The Giant Of Money Problems
Calvary 5-18-13 Ecclesiastes 4:1-8 Matthew 6:19-24
I am indebted to Andy Stanley for his sermon on Breathing Room for some of the concepts and ideas in this message.
Today is Pentecost Sunday. Let me tell you briefly how Pentecost Sunday came out in the church. Jesus had come and preached to people for about 3/12 years and did all kinds of miracles to show God’s love for people and to prove He was the Son of God. Some religious and political leaders got very upset over Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God.
They got together and had him killed on a cross which is what we mean by the crucifixion. Three days after he was put in grave, God raised Jesus from the dead, and Jesus started preaching and teaching again for about 40 days. He told his followers that he was going to send them a Comforter to take His place and that this Comforter would lead them into all truth. He told them to wait in Jerusalem until after the Holy Spirit had come upon them and they would receive power to be His witnesses to others.
They had no idea of what Jesus was talking about until after they had watched Jesus go back into heaven. Pentecost is the day that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit upon the church and the group of believers received power for their lives and the church came into being. There were about 120 people in a room who began speaking in other tongues to preach the gospel to foreigners. The Holy Spirit came upon them and gave them a boldness and wisdom that they had not known before. That same Holy Spirit is available for each and every one of us today who gives his or her life to Jesus Christ.
When we think of the Holy Spirit doing things in our lives, we often think of Him ministering to our spirits, healing our bodies, and comforting us during our times of loss or grief. But Jesus said the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. All truth belongs to God, and God wants us to be wise in every area of our lives.
We have been doing a bible study series on Facing The Giants. I want to take one of the giants out of order from the series and that’s Facing The Giant Of Money Problems. The Holy Spirit wants to lead us into truth about money, because we spend more time worrying about it, than probably anything else. We worry about what we will eat, what we will wear, and where we live. These worries are all traced back to money.
Now today, I want you to relax as we talk about money. I’m not going to ask you to commit to tithing. I’m not going to ask you to make a pledge. I’m not going to talk about our financial situation as a church. I’m going to tell you something that can help you to enjoy your life when it comes to money. It does not matter if you are a Christian or not, this is something that can help you if you listen.
Now Solomon who lived thousands of years ago, is the first one that identified what used to be called the rat race. The rat race is a race in which everybody is trying to outdo the other person by making sure they have the latest, the biggest, the fastest, the quickest, the largest, and the mostest compared to everybody else. It gets to be absurd. Solomon said, “And I saw that all toil and all achievements spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless. a chasing after the wind. In other words, the moment someone has something, we want one too, but if we can get a better one, we’ll take that one instead. We can’t enjoy our things unless we know someone knows that we have our thing. The only problem with living like this is that it never ends. Have you tried chasing the wind. You run over here it stops. You run over there it stops. You just can’t keep up.
When we look at the giants of money problem, most of us think that the solution is simple. Give me some more money and that will solve the problem. You may not believe this, but it probably won’t. Chances are, you will be right back in the same situation before your know it all over again. Unless you understand what we are going to look at today. The Holy Spirit is interested in your peace of mind. Lack of money destroys our peace of mind.
If you go to the grocery story with cash and your bill comes to $53. 69, there is no tension when you open your purse and see three $20 bills which comes to $60.00. You hand off you money and the love of Jesus is shining through your face as you say hello, receive your change and say goodbye to the cashier.
But if you open your purse or wallet and there is only two $20 bills, all of a sudden your tension level begins to rise especially if you thought had three. You only have $40 to cover a $53.69 bill. You start a frantic search for the other $20 bill. Now you are about to be embarrassed in front of the clerk. You start talking to yourself. Somebody tells you to just put back some of the stuff. You are about to lose your cool as a Christian to tell them to mind their own business.
The clerk asks you if you want to put something back, you snap back, “if you just wait a moment I know If have the money here somewhere. The difference between the two situations is that in the first scenario, you had what I want to call breathing room. Breathing room is the gap between what you have and what is required. The greater the gap the more relief and peace that you feel. I heard Andy Stanley preach a message on Breathing Room and I knew I had to bring it to us.
