What's most important to you when it comes to choosing your financial advisor? Someone who's aligned with your biblical values. How about someone who will take the time to explain your options? Certified Kingdom Advisors are professionals who meet high standards in competence and integrity and have been trained to offer biblical financial advice.
To find a Certified Kingdom Advisor in your area, visit faithfi.com and click Find a CKA. I'm sure you've heard the saying, you can't out-give God. It sounds good, but is it biblical?
I am Rob West. Even though the phrase isn't found in the Bible, it's giving us an excuse to talk about the amazing life-changing generosity of God. We'll do that today, and then we'll take your calls at 800-525-7000.
That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, that quote, you can't out-give God, is what Insight for Living author Steve Johnson calls bumper sticker theology.
There is a grain of truth there, but there's so much more to it than that. As Christians, we are called to go beyond the bumper sticker, allowing the reality of God's grace to change our hearts. It's absolutely true that God is the greatest giver. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3 16 is the bedrock of our faith. Unfortunately, when it comes to imitating the generosity of God, we will always fall short. He does out-give us every time. So does that mean we can skip being generous because we can't do it perfectly?
Of course not. Perhaps generous giving seems out of reach for you. You're afraid you won't have enough for yourself or your family's needs if you give too much. Now, let me reassure you. When God calls you to share what you have with someone in need, he is more than able to meet your needs in return.
It's a matter of trust. So here's how God's generosity changes us. The magnitude of God's gift is impossible to ignore. God died to save you from the consequences of your sin.
Not because of anything you did. He did it while you were still a sinner. Romans 5-8 reads, God demonstrated his love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
That's generosity beyond anything you or I can imagine and deserves a response. As a Christian and a child of God, you are on a journey of faith that includes learning to trust God's faithfulness more and more. According to Galatians 2-20, you have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. Generosity is one way you can demonstrate your trust in God and your desire to be a part of his kingdom work. Fear of not having enough is one way you might miss out on the blessings of generosity.
There are, of course, others. Perhaps you hope to win God's favor by giving. Or maybe you expect to be rewarded with material success when you're generous. Unfortunately, neither of these expectations is biblical. We're not trying to out-give God. We're not in competition with the Lord or with each other. As for earning God's favor, we already have it. It's called grace, and it's not something we can ever earn.
What we can do is offer grace to others. As it says in Ephesians 4-32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. What about those who expect God to reward them for being generous? Do we give in order to get something from God? Author Steve Johnson explains it this way, We are not to give to get earthly reward expecting God to always give us back in this life what we invest in the kingdom. We should give without care for the earthly reward of financial prosperity.
Instead, seek the heavenly reward of God himself. When we understand God's generosity towards us, it changes the nature of our giving and our attitude about all money and possessions. King David is an example of this right attitude about giving.
In 1 Chronicles 29-14, David praises God for his abundant provision to build the temple, even though the raw materials came from the people's gifts. But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.
David demonstrates gratitude and gives God the glory. Like a loving father, God shows us, through Jesus, how to love and give and live in the right way. When we follow Christ in our generosity, we experience the blessing of serving others in his name. Sometimes the Lord provides additional material blessings so that we can continue giving. Of course, we can't out-give God. But we can be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. As you mature in your faith, growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as it says in 2 Peter 3.8, the Holy Spirit is making changes in your heart. You will want to respond to God's grace by being generous in turn.
Best of all, when we serve and give generously, we experience a closer walk with the giver himself. All right, your calls are next. The number is 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West, and we'll be right back after this break.
We'll be right back after this break. Leverage your resources for greater impact today. God has entrusted his finances to you, and we at Faithfi have designed our Faithfi app to help you live, give, owe, and grow with that perspective. Our Faithfi app is the leading biblically-based finance app. You can manage your money, get top biblical financial resources, and interact with a community of like-minded believers where you can ask questions, get answers, and share what you're learning.
Visit faithfi.com and click the word app to get started. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. We have lines open today. 800-525-7000. If you have a financial question, we'd love to hear from you. Let's head right back to the phones. We're going to head to Oklahoma City. Hi, David.
