rich quick ideas. Get rich quick ideas. Don’t turn the page yet. I want to give you something to write in that small space in the bottom. If you are not in debt, get rich quick schemes will get you in debt. If you are already in debt, then you are ripe for this. Because all of us have seen the commercials. All of us have received the stuff in the mail. We have all gotten those emails where we think—maybe this could be my solution. But before you get into a get rich quick scheme, be sure to read this verse. Write this at the bottom of the page. Proverbs 21:5. I didn’t print it for you in your notes. Just look it up. Proverbs 21:5. It says, “Hasty speculation brings about poverty, among other things.” So be sure and read that before you do this. But we all buy into this idea that we can get rich quick easily. As a matter of fact there is a whole system in our metro area based on our desire to get rich quick. You know what it’s called? It’s called the lottery. The lottery fills this idea that you never know—you might win. You might get these millions of dollars. There are TV shows about the lottery. They put the stories of the lottery winners on the top of that. But you know, there is a word for someone who plays the lottery. It’s called a loser. Because 99.9999999% of the people who play the lottery, lose. And studies have shown that people who play the lottery regularly are in debt more than four times, or are indebted more than four times more than the average person. So you are in debt four times more of being in the lottery, if that makes sense. But we like the “something for nothing” mentality. The idea that there is going to be something that is going to get us out of this bondage overnight. But it’s just not true. So what does God want you to do? What does God say about getting out of debt?
Look over in your notes, and I have listed the nine steps out of debt bondage. These nine steps come straight from the Scripture and I want to walk you through this. But for every one of these, there could be four or five Scriptures. I just put one or two on most of these. But the Bible is very clear that you can get out of debt. Now, the Bible doesn’t promise that you can get out of debt quickly. You didn’t get into debt quickly. You can’t get out of debt quickly. As a matter of fact, one of the things that God wants to do while He gets you out of debt, is He wants to develop your character because debt says there is a character deficiency. And because there is a character deficiency you go into debt. So as God lowers your debt, He has to raise your character. And character development takes time. Getting out of debt takes time. But this is God’s way of getting out of debt. Now, some of you that are really sharp in math, you have already realized that there are nine steps here, and we have already covered six steps, so this is really a fifteen point message on today’s topic. So here’s my promise. Next time, the message will be pointless. So I will make up for what we are talking about today. But look at these nine steps rather quickly.
Nine specific steps that you can take to get out of debt bondage.
1. Commit to becoming debt free now. If that word is off your page, write it in. Commit to becoming debt free now. Even before you make the first financial payment, you can make the intellectual commitment. You can make a spiritual commitment. You see, debt is really a spiritual issue. When you go into debt with no reasonable time period for when you are going to pay that debt, you are going to put yourself into a spiritual condition that the Bible calls wickedness. Now Wicked maybe a really good Broadway show, but it’s a really bad place to live your life. Look at Psalm 37:21. “The wicked borrow and never repay.” It’s a spiritual issue. So you need to make a spiritual commitment. The first step is to commit to becoming debt free now. So what you do, is you say—God, I’m making this commitment with You. It’s not a commitment to me. It’s not a commitment to your friend. It’s not a commitment to your creditors. It’s a commitment to God. God, I want to do Your will and I need Your power. That’s what willpower is. Doing God’s will and getting God’s power. And you make that commitment and then God brings all of His resources into place to help you do this. So you commit to becoming debt free now. They key on this is two words—write this down, delayed gratification. It will take commitment. It will take discipline to get out of debt. It will take perseverance to get out of debt. It’s going to take character development to get out of debt. But most of all, it’s going to take delayed gratification because the reason you got into this is an issue of trust. You didn’t trust that God was going to provide all of your needs. And you realize that, right? God promised to provide all of your needs. He didn’t promise to provide all of your greeds. But He will help you along the way. So commit to becoming debt free.
2. Start paying God and yourself first. This is the principles of tithing and saving. Right off the top, whatever money comes into your life, you give the first 10% to God. That’s what a tithe is. A tithe is not any tenth. A tithe is the first 10th of what you make. So you give the first 10th back to God. And by giving God the first 10th, you get your priorities in order. So the reason you can’t delay gratification is because you have mixed up priorities. So you have to have proper priorities if you are going to pay down your debt. Proper priorities begin with putting God first. And that’s what a tithe is. Some of you say—you know, I’m so far in debt, how can I even begin to pay God? Look, you may not want to pay somewhere else, but you don’t want to not pay God. You want God to be first in your life. That’s what tithing is all about. And when you give God the tithe, that’s where you get His power. See, I’ve seen God work miracles in so many lives that I can say this over and over. It may not make sense for you to give the tithe first, but all that require faith don’t make sense. If it made sense, it wouldn’t require faith. So you have to, by faith, give God the first fruits of what you earn. You give Him the tithe. If you want to read more on that, I’ve put some verses in your notes. Matthew 3:3, I Corinthians 16. Then one verse that I printed for you from Deuteronomy 14. Let’s read this verse out loud together. Deuteronomy 14:23. Here we go. “The purpose of tithing is to teach you always to put God first in your lives.” So you see, when God is first in your life, then your priorities fall in order. It’s only when God is first that you can pay down this debt, because you have to get out of that spiritual state of wickedness that we talked about back in number one when you borrow with no intention of repaying. Now, you also want to learn to pay yourself. Write down this little formula just below Deuteronomy 14:23. Put down the number 10, another 10, another 10, and then the number 70. So you have written down 10/10/10/70. This is what the Bible says is the proper allegation of your finances. Now, I don’t have time to teach on this fully, but what I am going to do in the Tuesday email that you receive, This Week at The Journey or your devotion update email, I will send you a link to a whole teaching that I did on 10/10/10/70 principle. Because the Bible says there is an appropriate way to spend your money. The first 10%, that goes to God. The second 10% goes to savings. The third 10% can go to one of two places, either to pay down your debt, or it will go to long term investment. So if you pay down your debt, then you can start investing for the long term or investing in capital expansion. Then you live on 70%. So you have to learn to live on less than you make or else you will constantly be falling back into this debt trap. So that’s the principle of 10/10/10/70, of start paying God and yourself first.
3. List all that I own and all that I owe. You just need to get it down on paper. This was very surprising to me. When I felt God saying—Nelson, you need to get out of debt. I didn’t know how much debt I was in. I had to go get the credit card statements. I had to go get the bills. I had to get the bursar’s office deals, what they called them in the college that I went to, the financial statement from my college. I had to put all of that together. Then I put it down on a sheet of paper. But then I had to list all that I owned. What do I have in savings? I didn’t know. What do I have in checking? I wasn’t sure. What kind of property do I have? Do I own a car? Do I own any kind of expensive equipment? Do I have things that I need to put into that? What do I have and then I had to take stock of all of this. And you have to be honest about it. Look at Proverbs 24:3. It says, “A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense.” And that last words for sense, would you turn that “s” into a dollar sign? It becomes strong through good $ense. Through good understanding of your finances. And most of you are afraid of this. The reason you don’t know what you owe, is because you are afraid to add it all up. You have to bring that fear into the light where you can offer it to God and begin taking these steps. So once you know all of this, what steps do you need to take?
4. Have a sale. This particular point is sponsored by ebay.com. And maybe you need to get rid of some stuff. Maybe you need to take some of what you own and you need to sell it. When I moved to New York, I had a 1996 Pontiac. I know it was a chick-magnet car, but I felt God saying—you need to sell that. First of all, I didn’t need it here where I live on the upper west side. So I could take that and use it to pay down my debt. Maybe there is some stuff that you bought in the past that you know you paid too much for and you could sell it and use that to pay down your debt. I bet something came to mind when I was talking. If you are a guy, it’s probably a piece of electronic equipment that you paid too much for. If you are a lady, it’s probably something that you wear, either on your body or your shoulder. I’m not sure. So, maybe you need to think of that. Maybe you need to sell that. And you say—well, I’m not going to get back all that I paid for it. Well, of course you’re not going to. That’ why they got you to pay that for it. Now you have to sell it as used. But you put it up for sale. Let me ask, is there something in your life that if you knew God told you to sell it, you would be resistant to sell? This is an interesting spiritual question. I’m not saying God is telling you sell it, or He not telling you to sell it, but if He did tell you to sell it, is there something that you are protecting? You are like—God, I would sell anything that I have but this. And you hold it really close. If so, you have allowed that some thing to become your God. And you have made that thing into an idol. Instead of worshiping God properly, you are worshiping stuff improperly. That’s why Ezekiel 20 says, “Get rid of all of your idols.” We have idols all around our apartments, all around our homes. Maybe the best thing that you can do is sell those. So break the bond of materialism and also put yourself on the path of paying down this debt. So get the facts about your finances and then have a sale.