We all are given 24 hours a day in which to live. Time is limited. You cannot add additional time to your day to make things easier for you. Your money is limited. But unlike Time, you can additional money that you don’t have to make life easier.
It’s called credit or debt. You can buy stuff with money you have not even seen, and at the moment it may feel pretty good, but the bible does tell us eventually we reap what we sow, in other words payday is going to come around. The question is, when we obtain credit what is it doing to our breathing room in the future. Remember, when you have breathing room you have more peace and you find it easier to be a positive witness for Christ. Without breathing room, you are a lot harder to get along with in everyday life.
Credit will allow us to bring income out of nowhere from the future into today. But once we get too much of it, we can have things that we do not even enjoy because of the financial pressures from the financial giants around us demanding our money. If you are a Christian, what I’m teaching today is essential if you are going to follow Jesus Christ. We have a false view that when Jesus talks about loving money, he’s talking about people putting money in the bank and hoarding it up for a rainy day. We think “because we don’t have it, we can’t love it.” Jesus is saying “no, you don’t have it, because you did love it.”
Jesus also says no one can serve two masters. Either you will have the one and love the other, or you will despise the one and be devoted to the other. You cannot serve God and money. Now to understand what Jesus is talking about, we have to understand this.
What comes to mind when someone says “standard of living.?” What comes to mind when you hear “quality of life.” There is such a thing as a standard of living and quality of life. They are two different things. My standard of living is about the possessions I have. My quality of life is about the peace and joy that I have with myself and with others. These are two different things. But advertisers try to convince us that they are one and the same and are definitely tied together.
We are told, if we raise our standard of living, then we raise our quality of life. In other words, if I have a more expensive vacation, if I eat at the finer restaurants, if I live in a better neighborhood, if I get a better smart phone, if I get a luxury car, then I’ll automatically raise my quality of life. Some of you have found out that’s not true. You have a higher standard of living than ever before, and your life is not what you thought it would be. You’re not even as happy as you were before you got all you things. You may have more stuff than you ever had before, and you and your spouse may still argue about money all the time. There is a difference between standard of living and quality of life.
You can raise your standard of living with debt. In order to raise your quality of life you have to have discipline. Debt says “yes to me,” discipline says “no to me”. Which one do we like better? Now think about this for a moment. If there is God who loves you, who cares about you, and who knows your name, what would God want more for you? What would God consider is in your best interest? Would God choose a higher standard of living or a better quality of life?
When Jesus says in John 10:10 the enemy comes only to kill, steal, and destroy, but I have come that you might have life, do you think he’s talking about standard of living, or quality of life? Let me ask you this, what would you rather have, an awesome marriage with two used cars, or an awful marriage with two new cars on credit that have you left with no extra money to spend.
Some of you know what it’s like to have a high standard of living without a high quality of life. You have an awesome house with two really nice cars, but you don’t want to go home. When he comes home, you find a reason to leave. You’re happy she’s not there, but you have two really cool cars that everybody tells you they wish they had. But wouldn’t you rather have the quality of life.
At some point it dawns on us that there is a difference between a standard of living and a quality of life. That’s why breathing room is so huge. We get breathing room when our standard of living is below our income. With breathing room we have time for each, we have peace, and we have a less frantic life. It doesn’t even bother us if somebody in the family dies out of state. Breathing room means we have money to go to the funeral. Other wise we either go into debt to get there or we start telling lies saying we would come to the funeral but Jake can’t get off of work.
Creating breathing room may lower your standard of living, but it will increase your quality of life. But I am an American. What will my friends think if I don’t have a 61” inch high definition tv with 332 channels on it. What will my family think? They already think you have more money than you have. That’s why they keep asking to borrow it.
