Last week we looked at a passage where the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to Timothy a new pastor and Paul said to Timothy, “Command all those who are rich in this present world . . .” (1 Timothy 7:17) and we camped out on the idea that rich is a moving target.

We said that you’ve never open a paycheck at 3:00 on Friday afternoon and have it say, “You’re rich!” That will never happen, because rich is a moving target. And so people who are rich never know that they are rich, so they keep trying to get rich, and never get good at being rich.

We said that a poll was taken to determine what rich was and people who made less than $30,000 said that if they made $74,000 a year or more, then they would be rich, but if you asked people who made $74,000 a year or more they would tell you that they are not rich. People who made $50,000-$75,000 a year said that if they could make $200,000 a year that they would be rich, but the pollster asked people who made $200,000 a year if they considered themselves rich and they said “No”, and then they pointed at people who made $500,000 and said “They’re rich!” And on it went. Rich, they determined, was a moving target.

So, we said that if being rich is a moving target and people never really consider themselves rich, then they would never learn how to honor God with their wealth.  Lastly, we said that if you make $37,000 or more then you are in the top 4 percent of all wage earners in the world and if you make $45,000 or more that you are in the top 1 percent of all wage earners in the world. We said last week that many of us in this room are rich because we are in the top wage earners in the world, but here’s the deal. We don’t feel rich, and since we don’t feel rich, we don’t think that we’re rich, so we keep trying to get rich and never begin to act rich.

Here’s the question we left you with last week. If you make $37,000 a year or more, you are rich. I am rich. But here’s the question, “Why don’t we feel rich?” Why don’t you feel rich?

I mean, how many of you would say that you occasionally or maybe even often have financial stress in your lives? Would you raise your hands if that’s true for you? I want you to look around and see how normal this is. This is what the world calls normal. In our culture, financial stress is completely normal. Living paycheck to paycheck in our culture is completely normal. Having monthly payments normal – debt normal, worry, anxiety, fear around money – especially in a slowed economy is normal. Having financial fights if you’re married, is very, very normal in our culture.

Sadly, in our culture, having little or no margin is normal. The reason I don’t like normal finances in America is because normal is not working. Normal doesn’t give us that (Vision Banner: Heaven on Earth).

Financial margin is the amount available beyond what is necessary. Margin is the amount available beyond what is necessary. Financial margin is a simple math problem. It’s the difference between what we have versus what we need. So let’s put it into real numbers. If I make $500 a week and my bills are $400, then I have $100 margin for that week. If you earn $3000 a month and you spend $3000 a month, then you have how much margin? Zero, Zip, Natta!

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How many of you would like to be rich? Maybe you bought a lottery ticket yesterday, or maybe you found a lottery ticket yesterday on the ground, and today they read off the numbers and Eureka, Hot Dog, you are rich!!!! How many of you would like it if that happened? But then here’s the question, “What kind of rich person would you be?

Maybe you’ve known rich people in the past or maybe you’ve seen them on TV and so many of them are arrogant or rude or extremely selfish, even greedy, and you might have thought to yourself, if I was rich like them, I wouldn’t be like that. I would be more generous with my money if I was them, right? What kind of rich person would you be?

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Last week we looked at some of the foundational issues related to money.  We said that the most important issue in life is not so much what you own but what or who owns you.  You have to get the basics straight before you tackle the other issues.  If you missed last week, I highly suggest that you get a copy of the message from the guys in the back or that you go online and listen to it or read it that way, because last weeks message was absolutely foundational to understanding the biblical concept of money.

Let me start us with this question. Who did you learn about how to handle money from? How did you learn to handle money? And then this basic question, “are you doing it right?”  And then this one, “How do you know?” Read the rest of this entry »

Do you ever think about money? Do you ever worry about it? Do you ever have enough money? We deal with money every day.  Lots of people spend a lot of mental energy thinking about it, dreaming about it, or worrying about it.  People never seem to have enough money no matter how much they have.  There’s something wrong with that picture, don’t you think?

We as a church try to help people sort out the issue of money in a biblical way.  God has a lot to say about money.  Throughout the Bible God gives us wisdom that will help us when it comes to how we think about, save, and spend our money.

God never intended for money to be a burden in our lives.  Instead, he intended it to be a blessing and a resource that we could manage in a way that blesses us and others.

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Prop: Football

 Does anyone know the significance of this day? Yes, it’s Super Bowl Sunday! Does anyone here throw a big Super Bowl party? Are there any passionate football fans here this morning? Who do you think is going to win tonight? Ok, let’s not go there.

 I played four years of high school football, so football is one of my favorite sports. One of the reasons why football is my favorite sport is because there are many similarities between Christianity and football. Did you know that? Did you know that there are many similarities between football and our faith?

