got stress?
Too Many Bills, Too Little Money
Slide
Last week we began a mini-series on stress. We looked at being stressed out by the lack of time we seem to have to accomplish all that seems to be on our plates.
We saw that we have to learn to prioritize the things that will help us fulfill our mission to bring glory to God and not let other things take up all our time so we get stressed out when we are not able to accomplish the major things of life. We sometimes need to say no to things that may be good, but not best and prioritize those things that are best and help us glorify the Lord in our calling.
No, today, we are going to talk about the other major stressor of life, money.
It seems that a lot of our stress is caused by our perception that we have
Too many Bills and too little Money
Slide
Money issues are one of the leading causes of stress in America, if not the world.
When we feel we do not have enough money or we have too many bills,
we become irritable,
it affects our relationships, and
it affects decisions we make.
In short, we get stressed out when we feel we have too many bills and too little money.
But as we saw last week in regards to the stress we felt with too little time, it was less about too little time and more about priorities.
This week we are going to see that the stress we feel over too many bills and too little money, has more to do with
our lack of trust in the Lord,
our improper view of the resources in our control, and
our lack of wise stewardship of the resources the Lord has given us.
We are going to be able to overcome some of the stress we feel due to money issues as we grow in our trust of the Lord, gain a proper perspective of the resources in our control and then when we become wise stewards of those resources.
I want you to turn to Matthew 6:19-34.
Slide
We are going to read a larger section than we read last week when we talked about time, but we are going to address what Jesus deals with more directly here, and that is our view of money and in whom or what we place our trust.
Let’s read Matthew 6:19-34.
Matthew 6:19-34
19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
25 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ’What shall we eat?’ or ’What shall we drink?’ or ’What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Pray
Ok, I want to start out this morning and ask you a question. Don’t answer this out loud, but just to yourselves.
Who is your God?
Slide
Not just who you say your God is, but if someone were to look at your life, in whom or what would that person who looked at your life say you were putting your trust in?
Would people be able to tell
from the way you live life,
from the way you spend money,
that your trust is in
the one true God of heaven and earth,
the one who created all things and holds all things in place by His powerful word,
the one who is the provider of every good and perfect gift?
Or would they say you trust in
the abilities you have, or
the connections you have, or
the money you have?
Who is Your God?
Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:24 that you cannot serve both God and money. And money is personified in such a way that it represents a false idol that competes for priority in the hearts of men.
Who are you serving as your God if you really stopped and considered how you live?
I think that many of us are giving the right but are we living the right answer.
Slide
We can say we serve the one true God, the creator of heaven and earth, but what does our life indicate?
I think many of us deceive ourselves or, at least, are ok with being deceived by Satan in this matter, because I think a lot of us live our lives like Money is our god.
Or if it is not money, it is the stuff that money can buy.
Why we are in the financial crisis we are in as a nation
I believe this is why, as a nation, we are facing the serious financial crisis we are in.
Foreclosures, bankruptcies, creditors calling, banks failing, stocks plunging.
People no longer save to put a down payment on a house so there is no equity in the home.
Then when the economy worsens a bit, not only does the value of the home drop quickly putting a person underwater, owing more than the house is worth, but they also aren’t
making that overtime they were counting on, or
Getting the number of hours they were before or
Maybe they lose their job all together
so that they are no longer making the money to pay the mortgage on a house in which they owe more than it is worth.
Combine that with the “buy now and pay later” mentality that has got much of society charging things on credit cards that they cannot pay off each month, and you have the makings of a financial crisis that can and is leading to huge amounts of stress in people’s lives.
The average credit card debt for households that have a credit card is about $10,000.
About 56% of the households that have a credit card, carry a balance so the average credit card debt for those households that carry a balance is about $16,000.
Accessed 5/19/2010 @ http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php#footnote1
Minimum payments on that amount of credit card debt would be about $360 per month and it would take you 5.5 years to pay off that debt if you didn’t charge another thing.
Transition
We may be able to give the right answer verbally to the question, Who is our God, but as we look at our life and our financial situation, are we living the right answer?
I believe that for many of us, at some point or another, myself included, we live as if money is going to be able to buy us peace and contentment.
We think that having stuff, more stuff, more money to buy stuff, is going to make us happy, but it only leads to discontentment, and ultimately stress.
What do we do?
How do we overcome a society that continues to preach prosperity happiness?
How do we overcome the stresses that too many bills, and too little money cause?
Slide
To overcome this mentality and to eventually reduce the stress that is being caused by it, is not an overnight process. We didn’t get into this situation overnight, and it will require some change in us if we are to overcome these stresses and get to a point of enjoying the peace and contentment that come from the Lord.
