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When you go to a high-profile concert, you’re in for quite a show. The band is flawless; the lead singer commands the stage with swagger and charisma; the backup dancers are in perfect step; and the sound and lights coordinate seamlessly with the performers to create an overwhelming experience. That doesn’t happen by accident — the performers have been intentional about planning every aspect of the show. There’s a lesson here: Having rock-star financial success requires learning how to be intentional with money.
A two-hour concert is the culmination of months of intense rehearsal, not to mention years of prior training. Every musical note, dance step and lighting cue has been carefully planned down to the tiniest detail. You have a great experience because the show’s producers intended you to.
Nothing really great ever happens by accident. tweet this!
Nothing really great ever happens by accident — it’s always the result of planning, strategy, hard work and a clear vision. We call this “doing things intentionally,” and it can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your life’s endeavors. It certainly makes a huge difference with your money.
Real life rarely feels like a rock and roll show. Daily life contains a lot of tasks and hassles that aren’t exciting or glamorous. And we when we’re not intentional about pursuing the lives we want, the lives we have can become mundane or even chaotic.
This is certainly true in your finances. Learning how to be intentional with your money can make a huge difference in your journey to freedom. If you don’t have goals, and plans for your finances, you can earn a lot of money and still find yourself broke at the end of the month. You can work hard your whole life but come to the end of your career and without enough money for retirement. You can spend your whole life meeting your own needs and later regret that you didn’t give more to people who needed help.
Living intentionally means being conscious of your values. tweet this!Living intentionally means being conscious of your values, your purposes, your resources and your responsibilities. People who know how to be intentional with money make decisions that prioritize the things that matter most to them. It’s not always easy, but it does always lead to success.
If you feel like you’re treading water in your personal finances, there’s a good chance that you haven’t been intentional with the way you handle your money. To change that, here are five tips to help you learn how to be intentional with money:
The things that we do with our money are indications of what we value in life. So you need to be aware of what your most important values are. Do you value education? Giving? Missions work? Convenience? Eating well? Traveling abroad?
Everybody has different values, and that’s okay. What’s important is that you know what you value most. That way, you can intentionally use your money toward the things that are most important to you.
Once you have identified your values, you need to set goals to translate those values into real-world actions. These goals can include getting out of debt, saving a certain amount of money for a home, investing for retirement, funding your children’s education, buying a new car or giving a percentage of your income to charity.
Your goals don’t have to be something you can achieve this month — some of these goals will take years to accomplish. But they give you a big picture of the things that you should be doing to help you find success.
A budget is absolutely essential for winning with money. tweet this!If you’re going to reach your long-term goals, it will take series of short-term actions to get there. So you need to make a plan for how you’re going to spend your money this month in order to create progress toward your goals. In financial terms, we call that plan a budget, and it’s absolutely essential for winning with money.
This is also the place to examine life changes — such as finding a better job or learning a new skill — that might help you toward a goal.
Here’s where the rubber meets the road: A plan is only as valuable as the paper it’s written on until you put it into action. Plans only work if we execute them, and execution is often the hardest part. This means that just writing out a budget isn’t good enough. You actually have to live according to the plan you made.
If you’ve created a plan to further your education or get a better job, you have to take the steps to make those things happen, too.
If you’re trying to keep your spending in line with your budget, you need to have a way of keeping track of what you spend so that you’ll know how you’re doing. And if you have a savings or debt-payoff goal, it’s a good idea to watch your account balances to make sure progressing toward your goal.
In addition to showing exactly how you’re doing, tracking also helps you evaluate your success and determine if you need to make any changes. In reality, it’s rare for a plan to be executed perfectly the way that it was laid out. The messiness of life will necessitate some flexibility and adjustment along the way.
Learning how to be intentional with moneyLiving intentionally with your money is a lot of work, but it comes with a great reward. Nothing really great ever happens by accident. And if you learn to handle money intentionally, you’ll see really great rewards in the future.
For years, I’ve been helping people find freedom in their finances through studying God’s word. It would be my honor to help you too. My free e-book, “God’s Master Plan for Your Money,” is full of encouragement and practical tips to help you begin your own journey to freedom. You can get it right now by filling out this form:
Would you expect a contractor to remodel your house free of charge? Do you go to the doctor without paying for his services? Would you go to the store to get food without bringing money to pay for it? Of course not — money is a part of every profession. So why do so many people have a problem with money and ministry?
All work has value. Whether someone provides you a good you need to survive or a service that will make your life easier, you compensate them. We pay people to show them our appreciation for their time and effort and to enable them to provide well for their own needs.
When it comes to money and ministry, though, things get awkward. It takes money to run a ministry, but many great organizations are limited in their effectiveness by poor financial management. Following God’s Master Plan for your money can help with ministry finances. But it’s also important to clear up the misunderstanding that money and ministry don’t go together. Because the Bible is clear that they do.
If you work in ministry full-time, that work should provide you a wage that will support your family. tweet this!
If you work in ministry full time, that work should provide you with a livable wage that will support you and your family. Even if you work part-time in ministry, you should get some compensation for the amount of time and effort that you put into the work.
Jesus addresses the tension between money and ministry in Luke 10:5-7, when He gives His disciples instructions on how they should handle the practical aspects of traveling ministry assignments:
When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ 6 If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
Later on, in I Timothy 5:17-18, Paul gives similar advice to his protege Timothy, who is also working in full-time ministry:
17 The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. 18 For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”
Both of these passages make the same point: People who work hard in ministry deserve to be compensated fairly for their time and effort.
