What God’s Word Says About Money Part 2

Shawn: Ready for round two of Financial wisdom from the Bible? Last episode, we tackled honesty, debt giving, and ownership. Today we’re turning the page to saving, investing inheritance, and more. Brace yourselves. We’re diving deep again, so let’s get some perspective. Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you’ve joined us. My name is Shawn Peters. I’m joined as always by my co-host, Bob Barber. Today we’re going to be covering part two of a series on what God’s word says about money. There are over 1500 scriptures on stewardship and talking about money. So we think this is a really important topic to cover. And so we’ve divided this into eight total subjects. If you missed part one, links in the description should be somewhere on screen as well. Last time we covered honesty, debt, giving, and ownership. We’re going to be covering saving and investing, inheritance, seeking wise counsel, and faithfulness. Bob: One of the things I want to make sure that we say too, Shawn, when you talk about scriptures is that Jesus and all he spoke on, he spoke on stewardship more than heaven and hell combined according to many biblical scholars. So that’s a lot of… Shawn: So maybe it’s important. Bob: It’s very, very important. It sure is. So like you say, if you didn’t hear last week’s, please go back and listen to it. We’re giving you some really good information, but we’re only covering about 20 of the 1500 scriptures. Shawn: Exactly. Bob: Yeah. Okay. Shawn: So don’t worry, we’re not covering all of them. Bob: Alright, so let’s get started with saving and investing. Most people don’t realize that scripture speaks into this and it does and it comes. We have three scriptures that I see that go with this. Proverbs 13:11, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” Proverbs 21:15, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit is surely as haste leads to poverty.” And… Shawn: Ecclesiastes 11:2, “Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.” Bob: We say that one a lot around here. Shawn: We do. That is definitely one of our firm life verses, if you will. Bob: So when I look at these scriptures, they’re talking about saving and they’re talking about investing, but they’re talking about it with wisdom. I see where these scriptures provide protection and they talk about being frugal. Shawn: That’s right. Bob: Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little. It’s not get rich quick, Shawn. Shawn: Exactly. So that takes us into, for this particular subject, saving and investing, we have three real life application areas to cover. Saving with wisdom – so understanding the importance of diligently saving over time for financial security. We have protection – having a diversified investment strategy can protect against unforeseen financial downturns. And of course frugality – being economical in your saving and investing can lead to long-term financial stability. Bob: So the next subject we’re going to talk about today is inheritance. And when it comes to inheritance, we’re just going to go over two scriptures today, but there’s actually over 200 scriptures that have to do with inheritance. Shawn: It’s hard to pick just two. Bob: Yeah, it is. But I picked Proverbs 20:21 and Ecclesiastes 7:11. Proverbs 20:21 says, “An inheritance claimed too soon will not be blessed in the end.” There’s a lot of thought behind that, and Ecclesiastes 7:11 says, “Wisdom like an inheritance is a good thing and benefits those who see the sun.” So Shawn, I see that how we leave an inheritance to our children is extremely important and if we leave it without wisdom, it can hurt ’em more than it can help. Shawn: That’s right. That’s right. And for our real life application, how we leave inheritance to our children matters. The timing and thoughtfulness in leaving an inheritance can result in long lasting family stability and blessing. I know, Bob, from your personal experience, I know that you have your estate planning set up to where a certain percentage of the trust, everything that you have in your estate can be distributed out each year, but no more than that. Bob: That’s correct. Shawn: Specifically. So it will theoretically continue to last for multiple generations. And you even have, I believe, the church and maybe Compassion International. Bob: I do. And Focus on the Family is about 20% of my estate. That’s right. Shawn: Which is again, is a great way not just for Bob’s children, my wife being one of those, but it’s one of those things that will allow it to last without it just being completely spent and depleted by the descendants, but also that continued blessing for charities and for expanding God’s kingdom after Bob’s gone to be with the Lord. So that’s something that you could do in your own estate planning. Bob: Another thing else that we put in there is an idea is for the men of the family to inherit their portion each year, they have to work for that and so they basically get a matching grant for how much they worked. So it’s an incentive to work because work is a good thing. Shawn: Exactly. And then of course, wise inheritance. Bob: Yes. Shawn: Inheritance shouldn’t be given without wisdom because again, as we said, it could hurt the children more than it helps, it can compound the problems of the child. If your child is receiving a large inheritance, but they haven’t been able to show themselves faithful with what God has given them already, it’ll just exacerbate that problem and it basically amplifies whatever the weaknesses are. Bob: That’s right Shawn: In the child. Bob: Sure does. Shawn: So careful planning to make sure that what you’re giving to them, that what they’re inheriting is ultimately going to help them, going to bless them, not ultimately make their life worse. Bob: So this kind of takes us right into the next subject, doesn’t it? Shawn: Yep. Seeking wise counsel is our number three for today, and our first scripture on that is Proverbs 15:22, which is one of my favorites, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.” Bob: And another one is from Psalms 1:1 and Psalms 1:1, you can look at it kind of two ways. