Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - Money Talks Part 3 Keep Track

Transcript

Andy Stanley - Money Talks Part 3 Keep Track · Andy Stanley Sermons

• 0:01
  Now here's something that you perhaps have heard about before, and if you haven't
• 0:04
  heard about it before, you're about to hear about it now, and you
• 0:06
  can talk about this tomorrow at work and people will think you're smart if you
• 0:10
  haven't heard about this before. Did you know that it's easier to stay warm
• 0:13
  than to get warm? And the reason you may not know this is because
• 0:16
  you live in the south and we're just pretty much warm all the time,
• 0:19
  and even when we're not, maybe when it's cold, it's not really cold,
• 0:21
  and the people from the north laugh at us. But people up north
• 0:24
  they know this, that it's much easier to stay warm than to get warm.
• 0:28
  And the reason is because when you get cold, when you lose your
• 0:31
  body loses it's warm. Your body goes into overdrive and it burns more fuel
• 0:35
  to create more heat and the blood vessels you probably know this, that the
• 0:38
  surface of your skin begin to contract, right, and it can reduces blood
• 0:42
  flow. Because your body is smarter than your mind. Your body knows,
• 0:45
  oh, we have to protect the vital organs, and so it really creates
• 0:49
  stress for the entire nervous system. So it's easier to stay warm than to
• 0:53
  get warm because when you're getting warm, you're burning more calories, you're burning
• 0:56
  more fuel, and your again, your nervous system is stressed out. And
• 1:00
  the same is true for your money. Sort of. We'll come back to
• 1:04
  that in just a minute. Okay, So we're we're wrapping up this series.
• 1:07
  Money talks three things that it would love to tell you. So if
• 1:11
  our money started talking, what would our money say? And we decided that
• 1:14
  none of us would be shocked at what our money would tell us, especially
• 1:18
  if our money was giving us good financial advice. The shocker is the parallel
• 1:22
  between what our money would say if it could talk and what Jesus did say
• 1:26
  when he did talk about money and possessions. So week one, we asked
• 1:30
  the question, what would our money say if it could actually talk and if
• 1:34
  it actually started talking, And we said, our money might say this,
• 1:36
  I can add meaning to your life, but I am not the meaning of
• 1:41
  life. And we talked about the fact that money actually becomes most meaningful when
• 1:46
  it becomes a means to an end that's not you that when we discover what
• 1:52
  it is we want our lives to be a means to our money usually follows.
• 1:56
  So we asked at the end of that session, that first message,
• 1:59
  we asked this question to what ends, to what ends do we want our
• 2:01
  lives to be a means? And this is a question that all of us,
• 2:05
  at some level and at some point in our lives, should wrestle to
• 2:07
  the ground because your life, as we said, your life will not be
• 2:10
  meaningful until it becomes a becomes a means to an end that's not you.
• 2:15
  That's what meaningful means. Meaningful means being a means to an end. And
• 2:20
  when you discover when you answer the bigger questions in life, your money follows,
• 2:24
  and your money becomes a means to an end that's not you. The
• 2:29
  second thing our money might say if our money started talking is this, I'm
• 2:31
  a better servant than master. In fact, your self control will actually determine
• 2:38
  which one of us gets in control of which one of us stays in control,
• 2:40
  because money woes generally begin with character issues, not money problems. That
• 2:46
  money woes often and begin with our character rather than our income. So wrapping
• 2:52
  up today, I want to talk about the third thing that our money might
• 2:53
  say if our money were to begin to talk, And once again it parallels
• 2:58
  exactly what Jesus said when he did talk about money and possessions. And here's
• 3:01
  what our money might tell us. I'm easy to keep up with. I'm
• 3:07
  easy to keep up with, but I'm difficult to catch up with. I'm
• 3:12
  easy to keep up with, but I'm difficult to catch up with. Keep
• 3:15
  up, or you'll be playing catch up. It's a little bit like staying
• 3:21
  warm when you fall behind financially, and when specifically, when you fall behind
• 3:25
  knowing where your money's gone and where your money's going, you begin to burn
• 3:30
  more calories, You begin to burn more energy, You begin to get more
• 3:34
  stressed out, you begin to get more worried, You burn burn more energy
• 3:38
  and create more stress playing catch up financially. And the truth is, and
• 3:40
  you're not going to like me for saying this, there's really there's really no
• 3:46
  excuse for not knowing where your money has been going. There's really not a
• 3:50
  good excuse for not knowing where your money went. We should when it comes
• 3:53
  to money, not love and not relationships, and you know, not a
• 3:57
  lot of other things, but when it comes to money, we should never
• 3:59
  find ourselves saying, well it seems to me, or well I'm not sure,
• 4:04
  or well that can't possibly be right. And the reason we should never
• 4:09
  say these things that relates to our finances is because a certain amount comes in
• 4:14
  and then we send it places. Right, a certain amount comes in,
• 4:17
  you know how much comes in, or you shouldn't know how much comes in,
• 4:19
  and then you or you and your husband or you and your wife sends
• 4:23
  it places. So, and I've said this before if it sounds familiar,
• 4:26
  so consequently, we should all be knowing where our money is going, right,
• 4:31
  We should all know this. There should be no mystery about where your
• 4:35
  money is going. There's mystery when it comes to love and romance. There's
• 4:39
  a lot of mystery when it comes to raising kids. There's a lot of
• 4:42
  mystery when they become middle schoolers and high schoolers. There's a lot of mystery
• 4:45
  around certain decisions. But when it comes to know one where our money went,
• 4:47
  there should be absolutely no mystery. And the problem is when you lose
• 4:53
  track of where it's going. When you lose track of where it's going,
• 4:56
  it takes over, because it takes over emotionally. You know how we feel.
