MoneyWalk 186: Is Jesus Lord Of Your Money?

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Some people don’t realize that they’ve given lordship of their lives over to people and things other than Jesus Christ. Many have accepted the notion that Jesus is LORD of their lives because they call themselves Christian.

The Lord is not impressed when you or other people call you a Christian, a pastor, or a member of a local church. Neither is He impressed when you have a multi-million dollar income, millions of dollars in assets, a naturally powerful position among men, a six figure income, a low-income, or poverty status in society.

Instead, He’s hurt and very sad about you no matter your income and asset level when you do not use money to support His will in the earth. His will is that He be lifted up so that men can be drawn to Him in relationship in order to be saved, inherit eternal life, and partner with Him and His Church to fulfill the Great Commission through employing the purpose and calling He gave them in this life on earth.

Remember, the Lord was angry and called the rich man a fool when he built bigger barns for himself instead of giving proportionately to support kingdom work in the earth. Also, the young rich ruler had riches and position in life and yet Jesus was sad because he wouldn’t allow Jesus to be LORD of the life and money to which he had been entrusted. The young rich ruler walked away with great sorrow, even though he followed many of the other commandments from his youth on. He did not truly love the Lord with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength nor then did he love his neighbor as himself. He had a form of godliness, but denied the power thereof.

In Contrast, Jesus was pleased with the heart and actions of the low-income widow because she gave her few pennies to support God’s work and He was pleased with those who where rich that lent themselves to good works, helping the poor, and other service to which they were gifted by God and trained to use. Whether you are rich or poor make the Lord the priority of your life and desire to honor His will before all others when you earn or receive income and inheritances and as you accumulate more valuable assets.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 13:7, Mark 10:17-23, Luke 12:16-21, Acts 4:33-35, 1Timothy 6:17-19

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 185: Setting Vision And Goals

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

You should continually ask God and take inventory of you skills and abilities in order to find out the type of work God wants you to do in the Earth while recognizing that the form of the work may change from time to time and that you will have to do some types of work along the way that will seem totally unrelated but will actually add up to the kind of experience, competence, skill, and attitude necessary to ultimately fill the position / place that God has for you. The situation will be akin to the Karate Kid beginning his training to be a Karate champion by washing and waxing a car and doing many other things along the way that he felt were totally unrelated. They ultimately led to him being the Karate champion.

Next, you should write your vision down on paper or computer file along with goals you will pursue to accomplish it. Your vision might be something like hosting a weekly radio program in your local area or to write a book to teach millions of people the fundamentals of proper money management.

Your goals should be specific things, that you perceive will help fulfill your vision, and that you will work to accomplish by a specific time (six months, one-year, etc.) like writing the outline that the programs will follow or contacting two radio station programming managers each week to motivate them to allow you to host the program or writing one book topic each week.

Your vision and goals (whether business, employment, political, or ministerial) should ensure that you’re able to use your work to glorify God, lead people to Christ, and help them establish greater relationship with Him. It will take action to accomplish the goals and to fulfill the ultimate aim of the vision.

Every goal may not come exactly as you outline it and you may need to tweak the vision along the way as you receive greater insight from the Lord. So, you will need to be flexible to God opening doors and showing you other ways to accomplish His plan. Upon His guidance and to overcome roadblocks to your destiny, you must be willing to take steps other than what you envisioned in the past. With the Holy Spirit’s power working in you, vision and goals and faithful action to achieve them will help you persevere through every obstacle to be who God created you to be.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Psalm 89:19, Proverbs 29:18, Habakkuk 2:2-4, Acts 10:19-20, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 184: Be Shrewd Yet Godly And Honest

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Many unbelievers who seem to prosper on the earth are shrewd (perceptive, clever, insightful) because they look out for what they believe is their best interest. Many times they see the sky falling on the position that they currently have, or the income from a business endeavor on its way to running out, or a scenario that may come during which they could lose their job. So, they have made friends of the money entrusted to them in a way that can help them fend off prolonged earthly hardship. They are able to go to friends they have made while working and get a job or help or they have stockpiled cash to help them get through such situations.