They don’t know you don’t have any breathing room because of that tv and cable bill. You may not believe this, but Pastor Toby and I have the same large screen Tv we got 15 years ago. It’s a monster. It still works. It only gets 22 channels because we only have basic cable. That tv and those channels help give us breathing room in our finances.
Breathing Room may lower your Standard of Living but it will raise you Quality of Life.. Some of you have stuff you wish you did not have. You’re in a house you can’t sell because of the market. You have lease payments that are way too high. You can’t afford your cell bill. Your Mortgage payments prevent you from even thinking about a vacation. You’re thinking, who talked me in to doing this. You look in a full closet and say—I don’t have a thing to wear. (Other people would die to have it.)
Your standard of living has increased. You make more money than ever, but you have no peace. You fell for a lie that says as your standard of life increases, so does your quality of life. It’s not the advertisers fault for our choosing to believe a lie. The sooner we recognize the lie, the better off we are. We can stop chasing after the wind. You have got to get this difference right in your life if you are going to be a follower of Christ. You’ve been deceived.
3 things I know about you. You are living on a percentage of your income and you don’t know what it is. (Some of you are determining it now for the next decade with student loans. We ask the question, where are you going to college. The real question is where can you afford to go to college. Otherwise, if you take out massive student loans today, you are deciding where you can live, what car you will drive, what vacations you can take, and what clothes your kids will be wearing for the next 10 years.)
If you don’t pick a percentage of your income to live on, culture will pick one for you, the mall will pick one for you, your friends will pick one for you, the car dealership or real estate agent will pick one for you. All of you live on a percentage of your income and you probably don’t know what it is.
2. The second thing I know is that you think if you just had a little bit more, you would be fine. Things would not be so tight if we had a little more. Because you don’t choose to live on a percentage of your income, as your income goes up, so does your standard of living. This keeps from being able to create breathing room.
Some of you thought a few years ago, if you ever made $5,000 or $10,000 more a year, you wouldn’t be facing the giant of money problems. Well you’ve passed the $5000 mark and the problem is still here. You can’t follow the teachings of Jesus if you do not have any breathing room. You need to have space between your income and your bills. It gives you the chance to live abundantly.
The third thing is know is that you want this. You want breathing room. You want this regardless of being married or single, male or female, young or old, black or white, or whatever. Everybody wants this. Everybody wants breathing room. What happens when there is breathing room, you get along better, you sleep better, and you drive slower. You can pray better and concentrate. You become more generous with your time and money. You’re not scared to answer the phone.
Life is better with breathing room. You need to get here. We make the mistake of allowing our income to drive our standard of living. If you make 250,000 and your spending track your income, you still will have not breathing room. It’s worse if you make $250,000 and have no breathing room.
If you lose a $30,000 job, you find another one. You lose a 250k job, you have to leave town or out of state to get another one. The pressure is greater. The fear of losing all that you have can cause you to stop trusting God and start trusting yourself. You can’t give because you are afraid of what might happen. You can have a life full of stuff and not enjoy.(Here’s the irony, we get all this stuff, just to get rid of it toward the end. We get rid of it at a fraction of the cost. Wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t get it in the first place.)
Our desire for a continuous higher standard of living will send us into debt. Debt causes us to go into a life of financial slavery. All the money we make belongs to someone else before we get the paycheck. Now our bills are telling us what we can and cannot do. We have a new master. But Jesus says we can’t serve 2 masters. The Banks, the credit card, the furniture rental, the phone company, and Friendly Bob Car company have all become our masters.
Jesus, I know you told me I ought to tithe, but have you seen my bills, my car note. Jesus I know you told me I ought to come to church, but I need this second job to pay this mortgage. Do you know the taxes in this community. Jesus I know you said to help others, but I don’t have the money. I don’t have any breathing room.
You are angry with your new master, but you voluntarily sold yourself to them. Now though you are beginning to hate them. You won’t answer their phone calls, you won’t open their letters, you yell at them on your job, (this is my job, don’t you call be me back here again. I don’t want to get fired.) They’re trying to friend you on facebook so they can find you and collect their money. You hate them and don’t even know who they are. You become a slave.