• 5:00
  You know how we feel because we've all been there. You feel out
• 5:02
  of control, don't you. You just feel like something has taken over and
• 5:06
  you're trying to catch up. So if your money started talking and was addressing
• 5:13
  this particular issue, your money may say this, look, I'm easy to
• 5:16
  track, but if you lose track of me, I'm so easy to track.
• 5:21
  But if you lose track of me, you will lose your peace of
• 5:25
  mind. And if you lose your peace of mind for too long, you
• 5:27
  may feel like you're losing your mind. So consequently, all of us Christian,
• 5:32
  non Christian, religious, non religious, theis, non theist, it
• 5:34
  doesn't matter. All of us need a plan for tracking our spending. So
• 5:40
  we're all knowing where our money is going. And this is true whether you
• 5:44
  have a little or a lot. And the problem is when I talk to
• 5:46
  people on the two extremes. The people don't have much, it's like there's
• 5:49
  no point in keeping up because it's hard to keep up. The people with
• 5:51
  a lot are like, well, I don't need to keep up because I
• 5:54
  have so much. I don't really need to keep up. But what we're
• 5:57
  going to discover today, especially if you're a Jesus follower, is that there's
• 6:00
  every reason in the world to keep up where you with where your money's going.
• 6:03
  We all need a plan to track our spending, whether you have a
• 6:06
  lot or a little. And I'm not talking about a budget, right,
• 6:10
  which for some of you is great news, because what is a budget?
• 6:13
  And you're thinking, well, I think it's a waste of time. I
• 6:15
  know, no everybody should to some extent have a budget, But what is
• 6:17
  a budget? A budget is a theory, right, It's a theory that
• 6:23
  rarely reflects reality. Right now, at work, at work, you're super
• 6:28
  careful because it works. Somebody's looking over your shoulder, and at work,
• 6:30
  you know there's consequences, even though there's a little bit of margin at work.
• 6:33
  But in terms of our personal budget, our family budget, it's just
• 6:36
  it's a theory that rarely reflects reality. It assumes a specific future, and
• 6:43
  none of us can predict the future to that level or to that degree.
• 6:46
  It's great for estimating, but the other problem with a budget is where it
• 6:49
  lives. Where do budgets live? Budgets live in desktop folders. Right,
• 6:56
  you created it, it was perfect, you did excel, or you had
• 6:59
  colors, it was beautiful. You put it in a desktop folder and it
• 7:01
  has lived there ever since. It's safe. You know exactly where it is,
• 7:04
  but nobody looks at it. Because it's not dynamic. And if you're
• 7:08
  gonna get this part of your finances right, and I'm gonna encourage you as
• 7:11
  hard as I can to get this right, you need something more dynamic than
• 7:14
  a budget that predicts the future, that doesn't actually do anything, but just
• 7:17
  sits there and reminds you of what you have or have it done. But
• 7:19
  it's not really a reminder because again we don't even know where it is anyway.
• 7:23
  Right, you need a simple way. You need a simple way to
• 7:28
  track your actual spending. And the thing is, it is so simple now.
• 7:31
  There is no excuse for all of us not to do this. Now.
