It's Your Money! Isn't It?

G. Edward Reid

Omega Productions

1- A Biblical Perspective on Money

Welcome to It's Your Money, a practical guide for managing the financial resources God has provided.

Your host is Christian attorney and financial counselor, G.

These audio recordings are provided for those who want to gain more information from the biblical principles of money management.

There will be 12 sessions and this is number 1.

We're going to talk first of all about the spiritual implications of money management.

Some people ask why all the fuss about money?

1 of the interesting things is that we all have lives to live and we all have money to manage.

Some people recognize that you can go through elementary school, academy, and college and never actually take a course or be required to take 1 that would teach you how to balance a checkbook or to buy an insurance policy or buy a car, whatever, just general management.

Well typically it's just trial and error and lots of both.

So what we're going to do is to look at this from a spiritual perspective because God understood that we would need to have this and he wants us to have an abundant life.

It's kind of interesting also that 2 Timothy the third chapter in the first 5 verses there describe our day.

And those of us who have a Christian perspective recognize that based on Bible prophecy that we're living in the end times.

And the Bible says there, but know this that in the last days perilous times will come.

For men will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money, and then follows a great long list of awful things that people do without self-control and brutal and so on.

But it's interesting that the first 2 actually talk about money management.

1 is actually lovers of money or lovers of themselves.

And so what we're going to look at is to see if we can get out of this list of bad things and understand how God wants us to operate.

Those of you who have been at the seminar, you will have a workbook.

And if you don't, we'll tell you how to get 1 at the end of the program today.

But we're going to be on page 3, and I hope this will help you.

I'm sure it will be a good backup to have the material from the It's Your Money book and workbook.

We're talking about escalating bankruptcies.

It's fascinating to understand today that yet in spite of the fact that we live in 1 of the most prosperous nations in the world, for 2001 these statistics that we have indicate that 29, 000 American families declared bankruptcy every week last year.

That's 1.4 million families could not make it.

And you understand that we have been having prosperous times until the last few months, and we'll talk more about investments at a later session.

But I want you to contemplate the idea, is bankruptcy really an alternative for the Christian?

We'll talk more about it when we discuss debt, but the Bible indicates that in Proverbs 37, 21, that the wicked borrow and do not repay.

We'd like to understand that bankruptcy should be avoided if possible from a Christian perspective.

Today we see all kinds of interesting things in the news about us and in the publications.

I recently noticed a Forbes magazine cover that showed that the CEOs of large companies now are making up to a hundred million dollars a year, and many sports figures make huge salaries.

And of course, so you want to become a millionaire and other programs like that attract a lot of attention to people.

But what should a Christian do in all of this wealth and concern about finances?

I have found something that I call living in the land of the Philistines.

You remember in the Bible, It's in Judges chapter 2 verses 2 and 3 that God said, you shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land.

You shall not tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice.

But he says, if you serve their gods, they will be a snare to you.

So I'm going to give you a little illustration.

You understand that in the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, there is a place called the land of the Philistines and of course the camp of Israel or the land of Israel.

And when Samson became involved with the Philistine woman, she was not the girl next door.

He actually had gone some distance to become involved with her.

So I want to ask you a question today just to contemplate, and that is from a spiritual perspective, say good guys and bad guys, where is the land of the Philistines today?

Area, frequently people say well that must be where it is.

Some people are concerned about the the escalating crime and violence and so on but I will tell you that it's not some town that you think of with violence and crime record and all of that but from the biblical perspective especially from the new testament god says where the light of the world where the salt of the earth So we're kind of all mixed in together.

People have access to television and just about anything they might want to get involved in today.

But it's not all bad that we're mixed in there because we are the salt of the earth, but in money management, frequently the world is salting us more than we are salting it.

Now I want to give you an illustration so that you can understand that.

Frequently the Bible indicates that debt is bad, but today many, many people are getting involved in debt and that's why we have such a high incidence of bankruptcy as I mentioned earlier.

Now we live today in a society where we want things bigger probably and sooner than we would before, but let me just give you housing as an example.

In some countries of the world that do not have mortgages, I had a friend from Zambia, Africa, attend 1 of my seminars and he couldn't understand the session number 8 on housing because the whole thing was on how to finance a house and he said in Zambia there's no such thing as a mortgage you just build and live in it as you can.

At any rate from a biblical perspective I will try to give you a little insight right now as to what we'll talk about in session number 8 as well but because of the availability of money and credit today Housing prices have really really shot up so like the median house price in the United States now is a hundred and 47000 dollars and that's just across the board the average.

Obviously in the Midwest you can find them a lot cheaper or a smaller home or in a rural setting but in large cities of course it's much much more than that.

So the average person doesn't have the money to buy a house.

Well, they make a trip or 2 to the bank and they get qualified and they find the house that they want and they borrow the money.

And let's speak first about the Philistines.

If they want to buy or build a house and they don't have the money, they'll borrow the money and what is the typical time that they will take to pay it back?

Well anyone who is generally familiar with house financing knows that's 30 year mortgage in the United States.

That's not only typical here because some countries as I mentioned do not have mortgages, but some places like in Japan, if you lived in Tokyo or 1 of the large cities there, you may have a hundred year mortgage and it takes 3 generations of people to pay it back.

So let's just say that a Christian person decides that he wants to buy or build a house.

Well, typically they will do exactly the same thing and get a 30 year mortgage.

And that may be the way to set it up to begin with.

But you understand housing costs so much because credit is available.

Think about this, how much would the average house sell for if money was not available to borrow and to pay back?

Well, the Bible indicates that Christians or Bible believers should not be in debt longer than 7 years.

And you have that principle from Deuteronomy 15, verse 1 and other places like that.

So what we're gonna try to do is to help people to put their mortgage in perspective and to pay it off in a quicker time.

And I've done this personally twice and it really helps and a lot of people have come to me and felt that it was a benefit.

So credit cards, many other things, we take our cues more from the world than we do from the Bible perspective.

So let's take our Bibles now and we're actually going to go to the sixth chapter of Matthew and this is kind of an interesting setting because it is in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount and most of you are aware that that's Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 and when you look at Matthew from this perspective my Bible is a red letter edition, so all the words of Jesus are in red, right in the middle of this famous and longest recorded sermon of Jesus, we find these words in Matthew 6, 19.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Now this is kind of a fascinating thing because we actually see here that we're talking about concerned politicians, other people today, but people are wondering, should I save up money?

But the Bible says, don't store it up on this earth.

To me that's quite a fascinating thing to see because it seems like the logical thing to do.

Now this to me is pretty interesting and I will try to make it plain for you here when we look at Matthew 6, 19 and 20.

By the way, the Bible is not telling us not to store up treasures.

It's just saying store it up where it will be safe.

So how do you store up treasures in heaven?

When you look through the Bible, there's actually a number of ways that you can answer that question but there's only 2 answers that you get over and over again.

And I'll try to give you a perspective on that.

1 of them was the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and he probably was in the category of a group of people today that we call dinks that's dual income no kids he's coming up in his fancy car and says to jesus what can I do that I could inherit eternal life well jesus didn't tell him to sell everything to begin with?

So Jesus actually started quoting some of the 10 Commandments.

And what actually happened in this case is he said, well you can stop, I've been doing that since I was little.

And Jesus told him to sell what he had and give to the poor and follow him.

Now a lot of people miss the next phrase.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, all of them mention this story.

He says thereby you will store up treasures in heaven.

Frank Fournier

Eden Valley SDA Church

The Word Only

Have you turned with me to Matthew chapter 8?

More often than you could imagine, I have the opportunity of sharing a story that's in Matthew chapter 8, because I begin every series of devotions with our Lifestyle Guests with this story.

I've been doing that for 11 years, and so you can imagine if I do that once a month for 11 years, that's quite a few times that I've shared on the story that's found in Matthew chapter 8.

But I'm here to tell you that as often as I get to share this story, just that often am I thrilled with what I find there.

