Good stewardship is maintained by considering the current state of your income and assets to determine what is reasonable to spend on material things that you or family members desire. It is also maintained by determining how spending on desires will affect your future plans and by taking at least one day to meditate on how such spending will affect your future plans and the endeavors that the LORD wants you to put money toward. It is of utmost importance that you learn to forego impulse purchases, for he that is hasty to be rich (or look rich) shall not go unpunished.
Questions you should ask to help the meditation phase of your decision making process are:
• Will the purchase or time using the purchased item lead me to reduce my personal time with my LORD, my spouse, my children, and/or my Church family?
• Will it cause me to reduce my tithes & offerings or go into debt in order to obtain or maintain it?
• Will maintaining the purchase reduce the amount I currently put toward monthly savings and investments?
• If it is a possible home purchase, will the monthly mortgage payment possibly lead to my monthly expenses exceeding my monthly income, now or in the future?
“NO” answers to the above questions will bring financial and spiritual peace to your life. Ask someone, who is leading a debt-free life or seriously pursuing this lifestyle, to help you measure your current and future monthly budgets with consideration of the proposed purchase in order to ensure you do not or will not go into negative (deficit) territory with regard to disposable income and assets.
If you do not exercise self-control over the carnal nature, advertisements, sales calls, and the Joneses will stir you up to buy many things you don’t need and some that do not fit within your current financial situation. A person that does not use self-control in the financial arena or any other arena of life is like a city without protection. The barrage of attacks by the enemy will soon conquer that city (you) due to lack of good stewardship.
Constantly purchasing unnecessary desires and replacing major items (homes, cars, etc.) when you do not have the income and assets to do so will eat money up faster than anything else and will lead you to continually stay in debt to lenders and retailers. It is not God’s desire that you be or remain in bondage to lenders or other people.
Do not accept into your life the changing desires of society, which cries for more earthly pleasures and obtains them in a disobedient, irresponsible, and undisciplined way, without measuring whether such pleasures and what it takes to obtain and maintain them are Christ-like, in compliance with biblical instruction, and thus healthy for you, your family, and God’s desire for you to support the Great Commission and be an example of good stewardship to everyone around you.
Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!
Psalms 37:4-5, Proverbs 30:7-9, Matthew 6:19-23, Colossians 3:1-17
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