• 7:35
  When I say simple, I mean it's really simple because I'm thinking back
• 7:39
  to when Sandra and I first got married, and this has been a habit
• 7:43
  in our marriage for thirty years. We've been married thirty years. We did
• 7:45
  this from the very beginning, and thirty years ago we used Some of you
• 7:49
  have never seen this before. In fact, for some of you, this
• 7:51
  is just a desktop or a wallpaper. You don't know this was a real
• 7:56
  thing. We use graph paper, Remember graph paper. You can get a
• 8:00
  pad of graph paper. Some of you shake it in your head, You're
• 8:01
  like, really, that was a real thing. Yeah, it was paper,
• 8:03
  and we on the left, down the left, we put, you
• 8:07
  know, all the categories and every time there was a new category, we
• 8:09
  put a new category. Then across the top we put all the dates in
• 8:11
  the weeks and the months, and we would literally every single week. I
• 8:16
  would try to do it every day, so she would do it. Every
• 8:16
  week. We get out our receipts, we'd look at how much we spent,
• 8:20
  and we would take a pen you remember those not apple pencil, like
• 8:22
  a pen with ink that can run out. Yet this thing remember, or
• 8:24
  this thing remember, and we would actually write down every day or every week
• 8:30
  what we spent in the category. It was so onerous, but we did
• 8:33
  it every single year, year after year. In our marriage. It is
• 8:37
  one of the two It is one of the two best habits that we establish
• 8:39
  it. We've been doing it ever since. And every once in a while
• 8:43
  Sandra and I have this discussion and she'll say, do we really need to
• 8:45
  keep doing this? Or I'll say, you know, this is so detailed,
• 8:48
  and every time we sort of decide are we going to keep doing this?
• 8:52
  We decide to keep doing this for two reasons. Number one, I'm
• 8:54
  going to share with you in just a second while we keep doing it.
• 8:56
  But the second reason, and I always tell her this, I say,
• 8:58
  yeah, if we keep if we quit doing this, then I can't get
• 9:01
  up and tell everybody in our church they need to do it. So for
• 9:03
  the sake of moral authority, I'm gonna keep doing this so I can say
• 9:07
  I'm not asking you to do something that we don't do, even though we
• 9:09
  were married thirty years. And honestly it's not as it doesn't seem to be
• 9:13
  as important as it was in the beginning, but it's very important for us
• 9:16
  at this season of life. And I'm gonna explain why in just a minute.
• 9:20
  But if you will develop this habit, and I'm gonna give you a
• 9:22
  specific challenge in just a minute, if you'll develop this habit, then there's
• 9:26
  no guessing, there's no seeming, and there's less wondering, and there is
• 9:31
  actually less worrying because and I made this up myself. When you know,
• 9:39
  when you know you're gonna log it, you're more inclined to hog it.
• 9:43
  You like that. So last night we were talking about this, Sanders said,
• 9:46
  that's not good. Okay, the word hog sounds like you're being selfish,
• 9:50
  so she came up with one. So this is her version of the
• 9:52
  same thing. Okay, you can decide which one you like. Hers is
• 9:56
  this. When you know you're going to record it, you will be more
• 10:00
  inclined to consider whether you should afford it. So let me see a hand.
• 10:03
  Now, Okay, are you like that better? This is what you
• 10:09
  do when you're empty nesters. You sit around trying to make the sermon rhyme.
• 10:13
  Okay, now, I almost made a mistake at this point in trying
• 10:18
  to figure out how to say this. I was gonna say, don't measure
• 10:20
  it. I was gonna say, it's kind of like keeping track of what
• 10:24
  you eat, and then I was gonna say, don't reach I was gonna
• 10:26
  say, how many of you have ever downloaded one of those apps where you
• 10:28
  log in everything you eat? And I thought people shouldn't raise their hands for
• 10:31
  that, but but how many of you have downloaded an app where you log
• 10:35
  in everything you eat? Yes? I like this is the I like that
• 10:39
  you raise your hand like this, like you were kind of worshiping and admitting
• 10:41
  at the same time. Yeah, it's kind of a okay, I'm giving
• 10:43
  it up. Yeah, so I have too we you know it's a great
• 10:46
  thing. And when you when you use one of those apps, you think,
• 10:50
  okay, I'm gonna put log everything I eat and you know that some
• 10:52
  of the apps will tell you how many calories. Some of them you kind
• 10:54
  of have to figure it up and you kind of get in rhythm because you
• 10:56
  sort of eat the same things all the time. And what happens when you
• 10:58
  do that. A lot of you have done this. You realize every time
• 11:01
  you're about to eat something, you think, oh, I'm gonna have to
• 11:03
  log it. Ooh, I don't want to log that, or you do
• 11:07
  what I did. You're like, okay, well I've got six hundred calories
• 11:09
  left, and if I just don't eat any of these six hundred, then
• 11:13
  I can have like an ice cream cone and it's eight hundred. But anyway,
• 11:16
  so you start, you start playing these games. But what happens.
