How Much Money Is Enough?

This is the Truth Network. Welcome to If Not Forgot. Stories of Hopelessness That Turn to Hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. How much money is enough?

I've got David Belk. Back here. And David, what is the name of your business that you have? Carolina Financial Advisors. Carolina Financial Advisors.

And David has agreed to become a sponsor of my show. And so we appreciate that. But if you guys want to help support the show, I guess indirectly, you could support what he does. And so if people want to find out more about what you do, David, do you have a website or a Yeah, it's pretty simple. Carolina Financial Advisors.com.

Yeah. You could always reach us at the phone, 336. Yeah. And so, what do you guys do? We're a financial planning firm.

Uh, we've got uh Three certified financial planners, one additional who will come on soon as soon as he passes the exam. We're also certified kingdom advisors, which basically means that we attempt to speak with clients about biblical financial principles. That could be from anywhere from tithing to giving. To beneficiary inheritances, what does it look like to be a steward of your total financial picture? Um Through your finances and your investments, well, and we were the question of the day is how much money is enough.

And I was reminded of Matthew chapter 19, verse 16, where it says, Now, behold, one came and said to him, Good teacher. What must I do to inherit eternal life? And so Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one that is God. But if you want to enter into life, Keep the commandments.

He said, which ones? You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him, All these things I have kept. Since my youth, what do I still lack?

And Jesus said to him, If you want to be perfect, Go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Yeah, this this is a this is a tough one for many people to To talk about, and a lot of people will just say the good old, well, everybody can't do that. And anytime I hear well or but, I already know that a good excuse is coming.

But the most common excuse that we hear is: well, everybody can't do that. And and The question is, where's your heart? God's not calling everybody to do that. I mean, He doesn't call everybody to sell everything and go to the mission field. He doesn't.

Tell everybody to go to seminary and become a pastor. He tells many people to earn and give. He tells many people to earn, work well for For whoever you're working for, and then go teach a Sunday school class or be involved with Young Life or FCA or whatever it is. He calls many of us to many different things. The real key to that story in scripture was the gentleman's heart.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be a follower of Jesus. He didn't want to give up what he thought was more important. because of what he had achieved. And he had set these standards of what was so high That this is so important, and this is how I'm seen in society. And I've got all this money, so I've got all this freedom, I've got all this, I don't have to worry about anything.

When you get to the point where you... Are you self-sufficient financially, you're probably one of the most dangerous Christians. In the world, because you no longer rely on God for your life and what you need. You know, the Bible in the Old Testament, it says this: it says, Give me neither poverty nor riches. He says, Because if I have too much, then I'll say, Who is God?

I did this myself. He said, And if I have too little, he said, I'll be forced to steal and profane the name of the Lord my God.

Now, there are people who have great wealth. Who were doing great things for the kingdom of God? And it's like you said, if. You know, I think it was Sean Hannity who said years ago, he said, I worked for a lot of people when I first started working. And he said, none of my employers who ever hired me were ever poor.

He said, anybody who was really able to give, help me out, or to give to the kingdom of God, as we're talking about. You've got to have some money to be able to give money. I mean, I had a friend of mine years ago, he said, You can't sell a dream if you're living a nightmare. And so, you can't fund the gospel of the kingdom if you don't have two pennies to rub together yourself. And so, I'm sure that there is a balance there, but.

One of the things that I hear you saying. Is that you have to stay humble? You may not have said that, but I hear you saying that because if you have a ton of money and you're doing really well, then all of a sudden you could say, I did this. Look at what I did. Matter of fact, Elon Musk, I don't know if you saw this, became the first trillionaire.

in the world with SpaceX. But a few months before that, they asked him, They said, Are you happy? He said, No, not really.

So if a trillion dollars can't make you happy, Money's probably not going to make you happy. You're going to have to be grounded. In the word of God, and so every day, I know there's always things that I have to do, David. I'm always busy, you're always busy, but I first spend time with God before I do anything else. Because once I get out there and once I start moving around, it's hard to kind of settle back down.

and spend time in the Word of God. and in prayer. How about you? As you said, that was funny. I took my oldest daughter, took all three of our daughters to a place called JH Ranch in Northern California years ago when they were younger.

