Nov 02 2007
gripping talk - four
In my last post, I reflected on half the sermon. I avoided the practical half. I will correct that today.
In the sermon, a simple financial strategy was shared as an example of a healthy starting point for financial discipline. The strategy is basic, Give 10% to the church, save 10%, and live on the 80% that is left over. However I am left with two thoughts. The first is personal.
Why can’t(or probably more accurately “don’t”) I live on 80% of my income?
I now make more than I once did. I once had less and I lived on less. I know that I have two kids and have recently moved to an area where the cost of living is much higher. Nevertheless this reality does not fully absolve me from facing the reality that as my income had grown my consumption has kept pace. In fact, in some areas my growth in income has had a catalytic effect on my consumption and it has gone beyond keeping pace.
This suggested financial strategy is so simple, and so obviously beneficial and yet I have never managed to do it. Andy Stanley preached a sermon series on living with margin. It was about more than money but he talked about money as well. He suggested that many of the best things we want to do and that God can use us to do will happen in the margins of our life. If we are careful with our time, we will have the time to help a friend in a crisis. If we are frugal with our money we will be able to give to a special project. Likewise he suggests that to live without margin sets us up to be thrown off course by the littlest things.
I think that my life suffers and more importantly my service to God suffers because I try to fill up my margins. I need to recognize that the margins will fill up on their own. Instead I try to control everything down to the last minute and the last penny. How foolish to think that this is possible. Even more to the point, have I really become to self-indulgent that the luxuries that rob me of margin are more important than the freedom to fret less about money and serve with greater ease?
my second is less personal than pastoral, and it will wait for the next post.
on the walk
-Ethan
Thanks for making the connection between margin & time - that’s a bigger stumbling block for me $ (which is saying something because wanting control of every penny is big problem for me).
James 4:13-16
Matthew 6:25-34
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