• 11:18
  It slows you down, doesn't it you consider? In fact, then you
• 11:22
  start finding out how many calories foods are you get You just it becomes a
• 11:26
  little bit of a game. You're more careful why because if you know you're
• 11:30
  gonna log it, you know you're gonna sort of protect those calories for something
• 11:33
  better or for something later, to make sure you don't go over your four
• 11:35
  thousand calorie limit every day, right, so our thirty five hundred whatever your
• 11:41
  calorie limit is right now in the paycheck to paycheck seasons of life, and
• 11:46
  for many people and for most people, that's our whole lives, right but
• 11:50
  in the paycheck to paycheck seasons, this is so important. This habit actually
• 11:54
  takes pressure off. This habit takes pressure off because it takes the guess work
• 12:01
  out. It's easy to know where to cut back when you have to cut
• 12:05
  back. It's easy to know where to cut down when you have to cut
• 12:09
  down. And there were two seasons in our lives as married couples where we
• 12:13
  had to take significant steps back financially. And going backwards financially is not easy.
• 12:18
  I don't care how spiritual you are and how machure you are, it's
• 12:22
  just not easy when you realize, uh, oh, we've got to spend
• 12:24
  less. And this happens to everybody. You go from two to one incomes,
• 12:28
  you lose a job, you move, there's a setback. You decide
• 12:31
  one of your kids decides to go out of state to college, and it's
• 12:33
  like, oh my gosh, you know, we're gonna have to make cuts.
• 12:35
  But here's the thing. It's never, never easy to go backwards.
• 12:39
  But for us in both of those seasons of our lives, it was so
• 12:41
  much easier because when we didn't pull out a budget that we had to find
• 12:46
  in a file, we were able to say, this is actually how much
• 12:50
  we actually spend in all of these categories where can we cut back? And
• 12:56
  there was stress in terms of having to cut back, but there was no
• 12:58
  stress between us because there was no well it seems to me, well,
• 13:03
  it seems to me, well, it seems to me. In fact,
• 13:05
  one year, Santra still laughs about this. I forget how many years we've
• 13:07
  been married one year because at the end of the year, we would look
• 13:09
  at all this stuff. One year and she's here today one year. It's
• 13:13
  the only reason I'm sharing this. One year I spent more on clothes than
• 13:18
  she did. Now that's embarrassing to admit. I know WHOA is right,
• 13:22
  But if you had asked me, if you had asked us, who spends
• 13:26
  more on clothes, I'm like, really saying, do you need to cut
• 13:28
  back? Oh? Really? Will actually you spend more of me? Because
• 13:30
  I bought two suits one year. I have never worn them, but I
• 13:33
  bought I bought two suits. And you know, she's kind of buying little
• 13:37
  things all on the year, and she's a good shoper, and I'm like,
• 13:39
  whatever, just get it, you know. So anyway, so it
• 13:41
  took all the guests work. So when we had to step back financially,
• 13:45
  it wasn't easy, but it was easier because we knew where our money was
• 13:48
  actually going. So in the years where you're kind of paycheck to paycheck and
• 13:54
  things are tight, this actually makes life easier and it puts takes the pressure
• 13:58
  off. But from most of us today probably listening, and for most of
• 14:03
  us in the room, in the years of plenty, where there's margin,
• 14:07
  and again we never feel like there's plenty, but there's plenty more, there's
• 14:11
  a little bit more margin. Things aren't so tight in the years of plenty.
• 14:15
  This habit actually puts pressure on. And here's what I mean by that,
• 14:18
  And this is why this is such a good thing. And this is
• 14:20
  the second reason we haven't given this up as a couple. As you accumulate
• 14:26
  more and more, and as you make more, and as there's more and
• 14:31
  more margin, when you keep track of where your money is going. You
• 14:35
  are confronted with how much you are spending on you, and you're confronted with
• 14:41
  how little you actually give, and it's embarrassing, but it can be motivating
• 14:48
  and it can be inspiring, and for some of you it takes the fear
• 14:54
  away of being more generous because you always feel like things are tight. And
• 14:58
  one of the reasons you feel like things are because you don't know where it
• 15:01
  went. But once you know where it's going, and once you get in
• 15:03
  the habit of looking at it, it will actually keep a healthy pressure on
• 15:07
  you because the more you have, the more you have, and the more
• 15:09
  you make, the closer attention you should pay to where it's going. Not
• 15:13
  because you have to, but because, as we're about to discover, it
• 15:18
  is actually in your best interest to. It's in your best interest to because
• 15:24
  to borrow from something Jesus said. Here's what he said. He said,
• 15:26
  if you're not careful, those of you who have extra, those of you
• 15:30
  who have more, those of you who don't necessarily have to be as careful
• 15:33
  as you should. If you are not careful, you will begin to hoard
• 15:37
  for the future. You'll begin to store up treasure on earth and it will
• 15:41
  be a source of embarrassment later because, let's face it, human nature is
• 15:48
  this. When you have more of something than you need, you're just not
• 15:50
  careful. Right, when you have more of something than you need, and
• 15:54
  when you have when there's plenty, you're just not careful. If you don't
• 15:56
  have to be careful, you're not careful. This is why you leave the
• 15:58
  sink running and you go over to the refrigerator to get something. Water just
• 16:02
  runs and runs and runs. It's why you wash your car and you know
• 16:04
  you couldn't get the thing to screw the handles screw on ye I forget that
• 16:07
  and you just let it kind of spill off into the grass. We let
• 16:10
  water run all the time. Why we have way more water than we need.
