Managing Your Money Well

I want to let you know that we not only have to give an account for our quote unquote lives, we have to give an account for what we did with his resources. See, a lot of folks like to separate living from what you do with your money.

No, it's one and the same. Living right doesn't have to do only with your moral decisions and all of that, your relationships. It has to do with your relationship with the dollar. The Word of God contains over 2,000 verses on money. That's about four times as often as it talks about prayer and faith. Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Destined for Victory with Pastor Paul Shepherd, Senior Pastor of Destiny Christian Fellowship in Fremont, California. Clearly, God believes the subject of money is of vital importance. That means from time to time, Pastor Paul is charged with the task of giving us some biblical reminders, not only about tithing or giving, but about money management in general. And that's where we're headed today. Stay with us now or stop by pastorpaul.net to listen on demand.

That's pastorpaul.net. Here is Pastor Paul with today's message, Managing Your Money Well. I want to let you know that we not only have to give an account for our quote unquote lives, we have to give an account for what we did with his resources. See, a lot of folks like to separate living from what you do with your money.

No, it's one and the same. Living right doesn't have to do only with your moral decisions and all of that, your relationships. It has to do with your relationship with the dollar. So you've got to know that we will give an account not only for quote unquote how we lived, but for what we did with the finances he entrusted to us. So here's what I want to do in the next 17 minutes before I move to my final point. I want to give you fivefold approach to handling your money in a way that will allow the master, the owner of it, say to you, well done, good and faithful servant. Let me give you a fivefold approach to handling money, which I highly recommend.

All right. So here's the first thing in this approach. So generously, if you want to hear the Lord say well done, first thing you want to do is sow generously. When I say so, I'm talking about in the same way that a farmer or gardener sows into the ground. You want to sow into the kingdom of God. That's our primary source of sowing according to the scriptures.

And then you also want to sow into the lives of people in need. But our tithes, our offerings primarily go first and foremost to the kingdom of God. We are sowing into the kingdom because that's eternal. God wants us to take what is temporary and invest it into what is eternal. In other words, we give what we can't keep and what we don't own in order to gain an eternal harvest.

Paul talks about that when he writes the Corinthian church. We want to get an eternal harvest so that by sowing into the kingdom, we're seeing lives change not only for time, but for eternity. The reason why we're preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth here at destiny is because we want an eternal harvest. I want people from every continent on the planet to join us in heaven because they were ministered to by this church and by the ministries we support the missions and the church plants and the parachurch organizations and all that. We're trying to gain an eternal harvest. That's why Destined for Victory is not only on over 400 stations here in the US, but it is heard by podcasts literally around the world through the internet.

And we're serious. We are trying to take folk to heaven from every nation, every people group on earth. And therefore we sow generously. And I want to let you know, if you want to hear the Lord say, well done, he wants to know what did you do to make sure there was an eternal harvest with your funds.

So sow generously. Please, my brother, my sister, do not let folks tell you things that will corrupt your worship. I hear people say, well, you know, tithing isn't even New Testament. That's Old Testament.

And they try to act like so it shouldn't be practiced. The New Testament calls us to sow generously. Paul said to the Corinthian church, he who sows generously will reap generously. We're called to generous giving.

Now let me tell you something. I believe generous giving should start with a tithe because the tithe is not under the law as some try to emphasize. The tithe predates the law. You see tithing in Genesis, the law didn't show up until Moses, which is Exodus.

And so the tithe predates the law. The tithe, I believe is the best way to begin your sowing generously. I have an account.

I recommend some of you do it. I have a giving account at my bank, same bank where our joint account is. My wife and I have our joint checking and our joint savings. And then she has a personal savings.

I'm not even a sign of that. I don't know what's in there. Praise God. But we got the joint checking and the joint savings. And then I have in that bank a personal giving account. That is my tithes and offerings. I put X percentages.

It's above 10. You don't need to know my percentages. You just ask the Lord what you supposed to do. And I give a certain percentage of the funds that God gives me into that account. In fact, it's direct deposited. So when my check comes, my paycheck comes, I don't even see that.

