Ep #06: How Can We Use Our Money?

Episode Transcript

Austin
Well, welcome back to the Second Half Stewardship podcast. We again are so glad that you have decided to listen and join us here today. You know, today we've been talking about kind of some of these broad ideas of God owns it all. We talked about God owning money, God owning our time, our relationships, our gifts and experiences. What we're going to do over the next couple of episodes is we're going to dive deeper into each of those topics.
So we're going to start off with money. We're financial advisors. So where better place to start? But if we look back to last week, we just want to give you a quick recap of what we talked about last week, and that was the idea that God owns our experiences, our gifts. And we looked at Genesis 1-2.
And in Genesis 1-2, God creates the world, He creates man and woman. He makes them in their image and in God's image and in His likeness. And then He sends them out be cultivators of the world. He sends them out to go do work. And Andy Crouch talks about the five C's of culture. And in that we looked and we saw that we are called by God to be co-creators with him in this earth.
And so he gives each of us these unique gifts and talents to be able to then serve the world, to serve and bless God and be a part of his kingdom coming here on Earth. And so that's where we sit at this point. We've gone over that idea that God owns our gifts and experiences. So with that being said, Spencer, where does Dracula keep his money?

Spencer
I don't know where.

Austin
It's in a blood bank. You know, we talked about a riverbank. We talked about a snow bank. I thought you might have gotten that one.

Spencer
I guess I'm slow on the uptake here.

Austin
So we don't have any more banking jokes, but that's okay.
Spencer
That's probably run its course.

Austin
I think it has.

Spencer
So we want to dive again deeper into this idea that God owns our money. And one of the ways that we really want to unpack that is through a concept that Ron Blue and some others have come up with that labels each way that we could use our money. And that comes down to this concept of live, give, owe, and grow.
So we can use our resources to live. We can buy groceries. We can pay our rent. We could pay the mortgage. Those resources in live are principally those that we use on a day to day basis to take care of our expenses. The way that we go about our life. So, we have live then we have give. The give piece is what we give first back to God, but also to other institutions, to other people.
So we think about give beginning with our tithe, beginning with whatever we are giving back to our local church, to other charitable institutions, to people around us. So we have again, live give, owe being the third one. And owe has a couple of different parts to it. Owe, the first part is what we owe in terms of our debt.
And so we if we have a mortgage, if we have other debt, maybe student debt or a car loan or something like that, then we can use resources to be able to pay off that debt we have of course an interest payment, an interest piece of that, and then usually a principal piece of that that we're paying down. So that's the first part of owe.
A second part of owe would be taxes. So as we have income that comes in, we're going to have some amount that we pay out tax wise. If we have if we purchase things, of course, we have some sales tax and there's other way that taxes impact us. But we're talking a lot here about the federal income tax from a standpoint of we have that income and immediately there's a deduction or we've got to pay it at a certain period.
And then finally we go through again, live, give, owe, grow. That last piece would be those resources that we allocate towards savings. And oftentimes, if we're thinking about a way to set up a budget, what we would actually do is say, well, resources come in and instead of thinking live, give, owe, grow, we think in a little different order.
And we'll get into that. But we think about we receive resources. So the first thing that we want to do is come back to that giving side of things, perhaps saving thereafter and then thinking about living and what we owe there as well. So we'll dive into that more, but that's our general trajectory today, is unpacking that framework and then really grappling with that question of “How much is enough?”
As we think about God owning our money, because if we come back to our central thesis, it is that God owns it all. And if He owns our money, then we need to have ways that we think about how we utilize our money, that help us support us in a way that gives us that opportunity to be a good steward.
So can you start to unpack a little bit, maybe, Austin, where the culture comes and has a little different view of money?

Austin
You know I think coming back to that idea of give, grow, live, owe, or however we want to frame it, it just doesn't it doesn't have that same like spark as live, give, owe, grow. So when you hear live, give, owe, grow, remember them as categories, not where to start and where to finish. So couple of quotes and we're going to talk a little bit about John Mark Comer’s book, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.”
He's got a chapter on simplicity that I think it really illuminates some of where culture is going in this. But I'm going to start off with a quote from Voltaire, and he says, This is in like the 1600s I think is right, maybe the early 1700s. So a long time ago. But he says “When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”
I looked it up in French. I don't know French. I was going to try to say it in French, but I decided I would butcher it. I'm going to repeat it again, “When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.” So again, coming back to John Mark Comer's book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.” He's got this chapter on simplicity that I think illuminates some of those undergirdings of especially we both live in the United States.
And so it kind of undergirds that. What is an American ideal of how do we spend our money? How do we use our money? And in that book, he says that one of the Lehman Brothers or one of the founders of the Lehman Brothers, or maybe was on staff there, he said, “We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man's desires must overshadow his needs.” And I think, you know, we look at the last century of our existence in the United States and previously before, really before the Industrial Revolution. We've talked about this, but a lot of people are agrarian.