Go ahead. Yeah, we know that the, first let me say I love your show, and it really helps. We know that the earth is the Lord in the fullness thereof, and we know that it's not our money, it's His money, and we're just stewards of it. Reading in Leviticus lately, I saw where if we redeem back a part of the tithe, we are supposed to add a fifth to it when we give it back. And if we go, let's say, several months without paying the tithe because we're taking care of bills and everything else, does that all have to be redeemed? And if I wasn't paying tithe for 10 years, do I have to go back and pay that? And I just realized that we tithe on our gross, not our net. So I mean, do I, am I responsible for all that under the law, but we're not under the law? Should I just ask the Lord to forgive me because it was a sin to withhold that, and because I know He's faithful just to forgive?
What do you think? Yeah, that's a great question, David. So I think this is a personal conviction. My personal conviction would be that we're no longer under the Old Testament law, and therefore the fine print of the law that you're describing there in Leviticus, you know, and obviously we see even references to the tithe before the Mosaic law with Malchizedek, but I would say, you know, when Jesus came, basically what we would look to as New Testament believers, those who have seen the cross and trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of sin, I think we would look to Christ in terms of how He described our giving, and I don't see where He commands us to give a tenth. Instead, yes, He references it, but He describes our giving as firstfruits.
He describes it as proportionate. He describes it as being given freely and cheerfully. He does, I believe, raise the bar in the sense that He says, to whom much is given, much is required. He, of course, celebrates the most famous giver in the New Testament, which was a widow.
We don't know her name, but she gave out of her poverty, so clearly we should be giving, but I like the tithe, for me at least, as a meaningful guideline, perhaps a starting point for systematic and proportionate giving, but I don't think God is an accountant, and it's really not about a legalistic gesture. It's about giving out of a heart posture of worship and out of an overflow of just gratitude to God for what He has given to us, most namely the gift of His Son that we might have eternal life by placing our trust in the shed blood of Jesus and ultimately His resurrection, that we should be looking to increase our giving over time, in part, because we want to be partnered with God where He's at work. But for me, it's not about checking a box or complying with an Old Testament law. I think that misses the bigger idea that Jesus was trying to share with us about our role in being stewards, the potential that the deceitfulness of riches and how money can compete with our affections for God, and we need to hold it loosely. We need to live with contentment, and I think part of the way we overcome the potential for money to occupy a place in our life it was never intended to as a tool.
Ultimately, it's supposed to be a tool, not an end, but a means to an end. One of the ways we do that is through our generosity. But for me, and this is my conviction, David, that would just be a recognition that we want to be regular and proportionate givers, but we're not trying to necessarily go back and square up with God what we need to send because it all belongs to Him anyway, and ultimately He's about our hearts. So I would say take that back to the Lord in prayer. You and your wife think through it, pray through it, and decide how the Lord would lead you. But for me, I would say it's not a matter of kind of quote-unquote truing up your obligation to the Lord because we're not under the Old Testament law anymore, and it's really just about a hard posture of cheerful, proportionate giving moving forward.
Is that helpful? Yeah, it really is, because for years I didn't hide because I wasn't walking where I was supposed to. I mean, I'm just like, oh my gosh, God loves me, and I just can't believe He loves me. So now it's like I walk, I try to walk in the Spirit, I read my Bible every day, I talk to Him every day. He's turning into my best friend again, like He was when my child lived, and I just want to give so much that, you know, it's like, I don't care if my page is built, let me give this to my Lord. And every time I do that, He gives back more than enough to pay the bills on time. And it's just so good. And I look over my life, I'm 67, I'm never going to quit working because I enjoy it so much.
My house is almost paid off, I could retire if I want to, but I don't want to. And He keeps me in good health, so it's like, God is so good. But yeah, I really enjoy your show, and this has been weighing on my heart the last couple of days.
It really helped. Well, I appreciate that, and I appreciate your testimony today. I'm confident, David, that you were just an encouragement with what you shared just now. And I'm delighted to hear about your walk with the Lord and how it's deepening, and that relationship that you have with the Father, and how you are wanting just to be generous as an overflow and an expression of your gratitude to God for who He is and what He's done and the abundance that we have in Him, that He alone is enough. And yet, as a part of that, part of good stewardship is to meet your obligations and care for those that are your loved ones. And so you put all of that together, and I think that requires us then to walk by faith, which is the ultimate objective. God doesn't give us all the answers, He wants us to really navigate this road.