5. Set up a repayment plan. You are never going to get out of debt accidentally. You can get into debt accidentally, but you are not going to get out of debt accidentally. You have to be intentional. You have to have a plan. Somebody said that when you buy on credit, it’s like getting drunk. The buzz comes immediately, and the hang over comes afterwards. So, you have to deal now with a hang over of your debt. And the way that you deal with that, is you set up a repayment plan. Listen, it’s not the size of your plan that counts, it’s the starting of your plan that counts. So even if you can only pay $25 a month or $50 a month, just starting the plan will help you pay it down. You have to be intentional about this. Now, if you are going to set up a repayment plan, you may need to get some help. You may have to go to an outside source. Because there are all kinds of great plans that are out there. The plan that I used when I was paying down my debt is a plan called Pay Off Your Smallest Debt First. So when I listed all of what I owed, I took the smallest debt and I began to pay it down rather aggressively. Now, I paid the minimum on all the other debts to keep the creditors off my back, but I paid down aggressively that small debt. Once I struck the small debt off, I took the money that I was paying off that amount, added it to my next lowest payment and then began to work on that. And I began to chip it away. Chip away at that debt. Another payment plan that is out there is the Pay Off the Debt that Makes You the Maddest. Do you ever get a bill and you just get upset when you get the bill? Like, I can’t believe that I have a bill on that one. But you pay that one down first and then you can free up all this emotional energy to go to work on your other debts. There is a plan out there called the Envelope Plan. Which is where you put all of your credit cards in one envelope and you put cash in the other envelope, and you only spend out of the cash envelope. And when you run out of money in the envelope, you stop spending on that. I am going to put some resources in the email that I was telling you about, either This Week at The Journey, or your location update email that you can use. We have a ton of resources about plans for repayment on our website. I will send you the link to that as well. Then there are some great books out there. Like Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and some others that will help you. Then if you are deep in this and you are about to drown, you may have to go after a financial counselor. If you are interested in that, you can send me an email. My email every week is at the beginning of the teaching notes. Just send me an email and say, send me information on this financial counsel and I will send you some Christian financial counselors that can help you if you need to go beyond on what the books or the tools can help you. Now, listen to this. Debt is like a financial cancer. If you found out today that you had cancer in your body. Maybe skin cancer or lung cancer, or whatever. You wouldn’t wait to schedule an appointment with a specialist. You would begin to read up on that type of cancer. You would begin to explore treatments. You would set doctors’ appointments. You would be aggressive to deal with the physical cancer. Debt is like that. You should treat debt like a financial cancer. And do all that you can to deal with it. To cut it out, eradicate it, or erase it. To do that, you have to set up a good repayment plan. Then once you have your plan, then here’s the big challenging step.
6. Decide to do it in half the time. I now you are thinking—paying off my debt is impossible in the first place. Now it’s really impossible. But you see, I don’t want you to think that just from a human standpoint any more because debt is a spiritual issue. Instead, I want you to see debt from God’s perspective. And God doesn’t want you to remain in debt. He wants you to be free. So when you decide to honor Him by taking these first five steps that we have talked about, He gives you His power and His power is not explainable through human words. Through human understanding. Look at what Luke 18:27 says. Jesus is talking in this verse. He says, “What is impossible from a human perspective is possible with God.” So decide to do it in half the time.
7. Add no new debt. Don’t add any new debt as you are paying off your old debt. If you do, it’s just a revolving door. Now, look at the memory verse at the bottom of your page before you turn over on your sheet. This is the memory verse that I chose for this message and if you’re not familiar with the memory verse process, every week, back on the Resource Table, we give you the memory verse cards. We are big on memorizing Scripture, and this is part of character development as well. So I chose this verse because I thought it would help you to become debt free. So here’s what I want you to do. In addition to committing this verse to memory, I want you to go back and I want you to pick up one memory verse card for every credit card that you have. So maybe you have two credit cards, you will need two memory verse cards. And then, what I want you to do, is take each memory verse card and paste it on the back of your credit card. That way, when you go to swipe it, it won’t swipe, instead you can look at it and say, don’t be obsessed, let’s read this verse out loud together. “Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be satisfied with what you have.” Wouldn’t that be a good verse to put on the back of your credit cards? Here’s another thing that you can do with the cards. You can take one of these cards for every one of your credit cards, pull your credit card out of your wallet or your purse and replace it with this card. And then take all of your credit cards and put them in a microwaveable save dish and put it in your microwave for three minutes. And that will help solve your “adding no new debt”. So if you put your card in a microwave, mail that to me, I would love to have that in my archives along the way. But, just don’t add any new debt.