And so what you had was what you needed by and large. You might spend a little bit on your needs, but by and large it was a lot of needs based spending. But then even in the early twenties, 1920s, not 2020s, in the early 1920s, a journalist observed this about America “A change has come over our democracy, it's called consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of a citizen, but that of a consumer.” And so even 100 years ago, we see this shift starting to take place that it's not about what can I contribute to this country? What can I contribute to this society? But we've moved away from those needs based to a desires based. What does my heart want? What is my heart long for? And, you know, you can see it all over anything and everything. It's we live in a desires based culture. You feed what makes you happy, and if it doesn't make you happy, then don't do it. But it's not there's no there's no substance behind it. There's no. To quote Charles Taylor, there's no framework.
There's no moral source that gives it its potency. It's simply what do you want? Go chase it.

Spencer
Well, and we even see this on a broader level. When we see economists who are interviewed on financial news channels, because oftentimes, if they see the savings rate among people in our culture drop, they hit the panic button because they say, well, the consumer is not healthy, the consumer saving too much. We're not going to have people out shopping in the way that they need to so that we have the level of revenue for our companies and the resulting profitability.
It all is chasing that GDP growth. It is chasing that corporate profitability ultimately that drives so much of the way that economists view and even the way that we save, even if even if we're saving and we're saving to use it for ourselves.

Austin
Comer goes back to that. And he says that after 9/11, one of the things that Bush did in a speech right after 9/11 was say go essentially go shopping. Like return to a semblance of normalcy, which means go spend money. Let's not let these terrorist attacks stall our economy. Go spend your money.
Like we are reeling from a tragedy. And instead of sitting in the sorrow and grief, and we did. But he's saying go spend money. Going back to normal.

Spencer
Get back to the ways that we distract ourselves, basically. Which is such a telltale sign of the way that we deal with grief. The way that we deal with the challenges of being mortal. We distract ourselves with spending, and ultimately, we forget about it.

Austin
And I think, you know, coming back to this live, give, owe, grow framework, it's that live piece is the real piece that a lot of United States consumers focus on. It's that live. We forget the giving piece, which is really, you know, Ron Blue will say the way to break the power of money is through giving. And so we will spend more time on that.
I think we're going to talk a lot about giving and the joy that it produces. But, we're going to go ahead and start off. We're gonna look at Hebrews 13:5-6. So just some context of this, throughout Hebrews, the author is regularly reminding the people to hold fast to Christ.
And we have just moved through Chapter 11, which is the Hall of Faith chapter. We've moved through Chapter 12, which at the very beginning, in verses one and two, the author is saying, Lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely and run with endurance the race that was set before us. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecting of our faith.
So, what are some other contextual points from Hebrews that are important here?

Spencer
Well, I think going back to that Hall of Faith that you've talked about in Chapter 11, we just see the heroes of the faith. And so the author is really getting in and reminding us about the way that we run the race and those hindrances that can keep us from following in the footsteps of the fathers and mothers that have given us a great example.

Austin
So, again, some of these exhortations that the author is pressing us into is how they can walk with Christ in a broken world. How the readers of the letter of Hebrews can walk with Christ in this broken world. And within this section, the author is commending the readers that God disciplines those that He loves, which leads to fruitfulness.
He's saying, strive for peace, allow root no bitterness to spring up, avoid sexual immorality, show hospitality to strangers. Remember those in prison, keep the marriage in honor. Don't commit adultery. Remember and obey your leaders. Pray for your family of faith. So this is the framing that we're getting this and so right Chapter 13:5-6 says, “Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have.
For he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say ‘The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?’” Spencer, you want to unpack that a little bit for us.

Spencer
We see first there this reminder that God and money cannot be served at the same time. It's really the only example if we go back to Jesus's words in Matthew 6, where we see actually God and money as two different paths. And, you know, we don't hear Jesus talking about sexuality is as an idol.
We hear him talking about money as an idol. So, you can't serve God and money. Keep your life free from the love of money. Be content with what you have. We must not love money and we just can't come back to that enough. At the same time, we've got to say Christ's nearness is what we're looking for.
We're looking for that level of contentment because we might not have money, but we could still lust for money. So we want to be content in whatever way the Lord has placed us there. Again, we go back to the quote from Ron Blue that you surfaced earlier, giving breaks the power of money over us. Because when we open our hands and we allow the Lord to take those resources and use them, we no longer have them.
It allows us that element of release where we give back to him, trusting that he's going to give us what we need in the future. So, you know, we come back and we say, you know, if we're living on resources, the less that we live on, the more it allows us actually to open our hands and to give.
So really, if we think about kind of setting the stage for how we think about live, give, owe, and grow, in a very simple example, there, if we're pursuing contentment with Christ, if we can set our living and owing and growing at modest levels, it gives us the greatest opportunity to give and then to break the power of money that's over us.
That's over really our culture that keeps pushing on us.