To be sure, not all unbelievers do this and some of their activities are rooted in underlying attitudes of self-glory, pleasure seeking, and personal fame. Glorifying God is not their aim. Those that do not have a relationship with Christ often aim at satisfying their own bellies. They might use hook and crook to get what they want and they have a twisted view of the type of lifestyle that leads to peace, joy, and eternal satisfaction and aren’t interested in living according to biblical principles in order to obtain the peace that surpasses all understanding.

The shame is that many Christians, per Christ’s own words, do not look out for the best interests of the Kingdom of God and thus for their own best interest. Now to be sure not all unbelievers are just totally bad people that you cannot trust. In fact, some of them have proven to be more faithful, trustworthy, and kind than some that have taken on the name of Christ. In the Earth, they do some very good and helpful things. Their great problem is that they do not have relationship with Jesus Christ and thus no matter how good they may appear on earth they are choosing to allow Satan to aim them to the eternal Hell that awaits him and the fallen angels.

God wants you to be more wise, perceptive, insightful, and clever than unbelievers by allowing Him to aim your intelligence, abilities, vision, and focus on advancing the Kingdom of Heaven through the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Earth. This plan keeps you fully vested in the peace, joy, and eternal satisfaction that God promised His people. In order to do so in the financial arena of life, you must learn biblical money management principles so you will know how to honor God in Christ in the church, in your family, and among your acquaintances. By ordering your steps this way, you’ll prosper immensely on Earth and in Heaven and you’ll never have to fret because evildoers around you appear to prosper at a greater rate on earth.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Psalm 37:1-6, Matthew 6:19-20, Mark 10:42-45, Luke 12:42, 43, 47, 16:8-13, Jude 1:10-13

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 183: Have Relationship With Christ, Not Just Religion

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Religion is not a problem when it is pure and undefiled. It can only be that way when it keeps the person unstained by the world and results in fruitful activity like helping distressed orphans and widows. Only one thing can eternally and forever keep you unstained by the world and that is acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior believing that the blood He shed on Calvary totally eliminates your sin making you right with God.

If you answer the question, “Are you saved?” with the response, “I’m Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic or I go to X church and if you don’t live each day in relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer, bible reading, fellowship with other church members who are the body of Christ, and obedience to the principles God commanded man to follow, then you are likely unsaved because you have no relationship with Christ though you may have a form of godliness. Yet, there is no power in it.

Religious titles or lifestyles will not grant you eternal life in Heaven after you die on earth. They are only institutionalized or personal systems of belief and practice relating to what you think is divine. Confessing that Jesus Christ is your Savior and Lord based on the biblical truth of who He is indeed is the only way to God the Father and an eternal place in Heaven, the New Earth, and the New Jerusalem.

Only those who personally accept Christ in their heart can know true peace and joy and have treasure that lasts forever. This cannot be manifest by any other means. Do not let impure and defiled religion rule your life, rather let your committed relationship with Jesus Christ guide you spiritually and financially to the loving arms of our Savior and to the land of prosperity for spirit, soul, and body.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Luke 14:26, John 8:19-24, Galatians 2:19-21, Ephesians 2:4-9, 3:14-21

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 182: Is Debt Necessary?

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Some of the types of debt that you will encounter on your journey through life are: Home mortgages; Second mortgages; Home Equity loans; Vehicle loans; Student loans; Credit card loans; Store charge card loans; and Business loans. Most debt is bad and all types of debt can put you in financial harm’s way when you do not quickly seek to get yourself out of it. Yet, here are a few examples of debt that scripture may support:

1. Loans to provide necessary food and shelter for your family when you are in deep poverty and cannot earn enough at the present time to take care of the need (not desire).

2. Loans to pay for life saving surgery when you are in deep poverty and cannot earn enough at the present time to take care of the life-saving need.

3. Very low-interest rate loans to put into guaranteed-interest investments offered by the most reputable firms that will pay much higher interest on the money than you are paying out to the bank in finance charges. For example; borrowing $10,000 @ 3% annually to invest the money in a vehicle guaranteed to earn 7% annually.