It's already gone. It has gone into God's account, the kingdom account, the account of sowing. And it goes out from there to meet the needs of the kingdom. And I also use that to help people in need from time to time. But I need to let you know that sowing generously is one of the best things you can do with your money. And you who hear these people fight about tithing, I say, okay, sorry. So you want to say tithing is not New Testament. You agree with me that generosity is New Testament. They say, yeah. And they don't know.

They just walked right into it. I say, okay, generous is more than 10 percent. Generous is more like what you give to your mortgage company.

Generous is more like what you pay when you got to take care of housing in this crazy world of ours. So don't run up on me talking about you don't have to tithe to please God. You have to be generous to please God. And generosity exceeds a tithe. So you better be glad the Bible calls you to honor the Lord with your possessions, with the first fruits of your increase. And it encourages, although does not demand, the tithe.

What I just quoted was Proverbs 3 9. Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase. When you get increased, that's what your job is giving you.

That's what your other means of income are giving you. When you get increased, honor the Lord first, first fruits out of it. I don't just give first fruits in the first part of the year.

I give first fruits all during the year because every time I get increased, first fruits comes out of that as a offering first to the Lord. And then also we make sure that we help people in need. Alright, number two. Not only so generously, but number two, shrink debt systematically. That's the second of the fivefold approach to handling money.

Kind of think of it as your five fingers. One finger so generously, the second finger, shrink debt systematically. You who are in consumer debt, set your goal to get out of it in the next several months or in the next several years and you will be so much blessed. Talking about living successfully, one of the best ways to live a successful life is to live a debt-free life. Say amen wherever you are.

And even if you're not there, you want to get there. I still have a mortgage, so I'm not all the way there, but I want to get there, but I certainly have gotten rid of consumer debt. And there's a freedom, there is a lift you get when you get rid of those loans and whatever it is, whether it's school loans or whatever you have there, you get lifted, you get happier, you get freer, you get lighter when the debt goes away.

You know why that is? Because Proverbs 22 says, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender. That's why you need to get rid of your debt because in a way, you are ruled over until you get rid of that debt.

Then you'll be free. But right now, you got a master and that master is whoever you still owe money to, whether it's consumer debt, your credit card companies. Some of y'all have a master called Visa, some of y'all have a master called MasterCard, some of y'all have school loan masters, whatever it is. So set your goal, I'm going to get rid of this debt in the coming weeks, months or years. We have couples, I'm so proud, here at Destiny, we have couples that have worked hard and we have some singles who have worked hard and recently have been able to say, I am now debt free.

What a blessing that they have gone through it. Now here at our church, we take them through Financial Peace University, but there are many ways you can do it. So I don't have a personal relationship with Dave Ramsey.

I'm not pushing him for personal reasons. If Dave want to bless me, he can go ahead and bless me. But I don't know him, never met him, but our church, because some of our people went through it and I gave them the charge of taking others through it and we've now taken through a couple of classes of people through Financial Peace University and some of them are coming back saying, I'm now debt free. Some start out with six figure debt. Some start out with five figure debt and they learn how to get it, get rid of it and you can, you accumulated it and you can get rid of it. Don't let the devil tell you, you're always going to be in debt.

The devil is a liar. You can be free if you make it your decision and we have people who can help you do it. I'm going to have some of them record their testimonies as I'm thinking about it so that they can share even on video how they did it. And so I'm so proud of them.

One of them is one of our young couples, the Collins who have their first baby now, but that baby's coming into a debt free family. Thank you, Jesus. What a wonderful thing. We'll be right back with more of today's Destined for Victory message from Pastor Paul Shepherd. To listen to any of Pastor Paul's recent broadcasts, be sure to stop by pastorpaul.net. There you can listen on demand.

That's pastorpaul.net. And be sure to stay with us after today's message when he joins me from his studio in California. But first let's return to Pastor's five fold approach to money management in the rest of today's message, Managing Your Money Well.

All right. So generously, first finger in this five fold approach to handling money right. Second, shrink debt systematically. Number three, save regularly. Read Genesis 41 verses 34 through 36.

