So I want to talk about this idea of having a financial audit with God. And I know the word audit is not exactly exciting, but the main reason I want to
That's a tremendous mistake. There are a few things you can count on in life and while other people are not one of them, gravity is something and increasing
there are forces working against it all the time. You can think of these as overhead. A more technical description would be entropy. Anytime you organize
anything, there will be forces acting against it at all times to tear it down. And you don't necessarily see these things. In fact, the more complex the
can enumerate many times over its scope where you were slammed with something that you did not expect or you were completely wrong about something that
happen the further along you go? And yet, most people do. If I were to say to you, hey, uh, the more money you have, the harder it is to keep it. You might
think deep down, hey, it's going to get easier. Hey, it's going to get better. Is there evidence for that? Life gets better as you get stronger, but that
So, we really need to recode our brains. And that's the preamble for this financial audit with God. Now, here's the good news, the light part of it. It
is life going to kick your butt, and it's going to, and if you don't do this, you already know that what I'm telling you is true, unless you're one of these
by surprise and you did everything you knew to do and now you're calling on him in innocence for his help in something that was was bigger than you. It's a
it's a very different thing to go to God after being a complete doofus your whole life and to say, "Well, you know, I really I deserve this and far worse, but
I want you to take me out of what I deserve." That's a very different prayer and you don't want to be there. All right. So, let's talk through a couple
of ways you can know how badly you need to do this. First off, do you live check to check? If the answer's yes, you are not being a good steward of the Lord's
That's another way of saying the same thing. Does your financial picture go right out the window when you need to fix your car? Like something you really
should be expecting. Or you have a medical bill that's just sort of it's not something crazy. You don't have bone cancer. or you just broke a limb. Well,
if you can't handle what the kinds of expenses that you should be expecting, odds are you need to make some financial changes. Do you know where your money
goes? A surprising number of people have no idea what they spend their money on. If you ask them from memory to produce a a spreadsheet of where their money went
over the last 30 days, they would be off. They maybe they wouldn't even be able to attempt it because they have no idea. It's just they their left hand
buy whatever the heck they want until they're out of money. Now, that's a a a good a good time to bring up this idea. Money is never about money. Money is
always pulling in all these other things out of our lives. If if you live checkto check, that's not the only problem you have. In fact, it's it's a symptom of a
much deeper problem. If you don't spend your money intentionally, that's not the only problem you have. I guarantee your whole life is like that. If you can't
tons of sins in your life where it's the same thing where you're not controlling yourself emotionally. You're you your your rational process is not in the
driver's seat of your life because it doesn't ever just happen with money. What God wants from us in being wise stewards, he wants us to, it comes back
to this idea in Malachi of having meat in the Lord's house. And there's like 10 layers of ancient Israelite idioms there that we have to weave through. But the
long and short of it is he wants us to do all that we do in his name or according to his character, which is to say for the motive of making everything
good is? Well, you're going to have to do that. And you might be better or less good at that, but that's a separate situation. The point is is that you're
the one who gets to decide that. And so you should be deciding that and not just sort of throwing your cash or whatever other resources you have, your time,
your energy, your your your emotional and mental well-being into the wind and just letting it go wherever it goes. So before we get into practical practical
ways of doing this, the question could be asked, well, I mean, how how how intentional do we need to be about this? Does it really require some sort of
necessary detail, you're going to be making all these pockets where you can make bad decisions without realizing you are. And it's a magnet for everything
emotionally focused, and you'll be about as far away from the long-term optimal situation as you could be. Now, it it won't be visible to you unless you go
just happens to me. No, it doesn't. Oh, I'm I'm different than everybody else, and this this isn't my fault at all. Yes, it is. And when you go through the
details, you you can't get away from that, and you have to face it. Okay? But that's empowering. because it it shows you the way. Anytime you specifically
consider the ideal about something, you can't do that without also creating a path towards it. People are afraid to think about what might be better, but
they don't realize it's the only way to proceed beyond where you are. And those things always go together. It's like, oh, I'm going to feel bad if I realize