And we were having what's called solo time early in the morning together to do a Bible study. And I was telling her, I said, you know, I said, well, some people say. that you should get up really early. And go out by yourself and just study, you know, get up before everybody else, even if it's dark. And she looked at me and she goes, Who in the world would ever say that?

And we obviously know the answer, and we've joked about that for years. And I said, Jesus, go. Oh. You know, isn't she? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, you know. Setting your tone. Anything, even if you're a non-Christian, you're listening to this. Setting your tone by doing a meditation or some kind of study work. Thing for the day is going to set your tone for the day.

There's plenty of VMA. people out here and plenty of Pastors who are more PMA than they are pastors that you can get that from as well. And when you say PMA, you mean positive mental attitude. Yeah, positive mental attitude. There's not a lot of scripture, but there's a lot of things that make you feel good about yourself.

Right. But when it comes down to looking at those patterns, you really want to spend time in the word in the morning to set your day. And when you travel, sometimes that's hard, depending on what your day's like or whatnot, you may not be able to do it. But setting that structure is crucial to set what you're Tone's going to be in your mind. and in your tongue and your heart.

Now those are I gave you those indifference because from the young, it all. It comes out last, what's coming out of the heart. What are you trying to accomplish there? It's got to be What are you looking for? Yeah, now you said something.

You said something earlier before we started the show about the finish line. What do you mean exactly? Yeah, so. Finish lines are about. How much is enough?

Ron Blue has a book called How Much is Enough. Actually, he's got a book called Never Enough. He's got quite a few books. If you want to read good biblical financial principles, Ron Blue is a great person that's wrote a lot about that. Been very successful in our world on the retirement side of things, but he's still a great speaker and he's got great insights to those things.

Finish lines are about saying how much is enough for me that that My lifestyle is God's provided enough.

Well, you know, we talk about the wealthy in our country. It's not the guy who makes 100 because he's paying a lot of taxes. He thinks it's the guy who's making 200,000. And it's not the guy who's making 200,000. He thinks it's the guy who's making 500,000.

And it's not the guy who's making 500,000, it's the guy who's making a million, and on and on and on and on.

So, who's the wealthy, and where am I satisfied? Because there's never enough. Yeah. We have a society that keeps pulling us into showing us every day. Marketing today is designed to make you understand your life is terrible and you need something else.

You need more. And this thing that I've got for you is what's going to make you happy.

So you do whatever it takes to get this and it'll make you happy. And only get that nut and you realize, well, that didn't make me happy.

So what's the next thing?

Well, you've got somebody else coming at you from another angle, telling you why you need a better car. You need to wear better shoes. You need to go to. I don't know. You need to eat different food.

I don't know what it is, but America is designed in the marketing aspects to make you so dissatisfied. That nothing is ever enough. John D. Rockefeller, they asked him one time, they said, You're the richest man in the world. You've got all this stuff.

He says, When will it be enough? And he said, when I get just a little bit more. The good thing is, is y'all, everybody listening to this has heard this. You've never seen. Um Any travel cargo or anything behind the hearses.

Right. There's no, there's no moving company. Full of anything behind a hearse, yeah. You're not taking anything with you, yeah. And so, if you can't take it with you, then a lot of people say, Well, it's all for my kids.

And we have people who they won't build it for the kingdom, but they'll build it for their kids, and so and there's never enough for them. And lots of times that is in. Them being something that they can't find in Christ. They're trying to create a legacy. Through what dad or grandpa left for us as opposed to What he instilled in us.

And the biggest legacy that anybody could create is: what did you instill in your kids' and your grandkids' heart? to walk with the Lord. David Green. Is probably one of the best business owners in the country, in my opinion. Hobby Lobby family.

He set income limits on everybody in the company. If you were a sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year old family member thinking you're coming out to get rich real quick, you had another story coming because that's not the way the setup is. Everybody, there's a maximum on every what everybody in the family gets paid and they give their money away. Isn't that awesome? It's awesome.

