Money, Sex, and Power<\/a>\u201d by Richard Foster. It is really worth a read.<\/p>\nSo, here are some practical things we can do to free ourselves from love of money, and to grow our contentment with what we have and our trust in God to provide.<\/p>\n
The first thing to do is to get in touch with our feelings about money. When you saw on the notice sheet that we were talking about money this morning, how did you feel? Some of us might have grown up in situations or homes where money was very tight, life was hand to mouth, and there was conflict whenever money was talked about. The very thought of discussing money makes you anxious, or brings back some of those horrible feelings from the past. Others of us might feel guilty about money. We are a bit ashamed that we\u2019re fairly well off, maybe a bit embarrassed. We might be proud of our money, it\u2019s a sign of how well we\u2019re doing at work, it helps us to know that we\u2019re winning at life, it makes us feel secure to have savings for a rainy day. We might have no particular feelings about money either way. It is what it is, we sit easy to it, it doesn\u2019t really bother us. It seems to me that some of these feelings about money are healthier than others, but that\u2019s not really the point, the point is that we need to real about this stuff, if we are to be free of it. It is worth taking the time to sit down and think about it, pray about it, ask the Holy Spirit to show us our real feelings about money, and the source of them. Then we will be in a far stronger position to make any changes that need making.<\/p>\n
The next step is to get a different perspective by looking at the global picture. This is not to deny the stress and anxiety that financial concerns can cause us in this culture. In fact looking at the global picture might even free us from some of the expectations we have of what life should look like that can end us up in a financial bind. If we have a TV and a car we are In the top 5% of the world\u2019s wealthiest people. To have more than one or two rooms for a whole family to live \/ cook \/ sleep in is unusual. Clean water to drink close by the place they live is something that 10% of the world\u2019s population don\u2019t have. Once we have shifted our perspective, it might change our expectations about what we think a reasonable standard of living is. It might encourage us to think about the root causes of this global disparity, and to take responsibility for doing what we can to resolve it by letting this perspective change our purchasing decisions, our voting decisions, our giving decisions.<\/p>\n
So far I\u2019ve been talking about stuff that might just go on inside our heads. The thing I find with things that just go on inside my head is that most of the time they stay there. I might have 100 good ideas or fine intentions, but the chances of them getting acted on is quite low. But, there is something that changes that. That thing is telling someone else about it. There\u2019s something about getting things out in the open that releases their power over us. There\u2019s something about telling someone your plans that makes them more likely to happen. There\u2019s something about naming things that makes them real. For those of us who are married, very often the person to have these conversations with is your husband or wife. For those of us who are single, having a friend you can trust to have these conversations with is important. It may be that you need some outside help with money management or budgetting. One of the things that Christians Against Poverty do is run CAP Money courses. This is all about equipping and supporting each other to take control of money, rather than being controlled by it.<\/p>\n
I do not own the house that we live in. I have no claim on it, it comes with the job. It is effectively on loan to me to live in and look after for the next vicar. It can be quite useful when double glazing sales people knock on the door to be able to say that I don\u2019t own the house, they tend to move on fairly quickly. It is our home, but we have no right to it, and so we enjoy living there, sit easy to it, and when it comes time to move on we will go with gratitude for the years we\u2019ll have spent in it, but no resentment at having to leave it, it was never ours. In a sense this is true for all our stuff, all of our money, all of our things. None of it is ours. It is all God\u2019s. Getting this idea into our heads and hearts is the next step, and it can take some doing.<\/p>\n
I read something the other day that said, \u201cimagine for a moment that you only had today what you\u2019d said thank you for yesterday.\u201d Now, in some senses this is completely impractical, but on one level it might reveal something about how grateful we are as people. Cultivating an attitude of gratitude might be a clich\u00e9 but it really is key to destroying the illusion of ownership in our lives.<\/p>\n
Also critical is giving with glad and generous hearts. It\u2019s only on loan to us anyway. We\u2019re stewards of what we\u2019ve been given. Some of that is for our use, but some of what we\u2019ve been given to look after is for other people. When I go out for the day with the family I tend to end up carrying the packed lunch for all of us in my rucksack. I\u2019m the steward of it, it\u2019s been given to me to look after. But it\u2019s not mine. When it comes to lunchtime I share it out. I might have worked to get it to where we are by carrying it, but that doesn\u2019t make it mine, I\u2019m happy to share it and give the others in the family their portion.<\/p>\n
And root all this stuff in prayer. Money is a spiritual issue. Talk to God about it and listen to what God is saying to you about it. Bring those feelings about money to God \u2013 maybe write God a letter about it. Ask God to work in you to develop healthy feelings towards money. Ask God to open your eyes to see money and wealth across the world and across this community as God sees it. Ask for God\u2019s perspective. Pray about the decisions you make about money \u2013 how you earn it, how you spend it, how you give it. Pray with thankfulness, listen to God\u2019s promptings to be grateful. Pray on your own and pray with others \u2013 as a couple, as a family, with your friends.<\/p>\n
If we do these things, then I believe we will experience greater freedom from the love of money, and will grow in contentment with what we have and in our trust in God to provide.<\/p>\n
Finally, a word about children. You might be wondering why we are doing four straight weeks looking at money and our attitude to material things in our morning services this month. The answer is that this term we are doing the same topics in our sermons that the youngsters are doing in kids group, and this is what is on their syllabus for these weeks. Given this, I\u2019d like to encourage you to talk about this stuff in your families. I am grateful to my parents for many things, and one of them is that they modelled good financial management and giving to me from a young age. From when I first got pocket money they taught me to save some of it and give away at least a tenth of it. Having got into that habit as a youngster, it meant that when my income went up as a I got older, it was relatively easy for me to give at least a tenth of it away. I believe that it is much easier this way than to tell yourself that you just need to earn a bit more before you can afford to give. I don\u2019t envy those of you who are sensing a call from God to give a significant proportion of your income away, but don\u2019t know how you\u2019re going to trim your current spending in order to do it. But, it is possible, and the thing is, once you get there, you may very well discover that you\u2019ve achieved better control over your finances than you\u2019ve ever had before. But, back to my main point. If you want to set your children off on an easier path, teach them from when they are young to give and to save, to budget and to have control over their money rather than allowing it to have control over them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay Ain’t it sad And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me That’s too bad In my dreams I have a plan If I got me a wealthy man I wouldn’t have to work at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[420,882,391,969,970,38],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellington","tag-debt","tag-finance","tag-giving","tag-hebrews-131-8","tag-luke-1610-15","tag-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":664,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}