With regard to items 1 and 2, I believe 99.9% of United States and developed countries citizens are not in this position because they have a skill or ability that can bring them income so they never experience such deep poverty. Also, many medical providers and hospitals will often provide pro bono or low cost ways to get life-saving surgery. In addition, businesses and charities provide huge amounts of usable goods that they leave in the field that citizen’s hard work could harvest to provide necessary food, shelter, and clothing.

With regard to item 3, this is a situation that 99.9% of the people will never experience and would get into deep financial trouble trying to find. You’ve already been worshipping at the altar of debt / maintaining good credit scores by continually taking on more debt and refusing to negotiate with your creditors to eliminate debt or a portion of it. How is that working out for you?

The absolute best approach you can take to obtain financial freedom is to employ a singular focus and stop spraying in numerous directions trying to do a whole lot of other things that are not needful right now. It is futile to think you’re going to be a good investor earning high returns when you cannot manage the current income entrusted to you, shown by having no emergency fund cushion and barely being able to pay your bills if you’re able to pay them at all. It is likewise futile to believe you can maintain a high credit score by taking on more debt or when you are entertaining deficit spending in your monthly budgets. Need I say, like the Robot to Will Robinson, while frantically waving my arms so you get the point, “Danger Will Robinson, Danger, Danger, Danger Will Robinson!”

Intense focus on taking out no additional debt along with total debt elimination and obtaining a debt-free life is the process / good stewardship lifestyle that make it possible for you to be what God said He wants His people to be:

Debt-free, in a financially sound and asset rich position of a lender instead of the poverty-stricken position of a borrower, released from slavery (bondage) to lenders, owing no man anything but love, able to carry out His call and purpose for you to evangelize and disciple others and have greater monetary means to help meet the needs of the widows, orphans, oppressed, and enslaved.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Deuteronomy 15:7 and 28:12, Proverbs 22:7, Romans 13:8, 1Timothy 6:6-10

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 181: Most Debt Is Bondage!

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Debt management is a critical part of successful financial planning, yet many Christians do not properly manage their income and spending to reduce their debt load and facilitate a financially healthy life that includes a long-term build up of wealth.

This new type of financial life helps you by reducing stress caused by poor financial condition and lack of ability to pay creditors what is owed. It is also helpful in properly caring for your family, in teaching and exampling for them boundaries that need to be maintained so that you and they can be all God made them to be, and in communicating monetarily to the needs of others God placed in your life.

In order to live in the Lord’s debt-free plan for His people, you must use biblical principles. This recognizes that you will not mimic the mindset and attitudes of the world concerning money and how it says one becomes successful and rich. Your heart, thoughts, and actions change from your old ways and gravitate to finding out the principles of God while line by line, precept by precept employing them now in order to be a good steward of the treasure God entrusts to you.

The heart / mind of Christ makes you realize that most debt is terrible for your life because:

1. The bible speaks negatively of borrowing / debt in most every instance.

2. When things get tight you may ultimately decide to pay the man you can see (the creditor) instead of paying tithes to the God you cannot see. This shuts down the flow of supernatural blessing, reward, peace, and joy that He wants to come your way.

3. The borrowed money will not be used to create greater income streams.

4. You would be borrowing money to spend what you do not currently have in cash.

5. There’s no guarantee that you won’t be laid off or fired or your income won’t be reduced before the loan is paid off.

6. You would be acting on presumption not faith.

7. You most often would be borrowing money to purchase desires.

8. Finance charges on the borrowed money will most often be much higher than interest you will earn on savings.

9. Taking on debt reduces your net-worth.

10. Cosigning a note for a family member or friend who has no current cash to purchase their desires is a recipe for failure because most of them will never pay off the loan and will leave you holding the bag.

Your financial situation cannot improve as long as you continue to borrow and take on more debt with higher finance charges than your investment earnings. Borrowing money wrecks your will power, your financial discipline, and your trust in God to provide your needs.