And so that's a model that a lot of people say: well, why would you do that? Yeah. Because you understand the focus of what you've been put here for. Met with him and been in seminars with him personally, and just to listen to him talk, he's one of the most humble guys you'll ever listen to. And he'll just tell you: hey, this is why we're here.

This is why we're here. This is why we're here. And it's not so we can have more.

So, setting a finish line could be: say, you may be an engineer, you may be a doctor, you may be a high-income earner or a business owner who's making seven figures. The question is. How much is enough? Because if you've got a $10 million company, you want a $20 million company. If you've got 42 network stations, you want 142 network stations.

It doesn't matter if you're in the radio business or if you're in the TV business, it doesn't matter. You always want more. But why? Why? And so, if we understand that we're here to build his kingdom, how much is enough for us so we can really build the kingdom?

Yeah. And so, setting a finish line is: okay.

Okay. I want to get my retirement set to a certain point so it can hopefully grow. And get me to where I think I'll be okay with whatever God does. But when we do that and say, I want to do this first, are we saying, I trust the sp that I'm the sparrow. Mm-hmm.

Or do I need to feed my own sparrow? Yeah. And so where are we in that picture of the sparrow, even if God feeds every bird and knows their need and takes care of them? What are we to know that he won't take care of us? Where do we not trust him to take care of us?

And you all need to understand, these are struggles that David Belk struggles with every day. How much is enough? Because I like things. I like cars and boats and houses. I don't really like houses.

There's just more to work with. But my wife likes them. I want a little house. I want a mini house. That doesn't work with her, but not that she needs a big one, but I.

We don't need what we got. I think women are built a little different than men. You know, we uh, I got a friend of mine and he said that his wife wants things to look good on the outside, and he wants things to look good on the inside. And but it's funny with me, and it's probably because I grew up in sales, I'm kind of the opposite in our in our house. I've always been taught look good on the outside, and then so now I'm like, I got to work on the inside, you know what I'm saying?

But when we're talking about when is enough enough, I'm reminded of Proverbs 27, verse 20. It says that hell and destruction are never full.

So the eyes of man are never satisfied. And we talk about Elon Musk, but the Bible says that the wealthiest man who ever lived was Solomon. And Solomon, I mean, he had gold dust in his hair, man. I mean, whatever he wanted, he built himself houses. He had, I don't know, seven and a hundred and some wives and concubines and all this stuff.

And towards the end of his life, he became extremely depressed. Because he did not put God first. God warned him: don't marry foreign wives, they will lead you away from me. And what did he do? Same thing.

You know, he married the foreign wives or whatever. And I think it's easy for us to shake our finger at Solomon, but how many times do we do that in our own lives where we feel the Lord is leading us to give money or to stay away from somebody or to do ministry with somebody, and we don't do it? You know, the Bible says that obedience, it says that witchcraft. Is the same thing as disobedience. God teaches it, treats it the same way.

When the Lord tells us to do something and we say, No, God, we don't want to do that. We say, Well, I would never do a seance or I would never play with a Ouija board. But when we willingly disobey the voice of the Lord, He said it's kind of, they said it's the same thing. Yeah, and unfortunately, you. You get to a point after you've done that so many times, you don't even hear it.

You don't hear the promptings. It's these simple promptings that we get every day. I mean, it's simple that I can see somebody needs help on the road, but they've got somebody helping them. I'm okay there because they've got somebody. But what about the day I drive by and it's like, cause I gotta be somewhere?

Yeah. Yeah. Something that simple. There's many things we're called to do to help somebody. And I think people.

Often, we talk about this a lot in our small group. How we miss the promptings throughout the day because it's inconvenient. Or surely. That's not, you know, we just dismiss things so quickly. Yeah.

Just a small thought: help here, give here, do that, do that, help this person. And we just Well, I would, but, and, or keep going. And The more you discount or the more you dismiss that, I think that the harder it is to hear those promptings. Yeah. It's a muscle.

So You can fail. You can think you hear a prompting and act on it. I don't think that's what he called me to do. But I think there's obedience there sometimes just to get there. And I've done stuff.