• 16:14
  It's like water water everywhere. I mean, I mean, we don't
• 16:15
  have to be careful with water. There are places in the world. Many
• 16:18
  of you have visited those places. If they saw, if they saw how
• 16:22
  much water we were careless within a day, they wouldn't even have a category
• 16:29
  for that. Why because it's scarce. But when you have more something than
• 16:33
  you need, human nature is I just since I don't have to be careful.
• 16:36
  I'm not gonna be careful. But if you're a Christian, if you're
• 16:40
  a Jesus follower, when it comes to your money, that cannot be a
• 16:45
  factor. That cannot be a reflection of the reality of what you do with
• 16:49
  your money because of what Jesus taught. So here I'm gonna give you a
• 16:53
  little challenge. Okay, gave you a challenge last week, give you challenge
• 16:57
  this week. The challenge is this, just for two months, okay.
• 17:00
  I want to challenge you to figure out a way to document you're spending for
• 17:03
  two months. Just two months, okay. I want you to spy on
• 17:07
  your money. I want you to follow it. I want you to see
• 17:08
  where it's going, what it's doing. Create a Google Docs, share it
• 17:11
  with your husband or your wife or not, or share it with a roommate,
• 17:15
  or share it with a friend you know, share it. And the
• 17:17
  thing is, this is so easy. You don't have to buy any graph
• 17:18
  paper, you don't have to use a pen. There are so there's so
• 17:21
  much free software, there are so many apps to do this with. So
• 17:23
  many of you use the cash app and Venmo. It's easy to see exactly
• 17:26
  how much you spend it's easy to track that. It's just so easy.
• 17:30
  I want you to do that, just for two months, just log it.
• 17:33
  And then the second thing is I just want you have to end of
• 17:36
  those two months to sit down and look at it and then adjust if necessary.
• 17:40
  For some of you, you're going to be thrilled. For some of
• 17:41
  you you're going to be shocked. Now, if you're married, one of
• 17:47
  you hates me right now and the other one wants to come up here and
• 17:51
  hug me right now. I understand that because opposite it's a tract, right
• 17:53
  and somebody's sitting here going this is like my favorite sermon ever. I'm not
• 17:56
  even a Christian, but I love this guy in this church right because she's
• 18:00
  you know, or you're watching, and it's like, why isn't he here
• 18:02
  to hear this? I get that opposites the track. So don't make a
• 18:04
  big deal out of this. Don't don't commit for the rest of your life.
• 18:07
  This isn't you know, forever, Just for two months, especially if
• 18:11
  you've got kids and you got a family and get your kids involved, just
• 18:15
  for too much. Just track your spending and then sit down and look at
• 18:18
  it. Now. One of the objections I get or one of the responses
• 18:22
  I get whenever I bring this up is and it's always the same credit card
• 18:26
  that gets mentioned. So I'm just gonna use the credit card I always hear
• 18:27
  if people say, well, that's probably a good idea, But Andy,
• 18:30
  it all shows up on my MX bill. I mean, I just use
• 18:33
  AMX for everything. He's American Express for everything, and it just shows up.
