Food for thought - God and money

Already getting excited about this week's sermon entitled, "Three Disciplines of a Spiritual Life".  We will focus on Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6.  He suggests giving, fasting, and praying as three important ingredients to a spiritual life.

Jesus begins with a words about giving to the poor, so I thought I would share a note from the late Larry Burkett on Christians, giving, and debt.  After all, Christians should be different than the culture.  Enjoy.  See you Sunday.  Pastor Tom

Christian author, speaker, and financial counselor Larry Burkett's 25 years of experience, tells us that, “the Christian world is no different from the secular world when it comes to debt, bankruptcy, and divorce because priorities are misplaced. Burkett goes on to say, “while the Bible does not condemn borrowing, it does lay out specific guidelines for Christians and debt. “God said very clearly [that] you can’t be unfaithful in a small thing and faithful in a large — they come part and parcel together,” Burkett says. “You can’t be a bad money handler and be handling other things well. Money is just the outside indicator of what’s going on in our lives spiritually.” According Burkett, the use of credit/stewardship is not a problem among Christians — instead, he says, it is the misuse of credit. Burkett says, “most Christians do not have a firm grasp on the biblical perspectives on debt or stewardship. His origination Crown Ministries conducted research with the results that, “Only 3% of Christians actually tithe today. Thirty-seven percent of those attending evangelical churches don’t give anything at all to their local church in any way. And that’s not a problem,” he says, “that’s an indicator of a problem. It’s a spiritual problem being reflected through their finances.” Burkett cites surprising statistics to prove his point. “Over the last decade, giving overall in Christianity has increased about 20% — but recreational spending increased almost 125% and debt spending increased 550%,” Burkett says. “I think it’s really time that God’s people decided [that] God really does want us to live by a different set of rules.” Burkett further says, “there are several steps to becoming good stewards, among them transfer ownership of everything to God, tithe on gross income, allow no more debt, develop a realistic balanced budget, and start retiring existing debt. (quotes taken from Crown Financial Ministries http://www.crown.org website and article, Qualities of a Generous Giver periodical Generous Giving, 2002 by Gordon MacDonald)