8. Share my plan with my creditors. Now, your creditors, for some of you, they are people you try to hide from. If you have been hiding from your creditors, you need to talk to your creditors, because nothing makes them madder than when you ignore them. Simply tell them, I know that you say I need to pay $500 a month, but I don’t have $500 a month. But I can pay $250 a month, or I can pay $100 a month, or $25 a month. Most creditors are more interested in getting your money than they are seeing you go bankrupt. Because if you go bankrupt, they don’t get their money and you have this stain on your credit history and you will never be able to get back into debt with them again. So what you say is, you honestly say—look, here’s my plan. I can pay this much on this time period, will you work with me? So if you have been avoiding your creditors, that is one of the things that you need to do. If you are on good terms with your creditors, but you owe a lot, then talk to your creditors about lowering your interest rates. Did you know that most credit card companies, if you just call the 800 number on the back of your credit card, give them your account and ask for a lower rate, they will give it to you. That will help if you do a little research. Do a research and find out what other credit card companies are offering. Maybe the lowest credit card rate that you can find out there is 11%. You might find one that is even lower. And call your credit card company and say—I’ve been a customer with you for so long, and I have paid thousands and thousands of dollars to you, I want to ask you for a lower rate. You know the person on the phone may not be able to give that to you, but if you will ask for their supervisor, or the supervisor’s supervisor, if you are diligent about this, I have heard of people saving thousands of dollars because they got their interest rate lowered. And if you are following this Biblical process that we are laying out, I have ever reason to believe that God is going to help you out in this area. The reason that I can say this is because of Proverbs 16:7. Look at what it says, “When your ways please the Lord”, that number one, make sure you are pleasing the Lord and following this process, “He will make your enemies into friends.” Isn’t that a great promise? He will make your enemies into friends. That’s the eighth step.
9. Stick to it and trust God. Getting out of debt is not easy. It’s going to take discipline. It’s going to take effort. It’s going to take sacrifice. But these principles do work. If you work these principles they will work for you because God is backing them up. God’s not going to get you out of debt quickly, but He will get you out of debt. Along the way you will learn more than if you just worked on it by yourself. You can get out of debt by yourself, but unless you are going to develop your character, you are going to get back into debt. Because you have to become a different person than you are now to stay debt free for the rest of your life. That means you have to ask for God’s strength. Say, God, I’m going to trust You in this area. I’m going to trust You from this day forward. I’m not going to rely on easy credit. I’m going to rely on an available God. Galatians 6:9 says, “So don’t get tired of doing what is good. Don’t get discouraged and give up. We will reap”, maybe you will want to underline that phrase—will reap, if you do this, you will reap “a harvest of blessings at the appropriate time.” When God is working on you, as you work down your debt. I believe you can do this. You know, there is a lot of debt represented in this room and in the room at Jersey City. I just know, it’s just the world we live in. There is just a lot of debt here. Think for just a moment. Project forward a few years and imagine what your life would be like if you were totally debt free? This spurred me on. You know, I told you I was $20,000 in debt. I began to put my plan together and at the end of 2001 we started this church in 2002. I began to tithe and give more than I have ever given. I began to make less than I have ever made. I began to pay more than I have ever paid. All these factors worked together. But God worked in that. My plan was a five year plan. I thought, God if in December 2001, if I could be debt free by December 2006, that was my plan. But God added His will and His power to my plan and in November of 2004, Kelli and I became debt free. My five year plan was cut down to a three year plan by God. This is God’s power in this area. I’m telling you, God will bring this to bear in your life. Since then, I have remained totally debt free. I have zero credit cards today. I have zero outstanding education debt today. I have no debt. And with God’s help, I plan to go into no more debt except for maybe a mortgage debt which I classify as a different kind of secured debt. But the freedom of being debt free is amazing. I mean, if God tapped me on the shoulder and said—Nelson, I need you to go on a two or three week mission trip to some country where you can share the gospel or where you can serve along side local churches, I can go, because I don’t have this debt. If God called me and said—give extra money to some cause that you believe in, whether it is to The Journey church or some other cause, I can do that, because I am debt free. Project forward and think about what it means to be free. Paul said, “I am free to do ministry because I am bound by no man.” That’s a great place to be. Not to be bound in the financial area. Serving one God, being God’s servant, not a servant to a credit card company.