You spent and borrowed your way into slavery. Everything financial is your master. Your debt tells you, you Can’t live there, can’t buy that, can’t go there, can’t pledge there, can’t help out, can’t vacation there, and can’t go out to dinner. Christmas is a more stressful time because now you’re expected to spend more money that you don’t have. You’re stressed out which means you stress out those around you, which means your relationships start falling to pieces. All because you have no breathing room. You’ve been sowing and now you’re reaping. Why do we do this to ourselves?
Jesus talks about money all the time. You can’t be a sincere follow of Jesus without any breathing room. Jesus predicted this type of slavery. No one can serve two masters. (Your job, your parents.) You either hate the one or love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other.
When you are caught in the middle, it’s kind of terrible to be pulled in different directions. You can’t serve God and money. Don’t you mean God and the devil. No. Money is telling you how to live—Not Jesus. You will be torn between your devotion to God and your devotion to stuff. If money is your master, because you have spent your way into slavery you can’t do what God wants you to do. You can’t follow Jesus as he wants you to follow him. Some of you give so poorly to the church, because stuff has a greater claim on your heart.
There’s a tension between your money and being a sold out follower of Jesus Christ. It’ amazing how I’ve watched many of you claim you would tithe if you had a job, but then see you get a job and say you would tithe if you could afford it, but you can’t afford it. How can you not afford it when you just got the job.
The whole New Testament is about one anothers. We are to love one another, serve one another, comfort one another, encourage one another , help one another but when your finances are out of order you can’t do much one anothering. This is a spiritual issue. You have to find breathing room. That’s where you can love people. That’s where your relationships are better. That’s where you find peace in your home. That’s where your ministry grows. If you have no breathing room, you have two masters. You are torn. Your heavenly Father loves you. He wants you to come away from the edge. He doesn’t want you driven by standard of living. He wants you to have a rich quality of life. God wants you to be in the position of being able to go when he says go, or stay when he says stay, or give when he says give. How do we get there to that place.
First Step: Make the decision---You have to make a decision to do something about this if you want to follow Jesus. When it comes to doing exercising, the problem is rarely “I don’t know what to do, it’s the discipline of choosing to do it. Discipline is hard. We don’t like it. You raise your standard of living by debt. You raise your quality of life by discipline. Decide I’m not going to live this way anymore. You have to make up your mind to change. I am going to open up some space between my income and spending. I want a better quality of life. I want Jesus to be my master, not my bill collectors.
Second Step: You need to create some breathing room space. What space do you want to have? 5%, 10%, 20% . You set a realistic target for yourself of where you are going to live to have quality of life.
Step 3: Spy on your money for two months and see where it is going. Write down everything you spend money on to know where it’s going. Everybody should be knowing, where your money is going. You have to know where its going to fix the problem. Once we know where it is going then we can cut our spending. Yes it means having a lower standard of living for the moment. Remember this “I want” is better than “I owe.” “I want that car” is better than “I owe for that car”. Wants can come and go. Owe lasts for the term of the contract.
Step 4. You can’t simply pray your way out of this. Develop a debt retirement plan. Go to the bookstore or online and get Dave Ramsey’s book Financial Peace revisited. It costs $18.99 He has a plan for you to get out of debt once you decide to do it. You can listen to him for free by going to the website rightnowmedia.org . We have his videos Life, Money, Hope . There are three 30 minute videos that can get you to the place of creating breathing room.
If you are a Jesus follower its necessary to get your finances in order to be able to say yes to God’s will for your life. The chief competitor for your heart is stuff. You and I are not tempted to go run after the devil. We are tempted to keep on getting stuff which robs us of our ability to trust God. We need to reclaim the breathing room God intended for us to have. Life is better with breathing room.
Spy on your money, cut your spending, get out of debt, become a sincere follower of Jesus Christ.
