The Commerce Bank Review

First, Lennar Homes Texas recognize the need to do long-range planning. Just as in your short-range plans, your long-range plans should be written. Often, by writing down what you hope to accomplish, God will provide an insight into His plan.

Your long-range goals should reflect your personal financial objectives, a plan for the surplus, and an after-death plan.

The biblical perspective of bondage is expressed in Matthew 5:25-26: “Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way; in order that your opponent may not deliver you to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you shall not come out of there, until you have paid up the last cent.” In the Bible, financial bondage means physical bondage.

Such harsh treatment was meted out because failure to repay a debt was equated with dishonesty. Dishonesty was judged so strictly that usually when a thief was caught, his hand was cut off as a punishment for his crime. Someone who failed to repay an obligation was thrown into prison for the rest of his life and sold as a slave. Why? A man’s word was his mark of honor. When one gave his word, he was expected to keep it. Anyone who failed to do so could no longer be trusted. Today, society has become too sophisticated to incarcerate someone simply because of debts. Unfortunately, a new punishment has supplanted the old one.

There may be legal remedies to avoid creditors, such as bankruptcy, but there are no scriptural remedies. “The wicked borrows and does not pay back, but the righteous is gracious and gives” (Psalm 37:21).

In worldly terms, this principle will not seem logical. Many times even Christians begin to doubt God, often saying, “How will I live if they take everything?”

Thus we begin to seek “logical” ways to shelter possessions from legitimate creditors. But as Christians we cannot do that. We must accept the fact that God is in control and that He understands our needs and promises to provide them.

Attitude is the key, for it is attitude that brings into play a source of supernatural power. God says, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:14). So we must accept God’s plan of recovery when in financial bondage.

Many Christians have the ability to accumulate large amounts of wealth. Virtually everyone in America has the potential of accumulating a surplus. What we consider to be a minimum standard of living is significantly above that experienced in most other parts of the world. It is not unheard of for someone living on a small fixed income to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars through scrimping and sacrificing. With that potential, it becomes vital that God’s attitude about accumulating money becomes a part of our personalities.

God will provide a ministry in money for Christians attuned to His plan. But it is a ministry of sharing, not of selfishness. A Christian who reclaims ownership of his finances steps right out of God’s will. Others, who share as God commands, receive the blessings of the Lord and the great harvest promised in Scripture. Once a Christian accepts money as a ministry, a whole new area of God’s will opens up.

In 2 Corinthians 9:8, we are told, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed.” What are the absolute promises given here?

1. God will make all grace abound in each one of us.
2. We will always have sufficiency for our needs.
3. We will have an abundance for other good needs.

If you have the ability to make money, as a Christian you must have the desire to share. If you are making money and not sharing it, you can be certain you are not within God’s will and probably that money is being supplied from another source.

It’s important to realize some more religious folklore comes to the fore in this area: to give money is gracious, but to make it is a sin. Wrong! God said giving is a gift. If giving money is a gift from God, making it must also be a gift from Him. Christians should accept the principle that there is nothing wrong with making money, provided you do so within God’s plan.

Do not violate the principles that God established. Remember the symptoms: sacrifice of friends, family, health, and personal relationship with Jesus Christ to the pursuit of wealth; attitudes characterized by bitterness, anxiety, frustration, or worry. Exactly the same principles apply for the those who have not learned to live within the provision God has supplied.

Unfortunately we have also slighted the ministering brethren. It is somehow believed that those in full-time Christian service should live on less than those in the secular world. Why shouldn’t a pastor have a comfortable salary? Why shouldn’t an evangelist, for instance, live as will as someone who is in business? Do we believe that God’s worker is not worthy of an adequate wage?

Review what God says in 1 Corinthians 9:9, “For it is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,’ God is not concerned about oxen, is He?” And in 1 Corinthians 9:14, “So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel.” And in 3 John 6-7, “And they bear witness to your love before the church; and you will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.” Those references tell us:

1. The requirement of every Christian is to supply the needs of those ministering God’s Word.
2. We are to send them out in a way worthy of God, not second class. I believe a good principle to observe is to pay a pastor as much as the average member of this congregation. If he feels he is overpaid, let it be his responsibility to distribute the surplus.
3. Christians are ad monished by God to accept nothing from non-believers but to receive their support from the believers. That admonition must hold equally true of the church; the church should not borrow money from a non-Christian source. Christian organizations should fund their work within the Body of Christ, as John said, “Accepting nothing from the Gentiles” (3 John 6-7). How can those needs be met unless Christians accept this responsibility to supply the ministering brethren?

