A Fresh Start For Your Finances // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 2

Sometimes, our heart can be aching – if only I had enough to give more money to the poor and the needy.  And so the next thing we do is go and buy something useless on the credit card. Hmm.

In recent years there’s a new word that’s appeared in the vocabulary of sociologists. That word is Affluenza. It’s about the high social, personal and environmental cost of over-consumption.

The bloated sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that people get from over consumption. Work more, shop more, live less.

The research tells us that actually in the west it is becoming a serious social disease. And yet 24/7 is seems people are going down to the local shopping centres running the plastic through the machines spending it on stuff that in a years time will probably be lying disused at the bottom of the wardrobe. And then you get the credit card bill. It turns out that there is a lot of people that live in a constant state of debt and for what?

Spring Cleaning our lives. I know it’s not spring but you know as we look forward to the year its kind of nice to review our lives, to look at different parts of our lives, and think where’s some of the rubbish in my life that I can leave behind.

Yesterday we talked about spring cleaning our homes. Now some people want to live a good life and feel good about themselves, and yet there house is a pig sty. And they wonder why when they walk into their home they feel depressed. Sometimes we have to deal with the mundane issues to give God some space, to bring miracles into our lives.

Today I would like to talk about our finances. What does it means to spring clean our finances? Jesus actually talked quite a bit about money. He said:

Where you treasure is there your heart will also be.

Sometimes people read that and they kind of miss the sequence that He is using. Sometimes they read it the other way round, they read where your heart is that’s where you’ll spend your treasure.

But actually he puts the money first. He says where you spend your money, where you invest the cash, that’s where you will invest your emotional energy.

If we invest in conspicuous consumption, what ever that means in each of our lives and our social context, if we buy, buy, if all we want to do is get the new car, get this, get that… that’s where we end up investing emotionally as well.

Maybe that explains why people end up feeling so empty when all they do is try and spend money. That used to be me. It used to be so important to me that I had the latest up market car. It used to be so important to me that I had the latest this and the latest that, the best this and the most expensive gadget there. You ended up being bloated but you are never satisfied.

Yesterday on A Different Perspective we looked at the story that we find in the book of Acts in the New Testament, of the apostle Peter being in jail. He’s locked up, he’s being guarded by Roman soldiers. And in the middle of the night an angel of the Lord comes to him, taps him on the shoulder and says come Peter lets go. Put on your clothes put on your shoes put on your belt and follow me.

Miraculously the chains fall off his hands, he walks past the guards and they are asleep. They get to the outer gate and the gate swings open of its own accord.

There are two dimensions to this story. There’s the mundane, there’s the angel saying to Peter, “Get up, put your coat on, put your belt on, put your sandals on, follow me.” Do the mundane things that you can do for yourself.

And the other dimension is the miracle. The fact that God showed up at all. The fact the chain fell off, the gate flew open. Sometimes we hunger after miracles in our lives and we ignore the basics the mundane. If only we would spend some time getting the basics right. Maybe that would give God some space to bless us with his miracles. We spend, spend, spend. We just spend money. We end with sky high debt on our credit cards, we cant’ pray for a miracle to get us out of that. We can’t pray for a miracle, say, “God when I wake up tomorrow morning I pray that there would be a zero balance on my credit card.”

We live in the days of credit cards. Back in the good old days when I was a little boy we lived in a cash society. My father used to bring cash home. He was paid in cash. He used to give Mum the housekeeping. When housekeeping ran out, well, that was it. And so there was a control on the way in which we spent our money.

Now today, you can just keep running it up and running it up on the credit card. And when that one is full you can just go to the next credit card provider and get another one, and run it up and run it up. And so many people live under this power of debt.

This is what Jacqui my wife and I have done in our lives in our little part of the globe to deal with the whole money issue, to spring clean our finances. Jesus is heavily into the realities of life. Remember when he teaches the disciples to pray which we commonly refer to as the Lord’s Prayer. One of the lines in that is “give us our daily bread.”

God knows we need food to eat we need a roof over our heads we need pay for this and that and the other. So one of the things that Jacqui and I have done is we have a separate little bank account which is our housekeeping account. And that’s where the money, each week the same amount, goes into that account and that’s what we use for our groceries and the little things that we spend. And when that is finished and run out, you know something, it is run out. And that means that we can’t get take ways until next week until the money comes back in again.

Maybe it sounds old fashioned maybe it sounds a bit silly but it makes a lot of sense. It’s so basic it’s so simple. The other thing that we do is we have automated debits every month out of our bank account. The first thing that comes out is our tithe, giving to God’s work. Now I am going to talk about that in a little minute.

The mortgage payment comes straight out. Don’t have to worry about it never gets behind. The monthly insurance for the house comes straight out. So we’ve streamlined those payments that need to come out every month.

We know when major bills are coming. We plan for the car registration and insurance. We know what the income is, we know what outgoings are, we know what the surplus is, and we know how much we want to save, and therefore what our discretionary spending is.

This is not rocket science, right? But none of this is really high tech. If we would just do some of these basics and not spend more than what we earn, then by little step by little step, we would dig ourselves out of this hole that we call debt.

The miracle is in truly believing in that God want to bless us in all areas of our lives including finances.

Now let me talk about this question of giving to God’s work. giving to the poor, giving to the work of ministries. A tenth seems an awful lot but you know, but it’s a number that comes up time and time again. And lots of people who believe in Jesus actually tithe. It’s a step of faith.

You know when you’re down in that hole of debt and we go to God and we say “Lord I actually want to give to you, I want to give a tenth to you.” That is a huge step of faith. It is a huge stretch. But I believe in giving in a way that is a stretch.

And as we do that, as we believe that God blesses us in our giving, it is just amazing to see how He comes along. It doesn’t mean that He makes us all trillionaires. You know that is not what this is about. God is not a slot machine, where you put a coin in one thing and pull a handle and the money pours out. That’s not what we are talking about.

I was listening to a story the other day of a family who decided they really wanted to stretch and give a certain amount to some of God’s work. And that meant that they didn’t have enough money to go and do they entertainment things, you know, the movies, skating, all the stuff they use to do. And so they gave the money and they cut back there entertainment. And they were so blessed because they ended up spending so much more time together as a family.

As you and I look forward to this year there are some decisions we need to make if debt is a problem.

The first one is doing the mundane. Getting the basics right. Doing the cash flow, managing the bills and the second one is believing for a miracle. Having the faith that says, when I put God first, when I give to God’s work first, when I give to the poor first, God will come, God will bless. God will love me and help me through this. I really believe that we are to give in a way that cost us something, that makes is a stretch.

Manage with the mundane, move with miracles, believing this year, this year, is your year to deal with your finances. What does it look like for you?

You start … with a spring clean of your finances.