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked.” So blessed is a man that does walk in the council of wisdom, right? Shawn: Yeah, that’s right. Bob: “Or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.” So it’s saying the man will be blessed if he’s not walking in the council of the wicked. Shawn: That’s right. Bob: So I look at that and I say, okay, what’s the opposite of that basically is saying the man will be blessed by walking in wisdom in God’s word. There’s a lot of real life application to this. Shawn: Exactly. So the first one, wise counsel over social media and Hollywood. Bob: Oh yeah. Shawn: I mean our world is just saturated with information, some of it good, much of it not. And seeking the wisdom of trusted advisors rather than just whatever’s popular on “insert social media network of your choice here” or whatever popular culture is talking about. It’s critical. And when we say multiple advisors, that could be, like our firm, Bob and I are both financial advisors, Christian financial advisors, but there’s also, there’s CPAs, there’s attorneys, there’s maybe you have a trusted older relative of some kind. Could be a parent, grandparent, but someone who has shown themselves to be trusted with what God has given to them. Those are all examples of people that you can seek wise counsel from. Bob: And look at the traits that are listed for an elder or a deacon in the third chapter of Timothy. We don’t have that one as one we’re sharing today, but I just thought of that. Shawn: It’s a very good one. Bob: While you’re doing it, the third chapter of Timothy is a person with a good reputation, well known in their city, not drunkenness/too much wine and alcohol, things like that. So it’s got really good virtues in there that you would want to look for in that wise council. Shawn: And so going into our last topic or subject for today, but it’s faithfulness. So our scripture for this one is Luke 16:10, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. And whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much,” which goes back to, I mean, I guess like we said on multiple of these, if you’re seeking counsel or if you are receiving an inheritance, whatever the case may be, you need to be someone that can be trusted with what you have been given. Because if you can be trusted with a little, well, maybe you can be trusted with more. Bob: There’s order in wisdom, and there’s order in becoming wealthy as well. And that’s where I see this because it’s basically saying, okay, you handled that $5, how you handled that $5,000, how you handled that $50,000. Well maybe I can bless you with a $100,000 or $200,000 or even $500,000. You handled that well, now there’s a million. So it can increase. And it says this right here. If you can be trusted with that little bit. So you’re thinking I want to go way out there to the million or 2 million, how are you doing with the $5 or $10 in your pocket? How are you doing with credit cards? Shawn: And that could be more closer to home too of not just oh, that God somehow blessed you with money out of nowhere, but in your relationships maybe with your spouse, your kids, your job, maybe with your church and volunteering and that you don’t just get to be the leader all of a sudden. You don’t get to be the high income earner. Bob: That’s right. Shawn: You earn your way to that. You show that you can be trusted and faithful with what God has already put on your plate in all areas of your life. Bob: So I like what you wrote down here, the real life application of this, Shawn, and I know you wrote this, there is an order in becoming wealthy. Shawn: That’s right. Building wealth isn’t just about having resources, it’s about being faithful in managing whatever you have, large or small. Financial stability comes with time and faithful stewardship. Bob: So there you have it. There’s parts one and two of what God’s word says about money. Like you said, we shared about 20 and stewardship, we shared about 20 of the scriptures and last week’s, if you didn’t hear it, I would now invite you to go back and listen to that one of last week. We went over honesty, debt, giving, ownership, saving and investing, inheritance, seeking wise counsel, and faithfulness. What’s amazing, there’s so much more in God’s word, over 1500 to 2000 scriptures. Shawn: So hopefully this inspired you. Again, we did not share all 1500 to 2000 scriptures, but hopefully this has inspired you that we would encourage you to seek God’s word and read this for yourself. I mean, you can go to bible.com and Bible Gateway. There’s all these different places. Just look for scriptures on honesty, scripture on inheritance, scriptures on… Bob: We have this all on our website, Shawn. Shawn: We do. We have a lot of these on our website as well. We’ll have a link in the description. But again, God’s word says so much about this, so we hope this has encouraged you to seek this more, to look into this yourself. Don’t just take our word for it. Go look at God’s word. And I think that’ll wrap it up for today. If you want to get in touch with us, if you’re watching this on YouTube love for you to leave a comment. You can also contact us via phone or our website. That’s (830) 609-6986. Call or text. You can also visit www.christianfinancialadvisors.com. Thank you and God bless. [DISCLOSURES] * Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors®, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors® believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.