I won't read it because I'll be out of time before I know it. I want you to study what God gave Joseph to tell Pharaoh about how to prepare for the famine that was coming in Egypt. And in Genesis 41, Joseph said, Pharaoh, here's what you need to do and told him during the years of plenty, take 20% of the grain from the field and store it up. Now most of us can't save 20% of our money, but the idea is you save. Everything you have now is not for now. Some of what you have now is for later.

So whatever percentage even you said pastor, I can't do anything near that. Save 1%. Save something every time you get money, put some of it for another time. That's what God told Joseph.

That's the wisdom he gave Joseph to give to Pharaoh there in Genesis 41. We're going to so generously, we're going to shrink debt systematically. We're going to save regularly.

Let me give you two more. Spend number four, spend wisely. Spend wisely. Don't spend cause you're frustrated. Don't spend cause it's in your pocket. And some of y'all don't even have it in your pocket. You only have a card and you spend cause you have the card.

Don't do that. Spend wisely. Here's what Luke 14, 28 says, which of you, this is Jesus speaking, for which of you intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost whether he has enough to finish it.

Do you see that? Jesus said, look, if you're going to build a tower, you had the idea, but then you got to calculate. You got to count the cost. Do I have the money to finish the tower? I don't want to start a tower that, oh man, I ran out of money.

I can't even finish it. No, no. So the principle is you spend, yes, but you spend wisely. You spend intelligently.

You think, is this something I can and should spend money on and can I complete any thing that I start? Quit mixing up faith with stuff like that. I hear people blame it on faith. I just did it by faith. No, you did it cause you didn't think. You did it cause you didn't plan.

You did it cause you were being presumptuous. And we need to become more intelligent. The older I get, the more I am calling people to intelligence. Don't be a dumb follower of Christ. Be an intelligent follower of Christ.

Somebody who thinks, somebody who lives your life intentionally and with planning and structured thinking. And so I need you to know this is an approach if we will take this approach from today. Somebody else said, pastor, I wish I had heard this 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but I've made so many financial mistakes. I am buried. I am buried under an avalanche of debt. You can begin to systematically get out of that.

I'm not telling you what I think. I'm telling there are people who have experienced getting out from under that mountain, that avalanche and are experiencing the blessings, the freedom. It took them a long while. They couldn't keep going to cheesecake factory while they were doing it. Some of y'all got to quit it.

You just are so used to your little things. You can't afford it. You got to master. You got to pay off before you're free from slavery. Right now you can't afford it. And so you got to just put cheesecake off into the future.

I'll see y'all later with that too. There are two kinds of bread. They do have some good bread there, but you can't just run up in there when you are a slave. So you got to just wait and you go home, you go to the supermarket, get you some, you want that little wheat bread, find some little bread that you can buy in a loaf. That's it. And you, instead of cheesecake factory and all those wonderful entrees, your bologna has to have a first name. That's old commercial. I don't know if y'all remember that. My bologna has a first name.

It was Oscar Mayer. And so you just got to do what you got to do in order to get where you got to go. And you got to get to the place where God himself, who is going to call us to account for the way we use our funds, you want to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant. Fifth and final point set aside a legacy, set aside a legacy. Now I have taught the first four points for years off and on during various stewardship messages and stuff. This is the first time I've ever made this fifth point.

You know why? Because frankly, I didn't think about it in those years. Set aside a legacy. I now got a grandchild. And I'm starting to think generationally.

And I said, you know what? The other four things are good, but there's something else we all need to do, and that is to set aside a legacy. You might not be able to do it right away, but you should do it at some point. Proverbs 13 22 says, a good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. And I started thinking about that because a little less than a year ago my first grandchild was born. And he doesn't know it yet because he's coming up on his first birthday. He doesn't know it yet, but Pop Pop has started an account for him.

He can't have it anytime soon. But Pop Pop has started an account for him because one day he's going to have educational expenses. You know, these days you can't just think college.