The first step we need to take is to
Focus on the Lord and His Word
Slide
Have you ever bumped into someone because you were looking somewhere else and they have yelled at you, “Hey, watch where you are walking!”
It is because we want to be heading one way, but our eyes are focused on something else and what our eyes are focused on has an effect on what we end up doing, even if it is not what we intended.
Jesus says in Matthew 6:22-23
22 "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
In our spiritual lives, if we are continuing to focus on worldly things instead of focusing on the Lord and His word, that is going to affect how we live, even if it is not what we intend for our lives
Listen to what Paul tells the Colossians in
Slide
Colossians 2:6-8 - 6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
When we allow the world’s values and philosophies to grab our attention and keep our focus, we are in danger of stumbling and being taken captive.
We have got to Focus on the Lord and his word so we can be built up and strengthened in the faith.
Otherwise we are going to begin believing that
money really does provide happiness.
Having things really will make us content.
That is until we are making more money than we ever had and find that we are still not happy, or until we have those things and find that we are not content.
I have lived that and know that it is a hollow and deceptive philosophy. But even though I have lived it, I need to keep my guard up and my focus on the Lord, because I can be taken in by it again.
So the first step in overcoming the stress caused by too many bills and too little money is to Focus on the Lord and His word.
But then we need to
Seek His Kingdom and His Righteousness
Slide
Matthew 6:33 - But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
How is seeking his kingdom and righteousness different from focusing on the Lord and His word?
What does it mean to seek His kingdom and his righteousness?
Well, I think this is the next step as we focus on the Lord and His Word and his word is working in us, then we go and seek his Kingdom and His Righteousness.
Must Have the Spirit to do this
To do this requires that we have recognized who the one true God is.
It is impossible to seek after His Kingdom and His righteousness without having the Spirit of God within you and that comes
when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior,
when we recognize that Jesus is God in the flesh and that it is through Him and His sacrifice that we can receive forgiveness of our sins and be restored into a relationship with the God who created us.
Then the Spirit of God comes and lives in us and makes it possible to truly seek His Kingdom and His Righteousness.
What does it look like to seek His Kingdom and Righteousness?
The Greek word that is translated, “seek” means to seek in order to find. It is a verb and requires action. You are not just looking in the sky for His kingdom to come, but you are actively out seeking to live out what the Lord has been teaching you as you focus on Him and His word.
James tells us in
James 1:22-25
Slide
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does.
We can read God’s word and pray as an item on our checklist without the desire to be transformed, but then we just set ourselves up to for being deceived by “hollow and deceptive philosophies” (Colossians 2:8).
We need to read the word and do what it says.
That is how we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.
And when we begin growing in our trust of Him as we live out His word in our lives, we are strengthened to trust Him even when we have a society preaching something different.
That is because while we won’t always know how the Lord will work things out, we will know that as we have trusted and followed Him, He has given us the strength to stand, even as we felt weak.
This strengthens us to live for the eternal rather than the temporary and to invest our resources in the eternal rather than things that are fleeting.
Jesus said in Matthew 6:21 - For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Most often we hear the phrase, “follow your heart.” Well, that is not the best advice because the Bible tells us in Jeremiah 17:9 that, “The heart is deceitful above all things.”
We don’t need to follow our heart, we need to lead our heart.
What Jesus means when he says this is that
where we put our resources,
where we invest our time, our talents and treasure
is where our heart is going to be.
We need to
Invest our Resources to Lead our Hearts
Slide
Now this is where things get practical.
The title of our message is “Too many bills, too little money.”
Jesus gets practical when He says, “you cannot serve both God and money.”
For most of us, the problem we face is not too little money, although it seems like it.
The problem we have is a lifestyle that creates too many bills.
Exceptions
Now, I know that there are exceptions in that there are those who are unemployed, those who have faced sickness and those who are suffering through disabilities that truly are in need and do not have enough to pay for essential items.
Here is my plug for being part of a local church.
The church is the place where we can find help in the midst of those financial hardships. When you think you don’t need the church and cut yourself off from the church and face a financial hardship, you will find that you have cut yourself off from the very help that God intended to give you during those times.
Now recognizing those instances, there are still many of us have fallen prey to “hollow and deceptive philosophies” and created our own financial hardships by the pursuing a lifestyle that is beyond our ability believing that buying more stuff will make us happy.
If we take our focus off of the philosophy the world is espousing, and refocus on the Lord and His word, and then seek His Kingdom and Righteousness in our actions, we can begin to step out in faith and invest our resources to lead our hearts.
The next step for many of us, because money is such a priority in our society and in our lives, would be to invest our money in God’s eternal kingdom to help people come into a relationship with Him.