Jesus understood that “the worker deserves his wages,” and He instructed His disciples to receive physical support from the people that they ministered to. Paul used this instruction — as well as the Old Testament prohibition against forcing an ox to labor without feeding him — to convince Timothy that people who work in the church should receive both honor and financial reward.
This teaching has real ramifications in ministry as well. Some people become uncomfortable when they arrive at the intersection of money and ministry. They believe ministers shouldn’t make much money or that wealth is incompatible with service to God. But scripture doesn’t support those ideas. Looking at the teachings of Jesus and Paul, it’s safe to say that God intends for His full-time workers to make money and to enjoy a life of financial contentment.
Working in ministry without an income will eventually lead to stress, worry, discontentment and burnout. tweet this!
What does this all mean for you? If you run a ministry or do faith-based non-profit work, you need to make sure you’re being paid for your work. It can be tempting to forego a salary, especially if money is tight for your organization. But you can’t live that way for long — it’s simply not sustainable.
You need to have an income and personal money independent of your ministry’s cash. Unless you have some other resources at your disposal, working in ministry without an income will eventually lead to stress, worry, discontentment and burnout. It may sound noble to work for free, but ultimately foregoing a paycheck does more harm to your organization than good.
If you work in the secular world, these principles have real implications for you too. The work of the Kingdom must be funded, and God expects those of us with incomes to give generously to fund that work. Our tithes provide the funding that makes church happen, and our generous giving is what allows missionaries to take the gospel to all corners of the earth. Just as you wouldn’t expect a doctor, contractor or grocer to work for free, you shouldn’t expect your ministers to work for nothing either.
Managing Money in Your MinistryIf you work in ministry, you might have experienced some tension surrounding your finances. Financial trouble might even make you wonder if a life of ministry is worth the hardships. But if God has called you to His work, He doesn’t intend for money to get in your way.
For years, I have helped people find freedom in their finances by following God’s plan for their money. If you work in ministry and need a hand figuring out your financial life, it would be my honor to help you. My free e-book, “God’s Master Plan for Your Money,” is full of encouragement and practical tips to help you start your journey to financial freedom. You can download it instantly by filling out this form:
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Sometimes we all have trouble being the people we wish we were… and we don’t even realize we’re falling short. Things like money and selfishness can warp our hearts and send our lives in some ugly directions.
Everybody struggles with selfishness from time to time. And it can cause all sorts of problems in our lives. The older you get, the easier it becomes to hide your selfishness behind a polished exterior. But hiding the struggles in your heart doesn’t make them go away. And one of the best ways to determine if selfishness is driving you is to look at the ways that you think about your money.
The Bible teaches that money can make slaves of us in all sorts of ways. Some of those ways are overt. Others, like selfishness, are sneaky and difficult to see… unless you’re willing to take a hard, honest look at yourself.
Selfishness can creep into your attitudes and make a slave of you from inside your own heart. tweet this!Truth is, it’s a lot easier to be selfish with our money than it is to generous. If you don’t make a conscious effort to be a giver, selfishness can creep into your attitudes and make a slave of you from inside your own heart.
Think I’m overstating it? Maybe not. Here are five signs that you might be a slave to selfishness. See if you recognize any of these from your own life.
You believe that you’re special and should be rewarded for your extraordinary gifts and abilities. Maybe you grew up surrounded by comfort and a high standard of living, and you expect that same luxury throughout your life. When you encounter challenges, you feel that the world is being unfair to you. You have a keen eye for injustice being done to you, but you are blind to the injustices taking place in the world around you.
You’re constantly looking to your family members to give you things, help you with problems and meet your needs. But you rarely show up to help them in the same ways that they help you. You’re strategic in the way you chose your friends. You build relationships with people who can benefit you or help you get ahead. You don’t have time for anyone who isn’t useful to you. And you have no problem abandoning old friendships if better opportunities come along.
You spend so much time thinking about your own life that you don’t recognize the needs of people around you. Nobody you know is struggling financially, and you never visit the part of town where you might see real poverty. When you see images of poverty in the media, you turn the page, change the channel or mute the sound. And when you do thing about people less fortunately than you, you’re quick to blame them for their own problems and slow to consider what you could do to help them.
You know giving is a good thing but also think you have good reasons for not doing it. In your mind, the particular challenges of your challenges excuse you from God’s commandments of generosity. You tell yourself you’ll start giving once you get that next raise, finish saving money for your next home or get the kids off to college. There are plenty of other people out there to give, so it’s okay to let them care for others. You have enough trouble of your own.
You don’t have any problem giving money away — in fact, you love the way that it makes you feel. And you love it when other people know exactly how generous you’re being. You attend every fundraiser and charity auction you can, and you’re excited about the visibility and opportunities that might come about when others see how a kind you are. Your dream of having a public building named in your honor because you gave so much money toward having it built.
If you recognize yourself any of those descriptions, it’s a clue that selfish motivations may be controlling you more than you’d like to admit. I’ve found myself stuck in each of those attitudes at one time or another. Money and selfishness are a powerful cocktail that can lead my heart to some dark places.
God’s purpose for you is to be generous, compassionate and selfless. tweet this!Hope is not lost, though. God made you to be generous, compassionate and selfless. If you commit yourself to the things He asks you to do, He will change your heart and set you free from the slavery of selfishness.
My journey through faith has taken me from a heart of selfishness to a heart of generosity, which has led me to authentic financial freedom. I would love to walk with you on that same road. My free e-book, “God’s Master Plan for Your Money,” will give you lots of wisdom, encouragement and practical tips to help you find financial freedom and grow in generosity. It’s yours free today when you fill out this form: