Strategy Of The Treasure Series

John Wesley is often quoted as saying, "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can."

Expanded, what he said was, "Get all you can without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbour. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can. Be glad to give, and ready to distribute; laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that you may attain eternal life."

This week we are focusing on the Strategy of our Treasure. Or what will we do with what we have? Because every one of us has the same options as to what to do with our money. What separates us is the amount that we have to work with.

He Could Have Squandered it

And the reality is that what I define as squandering may not be what you define as squandering.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." When you decide to purchase something, there is a financial cost. We know that.

But there is also another cost in the fact that the money you spend on something, you could have been spent somewhere else.

As part of our budget at Cornerstone, we pay an assessment to the denomination. It is called the USF or United Stewardship Fund, and it helps finance our district office, our national office and our Universities. I sometimes compare it to a franchise fee—it what we pay for the privilege of being a Wesleyan Church. When we started Cornerstone, the largest portion of our initial funding came from money that other churches had paid into the USF.

A number of years ago, one of our churches had not paid their USF, and when they were approached by the District Superintendent, the pastor said, "We didn't have the money." To which the district superintendent replied, "Yes, you did; you just chose to spend it somewhere else."

When we lived in Australia, we invited someone we were close with to come and visit. All they had to do was pay their airfare. And they said they'd love to, but they didn't have the money. Because I was young and my filter didn't work, I said, "You have the money. You just smoke it." Sometimes, just because something is true doesn't mean it should be spoken aloud.

You may choose to spend the grocery money on groceries, or you may choose to spend it on cigarettes, or beer or cable TV or lottery tickets, but don't try to fool yourself into believing that you had no money for groceries.

You just chose to spend it on something other than groceries.

A Swedish proverb says, "He who buys what he does not need, steals from himself."

And each one of us gets to define what it is that we need.

Angela and I don't hide the fact that we like to go south in February, well, obviously not this February. And part of that vacation normally involves a cruise ship.

And I've had people say, "we don't understand how you can afford to cruise."

And the answer is that it involves decisions that we have made.