• 18:37
  Okay, that's not my point. Knowing you can know is not the
• 18:42
  same as knowing, and the fact that you have access to how much you
• 18:48
  spent is different than sitting down and looking categorically at how much you spent in
• 18:52
  each category. So the good news is if you spend, if you use
• 18:56
  AMEX for everything, guess what, this should be easier for you than the
• 19:00
  rest of us. So you have less excuse, okay to sit down at
• 19:03
  the end of two months and categorically look at and sit down with your husband
• 19:07
  or wife or your family or just if it's just you, and say,
• 19:10
  Okay, how did where did my money go? Now you're thinking this isn't
• 19:15
  much of a sermon, but it's certainly practical. Yeah, this is good
• 19:18
  practical advice, and I didn't make any of it up. I learned this
• 19:22
  from other people through the years. But here's the thing. If you're a
• 19:25
  Christian, if you're a Jesus follower, this goes way beyond practical, and
• 19:30
  this goes way beyond helpful because Jesus actually taught specifically as to why this is
• 19:37
  such a big deal. And here's why I say that, and here's why
• 19:41
  I want you to take this extra seriously if you're a Christian. And it
• 19:45
  goes a little bit back to something I said last week. You're betting think
• 19:48
  about this. You are betting your entire eternity on John's words, John who
• 19:53
  wrote the Gospel of John, and he was there when Jesus was having a
• 19:56
  conversation with Nicodemus, and he tells Nicodema you must be born again. And
• 20:00
  later, as an older man, John is recording this conversation and as he's
• 20:04
  recording the conversation, it's like John gets so excited. He's like, I
• 20:07
  just want my readers to know exactly what Jesus was saying, because we weren't
• 20:11
  sure we understood it either, and Nicodemus didn't understand it. And now on
• 20:14
  this side of the cross, on this side of the resurrection, it's so
• 20:17
  clear. And John kind of breaks into the conversation and he writes these words
• 20:21
  that many of us memorized as children for God so loved the world that he
• 20:25
  gave his only son, that whoever places their faith in him would not perish,
• 20:30
  would not fall away from God, would not be lost to God,
• 20:32
  but would have eternal life. And many of you, if you're a Christian,
• 20:36
  you prayed some sort of prayer as a child or teenager, or a
• 20:37
  college student or maybe an adult. And what you said is, God,
• 20:41
  I believe Jesus is your son, and I'm trusting you through him, with
• 20:45
  my entire eternity. So you've already trusted the teaching in the words of Jesus
• 20:52
  for your eternity right and beyond that, you've actually defined your relationship with God
• 20:59
  based on jesus invitation to address him as father. That many of you,
• 21:02
  when you pray, you begin your prayer dear heavenly Father. And the reason
• 21:06
  you do that is because when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, said,
• 21:08
  when you pray, pray like this, our father, who is in heaven.
• 21:14
  Besides that, he said, your father, your heavenly father, knows
• 21:18
  what you need before you even ask, and you've accepted that, So you've
• 21:22
  trusted God with hair eternity. You've defined your relationship with God based on what
• 21:27
  Jesus taught. So why why would you? Why would I? Why would
• 21:36
  we not lean just as heavily? And what he said about money and possessions.
• 21:41
  I mean, when you're sick, you ask him to intervene in your
• 21:45
  health. When your children are prodigal, you ask him to intervene on behalf
• 21:49
  of your children. When your children are about to go away to college,
• 21:53
  do pray for God's protection. In other words, if you're a Christian,
• 21:56
  you invite God in on every thing. You can invite God in on Why
• 22:03
  in the world would we hold back when it comes to our money and our
• 22:07
  possessions? And let me answer that for you because on all those of the
• 22:11
  categories you have no control over them anyway, So it's easy. And number
• 22:15
  two, many of those categories you can't see. And this is why Jesus
• 22:22
  is so brilliant. This is why I believe the New Testament actually reflects his
• 22:26
  teaching. This is why he's the master teacher, the master storyteller. And
• 22:30
  even if you're not convinced, he's the son of God. It's why you
• 22:33
  should lean into the teachings of Jesus, because Jesus two thousand years ago new
• 22:38
  your money and your possessions is where the rubber meets the road in terms of
• 22:44
  your ultimate devotion. And it's so much easier for you to give your heart
• 22:48
  to Jesus then your money to Jesus. So when Jesus started talking about where
• 22:55
  your heart is, there, your treasure will be also. And the ultimate
• 22:57
  measure of the litmus test of your devotion God is what you do with your
• 23:00
  money. And a person can't have more than one master. You're either gonna
• 23:03
  serve God or the devil. No God or money. Why because he knew
• 23:07
  this and so over and over and over he says, come on, you're
• 23:11
  gonna trust me with your eternity, your health, your children, your marriage,
• 23:17
  your singleness, your joblessness, your opportunities. Why would you hold back
• 23:23
  when it comes to your money and your possessions. It doesn't make any sense,
• 23:30
  does it. And what did Jesus say about money and possessions? He
• 23:34
  was so clear, he said this, it's not even yours belongs to my
• 23:40
  father in heaven. You're not an owner don't kid yourself. You're a manager.
• 23:45
  In fact, In Matthew twenty five, Matthew was the tax collector who
• 23:48
  followed Jesus. Such a cool story, right, Matthew, follow me where
• 23:52
  we go into your house. That's such a great story. Matthew the tax
• 23:55
  collector who followed Jesus. His gospel associated with his name. He records a
• 24:00
  bunch of the parables of Jesus and Jesus. Parables, for the most part,
• 24:02
  explain how Heaven meets Earth. They explain the Kingdom of God. The
• 24:06
  Kingdom of God is at someplace you go someday. The Kingdom of God is
• 24:08
  the value system of God that touched down on planet Earth. In Jesus and
• 24:14
  Jesus parables constantly said, here's what the Kingdom of God looks like when you
• 24:17
  live it out on planet Earth, when you live it out in your life
• 24:19
  as a teenager or a single or a married an adult or a senior adult.
