When Dave was a young boy, he hid money in his socks. He paid cash for his first car, which was preowned, but he later paid cash for a new car when he was about twenty-two. That is amazing, but anyone can do it if he is willing to start saving and be diligent at it. Although Dave no longer hides money in his socks, he calls his various accounts his “stash” or his “socks.” Everyone in our family has learned a lot about finances just by watching Dave. He is a very patient man and can wait on things he wants. He saves and does things at the right time.
As a result of his administrative gifts, we have been able to pay cash for everything at the ministry. We have been in ministry since 1976 and in our own ministry since 1985. Since incorporating, we have made payments on only one piece of equipment (a five-hundred-dollar copy machine). We even paid cash for the building we now occupy. That sounds almost impossible in today’s economy, but it can be done.
Dave simply won’t buy things for which he cannot pay. He had to do without some things in the beginning while saving, but once he gained momentum and had money saved, it put him, instead of the debt collector, in charge.
We could have borrowed money and built our ministry headquarters in one year, but we took five years to build it because we wanted to move in debt-free. Patience is always worth it in the end! I am certainly not judging anyone who cannot pay cash for everything he or she does, but I am sharing that it is possible through saving regularly.
SPEND SOME
I already mentioned the fact that some people actually need to spend some of their money. Maybe it’s time you did something special for yourself; it ministers to your weary emotions to do so, and that is not wrong at all. I realize this may excite you, but make sure you are one who actually needs to spend. And I am referring to spending out of what you have saved. Don’t spend what you need for other things, and whatever you do, don’t go spend what you don’t have.
The ones who actually need to spend are people who have a tendency to be excessive in saving. They hoard things, save everything for the future, and spend nothing for now. Most of the time, people hoard out of fear or greed. I noticed that when I began saving money, I accumulated a certain amount and thought it was awesome, and the more I saved, the more I wanted to save and became unwilling to spend any of it. I wanted a big balance in my account. I then noticed that when I refused to spend any, God stopped supplying. He wants us to enjoy what He gives as well as save for the future.
If I spent some as He directed, He then replenished it and gave more besides. It is like the principle of pruning bushes. Without pruning (cutting back), they can keep getting bigger and bigger, but they also become a problem. If we prune them, they grow right back, but in better shape and condition than before.
Some people won’t spend anything on themselves because they don’t feel they are worthy of anything. Some are martyrs; they want to be able to say that they never do anything for themselves, hoping it will invoke pity. Some people are just plain stingy, and they hoard everything because it makes them feel secure and powerful to own things. Whatever the reason, it is wrong to be out of balance. A balanced person saves some, spends some, and gives some.
If you are working your way out of debt, and as a result you are never able to spend anything on yourself, I believe God will do special things for you through other people. When you are doing your part, God always does His part. Ask Him to bless you supernaturally, but refuse to go deeper in debt.
GIVE SOME
Giving is actually one of the wisest choices anyone ever makes. The Bible says to give and it shall be given to you, and “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over” will men give back to you (Luke 6:38). Giving is wisdom, because it actually causes increase. Learning to give is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, and many others will testify to the same thing. I heard one woman, who has a very wonderful life, recently say, “My life is a result of giving.” That is a statement we should ponder.
Are you a giver? If not, you should start today. God requires the first 10 percent of all of our increase (as we saw in Malachi 3). We are to give it to the “storehouse,” the place or places where we are spiritually fed (see Exodus 34:26). In addition to that, He leads us to give other offerings at various times and on special occasions.
When you give, do it with a great attitude. Don’t ever give as an obligation, but realize it is a privilege. Second Corinthians 9 gives us a lot of wonderful insight about the principles of giving. It says we should not give “reluctantly or sorrowfully or under compulsion, for God loves . . . a cheerful . . . giver, [whose heart is in his giving]” (v.7). The attitude with which we give is very important to God. We are to give to bless. God blesses us so we can be a blessing.
Many people find it difficult to give, especially when they are not accustomed to doing it. The basic nature of the flesh is to be selfish; we want to own things, not give them away. But when people receive Jesus Christ as Savior, their nature changes; they receive the nature of God. This nature comes as a seed on the inside of their spirits, and they are to water that seed with God’s Word. As they do so, they begin to want to do what God would do. God is a giver; those who serve Him must be givers also.
Dave grew up in a church whose minister taught the blessing of tithing; therefore, we have been tithing since we got married. We have always seen God meet our needs. In thirty-six years of marriage, Dave has been without a job only about two days, if my memory serves me correctly. We had some tight years, but we always paid bills on time and never did without the necessities of life.