And I think finances is one of those training grounds of the heart that allows us to work out our faith on a daily basis, and it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. So listen, you've been an encouragement to me, David, I'm delighted that you're on the program. I'm so thankful for your kind remarks, and call back any time. God bless you, sir.
Let's go to Illinois. Hi, Barbara, go ahead. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I have a problem.
Well, it's not a problem, I just need advice. I'm a widow, and we have three children, I'm in their 80s, so therefore they're in their 50s and 60s, and the two older are doing well, the younger is not. And so, over the years, my husband and I have given him money when he needed it, and we've never done that to the other two. And so I'm just concerned when it comes to the dividing of the estate, what that should look like.
Yes. Well, it's a great question, and it's one that a lot of folks wrestle with. And I think the starting point is to recognize that one of your primary responsibilities is this idea of, is the next steward chosen and prepared?
And you need to consider kind of where they're at spiritually, financially, just in terms of maturity, and what a gift would do to either accelerate poor decision-making and financial decision-making, as well as lifestyle, to the extent they're not pursuing the Lord, and could that gift actually take them further away from God? And so just thinking through what's the worst thing that can happen, and really considering that fully. But let's do this. So I've got to take a break, I'd like to help you kind of think through this and where you go from here.
So if I'm going to ask you to just hold the line, and we'll pick this conversation up on the other side. We'll be right back on Faith and Finance, stay with us. My grocery bill went up 11% this year, gas, utilities, rent all went up, but my paycheck the same. I also pay for my own healthcare, a huge expense. A friend recommended Christian Healthcare Ministries as an option to insurance, and CHM helps pay for medical needs while allowing some breathing room in my budget. Open enrollment is here, so make the switch today with potential cost savings up to 40%.
Christian Healthcare Ministries at chministries.org slash faithbuy. We are grateful for support from Soundmind Investing in the Faith and Finance Program. If you have money in a retirement account or just a general investing account, you know the stock market can sometimes seem like a rollercoaster, but it is possible to enjoy both profit and peace of mind in investing no matter what's happening in the market. You can see a short video webinar on that topic at soundmindinvesting.org. Since 1990, Soundmind Investing has sought to offer financial wisdom for living well.
Soundmindinvesting.org. So glad to have you with us today on Faith and Finance here in our final segment of the broadcast today. We're going to go back to the call we had with Barbara in Illinois. Just before the break, Barbara was sharing with us, she is a widow. She's a mom of three adult children, two of them doing really well financially, one not doing so well, and she and her husband, and now she continues to help this child financially along the way. She's just wondering, how do I approach that as I think about an inheritance and my wealth transfer and should I be deducting that amount as I make my decisions around giving? I think the big principle here that I learned from my friend Ron Blue in the book Splitting Heirs, and by the way, Barbara, I'm going to send you a copy of that book. It's called Splitting Heirs, Giving Your Money and Things to Your Children Without Ruining Their Lives.
So you stay on the line after we're done here. But the principle he shares in this book, Barbara, is, or one of them among many, is that if you love your children equally, you will treat them uniquely, and here's what he means by that. He recognizes, and he and Judy, his wife, in their own wealth transfer, which has changed, the decisions on inheritance have changed over time, they recognize there's different needs, and God doesn't treat us all the same, and he evaluated at different stages in life the needs of his children, and they made their estate plans accordingly.
So one child was an attorney and doing well, and didn't need a lot, another had gone through a divorce and was a single mom, and had more in the way of financial needs, and so they constructed their estate plan accordingly. So I think you are the steward, and your final stewardship decision is to choose the next steward and prepare them, but part of that is a discernment question around what are truly their needs, what is the trajectory of their life, and how can money be a blessing and not a curse, and I don't think you need to automatically, unless you just have a conviction to do this and that's your call, you don't need to automatically assume that everybody needs to get the same amount. So then, once you look at that, you would make that decision to either, you know, give more to one child, and by the way, the one who's doing the worst financially may not be the one you give the most to, because again, you may decide that that's going to lead him or her down a path, you know, further away from the Lord or into more poor financial decision making, and so that's a decision you have to make, and then after you make those decisions, then I think you need to come back and say, okay, based on the decisions I made on how I want to divide my estate, and how I can make sure that they're prepared for the money that they would receive, regardless of how much, how do I want to account for any assistance that has taken place during their lifetime? Do I want to just treat that as a part of how I was blessing one child who was in need and I'm not going to factor that in at death? Or do I want to somehow account for that by, you know, withholding a portion to kind of make up for that? I don't think there's a right or wrong answer there. I think you just need to consider that as a part of the overall consideration. The last thing I'll say, and then I want to hear your thoughts, is to the extent there continues to be a financial need with this one child that has had financial struggles, I would just challenge you to prayerfully consider whether you are actually helping by giving financial assistance. Or is it possible you need to exercise some tough love because you're in some way perpetuating their poor financial decision making or, you know, their hunger to go out and work and earn what they need or perhaps spending more than they've earned because you're coming in and bailing them out and whether the very best thing you could do would be to say, you know what, I love you and I want to help you in certain times and in certain ways, but I'm no longer just going to give you a handout because I just don't think it's helping the situation.