Austin
I think we look back at this passage, we look at passages that Christ has spoken and he's not saying you can't use money. There's an impossibility to live in this world and not use money. Even if I were to try to flee to the hills and live in the Smoky Mountains, like I still need to come back for something at some point.
So I can't live in this world, be a part of society without money. But they focus on the love of money that can become this idol. We can't chase loving money. Again, Christ says over and over, you cannot serve both God and money. And so I love this idea that that you were just sharing it like we can set limits on our taxes.
We can set limits on our spending. We can set limits on how much we save. But those aren't often talked about and I think it's not talked about because we're afraid of a future state. Will I have enough money when I can't work any longer? Will I be able to do the things that I want to do?
Will I be able to do the things that I want to do right now? Can I do the things that that if I look inward, make me happy? But God so frequently cares more about the community of faith and the community flourishing. And you look kind of all through the Old Testament and it's all about communal flourishing so that people on the outside of the family of faith can look and see what a flourishing people of God look like.

Spencer
We'll get there in future episodes where we really do a deeper dive. But it's fascinating if we look at Israel and how the Lord instructs them from an economic perspective because there is individual ownership. So we're not in just this social commune, but at the same time, there are significant boundaries that are put on the way that capital is distributed and used.
There's this return of the land over time to different families so that they're not impoverished indefinitely. There's a forgiving of debt. And so when we even think about God owning it all, He put all of those rules and all of those encouragements in the Old Testament such that people would not love money, that they would see that people are more important than just hoarding resources.
But oftentimes we don't really get into the Old Testament enough to see the dynamics there. We just see people, you know, quote one text or another, but not really see the entire overarching structure of the economics of Israel.

Austin
So again, like you said, we'll get into that later. We're even going to dive more deeply into that question of how much is enough later.

And that's a really hard question to answer. I think that oftentimes we don't answer the question because it is uncomfortable. But we want to say it's a really important question to ask. And it's not just how much is enough for me, it's how much is enough for those around me. Yeah. And I think we've said it before, but it's this idea that Christ looks at not just how much we give, but he's really looking at how much we're keeping for ourselves.
We live in a very wealthy country. We live in a very wealthy time and place. And I think Christ is going to look at us and say, how much were you keeping for yourself and not giving substantially away to the people that need it the most?

Spencer
Well, that's the role of the steward rather than the owner. If we look at this from a perspective that we are the owner of the resources that are in our bank accounts or investments or we own our homes, then we say, Well, I could give this or I could give that, but if we know that we are the steward, then the question gets reversed, as you talked about. You say, how much is enough because it's not ours. We're just the agent.

Austin
Never has been ours.

Spencer
Never has been ours. So that is a very different way that we can flip the question. That actually is much more of a biblical way to look at our finances.

Austin
So I'm going to quickly make a little turn. Let's see what happens when we accumulate a massive amount of wealth. Yeah. And we're going to look at Ecclesiastes 2:24-25. And I'm going to give just a brief overview. We're going to look at it pretty quickly because we make sure that we're respecting your time.
But the author of Ecclesiastes has just listed off everything that he has sought after to have a pleasurable life. Essentially the good life. Think living my best life. He said I sought after laughter. I sought after wine. I sought after sex. I sought after works, building homes and vineyards, parks and gardens, forests. He encompasses both natural building and like manmade building.
So it's not just seeking the beauty that comes from our hands, but seeking the beauty that God has given us. He's got animals. He's got servants, entertainers, silver and gold. Treasures of the Kings. Verse ten says, “Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure for my heart found pleasure in all my toil.”
And then he goes on in verse 17. “So I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me for all is vanity and striving after the wind.” So we see this incredibly wealthy human chase after everything he said I gave myself everything I wanted, it led to vanity. And then his response is becoming depressed. Because he gave himself all that he wanted.
So 2:24-25 says, “There is nothing better for a person than that. He should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also I saw from the hand of God, for apart from Him who can eat and who can have enjoyment.” And I think that last little phrase there is that really the linchpin, like God doesn't withhold us enjoying this life.
He wants us to enjoy this life. However, he doesn't want us to enjoy it in such an individualist way where it's I'm seeking my pleasure and my happiness. He wants me to participate in this life with him. Otherwise it will lead to vanity and toil and depression. Because I'm seeking it on my good, not on good participation with the Father who loves me and longs to give me delightful things.
Like none of those things that the author said were bad. It's the way that he pursues them so that he can live the best life. Not so that he can enjoy life with the Father. And so I think this is this really illuminates that temptation to be all about me, that I think God really wants to to just destroy it in us, because it's not about me.
It's about participation with God and participation with my brothers and sisters and being able to live in this broken world with joy and delight that God gives us life in relationship.