In 1976, when God touched my life and called us into ministry, we began giving more than ever. We wanted to go beyond our tithe. We endured times of testing, but we have never been sorry concerning the decision we made. We have continued to increase our giving over the years and have seen God be faithful to increase us as well.
I believe givers receive a harvest back in any area where they have need. Thank God He provides financially, but that is not the only area of provision. He gives us grace. “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8 NIV). We see from this Scripture that God gives grace in abundance so we have all our needs met.
FROM POVERTY TO PROSPERITY
If you have been making right choices and are enjoying prosperity, keep doing what you are doing. Don’t ever backslide in the principles of wisdom you have learned.
If you find yourself in debt or in need, get started now doing what is right. If you don’t, you will still be in the same situation next year, and the year after, and so on. Pay the price to have financial freedom and security. No matter how big of a mess you are in—if you consistently do what you can do, God will do what you cannot do. Remember the simple formula: save some, spend some, and give some within your means, and you will soon find your situation changing. Not having to worry about money will greatly increase your peace.
PEACEKEEPER #14
Keep Your Thoughts Above Life’s Storms
Although people cannot see our thoughts, they can see the results of them. What is in our minds and hearts is what comes out through the words of our mouths. If we have troubled minds, we will not live peaceful, serene lives. We will not minister peace to others, because we cannot give to others what we do not have within ourselves.
Jesus said we are to be makers and maintainers of peace. Paul said to work for what makes for peace, unity, harmony, and agreement with others. It is very important to make peace a priority, but it begins inside of us.
As I said earlier, Jesus was able to quiet the storm outside because He maintained peace within Himself. Jesus did not have His mind on the storm even though it was raging against Him. While the disciples were frantic and fearful, Jesus slept. He had peace in the midst of the calamity and was able to actually calm it. He had peace; therefore He could speak peace to the circumstances.
Isaiah said
if we keep our minds on the Lord, He will give us perfect and constant peace (see Isaiah 26:3). God’s Word has a great deal to say about our minds and how we think. Proverbs 23:7 teaches us that as a man thinks, so will he become. I say it another way: Where the mind goes, the man follows. Thoughts precede actions!
CAN WE CONTROL OUR THOUGHTS?
We cannot control the thoughts that come to us, but we can control what we continue to think about. For many years of my life, I simply did what most people do: I thought about whatever came into my mind. I did not know I had a choice. The Bible teaches us that the mind is the area Satan tries to control. He offers thoughts for us to entertain on a regular basis; we can either keep them or cast them down and replace them with God’s thoughts.
God’s written Word is a record of His thoughts toward us and about the way we are to live. The Bible literally covers every area of life. If we order our thoughts and conversation according to God’s Word, we will be amazed at how enjoyable and prosperous life will be. But first we must believe that we can choose our own thoughts and that we don’t have to meditate on whatever happens to fall into our minds.
Second Corinthians 10:4-5 are important Scriptures for Christians to understand: “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (NIV).
This passage of the Word explains that we have spiritual weapons with which we can demolish any argument that “sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” and that we have been given divine power to “demolish strongholds” and “take captive every thought and make it obedient” to the knowledge of Christ. These verses teach us that Satan tries to build strongholds in our minds so he can dominate areas of our lives through wrong thinking.
Satan is a liar, and if we believe his lies, he has successfully deceived us in one or more areas. For example, Satan told me for years that I would never have a good life because I had been abused in my childhood. I did not know any different, so I believed what I thought. As I became a student of God’s Word, I learned that even though my past had been unpleasant, God had a great future planned for me. I learned it was not too late for me, as Satan had been telling me for years.
God’s Word renews our minds; it teaches us a new way of thinking. We can begin to think the way God thinks instead of the way the devil would like us to think. Instead of looking at a nice home and thinking, I could never own a home like that, we can think (and say), God will bless me with a lovely home. He meets all my needs.
Instead of thinking we will get cancer because three relatives in our family died of it, we can think, The blood of Jesus protects me, His name is a hiding place for me, God’s healing power is working in my body right now, making right anything that is wrong.
Instead of thinking we absolutely cannot forgive someone who has hurt us, we can think like this: I am hurting, and what has been done to me is wrong, but I trust God to vindicate me. I can forgive through the power of the Holy Spirit. I will pray for the one who hurt me, I will bless him, and God will give me double blessings for my former trouble.
Think about what you think about. If you start to feel depressed, discouraged, or angry, stop and examine your thoughts. You will find that you have been thinking thoughts that are producing the negative emotions you are experiencing. We can make ourselves miserable or happy by what we choose to think about.
