by Joe Ranney

Did I do WHAT? For nearly a year now this series has been running with numerous suggestions for you to pattern your spending lifestyle after. So let's start with the last article's question: Did, or have you torn up your credit cards rather than to radically change your spending habits? 

Its main premise bears repeating--if we as believers in Jesus Christ have accepted Him as our personal Savior, it's equally important that we, as stewards, yield ourselves to Him as Lord of every aspect of our lives. That includes our Treasure, Talent and Time.

A simple paraphrase of Galatians 2:20 helps us get a clearer and better perspective on spending habits as they relate to the Great Commission's call on our lives:

"My pocketbook has been crucified with Christ and I no longer exclusively spend on my selfish wants, because Christ lives in me. The spending life I now live is by faith and obedience to the Great Commission's call and can be successfully achieved because He loved me and gave Himself for me."

Think of it, every dollar we spend, or have to spend is directly related to the Great Commission's call. Should we not be concerned and careful how we spend the resources the Lord has entrusted to our care?

Fifty years ago the Lord led me to deal with and answer these questions in the following way: "Yes, with the Lord's help, my resolve is to radically change my basic attitude towards spending to the extent that I can enthusiastically become a 'have-to-have' type of spender and thereby free up the budgetary resource needed to do what the Lord wants me to do and what many of us have been frustrated in not being able to do." I hope that today the Lord has brought you to a point of answering in this way, too.

We should and can be so self-disciplined in our spending mode that whether we have cash or credit card leverage available, we no longer act on the premise: "If I have it, I'm going to spend it." Rather it is: "I will not buy it if it does not fit my God pleasing 'have to have' budget plan." It is not how you pay for something, but what you buy that matters.

Many that I have counseled have been frustrated and ashamed because they were not able to give a tithe, let alone some additional offerings to the Lord. With a sense of sincerity, they oftentimes have pledged to start "tithing" just as soon as they get out from under their mountain of debt. It never happens. The attitude towards spending is the key component of the human spirit that must be crucified with Christ for that to ever happen.

Let's now apply a basic principle of human behavior to this discussion: We mortals tend to be habit formers. What I do in one situation, I do by force of habit in other situations. Let's apply this principle to the subject at hand. If you lack the ability to discipline your way of life in the "Treasure" aspects of your life, can you discipline yourself in the aspects of "Time" and "Talent" management either? Probably not.

Therefore, it makes good sense to recognize that to be effective managers of some parts of our lives, we must be good managers in all parts of our lives. Remember one of my past articles when I talked about "think Olympic gold?" Apply that principle in budget planning. Conversely, if you are managing your time and talent effectively, but are not doing so with your treasure, take heart! Start applying the success discipline you apply on the two to the failure in the "Treasure" field; with the Lord's help, you can do it.

You can never outgive God, but remember, never give with the intent to get. God will not bless selfish intent. In closing, look at Malachi 3:10,11 (New International Version), "'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,' says the LORD Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,' says the LORD Almighty." How true that is.

Permit me to share a personal testimony that clearly illustrates this. In 1976 I built and leased a fast-foot restaurant to Long John Silver Sea Foods Co. In negotiating the lease, we insisted that an essential covenant in the agreement was to never sell alcohol on the property. We do not drink and will not condone it on our properties. They countered with a rent reduction requirement of $75 per month. Considering the 30-year life of the lease, that rent reduction amounts to $27,000. We considered it to be a sacrifice or gift to honor our Lord.

Now comes the window of heaven God promised in Malachi! A few years after the lease began, the lessee built an addition on to our property to accommodate the good business that the Lord had blessed them with. The building extension cost them about $225,000. Since they paid for it and it is attached to our property, it is ours, so they had to amortize it over the life of the lease (incidentally, six years still remain). As I calculated the average monthly benefit it is to us, I discovered that it totaled $750 per month and that does not include any of the interest they are having to pay, too. That is a ten-fold increase on the $75 monthly "gift" to our precious Lord. Oh, give to the Lord. Honor the Lord with your gifts and He will honor you in your giving.