You have to think sometimes these first schools that kids go to sometimes are costly. And so I'm thinking ahead, and already he doesn't know it, but already he's got four figures and an account with his name on it. Eventually it'll go to five figures because I want to leave him a legacy.

I want him, when I'm with the Lord, I want him to see a picture of Pop Pop and blow a kiss because Pop Pop helped him get some stuff done that needed to get done. You need to leave a legacy. Well, Pastor, I don't have kids.

Well, you got nieces and nephews. Find somebody worthy to sow into their future. God, why do I help you identify how best to do that under your circumstances so that you can hear the Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. Brothers and sisters, be sure that you treat money the way God will be pleased, and he'll bless you as a result. Think of how much better you will be when you're handling money right, when you're sowing generously and receiving the blessings of God, which are not just material and financial.

When you sow right, God blesses you in ways that money can't buy, and so that'll be a great blessing. Then when you shrink your debt, that lifts that load of debt off of you, and you live lighter and freer. Then save money, and you got to make sure that you put away something from now, because not everything you're making now is for now.

Some of it put away for later. And the fourth thing we said is you got to make sure that you spend wisely, and so don't spend money frivolously when you need to get out of debt, when you need to save, when you need to sow, and when you need to do the fifth thing, which is to set aside a legacy. If we'll do that right, brothers and sisters, God is going to bless us. Thanks so much for being here for today's Destined for Victory message, Managing Your Money Well. Look for any of Pastor Paul's recent messages online on demand at pastorpaul.net. That's pastorpaul.net.

And I'm pleased that Pastor is in the studio. Pastor, your ministry to us each day on the radio and with the various online sources for Destined for Victory is so encouraging. But one more thing you do, and you feel strongly about this, is the monthly encouragement letter that goes out to everyone. You want to say a word about that?

Yeah, absolutely. The one letter I feel strongly about making sure we produce every month is an encouragement letter. And so I take some time and based on some teaching of that month, and occasionally it's not related to the teaching, just something that God's put on my heart in that particular time, I write a letter to let people know not only are we preaching messages, but we're really trying to impact your life and help you with application. Because again, our ministry exists to help people know God's Son, apply God's Word, and fulfill God's purpose. And my encouragement letter is designed to help you know Him, apply His Word, fulfill His purpose. And so I feel strongly about it. And I want to encourage people who are not on our mailing list to please take a moment and let us know, hey, I'd love to get the letter. It's absolutely free of charge. There's no obligation for it.

No obligation at all. We will take care of the stamp and everything. All you got to do is let us know. We can reach you. We'd be happy to send it to you. We can also send it to you by email. And it's important for you to be encouraged month by month. And so please let us do that. Get in touch with us. Give us your email and your mailing address so we can get in touch with you on a monthly basis.

Well, the word encouragement means to give someone support, confidence, or hope, sometimes all three. And that's what Pastor Paul seeks to do each month with these letters of encouragement. You can sign up today and you'll be glad you did. And here's something else for you. When you send a generous gift to Destin for Victory, we'll gladly send you, by request, Pastor Paul Shepherd's DVD message, Influencers for Christ. Did you know that less than half of all Americans identify themselves as members of a church, a synagogue, mosque, or any other religious organization? That may sound discouraging, but Pastor Paul believes it should actually excite us.

He'll tell you why in his DVD message, Influencers for Christ. It's our gift to you for your generous donation to Destin for Victory. So please call 855-339-5500 or visit pastorpaul.net to make a safe and secure donation online. You can also mail your gift to Destin for Victory, Post Office Box 1767, Fremont, California, 94538.

Again, the address is Destin for Victory, Box 1767, Fremont, California, 94538. Let me tell you, my brother, my sister, your now is tough. You don't see a bright future. All you see is trouble.

All you see is trials. I came to tell you, you need to look above the clouds because when God makes a promise, He's not making it based on what you're going through now. He's making it based on what you're going to. And that's tomorrow in Pastor Paul Shepherd's message, Maintaining the Right Attitude When Things Go Wrong. But until then, remember, He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. In Christ, you are Destin for Victory.