When you do not have cash from an emergency fund or money designated within your budget to purchase things that you believe you need or desire, have faith enough to believe that God will supply all your need and refuse to go to the pit of debt that scripture often describes as a curse and bondage. Do without that product or service until He comes through with the extra cash for you to buy it or provides it as a gift from a person or organization. You will find that the Lord will come through with exactly what you need and that, in most instances, you really didn’t need what you thought you did.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Deuteronomy 15:7 and 28:12, Proverbs 22:7, Romans 13:8, 1 Timothy 6:6-10

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 180: Why You Need To Budget

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

A budget is a projection of future income and expenses that you expect for your household over a specified period of time. Expected income and expenses are derived from pay stubs and bills. It’s almost impossible to use the income God blessed you with in the best possible manner without keeping an updated 3-6 month budget on computer or paper. Very few people can keep an accurate budget in their heads!

Budgeting to produce surplus money to eliminate debt and building savings and investments will make you a good steward of the income God has entrusted to you. A budget’s purpose is to bring structure to spending income, identifying future expenses, and helping reach short and long-term goals. By doing so you will:

1. Better understand your present financial condition

2. Better understand the debt-laden mess you created in the past

3. Identify areas of wasteful spending

4. Identify the need to reduce expenses or earn additional income.

5. Plan better to overcome periods when expenses exceed income

6. Make better financial decisions to meet future goals

Long-term benefits of budgeting are organization of your income and expenses and related paperwork, engaging a spiritual / principled / methodical process proven to put in you in sound financial shape when adhered to, prioritizing and always remembering to honor God through tithes and offerings, incremental debt reduction, eventual total debt elimination, ever increasing asset building through saving, compound growth via investing, the ability to adequately respond to future emergencies, and peace and joy in Christ as you prosper immensely.

Let this process work for you so that you truly can be a wise man that builds a treasury while taking care of all your current God-given responsibilities instead of being the fool who spends everything he gets and thus has only poverty and a curse in life while on earth. Remember, there is much treasure in the ground of the poor man, but it is wasted for lack of judgment.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 21:20, Proverbs 27:23-24, Habakkuk 2:2-4, Luke 14:28-30

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 179: Retirement Accounts Off Limits

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

The bible teaches us to tithe and live debt-free. These practices bring disciplines to our lives by crucifying fleshly desires, and requiring us to trust God for provision. In order to faithfully use these financial principles we must exercise contentment and self-control by seeking to live off less than 70% of our net income. To help meet this goal it’s better to pay down credit card, car note, furniture account, and other higher interest debt before paying down and eliminating home mortgage principle.

You should not use money in 401k and IRA plans to pay off any of the above debts because removing money from these tax-deferred plans will increase your income tax burden and you will have to pay a 10% penalty for withdrawing the money without a resulting increase in savings and investments over the long run. You would have to pay the IRS approximately 50% of the amount withdrawn, which generally makes such withdrawals a very bad decision.

Yet, it may be feasible to stop your current contributions to these plans and use this money to pay your debts down to reach the land of debt freedom from every type of loan other than your mortgage. The reason being that revolving charge card and many other non-mortgage loans usually have much higher interest rates (10% to 30%) that impede your ability to get ahead financially. Continuing to obtain these types of loans and making minimum payments on them will keep you in bondage for many years into the future.

Once all non-mortgage debt is paid off, you should then re-direct all of your excess income to build your emergency fund to six months of income and afterward you should redirect your excess to pay off your mortgage and commit to remaining debt-free once it is paid off.

Finally, you should then put at least 10% of your monthly income into retirement accounts including a Roth IRA (both husband and wife). Any remaining excess income should be redirected toward other investments and larger charitable contributions to your local church and other worthwhile ministries. You should not speculate on investments that require you to borrow money in order to try and leverage growth. Debt-freedom is the high position the Lord wants for you.

There are too many horror stories of foreclosures on property and brokerage houses calling margin loans for them to be the tool you use to try and build wealth. Very few people make it out of the bondage such loans bring on them. Save your excess cash until you have enough money to make an educated cash purchase of the property or equity position (after much expert counsel from other people that have prospered under God’s financial plan) that you believe will provide great future growth.

Following this pathway, you will find over the next 10 to 20 years that the combination of debt-freedom, diversified retirement account investments, and paying cash for diversified investments outside of retirement accounts will catapult you into the wealthy place that God has for you whereas the debt-ridden position you formerly held would have subjected you to financial bondage and its resulting negative consequences (broke, busted, and disgusted all your days).

