Some steps for overcoming financial
adversity?
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1. Recognize and name the adversity for what it is. Face
your financial problems. You must confront before you can correct.
2. See your problem as a project. Look at the problem
as an opportunity for victory. Make the crisis a challenge. It is not
fatal-usually. It is not "the end."
3. Identify the reasons for this financial crisis.
4. Create alternative spending patterns.
5. Re-evaluate your spending habits.
6. Inform and involve others in your project of overhauling
your financial pattern.
a. Challenge your family.
b. Use financial consultants, also books.
c. Share your situation with creditors. Usually, if a
creditor knows you are being honest with him and are trying to meet
your obligation, he will work with you.
7. Consider alternative or additional income possibilities.
a. It may be time to change jobs or careers.
b. It may be time to seek a promotion.
c. It may be time to consider a new investment.
Disconnet from comfort or convinience; be creative.
Ownership or Stewardship
A classic in the area of finances is Larry Burkett's Your
finances in Changing times. In it, Burkett wrote:
Most individual tension, family friction, strife, anger,
and frustration are caused directly or indirectly by money. But for
those seeking God's best, He has established basic principles for the
management of possessions.
Here are some of those principles, as found in Burkett's
book:
1. We were made stewards over the earth's resources (Gen.
1:28). Each of us is a manager, not an owner. God is the owner,
and we are to manage according to His plan.
2. You can't take it with you! The only thing you
"take with you" is what you did with what was entrusted to
you.
Some asked John D. Rockefeller's Chief accountant how
much the immensely wealthy man left. The accountant answeed, "Everything!"
3. God expects those with the ability to invest to do
so, but He also expects a return on what He has given you. (The parable
of the talents-Matthew 25:14-30) .
4. God will never use money in a Christian's life to worry
him, corrupt him, build his ego, or to satisfy self-indulgence.
5. Hoarding money is not a godly principle.
6. There is nothing inherently spiritual in poverty,
nor is there sin in wealth-only in the love of wealth or possessions.
(1Tim. 6:10).
7. God's laws are no respecter of persons.
8. God has promised to meet our needs, as long as we put
Him first.
9. God's laws on finances are as fixed as His laws in
physics. His principle of sowing and reaping (Matt.13) works for anyone-
just as His law of gravity works for saint as well as sinner.
"Seek ye first the Kingdom
of God, and His righteousness; and all these things (to meet your basic
needs) shall be added unto you." Matthew 6: 33.
************************letter # 38 ( 7.10.2000)**********************