First we must develop a changed attitude. But you must do more than just make an initial attempt at creating a plan. You must first generate a plan according to God’s conviction and then utilize it—apply God’s principles to your life.

If you make plans that are inflexible, they will only hinder God’s work because you won’t be able to live with them. Develop plans that guide your financial life but also provide for some recreation and personal enjoyment as well.

Financial bondage can also exist through an abundance of money. Some Christians have been supplied a surplus of money and have misused or begun to hoard it. Those who use their money totally for self-satisfaction or hoard it away for that elusive “rainy day” are just as financially bound in God’s eyes as those in debt.

The accumulation of wealth and material pleasures of life can be an obsession that will destroy a Christian’s health, destroy his family, separate him from friends and block God’s will in his life. Everything and everybody can become objects to be used on the ladder to success. Those shackled by these wrong attitudes are always striving for the goal on money. Job 31:24-28 says: “If I have put my confidence in gold, and called fine gold my trust, if I have gloated because my wealth was great, and because my hand had secured so much; if I have looked at the sun when it shone, or the moon going in splendor, and my heart became secretly enticed, and my hand threw a kiss from my mouth, that too would have been an iniquity calling for judgment, for I would have denied God above.”

As discussed earlier, it is important for Christians to understand this truth. Many Christians have taken the very resource that God provided for their peace and comfort and transformed it into something full of pain and sorrow. There is nothing inherently evil in money itself, only in the preoccupation with and the misuse of it.

Too often we react to events around us without understanding what is really happening and why. Over-reaction is the norm, and in nearly any crisis the sequence of events is predictable—alarm, temporary panic, then apathy and disinterest.

We tend to look at the future with anxiety and worry. God says that worry is a sin. What is worry? Taking on a responsibility that belongs to someone else.

Unlike the majority of the population (who are not attuned to God’s financial plan), we don’t have to worry about circumstances. God has revealed in His Word what has happened and will happen. Parts of the Bible are history, parts are current events, and portions of it are prophecy. Through His Word God tells us what to expect in this economy and how to respond.

I did say respond as opposed to react. When we respond to something, we bring in the information, check it against known values, and act accordingly. When we react to something, we bring it in, amplify whatever we receive, and put it back out. That is not what God wants for us.

As we look at the economy today and where it may be headed tomorrow, we need to view it from God’s perspective. The most important part of that perspective is the imminent return of Christ. When we hear that Christ may return during our time, we say that we believe it. But when God’s plan is beginning to be unveiled to us, many refuse to accept it.

Peter had just been imprisoned and was to be executed. The Christians who traveled with him had retreated to his house to pray. They stayed that entire evening, praying that God would release Peter unharmed.

Then God performed a miracle and Peter walked out of prison a free man. He went to where the small group was praying and knocked on the gate.

A young girl answered and swung open the gate. There stood Peter. Shocked at the sight of him, she rushed back to the group saying, “Come quickly, Peter stands at the gate!” And what did they do? They chided her. “No, Peter can’t be here,” they said. “We’re praying for him in prison.”

Nevertheless, there he stood. They had prayed for a miracle. God had granted their prayer, and yet they didn’t have enough faith to believe it.

Sometimes we are the same way. We say that we believe the second coming is near, but when we see the imminent signs, including the changing pulse of the economy, we refuse to accept it.

What, then, is the correct attitude for the Christian to have toward wealth? To seek God’s purpose for what is supplied to him.

It is important for the Christian to trust God in every circumstance. If we believe that God really loves us and will give us only that amount of money hat we can handle without worry, we can have perfect peace in finances. But not until we have committed our entire resource to Him.

It becomes clear that money is a training ground for God to develop (and for us to discover) our trustworthiness. “If therefore you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous Mammon, who will entrust the true riches to you?”

Why do Christians have difficulty trusting God in this area? We really don’t believe that He will only do the best for us. So we have the tendency to want to withhold a part of what we have. But until a Christian has experienced freedom in the area of money, he will never experience God’s total plan for his life.

Thus, as we have observed, everyone has short-range plans or goals. Some are carefully considered, others are more haphazard.

If your short-range goal is to make money, you should review it because it is not a Christian objective. Having money as a goal means that you are really depending on yourself and not on God.

As we discovered earlier, the mere ability to make money does not enrich you spiritually (Proverbs 2:4-5). But to do something God has directed you to do will enrich you spiritually and financially.

Every Christian who has ever had money as a goal can testify that it does not satisfy. What are short-range goals from God’s perspective? How can we develop plans to accomplish them?