You see, I believe you can do this. In order to do it, I think you need to make two very vital commitments as we wrap up today. The first commitment is a commitment to follow God’s financial plan. I want to ask you to take action today. This first commitment, would you look on the back of your Connection Card. There some next steps printed there for you. Can you find it? The first next step is to memorize Hebrews 13:5. That’s the memory verse that were having fun with earlier that you are going to get and tape on the back of your credit card or replace in your wallet. Commit that to memory. Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be satisfied with what you have. So make that step. Everybody can do that. Secondly, follow these Biblical guidelines that I have laid out today and set a date to be debt free. Set a date. Maybe it’s four years in the future. Say by 2010. Or six years, 2012. Some of you may be able to do it in two years. I don’t know what your debt is. But set a date, a faith statement. Write that down and we will pray with you this week about that date. And you know, several months ago, almost two years ago now, I did our first debt free workshop here at The Journey. I think we had 30 people show up and there was about $500,000 worth of debt in that room. And over the last two years, it’s been amazing as I have heard story after story about how people in our church have become debt free. About a year ago, we did a debt free workshop with about 80 people and there was over $1 million worth of debt in that room. And even in the year since we have done it, I have received emails and testimonies of people who have become debt free. You see, it’s an act of faith so write that down. It gets you started. Then, make the decision to commit your financial life to God and begin living it out by giving the full tithe regularly. You have to stop robbing God. You have to give the full tithe. If you check that, I will send you information on a process that we have called automatic giving so that you can ensure that you are honoring God with your finances. Then there are some other next steps there that you just may need to take as well. But make the commitment, first of all, to commit your financial life to God. Here’s the second commitment that you need to make that is eve more important than the first one. That is, to follow God’s plan for all of your life. Say—God, I’m going to follow you in my financial life, but I am also going to follow you in all of my life. This is for those of you who have never had your sins, your debts cancelled. You see, there are two types of debt that we all have. We have financial debt, that’s what we’ve talked about today. But we also have a sin debt because we have sinned, we have all gone our own way. So, we have to not only pay down our financial debt, but we have to have the sinful debt cancelled. That’s what Colossians 2:14 is all about. Back in your message notes, the last verse in your outline, Colossians 2:14. It says, “We owed a debt.” what kind of debt? A sin debt. “We owed a debt because we broke God’s laws. He cancelled the debt which listed all the rules that we failed to follow, took away that record with its rules and nailed it to a cross.” See, that’s what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. That’s why He died. He was paying the penalty, the debt of my sin and your sin. So will you commit your financial life to God? If you have never done so, today, will you turn your whole life over to God as well, and have your sin debt totally erased.
Let’s bow our heads and pray together. As we pray, if you have never turned your life over to Jesus Christ, maybe you will just say this right now.
Jesus, I trust You for the forgiveness that I need. I thank You for paying the debt of my sin. Jesus, thank You for assuming that debt on the cross, wiping it out by Your grace, I want to ask You to forgive me. Today, I want to become a follower of You. Help me to live for You from this day forward.
And then all of us, we can commit our financial lives to God. Some of you, I realize you are here and are no doubt very discouraged about your finances. This hasn’t been an easy message to hear. But I want you to know that there is hope. That which is impossible from a human perspective is possible with God. You know, maybe right now, or this week, for the first time, you need to do something. You need to bow your head and say to God—
God, I’m turning my financial life to You.
If you are here with your spouse or here with your family, maybe this week at home, tonight at home, you need to get down on your knees and say—
God, I’m willing to do whatever You and Godly counsel tell me to do to get out of this debt trap. I need Your direction. I need Your strength.
Now let us all pray—
God, show me your plan. Help me to follow the plan. Help me to live my life by Your Word, by Your strength and by Your power. I ask all of this, and I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This sermon transcript is a free resource provided by Nelson Searcy and Church Leader Insights. For other resources visit www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com.
Nelson Searcy is the founding and Lead Pastor of The Journey Church in New York City. The Journey is an innovative, multi-cultural, multi-site church in Manhattan and Jersey City. The Journey is one of the fastest growing churches in the United States and was recognized by Outreach Magazine in 2006 as one of the Top 25 Innovated Churches in America. The church is recognized for its creativity, media and relevant approach to life changing teaching. Nelson is also the founder of www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com - a website devoted to resourcing pastors and church leaders.