I don't know if they're at the Lifestyle Center or maybe even here.

Still and all, I'll be going in a little bit different direction this morning.

And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion beseeching Him.

And The question I usually ask at this point is, do you know what a centurion is?

Well, Seventh-day Adventists know, Bible students know.

A centurion is a captain over a hundred men.

If you're going to be a captain over a hundred men, you better have some strength in you, right?

Not only that, this man was a Roman citizen.

And when you're a pagan and when you're a Roman and when you're a soldier, none of that is conducive to being a Christian.

And so he comes to Jesus and everything about him generally would not be conducive to Christianity.

And saying, Lord, my servant lies at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.

And Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him.

Now the question that needs to be asked here, how much time elapses between the time that this soldier makes a request of Jesus and Jesus responds to his request?

Well, friends, because this Roman soldier has something in him that Jesus can respond to.

This Roman soldier has met at least 2 conditions that we want to look at this morning.

Now, when you make a request of Jesus that He respond to you immediately, have you ever had times when you wish that He would answer your prayer and that he would answer it now?

Why is it taking a year for him to get to the point of answering my prayer?

Well, there are 2 conditions that this pagan Roman soldier is meeting that Jesus can respond to.

And listen, I don't know how many pagans are in this room.

There may be more than I know, I suppose, but I don't think so.

And if Jesus will respond to a pagan Roman soldier immediately, don't you suppose that He would respond to you if you met those conditions as He met them?

So we're talking about 2 things this morning in the story of this centurion.

The first thing is, this man felt his need of help from God.

And I want to tell you that that is all that God requires from you this day.

You don't have to be jumping through any kind of hoops.

You don't have to pay money to the church.

In Desire of Ages, page 300, it says, from the soul that feels his need, nothing is withheld.

Do you know the meaning of the word nothing?

From the soul that feels her need, Nothing is withheld.

All that God wants from you and from me is that we feel our need of help from Him.

And when an individual will come to Him feeling their need, feeling their helplessness to meet their own situation, whatever it might be, at this point God says, I can help.

He doesn't qualify it except with 1 thing.

You go to the individual who can meet your needs.

And many times, many times, you and I are in a situation that we cannot meet our own needs and there's no human being alive that can meet the needs that we have.

In Testimonies to Ministers, page 519, paragraph 3, Our need is the qualification.

If you pray eloquent prayers, God does not respond to eloquent prayers.

Eloquency by itself means nothing to God.

Our need is the qualification which gives us the assurance that we shall receive the gift.

If you feel your need, you have the gift.

The problem, of course, is we don't always feel our need.

We have high opinions of ourselves and our opinions.

And we don't feel any need because we have the answer to our own problems.

And we go on and on and on trying to meet our own needs.

And God says, 1 thing I require of you, 1 thing I require of you, 1 thing I require of you, to look at me as God and to see yourself as a sinner in need of my help.

And if you ever come to the place where you feel your need, I don't care what the need is.

From the soul that feels his need, nothing is withheld.

This is the ticket, this is the qualification that gives us the assurance we shall receive the gift.

Now, how qualified is a pagan Roman soldier of receiving favors from God?

You know, you would think, humanly speaking, that the Jews were far more qualified than Him to receive that which they needed.

Shawn Boonstra

Voice Of Prophecy

Surviving Rejection

Today on the Voice of Prophecy, we're going to talk about 1 of the biggest risks a person can take.

A huge gamble that almost everyone makes.

And I promise you, if you've never done this, you've at least thought about it.

Welcome to another edition of the Voice of Prophecy.

My name is Sean Boonstra and I'll be your host for the next 30 minutes or so.

And today I'm going to talk about serious risk-taking.

And I'm not talking about finances or risking bodily harm.

I'm actually talking about something far more common and far more risky.

I'm talking about the risk of letting other people into your life.

Now, if you're a dyed-in-the-wool introvert like me, the kind of person who loves to be alone, then building a new relationship kind of seems more of a bother than a risk.