Now, I've thrown a lot at you there, Barbara. So give me your thoughts. Well, yeah, because, okay, so another thing, so then do I share this with them so that, like, you know, after I'm gone, they won't say, Oh, really, you know, I mean, I think it's important that they know what I'm doing. I think you're right. I agree. I think it's important to have that conversation with your children, so they understand your decision making process and there are no surprises.
And you can express your heart to them in why you've done what you've done. And I think that's a good thing and that's addressed in this book as well, but I would communicate that. Okay. Very good. All right. Now, listen, I've been worrying about this for a while.
Well, I don't want you to worry anymore. I hope you're a reader, because I'm sending you a book. So I want you to stay on the line.
And we're going to get your information and in a few days, you're going to get a package in the mail from me here at Faith and Finance, and it's going to have a book called Splitting Heirs, and I'm going to pray that as you read the words of my good friend Ron Blue that that will be a further encouragement to you and it will give you some help in these decisions you've been wrestling with. So stay on the line. We'll get your information. Thanks for your call today. Let's go to Georgia.
Hey, Mike. Thanks for calling. Go ahead. I'm a 56-year-old retired teacher, but I'm working as a part-time job right now. I've got no debt and I'm drawing my teacher retirement. But I've got $28,600 in a 403b, and it's in a fixed account right now, and I didn't know whether I should be putting that into the stock market or whether I can and how to go about doing that if I should. Yeah.
So you said you are retired, but you're working part-time, and you said you're in this 403b of $23,000? $28,000. Yes, sir.
$28,000. Okay. And so would you expect to have to touch this in the next 10 years, or would you just continue to live on your teacher's retirement plus any side income you pull in? That's right. Yeah. I wouldn't need this money anytime soon. Okay.
Yeah. Then I would get invested, because keep in mind, even once you reach retirement, I mean, once you reach age 65, as a male in this country, your life expectancy is 83. If you're in good health, Lord Terry's, you might need this money in the last decades. So putting it in that stable account is probably going to end up just losing purchasing power because of inflation.
You're not really growing it. So I would probably roll it to an IRA and just put it in some high-quality mutual funds, either some faith-based investing funds, like you'll find on our website at faithfi.com, like Eventide or Guidestone or Praxis or One Ascent, or a robo-advisor that's going to use an indexed approach to investing, like the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. But I like the idea of you being in a balanced portfolio with a mix of stocks and bonds with the goal of saying, hey, what could it look like for this $28,000 to be $100,000 down the road? And maybe you're even adding to this IRA, as long as you have earned income, you could continue to contribute to it if you had some surplus, just to continue to build up a nest egg that you might need to tap into down the road for medical expenses or something like that.
Okay. And how would I go about getting the IRA? So you would just have to decide where you want to custody the IRA. So are you going to open it at Charles Schwab, are you going to open it at Fidelity? Wherever you decide, you'd go online, you'd open a traditional IRA, and then you'd contact your plan administrator, who handles the 403b, and you'd say, I want the surrender paperwork to roll this over. That's the key. You're not taking no distribution.
You want to roll it over to your IRA, they'll give you a form or you fill it out electronically, you put in the account number of your new IRA and the custodian, and then they'll just send the money through the ACAT system, and then a few days later, it would just show up as cash in your IRA, and then you'd need to invest it at that point. All right, great. Thank you. God bless. All right.
Absolutely. Thanks, Mike. We appreciate it.
Well, once again, our time went by way too fast. But tune in next time, and we'll do it all over again. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you again next time for another edition of Faith and Finance. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith Buy and listeners like you.