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Deuteronomy 28:12, Proverbs 3:9-10, Luke 14:28-30, Romans 13:8

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 178: Divorce Ungodly Stewardship

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Many people divorce for illegitimate reasons and the angry atmosphere created causes them to make decisions that negatively affect their family’s future. The atmosphere can be so contentious that spouses spend all they can and borrow more to fund lawyers in order to try and take away as many marital assets as they can from one another.

Many spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs fighting to get the upper hand because of the anger they let fester prior to and during divorce proceedings. As a result, they drag out proceedings over a much longer time period than would otherwise be necessary to settle affairs. In numerous situations, this brings extra debt and provides less money to each divorcee when matters are finally settled by the court.

Another thing that works against divorcees and those in the process is the Friend of the Court system awarding child support that seems to be a huge amount of the net income of the spouse that pays it. In addition, a court may order alimony for some number of years against the spouse with the higher income and/or greater probability of building greater future assets. Such support is only a fraction of the support the children and ex-spouse would receive if the spouses united in Jesus Christ and remained that way.

The separation of love and finances from one spouse to the other greatly perpetuates financial difficulties for both parties. If they were already at the edge financially or over the edge prior to the divorce proceedings, then it will be even more chilling financially because they effectively double major expense they used to pay together and incur even more expense fighting one another.

Scripture does identify a few reasons legitimate in the eyes of God that one spouse may have a right to use to divorce or separate from the other. Yet the reasons many are using today and the amount of divorce taking place today appear to be an abomination of the plan that God designed for mankind’s betterment and that Christ desires for His Church as a means of exampling the love He shows for His Body.

If we want the best that the Lord has for us, then it is best to exhibit good stewardship in our martial relationship as well as our relationship with money. Both married partners focused on pursuing His will for each other and the family unit are much better than both of the divorcees being forced to operate in single parenthood. This is true spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially, for when one falls the other is able to pick him / her up and help move the family unit into greater prosperity.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 13:23, Matthew 5:32, Mark 10:3-9, Ephesians 5:28-33, Colossians 4:5

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 177: It Is Not What It Looks Like

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Many people that earn or previously earned six figure or million dollar incomes actually live in poverty by God’s standards because they are not rich toward God in tithes and offerings, their eyes are solely and wholly focused on being rich at all costs, they disrespect and mistreat other people that are not at their supposed level, they oppress people that work for them, and/or they go into debt to live above their current income.

Many of them chase elusive get rich quick schemes sold by slick salespeople with glossy advertising. These propositions look good for a moment, but generally fizzle out shortly thereafter leaving the investors with a heap of worthless promises. Or, a slick salesperson, whose material lifestyle they covet, spends their investment money on his lifestyle thus stripping them of this money because they are not able to collect any of it even after the feds get involved (think Made-Off with your money).

Many others fall for day trading and multi-level marketing schemes that they are not able to grasp and do not have the skill to employ that rob them of valuable resources that could be used to slowly and steadily build their fortune. Many invest in businesses without godly motives and proper guidance and get caught in a web of bureaucratic red-tape, deceitful advertising, immoral employment practices, and family destroying work hours that will come back to haunt them in this life and/or the life to come.

Giving little to ministry work, people in need, and toward healthy family and friend relationships, they suffer many negative consequences that result in divorces, broken relationships with children, and lack of peace, joy, fulfillment, and eventual bankruptcy and foreclosure - thus stripping them of the material things they chased that were most important to them and of the things like relationship with the Lord, family, and friends that should have been most important to them.

All of these negative consequences can be overcome by setting the proper priority for your life by asking the Holy Spirit to reveal His purpose for your life on earth. Now set your goals to walk on that path and know (have faith) that God will provide all your need according to His riches in glory. Never let the pursuit of money, material things, power, or prestige separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. For His glory, simply employ biblical principles in the management of money and levels of influence He entrusts to you. After all, it does not profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 22:7, Malachi 3:8-12, 1Timothy 6:9-10, James 5:1-6

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com