how much of my misfortune is actually my fault. Well, sure. and you should, but you won't feel any better until you make better choices. And you can't make
So, if you have something that you're spending money on in life, because you're just going to go through and make an entry for everything you spend money
um, you go through and you list the item and then you can either write the actual cost and then try to enumerate the actual benefit, which might be hard to
do in dollar uh, amounts and then you subtract the cost from the benefit and that gives you the net benefit. What you're going to find is that some of the
thing, at least some of the things that you spend your money on don't have a net benefit. They just have a net cost. So, um, usually vices are like that. We
mind. There are injunctions against this throughout the scriptures, but people do it all the time. If the if the pluses and minuses are still too much detail,
those things out, um you'll you'll have for each item, you'll have the ability to then after you've listed your list, go through and ask yourself, is there
you shopped around to see if there was cheaper insurance available? Or when was the last time you called your agent to talk through exactly what's on your
policy and make sure you actually want those things? Maybe there are things that you can adjust. So, for example, on your homeowner's policy, maybe there's a
house fire. Well, you might ask your insurance agent, "What do I have to do to make that claim?" And if he or she says, "Oh, you have to produce receipts
things like that can actually save you a lot of money. And again, if you weren't going to use that $200,000 worth of coverage, why are you paying for it?
absolutely remove them from your life. You just can't that you shouldn't be doing anything just because other people do it. Do the the the calculation to see
it's not very good. And she likes it. I said, "Well, how much do you like it more than cheaper cheese? Is it really worth two, three, or four times other
insurance. That's an example of this. It's you're trading out one thing for another, but the cost benefit might be better. Uh, I've mentioned food. So, I
just mentioned the example of feta cheese. Maybe it's going to a different store. Pork at Walmart might be half the price it is at Costco. Is it really
chicken breast for example for three or four times times that it just doesn't make any sense. It's not three or four times as good. So that's something to
benefit like having a place to live is going to take a much higher place on your list than what kind of cheese you buy, right? Unless you're really really
into cheese. To each their own. But what this does is once you've got a ranked list and and don't be afraid to go and make changes because working through
this exercise, what you're going to do is you're going to draw a lot of attention to what you really think about things versus your initial thought about
and you go down the list summing the cost until you get to the end of your monthly income. And then you draw a line. Everything below the line you stop
said, it's a sign that you're not doing this right. There's a better way. All the stress that comes with that, it's optional. You don't have to deal with
that. So, what you do is if you don't have savings or investment in your list, you inject it in and you say, you know what, we're going to save $250 a month.
You know what? we're going to save $2,500 a month, whatever it is. And then you have the discussion about how to save or invest that. A very easy way is
a highinterest savings account. Very easy to set up on PayPal. If if you have an account through Erade, you can do it. Your local bank might do it, but
probably not because banks are really cheap. But just find a savings account with with a relatively high interest rate that you can get your money in and
baseline that anyone can do. You don't need to know anything about anything to do it. It's a piece of cake. And inject that line item into your budget and put
it up high enough that there's money for it because you're going to need that money. See that money isn't an end. It's a means to maintaining the things above
it on the list. So if those things are really important, you need to set aside money to maintain them in spite of surprises. And that's what you're doing
take control of your financial life and become someone who makes decisions and acts instead of someone who's just acted upon. And your your financial life
should not be you tossed on the waves of the sea. Okay? Now, you might say, "What the heck, dude? You got cancelled and you live off of donations. Yeah, it's
your way towards a highpaying set of jobs and your career was completely taken away from you against your will for no good reason. Actually, especially
completely wipe them out financially. We have to be wiser than this. You know, Paul told the people back in his day, hey, you guys believe that one day
you're going you are going to judge angels and yet you can't work out these simple problems between yourselves. You can't judge each other. What the heck?
family needs. There are people who think that they can live a life, they wouldn't describe it as a life of luxury, but if you have one working person in a in a in
benefit to justify the cost. So, I I invite you to be wise and to think about these things and really put yourself through the ringer of honesty and think