That is truly an investment. An investment that you will find that pays eternal dividends.
Monetary wealth is fleeting. Just take a look at the stock market over the past month, down 10% in just the last month. You invest in the stock market and your investments are uncertain. You invest in the kingdom and your investments are secure for eternity.
Now I do not mean to insinuate that you do not save for the future, or invest in the stock market.
I do mean to say that if that is where your hope is, if that is where your security is, you are standing on very shaky ground and I would say that you need to ask yourself the hard question of who truly is my God?
So, given the situation of many of already being in some financial hardship, how do we take steps to practically invest our money and lead our hearts?
First, we need to
Reduce spending
Slide
You have heard it said, “Live within your means.”
You should really, “live below your means.”
May are living beyond their means, and you are really enslaving yourselves to other peoples desires and wishes and living out the philosophy that I need stuff to make me happy.
When we have lived beyond our means and are weighed down by debt, then,
If our job wants us to work overtime, we have to say yes, so that we will meet our overextended obligations.
If our bosses desire us to do something that is against what we would want to do, we put ourselves in a very difficult position.
Reducing our spending and living below our means allows us to save money and to save money to use for bigger purchases and be prepared for unexpected events.
Saving money is not the same as “storing up treasures on earth.” It is wise to have some savings. That is wise stewardship. It is when we trust in our bank accounts and seek to accumulate more and more, that we risk storing up treasures on earth to the detriment of our treasures in heaven.
This doesn’t mean that you can never spend money on yourself or go on a vacation or out to dinner. It means we make conscious decisions to reduce our spending to live below our means so we are not putting ourselves in bondage to our jobs and creditors.
But we not only have to reduce spending, we need to
Increase Giving
Slide
to lead our hearts
A very real way of showing that money is not your god is to give more of it away.
This is a great struggle in our society because our whole society is built on the premise that money is our god.
If you have more money, you have more power.
If you have more money, you will be happier
If you earn more money, you have a more important job.
Etc.
The fact is that our society is not going to change, we have to change so we don’t act as if money is our god.
How much should we give?
For some, it may be like Jesus said to the rich young ruler, “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." (Matt 19:21)
I would think that for many that are here today, that the place to start or take steps toward, is with a biblical concept called tithing.
What is tithing?
Tithing is giving the first 10% of what you earn back to the Lord as a real and practical way of showing that you trust Him.
I believe in tithing as a place to begin in our giving.
We teach this as a church, and I practice this personally.
We don’t tithe because God needs the money.
We don’t tithe because the church needs the money.
We tithe simply as an act of trusting in and recognizing that the Lord is the one who is owner of everything we have.
He is the one who gives us everything that we have, and we are just the stewards, managers, of the things and money in our possession.
Giving back a portion of what He has given us is just a practical way of acknowledging that and keeping our focus and it helps lead our hearts as well.
Maybe you are saying,
“Whoa, I am stressed out because I don’t have enough money to cover my obligations already, and now I am supposed to give more? How does that work?”
It works because God knows what you need and we can trust His promise to provide for our needs. Now this does not mean that giving doesn’t require sacrifice.
Those TV preachers who want you to send money and plant a seed of financial prosperity I believe are leading people falsely.
Giving money away will require sacrifice.
But as Jesus said, the Father knows what you need. He is the one who feeds the birds and clothes the grass of the field and you are much more valuable then they. Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all your needs will be provided for you.
When we are concerned that our needs won’t be met if we do what God wants, then what we are saying is that we don’t trust God. We are replacing the true God with money or ourselves or something else. We are taking what are God’s possessions in the first place and not giving it back to Him when He asks. That in effect, is stealing.
Listen to what God says in
Slide
Malachi 3:8-11
8 "Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
"But you ask, ’How do we rob you?’
"In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse-the whole nation of you-because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.
Now I do believe that tithing is something that grows our faith, and that we may be at a point where we just are unable to take that step of faith.
I would say then take a step from where you are at toward it.
If you are struggling with a financial situation right now and you feel you just don’t have the resources to give, then I would encourage you to begin giving something and to do it regularly, every week in fact.
It is not about the amount. It is about trusting, but it has got to be an amount that indicates trust.
Listen to what Jesus said in Mark 12:41-44
Slide
41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.
43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything-all she had to live on."
We are going to close in a song called, “Show Your Power.”
One of the lines in there says, “We ask not for riches but look to the cross” and
“for our inheritance, give us the lost”
Make that your prayer. Ask the Lord to help you take that next step of trusting Him.
And if you want to know more about who Jesus is and how you can receive Him as your Savior, or if you have a prayer need, then I encourage you to come up after our service. We will have people up front available to pray with you and tell you more about Jesus.
Pray.