• 24:23
  And over and over and over, these parables would intersect with the topic
• 24:26
  of money and possessions because he knew this was such a key area for us
• 24:30
  to follow him. So in one of these parables, it's one that if
• 24:36
  you grew up in church. You've heard before. Here's how Jesus begins this
• 24:38
  particular famous parable. In fact that it's so famous, I'm not even going
• 24:41
  to read the whole parable. I'm just going to read the first part of
• 24:45
  it. Here's what he said. He said again, because he's talking about
• 24:48
  something he's talked about many times again, the kingdom of Heaven, the value
• 24:52
  system of God that he wants lived out on earth again. It will be
• 24:56
  like a man going on a journey who called his servants and trusted his wealth
• 25:00
  to them. Now, in a parable, as you hopefully know if you've
• 25:04
  been around for a while, parable, there's always a God figure, and
• 25:07
  there's always an Us figure. Somebody in the parable represents Jesus audience. Somebody
• 25:11
  in the parable represents God the Father. And if you read this whole parable,
• 25:15
  it becomes clear that the wealthy man who's intrusting his wealth to these servants
• 25:18
  is God. And the servants to whom the wealth is entrusted is me and
• 25:22
  is you, and as the followers of Jesus or the potential followers of Jesus.
• 25:26
  But here's the question that's not a trick question. What percentage of the
• 25:30
  man who'd bestowed his wealth to the servants. What percentage of the wealth belonged
• 25:33
  to the man all of it exactly one percent, and what percentage belonged to
• 25:38
  the servants zero percent exactly. I'm not even I can do that math right.
• 25:44
  It was all the masters. And he said, I'm gonna give it
• 25:45
  to you. And if you read this parable, it's kind of interesting.
• 25:48
  He gives one guy five bags of something of value and another person two bags
• 25:52
  of something of value, and the other guy got one bag. And he
• 25:55
  said, now, while I'm gone, I expect you to go do with
• 25:57
  my wealth what I would do with my wealth. And when I get back,
• 26:00
  I hope to have a return on my money. I want you to
• 26:02
  manage it the way you think I would. And when I get back,
• 26:04
  then you know, I want to know what kind of return. So I
• 26:07
  want you to work on a return so that when I return, I get
• 26:11
  the return on my wealth. And if you remember the parable, or if
• 26:15
  you read it, you should read it later. Two of them do really
• 26:17
  well, they go and you know, basically double their master's money. And
• 26:21
  then one of them doesn't do so well, he buries it. But the
• 26:23
  point of the parable is this, do you remember the difference. Do you
• 26:27
  remember what made the difference in the outcome of the story? Do you remember
• 26:30
  what made the difference when the Master returned and asked them to give an account.
• 26:34
  The issue was not the amount each of them were asked to manage.
• 26:40
  The issue was what they did with what they were asked to manage. And
• 26:45
  the point of the parable that Jesus is making is that one hundred percent of
• 26:49
  it belonged to the Master and zero percent of it belonged to the servants.
• 26:55
  They were managers, not owners. This is one reason, and some of
• 27:00
  you ask about this through the years, this is one reason I don't preach
• 27:03
  heavily on the tithe. A lot of church is all about tithe, tithe
• 27:06
  type tithe, you know, give ten percent to God. And here's why
• 27:07
  I don't teach the tithe specifically. And I've tithed plus all my life because
• 27:12
  I was raised you know ten percent goes to God. But here's why I've
• 27:15
  never pressed that heart in any of our churches, because the idea of a
• 27:18
  tithe tithe leaves the false impression that one hundred percent of it's yours. And
• 27:25
  if you're a really good Christian, you're going to give ten percent of it
• 27:30
  to God. And then when you give your ten percent to God, God
• 27:33
  is so happy. He's like, what, thank you so much? You
• 27:38
  gave me a dime out of that dollar. I don't know. I'm gonna
• 27:41
  your crops are gonna grow. I mean, your guy, I'm just gonna
• 27:45
  bless you. Oh my gosh, you gave me a dollar out of ten.