When writing about the effect stress has on our health, Dr. Colbert included the following review on the importance of keeping our thoughts in line with God’s Word:
Perhaps the greatest stresses that one encounters are the [unexpected] storms of life. It may be a personal injury or illness of a family member, friend, or oneself, a marital separation or divorce, the death of a relative or close friend, being fired at work, a lawsuit, finding out your daughter is pregnant out of wedlock or has had an abortion, or that your child is on drugs. These are the storms of life that seem to occur at the most inopportune times. Most of us want these problems to go away, and when they don’t, they leave us even more frustrated and stressed than before, and our minds constantly seem to dwell on the problem, with no answer in sight.
When confronted with a problem like this, the first thing we need to do is realize that in this world we will have tribulation—we have been promised that. Jesus said, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). And “many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19 KJV).
So, in other words, we should be able to accept problems as an inevitable part of our lives and see them as potential teachers rather than analyzing, meditating on, and struggling over them.
I once heard a preacher use the term “renting too much space in our minds out to problems.” The preacher talked about a man who had bought an apartment complex and rented out 90 percent of the apartments to drug addicts, prostitutes, and gang members, and 10 percent of the complex to law-abiding citizens who actually paid their rent. Well, after a few months, the 90 percent had run off the other 10 percent. Then the drug addicts, prostitutes, and gang members took up the whole complex, and no one was paying rent.
A similar thing happens in our minds when we start pondering, mulling over, and worrying about problems over which we have no control. We end up renting too much space in our minds to these problems, and they eventually take over most of our thoughts. In other words, we dwell on the problem, not the answer. We forget the second part of theScripture in Psalm 34:19: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth him out of them all” (KJV, italics mine).
Instead of renting so much space to our problems, we have got to learn how to turn the channel of our minds from the worry channel to the praise-and-worship channel, the joy channel, the appreciation channel, the love channel, or the laughter channel, and start focusing on the things that are good in our lives. When we focus too much on a problem, it only makes the problem stronger. Then fretting actually becomes a habit, and the habit becomes very difficult to break.
The average person has about fifty thousand thoughts a day, and for many, these thoughts are mainly pessimistic and negative. When you are confronted with a negative thought, you have the option of either ignoring it or inviting it in and analyzing it, meditating on it, and allowing it to rent more space in your mind.
When you do the latter, you begin to speak out the problem with your mouth, and it becomes a word. You ponder it more, and it becomes an action. You then analyze and meditate on it more, and it becomes a habit, and unfortunately for the majority of Christians, most of their problems are simply negative thoughts that have become habits.
When confronted with a problem that you have no control over, ask God what He wants you to learn from it. Try to find out what He is trying to teach you by permitting the situation to remain longer than you would like.
Do you need to be more patient, more forgiving, more loving? When you allow your problems to be your teacher rather than your punishment, you will begin to learn from them and develop godly character.
Therefore, when one of the storms of life comes on you, how will you react? Will you learn to ignore little, insignificant problems and not rent space in your mind to them? Will you instead change to the appreciation, joy, love, peace, and praise-and-worship channels? When a massive storm, like a hurricane, enters your life, will you allow your thoughts to actually bring you closer to the Lord? Can you practice love, forgiveness, patience, and all the fruits of the Spirit?
Many times, the storms of life actually show us what is really inside our hearts, and unfortunately most Christians fail the test; they react in the flesh, with anger, self-pity, hostility, unforgiveness, fear, or bitterness. I tell patients to practice the love walk during the little trials of life: Practice patience and kindness, instead of being envious or rude. Through intense practi
ce we will be ready for the storms of life; and when they do hit, we will be able to turn the channel in our minds to the love, peace, joy, forgiveness—to all the fruits of the Spirit channel. And thus, we will weather the storm of life and see the storm as a teacher that makes us even wiser.*
We know the fruit of the Spirit dwells in us, but as Dr. Colbert’s article illustrates, we never really know how developed it is until it is squeezed. Trials squeeze our fruit and reveal our level of spiritual maturity. We learn more about ourselves during trials than at any other time in life.
We must remember that God is not the author of our problems, but He will use them to help us once we have them. God is good, and He gets good out of everything if we trust Him to do so. Romans 8:28 teaches us that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. All things may not feel good, seem good, or even be good, but God can cause them to work out for good! What the enemy intends for our harm, God means for good (see Genesis 50:20).
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH
Keeping our thoughts pure and in the will of God will be a lifetime battle. We must “fight the good fight of the faith,” according to First Timothy 6:12. The mind is the battlefield on which we fight. Satan wages war in the realm of our thoughts because he knows that if he can control our thoughts, he can control us and our destinies.