In my past, where I felt the prompting, I went back to help cell, and I was like, Where'd they go? They're not here. And I was like. And I'm not one of these real spiritual when I say spiritual, like I'm talking somebody's been put here for me to do something like an angel. I know people have those experiences or say they're, I don't know.

But I've had one experience that I can't explain. Exactly. And my daughter. What happened? It was Christmas Eve.

We were coming back from family.

Somebody was out on the street 9:30 at night. It was cold. And so. We're at home and I'd go in the kitchen and I start grabbing stuff and Lord said, What are you doing? And my daughter, the same one that said, Who told you to get up early?

She goes, I know what he's doing. And she started helping me. And so I grabbed a backpack and I went back out there to give the guy to the guy. And Where I know people tend to sleep in this area, there was nobody there. I drove around for 30 minutes.

And they weren't there. And I was like, that's the strangest thing I've ever seen. The chair wasn't even there that he was sitting in. And so I thought that'd be in the tree. And I was like, there was no sign that this person ever existed.

And I almost didn't see it because it was a dark silhouette.

So in my mind, That was no, it could be to be, it just could be circumstances. You know, they got up, it was cold, they finally went to wherever they were. But to me and to my daughter, we both talked about that. It was like. That was kind of strange.

Well, it may have been more than that. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 13, starting in verse 1, it says, Let brotherly love continue. It says, Be not forgetful to entertain strangers. It says, For thereby some have entertained angels. Unawares.

And I remember seeing people in my life and God placing people in my life where It was nothing but God. I remember I went to Appalachian State, and when I went there, the professors told me there's no such thing as God. And so, my going into my senior year, I said, Well, I guess there's no such thing. These guys are the experts, right? And so, I my beginning of my senior year, there was a girl.

In my class, African American history class. She was blonde hair, blue eyes. And I said, oh man, she's cute or whatever. I left the class and I said, I guess I'll never see her again. I never checked my campus email, dude.

Like, never. In the four years that I don't ever remember checking it. One day I was at a computer and I said I might as well check this email. Who was it? It was that girl.

who I I the only thing I remember about her Was that she stood up at the beginning and they said, Who are two people that you'd want to meet if you could ever meet them? And she said, Jesus Christ. And I go, oh, oh, yeah, that's a good one. That's, oh, I just remembered that. I didn't believe, I wasn't a believer at the time, but.

I got that email, and I didn't know what to say to her. All I knew was that I wanted to take her out. And she sent me an email over the summer. Hope you're doing well. And I sent her an email back.

I still don't know what made me say this. And I said, hey, I'd like to get together with you and talk about Jesus. That was the last thing. That was the last thing that was on my mind. But I wanted to be able to go ahead and meet with this girl, and I wanted to start dating her.

And I started dating her, I did. And I She just kept talking to me about Jesus. And one day we were sitting there and she said, you need to give your life to Jesus. And I said okay. And I went to a church and I got baptized.

Well, was that just coincidence? I don't think so. I think that was God. And I think that we've all seen the hand of God move in our lives. But a friend of mine, Jason, we were just talking on the radio not too long ago.

And one of the things that he said is: a lot of times people are waiting on God. to take the first move. But a lot of times God is waiting on you. You know, because if you would You saw, I believe, a miracle with that guy who has just disappeared. But if you had never gone back to your house to gather up food and to give it to him, You probably never would have seen that.

Hmm. Very possible. The the um Topic of finishing starts with understanding. What is enough and where are you content? Mm-hmm.

If we go back to American marketing to make you discontent, there's this constant struggle. And it's the same scripture you just read about the rich young ruler who had plenty, but he wasn't willing. he was sold a bill of goods. That didn't provide anything that would be substantial. If We live a lifestyle.

That says X is enough and everything above it.

So let's suppose you're the guy who makes $500,000. Mm-hmm. But you want to make a million. What are you going to do with it? Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Then we go back to another story in Scripture. I want to build another barn. You're not guaranteed to have it. You're not guaranteed to.

to let it come to you. You're not guaranteed anything. But as opposed to building it to stock policy, you can take it easy because you're already taking it easy. If you're probably making that kind of money, you should be to a certain degree. Why not help other people while you're here so you can see what your money's doing?