• 27:48
  Then you gave me a hundred out of a thousand. Then you gave
• 27:49
  me a thousand out of ten thousand. That's generally where it stops for most
• 27:52
  people right there. Once they get three circles at the end of a one
• 27:57
  or a two, or a three or the four, they think, you
• 28:00
  know what, I'm giving so much more than most people. And when I
• 28:02
  think about what I could have done with that money, and that's where it
• 28:04
  ends, and God's going seriously, you're hung up over a zero. You
• 28:07
  think that's a lot of money. Okay, well wait, you think that's
• 28:11
  a lot of money. And so what happens is we tithing gives the impression
• 28:17
  that it's ours and we're giving some to God. So just so you know,
• 28:21
  and if you're not a Christian, this may be new news. This
• 28:22
  is something to think about. Jesus did not teach that. Jesus didn't even
• 28:30
  hint at that. Jesus showed up and said, the Kingdom of God is
• 28:33
  like this. It's like someone who allowed someone to a wealthy man who allowed
• 28:38
  someone to manage some of his money. It was all his. They managed
• 28:45
  it. Then they had an opportunity to give an account about how and how
• 28:48
  well they did and what they did with the wealthy man's money. It's all
• 28:52
  his. And here's the great news about that paradigm and that idea and that
• 28:57
  picture and that approach. And again, Jesus so brilliant. You see,
• 29:02
  no matter how much money you have, and no matter how much money you
• 29:06
  make, and no matter what you possess, you but possessed, you should
• 29:08
  never ever ever feel guilty. And you should never allow anyone to make you
• 29:12
  feel guilty. And here's why. Because money managers don't feel guilty. It's
• 29:21
  not their wealth. Money managers feel responsible and accountable for how much of it,
• 29:30
  for all of it. This was such a paradigm shift in the first
• 29:36
  century, and it's a paradigm shift that the Church struggles with and continues to
• 29:38
  struggle with. But Jesus could not have been any clearer. The reason you
• 29:45
  should keep track of where your money is going. It's not your money.
• 29:52
  We should be knowing. We should be knowing where our master's money is going.
• 29:57
  So you should pay at time. And the more you have, the
• 30:02
  closer attention you should pay. So create a system. Just do this for
• 30:07
  two months, create a system where you monitor where your money goes, and
• 30:11
  then sit down and look at it. Stop every once in a while and
• 30:14
  just take a look. And if you don't like what you see, adjust
• 30:18
  And if you realize, good grief, how could two people spend that much
• 30:21
  money on themselves? Good grief? How could one person eat that much money?
• 30:26
  How could one person wear that much money? How could one person spend
• 30:30
  that much money on travel? Oh, my goodness, this is embarrassing.
• 30:33
  And then you adjust because and this is the bottom line. This is throughout
• 30:38
  the teaching of Jesus. And this may seem one side of this may seem
• 30:42
  too heavily weighted on the side of money and possessions. But I would challenge
• 30:45
  you to read the gospels and read the parables. How you and how I
• 30:52
  how we manage our money speaks volumes about who and who's we are. And
• 31:00
  here's how you know this already. It's not because of what you do with
• 31:03
  your money that convinces you of this. It's people you've met along the way,
• 31:07
  because you have met some very generous people. You've met some generous people
• 31:11
  who had a little who had a middle, and who had a lot right,
• 31:15
  And when you saw what they did with their home, when you saw
• 31:18
  how generous they were with their car, when you saw how generous they were
• 31:22
  with their possessions, you walked away from those conversations or those encounters thinking,
• 31:26
  Wow, that person is the real deal. I can't hear their prayers.
• 31:33
  I don't know about their secret habits. I don't know what happens behind closed
• 31:37
  doors. I don't know how they parented their children. I don't know what's
• 31:40
  going through their mind in church. I don't even know their church attendance,
• 31:41
  habits, habits. I don't know any of that. But my goodness,
• 31:45
  they are the real deal because of how they manage their money and their possessions.
• 31:52
  And Jesus so brilliant knew the very same thing. So how you manage
• 32:00
  your money says so much. It says probably more than anything else about who
• 32:05
  and whose you are, so come on, pay attention. If you pay
• 32:10
  attention, you will live better, you will love better, You'll definitely be
• 32:16
  more generous, you will have less fear, and you will have far more
• 32:22
  purpose. If our money could actually talk, what would it tell us?
• 32:28
  I think it would begin with telling us, hey, I can add meaning
• 32:31
  to your life, but I'm not the meaning of life. Our money would
• 32:36
  tell us I'm a better servant than I am a master, But ultimately it's
• 32:38
  your self control that determines which one of us gets in control. Our money
• 32:43
  would tell us, hey, I'm actually pretty easy to keep up with,
• 32:45
  but I am difficult to catch up with, and you will stress yourself out
• 32:51
  if you lose track of me. And then, ultimately, reflecting the words
• 32:55
  and the teachings of Jesus throughout his ministry, what you choose to do with
• 33:00
  me speaks volumes, speaks volumes about who and whose you are