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The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe – Video Clip – about 2:00:00 – 2:05:00 Lucy using her magic healing serum to bring healing to Edmond.

Last week we started talking about words, and last week we specifically talked about the power of our words to create evil, to hurt other people, and really, the power of our words to create hell on earth.

We started last week with this premise: We all understand at some level that our words have power. People say hurtful things and those words affect us? And yet, the very same people can say really good things that put a smile on our lips and joy in our hearts. Those words feel good. There’s something therapeutic about words that come out a good heart, out of good intentions, out of a heart that loves

We started with this scripture last week.

Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Proverbs 12:18

We said that carefully chosen good words bring healing and help those around us become the people who God created them to be (blow up a balloon). On the other hand, rash words, words said without much thought or much caution could do great amounts of spiritual and emotional damage to those around us, much like a sword thrust (pop balloon with sword).

Jesus said, Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. 

Our words come from our hearts. There are not good words and bad words, but rather good words come from a good heart and bad words come from a bad heart, and we said that a bad heart is one that is governed by fear and a good heart is one that is governed by faith or love.

We briefly looked at the idea of speaking out of fear last week, so this week we’re going to look at what a heart of faith looks like.

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You and I speak thousands of words a day, but how often do we think about the words that we speak? You and I speak thousands of words daily, but how often do we take our words for granted? Do we stop and considered the affect of our words on the people around us? You and I speak thousands of words daily, but do we ever considered the enormous effect that our words have on our lives and those that we speak to everyday?

Shortly after we began elementary school we stopped jading our enemies saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” because we realized that wasn’t true. Words do hurt. Very early in our lives we found that to be true. Words affect us.

What is it about words that hurt us? What is it about other words that make us feel so good? There is no physical weight, size . . . no density to any word that we speak. You can’t smell them or taste them but you can feel the sting of a word or the peace and goodness that comes from a word rightly spoken. What is it that makes some words hurt, while others feel so good? The writer in Proverbs says this about the power of our words: Read the rest of this entry »

Nanny Clip

How many of you have seen one of the Nanny shows? Yeah, she comes in and rescues people from these unbelievably, bizarre incompetence in raising their children. Now, what would it look like if a super nanny came into a house when the kids where old enough to be on their own. That’s not the way that super nanny’s usually work because they normally come into a home when the kid’s are young and impressionable and at a time when she can make a difference.

It would be very different if a super nanny came into a home where the kids were now young adults because then most of who they will be is pretty much formed in many ways. By the time a child is 13 years old, most of their beliefs and behaviors about life are already formed. Now all of us know that failure is not final. But if we do not start well in the arena of relationships, it becomes more and more difficult to develop positive relationships.

What’s undermining most of our relationships today, and is certainly undermining the relationship that parents are having with their children is because we are reactive in our relationships. We are often times reactive in our marriages and in our friendships and parents are most often reactive in their relationships with their kids.  Our relationships are often times poor or deeply challenged because we tend to be reactive in the way that we relate to one another.

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I’d like you to take just one minute to come up with 4 words that describe the last decade of your life. You have two minutes and I’d like you to share your 4 words with someone around you. You cannot explain your four words. The only thing you can say to each other are the four words. Make sure that you include those people around you so that everyone gets included. 4 small words can give us great insight into the lives of other people, even over a ten-year period.

What if we could describe the meaning of the whole Bible in just four words? What if we could impart who God is and who we were created to be in just four words? Wouldn’t that be cool? I don’t know about for you, but for me, I like things simple and easy to understand. Sometimes the Bible isn’t all that easy to understand. But, wouldn’t it be cool if we could understand the main point in this book with just four small words?

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            I  can remember when my oldest son first discovered that turning on a switch in the wall made lights turn on in the ceiling.  He was fascinated by this concept.  Confused and amazed all at once.  After all, there was no visible connection between the two apparatus.  How could a small switch on the wall have such a large affect of the overall look of the whole room?  It was amazing, perplexing, fascinating and wonderful all at the same time.  Anita and I spent a lot of time getting after him for wanting to turn lights on and off, on and off, on and off.  

            We all know that it is electricity that runs through wires that makes all this work, but even that is a mysterious process.  We have seen it so many times that we take it for granted that it works.  We can’t really see what is going on, but we fully trust that when we turn on the switch the lights will come on.

            Yet how many of you have had trouble trusting in God for reasons that are very similar to the reasons that we would have for not trusting electricity.  We cannot see the electrons flowing through the wires (often we cannot even see the wires) just like we cannot see God.  Most of us do not completely understand how everything works in an electrical circuit and God tends to be very mysterious to us.  We cannot understand how he does things a lot of times, and the things he asks us to do seem to make no sense.  Yet somehow it is harder for me to trust God than it is for me to trust electrical lighting. Read the rest of this entry »