Spencer
And I think it's so important to come back to that. What He gives us and the love that He has for us, because this is not something that we ever, as we have this conversation, we ever want to be casting on people as if there are a series of rules that need to be abided by and there are heavy burdens.
If we look at Jesus's teaching, if we truly embrace them, then our burden is very light. Because the view that He gives us is so much more freeing. But at the same time, we have some things that we've really got to grapple with because wealth and the pleasures of this world, they have their tentacles around us. You know, really drawing us back to them.

Austin
So just to finish off, we've got a couple of minutes left, but how do we make this practical? Like what can we do? Let's maybe start with that giving category. How can we take steps of faith to make this practical?

Spencer
I think if we come back and we just frame things in light of live, give, owe, grow. For some of us that can be a really helpful tool to be able to sketch out to say, okay, how much am I using to live, how much of my using to give, how much do I owe, how much to grow?
Because there are ways that we can modify those categories accordingly. So even just beginning with that set of awareness is helpful. I think as well the more that we can start to shift the conversation, not to how much am I giving, but how much am I keeping? If we ask that to ourselves each day and we start to evaluate our spending in light of maybe what God is inviting us to do from a giving side of things if we can position it.
Not so much as I need to give x amount, but okay, I have an opportunity to spend a little bit more for a nice meal for perhaps myself, a spouse, friend, whatever it might be. Or I could be a little more simple here, and I could be able to help a friend over here. I think the Lord can use that juxtaposition to help us to make decisions that really line, line up in a way that brings us joy because we're lined up with the Father.

Austin
You know, I had a friend that preached a sermon on Psalm 90, and he illuminated this idea that sometimes we sing from joy we experience the joy of the Father, and we sing. Sometimes we sing for joy. We're not experiencing joy in a moment. So we sing so that God can transform our hearts to be joyful.
And I think giving is the same way. Sometimes we have to give from joy, or sometimes we get to give from joy. We are experiencing joy from the Father, and we can give. Sometimes I need to be reminded that it is an honor and a blessing that God has given me these things. And so I give for joy. I’m looking to the Father and saying, “This is yours, I give it back to you. I want it right. I want to keep it right. But I want your joy and your delight more.”

Spencer
And I think we do that not just as we think about giving back again, positioning ourselves as stewards, how much am I keeping, not just even for our lives, but as we think about the saving side of things, I think we think about it for the next generation as well, because there's some of us that are really focused on saving, but perhaps we need to reevaluate that category as well because we're really thinking about, okay, what might the Lord invite me into in this moment of giving?
So that's another way that that we start to grapple with how much of my keeping, not just for me, but maybe for the future, future generations there. And then how much can I reasonably deploy?
For building God's kingdom. For aligning with His joy. So one of the things, of course, we can ask is where are gifts going right now. Where am I? If we don't have a sense of of where we're at right now, it's very difficult to lay that before the Lord and be able to be open handed with that.
And so if we can kind of take stock with where are we would live, give, owe, and grow. And then specifically, what does that giving look like? Then we can ask the question, you know, that James one five question where we ask God for wisdom because we need it in financial decisions.

Austin
So, you know, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be diving in further into these conversations about setting those lifestyle limits on consumption. And we're going to be reflecting a little bit more on each of these individual topics live, give, owe, and grow. But maybe what are just some next steps for the audience? What can they do over the next couple of weeks to just prepare their hearts?

Spencer
I think, you know, for us, we come back to memorizing James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let them ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault and it will be given to him.” When we come before the Lord. And we actually put ourselves in a position of humility and asking with calm, to listen.
Then he tends to speak and do things in our lives. So having that memorized and then actively using that to pray. I think the other thing that we can do is we can start to track things and we can just take an inventory. So there are ways that we can do that. You could use Mint or Quicken or, you know, a daily budget, all kinds of different ways that you could just start to look.
And again, taking that before the Lord. God, what might you speak into this? To be able to get a reference for what do those categories look like. Live, give, owe, grow right now.

Austin
So I just want to finish with a quote. “It is just as much a matter of discipline for a church member practically to deny his stewardship as to deny the divinity of Christ” coming from Charles Finney. There again, I'll read that one more time. “It is just as much a matter of discipleship for a church member practically to deny his stewardship as to deny the divinity of Christ.” If we deny the fact that God owns it all—we are simply his stewards—what does that say about our belief in Christ?

Spencer
And it's hard to really think that we believe in the resurrection, the amazing history turning event, if we will not hand over our pocketbooks and say, Lord, it is yours. But it is so hard to do for so many of us. So, again, we appreciate your joining us on this journey as we talk through these elements.
If you have thoughts of future episodes or questions that you want to surface. Feel free to leave those either in the comments section or to reach out to us directly.

Austin
Thanks. We'll see you next time.