If you're an extrovert, someone who actually gets energized when they're around other people, you might be wondering how friendship could actually be considered risky, because the more friends, the merrier, right?

But I'm not actually talking about casual acquaintances.

I'm talking about your good friends, the close ones.

You throw open the door, you bear a piece of your soul, you give a piece of your innermost self away to someone who actually has the capacity to hurt you just because you let them in.

1 that destroys a lot of people emotionally when it goes bad.

You risk betrayal, humiliation, rejection, misunderstanding, And yet it's still something you crave anyway.

Even the most rejected and despondent person on earth, the person who just quits trying because it hurts too much, that person still wishes it would work.

They still wish they could get close to someone.

If this life is really just about survival the way some people talk, if you and I are just biological machines with an interest in self-preservation, then Surely you and I are past this point of needing other people.

Mass production has created a world where your basic physical needs can be met without any meaningful interaction with other people.

All you have to do is put in your hours at work, buy your groceries at a big box supermarket, pay your bills, keep to yourself.

You still crave some sort of deep connection with somebody else, even if you've been hurt in the past, even if you don't really trust anybody, even if you've been crushed by somebody else, there's still a part of you that wants a relationship.

You know, there's a reason we use solitary confinement as a form of punishment.

It's because you and I are actually hardwired to be social beings.

Now, that doesn't mean that every individual pursues companionship in exactly the same way, or that we don't have varying needs when it comes to how much interaction you want.

It just means that every human being seems to crave this at some level.

Now if you go and ask an evolutionary biologist, I imagine that he or she might point to the social animals that live out in your backyard.

Animals like bees or ants who live in mutually beneficial communities.

With bees and ants, it's all about survival.

Their chances of surviving improve because they work and live together, and they even have clearly defined roles in their communities that contribute to the overall health of the whole community.

But again, let me point out that on a purely physical level, our basic survival has never been simpler than it is right now.

You and I don't really need intimacy to handle the basics of life like food and shelter.

You just need some sort of contact with people that facilitates the exchange of physical goods.

And I also have serious doubt that ants or bees actually spend time exploring each other's feelings, listening to each other.

I doubt that their interpersonal connections are anywhere near as deep as ours.

You don't have whirlwind romances or bitter divorces playing out in a beehive, at least not as far as I know.

The human capacity for relationship runs very deep, and it comes with a huge amount of risk, the kind of risk that sometimes leads to crimes of passion, like the stabbing of a young girl who recently turned down a suitor at a Connecticut high school.

This boy asked her to the junior prom and she said no.

And minutes later she's on the ground dying of stab wounds.

Now all the early reports that I read suggested that he was an ex-boyfriend.

And if that's true, almost all of us can suddenly recognize why he did it.

We might not understand how someone could bring himself to commit such a horrible crime.

But at the same time, we recognize the complicated emotions that lead some people to make rash decisions.

We don't understand brutal violence, but we do understand passion.

You might not have killed someone, nor would you ever do it, but to some degree you have felt the sting of rejection, the hot embarrassment, the feeling of loss of control that comes from gambling on a relationship and losing.

Over the years, I can't tell you how many guys I know who have called me utterly despondent because their long time marriage just fell apart.

They risked everything for a relationship.

They gave a huge piece of themselves away to somebody else.

And now their personal sacrifice is being trampled underfoot.

And you know, I guess it doesn't even have to be a marriage.

I can almost guarantee that right now, some of you are thinking about a friendship that went south.

Someone took your trust and walked all over it.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

1- A Biblical Perspective on Money

28m

The Word Only

37m

Surviving Rejection

30m

Home Sweet Home

28m

Echoes From the Hall of Faith

29m

Episode 7- Herghelia Institute

28m

Episode 6- Kibidula Farm Institute

28m

Episode 5- Harbert Hills Academy & Mukuyu Outreach

28m

Scary Stuff

39m

Shipwrecked

31m

Putting On the Armor of God

47m

How Big Is Your God?

1h 28m

Sound Doctrine