Remember what Jesus said at the end of that? He said, You fool. Fool. You four. Tonight, your life is required of you.

And it's like, what kind of an answer are you going to give? How are you going to respond to God? And in Matthew chapter. Matthew chapter 25, it's towards the end of the chapter. I believe it's starting in verse 41.

One of the things that Jesus said, He said, There's going to be at the end of time when we're at the judgment seat. And Jesus is going to say, He said, You did this, you helped me. You helped me out when I was poor. You helped me out. He said, When did we do these things?

And Jesus said, What you did not, what you did for the least of these, my brethren. He says, you have done it unto me. And then there's another group of people, the goats, and they're saying, he's saying, You didn't give me money when I was poor. You didn't help me out when I needed help. You didn't do any of these things.

And he said, When did you not do these things? And he said, What you did not do to the least of these, my brethren, he said, You did not do it unto me. and if for no other reason When we're giving, if we want to give and we've got it in our heart. to give what we want to give to the gospel. We remember that we're not doing it unto men.

But Jesus says in Matthew 25, what we've done for the poor. Or what we've done to help those out who needed help, we're actually doing it for Jesus Christ himself.

Well, you know, he calls us to take care of our widows and orphans. The scripture you just read about the barns. The beauty of that story is. What if you're that person? and you're thinking hey we've got a good thing we can build more It's okay to want to build more.

But what are you gonna do with it? What if you've got what you need, but God's given you the ability to make more so you can build that kingdom? It doesn't mean you go. Get in bed with one organization, you may have three or four that you've vetted well and you agree that you love what they do.

So, you can also, because of what's growing and there, you're now stored in your time because you're investing your time with those organizations. A lot of people just say, Well, I'm gonna chat.

Well, that's great. But if you really have your heart in something, you're probably putting your feet to the. to the road with them as well. And so We encourage clients all the time. Find something that you are passionate about.

And go work with them. Don't wait till you die to give this organization some money. Give it to them now and get involved so you can see. Then you'll also same way with your kids. Everybody wants to leave money to all their kids and they know that some of them are going to blow it.

They're going to blow it.

Well Give it to them now. Yeah. And they're like, well, I wouldn't do that. I was like, well, why give it to them then they're dead then? Oh, okay.

You wouldn't give it to them and watch them do it now. You know that's going to happen. They're like, well, I won't be here.

Well, that makes no sense. It doesn't mean you don't love your kids, you don't take care of them, you don't help them. But you have to understand: is the next steward Ready as well.

So that's a whole different topic. That's why people set up a trust fund, I guess. It can be. Yeah, yeah. And so.

Are you? I know you do finance, you do all of that stuff, but for me, I remember Charles Stanley said years ago, he said that when the best time or the best place for you to be able to share the gospel is in your workplace. I do it online. I do it here. I do it all other places.

And sometimes I'll do it on the street with a guy named Fred Hagee. I don't even know if you know who he is. But. One of the greatest ways for me to be able to share the gospel and pray for people and talk to them about the Lord is when I'm selling insurance and I've got them one-on-one. Do you see that as well?

Well, people Everybody carries a bird. Yeah. And the one of the easiest and one of the probably the It was uncomfortable at first. But one of the easiest things to ask somebody is say, Hey, do you mind if I pray for you? And it doesn't matter if they're a Christian or not.

I've never had anybody, even those who weren't Christians, say no. Mm-hmm. Because everybody's got a burden and they're willing to share it with us when we're talking to them about things that matter. It may be their kids or their grandkids and all this stuff.

So they just want to know that somebody's got a link. or cares enough. And we can lift that care right to the board. Who cares more than him? That's it.

And we're running out of time again. It goes by so fast. But David Belk. And so, once again, if people, you help people with their investments. Um and you And it's Carijana.

Carolina financially five years.

Okay, and the website once again is And you said if people want to call the number to get some help, what's the number? Be a faithful steward of what you got. Thanks again, David. We'll talk to you soon. All right, for my YouTube channel.

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